“Uh,” Edith began.
Kohia rolled her eyes. “Officially, we have a watching brief. Cyrus ordered the Stealth here to observe happenings on San Juan and be present to provide back-up for you, Jaya. He deduced you’d return here at some point. Uncle Rick designed the Stealth. He knows its capabilities. We’re the fastest starship in the fleet. We have a crew of seven. Yvonne, my navigator, stepped aside for Edith. She has the right of blood to be part of your back-up team.” Kohia nodded brief acknowledgement at Edith before refocusing on me. “Cyrus alerted us when you departed Origin for San Juan, and we’ve been waiting for you. Some stuff has been happening planetside.”
“Freels,” Edith said with a note of doom.
Vulf remained unimpressed. “So Alex said. I’d rather hear your report on happenings at the Academy.” He glanced at Kohia, including her in the request.
She nodded. “The problem with orbital observation is the difficulty of infiltrating planetside events. Sean, my intelligence officer, has a program filtering the mass of communications going in and out of San Juan, but he suspects we’re missing a lot of the encrypted and/or hidden transmissions. Nor do we have the processing power to scan communications that stay on-planet.”
Ahab could probably do both, but he didn’t mention it, so I stayed silent, too.
“We’ve been monitoring arrivals and departures, backtracking to search out who is on the ground or in orbit. I don’t like surprises unless I’m the one springing them,” Kohia continued. “The Freels arrived the day Jaya departed, but stayed aboard their starship until the chancellor of the Star Guild Shaman Academy agreed terms with their commander. Your chancellor is either naïve or an idiot,” she added.
“Winona is ambitious.” I sighed. “I suspect she’s so busy fighting other humans, she hasn’t considered that other people in Galaxy Proper aren’t all as safe as the Sidhe and Meitj.”
Edith snorted. “There’s unsafe, and then, there’s the Freels. They are treacherous, violent villains.”
Kohia looked at her curiously. “I thought you said you’d dated one.”
Vulf choked on his coffee.
“Oops,” Kohia mouthed. “Sorry,” she murmured to Edith, as Vulf swelled with older brother wrath.
“You dated a freaking Freel?” he shouted.
To intervene or not to intervene?
Kohia caught my eye and shook her head.
“It was only for a few months,” Edith said.
“Months!” A vein bulged in Vulf’s neck.
Edith stared down at her half-eaten chocolate chip cookie. “We were on Glasgow Station in the Boneyard Sector. Both of our ships were being worked on. There’d been an asteroid storm. We were both on our first contracts, learning about…”
Vulf held up a massive hand. “I don’t want to hear what you learned.”
Kohia hid her grin in her coffee mug.
“Tell me, did you obtain the details of Winona Hayden’s deal with the Freels?” Vulf asked her.
Kohia sobered in an instant. “The details, no. But based on Freels’ negotiations in other sectors, we should assume a quid pro quo bargain. Her message to the commander of the Freels’ starship was simply ‘One exchange”.”
“Damn,” Vulf swore under his breath.
“I’ve not bargained with Freels,” I prompted, trying to elicit more information.
Vulf maneuvered his long legs out from between bench seat and table. “Freels’ basic bargaining strategy is simple exchange.” He looked at Kohia. “How many Freels surround the Academy?”
“A dozen.”
He looked at me. “Then the Freels will expect a dozen shamans to respond to a crisis as identified by the Freels.”
A sick feeling grew in my stomach. “To defend vulnerable Freels?”
Kohia shook her head. “I’ve been reading your chancellor’s communications. She’s not that smart. I’d wager she’s put a dozen shamans on the hook to fight with the Freels, not just defensively, but in solidarity with them whether the cause is just or not—whenever the Freels choose.”
I definitely felt sick. “Why?”
Kohia shrugged.
Edith met my questioning gaze, and shook her head. “No idea.”
“Alex might have some answers,” Vulf said. He added.
