Her Robot Wolf: Gift of Gaia Page 10

  Vulf stood. “Thanks.”

  “Reckon you’re owed it. Kenner messed up your mission on Station Drill. That kid…” Cyrus laughed. But his gaze was sharp as it rested on me. “Half-shifter? Shifter status doesn’t matter as much as people think. What matters is knowing your loyalties. Vulf will die for those he loves.”

  Vulf had endured torture for an unknown mLa’an child. Cyrus wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know in my soul.

  I held the old man’s gaze. I would not be considered lesser, even by implication. “It’s a good thing Vulf isn’t a shaman then.” I paused, and the two men watched me with heightened alertness. “I am, and I would break the galaxy to save my own.”

  Cyrus didn’t need to know that there were precious few that I claimed as my own. There was Ivan, and perhaps Daisy who’d known my mom. There were a handful of friends from the Star Guild Shaman Academy. Kenner had inveigled some sense of protectiveness from me. And there was Vulf.

  His hand was at my waist as we said our good-byes and hot-footed it back to the officers’ mess.

  Yes, I would break the galaxy to save Vulf.

  Lunch was less difficult than I’d thought it might be. Conversation stayed on impersonal topics, like my shamanic talent. I’d had similar initial discussions often enough when I joined a new starship on a voyage contract. Officers could be as curious as crew to learn more about sha energy, and just as spooked by it. On other starships, people simply avoided me; enjoying the benefits of smooth, safe travel through wormholes, but spooked by my abilities.

  I discovered the pirate officers weren’t spooked. Or at least, wouldn’t admit to fearing me. They were also more interested than the merchant starship officers that I usually travelled with in the offensive abilities of a shamanic talent.

  I ate my serving of standard ersatz meat stew with the enthusiasm of someone who’d missed breakfast. “I chose not to specialize in sha weaponry.”

  “But you must be able to defend yourself,” Edith pushed.

  Kenner wasn’t present. This was the officers’ mess. I assumed that Edith had managed to include herself at our table with the captain by virtue of trading shamelessly on the fact that Vulf was her brother. She sat at his left hand. I was at his right.

  At the Star Guild Shaman Academy one of Matron’s adages was that you only had one chance to make a first impression. Well, perhaps the fact that I’d boarded the Capricorn only just over an hour ago meant that this meal was part of that first impression. When I travelled as a starship shaman, I followed the Academy’s protocol and underplayed my shamanic talent. I smoothed the ship’s journey through wormholes but otherwise hid my use of sha energy.

  But on the Capricorn I was a guest, not a contracted shaman. I wasn’t going to consider if Vulf or I had a future or what the mating heat between us signified, but for my own self-respect, I had a sudden desire to meet the challenge that lurked beneath the pirate officers’ questions.

  Are you scary enough to tangle with us?

  Vulf knew I was. He’d brought me here and he was leaving his clan to question and pester me. How I responded was up to me.

  Phil had backed down from a direct confrontation with me.

  Maybe the other pirates needed to understand that while Vulf was one level of scary, I wielded my own terror.

  The officers’ mess was clean and tidy, furnished with hard-wearing, functional furnishings in shades of dull blue and brown. I could change the colors in the room. It was a simple matter of altering the way light behaved. However, the pirates wanted a convincing show, not the sort of children’s entertainment that reassured as much as it unsettled.

  Sha energy isn’t tame.

  I waited till our dinner plates were removed and hot apple pie served, then I turned out the lights in the mess. I also enclosed Vulf, Edith and myself in a defensive bubble. If anyone panicked, we wouldn’t be hurt. As Vulf tensed, I bumped him with my shoulder in a silent command to relax. I broadcast my voice over the exclamations, the shouted orders to restore the light, and the scuff of feet as people prepared to act. “Didn’t you want a demonstration of sha as a weapon?”

  Abrupt silence fell.

  “The door won’t open!” a man shouted.

