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    Lost Hope
    Lost Hope
    Lost Hope
    Ebook312 pages4 hours

    Lost Hope

    By Severine Wolfe

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Out in The Black you can lose everything.
    Nan’s entire life had been stolen from her before she’d been abducted and given away to pay a debt. All she wanted to do was give up and die and join her dead husband in whatever afterlife there was. Frustrated at not being allowed to go back to what little bit of life she had left on Earth, she grabs on to the chance to learn about new engines and propulsion systems. When she’d invited to visit a new ship with brand new engines, she feels life inside her for the first time she can remember.
    Miko left Selu as a young man to attend The Academy and become and engineer on the best ships with the best engines The Accord has to offer. He’s given up finding someone he wants to spend his life with until a woman walks into his engine room and he feels the mate bond his people had abjured centuries ago.
    The two of them discover each other and sabotage out on The Rim and find another piece of the puzzle into the faction that is trying to tear The Accord apart. Things turn especially dangerous when their ship is stranded far from a jump gate and dozens of saboteurs on board. They must discover how and why The Graxxus has been targeted and the discovery puts them into a race to beat the forces determined to rob them of the happiness they have found.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeverine Wolfe
    Release dateFeb 12, 2019
    ISBN9780463994450
    Lost Hope
    Author

    Severine Wolfe

    Severine Wolfe is a pen name. It's also a name I've used across the gaming world for nearly 20 years. I answer to, "Hey, Sev!" just as easily as my birth name.I am married and have four grown children and three grandchildren. I love to read and I read everything from treatises on philosophy to theories on the speed of light to the most bawdy of bodice rippers. My interests are varied but reading, knitting and gardening are my top three. Extreme knitting, not for the faint of heart.I've had stories running around my head for years and I'm just now letting them out to put themselves on the virtual page. I hope you enjoy the characters as much as I have over the years. You can contact me at sevwolfe@gmail.com.

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      Book preview

      Lost Hope - Severine Wolfe

      Lost Hope

      Shifting Alliances Book 5

      By Severine Wolfe

      Science Fiction Romance

      Lost Hope

      Copyright © 2019 by Severine Wolfe

      First E-Book Published January 2019

      Cover design by Melody Simmons

      e-book ISBN:

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission from the author.

      All characters, places, and events in this book are fictitious or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations are strictly coincidental.

      License Statement

      This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book 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 reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Out in The Black you can lose everything

      Nan’s entire life had been stolen from her before she’d been abducted and given away to pay a debt. All she wanted to do was give up and die and join her dead husband in whatever afterlife there was. Frustrated at not being allowed to go back to what little bit of life she had left on Earth, she grabs on to the chance to learn about new engines and propulsion systems. When she’d invited to visit a new ship with brand new engines, she feels life inside her for the first time she can remember.

      Miko left Selu as a young man to attend The Academy and become and engineer on the best ships with the best engines The Accord has to offer. He’s given up finding someone he wants to spend his life with until a woman walks into his engine room and he feels the mate bond his people had abjured centuries ago.

      The two of them discover each other and sabotage out on The Rim and find another piece of the puzzle into the faction that is trying to tear The Accord apart. Things turn especially dangerous when their ship is stranded far from a jump gate and dozens of saboteurs on board. They must discover how and why The Graxxus has been targeted and the discovery puts them into a race to beat the forces determined to rob them of the happiness they have found.

      Dedication

      My Muse says all of my books should be dedicated to her. Since we don’t always see eye to eye, I won’t. It won’t stop her nagging me at 3 AM with new ideas that I must immediately get out of bed and write down before I think they were a dream.

      This book is dedicated, instead, to my wonderful readers who write me the best messages and really encourage me to keep trying to get better. It’s for each one of you that I sit and stare at a white screen every day and put words into place that hopefully tell a really good story. Thank you for buying and reading my words.

      Acknowledgements

      I would like to thank my husband who has an almost repulsive knowledge of rocket engines, internal combustion engines and bleeding edge propulsion systems. I have tried to keep things as generic as possible.

      I would also like to thank Kyle at Because Science for imparting volumes of information about space travel, space ships, and battling in space. Any mistakes are mine, not his.

      ONE

      Nan Toto had stood next to the hole where they had put her husband, Stuart. How appropriate that it was raining in a part of the world that wasn't really known for it, according to old songs her mother had listened to. She nodded to the few people who had come to the burial service. She thanked them for coming, remaining stoic until the last person was gone, then she stood looking into the hole with the two men assigned to cover him up standing patiently by a tombstone. Madly, her mind latched on to the chore of picking out a tombstone for their plots. She hadn't been able to do that. Not yet.