Vulf was more strategic than me. If I became a Shaman Justice, he and I would have to negotiate with the Galactic Court a way for us to work together. Neither of us wanted to be separated by our jobs, which meant he had to ensure that the Galactic Court would trust him. In keeping its confidences, he was thinking ahead.
Maybe he shouldn’t have hit Alex.
“How about the human government?” I asked. “What is President Hoffer up to?”
“Stupidity,” Kohia answered concisely. “Criminal stupidity. What sort of idiot sends soldiers to lay siege to a school?” Anger roughened her voice. Evidently, Kohia could take Freels in her stride, but put children in danger and she wouldn’t be forgetting or forgiving the person responsible. “His own people ought to chuck him out of office, or off the planet.” By her tone, she meant off-planet without a starship or spacesuit. “Even if they don’t, he’s deluded if he thinks the rest of Galaxy Proper will let him control the shamans. You guys are the only reason the union accepted the rest of us.” Her eyes were green and very intent. “Is your Shaman Justice here to deal with Hoffer?”
“Alex mentioned the situation. But he didn’t discuss his mission, other than to say it involves Jaya,” Vulf added with disapproval.
“Then we need to know more.” Kohia drained her coffee mug. “What do you intend to do and how can we help you?” she asked me.
I took a deep breath. “I need to go to the Academy. I can hold a bubble of invisibility long enough to evade security on the space dock, but they’ll still know I’m around as soon as the Orion lands. They could lay down a stream of blaster fire or run disrupters to intercept me.” I trailed off as I saw Edith’s sly smile.
“The Stealth has a two person shuttle, and it’s as stealthy as its mothership,” Kohia said. “I can get you down to the planet without anyone being the wiser.”
“Me, too,” Vulf said. “I’m going with Jaya.”
“What about the Shaman Justice?” Kohia asked.
Vulf folded his arms, biceps bulging against the fabric of his utility shirt. “He can be the distraction.”
Chapter 8
Waking Alex was fraught with danger. It wasn’t as if he’d be feeling friendly toward us after Vulf punched him. Edith had dashed back across the lock to the Stealth and collected a disrupter from the corvette’s armory.
“Activate it,” Vulf said.
Edith hesitated with her finger on the trigger. “Are you sure it won’t hurt you, Jaya?”
“There’s no pain. It’s a bit disorienting and frustrating not having access to sha energy, but it doesn’t hurt. And I’d far rather the disrupter run than have Alex wake up and launch a defensive sha attack that I’d have to counter.”
Edith nodded at that and pressed the trigger. She locked it in active mode.
The world continued around me. The sha energy flowed around us, but I couldn’t access it to control it.
Alex woke neatly.
Ahab was monitoring the medbot and reported that Alex was conscious before Alex opened his eyes.
The Shaman Justice didn’t rush, although he’d have heard Ahab’s announcement of his waking status. Alex’s eyes stayed closed. He’d be assessing the impact of the active disrupter.
I’d discovered that I could play with sha energy even with a disrupter running. It was a different kind of relationship to the sha than what the Academy taught. The disrupter broke a shaman’s direct control of sha energ
y. But I’d found that I could still nudge the flow of sha energy so that a cascade of it could be encouraged to build up until it overwhelmed and broke a disrupter.
Could Alex do the same?
I waited with my nerves on edge. If Alex could destroy a disrupter, he could potentially simultaneously lash out at us with sha energy. I needed to be our second line of defense if the disrupter failed.
When he opened his eyes, Alex focused on Vulf. “Why?”
“I didn’t know my sister was in this sector of space, and until I knew why, your presence was an unacceptable danger to her and Jaya.”
Alex’s hazel eyes stayed fixed on Vulf for a long moment, before taking in Edith and Kohia. “And now?” He sat up cautiously. The caution wasn’t due to pain. While sedated, the medbot would have healed the consequences of Vulf’s hit. Alex was moving warily out of respect for the dangerous individuals in the cargo hold with him.
