 Today's First Chapter Friday is from one of my favourite stories I wrote, MADE FOR HER. This MF Futuristic Sci-Fi Romance is about clones, the military, aliens, space travel, and an undeniable romance. One reviewer said, "This was like a Top Gun story set in the future where cloning is real and space exploration is growing and alien contact is a reality for which the government has been preparing for years." Other reviewers didn't like how much sex was in the story. It's only 99¢ USD and available wide, so I hope you'll check it out!  Enjoy the first chapter of MADE FOR HER...Captain Mikayla Jones opened the door and gazed up at the Skymaster II rocketing another group of pilots toward SFTC, the Space Flight Training Center. She’d been the instructor of most of the men and women on that flight and would come face to face with a new class on Monday morning. But she hadn’t rushed to the door to bid the squad farewell. No, instead she stared at the four men in uniform standing before her. She recognized three of them from the base, knew they hadn’t come with good news—they would never have arrived at her door together other than to inform her of a tragedy—but it was the fourth man dressed in black, his hands drumming a beat on his utility belt, who worried her the most. He wasn’t military. “May we come in?” Lieutenant Colonel Madison’s question yanked her back from her thoughts. “What is it? Tell me what happened.” The chaplain from the base stepped forward with a heavy nod. “Captain, it’s best if we go in and sit down. Detective Krug of the Northwest Police Department has something to tell you.” She braced her hands on the door frame, afraid if she let them in, their bad news would be true. “C’mon, Mikayla.” Lieutenant Colonel Madison draped an arm across her shoulder and guided her into her home. He would be the only one to call her by her given name here, the only one who knew her well enough. “You need to sit down. It’s about Daniel.” She stopped in her tracks, dread pooling in her stomach, but the chaplain, the detective, and his military police escort continued into her living room. “This isn’t funny. It’s our anniversary. We’re supposed to go out for dinner. He promised he’d be home. Whatever this surprise is that you’re all involved in, I’m not impressed.” Her voice hitched. “Go over to the lab and tell Daniel to come home.” “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Detective Krug said. Her knees threatened to give out. “Why? He works just over there.” She pointed in the direction of the military labs where her husband conducted experiments for the government, ones so top secret, Daniel couldn’t even mention them in her presence. “No, Mikayla,” the colonel said. “He was contracted out to Onatria Labs.” She gasped. Her chest tightened. Had she misheard him? “The lab rumored to be involved in cloning? But that lab was blown up this morning.” She waited for one of them to tell her that her assumptions were wrong, that Daniel was okay, but they all stared at her, their eyes solemn. No, it can’t be true. “The Natural Lifes have already claimed responsibility for the bombing,” Detective Krug said. Drawing in a deep breath, she willed her body to stop shaking. Captain Jones could not break down, not when cadets depended on her every day to train them for flight. “Where is my husband? Which hospital is he at?” She couldn’t stand still. She had to get to Daniel, to take care of him. Their anniversary dinner no longer mattered, but she had to be with her husband. “Mikayla, I’m so sorry.” The colonel rested a hand on her shoulder. “But Daniel didn’t survive.” She stepped back, grasping for something to hang on to. A tear slid down her cheek, but she wiped it away. Her husband had to come home. Yet, her heart had already broken, processed the news before her mind. Grasping the back of a chair, she turned to the detective. “You have to be wrong. He can’t be dead. He can’t. It’s our anniversary. How do you know it was him, huh?” “We read his military ID chip. I’m sorry, but there’s no mistaking his identity.” “No!” She was no longer Captain Jones. She melted back to Mikayla, wife to Daniel Jones. And she let go, falling to the floor. Terrorists had stolen her husband from her. She was alone. Forever. All of their hopes and dreams, gone. Her chance at having a family, no more. She had nothing to live for. Madison knelt beside her and rubbed her back. “I’m very sorry.” But she turned away from him. “Leave me, please.” She wrapped her arms around her knees and wept for her husband. *** Ten years later Colonel Jones grabbed the remote before focusing on the three-dimensional holographic picture beside her. Another presentation for the general public, but she doubted it would work to recruit anyone. The audience was always more curious than willing to enlist. “In 2084, as you know, Earth made first contact with the Rafkels, a peaceful species living on the planet Raf, located twenty light-years from Earth.” She pressed the button to show her spectators an image of the still-foreign planet. “While meeting this species remains years away, their message warned us of other intelligent life forms in our own galaxy.” Mikayla rolled her eyes. The actual message had not been a warning, rather a fact, but the government insisted on changing the wording to garner more recruits and support for cloning. “Since then, world governments have combined efforts to develop a spacecraft that will take us faster and farther