Kristine Kathryn Rusch sold more than 35 million books worldwide. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance.
Her novels made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction appeared in more than twenty best-of-the-year collections. She won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.
To find out more about her work, go to her website, kriswrites.com.
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Kristine Kathryn Rusch excels at the midrange fiction length, as shown by the three space opera stories in this volume. All three feature strong women; all three take place in the deepest, darkest regions of space.
Chosen as one of the best novelettes of the year, "Matilda" marks the first time Rusch ever wrote about a sentient ship. "Stalking Space" explores the dangers people suffer using space travel to get from here to there. And "Proof of Concept," another best of the year finalist, features a murder in space, a murder not quite as straight-forward as it seems.
This collection of two novellas and a novelette appears only on Storybundle. This exclusive will vanish when this bundle ends.
Some writers can do it all…and Kristine Rusch is one of them. Not only has she won the Hugo Award, but she writes successfully across multiple genres, from science fiction to fantasy to mystery and more. If you haven't read her work before, you're in for a real treat, the kind that introduces you to an author who might just change your life and the way you look at fiction and the world. If you have read Rusch's work in the past, you'll see that she never stops progressing in her relentless quest for excellence. The novelette and stories in this book are packed with tension, action, ideas, characterization, and surprises—so many goodies that you might need a second or third read just to wrap your head around them. Kristine Kathryn Rusch is the real deal, and Strong Women, Dangerous Space is the perfect introduction—or reintroduction—to her vibrant, staggeringly exciting, and thought-provoking universe. – Robert Jeschonek
"The SF thriller is alive and well, and today's leading practitioner is Kristine Kathryn Rusch."
– Analog"Rusch knows how to construct a science fiction thriller that'll keep you turning pages right up until the end."
– Astro Guyz"Science fiction writing at its best."
– EssentialWriters.com"This is a fairly straightforward mystery, hard to do in a science fictional setting where future technology has the potential to not play fair with the reader's expectations. This could well be the start of an interesting series."
– Scrooge3"A gripping, well-written story…. Agatha Christie meets interstellar travel."
– Tangent Online"A nice twist on a locked-room mystery that makes good use of its setting to provide a ticking clock element."
– Locus"A gripping, well-paced plot and a victim backstory that quickly ups the emotional stakes. …a high-quality read."
– Tor Voli
Devi ran for the single ship. It was cradled in the docking bay, like a hammock rolled up against a wall. The single ship liked her the best. Like a ship's cat—always liking the one that hated it.
But she piloted the single ship better than anyone else. LaFayette said that was because the symbiosis worked with her and the single ship. LaFayette claimed to know. He'd parented half a dozen single ships in his day, raising them from a traumatized nub of consciousness to something large and glorious and thoughtful.
Or at least, that's what he thought. He loved single ships, and dreamed of piloting one some day. But piloting one permanently meant giving up other relationships for a single relationship—bonding with a ship and not another person, and LaFayette was an extrovert. He loved his crew. He loved his warship, the Yue Fei.
He loved Devi, even though she wasn't supposed to know that.
Devi found single ships creepy. This one rolled itself out of its protective cover the moment it heard her footsteps, sensed her presence, tracked her movements—whatever the hell it did to figure out she was there. She had no idea how it tracked her and she never asked.
Just like she never asked why the thing liked her. She barely could bring herself to say its name when she spoke to it. Matilda. Who the hell named a ship Matilda?
Devi knew the answer to that: the ship picked the name itself. Single ships had gigantic naming rituals, with champagne and humans in full dress uniforms and—
The single ship's door irised, revealing the dark interior. Devi could smell the talc and humidity, turning her stomach.
God, she hated that single ship. And she had to clear that thought before she got to the ship, because it just might know. Single ships weren't empathic, but some of them had the same level of intuition that other humans did. She never knew if The Matilda was one of those, but only because she never asked.
She braced herself, then dove into the iris, wincing as she did. The single ship closed around her, cradling her. Good single ship pilots—the ones who actually love the single ship experience—said it was like being back in the womb.
Not that she could remember being in the womb. Forty-five years from her mother's womb, she had no memory of it at all—and she hadn't opted to have those memories revived. Humans were designed to forget their first few years of life. There was a reason for that, if you believed the universe had some order to it, which she did.
She did.
The single ship wrapped around her, warm and pulsing and much too soft. She hated all the fake organics, the way that the single ship's interior was supposed to mimic the touch of human skin. Cilia brushed against her face, making her cringe.
She didn't use the thought-link, carefully keeping that off, even though time was of the essence. Nor did she greet the single ship. The damn thing always forgot that Devi wanted nothing to do with the touchy-feely experience, so she had to remind it and take control immediately.
"I need standard ship setup," she said against the pulsing warmth, trying to prevent herself from shuddering. "Now."
The entire single ship rose and fell, almost like a sigh, and then the interior altered. The Matilda never formed a standard ship's interior, even though the single ship lived on the Yue Fei and could see what an actual bridge looked like.
Instead, the single ship created a gigantic bubble around Devi, round and smooth, a bubble that felt like the interior of a normal ship. A chair rose out of the middle, even though she probably wouldn't use it until she absolutely needed to. A floating visual panel moved from surface to surface, so that she could see the exterior of the single ship if she needed to.
The nav panel rose in front of the chair, last, as if the single ship were reluctant to give over to Devi's demands.
"We've got to move fast," Devi said, more to herself than to the single ship. "Matilda, are you ready?"
Devi didn't wait for the ship's response, because if she waited, then she would have second thoughts and flee the damn thing. Instead, she slammed her hands onto the nav panel. It wasn't solid, like a nav panel should be. It was never solid, and she hated that.
Instead, it felt like warm jelly. Her hands slipped into it—her entire body could slip into it if she wasn't careful—and she had to hold herself upright to make sure the jelly only enveloped her up to the wrists. The warmth made sweat break out on her forehead almost instantly, and the not-quite-slimy feel of the jelly turned her stomach.
She swallowed against the bile that rose in her throat and made herself concentrate.
And then it came: that sneaky sense that someone was watching her. Matilda had entered her brain.
Devi immediately shut down all of the thought links except the one that allowed communication. Over the two years she had reluctantly piloted The Matilda, she had learned which links fed the single ship too much information and which links kept the communication pure.
She wanted the single ship to take orders and do nothing else.