      How was she supposed to survive this? How did one live without their heart inside their body? She had no idea, but she felt the hole that Stu's death had left in her being.

      She looked up at the two guys waiting, sighed and turned away. Nan carried an umbrella, but she didn't bother to put it up. She had eschewed the offered limousine ride to and from the funeral home, choosing to drive herself. Simply put, she could not stand to talk to anyone or see their sympathetic eyes or listen to their sympathetic mouths saying stupid things that people always said when one lost a spouse.

      I'm sorry for your loss.

      Probably the most useless words ever strung together, she thought bitterly. They had no idea what her loss was. They had no idea of the love between Nan and Stu. No one had. They'd had friends, but they were only truly themselves with each other. How dare they even consider speaking of what she'd had with Stu? They could not possibly know what kind of love that animated both of them. No one did because it had been so precious that they had shown no one in fear that it would sully what was perfect.

      She sat in her black Honda watching as the two men began putting the dirt back into the hole and she was overcome with the urge to run over to them screaming at them not to bury him, that Stu was still alive. She was used to those momentary, brief, flights into pure madness that would come upon her at the odd moment. They'd been hitting her since they had learned of Stu's cancer six months before.

      They would hit in between her bouts of wanting to just scream at the universe for doing this to them.

      She finally put the key in the ignition and drove home on auto-pilot.

      She had as much time as she needed in bereavement leave, but she returned after a mere week, unable to sit in the home she'd built with Stu. Everything was a reminder of him. She could still scent him, barely. He'd been in the hospice center the last two weeks of his life. After the medical equipment had been sent back to wherever that sort of stuff belonged, the house had seemed… empty. Even more empty that when Stu had gone into the hospice center.

      She'd phoned her supervisor and was cleared to go back to work, provided she have weekly visits with a grief counselor. Her work was too important for her to screw something up because her brain was all messed up. Going back to work was her attempt to keep the emotions at bay by working. Nan was frightened because she could not bring her thoughts into order after Stu's death. Her mind was the only thing she had left, and she was living in terror of losing that, too.

      The work had helped, the people at work had not. If they avoided her for whatever reason, she was okay with that. No, it was the people who felt she needed to talk, a shoulder to cry on, that aggravated her the most. She didn't want to talk to anyone about a man that most of them had never met.

      Quite simply, she was angry at the entire universe.

      At the time she had no idea that parts of the universe would make sure she knew what true anger was all about.

      ∆∆∆

      She had awakened restrained by something attached to some sort of surface. She could see the light beyond her closed eyes, but it was too bright for her to open them. Had something happened? What? Had there been an earthquake? Mudslide? Was she in a hospital? Where was Stu? Oh, dear God, Stu!

      It was the thought of her dead husband that opened her eyes, despite the lights and she stared at the face of… something… with red skin who smiled at her with so much evil intent she screamed.

      Good, my little slave is awake, it said. She was confused. His lips didn't move in conjunction with the sounds she heard in her mind. Nan tried to shake her head. The… thing just chuckled at her attempts to free herself.

      I fought a good war and you're my payment, female.

      You can't take people in payment for services rendered! She screamed at him.

      This could not be happening. This was some horrible joke. Aliens didn't exist. Everyone knew that. The Drake enthusiasts at SETI had found nothing to indicate there was any other life out there.

      The face loomed over her again and a thick tongue flipped out of the mouth and licked her cheek.

      Of course, you can accept slaves as payment of a debt. It's not strictly legal, but it is done.

      She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath.

      By whom?

      What do you mean?

      Who used me to pay off a debt to you?

      He stood up and away from her, giving her enough courage to open her eyes again.

      The Skelexian king, as I obtained an item for his menagerie for him. He looked at something somewhere else that she couldn't see from her table, bed, whatever. I'm taking you home to my homeworld. We can evidently breed, and you will give me sons that will sell their fighting skills.

      That's barbarous, she spat at him. Then a smile curved her lips. She'd show him. She was sterile! Well, she might be. She and Stu had not managed to conceive in their ten years of marriage. At first, because they were still college students and didn't want to, then because they just didn't. They were beginning the tests to see if they might be unable when Stu's bone cancer was discovered, and all hope was lost.

      Tears poured down along her temples at that thought.

      Why are you crying? I haven't touched you yet, He grimaced at her. Well, Nan assumed it was a grimace. Perhaps he always looked like that.

      My husband is dead.

      You were mated before? He asked, leaning to look her in the face. I was not told this.

      He died a couple of months ago, she said, crying even harder, finding it hard to breathe.

      The red giant grinned. Then you know how to please a male, I won't have to train you.

      I'm not fucking you, you stupid idiot! She yelled at him, outraged.

