Solar Heat - Softcover

Kearney, Susan

3.46

117 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765358441 ISBN 13: 9780765358448

Publisher: Tor Paranormal Romance, 2008

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Is she an indispensable ally or his worst enemy?

When Intersolar Mining entrepreneur Derrek Archer rescues Azsla from her emergency sleeping pod, he’s confounded by his desire for her. A desire so irresistible, Derrek wonders if he’s been drugged... or worse.

Is she better off with him or without him?

Azsla’s attracted to the sexy asteroid miner, but she fears getting close to Derrek might compromise her mission--and reveal that she’s an enemy spy. Her facade hides a complex and powerful woman, capable of enslaving Derrek and destroying everything he holds dear.

With a cataclysm of deadly proportions looming, Derrek and Azsla must overcome their distrust, suspicion and opposing loyalties. But while uniting forces might save a planet, working together might tear them apart or bring them together. Forever.

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About the Author:

Susan Kearney used to set herself on fire four times a day. Now a USA Today bestselling author, she does something really hot—she writes romance. She can apply the old rule of "write what you know" and never run out of ideas for characters and plots. An All-American and professional diver, expert in martial arts, sailor, real estate broker and owner of a barter business as well as women's fitness and three hair salons, she has enough material for a lifetime.

Kearney, a native of New Jersey, resides in a suburb of Tampa with her husband, kids, and Boston Terrier.

