Science Fiction

            Spun around in her bindings tied above her head, Rachel focused on Jack observing his former cellmates shooting dice near the hall’s great hearth. The traitor. It was like he hardly noticed her strung up for a lashing, his prison buddies looking forward to her vicious flogging. Heartlessly calm and detached, he intermittently checked the currently inactive scene of her soon torture, not very interested.

            “Jack…” she called out to him. He cast a lazy look her way.

            “If Quattro beats me, you can’t use me the way you want to in the mountains.”

            “What makes you think stripes on your back would stop me?”

            God, she hoped Jack was bluffing. She really couldn’t tell if he was a good guy or bad guy. Was it okay with him to assault her in the woods while she was wounded? She shivered.

            Jack rose from his table, abandoning his meal. His sight burned into hers, risk in his holographic sky-blue eyes. A low-grade anxiety pulsed through her. He sashayed over to where Quattro had left the whip on the floor behind her.

            “You want to see her punished, Quattro?” Jack brushed the dust from his hands.

            “I insist upon it,” the mobster replied.

            “Do you want her frightened?” Jack picked the whip up, suddenly too attracted to it.

            Quattro’s gross grin rose. “I want to hear her shriek in terror and fear me, you, and every man here.”

            Rachel was well on her way to all that. She feared every sadistic criminal in the room, but Jack. And he was fixing that right now. She watched him pull the lash through his hand as if he appreciated the braid…or measured it. Others took notice. He took another step back, nonchalantly taking a position. Her heart pumped harder, and her breath quickened. She stiffened to keep from shaking. He wasn’t going to do it, was he…going to beat her?

            “Hold still, Rachel…” he said low, getting a feel for the grip. She mashed herself against the wall in dread of the lash.

            Then Jack reared back and struck. The whip loudly snapped so close to her back, she felt the ripple in the air through the thin cotton of her techsuit. A shock shot through her body, and she shrieked. But she hadn’t felt the whip dig into her flesh.

            “You bastard!” she shouted at him, awaiting the agony and so fearful of the pain, she nearly wept. “I swear to God, I’ll find a way to kill you for this!”

            Her terror thrilled Quattro so much, he applauded.

            “You’re a passivist, Rachel Marie,” Jack berated her. “You can’t kill a thing.”

            She couldn’t yet feel the pain, though she didn’t think the hall cold enough to truly numb her from the agony of a lash. She opened her eyes and watched Jack’s audience grow. Where was the pain?

            Jack reared back with the whip again. Rachel pinched her eyes shut and screamed in terror again, certain he wouldn’t miss a second time. The strike ripped the material of the techsuit down her back. Except for blood-curdling horror and a puff of slapped air, she felt no physical pain or even any contact. The second strike caused the audience to cheer.

            A third strike still brought out her terrified cry and more of Quattro’s acclamation. The leather braid never met her back. Of course, it didn’t. Jack hadn’t missed a shot since he was twelve. If he missed the shot, it was because he meant to miss.

            Bets started going down to see how many stripes she’d last.

            Jack halted the entertainment cold, staring at them. She didn’t know what he was thinking. She wondered if he thought them vacant, psychotic souls, if he wanted to burn their hearts out with the laser gun strapped to his thigh. He broke away from some tormenting theme of thought, and began to roll the whip. Thinking the bloodsport over too early, the crowd found other things to distract them, their breakfasts, games of dice.

            “Quattro,” Jack bothered to finally say something as he coiled the whip and tied it, “beating her for an audience of your enemies isn’t such a good move, though I’m sure it would conjure a wicked orgasm for you and your men. If you torture her before your enemy, she becomes a hero. If you kill her, she becomes a martyr. Heroes and martyrs fuel rebellion. You may start a fire you can’t contain.”

            Rachel caught up with her racing breath. The panic attack slowly eased. The sweat risen from her body in fear of supersized agony made her colder.

            “You got the fear and loathing from her you wanted, the juicy fear and loathing,” Jack told him, “so let my property go.”

            Realizing Jack hadn’t beaten her at all when her back wasn’t bleeding, Quattro was stopped cold by a thought. The hovercraft the gangster sat upon gave a spit. “You can’t possibly think I should let the insolent bitch go without a serious blooding, do you?”

            “You should care more that your beds aren’t razed by blue armies. You’re done with her.”

            “Your first fuck in the free worlds hasn’t softened your black heart, has it?”

            Jack rolled stunning, digitally perfect blue eyes.

            “For as many men as I’ve seen you kill behind bars," Quattro growled, "you’re not much of a woman beater. You’re already softer than you were in prison.”

            Jack paused. Quattro hit a raw nerve. Rachel wished she knew her savior's thoughts.

            “I have more control than you,” Jack told him with a dead-eyed stare, his finger in the gangster’s face. “Don’t mistake that for weakness. I have control of every thing in this room.”

            The statement shut Quattro’s foul drunken mouth.

            “You’re very reckless today.” Jack passed him the whip.

