The Confluence: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 6)

by Valerie J Mikles

  “You’re not telekinetic,” Parker said, picking up the device. “How did you grab this?”

  “I reached for it,” she said, her eyes closed. She seemed more defeated by this most recent failure than anything else he’d put her through.

  “It was here,” Parker said, pacing to the table that had the tool kit. “Locked in a cabinet fifteen feet away. I didn’t see it fly through the air.”

  Janiya didn’t respond.

  “You teleported it,” he realized, standing between her chair and the table. “You reached your hand through their dimension. The path went here to here. Do it again.”

  “No,” she said.

  Parker planted his boot on her face, smashing the heel in hard enough to bruise her cheek. “Take something else from the cabinet. I can break more than your legs if you need motivation.”

  “I can’t. There’s no path anymore,” she said, unfazed by his threat or his foot.

  Parker set the device down on the table. “Is there one now?” he asked.

  She didn’t reply, but the crinkle in her eyes told him something had changed. Kneeling next to her, he lifted her hand and reached toward the table. He could feel the pull of the other realm on his spirit hand, but only when they reached for that device.

  “What’s going on here?” he mused, dropping her hand and going over to pick up the device. Janiya reached for it again, but Parker stomped on her hand and kicked her head, knocking her unconscious.

  “Talk to me Galen,” Parker said. “This piece got through. How do I get through?”

  10

  Saskia put her arms around Tray, hoping to impart some comfort as they rode in the tiny taxi to the clinic. He hadn’t agreed to the plan so much as he’d been drugged into compliance. Morrigan assured her he wasn’t helpless, but the glazed look in his eyes and the glisten of drool on his lips made Saskia worry. Danny had been similarly subdued, but between the panic attack and stunner blast to his chest, he was in no condition to make decisions. Saskia was prepared to face the consequences of her decision after she secured Santos as an ally.

  Their taxi followed a road that circumnavigated the city, and stopped in front of a line of buildings that looked identical to every other block. The buildings were tall with windows designed to bring in light from the day-GLO. A narrow ally on each gave admittance to the front entrance. Only emergency vehicles were permitted to traverse the interior.

  “You trust this guy, Morrigan?” Saskia checked.

  Morrigan had recovered quickly from gravity sickness and donned a soft, gold tunic that radiated wealth and signaled to everyone that she was a foreigner.

  “He’s the only doctor who has documented cases like Tray’s,” she said, glancing down a Virclutch that had her notes and research.

  “You trust him?” Saskia asked again.

  Morrigan pursed her lips. “You could always come in with us.”

  “Santos seemed nervous enough about meeting. If I’m late, I might not see him at all,” Saskia said. She kissed Tray’s cheek, then shifted his weight onto Morrigan. “Be good, baby.”

  “Love you, baby,” Tray said, wiping self-consciously at the kiss. He sat straight rather than lean on Morrigan, which surprised her, but she was glad the calming medication hadn’t rendered him invalid.

  Jogging through the ally, she emerged on the pedestrian-facing sides of the buildings. The buildings looked grayer now that the grass was brown and crunchy. The gardens were wilted. The city needed water.

  Santos had said to meet her at the school—there was only one on Terrana. Before the Revolution, the school had a mixture of Aquian and Terranan children, but now they were all Terranan and almost all luna-borns who had no option to leave. The building was bland and functional, but the playground had an amazing jungle gym, almost as tall as the building. As a child, that jungle gym had taught Saskia just how different lunar gravity was from Aquia’s.

  Santos sat alone on a bench across the street from the school. He was a tall man, with chiseled features, and significantly more gray hair than she remembered. His skin was pale from a life lived on Terrana, and his once muscular frame had softened in retirement.

  “General,” Saskia greeted, sitting next to him on the bench.

  “Lieutenant,” he returned, raising an eyebrow to see how she’d respond.

  Saskia smiled. She used to get testy when he referred to her by rank, but now she understood how wrong a person’s name could feel on her lips.

  “Solvere said she killed you,” he said, ducking his head.

  “I can’t believe you stepped aside for her,” Saskia said.

  Santos’ eyes returned to the empty schoolyard. “She put my son in the 5.”

  “Sir!” Saskia exclaimed jumping to her feet.

  “Just for an hour,” he said, twiddling his thumbs. “Just to show me she could. She broke his arm. And what she did to his mother… It’s all I could do to get him back to school.”

  “Is that why you’re here? You’re worried she’ll take him again,” Saskia asked, her heart racing with sympathy as she understood his hesitance to meet her at all.

  “Some days are easier than others,” he said, taking a few concentrated breaths before looking at her again. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

  Saskia nodded and squeezed his hand, but he pulled her into an embrace, letting her know how deeply felt his sentiment was. His Virp beeped and he glanced over her shoulder to check it before releasing her.

  “I don’t want to draw trouble here,” he said, heading back toward the city center and motioning her to follow.

  “Did you get an alert?” Saskia asked.

  Santos looked sheepishly at his Virp. “No. If Walter makes it through the first half hour, he’ll usually last the day. I stick around so I can get in quickly if he needs me.”

  “And Lea?” Saskia asked.

