“Watch the news,” Vulf said. “You’ll understand.” He keyed off the communication. “Ahab, emergency launch.”
The Orion’s sleek mLa’an design lifted from its mooring, flipped one hundred and eighty degrees, and zoomed out. The ship reoriented so that up was up, and not down, while still accelerating. We burned out of the holding space around the space dock—not all starships wanted, or could afford, to pay mooring fees.
“Go stealth,” Vulf ordered.
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“Plot a random course away from Corsairs and watch out for pursuit.” Vulf scowled at the screen. The route marked out for our emergency departure had already vanished. Now the screen showed our increasing distance from Corsairs.
“Not random,” I said quietly.
He looked at me, a question in the slight arch of his right eyebrow.
“Aim for the nearest wormhole. Star map, please, Ahab.” I touched the screen as the star map for the local area, the lawless Dragon Sector, appeared. I flicked it to show options from the first wormhole jump.
“Do you have somewhere in mind, or just away?” Vulf leaned against the back of my chair, hands settling lightly on my shoulders. He began massaging away the tension knotted in my muscles.
I paused in sifting through the options. I could plot a course later. The shifter clans had chosen a planet over a day away from the nearest wormhole, and that was in the exceptionally fast mLa’an designed Orion. Others would take nearer two days to reach the wormhole. The distance was to prevent an attacking fleet from jumping in and reaching the pirate planet without warning.
“The Ceph Sector,” I bluntly named my preferred destination.
Vulf’s massage continued uninterrupted. “Ahab, open a secure line to Mom’s communicator.”
I twisted my head to stare at Vulf. “Aren’t you going to say it’s too dangerous or not important?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?” I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood.
“Because Ivan’s discovery of the Ceph’s existence changed everything. You’re not the only person who’s spent the last three weeks feeling as if they’ve lost control of their life.” He reached for me.
I tucked myself against him. “You too?”
“Oh yeah. I’m curious about what Ivan found. What Galaxy Proper is hiding from us.”
“Us, as in humans, or us, as in all of its citizens?”
“Both. Also, there’s no one in the Ceph Sector. You’ll be safe there while we decide what we want to do about President Hoffer’s insane idea of using you as a weapon. I could kill him.” He paused at my eep! of protest. Assassinating a head of state was not a good idea. “But we need to know how many people share his views about using shamans as weapons, and what the Academy’s official position regarding Hoffer’s action is. If we lurk in the Ceph Sector for a while—learning what we can about the entombed aliens, which is always wise with potential enemies—that’ll give Cyrus time to assess what’s happening on San Juan, the risk to you, and our options.”
I bit my lip. “I dropped my communicator into a pocket dimension, so people couldn’t track me via it. I don’t know if Winona, the chancellor of the Academy, has tried. I should get it out and check. Anyone who wants to know where we are will be tracking the Orion, anyway, so using the communicator isn’t an additional risk. I can’t believe Winona—”
Laura’s voice came over the comm, interrupting us. “Vulf?”
“Hi, Mom. Jaya and I are safe on the Orion. We’re going to give the Conclave a few weeks to sort itself out before we return to Corsairs.”
“That long? Sorry. Of course you’ll want time alone. The Conclave should never have made you separate from Jaya when your mate bond was so new. But keep in touch, Vulf, or I’ll worry.”
“We’ll message you, Laura,” I said.
Her voice warmed. “It’s good he has you, Jaya. Women are better at staying in communication.”
“Sexist!” Edith’s distant tease carried over the transmission. “Say hi to them, and tell them we’re hunting the traitors on the Conclave.”
“We don’t know there were traitors.” Laura sounded harassed. “But if any of them seriously contemplated agreeing to President Hoffer’s terms, I’ll gut them. Metaphorically speaking,” she added unconvincingly.
Vulf grinned at my expression. “Bye, Mom. Remember that evisceration is messy. Choose an easy site for clean up.”
I punched his arm. “Bye, Laura. Love to everyone.” The friendly, family phrase felt nearly natural on my tongue.
