Escapee

By Edward Hoornaert

-- A Disillusioned Soldier
Hector Dukelsky, an upper-class career officer, yearns to fight a righteous war instead of defending corporate interests on Banff, an isolated mining moon. That dream seems dead when his entire command is slaughtered while he’s on leave. He returns to smoldering rubble, with no chance to survive let alone strike back at the enemy.

-- A Pilot with a Chip on Her Shoulder
Catt Sayer, a working-class fugitive from the law, earns a meager income carrying supplies on a decrepit airship, but her hard-won career vanishes when invaders capture Banff. While searching for survivors, she rescues Hector and flies him to safety. But he doesn’t want safety. He wants her to risk her life on a hopeless trek to attack the enemy headquarters.

-- A Dying Moon
Catt is sure Banff will kill them long before the enemy can, yet she agrees to Hector’s mad scheme, certain he’ll quit after experiencing one of the moon’s eruptions or ferocious storms. But he doesn’t quit, and his noble dream—and his love—conquer her heart. She pits her life and love against Banff’s lethal environment, even though the only reward for success will be the opportunity to face 10,000 enemy warriors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward Hoornaert
• Release date: Nov 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463282946

Edward Hoornaert

Edward Hoornaert is not only a science fiction and romance writer, he's also a certifiable Harlequin Hero, having inspired NYT best-selling author Vicki Lewis Thompson to write Mr. Valentine, which was dedicated to him. From this comes his online alter ego, "Mr. Valentine."These days, Hoornaert mostly writes science fiction—either sf romances, or sf with elements of romance. After living at 26 different addresses in his first 27 years, the rolling stone slowed in the Canadian Rockies and finally came to rest in Tucson, Arizona. Amongst other things, he has been a teacher, technical writer, and symphonic oboist. He married his high school sweetheart a week after graduation and is still in love ... which is probably why he can write romance.

Book preview

Escapee

Repelling the Invasion book 2

Edward Hoornaert

http://eahoornaert.com/

Second Edition

Copyright 2016, 2018 by Edward Hoornaert

A slightly different version of this book was released

by MuseItUp Publishing

All rights reserved

This novel is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places and incidents are either

the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Sweet ’N Spicy Designs

Edited by Sharon Pickrel

ISBN: 9780463282946

Dedication

This one’s for my son Scott, who has two legs rather than six and a normal length tongue. (Don’t worry, you’ll understand after you’ve read the book.)

Chapter One

Licking her lips while taking quick, nervous breaths, Catt Sayer stared at the forward windscreen. Her eyes darted from one of the airship’s instrument displays to another and then back to the windscreen. You sure the fort won’t spot us hiding in this canyon?

Sure? Lancelot’s electronic voice was deep and creamy, every woman’s wet dream, and his face and physique were sexier than his voice. "Certainty is impossible. Escapee is out of the fort’s line of sight, but neither the canyon walls nor clouds can protect us from electronic surveillance."

"I know that, Lance. Sheesh. Most of the time she preferred the uncomplicated companionship of her handsome android copilot, but other times she wished for someone a bit less literal. It was a rhetorical question, seeking reassurance that we’re unlikely to get caught."

Unlikely? Our probability of remaining hidden depends on whether the fort has trained instruments down rather than toward space, where previous threats came from.

We’re a supply ship, not a threat.

A supply ship sneaking up on the fort. I estimate our likelihood of remaining undetected at either ninety-six or thirty percent. I do not know if you consider these extremes unlikely or merely unpredictable.

A sour taste flooded Catt’s mouth. It would be thirty percent, then. Captain A-Hole—her nickname for Castle Mountain’s new commander—was the type to follow regulations rather than common sense, so he would order full-range surveillance even though it was unnecessary and a nuisance. He was the problem. She didn’t care whether every other soldier at Castle Mountain knew she’d arrived, so long as he remained ignorant.

One of these days, she muttered, I’ll be able to afford a human copilot who knows what I mean, not what I say.

"One of these days? Taking into account Escapee’s age and your habit of sending half our profits to your family, such a day will occur in two-hundred-thirty-seven years, eighteen-point-four-three days. Lance paused to emphasize a punch line; he was working on his comic timing. In the meantime, I shall consider my job safe."

A blip appeared on the fadar screen, and then the screen went dark. Hold on, I saw something.

Lance responded by holding on to the edge of the command console with both hands—another of his jokes.

With her index finger, Catt tapped the screen. Although the proximity meters worked fine, she needed the far-radar for things such as the blip—but the persnickety fadar screen was unreliable. When she tapped it again, it stayed lit.