into space. “If you join the military today, you will learn how to fly these vessels and train the clones for future wars. Science fiction has now become our reality.” Yeah, like that would work to recruit people. Who wrote the speech, anyway? Very few, if any, would ever make it to the SFTC, Space Flight Training Center. “It will never be your life on the line, but that of men and women created only for that purpose. Serving your country is no longer about sacrifice, but about honor.” She cringed at the bullshit words. People still died all the time. Terrorists, like the ones who’d killed Daniel, still objected to cloning, causing destruction and death. Just last month, a popular off-base nightclub, known to be a military hang-out, had been turned to rubble in a matter of seconds after a suicide bomber with known allegiance to the Al-Tidoa group blew himself up inside the building. Many, both clone and human-born, had died. When Mikayla switched the display to the live feed from Onatria’s main lab in Geneva, she sighed at the collective gasp. Robotic arms transferred material between Petri dishes at various stations while other, more complex equipment dissected strands of DNA. Human-born and clones alike wore white lab coats and watched new life grow under their microscopes. And in a glass-walled clean room, casket-like clear chambers held young clones attached to a multitude of tubes. Except for the military and Onatria staff, this was the first time anyone had seen the labs. The government had grown desperate for people to enlist. Clones, fully incubated at one year, resembled a teenaged human-born and lived better than most of the people there to watch the presentation. That was, until the clones left the labs four years later. Then they became nothing more than a possession of the military, a weapon trained for combat. And none, as of yet, had developed long enough to resemble an officer her age. They were killed in battle or by terror attacks before they had the chance to live a long life. At the end of her presentation, she slipped out of the hall, unwilling to answer questions from the audience. The junior officers could handle them. She refused to listen to the public refer to the clones as slugs. Daniel had died bringing them to life and she couldn’t have his work, his creations, insulted in front of her. Sure, they weren’t born the same way as her, but they were still people, and she had a new squadron of clones waiting for her on the tarmac. They wouldn’t fly today. Instead, they’d head to the classroom for theory. With their basic training already completed, they were sent to her to become pilots. But her job involved more than training. She had to weed out the clone cadets who were better suited to a civilian position, and keep those who took their assignment seriously. As she approached them, they stood at attention and saluted her, but all wore the same cocky smile. She gave them her infamous glare to wipe away their grins, even though she knew every one of them deserved to be arrogant. They were, after all, created and genetically modified to be the best. Colonel Jones eyed each one of her new cadets, examining the neatness of their uniforms, while inspecting for signs of stress or over-anxiousness. She’d never seen the telltale muscle twitches or sweats in any previous clones, only in human-borns, but she had to look for them anyway. The first generation of clones didn’t live long enough to become cadets. Their hearts had given out within a year after incubation. But the scientists at Onatria had plowed on, utilizing more of Daniel’s research, speeding up the aging process with hormones to create the perfect generation she saw before her. She’d had female clones in previous squadrons, but the government filled the one in front of her with testosterone-driven masculinity. If she’d been younger, she’d have a hard time concentrating. But her days of crushes and fantasies were long over. She was devoted to serving her country and planet, and nothing else. That didn’t stop her from going out on the town for a stress-relieving fuck from time to time. But these young men in front of her appeared so virile, sure to last longer than any of her previous sexual partners. No. As junior officers, and more importantly, as clones, they were off limits. Inspecting them gave her the opportunity to check out more than their fatigues and tics, but if they knew her thoughts, they’d walk all over her. She’d be done. They were of varying nationalities, builds, and heights, all fit to serve the planet. None of the cadets revealed any indication he would put the lives of others in jeopardy. It would be an easy squadron, every one of them ready to fly in a matter of weeks. She reached the last cadet and froze. Her stomach clenched. No, they couldn’t have! She pivoted on her heel and rushed off the tarmac, leaving the squad without an instructor. *** “How dare you!” She shouldn’t have barged into General Madison’s office, but Mikayla didn’t care. The military had crossed a very personal line. One she could never forgive. Her commanding officer rose from his desk, his hands raised in the air. “I beg your pardon, Colonel. Remember who you are speaking to.” She slammed the door. “I can’t believe you let them clone Daniel and then send him to me to train. I had no problem training them when I didn’t know who they were made from, but this is just…wrong. Daniel never gave permission.” He stepped out from behind