Her Robot Wolf (Shamans & Shifters Space Opera Book 1) Read online

  Far from it. Ivan never bothered to hide his scorn for the Academy, its rules, and the way it required shamans to register with it. Ivan evaded that necessity by operating in the galaxy’s black market, in places like the Psy Sector.

  “I offended you.” Ahab managed to sound regretful. “The Captain did not instruct me to learn of shamans from you. It was personal curiosity.”

  I returned to the sofa, sitting down morosely.

  A shadow moved on the wall, and I flinched.

  The shadow was of a mLa’an, motionless except for the faint lower left to upper right movement of its proboscis. “This is the form I would take if I could,” Ahab said.

  The shadow mLa’an’s height suited the size of the cabin. Even refitted for human occupation, the Orion remained a mLa’an creation.

  I watched the proboscis move again, from lower left to upper right, and made a guess. “Are you apologizing, Ahab?”

  “Yes. I did not anticipate your interpretation of the motivation for my question, but on reflection, it was the obvious one. I made you uncomfortable, and for that, I apologize.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  There was an awkward silence, on my part, at least. Ahab was a complicated AI. Did he feel embarrassment?

  I sighed. “Maybe I overreacted, too.” There were things I could tell Ahab that were common knowledge about shamans. Talking a little about my childhood wouldn’t betray Ivan. “The Star Guild Shaman Academy begins by training students to wind sha energy around staves. Physical props help young shamans to visualize where to guide sha. As we gain competence we discard the physical props.”

  I didn’t add that when we attempted complicated new patterns, props could be used to anchor the sha energy. Shamans who committed to terraforming barren planets used such props constantly. Sha energy on such planets had to be coaxed to flow in new patterns, ones that supported life. Anchors stabilized those patterns till the sha created its own rivers.

  “How old were you when you joined the Academy?”

  Ahab probably thought he’d selected an innocuous question. For most shamans, it would be. Their families brought them to the Academy after they’d showed signs of accessing sha. The Academy often assisted financially in relocating entire families so that new Academy students had family support close by. But I was different.

  “I was three.”

  In general, shaman talent revealed itself around puberty. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t “see” the flows of sha in my other sight.

  Hesitation slowed Ahab’s voice. “The Academy requires students to live-in, doesn’t it?”

  “Correct.” I kept my tone brisk. I didn’t require an AI’s pity. I didn’t require anyone’s pity. “I was anonymously surrendered to the Academy at the age of three. A note pinned to my jacket gave my name and birth date.”

  I knew my name, Jaya Romanov, my age, and—thanks to blood tests—my genetic heritage.

  The Academy had determinedly investigated my mysterious appearance at its doors, but learned nothing more. Now that Vulf was curious about my connection to Ivan, what would he learn?

  I kept my voice emotionless, falling back on information Ahab could have accessed from the general network. “The ability to access and manipulate sha energy is a rare talent even among humans. Hence, those of us who show signs of it are valued.” And controlled, Ivan argued. I didn’t think I was controlled. Yes, I operated according to patterns and protocols trained into me at the Academy. But I chose the starship shaman voyage contracts that I signed. I’d worked with and for any number of organization, many human, but not all. Starship shamans’ ability to smooth and ensure safe passage through wormholes was valued by many trading species.

  Ahab’s shadow slid down the wall, legs folding into its bonz body. His voice sounded thoughtful, so perhaps mLa’ans rolled up when they were thinking. “Scientists can’t measure sha energy.”

  “They can’t even reliably detect it. But I can shape and direct it.” I could also collect it from the pools in space in which it coalesced. I fidgeted with my collar. I no longer wore my platinum chain around my neck. Without the crystal that I’d stored sha in for five years, there was no point to the hidden chain.

  “Mostly sha energy only needs a light touch to redirect it, as with easing starships through wormholes. At the Academy they emphasize control. Through trial and error they’ve learned that the more violently a shaman attempts to use sha, the more the energy slips away. It has to be coaxed.”