Yes, the army’s automated shuttle had taken off from Castle Mountain. If her spies were correct—and they’d better be, or she’d get even—that shuttle would carry Captain A-Hole up to this moon’s orbiting space station and hence to the home system for a three-week leave.

Victory. Catt thrust her fist in the air and gave a whoop of triumph. She twirled an imaginary mustache like a villain in one of those stupid melodramas Dad used to watch. Mitt Cabbytain A-Hole gone, de wallets of Castle Mountain lie defenseless at my feet.

Your feet? Neither helpless nor near your feet. Although understaffed and under-armed, Castle Mountain is quite capable of destroying something so large and fragile as a blimp.

Puh-lease. Advanced technology airship with buoyancy aids. Not blimp.

Advanced technology? Lance paused for the punch line. A hundred years ago, maybe.

Not funny. Why does an android even care about developing a sense of humor? Before he spouted the long, convoluted answer she’d heard before but couldn’t comprehend, she added, Rhetorical question.

With one hand, Catt tapped switches to release the twelve land anchors holding Escapee down. She plunged the other hand into the command box and gripped the joystick that controlled the ship’s struggle against wind. The box responded with sluggish reluctance. One of these days she'd have to upgrade that, too.

Anyway, she said, you know what I meant about Captain A-Hole. I told you often enough what he called me.

I know you wish to avoid the captain, Catt, but I do not quite comprehend why you remain angry four weeks later.

"Because Captain A-Hole called me a prostitute. That wasn’t a bad enough insult, so he had to add cheap prostitute." With infuriating upper-class arrogance, Captain Dukelsky—A-Hole's real name—had assumed there could be no other reason why his all-male command treated her supply trips to Castle Mountain like holidays.

Without warning, a side-draft slammed the ship, and the deck underfoot shuddered. The battered and bent aluminum floorboards sent up a metallic howl as they ground against each other.

Going to die because of this plarking basket of rivets, Catt muttered. But not today, not today. Edge left one degree to give the starboard cliffs more clearance.

Edging left one degree.

A little more, Lance. That’s a bad crosswind. Catt swore at the command box’s slow response. More…a little more…steady, old girl. Steady. After several minutes that dampened her armpits with nervous sweat, the airship stopped shuddering in the crosscurrent.

A cheap prostitute, Catt said, returning to the previous topic. Me!

Prostitute? I still do not understand, Catt, Lance said. You have told me thirteen times how you shot right back that you had a special price just for him—five thousand Standard Units, which I calculate to be eighty-three and one-third times the going rate of sixty Sues at Rundle City.

Why does an android know how much prostitutes charge? Rhetorical question, she added quickly. "I do not want to know the answer."

Most of those thirteen times, you described how your high price brought the first ever flicker of a reaction to the captain’s face. He raised one eyebrow.

Cold-hearted, humorless, unemotional bastard. You have more emotions than he does.

I am flattered. Lance paused—punch line coming up. Emotions are, after all, the primary goal in any android's life.

Ha, she said, matching his sarcastic tone, ha.

During the first eight tellings, you laughed. The next three times, you failed to laugh. During the final two tellings, tears glinted in your eyes.

You notice too much.

Too much? Only as much as experience has programmed me to notice. Did you react so strongly because poverty forced your mother to resort to prostitution after your father died?

Gar off, she said with a sigh. Gar off was the command for Lancelot to cease being chatty.

He stopped talking. Since he didn’t need to move his head to watch dials and readouts—the readings went into his nervous system when he was plugged in—he sat with inhuman stillness. He looked more robotic in non-garrulous mode.

And Dad didn’t just die, she said, although she knew he couldn’t answer—or perhaps because of it. He was murdered by patroons.

The ship rose from the clouds into the light. With the worst danger over, Catt had time to think before docking at Castle Mountain. That was the best thing about piloting a slow-moving airship. Plenty of time to think.

Being called a whore by a scary-powerful man like Captain A-Hole didn’t bother her. Well, yeah, it did, but that wasn't the worst thing about the incident. The worst was that Captain Dukelsky had looked right through her multi-layered shells and saw—

What had he seen? From the glint in his eyes, he didn’t see the skilled captain of a fragile and fickle aircraft. Nor one of the guys who had painstakingly infiltrated the old-boy’s club on a man's world.

He saw though all the defences she’d slaved to build, and saw a woman.

* * * *

Captain Hector Dukelsky was alone in the robotic shuttle, so he allowed himself a long, disillusioned sigh as he switched on the view screen covering the forward bulkhead.

