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Let's Get Thinking About Stuff
16m ·
Here are the first three chapters of my SFR space opera manuscript, SPACE FOR US.
Chapter 1
Earth, Near Future… See More

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Let's Get Thinking About Stuff
August 26 at 5:25 AM ·
Two kinds of lensing: one due to general relativity, the other to special relativity (inflection of outer-space/energetic-energy just outside a black hole).
Two Kinds Of Gravitational Lenses Both Reveal Dark Matter
LINK.MEDIUM.COM
Two Kinds Of Gravitational Lenses Both Reveal Dark Matter
The Universe is dark, but the distorted light reveals its presence.

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August 12 at 7:14 AM ·
Quora Question: I often hear about new planets being discovered with water beneath the surface, but rarely about planets with large oceans. Is subterranean water easier to detect or more likely to occur, and why?
Davis Prather
Great question. I’m trying to use my published research about the oscillating expansion of an unstable boundary to understand trough-like regions and crest-like regions (from incident sine waves producing such oscillations).
The trough-like regions ini… See More
UNIONOFOPPOSITESDOTCOM.FILES.WORDPRESS.COM
unionofoppositesdotcom.files.wordpress.com

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Let's Get Thinking About Stuff
June 7 ·
Quora Question:
The universe is infinitely large and inhabited by many billions of planets. So where are all the alien beings?1 Answer requested by Jeff Reno
The question you are asking is called the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox… See More
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Fermi paradox - Wikipedia
The Fermi paradox, named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability (such as some optimistic estimates for the Drake equation).[1][2]
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Fermi paradox - Wikipedia
The Fermi paradox, named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability (such as some optimistic estimates for the Drake equation).[1][2]
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Let's Get Thinking About Stuff
May 18 ·
The other day, hubby and I saw a Wombat on THE ANIMAL PLANET channel. I said that I saw those sitting up and begging in Glacier National Park. Then he said, I don't think you did. Those make their homes in Austrailia.
So, what animal was it that I saw at the national park?
It was a Marmot. … See More
Climate change creating 'super marmots' that are bigger and more abundant
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
Climate change creating 'super marmots' that are bigger and more abundant
Climate change is creating "super marmots" that are bigger, stronger and do not need to hibernate for as long, a new study shows.

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Let's Get Thinking About Stuff
May 18 ·
Humans are a species that has been hugely successful. Unfortunately, that success has ended the lives of other species as a result of habitat loss that humans have usurped. Instead of arguing about carbon footprints and how they are influenced by industry, lets just look at the 8 billion humans. I wonder if any other dominant species has ever been so successful and what that has done to, perhaps, bring on their extinction. Here's a link to an article about the loss of biodive… See More
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Biodiversity
“The Earth will retain its most striking feature, its biodiversity, only if humans have the prescience to do so. This will occur, it seems, only if we realize the extent to which we use...
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Biodiversity
“The Earth will retain its most striking feature, its biodiversity, only if humans have the prescience to do so. This will occur, it seems, only if we realize the extent to which we use...
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Let's Get Thinking About Stuff
May 11 ·
Immunity to Covid-19 continued
https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-passports-in-the-context-of-covid-19
"Immunity passports" in the context of COVID-19
WHO.INT
"Immunity passports" in the context of COVID-19
Scientific Brief

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Let's Get Thinking About Stuff
Here are the first three chapters of my SFR space opera manuscript, SPACE FOR US.

Chapter 1
Earth, Near Future

The attack copter whipped up a faceful of Chinese swamp on its brisk retreat from the Yangtze River Basin. Jade wiped mud from her visor with the gloved hand of her bulky rainsuit. She’d rather get pelted by rain than smothered in this storm-trooper-look-a-like suit they’d forced her to wear.
To rescue a downed pilot, she thought. In the middle of these monsoonal rains. And all for President Wilsoner. His untrustworthy agents.
The only protection from the president, now that his wife, Aunt Mae, had fallen ill, was Gracie, an artificial intelligence. How pathetic is that?
Gracie was right. It wasn’t Jade’s fault her aunt was in a coma. Even though the president might think it was. That’s probably why he retaliated, sending her into this mud-fest of a jungle.
“Get your bony ass up and yourself on the trail, jailbait,” Baker said through Jade’s comlink, its nub nestled in her ear. “Enemy’s up ahead.”
Ja****it? My luck. I look young enough for any man to think he might end up in jail if he makes more than a pass at me. She only wished some man would. “Got your message, Baker. Loud. And. Clear.”
When Jade finally grabbed onto some windswept foliage and lifted her visor, she found herself eye-to-eye with a two-inch-long, lime-green insect. It rested on a lone branch shielded from the deluge. The green katydid lookalike met her with red beady eyes and long, hair-like antennae.
