Free Burning Love [Flights of Fancy 1] (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) by Melodee Aaron

weapons trained on the opening as the rest of the team moved forward.
    When everyone was ready, Spence stepped out and kicked the door open. The five Marines swarmed inside like angry hornets, weapons searching for a target. The room was empty, but several chairs lie overturned, as was the table at the end of the couch.
    A soft moaning made all the warriors spin to face the bedroom, and a weak voice called out.
    "Major?" It was Debi Harvey.
    Spence rushed to the room and found her leaning against the foot of the bed, blood from a gash above her left eye covering her face. "Medic!"
    The other Marines came in and searched the room as the corpsman tended to the wounded woman. The medic smiled. "She's OK, just a cut and a little dazed is all."
    Spence asked the inevitable question. "Debi, where's Star?"
    She wiped at her face with the cloth the medic gave her. "They took her."
    "Who?"
    "I think they were Rangor." Debi suddenly smiled. "And I scanned them." She held up her data recorder.
    Spence shook his head. He didn't care about scans, only getting to Star. "Where were they taking her? Did they say?"
    "No, but this is important." She played with her scanner for a moment. "Major, the only difference in the Hendri and the Rangor is that thing in their brain." She smiled again. "They are the same species."
    He still didn't care. "Can she be moved?" The medic nodded his affirmation. "Sergeant!"
    Kyle came to stand beside him. "Sir."
    "Get these people to the landing craft, and try to contact Daedalus . Wait for us if you feel safe doing so, but get these people to the ship. Is that clear?"
    "Us, Sir?"
    "Yes. I'm going after Star."
    "I'll come with you, Major."
    "Negative, Sergeant. You get these people to the ship."
    "Yes, Sir."
    "If anyone or anything not me or Star approaches you, kill it."
    "Understood, Major."
     
    * * * *
     
    The wail of the alarms still rang in her ears even though Elsa gave the order to silence them. At some point, the violent buffeting of Daedalus damaged the control circuits, and the computers couldn't send the commands to stop the racket. The fail-safe systems decided it was better to let them scream.
    The tactical officer worked furiously at her console. "Deflectors holding at 61%. Harbison Field at red."
    The Harbison Field worked not by absorbing or deflecting energy, but by moving it around. As energy of any kind poured into the Field, the generators converted it into heat, and the heat was then pumped to cooler places where it radiated away safely to space. If the Field couldn't radiate the energy, the heat was stored in the Field generators. Some point inside the generator would get hotter and hotter.
    But something attacked Daedalus now by pouring heat into the field from all directions at once. There was no place to get rid of the energy, so the generators stored it deep in their complex workings. As the energy stored built to ever higher levels, the Field changed color. Starting the same as the blackness of cold space, the Field would change colors, moving up through the visible spectrum through red, to yellow, to blue, to violet. When it reached white, the Field would fail, releasing all the stored energy at once, both outwards, away from the ship, and inwards. When a Harbison Field failed, ships died a burning, flaming death at temperatures far hotter than any star.
    "Time to Field overload?"
    "Two hours, forty-two minutes, Captain."
    Elsa turned to the science officer. "Any luck?"
    "No, Ma'am. I can't get through the interference to scan the planet."
    Else nodded as she looked to the communications officer. "What about contact?"
    "Still no response to our hails on any frequency, Captain."
    The ship rocked again as the Field tried to radiate energy and the pulse acted like a thruster. The artificial gravity reacted and compensated.
    Commander Harris looked up from his damage control console. "Do you want my recommendation?"
    "No." Elsa took a deep breath as she glanced at the status board. Half