by TylerRose.
In her home, he checked for the suitcase she usually took on trips. It was still in its corner. He put Dorn’s memory card into the makeup case with a hastily scribbled note that they were glad she was alive and would welcome her home when she chose to return.
Two days of borrowing clothes was enough, and she didn’t have her own line of credit to purchase anything through the ship’s store. Tyler brought her suitcase to herself. She found Pisod’s letter first, when she opened the zipper. Getting out her makeup case, she could feel the immense sorrow and guilt it contained. Opening, she found the memory card. She inserted it into the vidpad from her messenger bag.
Dorn’s face filled the small screen, eyes heavy with grief and regret.
“I’m so sorry, Femina. I allowed myself to be detained. I did not send replacement. I let you be unguarded and my brother is dead and my love is stolen from me. Father refuses to punish me over the matter, since it was he who detained me; but I cannot punish myself enough. Knowing what is being done to you because of my own negligence is too much to bear. I cannot live with the guilt. If you are seeing this, then you have survived and gotten to safety and I will already have taken my life in ritual. There is a guilt too profound to be borne, a betrayal of self and of duty too deep to ever be redeemed. I will pass on the energy to another of my brothers so that you can go forward when you’re ready.”
The screen went blank.
Her phone was already in her hand, having been in the messenger bag with the journal and vidpad. She called Pisod.
“Where’s Dorn?” she demanded.
Silence that spoke everything.
“He’s gone, Tyler. He couldn’t live with his guilt. Father allowed him to take his life in ritual suicide yesterday. He gave me the crystal power for you when you’re ready to come back.”
She hung up on him, whipped the phone against the wall. It ricocheted off in pieces. At once, Vanja was there to physically stop her rampage and hold her still. When she was calm, she went to the ship’s temple and sat on a bench, unable to cry, too numb to speak. That pain in her chest returned, just like when she’d lost Nails. She heard no one. She saw nothing but the wall in front of her.
She was a stone.
Vanja told the Captain what he’d heard of the message her the vidpad. Groaty sat in his command chair, tight-lipped and wondering what he’d gotten into with this one.
[Captain, we are receiving a message from an unknown vessel near where we picked up the torpedo] the reassigned Communications Officer said.
[Text, video, or audible?]
[Live and audible.]
[Record it and let me hear it] he said.
“Drakkorian vessel, I am looking for a torpedo that was launched accidentally. Apparently one of my crew was inside the torpedo. I want to retrieve it. Please respond.”
[Respond with text only,] Groaty instructed. [Unknown vessel, we have no knowledge of an errant torpedo.]
[Message sent, Captain.]
Pause
[New incoming message, Captain. They are requesting visual interaction and physical meeting.]
[New message: Request denied. We are on standard patrol and will not deviate from our orders. Do not approach Drakkorian space without proper authorization from Congressional channels, as per current Drakkorian and Congressional law.]
[Message sent, Sir.]
[How far away are they?]
[Seventeen hours at current speeds of both ships, Captain. They are five hours from our border and closing.]
[Keep track of their location. Maintain course and speed until further orders.]
[Yes, Captain] the Pilot, Navigator, and Communications Officer all said.
Groaty sent a private encoded message to Cosmic-Naval Command, requesting video consultation. Ten minutes to bounce along the relays, another ten minutes to get an answer back. He was already in his office when permission came through. He fired up the more powerful comm system for faster discussion. He explained the entire situation, up to and including the maniac wanting the new passenger back.
“What he does not know is that she is pregnant. He can never know and she doesn’t want anyone to know where she is. She’s in full flight mode. Who is she, really, and how far am I permitted to go in protecting her?”
“She is the First Daughter of Voran III. She is the most powerful Earth telepath, the one Administrator Earnol resigned and turned himself over to Sistarian law on account of. There are rumors of more, but she’ll have to tell you herself if she knows. The fact that she’s with child makes her the most precious cargo you carry. You will give her sanctuary. You will do what you must to prevent her enemy from re-obtaining her. I will dispatch another ship to join you at once and take your place on the border. Then you will retreat to our inner territory, to keep her safe for as long as she wants to hide. If you can convince her to come to Drakkar, that would be best. We will protect her here.”
“She wants to leave, wants to abort the child. I have promised her that her child will be hidden and taken care of if she will carry it to term,” Groaty said.
“As well you should promise. Tell her about the prophecy. And tell her I will take the child into my own household. He or she will be afforded every opportunity granted our every child. You can tell her with all honesty that we sympathize with her plight and the child will be well cared for.”
The screen went dark.
[Any change in the position of the ship?] he asked as he left his office.
[Ship is paralleling us, Captain] the Navigation officer replied. [Matching our speed and bearing.]
[Continue patrol.]
He left the Bridge, asking Vanja where they were at the moment. The temple. He had a feeling he would find her there quite a lot in the coming weeks. She was sitting on the front bench, hands in her lap, staring forward and unmoving. Vanja was in the rear bench, four rows back.
[Bring her to have supper with me again] Groaty said, and left her be.
