The Lord of the Broken Tower

By Theda Hudson

A broken tower, a burning desire, a buried mystery...

When the Hegemony offers Della Cruz a job managing a manufactory on another planet, she leaves her volcano-destroyed home to take it. When she arrives she learns the handsome leader of the colony, Lord Ashdon Carlizo, lives in a broken tower and no one will talk about how it came to be damaged or why everyone holds such a long-lived anger toward the Hegemony.

From their first meeting, the sexy Carlizo courts her relentlessly and, when Della discovers the manufactory needs far more work than the recruiter described, she begins to wonder exactly why the Hegemony wanted her for the job. Despite her sizzling attraction to him, Della resists, believing a relationship with the lord would damage her credibility and position as a Hegemony agent. But the broken tower haunts her dreams, and her desire for Carlizo pulls her irresistibly into the heart of the mystery of the broken tower and the lord's past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lilac Moon Books
• Release date: Oct 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301642779

Theda Hudson

Theda Hudson's deliciously wicked short fiction has appeared in Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 and 2015, Best Lesbian Romance 2011 and 2012, Best Women's Erotica 2007, Sex in San Francisco, Pirate Booty, and Best S/M III. Her novels include Dyke Valiant, an erotic lesbian urban paranormal, and The Pearl Witch and Lord of the Broken Tower, both hetero erotic science fiction. She lives in Colorado with four rescued cats, 1000 books, and an understanding partner. She likes to use her writing to share things women don’t usually get to talk about.

Book preview

The Lord of the Broken Tower

by

Theda Hudson

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Lilac Moon Books on Smashwords

The Lord of the Broken Tower

Copyright (c) 2013 Theda Hudson

Cover by Laura Givens

Copyright (c) 2013 Laura Givens

http://www.lauragivens-artist.com

Discover other titles by Theda Hudson at Smashwords.com

And at http://www.thedahudson.com

SMASHWORDS EDITION LICENSE NOTES

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Chapter 1

A month after the volcano destroyed her colony, Della Cruz found herself with her few possessions jammed into a backpack, boarding a quick transport ship that would make a swing over the planet Citandra, the posting the Hegemony had offered her. In the three boring days leading up to that rendezvous, she slept and reread the project files for the manufactory supervisor position. She'd stared at the picture of Lord Ashdon Carlizo, the handsome leader of the colony, tracing a finger over his square jaw, his sensual mouth, trying to guess what lay behind the intensity of his piercing green eyes.

When she got the call to report, a ship tech took Della to the ship’s freezing belly and opened a hatch in the floor leading to the drop capsule. Looking into it, she was irrationally certain it was too small to hold her.

Stale and dry metallic smelling air puffed out of the dark opening.

Good luck, the man said.

She didn't want to go in. Didn't want to be closed up. What if the door wouldn't open when it landed? What if it crashed and she couldn't get out? Worse--what if taking the job was a mistake? A destroyedhome, even one buried under tons of ash, was still technically a home. This was completely different, a long way away from everything and everyone she knew.

Thanks, Della said to the man’s receding back as she slippedinto the capsule. There was a little more space than she'd thought as she fit herself to the chair and tried to breathe normally when the hatch locks clanked, sealing her in. She couldn't shake the feeling she was in a coffin.

Please secure yourself with the harness, a calm and pleasant recording said, and review the literature and the procedure video. Drop will occur in five minutes.

She reviewed everything even though she'd taken the sim course twice and read the specs a dozen times, and checked that her pack was indeed tucked into the tiny hatch at her feet, and that it was latched closed. No, she didn't want any projectiles loose in the tight confines with her. Excitement began to dance with fear in her belly, and the resulting thrill made her flushed.

She was on her way. The contract to bring the manufactory plant on Citandra back on line, train the locals to run it, and introduce some new patterns that would jumpstart their exports again offered her work that she could throw herself into--and an opportunity to create a nice addition to her resume.

Not to mention the chance to see if she could make a new life there, since her old life was buried under pyroclastic flow on a planet four jumps back across the Hegemony.

The computer pinged. Countdown commencing.Planet fall in twenty minutes. Please verify your harness and flight suit are secured.

