Sharksinger

by Jay Aspen

  ‘Are you still angry with me?’

  ‘Of course. Absolutely furious. But incredibly proud of what you did. Have you made your decision yet?

  The dark weight of it returns like a shiver of ice down my spine. If only I’d thought things through properly from the start. Maybe I’d have seen how impossible it would be to have a Webdancer career and a relationship with someone who isn’t always roaming the wilderness. But would that have changed the way I feel about Severin? Too many questions...

  I stare at my hands. ‘Today. Soon as this mess is sorted.’

  Alexin gives my shoulder an encouraging squeeze and goes off to find a place for his salvaged shelves.

  Severin returns from his umpteenth flight to the recycling depot and releases the empty haul-bag next to the three others waiting to be filled. He moves the recon back out of the way and lands it near the sea wall. He jumps out, casting an enquiring eye at the line of haul bags.

  ‘Looks like they’re slowing down a bit on refills?’

  I wave a vague hand back at the bustling scene in the square.

  ‘Only small stuff left. Most of what’s coming out now is goodies for Ravan’s picnic. I think the wreckers must have grown bored by the time they reached the food section. How’s the broken rib after all this forbidden exercise?’

  His hand goes to the side of his chest, still swathed in the black band of the clamp under his shirt.

  ‘Janna says this thing can come off tomorrow. Thank the stars, ‘cause it’s starting to itch like hell.’

  We lean on the sea wall gazing out at the shifting grey-blue light on the ocean, the unspoken words hanging between us like a shadow. I can’t bring myself to say it aloud. I can sense Severin knows it will have to come from him.

  ‘You have to go for it, Hannik. Janna was pretty clear about how talented you are. You can’t waste that. And with the chance of Talaya’s people coming back for another takeover attempt, Pangaea’s going to need everything we have.’

  I can’t bear that it sounds so final.

  ‘Severin, it’s not going to be all wilderness patrols. I have to maintain connections with the university here and eventually with the Kar faculty as well. So we’ll still be able to see each other? Sometimes? More often than if I was going to be on regular Webdancer duties...’

  We both know it won’t be very often but there’s no point debating it and wasting the precious time we have together now.

  ‘You know where to find me, Hannik. Alis already has my career in Qat mapped out.’

  ‘After everything you’ve done, you should be getting medals and the sort of hero-worship that’s going on back there outside Ravan’s shop.’

  ‘Qat doesn’t work that way. You know how it is.’ Severin takes my hand and steers me towards the square.

  ‘Come on, the picnic’s waiting.’

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  Author’s note

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  THANK YOU FOR READING Sharksinger! If you enjoyed it, do leave a review! Reviews are really helpful to a SF author like me, and if you have a moment to spare to leave a star rating or short review on Amazon or Goodreads, or even just telling a friend, that would help me enormously!

  Review pages are on Amazon USA or Amazon UK. You may have to log in to your Amazon account first.

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  And if you’re wondering how Hannik got into the interesting pickle she was in at the start of the book, (and how she met the gorgeous Severin and shady Vander) you can download Spyhunter, the gripping prequel to Sharksinger, as a free e-book, exclusive when you join my readers’ group to receive updates on new releases!

  Download Spyhunter here!

  .

  .

  The adventures of Hannik and Severin, as well as the devious Deron, are prequels to the Infinity Paradigm series, which is set sixty years later when Hannik’s most talented student Aisha detects deep disturbances in the planet’s resonance. They escape assassination attempts to discover the cause, which turns out to be far more sinister than they had thought possible.

  You can pre-order Webdancer, the first book in the Infinity Paradigm series, on Amazon.

  It’s free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

  Pre-order Webdancer here.

  .

  You can also read a preview of it next!

  Maps and other details on www.jayaspen.com

  Webdancer

  The Infinity Paradigm book 1, Preview

  .

  DEEP BLUE SCENT OF heavy olifrae flowers, soft against my face. The thin crescent of First Moon lifts above the horizon, ghosting the warm Karesh night in shades of grey. Less than twenty minutes before Second Moon rises to flood Kar University’s sprawling campus in silver light.

  No chance to stay hidden after that.

  A faint rustle in the leaves and Tigan’s at my side, his dark hair brushing my face as he leans close, his voice barely a whisper.

  ‘Hey, Aisha.’

  He’s getting better at night-silence. At least I’ve taught him something to repay his four years helping me through tec assessments. I’d have flunked after my first year otherwise.

  He shuffles and looks away, unrolls his holo-vis, adjusts the connection to his earpiece, waits for me to speak. Six months since I broke off our relationship and I still sense his awkwardness. Chaos, he’s the one insisting we can stay friends! Anyhow, he’ll graduate in a few weeks’ time. Then he’ll be leaving and I’ve another year of study. Maybe the friend thing works better after a bit of space.

  ‘You’re late.’ I flash him a mischievous grin, hoping our habitual riffing can ease the tension.

  ‘Gimme a break, Aisha! Took me longer than I expected to dodge security.’ Then his hazel eyes crinkle as he relaxes a little. ‘Here.’ He holds out a couple of rubbery shapes. I strap the octopus suckers onto my wrists.