  He smiled. “I didn’t realize you knew my wife’s name.”

  “You may have mentioned her before,” Saskia teased. “You were pretty lovesick the year you recruited me.”

  It was just under fifteen years ago, but they were both so much younger then, in experience and in pain.

  “Lea spends the first three hours of the day in rehab,” Santos said “She can barely stay on her feet more than an hour in this gravity. I have no idea how I’m going to get them off this world.”

  Santos had married late in life, and the youthful exuberance that had drawn Saskia to joining the Guard was due in part to the happiness that he had discovered with Lea. Saskia knew she smiled more often now that she was with Tray, but she wasn’t as happy as she remembered Santos being, and didn’t know if she ever could be. She didn’t even know whether she and Tray had a future.

  “As a General, I had a food box delivered directly to my office. No bread lines,” Santos said, joining a cluster of people. It wasn’t until Saskia saw the rope that she realized the cluster was meant to be a line.

  “Didn’t this used to be a restaurant?” Saskia said, leaning back and scanning the storefront. There was no paint or signage, but the stained glass on the second floor windows looked familiar.

  “Best fish market on Terrana,” Santos nodded. “No Aquian imports means no fish. They were the first to close.”

  “And turn into a food bank,” Saskia said, feeling uncomfortable as the line inched forward.

  “People are too angry to accept a replacement that serves only local cuisine. We have enough of those restaurants around,” Santos said. It didn’t take more than five minutes to move through the line, and Santos walked away with a half-filled crate that had cereal, beans, and protein blocks. There were a dozen apples and a few root vegetables, but nothing as generous as the food Oriana had been offered upon arrival.

  “The crop yield is already suffering from the water shortage,” Santos explained. “No one was expecting the embargo to last this long.”

  “Well, you burned the good will of two water haul captains in the space of a week,” Saskia
said glibly.

  “And one still came back,” Santos smiled, bumping her shoulder.

  Saskia glanced over her shoulder, checking their surroundings. No one seemed to be following them or listening in. “There was a microcruiser that showed up in port two weeks ago,” she started.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Santos interrupted.

  “Nothing? No new travelers? No new prisoners?” Saskia asked, disappointed.

  “Everyone’s talking about your crew and this black market water tank,” he grinned. “It’s strange something we need so desperately in our world can go missing from yours and people aren’t left thirsty.”

  “If you ever get your family to Quin, you will never tire of water views. You can live on a boat in the ocean completely out of sight of any land. You can purify your own water and catch your own fish,” Saskia said.

  “I’m retired,” he chuckled. “Any fishing I do will be for sport, not sustenance.”

  “Is there any way you can do a check of records or reports on the cruiser? Do you have any contacts that can that can help me?” Saskia persisted.

  Santos checked for eavesdroppers, then his voice dropped to a low whisper. “My contacts told me that a lot of crime bosses have gone missing from Quin of late. As I understand, a Ketlin was murdered. A Vimbai joined your crew. A Coro went missing two weeks ago. I’m assuming she was on the microcruiser, which explains why the other Coro was so eager to bring the water shipment. But the one that has truly disappeared without a trace is the old Valentino. Sikorsky. Did you kill him, too?”

  “Um. No,” Saskia said, disheartened by the irrelevant intel.

  “Where is he?”

  “Why? So you can report back to your contacts and win some favors?” Saskia intoned.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “My family was attacked. Favors are all I have.”

  Saskia let out a sigh. It was unfair of her to ask and not give. “Sikorsky did come with us. He’s worried Parker is up to something diabolical.”

  “When is he not?” Santos said, managing a nervous laugh. “Did Sikorsky have a plan to stop it?”

  “Don’t know. He Disappeared the moment we landed and I have no idea where he is,” Saskia said. “But if he resurfaces and you need to deport him, we’re leaving in few days.”

  “You want him alive?” Santos asked.

  “For now. He’s Tray’s ex-father-in-law and has considerable sway over whether Tray sees his son again,” Saskia said.

  Santos looked like he’d been kicked in the gut. “I didn’t realize he had a son.”

  “Neither did he,” Saskia allowed. She’d forgotten that Santos didn’t know. “It’s been an adjustment.”

  “Are you planning to see your family while you’re here?” Santos asked, his voice hoarse.

  Saskia ducked her head. She had no intention of seeing her mother ever again. “I have no family here.”

  The Joslin research clinic was a small metal building wedged between two, massive stone buildings. It was a shack, not fit for human habitation, but usable for under-funded science. Giant tubes and power lines fed into the gravity chambers inside, and Aquian-bound families used to come through, getting treatments to build their bone strength. There was lore that if a luna-born received prenatal gravity treatment, they might survive a trip to Aquia, but thus far, no parent dared risk their child in an experiment. Grav-tech had only been around for the last fifteen years or so.

  Exposure to artificial gravity had been slowly killing Tray since the first trip he’d made to Terrana to find his brother six years ago. Even Oriana had been retrofitted with a grav-drive at one point, but it had only worked about half a year, and Danny had never wanted to stay in port long enough to get it fixed. In retrospect, Tray was grateful for his brother’s excessive frugalness and impatience. It had probably saved his life.

