A Galactic Holiday Read online

  A Galactic Holiday

  By Stacy Gail, Sasha Summers and Anna Hackett

  Do androids dream of electric sugar plums?

  A detective who refuses to modify her body teams up with her cyborg rival to track down a burglar who is putting toys into homes. A solitary ice miner finds love and friendship while stranded on the surface of Galileo. And two hardheaded negotiators put their differences aside to evade an assassin and save their planets. Enjoy these visions of Christmases yet to come with three science-fiction novellas from Carina Press.

  Edited by Angela James, this anthology includes:

  How the Glitch Saved Christmas, by Stacy Gail

  Galileo’s Holiday, by Sasha Summers

  Winter Fusion, by Anna Hackett

  Stories also available for purchase separately.

  86,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  I love the month of December when it comes to releases at Carina Press. This is our third year of publishing our special holiday collections, and I’m fortunate to be the one to edit the collections. It’s become our tradition to do three separate anthologies and this year we chose to do contemporary romance, science-fiction romance and erotic contemporary romance collections.

  Each of these three collections is amazing in its own right (not that I’m biased or anything), showcasing the talent of the contributing authors. In our contemporary romance collection, Romancing the Holiday, Jaci Burton wraps up her Kent Brothers trilogy with the story fans have been waiting for: it’s finally time to see Brody and Tori’s combustible attraction on page and cheer them to their happily-ever-after in The Best Thing. We’ll Be Home for Christmas by HelenKay Dimon returns readers to Holloway, West Virginia, as she gives us Spence’s story. Lila is more than a match for the delicious Spence and sparks fly when they go toe-to-toe. Last, but certainly not least, is newcomer to the collection, Christi Barth, with her delightful friends-to-lovers novella Ask Her at Christmas. And if you haven’t already checked out Christi’s full-length novel, Planning for Love, now’s a great time to treat yourself to this funny, emotional, captivating book.

  Heating up the pages, and I do mean heating up, are the three novellas in Red Hot Holiday, the erotic contemporary romance collection. If you’re looking for stories that are going to make what goes on under the mistletoe even more interesting, you’ll want to read this collection. I Need You for Christmas by Leah Braemel features a strong-willed, career-driven Mountie—and the sculptor who molds her to his will in the bedroom. In Wish List by K.A. Mitchell, Jonah discovers his lover, Evan, may be the one who can deliver the BDSM wishes on Jonah’s naughty list. And Anne Calhoun brings to the collection a stunningly powerful erotic romance that’s both deeply erotic and deeply emotional, with Breath on Embers.

  A Galactic Holiday is the third of our holiday collections, showcasing three science-fiction romance novellas with incredible world building and incredible characters. In How the Glitch Saved Christmas, author Stacy Gail takes us to our future, with bod-mods, enhancements, tech, artificial intelligence…and a growing love between two rival detect­ives investigating the case of the...appearing gifts. Traveling off world, Anna Hackett’s Winter Fusion delivers a story that’s also of two rivals. Rival negotiators Brinn and Savan must come to an agreement on behalf of their respective planets during the cold of Yule, and amidst the danger of a force that wants to stop their negotiations. Galileo’s Holiday by Sasha Summers takes us into deep space. Riley’s tugger has just been destroyed, but will she still have reason to be thankful as her relationship with Leo gives her a future to look forward to?

  In addition to these nine incredible holiday novellas, four fantastic novels release in December, each one the first book in a new series from the respective authors. For fans of Regency romance, Wendy Soliman kicks off her Forster series with Compromising the Marquess, in which the enterprising heroine supports her family by writing for a scandal sheet, placing her on a collision course with a marquess. In her steampunk romance The League of Illusion: Legacy, Vivi Anna begins a dangerous journey for three brothers. Each will find love while two brothers battle deception, jealousy and ruthless rivals to find and rescue the third.

  Fan favorite Dana Marie Bell’s new series, The Nephilim, begins with All for You. He’s not just the guy next door, he’s the angel next door. And it’s just become his job to protect her—while trying not to fall in love, or into bed.

  And this month we’re thrilled to introduce debut author Alison Packard with her debut contemporary romance title, Love in the Afternoon. When I grabbed Alison’s book from the slush pile to put on my eReader for the weekend, I had no idea I was in for such an amazing story. Though I’m not one to watch soap operas, Alison sucked me into the world of soaps and made me fall in love with Kayla and Sean. Soap opera stars, maybe, but characters you root for, relate to and want to turn the pages faster for so you can see them fall in love, definitely. If you’re a fan of Shannon Stacey, Victoria Dahl and Jill Shalvis, be sure to give this new author a try.

  I hope you find time to pamper yourself during the crazy holiday season. And if that pampering takes the form of a great Carina Press December release, even better!

