Cabex, p.1
CabeX, page 1
CabeX
A Project Enterprise Story
Pauline Baird Jones
Contents
A Note
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Also by Pauline Baird Jones
About the Author
A Note
Dear Readers,
This story didn’t turn out quite like I expected it to when I started it late in 2021, so I wanted to add a little note so you’d know what to expect.
This story happens concurrently with Cosmic Boom so it contains some spoilers.
Long-time readers of the Project Enterprise series have been asking for CabeX and Savlf’s story since they first appeared in Lost Valyr.
This story is shorter than the books in the main series.
If you’re new to the series, you can “meet” the characters by reading Lost Valyr and/or Cosmic Boom.
I hope you enjoy this discovery story of CabeX and Savlf as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Perilously yours,
Pauline
April, 2022
Introduction
The book that Project Enterprise readers have been waiting for! CabeX and Savlf’s story is coming to an eReader near you!
The mission? Rescue their missing comrades. The challenge? Navigate a dangerous sector of the galaxy while exploring their feelings for each other.
CabeX transformed into a human to save the galaxy. But when he falls for a woman who could betray him, can he also save his human heart?
Savlf escaped the spider’s web but can she elude a past she doesn’t remember? Can she prove to the CabeX—and herself—that she can be trusted?
While they search the distant part of the Garradian galaxy for a lost ship, they discover their biggest challenge might be navigating their feelings for each other.
If they can survive that long.
Can love—swirling between two people who have no concept of its power—break through minds and take over hearts? Or are they so broken that loving and being loved is beyond their grasp?
This highly anticipated romantic science fiction adventure set in the Project Enterprise universe beckons. Journey with CabeX and Savlf as—with their lives lie on the line—hard questions are answered and secrets are exposed.
Get your copy today!
Chapter One
The air was soft and just the right amount of cool. Sometimes the wind would come off the ocean with a damp chill that bit into her bones and she’d have to turn back toward shelter.
Her body didn’t seem to like the cold.
But she also didn’t like turning back. The freedom to walk outside and to look around was still a peculiar delight.
Savlf looked up at the moon and planet hanging in the sky above her head. Her mind, what memories she had, told her it wasn’t right, but it became less wrong as each day went by.
Knowing something was different or wrong didn’t necessarily deliver “right” to the forefront of her consciousness.
The transfer of that consciousness into this cloned body had resulted in a few glitches, the largest of which seemed to be her ability to access her memories from before her capture.
What had made it over to this new body tended to drift through her mind in blurred, disconnected fragments.
And what she did remember, she’d rather forget. The doc-shrink called it denial—which it utterly was, why would she want to remember being tortured?—and could lead to something called PTSD.
Savlf decided she’d rather have a disorder than the memories.
So all this brought her back to knowing that what was above her wasn’t her home sky. This wasn’t a breakthrough. It was, sadly, just very obvious. Or as she’d heard one of the Earth techs say, “D’oh.”
It was a good thing she’d gotten out of the habit of sharing her random thoughts during her captivity.
She felt out of her depth navigating the personal interactions of this place.
Of this people.
When her sole contact had been a sadistic spider for she didn’t know how long, she’d pretty much lost her interpersonal skills—assuming she had them before.
So she thought many things that didn’t make it past her lips, unless she actually had to answer a direct question.
“How are you doing?” The soft voice of the doc-shrink broke the silence.
Like now.
Savlf didn’t sigh. This doc-shrink was trained to notice sighs. And, to give this mental physician credit where credit was due, she’d waited longer than usual to break the silence.
She’d noticed others’ difficulty with her long silences, but Savlf didn’t know how to help these people with that.
She stood on one side of a chasm, they on the other.
Even the question, “How are you?” had been a minefield the first few times.
It seemed that asking for further clarification of what information they sought made them uncomfortable.
“I am fine.” She’d learned this much. She was fine with not being tortured and being able to eat food with her own hands rather than have it delivered through a web. She was fine with choosing what to eat and when to sleep.
She was less fine with people asking her how she was, but it was a minor blip compared to being forced to help a sadistic spider enslave others.
She didn’t know what “fine” meant to them or why they kept asking her about “fine.”
If they asked too many times in a day? She felt less fine. This thought almost made her chuckle. Being asked if she were fine made her not fine?
Yes, she decided, that was funny. Not big funny, but little funny.
Funny enough to make her feel fine again.
Her lips twitched, but she’d turned her head to study the restless ocean below the bluff that they walked on so the doc-shrink wouldn’t see it and ask about it.
