Snows of Aturia (The Darvel Exploratory Systems #3) Read online

  Snows of Aturia

  The Darvel Exploratory Systems

  S.J. Sanders

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Aturian Gifts of Yule

  30. Chapter 1

  31. Chapter 2

  32. Chapter 3

  33. Chapter 4

  34. Chapter 5

  Author’s Note

  Other Works by S.J. Sanders

  About the Author

  ©2021 by Samantha Sanders

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without explicit permission granted in writing from the author.

  Cover art by: Pierluigi Abbondanza

  Artist websight: abboart.com

  This book is a work of fiction intended for adult audiences only.

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter 1

  Vanessa frowned as she eyed the dress that had been packed for her. Gossamer sheer with a subtle sparkle when the finely woven fabric caught the light, it had her mother’s touch all over it.

  A pained groan escaped her as she rummaged through the bag and saw that half of her cozy sweaters and knit leggings had been replaced with similar clothes. Elegant blouses, silk skirts, and a couple of pairs of expensive slacks had been ill concealed beneath a couple of thick sweaters.

  She sighed and stuffed it all back into the bag, not caring that it was going to wrinkle. She had absolutely no intention of wearing that silly dress, or anything of the selections her mother had smuggled in.

  Damn it!

  She had told Natalie not to let her mother touch her bags while she was running last minute errands, but clearly Desiree had gotten her way, as usual, and had managed to make a few switches. Each of them entirely impractical for a writer’s retreat at the cabin she had reserved.

  The intercom overhead dinged, and she smothered a groan. She had only been awake from stasis for an hour. Who could possibly need to talk to her now?

  “…Yes?” she reluctantly answered.

  There was a pause and a throat cleared with a hint of censure before the captain’s deep voice filled the room.

  “Miss Williams,” he growled in a tight voice, “we’ve received an intergalactic comm for you from Earth.”

  Oh no.

  She squeezed her eyes closed. No wonder he sounded peeved. The starcruiser, Anointed, strictly forbade comms after leaving the Sol system. There was only one person who could have managed to get through: Desiree Williams. No one said no to her mother, as evidenced by Vanessa’s current wardrobe. She had left Earth to escape her mother’s matchmaking machinations. She was the last person Vanessa wanted to talk to on what was supposed to be her vacation, but she had played this game enough with Desiree to know that she had no real choice in the matter.

  “My apologies, Captain,” she sighed. “Go ahead and put her through.”

  “Thank you,” he replied, almost sounding sympathetic. “I’ll patch her through immediately.” He hesitated before muttering a hasty “good luck,” and then the comm clicked and his voice was replaced by a feminine shriek that made Vanessa wince.

  “Darling, thank goodness! I’ve been so worried!” her mother wailed.

  Vanessa raised an eyebrow—not that her mother could see since the comm was a direct line voice communication—and wiggled out of the wet fabric that had covered her during stasis.

  “I don’t know why you would be so worried,” Vanessa said as she stepped into a pair of warm leggings. “I know that their policy makes them send message alerts to family when we’re awakened during approach. You should have been notified immediately.”

  “Oh, that. You know I don’t trust such things! Why, anything could have happened… pirates, even!” her mother gasped, and Vanessa imagined her mother clutching her heavy ropes of pearls close to her chest as she fanned herself with her silk handkerchief. She freely rolled her eyes for a change and plucked up a beautiful deep green angora sweater and pulled it over her head. Enclosed in the softness, she was finally starting to feel warm again.

  “Mom, we both know that automated alerts would have been sent out with specific codes and evac coordinates in the case of any crisis. Pirate attack is on that list.”

  Desiree gave an unhappy harrumph. “Well, when are you planning on coming back? Six months is a long time to travel, darling. With travel time alone, you’ll be gone for a year!”

  “Yes, Mom, but we talked about this—remember? I really need a good three months to have some peace and quiet to work on my book. I have a six-month visitor visa to the human colony on the southern continent of Aturia and plan to make as much use of it as I can. I promise I will let you know as soon as I’m ready to come home.”

  “And I suppose there is no talking you out of this insanity?”

  “I am my mother’s daughter,” Vanessa quipped, knowing that it would make her mother laugh.

  Despite her tendency to be overdramatic, Desiree was well aware of her faults and acknowledged them with humor while, at the same time, not changing a single thing about them. She claimed that they gave her character, and Vanessa’s father did seem to love those same little quirks. Her mother might drive her to distraction sometimes, and hovered way too much over her only child, but Vanessa never felt any lack of love from her parents.

  “Oh, very well, since you insist.” Her mother sighed. “Cary is just going to have to wallow in misery until you get back.”

  Vanessa threw back her head and groaned. “Mother, not Cary.”

