“Yes,” Djarl said. “Do you want to see to your mate?”
I considered her question. Now that he was safe, if injured, other emotions triumphed over my previous worry. I was surprised to feel anger surging through me. “No.”
Kohia laughed. “You need a drink.”
“Why?” Aaron asked.
We ignored him.
“A girls’ night out,” Kohia continued. “I know the perfect space bar back on-station. You in?” She glanced at Djarl.
The Freel woman stared down at her husband and my mate in the center of a circle of clamoring admirers. For all her cool composure, we’d both worried ourselves sick while the two idiots beat each other up, and enjoyed it. “Yes. We can take my shuttle.”
She refused a guard for us.
Aaron whined about it, but her argument was irresistible.
“Are you implying that either I, your house leader, or Jaya Romanov, a shaman, or Kohia, the Captain Jekyll, can’t protect ourselves?”
Faced with three hostile female glares, Aaron’s spine stayed straight, but his gaze darted away, searching for support. None of the Freels within hearing distance were offering any. In fact, one woman sniggered. Aaron flushed. “No, Djarl.”
“Good.” She led the way to her shuttle with a swagger, and piloted it efficiently to Station Zemph.
The bar Kohia chose buzzed with energy. The people in it were in a party mood and the music pulsed with a driving beat. Colored lights framed zones for dancing, for talking, and for simply drinking.
Kohia, Djarl and I lined up at the bar, claiming stools and sampling drinks. Even though none of us had had an opportunity to dress up, we still attracted attention. Some of it went too far.
“Ow!” The Sidhe male who’d unwisely whispered a suggestion in Kohia’s ear found his own pointy right ear pinched.
“No.” Kohia swigged her Passionate Nebula as her would-be suitor slunk away.
A group of four Freels at a table nearby nudged each other, and pushed one of their group forward.
I could see the incoming trouble in the mirror behind the bar. “Not of your house?” I asked Djarl.
She smiled, lips stained yellow from her cocktail. She captured an ice cube and crunched it, just as the nominated Freel representative reached us. “Nope, and too drunk to remember to check if I’m married.” She spun on her bar stool and flashed the bangle at her wrist in the approaching Freel’s face.
“Oh,” he said, disappointed. His shoulders lifted a fraction as he turned to me, hope renewing in his drunken mind.
“She’s taken, too,” Djarl said.
The guy looked at Kohia, who smiled her predatory grin. He gulped.
She laughed.
The poor guy looked surreptitiously back at his group. If he retreated now, they’d never let him live it down. If he didn’t…
I saw the moment when he decided that approaching Kohia was his best option.
So did she. She shook her head.
The guy wasn’t going to take a hint, and he didn’t realize how forbearing Kohia had been to offer him one.
I reacted spontaneously.
Just the tiniest twitch of sha energy and the beer he’d guzzled roiled in his stomach. Gases swirled potently and emerged in a loud, long burp that rattled the bottles behind the bar.
The Freel’s eyes widened in shock. Then he blushed. With a muttered “pardon” that indicated he hadn’t completely forgotten his manners, he bolted for the bathroom.
The crowd roared with laughter, his three companions at their table loudest of all. In fact, one of them had an annoying, braying laugh.
That should have been the end of things, however, a group of six men strolled forward. Unfortunately, where the Freel had been willing to accept that Djarl and I weren’t available, these men were human. Their leader smirked in our direction.
Kohia put down her drink.
I stopped watching what else she might do. The group of six men were unpredictable enough that I kept my attention on them. “We’re just here for a drink,” I said evenly. “Try the dance floor.”
“Nah.” The group’s leader pushed the guy next to me off his bar stool and slid onto it. “I like the view here.” He leered at me.
I sighed. As much as I preferred to avoid trouble and notoriety, I didn’t see a non-confrontational way out of this. Perhaps it was the alcohol I’d consumed, but suddenly I didn’t care. I spun my bar stool away from the intruder and confided to Djarl and Kohia. “Now I remember why I don’t drink in bars.”
