VirtuallyYours

Virtually Yours

Caroline McCall

Blush sensuality level: This is
a sensual romance (may have explicit love scenes, but not erotic in frequency
or type).

Ensign Charley has just completed
years of the toughest training in the galaxy. She’s given up her world, her
family and her name to become a starship officer.

Pete is engineer and designer of the
prototype ship, the Pegasus. He has enough problems with a missing scientist
and an Artificially Intelligent ship that refuses to communicate with anyone.
The last thing he wants to do is mentor a cadet.

But when the Pegasus is boarded by
tech-hungry mercenaries, Pete and Charley could lose it all. Their AI ship may
be their only hope.

Ellora’s Cave Publishing

www.ellorascave.com

Virtually Yours

ISBN 9781419938641

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Virtually Yours Copyright © 2012 Caroline McCall

Edited by Briana St. James

Cover design by Fiona Jayde

Photos: VishStudios/Shutterstock.com; George Mayer/Fotolia.com

Electronic book publication April 2012

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons,
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Virtually Yours

Caroline McCall

Dedication

For Ben, cat extraordinaire, and finest muse a writer
could wish for

Acknowledgements

Go raibh míle maith agat
to my wonderful
editor Briana St. James, who tames my Hiberno-English.

Chapter One

“Charley, can you see it? Who did you get?”

Charley watched as Misha wriggled her way through the
uniformed bodies, trying to get to the holo-display. They finally had their
“shadowing” assignments. For the next month, they would spend every waking hour
with a senior Fleet Command officer—General Holmes’ latest initiative to mentor
his final year Fleet Academy cadets before they received their first starship
assignments.

Charley stood back to let the diminutive brunette get
through. There were times when her height was an advantage. At five foot eleven
in her bare feet, she was the tallest female in her class, in heels she was
terrifying.

Ensign Steven Richards winked at her. “Hey, Tiny, looks as
if you struck out.”

“Bug off, Richards. If you get your big empty head out of
the way for a minute, some of us might get a look in.”

Beside her, Misha jumped up and down and squealed. “I got
her. I got her.”

Charley scanned the list of names on the display. Misha had
been partnered with General Leona Hallstrom, one of the few four-star generals
to volunteer for the program. She wondered how the party-loving Misha would
cope with the tough general. Her eyes moved down the list until she found her
name. Ensign C. Maxwell—TBA. To be announced. Her heart fell. She had
desperately wanted to be paired with one of the chief engineers.

It had never been her ambition to sit in the captain’s
chair. She wanted to know how everything on a starship worked, to take the systems
apart and put them together again. Unfortunately, not too many engineers had
volunteered for the program. The good ones were all off-world with ships to
run. Charley moved away from the excited crowd. Within a few days, her
classmates would be gone to stay with their mentors and she would be left
alone. What the hell was she going to do then?

* * * * *

“You’ve got to be joking.” Pete Olafson eyed the crop-haired
general with barely concealed annoyance. “You’re asking me to nursemaid some
snot-nosed cadet for the next month?”

“No, Engineer Olafson, I’m ordering you to take part in a
mentoring program. Just because you haven’t been charged with hacking Central
Com doesn’t mean that I don’t know about it.”

Pete sat back in his chair.
Damn it, I thought I covered
my tracks better than that.

“And there’s the question of a missing starship captain,”
the general continued. “Do you really think that Fleet Command is happy about
losing a million credits worth of tech-enhanced officer?”

Pete was about to interrupt, but thought the better of it.
Telling the general that his best friend had travelled back to the twenty-first
century because he was in love probably wasn’t a good idea.

The general passed him a digi-reader. “Charley Maxwell is
one of the best ensigns in the class, and all yours for the next four weeks.”

Pete didn’t bother opening the file. Charley was a good
name. They could be buddies. He began to cheer up. With Jake getting married
and Strom gone to back to the twenty-first century, he would be alone. This
might not be a bad idea after all. “Okay, General, you’ve got yourself a
mentor. Send Charley around tonight. The apartment’s a bit of a mess, but I’m
sure he won’t mind.”

The general almost smiled. “I’ll do that.” He stood up and
offered his hand. “Glad to have you on board, Pete.”

Back at his apartment, Pete looked around him. Not too
shabby, apart from the bits of equipment salvaged from various starships. He
would find a use for them some day. He opened the food storage unit—two beers
and a selection of pre-packaged meals. Great, that was dinner sorted. They
would have to eat on the couch because the dining table was covered with design
specs for thePegasus—Fleet Command’s latest starship. He picked up a
stray sock. Damn. He had forgotten about laundry. Ah, what the hell. Charley
would understand. He could bunk on the couch until they got the spare room
cleared out.