  The passageway door was the least of their problems. The service door to the kitchen wouldn’t open either. I’d observed the last of the serving staff retire beyond it, and then, secured it and extinguished the light. I ate excellent apple pie in the darkness, while I built a wraith, folding sha energy over itself in a spiral till it created its own vortex. As I allowed the light to return, the wraith, a pale imitation of a black hole but given a hooded, humanoid form, became visible.

  The shifters all stood and swiveled to face it, drawing weapons. Well, not all of them. Captain Bree Darnell remained seated. She studied the wraith.

  I called it forward.

  A couple of pirates shot it with a blaster. The energy bolts fed the wraith. It loomed up to the ceiling.

  “Good pie,” Vulf said.

  On his other side, Edith slowly sat. She peered around him at me. “Jaya, are you controlling it?”

  I nodded. I’d taken a sip of the ersatz coffee served on the Capricorn earlier, and had decided to wait till we returned to the Orion to have a real coffee. So when I lifted the coffee mug to my lips, it was only for the look of things. See how casually powerful the shaman is. That kind of thing.

  The wraith looked scary. At the Academy we’d learned that wraiths had been difficult to create on Earth. However, in space, they were an easily assembled sha construct. I could stretch it thin and large enough to wrap around an entire starship, and it would absorb the attack of energy weapons. It was more effective than the most advanced technological shield.

  I caused it to jerk forward, in a pouncing movement. That startled energy bolts out of more officers.

  “Cease fire,” Bree barked.

  The wraith now exclusively occupied the center of the room with the pirates surrounding it.

  “It appears an excellent defense against energy weapons,” Bree said calmly. “However, take out the shaman—” She sat beside me, so when she drove her dagger with shifter-fast reflexes at me, she expected to succeed.

  The protective bubble that I’d enclosed Vulf, Edith and myself in dissolved the blade of Bree’s dagger. It looked as if acid ate it, but I knew it was sha energy dancing with the blade’s molecular structure.

  Vulf stood. “Aunt Bree, Jaya is a guest.”

  Bree tossed the hilt of the ruined knife onto the table. “More than that,” she said casually. “You brought her. So we tested her.”

  “Did I pass?”

  I held Bree’s gaze, trying my best to keep my expression neutral while I readied the sha held within the wraith’s form to explode from defense into a weapon. The challenge was to impress the pirates without irrevocably destroying them or their ship. They wouldn’t disrespect me a second time.

  “You tell me,” Bree replied, giving nothing away.

  I scraped up the last of my pie. “Thank you for your hospitality.” I looked around Vulf to Edith. “Nice to meet you.”

  She smiled at me. “It’s been interesting.” She hugged her brother. “I’m telling Mom and Dad,” she whispered.

  I released the sha energy from the wraith, feeding more sha into a new pattern, one which was showy and ridiculous, but which tapped sha energy’s affinity for mandalas to economize on the amount of sha I needed to use to control it. It wasn’t a conventional weapon, but it showed that I could be dangerous.

  From the center of the room, ribbons of light lashed out, locking around each and every pirate, including Captain Bree, and dragging them into the center of the officers’ mess. A quick push of sha cleared the floor space and I let the sha arrange the shouting, squirming pirates into a human lotus, each petal a pirate. Then the last sha ribbon set Bree in the center.

  I smiled at Edith. “Do you have your communicator?”

  She was biti
ng her lip, but giggles escaped. Lying helpless and pretty were the commanding officers of the ship she served on. She waved her communicator at me in answer.

  “Take a photo,” I said.

  “Send a copy to me,” Vulf added. Then he escorted me out of the mess.

  Chapter 6

  Vulf was still laughing under his breath when we boarded the Orion.

  It felt good to be home, and I responded cheerfully to Ahab’s welcome.

  “They won’t underestimate you, again,” Vulf said.

  I eyed him interestedly. This was a new facet to his character. “I can see a resemblance to Kenner in you.”

  “As a troublemaker?” He grinned, fierce and self-confident. “He’ll be okay once he can fight his way out of the trouble he gets into.”

  I sighed, deeply, and climbed the ladder to the cargo hold.

  Behind us, the unlocking procedure would already be underway.