  Sha energy wasn’t sentient, but its sensitivity and responsiveness had caused shamans on Earth to make that mistake. Some had worshipped it. I thought of sha as streams of possibilities. When I accessed it, I nudged it toward the possibilities I preferred. Having a clear intent was vital for a shaman accessing sha—or so the Academy said. I had vague memories from when I was very young of simply playing with sha. How was it that I remembered the sha and not the people from my three years before being surrendered to the Academy?

  Ahab had a question. “At the Academy, do you choose which aspect of sha energy use to specialize in or is it chosen for you?”

  “It’s personal preference, influenced by the sha patterns we each find easiest. I like the freedom of travelling through space.” The independence of it and the possibility of stumbling over pools of sha that I could collect in the crystal Ivan had stolen appealed to me. If Ivan had asked for the crystal, would I have given it to him? Not without a compelling reason. “Other shamans specialize in growing things. Shamans are why humanity has managed to terraform barren planets so quickly.” We had imitations of Earth scattered around the galaxy. “But choosing to terraform ties a shaman to that planet, emotionally as much as anything. Most shamans choose a specialty that enables them to travel.”

  And two that I knew of had chosen to specialize in sha weapons development.

  The Academy included ethics classes. It wasn’t just Matron who worried about our power outstripping our awareness of our responsibilities. It was why the Academy preferred us to establish relationships. Bonds. Even when we travelled, they wanted us to have a home base.

  I stared out at the people passing by the ship. It wasn’t something I dwelt on often, but I was one of the least connected shamans to have graduated from the Academy. I didn’t have a home base, although I quieted the Academy’s worries by holding one of their low-interest mortgages on a small apartment on planet San Juan where the Academy was situated. I seldom visited.

  “How would you define a shaman?” Ahab asked.

  “We fix problems.” It wasn’t the Academy’s definition. I doubted my colleagues or Ivan would agree with me. But the answer came from my heart. I believed it was part of Earth’s shamanic tradition. I mightn’t have close personal relationships, but I remained connected by my belief that I served others.

  We fix problems. It was time I fixed my own and talking with Ahab had given me a hint. I had been reaching for sha energy in the way the Academy had trained us, summoning it to build in expectation of how I wanted to alter the world. With the disrupter going, each time I attempted to touch the sha energy, I experienced an incorporeal burn.

  However, before the Academy’s training shaped my shamanic abilities, I hadn’t summoned sha. I hadn’t consciously reached for it—which was the trigger for the disrupter to burn my spirit. No, my dim memories of playing with sha featured it as flowing around me. I didn’t need to touch the sha. If I disregarded the Academy’s training, perhaps I could sneak up on the sha, observing it, until I found a way to direct it to destroy the disrupter. I could, perhaps, withstand the disrupter’s burn long enough for a targeted strike to take it out.

  I stared unseeingly at the viewscreen and concentrated on seeing sha with my other sight.

  If Ahab spoke again, I didn’t hear him.

  Sha danced over the Orion. I’d never seen a starship as engulfed in sha energy as Vulf’s. Was it because the sha tried to reach me, only for me to flinch from the disrupter? Or was my
presence irrelevant? Could the sha be attracted to the cold fusion reactor powering the ship?

  The sha shimmered and wove in streams of unnamable color, like an aurora gone crazy. I shifted on the sofa, sliding from sitting into a comfortable slouch, then into stretching flat out. I no longer looked at the viewscreen or at anything visible. My eyes were closed. Perhaps Ahab would decide I was sleeping. Somewhere in the patterns of the sha had to hide the disrupter, but I couldn’t see a space that the sha avoided. Which made sense. The disrupter affected me, not the sha itself, but it would have been handy if I could have located it.

  The sha swirled suddenly, flaring joyously. I smiled, caught up in the pleasure of it. I ought to do this more often, simply lose myself in the sha energy.

  A hand touched my shoulder.

  I jerked upright.

  Vulf frowned down at me. “I called your name. You didn’t hear me.” He was close, still leaning over me, one arm braced on the back of the sofa.

