Starbase Human (42 page)

Zagrando had a new goal: stay alive until he could talk to someone.

He really hoped Flint would be near his ship when he arrived.

If they let him into the Port of Armstrong.

If they didn’t, maybe he would trust the links.

Maybe.

But the voices swirled around him, demanding identification, sounding official. A hologram appeared above the shadow console, showing dozens of Space Traffic Control ships surrounding his, escorting him.

Zagrando hoped that was a good thing. He hoped it didn’t mean someone from the Alliance was going to get him.

He hoped this would work.

Flint might have mentioned a name for Zagrando to talk with, or maybe Zagrando had just imagined it.

He didn’t know.

In the hologram, there was one of those fake lines that showed the edge of Moon-policed space. He had gone into it—how long ago, he didn’t know—and then…

The next thing he knew, the hologram showed a dome, and a port opening, and his little ship settling over an area to land. The voices said he was approved for some terminal or other, and he closed his eyes.

Approved. Terminal. Dying. Of course. The doctor told him his death was approved.

That didn’t surprise him.

The next thing he knew, hands were on his shoulders, shaking him. Voices above him.

“…never seen anyone look like this…”

“…shot up really bad. Wonder how long his feet have been like this…”

“…be able to save the legs…?”

He was floating now. They had him on a cushion of air. He opened his eyes, saw human faces, saw uniforms with insignia that had a dome and a word in all caps. He didn’t know what that word was—what language it was in—and then it came to him. An acronym for Port of Armstrong Space Traffic Control.

He grabbed someone’s arm, and a face (male?) looked down on him. “Flint?” he asked, or rather, whispered. It was hard to talk.

“He approved you. But we’re arresting you all the same. It’s procedure. If you get cleared by a higher-up, then you’ll go free. You can talk to him, though. He’ll be here soon.”

Zagrando nodded—or rather, he hoped he nodded. Flint. Here. Zagrando could tell him anything.

“Need…to…be…awake…then…”

“We’ll see,” said the man. “You need medical attention.”

“Need…to…talk…first…life…and…death.”

“No kidding,” the man said. “You’re going to have to fight hard to survive.”

“No…” Zagrando had to be really clear. “Talk before…surgery…or…medicine…life…and…death…for…Moon.”

The man looked at his companions. Zagrando realized they were no longer on his ship, but in a place he didn’t recognize, with a movable ceiling and clanging sounds and something that smelled faintly of warm metal. The port. That was the terminal. Not that
he
was terminal.

“Please,” Zagrando said, knowing he wasn’t clear-headed, and he needed to be. “Flint. Please.”

“He just arrived outside. He’ll be here as quickly as he can,” the man said. “In the meantime, we’ll get you to medical here in the port. They can help you.”

The man was probably lying, but Zagrando could hang on until Flint made his way through the building.

Zagrando was strong. He had made it this far.

He would make it another hour or two.

He smiled.

He had succeeded.

It might not look like success to anyone else, but in his universe, a universe of spies and double agents, of thieves and murderers, getting this far wasn’t just success.

It was a miracle.

And somehow, he had pulled it off.

The thrilling adventure
concludes with the eighth book in the Anniversary Day Saga,
Masterminds.

The fate of the Alliance hangs in the balance as the masterminds behind the Anniversary Day bombings trigger the final stages of a plan decades in the making. A plan that will bring about the total destruction of every dome on the Moon.

As Moon Security Chief Noelle DeRicci struggles with the overwhelming scope of the investigation, Retrieval Artist Miles Flint races to save the life of a man from his daughter Talia’s past. A man with vital information regarding the identity of the masterminds who planned the Anniversary Day bombings. And deep beneath the surface of Armstrong, a dome engineer makes a chilling discovery that could crack the investigation wide open.

If only he can get someone to believe him.

Turn the page for the first chapter of
Masterminds.

SEVENTY YEARS AGO

ONE

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. Shuffle. Draaaaag.

Jhena Andre huddled in her bed, covers nested around her, her favorite doll cradled against her chest. She woke up, heart pounding, afraid someone was in her room—and someone was—but then she heard him mutter, and she realized—
Daddy!

She wanted to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t. Daddy sometimes came to her room to make sure she was okay. Sometimes he just held her. Sometimes he stared at her from the door.

Her room was the best room in the house. He painted the walls—Daddy wanted to be an artist Once Upon A Time, before It All Went Down which Jhena knew meant the day that Mommy died and everything changed. Greens and golds and touches of sunlight, bits of color. The tall grasses waved and glistened. Sometimes the sky turned gray and rains fell, but not for long. Then the sun came out and the grasses gleamed. The air fresh—Daddy said it smelled like fresh-cut grass—but Jhena thought it smelled like green.

