Gabriel's Ghost

by Linnea Sinclair

“My research has never turned up any Kyi-Ragkirils with scales or wings. But we can change what people perceive. That’s probably where the shape-shifting stories come from.” His eyes narrowed for a moment, thoughtfully. “I could almost be tempted to ask Guthrie for his information on us. But I don’t think I’d like what he’d ask for in return.”

  “For the link you have with me to be broken? Would that really be fatal?”

  He nodded solemnly. “To me, because I am ky’sal to you. Guthrie doesn’t understand that. If his family gathered most of their data during the war, all they would have seen were mind links for the purpose of defense or interrogation.” He rubbed his thumb over my fingers. “That’s not a unique attribute. The hand that caresses can also kill.”

  “But fatal only to you?”

  He sighed. “He told you there are ways to break a link. There are, though they’re not without risk. But since I’d be an unwilling participant and since my focus would be on keeping you alive and not protecting myself … yes, fatal, but only to me.”

  “Then why—”

  “Because, my angel, you are worth the risk to me.”

  “But the risk would be to both of us.”

  “Not if I died first.”

  I started to speak, stopped. This was something almost beyond my comprehension. A gentle warmth flowed through me. Sully, sensing my consternation, sending reassurance.

  I promised you. I would never hurt you.

  No, he wouldn’t. He’d just make me wild, make me crazy, make me delirious with passion; make me angry, frustrated, and confused. He’d make love to me until the universe skewed on its axis. And he’d risk his life, if it came to that, to keep me alive.

  But hurt me? No. I understood that now. I believed that now.

  He slid his hand out from under mine. “Watch.” His fingers curled into a loose fist, and only because I was looking for it did I see a faint spark of something silvery. He opened his hand slowly. A crisp angel of heart-stars card unfurled.

  I took it. For the first time in several hours I saw the glimmer of a wicked Sully smile play across his lips. And saw something other than darkness in those infinite, obsidian eyes. There was a twinkle of starlight, an effervescent, silvery light. I knew what it was now.

  All that I am is yours, ky’sara-mine.

  Ky’sara. And to me, he is ky’sal. An almost unbreakable link. All that I am is his. All that he is is mine. A selfish, hedonistic desire to have in a time that was sure to get more troubled, more dangerous, more desperate. A time when jukors are born and Takas are dying. A time to fear.

  Only fools boast they have no fears.

  No. Only fools underestimate the power of love.

  About the Author

  A former news reporter and retired private detective, Linnea Sinclair has managed to use all of her college degrees (journalism and criminology) but hasn’t soothed the yearning in her soul to travel the galaxy. To that end, she’s authored several science fiction and fantasy novels, including Finders Keepers, Gabriel’s Ghost, and An Accidental Goddess. When not on duty with some intergalactic fleet, she can be found in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her husband and their two thoroughly spoiled cats. Fans can reach her through her Web site at www.linneasinclair.com.

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  It wasn’t the first time Gillie had hazily regained consciousness flat on her back in sickbay, feeling stiff and out of sorts. And unable to account for a missing two or three hours. Pub-crawling did have its side effects.

  But it was the first time she’d been unable to account for a missing two or three hundred years. Not even a week of pub-crawling could explain that.

  Three hundred forty-two years, sixteen hours, Simon’s voice stated clearly in her mind. If you want to be absolutely accurate.

  She didn’t. Her math skills had never been her strong point. And three hundred years was a close enough estimate to cause her stomach to do flip-flops in a way a bottle of Devil’s Breath never had.

  The possibility that she’d died flitted across her mind, though logically death wouldn’t have thrown her inexplicably into the future. Even so, she thought it prudent to pull her Essence out of her physical Self and make a cursory examination of her own body on the diag-table. By all appearances, she was still short, blonde, and very much alive. The readout on the medistat confirmed the last part of her hastily conducted diagnosis. It detailed a few bumps and bruises as well as notations on a mild concussion, no doubt the source of her blistering headache.

