I remembered Ren’s explanation of what I termed rainbows. There was nothing scary about rainbows. “Is being able to see your own resonance, these colors around your body, so frightening?”
He said nothing for a very long minute. “It can be.”
If you weren’t expecting it, I supposed. If you were … “You were a child,” I guessed. That might very well be terrifying to see colors dancing all over your body.
He nodded.
“How old were you?” I asked softly. I thought I was beginning to understand a little more about him, a child alone with a terrible secret.
“Twelve.”
Not that young, but at the precarious point between child and teenager. Puberty? Did puberty trigger the change from limited human mind to Ragkiril? “Is that usually when it—”
He shoved himself to his feet, headed for the door to the corridor. My heart plummeted. I wanted to call back all my questions, apologize, tell him it didn’t matter.
He stopped, shoulders hunched, hands jammed in his pockets. Then he turned and walked back to the couch, but sat instead on the low table in front of me. I swung my legs off the cushions. He took my hands in his. “Sorry. For a moment I was that twelve-year-old again, looking in the mirror.”
That explained something I’d not paid much attention to before. There were no mirrors in Sully’s cabin. Only a small one over the sink in the bathroom. Where there usually was one between closets, he’d hung an old star chart, framed.
He brought my fingers to his mouth. “Can we talk about something else?”
I smiled. “Sure. How much do you owe Ren now?”
23
I hadn’t been to Dock Five in almost three years. The place hadn’t changed. Except maybe to get a little more seedy, a little more raucous, a little more peppered with divergent humans and humanoids. Freighter crew, tanker crew, and barge workers all mixed in with shopkeepers, bartenders, and miners in transit. There were men and women of all shapes, sizes, and ages, but very few children. Just the odd pickpocket or some rafter’s brat running loose while his parental unit slumbered, deep in hangover heaven.
Dock Five was an ugly structure, long, somewhat cylindrical. Six levels at its narrowest, ten at its widest, each level crisscrossed with corridors. Gravity only worked at its core. In the outlying areas, beyond the core, it was all free-float, zero-g boots required.
Sixty bays total, thirty a side, most around the center core. That’s where the shops were, the bars, the nighthouses, the rafthkra dens. Tool shops, ships’ supplies hugged the outer core.
So did the Boru Karn. We waited an hour for the berth to clear. Center core was more heavily trafficked, making an unscheduled emergency departure more hazardous. The Karn was always prepared for one of those.
We were listed in dock manifests as the Lofty Echo. Sully had a random list of names, words, and threw them together on a whim. This week, the Lofty Echo. Next month, the Iron Sun. It didn’t matter. He had clearances and docs for them all.
We traipsed toward the core in plain spacer fatigues, myself in dark blue, Sully in his usual black. No ship patches. Weapons discreetly under jackets. My Grizni, as always, wrapped securely around my wrist.
Verno and Dorsie followed us down Blue Level. Dorsie had a list of supplies. She and Verno broke off as we came to Blue Corridor 6. There was a warehouse on BC 6 she dealt with regularly and trusted their prices. We’d meet up later in a pub on BC 12.
Gregor, Aubry, and Ren stayed on board, but only Gregor and Ren were on duty. Gregor because he was first pilot. Ren because there were sighted Stolorths on Dock Five. Being caught on an open dock was something he couldn’t risk.
The office for the repair techs Sully used was on Green, one level down. The lifts were crowded. We took the nonworking escalator stairs. I didn’t know if they’d broken again or hadn’t been fixed since I was last there.
“Never fixed,” Sully told me, then added a questioning glance. “Fleet doesn’t dock here.”
“I was on vacation.”
“Here?”
“With a friend.” I gave him a bland look and tried to throw it’s old business and not worth bringing up into my rainbow.
He caught it, but it didn’t stop him. “Not another husband.”
I punched his arm. “One’s more than enough, thank you.”
“A friend in the freighter business?”
“Yes. Now what’s the name of that office we’re looking for?”
He chuckled. It’d been a while since I heard his deep, rumbling laugh. It sounded wonderful.