“I’m happy to hear it,” the doc-shrink said, her tone registering more belief that usual.
Did that mean the doc-shrink believed her?
It surprised her that she thought this. Did she expect to not be believed?
It was possible, she decided. She’d spent so much time lying to the spider, Xaddek, she was never sure when she spoke the truth and when she didn’t.
“Have you remembered anything?”
So they’d moved on from feeling. That was a relief.
She glanced at the doc-shrink and considered her answer. The words that formed in her mind felt risky to say, but nothing else came to her, so she went with the question.
“What if I don’t want to remember?”
Was it acceptable to answer a question with a question? But where had it come from? Oh, now she remembered. One of the nurses had asked the question of another colleague when she thought Savlf couldn’t hear her.
She had noticed that people sometimes forgot she was there.
With an inner start of surprise, Savlf realized she really wanted to know the answer to this question. Savlf met the doc-shrink’s carefully professional gaze. If she turned the question back at her then she’d know…what?
The doc-shrink met her gaze without flinching, then nodded slowly. “Loss can be challenging to process.”
Savlf nodded because it was an interaction construct she’d observed used many times. She’d need time to process this answer into something she understood.
She’d done a lot of observing since she and her new body had worked out their differences.
It should have been easy to move back into what was, to all intents and purposes, her own body. If there were slight differences, she couldn’t identify them because it had been a long time since she’d been in control of her original body.
She’d found the edges, the perimeters, and the limitations of this body, for the most part. She still sometimes bumped into things, but she could walk without tripping most of the time.
“I do remember,” was that the correct term? “Not liking it.”
The doc-shrink smiled. “That’s a good thing,” she said, with a hint of too happy. “You’re making progress.”
Was she? She had no stick to measure herself with. And she knew she was a pain in the butt. This was another thing she’d overheard. She wasn’t entirely sure she knew what that meant, but she assumed that this was an indication that the lack of comfort she felt around them was reciprocated.
Mostly she didn’t care. She had bigger problems to worry about, things like what came next in this strange new place?
But she did wish she could get over feeling uncomfortable around—
In the distance she saw a tall, familiar figure approaching. He moved with a swift and determined stride, his gaze scanning his surroundings with wary care.
CabeX.
This time she couldn’t stop the sigh. He had many enemies.
She should know.
She’d been one of them.
CabeX saw Savlf in the distance, the breeze off the ocean ruffling strands from her casually confined, dark hair. She and the doctor were walking along the bluff that o
As he drew closer, he saw no sign of the torment in her eyes that had been there at their first meeting. Her pale skin, as much as was not concealed by her loose and practical clothing, was smooth and unmarred, with no sign of the angry weals of the web that almost killed her.
Of course, this body hadn’t been caught in the web. It had been a risk, trying to clone her from her own genetic material. They’d had to do some high-level filtering to keep the damage from reappearing in her clone.
They had succeeded in erasing the physical damage but were uncertain if there’d been changes to her personality and memory. Savlf herself had no baseline for who she’d been before her capture by Xaddek.
When she’d wakened after the procedure, she’d known who she was, where she’d been, and where she was now. But had her unusual brain chemistry been there before?
Savlf had no memory of her brain emitting a highly unusual EM signal before. Whether she was a mutated version of herself, the scientists were unable to say.
The Garradians, who had conducted extensive research across the galaxy many eons ago, had no record of anyone like her. So it could be, as one of the Earth doctor’s put it, an, “oops, sorry about that.”
The other theory was that it was what had brought her to the attention of Xaddek, but that he’d been unable to use it. In the chaos before the spider’s ship blew up, there hadn’t been time to note or register a rogue EM signal.
Savlf, when informed of the anomaly, had appeared interested, but not overly concerned.
“What does it change?” she’d asked.
No one had an answer.
“Am I a danger to myself or others?”
“It is possible that you could be tracked with it,” the Garradian Maestra had said.
And so Bangle, the outpost’s AI, had come up with the design for a device that blocked the signal.
Savlf wore the bangle—the name appeared to amuse those in the Earth expedition that knew its function—now as she and the doc turned to wait for him to reach them.
He stopped an arm’s length, managing a brief nod for the doc before his gaze met Savlf’s.
She didn’t speak and he couldn’t. He always felt more aware of his human body when he looked at her. This puzzled him, but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.
Savlf licked her full lips, and his throat went dry.
The doc cleared her throat, causing him to start. He’d forgotten she was there.
He looked at her. So did Savlf. The doc had an odd look on her face.
“What?” CabeX asked.
“What?” Savlf’s question was on the heels of his.
