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down on her bunk, she didn’t think she would be able to sleep.
    Her mind wouldn’t shut down, racing over the events of the past few hours and trying to www.samhainpublishing.com
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    Lanette
    Curington
    make sense of Steve’s betrayal. She had listened as the bunk groaned beneath the Commander’s weight and he turned off the light. Some time later, she had finally fallen asleep.
    Now, as she woke, her heart thudded wildly. A sound lingered in the air, a faint echo reverberating at the edge of her consciousness. Had the Commander called out?
    She sat up, swinging her legs over the side. Strategically placed nightlights, creating a muted glow in the anteroom and cells, dispelled the darkness. She heard it again, the sound that woke her—a distant thump somewhere in the hold.
    “Commander?”
    “Yesss, I hear it. It ssseemsss Hancock completed hisss deal with the Cruciansss.”
    She dropped back onto the bunk and closed her eyes. The waiting was worse than Steve holding a Blaser on her. This time it was easy to fall back asleep. Too easy.
    The next time she woke, Phillips brought foodpacks. She shaded her eyes against the anteroom light while he keyed in a code to release the forcefield a few centimeters from the floor. By her watch it had been three hours since Steve locked them up. Phillips shoved several packs in each cell, then quickly reset the forcefield.
    “That’ll take care of you for a while,” he growled.
    “You know my father will never rest until he finds out the truth,” Leith began, but Phillips scurried out without acknowledging her, and the anteroom light went out.
    She closed her eyes again and heard the crinkle of a foodpack wrapper and then the crunch of freeze-dried food as the Commander ate. Her appetite gone, the thought of food made her sick.
    “Eat, saàloh. You need to keep up your ssstrength for the tasssksss ahead.”
    “I don’t see the point, Commander. Steve said he wasn’t going to kill us outright, but we can be sure that whatever he has planned, we won’t survive long.”
    “Where there isss life, there isss hope. A belief of humansss, I think.”
    “Yes, it’s one of our sayings. You can count on a human to have a saying for every occasion. Sometimes they contradict one another. For instance, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ Yet, we have, ‘Out of sight, out of mind’.” She rested her arm across her eyes. “Sayings are just clever words strung together. They have no meaning.”
    “‘Out of sssight, out of mind’,” he repeated thoughtfully. “It doesss not mention the heart. Sssomeone can be out of the mind for a time, but never out of the heart. Sssss, the two do not contradict at all.”
    She couldn’t find fault in his reasoning.
    “If you do not eat, saàloh , they may not give you any more food. Now you are not hungry, but if many daysss passs, you will wisssh you had the food.”
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    Starkissed
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    Steve might find it amusing to toy with them by withholding food. She set the lights on three and retrieved the packs. She punched in the code for boiling water then tore off the wrapper.
    “It’s better if you pour hot water over it and let it set a few minutes.”
    “Isss it? Our foodpacksss are meant to be eaten dry.” She heard him punch in the code. “In a warssship, ssspace isss at a premium; in a war, time isss at a premium.”
    She poured the boiling water over the piles of freeze-dried crumbs in the plastic tray, turning them into a mush-like consistency. Each section had its own flavor, and although the granules didn’t resemble what they represented, they satisfied the palate and provided essential protein, vitamins, and minerals a body needed to survive. A human body.
    “These are made for human consumption. Can you survive eating nothing but this?”
    “Yesss. My needsss are not much different than yoursss.”
    She smiled at the double entendre. She had to remember his English left something to be desired,