his desk, lowering his arms. “I can see how intimate this situation is to you.” She glared at him. “Oh, really?” The only way to get more personal was if they’d created a clone of herself, and she would never allow that. “Sit down. You need to be quiet and listen, or I will have you escorted out of my office.” Mikayla plopped into one of the leather chairs in front of the general’s desk. She gripped the arms, holding in her anger, though she still had so much of her mind to tell him. The general sat back down. “Just so you know, Daniel did grant permission to be cloned when he was first contracted to Onatria.” She shook her head, unable to believe the man’s words. Daniel would have told her if he’d agreed to something so significant. “He actually created D1, before cloning became legalized. He used his own DNA.” “No.” Was everything she knew about Daniel a complete lie? “Yes. He didn’t want you to know because the survival rate of the clones in the beginning was less than one percent. Now, ninety-nine percent will go on to serve our government.” “But Daniel’s been dead for years. Why did you suddenly decide to clone him again?” General Madison wiped a hand across his face. “Mikayla, the clone in your squadron is the thirty-second clone made with Daniel’s DNA. He’s D32.” “And you’ve kept them from me all along?” She dug her fingers into the leather. How had she never found out? “What happened to the rest?” “The early ones didn’t survive. Those that lived stayed in the labs to help Onatria create better and better clones.” The information left her mind spinning, and she struggled to breathe. “So why is this one out of the lab and in my squadron? Why couldn’t he be trained by someone else, somewhere else?” General Madison smiled, and she had a feeling she wasn’t going to like his answer. “Because he wanted to be trained by the best. You are our best instructor and have turned out our best pilots. Why would we send him anywhere else?” Oh, he thought he’d sweet-talk her into compliance, like he always did when he wanted something. But not this time. Mikayla had her own agenda now that she knew the truth. She stood up, resting her hands on his desk. “I’m going to the labs in Geneva to see the rest of Daniel’s kids...brothers...uh, whatever they are.” “Colonel Jones, you will do no such thing.” His tone grew sharp. “You have a squadron depending on you.” She couldn’t hide her rebellious grin. She’d been kept in the dark too long. “I am going and I’ll hijack a plane if I have to.” Although she’d always turned down the opportunities to tour the labs, Daniel’s research now affected her directly. She had to find out more, needed to see the labs for herself. He sprang to his feet, his chair scraping the floor behind him. “I will be leaving for Geneva in two days. You can wait until then.” His nostrils flared, and she didn’t consider defying him. “Dismissed.” Marching from the office, she returned to her quarters to pack for her upcoming trip. *** He’d expected a reaction from her, but he didn’t think she’d walk away when she saw him. What came as a complete surprise, however, was his body’s reaction to her. He’d seen pictures of his donor’s wife, but hadn’t expected the urge to jump her bones right there on the tarmac. D32, or Dare, as the other clones called him, was the first “Daniel” clone to be released from the labs and survive basic training. But he’d felt different from the others he’d interacted with on a daily basis. Always had. He yearned to get out and see the world he’d been created to protect, rather than be cooped up in the labs. And as soon as he’d proved mature enough, he’d asked to enlist in basic training. Some of his squadron hadn’t been strong enough and were sent back for reassignment. But for Dare, it had come too easily. He’d pushed his body to its limits time and time again. And after completing basic, he wanted to fly. That’s why they’d all been created in the first place: to protect the space tourists and fight for the planet if the need ever presented itself. He answered the call. He’d been told his instructor, Colonel Jones, was the wife of the man whose DNA had been used to create him. At first, he thought training under her was a bad idea, but so many pilots told him she was the best. She would teach him everything he needed to know, thus making him the best. And who didn’t want that designation? Even clones needed to prove themselves. “Oh look, fresh meat.” Every one of them turned toward the gruff, condescending voice. “I am Major Thompson, but you can call me “sir,” as in “yes, sir.” I will be your flight instructor now.” Bile rose from Dare’s stomach, burning his throat. Where had he come from? Colonel Jones hadn’t left more than ten minutes ago. “I know you slugs have all completed basic training, but that was a walk in the park compared to what I’m going to put you through.” The major’s chiseled face revealed a slight grin, mocking them. “When I’m done with you, you’ll wish those bastards at Onatria had smashed your Petri dishes before your cells began to divide.” If Colonel Jones was the best, this man wasn’t. He was Dare’s worst nightmare. With clenched fists, he vowed to find a way to get Colonel Jones back. I have to be the best.
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AuthorJessica E. Subject is a USA Today bestselling author of Sci-Fi and Paranormal Romance. Please note: Some links contain affiliate links.
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