  “I don’t want to be here,” he whispered to Morrigan, tightening his grip on his cane as she forced him into the building.

  Morrigan greeted the nurses and asked them about the business and their equipment. The medicine she’d given him to lower his blood pressure kept him calm, making the fear he felt foggy. He greeted the pretty nurses, and started to flirt. Then he got upset with himself for flirting, and the medicine turned that anger into fog.

  A young man named Doctor Draver ran the clinic. He was the same age as Morrigan, but had no degree to warrant the title of doctor. He was a heavy-set luna-born, with a hunched back and slanted shoulders. Draver looked like he’d been the victim of his own gravity experiment, and as soon as that thought popped into Tray’s head, he promptly vomited at the man’s feet.

  “No need to be nervous, Mr. Matthews,” one of the nurses said, giving him a cup of water and directing him to the toilet to finish throwing up. After losing every last carrot he’d eaten, he refilled his water cup in the sink, and downed two more cups full. That helped clear the fog from his mind. He preferred the fog to the nervousness that replaced it. And the shame. His father would have been mortified to see him in such a state.

  Tray sighed. He hadn’t seen his dad in seven years, and he still craved the man’s approval. Every time Tray looked in the mirror, he could hear his dad’s voice, either complimenting or criticizing. Appearance was everything in aristocratic circles. Quickly, Tray splashed water on his face and then neatly reformed his ponytail, catching all the straggling curls that were floating away. He blotted away the vomit stain on his vest and smoothed his long, gloves over his elbows. Then he brushed off the lint that had transferred onto his pants from that dirty, old taxi. His father would have smacked him.

  Concierge doctors exist for a reason.

  Fingering the damp spot on his vest, Tray frowned at himself in the mirror. He didn’t want Hero to be ashamed of him, but even more, he didn’t want to teach Hero to hate his own reflection the way Tray hated his right now.

  Emerging from the bathroom, he retraced his steps down the hall, approaching the room where Morrigan and Draver were going over the notes she’d made. She described his single, aborted grav-therapy sessions back on Aquia. A few burst capillaries and a fainting spell had convinced her to turn off the device.

  Bile rose in his throat again, and Tray leaned against the wall, pressing his eyes shut. He had better access to Terrana’s medical system inside a facility like this, and getting Amanda’s new alias solidified would help. Finding evidence of Janiya would help more. Saskia’s plan was long and filled with too many variables. There was a chance he could speed it up.

  Ducking into the neighboring exam room, Tray shuddered at the sight of a grav-chamber. He turned back to the door, finding the medical terminal. Syncing his Virp, he painstakingly bypassed the mid-grade security and accessed the medical system on Terrana. If Janiya had been treated for gravity sickness, she’d be in the system, and if the record had been wiped, there’d be a hole.

  The voices in the other room got louder. Draver kept slipping into Terranan, calling Morrigan names and spitting xenophobic slurs that she wouldn’t understand. Morrigan responded with her own choice insults in Lanvarian. Draver wanted to put Tray into a grav-chamber, so they could monitor the physical response to the artificial gravity. Morrigan argued against it, and from the sound of it, she was losing.

  His attention wavering, Tray tried a different tactic. Accounting. Janiya popped up instantly as a Jane Doe. She’d refused to give a name. Aside from basic meds, Janiya had been issued a leg splint, but it was two days after the landing. She’d broken her leg in the 1, after gravity sickness would have passed. Thinking of the torture his brother endured at the hands of the Guard, Tray checked for other signs of treatment. But then he heard a stunner charging.

  Relax, Tray.

  This was a doctor’s office. The stunner charge was out of place here. His mind was playing tricks on him. Shaking off the incongruent sound, Tray attacked the computer with a different code-break algorithm.

  “Tray Matthews.”

  Tray cursed under his
breath and kept his fingers flying, determined to cover his tracks. He recognized Solvere’s voice, and his gut twisted in fear. Solvere liked to play with her victims before killing them. She severed Corey’s fingers and cut off her ear.

  “Colonel Solvere,” Tray said, raising his hands. He’d punched Rhodes, but he didn’t dare touch her. “How unpleasant to see you again.”

  “Don’t get smart, Matthews,” she sneered. Her military-grade stunner glistened in the low light. “Why are you in here?”

  “I needed some air. My doctor’s arguing with the doc here, and it’s just so stressful,” Tray said, motioning over his shoulder to the door. He tumbled and threw out a hand, grabbing hold of his cane, but she stayed out of reach of his swing. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my appointment.”

  Solvere laughed evilly. “I catch you tampering with a medical computer and you want to walk away?”

  “I’m not tampering. Fine, I am. I’m looking for Janiya Coro. Damien Coro put me up to it. He really wants his wife back,” Tray tried. A part of him wished Morrigan or Draver would come looking for him. The rest of him knew he preferred they find his body than get caught in Solvere’s rampage.

  “Where did you stash Amanda Gray?” she asked.

  Tray’s jaw clenched. He could find cover, but he couldn’t escape unless he drew here into the room and clear of the door.

  “I had nothing to do with her. I want nothing to do with her,” Tray tried, stalling for time.