Tyler was deep in thought, as she had been so often on the other ship. Dorn’s death was too much of a setback. She couldn’t hope to proceed here anymore. Everyone she had been emotionally close to was gone. With them gone, she felt more than ever that they were the ones she needed. Jerome, Nails, Shestna, Dorn, she had loved each one in their own way.
Now they were gone. The child she had worked so hard to have was gone. In her place, the spawn of a monster that she might have to carry full term in order to learn the things she wanted and needed to learn. Would that be her price for the knowledge? Carry to full term a child she didn’t want, that should not exist?
No, she needed to go back and start it all over again and cut through the crap to get it right. Earth would need an army. How could she get an army? Voran and K’Tran would know nothing about it and nothing about her. That would take too much work to pull together.
Maybe Nails already had an army for her, ready to be put into action? The Iron Knaves. And Dicer, as the leader of the Droghers? The rival motorcycle clubs they both led, if brought together, could be quite a grass roots force.
The dinner hour approached. Vanja tried to get her attention telepathically. Her psionic voice may have been loud; but in his moment, so deep in though, he could not hear a thing from her. She was a brick wall in both directions. Crossing in front of the bench did not get her notice. He placed a hand on her shoulder. Before he knew what was happening, she had knocked the arm away.
“Don’t touch me,” she growled in a voice not her own, other hand shoving him with a psionic blast.
He stumbled backwards and fell up the few steps to the alter at the front of the room, landing on his ass. He sat a moment, stunned by the force of her reaction. She was blinking her way out of her meditative state.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No,” he replied. “Caught me off guard and unprepared. I’m sorry I startled you. I will make more of an effort to get your attention from now on.”
“That would be wise,” she said, not abo
ut to apologize.
She would not ever again apologize for something that was not her fault.
“The Captain wants us to see him for supper,” Vanja told her.
“Must we?”
“I’m sure the invitation has more information attached to it. He will have gotten orders from the CNC.”
“What information? That Solomon is flying his ship just the other side of your border, matching our speed and course? Or that he’s been told to offer me asylum on Drakkar? Another offer that I can learn all there is to learn so long as I don’t abort a rape baby? Do you not see what a manipulation that is? Sure, we’ll help you. So long as you don’t get rid of a child you never wanted, that was forced on you by a man who raped you three to five times a day for the last five weeks or more.”
“I cannot apologize for the philosophy and beliefs of my people, Tyler; but I am sorry for the position you are in. I am no one to change anything. I’m just a communications officer on a patrol ship. I can only help you learn what you were denied before.”
“I didn’t say I wanted you to be sorry for anything. I don’t want any fucking sympathy. Lots of people on this ship feel sorry and that doesn’t get me a god damn thing. I want people to stop talking to me with their half-truths and personal agendas, thinking I’m an idiot. I want them to stop thinking they can pull one over on me.”
Vanja said nothing. What was there to say to a declaration like that?
“It would appear that, instead of dampening my psionic abilities, wearing the mental chain high for so long has brought me a new sort of clarity and conciseness,” Tyler concluded, getting up from the bench. “I think tomorrow we will begin to work on controlling my psionic voice. That’s really how Solomon was always able to find me. I’m going to take it away from him.”
She remembered the way to the Captain’s quarters. Over supper, she listened to a prophecy about an unwanted child born of hate and violence, who would usher in a new era of prosperity. Her anger deepened with every passing word.
“The child is innocent and will never know how it came to be—“
“Stop right there,” she seethed between clenched teeth. “The child? Is a blob of cells without a brain. I am not a guilty party either. I was held against my will. Forced to lose the child I love, made with the man I love. But I’m the one who has to carry the burden of what was done to me. You blackmail me with the promise of knowledge—“
“That’s rather a strong word, don’t you think?” the Captain interrupted her.
“Would you prefer extort? It is blackmail. It is extortion. You are telling me that if I keep the child alive and let it be born and give it to one of you, you will teach me whatever I can learn. What if I go away to get rid of the child and come back? You won’t help me train with my abilities. What is that if not extortion?”
“Well—But—“
“That is the arrangement you have presented to me, isn’t it? Now you throw in some ancient prophecy to lay an even bigger guilt trip on me. Have I in any way misunderstood the insinuations?” she challenged.
Groaty closed his mouth against the protest rising in his throat. “I suppose that is the way it sounds on the other side of the table.”
“So,” she reopened with a finer point to her tone. “I will stay for a few weeks. I will learn what I can learn in that time. Before it is too late for me to terminate, I will decide if I will stay or if I will go. Between now and then, I don’t want to hear a single word about the innocence of a third party that doesn’t even have a heart to beat yet. The decision is mine and mine alone and I will make it when I choose. Thank you for supper.”
She was out of her chair and halfway to the door before Vanja could put down his napkin. She waited for him in the lift, and returned to the temple to sit on a bench again. He gave her an hour before pleading comfort.
“You may be content to sit here all night, but I require sleep.”
She went back to his quarters.
