Fontanas Trouble (11 page)

Chapter Fifteen

This was not her fantasy. They
were only one hundred kilometers away from Sagitariun, and already four
fighters flew circles around the
Dawn Rising
like moths around a porch
light, firing electron-beam weapons against the
Dawn’s
shields. One
cruiser, presumably the lead ship, flanked the
Dawn Rising
, firing off
exploding rounds with some kind of broadside-mounted cannon. So far, the
shields held the onslaught at bay, but with no power to spare for the ship to
go into warp. The fighters’ beams stabbed, stuck, and flared, then glanced off,
spilling sparks of ionized gas from the
Dawn’s
thrusters.

Brent looked up from where he
stood at weapons and shields.

“I told you to stay on
Sagitariun,” Fontana told him.

“All this over a coat?” Swayne
demanded.

Fontana wanted like hell to say
yes, but even a fantasy package meant for her wouldn’t shoot live fire. “No,”
she said. “My guess is the Track Cartel.”

Swayne shot her a dark look.
“They must want you bad to fire on us before we’re out of Sagitariun space.”

“Acknowledge,” came the order
from Sagitariun space control.

Swayne cursed. “Sagitariun
launched a frigate. We’ve got to return to the space station.”

“No power to jump into warp
without lowering shields,” Brent said.

Fontana cursed. “We’ll all end up
in the brig.”

“Yeah,” Swayne agreed, and veered
toward the space station.

“No!” She grabbed Swayne and
whirled him around.

He didn’t swing at her, though
his fists were balled at his sides, but he glared a warning that said
touch
me again, and you’ll be looking for your teeth on the floor
.

She pointed at the cruiser on
view-screen. “Beam me over to the lead ship, then get the hell out.”

“I’ll lose my license,” he
growled.

“Fawn,” Brent began, but Fontana
ignored him and stepped closer to Swayne. “Give me your sidearm, and I’ll force
you to do it. It’s your only way out. I know how to deal with these people.”

“Then deal with them over the
comm,” Swayne said.

A cluster of manual-control
panels, consoles, and video screens was all the bridge of the
Dawn Rising
held. The ship needed no personnel as long as the computer worked.

“Okay,” Fontana said, “give me a
weapon, turn on the vid, and they’ll see I’ve taken the ship by force.”

“Nothing doing.” Swayne’s hand
strayed to his holster.

She had to do something besides
squint at the display. The fighters and cruiser had reduced the shields by 30
percent, and they were getting worse by the second.

The comm beeped, and the frigate
came into view on the display.

“Damn,” Fontana cursed.

Swayne’s head swiveled in her
direction. “What is it?”

“I know that frigate; it’s a
Saber-III commanded by Major Sorens of the Galactic Coalition.”

“
Dawn Rising
, prepare to
be boarded,” came a male voice over the comm.

“Sorens?” Swayne demanded.

“Yep,” Fontana said. “And he
knows how to use a tractor beam.”

Stephaney had sent someone to
arrest her for running her own covert operation? Did Sorens think he was after
a rogue agent? At the very least, the Corps would bring her up on charges of
alerting the cartel that someone at Sagitariun was on to their smuggling
operation. If nothing else, she had to get Swayne and Brent off the hook.

Fontana dropped to a squat and
swept one leg in a circle, catching the back of Swayne’s knees. He went down.
She vaulted over him, grabbed his handgun, and rose. The Colt 200MeV pulse gun
had enough energy to render a person unconscious but wasn’t intended to kill.
She cranked the power knob on the bottom of the handgrip into the red. The
setting would knock out an elephant and give the recipient one hell of a
headache for a week.

“Sorry, but I must insist you
beam me over to that cruiser.”

The captain shrugged. “It’s your
funeral.”

Swayne shoved to his feet and
backed away as he spoke commands in a language she didn’t recognize.

She leveled the weapon at his
head. “No funny stuff. Brent, beam me over.” Brent she could trust not to beam
her into empty space—she hoped.

Oddly enough, Brent used the
console instead of voice command. A few seconds later, the air around her began
to sparkle, and the scene changed to the interior cargo bay of another ship.
Shipping crates and plastic-wrapped equipment sat strapped to the decking.
Brent materialized by her side.

“You fool,” Fontana cried. “What
have you done?”

The sound of running boots echoed
toward them.

He looked crestfallen. “I
couldn’t let you go alone. After all, this is my fantasy.”

“Damn you.” She tossed the
handgun to him as two men in brown overalls rounded the corner. They skidded to
a stop—one tall and thick, the other about Brent’s height with a receding
hairline. The tall one hefted a stubby laser pistol. The other one had a
short-range sonic blaster. Brent pointed his weapon at the two men.

