Hybrid: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 4)

by Valerie J Mikles

“Hey,” she said seriously, giving him an apologetic look. “I didn’t mean it was your fault.”

  “Isn’t it?” he whispered, his chin dropping.

  “Sit down. Listen to this,” she said, finding her Feather and hooking it over his ear. Tray’s Feathers tended to be blue or jewel-toned, adding a noticeable fashion element to the listening device. Saskia’s were plain, olive-toned so that it matched her skin and disappeared onto her ear. To her, it was not a fashion accessory.

  “I swear I heard a familiar song,” she added, watching his expression. A familiar song would mean a signal from home. They’d strayed too far from their home city and the fact that all of Quin’s communications were focused narrowly and powerfully to their allies on Terrana meant that they weren’t getting anything this low in the atmosphere. They were out of the cone of the signal, but sometimes, they picked up signals from technologically advanced nomadic tribes.

  “It sounds like static to me,” he shrugged, touching the Feather. “Honestly, I’m just glad we got the comms working.”

  “Give it a moment. Terrana’s low enough on the horizon that we’re almost in the path,” she said, raking her fingers through her long, black hair, pulling strands from her loose braid.

  Tray slid the other chair in the room around the tracks, bringing it next to hers. The chairs were designed for micro-gravity, and they got stuck when he tried to sit first then slide. He pressed one finger against the Feather, closing his eyes, concentrating on the sounds coming through the device.

  “I hear something,” he smiled, his face seeming to glow with excitement. “It doesn’t sound like a song. Let’s see if we can respond on that frequency.”

  “If it’s from Quin, it has to be a song. It’s their music broadcast frequency,” Saskia said.

  Tray listened again, then frowned.

  “We turned. It’s fading,” Saskia sighed. Saskia stopped the recording and adjusted the antenna, trying to get the signal back. It took four days to get to the nearest moon; it had taken them less than five minutes to veer off course and land in Rocan. It seemed crazy that their journey home had dragged so many weeks.

  “You made a recording?” Tray asked, tapping her arm, wanting to take over the station. He’d written his own algorithms to analyze signal coherence.

  “Hold on,” Saskia said, planting her elbows on the console, holding her head to stave off a dizzy spell. “I want to record as much as I can while we’re up here. It’ll give us something to play with tonight.”

  “Don’t you like playing cards?” Tray teased, putting on a mock pout and giving her shoulder a squeeze. Saskia gave him a look, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from twinkling. One of these nights, they’d skip the cards and tear each other’s clothes off. She just had to decide if it was worth the risk—bedding the Captain’s little brother.

  Captain Danny Matthews shuffled out of his quarters into the adjacent galley area and promptly tripped on the raised footrest of the blue plush recliner blocking his doorway. With a growl, Danny pushed the footrest down and glared at Sky. She was a gorgeous, fair-skinned thorn in his side.

  “Don’t blame me, Captain. Hawk brought the chair up here,” she smirked, standing over the stove, stirring some kind of sweet and spicy chowder. As their fresh food supply aged, it seemed they were having chowders more and more.

  “Take it back to the cargo bay. This is not his property, and it is not yours. That chair belongs to a client, and I intend to see it delivered,” Danny grumbled, putting his head down on the table and massaging his shins. Hawk may have brought the chair up, but it was Sky who had blocked his door with it.

  “Chair’s more comfortable to relax in,” Sky taunted. “Or I could help you relax.”

  Danny snickered, warmed by the tease.

  “You look like you could use another few hours,” Sky commented.

  “I feel like all I do is sleep,” he complained. He’d had a hell of a time falling asleep, knowing Amanda was on the bridge alone, but he imagined he’d be out like a light if he fell asleep in Sky’s arms. Only, from what he’d deduced, she didn’t sleep.

  “You run around a lot for a man who nearly died the other week.”

  “Says the woman who was stabbed in the gut getting the medicine to cure me,” he smirked. “You shouldn’t be on your feet either.”

  “I haven’t been standing long,” she shrugged.

  “How are you?” Danny asked, closing his eyes, but forcing himself to listen.

  “Physically, fine,” she said, “but something Marius said has been bothering me.”

