There was a lot that I’d left out, but even this much information shocked those around me. Suddenly, Alex and the rebellion were old news.
Sometimes violence was necessary, and I’d reluctantly come to understand that attitude.
I changed from telepathing because I had a question. “Dan, why did you take me back to Naidoc?”
“Alex had other supporters. They were checking that you returned to the Meitj. I needed time for Alex to relax so that I could free Vulf.” The weapons master glanced wryly and warily at my mate. “Except he freed himself. It was quite a statement, dumping Alex’s crushed body down the tower stairs.”
Vulf stared back in silence, simmering violence remaining in his aura. He wanted vengeance for me not being safe in the Academy, the one place I’d had to call home in my childhood. His emotions came through our bond as clearly as words.
I hoped he was receiving mine just as clearly. I was overwhelmed with relief. He was everything I needed, and all I wanted was to go home with him.
“How will you punish us?” one of the shamans standing in the small group around Alex demanded.
Michael shrugged. “There will be no punishment, other than humanity learning of the price we will pay for the ambition and treachery of a few. The Galactic Court could order your shamanic talent stripped from you.” He stared at Alex. My former foster father looked almost peaceful in his unconsciousness. “The Meitj hold a device capable of doing so.”
I jolted.
Winona touched my arm sympathetically, misunderstanding the cause of my consternation. “It was awful. Jaya and I watched it happen to her grandfather.”
“The Galactic Court has already decreed that it won’t be used against shamans for anything humanity has done in the last month,” Michael said.
My fingernails dug into Vulf’s forearms. “Actually, they won’t be able to use it at all. I destroyed the device on Naidoc before returning here.” I debated adding to that statement. Despite what the Galactic Court may have decided regarding the device not being used against shamans, the Meitj Emperor had turned the Imperial Crown against me. Perhaps Raine would argue that he’d done so for reasons other than humanity’s actions, and so, hadn’t broken the Court’s ruling. At any rate, sharing the fact that he’d attacked me would only inflame and confuse the current situation.
“How did you destroy it?” Winona demanded. She’d experienced the device in action. She knew how powerful it was.
“Does it matter, here and now?” Vulf demanded. It would be a long time before he forgave Winona and the other shamans, including Dan and Michael, who’d connived to let events play out, risking me for the satisfaction of the Galactic Court’s scenarios.
I patted Vulf’s arms which were locked tightly around my waist.
“It matters,” Winona said tensely as she stared at me. Whatever measure she’d thought she had on my shamanic talent, I’d just revealed that she’d underestimated me. Then her gaze traveled around the hall, taking in the confusion and horror on shamans’ faces.
They had thought themselves invincible; able to be affected by disrupters or blasters, but not to have their shamanic talent torn from them. The news was devastating to their psyches, even if I’d destroyed that particular weapon.
Winona reluctantly accepted reality. “We’ll discuss it later,” she conceded.
I felt her gather up sha energy. A clap of thunder sounded in the hall. A couple of people shrieked, then everyone fell silent.
Winona stood tall. “A lot has happened and we have considerable new information to process. We’ll talk later, but for now I want you to consider two things and consider them well. The first is what would have happened if President Hoffer had succeeded in using shamans to force Galaxy Proper to accept humanity as full members.”
The rebel shamans eyed her mistrustfully. They’d been idiots as well as traitors and they expected her to rub their noses in it. They should have been watching Michael.
He triggered a sha energy hologram that covered most of the hall. It was incredibly detailed, and he added sound effects. Holographic people, some of them replicas of shamans present in the hall, died horrifically on battlefields and in exploding starships. “War. Galaxy Proper would not have let President Hoffer’s use of shamans as weapons to ‘advance’—” Michael’s mouth twisted sourly on the word. “—humanity’s interests without retaliating. Humanity would have suffered immensely, and once we’d lost the war, we’d have been treated as little more than slaves. Reparations would have been huge. Do you people not understand? Humanity’s junior membership of Galaxy Proper protects us! No other member species can go to war with us until we are full members, and if a non-member species attacks us, Galaxy Proper will defend us. We should be in no hurry to ‘advance’ our status within Galaxy Proper. We need to concentrate on building up our own societies and capabilities.”
He’d left the crowd dumbstruck, as much by the violent, gory hologram and screaming, booming soundtrack as by his words. He closed his right hand in a fist and the hologram and noise ceased.
“The second point for us to consider,” Winona resumed calmly, although her face was bloodless and even more strained. “Is what we want to stand for. Humanity has undermined its position within Galaxy Proper. Our opportunities will be less, our struggles harder, until we prove our maturity as a species.”
“Until people can trust our word,” Vulf said.
Winona glanced at him. “Your alliance with the Freels is a starting point.”
“No, it’s not.” Vulf released me and stepped up to stand shoulder to shoulder beside me. “House Cardinal became a shifter clan on Corsairs. They did not join humanity or ally themselves with it.”
