Year 2850, An’Ailorous System, Approximately 35,000 Light Years from Earth

From her position on the bridge, Captain Tanna Aldrick stared out at the derelict ship drifting in space. Small and not exactly what one would describe as sleek, it was like nothing she had ever seen before. She frowned as her pilot ran a scan against the computer’s database.

“Anything?” she asked, glancing down at the dark-haired woman seated at the console.

Ena Daas shook her head. “Nothing, Captain. It doesn’t match anything we have in our database and the markings are too worn to help us. But it definitely looks old. Five or six hundred years at least.”

Standing beside Tanna, her first officer, Malana Randrick, let out a snort of disgust. “Which means it’s probably already been stripped and gone over half a dozen times.”

Tanna nodded in agreement. Even if they cleaned all the cargo out years ago, there could still be some valuable parts they could salvage, though.

“I know it’s silly to even ask, but are there any life signs aboard?” she asked Ena.

Since there weren’t any other spacecrafts in the immediate area, Tanna didn’t think there would be anyone on board, but it was standard salvage protocol to confirm a ship was completely abandoned before taking possession of it.

From her chair behind the console, Ena pushed a few buttons, then waited for a read-out before giving Tanna a shake of her head. “Inconclusive, Captain. The sensors are picking up something faint, but there’s no way to tell what it is. It could just be a thermal battery still giving off power or a glitch in one of the computer systems.”

“Could we just bring it on board?” Malana suggested. “It’s small enough to fit in the bay.”

Tanna considered that. “I don’t want to bring it on board until we know for sure what’s on there. It could have hazardous cargo.”

“I’ll take a team and go check it out then,” Malana said.

Tanna shook her head. “You went last time. I’ll go. Have Vi and Leala meet me in the airlock.”

Without waiting for a reply, she turned and left the bridge, ducking her head under the low-hanging doorway as she did so. Once in the passageway, she headed in the direction of the airlock, her lug-soled boots clanking rhythmically on the metal floor.

Tanna had owned the salvage ship for the past five years and loved every minute of it. Not only was the business profitable, but the crew was the best any small-ship captain could want. Ena, Vi, and Leala had been with her from the beginning. The others, like Malana, had signed on over the years. But whether the women had been on board for a week or five years, she considered them all family. Work on a salvage ship was hard and dangerous, and most ships had high turnover rates when it came to the crews. However, hers was the lowest for any salvage ship she knew of, mainly because she genuinely cared about her people, and they knew it. Sure, the girls complained sometimes, but they all worked hard and none of them ever caused her any trouble.

When Tanna got to the airlock, she found Vi Newl and Leala Wester waiting for her. The women, tall, slender, and dark-haired like her, were already putting on their envirosuits and life-support packs. Five years ago, Vi and Leala had been working on a merchant ship for a captain neither were too crazy about when they had heard Tanna was looking to put together a salvage crew. Tanna liked both girls right away and had immediately hired them. A couple of years younger than Tanna, they treated her more like their big sister instead of their captain, but she didn’t mind. She thought of them as sisters, too.

Securing her long, straight dark hair back in a low ponytail, Tanna reached for her own suit, pulling it on over her snug-fitting breeches and curve-hugging tee before zipping it up. Picking up her life-support pack, or LSP as they all called it, she shrugged it onto her shoulders. The LSP provided air and kept her warm, as well as allowed her to maneuver in the weightlessness of space.

Grabbing her helmet, she looked at the other two women before putting it on. “Let’s be careful over there,” she advised. “It’s an old ship and there might be some stuff on it that we’re not used to seeing. So keep an eye on each other.”

Though Vi and Leala had taken part in hundreds of initial entries over the years, Tanna knew from their nods that they had taken her words to heart. While lucrative, salvage work could also be deadly, and she took pride in the fact that there had never been a fatal incident under her command.

Opening the airlock, they moved slowly across the space between their ship and the derelict craft. Even clipped together and tethered to the salvage ship, Tanna still got that same little queasy feeling in her stomach she always did. Some irrational part of her couldn’t help but think about what would happen if the tether lines broke and they tumbled off into space. Of course, the tether lines weren’t going to break, and even if they did, Malana would just send a shuttle to come get her and the other two women.

