Shades of Dark - Coming July!

Yes, I know I've been absent. I plead the usual writing insanity and a move to Ohio for the summer. While I try to dig out from under it all (and hang mirrors, drapes and all the rest of the move-in shtufff), here's a reminder that Shades of Dark will be out next month:


~Linnea

SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost, coming July 2008 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: www.linneasinclair.com

Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith.

It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn’t ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we’d face whatever outcomes there were together.

Insufficient Mating Material

Shades of Dark--Sneak Peek #2

Continuing my propensity to torture my readers, here’s another SHADES snippet for your collection:

Blurb:

For two fugitive lovers, space has no haven,no mercy, no light—only...SHADES OF DARK

Before her court-martial, Captain Chasidah “Chaz” Bergren was the pride of the Sixth Fleet. Now she’s a fugitive from the “justice” of a corrupt Empire. Along with her lover, the former monk, mercenary, and telepath Gabriel Ross Sullivan, Chaz hoped to leave the past light-years behind—until the news of her brother Thad’s arrest and upcoming execution for treason. It’s a ploy by Sully’s cousin Hayden Burke to force them out of hiding and it works.

With a killer targeting human females and a renegade gen lab breeding jukor war machines, Chaz and Sully already had their hands full of treachery, betrayal—not to mention each other. Throw in Chaz’s Imperial ex-husband, Admiral Philip Guthrie, and a Kyi-Ragkiril mentor out to seduce Sully and not just loyalties but lives are at stake. For when Sully makes a fateful choice changing their relationship forever, Chaz must also choose—between what duty demands and what her heart tells her she must do.


…I saw Sully falling backwards, Gregor’s hands locked on his throat. I saw black-clad arms gripped around the stained, sweaty back of Gregor’s gray shirt. I was standing, Stinger set to stun, but I couldn’t get a clear shot. Sully and Gregor, tangled together, pushing and shoving, toppled into the small space between the table and the wall.

Ignoring the grunts and curses, I shoved the table away with my boot, giving Sully more room. I didn’t know why he didn’t just blank Gregor’s mind, shut him down then and there, but he wasn’t. Instead, he yanked on Gregor’s arm, wrenching it around. Gregor turned, knees coming up. Sully jerked sideways, Gregor moving with him. If Sully wasn’t going to use his Ragkiril methods, then I needed a clear shot. But they were too close.

I danced out of the way of a swinging leg just as Sully flipped Gregor over on his back, pinning his shoulders to the floor. A chair skittered sideways, fell.

Move, Sully. I have a shot! “Stop it, Gregor, now!” I took aim.

Gregor reared up, bellowing a guttural cry. Sully swung, smashing his fist in Gregor’s face. Gregor thrashed back, bleeding, cursing, twisting, reaching—

Something glinted in his hand. I saw the thin edge of the knife. “No!”

The room exploded.

I was flash-blinded, seeing nothing but light. I dropped to the floor, shielding my face, waiting for the intense heat from the detonation to roll over me. But I felt nothing. Heard nothing.

I jerked my face up, blinking. Light melted into haze. Still clutching my gun, I pulled myself onto my hands and knees. Sully was three, four feet in front of me, down on one knee next to Gregor’s body, fingers splayed. The silver fire of the Kyi whipped all around him, flowing over Gregor and past me, but it was nothing compared to the luminescence radiating from within Sully.

Sully? For a moment I wasn’t sure who I was looking at.

Jagged streaks of lightning striped his face like blazing tattoos, one down each cheek. More streaks disappeared beneath his black shirt, which barely contained the heated glow. It was Sully’s profile, it was Sully’s clothes. But this was not a Sully I’d ever seen.

I stared at him. His focus was fixed on Gregor.

The only movement on Gregor’s body was a thin trickle of blood flowing from his left ear. His gaze was riveted on Sully’s hands. His mouth was open in a silent scream.

This was not supposed to happen. You’ll control yourself because of her, Ren had said.

This was not control. This was... I shook myself, trying to process what I was seeing. The only thing I knew for sure was I had to stop this. Sully. Back off.

No answer.

Gregor’s chest jerked up, his body arching unnaturally, almost as if Sully’s fingers pulled him up. Pulling the life from him. Kyi energy sparkled in small bursts all around me.