  “Ahab, plot a course for the swiftest return to the Boneyard Sector, Station Folly specifically,” Vulf ordered.

  At the recreation cabin he caught my hand and kept me moving. “Come through to the bridge. I like to be there for departures.”

  “And arrivals,” Ahab said. “I can handle both.”

  “I know.” By Vulf’s tone, it was an old fight. Neither the AI nor Vulf seemed bothered by it. “As captain, I prefer to be on the bridge.”

  There were two chairs on the bridge. He took the pilot’s chair. I dropped into the copilot’s, which looked shiny new and unused, a reminder that Vulf usually travelled alone.

  “We need to talk about your blood and your father.” The humor had vanished from his face. He watched the unlocking procedure through a screen, while monitoring another screen of data. “I can arrange to have your blood sample run against the shifter database at any time.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured.

  His mouth compressed. For an instant he glanced away from the screens to study me. “If the database finds a match, it will alert your father first.”

  “What?” I spun my chair to face him.

  “It’s one of the rules of the database. Full-shifters are prioritized.”

  “But he could be anyone!” Were these shifters crazy? I didn’t want some stranger suddenly entering my life—which would be what I’d do to him if I learned his name and decided to meet him. I slumped back in the chair. “Forget it. I don’t need to know who my father is.”

  Vulf held up a finger. “There might be another option, but I need to farewell the Capricorn first.” He flicked the communication system on. “Captain Trent thanks the Capricorn for its hospitality. We are unlocking in three minutes.”

  The voice that came over the communicator wasn’t the least bit interested in the protocol for unlocking. “Who the hell did you bring aboard, Vulf?”

  A cackle of laughter erupted from the communicator before Vulf could answer. Cyrus crashed the conversation and the secure communication beam. “Jaya Romanov, first class shamanic talent, groomed by the Academy to become a Shaman Justice, but activating her right to liberty by choosing the life of a starship shaman. The Academy will likely allow her her freedom for seven years before putting the pressure on to assume the role of a Justice.”

  Cyrus had more than proven his abilities as a chief of intelligence.

  And he was right. I had known that with five years served wandering the galaxy according to my own fancy, taking or rejecting voyage contracts, I was nearing the point when the Academy would intervene to push and prod and guilt me into the role they’d groomed me for. I had more shamanic talent than they’d seen in three generations.

  That Vulf hadn’t known the level of my shamanic talent or the Academy’s secret plans for me was evident in how still he went, and the frozen, nearly betrayed look in his blue eyes.

  I was so accustomed to downplaying and hiding the extent of my shamanic talent that I did it without thinking. I certainly never confessed it to anyone. But the secret was out, now.

  “A half-shifter Shaman Justice,” Cyrus said. “It’s something to think about.” Then his voice snapped into a command. “Vulf, don’t do anything stupid.”

  The communication beam ceased.

  Ahab reported the unlocking procedure complete. The Orion accelerated in the direction of the Boneyard Sector and Station Drill.

  Vulf spun his pilot’s chair to face me. His right boot landed outside my left one, stilling my restless side-to-side movement and the fractional spin and return of my chair. “So, Shaman Justice?”

  “I don’t know if I want the role,” I blurted. I’d never honestly and completely discussed my future with anyone. “Even Ivan doesn’t know what the Academy plans for me. No one is meant to be able to hack their system. My shamanic talent level is a secret.” It was one of the few secrets that I’d kept from Ivan. As a toddler, I’d played with sha. As an adult, I commanded it. None of the instructors at the Academy could wrest sha energy from me once I controlled it.

  “There are only two Shaman Justices at the moment,” Vulf said. “The third position is empty—waiting for you?”

  I nodded. I had two more years of my seven years of liberty, a freedom the Academy had grudgingly granted me given my youth and the fact that I’d experienced nothing of life outside the Academy’s shelter. “I don’t know if I’ll accept it.”

  He grunted. “You won’t have a choice.”

  That was what I was afraid of.

