Galactic Thunder

by Cameron Cooper

  Fiori didn’t quite glance over her shoulder and I knew she had resisted the impulse to seek out Dalton with her gaze. “I slipped a sedative into his breakfast. Otherwise, I don’t think he would be handling it at all.”

  Fiori was a medic. A damned good one, I’d finally figured out. Wherever Dalton went, she and Mace had gone with him. He and Fiori were not together. They weren’t a couple and had never been more than casual partners—which was how Mace had happened. But Fiori, like Dalton, had elected to raise Mace through to his majority. Where Dalton went, they went. Fiori would act as the colony medical service until they moved on to the next set-up.

  She was dealing with her own shock and worry but had diagnosed Dalton as being in greater need. Despite drugs, he was still wound up tighter than a nuclear coil. I let out a slow breath. “No more,” I told her. “I need him with a clear head.”

  She nodded. “Now he’s here, it should help.”

  I wondered if she meant that now Dalton was here with me, or that now he was actually doing something. But I didn’t ask. Fiori and I had a limited, compromise-filled relationship.

  That strained relationship prevented me from asking if she had known what Dalton had intended to tell me when he got here, if Mace hadn’t disappeared in the meantime. Whatever her answer might have been, it was irrelevant now.

  Dalton moved away from the front desk, heading for the up shaft. I got to my feet and we all moved over with him. I saw some startled looks from the staff behind the counter. They were used to seeing Vara here, for I often brought her with me when I came to see Dalton. But two parawolves in the same space was unusual, anywhere.

  Because they were siblings, Vara and Darb were at ease with each other and trotted just ahead of me, their shoulders not quite touching, moving in unison.

  All of us just barely fit into the elevator. Darb took up a lot of horizontal space and he maneuvered to place himself next to his bonded master.

  The room was not one I’d seen before. The two big windows looked out upon the dome itself and black space beyond. Just at the edge of the far-right window, Melenia blazed, shedding bright yellow light. The windows had polarized, taking the edge off the glare.

  I immediately moved over to the terminal. “Take a seat, you guys. I have a couple of calls to make. Where are your bags?”

  “Bonded storage with the harbor master,” Dalton said. “The concierge is fetching them.” He scrubbed at his hair. “Are you calling Lyth?”

  I knew why he thought I might. I shook my head. “How long is it since you ate?”

  “I’m fine,” Dalton said.

  “Five hours, at least,” Fiori said. “I’ll order something.”

  “Something hot,” I added.

  She glanced at me, but didn’t nod, although I knew she had recognized what I was doing and was helping me do it. I wanted Dalton alert and energetic. Fiori, too, as it appeared she was along for the ride.

  “You’re not questioning whether this is a false alarm,” Dalton said, lowering himself onto the satin coverlet on the bed with weary slowness. Darb leapt up onto the bed and sat right behind Dalton’s shoulder. The parawolf could sense Dalton’s stress.

  “There’s no point in questions,” I answered Dalton. “No ship stays out of contact for longer than necessary. I can’t think of a single simple explanation for staying silent for three days. The longest jump to anywhere is under three. Even if they were taking that jump, they should have emerged by now. Something has happened and they can’t extricate themselves. We have to go in.”

  Dalton nodded, satisfied, even though I was lying just a bit. I had a thousand questions I wanted to pepper Dalton with, including what the fuck his son was doing on a ship by himself. But all of them would keep.

  Priorities, priorities.

  Fiori dealt with the concierge panel, ordering freshly cooked food from the kitchens instead of dialing up something on the printer shelf right beneath. Medics were often resistant to printed food, despite the medical profession as a whole insisting it was perfectly healthy and nutritious.

  In this hilton, unlike its cheaper cousins, the concierge panel was separated from the communications and data terminal. The terminal was a fully-functional dashboard one sat at, with physical screens. It was a swanky hotel, but it was also a very old one.

  I pulled up the chair and got to work.