“Be safe, children,” Thor’s deep voice rumbled.
The bridge on the Orion was silent when the transmission ended.
“How do you leave them, for your job, I mean?” I asked Vulf. “They love you so much.”
Instead of answering my question, his eyes went the icy-blue of his wolf. “You shouldn’t have been forced to leave Corsairs. It’s your home, now.”
A tiny jolt went through me.
“If you want it to be?” For the first time, I heard uncertainty from him.
“I hadn’t considered. This.” I gestured around us. “The Orion feels like home. I hadn’t considered a planetside base. I would like to be near your parents.” I smiled at him. “I liked your cabin.”
His usual confidence returned. “I liked you in it—and it’s our cabin.”
There were so many other issues, but that didn’t mean our personal ones were less important or could be ignored. “Vulf, I need to contribute something. I have savings and I can sell my apartment on San Juan. I know the mLa’an gave you the Orion as a reward for saving the child Saylon from the Freel bandits, so there’s no mortgage on it, but are there upgrades you’d like to make to it or something?”
“I can’t think of anything.” He stroked a thumb across my left cheekbone. “But if it’s important to you…” He stopped to think, his eyes going distant, and I relaxed into the moment until his attention refocused on me. “Would you be satisfied with contributing money and labor to expanding our cabin on Corsairs?”
“Expanding it how?”
“However you want. It’s just two rooms at the moment. Living and bedroom quarters with a bathroom tacked on. It’s one of five basic designs for single occupant dwellings on Corsairs. We should probably dismantle it and begin again. Build a family home. It doesn’t have to be on my family’s land. It doesn’t even have to be on Corsairs.” There were questions in his eyes.
“Yes, it does! I want us to be near our family.”
He kissed me. “So, any more problems?”
A whole raft of them, but they weren’t personal issues. They could wait. I hugged him. “We’re good.”
“Yes, we are.” An emphatic kiss. “Breakfast.”
Over breakfast he brought up a change of tack in our hastily-set course of action. “I’d like to make a quick detour before we investigate the Ceph Sector.”
I looked at him over my coffee mug.
He ate steadily, crunching toast. Then he gulped some coffee. “I want to stop by Origin.”
Chapter 6
Origin hosted Galaxy Proper’s key institutions, including the Galactic Court House.
Two days into Vulf’s and my five day journey to the planet, a transmission from Laura and Thor was closely followed by one from Rick. Both assured us that it was safe for me to return to Corsairs. The Conclave members targeted by President Hoffer to enact what the shifter clans considered treachery against one of their own—namely me—had proven their innocence. They’d had no prior contact with President Hoffer and they’d satisfied our family, plus Cyrus, that there’d been no clandestine mediated contact either.
In fact, the targeted Conclave members were hopping mad—Laura’s term—at the interstellar human governments that President Hoffer had maneuvered his way into representing. How dare humanity turn on one of its own?
And if that was the shifters’ attitude toward humanity’s official representatives, what they t
hought of the Star Guild Shaman Academy that had failed to both protect or ally itself with me was frankly unrepeatable.
Loyalty was everything to shifters.
I was discovering that it was everything to me, too. It was the reason I’d agreed to Vulf’s detour.
He needed to speak with an old friend of the family, Professor Summer.
I’d met the elderly Meitj academic a few weeks ago at Proper University on Origin, then again at the Meitj Imperial Palace on Naidoc, just before my grandfather blew it up. The things I’d learned there had changed my initial assessment of Professor Summer. I still thought the historian and antiquities expert was one of the smartest people I’d ever met, but now I knew he was politically connected—uncle to the Meitj Emperor—and playing some mysterious long game.
Vulf had his suspicions about what that long game might be. So we dropped in on the history professor.
Not that “dropping in” to visit anyone on Origin could be considered casual. Space dock security was as tight as you’d expect for the planet that housed so many vital government institutions. Before we arrived, Vulf messaged Professor Summer, requesting a meeting. The professor agreed and sent his authorization of our visit to space dock security, clearing the way for us to disembark after a standard customs clearance.