“But you are human,” someone protested.
Vulf’s smile was feral. “You wouldn’t know it by how humanity’s planetary governments have ostracized my people.”
“What can you expect? You’re pirates,” a shaman sneered from beside Alex, who still lay unconscious.
“I expect nothing from you,” Vulf said.
“I do,” I said. “I was raised here among you. Trained here.” I scanned the crowd. “I considered myself one of you, until you allowed President Hoffer to threaten me, and Alex to threaten my mate.”
“We didn’t.” Nairo glared at Dan. “Some of us had no idea what was happening.”
Dan returned the younger man’s scowl. “If you ever ventured out of your lab…”
“Oh, I intend to.” Nairo folded his arms. He turned his shoulder to Dan. “Jaya, what do you need from us?”
“Nothing. I have Vulf. I have family on Corsairs. You could say that my allegiance has shifted.”
Michael looked at me sharply.
I gripped Vulf’s hand.
He squeezed my fingers.
“The Ceph are real,” I said. “They ar
e who the ancient species of the galaxy, such as the Meitj and mLa’an, likely fear we could imitate. You need to learn all you can of the Ceph from historical records. You need to agree on the role of shamans in the galaxy. You need to decide, individually, what your role is in restoring humanity’s standing in Galaxy Proper. For myself…Michael, will Alex be removed as a Shaman Justice?”
“It has already been done.”
I took a deep breath. “Then the Academy owes the Galactic Court a second shaman, as per humanity’s obligations under the Charter of Galactic Union. I put myself forward as a candidate, unless another shaman will accept the responsibility. Assuming the Galactic Court will accept me.”
“They have requested you.” Sympathy showed in his eyes and the slight curve of his mouth. Some of the other shamans might resent me nominating myself, but Michael understood I’d had no option. I would always have been the Galactic Court’s choice. No one else had my level of shamanic talent or its particular quirks. And humanity owed Galaxy Proper. I had to pay some of that debt.
I opened a portal. With so many shamans gathered in one place, the rule at the Academy was that major sha energy workings such as portals had to use sha energy collected somewhere else. It was bad manners to use up the sha energy that everyone needed. The crystal around my neck held the sha energy I’d collected in the two wormholes, but I didn’t need it. I slipped into shamanic sight and sought the spiral space perception that collapsed distance in weird ways.
The sha energy that had chaotically exploded from the Meitj Imperial Crown when I destroyed it still spilled into the negative space I’d actualized there on Naidoc. It wasn’t doing anything, and it wouldn’t be visible to non-shamans, but for me, it was a concentrated pool of sha energy. I drew on it to form the portal.
According to shamanic theory, pulling sha energy across such a distance was impossible. One day, I’d have to advise them to consider the theory of spiral space. But not today.
The portal opened. Vulf walked with me into it, and out into the lane that ran along the edge of his family’s land.
“Home.” His thankfulness and his need for me matched mine for him.
We hugged and kissed, only breaking apart when someone in the house noticed us and people ran down to greet us.
Edith reached us first, but my father was close behind Vulf’s sister. The whole family—far more than I’d yet met—plus Rjee and Djarl descended on us, hugging and demanding explanations for our sudden arrival.
“We need food,” Vulf shouted over the pandemonium. “And clothes.”
No one seemed perturbed at his state of half-undress, but the women focused on the ugly cotton gown the Meitj clinic had supplied me with.
“You sure do,” Kohia drawled as she strolled up. She sounded casual, but her hug was strong and spoke of relief. She also had her blaster strapped to her waist.
Belatedly, I realized that all of Vulf’s family—our family—were armed. “Has there been trouble?” I asked cautiously.
I had no idea why my worried question was met with uproarious laughter.
My mother-in-law, Laura, filled me in as she and various female relatives plus Djarl escorted me off to bathe and change into more suitable clothing. “Professor Summer contacted us when you and Vulf disappeared. Then he updated us that you’d reappeared, destroyed some massively powerful, ancient sha energy device, then disappeared again.”
“I went to retrieve Vulf,” I said rather inadequately. I grinned. “I needn’t have worried. He had things under control.”
“Of course he did,” Laura responded, proud of her son. But she gave me a hug; proud of me, too.
Dinner was a lively meal that even the vast front room of the Trents’ house couldn’t contain. More and more people arrived and we spilled out onto the back porch and across the yard. Tables were set up and lamps flickered in the evening shadows. Vulf’s family were there, friends and neighbors, the Conclave, so many Freels that it could have felt like an invasion, and—
“Nairo?” I blinked, bemused, at the sight of the Academy’s healer being marched into the gathering at the point of Kohia’s blaster.
“He portalled in by the front gate,” my cousin said.
I stared down at the small glass in my hand. “How potent is this mead?” I hadn’t even noticed a portal opening close by.
Rather than answer, Vulf’s dad topped up my glass. I guess that was a kind of answer. Whatever happened, we had family and allies to deal with it. The responsibility wasn’t solely on Vulf and me.