  “I was…meditating.”

  He was close enough that I could count his eyelashes, smell the warm male scent of him, touch him—if I wanted to.

  Shifters liked touch. It helped to keep them balanced, emotionally. How did Vulf survive alone?

  Without meaning to, I flattened my hand against his chest. There was no force in my touch. I wasn’t pushing him away.

  His heartbeat was steady. “I found something at a bar called the Spotted Toadstool.”

  My fingers curled into a fist.

  He nodded, as if he’d expected some reaction from me, even the recognition I’d just displayed. He lifted his hand from the back of the sofa, straightening and retreating from me. “Show the video, Ahab.”

  Chapter 3

  Vulf sat beside me on the sofa, while on the viewscreen, his recorded self entered a bar. The Spotted Toadstool lacked the whimsy of its name. Its lighting was dim. Inside the bar, time evidently didn’t matter. It offered twenty four hour a day oblivion. The chairs and tables were narrow and crowded. An array of bottles and canisters lined the shelves behind the bar. Since leaving Earth, humans had discovered a number of substances legal in the galaxy that nonetheless gave a human a high. Still, for the most part, people on a binge remained loyal to alcohol; as if the price of it—a hangover—was part of the ritual of overindulgence.

  “How did you film this?” I asked. The angle was about eye level for Vulf, but the fact that he was in the picture meant that the recording device wasn’t on him. A drone, no matter how small, would surely have been noticed. Unless people mistook it for an insect like a wasp? Did Samanth have wasps?

  “I installed a surveillance camera when I identified the Spotted Toadstool as one of Ivan’s regular haunts. Listen.”

  The woman behind the bar was middle-aged, her blonde hair curled and the blue of her eyes emphasized with turquoise eye shadow. Her low, tight top was silver above black trousers, and cut to draw attention to her breasts.

  Vulf looked her in the eyes. “Daisy?”

  I stiffened. Was this who Ivan meant could get a message to him in an emergency?

  On screen, the woman tipped her head fractionally, shrewd eyes assessing Vulf. “I’m Daisy.” She picked up a pixie rock canister and rolled it between her hands. The movement would excite the molecules inside, making them glitter brighter and intoxicate whoever inhaled it faster.

  “I was in earlier this week, looking for Ivan Mishkin.”

  Daisy said nothing.

  “What can you tell me about him?” Vulf didn’t put any money on the counter, nor did he produce a weapon. But his whole attitude said he wouldn’t leave without answers.

  “Annoying. Harmless. Loud-mouthed. Not here.” Daisy was succinct. But even in the few words, her accent came through. She was Arcadian, the accent a mingling of Canadian and British speech patterns from Earth. Arcadia was a farming planet, a long way from Samanth. How had Daisy found her way to the Psy Sector, and was Ivan involved?

  “He also bought the Spotted Toadstool for you.”

  Daisy’s eyes widened as her mouth tightened. Her surprise and anger were obvious.

  My own surprise caused me to glance at Vulf.

  He was watching me rather than the screen.

  I looked back at it quickly.

  The pixie rock canister slowed in its rolling motion between Daisy’s hands. “How did you find out that Ivan lent me the money for this place?”

  “Gave you the money,” Vulf corrected on screen. He held out his communicator. “Do you recognize this woman?”

  Daisy’s composure was fracturing. Her arched eyebrows rose sharply, then drew into a frowning V. “I don’t know her.” She set the pixie rock canister down with a cracking sound.

  “Jaya Romanov.”

  I jumped. He’d shown Daisy my photo? Why? And why did it look as if Daisy had lied and she did recognize me? “I’ve never seen her before.”

  On screen, Vulf said. “I want to know her connection to Ivan Mishkin.”

  Daisy went to pick up the pixie rock canister.

  Vulf snatched it. He was so fast, his hand nearly blurred. “Ivan’s in trouble. Jaya might be able to provide some answers.”

  “Leave the girl alone,” Daisy snapped. There was real feeling in her voice.

  I shook my head. “Who is she?”