Djarl smiled slightly and clinked her glass with mine.
The idiot put a rough hand on my shoulder and pulled me around. As Kohia leapt off her chair in a lethal dive, I wrapped my would-be suitor in sha energy and bounced him up to the ceiling.
Kohia halted abruptly, and laughed. “Sorry, cuz. I didn’t stop to think that you’d fight differently.” Her grin was predatorily amused as she watched the man punch the ceiling. The sha bubble kept him stuck there.
His five friends finally tore their stunned gazes from him, and scowled at me.
“My turn!” Kohia kicked the nearest one behind the knee, crumpling him before ducking sideways, so that the guy who went to his aid ended up sliding over the bar.
“Hey!” the barman protested.
Djarl fixed him with a menacing glare. “You had your chance to end this. You didn’t care when it was three women being hit on…”
The barman found someone needing his services down the far end of the bar.
“Pump scum.” Djarl hit out, sending the man who’d lunged for her reeling back into a table of Sidhe men and women who’d been drinking quietly and watching the show. They rocked back into the three Freels whose friend had burped his way into embarrassed retreat. The Freels steadied them before pushing past to join the developing fight, arraigning themselves with Djarl, Kohia and me.
A wild yell from the Freels and the lavishness of their fighting moves revealed that it was the joy of the fight rather than an impulse to gallantry that motivated them.
A faint sense that Vulf would not be happy if Djarl got hurt while out drinking with me meandered its way through my alcoholic bemusement with the bar fight breaking out all over. I released the sha bubble that glued the guy to the ceiling, and he dropped down in the midst of the Sidhe group. I’m not sure what happened to him after his precipitous arrival spilled the drinks that they’d managed to save when their table overturned.
Instead, I wrapped Kohia, Djarl and myself in a protective sha bubble and floated us up and back from the bar toward the viewing deck which provided an unimpeded view of the space dock and the varied craft anchored there.
It also allowed an unimpeded view of the door, and the three of us saw Vulf and Rjee walk in the door of the bar and pause.
Vulf’s gaze shot straight to me.
Rjee had to be prompted to look up. His mouth fell open, presumably at seeing his wife sitting comfortably on nothing in mid-air.
She saluted him with her drink.
“You have class,” I told Djarl.
“They look cranky and cute,” Kohia said, observing Vulf and Rjee’s ruthless progress toward us.
Whatever their injuries had been, evidently medbots had gotten them back into fighting trim. Bodies flew away from them as they cleared the path to where we lounged in our sha bubble.
True, I could have floated our bubble to Vulf and Rjee, but I honestly didn’t think of it.
“I want my own cranky, cute guy,” Kohia said wistfully. She looked around the bar. “I don’t know why I was thinking that I might find one here.”
“Aaron’s interested,” Djarl said.
“Mmm.” Kohia didn’t sound convinced.
I felt his love and unwilling amusement.
I did, and released it.
Rjee grabbed Djarl.
Djarl winked at her. “See you later. Come on, cute guy.”
Her husband looked bewildered, but then something he saw in her face caused a slow grin to replace his angry frown.
“We’ll walk you back to the Stealth,” Vulf said to Kohia. He’d wrapped an arm around my waist and his scowl dared anyone to approach. Prudently, they found someone else to fight.
“You really are cute.” Kohia shook her head at Vulf. She sauntered ahead of us and out the front door of the bar.
We were just in time to avoid the station security force rushing inside.
“I’m perfectly safe on-station.” Kohia tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Although I think I’ll find a quieter bar. And maybe ask Edith if she wants shore leave.”
Vulf’s eyes widened at the thought of his little sister partying with Kohia.
I giggled.
Vulf knew it, too. He sighed, conceding the point. “Okay. But message us if you get into trouble.”
“I expect you’ll be too busy to rescue me, anyway.” Kohia winked wickedly at me.
