by Black, Tasha
“That’s my nose,” Peter told him.
Tchai laughed.
“What are you guys laughing about?” Angel asked as she strode in.
Her smile was like shooting stars in his chest. Peter could hardly breathe.
“Oh, we were just missing you,” Peter said.
“A likely story,” Angel teased, raising an eyebrow.
Tchai chuckled and reached for her. She took him and Peter reveled in the sight of them together.
Mate and child.
“Well, I guess it’s time to find out more about you,” Angel told Tchai.
BFF21 sailed out through the open door, and the three of them followed.
After their night in the small bed chamber, the corridor felt immense.
His eye was drawn to the far side of the hallway, where glass panels allowed a view of the biodome. There was a breeze in the forest today. The light filtering down from above danced on the moving leaves, and made it look almost as if they were laughing or applauding.
Though they had not fully consummated their union last night, Peter felt a deep sense of satisfaction and he anticipated their lives together with great enjoyment.
He was excited to learn more about Tchai’s history. Now that the mate bond had secured the three of them safely together, they might gather information that would help their son, and he no longer feared that Angel would try to take him away.
Life since the pleasure ship had been empty, and even finding Tchai wasn’t enough to brighten the darkest corners of Peter’s loneliness.
It was impossible to think that in one night, Angel had illuminated his heart and soul.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, her voice a little husky as she gazed at him over Tchai’s little head.
That I love you. That I would die for our little family.
“That I’m happy,” he told her, deciding it might be better to go with something a little less intense.
“Me too,” she said, grinning back at him.
If she felt one tenth of what he was feeling right now, he knew she was telling the truth.
“Here we are,” BFF21 announced.
Peter turned the handle and the door swung open to reveal a large, well-lit room with built-in storage units lining the walls. In the middle of the room stood a round table with hologram projectors aimed at its center.
“Wow,” Angel breathed as they stepped into the large room.
The floor looked like the wood parquet from the children’s storybooks in the passenger’s library, and the ceiling rose high above.
“We could search this room forever,” Angel said, sounding a little disheartened. “Do you have any sense of how it’s organized, BFF21?”
“The room we’re in now contains the manifest, plans for how to build and maintain the ship, information about the plantings in the forest, the food stores, the languages spoken by the former inhabitants, and other non-sensitive information,” BFF21 explained.
“What about detailed passenger logs?” Peter asked.
“And valuable cargo?” Angel added.
Her words didn’t sit right with him, but he reminded himself that he had found the baby in a stasis pod.
“This way,” BFF21 said.
They followed as she flew through the enormous room, looping back to them and sailing off again several times.
She led them to a wooden door with a bronze placard similar to the one from Tchai’s pod.
High Security Archive L24
“It was also on a sequencing code, but I took care of it,” the little drone said proudly.
Peter opened the door and entered, Angel followed with Tchai in her arms.
This was a smaller room. Wood wainscoting stretched from floor to ceiling, a leather chair and desk made a cozier setting for the hologram, and a cozy synth fire crackled in the fireplace.
“Is that—?” Angel began, looking at the fire.
“It’s not real,” Peter told her, waving a hand through the flames to demonstrate. “It’s just for ambiance.”
She nodded.
“The files you’re looking for are here,” BFF21 said, flitting over to a small section near the desk.
Peter gestured for Angel to sit on the chair.
“This is very nice,” Angel said.
“The archivist was human,” Peter told her. He tried not to think about all the former occupants being eaten by that shadowy creature.
“Are the doors from the corridor closed?” he asked BFF21.
“I’ll just check,” the little robot said. “Shall I keep watch on the corridor while you’re here?”
Peter nodded and skimmed the titles on the spines of the cards.
Potable Cargo
Edible Cargo (long storage)
Edible Cargo (perishable)
Mineral Cargo
Digital Cargo
High Value Cargo
VIP Passenger List
Special Accommodations Passenger List
The last two looked promising.
He pulled out the two passenger lists and placed one in the hologram slot.
An image of a human in a gadabout appeared in hologram and spun to show the dimensions of her all-terrain chair.
He swiped and saw images of aliens with prosthetics, a passenger with no sense of smell, several with helper beasts.
“What are you looking for?” Angel asked.
“A woman who is with child,” Peter said, wondering how she hadn’t anticipated this.
Angel merely nodded.
The images flew past, but no pregnant females were among them.
“Ohhh,” Tchai said, grabbing for the shimmering pictures as they swept past.
Angel kissed his little head.
Peter tried the second list, still with no resulting babies or expectant women.
“What about this one?” Angel asked, handing him the High Value Cargo list.
Reluctantly, he took it and placed it in the slot.
A single image appeared and rotated slowly before them.
It was Tchai in his pod.