[It makes no sense for you to sleep on the floor] she said telepathically when he put a pillow down. [Just don’t try to touch me and we’ll be fine.]
[Touch you? As in sexually? It is forbidden anyway even if I did like women.]
[Forbidden? No sex during pregnancy?] she questioned.
[Correct.]
[Bummer. I enjoyed the hell out of pregnant sex. I was even more orgasmic than I already was.]
[You tell me not to try to touch you and then you make a comment like that?] he teased.
[We’re going to have to seriously work on my mental voice then. I need my own room. I may not ever have sex with anyone, but I will eventually need to masturbate.]
Changed into night clothes, he kept to his side of the bed and she kept to hers. In the morning, looking through the suitcase to see what she had, she found a small silver ring. It fell out and landed next to her foot. Picking it up, she saw the half black, half white curve.
The Sanctuary ring. She had thought she’d been wearing it that day. Had she taken it off before the picnic and left it at home and didn’t remember? She put it on her pinkie, silently vowing that she would never again take it off.
Learning to use her abilities and control her psionic voice began with breakfast. She had to get the food machine to hear her without being too loud. Its control screen showed a series of lines, like an EEG, when it received an order. If she was too loud or too soft, the machine wouldn’t recognize the order. Five tries, each too loud, and she was ready to punch the thing. Fists clenched, squashing the urge to be violent, she tried once more. The machine beeped acceptance.
[Order mine also. Sandwich number 15] Vanja said.
Three tries before the machine accepted it.
[I think we found your testing system] he joked.
The machine beeped and the door unlocked. She opened it to find her plate of food.
[Is this some sort of reconstituted protein powder?] she asked, looking over the things on her plate with no small suspicion.
[No. The dishes are prepared fresh and kept in a long-term teleport storage bank. When we order one, the Galley selects it and brings it out of teleport, heats it up and composes your plate. They put together full meals in the system every day, so we don’t have to select everything. Or you can pick out every item on your plate.]
[What happens if the food storage unit is damaged?] she asked. [Or the teleport system?]
[There are redundancies and backups for everything] he replied.
[But how—?]
“Tyler, stop,” he said aloud. “I cannot give you information on how the ship operates.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess not. Sorry,” she said, taking her seat.
His was ready and he sat opposite her at the small table. They discussed the types of exercises Drakkorians practiced. After the meal, they worked several hours on how to levitate herself. If she could levitate objects, she could hold herself up off the ground as well. While she was floating in the middle of the room, he told her to feel how far out her own energy went. How big her aura was. It filled the room, barely contained by his own. She learned to pull it in tighter around herself.
[Come down and we’ll have lunch] he interrupted her concentration.
A leg reaching down, she slowly lowered herself until her foot touched the floor. No sooner was she standing than a loud alarm was going off.
“What’s that?” she asked aloud.
“Battle stations.” [Captain, do I stay with Tyler or come to my station?]
[Stay with her.]
Not an order to be relished. He hated missing out on the action on the Bridge.
The ship rocked from being struck.
“It’s him,” she said. “He knows I’m here.”
A different sound, of energy flung out.
“We’re returning fire. He cannot get on board. If he tried to teleport, he’d end up frozen in the memory core until we return to Drakkar,” Vanja said, trying to calm her visibly rising fear.
“I should leave,
” she said in near panic.
He held her arms, dodging his head up and down until he captured her eyes as well.
“Stop. Just wait. We can teleport at any time if needs be. Give the Captain time to do his job,” he pleaded.
Breathless minutes as the ship shot another two blasts.
[Enemy ship is destroyed] Vanja heard from the Captain.
The alarms stopped, a signal to resume normal operations sounding instead. Then all was quiet.
“See?” Vanja said, letting go her arms.
“He didn’t die on the ship. I need to talk to the Captain.”
Vanja sent the request, receiving a reply to come to supper in the Captain’s quarters.
“A small craft took off about half a minute before we destroyed the vessel,” Captain Groaty told her. “He was probably in it.”
“I know he was. Which way did it head?”
“Back into Congressional space.”
“Why did they suddenly attack?” Vanja asked.
“Because our patrol replacement just came into sensor range. They had to attack now or face two ships,” Groaty said. “We’re heading deeper into our own space until you decide what to do. I have orders to sail around an inner patrol and assist your learning as much as we can. If you decide to leave, so be it. If you decide to stay until the child is born, our arrangements remain as previously stated. Nothing has changed in that regard.”
“How long would it take to get to Drakkar from here?” she asked.
“About a month at standard speeds. A week if we’re in a hurry.”
She certainly wasn’t in any hurry.
“Should I pay you for the space I take up on the ship?” she asked. “Or is there some work I can do?”
Groaty’s expression fell to one of confusion. “Why in the world would we want you to work? Your work is in mastering your psionic abilities and growing a healthy child. Both are work enough. Vanja can take you to the communal lounges. Once you’ve learned to contain psionic voice, you can be there whenever you want whether he’s with you or not. We can go to Drakkar whenever you want.”
