The Seek
Authors: Ros Baxter
The Seek
Ros Baxter
Ros Baxter
From the talented and versatile Ros Baxter comes the first full-length novel in her sexy, engaging, groundbreaking SF romance series: when everything else is gone, all you have is hope
.
The year is 2098, and the people of New Earth have been homeless for seventeen years. Ruled by a mysterious Council, and adrift in a fleet of space stations, their sole mission is to survive long enough to find a new home. They call it The Seek.
Kyntura is the first and only female Avenger – one of the secret, separate elite who stand on the frontline between the refugees of Earth and a universe that would do them harm. For Kyn, fight and pain are the only things that drive out memories of the Apocalypse, and of the boy she left behind when she enlisted. But a young recruit called Mirren and a deadly mission will bring her face to face with all she has tried to forget.
As she leads a squad of Avengers in The Seek, Kyntura will have to face her demons – and the boy whose heart she broke a decade before – to confront the truth about New Earth and save the future of humanity.
Ros writes fresh, funny, genre-busting fiction. She digs feisty heroines, quirky families, heroes who make you sigh and tingle, and a dash of fantasy from time to time.
Ros has published
Sister Pact
, a romantic comedy co-written with her sister Ali (HarperCollins),
Fish Out of Water
,
Lingerie for Felons, Beached
and
White Christmas
(Escape Publishing),
Home for the Holidays and Seven Deadly Sins
(Amazon), and
Second Chances
, a Bold and the Beautiful novella (Pan Macmillan).
In her spare time, Ros is also a public servant, consultant, mother, lover, taxi service, and (because she is so freakin’ busy) maker of five-minute family meals. There is nothing you can teach her about using a slow cooker, or making some mediocre dinner sound more appealing by giving it an exotic name or interesting backstory.
Ros also coordinates “Tomorrowgirl”, a short story competition for remote Indigenous girls in Australia. You can find out more at
www.tomorrowgirl.com.au
.
Ros lives in Brisbane, Australia, with her husband, Blair, four small but very opinionated children, a neurotic dog and nine billion germs.
You can email Ros at
[email protected]
, find her on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/RosBaxterInk
, or on twitter
@RosBaxter
. You can also visit her website
www.rosbaxterink.com
.
Special thanks for this novel go, as always, to my support crew — my husband, Blair, my sister, Alison, and my babies. Next comes the lovely Kate Cuthbert of Escape Publishing, who backed the short story (
White Christmas
) that was the kernel of the New Earth concept. And to Adam, Polina and all the Escape crew.
Also to my fellow Escape artists, who are cool, funny and supportive. I can’t imagine any other vocation where your colleagues are so encouraging.
To the reviewers and readers who have been so interested in New Earth, and who have supported my other books along the way as well — thank you; you make it possible to keep going when the demons of doubt yowl at the door.
A special note to my friend and colleague, Janet, who understands the many directions in which I split myself — and is gracious, clever and oh-so-funny: thank you, Ms J. We have a ball, don’t we?
And last but not least, to the women who hold up my life — those wonderful girlfriends who step in to help with the load of work, life, mothering and writing when it all seem TOO BIG. Without you, I’m toast. Or at least, checking into rehab.
To Saul, my biggest little explorer
Bestselling Titles by Escape Publishing…
‘Again.’ She hurled the word into the darkened room, where it stoned their screaming muscles.
Rebellion rose like steam from their bodies, but no-one said anything. And no-one moved.
‘I said: again.’ She stalked through them, kicking one vulnerable oblique with the hutanium toe of her boot, swift and vicious, driving the point into the soft apex. Then she reached forward with her prod and zapped three inert backs.
Curses broke the silence open. ‘Get up,’ she whispered to the twelve men lying panting on the cold floor, as she smelled burning flesh and fury. ‘And go again.’
One of them pirouetted to his feet, and the thought rose again: He was like a dancer, this man-child. Light, swift and graceful. No wonder they chose him.
She pressed her eyes shut for an instant, quieting her brain from the story it wanted to tell her about a little girl who had wanted to be a dancer, in a place, and at a time when humans still danced.
First position. Arabesque.
He landed on his toes in front of her, only a shade taller, and ten years younger, but with eyes that looked older.
He stepped closer, until his face was an inch from hers. ‘Why do we have to keep going? Why?’
She eyeballed him hard, willing him to back down.
But he didn’t flinch. ‘How much longer?’
Spittle sprayed her as she examined the bloody slash that cut open his pretty face. His eyes narrowed and his top lip folded into his teeth: a snarl.
Kyntura rolled her shoulders like she was starting a shrug, then stretched both hands high into the air before bringing them down hard on the shoulders of the dancer in front of her, right in the place where tender skin met tendon. His yelp almost undid her, but she followed through hard, kicking his legs from under him with one swift turn, and drawing back her boot to kick him in the stomach. He made to rise, his breath jagged and gurgly, but she bent down, picked up one hand and yanked it upwards behind his back, almost to his neck. ‘Move, and you’ll never use your arm again,’ she said, conscious that eleven sets of eyes were on her. ‘How much longer, Kendis? Like I said, until only one of you is standing. Now, are you gonna fight each other, or are you gonna come over here and fight me? ‘Cause they’re the only choices you have tonight.’