  “What’s wrong with Cary? He’s a perfectly sweet young man, good looking, and very talented. He’s rising in the vids as we speak if you would ever pull your attention away from one of the books on your datapad to pay any attention. Most importantly, he really thinks you’re exactly what he’s looking for in a wife. It really is a good match, darling.” Her voice dropped a bit. “And it’s not like you have a lot of offers as of late.”

  She meant ever since Vanessa dared to turn down her last proposal three years ago, just before turning thirty. Although she was successful with women readers on Earth and throughout the colonies, she was no longer a fresh-faced young woman of status. Although most actors belonged to the lower pleasure arts class, only those who were truly successful belonged to the greater arts and entertainment strata. Vanessa was born into it, as was Cary, which meant that they had the best arts education that money could buy.

  “Cary is nice, but he’s so boring,” Vanessa replied. “I’m actually okay being on my own. If love happens to come along, then great! But I don’t want to settle for someone who looks good on a data record but does nothing for me.”

  Her mother’s disappointed sigh was audible. “I know, Nessie,” she said, making Vanessa cringe at the pet name, “but I don’t want you to end up all alone. I won’t be here forever… and I wouldn’t mind grandbabies to spoil, since we’re being perfectly honest.”

  Nose wrinkling, Vanessa muttered the foulest curse she could think of under her breath.

  “Did you say something, Nessie?”

  “Sorry, just thinking aloud. I’ll try harder when I return, Mom. Maybe one of those matching agencies you’re always talking about. But no promises,” she interjected at her mother’s excited gasp. “I’m not going to just get hitched to whomever I’m matched with either. This has to be all or nothing.”

  “Of course, darling!” her mother trilled.

  She suspected that her mother ignored about half of what she just said, but that was a battle for another day. Glancing down at the time on her comm band, she winced. She needed to hurry and wrap this up before she delayed the shuttle.

  “Mother, I really need to go. My shuttle is departing for the surface in about forty minutes. I really can’t hold them up.”

  “Nessie, you are a Williams, dear. Not only our daughter, but well known in your own right. You know very well that they’ll wait for you without complaint.”

  No complaint that Vanessa would hear, anyway.

  “Yes, but it’s rude to keep people waiting, as you’ve often told me when we’ve had to go to social functions,” she reminded her mother cheerfully. “Have a great time preparing for the Midwinter Feast,” she added.

  “It won’t be the same without you, but I’ll try. Daddy gives his love. Comm us as soon as you’re settled,” her mother said, making kissy sounds into the comm. “Bye, darling.”

  “I will. Bye!” she assured her, nearly sagging with relief when the comm terminated.

  Running a weary hand thro
ugh her long brown hair, she glanced at the time again. She had just enough time to grab her belongings and head toward the docking bay. Scooping up her coat, she tossed it over her arm and rushed over to pick up her bag just as her comm alerted her to proceed to docking.

  The departure crew was waiting for her when she walked into the bay, the heels of her boots clicking in a sharp staccato, announcing her presence. At her punctual arrival, the tension drained out of them, and they nodded politely to her with cheerful smiles as they opened the shuttle door. She returned their smiles and ducked inside, pleased with the cheerful cherry red padded interior. She hadn’t noticed that they had followed her inside and departed for their assigned stations until the pilot’s voice greeted her through the comm system.

  “This will be a bumpy descent, so get fastened in good and tight, Miss Williams. It looks like we have a bit of weather below.”

  Vanessa sat down and strapped herself into the harness tucked discreetly into the sides of the chair as she frowned up at the comm.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s no worse than we’ve descended through before. Just some upper atmospheric winds and snow as we get lower. Once we get on the right flight path, we can head to the southern continent without a problem. Just hold tight.”

  “Okay,” she mumbled, her fingers curling around the edge of the seat.

  The rumble of the shuttle’s engine and the heavy grind outside of the docking bay opening into space nearly drowned out the voice on the comm. Going back and forth on the shuttles between starcruisers and planetside was always frightening, but there was no avoiding it. The cruisers were too large to land and take off from a planet. Old starships had once been rocketed up from earth, but now the enormous cruisers, traders, and fleetships were all built in space. Shuttles were a necessary way to travel.

  Vanessa swallowed back her nausea as the rumble around her grew louder, focusing on the voice of the pilot overhead.

  “Disembarking Anointed in five… four… three… two… one.”

  Chapter 2

  Jor’y flexed his wings as he stared out of the tall southern window of his home, his mood pensive as it had been frequently as of late. Fluffy white snow crystals drifted down from the sky, but he knew that the sedate peace wouldn’t last. The storms this winter were going to be bad. He could feel it in the marrow of his wing base.

  Perhaps more of his kind would have recognized the instinctive warning signs of bad weather if it hadn’t become fashionable to dock their wings and adapt to the “civilized” city life that had come with the arrival of humans, bringing with them the advances of the Intergalactic Union two generations ago. Their entire way of life had been changed… and not for the better, in his opinion.