“It’s not him you want,” Fontana
told the men. “Let him go, and I’m yours without a fight.”

“Fontana.” Brent reached for her,
but she stepped away.

“Let him beam off,” she said.

“You’re ours anyway,” the big guy
said. “Gaelen’s gonna love hearing we finally got you.”

“I can kick your ass,” she said.

“Not if we get you first.” His
thumb tensed on the laser’s button.

Fontana dived to the side behind
the crates as a beam of light flashed from his weapon. Someone cried out, and
she rolled to her knees in time to see the pirate crumple to the floor. Brent
stood, his weapon aimed at the second man.

“Try me.”

The steel in Brent’s voice sent a
shiver down Fontana’s back.

Apparently, the man detected the
same determination, and he let the weapon drop from his fingers and raised his
hands.

“You all right, Fawn?” Brent
asked.

She rose from behind the crates.
“Yeah.”

“Back up,” Brent ordered the
pirate. Brent waved his handgun in the direction of a built-in equipment
locker. The man backed up as Brent approached the fallen man and snatched the
laser from the floor. “Grab that,” Brent told her. He pointed to the sonic
blaster on the floor.

She did as ordered.

“Come on,” he told her, eyes
still on the man, “let’s get out of here.”

Fontana crossed to him, and they
backed out of the room. When they reached the door, it slid open. As they
stepped out, Brent fired at the man. He dropped to the floor.

The sound of pounding boots on
the metal floor made them glance to the left.

“What did you do to deserve all
this attention?” Brent asked.

“You don’t want to know. This
way.” Fontana turned left, then stopped at the sound of approaching feet from
the direction they were headed. She looked at Brent. “Told you to stay on
Sagitariun.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“The fun ended when we left the
shop on the boardwalk.”

“We’ll see. I’ll take this way.”
He pointed to the right. “You take that way.”

She nodded, and he released her.
They turned, their backs pressed against each other, and raised their weapons.
She wasn’t going to make it back home in time.

Forgive me, Jenny.

Her pulse thundered in her ears.
Major Sorens and three armor-clad Corps officers appeared around the curve.
Fontana froze, her finger on the trigger. Dammit, they had monitored her and
Brent’s transport to the freighter and had followed.

“Brent,” she whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Can you see who’s headed your
way yet?”

“Yeah.”

She heard the tension in his
voice and knew he was facing cartel members even as Major Sorens’s gaze shifted
beyond her and narrowed.

“I’ve got the cavalry on my
side,” she whispered. “Hit the deck on three.”

He nodded.

“Three!” Fontana whirled as Brent
began firing. She hurled herself against him, firing at the cartel members as
she and Brent crashed to the floor. Laser fire crisscrossed over their heads.

“Cease fire!” Sorens shouted.

Brent rolled over her and hugged
her close. With a mighty heave, he shoved to his feet, pulling Fontana with
him, and lunged toward the door. The metal slid open a second after laser fire
creased her right arm, and pain seared her flesh as they fell onto the hard floor
of the compartment. They jumped up and threw their backs against the wall to
the left of the door. Brent peered around the edge and fired.

The sonic blaster had too short a
range. “Give me the laser,” she ordered.

Gaze locked on the men he was
firing at, Brent reached into his waistband and blindly extended it toward her.
She took it, then leaped across the open doorway and plastered herself against
the opposite wall. Fontana scanned the hallway. A laser beam fired from her
left where Sorens and his men were. Two cartel members lay motionless on the
floor. With her left arm, she aimed and fired at the man who peeked around the
bend in the corridor. Her laser blast was followed by one from Brent and more
from the Corps officers to her left.

Brent glanced at her. “Fawn.”

A laser blast bit into the corner
of the doorway bare centimeters from his face. He ducked back against the wall.

“Let’s get out of here,” one
cartel member shouted. The man disappeared from view.

Brent made a fast jump from his
side of the door beside Fontana. “What happened to your arm?” he demanded.

Corps officers inched forward
past the door. Sorens paused at the doorway. “You two all right?”

She nodded, and he motioned the
other officers to follow him as he hurried forward.

“What happened?” Brent demanded
again.

Fontana looked at her arm. “A
flesh wound. I’ll live.”

His mouth thinned. “Was this
worth getting off Swayne’s transport?”

She allowed the arm holding the
weapon to drop to her side. She was suddenly very tired. “This job turned out
to be more than you bargained for?”

He pulled her into a hug. “You
turned out to be more than I bargained for.”

Fontana pulled back to see Sorens
in the doorway again.

Sorens’s eyes settled on Brent.

