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  Alessandra Wyt has been hooked to computers for the majority of her tenure in the Alliance for her talented intuition, but when an opportunity for reassignment to the Sector Guard came up, she jumped at the chance, so to speak. With her mind unable to handle space travel, she is shipped unconscious across the galaxy. The odds of her ship being damaged and her pod being ejected are astronomical, but she does not have time to do the math on her way down to the uninhabited world beneath her.

  Waking in the arms of a strange man is also something she hadn't counted on, but Effin is just the person to rescue the damsel and fight off the predators who see her as an easy snack. With his skills as a hunter, he can find her in the dark, and damned if she doesn't want him to.

  Effin is sure of only one thing, if his woman is headed to the Sector Guard, then he is signing up.

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  Wyt and Wild

  Copyright © 2010 Viola Grace

  ISBN: 978-1-55487-507-8

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Devine Destinies

  An imprint of eXtasy Books

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  Wyt and Wild

  Sector Guard Book 7

  By

  Viola Grace

  Chapter One

  The whirring of gears and motors filled the air as the extraction machinery swung into position.

  “I will be fine.” It was the ninth time she had reassured her handler, Stonor. Alessandra Wyt had been the controller for the relay station for four years and now that post was at an end.

  Once they connected the new relay, she would be free to start her new position as the logistical head of the Sector Guard, Morganti team. The new relay was hooked up and their minds were colliding in a number of small tasks within Echo Station 9. Allie slowly pulled her mind back until she was only occupying her own mind once again.

  “Replacement is in position and has acquired control of the station. Removal of previous relay may commence at any time.” A voice that was no longer Allie’s started to emanate from the speakers. The new relay was ready, in his tank and completely wired to be one with the small station.

  Stonor and the new relay worked to enter the codes that would free her and in a rush of oxygenated liquid and a riot of wires, Allie was back in the physical world and puking the fluid out of her lungs.

  They had drawn her out sunny side down, her mouth and lungs cleared rapidly, allowing her the first draw of air she had enjoyed in four years. Enjoy was probably the wrong word to think of as the harsh, dry air whooshed into her lungs. Sharp ribbons of pain were par for the course.

  They disconnected the main leads and hooked her vital functions up to the mobile care unit that they had prepared. Stonor supervised the technicians who were listening to his orders raptly, never having seen the decanting of a relay before.

  The majority of her ports were on her back and the rear of her skull. They felt icy in the open air as she was wheeled through the halls and carried over doorsills. Allie looked down at her hands where they fell next to her face and started to open and close them. She couldn’t have swatted a dead fly with the strength she had.

  Four years of only minimal motions had turned her muscle tone into an empty space saver on her body. She only had engaged in enough for basic maintenance. Now that she was out, she knew it was a mistake.

  Hindsight was always 20/20.

  The small medical bay was a welcomed sight. The reflection in the plexi of her case let her see the doors that she had been dreading until this moment. They had never looked better.

  It was time to start the next portion of her life and that next portion could not be enacted in Echo Station 9. She was headed to Morganti and was proud to have accepted the position of logistical head of the Sector Guard base.

  If only they could get her body up and running in time to catch the window for transport, all would go smoothly. Allie braced herself for two weeks of hell.

  “Relay Wyt, are you ready for the removal of your main nutritional ports?” The doctor was nervous—it showed in her voice.

  “Yes, and don’t worry, the worst thing you can do is kill me, as I am currently between assignments, there wouldn’t even be an inquiry.” Her attempt at humour had fallen a little flat, but the medical team got to work. Local anaesthetic was used on her ports, her system far too delicately balanced for any tampering until she was healed. Then she simply needed to slough a layer of skin and start digesting on her own. Oh what joy to be a relay in recovery.

  She settled in to the padded bench inside her tube, the facial surround supporting her as she breathed calmly through the surgeries. It was going to be a long road to mobility and it was going to start with pain.

  “Push you feeble cow, push!” Stonor was not going to win for motivational coach of the year, but he did make her work a little harder on the exercise equipment.

  Allie flexed her legs with a groan and pushed upward. The weight on her shoulders bit in and she hissed, but kept going until her legs were straight.

  He took over the weights, locking them in place, then helped her into the braces and crutches that she had been given.

  “Am I getting any better?”

  “By leaps and bounds, Allie. A few more weeks of this kind of workout and you will be almost a human again. Much less like a jellyfish.” He cackled at his own joke, his beak clacking in surprisingly clear speech.

  “I should never have mentioned those things. It figures that you would go and look them up.” She moved slowly through the halls, each step precious. Only a week earlier she had been confined to her bed, now she was up and reasonably mobile, for a jellyfish.