  A headache that wasn’t the least bit helped by whatever heathen concoction was being pumped into her system through the round med-broche clamped to her wrist. Med-broches! Raheiran technology rarely used such invasive things. She longed to alter its feed rate but knew her mental tinkering would likely set off some alarm. She’d almost tripped a few when she’d awakened ten minutes ago, groggy and achy, then tried to spike into this sickbay’s systems.

  Impatience invariably leads to sloppy work, Simon had chastised.

  Sloppy work, a bitch of a headache, and a reality that suddenly did not make sense.

  How in the Seven Hells had she ended up three hundred years from her last conscious moment, flat on her back in some unknown space station’s sickbay? With Simon in a similar state of disarray a few decks below.

  The Fav’lhir.

  Ah, yes. Small matter of a large warship intent on her destruction. Obviously, the Fav hadn’t succeeded. Though something had happened.

  They’re vicious and powerful, Simon, but they don’t have time-travel capabilities. Neither do we. Someone or something else pulled us here. Wherever “here” was. That much she ought to find out.

  She stepped away from her diag-table and peeked around the corner of the small room. Felt foolish and could hear Simon’s wry chuckle. No one could see her.

  At least, no one other than Simon, who, from his tone, was very aware she’d pulled out of her Self to explore her surroundings. Have a care, My Lady. You were injured.

  We’ve more serious things to consider than my few aches and pains. There were two other patients in the sickbay in much worse shape than she was. She didn’t know them; there’d been no one on her ship when the Fav had attacked, other than Simon and herself. The girl on the diag-bed was too young to be part of the squadron she’d worked with in the Khalaran Fleet. Almost automatically, Gillie touched their Essences as she walked by. Then she sidestepped quickly—and unnecessarily—as a thin man in a blue lab coat hurried past and into the corridor.

  She followed him and for the next fifteen minutes was thoroughly astounded, and more than a little disconcerted, by what she saw.

  Wide corridors were filled with people in various modes of dress, from the utilitarian freighter-crew shipsuits to more exotic costumes with flowing skirts and elaborate fringed shawls. She heard all three Khalaran dialects and a few languages that were harder to identify. Rim world tongues, most likely, clipped and rapid in their sound.

  She raised her eyebrows at the antigrav pallets trailing behind a group of dockworkers, surprised by the pallets’ advanced configuration. Raised her eyebrows further at the state-of-the-art holovid news kiosks and station diagrams near the lift banks. Those she studied carefully, listening to the chatter around her—tech talk about scanner arrays and enviro grids. That matched what she saw on the diagram suspended three-dimensionally out from the bulkhead.

  The Khalaran Confederation, with her assistance, had just been developing the technology to create a deep-space station the likes of which she looked at now. At least, they had been a d
ay ago.

  Correction: three hundred and forty-two years ago.

  Yet it wasn’t this jump in technology that bothered her. Nor this space structure bristling with unexpected weapons and sensors and databanks. Nor her headache. Nor the stiffness in her left shoulder, the result of her sudden collision with the bulkhead when the Fav’lhir ship had exploded a little too close for comfort off her starboard side.

  Even the unexplained missing three hundred and some-odd years failed to bother her. Or the fact that—in those three hundred and some-odd years—there’d been no other Raheiran advisors in this sector.

  Given her people’s minimal intervention policy, that was one of the few things that made sense.

  No, none of those things bothered her at all.

  What really bothered her was something she heard in the corridor chatter, something she viewed on the news kiosks and station diagrams. And finally, something she saw as she stood before the temple’s double-doored entrance, shaking her head in disbelief.

  What really bothered Gillaine Davré was that during her three-hundred-andsome-odd-year absence, the damned Khalar had gone on a shrine-building kick, and made her into a deity.

  Simon? There’s a temple with my name on it! But I’m not—

  It appears they think you are, My Lady.

  Oh, hell. Oh, damn. This wasn’t a minor error in alien protocol: a wrong phrase, an inelegant gesture misinterpreted. This was a mistake. A big one that encompassed an entire culture. Gillie shuddered at the ramifications. We have to get away from here. Now.