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a
fantasy fanatic, Yari.”

Brent grinned. “Everyone needs a
hobby.”

“You know him?” Fontana asked
Sorens.

“I worked with him five years ago
on a new class of battle cruiser on a classified mission.” Sorens’s hard stare
added,
classified above your level, so don’t ask
.

Fontana shifted her gaze to
Brent. “You really are an engineer? Why would an engineer—” Her pulse jumped.
“You’re not an escort—part of my fantasy package? But you said you were.”

“You said I was your fantasy. I
simply quit trying to convince you otherwise.”

“But why?”

“You seemed set on believing I
wasn’t who I said I was.”

Sorens’s communicator chirped. He
tapped his ear. “Sorens.”

“Sir, the warp core was damaged
in the fight. We’ve got two minutes to get you off the ship before it blows.”

“Three to beam aboard,” he ordered
into his communicator.

Again, the sparkle mix began, and
seconds later, Fontana stood with the two men in another compartment on another
ship.

“Fontana needs to get to sick
bay,” Brent told Sorens.

“Brent,” she began.

“Lieutenant,” Sorens addressed the
officer standing at the door, “see the major to sick bay.”

Brent pinned her with a stare.
"Major?"

“After I’ve spoken with Brent,”
she told Sorens.

“Sick bay, then debriefing,”
Sorens said, then added before she could argue, “Orders.”

Fontana knew exactly where those
orders had originated.
Thank you, Stephaney
. She looked at Brent. “I’m
sorry.”

He smiled. “We’re even, huh?”

Pain stabbed her soul deep. No,
they weren’t even. He was walking away with a piece of her heart.

Chapter Sixteen

Fontana nodded to the tall black
man she sat across from on the top floor of the Sagitariun Building. He was
Harlan Nelson, director of Sagitariun, overlord of the fantasy resort. His
shaved head gleamed in the soft light. He wore an Allipore turtleneck that
conformed to his broad shoulders and washboard stomach.

Stephaney had ordered her to
attend this meeting before leaving. Fontana had acquiesced when Stephaney
informed her that Jenny had reached Earth. The same relief she’d felt upon
hearing the news rushed to the surface again. Jenny’s family didn’t have to
live with knowing their daughter had been abandoned in the cold of space once
the cartel had robbed the coffin. It was stupid, Fontana knew, but she couldn’t
let Jenny’s parents—or Jenny—down a second time.

The information that Jenny was to
arrive in a week had been a lie to trap the cartel. The Coalition was well
aware the cartel had smuggled Poincaré crystals off with Jenny, just as they’d
been aware that Fontana was conducting her own investigation. They would be
waiting for the cartel when the empty S-warp drone arrived next week. Fontana
couldn’t be angry at the fact the Corps had used her. They had done what was in
the best interest of the Coalition…and Jenny. That was their –- her—job.

Nelson shifted, and Fontana
returned her attention to him as he crossed his legs and smoothed the perfect
crease in his black pleated slacks. Her fantasy was the first in Sagitariun
history to run afoul, he’d told her.

“We didn’t factor in the Track
Cartel,” he said in a deep voice that reminded her of an opera singer.

Fontana offered a thin smile. “No
one’s perfect.” After all, she hadn’t factored in the possibility the Corps had
paid for an alternate reality vacation she wasn’t aware she was participating
in. Or that she would fall in love.

“Things worked out well,
considering,” Nelson went on.

She lifted a brow. “
Considering
the Corps showed up when they did.”

“Our algorithm was sound.”

“Sound enough to risk a guest’s
life? You shouldn’t have allowed Brent onto that transport with me.”

“Mr. Yari wanted a Rogue Agent
package,” Nelson replied. “You accommodated. He’s not disappointed.”

Her heart twisted.
Not even a
little disappointed?

“You, on the other hand,” Nelson
said, “wanted closure.”

Fontana stilled.

“I’ve reviewed the data and have
concluded we were given misinformation,” he said. “According to the algorithm,
Mr. Yari’s true fantasy was to fall in love with someone like you. He did. You
were supposed to fall in love with him as well.”

Fontana stared. “You’ve
miscalculated a second time. He isn’t in love with me.”

Nelson’s mouth curved upward in
an indulgent smile. “Why don’t you ask him?”

* * * *

At the spaceport, Fontana scanned
the departure board from a balcony over the duty-free shop concourse. Twenty
transports left in the next hour alone. Brent had told her he was in between
contracts. Did that mean he was going home? Even if he was, he could be on any
one of ten transports headed for Earth. How could she narrow the possibilities?

She had to find him, had to get
his attention…had to tell him. But how? The concourse below teemed with
people—men, women, couples, families, tour groups. No way she would be able to
spot him in the crowd.

