Chapter 1

Captain Esmerelda Petersen stared out the porthole glass, watching for one of the occasional bursts of light that came from the event horizon of the singularity. That was about as exciting as a day on the United Expeditionary Forces science station Arthur C. Clarke ever was. And she had only herself to blame.

Her first love had always been science. From the time she had been old enough to pick up a test tube for the first time, she had been hooked on exploring the mysteries of chemistry, physics, and biology. At 20, she had graduated from the University of Arizona with degrees in both physics and chemistry, as well as minors in biology and astronomy. She could have had any job she wanted with any research or technology firm on Earth, and the recruiters had dangled interesting incentives in front of her during her last semester in school. She pondered and considered, and tried to imagine where she'd be in 10 years, in 20 years, if she accepted any of the offers. Most of the time, those thoughts ended with her in a white lab coat, injecting mice with yet another version of some cure-all drug or youth formula. Despite the temptations of perhaps finding something that could completely revolutionize the human condition... she found the idea of sitting in a laboratory for the rest of her life extremely boring.

So she had reached for the stars.

The U.E.F. did not actively recruit scientists, at least not to the extent that Dupont or Merck did. Yet, less than two weeks after she had sent her application for entry into the service, she received a letter back from U.E.F. headquarters in Washington.

Accepted.

So she sold all of the belongings she had gathered in her few years as a student, packed a small bag, and boarded a bus headed to Las Vegas, where she would rendezvous with several other potential U.E.F. initiates, who would then be ferried to the service's groundside training headquarters in the Nevada desert.

Her mother had looked so small and frail that day, standing by the bus, knowing she wouldn't see her daughter again soon, if at all. When Esmerelda bent over and wrapped her arms tight around the woman who had struggled, alone, to raise her, she could hear the thought behind the return embrace.

'Don't leave me.'

But as much as she loved her mother, she loved science more. And the chance to explore solar systems, to find new life forms, to add to humankind's knowledge of the chemical and physical sciences... the thought of that pulled her from her mother's embrace and into the U.E.F.

Into what now was eighteen months of watching a black hole do nothing but what a black hole does... suck things into nothingness.

She felt Marcus' arms slip around her waist, his lips touching her neck just under the jaw line. "Good morning, beautiful."

She ruffled a hand through his hair absently, still lost in her thoughts.

"Ahhhh, I see the 'Ice Queen' has returned to duty," Marcus said mockingly.

She couldn't help but smile at that. Through a year of training and tests at the U.E.F. Academy, her calm during emergency situations had earned the nickname "Ice" from her instructors.

After a year of spurning offers from any man who asked her out, even for coffee, that had been modified to "Ice Bitch." Esme was far from unattractive; at 5' 8" and 135 pounds, she had delicious curves in all the right places, especially when emphasized by a jet-black U.E.F. jumpsuit. Her blonde hair and vaguely Nordic features added even more to her "icy" reputation. For the four years of continuing training and research in Earth's solar system during which she was promoted from ensign to first lieutenant, the nickname had followed her wherever she had been stationed, and she secretly had to admit that she was proud it had. To her it meant two things: one, that she gave as well as she got from the chauvinistic men, both superiors and subordinates, who tried to give her grief because she knew her business and refused to meet their image of what a woman "should be"; and two, that she had never, ever let herself become entangled in any kind of personal relationship that might complicate her goal of getting a long-term assignment outside the solar system.

With her promotion to captain and assignment to helm the Arthur C. Clarke, the nickname changed again. Because she was believed to be the first female captain placed in charge of a U.E.F. science station, she moved from "Ice Bitch" to "Ice Queen." As Marcus' hands moved up her naked torso to fondle and squeeze her breasts, she smiled at the various ways the handle did and did not suit her now. She had indeed had to be "iced," or placed in cryogenic suspension for the trip outbound. And she had been rather icy to the crew when she had arrived, given what she saw as the sloppy nature of both their attention to their jobs, and their attention to doing things by the book.

And then, six months had passed in unending boredom, watching an invisible hole in space-time swallow things like a frog with a very, very long tongue. And the ice began to melt.

After one too many 10 hour shifts with nothing to do but sit in a chair and listen to everyone else complaining about having nothing to do but complain, she entered her cabin and broke open one of the few "exempt" items she had been allowed to have ferried with her to the Clarke: a bottle of Irish Whiskey given to her by her last Captain as a going away present. His note was still stuck to the label inside the box - "In case of emergency, break seal, pour into, not onto, Ice. Repeat as necessary."

She followed his instructions to the letter, and it was a drunken Captain Esmerelda Petersen who thereupon called Second Lieutenant Marcus Bird to her cabin, where she asked him to join her in a snort... or two... or ten.