A young woman raised her gaze from her screen as we entered. She was pretty, with bright gold hair clipped back with a colorful assortment of pins. She sat behind a low counter that divided the room. Two men in coveralls were in the other corner of the office, studying an enlarged schematic on a hologrid. They turned.
Sully raised his hand. “Pops. When you get a minute, we need to talk to you.”
The taller, bald-headed man nodded, splayed his hand in the air. “Five minutes?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll keep him busy, Pops.” The woman rounded the counter, walked toward us. She was tall and slender, with tight leggings under a thin, clingy tunic.
“Well, hello, Ross. I didn’t know you were on dock.” She glanced at me, smiled, then returned her focus to Sully. Or Ross, the name he told me he used here.
“Business is good, Ilsa?”
“Can’t complain. No, wait. Maybe I will. It’s been more than six months since you even stopped in to say hello to me.” She pouted prettily. “Doesn’t Gregor ever give you my messages?”
“He has.”
I felt Sully’s hand at the small of my back. Ilsa’s gaze flicked to the movement of his arm.
Ah. Ex-girlfriend meets current girlfriend. I didn’t enjoy these kinds of meetings. Eventually it led to the almost subliminal stare-down, the message: you’ve got him now. I’ll get him back.
Ilsa didn’t waste time. She appraised me thoroughly. I could almost hear her thinking: cute, but not beautiful. “Known Ross long?” she asked me.
“Since the wedding,” Sully put in before I could answer.
I almost choked.
Ilsa did. “Wedding?” She recovered. “You met at a wedding recently?”
“No,” I said.
“Of course not,” Sully said right after that. “Chaz and I got married recently. But I’ve known you how long, my angel?” He brushed a stray tendril of hair from my face, his dark eyes twinkling but smoky with desire. “Almost six years?”
My God, why were all the handsome ones always such bastards? But I was grinning. This was so Sully. This was so much the Sully I hadn’t seen since the problem with Kingswell. Since the problems with the Karn.
Six years was about right. I just couldn’t remember if it was synth-emeralds or silacksian crystals that had brought us together.
I was saved from answering by the appearance of the bald man. Ilsa’s father, I guessed, from the resemblance around the eyes and mouth.
“You’re looking well, Ross.”
“You too, Pops.” Sully took the offered hand, then motioned to me. “This is my wife, Chaz.”
Pops exhibited none of Ilsa’s surprise. “’Bout damned time. And a lovely one you are. Chaz? Good to meet you.” His large hand enveloped mine. “You in the business?”
I thought of all the things I knew Sully, as Sully, had done. I wondered what business Pops thought I was in.
“She’s a pilot. Damned fine one,” Sully said. “Good thing too. We had a bit of a problem with my ship.”
Pops frowned. “Something my people worked on? I’d have a hard time believing that.”
“So would I. Can we go somewhere and talk?”
Ilsa managed a rather frigid “congratulations” before we followed Pops to a back office and sat in spindly chairs permanently locked to the decking. Sully outlined the systems failure.
Pops rubbed his bald head while
he listened, then brought up Sully’s repair records. “Aubry or Gregor okayed everything. Just like normal. I can’t see … Ross, I can’t understand what happened.” The news disturbed him deeply.
But if he was lying, only Sully could tell. I knew that’s why we were here. He knew what those records showed, he’d listened to Gregor and Aubry’s recounting. But he needed to talk to, to read, Pops. And read the three techs who’d worked on the Karn.
We had coffee while Pops called them in off their current jobs on the docks. Sully spoke briefly to them all. It was all he needed to clear them. We left without saying good-bye to Ilsa.
“Trying to make me jealous?” I teased as we climbed the uneven escalator stairs.
“Was I that obvious?” He paused a second. “Did it work?”
“I don’t know. Depends if she and I are on the same list.”
It took him a moment to place my comment. His list of confused women. The one I didn’t want to be a part of.
“There is no list,” he said as we reached the top of the stairs. He grabbed my arm, pulled me against him, kissed me. I revealed in his warmth as it fluttered invisibly over my skin.
“Shit!” A burly man in mining-company coveralls behind us almost knocked us down. “Go rent a room, will ya?”
