Cosmic Catalyst (Shamans & Shifters Space Opera Book 2)

  Cosmic Catalyst

  A Shamans & Shifters

  Space Opera

  Jenny Schwartz

  Everyone has secrets. But some people will risk the galaxy to protect theirs.

  When starship shaman Jaya Romanov and her new mate partner, galactic bounty hunter and robot wolf shifter, Vulf Trent, saved the galaxy from the deadly actions of a determined geriatric terrorist, they forgot that old Earth truism: no good deed goes unpunished.

  Now, the galaxy is exploding with unexpected aliens, greedy politicians—well, that’s normal enough, it’s what the politicians will attempt that is worrying—and a radically new aspect to sha energy that has the potential to change everything.

  And then there’s the mystery of Jaya’s father…who is he? Some big secrets are lurking in Jaya’s past, and to save those she loves, she’ll be forced to risk the galaxy in a shoot ’em up, take-no-prisoners rescue because sometimes there’s no fighting your destiny.

  Fortunately, Vulf is always ready for a fight!

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Want More?

  Chapter 1

  The stone walls of the Star Guild Shaman Academy shuddered. I recognized the pattern. Boom-boom-b-b-b-boom! A student had attempted a shield shaping and lost control of it. It happened in combat class. Shields siphoned a lot of sha energy, sufficient that a strong shaman could protect against physical as well as energetic attack. However, if the shaman lost control of their shield, then all the energy seething through it exploded outward. The combat arena, itself, was shielded to contain that chaotic energy, but powerful student shamans occasionally overwhelmed the protective shield, and then, the Academy shook.

  I envied the students. Their lessons might be violent and unpredictable, but I was stuck in an endless meeting with the most important—or, at least, the most self-important—people on the planet of San Juan.

  The Global Government had sent a third of its parliamentary members and the five Land Mass Governments had sent two representatives each, plus support staff. The Academy’s large conference room was bursting at the seams with people wearing business suits and smirks.

  Tomorrow, they’d be gone—all except the President of San Juan and his Interplanetary Alliance Minister. Unfortunately, they’d be replaced by representatives from seven of the human planets in Galaxy Proper, the official union of sentient species, of which humanity was the newest member.

  “Earthquake?” The Islands Chief Negotiator gripped the edge of the large wooden table, ready to dive beneath it. A number of islands on San Juan were volcanic in origin, and islanders were drilled in earthquake emergency procedure.

  “No, and no need for concern. Some of our junior students are practicing sha energy combat.” Winona Hayden smiled coolly.

  I eyed her with sudden suspicion. Over the past three weeks, the chancellor of the Academy had revealed herself to be a wily political operator. Her patrician face and expensive grooming hid a sharp mind that was constantly observing, calculating odds, and readjusting her strategy. Had she scheduled the junior students to run sha shield drills at this time hoping for exactly this result? When the walls of the impressive building that currently enclosed them shook, government ministers were forced to confront the reality of shamanic power.

  Whatever Winona’s intent, I took it as a win that none of the ministers, or their staff, looked in my direction when reminded of the power shamans wielded. I had done my best to appear unremarkable. I’d swapped my starship shaman uniform of utility suit and boots for an off-the-rack dark blue jacket and straight skirt teamed with a white blouse. My long black hair was swept up in a knot, and I wore black court shoes with pantyhose. Pantyhose. Yuk. But it was worth the discomfort. I blended in with the administration staff.

  I sat in a corner of the conference room with a data recorder on my knee and one hand pressed back behind me against the stone wall. Six generations ago, the Academy’s founder, Clarence Bloodstone, had created the Academy’s central building in one massive sha action. The stone walls were, in fact, a single solid piece of stone, and included the roof, interior walls and ceilings. He’d modeled the building on his notion of what Earth’s abandoned Oxford University had looked like, and he’d succeeded well enough in creating something that humans found reassuringly familiar, yet awe-inspiring. Ordinary human labor had filled in the woodwork and windows of the building, and furnished the rooms with hard-wearing furniture, like the bentwood chair I currently sat on.

  With my hand pressed to the stone wall, it was a simple matter to drain the resonating sha energy from it. The subtle vibrations that had set everyone’s teeth on edge ceased.

  Winona flashed me a smile. “Thank you, Ms. Romanov.”

  And with that one comment, she demolished my attempt to remain unnoticed. Everyone turned to stare at me.

  I looked back, purposely unfocusing my gaze so that no one’s expression was clear to me. In the three weeks since I’d saved the Meitj trading planet Shaidoc from obliteration, I’d endured too many terrified and suspicious stares to suffer any more. Worse, though, were the people who assessed me for how they could use me. Winona was the first, but others were queuing up. In fact, that was the purpose of this meeting. I was humanity’s new trump card for negotiating an improvement in our position within Galaxy Proper.