  Now is not possible, I fear.

  When?

  Three weeks, perhaps less. There’s much damage to repair.

  There’ll be worse damage if they find out who I am!

  Calm down, Gillaine Kiasidira. There’s no reason they should. Just try to avoid contact with any crystal and, of course, any itinerant witches or sorcerers.

  The Khalar aren’t mageline.

  Then we’ll have no problems, will we? Just be your usual charming self for the next few weeks and no one will know a goddess walks among them.

  I’m not a goddess!

  Nor are you seriously injured. Therefore, if you don’t return to your Self rather quickly that medical officer trying to wake you may start running tests you won’t like.

  Damn!

  Rynan Makarian frowned at the irritatingly incomplete data on his desk screen and knew it was all his fault. It had been four months since he’d been given the command to establish a Fleet presence on Cirrus One and secure it for the Project. Station systems were still far from optimal. Cirrus One was far from optimal—the station had passed its prime well over eighty-five years ago.

  “Give it to Mack. He’ll fix it,” someone in Fleet Defense and Logistics no doubt had said.

  It wouldn’t have been the first time it had been said, either. He knew his reputation for unerring efficiency preceded him. It had bestowed upon him the rank of Admiral in the Khalaran’s newly organized Fifth Fleet at the unlikely age of forty-three. And bestowed upon him the derelict monstrosity known as Cirrus One, to rehab into a usable headquarters. And, eventually, serve as something even more important than that: as the primary terminus for the critical Rim Gate Project.

  That project, more than Cirrus One, had drawn him off the bridge of the Vedritor and ensconced him behind a desk—a well-dented, slightly rusted desk—at forty-three.

  But it was Cirrus One that took up the majority of his time. Yet time was the one thing he lacked. He had little more than a month in which to get his HQ fully operational and secure. Missing supplies, incomplete data, and delayed support staff notwithstanding.

  He rested his elbows on that same battered desk and leaned his forehead against his fists. Damn. There was a wisdom in imperfection. He saw that clearly now. What was that adage Lady Kiasidira’s priests used to comfort the misguided? We are all in a continuing process of growth. There are no mistakes. Only lessons.

  Cirrus One was one hell of a lesson.

  Had he allowed himself a few mistakes in his career, he might well still be on the bridge of the Vedritor. A mere senior captain, not an admiral with an impeccable reputation to solve the unsolvable. To rectify the—

  His intercom trilled. He tapped the flashing icon and leaned back in his chair. “Makarian.”

  A familiar thin face wavered, solidified on the screen. Doc Janek, his chief medical officer. His blue lab coat bore the Vedritor’s insignia. Like many things Mack had requested, Fifth Fleet uniforms were still “in transit.” As supply routes went, Cirrus One wasn’t in the middle of nowhere. It was just the last exit before it.

  “Admiral, you asked to be notified. Our visitor from that damaged freighter’s awake.”

  Yet one more thing to plague his schedule with delays: an unauthorized ship with an unconscious pilot. An image flashed through Mack’s mind: a pale-haired young woman in nondescript spacer grays lying awkwardly on the decking, just behind the pilot’s chair. Emergency lighting had tinged the small bridge with glaring shades of red, casting eerie shadows over her small, still form. Another smuggler, he’d thought at that moment, whose ambitions had far exceeded her ship’s weaponry.

  He had a studied dislike for smugglers, yet had felt it would be a shame if this one died. He’d caught little more than her profile as the med-techs had lifted her onto an antigrav stretcher. But it had been enough for him to mentally tag her as beautiful, before he was even aware he’d done so.

  That wasn’t like him. It was unprofessional, judgmental. She was nothing more than a temporary annoyance.

  But she was beautiful. It made the job of questioning her a bit less unpleasant.

  “On my way.” He slapped off the intercom, threw one more frustrating glance at the inadequate, nonsensical data and strode from his office.