  My first call went through very fast, because it was a good connection. The communications beacons around Triga were fifth generation, advanced models with high capacity. I happened to know that because Lyth had told me about the contract he’d completed to deploy them.

  I could remember the time—which really wasn’t all that long ago—when it was impossible to speak to someone outside your own local star system for longer than sixty seconds, and even that short call would rack up charges to keep you in debt for the next generation. Instant and near-instant live communications, provided cheaply, were still a novelty, although I had apparently got used to talking to holographic 3D images. The flat physical screen took the edge off my marveling.

  Jai Van Veen sat back in a well-padded armchair that I could see, instead of appearing to be lounging upon nothing, the way the tri-d reps did. His brow raised. “Danny.” He leaned sideways a bit. “Is that Dalton?”

  I shifted out of the way, so Van Veen could see him properly.

  Dalton lifted a hand in greeting. “Jai.”

  Van Veen’s eyes narrowed. He’d gone through a round of regeneration therapy recently. The heavy laugh lines at the corners of his eyes had disappeared and his flesh was smooth and young. His cheekbones were still high and his cheeks thin. His jaw was still covered in dark blond scruff, but he looked relaxed and well.

  He said, “Something’s happened.” He’d spotted Dalton’s tension, too.

  I nodded. “Dalton’s son, Mace, is on a ship that has gone silent. I’m going to ask Lyssa to take us out there and check it out.”

  Van Veen processed it quickly. “How long has it been dark?”

  “Three days,” I said.

  “Three point nine, now,” Fiori said from the concierge panel.

  “I didn’t catch that,” Van Veen said patiently.

  “That was Fiori—Mace’s mother. She’s working with the concierge panel. She said it’s been three point nine days now.”

  “Sorry!” Fiori murmured from the side.

  Van Veen didn’t appear to hear the apology. He frowned. “Three days is long enough to be concerned,” he said slowly. “The ship’s AI doesn’t respond, either?”

  I glanced at Dalton. He scrubbed at his hair. So I looked at Fiori. She shook her head. “No response.”

  “What is the last known location?” The question didn’t come from Van Veen, but from someone off Van Veen’s screen. We were all breaking etiquette today.

  “Marlow?” I asked.

  Anderson Marlow moved into view—rangy and elegantly dressed. He leaned on the back of Van Veen’s chair, and bent to look at the screen. “Hi Danny. You’re planning on heading for the ship’s last known, I presume. Just wondering what quadrant that is.”

  “When I know myself, I’ll pass it on,” I told him. “Somewhere remote, I suspect, or someone would have noticed a ship in distress. They would have picked up the beacon at the very least.”

  “It’s a wildcat ship,” Dalton said, lifting his voice so he’d be heard by everyone listening in on this conversation—and that number was multiplying by the second.

  Another what the fuck? tried to burst out of me. I ground my teeth together until the impulse passed, but mentally jotted yet another question on my long list.

  What was Mace doing on a wildcat ship?

  “Then somewhere remote indeed,” Jai concluded, with a heavy exhale.

  I was already getting bogged down in details I didn’t think we had the time to hash out. “Once we get moving, I can discuss this properly. This is a courtesy call.”

  “You’re not going to make our meeting,”
Marlow concluded.

  Even though I was facing the screen and Dalton was behind me, I still sensed him stiffen and grow still.

  “Probably not,” I replied carefully. “I don’t know why you wanted to see me, but this takes priority, no matter what it was.”

  That was another small lie. I had a damn good idea what Marlow and Jai wanted. It was another job, one of the projects, assignments and gigs they had handed out for…oh, decades. I would have stopped taking on their dirty work long before now, except the work was important. Saving-humanity-level important.

  Those two, between them, knew everyone of any influence across the known systems. They had done more than anyone to pull the remnants of the old Carinad empire out of its death spiral, made us pull together and work toward a future that only they seemed to fully see.

  There was no empire anymore. No central government of any kind. When systems needed to coordinate to get something done, it was often Jai and Marlow in the center of that work, directing it. Everyone knew who they were, and their role in the last days of the Empire and the defeat of the array. It gave them power of a kind.