Was this what would eventually happen to Thad?

“Sully!” I hissed. “Enough!”

Gregor’s gaze moved to me. He heard me. God. Gregor was still alive. Stark terror showed in his eyes. His throat moved convulsively. He panted in short, hard gasps through his gaping mouth, sounding more animal than human.

Another abrupt jerk on his body. Then Gregor’s right arm came up smoothly as if guided by the thick silver haze around it. His hand clutched the knife, bringing it toward his own face, his own throat—

“Stop this! Or I will!” I levered up on my knees and raised my Stinger, taking aim at the man who was ky’sal to me. And I screamed, in my mind, for Ren.

For two, three heartbeats, nothing happened. Then Gregor’s fingers spasmed. The knife fell, sliding off his arched chest, hitting the floor with a muted clink.

Keeping the Stinger on Sully, I grabbed blindly for the knife with my left hand, then shoved it across the floor behind me, toward where I remembered the door being. I wasn’t going to turn around and check. And in this silver haze, I wasn’t even sure I could see that far.

Stupid, I told myself when I heard the knife hit against something metallic. He wants a knife, he can think a thousand of them into existence.

Sully turned suddenly, his expression of intense concentration shifting to one of an almost detached curiosity. No, this wasn’t Sully, mercenary, poet and lover. But Gabriel, shape shifter, telepath, Kyi-Ragkiril.

I had no way of knowing if he heard my mental comment or had suddenly noticed I was there. But it was the first time he’d looked at me. A chill ran up my spine. I didn’t know this man kneeling a few feet away from me, this luminescent demon with lightning glowing in flashes under his skin. But I could taste his power. It was a cold thing, thick and astringent. It had no mercy.

And I had no choice.

“Gabriel, let him go.” Silver tendrils still writhed around Gregor’s partly suspended body. “I will shoot you.” And I swear, if you rip this gun from my hands, or in any way stop me from stopping you, you will be sleeping alone for the rest of your very miserable, very celibate life...


Linnea Sinclair
http://www.linneasinclair.com/ -- www.myspace.com/linneasinclair
RITA(c) Award Winning SF Romance from Bantam Spectra
Coming 2007-08: GAMES OF COMMAND, THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES, SHADES OF DARK

And then...another GAMES OF COMMAND scene

Another little GAMES OF COMMAND vignette than ran through my mind (and into the keyboard) after the story "ended" in the book:

Sass was nervous as she stepped into the Regalia’s ready room. Branden Kel-Paten saw that in the way her gaze flicked to his as he rose from his seat behind the room’s long conference table; saw it in the way she was trying not to purse her lips as her mind—-caffeine-fueled, as usual-—worked at light speed. And he saw it in the way she absently fingered the edge of her utility belt, then caught herself and stopped. After three months of living with her on the Regalia, he knew all her little idiosyncrasies and more.

After three months of living with him, he thought she might realize she had nothing to worry about. It wasn’t as if he was going to kill the man following Sass into the ready room. Though the thought did hold a certain appeal…

“Kel-Paten.” Dag Zanorian nodded curtly, the ready room door shutting silently behind him.

Ooh, jealous! Tank’s furry head poked over the table top from where he’d been snoozing on an adjacent chair for the past hour while Kel-Paten went over the latest block of data he snagged from a Concordance cruiser before it escaped into the Void. The furzel’s empathic and telepathic range had expanded in those passing three months and he was never subtle about commenting on what he sensed or heard.

Embarrassing at times in the privacy of the captain’s quarters. But informative right now.

So Dag Zanorian was jealous. Imagine that.

“Zanorian.” Kel-Paten nodded back.

“Sit, Dag,” Sass pointed to a chair opposite his, compscreen already slatted up out of the table top and at the ready. “We’re all on the same side now.” She rounded the end of the table then lifted Tank out of the chair. The black and white furzel thumped down onto the ready room table with a soft sigh. Love Mommy!

Sass swiveled the chair around to sit. Kel-Paten brushed the top of her head with a kiss before she did so, sat when she did, didn’t miss the narrowing of Zanorian’s eyes.

Big jealous!

Sass tapped a white paw in warning. Evidently she heard Tank this time.