“I tracked your portal with Michael’s help,” Nairo said calmly, before adding with a degree of impatience. “Jaya, can you tell the Amazon behind me that I’m no threat to you?” Presumably Kohia had greeted him less than gently, or else just now jabbed him with her blaster, or perhaps both.
“Why are you here?” Vulf asked.
Nairo stood as confidently as if he lectured in his own lab. “I’ve been working on the theory of how Jaya triggered your initial shift into a robot wolf. Seeing you in that form was very interesting.”
The people around us, so many of them shifters locked into their human form, watched him with predatory hope.
“I have some ideas of what might help. Since by all the signs there’s never going to be a quiet time for Jaya to focus on the issue, I think my assistance is required.”
“The Ceph,” I murmured unhappily to the mead glass, and even more unhappily added, “The Meitj.” I would have to contact Professor Summer and the Emperor soon.
Vulf had sent a message updating Ahab on events, and Ahab was on his way back from Naidoc to Corsairs, travelling as fast as the Orion’s design allowed.
“I didn’t want to waste time negotiating permission to enter Corsairs,” Nairo continued. “This way, Jaya can vouch for me before she dashes off somewhere else, saving the galaxy.” He gave me a surprisingly charming, wry grin. “Shaman Justice.”
I ceased to be charmed. “I don’t want to be a Shaman Justice.” There was truth in mead, I’d discovered.
Vulf took the small glass from me. “Can we trust Nairo to attempt to trigger our shifts?”
Everyone leaned forward, holding their breath for my answer.
I shrugged, and snatched my mead glass back from Vulf. “Of course. Nairo lives his oath as a healer. ‘First, do no harm’,” I quoted. “Whether he succeeds or not, he won’t endanger anyone trying.” I tossed off the last of the mead. “Take me to bed now, Vulf.” In the morning, I’d be embarrassed for my drunken honesty, but for now, the shifters’ roar of amused approval only caused me to smile jubilantly.
Vulf and I left Nairo to Kohia’s less than tender mercy, and retired to our cabin in the woods. We had seven hours of peace.
The Meitj arrived in the morning.
Chapter 15
“We accepted Shaman Dan Carson’s offer to portal us here to demonstrate our faith in both the shifters of Corsairs and the shamans of the Academy.” Raine, the currently travel-sick Meitj Emperor, leaned against the apple tree in the Trents’ front yard.
The same goat that I’d encountered on my initial arrival on Corsairs bleated a demand for food or attention from the adjacent field. When everyone ignored it, it bleated again, stridently.
Professor Summer had shown the courtesy and good sense to message Vulf and Vulf’s father, informing them of the trio’s imminent arrival. As a result they’d been greeted by shifters armed with blasters and a disrupter (for Dan), as well as by Vulf and me. However, they hadn’t been greeted by blaster fire, so his prudence had been justified.
“There are explanations and apologies that we need to make.” Raine showed his hardihood by straightening from his leaning posture against the tree and facing me directly. “As well as plans for the future. Jaya Romanov, I apolo
gize deeply and unreservedly for the violence I offered you. If I’d had any option I would never have violated your trust in such a manner. You may demand of myself or my family three favors. Please, accept my reparation.”
Raine’s head stayed bent in a formal bow, while his multi-faceted eyes angled attentively in my direction. Sunlight glinted off his crimson exoskeleton. A butterfly flitted to him, obviously entranced.
I was less impressed. I was hurt. “Why did you try to take my shamanic talent from me?”
“It was at my suggestion,” Professor Summer said.
Vulf’s family sucked in a betrayed gasp.
“My friends.” The elderly Meitj’s eyes shimmered with the gray-blue of grief or anguish. “Jaya’s power is far beyond anything we believed possible among shamans for generations yet. We hoped, oh how we hoped, but she has exceeded our hopes. Raine’s test was essential. If she could destroy the Imperial Crown, then she was capable of freeing the Ceph.”
Everyone nodded, following his reasoning even as they withheld forgiveness. They’d heard Vulf’s and my story last night, and undoubtedly had discussed it long after we’d retired.
“I won’t free the Ceph without consulting broadly on whether the galaxy can survive them.” I curled my fingers around Vulf’s hand as his approval and relief flowed through our bond. “Shamans’ powers are disruptive enough. How will we cope with the legendary Ceph?”
“You don’t have to free them.” Raine raised a claw and the butterfly that had been flitting around him settled on it. The insect’s fragile blue wings shone like lapis lazuli. “Destroying the Imperial Crown has done that.”
The shock of the Meitj Emperor’s calm statement thudded into me with physical force. “I didn’t know,” I whispered to Vulf.
“You protected yourself and you were trying to get free to save me. This is not your fault.” He glared at Raine. There was no doubt who he blamed, and others shared his view.
Cosmic Catalyst (Shamans & Shifters Space Opera Book 2) Page 21
