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

If we have to stay longer, we’ll stay in the Semper Fi, I don’t


care how that looks. He’s mine.Hell, I’ll sleep in their damn


quarantine lab if I have to, just to be with him.


Ellington points at the window and the three


of us crowd together to peer inside. A woman lies on a bed in the


center of the room, the skin around her closed eyes as dark as


bruises in her pale face and her hair like seaweed spread out on


the white pillow. She’s hooked up to a monitor of some sort, which


beeps quietly beside the bed, and on the other side is a


straight-backed chair where Conlan sits, his elbows on his knees,


his chin in his hands, watching her, waiting. Shanley and another


man hover by the monitor, talking low. Conlan doesn’t seem to


notice them—he just stares at the woman, nothing else exists for


him. “Marie,” Ellington whispers behind us.


“She doesn’t look too good,” Dylan


I stop him before he can tap on the glass.


Chapter 49