by C. Gockel
6T9’s circuits lit all at once. He might not have to worry about dropping Volka off in a strange new society to become a slave to the dole. “You’re welcome to stay with us,” he said.
Volka drew back, and his Q-comm whirred with how a Luddeccean woman would interpret that offer. She might think he was offering to make her his whore—or as the Luddecceans would say, his “weere.” He added quickly, “As our friend and guest.” Shrugging, he adopted an air of nonchalance. “Until you find your feet.”
Or really as long as she wanted.
She didn’t drop her hand, but her eyes roved from Carl to him and back again .
Putting a tiny paw on her arm, Carl said, “You saved us on your world, Volka. Let us return the favor.”
Her shoulders relaxed.
6T9’s eyes fell on the sketchbook peeking from her blouse top. “It’s a beautiful place for landscape paintings, I promise.”
Volka’s ears perked. She smiled tentatively. “I…I…accept.”
6T9’s emotion apps took over. For the first time since he was aboard Sundancer, he beamed.
22
Darkness Rising
Approaching Sundancer, hovering above the lawn on Sixty’s and Carl’s asteroid, Volka felt a now-familiar sense of anticipation and happiness. She still hadn’t “found her footing,” in the Galactic Republic, and memories of home—Myra, Joseph, Esther, her betrayal of Mr. Darmadi, and Alaric’s betrayal of her, were a constant ache.
Still…“Sundancer loves us,” Volka murmured. It muted the hurt and made her feel like she could keep going.
Hopping at her feet, Carl replied, “Like we are her pets.”
Ears flattening, Volka looked down at him sharply.
He squeaked. “That is a love for pets feeling. Volka, trust me. There is an undercurrent of superiority in her affection and protectiveness. Considering she can deflect phaser cannons, is immune to projectiles, travels light years in milliseconds, and can hold telepathic conference calls with non-telepathic humans while they are awake —I can only do that when they’re sleeping, and often got colored by my pet human’s own dreamscapes—she’s entitled to it.”
Volka’s ear flicked. She wasn’t sure she agreed with Carl, but then, her telepathy was rudimentary. Sundancer did appear to be a higher life form. Not even The One or the scientists of the Galactic Republic understood how the ship did the things Carl described, though they had scanned, poked, and prodded her. Sundancer either wouldn’t tell them, or couldn’t. Carl had theorized, “It might be like us trying to talk to an unpossessed werfle or cat. Our language and learning are so advanced, so much vaster, that we can’t put our knowledge into any words they can understand. It probably is the same with Sundancer, which might be why she talks in pictures and feelings.”
They halted beneath the ship. Sundancer was so close to the ground, Volka could reach up and touch her. A familiar sensation bloomed in the pit of her stomach, a nervous energy and urge to move. She interprets it as, Ready?
Reaching up, Volka touched the ship’s barely-warm surface and ran her fingers along one of the smooth grooves. Closing her eyes, she pictured Sixty. They couldn’t leave without him.
She felt a ripple of curiosity and bemusement in reply. Sundancer couldn’t communicate with Sixty at all, and as such, he was fascinating to the vessel.
Hearing footsteps, Volka opened her eyes and saw Sixty walking briskly across the lawn. He was wearing a light gray suit in the style that was considered formal on Earth: high necked, with smooth onyx buttons down the front. The collar of a black high-necked shirt peeked through at the top. She glanced down. He was wearing conservative black shoes as well, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Do I look boring enough for court?” 6T9 asked Volka, coming to a stop beneath the ship.
At Volka’s feet, Carl squeaked and waved his topmost paws. “Looking boring won’t be enough if you wink at the judge and say, ‘I’m ready for your discipline anytime, Your Honor.’”
Volka found herself reddening at that memory. This was the robot, android, machine man that she’d mistook for an angel…She blamed the delusion on stress.
6T9 gazed heavenward and smiled as though reminiscing on something extremely pleasant. Which maybe to him, it was. “It’s my programming,” he said.
There was no debating the note of pride in his voice, but maybe that was only programming, too?