            “She’s not getting any more punishment than she just got. If I allow you to beat her, she’ll never survive the mountains with me for my purpose. She pilots the only ship around capable of traveling the wormhole in one piece. Leave her correction to me. I’ll make her want to die. Release my property, now that you’ve gotten your rocks off seeing her terrorized. That’s all you required.”

            “I hope she cuts your throat in the middle of the night.”

            “If you couldn’t get the job done after five years of trying, she can’t.”

            “You sleep with your eyes open.”

            Rachel watched Jack. He was magical. He knew just what to say to make Quattro do his bidding, the cold timing required, and the guts and confidence to pull it off, not to mention his dead-on aim. He was impressive.

***

            Later, she had to know…

            “What were you thinking when you were staging my beating and watching your audience thrill to the show?”

            Jack surveyed the western mountains with the binoculars, and then the sea line. Rachel considered he might not answer the question until he replied, “I was thinking of how I wanted to kill all the sick degenerates for getting off on a weaker creature’s fear and pain.”

            At the time, he looked like murder was on his mind.

            Maybe that's what happens to a good man’s soul when he serves time in Hell. He becomes the cold executioner.

            How would she stop this avenging angel’s killing spree?

***

Don’t stop!

Read the First Chapter:

http://dreneebagbypresentsfirstchapters.blogspot.com/2010/08/luminous-nights-by-michele-hart.html

Read hot excerpts packed with peril, check out awesome reviews, watch a kick-ass book trailer:

http://www.michelehart.com/b15-book.htm

Luminous Nights by Michele Hart

http://www.BookStrand.com/luminous-nights

ISBN#: e-book 1-60601-884-1 * Print 1-60601-885-X

Available @ Amazon Books, Barnes & Noble, nearly everywhere!

Angels, and demons, and lasers, oh my!

Investigate I-Marshal Stories.

http://www.MicheleHart.com/series-i-marshals.htm

Peace on Earth, Hell in Space.

Live Fire

To be synched with your weapons is to fly. It is to hurtle near light-speed down the barrel of an ion cannon, to thrum tight-stretched along the beam of a targeting array, your skin burning with the hail-bite of tachyons probing the deeps of space. Quasar, quasar, burning bright, like a beacon in the night...

I am the beacon in the night, when I am rigged at tac-ops. I am the far-cast energy frequencies of targeting sensors, and the predator's eye that follows their mark. I once was the Fire-rigger, the finger on the trigger for the Talisman. My gun-hand was made of cybercircuits and plasteel, my digits were the five techs of my tactical weapons crew, their subsystems ganged to my control. Together we were the human interface to our ship's armament.

Our role was critical, but we weren't alone in it. Specialized weapons officers and fire-rigger teams are required crew on every imperial patrol ship along the Hashmin Demilitarized Zone.

Yes, you heard right. Hashmin, that buffer zone between us and our long-shunned enemies, the Dalukin Empire. It is a place where our military presence may go from boring routine to brink-of-war hostilities in the blink of an eye.

They say the DMZ keeps the expansionist Dalukin at bay, but I'm pretty certain you've never heard news reports of the brinksmanship that routinely plays out there. Dalukin slip through all the time, to test our security, and probe our borders at will. We are unable to detect their stealthed ships until they are well within deadly striking range. And these things will never be said publicly, lest it panic citizens and make our Navy look worthless.

But such a judgment would be very wrong. They may black out current news, but our triumphs are many, countering everything the Dalukin have tried over the years. So yes, you can sleep safely after all. The men and women who wear the golden starburst are watching over you in the night skies – unless they perish, guarding you in your sleep.

My young career was nearly cut short by an incident on that border. It taught me the cost of vigilance, and the circumstance under which I might just throw my life away, risk vanishing into the cracks of space beyond reach of help or hope.

I've been there.

Part of me is there, still.

Alexa sat up straight and repressed the feeling of dread that had plagued her all day. It was only a speech, she reminded herself, but a speech that would change the world. She had no qualms about the impending change, but the fact that her image would be broadcast worldwide made her hands tremble. Ever since childhood, she'd preferred to work in solitude, behind the scene, but now everyone on Earth would know her face. Her entire adult life had led to this moment.

Roses spilled over the garden wall surrounding Casa Agosto, blooms of scarlet and pink and white blazing against the pale stone under impossibly bright Italian sunshine.  Below the village of Castagno, forests and fields glittered faintly, as if washed in gold.  Here and there, grapevines stretched and twisted in long, straight columns.  In the valley beyond, a brown ribbon of road meandered along the blue line of a narrow stream.  The Italian hills looked like bolts of dark green velvet, rolling gently from the ancient hilltop where twelve houses, each named for a month of the year, clustered along cramped streets.  The houses were tall and narrow, trimmed with window boxes and surrounded by small gardens.  Saints’ niches pierced the outer walls, their tiny statues nestled amid offerings of tiny nosegays or bunches of herbs.  In the garden of Casa Agosto, the branches of an ancient olive tree drooped to the grass, heavy with unripe fruit.  A wooden bench, painted with a rustic scene of wooly lambs in a green field, nestled in its shade.

            It was all real, Frederica reminded herself.  Everything was real.  Except for her.