Bugs? Tired of government agents watching her, inside and out, she hoped these were real insects, and not the spying kind. At least questionable insects sure beat the alternatives—coming face-to-face with an alligator defending its nest, or the emotionally vacant eyes of a terrorist.
Gracie told her to be careful. How did the AI from Scanning Tunneling have a better bedside manner than Earth humans who’d held Jade captive all these years? She wanted to believe her quantum-conscious friend, but what did a computer know about the real world anyway? Maybe as much as she did, a supposed space-alien child who the government had isolated from normal human society.
Cracks of whips and shouting voices came in and out of focus as Gracie’s warning flooded Jade’s mind. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, even the terrorists her team was after. So, maybe she’d rid herself of the pent-up need to inordinately vent on them by practicing on the insect.
Jade forced an internal yawn, a kind of purr, a buzzing in her ears like a cat makes. Her brain registered the creature’s disorientation. The oversized bug fell from its branch, catching itself before it flew away.
What do you know? It’s a real insect. As expected, her powers didn’t completely work on Phylum Insecta, only on Phylum Mammalia—humans. Maybe insects don’t exist on the planet they say my real parents come from.
Voices carried on the wind triggered her dive to the muddy ground.
A cracking of whips came without a scream or any fearful thought from the victim. Did they somehow train pilots to cut off their response to pain if they’re captured? She didn’t think so. Maybe he’d taken one of those triangular kill pills, and they were beating on a dead body.
Wilsoner’s squad wanted her to use her powers against the bad guys, the terrorists, other humans. She could hardly stand thoughts of how the unruly bunch had treated the peaceful rice farmers.
She didn’t like being set up to hurt anyone. Even if she might have been guilty of that in the past.
Aunt Mae had protected Jade from Wilsoner before the secret service found her in a coma.
No, Gracie’s right, I didn’t do that. But she wouldn’t put it past the president.
To make sure Jade completed her task, the rest of the president’s black-ops squad followed her physical reactions, using the rainsuit feeds. How might she oppose the president’s orders to purposely hurt or kill anyone when the base MPs and his black-ops crew were tasked with tracking her every move?
Each time the wind died, a close jumble of human voices assaulted her sensitive hearing. Whenever the crack of a whip hit her ears, her blood surged, seeming to expand her skin within the confines of her tight-fitting rainsuit.
“Suit fully deployed?” Baker said, the woman officer safely ensconced in the team’s copter nearby.
Jade forced her eyes closed and bit her lip. “Yes, my suit’s deployed.” She hated lying.
“Are you sure? We’re not getting proper readings.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” Her undergarments were nearly drenched with sweat. Anticipating the discomfort, before deployment, she’d redesigned the rainsuit sensors to pick up her psychic signal so she could open the suit. Besides giving her hot flashes, the stiff spacesuit-lookalike slowed her, hindered her progress along the trail. That wouldn’t do. Mainly if they discovered her plan to ditch the suit and its feedback.
She didn’t need the suit to complete her mission, or its protective Kevlar, or the fake weapon they’d provided her. And if they kept bossing her around like this, she’d help them remember why she didn’t need the suit, or the Kevlar, or the fake weapon.
It was kind of neat that her powers made her nearly invincible now that she’d learned to control them. It didn’t make her happy to lord over others, and she promised Aunt Mae she’d never again use her powers to put people in comas. Not because they suffered when she did. It’s just that she didn’t know how to bring them back.
As she carefully lifted and placed each boot in the mud, the footprints she left behind flowed together and disappeared.
Jade froze at the heightened sound of enemy emotions.
The pilot’s alive.
She didn’t know what her squad would do to her if she decided not to use her powers on the terrorists. No doubt she could pull it off—down a whole unit of enemy combatants to save the pilot and recover his precious plane. The plane, she sensed, was way more important than he was.
Is the plane’s tech more essential than I am? No, it can’t be. She was their weapon, and weapons always took precedence over the warrior that wielded them.
The worst part of getting thrust into this wilderness was missing Gracie, her incorporeal friend. Since Aunt Mae’s disease, Gracie had taken up the protective role.
Had it been the president himself who had anything to do with his wife’s state? Was he tired of listening to her well thought out, yet outspoken, criticisms?
Jade had pleaded with Gracie to project herself into the rainsuit controls. The AI said she’d always be with Jade to protect her, no matter what. What did that mean? Right now, despite the squad, comfy back in their helicopter, she had to pull off this assignment alone.
Jade stepped toward an open area where the enemy’s nasty emotions got louder.
“What happened, Jade?” Baker’s voice cracked over the comlink. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” she whispered. “I can hear them, though.”