  Allie didn’t have time to enjoy a full recovery. The Guard Station on Morganti had already called to hurry her arrival. She was going to have to be launched in a pod.

  It wasn’t her favourite way to travel, but it was safe.

  Lashed into a pod filled with life support and a hardening gel to keep her immobile, she would be loaded into a rocket-styled ship and blasted toward Morganti. When she arrived in their system, her rocket would put out a signal and they would pick her up. Simple.

  Dear God, I hope it’s simple. Her confidence was not high, but then her senses were still all out of whack. Her sight was a little blurry, but her hearing was so keen, the smallest sound made her jump. She didn’t even want to think about the new layer of skin beneath her fitted jumpsuit. A light blast of air on a fingertip and she was all goosebumps. It was maddening.

  “Have you packed for your trip?” Stonor was keeping to her slow pace even though it was frustrating.

  “Since I only own body suits, it took nine minutes. I only need food and shelter to do my job.” She could feel the blood rush to her face as she tried to increase her speed. Her legs were working, but her nerves were
too used to sending the commands to a tangle of wires and switches, not her muscles. She was relearning the art of walking one step at a time and it was fighting her all the way.

  “There is more to life than existence, Allie. You know that. All of those coded priority messages that you processed, how many were communique’s between husband and wife?”

  “Over half.” She had kept the names and dates to herself, but talking to Stonor had been her only solace for a long time. He was bound by the same laws of secrecy as she was, but they could talk about the bulk of the messages without detail.

  “Then there is your answer, only the highest classified members of the Alliance work through relays and they don’t even know it. They use it to keep connected with others. You need someone to connect to yourself.”

  “There will be time for that when the Alliance orders it. Until then, my work is my life. Literally. Look at me—all pale and pasty with skin that can’t stand contact. This isn’t the right time for me.” She quickly squashed the flare of depression. The last thing she needed was to be detained on a psych issue.

  “I will miss you when you go. No other relay ever bothered to involve themselves in my personal life before you and Palari is the best wife I could have asked for.”

  “Well, you are not the best husband in the world, but I suppose she did all right.” With nothing else to occupy her emotional mind, Allie had long ago decided to use the people around her for matchmaking purposes. It had taken several thousand eavesdropped conversations, but she had finally found a wife for Stonor and had her transferred to Echo 9.

  Palari was kind but stern and savagely devoted to family. Right now, she was watching their egg in the incubation unit that had been brought to the station for her. She was going to have kids and Stonor would just have to play along if he wanted his dinner on time. Not that he minded. He needed a woman to verbally kick his ass. It was why he and Allie got along so well. She had chosen a woman for him that had a wit similar to her own.

  Rigged into the station and floating in the nutri-bath had given her a lot of time to think, so as soon as the post to the Sector Guard came up, she was all over it. The Guard loved their commander, so Allie had already come up with a counteroffer. She just hoped that they went for it, or she could have a very uncomfortable takeover. Period.

  * * * *

  Hundreds of thousands of miles away, a chunk of a broken hulk of a ship broke off and began floating toward the nearest gravitational body. It was drifting slowly and would have posed no danger to anyone, burning up on entry into the first atmosphere it encountered if something didn’t fly into its path. What were the odds?

  Chapter Two

  Alarms, whistles and buzzers were going off and Alessandra was stuck in position. No matter what happened to the ship she was in, she would remain immobile until someone got her out. She didn’t want to die in pink Jell-o.

  Once the initial impact hit, it was two hours before she felt the tug of gravity on her pinned limbs. Her little ship was going down.

  The release of the distress beacon relaxed her somewhat as the viewer showed her a small planetoid with an atmospheric reading. She wouldn’t die from lack of oxygen and carbon dioxide, but that left an awful lot of dangers for her to face before someone came to her rescue, if they managed to find her at all.

  Space was huge after all.

  The roar of entry into the atmosphere had her shivering in her gelatine. Whatever had struck the ship had made it fly a little wonky, the rotation into the atmosphere causing waves of disorientation to flow through Allie. The only thing going through her mind was the impact. It was the chant of survival that went through her mind that kept her going. Not me, not now. Not me, not now.

  * * * *

  Effin Nywyn looked up as the sonic boom shook the air. He had been hoping for a quiet time on the planetoid for hunting and meditation. It was just his luck to have company.

  He looked up to see the ship wobble badly and head deep into the forest. “Hells.”

  His oath as a physician kicked in and he hopped on his short-range skimmer. The smoke cloud was mercifully short, meaning that either the ship was out of fuel to burn or it had immolated anyone onboard. Either way, his work would be short. The speed of the crash was bound to have killed the inhabitant, but he had to satisfy his own urge to make sure there were no survivors.