Kel-Paten bit back a grin while he shunted data to Zanorian’s screen. “This is the pattern we’ve been picking up in this sector for two weeks now,” he told Zanorian as a private message popped up on his screen: Gloating is unprofessional.

But it feels so damn good, he sent back to her screen with a thought. The Regalia—-being U-Cee-—wasn’t designed with data ports at every comp station for him to spike in. So far he’d only had time to convert two stations in the ready room, one on the bridge and, of course, in the one in the captain’s quarters. The majority of his time was spent bringing the New Alliance fleet up to date with everything he knew about the Triad. It didn’t matter it was now called the Sanctified Concordance. The hardware—ships, station, data systems—were still Triad built. And the personnel—even though they were Ved controlled—were still Triad Fleet crew and officers. The latter pained him. It was bad enough to witness the deaths of some of his key officers. It was worse to watch those still alive, controlled and driven insane by the Ved...

*************************


See, the characters really never shut up. Or go away. I guess that's kind of good. ;-) ~Linnea

GAMES OF COMMAND - after the last page...

Authors always write more than the readers read. For any novel, there are pages and pages that end up on the cutting room floor due to word-count limitations (I've posted some here), and then there are the post-book scenes. These are things that flow from the keyboard even after the book has been put to bed.

You see, when you've been living and breathing a character (or several characters) for months (or even years), you can't just shut them up, turn them off with the flick of a light switch. Not surprisingly days after GAMES OF COMMAND was done, edited and outta-my-office, Sass and Kel-Paten still wandered in from time to time and gave me a glimpse of what happened AFTER the book's last page...

Ralland Kel-Tyra caught Sass by the elbow as she threaded her way through the tables in the ship’s mess, and leaned his mouth down to her ear. “He’s about thirty minutes from imploding.”

She angled her face towards him but didn’t look at him. She watched Kel-Paten, instead. Had been watching him since he’d entered the Regalia’s mess hall ten minutes ago. “How long has he been like this?”

“His ‘I’m the only one who can save the universe’ mode? About four months, ever since he headed the mutiny against Psy-Serv.”

“Umm,” Sass said and then sighed. It had been less than an hour since they’d left the Vaxxar—a ghost ship now, secured for tow. Timm Kel-Faray and two other crew were in Monterro’s sick bay. The rest of the thirty-nine survivors were sent to the mess for a hot meal while her crew made some hasty rearrangements for sleeping quarters to accommodate them on the three day trip to Varlow.

Kel-Paten had tailed after her—or sometimes strode ahead of her—as they’d gone from shuttle bay to the bridge to sick bay and now to the mess.

At the moment, he was standing by a table of three former officers from the Vax, whose trays were full of hot food and mugs of cold beer. But a few minutes before that he’d been at a table of four, and minutes before that, another table of three. Had he eaten? No. He hadn’t even had a sip of beer.

“When’s the last time he slept?” she asked Ralland.

“I honestly couldn’t tell you. But I thought when we found the Regalia, found you…did you see what happened when Tank showed up on the bridge?”

She had. The site of the unshakeable admiral dropping to his knees had shaken her. “We had visual of your bridge, just not audio.”

“I thought he was going to implode then. He didn’t. That’s what worries me. He should have. He achieved the objective: he saved everyone he could from the Vax and Dalkerris. He got out of the Void, again. And he found you. That was everything. I thought that was everything. But he won’t stop. He can’t stop,” Ralland corrected himself. He shook his head wearily. “Damn him.”

“When’s the last time you slept, Captain Kel-Tyra?”

Ralland slanted her a quick, challenging glance that was one hundred percent Kel-Paten, even though his eyes were the color of chocolate and Kel-Paten’s were pale ice blue. Brothers. Four, six years apart? She didn’t know. But their stubbornness was just one more thing they had in common. “I’m due,” he admitted after a moment.

“And you’ve been assigned one of the executive guest suites.” The Regalia had two on the deck below the bridge. In an emergency—and this was one—they could sleep three people. “My people will take very good care of your crew,” she added. Five had already left, being guided to their quarters by one of her crew and a furzel, for probably the first decent sleep they’ve had in months.

“It’s him I’m worried about,” Ralland said, jutting his chin in the admiral’s direction. Kel-Paten had moved to another table.

“I will take very good care of your brother,” Sass said softly.