“Don’t take chances. Turn on your field weapon. Now.”
“The remote-control-looking thingy you gave me? What do you expect me to do with it?”
“You’re supposed to pretend it’s some sort of handheld microwave zapper. But we both know the truth. Now, don’t we, Jade?”
Give me a break. The team had Baker putting on the pressure, talking down to her. Wilsoner’s agents must have had their heads up their butts, and their feet firmly planted in the air. The longer Jade was parted from her outspoken aunt, the more she sounded like her.
“I appreciate your concern, Baker,” she said, “but I’ll pretend to switch the device on when I need it.”
“Let me remind you, little girl, this mission is part of the North American President’s promise to get you back safely to your people. You did sign an agreement with him before he sent you out here. So, do your thing. Get in and out. We’ll pick you up. After.”
“Yeah, the same way I was deployed?” How could she trust any agent loyal to the president, or anything they did in his name? “What’ll it be this time, Baker? Hang me from the helicopter by a flimsy rope while you drag me through the swamp?”
In truth, it didn’t matter what the aircraft looked like. For an aerospace forensics gal, who’d seen distorted metal from numerous crashes, she had resisted air travel, no matter how tempting. So, Baker’s comment about getting her back to her people—up there—was the last thing she wanted.
“Upset at the rough deployment?” Baker said. “Don’t take offense at how our male teammates treat us. They all haze new recruits. You know they do.”
She heard male voices over her comlink, laughing in the background. “Hey, I can hear them.”
“Who, the enemy?”
“Yeah. Right, Baker. No, you turncoat. I swear you’ve put our conversation on speaker. I can hear the guys snickering back there. Turn it off.”
The squad’s ready for a fight, she thought. They love risk. And I’m their risk du jour.
Jade had acted her part well—pretending she’d go along with the president’s murderous team. She had sympathy for the enemy, something these military types seemed to lack. She shook off thoughts of the team’s hazing and turned her attention to the mission they’d given her—find the pilot and get his plane away from the enemy.
Up ahead, human emotions. Male voices.
Not North American.
Getting louder
Coming toward me?
She ducked behind thick foliage that looked somewhat like her houseplants back home. Only these tropical giants were alive. No, she had no destructive power over plants. She’d just forgotten to water them.
Sweat dripped down her neck and between her breasts. Her suit might be good for marginal protection from the elements, but it was so hot she felt as if her blood was scorching her from the inside out.
That does it.
Like a moth emerging from its cocoon, she tripped out of the protective suit and into the mud. As the last of the suit’s sleeves sank below the surface of the deeper swamp, a loud glub-glub signaled its demise.
The wind picked up. She shivered, now only in her sweat-soaked undershirt and fatigues. Without the suit and the activation of its sensors, the team would not immediately notice her skin’s change in temperature.
Voices, again.
There they were. Maybe ten small men in badly fitting camouflage uniforms swarmed around a much larger man.
Naked to the waist.
Light-skinned. Muscular. Military-shave haircut.
The pilot is alive.
Rocking on his feet, he maintained his balance even as two of the soldiers launched their whips, beating him repeatedly.
Blood dripped from welts on his back.
With a rope around the pilot’s neck, the soldiers pulled him forward until he fell to his knees. No reactions from the pilot, no emotions, but his agony swept through her, the pain unbearable. How was he able to ignore all that pain when she couldn’t?
The full bite of the whip’s lashes on the aviator’s flesh drove her to her knees and into the mud. She held her stomach, suffering the pilot’s nearly intolerable cramps.
This had to stop. If it went on much longer, if the tortured pilot took much more abuse, he’d be dead, and she’d drown in the liquid mud.
Pointing the fake weapon at the enemy soldiers, in their dialect she told them what she could do to them if they didn’t retreat.
Will they believe me, a skinny, muddy Amerasian-lookalike with braided coarse hair?
The terrorists regrouped at what she sensed they thought a safe distance from the pilot. They sporadically pointed at her, speaking among themselves.
Sensing the pilot watching her from where the they’d allowed him to collapse on his hands and knees, she waved the weapon as if brandishing a sword.
She wiped mud from her face on the sleeve of her undershirt. He used his naked shoulder to smear the mingling of mud, sweat, and blood off his cheek.
Static amplified on Jade’s comlink. “F**k, Baker said, “We’re not getting any feedback, Jade. Just do it and get out of there.”
Static, commotion on the other end of the line. “Just do it, jailbait.” The team leader must have grabbed the microphone from Baker. “Your suit readings aren’t changing,” he said. “Have they malfunctioned? Never mind. Turn up the amp on your weapon, down them, and get the f**k out of there.”