  The sights and sounds of Cirrus One assaulted him immediately. He’d thought by now he’d be used to them. Had the sights and sounds been continually repetitive, he probably would be.

  But there was always something new. Or rather, there was always something. His office was a few steps from the Main Atrium. Raucous laughter barked out from a level or two below, or possibly above, as Mack stepped into the open corridor. A man and a woman in the blue shipsuits of a starfreighter crew leaned against a wide metal pylon on his left. They were locked in a passionate embrace, oblivious to his presence. And oblivious to the snickers of a trio of adolescent boys in various stages of sartorial rebellion loping past, their long skirts catching between their gangly legs.

  Mack shook his head, sent a mental plea to the Gods for understanding. And patience. He missed the orderly routine of the Vedritor.

  There was a loud whoop, a high-pitched screech. His gaze automatically jerked to the right. A flash of bright yellow and blue hurtled quickly uplevel through the atrium’s center.

  His hand automatically tapped the intercom badge on his chest. “Makarian to Ops.”

  “Ops. Lieutenant Tobias.”

  “I thought we’d solved the parrot problem.”

  “I thought we had too, sir.”

  “I just left my office.” He sidestepped a merchant whose balding head barely topped the bolts of cloth stacked in his arms. Evidently someone was getting hard-goods deliveries. Where in hell were those uniforms? “Main north, Tobias. Heading uplevel. The problem’s not solved.”

  “Logged and noted, sir.”

  He tapped off his badge. Fleet crewmembers, whose uniforms showed mixed insignias, nodded respectfully as he passed. Stationers and freighter crew, whose clothing and demeanor showed an unholy mixture of unknown origin, simply ignored him. Janek’s sickbay was at D5-South—five levels down, opposite section of the ring. He headed for the stairs. Cirrus One’s lifts had been known to ignore him, too.

  The lanky CMO turned from the medistat panel when Mack stepped through the sliding doorway. “She’s in Exam Four.”

  A second sliding door—this one ceased opening at the halfway point. Mack sq
ueezed through sideways, after Janek.

  The young woman on the diag-bed had her knees drawn up under the silver thermo-sheet, her arms wrapped around them. There was a flush of color on her cheeks, a slight curve on her lips. And an engaging, almost challenging tilt to her chin.

  She was most definitely beautiful. But young. Couldn’t be any more than twenty-five years old, though sickbay’s analytics transed to him earlier had stated early thirties. Something more than her youthfulness didn’t fit the smuggler’s profile as he knew it. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was but then, his mind seemed very reluctant to focus on business at the moment.

  Janek moved to her bedside. She smiled, then her gaze found Mack.

  “This is Admiral Makarian, commander of Fifth Fleet on Cirrus,” his CMO was saying, but Mack only half listened. The other half of him was unprofessionally captivated by the color of the young woman’s eyes.

  Green, yet lavender. Her eyes widened slightly at his introduction. He assumed the cause of her surprise was his age—he was the youngest admiral in Fleet history to date—or his uniform. His shirt, like Janek’s lab coat, still had the Vedritor’s insignia. The bars decorating his breast pocket showed only the three for senior captain.

  His admiral’s bars, like the requested uniforms, had also not yet materialized. Now he wished they had. For some reason, he wanted to look his best in front of her. He shook off his uncharacteristic self-consciousness. She was just a smuggler. She was—

  “Gillaine Davré.” She leaned forward, extended one hand. No salute. Therefore, she wasn’t military, or even ex-military.

  He took her hand, got a closer look at those eyes. They were an odd combination of green and lavender. Green with decidedly lavender flecks. His fingers tightened around hers. A man could lose his soul in eyes like those. The direction of his thoughts jolted him. Quickly, he cleared his throat, refocused. Put a firm tone in his voice. “Miselle Davré? Or is it captain?”

  “Captain, technically. But mostly just Gillie.”

  He released her hand. She had a voice almost as intriguing as her eyes. Firm, yet with a sultry undercurrent. He imagined her laugh—

  He had to stop imagining. He didn’t imagine. He never imagined.