  Reared by his proud grandsire in the mountains of the eastern continent, Jor’y had been raised to respect Aturian ways. Unlike many of his peers in the cities with whom he was forced to deal for business, he clung to tradition like most outer rim males of their planet. He kept his broad, feathered wings, and even the plume of fine feathers that filled out the lower length of his tail that were barely thicker than the long wispy feathers that grew from his head.

  Although his business associates and the occasional human he met did not bother to hide their contempt, he was proud of his feathers and his ability to fly as nature intended. He had still been young when he learned of the horrors his species inflicted upon themselves. He had trembled beneath his grandsire’s wing for two days after coming across a “health vid” that demonstrated how the urban Aturians were having the tiny cuticles of their infants’ tail feathers removed, and around the same time they severed the delicate, featherless wings. Body feathers were otherwise lasered off whenever they made an appearance.

  For health. That was how it was being pushed onto their people. Feathers were dirty, susceptible to pests and disease that could potentially cause wing rot, so the medics considered amputating the wings and defeathering the tails to be the most sanitary actions. In collaboration with off-worlder medics, of course. Flightless human colonists, and the few other alien visitors that they had, were frightened by Aturian wings and had been the first to call them unhygienic and a threat to community health. It was only a short hop from there to becoming uncivilized, inconsiderate—wings and feathered tails required more space and were seen as unnecessary as Aturians adopted the use of shuttles and flyers to travel.

  Jor’y sneered. Those shuttles would not do them any good in the storms that were coming. Nor would they find extra warmth with the comfort of feathers.

  He stroked a hand over the fine feathers that ran over his neck and shoulders like a collar brushing over the top of his pectorals. While it formed a thicker ring of slightly longer feathers circling his neck, those on his neck were smaller, like a fluffy down, but provided a comfortable barrier that kept him warm. From below the collar, the downy feathers thinned to show the rough purple skin that covered the rest of his body.

  He glanced down at his broad chest visible in the deep V at the front of his knee-length robe. It was vanity, but the large, muscular chest was another thing that the mutilated members of his species lacked. The females were not so aggrieved over it, but, despite the fact that they would not foul their nest with his presence as a mate, there had been more than one admiring look cast his way—and more than one jealous glare from rival males. His tail rose behind him, the long, thin feathers fanning out as he stretched them to work loose some of his annoyance.

  He was tired of the offers to pleasure join. There was nothing wrong with it. It was a method for revitalization and restoring one’s energy, even if it was addictive to some of those who were unmated. Recently, however, he had refused all offers because he wanted a mate and to breed offspring. Not to merely pass a few hours in the company of a female looking for a momentary thrill, to exchange energies. He wanted to find his a’talyna, a female compatible with his energy and heartsong.

  His ear twitched at a scuffing sound behind him, and his nostrils flared. Ah. His assistant—and friend, he had to acknowledge, even if the male annoyed him in equal portion to his skill at his work.

  “I’m going to leave now, Jor’y, before the weather worsens, unless there’s anything else you need?” the male said in a low voice.

  Jor’y glanced over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing slightly on Vi’ryk, noting the way the wings lay restless against his side.

  “A wise decision. You do not wish to be caught flying home when the weather breaks,” he rumbled, one of the claws of his toes clacking in a thoughtful beat against the stone floor.

  The movement sent the gold hoop bracers around his foot jangling, but he ignored it. It was merely an annoying nervous habit when he was restless. This weather, among other things, fueled his poor mood. He was certain that Vi’ryk was feeling similar effects since he wasn’t able to keep his wings flat at his sides. At least the male had a mate to go home to, the fortunate prick.

  “It will be a bad one, I suspect. It will likely snow us all in,” Vi’ryk murmured. “You should know that I have canceled all of your appointments for the morning.”

  Dipping his head in acknowledgment, Jor’y grunted deep in his chest, wordlessly communicating his appreciation.

  “Make sure that they are cleared for the week. This storm isn’t going anywhere soon,” he muttered.

  “You feel it that deeply?” Vi’ryk cocked his head curiously. “There is no indication on the weather system scanners.”

  He nodded and the male immediately turned his attention to the datapad in his hand. They both knew just how unreliable the scanners were. They did fine for issuing immediate alerts to the populace, but the weather on Aturia was too unpredictable for them to be dependable. He could feel it, though. It was an instinctive thing buried deep within his bones, bred into him over generations, ever since his ancestors were selected as the valmek. The duties of the valmek had been passed down to him fifteen revolutions ago when he demonstrated the instincts and aptitude for it and his own sire had welcomed retiring from the role. As such, Jor’y was the guardian of the valetik, the extended family grouping to which he belonged.