She’d have to down the enemy group. There wasn’t any other way to save the pilot. At least, she couldn’t think of one. Gracie would know, but her AI friend wasn’t here. Why not? She’d infiltrated every system on base. Why not here, in the helicopter, in my rainsuit? What problem did her incorporeal friend have with protecting her now?
As the leader of the terrorist band approached her, Jade fi**ed her hands, swallowed hard, and closed her eyes, concentrating on her potential victims through the aviator’s pain. There it was, that cat-purring sound her Eustachian tubes made preceding the lethality of her powers.
Her legs rigid in place, she pointed her fake zapper at them. Focusing on each, and with careful control of her powers, she forced the men to fall, one at a time.
Viewing the unconscious human forms scattered across the wet ground, she inhaled abruptly. At least, like the others she’d accidently struck down, they weren’t really .dead.
Not yet.
After taking a short breath of reprieve, she noticed the pilot crawling toward her.
No longer able to stand?
He moved to kneel in front of her, sat back on his heels, and bowed his head like a monk in prayer.
“Is it done?” Baker asked.
“It’s done.” Jade felt the pilot’s relief, or had it been hers? She’d saved the man, but at what cost?
The water rose on the closest body, the soldier who’d first approached her.
What kind of monster am I? she asked herself. I’m not like them. I had to act against them. To save the pilot.
Guilt welled up within her. It’s too easy for someone like me to become just like them. I won’t let these people drown.
As nasty as the enemy soldiers were to the pilot, their families would grieve for them, and she couldn’t let them die like this. Caught in a possible flood, their drowned bodies might be buried under the mud, never to be found by their loved ones. If she couldn’t save them now, maybe some of her supposed alien kinfolk, with the same powers she’d accidentally developed, would know how to bring them back.
“Okay, let’s get out of here.” Baker said.
“Wait.” Jade couldn’t believe what she’d gotten herself into.
“What?” came Baker’s irritated response.
The pilot, now within arm’s length, looked up. His eyes blank of expression, as if he knew he were a condemned man. “I’m ready,” he said.
The pilot’s confused. Like he didn’t expect this. Or maybe he did. He isn’t a bit afraid of me, even though he knows I’m dangerous. Still his thoughts and emotions seemed hidden.
“And the pilot?” she said into her unit, anticipating the worst.
“Him too.”
Jade took a few deep breaths, hoped the team had no way of relating her uptake in air with her nervousness. “Him too, what?”
“I’m sorry, Jade. Bigger storm’s coming. Off the pilot. Run back the same way you came. We’ll meet you. Fly you out.”
Baker. Unusually blasé about giving a kill command. “But the pilot—”
“Look, Jade, don’t act so naïve. You did kill your parents. This is an opportunity to redeem yourself. All we ask of you, if you want to keep your cushy, well-paying lab position back at Carswell, and that nice apartment the first family has furnished you with, is for you to help us now and again. We’re asking you now. Understand?”
Jade had a hard time thinking about all that Baker said.
She tried to keep her emotions in check, wondering if Baker could hear her forced swallow. I was just a kid, and those agents weren’t my parents.
“I can’t help you with your dilemma,” Baker said. “Look, cadet, I’m sorry it’s come to this, but we need to know we can trust you. The president needs to know. I can only tell you to snap out of it. Okay, hon? We’re just Clean-up. The president wouldn’t have us out here if it weren’t a matter of national security. The pilot’s involved in a conspiracy against the government. We’re unsung heroes, don’t ya know? So, get out there and do the heroic stuff we all know you’re capable of. The pilot. Now. That’s an order!”
Jade threw her visor, the last remnant of her rainsuit, all but its comlink, into a nearby pool of mud. She hid the tiny nub of the communications unit back in her ear. “It’s done,” she lied.
She thought about turning off the comlink so the squad couldn’t find them. Pointless. Like some lost pets, all government agents had tracking devices implanted under their skin. And, even if they found her, she could take care of them. Of course, she’d rather convince them to cut off their pursuit—thus the usefulness of the comlink nestled in her ear.
Still on his knees, the muscular pilot bowed to her, his face nearly in the mud. The swirling rain washed rivulets of blood from his back.
“So, everything’s taken care of?” Baker asked.
Jade gazed past the all-too-alive aviator to observe the unconscious soldiers, many facedown and the water rising. “I’ve taken care of it.”
“Don’t hike too far away,” Baker said. “Find yourself some high ground. And be careful. There may be others. Enemy’s still out there. Copter can’t take off or land because of the wind. We’ll pick you up on foot. Find some cover.”
She hardly heard Baker’s words with this big, beautiful, tortured man before her. His sizable biceps sported the mesmerizing tattoo of a bald eagle with its wings spread wide—arrows clutched in one claw, an olive branch in the other. The ambiguous image born by North America’s corps of privileged test pilots.