I giggled, again. “I am definitely drunk.”
Vulf whisked me away to the Orion and I discovered what drunk sex with my own cute guy was like. Fun!
Meantime, Ahab hacked the station’s security and kept a virtual eye on Kohia and Edith and the rest of the Stealth’s crew. He is such a good guy.
Chapter 12
The transmission from Professor Summer, the mLa’an academic and Vulf’s old family friend, reached us one day out from the last wormhole before we arrived in the Dragon Sector, the region of space that Corsairs inhabited.
The Orion had been travelling much slower than normal given that we were matching speed with the Force, the Freels’ destroyer. The relatively leisurely journey had been a positive experience. Vulf had roamed the destroyer in his robot wolf form, providing our new allies with a thrill that some of them looked as if they could have done without. Aaron, however, was fascinated, and my cousin Kohia had looked desperately envious. Seeing how much she craved to release her inner tiger I knew that no matter how long it took and how many attempts, I wouldn’t stop till we, shamans and shifters working together, could release the shifters’ beasts, even if it was into an inorganic robot form.
However, my comm-chats with the Freels, as well as with Kohia and Edith, weren’t all serious, and we shared hilarious meals when we managed physical visits between the travelling starships. It was safe to say there were distinct differences between Freel and human food. They liked things sourer than us, and we liked things spicier. Aaron had nearly burned his mouth out learning that fact; not that his shipmates gave him any sympathy.
Those light-hearted moments, as well as group conversations via comm with the Conclave waiting on Corsairs, had eased my concerns about how difficult House Cardinal’s integration into Corsairs society would be.
There’d be metaphorical asteroid belt bumps—all right, there’d likely be outright fights among individuals—but both Freel and shifter culture could accommodate a rough adjustment period. Moreover, both groups were led by individuals both capable and willing to make and enforce difficult decisions.
In short, by the time we approached the final wormhole, I was in a good mood, blithely anticipating private time on Corsairs with Vulf at the cabin. I was also dressed and waiting for Ahab to initiate the Orion locking with the destroyer so that I could go across and guide the destroyer’s jump through the wormhole. Vulf and Ahab were experienced wormhole travelers and could easily navigate this safe wormhole, although with a rougher ride than if I was onboard, while the Freels were keen to experience the reality of a shaman-guided jump through a wormhole.
Professor Summer’s transmission scuttled those plans.
It was a live transmission, although with a twenty minute lag-time due to our distance from the Meitj planet, Naidoc, where he was currently in residence.
I winced. The last time Vulf and I had been on Naidoc, my grandfather had kidnapped me after exploding part of the Meitj Imperial Palace, among other adventures. Now, my grandfather was causing other problems. Even in prison, Ivan wasn’t the kind of man to patiently accept his fate, or the fate of those he fought for.
I listened to the professor’s message on the bridge with Vulf.
He felt my confusion. Sympathy flowed from him, through our mate bond, to me.
I got out of the copilot’s chair and dropped onto his lap in the pilot’s seat. Everything felt more manageable, less frightening and uncertain, with his strength holding me. I switched on the communication system, but not to respond to Professor Summer.
There was a few seconds delay, then the Freel communications officer on the destroyer patched me through to Djarl. “I’m sorry, Djarl.” Between our bar fight and chatting over the last few days she’d become a friend, an older, wiser woman with a wry sense of humor. “I have a personal issue, a family problem, to deal with and it’s urgent. Vulf and I can’t continue with you to Corsairs. Kohia will, but I…I can’t.”
“My family’s invitation to you stands, Djarl,” Vulf rumbled. Concern for me deepened his voice. “The homestead is capable of hosting your crew in four shifts.”
“Thank you, Vulf. Jaya, is there anything we can do to help you?” Djarl’s question, personal rather than leaping to discuss political issues, confirmed for me yet again that we’d chosen well when we’d gained House Cardinal as allies for Corsairs.