  “Is he the one you killed?” Danny asked. Between the coma and the post-illness sleep marathon, Danny hadn’t had much time to get caught up on their interaction with the Drava. His most vivid memory of that whole week was seeing Sky kill her rapist. Everything else was a blur.

  “No. Marius is the one who orchestrated the abduction,” Sky said, dancing around the details of the trauma. “Marius seemed to think the Drava had a definitive medical test to prove that I had… that I…”

  “Had spirit-like ability,” Danny finished, resting his chin on his hands. Danny hadn’t quite figured out Sky’s connection to the Aquian spirit creatures, but he knew something was different.

  “A physical test. Their test said I was a hundred years old,” she said, her body twitching.

  “Are you?” he asked. He figured she had half a century on him despite appearing in her early thirties. She had also healed from a knife wound to the gut in a matter of days with almost no treatment. She never slept, not because she didn’t need it, but because what she saw when she closed her eyes physically pained her.

  Sky twitched again, her anxiety rising at the challenge to her humanity. “That’s not the point. They think there’s some kind of physical, cellular marker that they can detect.”

  “Are you sure it was a medical test? Their culture may be guided by all sorts of superstition. Maybe they burned a leaf and read the ashes,” Danny said.

  “Not Drava culture,” Sky said, shaking her head, adding liquid to her chowder and stirring. “They’re scientists.”

  “How advanced?” Danny asked. “Gene therapy? Cloning? I know some people try to selectively breed Panoptica.”

  “Panoptica?” she asked. Sky set a mug by his elbow, and Danny shuddered at the intoxicating scent of fresh Terranan coffee. Danny wanted to drink at will until the supply ran out, but his brother was determined to ration the drink. When Tray hid the Terranan coffee beans and the Aquian bunna beans, it led to a fistfight. Tray won on principle, not on strength. Cupping the mug with both hands, Danny lifted his face just enough to get his nose over the lip of the cup and inhale. Hopefully his groan of pleasure would count as a ‘thank you’.

  “Truth seers. Future seers. The Panoptica are a sect on Terrana, some claiming to have supernatural ability. But they don’t teleport like those hybrids in Rocan did,” he explained, sipping the coffee, feeling his neurons fire for the first time in days.

  “Those are just stories,” she said, sitting backwards on the bench seat and extending her legs languidly. She denied her spirit connection at every turn, and Danny knew if he pushed too hard, she’d run. He’d heard her talk to Hawk about spirits, but around him, she clammed up.

  “Where’s your shadow?” Danny asked.

  “On the bridge, bird watching. Writing in his journal,” she said, relaxing at the topic change. Sky tickled the back of his neck flirtatiously, and Danny shivered.

  “Where did he get a journal?” He’d seen Hawk with the book earlier that week. It would freak Hawk out if he knew the cover was animal skin.

  “I gave it to him,” she said.

  “And where did you get it?”

  She smiled mischievously, her blue eyes twinkling.

  “Right,” Danny huffed. “Where you get everything.”

  “I didn’t steal it, I appropriated it. And not from your cargo bay. The Drava artisans have tons of them lying around,” Sky said, walki
ng her fingers up his arm. Danny swatted her away, blushing. When he was awake, it was easier to remember that he didn’t want to be seduced by her. It had been only a month since he lost Corey, and between the grief, guilt, and regret, the happiness felt out of place. Telling himself that he deserved a little respite only brought the painful truth that despite Sky’s long life, her interest in him was fleeting. He was the type to fall head-over-heels in love, and she was the type to vanish from his life. Just as she’d vanished from the Drava, leaving behind a heart-broken lover.

  “The Drava had you tied to a bed and—” Danny paused mid-sentence, not wanting to articulate the horror. “When did you have time to shop for souvenirs?”

  “I never leave any place empty-handed,” Sky shrugged.

  “You were tied to a bed!”

  “Not initially,” she said, giving him an innocent look.

  Danny scratched his arm and finished the rest of his coffee. “Sky, is that my robe?”

  “I suppose,” she crooned, sauntering back to the cooking island, giving the chowder a stir. “Tray insisted I wear something now that I’m ambulatory.”