Peter read the tag below the image.
Storage:
Climate Controlled Environment, High Security Environment B23
Contents:
Pod-grown fertilized human embryo “Tchaikovsky” with ship-mind enhancement, stasis pod, golden nameplate
Notes:
Extremely Valuable/Priceless
Property of New Russia
Peter studied the tag, feeling lost.
“What does that mean?” Angel asked. “Ship-mind enhancement?”
“It means that this baby has been genetically enhanced to allow him to interface with the programming of a ship,” Peter said. “They were going to keep him in stasis forever, and hook him into a starship, most likely one called the Tchaikovsky, and use him as a go-between.”
“A go-between?” Angel echoed.
“He would have been the ship’s personality,” Peter said bitterly. “He would have jumped between the ship’s programming and the staff to make their orders go through smoothly.”
“That’s horrible,” Angel breathed. “Why would someone use a life in that way?”
“The theory is that it will save other lives,” Peter said. “In an emergency, he would have intuited human command instantly and communicated it to the ship’s computer. He could even have made a judgment call if the captain were incapacitated.”
“It still doesn’t seem right,” Angel said, hugging the baby closer and pressing her lips to his golden hair.
“It isn’t right,” Peter agreed.
“The tag says he’s priceless,” Angel said.
“As you can imagine, pod-raising an embryo is expensive tech on its own,” Peter said. “Only the hardiest survive, and this one had to have had a proclivity for perception to begin with if the enhancement took. He’s one in a million, maybe.”
“But he’s been lost here for hundreds of years,” Angel said. “Surely b
y now they have stopped looking.”
“Are human-run ships common now?” Peter asked.
She shook her head.
“Tech this precious has trackers planted in it,” Peter said. “The signals aren’t getting through the web surrounding us, but as soon as we get him out…”
“New Russia will come looking for him,” Angel said.
“Let them come,” Peter said roughly.
The Other was rising in his chest, tingling under his skin. He would protect his family.
“We can’t really fight off a nation though,” Angel said sadly. “And even if we wanted to, I don’t think Mama would cross a government. She doesn’t want to be a fugitive.”
“What are you saying?” Peter asked.
“I-I’m not sure,” Angel said. “We’ve got to figure it out. Mama will know what to do.”
Peter was pretty sure Mama would see nothing but dollar signs. That was the way pirates worked. Tchai was as good as gone if they returned to her.
14
Angel
Angel was devastated.
Family - the one thing in the world that meant something to her. She had tasted its sweetness for one impossible moment, and now it was being torn apart.
The look on Peter’s face told her he knew it too.
“I’m going to go check on something,” he told her. “Will you guys be okay in here for a little while?”
“Of course,” Angel said.
“I’ll be right back,” Peter told her.
He disappeared and Angel was alone with Tchai once more.
He was happy, humming to himself and banging on the table with a chubby fist.
It couldn’t be possible that anyone would expect him to live in a stasis pod for his whole life. Angel couldn’t imagine such torture.
But human life seemed to have little value in this new world. After all, her own mate had been used as a sex toy for two years. She herself had been bought at auction.
Hot tears prickled at her eyelids and it took all she had not to fall to the floor weeping.
I have a baby to think of. I can’t frighten him.
She forced herself to take deep breaths and focus on trying to think of a solution to the problem that faced them. But it was difficult to think straight while she drowned in a wave of sadness. The depth of her emotion shocked her. She had lost her brother and managed to keep going. This new family had only been hers for a day.
Besides, there was no way off the ship - there were no comms, and no one knew they were here besides Mama.
As much as Angel admired Mama for trying to save lives from the pleasure ships, she knew instinctively that the gruff captain had her limits. She would never put the whole crew in danger to steal from a government. Angel couldn’t ask her to do that.
And they couldn’t stay on this abandoned cruiser forever, not with something evil trying to get to them.
There had to be another way.
Tchai managed to swipe the feed on the hologram.
The image changed and he crowed with delight.
Angel found herself looking at a slowly rotating image of a ghostly ring - the perfect size to fit Tchai’s little head.
Storage:
High Security Environment L24
Contents:
Communication halo for pod-grown fertilized human embryo “Tchaikovsky”
Notes:
High Value item
Property of New Russia
The halo must be some sort of device used to help Tchai communicate with a ship.
She wondered why he wasn’t wearing it in the pod, then she realized that they wouldn’t want him communicating with just any ship. Perhaps at this age he could cause accidents and confusion.
An idea began to occur to her.
She re-read the tag for the halo.
High Security Environment L24
Something about that sounded familiar.
“L24,” she said to herself.
“Nah, aah, LAH,” Tchai replied helpfully.
“The door,” Angel said.
She carried Tchai back through the room to look at the placard on the door.