He’s an astronaut.
The pilot had seen what she could do. Had he moved closer?
Probably thinks I killed these people.
Would he kill her, thinking it the only way to save himself?
From the North American Aerospace Alliance, the N-TRIPLE-A, he was one of the flying elites.
“Don’t hurt me.” She only said that so she wouldn’t have to put him down, this human without apparent brain function.
“I won’t,” he said, his crystal blues coming alive in reaction to nothing she could sense.
Isn’t he too perfect? His face too symmetric?
Jade hadn’t kept up on research into artificial intelligence. Might the space program have opted for a new human-model android to pilot their jets? Gracie had shared an article with her recently. What did it say? Scanning Tunneling, back at the base, might be working on a higher-order machine intelligence.
“I can’t read you,” she blurted out to the pilot. “Are you an android?”
Something, some signal lit up inside him, then she lost it, but she recognized its form, she’d experienced it before.
He’s laughing at me.
Already soaked to the skin, Jade wrapped her arms around herself to keep her hands from shaking. What might she expect from this one, a bigger than life hero? Nothing hurts him. And who am I? Not even noticeable to a superman like him. Not appealing enough to sweep up any crumbs of his attraction.
Her anxiety remained. What could he do to her before she could defend herself? Grab me around the neck and twist?
Could she trust him like he’d said? Trust he wouldn’t harm her? She didn’t think he would. Not if he’s an android. Not with an Asimov android’s conditioning against directly harming a human. And if he’s merely human, not in his degraded state.
Looking deep into his eyes, she gently touched his forehead with a muddy thumb and forefinger, opening herself even further into his world of inner sensations.
Jade shivered. Under the onslaught of the bullet-like rain impacting his wounded skin, there were no responses—nothing. Or, perhaps, she thought, he has a talent for hiding them.

Chapter 2

How imaginative, Mr. President, Shep thought. In addition to sabotaging our mission, you sent your teenage alien out as part of a clean-up squad.
Rumors of the little alien abounded at the base. Lots of hype. He wondered if all of it, or any of it, were true. She looked somewhat Asian, deep brown eyes that swallowed him up, a long shiny black braid down her slim back, all the way to her bottom. Only then did he notice she wore Air Alliance fatigues. He had trouble forcing his eyes from her chest. Through her wet and translucent underthings, not an inch of her was left to his imagination.
Her eyes seemed the picture of innocence. No wonder my captors hadn’t feared her until it was too late.
Hand to her ear, she most likely received instructions over her comlink.
Was she reluctant to make the kill, to deal the final blow? She didn’t seem like a willing participant. Her contact holds something over her.
He wanted to live. Yes, he did. At least long enough to get Wilsoner back for double-crossing him and, most probably, destroying the cube he’d installed in his plane—a remote form of Gracie that helped with navigation.
For some inexplicable reason, his heart went out to this small bedraggled person in front of him. Even if it looked like she’d murdered an entire squad of terrorists.
“I understand they’ve made you a captive just like me,” he said. “Do it. Kill me. If you don’t, you’ll be the dead one.”
“I can’t,” Jade said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not one of the bad guys.”
“They didn’t tell you then?”
“Tell me? Tell me what?”
Leaning over, his face almost in the mud, he coughed up some blood and recently ingested food.
Again, she reached out to him.
He pulled away.
“I just want to help you,” she said.
“With that?”
She looked down at her handheld device, the one she’d wielded while downing the terrorists.
If she’s an alien, then she might have special powers, he thought. Maybe her weapon isn’t real. But just in case, I better not make a move for it. Might end up like my captors.
“I’m sorry,” she said, throwing the weapon several feet away into the mud.
She didn’t appear to be ready to deal the same deathblow she’d inflicted on the others. He’d have time to assess the situation.
He could take care of her—later. Though after what Wilsoner had put him through, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hurt her.
Which side am I going to end up on?
He had to follow orders. Didn’t he? “You can come with me or wait for your squad. The choice is yours.”
She shook violently. Was she afraid of him, or just cold?
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“Make up your mind. Your squad, Wilsoner’s clean-up are probably on their way. How close do you think they might be?”
* * *
This American pilot seemed braver than the others. Her surrogate parents, government agents, had kept Jade captive from so far back into her childhood she couldn’t remember her real ones. If this pilot had known anything about her, about her past, what she’d done to her foster family, he’d be alarmed. He wasn’t.
He probably thinks I killed the terrorists. Probably thinks I’ll kill him. Yet he remains rational.
Was this lack of response out of some strange and misguided compassion for her? If it was, it wasn’t from an impassioned heart.
Nothing there.
