Jeannie Holmes - The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance

“Come with me,” he said, releasing me. “You’ll be able to ask your questions of my commanding officer.”

His commanding officer. Interesting distinction. One of the only things I felt I could process in this morass of quicksand – or airless vacuum – beneath my feet.

I eased out of his grasp and turned back for my shoes. Mary had been so careful when she’d undressed me that I could account for every single hairpin I’d used earlier in the day. She’d even left a comb, which I applied to my tangled hair.

“Which military?” I asked, stepping into my sensible brown pumps. My attempt at a casual tone didn’t even fool me.

“One you won’t be familiar with,” he replied.

A military I wouldn’t know, and that hint of dialect flavoring his words – clues that ought to add up to something useful. Who had the kind of technology that could put me on a spaceship hundreds of miles above the planet without a spacesuit? For that matter, why weren’t we floating in zero-g? Since we weren’t floating, did I know for a fact that no one on Earth had the special effects budget to mock up something like this?

I didn’t. But I couldn’t imagine anyone going to the effort and expense. It wouldn’t make sense. Again, my thoughts circled back to why .

Impatient with the disorderly whirl of conjecture in my brain, I slapped down the comb and coiled my hair into another French twist.

Light and heat thrummed through my blood. Carrollus tangled his fingers with mine before I could reach for the pins to secure the coil.

“Leave it,” he commanded, pulling my hands away as if I wasn’t resisting.

Hair spilled down my back.

He had strength in spades, and he had me trapped between him and the dressing table.

A split second of fright trailed ice down my spine.

“Your hair is beautiful,” he said, folding my arms around my middle so that I stood, confined within his embrace.

Every piece of my biology arced to life at his contact. The reaction shook me. I’d never known that I could feel so much, so strongly.

“Mousy,” I corrected. My voice sounded small. Scared.

“I’ve yet to see a mouse with strawberry-blonde hair,” he countered, humor deepening his accent. “It’s beautiful and unruly. Like you.”

I shook my head.

“Leave it down,” he urged.

I shivered at the caress of his warm breath against my ear. While I had little inclination to indulge his whim, I couldn’t control my body’s runaway response to his persuasion. Goosebumps erupted over my skin.

“Fine. Yes,” I choked. Anything to get my body back under my control.

He chuckled, released me, and walked away.

The note of triumph in his laugh made me clench my teeth. Stiffening my spine, I tugged my jacket straight, turned on my heel, and marched to the door.

Assuming I wasn’t locked in, I’d walk out the door, and wander around until I found someone else and demand to be taken to their leader.

I left the bedroom and walked into a tiny, Spartan compartment, little more than a glorified closet, really. It had a kitchenette on one side and a scarred desk on the other. Odd. So much space devoted to a bedroom and so little to the rest of off-duty life.

The door opened at my approach. I had expected a whoosh sound effect, but it opened and closed silently.

I wasn’t locked in. Fine. It didn’t change the fact that until I learned interplanetary flight and navigation, I was more effectively a prisoner than any Earthly lockup could have made me.

“This way,” Carrollus said from behind me.

He led me through a maze of corridors, any of which could have been found inside military facilities the world over. Except that this one was over the world. By miles.

I was on a spaceship! Or was I? Could I be on a base? Or a station? Did it matter? I’d left my planet, something I’d never dreamed would be possible, much less likely. I had to fight to keep a giddy grin from my face.

We paused at a junction where several corridors met at what looked like a central elevator shaft. I felt his gaze on me.

“If I were going to hide a spaceship, which I assume you’re doing, since I haven’t heard about UFOs outside of the regular conspiracy theory circles, I’d put myself in orbit inside the asteroid belt. Just another space rock,” I noted, slanting him what I hoped was an innocent look.

A shadow passed over his perfect face. It looked like uneasiness.

Score one for me. If his expression was any indicator, I’d nailed that.

“To stay hidden, you’d have to dodge the craft that get lobbed out past lunar orbit,” I went on.

The uneasiness drained out of him. He waved a hand. The elevator door opened and Carrollus gestured me inside.

Either he’d gained control of his poker face or I’d gotten that last bit wrong. I entered the compartment and propped one hip against the wall.

He said something. It wasn’t English. Again. Native language? A non-Earth language?

The elevator started up.

If they weren’t avoiding spacecraft, they’d have to find another way to conceal their presence, which suggested tampering with the signals in some way.

“You’re tapping the data streams of everything that could see you, and scrubbing your ship’s image?” I marveled, forming the hypothesis as I spoke it. Of course. It made sense. With the technology I’d seen so far – like the fact that I wasn’t floating through the corridors – it might be a trivial matter to splice in

. . .

Carrollus crossed the tiny space in a single stride, slapped his hands against the wall on either side of my head. An odd combination of anger and regret sparked in his eyes. “Stop. No more synthesizing observations. Your hope of returning home diminishes the more that you know.”

My fleeting sense of satisfaction at having hit so close to home evaporated. I clenched my fists. “I’m a scientist. I can’t stop.”

He spun away from me.

The rigid set of his shoulders warned me to watch my mouth. I took the caution to heart. Studying him, it hit me.

He looked human. I’d naturally assumed he was human. At first. How far had they come? From which star system? Why? Was it a quirk of genetics that allowed them to pass as human? Or had they modified . . . The elevator stopped and the door opened.

He led me through another short maze of corridors to a set of double doors. He muttered another incomprehensible command.

The doors opened. Bright lights blinded me. I squinted against the glare.

Either the place was huge, or it had been soundproofed. Our footfalls disappeared into the quiet. I smelled . . . Did expectation have a scent? I drew in a breath and knew that other people filled the room.

As my eyes adjusted, I caught several things at once. Uniformed, young men stood at attention in front of instrument panels. The oval room was terraced, personnel and equipment arranged in descending concentric horseshoes down to a central floor. An enormous table of what looked like black glass dominated the lowest point.

Definitely not an office. A command center? Or a coliseum?

Carrollus and I paused on the top tier where the horseshoes opened into a broad aisle up the steps.

A thin, brittle-looking man with white hair, a hawk nose and rheumy, pale-blue eyes watched us. A blue uniform hung on his frame. No visible rank insignia. On any of them. Including Commander Trygg Carrollus.

“Ms Finlay Selkirk,” Carrollus said, “may I present Orlan Grisham? Sir, Ms Selkirk.”

“Captain,” he didn’t say. But it was obvious.

We sized one another up.

In the deep frown lines around his mouth and eyes, I believed I saw a despot.