On a human planet I might have been wary of making such a documented arrival when I didn’t know who was after me, but on Origin, humanity had very little power. We were the most junior member of Galaxy Proper and all humans who were on-planet would have been screened. And if a shaman attempted to bypass security and portal in, well, the consequences for that shaman and everyone connected to them wouldn’t be worth the potential chance to nab me. Galaxy Proper defended its hub planet with a policy of responding to infractions of its security protocols with disproportionate force. I was as safe on Origin as I’d be on Corsairs, arguably safer.
Vulf and I hopped onto an Origin tram. We chose the open carriage since it was a sunny day. The trams that wove through the city always had three carriages. The first was the enclosed carriage with a roof and a wide door and no seats. The second carriage was likewise enclosed, but had bench seating. The third carriage was a simple platform with a rail around it for safety, but otherwise without sides or a roof. There were complexities to providing public transport on a planet that was both home to and hosted a multitude of people with very different body types.
An Aalg balanced on its curled tail beside Vulf and me in the open carriage. Its many appendages, which could act as both arms and legs, were at rest, folded neatly against its body. By the sedate beige herringbone pattern on its indigo skin, I assumed that it was an older Aalg. The younger ones were keen on self-expression and usually adorned their bodies with slogans and graffiti. Human tattoo artists swooned with envy when they beheld the art form Aalg adolescents made of their large caterpillar-like bodies. This Aalg acknowledged us with a friendly dip of its nearest antenna before returning to studying the passing scenery.
Holding onto the railing, I leaned around the Aalg to view the Galactic Court at the top of the main boulevard. People of numerous species traversed its steps and ramps. The stone of the building glowed a luminous aqua-blue so pale as to be almost white. Earth had once held stones that color. Opals. The stones would still be there, lying beneath the frozen weight of a nuclear winter.
Vulf put an arm around my waist. He didn’t say anything and nor did I, but we both watched the court house till it was out of sight. If I became a Shaman Justice, serving the Galactic Court, it would complicate our lives. But so would my refusal of the position.
The comfortably crowded city opened up to the university grounds. Vulf and I jumped off the tram. Proper University encouraged students, staff and visitors to perambulate its campus; the idea being that walking, or its equivalent, provided the greatest opportunity for encountering each other. Quite apart from its formal teaching, the university existed to facilitate the various member species of Galaxy Proper learning to work together.
Respect was a core principle of the university.
Professor Summer waited for us in his office. One of the assumptions you had to make when operating on Origin was that you were under surveillance. The security forces on Origin were proactive in preventing trouble in a place where so many different sentient species mingled, and where vital decisions on Galaxy Proper’s future were made.
That said, Professor Summer ensured his office was free of surveillance—which wasn’t to say he wouldn’t record his meeting with Vulf and me.
He met us at the door to his room, comfortably entrenched in his persona as a friendly, harmless, elderly academic.
A lot of humans called Meitj “bugs”. It wasn’t the most respectful name for an ancient space-faring species that had helped found Galaxy Proper and, more recently, championed humanity’s evacuation from Earth and inclusion in the union. However, the name fit. The Meitj stood roughly human height, but on spindly lower legs. They tended to fold their short middle pair of limbs at their abdomen and use their upper limbs as arms, much like human arms, although the Meitj had an exoskeleton. They were an insectoid species with prominent multi-faceted eyes that glittered in metallic shades. The color of their exoskeletons and the patterns inscribed on them revealed a multitude of information about an individual Meitj for those in the know. Unfortunately, apart from recognizing the blue of those with guard duties or the red of the Emperor, I was clueless.
Professor Summer’s coloring was the greenish color of old bronze and his eyes shimmered with similar hues. “Come in, come in. Welcome, Vulf, Jaya.” The claws of his middle appendages clasped our hands gently. “Please, be seated.”
Despite our different body forms, the Meitj office chairs fitted Vulf and me adequately. Physical discomfort wasn’t the reason I squirmed.