“No. I…just need to be somewhere else, suddenly and…” And I didn’t know what meeting in person with Professor Summer and his nephew, the Meitj Emperor, would bring. The professor’s message had been maddeningly enigmatic. “Enjoy your welcome on Corsairs,” I said instead. “And we’ll join you there as soon as we can.”
I ended the communication, and gripped Vulf’s hand hard, before asking Ahab to open a secure communication line to Professor Summer.
The Orion shot toward the wormhole like a wasp to jam. By using the Orion’s speed to diagonally dissect this corner of the Dragon Sector we’d reach the next, far more dangerous wormhole on the far side of it in mere hours, then we could jump through it to—
Vulf unpeeled my hands from their death grip on the edge of the console and kissed them. “Worrying won’t speed our journey or Professor Summer’s response to your message that we’re coming. He may send more information with his next transmission, and it should reach us before we enter the wormhole. He may even arrange for you to talk with Ivan.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I challenged, grumpy with worry.
“Then agonizing over it still won’t help.”
But if worrying was all I could do, then it’s what I would do because my grandfather, imprisoned for the most heinous of terrorist activities, had requested stasis and, on being denied that expensive and experimental treatment, gone on a hunger strike until the Ceph were freed from their forty two millennia of stasis imprisonment.
Forty two millennia. It broke the mind and hurt the spirit to think of it. Because while stasis for longer than a year was still very much a scientific challenge here and now, for the Ceph—sha energy users from ancient times—it had been an ordinary enough talent, and one that had been wielded against them by one of their own. Theta, a rebel Ceph, had worked with the Meitj to lock his own people into stasis. He’d believed that their rampage across the galaxy—violent, utterly destructive, and without compassion—could not be stopped until another species developed a matching talent for accessing sha energy.
Humanity’s shamans, people like me, had that talent, but the Ceph remained locked up.
For my grandfather, the Ceph’s continued slumber in enforced stasis was unacceptable. His terrorist actions to either free or avenge them had landed him in a Meitj prison, and more than that. The Mei
tj Emperor had used the Imperial Crown to strip Ivan of his shamanic talent.
I wouldn’t have believed that anything could irrevocably prevent a shaman from accessing sha energy. A permanent rupture, not the limited interruption of a disrupter, shouldn’t have worked.
However, the Imperial Crown proved to be a final gift from Theta, the Ceph who’d turned on his own people, and it had enabled the Meitj Emperor, although without a skerrick of shamanic talent himself, to strip that talent from Ivan.
The thought of losing access to the sha energy that played around me, whirled through the starship, and grew rambunctious as we neared the wormhole, had me closing my eyes in emotional turmoil.
Ivan’s threat to turn the Meitj solar system into a black hole had warranted his death. The Meitj rejection of capital punishment meant Ivan hadn’t been executed for his crimes. But losing access to sha energy, blinding his senses to it, was that almost worse? Perhaps only a shaman could understand the true horror of it.
And so my grandfather had decided to kill himself slowly via a hunger strike.
Just as the Meitj wouldn’t commit capital punishment, nor would they violate a sentient individual’s body to force it to accept nourishment against the person’s will.
Ivan was dying, but Professor Summer’s transmission had said there was a chance that I could save his life.
Only the professor hadn’t added any details.
Nor did any further transmissions from him reach the Orion before we entered the wormhole.
I navigated us through the wormhole with implacable efficiency, pulling the tangled lines of sha energy into smooth spiraling patterns that shot us forward and out, deep inside the Foundation Sector. We could make good time here, too, although we’d have to stick to the starlanes. The Foundation Sector was the core commercial sector of the galaxy and correspondingly busy.
Vulf switched the Orion to autopilot, having set course for the next, far more dangerous wormhole, that would bring us relentlessly, yet not nearly fast enough, closer to Naidoc, Professor Summer and my problematic grandfather.
Cosmic Catalyst (Shamans & Shifters Space Opera Book 2) Page 17
