Karma of Kalpana Read online

  KARMA

  of

  KALPANA

  T. L. SMITH

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, organizations and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances are entirely coincidental.

  Karma of Kalpana

  Copyright © 2019 T. L. Smith

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781693031656

  Cover Design by T. L. Smith

  Cover Copy by Jeanne Cook/Artichoke Head Creative

  Cover Art contributors: Comstock Images/Getty Images/Cassinga/

  Tiziano Cremonini

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are so many people to acknowledge, I have to keep it simple.

  A huge thanks goes to my family, particularly my mother, Patsy, who never discouraged me from going after whatever I wanted, even if secretly she thought I was crazy for wanting to be a writer. Another thanks to my brother Bill, who introduced me to Science Fiction. To my friends, Rick and Brenda, who help distract me into family and friend time.

  A special thanks to all my writing friends, particularly Gini Koch, author of the Alien/Kitty Kat series, for being an encouragement, even if an entire continent separates us now. And when the final crunch is on, I can always count on her to provide her special services to help me wrap up the final aggravating projects before print.

  Then to the Amazing Wyked Writers collective, who’s variety of specialties, in writing and their professional lives, provides me with a slew of interesting details to draw from, or a bottomless well of support when encouragement is needed.

  A special thanks to my dear friend Sandra Bowen, who was one of the first authors I met, encouraging me, and actually inspired this story. And her daughter, Cassandra, my pseudo-sister.

  And always, I have to thank the readers who want to share in my insanity. Read on!

  Want more from

  T. L. Smith?

  Check out her other books

  Scent of Treachery

  Defending Hippotigris

  Star People Legacy

  Playing God - book one of the Playing God Series

  Blood of Gods - book two of the PG Series

  Or visit her at:

  http://www.tlsmithbooks.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  “This is Captain Kalpana Ghiya, Intergalaxy Federation registered freighter, the Tamanni. We’re unarmed. Repeat, we are an unarmed IGF freighter. Running empty. Please identify.” I yanked hard at the controls, but their next blast sent our ship tumbling ass-over-wing.

  Everything went dead. “Power’s down!” Emergency life support and lighting kicked in before I got the words out. “I swear, if reincarnation exists, then the opposite’s gotta be true too. If so, I’m going back to haunt that Cassandra woman for putting me here.” Waiting for our attackers to lock onto us again made my stomach turn. “Who the hell are these guys?”

  “I don’t know, Kali. They’re not on my charts and these radar signals make no sense.”

  A side glance at Carl confirmed the same anxiety I felt. So you do get ruffled. It was rare anything got under his skin.

  He jabbed at the same sensor panel three times. Nothing happened. He let out a frustrated growl. “Well, clearly they intend to take us alive, since they targeted our engines.”

  “Unless they’re just bad shots. Of course, the only weapons we got are Tac5’s MREs.”

  “I doubt they’re hungry.” Carl grimaced at my attempt to joke. “What’s this Cassandra dame got to do with this? And try harder to make it funny. I want to go out laughing.”

  Ouch! “Thought you said they wanted us alive?” I pulled my hands out of the navigation cuffs and flexed fingers. They hurt from gripping the controls too tight.

  “You don’t shoot just to say ‘hi’. You shoot to kill or capture.” Carl glanced over at me. “Cassandra. Tell me quick. I could be wrong.”

  I looped my hands into my harness and watched the stars spin crazily around us. Here and there I caught a brief glimpse of our pursuers. Whatever their intent, they were taking their time. Delaying the inevitable. Torturing us with dread, no doubt. It was working. Getting captured could be worse than dead.

  Though I tried to hide it, my heart was pounding hard, and holding my breath wasn’t helping. Talking might keep the hysteria from creeping in. “I went to a party that had a fortune-teller for entertainment. He read prior lives. I sat down and he refused to talk to me, until the crowd booed him. He agreed to one life and gave me a name, promising she’d reveal everything. I looked her up and she was real. She wrote a book about all her past and future lives.”