“You’ve got who, Charley?” Misha shouted into the com. In
the background, Charley could hear the sound of traffic. General Hallstrom was
determined to get started with the mentoring program and Misha had already
moved out of the dorm.

“Chief Engineer Pete Olafson. I’ve never heard of him. Who
the hell is he?”

Misha erupted with laughter. “Are they back?”

“Is who back?”
What was this, twenty questions?
Misha
could be a pain sometimes. “Just tell me, Misha.”

“I know you were brought up off-world, Charley, but you must
have heard of them. Hallstrom, Svenson and Olafson—otherwise known as the
vikings. I’ll give you a big hint. Three tech-enhanced hotties.”

Misha rambled on. “Their ship was badly damaged during one
mission and your guy built a new hyper-drive out of spare parts. Can you
imagine?”

Charley whistled. No, she couldn’t imagine, but if she had
to follow someone around for the next month, Pete Olafson was suddenly top of
her list.

Misha giggled. “I can just hear those little wheels turning
inside that blonde head of yours. Don’t get too excited, hon. Pete Olafson has
a reputation for being one of the toughest, crankiest techies in Fleet
Command.”

On that less than cheerful note, Misha disconnected the com.
Charley wandered back to the dorm. There wasn’t much to pack. She had never
owned any more than she could carry in a kit bag. It was one of the habits she
had picked up while travelling with her parents from one planet to another. She
reached into the locker and took out the last of her perfume pills. The guys
teased her unmercifully about them. With her height and build, they didn’t
expect her to have any girly habits. Good old Charley, she was just one of the
boys.

“Hey, Tiny, someone called Pete left a com earlier. He says
he’ll meet you at the spaceport bar tonight.”

A burst of raucous laughter came from the other side of the
dorm. “Tiny’s got a date. Tiny’s got a date.”

Her short, explicit response shut them up. Just because she
didn’t date her classmates didn’t mean that she didn’t date, but it had been a
while. Charley stared into her kit bag. What the hell was she going to wear?

* * * * *

Pete sat in the spaceport bar watching as the cadets
arrived. It felt a lot longer than ten years since he had sat in a classroom.
Since then, he had travelled to several galaxies, and these kids were only
starting out. It made him feel old. He eyed the noisy crowd, wondering which
one of them was Charley. The cadets had a couple of beers each and left, he
obviously wasn’t with them.

Pete watched idly as two men hit on a stunning blonde
sitting at the other end of the bar. She rebuffed them gently at first, but as
the evening wore on, their advances became more overt. The blonde ignored the
drinks they sent over to her and sipped on a soda. The spaceport bar wasn’t a
great place to be waiting for someone, especially if you looked like that. Pete
guessed that she was tall. Her ash blonde hair hung just below her shoulders
and she tucked it back behind her ears. The girl had gray eyes, really unusual.
She looked like an ice queen.

One of the men sidled drunkenly up to the blonde and tried
to put his arm around her. When she slapped his hand away, he apologized and
returned to his friend. They exchanged furtive glances and the dark-haired one
gave the other a sly grin. He wasn’t that drunk and he had just slipped
something into her drink. Pete took off his jacket and dropped it over his
stool. Flashing an apologetic glance at the barman, he moved toward them. “What
did you put in her drink?”

The dark-haired man swiveled on his stool and looked Pete up
and down. “Get lost. We’re just having a little fun.”

As he turned away, Pete gripped his hand and squeezed. His
titanium implants gave him an unfair advantage in situations like this, but
this time he had no qualms about using it. The man let out a roar of pain as he
felt his fingers being crushed. His friend reached for a bottle.

“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Pete snapped. “Unless you like the idea of
helping him pee, your friend may want his hand back. Now I’m going to ask you
again. What did you put in the lady’s drink?”

The beer bottle was reluctantly returned to the bar and the
dark-haired man winced again as Pete tightened his grip. “Nothing bad, I swear,
just a little
Joyz
.”

Pete felt like breaking his other hand.
Joyz
was
associated with euphoria and loss of inhibitions. It was legal and less
addictive than alcohol, but it wasn’t something you slipped a lady in a bar.
Pete squeezed again until he felt another bone pop. That was definitely going
to hurt, but not as much as he wanted it to.

