Protected by the Pantherite
Fall in love with the alien from the galaxy next door...
The Pantherite people have undergone their fair share (and then some) of turmoil, but lately it all seems to have been coming from within.
When the “bad” guys have more scruples than the “good” guys, you know something is rotten.
Reno, a space pirate who just wants to get his people out from under a corrupt governor’s thumb, decides to do something about it, one contraband shipment at a time.
Until he’s caught, of course, and thrown in a cell with a bunch of bloodthirsty smugglers and one kidnapped human scientist who keeps ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Pamela Edwards’ passion is in immunology, and her final hurdle before she can put the title of Professor in front of her name is to study the Queen Fever that impacted the Felix Orbus Galaxy.
The problem? All the guest academic research positions in the Felid System academies are full due to a backlog of deferred visits from the lengthy quarantine.
The solution? Take an illegal shuttle in the name of medical science and hope you don’t wake up sold to the highest bidder—or in a cell, courtesy of a dodgy shuttle captain, whose master plan from the start was, apparently, to hold you for ransom.
Five minutes in a cell with Pamela, and Reno considers signing a falsified confession just to escape her endless chatter, but when he overhears that not only was she smuggled in on false pretenses but also that a corrupt warden has plans to trade her to one of the most depraved kingpins in the System, the not-quite-good-guy can’t just leave her to die—or worse.
One prison transport hijacking, one narrow escape, and one crash-landing later, and suddenly these two are acting less like enemies and more like lifelong-friends-in-the-making. Or perhaps something more. Now Pamela has a new hypothesis to test... Is it true that opposites attract?