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  Table of Contents

  How the Glitch Saved Christmas

  Galileo’s Holiday

  Winter Fusion

  How the Glitch Saved Christmas

  By Stacy Gail

  Reina Vedette chose principle over position when the Chicago police department ordered her to accept performance-enhancing body modifications or lose her rank. Demoted to a level one detective, Reina’s stuck chasing a bizarre, Grinch-in-reverse break-in case with fiery bod-mod enthusiast and level five top detective Edison Wicke.

  Wicke has had his eye on Reina for ages, and as the two of them hunt down the benevolent burglar, they take turns warming each other with body heat in the subzero Chicago winter. Despite professional friction and their opposing views on bod-modding, Reina soon has to admit that she and Wicke are perfect for each other.

  But when they track down their philanthropic quarry on Christmas Day, an unexpected glitch in a homemade android brings out Reina’s emotional side, and she and Wicke must decide whether love between a Neo-Luddite and a “walking toaster” is a gift that either of them can give.

  34,000 words

  Dedication

  To Angela James, editor extraordinaire, lover of imagination and all-around good egg.

  Thank you for giving Reina and Edison their chance to shine.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “...one-year anniversary of the death of Chicago’s hometown hero, Delbert Vincent Conrad, otherwise known as the father of androids. Fans of the reclusive genius are marking the occasion with flowers at his Graceland Cemetery ma
usoleum, while others have started a Life-Cap channel for people to upload their stories on how Conrad’s many inventions and philosophies have touched their lives.”

  With the echo of sadness resonating in her heart for the passing of a personal hero, Reina Vedette pulled her slick bike off South Wabash Avenue’s Maglev track. In an instant the silk-smooth glide along powerful magnetic currents became a bone-rattling jolt as wheels touched down on crumbling pavement. She ignored the transition, instead thumbing a control on the bike’s right throttle. The satellite radio built into her helmet switched off as the GPS map in her visor’s peripheral vision showed a glowing red X.

  Now was not the time to mourn the passing of a man who’d revolutionized the world. Now was the time to get to work.

  Dominating the horizon was the once-famous but now-condemned Mercy Hospital, the epicenter for the second H8N1 bird flu pandemic. In its present condition it was nothing more than a frozen block of toxic real estate, but still the mere sight of it made her blood run cold. With great deliberation she turned her focus onto the sea of low-rise tenements nudging up against the insanely expensive Stevenson Express Tollway. This was a part of Chicago that the local Board of Tourism hoped would vanish if they ignored it long enough. After the second pandemic made everything south of West Roosevelt a disease-riddled graveyard, the few people who’d been strong enough to make it through had huddled near the city’s main arteries in the meager hope of one day getting out to someplace better. To something better.

  The last pandemic had been a decade ago. They were still waiting.

  The hum of the slick bike’s hydrogen cells sighed into stillness as Reina pulled up to a knot of police vehicles and a handful of rubberneckers dressed in bulky winter clothing. They were held back from a walk-up tenement that looked like a stiff wind could bring it down in a well-worn heap. She made her way to the perimeter, a standout in the black frictionsuit that kept her warm on her bike even on the coldest winter’s day, her jackboots crunching through the crust of week-old, grimy gray snow as she went.

  To Reina’s well-trained eyes the perimeter was easy to spot even from a distance. It was maintained by a line of perpetually smiling service droids clothed in the neon yellow meter maid outfits of their department. The one closest to Reina turned in her direction as she skirted around the gawkers.

  “Citizen, please halt and identify.” Not blinking, the droid looked like something between a Hollywood ingénue and a blow-up doll bought in an S&M sex shop. They all did. But Reina knew better than to underestimate the curvaceous automatons. One wrong move and the crowd-control droids were programmed to show her just how easy it was to make her elbows touch behind her back.

  Without fanfare, Reina tugged off a glove and held up the dat-tat on the inside of her left wrist, the barcode that held all her worldly information. The droid’s blank eyes, colored an impossible marshmallow Peep pink, lit from within as the laser slid over the information while Reina’s fingers quickly froze in the mid-morning air.

  “Detective Reina Leonida Vedette, clearance level...one. Time check, oh-nine hundred point oh-one hours, December 22nd, 2062. Detective Vedette, you are permitted entry into crime scene #1478, located at Brightside Condos, number 303. Have a nice day.” The air flickered with the faintest blue arc of power, and the electro-static barrier emanating from the droid-line vanished.

  With her helmet still on, Reina didn’t bother stifling a scowl as she stomped toward the building. Clearance level one. Shit. At this time a year ago she’d been at the top at level five, a star among stars after bringing down the latest serial killer dubbed by the media as the Cicero Slasher. When she’d celebrated Christmas with a rare splurge of honest-to-God champagne, and not that synthetic crap scientists insisted was just as good, she’d thought the sky was the limit.

  A week later she’d come crashing back to earth like a dinosaur-killing meteor. The first of the year had brought about the police commissioner’s announcement that effectively pulled the plug on every dream she had. For continued advancement in security clearance levels for all law enforcement personnel, biomechanical bod-mods were now mandatory.