She didn’t know, so she replied with what she did know. “You look very nice. The cut suits you, and so does the hue.” The gray was nearly silver and contrasted sharply with his tan skin, dark hair, and brown eyes.
6T9 winked at her and straightened his cuffs. “Thank you.”
Above them, Sundancer began descending, a Carl-Sixty-Volka-shaped opening appearing in her hull. She hadn’t scooped them up with the ground since that first trip. Both the mysterious opening and the “scoop move” were more things that baffled The One and scientists. Carl theorized it as “unimaginably complex quantum wave manipulation” and something about “waves making up everything, even matter.”
They stepped into Sundancer’s interior, and the floor sealed beneath them. Almost immediately, Volka felt the barest force of acceleration, first toward the “space elevator” and airlock, and then up and out.
They turned to light, and then the walls became translucent, revealing Earth. Sundancer hovered and waited. Volka knew the moment Sixty had received Earth Control approval over the “ethernet,” because he nodded at her. Closing her eyes, she imagined the area that they were allowed to land. She didn’t have to give directions; they’d been there many times before. At her thoughts, Sundancer zipped forward.
Glancing down, she saw Carl still pacing. He had his middle paw pairs behind his back, and he was waving his uppermost paws. “Don’t say you want to lick the gavel, either, 6T9.”
Volka’s eyes went wide.
Sixty’s nostrils flared. “I never said that in front of the judge!”
Volka’s ears flicked. “Now you’re just being mean, Carl.”
Sixty licked his lips and waggled his eyebrows. “Although she holds it with such authority.”
Volka didn’t sigh.
Carl sniffed, or sneezed—it was hard to tell which—turned and began furiously licking his tail.
Volka bit her lip. “What’s wrong, Carl?” she ventured.
The werfle blinked up at her, and then waved six paws and squeaked. “What’s wrong? I don’t want one of my pets going to the pound, that’s what’s wrong!”
Volka’s eyes narrowed. She glanced at Sixty. His eyes met hers, jaw tight. They both glared down at Carl.
Carl sniffed, or sneezed—or whatever the sound was— and crossed his tiny topmost paws, ears going back. “I am unrepentant.”
The floor sank gently beneath them and then vanished. Sundancer rose above their heads, and Volka was assailed by the scents of asphalt, hover fuel, and Bengal tiger. The latter of these loped over to them. It was Carl’s “once sister” Shissh. When he’d said she had possessed a “cat” on Earth, he’d neglected to say what type of cat.
“Is he being annoying again?” Shissh spoke the words into Volka’s mind, or perhaps her heart, and must have broadcast it over the ethernet, too, because Sixty snorted. “Yes.”
“I am not being annoying! I’m being rationally concerned ,” Carl hissed, and began hopping past Shissh.
Shissh caught his tail beneath an enormous paw. “You look fine, Little Brother,” she said. Carl rose to his hindmost paws and began licking a paw and running it over his ears. “Really? I don’t look flea-bitten, mange-ridden, malnourished, or over nourished? One of the charges is animal cruelty, you know.”
“You look fine.” The words were spoken aloud by a woman emerging from a pair of doors on the rooftop. Admiral Noa Sato had the darkest skin Volka had ever seen, eyes that were nearly black, and hair that must have been just as dark at one time, but was now steel gray. It matched the neural port on the side of her head. Sh
e appeared to be in her mid-fifties, but she was slightly older than her younger brother, Archbishop Kenji Sato. Despite the difference in apparent age and skin tone, you could see the resemblance between them, or maybe the resemblance was in the way that both Satos saw Volka and spoke to her like she was a person…and Sixty, too, for that matter. Volka had come to realize that androids—and “sex ‘bots” in particular—were not regarded as “persons” by many humans, no matter what laws said about having a “Q-comm.”
Admiral Sato walked toward them with so much authority that even Shissh made way for her, releasing Carl’s tail at the same time. Carl sprang into the Admiral’s arms, and she cradled him to her chest. “Relax, Fluffy.”
“Fluffy” was Carl’s name through two werfle lives when he had lived with the Archbishop and Admiral Sato in their childhood home on the Luddeccean frontier. Carl had been their pet; although, in Carl’s telling, the humans were his pets, of course.