Even so, her paranoia didn’t stop there. As they continued to move toward the other ship, Tanna had to fight the urge to constantly keep checking her suit for tears. Every time the cold material touched her skin, she panicked for a moment, thinking she had missed a tiny hole that was even now releasing all of the warmth and pressure in her suit out into space. Which was silly, of course. The crew always inspected the suits multiple times after each use, and there was no chance the reinforced material could suddenly tear. That knowledge didn’t keep her from shivering inside her suit anyway, however. She always kept her fears to herself, though. She was the captain and her crew expected a certain level of bravado from her, after all. Of course, it didn’t help that Vi and Leala thought floating in space was the greatest thing in the world. Unlike her, they were completely comfortable with being out here.

Maneuvering by releasing little shots of pressurized air, Tanna crossed the distance between the two ships as quickly as she could. Once she and the other girls had reached the derelict craft, they immediately began looking for a way to get on board. While it didn’t take them long to find the door to the airlock, the thing was so ancient that they couldn’t get a computer signal through to the locking mechanism. After several attempts, Tanna finally decided Leala should simply cut a hole in the hull on one side of the door and open it manually by applying power from her LSP to the door actuator circuit. As Tanna had suspected, it was completely dark inside the ship, and she and the other women automatically turned on their envirosuit lights so they could see. As their beams played around, she saw they were in the cargo hold of the ship.

To her surprise, the derelict ship hadn’t been stripped at all. There were two old looking satellites in the hold, as well as dozens of containers. They were all marked with a series of numbers and letters that didn’t mean anything to her, so there was no way to tell what was in them.

Taking out her radiac, Tanna scanned the hold for radiation. If there had been anything really dangerous, the sensors on her ship would have picked it up, but she wanted to be sure. There was a little bit of reading around the satellites, but nothing significant. The containers were completely safe.

“This looks like old test equipment of some type,” Vi said from behind her.

Tanna turned to see that Vi had opened one of the containers and was looking at a collection of metal instruments. Tanna didn’t have a clue what any of it was, but it was ancient, which meant it was going to be worth some money.

Curious, Tanna made her way over to the box Vi had opened while the other girl and Leala went off to explore the control room. She had barely started investigating when Leala’s voice came through the speaker in her headset.

“Um, Captain, I think you should see this.”

Her brow furrowing at the odd tone in her engineer’s voice, Tanna immediately set down the piece of equipment she’d been holding and headed for the control room. Seeing Vi standing just inside a doorway on the opposite side of the room, she quickly made her way over to the woman.

Letting the light from her torch play about the inner room, Tanna saw that it was a joint galley and med-bay.

“What did you find?” she asked as she stepped into the room. “Something valuable?”

Leala was standing in front of a glass-enclosed container of some sort. From her vantage point, Tanna couldn’t see what was inside it, but there was a series of brightly colored blinking lights at the bottom of the unit.

The engineer turned to her with a smile. “Oh, yeah.”

Frowning at the woman’s cryptic answer, Tanna walked over to where her engineer stood, only to stare at the pod in stunned silence. Leala had wiped off the light coating of frost from the upper portion of the pod, and through the glass, Tanna saw that there was a man inside. A completely gorgeous--and from the parts she could see--very well built man who, shockingly, appeared to be in perfect health. The pod container must be some type of hypersleep chamber, she thought. She had heard of those, but no one had used them in over five-hundred years, not since the invention of the faster-than-light Tachyon drive. That meant the ship was even older than they had thought, back from the days of sub-light space travel.

The fact that the man was still alive after so long wasn’t the only thing that made him unusual. Not only was he all beautifully sculpted muscle, but he was also unusually tall as well. The hypersleep chamber was at least seven feet long and the guy did a pretty good job of filling it up. That meant he was at least six-four or six-five. At five-ten, Tanna was as tall as any man she’d ever met, and taller than some, but this guy would clearly tower over her. She let her gaze run over his broad shoulders and muscular chest appreciatively. Damn, the guy was built. The hypersleep chamber must be equipped with some type of electro-stimulation to keep him in such great shape for so long.

Her gaze went to his face. His body distracted her so much that she hadn’t really spent much time looking at his face, but as she took in his square jaw and chiseled features, she decided he had to be the most attractive man she’d ever seen. She stared at his dark-blond hair, fascinated by the color. She hadn’t seen that many people with blond hair in her life. And most of the people she had seen had artificially colored it. She had no doubt his was the real deal. All at once, she found herself wondering what color his eyes were. They had to be blue, she thought. That would match his hair perfectly.

