DEADLY PLANET (PAPERBACK)

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Deadly Planet
CHAPTER ONE
Amelia Blueheart sat beside her friend Largo on the bridge of his ship, Nobody’s Business, and watched hypnotic waves of green and yellow undulate across the video screens on the bridge walls.

“It reminds me of traveling under a vast methane sea.” Largo turned his handsome face to her. “You know you’re moving, but there’s no point of reference, no way to measure how far you’ve traveled or how much farther you need to go to reach your destination. And the colors are similar, too.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Undersea travel was not in her realm of experience. “Wait. Was that your way of telling me we’re lost?”

Largo flashed a grin and settled back in the pilot’s chair.

The Nobody’s bridge was exceedingly comfortable–as were all the crew areas of the ship. A small cargo ship that could be handled by a crew of one and carry up to a dozen passengers, Largo had received the older Nobody in lieu of payment for a job.

Amelia admired the way he’d made the ship his own, adding creature comforts, and beefing up or upgrading its systems. It was a well cared for ship, a responsive and comfortable ship; a ship that had never hosted more than its crew of one since Largo owned it. Not until Amelia been invited aboard.

She felt absurdly pleased about that.

The bridge gel seat warmed to Amelia’s body temperature and molded to her petite frame, a bit like sitting in a giant human palm–or floating in a cloning chamber.

Largo brought up a three-dimensional holo of the gate they were traveling through so she could mark their progress, but the snaking waves of color on the video screens behind it kept snagging her attention. One in particular looked slightly out of synch with the others.


Travel through the galactic gates was never pleasant for a ship’s crews. The anomalies that allowed ships to traverse vast distances over a short time frame required a ship to shut down its propulsion engines–no matter the fuel source–while inside the gates.

No crew liked to kill their engines. It made them vulnerable to attack when exiting a gate. Many had tried to travel through the gates with engines idling, never to be seen again, whole crews lost. After the loss of too many ships and countless lives, it was finally accepted that the only way to utilize the gates was to shut down a ship’s propulsion system.

Given the vastness of the galaxy, using the gates was necessary if a ship wanted to travel beyond its home star system.

Amelia began to wish she’d stayed in her cabin. The patterns on the screens were making her queasy.

“You doing okay?” Concern filled Largo’s gold-flecked tawny eyes.

Amelia managed a wan smile. “I’ll be fine. How long until we exit?”

They were on their way to Belliot, Largo’s home planet. Unfortunately, they were having one hell of a time getting there. A detour at the request of an old friend of Largo’s a few months earlier had nearly cost them their lives. It had definitely cost Largo a friendship.

“Not much longer, I promise.”

Since leaving Ankama, they’d slipped in and out of gates, making their way along the Milky Way’s Scutum-Centaurus Arm. Amelia sided with the enthusiasts who believed the gate system had been created millions of years before by ancient travelers from other galaxies. Why else would each entry/exit sit near a planet?

The naysayers insisted the gates were natural ripples in the space-time continuum created by gravity waves from long extinct pulsars, and the entry/exit points were created by the planets’ magnetic fields.

It didn’t really matter who was right. What mattered was that the discovery of the gates pushed space travel forward by leaps and bounds, allowing ships to reach distant planets and opening up trade between vastly different cultures.

The transition between travel inside the gate to free-floating in space always made Amelia dizzy and upset her stomach. When she still belonged to the Tribunal, she wasn’t allowed outside the confines of her cabin, but she always knew when their star cruisers exited a gate by the way she felt.

“Did you see that?” she asked, pointing to one of the video screens. “The wave pattern is different on that screen. It’s almost as if . . .” Her voice drifted off. She frowned. “Wait.” She watched the screen intently.

“There. It did it again. It’s as if something is manipulating a gate.” She watched the screen, counting in her head. “It’s a regular disturbance. It has to be from an outside source. I think . . . I think it might be a distress call, Largo. The closer we get to the entry point, the stronger the signal.”


Largo began scanning frequencies for the call. He trusted Amelia’s instincts. She had a knack for picking up on patterns well before others saw them–part of her translator clone’s genetic soup.

Translators worked non-stop until they either burned out or failed to bring about a satisfactory resolution, at which time they were terminated. The life expectancy for an adult translator rarely spanned ten years.

Amelia was a runaway translator clone. If found, she would be terminated. Largo would be stripped of his ship and his credit account for aiding her.

For Largo, the risk was worth it. Amelia Blueheart was the most generous and fascinating woman he had ever met and he wanted her in his life. Permanently. She had raised him out of the dark funk he had fallen into over the last decade. Since they’d been together, his moments of happiness kept multiplying.

Although he’d never said the words for fear of scaring her off, he could admit to himself that he loved her.

“I think the call originates right outside the exit.” He pursed his lips. “Damn. It could be a trap.”

Pirates–collectively known as the Kuri–liked to wait in ambush outside the exits and grab a ship when it was in the vulnerable period before its engines powered up enough to maneuver. The Department of Galactic Safety stationed ships at the well-traveled gates, but they didn’t have enough men or ships to guard every gate. Numbers of ships and their crews were lost to pirates each year.


Amelia’s green eyes remained focused on the screen with the troublesome wave pattern. When it appeared again she felt sure it was a distress signal. Was it a trap or was it real? She pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head.


“I don’t see that we have any choice in the matter, Largo. Galaxy law says any ship that catches a distress signal must respond unless the danger to itself is too great. Since we can’t assess the level of danger from inside the gate, we have to exit.”

“This is exactly the kind of out-of-the-way gate the Kuri like to stake out. That concerns me.”

“I agree with you.” Amelia drummed the slender fingers of one hand on her thigh, thinking.
“But I don’t see that we have a choice,” she eventually repeated. “Can we arm the ship before we exit the gate?”

“No. But we can have her ready to arm as soon as we’re clear.” He pulled up the defensive weapons panel and programmed the new destination into the navigation system. “Are you ready?”

Amelia nodded and grabbed her stomach. It never helped, but she was ever hopeful that it would alleviate the queasiness. Her ears popped and she felt as if she was being squeezed along with the Nobody. The video screens went dark. Moments later, pinpoints of light began to pop up on them. Amelia swallowed against the bitter bile creeping up her throat.

The ship’s engines kicked in, but Largo let it hover. A large cargo ship appeared on one of the screens, a gaping hole in its port side. “I assume that’s the source of the distress call,” he said. He scanned his instruments, but saw nothing alarming.

“There are no other ships in the area. I’m going to ease closer.”
He circled the huge ship slowly, looking for more signs of damage. “I don’t see any–Amelia? What’s wrong?”

Amelia felt light-headed, but it wasn’t from exiting the gate.

“I know that ship,” she whispered. “It belongs to my friends, the Zabolovs.”