Another glance but no challenge this time. “You’re an amazing woman,” he said with a small smile.

She smiled back. “Then let me do my job.”

He squeezed her arm. “Aye, Captain.”

“Get some sleep. And if you can find your way to my office at 0930, I could use some help processing your people before we hit Varlow.”

A short nod. “I’ll be there.” He moved away, the sound of his footsteps lost in the clatter and clank of the mess hall.

She headed for Kel-Paten, who looked her way at that moment, his mouth curving into that odd, crooked smile of his. She noticed again how much thinner his face was. He wasn’t eating or sleeping, and maintaining his 'cybe systems was draining his body. It was as if he was stuck on Red Alert, all systems at max. If he didn’t implode he would burn up from the inside out.

“Our table’s up there.” She motioned to the command staff dining table on the raised platform along the wall.

“I’m not hungry and there are a few things I—”

She yanked on his arm. “Now, flyboy. Food. Beer. Or wine or Excelsior or whatever’s your poison of choice. But now.”

She saw it then. It was as if—for a moment—things weren’t synching, as if—for a moment—he didn’t know who she was or where he was or what he was doing there. His expression blanked. She felt him tense under her fingers. Fight or flight.

Then he was back. “Tasha—”

She switched tactics, abruptly. “I need your help. My office, now.” Taking care of himself wasn’t on his agenda. But a request for help fit neatly into his ‘save the universe’ mode.

She’d feed him, later. After he imploded...

Not quite a scene, I know. A bit of a vignette. There's one other that occurs a few months past this one. I'll post that next week (if I'm not going too nutso packing for RWA National and forget to do so).

I've been asked if readers will see further adventures of Sass and Kel-Paten. I don't have any formally planned as of right now, no. But you can see from the above that the characters aren't about to go away without a fight. I guess that's a good sign. ~Linnea

Where it all began...GAMES OF COMMAND original files

I've received a lot of fan mail (thank you!) since Games of Command came out the end of February. I'm just tickled that readers so love Sass and the admiral, Jace and Eden. A lot of my fans know--since I'm not shy about it--that the original manuscript ran over 300,000 words...and was a series of emails between a dear friend and myself. Rather a "continuing adventure" just for fun and never meant to be published.

Readers have also been clamoring for all those scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor.

I thought I'd lost a lot of the original, due to computer crashes and such. But I did come across a few files from 2001. They're not the FIRST original files but pretty durn close. I'll share them with you over the next few blogs...

Please note some names/scenes/settings may NOT match the book. This is the seed from which the book was sprouted.


Enjoy! ~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com


ORIGINAL CHAPTER ONE from my notes dated 2001



Sickbay, Triad HUNTERSHIP Vaxxar

There might be worse things in the galaxy than a lethal alien virus. An admiral with an attitude, and an agenda, could well be one of them.

Chief Medical Officer Eden Fynn glanced at the time stamp in the corner of her screen. “Damn!” She increased the document’s scroll rate. There was a required staff meeting in five minutes, and she had fifty more pages to review. A second outbreak of Nar’Relian flu had inexplicably surfaced at three United Coalition spaceports in the past month, resulting in five more deaths. Finding a cure was now a race against time. She’d waited for two days for this critical analysis. Yet when it finally arrives, she had to go play Dutiful and Obedient CMO because Kel-Paten had his proverbial cybernetic knickers in a knot over something. Again.

“Cal, can you load these stats into my medalytic program? Got another command performance with the full staff in the ready room in five.”

The portly, gray-haired doctor smiled knowingly. “He’s overdue by about thirty-six hours this week, isn’t he?”

“The admiral just likes to be efficient,” Eden replied as blandly as the tired grin on her face would allow her.

“The admiral likes to see how high we all can jump, and when.” Caleb Monterro accepted the thin data-disk that Eden held out to him. “Be glad to help. We need some fast answers on this one. But I’ll tell you, I don’t envy your having to go to these meetings of his. Especially this late.”

"The admiral has his own view of time," Eden agreed as she straightened a stack of files on her desk. It was already a half hour into Third Duty Shift, which was Cal’s shift, not hers as ship's CMO. But medical work rarely respected schedules.

“It’s been different working with the Kel Triad these past six months." Cal absently tapped the thin disk against his palm. "Not like on the Regalia, with Captain Sebastian.”