An epiphany struck. Brent
couldn’t possibly miss seeing a woman wearing only a trench coat running
through the concourse.

Fontana whirled. She needed a
clothing store.

She started down the escalator,
scanning the nearest shops. A café. The next was an antiques shop, then a
casino, and next to that was a tobacco shop. On the opposite side were located
a bookstore, health-food store, another café. Not a single clothing shop. She
landed on the main deck and strode along the shops. If she couldn’t find a
trench coat, she could simply streak through the spaceport. Would Brent
understand the message?

A man stepped from the
casino/club twelve meters away. Fontana veered in his direction, then slowed.
It couldn’t be. Her pulse accelerated. It was. The owner of the London Fog
trench coat—and he was wearing the coat! How? But she knew. Fontana smiled.

Thank you, Harlan Nelson.

As if sensing her intention, the
man turned and met her gaze. His brow snapped downward; then his eyes widened
as she started toward him. A small crowd beyond him parted, and two officers
came into view. Fontana slowed. They veered into the café on their left, and
she picked up speed. The coat owner turned as if to run.

The Lauren Bacall look-alike
appeared from within the shop nearest him. Fontana halted. What the hell? The
woman met Fontana’s gaze, and a corner of her mouth lifted—then she stuck out a
foot and tripped the man. Fontana felt her eyes widen as he stumbled. An alert
woman jumped out of the way, and he fell flat on his face.

Fontana jerked her gaze back to
the Lauren Bacall look-alike, but she was gone. Fontana couldn’t believe it.
The woman worked for Sagitariun, not the cartel. The man moaned, and she broke
from her shock when the group of passersby started to close in on him.

She rushed forward and shoved
past them. “He’s all right.” Fontana pulled him to his feet as the crowd
dispersed. His mouth opened as if he would scream, and Fontana yanked him
close. “Keep quiet.”

She dragged him into the club
next door while scanning for a private corner. Half a dozen customers sat at
tables. The man behind the bar didn’t look up from the drinks he was pouring.
Fontana spotted a discreet corner next to the entrance between the slots and a
videophone and pulled the coat owner into it.

“Don’t hurt me,” he said.

Fontana seized his shoulders,
spun him toward the wall, and shoved him up against it. “Don’t move.”

Sixty seconds later, she had her
clothes off and had yanked the coat down the man’s arms and off him.

“Hey, baby,” came a deep male
voice behind her as she swung the coat around her shoulders and slid her arms
inside the sleeves.

The coat owner turned around, and
his gaze raked down her naked front. Then he screamed like a woman. Strong
fingers closed over her shoulder, and she whirled to face a big man. His gaze
also raked down her naked front, but he didn’t scream.

“Need some company, baby?”

Fontana shoved him. He crashed
backward into a table, and she sprinted through the club and out the door. The
coattails flapped against her legs as she streaked down the promenade.
Commotion spread like ripples in a pond, and the crowd parted for her. A woman
screamed as Fontana dodged her. A group of three men froze at the edge of the
parting throng, their gazes on her breasts, then the apex at her legs when she
sped past them.

Two minutes had passed. More than
enough time for Brent to have seen her. If he didn’t respond, she’d know he
hadn’t ever loved her…or it was too late. A whistle blew behind her. She
glanced back. Two security officers were giving chase.

“Halt!” one shouted.

Fontana veered left, taking a
track around an escalator and back the way she’d come, and rammed into a wall
of muscle. She clutched at the man’s shoulders and blinked into Brent’s face.

“Starting a fantasy without me?”
he drawled.

Her heart raced. “I’m sorry,” she
blurted, and her face warmed. That wasn’t what she wanted to say –- and he
deserved more.

His mouth curved into a smile.
“How sorry?”

Footfalls sounded on the
boardwalk at the end of the lane to their right. Brent pulled her into a
rental-car booth and ducked behind a shelf. He pushed her into the corner. She
glanced down, and her mouth went dry when she saw the bulge straining against
his trousers. He grasped her chin and tilted her face upward.

“We’ve really got to return that
coat to its owner,” he said as he lowered his mouth to hers. “It could get you
into trouble.”

###

Fontana’s Trouble was such a fun
book for us to write! Hopefully, you enjoyed reading about Fontana and Brent’s
quirky fantasy as much as we loved writing it. For your reading pleasure, we’ve
included the opening chapters to our erotic space opera
Sasha’s Calling
.