  “What the hell does that got to do with this?” Carl jerked his hand out into the stars.

  “Because…” Words I’d read late at night flickered around in my mind. “… this happens in the book. Just like this. Making this feel like very bad déjà vu.”

  “Nahhh.” Carl glared in disbelief. “Come on, Kali, you’re joking.” He jabbed at the computer image of the ship closing on us. “The attackers looked like this?”

  “She didn’t include pictures, but I’m sitting here in a dead ship staring at an alien ship. Just like... just like in her book.” I shook the insane thought from my head. No! It’s just a coincidence.

  Carl’s fingers jabbed at the computer image of the ship. “Well, who are they in the book? Who were we? Does it end with a bang, a slow simmer, or do we get away?”

  Who were we? It sounded as odd coming out of his mouth as it did my own. I shook my head as our spin slowed. “We were on the edge of nowhere. Our ship wasn’t a ragtag freighter and we were married.”

  Carl let out a snort. “Well, on that last one, we probably have a few minutes...”

  Our chaotic roll jerked to an abrupt stop, knocking the air out of both of us, but mostly in awe. We sat nose-to-nose with our attacker’s ship. In stationary view she was huge, beautiful, her lines sleek, her surface impervious. No portals, no weld joints, not even a sign of weapons ports, yet they were clearly armed.

  The moment of fascination broke. “Time’s up.” I jerked my harness latch and slipped out of the chair. “Prepare to be boarded. Just like in the book.”

  Carl followed me up. With no engines and zero G, we needed hand and foot bars to move about. “It’s definitely not military. She doesn’t match anything on the boards when I left the IGF.” He floated behind me as I engaged the manual controls for the bulkhead door.

  The latch gave and I glided into the main cabin. A push sent me down the corridor. Carl caught up with me, better in zero, though he had no choice. It was a clear resemblance to his fictional counterpart. In Carl’s case, an accident left him struggling in anything over one-third gravity. Without a special suit to supplement artificial nerves implanted along his spine, he couldn’t move at all in normal G. Even so, he was the best partner I’d ever had.

  Now that they had us, there was no telling what came next. “Suit up. I need you at a hundred percent.”

  “Yes Ma’am!” He slipped into his cabin. With his training he’d only take a couple minutes, depending on what little surprises he kept stashed in his cabin. I never asked, but his type never gave up their toys just because they left the service.

  Entering my cabin, I grabbed my EV suit. I hated to wear it, the fabric was heavy and the gloves too bulky. It made me sweat. Besides, this far out, no one could get to us before our oxygen was exhausted. Protocol is protocol. I didn’t argue with myself.

  From the door mirror, I saw my reflection, thinking about the woman I had just read about. We were also easy doppelgangers. Both tall. We both had long dark hair, slender, but well-muscled from a rigid workout program. We matched, right down to the deep dark secret I kept hidd
en from everyone. Even Carl.

  I shook off the inner-reflections and rushed to get my suit on.

  Not surprisingly, I was only halfway in my suit as Carl slipped into my room and locked the door behind him. More alarms blared through my ship. “We’re definitely being boarded, so hurry it up.”

  Yes, SIR! I rolled my eyes as I yanked the suit closed. My heart beat faster as the ship shuddered. “Computer, if hull breached, restrict oxygen to rooms we occupy.”

  A soft voice confirmed my order. I hoped they didn’t disable her and life support too. “Carl, you’re the military expert here. Since they’re not IGF, I’m game for suggestions.”

  He stood with his hand defensively against the door, as if the effort might hold them off just an extra second. “I’d like to have one, but without knowing who we’re up against...” With his other hand he reached into a side pocket of his suit and took out a small hand laser. I’d seen him habitually pat his leg before disembarking at our less reputable ports.

  He turned the weapon in his hand. “The ‘outnumbered and outgunned’ rule applies. Don’t give them a reason to shoot before we know what’s up, but be prepared.” Carl glanced at me. “If you have a weapon, get it. Keep it in plain sight when they enter, but don’t point it unless you’re ready to shoot.”