Vulf sat straight and resolute, waiting for Professor Summer to settle in his chair behind the desk.
Apart from the viewscreen built into the desk’s surface, it held only a single opia flower in a narrow, angular, twisted metal vase. The opia flower, flame-red at its heart with its five petals edged in amethyst, was the Meitj’s iconic flower. They honored it as a symbol of truth and allegiance, of honor fought for and maintained.
“You requested a meeting, Vulf?” The claws of Professor Summer’s middle appendages gripped each other lightly over his abdomen. His upper appendages rested comfortably on the wooden arms of his chair.
“I did. I have some…concerns. I consider you a close friend of the family, someone I do not wish to offend.”
“An honest sharing of your concerns honors me,” Professor Summer said. “To seek to protect me from your questions and emotions would lessen our friendship. Please, speak freely.”
Vulf nodded. “When Jaya travelled to San Juan to allow the Star Guild Shaman Academy to learn more of how she’d used sha energy to save Naidoc, and earlier to trigger my shift into an inorganic robot wolf form, I would have gone with her if not for the approach of my people’s pirate battle group and their demand to hear firsthand—to observe—my shift. As much as I wanted to go with Jaya, I accepted that the Conclave had a right to the hope that my shift represents, the hope that shifters are no longer trapped in their human forms.”
Professor Summer inclined his head. “Your people would have understood the sacrifice you made in separating from Jaya so soon after your mate bond formed.”
“Yes,” Vulf said bluntly. “Many of them would have understood if I’d only stopped briefly to show my shifted form to the Conclave, and then, joined Jaya on San Juan. But I stayed on Corsairs because I realized that there were more issues at play than my people’s hope of rediscovering their animal forms. I needed time to think and to discover what answers my people’s brief post-Evacuation history could provide. Who we are since we left Earth has changed. I hadn’t considered how much until recently.”
I reached across and clasped his hand.
People underestimated Vulf. They saw his size
and physical power, and overlooked his intelligence. If he hadn’t chosen to be a lone wolf, he’d have made a heck of a pirate captain. He had the ability to see patterns, deduce actions and evaluate consequences that characterized the best strategists.
His fingers curled around mine. “Humanity’s interstellar government holds seven planets, including San Juan, but excluding Corsairs. As shifters, we’ve prided ourselves on our clans’ ability to establish independence as a pirate fleet and on an independent planet. But is it independence or exclusion? And did we choose it or was it forced on us?”
“Interesting questions. Important ones,” Professor Summer said. “Your success as a bounty hunter has always rested on a tripod of intelligence, determination and physical ability.”
Vulf stiffened fractionally, but he stayed focused. We had discussed his suspicions while travelling here. If his suspicions were wrong, he needed to provide the context in which he’d entertained them so that Professor Summer might forgive him. However, if Vulf’s suspicions as to the professor’s interest in Vulf’s family and clan were correct, then we needed to observe the Meitj academic for everything and anything he might reveal as Vulf outlined his suspicions as to the elderly Meitj’s motivation for involving himself in the lives of shifter pirates.
“But my physical abilities have changed, haven’t they?” Vulf stated the crucial point understatedly. “I can now shift not only into another form, but into an inorganic being. I represent a potential for the shifter clans to be something truly different in the galaxy.”
It was my turn to pick up the story, a story that Professor Summer knew better than either of us, but one which the Academy and my own personal fascination with shifters’ heritage had taught me. “Other species metamorphosise. Your own people transform at adolescence. The Aalg change two years before they die—if they die of old age, I mean, not accidents. But shifters on Earth transformed back and forth between human and animal forms. Theirs wasn’t a one-way and forever change. They kept their talent secret, wrapping it up as a mythical story, as shamans did with their own unique abilities, but the reality was undeniable for anyone who studied them as the Meitj studied humanity before offering us membership of Galaxy Proper and evacuation from our dying home planet.”
Cosmic Catalyst (Shamans & Shifters Space Opera Book 2) Page 8
