Star Noir by Paul Bishop

Author:Paul Bishop [Bishop, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2019-10-09T06:00:00+00:00

He knocked on the hatchway to her quarters exactly when he said he would.

She let him in, handed him a warm cup, and kissed him on the mouth. “God-awful green tea, a portable electric heater dolled up to look like a fireplace, my great-aunt’s quilt, and a gorgeous blonde willing to jump your bones. What more can you ask for?”

Dak wrinkled her nose and fell back onto a battered futon that served as one of two pieces of fancy furniture in her shoebox quarters. He sat in the guest chair, a torn vinyl upholstered recliner.

It was better than the plastic conference room chairs.

Slade sipped his tea and gazed into the fake fire. “I could ask for answers,” he said.

“About the god-awful tea or the jumping-the-bones part?”

His smile in the room’s dim light was warm and genuine.

“I found the tea outside, frozen in a glacier,” she explained. “I think it dates back to Amundsen. As for the romp, I merely thought it sounded like fun. We have twenty more weeks until morning.”

Dak was thirty years old, three years younger than him but a better pilot—a natural pilot with unerring instinct. A born warrior, she was muscular with long, curling torrents of blonde hair that splashed across her freckled shoulders and down her ample breasts. Her stomach was flat, her hips the right amount of round, and her legs could carry a man to eternity and back.

She took his cup, refilled it from a stainless-steel thermos, and handed it back. “I suspect you’d rather talk about Commander Morocco.”

Her green eyes were all about the emerald heartland and her lips about the breath of summer. She grew up hunting rabid coyotes on the prairie and later, heartland drug kingpins in the big Midwest cities. She had been the best at her job until things got too hot.

As a result, she was stationed at Endurance until things cooled down.

“What do you think happened to her?” he asked. “Lin Wu lost track of Jennifer at the same time we did—immediately before the blister storm.”

“The commander’s magnets were showing orange. Was she in the storm too?”

“Yeah, right on top of me,” Slade confirmed. “For a minute anyway. We were both moving pretty fast.”

Dak sipped her tea and made a face.

“This stuff really is bad,” she said.

He agreed.

They sat in silence for a while before she said, “You need to rest. Tearing yourself up over the mission won’t help Jennifer.”

“We saw them, didn’t we, Dak? We saw the spiders glow and fade from view?”

“Rime Ice Three logged it. I didn’t see anything.”

“Lin Wu did.”

“About that,” she said. “Have you noticed something wonky about—”

His comm unit buzzed to life. “Emergency alert, Colonel.”

He identified the origin as the station guard at wing three.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Somebody came knocking on the door. Literally.”

“Spiders?”

“It was Commander Morocco, sir.”

Slade leapt to his feet. “Where is she?”

“Medical space in lab four,” the soldier said. “She’s froze up pretty bad. I don’t think she’s gonna make it.”

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