I leaned against Sully’s chest, chuckling, and let him drag me out of the way.
We were back on Blue Level. Pops and his techs had read clean. Just like Gregor and Aubry. “Who else had access to the ship?” I asked quietly as we walked past dingy storefronts, garish pubs.
“No one, officially. And if the boys were lonely, they’d go to one of the nighthouses. If they did bring a prosti back on board, they wouldn’t let her out of their sight. That much I know. Besides, I asked Gregor that question.”
“And Marsh, Aubry?”
He nodded.
“Dorsie?”
Another nod.
We stepped aside as a stout woman, her arms laden with boxes, walked unsteadily past us.
“Verno?”
“The Englarians have a small mission here. It was just before Peyhar’s, you know.”
That brought it back down to someone on board. I was the only new figure in the equation. “Kingswell’s datapad had to have had some kind of delayed destruct program. Something I didn’t see when I emptied it. I usually don’t miss that kind of thing. Especially when it’s Fleet.”
“Unless someone put it there after you cleaned it.”
I was surprised. “But you asked, you read …” I let my sentence trail off. I wasn’t about to elaborate on his Ragkiril abilities in the middle of Blue Level.
“I did. But only resonances, looking for fear, evasiveness. I may have to ask again, more deeply this time. And I’ll need Ren there, though they’re not going to like it. I’ve never had to question my crew in any way that they were aware they were being probed, read.”
“Do they trust Ren?” I’d noticed Marsh’s attitude was friendly, but Gregor and Aubry rarely talked to him. Dorsie, however, was clearly fond of Ren.
“They tolerate him. Except for Dorsie, of course, who vacillates between wanting to adopt him and wanting to mate with him. Gregor and Aubry went flying out of their chairs like you did when I first brought Ren on board. I’m so used to having him around that I sometimes forget the effect he has on people.”
A shop door slid open and two people exited into our path. We stopped, let them pass.
“How long have you known Ren?”
“Long time. Almost twenty years.”
“You met him when he was ten?”
“Excellent math skills. And cute too. What a wife. I’m such a lucky guy.” He gave me a Sully smirk. Then showed off his quick reflexes as he danced out of the way of my playful punch to his arm.
“I thought Ren lived with the Englarians. And his Takan family in the compound.”
“He did.”
“What were you doing there?”
He glanced down at me, a half smile on his lips. “Studying to be a monk.”
My God. He almost was Brother Sudral. “Whatever made you want to become an Englarian monk?”
“It seemed appropriate. Shall we say, I stared at a painting of the revered Abbot Eng one day, and it spoke to me.”
“And what did the painting tell you?”
He stopped and gazed upward at a blinking sign. “Trouble’s Brewing. We serve only the finest Imperial ales.”
This time my fist did connect with his arm.
He laughed. “Come on. Let’s see if Dorsie left any money in my account.”
The pub was crowded. “Where’s Verno?” Sully asked as we sat. Dorsie must have grabbed one of the last available tables. Her ale arrived just as we deck-locked our chairs. We ordered a pitcher. “That is,” Sully said as the ’droid server wheeled away, “if I have any money left.”
“The way you play cards with Ren, you’re worried about me?”
I knew Sully wasn’t. Dorsie was an excellent supplies manager and a sharp-eyed guardian of her budget. I also wasn’t far off in my initial appraisal of her. She was Marsh’s aunt.
“Verno ran into a friend. He’ll be here,” Dorsie said. “How’s Pops?”
“Not growing any new hair.”
“He have answers?”
“Nothing we didn’t know.”
She nodded, looked at me. “Meet Ilsa?”
I nodded back. “Lovely young woman.”
“Not sure what that means, Chaz. Did she or didn’t she try to scratch your eyes out?”
I shot a glance to Sully. “No list, huh?”
“Honest. None. Not a one.” He held his hands up.
“List?” Dorsie asked as the ’droid returned with the pitcher and two tall glasses.
“List of women. It was, um, a point of discussion between Ross,” I said, stressing his current name, “and myself.”
“Oh, Ilsa wanted to be on that list, real bad,” Dorsie said. She took another sip of ale. “Bet meeting Chaz here stopped that ambition.”