  ‘Ugh. They’re cold.’

  ‘Sorry. Forgot I’d have to defrost them first.’ Tigan kneels on the grass and checks updates on his holo, hunching broad shoulders over the screen, cupping a hand over his earpiece. ‘Check one through four?’

  He waits while his lookout team checks in the all-clear while I tighten the band of black silk masking sunbleached waves in my hair. I don’t repeat mistakes. My previous night foray, only speed and agility saved me from arrest by university security guards when stray starlight caught a few pale blond strands.

  Now I’m no more than a patch of deeper shadow, soft grey-black silk combat tunic and leggings through to the walnut-leaf I used to darken my face. Inner vision running like a vid-map of the route up the shadow side of the science lab, I estimate whether I’ll make it there and back before moonrise.

  Tigan signals, go!

  I run silently across the open lawns to the living canares dome housing the lab and start to climb, an effortless ascent up the steep incline. Wrist-suckers grip well on the smooth outer skin, bare toes perfectly sense the minimal friction, lungs breathe in subtle night-scents.

  Yes! This is what I came for!

  The stretching of muscle, space beneath my feet, the surge of adrenalin as skill and practice merge in precariously balanced movements. I know the others are watching enviously. For a few precious moments, the edge I always have with physical performance wipes out the heaviness of being hopeless at tec, an outsider at the university, a foreigner in comfortable tropical Karesh.

  I push the thought from my mind, determined not to let it spoil the moment. My friends don’t hold my desert background against me and they’re all rooting for me on this op. With the graduation party coming up, if I can lift Tigan’s latest experiment from the science lab, my home-brew supply will be the best ever!

  Tigan’s phytochemistry degree officially focuses on tensile strength improvements for structural plant species in Karesh––but happens to include a branch of plant synthetics to increase alcohol content in carbon catalysts. Wasted sitting on a s
helf in the lab as much as I’m wasted trying to understand nano-tec.

  My fingers test the surface textures for flaws, making sure the suckers grip. And now I feel like I’m flying, laughing softly with the joy of merging into an air-dance of climbing...

  The angle eases at the dome’s apex. I drop to a crouch, check the ground below is still clear of guards and draw my hunting knife to cut a neat hole in the canares plant-flesh. Stab the blade deep into the side of it, glad for once I’m built lean and wiry as I tie off the slender line and wriggle through the hole to slide down onto the smooth compacted-clay floor.

  The lab is dimly lit by the faint glow of crescent-moon light diffusing through the pale green living walls of the dome. I move silently across to the shelves, my senses alert for anyone approaching. Nothing. Except for the tiny twitch coming from my pocket. Reluctantly I activate the earpiece, hating the way it takes the edge off my resonance-sensitivity.

  ‘Tigan. I’m in. Where did you say it was?’ All it needs now is someone to overhear my anxious whisper. Or overhear Tigan still ensconced in the leafy shadows outside.

  ‘Seventh shelf, third from the left.’

  I run my eyes across the racked shelves to the meticulously-labelled flask, secure it in the bag at my waist, pocket the earpiece again and climb back out, carefully replacing the chunk cut from the roof. If it self-repairs before dripping too much sap onto the floor no-one will notice I’ve been there. Hopefully.

  I sit by the sticky circular scar and coil the line, gazing across the clustered pale domes of the dusky campus to the lush forest beyond, enjoying the familiar buzz of adrenaline in my veins, the rush of feeling fully alive, awake to the orchestra of information flowing in from the night. My senses reach out into the darkness, probing rock formations poised deep below the edge of the campus in precarious muted tension across the fault line.

  Stable. No change.

  I follow teeming life-forms burrowing through damp night earth, sense the pull of water rising vertically through tall tree trunks, until the oxygen exchange rippling across the surface of the leaves tingles through my skin.

  From there I quest into the air itself, the faint scent of warm sand drifting in from the desert beyond the mountains. The wind’s changed. That’ll carry any sound I make straight to the security office...

  Second Moon eases over the rippling leaf-ocean of forest and the green dome-clusters of the university glow silver between ebony shadows. I don’t know if I’m lingering for the exhilaration of the airy perch, or if it’s that irresistible bet with fate...

  Can I beat the heightened risk of getting spotted with every extra lumen of moonlight filtering across the landscape?

  Another impatient twitch demanding I get back on coms.

  ‘Tigan? What’s up?’

  ‘Aisha, what are you doing? I saw you get out ages ago!’

  ‘Just coiling the rope.’

  ‘No you’re not! I saw you do that as well. You’re crazy. You get caught, you’ll be kicked out of uni and wreck your one chance to apply to the Order. If you can’t be cautious on these ops, just hold off till you’re accepted. Life will be exciting enough without mad stunts like this.’

  Tigan has never felt comfortable with my extracurricular excursions. I sigh, adjusting the fragile flask on my belt.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. As usual. On my way.’

  But how do you prepare for a career roaming the wilderness with the Webdancer elite by sitting in classes and studying? Or testing your heightened lieth-awareness on easy practice routes where there’s no challenge?