Leading the group back to the double doors, the admiral said to Carl, “You did fine during the hearing.”
Tension in Volka’s shoulders loosened at that assessment. She smiled at Sixty, but his gaze was leveled on Noa, his expression uncharacteristically serious.
Noa continued, “And the judge is going to take Sixty’s service to the Republic into account.”
Volka’s brow furrowed. Noa meant the message Sixty had delivered from her brother. The admiral had Sixty repeat it verbatim in the common tongue and in Japanese several times. It didn’t sound particularly important to Volka. “Tell my sister I have her left flank.”
She glanced at Sixty again. He was frowning now. She felt like she was missing something, and blinked. Perhaps she was. They could talk through the ether—as she understood it, it was a brain-to-brain radio. Carl and Shissh said it was much more primitive than telepathy, but Volka wasn’t sure if that were true or if they just disliked it because they weren’t very good at it. They were always moaning to her about the difficulty in making the quantum waves create the right frequencies.
Trying out her own rudimentary “telepathy,” Volka focused on Carl and thought, “Are they talking about something top secret over the ether?” She tried to feel the meaning of the words at the same time.
“No.” The answer came from Shissh. “Noa’s worried about her husband, James. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to what Sixty is thinking.”
They entered the doorway and were immediately set upon by reporters. Volka and Sixty were responsible for first contact with not one, but two alien species—The One and Sundancer. The One could inhabit some of humans’ favorite pets. Sundancer was capable of gateless faster-than-light travel. A third of the Republic was amazed, a third was terrified, and another third were both.
So, Sixty and Volka were famous. At least, Sixty said, “for the next seven minutes.”
“Admiral Sato, is that a member of The One in your arms?” a reporter cried.
“6T9, are you aware that your manufacturer has sold out of your particular model?”
“Volka, who is your plastic surgeon? Women everywhere want your ears!”
Thankfully, no one touched her, and when the tigress growled, everyone took a step back.
They entered the courtroom and were greeted by Lauren G3. Looking Sixty up and down, she nodded approvingly. “You dressed like you care! No winking at the judge or commenting on the length of her gavel.”
In Noa’s arms, Carl sniffed and glared at Sixty as though to say, “See? ”
Sixty smirked, and then said, “I am unrepentant,” in exactly the same tone Carl had used earlier.
To Volka, Lauren said, “Don’t worry, I think he’ll be fine. We may even be able to sue Raif for entrapment.” Volka nodded. Lauren G3 had explained to them that Sixty couldn’t leave the asteroid for more than three months at a time and keep his inheritance. Accused ship jackers weren’t allowed to access the time gates. The lawsuit had been an attempt to keep 6T9 from returning to the asteroid in time. It might have worked, but no one had counted on Sundancer.
Lauren G3 tried pulling Sixty to the front of the courtroom, but he resisted. Looking down at Shissh, he said, “You’re not going to sit behind Raif and growl, are you? Just because he has obviously had work done on his face doesn’t mean he’s had work done on his internal organs. You might give him a heart attack.”
Shissh’s ears flattened. “He accused you of stealing a ship that was yours to use as you saw fit, and he tried to poison my little brother.”
Sixty winced. “Yes, but he’s human and I’m programmed to keep him safe.”
Tail swishing, Shissh said, “I’m not.”
Lauren G3 touched her lips. “I don’t think we can prove the attempted werflecide in court. The Republic’s laws aren’t set up for telepathy as evidence yet.”
The big cat narrowed her gold eyes. “Be glad I’m not going to eat him,” she said, and then sauntered off and took a seat behind Raif. She didn’t growl, but she huffed loudly and repeatedly with enough force to make his hair sway in her breath.
Shissh’s presence may have been why, an hour later, when the judge read the verdict, Raif didn’t protest…or maybe he just figured he’d only lost the first round.
“You’re cleared of all ship jacking and animal cruelty charges!” Lauren G3 declared, smiling triumphantly at Sixty and Volka as the judge and prosecution left the courtroom.
Sixty didn’t smile, and Volka couldn’t resist putting a hand on his sleeve in sympathy.