  And that was something I needed to consider. Did humanity deserve to move up from barely-tolerated newcomer to a full member of Galaxy Proper with two representatives in its parliament? Could we handle the powershift, the responsibilities as well as the rights, that would go with such a change? It was only seven generations since we’d evacuated Earth, having rendered it uninhabitable in a nuclear winter after more than a century of environmental vandalism and increasingly vicious wars as we fought over diminishing natural resources. If Galaxy Proper hadn’t streamlined admission procedures for inducting humanity into the union, we would have annihilated ourselves as a species. Galaxy Proper, especially its kinder, more socially-conscious members like the Meitj and mLa’an, had saved us when we couldn’t save ourselves.

  Part of me felt that even after seven generations, we still hadn’t paid our debt.

  Ironically, it was literal debt, rather than the metaphorical debt I mused on, that motivated this meeting of human leaders and their minions. When our ancestors evacuated Earth, they’d had very little.

  Galaxy Proper had provided the starships to ferry out a couple of billion of us along with the plant and animal life we’d need to seed other planets with the life forms necessary to establish ecosystems to sustain us longer term. In return, humanity’s new government—which was truly new, since Galaxy Proper hadn’t allowed anyone associated with the governments and corporations that had destroyed Earth to serve in a leadership role off-Earth—had signed the Charter of Galactic Union that bound humanity to observe the union’s laws and regulations, and to commit to a gradual and negotiated crawl toward full membership.

  As a gift of goodwill, and because millions of people had to go somewhere, Galaxy Proper had surrendered the semi-terraformed Sidhe planet Utopia to the first generation of galactic humanity. Its residents were still paying off the mortgage on it. Residents of the other six planets humanity had spread
out to were doing the same for their planets at less discounted rates. And then there was San Juan, the planet we were currently on. Shamans had won the best of all rates for planetary purchase under a rent-to-buy scheme from the Meitj who’d been holding the terraformed but uninhabited planet before humanity moved in. It was humanity who renamed it San Juan. And it was humanity who now wanted to renegotiate its many and varied contracts, as well as its membership status, in Galaxy Proper.

  “Before we get ahead of ourselves,” the President of San Juan’s Global Government began. “What is to stop Galaxy Proper from simply executing Jaya Romanov?”

  I kept breathing as my home planet’s very important people debated the likelihood of my continued existence and how far they could push Galaxy Proper before its parliament pushed back.

  Given that I was in the room, and Galaxy Proper wasn’t, I thought the politicians ought to be asking how far they could push me before I simply left. So far a mixture of guilt and lingering loyalty to the Star Guild Shaman Academy which had been my home for eighteen of my twenty six years kept me in my seat. A preference for avoiding the limelight kept me silent.

  For all the power shamans wielded when we manipulated sha energy, and the fact that Winona had just demonstrated that power when the junior students set the Academy’s walls shaking, the meeting treated me as a puppet or a pawn that answered to them.

  I didn’t.

  I was my own person. Or I had been.

  The tension in my jaw and down my spine relaxed as I thought of Vulf. I was no longer alone. I shared a brand new, terrifying and exhilarating mate bond with Vulf Trent.

  We’d kept our mate bond a secret, but everyone who’d seen the video of Vulf’s rescue of me in Meitj space off Naidoc three weeks ago knew that we had a relationship. A man didn’t shift into an inorganic robot wolf and risk near-certain death in interstellar space for a woman who meant nothing to him.

  Actually, we didn’t know how Vulf had shifted into a robot wolf.

  Since humanity’s evacuation of Earth, the shifter clans had been unable to shift. Werewolves like Vulf, along with werebears, weretigers, and so on, hadn’t been able to assume their animal forms. The best guess had been that separation from Earth had irrevocably separated them from their shifter-selves.

  Vulf’s robot wolf form destroyed that hypothesis, but opened up new questions. It was partly in search of answers to those questions that I stayed on San Juan. Whenever I could evade Winona’s endless political maneuvering, I haunted the Academy’s research center in the West Wing. The research scientists were fascinated by Vulf’s robot wolf form and repeatedly studied the video of him racing across Naidoc’s capital city and launching himself from its space dock in his four-footed form. They grumbled that the video didn’t cover the moment of his shift from human to robot wolf, and argued that they needed to witness his shift for themselves. They had to be present to monitor the flow of sha energy as he shifted between forms if they were to understand how it worked and replicate it.

  Replication was the issue.

  For seven generations shifters had been unable to shift. Now they could, potentially. Vulf was their hope. But could I, and other shamans, replicate the altered flow of sha energy to initiate their shifts?

  Vulf had first shifted into his robot wolf form on Earth, the shift coinciding with a sha energy explosion, a do-or-die event, and our mate bond fighting to establish itself and burning with mating heat. If all of those factors were essential to the shift, then other shifters were out of luck.

  However, there was a secondary question. If by some miracle the alteration in sha energy flow was replicable, would other shifters be as accepting as Vulf of shifting into a non-organic, robotic form?

  It seemed likely that they would.

  As soon as the video of his robot wolf racing through Naidoc had hit the galactic communications network, the shifter clans’ nearest pirate battle group had turned as one for Naidoc, wanting answers, wanting hope. Yes, pirate battle group. After humanity evacuated Earth, the shifters had been restless, their inability to shift spiking their already tense relationship with authority. Within two generations they’d gone their separate way and established themselves as space pirates.

  Much feared pirates.