  Danny bit his lip, glad Tray had been able to talk some modesty into her. With the wound on her torso, she’d been going without clothing the first few days.

  “Did you want it back?” Sky asked, slipping off the robe and holding it out to Danny.

  “No,” Danny chuckled, his temperature rising at the sight of her naked body. It had been awhile for him, and it was bad enough that her merciless flirtation invited fantasy. Jumping up from the table, he caught the robe before Sky dropped it, and he draped it around her shoulders, cinching the waist carefully so that he wouldn’t reinjure her. She leaned against him, making him as uncomfortable as possible.

  Suddenly the ship pitched and the pot of chowder fell off the stove, crashing into the coffee pot, spilling the coffee. Danny grabbed one of the overhead hand rungs, then looped his arm around Sky’s chest, keeping her steady. They both started swearing in as many languages as they knew.

  “Captain!” Hawk’s voice rang over the Vring. “Help!”

  3

  Hawk grabbed the yoke, searching for the button that would switch the controls to the captain’s side of the console. The ship crossed into a cloud of little flying machines and proximity alarms flashed and blared. Yanking hard on the yoke, Hawk tried to level them off, but he forgot how sensitive the ship was to small movements, and sent them into a roll. He tried to raise them out of the turbid air, but the force of the thrusters sent strong vibrations through the damaged hull plating, and he collided with one of the flying machines.

  “Captain!” he hollered. “Anyone!”

  Saskia came behind him, gripping the overhead rungs with both hands, to keep steady as she made her way to the console. Leaning past him, she entered a few commands, using buttons Hawk couldn’t translate because they were all labeled in Lanvarian. A thruster fired and their pitch steadied.

  “What happened?” Saskia asked, taking the middle seat and lifting Amanda’s bruised face from the console.

  “She collapsed. She just collapsed!” Hawk cried. His hands shook and his heart pounded, fearing punishment for allowing harm to come to Amanda. He didn’t want Tray to make his head explode.

  “Keep flying. Keep steady,” Saskia ordered.

  “How can I? They’re everywhere!” Hawk said, feeling the impact of one machine after another. “What are they?”

  “Drones. Sky said the nomads might have tech like that,” Saskia replied. “If we hold steady, they’ll be able to predict our movement and avoid us.”

  “Unless they’re trying to hit us,” Hawk muttered.

  “Report!” Danny hollered, clambering in, swinging from the hand rungs.

  “She’s unconscious but breathing,” Saskia answered. “Hawk, are you steady?”

  “No,” Hawk said, squeezing his eyes shut.

  “You’re doing fine, son,” Danny said, putting his hand over Hawk’s. “Just keep your eyes open. See if you can take us higher without stalling.”

  Hawk could tell by the endearment that Danny was repeating platitudes that he’d heard in his youth. Not from his father or stepfather, but from a man named Alex for whom Danny had great reverence. When he needed to be calm, he used certain words. And the fact that he needed to calm himself did nothing to calm Hawk.

  “I rolled the ship,” Hawk whispered.

  “I noticed. Hawk, don’t take your hands off the yoke,” Danny coached, nudging Hawk’s fingers to correct their course. “I’ll take over as soon as we can get Amanda out of the pilot’s seat. You’re doing fine, son.”

  Shedding her robe, Sky slid through the spilled coffee, and ran to the quarters she shared with Hawk. She donned her sleek, white travel clothes and slung her aged, brown satchel over her shoulder. She felt a gust of wind and Spirit reared its ugly head, teeth bared, like a dog whose territory had been encroached.

  “No, no. We’re almost to Quin,” Sky groaned, her stomach dropping as the ship swayed. The Spirit she carried had been threatening to kill her for decades. She ran to the forward ladder, part of her wanting to go up to the bridge, but most of her wanting to run down to her Bobsled and make a quick escape.

  “Sky!” Hawk cried, his voice echoing through the crawlway. The fear in his voice ignited a protective instinct that Sky hadn’t known since she was a girl, the day she stepped between her baby brother and his bully. Hawk had only been in her life for a month, and he’d become family to her the minute she saw him. Hustling up the ladder to the bridge, Sky was glad to see Hawk strapped in and safe, though shaken.