“Tell me about it,” she quipped. A med-tech interrupted any further conversation, handing a new patient file to Monterro to review.

They parted with an exchange of tired smiles.

But, yes, what Cal had said was true. Their captain had her own way of doing things, and in Eden’s opinion, that to a great extent was what caused some of Admiral Kel-Paten’s problems. The other cause was a supposition she’d only recent begun to consider. It wasn’t one she wanted to explore further, right now. Especially because if she were right, and the bio-cybernetic construct in charge of the newly formed Alliance Fleet was actually experiencing emotions. Then she, as Chief Medical Officer, might just have to Section Forty-Six him.

She didn’t think that would go over well in the Triad part of the Alliance. It might even start another war. Then a puzzling virus would be the least of their problems.

The lift door pinged. She spent the short ride up to the Bridge Deck searching for more pleasant thoughts: the meeting shouldn’t take more than an hour and a half, two hours at most. That would leave her just enough time to get back to her quarters, change into some comfortable hiking gear and unwind with a leisurely late-shift stroll through one of the simdecks’ “Scenic Trails of the Universe” programs. It would unkink muscles now tense from hours of sitting. And maybe would unkink a mind tired from staring at medical data that made no sense.

Eden entered the stark ready room, a relaxed smile on her face. She only had to play “dutiful and obedient officer” for another ninety minutes and then she was free to do as she pleased.

Unfortunately, Fate and the Universe, as they often do, were just at the moment making plans of their own.

Ready Room, THS Vaxxar

Admiral Branden Kel-Paten noted the exact time of Dr. Fynn’s arrival in the same way he noted the exact time of every one of his officers’ arrivals: on a digital read-out in the lower left corner of his field of vision. The angular numbers were a bright shade of yellow-green, a color he'd found disruptive at first, as he'd found disruptive many of the bio-mechanical enhancements that had been added to his human form. He’d said something about the color choice to the Bio Engineers, hesitantly, as he'd been young enough then to still experience the emotion of shame. And the engineers had been sharp and caustic in their reply: he was a fifteen year old child and in no position to dictate preferences to these experienced and degreed professionals.

Truth was, he was more than just a fifteen year old child; he and eleven others had been human experiments, lab-bred from the best genetic materials available so that the Triad could produce five Senior Captains to helm and command the Triad’s five quadrants. But out of the dozen crèche-lings that had fertilized in the test tubes, only three had lived past their tenth birthday. And only one -- Kel-Paten, literally “Kel” (for the Keltish Triad) P.A.-Ten -- Paracybernetic Augmented Humanoid Ten -- survived past his fourteenth birthday and into enough human maturity where the mechanical enhancement procedures could begin.

The psycho-synthesizing had started three years later.

Over the years -- almost thirty more of them -- he'd gotten used to the putrid yellow-green color of his visual readouts. So now when he noted his CMO’s arrival it meant nothing, other than she was on time, and Sass wasn’t.

Again.

Oh, Captain Sebastian still had seventy-two point four seconds in which to arrive on time, but he knew she wouldn’t. The look she’d given him over the vidcom when he’d told her to be at the ready room at 2030 hours had portended that. She was off-shift at that time-- as most of his command staff would be-- and was scheduled to play a zero-g racquetball game at 2030 with a certain unmarried commander from Engineering who, Kel-Paten felt, was a little too attentive to Captain Sebastian lately. The info packet he’d downloaded from HQ after they’d cleared the ion storms could’ve waited until First Shift, until the “morning” as dirtsiders would say. There was no reason for a 2030 hours conference, other than such a meeting would keep Sass where he could keep a eye on her. And that was something he lately felt more and more inclined to do.

Sass... Captain Sebastian arrived at exactly 2034.43.2, her bright pink cropped t-shirt top and side-slit work-out shorts still damp from her recent exertions.

Something heated flared correspondingly inside Kel-Paten, his gaze taking in far more of her than he was used to seeing. At least, not while he was awake. He didn’t miss her playful tap on Dr. Fynn’s arm with the tip of her racquet as she strode by.

“Whipped his ass, 5-4!” she rasped, still somewhat short of breath.

(to be continued... more of the ORIGINAL Chapter One next time...)