  Of course, it was still a free country. No one could be forced into accepting implants that changed ordinary human beings into what she thought of as walking toasters. For some, modifying went against religious beliefs. For others—like her—the idea of body modifications was repugnant on a visceral level. Her personal rejection of it no doubt stemmed from when she’d had machines keeping her alive, and she’d been obsessed with both the alien wrongness of it and the fear of them failing. Maybe it made her a control freak, but some instinct inside her recognized that no one could stand on their own if they were propped up by something that could fail. Her father had taught her self-reliance was the only way to be in control of her own destiny. Even if it made her a pariah in her own precinct, she wouldn’t rely on the crutch of technology. Crutches had a nasty habit of being kicked out from under a person when they least expected it.

  Luckily for her, civil liberties still meant something, if only for the sake of political sound bites. Enforced cyberization was outlawed. Moreover, it was illegal to fire a person if they didn’t want to go through the procedure.

  But the system could sure as hell make a person beg to quit.

  It had been the worst year Reina had experienced since her parents died in the second pandemic. God knew she hadn’t felt so helpless since she was sixteen. Within a week of refusing to sign up for the bod-mods, she had been busted down to a level four, and the kidnapping case she’d been sweating blood over had been taken away from her, only to be given to her know-it-all rival in the precinct, Edison Wicke. She’d toiled away gamely for another couple of months before the pressure to convert had been applied in earnest during a private meeting with her captain.

  She had to give the guy credit. His grim prediction that life would get worse if she didn’t play ball had been spot-on. All too well she remembered the need to smash her captain’s face in when he’d insisted that no one in the department wanted her to leave. She was too valuable—not to mention too visible—to simply be swept under the rug. But she couldn’t be allowed to be a fly in the ointment of the master plan of building a better police force.

  Allowed. That one word should have tipped her off that she wasn’t as in charge of her destiny as she’d thought.

  Misery had proven to be their weapon of choice. Life had become a daily, petty hell in the hope of forcing her into accepting the bod-mods. Reina, on the other hand, dug her heels in all the more. While cybernetic modifications were fine for others, she was certain that true misery would be found in “upgrading her organic chassis” to one that simply wouldn’t be as good as what she already had. In the end her decision had been viewed as nothing more than flagrant disobedience. Considering she was David going up against Goliath in this war of wills, she supposed her plummet into humiliating obscurity had been unavoidable.

  The higher-ups had made sure it was also spectacular.

  A spotlight had been lasered down on her to make sure everyone saw what happened to those who bucked the system. Overnight she became the poster-child for failure. Many people within the department whom she’d thought were her friends—people she’d known and loved since the academy—wouldn’t even look at her as rumors abounded that she thought herself to be so perfect she didn’t need modifications. Even her partner, Lazlo Gerski transferred away without a word or even a call in the aftermath. And as for the people who’d never liked her to begin with...well, hell. The department may as well have declared open season on her. Her enemies could now let their hater-flags fly with gleeful abandon.

  It was a mystery to Reina why she got out of bed every morning and trudged through the hideousness that was the day job. Habit, maybe. Or maybe she was too stubborn to abandon the promise she’d made to her dying parents—both decorated cops themselves—that she woul
d follow in their footsteps and make the world a better place. It could even be that in the deepest part of her heart, she was stupid enough to believe she still had something to offer.

  But did she really?

  Reina scowled at the whisper of self-doubt. Bod-mods or no, she was good at her job. No, more than that. She was kick-ass outstanding. Even if she couldn’t hear through walls, or turn on video surveillance with a flick of an eyelash, or have multi-colored sparks fly out of her ass, she’d been gifted with a superior brain that needed no modification. If anything, such mods would only muddle the instincts she’d worked that much harder to hone in the past year to prove that she, a pure-bodied human, could keep up.

  And she could keep up with the walking toasters, damn it. No matter what everyone else thought, she knew what she could do. So screw them all. She’d frigging bury the toasters in her so-called organic chassis’s abilities. And they could suck it.

  “Well, well. What idiot called for a Neo-Luddite? This is a straight-up B & E, not the organic hippie channel.”

  A stab of hatred blistered Reina’s insides at the sound of the voice of her most poisonous enemy, Manu Obie. Funnily enough, she hadn’t even been aware of the bastard’s existence before last year. He’d been nothing more than a face in the crowd around the office, his vaguely Slavic bulldog features both bland and unmemorable. But after a couple of months of receiving his bod-mods he had gotten a whopping promotion, while her captain publicly toppled her from her pedestal. That had apparently been Manu Obie’s cue to hop on the Let’s-Hate-Reina bandwagon, and he’d been actively recruiting fellow haters ever since.

  The man needed to get laid in the worst way.

  Shoving her hand back into her glove, she was piteously grateful her helmet was still in place. The snarl that curled her lip felt much too ugly to be seen in the light of day. “Obie. Are you the detective in charge?” God give her strength if he was.