Quiver and Crave Read online

  Learn the origins of the Endurance.

  Terra, Luna, Mars, the Belt…war rages, while Terra’s environment slowly fails.

  Torill Darya will sacrifice her marriage, her health, even her life,

  in order to see her work on humanity’s generation ship completed,

  for it is the one hope left to mankind.

  Discover the heartbreaking truth of how the Endurance left Earth.

  Get a copy of Forever, free.

  See details at the end of this book.

  Table of Contents

  Learn the origins of the Endurance.

  About Quiver and Crave

  Praise for Quiver and Crave

  Title Page

  The Endurance Timeline

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Learn the origins of the Endurance.

  Did you enjoy this story? How to make a big difference!

  The next book in The Endurance series.

  About the Author

  Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Copyright Information

  About Quiver and Crave

  He broke her heart. Tankball made her whole again.

  Quiver Sheenan is the most talented topman the Endurance has ever seen. Despite her incredible abilities in zero gravity, she’d rather have a career in the sciences than play for the Dreamhawks while Kallon Crave is their captain.

  The Quiver and Crave novelette is part of the science fiction romance series readers are calling gripping, superb and fantastic. Written by award-winning SFR author Tracy Cooper-Posey, it is set aboard the closed-system marathon-class vessel Endurance, a generation ship a thousand years from its destination. If you like the smart, romantic SF of authors like Linnea Sinclair and Anna Hackett, you will love the Endurance series.

  Dive into this thought-provoking new romance series today!

  __

  This novelette is part of The Endurance SFR series:

  0.5 5,001

  1.0 Greyson’s Doom

  2.0 Yesterday’s Legacy

  3.0 Promissory Note

  3.1 Quiver and Crave

  4.0 Xenogenesis

  5.0 Junkyard Heroes

  5.1 Evangeliya

  6.0 Skinwalker’s Bane

  …and more to come!

  A Science Fiction Romance Story.

  Praise for Quiver and Crave

  Short and sweet glimpse into the Endurance tankball scene.

  Thank you once again, Tracy Cooper-Posey, for a fun ride!

  OMG, I love the Endurance stories! "Quiver & Crave" was sooo goooood!

  Even if you think you won;'t like sci-fi you will enjoy this book, the whole series. Love found, lost and jound again. This series is one of the best I have ever read.

  I've been following the entire Endurance series and love them all!

  Not a wasted word, great from start to finish!

  Loved reading this little gem!

  Very quick, very satisfying read from the Endurance series by Tracy Cooper Posey.

  The name of the book is genius as are the characters it represents.

  Wow so cute and sweet!!!

  The Endurance Timeline

  Ship Years 210 – 219

  The events of Greyson’s Doom

  Ship Year 313

  The events of Yesterday’s Legacy

  Ship year 381

  The events of Quiver and Crave

  Ship Year 402

  The events of Promissory Note

  Ship Years 499-501

  The events of Xenogenesis

  Ship Year 526

  The events of Junkyard Heroes

  Ship Year 533

  The events of Evangeliya

  Ship Year 535

  The events of Skinwalker's Bane

  Ship Year 735

  The events of 5,001

  Note: This is the chronological order of events aboard the Endurance. To fully enjoy the series and avoid spoilers, it is recommended you read the series in series order (see About Quiver and Crave).

  Chapter One

  “There’s Kal now,” Micah told her. He squeezed Quiver’s arm in encouragement, even though Melody was glaring at him because he was holding her arm in the first place. Quiver was glad of Micah’s silent support, despite how much Melody clearly disliked it.

  Quiver looked around the huge gymnasium, her eyes widening. She had only ever caught a glimpse of the inside of the players-only training area when someone entered or left. Now she was actually standing inside it. It was hard not to be impressed. The facility was roomy enough to hold a half-tank field at one end, with all the strengthening and flexibility equipment at the other.

  There were dozens of people using the equipment and six more in the tank area, most of them floating at the zero level, while one player waded through the bottom level toward the ball the floaters were waiting for him to toss back to them.

  There was no plasteel glass wall separating the tank area from spectators. There were no spectators.

  “Where is he?” Quiver asked Micah, looking around.

  “Kal!” Melody called and waved.

  The tall man who had been standing with his back to them at the edge of the tank area turned at Melody’s hail. He waved and called up to the players floating at the top, then headed toward where Melody, Micah and Quiver were standing close by the doors.

  Broad shoulders, deep-set eyes. Short dark hair, despite the player preference for long locks. Kallon Crave, the youngest player to ever captain the Dream Hawks.

  Quiver drew in a breath, fighting for calm. He looked just like he did in the streams. He didn’t look smaller like so many people did. His shoulders really were that wide. They were bare right now, not disguised under a sleek uniform. There was an abbreviated tank top and slim training pants, but mostly he was just gleaming flesh.

  She shivered.

  Kal Crave stopped in front of them. “You two going to stand around all day? We don’t get enough scheduled time as it is.”