He didn’t want to look at Banff. For a little while, he wanted to forget the lethal cesspit existed. Nonetheless, he selected Rear View to see how Castle Mountain Fortress would look to an invader.

He hated Banff, true, but he didn’t hate his troopers. His duty to them got him from one day to the next, and if he could observe anything that helped keep them safe, he must look. He might not be the best officer in New Ontario’s army, but he protected his men’s lives better than any other, and that’s what mattered—to him, if not to the high command that had banished him here.

The screen snapped to life. With another sigh, Hector forced himself to look.

Long ago, Banff had been a planet with microscopic life forms. Then it was captured by the gravity of the massive planet circling Nuck III, the smallest star of a sprawling trinary system. Hector’s home world, New Ontario, orbited Nuck I. Although Banff was now a moon of the gas giant, the giant wasn’t yet satisfied. Slowly, inexorably, it was pulling Banff closer, eager to hug it to death. In a thousand years or so—tomorrow morning, by cosmic standards—Banff would reach Roche’s Limit, at which point tidal flexing would crush it into asteroids like a child crumbling a cookie. By human standards, of course, a thousand years was plenty of time to rape the moon’s mineral wealth.

Banff’s atmosphere convulsed with storms and cyclonic winds. Massive tidal pressures tore at the surface, causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It was the epitome of a worthless hunk of rock. But it was Hector’s worthless rock, for better or—mostly—for worse.

From the air, Banff was a cloud world: storm clouds, grey clouds, black clouds, thunderous clouds. Here and there, mountaintops pierced the cloud cover, islands in a dark, violent sea. Atop such crags, Banff’s few humans huddled like fugitives from Hades. In the distance stood the domes of Takahashi Mining, automated to save on isolation pay. Closer at hand, sunlight gleamed off the six domes of Castle Mountain Fortress. Home, such as it was.

As the shuttle gained speed, Castle Mountain shrank. Hector reached to switch off the screen, but paused with a thumb on the push pad. A long, fat ship rose out of the clouds and lumbered toward the fortress. Alert and filled with adrenaline, Hector zoomed in the view.

From above, all he could see were three streamlined torpedo-shapes, but he knew they hid a small cabin and large cargo holds suspended below the gas-filled torpedoes. It was an airship.

Decades ago, some mining company genius who’d never visited Banff imported a hundred airships, planning to ferry heavy ores around at minimal cost. Bad decision. Even with masterful piloting, which was in short supply on such a gods forsaken outpost, the unwieldy ships were easy prey for predatory storms. Most crashed within a few years and weren’t replaced.

Only one antique airship remained—and in it, Catteroon Sayer was sneaking up to the fort the instant he left. The woman possessed both pluck and cunning; he’d give her that much.

Hector allowed himself to relax, and a reluctant smile nudged his lips. Sayer posed no threat to his troopers’ lives, just their morals. The way his men reacted to the visits of her supply ship, she obviously did more than just deliver government-issued supplies.

When he confronted her last month, her stricken face had convinced him she wasn’t a prostitute. He’d intended his comment as a backhanded compliment: You're up to no good, but you’re attractive enough a man would be willing to pay—though not five thousand Sues. Needless to say, the words hadn’t come out right. They never did.

Thinking back, he suspected her wounded puppy-dog expression was an act. He wouldn’t fall for it again—and when he returned, he'd get to the bottom of whatever she peddled under the table. But that was for later. Now he must deal with the last of the unused leave he'd accumulated over his service time. Use it or lose it.

He would rather have lost it, but family duty called. His twin brother had married the heroine of Farflung Space Station, who required reconstructive surgery on planet Heartsrest. Hector had been designated by the family to entertain her during her layover at New Ontario.

The trip to Enno, the third planet of Nuck I, would take three-point-five days each way. That left two weeks to fill. Sure, he would enjoy getting to know his sister-in-law…but entertain her on his own for two weeks? By all the Draynian gods, how could he endure two endless weeks away from his duty?

One thing was certain. He wouldn’t call his sister-in-law a whore.

At least he hoped not.

Chapter Two

By reputation, New Ontario was a rather boring, workaday world lacking in scenic, architectural, or cultural wonders. Nonetheless, Hector faithfully led Sandrina Dukelsky, his sister-in-law, on a whirlwind tour. The busier he kept her, the less pressure on him to talk.

Sandrina was an undemanding companion, content to trail along wherever he led. She’d lived most of her life on a space station, so any planet was a novelty, and he was able to keep conversation to facts and figures, of which he had many. And he never accidentally called her a whore. All in all, it was going better than he’d feared.

But after a week, he was exhausted and he’d run out of places to take her. He searched for a female relative to take over the grand tour.