  For the Meitj, having barely survived a galactic terrorist event designed to obliterate the planet Shaidoc and create a black hole in its place, thereby obliterating the neighboring planet of Naidoc along with it, the last thing they needed was an invading pirate horde. So they’d implored Vulf to head them off.

  Vulf and I had exchanged a final, desperate kiss, and separated. He had his duty to his people, and I had a duty to mine. Although, stuck in the crowded conference room, I could feel my bonds of loyalty to the Academy fraying.

  I missed Vulf.

  Apparently, I’d also missed the meeting drawing to its close. A scraping of chairs and a shuffling of feet, coughs and a babble of chatter, alerted me that I was free!

  Or I would have been free, but my distraction cost me.

  The meeting had broken up, but that only meant that its key players were at liberty to concentrate on me.

  Winona led the President over to me. They stopped too close, invading my personal space in a way that if I stood, I’d be in the President’s face. In effect, they trapped me in my chair.

  “Ms. Romanov.” President Hoffer’s smile stretched his lips, but failed to reach his dark brown eyes. “Walk with me?” The invitation was an order.

  I considered my options. Outside the door waited the President’s two bodyguards. Inside the room was a chaos of people. It was the second consideration that decided me. Walking with the President gave me an excuse to leave and an easy passage out.

  “Of course.” I stood.

  The President retreated a step and swiveled.

  The crowd opened up a path for us to the door.

  “We won’t be needing you, Winona.” The President didn’t even look at Chancellor Hayden as he dismissed her.

  I did, and saw the cold fury in her gaze.

  She had excellent control, though. The fury only showed for an instant. Then she nodded, her silvering fair hair swinging in its sleek bob, and turned away to join the nearest group of gossiping politicians.

  “The relationship between humanity and shamans has always been a special one on San Juan,” President Hoffer began smoothly as his bodyguards fell in behind us, and we strolled down the corridor toward the front of the building.

  I clicked my teeth together to keep my jaw from dropping open. Had he really just implied that shamans were something different, something not quite human? Shamans didn’t have a “special relationship” with humanity. We were part of it.

  President Hoffer’s practiced politician’s voice rolled unctuously on. “People on other planets don’t understand the unique pressures shamans operate under or the limits of your power.”

  This time I had no trouble staying silent. There was a threatening note underlying his urbane speech, and I wanted to learn where he thought he was guiding this conversation. His office and Winona had worked closely together for the last fortnight, culminating in today’s meeting and tomorrow’s interstellar humanity conference. Yet now, he’d ditched her to subtly threaten me. Was she aware of his threats?

  Hearing him mention “the limits of your power” reminded me that disrupters, the one form of technology capable of disconnecting a shaman from his or her shamanic talent, had been developed here on San Juan. I had thought it mere coincidence; that the planet’s scientists showed an especial interest in shamans because we were one of them. What if it was more ominous? What if they sought to control us?

  They’d be in for a shock, then. I’d already destroyed one disrupter. It was an unexpected ability, a consequence of my non-standard shamanic practice of “playing” with sha energy, that had enabled me to do so. I hadn’t shared my technique for destroying disrupters with the research shamans. It hadn’t even occurred to me to do so. The h
abit of hiding the extent of my power and its idiosyncrasies was a long-standing one. Tomorrow I’d push through that reluctance. If trouble was coming, my fellow shamans needed to be prepared.

  Unaware that his speech had had the opposite of its intended effect on me—I wasn’t scared, I was angry—the President continued. “Shamans require allies.”

  What the heck did he think Winona was doing with her relentless cycle of meetings if not cementing alliances? I might be a political novice, but I understood that her personal ambitions to leverage the power of her position as the chancellor of the Star Guild Shaman Academy required her to do so from solid foundations.

  “Alliances are strongest when both allies gain something from them.” Now he was educating me on political game playing. “Humanity deserves full member status of Galaxy Proper. We are established across seven planets.”

  Eight, actually. But respectable humans refused to count Corsairs, the pirate planet governed by the shifter clans.

  “What you did to save Shaidoc…” The President halted just before the corridor opened to the foyer of the central hall. Above him hung a portrait of the Academy’s founder.

  Immortalized on canvas, Clarence Bloodstone looked tired. He’d been an old man when his portrait was painted. His gray hair and beard were almost white, his dark skin nearly black around his eyes. But there’d been resolution in his face. Being evacuated from Earth, discovering that his shamanic talent was valued in the galaxy, identifying and organizing other shamans, and establishing the Academy had been a lifetime of heroic endeavor. Had he also had to fight political battles?

  Undoubtedly.

  I could do no less, although I was woefully unprepared. At least I knew I was outclassed. It made the decision as to what strategy to take an easy one. I stayed silent.

  As a politician, President Hoffer had never found a silence he didn’t want to fill. “The galaxy is now aware just how powerful a shaman can be. You are a weapon, Ms. Romanov. A shield for humanity, and its sword. What you must remember is that a weapon is only as good as the person who wields it. You need guidance to use your power effectively. This is humanity’s chance to stand equal with the aliens of the galaxy.” He put so much distaste on the word aliens that it sounded like a curse.