“If I see you around here again, I will break the other one.
Do you understand?” Pete gave his hand a final squeeze before releasing him.
The only place they were going tonight was a medi-station.

Pete glanced down the bar. The soda glass was empty and the
blonde was gone. As he raced toward the exit, his eye caught sight of something
tucked under the stool where she’d been sitting—a Fleet Academy kit bag.
Blondie was a cadet, and now she was wandering around the spaceport drugged up
to the eyeballs.

He grabbed his jacket, tossed the kit bag to the barman and
followed her. The corridor was empty. Pete sped toward the main concourse.
Outside, the place was buzzing with people heading to clubs or going home after
a night out. Pete’s eyes scanned the crowd. Nothing. How could someone like her
just disappear? He heard a roar of laughter from beside the fountain and
hurried over. Blondie was dancing in the water. “Get out of there, will you?”
he shouted.

Blondie had the kind of smile that could stop a guy’s heart
and his was about to explode any minute. The water had made her white tunic
almost transparent and he could see a lacy bra underneath.

She leaned down and splashed the water in his direction.
“Why don’t you come in? The water is lovely.”

“I will, darlin,” a passing serviceman shouted, and his
friends roared with laughter.

Pete watched as she twirled around with her hands over her head.
There was nothing for it, he would have to go and get her. Muttering under his
breath, Pete stepped into the water. There was nothing lovely about it. The
water was icy. He had to get Blondie out before she froze. He caught her around
the waist and she leaned dizzily against him.

“Don’t you just love it here?”

Her hair brushed against his face, like strands of pale
silk. “It’s wonderful, but why don’t we go someplace else?”

“Will there be music?” Blondie started to sway. “I love
music.”

“Sure, whatever you want, sweetheart.” Pete bent down and
swung her up in his arms. To the delighted applause of the spectators, he
carried her out of the fountain.

Blondie tucked her head under his chin. “You know what?
You’re nice. I like you.”

Pete grinned. “I like you too, but I’m damned if I know what
to do with you.”

He set her down at the edge of the fountain. There was no
point in going back to bar, it would be closed by now. “What’s your name,
sweetheart?”

“Guess.” Blondie giggled.

Pete pulled off his jacket and draped it around her
shoulders. He was going to get no sense from her for hours. If he brought her
back to the Academy in this state, she would be put on report. There was
nothing for it. He would have to take her home with him. “Okay, Guess, why
don’t you come home with me and you can sleep it off.”

She held his hand as they walked back to the bike. His
leather jacket looked kind of cute on her. At least it covered her breasts,
which were distracting to say the least.

“Wow, a Tezron 509 air-bike.” She stroked the chrome
lovingly.

Pete was impressed. He didn’t know many girls who knew
anything about vintage bikes. He had rebuilt this one himself and it had taken
him almost three years to track down all the parts. Pulling the spare helmet
from the carrier, he placed it on her head. “Hold on tight.”

He revved the engine and the bike moved forward. Blondie’s
arms wrapped around his waist and she rested her chin on his shoulder. Pete
could hear her delighted laughter as they sped along the main highway and out
toward the coast.

The thing he missed most about Earth was the sound of the
sea. The slow ebb and flow of the waves and the soft sigh of the water as it
hit the waiting sands. He had never been on a planet that was so full of water.
If he left the windows of his apartment open at night, the sound of the sea
would lull him to sleep. It was almost as comforting as the hyper-drive of a
ship.

Blondie perked up again when they reached his apartment. She
didn’t seem to mind the mess and settled down beside him on the couch. Her
tunic was still damp and she shivered.

“Let’s get you something dry to wear.”

Pete went to his bedroom and picked out a black tunic. It
should fit her. When he returned, Blondie had found his personal com and she
was swaying slowly to the music.

“You promised me a dance.”

“No, I promised you music.” He thought that he wanted to sit
down, but his feet moved toward her. “I don’t dance.”

“Ever?” she asked. Cool gray eyes held his gaze. “Not even
for me?”

Oh yes, he would dance for her. He would dance naked on the
roof of Fleet Command if she asked him to. “Well, maybe just one.”

Blondie stepped into his arms. Face-to-face, they were
almost the same height. He wouldn’t have to bend his head to kiss her. Pete
didn’t know why that idea popped into his head. He should be discussing
engineering protocols with his new apprentice. Not holding a beautiful stranger
close, not burying his face in the sweet scent of her blonde hair and not
sliding his hands under the damp folds of her tunic to feel the warm skin
beneath.