“Don’t everyone thank me at once,” said Lauren G3.
Volka and Sixty turned to her, and Sixty stated the obvious. “I still have to replace a ship that was outfitted with gold toilet seats.”
Volka frowned. Raif had won that much…and it was, apparently, a lot.
Turning back to Volka, Sixty said, “I could always sell my body.”
Volka recoiled. “No, you can’t do that!”
Rolling his eyes, he said, “I don’t have any societal hang-ups against doing that . It’s legal in most of the Republic systems, and I’m an extremely popular model right now, so, yes, yes, I could.”
Volka’s ears swiveled down submissively. “But do you want to, Sixty?”
He shrugged and said unconvincingly, “There are worse ways to earn a credit.” His shoulders sank, and he stared at a point on the far wall. “And yet…oddly, I don’t care for the idea very much. It’s very strange.”
Volka blinked.
Lauren G3 tilted her head.
“Sixty,” the admiral said, approaching them with Shissh behind her and Carl in her arms. She’d left the courtroom for a brief discussion with the two aliens after the verdict was read. “Have you ever thought of starting a delivery service?”
“A delivery service?” said 6T9.
The admiral raised an eyebrow. “You have—or at least are friends with—the fastest ship in the known galaxy. I’m sure you could find some customers who’d be willing to pay a premium for that.” Her lips pursed. “The Galactic Fleet may be interested, since confiscating her won’t work.”
The last had been considered, but Sundancer wouldn’t allow anyone to board her without Sixty, Carl, or Volka.
“Do you think Sundancer would be interested?” Sixty asked Volka.
Volka closed her eyes, felt the question, and smiled tentatively in response. “I think she’ll want to sign off on the cargo…” She felt a wave of anticipation in her stomach. “…but yes, she’ll do it.”
Sixty grinned. “I think we should celebrate. Dinner and dancing?”
Lying on the admiral’s arm, Carl yawned. “You go on without me…that will give me some time to catch up with my pet.” He tucked his nose into her arm, and so didn’t see Noa roll her eyes.
Turning back to Volka, Sixty said, “We are in Paris, and since I won’t be using my life savings to pay off the spaceship I blew up—”
“Are you sure you want to go out with Sixty?” the admiral asked Volka, gaze shifting between the two
of them. “It might not involve clothing.”
Sixty put a hand to his chest. “Admiral, you wound me. Unlike some people, I take into account the personality of my guests when choosing activities.” To Volka, he said, “I was going to suggest swing dancing. It’s in the midst of a revival. It will be somewhat familiar, but still different than what you’re used to.”
Volka looked around. Everyone’s eyes were on her. She did like seeing Earth. It was so crowded, bright, and alien . She also liked retreating to the asteroid for a day or two to recover, rat hunting with Carl, or deer hunting with Shissh. And despite his…proclivities…she never felt like Sixty was pressuring her for anything untoward. She didn’t fancy him for anything untoward, either. He might be the second most handsome man she’d ever met, and she might even be attracted to him at some very base level, but she didn’t think of him like she did Alaric. Which was a good thing…if she did, she’d be growling at every other person who looked at them—or rather him —on the street. Her mouth would freeze in a permanent snarl. They were the two most romantically unsuited people in the galaxy. They both knew it, and had sensibly made an unspoken pact to just be friends.
“Well?” said Sixty.
Volka smiled. “That sounds…nice…actually.”
Sixty grinned. “Excellent.” Reaching for his coat collar, he tore it off, sending buttons flying and revealing a silky, red, knit, skintight short sleeve shirt with a high-necked black collar and two black stripes down the left front. Volka’s eyes went wide. It left very little to the imagination. She’d be able to see his heartbeat, if he had a heart in more than just the figurative sense. Still, it was reassuring to see his chest had been successfully patched up and his back as well.
“Are you going to take off your pants too?” the admiral asked dryly.
“No, this is it,” Sixty responded .
Giving Volka an odd look, Admiral Sato said, “That’s very restrained of you, Sixty.”
“I know,” he said. Holding an arm out to Volka, he said, “Shall we?”