  They were as close to being leaders of the known worlds as anyone was comfortable with, these days.

  Besides, they always paid better than anyone else in the galaxy. With my debt load, I couldn’t afford to be choosy about my work.

  Vara whined, next to me. Her tail thumped.

  I refocused on Jai and Marlow. “Vara would like to say hello to someone.”

  Jai smiled and beckoned with his fingers to someone out of the range of his screen.

  I heard soft padding steps, then Coal moved into view, put his forepaws on the arm of Jai’s chair and lifted himself up to peer at the screen. His tail wagged and his tongue lolled.

  He was very nearly as black as his name, except when he moved, his fur turned silver as the light played over it, with dark grey ripples. His appearance was mesmerizing—especially when he fixed his dull gold-eyed gaze upon you. With a jolt, I noticed for the first time that Coal’s and Marlow’s eyes were nearly identical in color.

  Vara balanced on her front paws on the edge of the terminal dashboard, and gave a soft whine, staring at her brother on the screen.

  Behind me, Darb’s tail thumped on the coverlet. He gave a soft yip.

  Coal yapped back. Marlow scratched between his ears and Coal panted happily.

  “Let us know what you find, Danny,” Jai said. “Let us know if we can help.”

  “Thank you, I will.” I disconnected and put the terminal in sleep mode. I’d disabled all lenses except the screen, scrubbed a dozen spy programs and archives out of existence before making the call to Jai, but I still didn’t trust the public terminal to not passively record anything it heard in the room “for our own safety and convenience”.

  Then I turned to face Dalton and Fiori. Fiori had finished ordering food and stood with her back against the wall opposite the bed Dalton sat upon. She looked like she was propping herself up. I wondered how much sleep she’d got, lately.

  Dalton wasn’t slouching wearily anymore. He gripped his hands together, between his knees, staring at me. I raised a brow at him, knowing what was coming.

  “Fiori,” Dalton said, his voice low. “Would you mind stepping out? I want to talk to Danny for a moment.”

  Fiori straightened instantly. “Of course. I’ll go see what’s taking the concierge so long with our bags.”

  She stepped out of the room and let the door seal with a heavy click, leaving us alone with the two parawolves, facing each other.

  —3—

  For one long minute, Dalton didn’t move.

  Then he sighed. “You were heading for Triga in a couple of days.”

  “Not for anything urgent,” I assured him. “Marlow contacted me nearly two weeks ago, now.”

  Dalton’s tension didn’t ease at hearing it had been a longer-held appointment than his short-notice visit. “You didn’t let them know you wouldn’t be there. Not until just now.”

  A few decades ago, I might have done something—anything, really, to duck such a conversation. But I had been through harder conversations than this with Dalton since then. So I kept my gaze steady. “You didn’t give me any reason to think I should cancel with Jai and Marlow.”

  He shot up off the bed and onto his feet, driven by an emotion that made his jaw flex and his eyes to glitter. “You knew why I was coming here!”

  “I hoped,” I said, keeping my voice down.

  He shook his head. Nope, he wasn’t going to let me get away with that prevarication at all. “You knew, Danny. You knew. That has always been understood. Even Fiori knew it. Twenty-five years, until Mace reached his majority, then you and I…” He let his hands fall. “Then, finally…” he breathed, all the anger draining from him. “You knew that,” he added.

  I nodded. “I know that,” I agreed. “But Mace turned twenty-five over a year ago.”

  His jaw beneath the trimmed beard rippled again. “I couldn’t just down tools and sprint here, no matter how much I wanted to.”

  My heart gave a little squeeze. The two wolves were shifting their snouts from one to the other of us as we spoke. They could feel our emotions and would be puzzled by them.

  “Reassure Darb,” I warned Dalton softly.

  He put his hand out in a reflex motion, found Darb’s head and scratched it.

  I did the same with Vara. “It doesn’t really matter what either of us intended, Dalton. Mace and a shipload of wildcatters are likely to be in serious trouble. That supersedes anything you and I might want.”

