Neal James is a space station navigator whose lover, Dylan Teague, left him for a starmapping mission. But when Dylan radios in a distant signal one night, Neal discovers that he hasn't managed to put the relationship behind him in the two months they've been apart. When he's one of the crew members sent to investigate the signal, he finds that his ex-lover feels the same.<br><br>The source of the signal is a lost colony ship. Only a handful of the original colonists remain, survivors of a deadly disease that killed most of their fellow shipmates twenty years ago. To keep the threat of disease to a minimum, the colony adheres to strict laws, including the prohibition of same-sex relationships.<br><br>When the same fatal virus seems to appear again, Neal and Dylan find themselves in the midst of an irrational panic and hate that threatens to destroy everything the colonists have worked so hard to attain.

Operation Starseed

Leaning over his shoulder, I point at the decontamination


procedures and add, “This part strikes me as odd.”


Dylan laughs. “Only that part? What about


the rest of it? They’re going to open a comm-link? What the fuck?”


I see the shine in his eyes when he glances up at me and I know


what he’s thinking before he even speaks. “And you’re still


sticking to this relay theory, aren’t you?”


I shrug—I don’t want to tell him that I’ve


been thinking maybe, just maybe, there’s a slim chance someone


might be out there. It’s improbable as hell and I don’t want to get


his hopes up, I know he wants this to be something big, and if I


tell him he might be right, the S410 mightbe a colony ship,


part of Operation Starseed, and one or two people mightstill be alive onboard, sending us those signals, maybe,


then he’ll get carried away with the idea and I don’t want him


crushed when it turns out Dixon’s right after all and it is


Chapter 22