By now, she knew how to clearly read emotions, but attempting to read his, she came up empty. Didn’t he have any feelings at all, or had he hidden them away?
“Come.” The bigger-than-life man rose slowly without wincing.
Jade sensed the waves of pain exploding across his back. He reached out to her, his body covered in welts, some still oozing blood.
“Jade,” a voice came back over the comlink in her ear. “We know you haven’t completed your mission with the pilot. Don’t listen to anything he says. Run back the way you came. Wilsoner won’t be too happy with us if anything happens to you.”
The squad’s still listening in. I should have turned off the link?
Too late to run back into their arms. By asking her to down both the terrorists and this pilot, they’d shown scorn for any humanity they, or the president, might have possessed.
“Hurry.” The pilot held his hand out to her. “We need to get away. I’ve got medical supplies back at the plane. How far away is your team?”
“Not far. I’m sorry for making you think I’d do the same thing to you as I did to these terrorists.
“There’ll be time for apologies later.” He grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder with nearly superhuman strength and then, splashed through the muddy swamp with her upside down. Wiping mud from her face and spitting it from her mouth, she stared at his partially exposed glutes, little fabric remaining to cover his straining muscles. She closed her mind to what those muscles might do, not to her, but to one of his overly buxom girlfriends back home.
To escape the twinge of desire, she set her analytical mind into gear. Flight suits are made from Nomex, composed of discontinuous fibers for heat and fire resistance. “How did your suit get so ripped up? The material’s like Kevlar, so why did it tear?”
“Didn’t you ever hear the tip of a whip goes supersonic?” he said without breaking stride. “It worked. Take my word for it.”
I don’t have to, she thought, still staring at what was revealed under the torn fabric.
They hadn’t gone far when she said, “Why are you doing this? Please, put me down.”
Once he found cover, he set her down and looked keenly at her, waiting, maybe for instructions.
She focused on his straining eyes, the only repository of emotion in his distressed body. “We can’t leave the enemy like this,” she said. “The water’s rising. We have to pull them to higher ground.”
“Those fanatics who whipped me? I thought them dead. You did something. Hit them with your laser device, or something.”
“Or something.” She turned, walked back along the muddy trail to the clearing where the water had gained on the bodies. “Are you going to help me or not?”
Would the pilot follow? Catch up to her? Drag her back?
Worried he wouldn’t help, and she’d have to pull her victims to higher ground by herself, she only gave a brief thought to Baker and the team—how long it would take them to make it this far on foot.
Lucky for her, the pilot did follow, and they made sure the sleeping enemy would live to sleep another night.
When finished, he crouched by the last body and looked up at her. “Ready?” He rose, moving a little too close. “Now where are these people of yours?” Is there any way to avoid them?”
The rain dripped like cold sweat from his face and cascaded off his muscles. Some droplets splashing their way onto her cheeks.
Isn’t he tall for a pilot?
He took a step back and put his hand out to her. Why had he offered his hand when he intended to sling her over his shoulder? I bet he wouldn’t be doing that if he’d known I wasn’t as young as I might look. Even in her wet undershirt, she had scant development to give him any idea of her age.
It wouldn’t much matter even if he could sense her attraction to him. As far as his feelings go—nobody’s home.
“You don’t want to come back with me,” she said, “The agents I’m here with are somewhat crazed. Hurry, you must leave. I think I feel them coming. They’ll be here soon. Don’t you have your people looking for you?”
“At first, I thought you were my people.”
Baker appeared with her cohorts, rifles raised. “Wrong. Major Shepard Monroe, is it? Our girl’s a little muddy, but cute, don’t you think?”
“Go! Run!” Jade said to the pilot.
With an apparent presence of mind to place her between himself and their guns, he pulled her back against his firm body, one impressive forearm over her upper chest.
I’m not afraid. I am their weapon, she thought, calming herself. He doesn’t know that about me, but they do.
Wilsoner needed her alive. This pilot, Shepard, had guessed right about her importance, though. The team lowered their rifles. They wouldn’t shoot her. For some reason, the thought conveyed little comfort.
His hugging me feels so good. Except for Aunt Mae’s, Jade’d had too few hugs back as far as she remembered. However, with the feel of his hard muscles behind her and the heaving of his chest, she hoped he’d restrain her a little while longer.
A warm glow worked its way down her body.
Yes, she thought, all traces of fear leaving her mind, a little while longer, please.
Before awareness hit her, he’d thrown her over his shoulder and ran into the jungle.
Tired of being shaken about, and with all the blood rushing to her head, she found herself again observing his firm and naked ass. With each of his pounding strides, more mud splashed onto her face.
“Put me down.” She tried giving him orders again, even though it meant another mouthful of swamp.
The rain had stopped suddenly, and once he set her down, the jungle seemed eerily quiet.