“Now, we need your help,” I said.
“Have you read the scenarios?” he asked me.
I shook my head.
He inhaled briefly, a hint of anger escaping. “There is information you need buried in those scenarios.”
“I believe you,” I said. “But the wider implications can wait. I want the children trapped in the Academy free and safe first.”
“Where will you take them?” he asked.
I frowned.
My eyes widened at Vulf’s ’pathed suggestion and I stared at him. Then I giggled. “President Hoffer would lose his mind.”
“Is that a yes?” Amusement laced Vulf’s voice.
“A yes to what?” Kohia wasn’t one to remain quietly in ignorance.
“It’s a ‘not yet’,” I said to Vulf, and then, to Kohia. “We could evacuate the students at the Academy to Corsairs.” Unlike me, her eyes didn’t widen in shock at the idea. In fact, she nodded as if it was a course of action she’d considered. “But I think I’d rather remove the Freels and soldiers from the Academy rather than disrupt the students. It’s their home.”
“You really need to read the scenarios,” Alex said. “The situation with the Freels—”
“Is not our problem,” Vulf said with all the ruthlessness of his society. The shifters cared for their own and for children. “Not the Freels and not their retaliation against Winona Hayden when we break her bargain with them.”
I wasn’t so sure that I was willing to throw Winona to the Freels. However, the question of her fate was only one of many that needed to be answered by actual events. Scenarios couldn’t provide real-time information and decisions. “If we need to evacuate…Vulf, can you get a secure communication line to Cyrus? Would Corsairs accept Academy staff portalling in with students?”
Edith laughed briefly. “I keep forgetting you’re a shaman. You don’t need a starship to travel.”
“Mostly I do. Portals require a lot of sha energy to create.” But I had my crystal and other shamans at the Academy would have either portals ready or sha energy collections capable of powering the creation of one. How many would we need to transport all the students? I hadn’t heard of a definite upper limit for portals, although no shamans were recorded as ever transporting more than twelve people through one.
“Jaya, what do you think you can do on San Juan that others can’t?” Impatience nudged Alex’s question into something close to criticism.
As a Shaman Justice, he had to have received a report from either Winona or the Meitj involved in Ivan’s trial on Naidoc that I could destroy disrupters. The trial had ended in explosions and Ivan’s temporary escape with me as his hostage, but it had also revealed something of my power. The disrupters the soldiers carried weren’t a threat to me.
But then, they weren’t a threat to the Freels Winona had contracted with either. The threat they faced was blasters that could stun or kill a soldier. A shaman under the effects of a disrupter could still fire a blaster.
What was preventing an all-out fight and containing the volatile situation was likely shamans’ own sense of the risks involved: not physical risks, but those of choosing our future.
At the Academy we were taught to see ourselves and our abilities as peaceful, nurturing and creative. Even those shamans who specialized in using sha energy as a weapon, did so with an emphasis on defensive purposes.
If we displayed our power violently, there’d be no going back from that.
And if we were choosing sides, were shamans going to see themselves as part of humanity or as something unique? I hoped for the former. We would suffer the most if we chose power over a place and people to belong to.
I frowned at Alex. He had to know that shamans were at a turning point in our history. As one of only two Shaman Justices, the most powerful of shamanic talents, he had a right and responsibility to be at the Academy when the choice was made. At least as much right as me, probably more. “Maybe Alex shouldn’t be the distraction,” I said to Vulf. “He needs to reach the Academy safely.”
“Wait,” Alex interrupted. “This is important, Jaya. Why do you want to reach the Academy?”
I flung my arms in the air, abruptly finished with all the talk, talk, talk. “You and Professor Summer both pushed me to come here.”
Alex rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Apart from that?”
I looked wildly from him to Vulf with a can you believe it? expression.
Vulf studied Alex.
His intentness jerked me out of my incipient rant. What had Vulf seen, heard or put together that he was puzzling over Alex?