  The heavy warmth of the forest engulfed him as he followed the trail of the beacon in the ship. That it was working was good if the odds were twisted and there was indeed a survivor. Someone else would come to claim the body. He needn’t worry about burial.

  The column of metal had shredded on contact with the ground, peeling open like ripe fruit. He landed his skimmer outside of the debris zone and walked in.

  He could feel something in the wreckage, something alive. Sighing, he opened his mind and connected to the living being with a jump of surprise. She was alive and whole, but trapped in some way.

  Moving faster than he ever had in his life, Effin crossed through the debris and entered the shadowed expanse of the interior. The flare of a bright mind called to him from a dark corner. When he saw why she was trapped, he laughed in relief. “A gel bed. Just wait, lady. I will have you out of there in a few moments.”

  She didn’t respond, but dark blue eyes stared out of a face framed by rich brown hair. The breathing mask on her face framed full lips and a tilted little nose. She was cute and he recognized her species.

  It would have been hard not to recognize a Terran when he saw one. His cousin, Altius, had married one a few years earlier and Thea was a lovely addition to the family.

  Her eyes seemed a little dazed, but with the shock of the crash, he would be surprised if she had survived unscathed.

  His fingers moved over the switches and toggles, rerouting and overriding the commands until the gel dissolved and its contents were free if moving somewhat sluggishly.

  “Come on, Beauty. Time to get away from the wreckage.” Lifting her was easy. Her body indicated she would be quite tall, but there was nothing to her. No real muscle mass and barely any curves.

  * * * *

  A touch on her mind stiffened her spine until she saw the owner of the thoughts that she linked to. A Wyoran. No wonder her mind attached to his so easily. His was trained for this type of thing.

  He was dressed like a wild man—leather leggings, black boots, no shirt to cover his auburn skin and his red-black hair fell heavily to his waist in a silky cloud. His eyes were dark amber, slitted and smiling into the tube where she lay. His mouth wide with a grin and his nose flat and vaguely feline with a jaw that made her want to stroke it.

  That one instinct froze her in her tracks. She was on an assignment to a new world, not flying around to get her rocks off.

  He seemed to know his way around a gel bed though and soon had the goo dissolving back to whence it came. He lifted her in arms that supported her easily and carried her out of the wreck. One thing stuck in her mind as he murmured to her in the skimmer as he piloted them away from the crash. He called her Beauty.

  The part of her that wasn’t flattered was horrified that she was so vulnerable. Her muscles were quivering with the shock of the crash and her mind still couldn’t believe that she had made it out alive. She had survived falling through air and space, to land, pinned in her safety feature. If this guy hadn’t come along, she would have been dead in six days. A slow, lingering death. The very thought shook her up more than she wanted to admit. She wasn’t cut out to be alone. It was why she used her speakers to communicate with others on Echo 9. She had to have people around her. Dying alone was a terror that she had only touched the surface of.

  “What is your name, Beauty?” His voice cut through her fear and depression. He had probably felt it and was trying to shut her up mentally.

  “Alessandra Wyt. Communications Specialist in route to Morganti and you are?” The etiquette drilled into her in basic training kicked in with soothing familiarity.

&nbs
p; “Doctor Effin Nywyn of Wyora. I was here on a little vacation when I saw your ship. It’s a good thing that you have a broadcasting mind. I was able to find you easily.”

  “Thank you for that. Dying in that ship was not my idea of a fun way to spend a week.”

  His mouth twisted, “You would not have had a week. Your bed was damaged, all nutrients had ceased and it was feeding you external air. Three days would have sealed your fate, Beauty.” His hands moved on the controls with calm surety. “I have medical supplies on my ship. We should have you right as rain in no time.”

  She laughed weakly. “That is a Terran phrase. Right as rain.”

  “I know. My cousin’s wife uses it often.” He chuckled. “And a few other phrases that she has told me are quite inappropriate to use in mixed company.”

  Allie smiled. One thing that they had all learned early on was that swearing in their original Terran language did not translate into Alliance Common. Therefore, they all swore more than they ever had at home just to get a little bit of Earth wherever they went. A bad habit but occasionally a fun one.

  “Why are you so frail?”

  “What?”

  “Based on your body’s condition, I would guess that you have spent the last three years in a tank.”

  “Four actually. I am a communications specialist. Sometimes we get assigned to tanks.” She tried to lift her hand, but her muscles only twitched uncontrollably. “I had more control than this before I left though.”

  “Adrenaline. You will need to flush it from your system before you get your muscle control back. Have patience, Beauty. You will be all right.”

  His tone soothed her, rocked her into a state of calm. An unnatural state of calm. He was touching her mind! “Stop it, Effin. I know you Wyorans link together for mental stability, but it isn’t necessary. I will be fine.”