Daddy’s paints made everything come alive, except Mommy.

Jhena’s brain skipped—that memory everybody wanted to know or not know, the memory everybody told her to forget or not forget, the memory of the day It All Went Down. All she had from that day was Daddy and her favorite doll. Her favorite doll didn’t have a name because Mommy said they’d name it together, and smiled, and never smiled again.

Jhena pulled the doll close, and listened to the rustling. The air didn’t smell green. It smelled like sour hot chocolate and sharp sweaty smell Daddy got when he got scared. He hadn’t taken her special cup from the room. He always did or the bots did or someone did, because in the morning her special cup always got clean, and ready for that night’s chocolate, which she drank while Daddy read stories and she looked at the swaying grasses on the wall.

Thump. Draaaaag.

Daddy was taking stuff out of her closet. Her stomach started to ache.

Then Daddy swore, and Jhena sat up.

He turned around so fast she thought he was going to fall down. One hand out, catching the wall, disappearing in the grasses kinda—shadows of them always crossed skin but not really shadows. Echoes sorta. The grasses couldn’t be on skin unless they got painted there, and Daddy said that nothing should get painted on skin.

“Jhen,” he said in a voice she’d never heard before. Like he wasn’t ready and he was scared but he wasn’t scared of her. “Baby.”

Then he sighed, and she thought maybe she heard another bad word, but she wasn’t sure.

He waved a hand, and dawn started in the grasses. The light in the wall was her nightlight. She thought maybe a minute ago there was a full moon—the night-time light—but Daddy changed it. That orange glow meant get up, even though her eyes felt sandy and the clock she hid under the edge of her night table had a 2 as the first number not a 6. She knew the difference.

She was a big girl now.

“Oh, sweetie, I didn’t want it to go this way.” He looked scareder than he had before, like she was the daddy and he was the little girl and he’d been doing something wrong.

Jhena pulled her doll close, clutching the blankets. The light was just enough to see his familiar face, all twisted in something like a frown, his black hair mussed, and his brown eyes wet like they’d been the day It All Went Down.

“Daddy?” Her voice sounded tiny. She didn’t want it too, but she wasn’t sure she should be loud. The day It All Went Down Daddy picked her up and held her and shushed her and she was afraid he’d shush her now.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” Daddy said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. If I thought it could happen again, I would have stayed in Montana.”

Then Daddy grabbed something from the floor. Her duffle. He tossed it on the bed.

“You gotta stay here, baby, and be really really quiet, okay? My friends will come for you. They’ll take you to Aunt Leslie. You remember Aunt Leslie, right? She’ll take care of you.”

He leaned over, all sharp sweat and cologne. His arms went around her and he squeezed too hard.

She said, “Don’t wanna go with Aunt Leslie. Wanna stay with you.”

“You can’t, baby. I screwed up. Again. I screwed up again. I’m so sorry.” He ran his hand through her hair, kissed her crown (
My princess
, he usually said when he did that), squeezed even harder. “I love you. I love you more than life itself. Can you remember that much, at least? That I love you.”

Her heart was pounding. “I love you too, Daddy. Take me with you.”

“No, honey. I can’t. You’ll be okay. I promise. Aunt Leslie—she’s a good woman. She’ll raise you right.”

Raise? Daddy was raising Jhena. Daddy was raising Jhena alone ever since It All Went Down.

“Daddy—”

He put a finger over her mouth, shushing her. Then she heard the door close, the house telling someone that Daddy and Jhena were in the bedroom.

He stood up. “You stay here, okay? They’ll come back here, and they’ll take you to Aunt Leslie.”

“Wanna stay with you,” Jhena said, tears falling now.

“I want to stay with you too,” he said. “But we don’t always get what we want, honey. God, I wish I wasn’t the one to teach you that.”

He ran a hand over her head, cupped her chin, said, “I love you,” and then walked out of her bedroom, his back framed against the hall light, his shoulders square.

He didn’t look back.

But she kept looking at the space where he had been.

Looking and seeing nothing.

At all.

The thrilling adventure concludes with the eighth book in the Anniversary Day Saga,
Masterminds,
available now from your favorite bookseller.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

USA Today
bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the
Asimov’s
Readers Choice award, and the
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Readers Choice Award.

Publications from
The Chicago Tribune
to
Booklist
have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award.

She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.

Her popular weekly blog on the changes in publishing has become an industry must-read.

She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series
Fiction River
, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own.