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

I don’t know how long we stand there in the


dark, mere yards from freedom and trapped because Conlan’s not


alone. Ellington must have come running at the alarm, Conlan didn’t


silence it fast enough, and Dylan’s right, now what? Now they


fix the breaker and the lights come back on and they find us here,


just waiting to be led back to our cells. Separate cells.I’m


not going to let them do that to us again.


Nudging Dylan, I start to easy away, down


the corridor, back the way we came. Maybe to one of the cells, I


don’t know, but I don’t want to be standing here when Ellington’s


tinkering brings the lights back up. Dylan gets my drift and


unwraps his arms from around my waist, takes my elbow, starts to


lead me away from the scant light of the flash, when Tobin sighs


lustily. They’re so damn close, I think, amazed. If not for


the cover of darkness, we’d have been seen already, we wouldn’t be


I could tell Dylan what that fucker Tobin


Chapter 91