They started to move, but the voice that came from the direction of her feet wasn’t done. ‘We didn’t ask for this,’ it rasped, thready and low.
Kyntura felt the laugh rise, rich and bitter in her throat. ‘Boohoo,’ she spat. ‘I’d get you a handkerchief, but I left my last one back on Earth. Seventeen years ago.’
But the dancer wasn’t done. ‘You want us dead.’
‘We’re all dead,’ she said. ‘We’ve been dead for seventeen years.’ The words settled warm and ripe into the thick varnish of fear, sweat and blood that coated the atmosphere in the room. ‘Now get up and fight, you motherfuckers. Before I finish you all off myself.’
***
‘Will they be ready?’
Kyntura didn’t turn around as she heard him enter but continued her ritual, linking her fingers into a steeple in front of her, stretching her arms forward before raising them over her head, looking for the sorest places and extending the stretch into them, breathing deep into the rich purple agony.
Pietr had been right. There was no escaping pain. You could only face it down.
She turned mid-stretch and considered her interrogator. He was shorter than her but she’d learned from ten years on the battlefield that these things meant little. This one — this swift, deadly little rooster — was one guy you always wanted on your team. Preferably leading it.
She nodded. ‘I’ll get them ready.’ She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘I said I’d get them ready, and I’ll get them ready.”
He laughed, and it sounded like a dog barking. Least, she was sure she could almost remember how that sounded. ‘Do they hate you yet?’
‘Not nearly enough, Jedro,’ she said. ‘But they will.’
She turned to face him, throwing him her towel as she stepped under the water. ‘Now will you kindly fuck off out of my shower room?’
He whistled appreciatively, his bright green eyes shining and the light bouncing off his smooth, bald head. ‘Do I gotta?’
Kyntura slid a long silver blade from where it rested next to her caddy. ‘Well,’ she said, head to the side, a parody of deliberation. ‘I dunno, do you gotta use your throat again any time soon?’
The older man barked again as he held his hands up in a calming gesture. ‘I was only joking, Captain,’ he said.
She stared hard into his face, resisting the urge to cover her body, and flicked the shower switch. Water streamed over her, cold and unforgiving. ‘You really gotta work on those punch lines, General.’
He turned to leave. ‘Just get them ready,’ he said. ‘Sector Five needs reinforcements. Those kids have been out there way too long for a second rotation.’
Something sharp and cold twisted in Kyn’s gut at the look on his face. ‘General,’ she called as he punched the pad and made to exit the communal bathroom. ‘Any news from today?’
Something about his shoulders from behind, before he turned — Kyn knew it was going to be bad. Just a second; just a beat before he turned. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to turn around, because he didn’t want to tell her.
But he turned. And nothing in his face gave anything away. ‘Three,’ he said.
She flicked the shower off, her stomach in free-fall. But if he wasn’t showing, neither was she. ‘How?’
‘Temerites.’
The water ran down her body, and Kyntura tried not to think about death by petrification. ‘Who’d we lose?’
Jedro held up a finger. ‘Yvo,’ he said.
Yvo. The joker. The one who could always make anyone laugh, even her. Blood heated up her skin as her fingers curled into a fist. ‘Stupid little prick,’ she bit. ‘He was always going to be the first to go.’
Jedro nodded.
‘Who else?’
He held up another finger. ‘Hendax.’
She closed her eyes. The big man with the gentle brown eyes. Poker and poetry. She breathed and unballed her fists.
Jedro turned to go, and when he spoke she knew he did it that way for her. So she wouldn’t have to watch him watching her as he said it. ‘And Tyven.’
Then he was gone.
She flicked the water back on and sank down onto the floor, trying to make the cold wash away the picture of a laughing boy. The one she had always been harder on than anyone else.
Because she had just wanted him to live.
***
The cold felt like it was coming from inside her, eating her up from within. It was vicious and alive, wanting to take her. Well it could get in line. Kyntura was pretty sure the twelve bodies shivering on the floor beside her would fight it for the privilege of taking her down.
‘Why the hell are we doing this?’
She was sitting as straight as she could, her back against the wall, focusing on each breath.
She turned to face him. Brave kid, after what she dealt out to him last night. She assessed him: those old eyes, that graceful body, naked bar his underwear, and trembling. But still with that defiant snarl.
She took a careful breath. ‘When you talk, when you get emotional, you feed it; the cold. How about you just shut up? If you want to live, that is.’
He glared back at her, dark green eyes brimming with unspoken insults. She could imagine those insults, almost see them dancing in those long-lashed eyes.
Bitch.
Sadist.
Whore
.
The last made her chuckle, it was too funny, too ridiculous, but she knew as she watched his face that her laughter only added to the insults laying there.