Baker and the others couldn’t be far behind. Yet her heightened senses were no help in finding them. What were their plans? They’d fallen back, didn’t want to get on her bad side.
He grabbed her shoulders and looked intently into her eyes. “Now you can tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Why didn’t I hear any shots.”
“Why would they shoot me?”
“No, I didn’t mean you. You’re important to them. I get that.”
“You do?”
“I meant my captors, those terrorists,” he said. “We left them lying there, asleep or something. I can’t hear your squad. I don’t think they followed us. And they haven’t gone back to finish those soldiers off. Clean-up squads don’t take prisoners.”
“Yes, I suppose I’m going to have to explain.” She dreaded that, especially the psychic part forcing her to admit her alien roots. What sort of amused un-reaction could she expect from him then?

Chapter 3

Most strange. He and the girl had made it halfway back to his plane. Several times he stopped to listen for her squad. A stirring here. A rustling there. Her comrades were still tracking them. Wilsoner’s agents were loyal. So, this all must be part of his plan. When Wilsoner had suggested the operation, Shep hadn’t anticipated this kind of abuse. The president must know he’d been in communication with Mankin and Roberts, leaders of The Resistance, but, in truth, Shep had never gone along with their crazy plans. And he had no idea how to get Wilsoner back for the double cross. Gracie, his right-hand girl, wouldn’t be too happy either, if she found out about Wilsoner’s plans. Of course, the AI knew all about the president’s motives. She knows everything. But if she did know everything, then why had she allowed Wilsoner to trick him without putting up a fight? No, he thought, Gracie won’t be too happy at Wilsoner deceiving me.
In the waning daylight, he scanned the girl’s exposed state—from her small stature, narrow waist, and thin tee clinging to her small breasts. S**t, she’s so young. How would he do what he knew had to be done? “The only way I know to get you warm is for us to strip off our wet clothes and share our body heat.”
Her teeth continued to chatter. She shrugged and averted her eyes.
She doesn’t seem afraid of me?
He had to fake his responses so he could appear normal to his cohorts. He might not be good at expressing his feelings, but he thought he did all right with sensing the feelings of others.
If she’s not afraid, she might be anticipating our closeness. Like I’d be interested in an inexperienced woman. He didn’t have time for any childish teen infatuation on her part. And by the way she shivered, neither did she.
“Just how old are you,” he found himself asking.
Like a chirp, she forced out a brief laugh.
He didn’t think his question was that funny. Maybe she’s older than she looks. He wasn’t too happy about the prospects. Yet, he found his body wanting to respond to her in all the normal ways a man might respond to a grown woman.
Maybe she did look younger. How young can she be? For God’s sake, she’s an agent with a clean-up squad.
Still shivering and with watering eyes, she gazed into his. “Is that it?” she said, frowning at him as though he’d made a monumental mistake. “I thought we were going to have a discussion here.”
He flashed his eyes up to the canopy of dripping foliage. Hit me over the head with a giant bamboo stick. Is she angry because he wasn’t making a move on her?
“No discussion,” he said. “Not with you shivering like that. We need to get you out of your clothes.”
God help him, he’d always been so willfully in control of his emotions. Will sharing my mummybag with this girl be a problem?
* * *
This was the first time a real man had ever said, “We need to get you out of your clothes.” Maybe his only intention, to prevent hypothermia.
“And how do you suggest we get out of our clothes?” she asked.
“First, we need to find my mummybag.”
“Mummybag?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you don’t have to repeat everything you hear?”
She couldn’t help thinking—Has anyone ever told you that you’re a robot? Not a single emotional bone in your very substantial body? She’d only asked that two-syllable, one-word question—Mummybag? —and he’d said what felt to her like a put-down.
An opposing wave of interest swept over her. If she refused his affections, when they slept close, up against one another, might that upset him? She hoped not, because she was of no advantage to him. Devoid of any emotions she could sense, he might easily attempt to strangle her and think nothing of it. And in defense, without knowing how to bring him back, she’d have to put him down, into a coma. The way I did the terrorists. I don’t want to do that.
Might as well keep the conversation going. She’d read somewhere in a never-ending stream of course material the team sent her that keeping your captors talking forced them to think of you more as a person and less as a thing to be dealt with. She should have followed this advice earlier with Wilsoner, before he put her under guard, thinking he could use her as his own personal weapon.
“Where are we going to find a mummybag?” she asked.
“Where I stashed my stuff. Inside the plane. Inside her fuselage. At least, the intact part of it.”
“Won’t some of your things be underwater by now?”
“No, missy. I tied them up in a tree like a proper Eagle Scout.”
A lame “Oh,” was all she could come up with.