The Shaman Justice rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I really wish you’d read the scenarios, Jaya, and shared them with Vulf. The mediators prefer people to choose freely. As it is, what I tell you will be perilously close to a directive.”
“You have no right to order Jaya to do anything,” Vulf growled.
Alex stood. “Not Jaya. You. It’s you we finagled to San Juan, Vulf.”
Edith had been holding the disrupter loosely by her side. Now she raised it. Like all disrupters, it had a blaster function built in. That—the threat of excruciating nerve pain—was what she levelled at Alex.
Meantime, I felt a tiny thread of relief within my wider wariness. Whatever happened, if Alex admitted he’d connived to get Vulf to San Juan, then maybe he wouldn’t have Vulf arrested for striking him? Surely that would be fair?
“Well, I’m here,” Vulf said. “Did you want me here as Jaya’s mate, as a bounty hunter, or as a robot wolf?”
“All of the above, but primarily because of your reputation with the Freels.”
I think Alex’s response shocked us all. I felt Vulf’s surprise through our bond, although his expression didn’t alter.
The muzzle of the disrupter Edith held wavered.
Kohia stepped close and took it from the younger woman. “The Freels are our enemy.”
“No more than the other rogues you fight,” Alex said. “And those that you are thinking of, the brutal maniacs, they do not represent the truth of Freel society. Do you know the Freels’ history?”
“They joined Galaxy Proper a few centuries before humanity.” I’d been taught the history of all the union’s member species at the Academy. “They achieved faster than light travel and demonstrated sufficient moral awareness to be granted provisional membership which became full membership two and a half centuries ago.” My confident recitation slowed. “They were granted full membership…if their moral character was as abysmal as the stories I’ve heard about them from starships’ crews was genuinely that bad, Galaxy Proper wouldn’t have accepted them.”
Alex nodded sharply. “Finally, you are thinking.”
“Don’t push it,” Vulf growled.
“The Freels are humanoid,” Alex said.
Involuntarily, I glanced at Edith. Before her admission that she’d dated a Freel, I hadn’t truly considered the Freels’ similarity to us. The Sidhe, yes, the
y seemed like greenish cousins, but the blue Freels with their muscular builds and violent behavior, their talons and bloody habits…I sighed. As a human, I shouldn’t judge. The Freels still lived on their home planet, although many had migrated to three other planets and a number of stations. Humanity had rendered its home planet unlivable.
Plus, Edith struck me as enthusiastic, but not naïve or stupid. If she’d dated a Freel boy for months, then there had to be something good about them.
Alex continued. “Freels understand strength. Both sides of it. Conquest and defeat. They respect Vulf.”
“I doubt it. Apart from our other encounters, when I rescued Saylon, the mLa’an child the Freels had kidnapped, the mLa’an rescue party that caught up with me leveled the stronghold.”
“Thereby killing those Freels’ commander. The other Freels were grateful.”
“Pardon?” I needed that repeated. I’d heard it, but hadn’t believed it.
Edith nodded. “They were. Houron, the guy I dated, thought Vulf was a hero. Technically an enemy, but still someone to respect. I wouldn’t have given Houron a second look otherwise.”
While Vulf struggled with his sister’s statement, Alex finished his briefing. “The Freel who led the band of thugs who kidnapped the mLa’an child was crazy, but also powerful. The Freels were glad to learn of his death, and relieved that by your intervention, Vulf, the madman’s recklessness hadn’t plunged all Freels into war with the mLa’an. The Freels are violent and deadly, but the peaceful mLa’an have the technological edge to subjugate them.”
“Not that they would,” Ahab said. “The mLa’an believe in the right of liberty for all living sentients.”
My mouth compressed. Ahab and I would discuss that point. He might be an artificial intelligence, and not an organic being, but he was still a person. He deserved freedom and full Galaxy Proper membership. I had to stop letting other events delay our overdue conversation.
Cosmic Catalyst (Shamans & Shifters Space Opera Book 2) Page 12