The doc looked at him. Then she looked at Savlf. Then she looked back at CabeX.
“If you don’t know, I can’t help you.” She gave a head shake, her lips quirked into a half smile. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Savlf, though please comm me sooner if you need me.”
“Thank you,” Savlf said, her clear voice exquisitely polite.
When the doc was out of ear shot, Savlf said, “What was that about?”
“I have no idea,” CabeX admitted, relieved she didn’t know either. “Have you ever commed her?”
Her brows arched in what he assumed could be surprise.
“No. But she always says it when we finish our walk.”
She gazed out at the ocean, possibly puzzling over the problem. It was a relief to CabeX. Before her gaze could turn to him again—steal his wits—CabeX gestured along the bluff.
“May I walk and talk with you?”
“Of course.”
It seemed that the flush of her cheeks deepened, the wind did seem to be trying make itself felt. He considered asking her if she were too cold, but other than her pink cheeks she seemed unconcerned by wind or temperature.
If he didn’t begin, she’d look at him again, so he dove in with an abruptness that made him wince internally.
“I assume you know that the Vega is missing?”
“I had heard it mentioned,” Savlf said. “One of your crew was aboard?”
“BoomerJ. Boom.” CabeX felt his chest constrict. He’d asked Boom to go. And now he was missing. “Tals—TalusH—has been doing some research with the Maestra on possible scenarios.”
CabeX knew that General Halliwell and members of the general’s team feared the ship and all aboard were lost.
Losing contact doesn’t mean lost. He repeated the phrase daily, but Tals and the Maestra’s theory—or hope—had given him something practical to do. Well, he amended, something to do.
“It is possible they engaged an enemy and were destroyed,” he forced himself to say, “but there are other possibilities.”
He stopped and faced her, deep enough in worry to look at her without the brain scramble.
“It is a big galaxy with perils other than enemies.”
Savlf nodded, but he thought he detected puzzled in her gaze. He looked past her, seeing with his mind’s eye the great expanse of galaxies, with its wonders and perils they’d seen and experienced in their travels. He shook himself.
“Let me show you something.” He crouched and picked up a rock, then cleared a circle in the coarse dirt.
Savlf sank down on the other side of the circle, folding her legs under her, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
“If this were the Garradian galaxy, we are about here,” CabeX said, making an “X” in his map. “The Earth expedition arrived here in this quadrant—Yankee, where the Kikk Outpost is located.”
“Aren’t we on the Kikk Outpost?” Savlf asked.
“Yes, we are,” he said, puzzled by her question. He was able to look at her, because her attention was on his map.
“The Earth expedition assigned other regions of this galaxy with quadrant names, but they don’t matter to our discussion.” Though they didn’t matter, he made lines in the dirt where the quadrants were.
“The Dusan and Gadi basically divided the galaxy in half during the war, though there was a zone of space between them that is mainly where they clashed with each other.” From his reading of the histories—not always with permission—these clashes were almost a habit until the Earth expedition tipped the balance of power by finding the Kikk Outpost. It got serious then.
“Where was the Vega going?” Savlf asked.
“Part of their mission was to reach the Dusan home world here in Bravo Quadrant.” He marked the quadrant for her. Between the Kikk Outpost’s quadrant and the Dusan home world was a quadrant the Earth expedition called Victor. It was while the Vega was in Victor that they’d lost contact with it.
One of the proposed scenarios was that the Vega had lost contact because they couldn’t get the outposts along the route back online. A side scenario to this was that they couldn’t turn back for some reason. That they’d either chosen or been forced to continue on toward the Dusan home world.
Tals had proposed that scenario based on data from the last Dusan-Gadi conflict. For that final battle, the Dusan’s course had not been through Victor, but had curved around through the buffer zone. It had been a curious choice back then. Why not take the most direct route when the Gadi already knew they were coming?
“What did the Dusan know about Victor that we didn’t?” He didn’t realize he’d asked the question aloud.
“I’m afraid I know very little about the cosmos and how it all works,” Savlf said, on a sigh. “Xaddek didn’t like me to know where I was.”
Her tone didn’t change when she said the spider’s name, but her hands might have quivered briefly where they rested in her lap.
He wanted to touch her, to reassure her. He’d held her hand during her first attempt at recovery, but he’d been a robot then. And she had been mostly unconscious and didn’t remember.
“Well, one thing about a galaxy, change happens very slowly, over long, long periods of time. For instance, this planet rotates, but you don’t feel it. We can see the rotation in the changes above us as the position of the other moon and the planet change.”