Glancing at the other two women, Tanna saw he equally entranced them, and she watched breathlessly as Vi began to wipe more frost off the front of the glass to reveal a washboard stomach and lean hips.

“Vi, that’s enough,” Tanna ordered abruptly, pushing the other woman’s hand away when she started to move lower.

Vi frowned. “I just wanted to see if he’s built like that everywhere.”

Tanna wouldn’t have minded seeing more of him herself, especially since the only men she had seen naked in a while had been the computer-generated ones conjured up in the holo-chamber on their ship. And they definitely hadn’t looked anything like him. But ogling a man while he was in a hypersleep pod just seemed wrong.

“Try to control yourself.” She glanced at Leala. “Do you think he can be revived?”

Leala chewed on her lip as she eyed the equipment. After a moment, she shrugged. “The chamber’s really old, but everything seems to be functioning properly. Sela would probably know more, though.”

Sela Fanaday was the salvage ship’s resident bio-system engineer, but she also served as their med-tech when they needed one.

Tanna turned her gaze back to the handsome man asleep inside the pod. “Is this ship safe enough to bring on board?” she asked Leala.

The girl shrugged. “I don’t see why not, Captain. The sensors didn’t pick up any hazardous cargo and I haven’t seen anything dangerous. There’s isn’t even any fuel left.”

Still gazing at the man, Tanna flipped over to the ship’s frequency on her radio and spoke into the headset. “Malana, we’re bringing the ship aboard.”

“Did you find anything valuable?” the first officer asked.

Tanna only smiled. Oh yeah, they had definitely found something valuable.

* * * *

Dear God, he was absolutely perfect, Tanna thought as she gazed down at the sleeping man an hour later. The blanket that Sela had carefully tucked around him left his chest and shoulders exposed to her appreciative gaze, and she had to fight off the almost irresistible urge to reach out and run her hands over his smoothly sculpted muscles. How many hours a day would a guy have to work out to look like this?

After bringing his ship aboard, they had transferred his hypersleep chamber to their own med-bay so Sela could examine him, which the woman had done once she had gotten over her shock at seeing their cargo. Since no one used stasis chambers like his anymore, Sela had to do some research in the computer archives to figure out how to revive him. Following the procedure, she had found on the computer, Sela had slowly brought him out of hypersleep. Tanna had expected him to come awake right away, but the other girl told her that wasn’t how it worked. It could take hours for him to wake up. According to the med-tech, though, his vitals were strong, which was a good sign. That didn’t stop Tanna from worrying, though.

Getting her crew to focus on anything but the man laying in the med-bay had been almost impossible since then. Especially after Sela had hurried to the shuttle bay and briefed everyone in great detail about her patient and those parts of his anatomy they hadn’t seen yet. Her description had brought the rest of the crew running to the med-bay so they could look for themselves. Sela was just about to pull the blanket down for a little show-and-tell when Tanna finally pulled rank and tossed the other women out of the med-bay, sending them back down to the shuttle bay to take a closer look at his ship and the salvage it contained. Anything to distract them.

A few minutes ago, Malana had called on the ship’s intercom to let her know they had located the class and ident-number of his ship. According to the database, it had disappeared in the year 2104. Other than that, the computer didn’t know a lot about it. Or him. Malana had found some uniforms in a storage locker, though, with the name Carlisle on them. There was a shoulder patch of a flag with red and white stripes and stars in the corner on one sleeve. There was another patch underneath that, this one with the letters ISEA. A search of that acronym had turned up the name International Space Exploration Administration, an Earth-based government agency that had conducted space research in the early part of the twenty-second century. Tanna shook her head. Well, whoever he was, he was going to be in for one hell of a shock when he woke up. If he woke up.

Tanna was just wondering if she should call Sela so the other girl could check on him again, when the man’s eyelids suddenly fluttered open and she found herself gazing into the most incredible pair of blue eyes she had ever seen. She’d been right about the color, she realized a little breathlessly. And they did go perfectly with his blond hair.

He gazed up at her for a moment, and then glanced around the med-bay, confusion on his handsome face. “Where am I?” he asked slowly.

Damn, even his voice was sexy as sin. Which was surprising, considering he had just spent the last seven-hundred years in hypersleep. She would have thought it’d be more dry and raspy after so long. Apparently, Sela was damn good at her job. There should probably be a bonus in this for her.

“You’re on a salvage ship,” Tanna told him.

