The Science Officer Omnibus 2 by Blaze Ward

Author:Blaze Ward [Ward, Blaze]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knotted Road Press

Part Two

Free.

After years locked inside those two, tiny survey probes, Suvi luxuriated in the solar wind flowing across her skin again, like a phoenix kissed by the flames.

Better, she was back in a warship.

The Concord vessel that would come to be known as Mielikki had been downgraded to a mere probe-cutter when she was demobilized, after the end of the Great War and all the subsequent silliness. One hundred and five years as a Concord Yeoman, then four good years with Javier before the pirates had killed her.

And now, she was back. Bigger than she had been before by three point four orders of magnitude.

Badder, too.

The Sentience-in-residence on what had been the Neu Berne First Rate Galleon, Hammerfield, last flagship of the Neu Berne fleet before those people had lost the Great War.

Hell on wheels.

Suvi reached out with the sensors that had been her eyes once, aboard Mielikki, before the pirate strike corvette Storm Gauntlet had taken them. The eyes of a probe-cutter.

Better than an eagle.

The vacuum of space didn’t have a smell, but it did tickle. And it was filled with radio chatter, encrypted and clear, on every channel and frequency she chose to listen to, all the way down to the gurgling hiss of Binhai’s star as it transformed hydrogen into light, heat, and age.

Suvi ignored most of the noise. She was really only interested in one vessel, among the hundreds in front of her orbiting Binhai, as well as the ones coming or going.

Shangdu.

The personal pleasure yacht of one of the wealthiest people in space, the Khatum of Altai.

They had never been formally introduced. Javier had been busy pretending to be Captain Navarre, and Suvi had been pretending to be about as smart as a rabbit, hiding in the tiny survey probe.

And Behnam Sherazi had been pretending to be either a cold, aloof aristocrat, or a bored dilettante seeking mindless pleasure.

That game probably worked on anybody that couldn’t scan your respiration, heart rate, and pupil dilation from across the room to put lie to the careful stories you have cocooned yourself in.

Not that Suvi would do anything with the information.

Javier might actually be smitten, this time.

Suvi had made a study of the physiological changes that came over the man when the topic of the Khatum came up. He liked women, and maintained polite, intimate, physical relationships with many members of the crew.

None of them affected him like just thinking about that woman did.

Suvi suppressed a jealous rage that she couldn’t have a physical body, just so she could compete. She really didn’t need anyone explaining CG Jung’s theories to her, since she could read the original texts herself.

She had Javier’s mind, and his love. That would be enough.

Hopefully.

Because as a First Rate Galleon, she was likely to outlive the man by centuries, if she was careful. What would her distant future bring?

A signal brought all her little avatars, her shards of consciousness, back together. More or less.

Shangdu was responding, the big, armed yacht slowly orbiting Binhai’s skies while Suvi sat in her armored warhorse clear out at the edge of polite communication range.

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