  The Galactic Government had negotiated a clause in humanity’s Charter of Union that compelled humanity to provide shamans to assist in the exercise of justice across the galaxy. There were ways of accessing sha to determine the truth, and there was the fact that few could take out a strong shaman. If the Academy ever learned that I’d destroyed a disrupter, the only technology that could negate shamanic talent, they’d cease to respect my liberty and push me into the role of a Shaman Justice immediately.

  Over time, the shamans that assisted the Galactic Court in its operations had come to be known as Shaman Justices. At a minimum, there had to be one. Currently, there were two. Usually, there were three.

  “I need coffee. Real coffee.” Vulf strode from the bridge.

  I watched him go. The screens showed the Orion travelling steadily back to the Boneyard Sector. On the journey here, I’d slept through the wormhole we traversed. This time, I’d stay awake and smooth the jump. That would decrease our journey time.

  However, locating Ivan and talking sense into him had competing priorities. There was nothing I could do for Ivan while the Orion was in transit. But I could find out more about the shifters’ database and the consequences of searching for my father.

  There was also the issue of the mating heat between Vulf and me. I’d never felt anything as wild as the attraction between us.

  What had Cyrus feared when he’d ordered Vulf not to do anything stupid?

  I pushed up from the copilot’s chair. There were things in life that scared me—like becoming a Shaman Justice—but Vulf wasn’t on my list of terrifying things. I went in search of him, and of coffee.

  Vulf stood with his back to me as I entered, his attention on the food dispenser, but as I approached, he slid a mug filled with steaming coffee along the counter toward me.

  “Thank you.” I wanted to touch him. On the Capricorn, he’d been more playful than I’d imagined he could be. He’d laughed at my treatment of his fellow shifters. He’d stolen opportunities to touch me: a hand at my lower back, a brush of our fingers, crowding close behind me in the passageways. Yet here I stood, too nervous to touch him. Cyrus’s revelation about my power and likely future had changed things. I just wasn’t sure how or what Vulf had originally intended. Could a mating heat be indulged in just for fun?

  I curled my hands around my coffee mug. Even if a mating heat could be treated casually, relationships were too rare for me to enter into a meaningless one.

  “Vulf—”

  He walked away, crossing the cabin to the viewscreen t
o stand near it where he could watch the view of infinite space. “Kenner’s school friend Ellis isn’t the only hacker on Corsairs. She’s not even anywhere near as talented as some of the shifters off-Corsairs. If you want to know who your father is, no strings attached, I know a hacker who owes me a favor.”

  He was volunteering to arrange the hack of the shifters’ database to match a genetic code for me and identify my father. I trailed after him across the cabin to stand on the far side of the viewscreen, leaning a shoulder against the wall. “That’s some favor. Wouldn’t Cyrus suspect any attempted hacking?” Was this the stupid thing Cyrus had warned Vulf against.

  “Yes. It doesn’t matter.” He was completely serious. He’d go against his own clan for me.

  The knowledge was nearly painful, creating the sensation of a jagged lump in my throat. “Thank you. I’ll think about it.” I drank some coffee to try and push away the feeling.

  Vulf gulped his coffee and put the mug aside. “How much do you know about the mating heat?”

  The coffee sloshed in my mug. “Not much. The mating heat only happens between full-shifters—” and us. I bent and deposited the mug on the coffee table before licking a spilled drop from my thumb.

  Vulf’s gaze flicked to my mouth, and away. He stared out through the viewscreen. The cold emptiness of space seemed to enter his voice. “There were a number of things I could have done when you intervened in my pursuit of Ivan on Tyger Tyger. Kidnapping you was an extreme response. My instincts told me you were important. I assumed that meant you were important to locating Ivan.”

  “I have helped with that,” I said, thinking of what I’d learned from Daisy at the Spotted Toadstool. Although, perhaps, what I’d learned was more crucial to me personally than to Vulf’s pursuit of Ivan.

  Vulf flattened his palm against the viewscreen. He turned his head to look at me. “My instincts recognized you as a potential mate. I recognized the turmoil in me soon after that—the impulse to protect you, to be near you—but it didn’t make sense because you weren’t a shifter.”