      Willing or no, I will take you, he told her, releasing the restraints.

      Nan popped off the table ready to do battle.

      Conscious or not, she heard before the lights went out again.

      ∆∆∆

      When she woke up again, she was staring into a red chest while she could feel him moving inside her body. Her entire spirit broke with that knowledge and she just gave up, wishing to join Stu wherever he might be. She couldn't live with it. She turned her brain off like flipping the light off in her closet.

      ∆∆∆

      The rapes happened daily, several times a day without her in her own mind. The moment he approached, Nan shut her brain off and lay there, taking it. The big, red guy grew more and more disgusted with her lack of a fight or participation. She had overheard him talking to someone somewhere about getting screwed in their deal and demanding better payment, more payment.

      She had heard the conversation clearly since the guy thought she was completely broken. They had made arrangements to meet up at some station and the red guy would be given two more slaves. He could blow her out of an airlock for all anyone cared, including herself. She hated him, hated herself for still living, and she felt filthy. Big, red, and rapist would just toss her into the shower, not even really cleaning her up, then throw her back on the bed to fuck her all over again.

      It hurt. He was huge, and it hurt so badly, but she never made a sound. She gave him nothing at all to work with, enjoying the fact that it was frustrating him more and more. In her mind she smirked at getting back at him in some small way.

      They had stopped by the station and the scientist inside Nan wanted so badly to see it, feel it, learn it, but she had to remain mute and brain dead. Two other women had been brought aboard and she had been left on a table in what she presumed was the medical bay. She could hear the cries and the screams of the women and it sickened her. She could not help them. She had no idea how to fly this thing, where they even were in the galaxy or even how to contact anyone that could or would help them.

      She'd watched in horror as the red guy had carried the limp body of a woman into the medical bay and he threw her onto a bed and closed the lid on it. A few seconds later a sound was made, and he pulled her bloodied body out and put her into the refuse chute, to be blasted out into space.

      She's dead, so you're back in business, slave, was all he said.

      Rations packets were occasionally thrown at both women and a tube of water per day. They didn't speak as Nan was still in her silent phase, giving him nothing, especially when he raped her.

      The other woman finally died two weeks after they had picked them up and Nan found herself numb. She could only see the day when her own body would be thrown out an air-lock, into the unforgiving vacuum of space where her blood would boil within her body because there was no way to radiate heat in a vacuum. Space was cold, but that's not what killed you in exposure. It was the inability to shed the heat the human body produced.

      A few hours after the other woman had been literally fucked to death, alarms sounded. The red guy ran to the front of the spacecraft and Nan was glad she was strapped to a table, if only to prevent her from killing herself. It felt like the craft was jinking, as she knew it was called. The craft was rolling from side to side, as if it was in gravity evading fire from another aircraft. She wasn't sure how that would work in space. Dogfights would be useless in a vacuum.

      Then everything stopped, and the guy ran back and began gathering things, madly tapping at screens when there was a bump and the computer told her to prepare to be boarded. The red guy froze and stared as a tall, silvery skinned person with the whitest hair she'd ever seen walked in. His black eyes took in her on the table and the red guy standing stock still in the middle of the medical bay.

      Well, well, well, Moru, he spoke quietly. Finally. He sounded very satisfied. He looked over at Nan again and nodded towards her. A female with pinkish skin came forward with a blanket. The big red guy, Moru, evidently, didn't even reach out to stop her. Two more male aliens walked in and shackled his arms and legs. The first, silvery guy smiled.

      Justice will be meted out, Moru, have no worries.

      Big, red was then dragged off, screaming and yelling and then that suddenly just stopped, and the silvery guy looked extremely smug.

      My name is Silas, madam, he introduced himself from a distance while the female ran something rectangular around her body. You have been rescued by Accord Security Forces.

      I want to go home. I didn't get to see my husband's headstone installed, she spoke up suddenly. The word rescue was a beacon to her. No more pain for her body to endure. She could go back home, to her home with Stu… but Stu was no longer there.

      I'm afraid I cannot help you there, the man said quietly, and she felt some pressure in her brain and closed her eyes.

      I have a headache, she mumbled to the pink woman.

      I am currently scanning your mind for your recent memories, the silvery guy, Silas, told her. Mareet will finish with your physical scan in a few moments, then we will know where to take you.

      Take me? I asked, looking up at him."

      "Which rehabilitation planet on which you will most likely be helped before we can take you to Olyg where all Earth females are living.

      Nan just stared at him. Did you say Earth females?

      He smiled and nodded. We are trying to make sure we find all of you who were stolen.

      Then you'll take us back? She asked, hoping against hope, even though her rational mind told her it would be a foolish move and that nothing awaited her back there anyway.