  “I told you we shouldn’t let the crazy girl fly,” Sky quipped, stepping over Amanda, tickling Danny’s earlobe. He flinched and frowned, but his caramel, stubble-coated cheeks took on a strawberry hue, and that amused her to no end. “That roll was fun. Can we do it again?”

  “Sky, we’re under attack,” Danny snapped.

  “Nobody’s firing,” Sky observed.

  “They’re swarming. Is this a nomad tactic to bring us down?” Danny asked, his teeth grinding at a fresh impact against the hull.

  “Sky,” Hawk whimpered, burying his face in his elbow, like he was going to be sick. When she’d invited him to travel with her, she hadn’t anticipated how sick he’d be all the time.

  “I’m here,” she said, tucking wild strands of his hair behind his ears. After so many weeks in the world, the bright red color had faded to dull pink, and he had a shadow of black roots. “Those look like Boone toys. We shouldn’t be this far west.”

  “Amanda turned the ship,” Hawk sniffled, taking her hand. “She saw them from the coast.”

  “Are they friends of yours?” Danny asked.

  Sky nodded and tapped her Feather. “Tray, if you’re broadcasting any messages, I need you to stop, now.”

  “We thought we picked up a music broadcast from Quin,” Saskia spoke up, leveraging Amanda into the rear jump seat and strapping her in.

  “And you probably interfered with whatever was coordinating these guys and keeping them from running into each other. Or us,” Sky sighed. “Can you control comm frequency from here?”

  “You can do it better from the ward room,” Saskia said. “Can you make them stand down?”

  “I can try,” Sky said, using the hand rungs to keep steady as she crossed the hatch to the ward room. Half the consoles were lit up, and a projection of Oriana in the middle of the conference table showed red marks whenever one of the drones hit. Tray faced the corner, using six viewscreens simultaneously, showing signals received and sent on the left three, and damage and proximity alerts on right.

  “Somewhere around 97 Hz, ‘we come in peace’,” Sky told Tray.

  “I’ve been sending that message on all frequencies in every language I can,” Tray said, pointing to the middle screen on the left, grabbing the console as the ship was struck again. Sky lost her grip and fell forward, crashing onto the center table.

&nb
sp; “Let’s try something else,” she suggested.

  Danny wasn’t sure whether to mutter swear words or prayers. His precious ship was falling apart. Last night, he’d talked to Sky about using the Bobsled to get home. If they got Oriana high enough in the atmosphere, they’d get clear of the drones. The ship would depressurize, but the ‘sled would hold true, and it could carry four safely. Danny would be the noble captain, going down with his ship, to save his crew.

  He was tired of falling out of the sky, hanging on by a prayer. With the last of their fuel, he could rise up instead of go down. All he had to do was give the order.

  “Hawk—son—”

  “She flew us away from the coast. We’re over forest,” Hawk reported, his hands hovering over the yoke. He felt a rumble of air turbulence, and then the engines stalled.

  “I miss beaches,” Danny said. “Beaches are great for emergency landings and the ocean sounds are so calming. If only I had been a little more conscious when we’d stopped at that last beach. But then, I guess we wouldn’t have stayed so long.”

  “Saskia, the port engine stopped! Are we gliding?” Hawk asked.

  “Took a drone through the intake. It should clear in a moment,” Saskia replied. The devices seemed to be avoiding the ship now that they’d shut down whatever communication broadcast Tray had been attempting.

  There was only so much Danny could do to steer the ship without the port engine. Oriana didn’t have a rudder, practically speaking. It was a spaceship, and it was designed for upward motion. Gliding required planning—required them to already be lined up with a runway.

  “Keep us floating, Captain,” Sky said. “Grav-drive will kick in shortly.”

  Danny blinked in confusion. The grav-drive supplied artificial gravity inside the ship when they were in space. It wasn’t adapted for outward thrust. “How does that even work?”

  “Just like the Bobsled,” Sky repeated with a nervous laugh. “It’s one of those projects I work on when everyone else is sleeping. Head west to the foothills. There’s a plateau with a dome. Great engineers there. Either the drones are theirs or their defensive weapons can help fend them off. Either way, we’ll need their help to patch up and they like me well enough.”