High Security Archive L24
“It must be here somewhere,” she said.
Tchai wrapped a hand in her hair.
She kissed his fragrant curls distractedly as she scanned the little room. There wasn’t much of a place to hide a halo in here.
The drawers in the wall were tiny, just big enough to hold hologram cards.
She walked back to the desk and opened the drawers.
Empty.
She gingerly turned the leather chair over with one hand, gripping Tchai carefully in her other arm.
There was no halo taped to the bottom of it.
“I guess that was a long shot,” she told the baby.
He leaned his head against her chest.
The hypnotic glow of the fireplace drew her eye.
It was peaceful here, with the baby and the fire. If only she could forget their troubles for a moment this could be pretty near perfect.
The flames danced and the coals below sparkled.
“Wait,” she breathed. “That’s a synth fire. Why is it sparkling?”
“Mm,” Tchai said sleepily into her chest.
“Sorry, buddy,” she told him. “You can nap later. Right now I need to see what’s in that fireplace.”
She pulled an empty drawer out of the desk and set it on the floor.
“I swear to you, I will get you out of this thing in two seconds,” she promised him.
Tchai fussed as she placed him gently in the drawer.
“Just a sec,” she told him.
Angel eyed the fireplace. It was one thing to know the flames weren’t real. It was another to stick her hand in there. She could feel the heat coming out of the grate.
Tchai let out a wail.
Here goes nothing, she sad to herself as she thrust her arm into the fire.
It was pleasantly warm, but it didn’t burn. Incredible.
She felt around in the coals, but they were an illusion.
There was only one thing at the bottom of the fire bed. It was smooth and round.
She pulled it out.
The halo gleamed like molten gold in the firelight.
“Angel,” BFF21 cried out as she sailed into the room. “Something’s coming.”
15
Peter
Peter bolted as soon as he was out of Angel’s sight, the rudiments of a plan beginning to take shape in his mind.
“Do you wish me to stand guard?” BFF21 asked.
“Yes,” he said, as he ran past the archive room doorway and out into the corridor without even waiting for the little drone’s answer.
The news that the baby was property of New Russia was terrible. He hadn’t wanted to share too much with Angel, but he knew the New Russia guard were all too ready to butt heads with anyone who got in the way of their prized star fleet.
To have stolen something that was meant to empower one of their battleships put a target on all their heads.
Angel had been horrified to think of Tchai running a ship.
Peter could only imagine how she would feel if she knew that his mission would be to plow down waves of civilians and claim new worlds.
“Not while I live and breathe,” he growled to himself as he sprinted down the corridor, feeling his body shift slightly, legs elongating, to make him faster.
He didn’t dare shift enough to throw off his thinking. He would need his wits about him. He was in the open now. That evil shadow could fall on him at any time.
Think of the child.
The forest was hushed. Not one leaf shivered in the gloom of the undergrowth as he thundered past. Perhaps the weather system was rebooting.
He pushed himself hard. The only sounds were his own footsteps and the pounding of his heart.
At last he reached the nearest alcove and found what he was seeking.
Escape pods.
The two units in this alcove were pristine.
It was impossible to know if the oxygen reserves inside were still full or if the navigation systems were operating at full strength.
Nonetheless, he liked their chances better out in space than on Angel’s captain’s vessel.
He observed the pods, wondering if it would be best for him to shift into something tiny and ride with Angel and Tchai, or if two linked pods would have a better chance than one.
If he could get them to Archmach 12, they could find a surgeon who would operate off the books for enough credits. All they needed was to remove Tchai’s tracker before New Russia located them.
Archmach 12 wasn’t exactly a family planet, they would need enough booty to pay off the surgeon and then hitch a ride off-planet as soon as they were done.
There was also the matter of finding a reliable surgeon. The right one would keep his trap shut. The wrong one would alert New Russia the moment they asked for help.
But that was a problem he would deal with when they were safely off this ship. Peter’s Other was a pretty good bullshit detector - he could smell nervous sweat and hear the thrum of a liar’s pulse. It had kept him out of tough spots before. He would have to rely on it again.
As if on cue, the Other in him awoke.
Something was on the ship.
He let his animal instincts overtake him as he bounded back toward Angel and Tchai.
The complexity of his human fears melted away as his mind slid into the Other.
His vision faded to black and white, but his other senses mounted.
His arms lengthened into paws that hit the deck and flexed, sending him sailing through the stillness of the corridor back to his tiny pack.
He ran, furry ears plastered back to his head, ran until his muscles burned. The rhythm of his paws beating out his singular thought.
My mate, my child, my mate, my child…
As he neared the place where he had left them, a quartet of scents met his nose.
Two were familiar and two were less so.
The sound of their voices was upbeat.
