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

“So now what?” Dylan wants to know.


“Marie’s doing well, right?” Shanley nods, and Dylan continues.


“That’s all you really came back here for, isn’t it? Make sure she


has the medicine, make sure she’ll have the baby. We can leave now,


“What if you’re infected?” Shanley


asks, his quiet voice low in the empty corridor.


Shanley stops and looks at us, at our hands


laced together, at the fear I know he sees in our eyes. “You


mightbe,” he says softly. “Either of you two might be


carrying the virus. What happens when we go back to the carrier?


When we head back into the station?” Dixon’s station isn’t as large


as the S410 but it easily houses almost a hundred people at any


given time, technicians and pilots, there’s always a ship docking


in the bay, always a crew taking off to map another sector. If


we’re carrying something that manages to get through the


decontamination procedures—if it doesn’t even register on the


Chapter 110