  Vulf paused the viewscreen with Daisy glaring at his on-screen-self across the bar. “Daisy Smith is forty nine years old. She was born on Arcadia, but left it at the age of eighteen. Within a year she was stuck on a remote station near a mining belt. She waited tables and did what she had to do to get by.”

  Prostitution, he meant.

  “She survived.” I studied the woman on screen with new respect.

  “Twenty three years ago Ivan bought the Spotted Toadstool for her. It’s the single biggest gift he ever gave anyone. Yet there doesn’t appear to be a romantic or any other relationship between them.”

  Ivan was a hundred and two. Shamans age more slowly than other humans and live longer. “Could he have known her parents or grandparents?”

  Vulf shrugged. “Daisy has managed the Spotted Toadstool ever since. Men come and go in her life, but the bar remains constant. It is her life.”

  I understood how work could be everything. “You know a lot about her.”

  A flicker of what might have been amusement deepened the blue of his eyes. “How do you imagine I do my job?”

  “You’re not the stereotype I had of bounty hunters, all brawn and no brain. I can’t imagine you bashing your way to answers.”

  “I can if I have to.”

  I nodded, puzzling over the question he’d posed. “You’re…meticulous.” I had a glimmer of understanding, and seized it. “Like a wolf casting for a scent. You research the people you’re chasing, looking for clues.”

  “Patterns of purchases and presence,” he said. “People are more predictable than they think. They have ties to a place. Most people. You don’t.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked around the cabin. “I thought the Orion was your home.”

  “It is.” He changed the subject, returning determinedly to the original issue: finding Ivan. “Ivan buys gingko leaves from an apothecary here on Samanth. He also buys ri gum, a specialty of the apothecary’s father. Ri is a stimulant and painkiller and mildly addictive. Ivan will want to ensure his supply. He bought a substantial amount before he attempted to steal from the Meitj Emperor.”

  I considered the information. “It’s an anomaly in his behavior, one indicative of other alterations in his usual pattern.” I paused. That wasn’t the only anomaly revealed by the video. “How does Daisy know me?”

  “We should go find out.”

  Stunned into silence, it took me half a minute to get my question out. “You’d let me off the Orion?”

  “Perhaps. There’s something else you need to see first. Ahab, run the marked scene from the footage recorded yesterday at the Spotted Toadstool.”
/>   Daisy’s image vanished from the viewscreen, replaced by the image of a man every bit as tall as Vulf, but with an expression in his eyes as he scanned the bar’s patrons that made me recoil.

  “Mike Seymour,” Vulf said. “Bounty hunter.”

  My gaze shot to him. “You said no other bounty hunter would risk going after a shaman. You said Ivan was safe!” Well, not safe, but being brought in by Vulf seemed a heck of a lot safer than tangling with Mike Seymour.

  “I hadn’t seen this video then.” Vulf stared at the screen. “Seymour has the arrogance to tackle a shaman. He won’t use a disrupter. He can’t afford one. He spends money as fast as he earns it. But he’s efficient.”

  My skin crawled at the tone in which Vulf said efficient. “He looks brutal.”

  “He is,” Ahab contributed. “Michael Seymour is thirty six years old. He has been charged twice with murder, and he’s killed more often than that. Although clever lawyers argued him clear of murder, he’s served jail time twice for grievous bodily harm. The scar on his face was inflicted with a shiv, an illicit prison weapon. The red marks on his right forearm are acid burns when one of his victims fought back. He ripped off the Kayrim’s tentacles.”

  By which I gathered that Mike Seymour was a multi-species bounty hunter, and abusive.

  Vulf’s size meant he intimidated people just by breathing, but in the video of the Spotted Toadstool, it was obvious that Seymour menaced on purpose. The leather, or faux leather, that he wore strained over bulging muscles and prominent veins. The man was on steroids. Steroid rage was a real phenomenon, and one that made addicts both violent and unpredictable.

  “Could he really find Ivan?” I asked as I studied the man on the frozen viewscreen. “He doesn’t look very smart.”