Table Of ContentContents
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author
Also by Linnea Sinclair
Copyright Page
With thanks to:
My Intergalactic Bar & Grille regulars, including but not limited to:
Commander Carla Arpin, Lynne “Library Lady” Welch, Cy Korte, Mike
Pennington, Brenda, Marty, Jennifer, Diane, Robin, Bill, Lynne, Debby, Katrina,
Sumera, Ann, Liza, Cynn, Chris, Cathy, Marie, Darcy, Mischelle, Kimberly,
Donna, and the rest of the wild gang. Thank you for listening to the lunatic
ravings of an author when surely you could be doing better things. . . .
Some of the best authors on the planet: Susan Grant, Stacey Klemstein, Robin
Owens, Isabo “Kat” Kelly, Monette Michaels, Nancy Cohen, Ruth Kerce, and
Jacqueline Lichtenberg—thank you for your friendship and guidance. . . .
My agent, Kristin Nelson, for her spunky effervescence, and my editor, Anne
Groell, for her good-natured patience. . . .
And as always, with thanks to my husband, Robert Bernadino, who believes in
me; and our resident furpersons, Daq and Miss Doozy, for their secretarial
expurrrtise.
With love,
˜Linnea
1
It wasn’t the first time Gillie had hazily regained consciousness flat on her back
in sick bay, feeling stiff and out of sorts. And unable to account for a missing
two or three hours. Pub-crawling did have its side effects.
But it was the first time she’d been unable to account for a missing two or
three hundred years. Not even a week of pub-crawling could explain that.
Three hundred forty-two years, sixteen hours, Simon’s voice stated clearly in
her mind. If you want to be absolutely accurate.
She didn’t. Her math skills had never been her strong point. And three hundred
years was a close enough estimate to cause her stomach to do flip-flops in a way
a bottle of Devil’s Breath never had.
The possibility that she’d died flitted across her mind—though death wouldn’t
have thrown her inexplicably into the future. Even so, she thought it prudent to
pull her essence out of her physical self and make a cursory examination of her
own body on the diag table. By all appearances, she was still short, blond, and
very much alive. The readout on the medistat confirmed the last part of her
hastily conducted diagnosis. It detailed a few bumps and bruises as well as
notations on a mild concussion, no doubt the source of her blistering headache.
A headache that wasn’t the least bit helped by whatever heathen concoction
was being pumped into her system through the round med-broche clamped to her
wrist. Med-broches! Raheiran technology rarely used such invasive things. She
longed to alter its feed rate but knew her mental tinkering would likely set off
some alarm. She’d almost tripped a few when she’d awakened ten minutes ago,
groggy and achy, then tried to spike into this sick bay’s systems.
Impatience invariably leads to sloppy work, Simon had chastised.
Sloppy work, a bitch of a headache, and a reality that suddenly did not make
sense.
How in the Seven Hells had she ended up three hundred years from her last
conscious moment, flat on her back in some unknown space station’s sick bay?
With Simon in a similar state of disarray a few decks below.
The Fav’lhir.
Ah, yes. Small matter of a large warship intent on her destruction. Obviously,
the Fav hadn’t succeeded. Though something had happened.
They’re vicious and powerful, Simon, but they don’t have time-travel
capabilities. Neither do we. Someone or something else pulled us here.
Wherever here was. That much she ought to find out.
She stepped away from her unconscious body on the diag table, peeked around
the corner of the small room. Felt foolish and could hear Simon’s wry chuckle.
No one could see her.
At least, no one other than Simon, who, from his tone, was very aware she’d
pulled out of her self to explore her surroundings. Have a care, My Lady. You
were injured.
We’ve more serious things to consider than my few aches and pains. There
were two other patients in the sick bay in much worse shape than she was. She
didn’t know them; there’d been no one on her ship when the Fav had attacked
other than Simon and herself. The girl on the diag bed was too young to be part
of the squadron she’d worked with in the Khalaran Fleet. Almost automatically,
Gillie touched their essences, sending healing energy as she walked by. Then she
sidestepped quickly, and unnecessarily, as a thin man in a blue lab coat hurried
past and into the corridor.
She followed him and for the next fifteen minutes was thoroughly astounded,
and more than a little disconcerted, by what she saw.
Wide corridors were filled with people in various modes of dress, from the
utilitarian freighter-crew shipsuits to more exotic costumes with flowing skirts
and elaborate fringed shawls. She noted the familiar range of skin tones—from
the dusky to the pale—and hair colors—mostly browns and blacks but a few
bright reds and light blonds—and heard all three Khalaran dialects. A few
languages were harder to identify. Rim-world tongues, most likely, clipped and
rapid in their sound.
She raised her eyebrows at the antigrav pallets trailing behind a group of
dockworkers, surprised by the pallets’ advanced configuration. Raised her
eyebrows further at the state-of-the-art holovid news kiosks and station diagrams
near the lift banks. Those she studied carefully, listening to the chatter around
her; tech talk about scanner arrays and enviro grids. That matched what she saw
on the diagram suspended three-dimensionally out from the bulkhead.
The Khalaran Confederation, with her assistance, had just been developing the
technology to create a deep-space station the likes of which she looked at now.
At least, they had been a day ago.
Correction, three hundred and forty-two years ago.
Yet it wasn’t this jump in technology that bothered her. Nor this space
structure bristling with unexpected weapons and sensors and databanks. Nor her
headache. Or the stiffness in her left shoulder, the result of her sudden collision
with the bulkhead when the Fav’lhir ship had exploded a little too close for
comfort off her starboard side.
Even the unexplained missing three hundred some-odd years failed to bother
her. Or the fact that, in those three hundred some-odd years, there’d been no
other Raheiran advisers in this sector. Simon had checked station security logs.
Given her people’s minimal-intervention policy, that was one of the few things
that made sense.
No, none of those things bothered her at all.
What really bothered her was something she heard in the corridor chatter as
she continued her brief, hurried tour. Something she viewed on the news kiosks
and station diagrams. And finally, something she saw as she stood before the
temple’s double-doored entrance, shaking her head in disbelief.
What really bothered Gillaine Davré was that during her three-hundred-some-
odd-year absence, the damned Khalar had gone on a shrine-building kick and
made her into a deity.