Cousin Sienna’s youthful enthusiasm would make her perfect for the job, but she was packing to leave Enno. I got a job, a real job, she bubbled. I’ll be flying a tugship for Space Traffic Control at Farflung Station. Isn’t that exciting!

He hadn’t even known she’d graduated from the Flight Academy. When had she grown up so quickly?

Aunt Bertha said no, without bothering to explain why not. Same for Cousin Drella.

His sister Helen was off-world, doing whatever she did for the planetary government. Research, she called it with deliberate vagueness. She managed to squeeze in a video call with Sandrina. The background was blacked out, and all outside noises filtered out—her current ‘research’ must be more secret than usual. She asked Sandrina a question that made Hector feel like an idiot, because it hadn’t occurred to him to get his sister-in-law’s input: What would you like to see next?

Visit one of your planet’s space stations.

So here he was, having an awkward dinner in a tourist spot on Enno Space Station One—better known as Esso—with his cute, dark-haired sister-in-law.

I can’t believe how fast these eleven days have passed, Sandrina whispered.

Despite their dinner’s romantic setting, Hector knew Sandrina didn’t whisper to be seductive. A whisper was the loudest she could talk. She’d just finished medical procedures to regrow a tongue cut out by space pirates.

Reflected light from New Ontario, a breathtaking aquamarine jewel against a black velvet background, cast a romantic glow over her face. Their private dining room was a transparent bubble on the skin of the station, with panoramic views of the planet and the vastness of space to the left, right, above, and below. Hector cared little about the view, but Duke—Sandrina’s husband—had often used the bubble room to impress a potential conquest. Hector had shelled out three hundred Sues so Sandrina could admire New Ontario, hoping she’d ask about continents, oceans, and cities. He could handle a conversation like that; he loved maps. Unfortunately, she wanted to learn about him, not the planet.

He needed to keep up his end of the conversation now that dinner was over. Speech was hard for her, so it was his duty to help. She’d said something about their eleven days together passing quickly, or some such.

I’m glad, Hector said. And then he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He stalled by taking a slow sip of expensive red wine. The silence stretched. He took another sip.

Sandrina’s narrow shoulders rose in a sigh hinting at a sob. I’ve tried. By all the stars, I’ve tried.

What was she talking about? Had he missed something? When she said nothing more, he asked, Tried what?

You don’t like me, do you?

Guilt propelled him out of a slouch. He sat up as though enduring an inspection. No. I mean, yes. Yes, I do.

She sighed again and turned the stem of her wineglass without looking at him. Her eyes glistened.

Not tears. Anything but tears.

I haven’t done my duty by you, Hector said rapidly. Sandrina, you are attractive in an elfin sort of way. I can see why my brother finds you captivating. You are prodigiously intelligent and even more prodigiously determined to learn and succeed. You married my twin brother, which makes you interesting. On top of that, you’re a heroine. Almost single-handedly, you and Priam fended off a Proximanian invasion of Farflung Space Station.

But you’d rather be somewhere else instead of entertaining me.

No, I— Hector stopped in mid-protest. The skeptical, angry arch of her brows warned him she was bullshit-proof. For a man who’d hidden his emotions so long he wasn’t sure he still had any, this was a disconcerting trait. Especially in a relative. At family reunions, his sister Helen pestered him about his feelings. Now there’d be two of them.

If I admit surrender, he said will you stop dissecting me with your eyes? Yes, you’re correct, I’d rather be elsewhere.

Sandrina peered at him, her expression shy yet eager, as though she wanted to get to know him, even if the knowledge bruised her ego. Very odd.

Even odder, instead of recoiling from her gaze, Hector found himself relaxing in his chair and explaining himself. I’m a soldier first and last. That explains everything about me.

I doubt that.

Nonetheless, it’s true. And I’m worried about my command. I think the Proximanian attack on your space station signaled their intent to wage an undeclared war by nibbling around our periphery. They would never hit Enno itself. He gestured toward the planet dominating their view of the heavens. Too well defended, and it’s a military commonplace that nobody can conquer an entire planet. But a crucial yet vulnerable source of raw materials, like Banff? Yes. And if the Proxies want to take Banff, my command is a primary target.

You’ve thought a lot about this, I gather. Is the high command worried, too?

They don’t confide their worries to lowly captains. Neither do they listen to said captains, even if they’ve demonstrated a knack for figuring out what the enemy will do next.

Do I detect a note of bitterness?

Hector knew his brother would deflect the question with a witty joke, but he was the unfunny twin. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

Sandrina, bless her, didn’t seem to mind. "You’d rather be with