  Melody pulled off the light jacket she was wearing. Beneath, she wore a plain green colored version of a tank team uniform, figure hugging and flattering. Her hair was already tightly secured to the back of her head. “I’m going!” She waved and jogged over to the tank area, then climbed up the ladder and pushed off into the zero level, chatting to the players already there.

  Micah watched her go with a warm, soft expression on his face.

  “This isn’t the topman your old Palatine coach was enthusing about, is it?” Kal asked Micah.

  Quiver jumped. He was talking about her.

  Micah pulled his attention away from Melody and focused on Kal. “Sorry. Kal, this is Quiver Sheenan. She’s here to try out.”

  Kal looked at her directly for the first time. “You?” There was disbelief in his voice.

  Quiver felt her spine straighten all by itself, to her full height, which still made her quite a bit shorter than either of the two men standing with her. “I was invited.” Until that moment, the invite had been a nuisance in her life. Now, it gave her legitimacy.

  “Esme insisted she come and train,” Micah said, his tone defensive and at the same time, filled with pride. “He saw her playing.”

  Esme Ganzo was the Dream Hawks coach. He was supposed to be the best coach on the Endurance. He had told her she was going to be a star player. Quiver was still in two minds about that.

  Kal Crave, though, didn’t seem to have any doubts. “How old are you, kid?”

  “Twenty-three,” she said shortly.

  “She’s only a year younger than me,” Micah pointed out.

  Kal shook his head. “I could toss you around like I do the ball.
Even topmen need strength.”

  “Everyone is as strong as each other in zero gravity,” Quiver pointed out. She wondered why she was defending herself. She didn’t want to be here any more than Kallon Crave did.

  He didn’t hear her. His gaze had shifted from Micah and her to something over her shoulder. “Damn. They must have snuck in behind a player. Hang on, I’ll have to get them tossed. Excuse me.”

  He stepped around them and Quiver spun on one foot to see what he was referring to. He was heading toward the mature couple sitting on the low stacks of matting in the corner, watching everything with eyes as large as hers must be. Their eagerness and enthusiasm had painted them as fans.

  “They didn’t sneak in,” Quiver called out.

  Kal looked back. “You know them?”

  “They’re my parents.”

  “You brought your parents to your try out?” Kal asked. He sounded amused, while his expression was a baffling mix that wasn’t humorous at all.

  Everything was going wrong here. Quiver had not expected Kallon Crave’s resistance to the idea of her trying out. It was making her question her own reluctance. So she said bluntly, “They brought me.”

  “You did say you were twenty-three, right?”

  “They’re here to make sure I stay here.”

  He turned back to look at them, his eyes narrowed. “So…you don’t want to try out?” He seemed to think that was a pathetic attitude.

  “I agreed to a tryout. That’s all.” She could feel anger curling through her. What did he know? He’d left the Palatine years and years ago, scooped up by the Dream Hawks before he’d even emerged.

  “Kal, Esme was pretty insistent,” Micah said quietly. “Check your messages. He said he would leave you one.”

  Kal stared at Micah for a moment, as if he wanted her friend to melt into a puddle on the floor. Then he went over to the bench where everyone had left their gear and pulled a screen out of a bag and swiped through it. He came back to them, reading it. He looked at Quiver. “Esme seems to think you’re hidden gold. He’s the coach, so….” He let the board hang from one hand and shoved the other into his pocket. “Let’s see what you’ve got. Go join the topmen up in the zero area.”

  Quiver sighed. She’d talked herself back into trying out. What a mess it all was now!

  * * * * *

  Despite her qualms, Quiver had no issues with playing around in the zero zone. It was always a treat to feel gravity drop away and float. So she climbed up the ladder until she could feel herself growing lighter. Then, before her weight evaporated altogether, she turned and pushed off with her heels on the rung, driving upward with her hands out, shooting like an arrow up into the weightless zone. Her inertia kept her moving once her weight was gone and she breathed out her enjoyment and curled up into a ball and rolled a couple of times, just for the fun of it.

  Some players had a rough few minutes transitioning to weightlessness, but she never did. While others had spent weeks learning how to move using kinetic energy only, she had understood the mechanics without explanation. It had simply made sense to her.

  The other players were working on some sort of four-man strategy for driving the ball toward the goal mouth. Melody was shouting at them, as she pushed off from the wall in a horizontal drive toward the ball, which was hanging almost motionless in the middle of the half-arena.

  “Quiver, protect the ball!” It was Kal, shouting from the floor. He and Micah were both standing at the edge of the tank area.

  Quiver glanced over her shoulder as she slow rolled, spotting Melody as she reached for the closest handle on the ball. Quiver reached up with her hand. When her fingers made contact with the roof, she let her elbow bend, still moving upward. Then she pushed off hard and dropped feet-first toward Melody. All she had to do was knock Melody off her trajectory, then push herself off the woman to go back to the ball. Quiver had done it hundreds of times.