His brow furrowed and he looked around again. “A salvage ship? Not Space Station Eight? How did I get here?”

“We came across your ship drifting in space. You were in hypersleep,” she explained. She didn’t want to mention he had missed his space station by a couple hundred years. “Can you tell me your name?”

His frown deepened as if wondering why she was asking such an odd question. “Garrick Carlisle.”

Tanna released the breath she’d been holding. At least he knew his name. That was good. Sela had said he might have trouble remembering simple things, like who he was and where he was from since he’d been in hypersleep for so long, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case.

“How long was I out?” he asked.

Tanna chewed on her lower lip as she wondered what to say. She tried to imagine herself in his position and finding out that she had just spent the last seven-hundred years in hypersleep. No matter what she said, it was going to freak him out.

“A long time,” she finally said.

His blue eyes narrowed. “How long is a long time?”

She hesitated again. She really didn’t know what to say. But she didn’t want to lie to him. Besides, he was going to find out at some point. “Over seven-hundred years.”

His eyes went wide. “Seven-hundred years? But that would mean it’s...”

“The year 2850,” she said quietly. “Yes.”

He shook his head from side to side on the pillow. Behind him, the computer sensors beeped in warning as his heart rate increased. “That’s not possible. There’s no way I could have been in hypersleep for seven-hundred years.”

She took a step closer to the bed. “I know this must be shocking for you.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” he muttered. “I put myself in stasis expecting to wake up two years later, and wake up seven-hundred-years later instead. Shocking doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.”

Tanna’s heart ached for him. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he must be feeling. To wake up seven hundred years in the future and realize that everything he knew, everyone he cared about was gone...

She swallowed hard. “Why did you put yourself in hypersleep? Was your ship damaged?”

He shook his head in confusion. “No, of course not. It’s the standard way to make a long distance trip. I put myself in stasis a few days after leaving Mars Base.”

She had heard of the planet, of course, but she didn’t recognize the name of the base. Then again, seven-hundred years ago, a base on Mars would have been a big deal. “You said Space Station Eight. Is that where you were headed?”

He nodded. “I was going there to serve a tour as station commander and bring supplies.” He pushed himself upright. “I need to go take a look at my shuttle. I’ve got to find out what happened.”

Tanna put a gentle, but firm hand on his bare chest. Beneath her fingers, his skin was warm and solid, and she felt the play of muscles beneath it as he moved. The contact made her pulse quicken. “What you need to do right now is stay in bed and rest.”

Blue eyes lifted to meet her gaze. “I’ve been in hypersleep for seven-hundred years. The last thing I need is more rest.”

“Well, according to my med-tech you do,” she said. “If you push yourself too hard right away, you might hurt yourself. Now, lay back down.”

For a moment, Tanna thought he would argue, but to her relief, he only let out a sigh and lay back on the bed. Reluctantly taking her hand off his chest, she reached down to press the button on the personal communicator attached to her belt.

“Sela, I need you in the med-bay. Now.”

“Roger that, Captain.”

Garrick’s brow furrowed as he gazed up at her. “You’re the captain of this ship?”

“Yes.” She offered him a small smile. “I probably should have introduced myself before. I’m Tanna Aldrick.”

He opened his mouth to say something in reply, but what it was Tanna didn’t know because just then, Sela hurried into the med-bay.

“What...?” The med-tech stopped in her tracks to stare at Garrick. “You’re awake.” She glanced at Tanna. “He’s awake.”

Tanna couldn’t help but smile. “And determined to get out of bed. Which is why I asked you to come to the med-bay.” She turned her gaze back to the handsome blond man. “Garrick, this is Sela, our medical technician.”

Garrick Carlisle was even more mesmerizing now than he was when he had been sleeping, and Tanna noticed it was all Sela could do just to keep her mind on what she was doing as she checked him out. As the med-tech ran the hand-held sensor over him, Tanna automatically found herself moving closer to the bed for some reason. She couldn’t explain why; she just felt protective of him.

“Everything looks good,” Sela said, turning off the sensor and setting it down on the counter. She gave him a smile. “Actually, for a guy who’s over seven-hundred-years old, you’re in damn great shape.”

If Garrick noticed the double meaning of the words, he gave no indication. “So, does that mean I can go take a look at my shuttle now?”

“No way. You still need to rest,” Tanna said, then glanced at Sela. “Tell him that he needs to rest.”

