Scott Sigler - Ancestor

The timing couldn’t be worse. She had inspiration, the missing link that might let her solve the immune reaction problem. But she highly doubted the backup drive failure was an accident—someone was up to something. She’d just have to do two things at once: deal with the backup failure, and simultaneously type in the genetic code that had hit her like a blast of mountain wind. She isolated the computer lab from the rest of the network, then quickly called up a diagnostics program.

Margarite’s hands moved of their own accord, as if possessed by an unseen demon of passion. She undid the laces on her bodice, slowly exposing her soft, moon-shaped breasts. When the night air caressed her nipples she gasped… how could she be so bold?

“Yes, Mrs. Sansome,” Craig beckoned heatedly. “Yes, let me see.”

“I will, Craig,” she cooed sexually.

She stared at him, her eyes passionately out of focus. She wanted him. But he was a vampire! And a stable boy vampire at that!! She had come so far from her servant beginnings, winning the hand of Edward and becoming Mrs. Edward Sansome the Duchess of Tethshire and a very rich woman with money and jewels and many servants of her own. This was wrong, was it not? This was evil! She had to run! Run to Pastor Johnson and do something or she would become an evil denizen of the night and seek the blood of innocents.

However, before she could turn and run, Craig stood up and effortlessly declothed himself of his trousers. His penis sparkled in the moonlight like skin made of crushed rubies.

GUNTHER JONES SAT back and read his words. Not bad, if he did say so himself. Take a bite out of that, Stephenie Meyer. How hard could it be? Some handsome bloodsuckers, some romance, a little forbidden fruit that turns into hot sex, and boom—vampire novel.

The wee hours of the morning were usually his most creative. Tucked away in the security control room, no one bothered him, particularly at 3:00 A.M. Not that he didn’t do his job… there just wasn’t much job to do. Other than making sure Jian didn’t try to off herself, he ran through all scheduled procedures and checked that the alarm systems were online. If anything came up that required eyeballs, he woke Brady or Andy or Colding, depending on who was on call.

Closed-circuit cameras blanketed the facility’s interior, giving him a view of every possible angle. After almost two years here, he was adept at keeping the monitors in his peripheral vision—if something out there moved, he’d see it. Nothing ever did. That meant Gunther Jones basically got paid damn good money to sit and write for hours on end.

He’d completed two novels in the Hot Dusk series already: Hot Dusk and Hot Evening . As soon as he finished his current book, Hot Midnight , he’d have a kick-ass trilogy to push on agents.

The computer beeped, indicating an alert. Gunther reduced his novel (making sure to save it first, he wasn’t about to lose those amazing words), revealing a flashing alert message:

SATELLITE UPLINK SIGNAL DOWN

He called up the maintenance screen, hit the re-link button, then waited to see the link reconnect like it always did. Colding didn’t like losing that signal, although it happened from time to time for some interstellar communications reason they didn’t really understand. A new message appeared:

NO SIGNAL DETECTED, RE-LINK FAILURE

Huh. He’d never seen that before. He repeated the step and waited.

NO SIGNAL DETECTED, RE-LINK FAILURE

“Colding’s going to be pissed.” Gunther called up the diagnostics program and let it run.

HARDWARE FAILURE

He stared at the screen. Hardware failure? That had never happened before. There was only one thing left to do in the repair protocol—send out some eyeballs. He turned to the vid-phone and punched Brady’s room.

BRADY GIOVANNI DIDN’T mind the cold, but that didn’t mean he was stupid about it. He had been one of those kids who always listened to his mother. Growing up in Saskatoon, listening to your mother meant dressing warm.

When on call, dressing warm meant wearing his thermal long johns and socks to bed, cutting down his response time. After Gunther’s call woke him, it took Brady only seconds to pull on the black Genada parka with matching snow pants, military-grade cold-weather gloves, a scarf and the thing that Andy “The Asshole” Crosthwaite teased him about to no end—a wool hat knitted by none other than Brady’s mother. The hat fit perfectly over his big head and the headset/mic combo in his ear.

He punched in his access code at the front interior airlock door. It opened and he stepped into the chamber. He closed the door and waited five seconds while the pressure equalized. A beep from the door let him know the cycle had finished.

“Gun, this is Brady, exiting now.”

“Roger that,” Gunther’s voice said in his ear.

Beretta in hand, Brady opened the heavy latch to the outside door and stepped out into the cold night air. The compound’s lights lit up the grounds. From the door, he could see the back of the satellite dish. Nothing moving. He double-timed it across the snow, the icy wind pulling at him as he ran. It could blow all it wanted, because Brady was prepared. Maybe a little more than just prepared , as proven by the sweat that already trickled down his armpits despite the subzero temperatures.

He kept a sharp watch as he cut a wide circle around the satellite dish. Nothing really happened at the isolated facility. Even something as trivial as this hardware failure brought welcome excitement, gave him a chance to practice good soldiering.

The fifteen-foot-wide satellite array pointed out to the stars, away from Brady. His circle brought him around to the front, where he could see the receiver held up by metal arms that pointed in and up from the concave dish. As he moved, he steadily swept his vision from left to right, then right to left.

Gunther’s voice piped into his headset. “You there yet?”

“I’m twenty feet away and you know that,” Brady said. “You’re watching on infrared, aren’t you?”

Gunther’s laugh sounded tinny through the small headset. “Yeah, I love this thing. Never get to use it. Nothing moving out there but you, big fella.”

Brady came around the front of the satellite dish. Seeing no movement, he closed in until he could examine the receiver. He stared at the gadget for a full three seconds, not really believing what he saw.

Baffin Island wasn’t boring anymore.

THE VID-PHONE AGAIN let out its shrill digital blare. Colding groaned and rolled over and looked at the phone—3:22 A.M. Jian again? Jesus, couldn’t a guy just get some fucking sleep around here? Colding clicked the connect button.

“What’s up, Gun?”

“We have a situation,” Gunther said in a rush. “The satellite array has been damaged.”

Colding instantly came fully awake. “Define damaged.”

“Let me patch in Brady,” Gunther said. “Brady, Colding’s on, tell him what you see.”

Gunther’s face stayed on the screen, but Brady’s girlish voice came from the speakers. “Someone whacked the fuck out of the satellite array. The dish is fine, but the receiver-transmitter unit has been smashed up pretty bad. Looks like marks from an axe.”

An axe. There were twelve fire axes spread through the small facility’s interior. Whoever sabotaged the satellite dish had come from inside the building.

“Gunther,” Colding said, “activate all the apartment cameras and give me a head count, right now.”