  Melody saw her coming and flipped over in mid-air, so her belly was exposed. Quiver wondered what she was doing, although there was no way for Quiver to change her own trajectory now—she was committed.

  Quiver’s shoe landed flat against Melody’s stomach, driving them both downward. Quiver bent her knee and surged up, pushing off from Melody. The ball was above them now.

  Melody gripped her ankle, halting Quiver’s upward momentum. Quiver gasped. It was a trick move, to anchor her. Now they were both hanging in mid-air with nothing to push off from but each other.

  “What are you going to do now, little girl?” Melody asked with deceptive sweetness.

  The ball gave a warning beep. Quiver looked up. The gravity lights under the four handles were now showing pale red. The ball was at normal weight instead of zero weight.

  One of the other three players who Melody had been shouting at landed on the ball with both feet, driving it downward. It dropped quickly. It would pass within reach.

  Quiver threw her hand out and gripped the handle, letting the ball pull her arm down. Melody couldn’t snatch the ball away, for she was holding onto Quiver’s ankle.

  As the ball reached the middle zone, it plummeted. Quiver had been waiting for that. She hauled on the handle, using the ball’s weight and momentum as leverage. She whipped her body around the ball, which momentarily hung in the air as the weight of two women yanked on it. Melody shot downward, abruptly more heavier than usual because of the momentum. At the bottom of the pendulum swing, the inertial force was more than her strength could overcome. Her grip on Quiver’s ankle was torn away and she landed on the thick training mats at the bottom of the tank with a heavy jolt, grunting at the impact.

  Quiver hung on to the ball, coming back up on the other side of the swing, until her legs reached the zero zone and she was weightless once more. She hauled on the ball, swinging it up over her head. She hung on and it pulled her fully into the zero zone. The ball and her flipped and flipped again, anchoring each other.

  She glanced around. The goal mouth was right there and there was no one else near it. So she slammed her hand into the roof, coming to a halt. She swung again, this time horizontally and let go when the ball lined up with the mouth.

  It disappeared inside. There was a mechanical clunking sound as the ball was grabbed and pushed into the feed tube so it could spit out from the roof vent and back into play. There were no sirens and no cheering, but Quiver was pleased, anyway.

  She hung in the air and looked down at Kal and Micah.

  Micah was smiling up at her, even as Melody brushed herself off and stalked out of the tank area.

  Kal, though, was scowling. He no longer had a hand in his pocket. Instead, he was holding something, working it with his thumb, the knuckle white. “Come down,” he said curtly.

  Had she blown the try out for some reason she couldn’t fathom? Quiver didn’t know and she didn’t really care. Earning a place on the Dream Hawks was not her ambition, after all.

  She swam forward until she reached the ladder, then hauled herself down face-first until gravity brought her feet down and she could climb down normally. In the bottom layer, she waded out until she was beyond the tank area and normal gravity was restored.

  She didn’t understand why players like Micah and Kal enjoyed working in the bottom layer. She always came out of it with her heart straining and her muscles shaking.

  Melody’s face was tight with fury as she stood next to the two men with her hands on her hips. The anger stole all the prettiness from her features.

  As Quiver went over to them, she could see that Kal was working a set of beads in his hand, pushing the beads around with his thumb. Hanging from the bottom of the beads was a flat metal disk, polished to a dull sheen by being handled all day, every day. This had to be his famous lucky charm the Forum was always talking about.

  There were some people who swore the medallion had a supernatural power. Others swore just as vehemently that it was all nonsense, that Kal’s “luck” was sheer coincidence. Quiver suspected the truth wa
s somewhere in between. If Kal believed in the power of the charm, then he would play well because he thought the charm was helping him to play well. It was pure psychology.

  Kal flipped the beads up and into his palm and put the charm away. “Are you trying to be funny?” he asked her.

  “Me?” She had never been a funny person, not even intentionally.

  “You had three other people in the zero zone you could have called on to help you protect the ball. Instead you showed off with a pretty trick.”

  “I was….” Quiver began, bewildered.

  “Was what?”

  “I was just having fun.”

  “You call that fun?” Melody’s voice was filled with disbelief.

  Kal gripped Quiver’s upper arm, his grip almost painful. “Step over here a minute,” he told her and pulled her away from the other two. Quiver had no choice but to go with him. He was bigger, heavier and stronger than her. She could have thrown him off in zero gee, only this was one gee.

  He hauled her around to face him and looked at her with a baffled expression. “You wanna tell me why you’re here, Sheenan?”

  She glanced back at Micah. He was talking to Melody in a low voice, his hand on her shoulder. Soothing her. Melody didn’t look so angry, anymore.

  “No, don’t look to your friends for help. This is just you and me,” Kal said roughly. “I don’t understand you. Help me figure it out. You clearly don’t want to be here. So why are you?”

  Quiver pressed her lips together, her gaze moving to the corner where her parents sat, watching her and Kal with hopeful expressions.

  “Your parents?” Kal guessed. “You said they brought you here. They’re the ones who want to play. You’re their substitute, right?”