He grumbled with annoyance, turned, and left her, continuing his trek through the thick brush.
Wow, attitude. Didn’t think you had any emotion, Mr. Robot. Unable to think of any other comebacks, she decided to follow.
Thorns cut through his skin, but he showed no reaction, and as the stepped-upon branches popped from the ground, they brushed against her, leaving his blood on her nearly transparent top.
Her teeth chattered. Her whole body shook. She wouldn’t complain or bring attention to herself, not when he’d so easily acted as if he wasn’t in discomfort from the welts crisscrossing his back or the bleeding scratches exposed by rips in what was left of his flight suit.
Once he found his stash somewhere inside the dry recesses of the plane—inviting her into the blacker blackness within—she felt his warm and steady exhalations on her face. He gripped her shoulders and stated the obvious. “You’re freezing. Temperature’s dropping. We’ve got to get you into my sleeping bag. We need to share our body heat, or we won’t survive the night.”
He turned away, even though he couldn’t have possibly seen her in the dark. She removed her damp clothing before he wrapped the mummybag quilt around her and zipped her part of the way in.
* * *
Why were her black-ops people after him?
Why would any branch of the North American Union want me dead? Does Wilsoner?
Had Shep guessed right about being on the wrong side of the president? And why weren’t there any gunshots when her crew arrived, or after he and the girl fled?
All valid questions. But the one overwhelming him right now—why had he thought it proper to put the girl, freezing or not, into his sleeping bag? True, the going survival theory had been—strip naked and share your heat—two bodies more efficient at preserving energy than one.
He hadn’t been thinking. This girl had been a mystery from the first he’d set eyes on her. Something about the self-assured way she spoke to him and that frightening squad of hers—she, refusing to take their orders—saving his life.
What if I’ve guessed right? If all she’s done is supernatural? As by the president’s briefings, she’s alien. Her people must have visited the Earth. Scientific calculations by exobiologists suggest even humans have little chance of existence. What if she were another kind of human? What if he were wrong about her age? He revisited the thought that she might be older than she looked.
Regardless of all that, he couldn’t take her out as the president had ordered him to.
“You can stop wondering,” Jade said, still shivering against him.
“What can you mean?”
“Don’t be afraid of me. Don’t think I’m a child. I’m not as young as I look.
He had to laugh to himself. There she’d done it again—gotten him to laugh—and it felt good. “Major Shepard to you.” No matter her age, he didn’t think subjecting her to his full nudity a good idea, especially before she became aware of what a man was and the dangers therein. Even if my only goal is to keep her warm and alive.
Before zipping up the bag, he put on warm-up bottoms, tied them around his waist with a drawstring.
Inside the sleeping bag, she snuggled into him, and her breathing became slow and regular.
He’d been taught what to do in run-ins with questionable folk—those whose erratic behavior might spell disaster. Mankin, his surrogate uncle and base shrink, had counseled him to play along when it made sense. He’d said Shep would never know when someone’s help might come in handy, even if they appeared dangerous. If menace ever presented itself, he could always take care of things.
Anyway, the girl snuggled against his chest and even though naked, she seemed to trust him.
Yeah. That’s because she’s freezing, moron!
So, what’s my excuse?
Why had he agreed to put himself in such a vulnerable position? Intending to place his unclothed body up against someone who might be love-starved and lethal? He’d have to be an idiot not to know—once she warmed up—what might happen between them in the bag.
So why did he go ahead with this ill-thought-out plan? He hadn’t thought of himself—only of her. She needed to get warm. And there might be a time when he needed her.
Need her? He needed a woman right now, especially after the trauma of this day. Not any woman and not her. He needed to find a way to relax.
“Don’t worry,” she said in her half-asleep voice. “I’ll make it better for you. I’m not expecting anything. Thank you, Shepard.”
How can she tell what I’m thinking, feeling? Another alien thing? And if he’d been so good at compartmentalizing his feelings, why couldn’t he resist this overwhelming drive to get closer to her?
Mankin—resident shrink at the Carswell Air Alliance Base where they were all stationed—said his lack of natural emotional responses came from a childhood trauma. No one else knew that. A well-kept secret. Yet, from time to time, Shep found himself obsessing over physical warmth, food—even s*x. I can’t be emotionally intimate. But, maybe s*x is like a hunger for me.
Strange as it seemed, the thought of sharing his warmth with this young woman did give him something back. Was that sensation coming from her?
Small. Beyond s*xual.
A feeling he was not yet willing to explore.
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site author’s education and experience Hello, I’m S.B.K. Burns, RWA award winning author of the LEGENDS OF THE GOLDENS SERIES of mostly new adult and mixed genre sci-fi/light urban fantasy novels and AGES OF INVENTION SERIES, a st…

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