Chapter 1
Talk about unlucky missions. Everything that could go wrong had. One moment Azsla and her crew of four “fugitive” slaves had been on course for Zor, the next the starboard stabilizer had malfunctioned, damaging the hull. The spaceship had jolted, and engine failure had turned their systems inside out, and slammed her crew into unconsciousness. The cosmic whammy had dealt them one hell of a beating, and she thanked Holy Vigo for the lifelong supply of salt that had given her strength and enabled her to remain alert.
The ship was currently powerless and drifting toward the portal that was supposed to have transported them to Zor and freedom. The lights flickered. With the snap of a toggle, Azsla cut the blaring alarm. She didn’t need a news flash to know that unless she altered her damaged ship’s course, the forces sucking them into the black maw would squash them flatter than a neutron particle.
By now, the backup system should have come on line automatically. Azsla initiated emergency procedures and flipped open the auxiliary engine panel. Twisting the manual override, she thrust the handle to starboard. But the reboot mechanism was also on the fritz. When no lights or controls lit up, licks of alarm shot down Azsla’s back. Mother of Salt—a double cosmic whammy.
Keep it together. She’d drilled for emergency situations. Only this was no drill. They were in trouble. Bad trouble. And fear ignited in the pit of her gut like a retro-rocket on nitro.
She checked her watch, then estimated the triple threat of time, distance, and mass. At the inescapable result—certain death—her scalp broke into a sweat. As a First of Rama, Azsla had been entitled to a life of privilege and all the strength-building salt she could swallow. But what should have been a life of luxury on Rama had been destroyed by a slave rebellion that had led to hundreds of thousands of slaves escaping from Rama to Zor, a planet in another solar system. To prevent further uprisings and retaliation from the slaves, she’d agreed to go to Zor as a spy. She’d always known her mission would require sacrifice and she’d accepted the danger of pretending to be an underfirst, a lowly slave, in order to assess what kind of weapons Zor was developing against Rama. But to succeed, she had to get to Zor.
Right now, that didn’t seem likely. Or even possible. She glanced around at her still unconscious crew. She’d always thought she’d understood the risk of covert operations. When her superiors had cooked up this mission, she’d volunteered. The decision hadn’t been a hard one. Fifteen years ago when she’d been in her early teens, a slave uprising on Rama had killed her parents and ruined her home. Some 200,000 slaves had escaped her world and resettled on the planet Zor. Eventually the Firsts had regrouped and regained control, but life as Azsla had known it was over.
After losing everything, her existence had gone from street orphan to ward of the state. When the Corps offered to train her as a weapons specialist and promised her a shot at stopping any chance of another slave rebellion, they hadn’t had to ask twice. As a First she’d understood, even as a teenager, that as long as Zor offered safe haven to slaves, all Ramans stood in peril, their way of life threatened. And it had been surprisingly easy to leave behind her regimented, friendless existence where no one would miss her.
But to become an effective spy, Azsla had been asked to accomplish what no other Raman had ever done: suppress her Quait, a First’s ability to dominate. She’d accepted she might never succeed—but after years of training she had achieved the impossible. Sort of. As long as she kept her emotions in check, her Quait didn’t take over and Azsla could prevent herself from overpowering the will of her crew and outting herself. By reining herself in tight, she could now pass as one of them.
She’d never considered that engine failure might kill her in this tin can before she’d even landed on Zor.
If her crew ever sniffed out her real role, they’d sabotage the journey to Zor. Slaves might be weak, but they were fanatical. Dangerous. They placed little value on life, even their own. To find out what the Zorans were up to, Azsla had to be just as ruthless. Knowing any one of them would turn on a First to keep her away from Zor reminded her to keep up her guard. Always.
One by one, the systems went down. Getting to Zor, at this point, was secondary to staying alive. Artificial gravity failed. The air grew stale. It was already freezing cold, as if the heat hadn’t been on since liftoff three days ago. Azsla gripped the command console to maintain her position at her station and ignored the white vapor puffing from her mouth, the prickly bumps rising over her flesh, her body-racking shivers. Her unconscious crewmen floated away from their stations as the ship lost gravity and she couldn’t blow off a spark of sorrow over their plight. But during the long months of training for this mission, she’d come to know her crew, and, to her surprise, respect them. Now, she couldn’t remember when she’d stopped thinking of them as slaves and started thinking of them as people.
“Anyone awake?”
None of her crew answered, likely frozen, shocked, and possibly injured. Yet, they weren’t dead. Rak, her second in command, drew in choked breaths. Kali, the copilot and chief engineer, flailed on the ceiling, seeking leverage to alter his attitude.
Knowing she had mere moments to divert the ship, Azsla stayed put. If she couldn’t change their course, the wormhole would devour the ship, leaving nothing, not even scattered debris, to mark their passing.
“Report,” she insisted, her voice lowering an octave as if ashes filled her mouth, her cold-numbed fingers flicking the damaged control toggles, frantic to restart the engines. Surely Jadlan or Micoo in the sleepers had been jarred awake? Or had they ditched protocol, abandoned their posts, and ejected in their escape pods? Azsla had no way of knowing, not with her instruments off line, but as always, she cut her crew some slack, all too aware that none of them had her superior intellect or physical strength. After all, they were slaves.
Taking stock, she assessed their predicament with as much presence of mind as she could summon. Instant depressurization had collapsed the aft stabilizer. Her damage-weakened ship now spiraled end over end—straight toward hull-crushing forces that would terminate her mission—unless she found some miraculous way to steer clear.
Azsla ripped open the panel’s cover to examine the wiring. The reek of burning plastic singed her nostrils. Smoke filtered into the cabin and fear scratched along her skin like claws, ripping and shredding, threatening to tap out her last reserve of Quait control. Damn her crew. They should have responded by now.
Not that she was even close to normal. Her fingers trembled and she loathed her own weakness as much as that of the underfirsts who hadn’t responded to her plea for information. With her gut doing a slow spin job, she battled fresh panic.
Easy. She was beginning to hate the empty brutality of space. Not that she was bitter. Sweet Vigo, people were supposed to live on planets where they didn’t have to breathe recycled air, where every little mechanical failure wasn’t life threatening, where a stray piece of dust didn’t create lethal havoc with her ship’s systems.
Trying to buy herself a little relief from pounding panic, Azsla attempted to dial down her emotion. She cornered it, squashed it. Beat it into submission. Pretend it’s just another drill. After ten years of keeping her cool and suppressing her Quait, her spontaneous instinct to dominate should have been under control . . . yet, as the port fuel tank exploded, her natural inclinations to overpower kicked in. Hard. Every cell in her body ached to reach out and make the crew work as one. But if she reverted to instinct and used her Quait to save all their lives by forcing them to fix the ship, her crew would then learn that she wasn’t one of them. If they didn’t kill her, she would wind up returning home in defeat. Sure, mind scrubbers could erase her crew’s memories, but the Corps didn’t accept failure. Azsla would never get another shot at returning to Zor.
But the aching instinct to survive at any cost began to burn. Sizzle. Her blood boiled with the need to take charge . . . for the sake of self-preservation.
She was about to lose it and take over the will of every underfirst on board. With no time to talk herself down slowly, she popped a tranq, swallowing the pill without water. Immediately, the fire eased. The seething boil cut to a manageable simmer. Of course, later, if she lived that long, she’d pay for relying on the tranq. If her superiors ever discovered she’d resorted to artificial tactics, it would put them off—enough to shut her down, boot her from the Corps. But with the metal hull groaning, official consequences were the least of her problems.
The portal was sucking them in. Thanks to the tranq, her Quait settled and the need to dominate abated. Finally, praying to save the ship from annihilation, she struggled to route the last remaining battery power into the bow thrusters.
Her fingers manually keyed in instructions, and she regained her normal tone of voice. “Kali. What’s doing?”
Kali groaned, opened his eyes, shoved off the ceiling and buckled into the copilot’s seat. He slapped his flickering monitor. “Navigation’s a bust. Hyperdrive’s nonoperatio...

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