Sela’s mouth curved into an amused smile. Probably because she was thinking Tanna was such a lousy patient herself.

“The captain’s right,” the other girl said to Garrick. “You’ve been in hypersleep for a long time and you need to let your body get used to functioning again. Besides, your shuttle isn’t going anywhere.”

Garrick didn’t look pleased to hear the med-tech back her up, Tanna noticed, but he didn’t argue.

“I’ll be back to check on you later,” Sela said to Garrick.

“Thanks, Sela,” Tanna said as the other girl turned to go, then added, “Oh, and tell the rest of the crew that I don’t want Garrick disturbed.” Once they found out he was awake, the women would be right back in the med-bay, gawking at him like a bunch of teenage girls.

The med-tech nodded. “Will do, Captain.”

Tanna looked down at Garrick. “I should be going, too. Can I trust you to stay in bed?”

The corner of his sensuous mouth edged up. “Yes Ma’am, Captain Ma’am.”

If any other man had said that to her, Tanna probably would have been insulted, but for some reason, she found herself smiling. “Okay. Then I’ll let you get some rest,” she said. “I’ll come by later.”

Rather than turn and walk out of the med-bay right away, though, Tanna stood gazing down at him for a moment. His hair had fallen over his forehead and she had an almost uncontrollable urge to reach out and brush it back. Telling herself she needed to get out of there before she did something foolish and gave in to the impulse, she told him to have a good night and left the room.

Once outside, Tanna didn’t head down the passageway immediately, however, but instead stopped to lean back against the wall. She didn’t know how it was possible that no one else had ever come upon Garrick’s ship in seven-hundred years, or even how a primitive ship like his had made it so far from Earth’s Solar System.

She did know one thing, though. Adjusting to this new time was going to be damn hard on him. A lot had changed in seven-hundred years, and he was bound to feel lost and confused. He would need help acclimating and she decided right then that she was obligated to give it to him. Obligated. Yeah right. She didn’t want to help him out of obligation; she wanted to help him because was the hottest damn guy she’d ever met.

* * * *

Garrick watched her go. He probably would do what he normally did around the opposite sex and turned on the charm for the beautiful Tanna Aldrick if he hadn’t been so preoccupied by his present situation, but right then all he could think about was the fact that he had spent the past seven-hundred years of his life in hypersleep. To say that his life had completely changed was an understatement.

The shuttle’s computer was supposed to have brought him out of hypersleep just as he was approaching Space Station Eight. Obviously, it hadn’t. He supposed there could be a dozen different reasons why the automated mechanism had failed. However, the most likely one was that the shuttle’s autopilot had malfunctioned on the way out to the station and sent him on the wrong trajectory. When the shuttle’s computer had failed to pick up the space station’s navigation signal, it would have redirected all power to the hypersleep chamber, striving to keep him alive until rescue came. It was disconcerting that the International Space Exploration Administration, the organization he worked for, had never found him. How could he have gotten that far off course? Trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong would just be a waste of time now, of course, but he had to know anyway. He would check the shuttle’s computer as soon as he had a chance. If it were intact, it would most likely tell him what had gone wrong.

His brow furrowed as an idea suddenly occurred to him. What was he going to do once he figured out what had happened? It wasn’t as if he could report it to the ISEA. Hell, he didn’t even know if the ISEA was still around. After seven-hundred years, it was probably gone. Just like everything else he’d ever known.

He swallowed hard as he thought of his family--his parents who had been so proud of him for his promotion to commander, and his younger sister who wanted to follow in his footsteps, and had been accepted into the space academy. He thought of his aunts, uncles, and cousins. All of them would have been devastated. His friends, too. When he disappeared, his ship would have been added to the long list of missing spacecrafts. There would have been a formal ceremony honoring him, but no one would have ever really known for certain what had happened to him. It was beyond painful imagining all the anguish his family and friends must have gone through. If he had just run one more diagnostic of the ship’s computers before putting himself in hypersleep, then maybe... He shook his head. He had run half a dozen checks before he’d left Mars Base and everything had been in working order. Another diagnostic wouldn’t have shown him anything different.

Garrick ran his hand through his hair. So, what did he do now? He had no money, nowhere to live, nothing but an old, decrepit shuttle. And if he were right about the ISEA being gone, then he had no job, either. He had nothing and no one. Except for the beautiful captain of the ship who had rescued him, he reminded himself. For some reason, that gave him a sort of consolation.