  I ran my hand down the back of my suit leg and opened the hidden pocket, to withdraw a sheathed knife I kept there for emergencies.

  Carl raised an eyebrow at me. “I certainly never took you for the stiletto type.”

  “Hijackers keep women a bit longer for fun. Knives work for close up jobs.”

  “You’ll need more than that toothpick.” Carl handed me the small laser. I clipped the knife to my belt and took his weapon. He fished another from a deeper pocket, giving me a sideways look as he checked it. “Does this happen too?”

  “What… oh, ahmmm yeah, kind of. They fought it out, but were captured.” I felt a shudder run through the whole ship and the computer reported a cargo door had been breached. “What can they want? We’re running empty.”

  Carl wrapped his arms around me. “Take a breath.” For all our casual flirting and the occasional surrender to temptations, we usually maintained an emotional distance. Right now I needed his calmness to maintain my own. “What did they want in the story?”

  The computer confirmed unidentified beings boarding my ship. “I don’t know.” I took the breath. Focusing. Pulling as much strength as I could from Carl’s embrace. It was time to act like a proper ship’s captain. Time to pull from my secret bag of tricks. But I need to know.

  I closed my eyes, but imagined myself beyond the door. Out into my ship. It took an effort, but I pushed my senses beyond the reinforced steel, flowing towards the strange presence. Who are they? What do they want?

  I found the invaders, jerking back immediately from what I saw in my head, in my soul. For the first time in years, I questioned my talent. Maybe the book or my own imagination contaminated my vision. Or not. Maybe this was real after all.

  Either way, Carl needed to know. “They’re big, more or less humanoid. They’re in armor or atmosphere suits, and armed. They’re looking for us.”

  “Really? How do you know? Is this from the story?”

  “Yeah…” I didn’t have time to explain, jumping involuntarily as my door creaked, then banged open as the lock gave out. A single hand held the door and a helmeted head leaned into the room cautiously.

  “Shhh…shit!” Carl’s arms gripped me tighter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  At first the creature’s armor looked a dark smoky gray, but shifted iridescently as it moved under the emergency lighting. A weapon mounted to the forearm of the body armor pointed at us as it cleared the doorway.

  It entered head first, then massively broad shoulders, to the torso that was twice as wide as Carl. As described in the book, it walked on legs that looked somewhat insectoid, except the joints on the arms and legs weren’t as segmented as the author had painted that picture. There was a bend to the legs that made the creature bow forward a bit. But the feet landed firmly on the decking, thudding with each step. This was a heavy creature.

  The resemblance to an insectoid was most prominent in the helmet. Two huge bulging lenses covered almost half the face plate. They looked like bug eyes, right down to the grid pattern covering them. Probably a hundred different lenses for processing information.

  That also meant those eyes never left us, even as the creature turned its head to look about the room. Growling sounds emanated from the lower half of the helmet. This section protruded out further, with what looked like mandibles.

  Yeah, Cassandra, you win the insectoid argument.

  The first creature moved aside to let a second one enter. I remained still, my back to Carl’s chest as their weapons remained fixed on us unceasingly. Carl was definitely right about not taking the immediate offense.

  The rumbling from the helmets were unintelligible. While I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I sensed there were three voices, and just then a third creature entered my little cabin. “Well, anymore of you boys want to join the party, we’re going to have to take this outside.”

  Carl jerked at my arm. “Kali!”

  “Sorry. You know I get lippy when I’m cornered. Besides, they’re not human and certainly can’t understand us anymore than we can understand them.”

  Nor did they seem to care what we were saying, talking amongst themselves with a few gestures in our direction. Their intentions were hard to read, but their actions said they found us interesting. Interesting, but at the moment no threat.