“Meeting my wife here stopped that ambition,” Sully said.
Dorsie’s lips hovered for a moment over the rim of her glass. “Hell’s fat ass. For a second there I thought you were serious. I thought you went and done it.”
Sully grinned. “Ilsa thinks I did. But don’t worry, Dorsie. You’ll get one of the first invitations to the wedding when they go out.”
Dorsie’s look switched to me.
I shook my head, turned my hands outward. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Sully placed his fingers under my chin. “Did I forget to ask you, my angel?” He brushed my mouth with a kiss just as Dorsie raised her hand in the air.
“Verno! Over here.”
I pulled back from him and saw the tall Taka ducking under the low-hanging lights, saw heads turn. Saw a woman following behind him, in Englarian sand-gray robes, her face almost covered by her hood.
“Sully-sir! Sorry to be late.” He put his hand on the woman’s arm, guided her in front of him. “Sister Berri’s been praying for you since you left. Knew you wouldn’t mind if she came to see how the abbot has answered her prayers.”
The woman’s lips turned up slightly in a sweet smile that would make a saint jealous. “It’s good to see you again. Truly, it is the blessings and providence of beloved Eng the Merciful that you are all safe.” She bowed her head slightly, then raised her eyes to me. “You must be the brave Captain Chasidah I have heard so much about. Blessings of the hour, my sister.”
Sister Berri Solaria. The inimitable Berri Solaria whom Drogue had spoken so highly of, teacher of orphans whose life I’d worn for two days on Moabar Station. She was, I realized, everything I’d always thought an Englarian nun would be. Just a lot younger.
Her voice was gentle, melodic, sweet. Her face was thin but delicate. She accepted the chair Verno held out for her, sat as if a cloud lowered her into it. She pushed her hood back. Her hair was a medium light brown, wound into a bu
n at the nape of her neck. Two wispy curls had escaped, trailed down the sides of her face.
She looked freshly scrubbed, innocent. Angelic, lacking only halo. I doubted she’d crossed her thirtieth birthday yet.
Sully rested his arm around the back of my chair, his fingers on my shoulder. “Sister Berri Solaria. Blessings of the hour. I didn’t know you were so concerned about us.”
“There’s not a moment you have left my thoughts and prayers these past few weeks, I assure you, Mister Sullivan. Not one moment.”
I felt Sully flinch and knew why: Sullivan. That was the name of a dead man, a ghost, and not to be used, even in places like Dock Five.
“Sister,” he said, but she’d leaned forward, her voice rising as she did so.
“I know that your appearance here again is truly a sign from the beloved abbot.” She fixed Sully with an imploring gaze. “You must permit me to assist you in this time of great peril. You must take me with you, to Marker!”
24
“Sister Solaria. Please. This is not the place to discuss things like that.” Sully’s voice was firm but kind. I relaxed because he did.
Verno angled his tall form into the seat next to Berri, put his large hand on her arm. He leaned toward her, his whispered words gravelly.
A pale pink rose on her cheeks. “Forgive me. Of course. In my fervor, I’m being indiscreet. I humbly ask your pardon.”
“We’ll discuss this later.” Sully reached for the pitcher. “Grab the ’droid and get us another glass if you can, Dorsie.”
Berri raised her index finger. “Oh, please, don’t go to any trouble. Brother Verno and I will share.”
Verno smiled. A Taka’s smile was thin-lipped and showed lots of teeth, almost feral. Verno’s was clearly the besotted version of that.
I realized how much I didn’t know about Englarians. I based their use of monk or sister on the rather nebulous Celestialism most of the Empire followed. I vaguely thought that Englarian monks, like Celestial monks, were celibate. That was why Sully’s admission he’d studied to take the cloth so surprised me. Celibacy and Sully didn’t belong in the same sentence. But then, he’d only studied Englarian theology. Not actually become a monk.
And Ren … well, Ren was a Stolorth. I didn’t know if they followed the same rules as human monks. I knew very little of their culture, their rituals, other than what the Empire fed us. Which was, it appeared, mostly erroneous.
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