Search for Tomorrow: The Fringes of the Universe, #2

By Cassandra Logan

On the fringes of the universe...

Their memories taken, Jutel and the crew of The Flower, search for answers.

Left for dead Kisho is just happy the woman he loves is still alive.

Separated by circumstance they fight to discover the truth only to end up in the middle of a fight they all might not survive.

...anything can happen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cassandra Logan
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393288077

Book preview

Search for Tomorrow

The Fringes of the Universe

Book Two

Cassandra Logan

Search for Tomorrow

The Fringes of the Universe

By Cassandra Logan

Copyright 2017

Search for Tomorrow is a work of fiction.

Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written consent from the author and/or publisher, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or review.

Nians are a peaceful race, even before the virus that decimated their female population hit they avoided any kind of violent contact. After the virus, things didn’t change. Their defensive technologies were like no other race in the universe. Everything they created was meant to incapacitate, not harm. They took pride in that ability.

With all their desire to do no harm, it surprised other planets that Nian culture was divided up into two career paths, the Creative and Warrior paths. Most careers fell under creative, artists, writers, scientists, these were the choices of most adult Nians. The second path, though, didn’t attract as few members as others would think. Many Nians were born with an innate desire to protect those weaker than them, and those were the ones that dedicated their lives to becoming warriors.

Jutel didn’t have a desire to paint or write, she’d never excelled at science. What she did have, though, was an all-encompassing desire to protect. She excelled in her training and was accepted to go on the first diplomatic trip off of Nian in over one hundred years. Being out in the galaxy opened her eyes to injustices she had no idea still existed.

Nian had virtually no crime and an abundance of people able to fight what little there was. All she had to look forward to on her homeworld was training in skills she’d rarely if ever, would be able to use. She was by no means the most skilled warrior on her planet, she was far too young to have attained that rank, but she had already reached the level below expert in all fields of training.

Instead of spending tens of thousands of hours practicing and training to reach the top of her field, fed from her small taste of the outside universe, Jutel decided to leave her planet. With Mal’s knowledge and assistance, she decided she was going to get her planet back into the United Universe Aid Coalition, the largest and greatest government known the galaxy over for helping those in need.

It was a lofty goal and would have normally been pursued by an entire delegation, but it wasn’t a priority for the Nian council. Refusing to be deterred Jutel knew that if she were able to obtain membership reinstatement, they’d accept it. They’d have to, right?

Ten years later, all of Jutel’s dreams had been dashed. The UUAC had been nothing like she’d imagined, and her view of the universe was irreversibly altered. Jaded and depressed, she had no idea what she wanted with her life. Nian seemed too pure for someone like her, so she commissioned a ship and left her homeworld to try and find meaning and purpose in her life.

Time is supposed to heal all wounds, maybe if she spent enough time searching she’d find the hope she had before.

Disclaimer- This story has some mild language.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Author's Note

About the Author

Other Books by Cassandra Logan

Chapter One

Jutel

Standing barely five feet, three inches meant that people tended to underestimate Jutel. With her dark, almost black, blue skin, she didn’t look like a typical Nian, which was right in her eyes since she rarely acted like one. She wasn’t artistic by any stretch of the imagination, and she had killed a lot. She was working on it, though, and it certainly wasn’t something she was proud of, which was why she was in her current predicament. Instead of living out her days on Nian, continuing to excel in her warrior training, but letting it languish on a planet with almost no crime, she was out in the universe.

Making matters worse, she wasn’t alone. Mal, very much your typical Nian pale blue skin and all, he refused to let her be on her own. The fact that he was working through his own problems, problems she felt she’d caused, just made things worse. Bill, on the other hand, was an Olovian and didn’t have as many hang-ups as Nians. His green skin and spiky green hair did nothing to hide how young he was, but when he spoke, you realized he was something more.

Somehow she’d inspired them to get on a ship with her and explore the galaxy. Not that she’d asked them to follow her, the exact opposite actually, but they both chose to ignore her, and now they were in this mess together.