She ran through the final checks, got a green light, and tried to breathe the cold, dry air slowly as the countdown approached zero. She heard clicks and a loud whoosh, then her stomach dropped and she gasped. She watched out the window as black, star-studded space faded to indigo, then to pale pearl, and finally a turquoise dotted with fluffy white clouds.

The transition was beautiful and that alone was worth the trip, despite the bone-jolting shaking as the drop capsule shuddered through the atmosphere. The capsule traveled widdershins, taking advantage of the planet's rotation to travel faster. Soon enough, she could see green and pale tan, and vast expanses of bluish green water. The capsule fired jets and descended toward a reddish brown region studded with black dots: the high plains of the colony. As the ground rushed up to meet her, the reddish brown resolved into a plain of brushy plants with a green cape of cultivated fields surrounding the colony all the way to the manufactory grounds. The darker dots punctuating the land were pools of greenish water, each circled by a drab olive-colored ring of vegetation. She saw the manufactory, a stone building, but few signs of busyness around it.

Before the eruption, her manufactory had six printers running in three shifts. At least two hundred people came and went at all hours, with transports constantly lined up at the docks to deliver pattern materials and take on finished goods.

Her heart fell as she realized this place was a ghost. She told herself she was there to bring it back to life. But the manufactory seemed too neglected, too forlorn to ever rise up to be the shining jewel it had been.

Chagrined, she wondered if, perhaps Helas Helman, the deputy director of placement for the Hegemony, had misled her by brushing over the manufactory's true situation.

The bright sparkle of the early morning sun drew her gaze to a tower of darker stone pointing up to sky. Enod Tower, it must be. At first she thought of a proud cock with a drop of pre-cum on its tip. Drawing closer, she realized the building had been pretty once, but now looked shabby and derelict. The top of the tower was broken, many of the shiny tiles on its roof now gone, leaving it open to the weather.

What kind of people would let a magnificent tower fall to such decay?

She turned her thoughts back to her job, resolutely pushing off the despair. She remembered her father's advice when confronted by a huge project. Be hungry, he'd said, and pretend it's an elephant. Don't look at the whole beast. Just take one bite at a time and you will get through it.

She decided she'd better be ravenous, with an elephant this size laid out for her to feast on. Yes, bite by bite, she'd return it to glory.

Her mouth began to water and her hands twitched at the thought of all the work there was to do, the possibilities. She stroked the packet of data drives in her upper arm pocket. They included plans, grants, delivery dates, product programs for the robotics that would rebuild and upgrade the equipment. Cargo pods would drop the next day and she'd be busy setting up.

She wondered what folks she'd have for staff. The Hegemony was investing heavily in training and wages to get them started.

The booster rockets fired, slowing the capsule. As she dropped she saw a hover cart leave the tower and begin to drive through what would be Enod Village. A stream of dust rose out around the edges of the base of the vehicle, slewing to the side as a gust of wind caught it.

The rockets were deafening even through the insulation of the can, and, with her hands clapped to her ears, she apprehensively watched the ground loom closer and closer. The drop capsule settled lightly on the ground just as the rockets shut down and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Her ears rang in the sudden quiet and her skin tingled with the memory of the vibration.

Touch down complete, droned the canned voice. Please follow landing procedures.

Della ran through the checks and shutdowns, then stripped out of the flight suit, wriggling out of it in her seat. Once she'd wrestled her bag out of the small storage bin, she dug out her dark brown leathers and shimmied into them. She was going to step out onto a new world and into her new life and the familiar, animal smell of the leather, coupled with their smooth texture and perfect fit, made her feel comfortable and confident in these strange and new surroundings.

Grabbing the packets from the flight suit, she released the frog latches and the door sprang open. As she climbed down the short ladder,the dry air of this new planet brought a dry, dust that made her sneeze. She realized it was a nice change from the constant thick rotting forest on her home world.

The morning was still cool, but held the promise of heat as the day wore on. The introduction had said summer would bring temperatures in the high nineties farenheit, but with low humidity. That was a relief. Her planet was warm, but with high humidity, which felt like a