  Dalton held his breath for a long moment, then let it out with a hard bellow. “I can’t argue with you. Mace is all I can think of properly right now. But Danny—”

  I shook my head. “No. You’re doped and tired and stressed. Anything you say now will be colored by that. So don’t say it.”

  Dalton let out his breath again and rolled his eyes. “Fiori slipped me something. No wonder I can’t think straight.” His shoulders straightened and I could almost feel his energy pick up. Just knowing it was a drug making him feel useless was helping.

  “She did it because you needed it. Fiori knows what she’s doing,” I said. “But I told her not to give you anything else. I need you chilly and calm here on out.”

  “I want me cold and calm,” Dalton muttered. He pushed his hands into the deep pockets of the heavy coat he wore—he hadn’t taken it off. “Will Lyssa help you?” There was a faint note of hope in his voice. He didn’t know Lyssa nearly as well as me. She had been an AI shipmind without a body, the last time he’d interacted with her. He had not been there during the dark days on Nijeliya when I had got to know Lyssa better.

  “She will help,” I said firmly. “For some reason that escapes me, Lyssa feels she owes me a debt.”

  “Half the universe feels that way,” Dalton muttered. His gaze met mine. “I keep thinking of Sam.”

  “I know.” Sam was his first son and until Mace, his only child. Sam had died a long time ago, and far from here, and Dalton hadn’t learned that until years later. The wound would always be fresh.

  He swallowed. “I don’t know how I…how do I deal with it, if Mace is gone, too?”

  My heart ached for him. But I said with a snappy tone, “First, you don’t know what the fuck has happened to him. He and his shipmates could be on the surface, having a week-long party, completely unaware that their shipmind has stopped answering hails, and when we get there, they’ll blink drunkenly at us and wonder what all the fuss is about.” Wildcatters were risk-takers. They liked their parties as reckless as their ventures into unknown space.

  Dalton pressed his lips together, suppressing a smile. “Oh, and I will kill him myself if that is all it is.”

  I silently cheered at that small sign of spirit. “Second, if the news is bad, if something has happened to Mace, then you’ll deal with it the way we all do. You’re strong, Dalton. You know how to do it.”

  He
stared at me for a long moment. “A day at a time.”

  “Or even an hour at a time. Or just the next minute. You breathe and wait for the minute to pass.”

  He nodded.

  “But I have no intention of letting you get to that point,” I assured him.

  His smile had some of the same spirit in it. “You don’t, huh?”

  “Nope.” I brushed that aside. “Let me reach out to Lyssa and ask her to step across the systems from wherever she is. Then we should eat, and we can talk.”

  Dalton nodded. Then he tilted his head. “Hang on. What about Juliyana? I thought she was using the Lythion as her ship.”

  “Stars, you are out of touch,” I replied, as the concierge panel gave the little three-tone trill announcing that the meal Fiori had ordered was at the door.

  Dalton headed for the door. “Then, if Juliyana isn’t using the Lythion anymore, won’t you be yanking whoever is captain now out of their business?”

  “Hardly,” I said, my tone dry. “Lyssa fired Juliyana five years ago. Since then, she’s been running the ship.”

  Dalton glanced at me as he opened the door, startled. “A sweet little shipmind as her own captain? Doesn’t that scare any potential clients away?”

  “Oh, you poor man,” I breathed. “I can’t wait for you to meet Lyssa again.”

  —4—

  Twenty-four hours later, I packed a jump bag and met Dalton and Fiori in front of docking bay one-thirty-three on the commercial hub. They’d kept Vara with them so I could move quickly and were drawing lots of attention as they stood in front of the big commercial doors of the bay. It was the middle of Melenia’s day and busy on the docks.

  I hadn’t bothered trying to talk Fiori out of coming with us. In her own way, she was as stubborn as me. Or Dalton. Mace had been a challenge to deal with when he’d hit the terrible twos, as he’d acquired both their recalcitrant genes.