Missing six weeks of your life isn’t a huge deal in the grand scheme of things. The average lifespan of a Nian was well over one hundred and fifty years, what was six weeks when you looked at things that way? The problem was, six weeks of memories gone followed by an Andovian stranger that turns into a very large wolf appearing on your ship while it’s trying to explode around you and your bio-implants are trying to kill you means that those six weeks were probably pretty important.

The ship will self-destruct in five minutes.

Shit.

Working on one side of the cockpit, Jutel tried to figure out what the fuck was happening to her baby. Not ten minutes after they’d jumped into hyperspace, on their way to the closest Nian communications relay, everything started going wrong. Lights were blinking, sirens screaming, and now her ship was minutes away from blowing up.

Why do we even have that feature? Who blows up their own fucking ship? Mal’s eyes were wide, and his voice had reached octaves too high to be attractive on a man.

I think it’s supposed to be a countermeasure in case of a worst-case scenario event. Where it would be better to be dead than alive. I could be wrong, though. Bill was keeping his cool surprisingly well for a psychic that had lost his ability to see the future.

Will, both of you, shut the fuck up! I can’t concentrate. Raiden was probably the most shaken out of all of them. This wasn’t surprising considering he was the only one completely out of his element. He had no idea why he was on the ship or even who the rest of them were. He was still doing a pretty good job helping Jutel out. Apparently, he was a computer god on his planet, his words.

Working in tandem, their fingers flew across the panels as they tried to stop the ship from killing them. The tense silence was only broken when the ship gave them an update on their demise.

About to order them all to the escape pods, a last-ditch effort that had only a slim chance of working since they were in hyperspace, the countdown stopped. Not out of the woods yet, Jutel and Raiden continued to work.

Navigation and life support were down, as well as several other more minor systems. Since they were in hyperspace, basically flying blind, that was their next priority. Current oxygen levels were fine, and the artificial gravity was still intact, so life support was set aside for now.

Sweat began to bead on Jutel’s upper lip, and a growl was coming from Raiden that just made things worse. If he lost control, they’d be fucked. A wolf on a space ship was fine, but a wolf on a space ship who was panicking was nearing worst-case scenario territory.

As if sensing that, Mal and Bill, neither of which were much help on the technical side of things, slowly backed out of the room. The cockpit was small, so with them gone, it opened up some much-needed space. Jutel and Raiden were still working on the same panels, but neither felt as cramped, and that helped calm Raiden’s wolf down.

Unsure how long they worked, Jutel pushed her limited knowledge to the max. Raiden clearly knew more than she did, but he didn’t know Nian systems. Together, under the pressure of imminent death, they reached a point where they began to work in semi-perfect harmony. By some miracle, they located the source of their problems, a virus implanted on their internal network, a small bit of code that had wormed its way throughout the ship.

This time when Raiden growled Jutel knew it wasn’t because he was about to lose control. Who attacked a ship this way? She had some ideas, but with the last six weeks of her life missing, she had no motive. Who had they pissed off?

Using a combination of Nian tech and Raiden’s skills, they found a way to quarantine the virus. Setting up a tracker to go through each line of code and find and delete what was attacking them, Jutel let out a deep breath and started to relax. Raiden’s reaction was a bit more heated.

Neither of them had been sitting in either of the cockpits captain’s seats so when Raiden grabbed her arms he didn’t have far to pull her before their lips connected. It had been well over a year since Jutel’s last intimate encounter. It was her longest dry spell ever. When Raiden’s lips hit hers, she should have melted into him. He was strong and attractive, clearly smart though probably younger than she first thought, there was no reason why she couldn’t enjoy a passionate interlude with him.

Instead, as his tongue ran along the seam of her lips, and his hard body pressed into hers, she felt the urge to heave. Her skin grew clammy, and bile crept up her throat. She pushed him back and doubled over gagging.

What the hell?

Shaking from her body’s violent reaction to the unexpected kiss Jutel, still bent over, tugged on her ear to activate her bio-implants. Static filled her vision, and a blinding headache pounded at her skull. The pain was so great she pushed the palms of her hands into her eyes. A scream tried to force itself past her lips, but she lost consciousness before it could.

Mal’s Notes

SIX