Evan and Shawn

T. C. Archer

SASHA’S CALLING

Spy for hire Sasha Smirnov has stolen classified data. One
man stands in her way of escape: sexy diplomat Dirk Roscoepilot. A sizzling
kiss burns him into her memory—and her body. She stows away on a spaceship,
only to find Dirk is the pilot. She doesn’t count on the passion that explodes
between them, or the choice that forces her into his bed. If she is to save her
planet, Sasha must get as far away from Dirk as possible.

Chapter One

No day
was a good day to die. Today was no exception.

Footfalls
of Pinkerton security forces echoed ever louder in the spaceport’s sterile,
wide passageway, converging on Sasha. She sprinted faster, lungs and leg
muscles burning with the effort in her mad race to outrun them. Dammit—dammit
all to hell. Damn the scientist who’d walked in while she was downloading the
retrovirus model from Centor’s main computer. She forced back the mounting
panic that twisted her stomach. He’d sounded the alarm before she could knock
him unconscious. That was the one piece of bad luck that might get her killed
on this mission.

A doorway
materialized on the right. She plunged through it onto an open catwalk high
above empty space. A bone-vibrating hum ripped through her. Sasha slowed, the
gecko-grip soles of her boots making a snicking sound as she stutter-stepped to
a jog. A roar filled her ears and she winced at the throb that pounded in her
head in sync with the wild beat of her heart. She shook her head against a
sense of light-headedness, and her surroundings snapped into focus.

No
railing bordered the ribbon-like walkway, which spanned a room that stretched
almost to infinity. What was this place? On each side of the catwalk, dim light
emanated from a dozen giant warp generators made of pulsing blue rods.
Surrounded by coils of opalescent crystal, the rods rose like huge springs from
the dim depths below and disappeared out of sight.

She
veered left and peered over the edge into a bottomless gray abyss. She slowed
even more. Infinite space inside a spaceport? Impossible. Her pulse jumped. She
stopped and stared. It couldn’t be. Sasha slid her gaze up the rods until they
disappeared into the infinite space above. Yet it was. Excitement flared in the
pit of her stomach.

This was
the heart of the star-drive she’d broken half a dozen galactic laws to find.
She gazed around in astonishment. All along, it had been right here at the
center of the spaceport.

A laser
pulse sizzled past and hit the platform inches ahead of her, kicking up a
shower of sparks. Sasha spun and dropped, yanking the Omegatron from her hip
holster as she landed on her belly facing the direction the shots had been
fired. Three Pinkertons in battle armor piled through the opening. They fired,
their shots going wide.

Fools.

She
aimed.
Zot. Zot. Zot
. Three quick shots, three recoils from the
Omegatron, and three Pinkertons collapsed onto the walkway. More would follow,
and soon, now that they’d pinpointed her location. She had to get video of the
warp drive and get off Centor. Sasha pushed to her feet and, touching a stud on
her weapon, activated the record feature of its built-in camera.

Winded
and still shaky, she raised the Omegatron and pointed the camera at the rods.
“I hope you get all this, Newton.” She darted a glance at the empty doorway,
then ran the Omegatron’s aim-point up and down the power rods.

Hope—the
first she’d felt since news broke that the sun her homeworld, Magnus 3, orbited
was going unstable—rose in a sudden rush that tightened her chest. She snorted
a laugh. All her hard work and planning, yet dumb luck had thrown her into a
room she hadn’t known existed. Talk about lucky. Damn, incredibly lucky.
Warp-field coils this big weren’t thought to exist. Technology imbued in a warp
generator that huge could save Magnus.

Sasha
terminated the recording and reholstered the weapon as she sprinted toward what
she prayed was an exit on the far side of the walkway. If this wasn’t a way
out, she and her planet were finished.

As if she
were running on a moving walkway, the catwalk zipped under her feet at
unbelievable speed. No sense of acceleration weighed against her body, but the
far end zoomed closer. She came to an abrupt halt a meter from the opening.

She
glanced back, startled to see that the other end looked a kilometer or more
away, ten times farther than she had run. As with all warp fields, this one
disrupted perception, but on a monumental scale. Unexpected tears stung the
corners of her eyes. Magnus 3 stood a real chance at survival—if she got out
with the video intact.

More
Pinkertons appeared in the far end doorway. Two scrambled over the bodies of
the three unconscious Pinks and fell flat, while two more halted behind them,
holding their fire. She couldn’t help a condescending laugh. They feared
hitting the coils and didn’t want her to return fire.

Double
fools.

Sasha
drew and fired twice:
Zot. Zot
. Bolts sizzled across the expanse as she
holstered the weapon and sped through the opening into a shiny metal corridor.
She skidded to a halt, glanced left, then right. The empty corridor curved out
of sight in both directions, as if wrapping around the generator room she had
just crossed.