  After a few seconds, the last creature stepped up to me. I still couldn’t make out clear thoughts, but this was the leader of the boarding party. Towering over me, his helmeted head tipped to study me. This close, those mandibles looked were decorative, but they might also depict what lay beneath. A scary thought.

  I tried not to jerk away as he reached out and flipped the knife off my belt. He caught it as Carl pulled me back. The huge gloved hand had no problem sliding the knife up from the sheath. He threw the knife towards the one who entered first. The creature caught it easily and let his weapon arm down to pull the knife out of the sheath completely.

  I didn’t need a translator to know it laughed.

  All three laughed. Clearly they considered the knife nothing more than a toy. The leader motioned towards my laser and held his hand out, waiting as unintelligible words ordered me to hand it over. Since any type of shootout would only leave the two of us as nothing more than bloody puddles in the middle of my cabin, I handed it over. He dropped the weapon into a hard case at his side.

  Repeating the gesture, he ordered Carl to surrender his weapons. “I’m going to be sorry to lose these.” Carl obeyed and stood close beside me.

  Their laughter over our weapons made me mad, then embarrassed when I considered how disproportionate this whole scene had become. Carl must have felt me tensing up. He gripped my arm cautiously as my knife was flipped back haphazardly to their leader. He turned it around playfully, then extended the hilt to me.

  I shook off Carl’s hand and reached out to curl my fingers around the leather wrapped hilt. I didn’t recoil when this gigantic figure leaned down to look at me through those bulging eyes. The large hand let go of the knife and gripped my chin. I didn’t flinch, but didn’t breathe either as the tips of gloved fingers pressed into my cheeks.

  The helmeted head jerked slightly and a growl emanated from neck grills, directed towards Carl. I tried to turn my head. “Don’t move, Carl, he’s not hurting me.”

  I gasped as the creature jerked my face back up to his.

  “Let her go!” In the creature’s helmet reflection, I saw Carl lunge forward.

  One of the other creatures grabbed the collar of Carl’s EV suit and jerked him backwards. In zero gravity, Carl was propelled across the room. He bounced against the wall with a loud, hard crack.

  “NO!” I pulled free of the h
and around my jaw. Carl’s limp body rebounded towards us. “Damn it!” I pushed off the chest plate of their leader, to catch Carl. My pressure countered his and changed trajectory. I grabbed at the edge of my bunk. “Carl!” I struggled to pull him down, to get his head where I could see his face.

  Another hand gripped him. “NO! Get away!” I struggled to pull the alien’s hand from Carl’s shoulder, but stopped as the leader of this group pushed Carl onto the bunk.

  I pulled myself down next to him. A four-inch gash over his left temple spurted globs of blood. I grabbed a shirt over the foot of my bunk and pressed hard to stem the blood flow. A breath from him blew droplets of blood past me. A relief, slightly. He was still breathing.

  “Come on Carl. Wake up. Open your eyes. Carl!” Nothing, not even a murmur. I shook his shoulder harder, easing the shirt away from his forehead. He was still bleeding, but I could see the gash cut clean to the bone. “Carl, wake up. I need to get you to the med bay.” Still nothing and his forehead was already starting to puff up.

  “Don’t do this to me!” I shouted at him. The thought that this could be a serious, or fatal injury made the blood drain out of me as well. That emotional wall I always kept up between us was crumbling. I couldn’t lose him. I bit at my lip and looked up at the creature standing over us. “He’s… hurt… bad.”

  I tried to emphasize each word with a shake of my head. I pointed from Carl to my door. “I… need… to… move… him.” It was stupid to think whatever these creatures were; they could understand me, so I held the shirt at his face as I tried to pull Carl off the bunk by myself.

  Somehow the creature understood and reached past me to take Carl’s arm. With much more ease he lifted Carl from the bunk, his gloved hand so large it nearly covered Carl’s face as he took the shirt from me too. He bowed his helmeted head towards the door.

  The other creatures moved out of our path at a softer growled command and I led the way, hand-over-hand by the rungs, while they strolled through the corridor behind me.