“Lucky old you.”
Frey relaxed as the thrusters started to rumble, and Slavin turned her attention to piloting the ship out of the dock and into open space. Sensors emerged from the arms and back of the chair and coiled themselves around Frey as the big engines kicked in and they set up for their first jump.
Now all she had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride.
Book 1 of the Valhalla series.
Copyright © 2015 Kate Pearce
“System overload. We are about to crash-land on this planet. Please take evasive action.”
Jerked out of her stasis sleep, Douglass Fraser stumbled toward the pilot seat. This was supposed to be the easy part of her journey. She’d delivered her last scheduled package, used the last of her fuel and was meant to be on a free-trajectory return to Earth.
The soothing female tones of her ship’s emergency alarms failed to dampen her fear as the ship hurtled toward a range of hills on the unknown planet below. Manually landing a damaged spacecraft was not something she did every day.
“Where the hell did that come from?” she yelled, not expecting a response but too overwrought to care that she was talking to a computer guidance system. “It shouldn’t even be there!” Although the big purple planet wasn’t on her charts, its gravitational attraction was affecting her trajectory and had pulled her out of the slingshot effect that should have taken her home. She grabbed the controls and reset them to manual. Despite her best efforts to remain horizontal, the ship dipped sharply to the right. Because the ship had no fuel left to burn the main engines, she couldn’t pull away. She only had the ability to make slight course corrections to minimize the effects of landing. The wing grated on a sheer rock face and slowed her speed, sending the ship down at a less steep angle.
Douglass buckled herself into her seat harness and allowed the ship’s emergency systems to cocoon her in some kind of foam. It started to harden around her as the craft rapidly dropped altitude.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven…”
She shut her eyes as the ship’s auto-defense screens activated and shut off her view of the purple planet’s surface. Dammit, she was only twenty-eight, way too young to die. And she had people who depended on her. She pictured her five-year-old son Danny smiling up at her, his face covered in chocolate, his sticky fingers clasped in hers. She
had
to get home. As the ship hit the planet surface with a screech and grind of tearing metal, she made herself a promise. If she survived, she was going to take a year off from the United Planetary Parcel Service and spend it lying naked on a beach.
When Douglass opened her eyes, she smelled smoke and charred circuits. She struggled to release herself from the crusty foam confines of the chair. By the time she clawed open the last restraint, flames licked at her boots. With all her energy, she crawled toward the hatch. Agony jabbed and seared her side. Had she broken anything vital during the impact? She fought the pain and managed to force the door open. Better to get out and suffocate than be burned alive.
She gulped in fresh air as she fell onto the soft purple sand. At least the planet had breathable air and an atmosphere similar to Earth’s. Behind her, flames licked voraciously at the new source of oxygen. Heat blasted the back of her neck. She tried to stand, then clutched her side as the pain started up again.
She kept crawling, the sand warm and gritty against her palms. Sweat poured down inside her brown jumpsuit. Ahead of her lay an ocean of swirling purple. She shaded her eyes and blinked as some of the dots melded together and became larger. A rescue party or trouble?
At this point she didn’t care. There was nowhere to hide. She was injured and likely to die out here. The Space Academy had always stressed that staying alive was preferable to being heroic. Douglass struggled to her feet as the figures approached.
The largest of them broke away from the rest and brought his mount to within twenty feet of Douglass. She wasn’t quite sure what it was the guy was riding, something between a chicken and a dragon. She stifled an inappropriate desire to laugh. This wasn’t the time to insult her hosts by ridiculing their forms of transportation.
The man who dismounted looked enormous to her. He was cloaked, apart from his eyes, his face hidden behind a swath of fabric. Douglass stepped back as he came toward her. Damn he was big. Okay, she was only five foot four, but this guy towered over her. She reckoned he must be at least six foot five.
He stopped three paces away from her and unwrapped the cloth from his face. Douglass blinked hard. He had long, thick black hair and golden eyes, high cheekbones and a mouth that begged to be kissed. His cloak was lined with fur and his muscled chest was bare. Gold armbands accentuated his muscled biceps. He held out his hand.
“I am Marcus Blood Axe, king of this planet, Valhalla. Can you understand me?”
She automatically pressed her left earlobe to activate the embedded interplanetary translator but realized that even though his English was heavily accented she could make it out. To her fevered mind, he sounded Scandinavian. Perhaps the Vikings really had been the greatest explorers the world had ever known. She tried to restrain her unruly thoughts. She was already hallucinating, no need to make it worse.
“Yes. I’m Captain Douglass Fraser from the United Planetary Parcel Service. I would appreciate your assistance in contacting my people and reporting the accident.”
He looked past her to the smoldering wreck of her craft. “Is there anyone else in there? Your pilot, your mate?”
“I’m alone. I’m the pilot, the first mate and the entire crew.”
He didn’t smile at her feeble joke. She pressed her hand to her side as another treacherous wave of agony caught at her breath. Behind her, the back end of her ship erupted, spitting forth a lethal rain of hot metal.
“Watch out!” the man roared, as he raced toward her. He caught her in his arms and supported her against his chest. Damn, the man was all muscle. Not a soft spot to lay her head. She wasn’t used to being cradled in a man’s arms. For a terrifying moment, she wanted to give up and bawl like a little girl.
“Are you injured?”
His quiet voice sounded loud in her ear.
“My ribs…” she hissed in pain as he gently ran his hand down her side.
He cradled her in his arms. “I will take you back to my palace. I swear I will take care of you. You will want for nothing for the rest of your life.”
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Kate Pearce was born into a large family of girls in England, and spent much of her childhood living very happily in a dream world. Despite being told that she really needed to “get with the program”, she graduated from the University College of Wales with an honors degree in history.
A move to the USA finally allowed her to fulfill her dreams and sit down and write her first romance novel. Along with being a voracious reader, Kate loves walking on the beach and climbing live volcanoes in her new home in Hawaii. Kate is a member of RWA and is published by NAL Signet Eclipse, Kensington Aphrodisia, Cleis Press, Carina Press and Virgin Black Lace/Cheek.
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Historical Romances
Diable Delamere series
House of Pleasure Series
The Sinners Club
The Tudor Vampire Chronicles
Contemporary Romance
Branded, Dirty Sexy Cowboy Shorts
Turner Brother Series
Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?
Sci-fi/Futuristic Romance
Valhalla Series
Paranormal Romance
Soul Justice Series
Viking Claimed
Copyright © 2015 by Kate Pearce
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.