Shades of Dark
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR’S PLAYLIST
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PREVIEW OF HOPE’S FOLLY
ALSO BY LINNEA SINCLAIR
COPYRIGHT
To my readers, thank you for waiting for the rest of Chaz’s and Sully’s story, which started with
Gabriel’s Ghost.
To the cherished members of my Intergalactic Bar & Grille on Yahoo Groups, especially David, Brantley, Velvet, Paula, Jen, Robin, Mikey, Patty, Kathleen aka KPON, Teresa, Ray, Bill, Mary, Maya, Thomas, Mo, Frances, Alecia, and all the rest of you lunatics…and with very special thanks to Skipper skippy. You guys rock my world!
With heartfelt thanks for their suggestions and input: to author Stacey Klemstein, critique partners Donna Kuhn, Lynne Welch, Michelle Williamson, and Chris Galan. Special thanks to the sharp science fiction eyes of Marcia and J. J. Pierce.
To my editor, Anne Groell, and my agent, Kristin Nelson, because you’re simply the best.
As always, to Daq-cat and Miss Doozy
fur
all their help. And to my husband, Robert Bernadino, who after nearly thirty years still finds me amusing and continues to believe in me.
d.a.v.e:// -
Compjacent
DJ Lithium -
Now and Forever, Galactica
Delerium/Sarah McLachlan -
Silence (Airscape Mix)
Third shift and I couldn’t sleep. I loved the big wide darkness—it’s been said I was born for a stellar helm—but I usually don’t love it enough to give up a warm bed and an even warmer man after the normal aggravations of onboard duties. Yet that’s exactly what I did, slipping out from under the sheet, away from the heat of Sully’s body so I could stand in the crisp recycled air at the back of the
Boru Karn
’s bridge and wonder what felt so terribly, horribly wrong.
Besides the obvious. We were fugitives with a high price on our heads, largely due to the man whose bed I’d just left: Gabriel Ross Sullivan, a rare human
Kyi-Ragkiril
whose secret telepathic and telekinetic abilities were hated, even feared. However, thanks to the rather large amount of honeylace he’d indulged in earlier, those abilities were dormant at the moment, or I’d not have the luxury of being on his ship’s bridge at this hour, unquestioned, watching the starfield spatter elegantly across the forward screens, watching Verno’s large furred hands move with surprising grace over the glowing control screens, and listening to the soft beeping and trilling of the ship’s systems—sounds that were almost as much a part of me as my own breath, my own heartbeat.
My breath had lately become a little too tight, my heartbeat a little too rapid. So I needed to stand in the shadows of the bridge and I needed to do so without Sully’s knowing I was here. And why.
“Are you sure I can’t call up some tea, Captain Chasidah?” Verno’s voice, like most Takas’, was a rumbling growl, guttural without being harsh.
“I’m just a bit restless. It’s okay.” Those emotions that swirled through me were one of the downsides of being Sully’s
ky’sara
. He sensed all my thoughts and emotions, and could transmit his. It had been almost three months since I’d granted him permission to become so intimately a part of me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. I did, beyond all measure—words he often used to describe his love for me. It just took some getting used to.
A stream of red data on a blue-tinged screen to my left snagged my attention. We were on the outer fringes of an Imperial GA-7’s signal—a data relay drone normally not accessible to renegade ships like the
Karn,
and definitely not at this distance. But this was the
Karn,
Sully’s ghost ship that routinely defied government regulations and just as routinely ignored ship’s specs. So I slipped into the vacant seat at communications and executed the grab filter with an ease that even Sully would have been proud of.
Captain Chasidah Bergren. One-time pride of the Sixth Fleet and staunch defender of the Empire, illegally hacking into a GA-7 beacon.
Verno glanced at me, a thin-lipped, knowing grin carving a half-circle in his dark-furred face. “Sully-sir is anxious for those scores in the Baris Cup finals, is he?”
Sully’s penchant for gambling was well known among his crew, as were his losses to Ren—something I still hadn’t quite figured out. A telepathic
Kyi-Ragkiril
losing to a blind empath? It made no sense, but that wasn’t what puzzled me at the moment. My issue lay much deeper, something I couldn’t define except that it was a haunting, disturbing feeling.
Stress,
my rational mind informed me. Sully handled the stress his unusual talents put on him by numbing them now and then with a glass or two of honeylace. That same amount would put me flat out on the decking. I always handled stress by doing something quantitative. Like downloading ship advisories, fleet movements, and the latest news.
“Sully gave Ren the Walker Colonies and four points,” I told Verno. Being on third shift, he might not have heard Sully’s latest betting strategies, expounded upon several hours ago in the galley. It also kept us off the topic of what I was doing here on third shift, while Sully slept alone.