      That would be quite impossible. You would not be able to cope with what's happened to you. Who could you tell? He shrugged one thin shoulder. "We're trying to do right by you and offer you new lives for the ones stolen from you.

      She's not pregnant, the pink lady told Silas.

      Thank you, Mareet, he said, still smiling. Can you please get a hover bed and take her to the medical bay on board our ship? I'm going to get this thing into the flight bay and have our tech teams go over everything.

      He killed two women, Nan suddenly blurted out. He picked up two earth girls from a station somewhere and fucked them to death.

      Both the silver and pink beings in the room with her stopped and went still.

      He complained that I was not payment enough and he was told where to go to get two more women.

      Silas nodded sadly and then to Mareet who motioned a bed into the room where Nan was told to lay down. The hovering slab fascinated Nan.

      I'll let you inspect it later, Mareet whispered to her.

      For the first time in what seemed like forever, Nan looked forward to something.

      TWO

      She had been put into a med-bed and healed from the internal injuries she had received as a result of Moru's enthusiastic use of her body. She felt physically better when she was released from the med bay and taken to her own quarters. There was a guard outside her door and only the captain was allowed in or medical staff with his permission. Three times a day food was brought to her. Mareet had come by to check on her and show her how to use the lighting and climate controls.

      A shower in the ray device had left her feeling cleaner than an hour-long soak in a bathtub. She could see why they would invent such a thing since providing water to an entire spacecraft had to be a pretty mean feat. After the first few days she had asked permission to tour the engines but had been denied. Silas had explained that they could not show her anything above her own technology. It was forbidden beyond the viewer she had been given with the cultural information on Olyg and the Accord and the peoples therein.

      Nan had read everything given her and asked for anything more she could be provided. She had nothing but time as it had been decided that she would be taken straight to Olyg rather than spending time on a rehab planet. She was as healthy, physically and mentally as she could be, all things considered.

      Silas had asked her about Stu on one of his visits and she had only explained that he had been her mate, as these people called them. She offered nothing more and did not feel a burgeoning headache she got when he went diving for information in her memories. He was never rough or mean about it, but it did not sit well with her, having her brain put through a sieve as he sought information.

      Moru has been gelded and he will be sent to a mining prison, he informed Nan the day before they were to reach Olyg.

      She had gasped and stared at him. Her mouth opened, but there were no questions for her to ask.

      It is done cruelly, without the aid of anesthesia and he's been given no painkillers after. He will be put in the same compound with the other rapists who have been caught and sentenced.

      She did nothing but stare and wonder at the justice of an advanced civilization.

      Rape is a horrible crime, as Moru is about to discover. It's far uglier than you think in the aftermath when you have to face your rapists every day, Silas had said before bowing and leaving her quarters. It chilled her to her marrow, the word rapists. However, she did not ask for any leniency. The man would have fucked her to death and shot her out of a refuse chute without a backward glance.

      Nan sat on the sofa type of contraption in her quarters thinking of everything, her mind swirling. She wasn't sure what she should think about it all. She found herself, for the first time since her abduction, feeling a wrathful anger toward those who had stolen her from her life and her life from her. She got up and began picking things up and throwing them. Then the screaming and yelling began, and she poured all of her anger, all of her grief, all of her horror into that until she was on the floor, curled in on herself.

      That was how Mareet had found her when Silas had warned her that Nan was breaking down. The medic had kindly given Nan a sedative and once she was out the other guard had asked one of the guards to place her on her sleeping platform, tucking her in securely. Then the medic watched her for a while, while busy on her own personal comm, contacting a person she was sure could help Nan with her transition into her new life in a place she had never before known existed. A sly smiled crossed her face at the response from the person she'd contacted.

      If anyone could help Nan, Tasha was that being.

      ∆∆∆

      Nan had been taken down to the surface of Olyg by Silas who had officially handed her off to the Alliance medical personnel assigned to The Center where she would apparently be staying until they could decide where to dump her. She had been given a complete scan, told that she wasn't pregnant, again, but that she was fertile. That was something, she supposed.

      She'd been handed a tote-like bag with clothing in it. She'd kept her own viewer from the ship she'd been on and it had been calibrated to The Center, so she could access more information than she had aboard the ship. Then, she'd been shown to her quarters that she was supposed to share with another woman, who never showed up. She was told that the woman had stolen a ship trying to get back to Earth to retrieve her daughter. That had set Nan back on her heels. As far as she’d been told, they had made sure to capture women who would not be quickly noticed to be missing. Missing an entire child was a huge deal.

      She spent the first two days in her room reading up on Olyg, the people, the culture and

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