  One last sense-exploration east towards the desert, its distant pulse a reminder of my future dreams, provocative, elusive. I’ve one more year to perfect my wave-attunement, meet the demanding standards for joining the skilled Webdancer teams guarding resonance integrity...

  Dammit! That faint dissonance again, gritty against the sleek wave-form. It’s discordant, threatening, but no one else seems to have noticed. My efforts at describing it just seem to convince people I’m imagining things. Undermining my confidence, my hopes of being accepted into the Order...

  Self-pity won’t help. Get back down before Tigan turns into a nervous wreck.

  His holo-vis is already rolled and packed by the time I reach him. I give him my best-friendly peck on the cheek.

  ‘I’ll take the flask home, get it in the mix straight away. See you in the morning.’

  He catches my hand. ‘I’ll walk you back.’

  I don’t argue but we both need to avoid this awkwardness for a while. I head for my sector of student accommodation domes. It’s not long before the expected muffled expletives erupt behind me as Tigan forces his broad frame through dense shrubbery.

  ‘Ugh. Aisha, what’s wrong with using the proper pathways?’

  ‘My carefully researched shortcuts avoid security patrols most-perfectly. Anyhow, we’re here.’

  The narrow path to my domehouse between dense blue olifrae bushes feels reassuringly familiar after an evening of risk and rule-breaking, instead of boringly familiar after a day sitting in lectures.

  Tigan hovers outside the door. ‘I’ll pick you up first thing. Don’t forget we’re scheduled for wildside resonance-attunements first thing tomorrow and Professor Maret already gave you two warnings about being late.’

  Another best-friend peck. ‘Thanks Tigan. I appreciate the way you look out for me. Really.’

  Except I’ll never be able to play the respectable wife you’ll need when you take over your father’s factory and become a responsible businessman.

  I step inside before things get any more awkward. The earthenware pots of home-brew are bubbling nicely, stacked around the circular edge of my domehouse waiting to be double-enhanced. I give them a few drops each of catalyst, counting weeks to the party, wondering whether I could maybe get them triple-enhanced or even...

  Hmm, maybe I should make sure this party doesn’t get too out of hand...

  Rummage for my holo-vis in the tangled heap of clothes strewn across the circular table. Kareshi dome-houses are designed for simple living; a few curved wall-shelves, hover-table, chairs and bed, tiny cooking-pod to one side. Works really well if you keep it tidy. Which I don’t. So much easier to keep putting it off till tomorrow... which never comes.

  Find my holo, peel off the half-eaten dry-fruit snack that has somehow managed to get itself stuck to the flexible solar generator on the back of it. Check. Nothing much incoming, except a somewhat slurred and giggly thank-you vid message from Safrael, Jahan and Krill, rather obviously finishing off the last flagon of home-brew I left with them.

  ‘Aisha! Love you! Celebrations! Your seed-transfer request to the accommodation secretary came through today. Now we’ve only two years to wait for the most-perfect triple marriage––with our own domehouse ready-grown! Bye, see you wildside tomorrow!’

  I key in a quick, ‘You’re welcome,’ still restless, body singing with leftover adrenaline. Too soon to try to sleep. I slouch into the worn honey-tinted hover-seat, mind drifting, waiting for the elusive quiet that only comes after a few hours’ exertion and danger, idly watching hue and shade shift and change in the living dome-wall. The softly swirling patterns of green-silver leaf pigments slowly dissolve and withdraw to let in more light as the moon sets outside and viridian fades to dusky pearl.

  The heavy seed hangs like a silk-cocooned teardrop at the dome’s apex, carefully nurtured with regulated amounts of light and dry-warmth by the canares plant in which I, and it, both live. Five-year ripening cycle complete. Ready for planting any day.

  I hadn’t rated dome-living when I first arrived here from the beautiful adobe house in the desert oasis-town where I was born, but I admit it works well in this humid climate. Tigan’s Structural-Plants Module calls it “A successful adaptation of symbiosis; human occupant and plant seed dispersal, adapted by the first colonists to arrive from Earth. Use of pod-domes as living space is permitted only on the inhabited continent of Pangae
a.”

  Sometimes I wonder what the colonists lived in before they fled their ancient third planet of a distant sun. The module doesn’t go into pre-history much.

  At last my mind is slowing down. Sleep essential if I’m to be alert for wildside assessment tomorrow. I wrap the soft peach quilt from the hover-bed around my shoulders and shuffle to the entrance. One last moonlit breath of night before closing the door softly against the evening chill.

  And at last the overworked and rather indignant canares can relax a little in its efforts to maintain an ambient indoor dry-temperature for its precious seed.

  EIGHT HOURS AND NINE hundred miles northeast of Kar by bullet train but only one hour by air transit, Zin val Roche steps off the last air-shuttle flight from Kar to Merkaan, gives the slip to the shadowy figure tailing him from the port and walks the crowded evening streets of the capital.

  He is short, wiry, of unremarkable appearance. An essential quality for his work. Qat field agent, Merkaan northwest sector. Officially the role doesn’t exist, easily deniable as the wishful fantasy of a successful chemist’s middle-aged house-husband.

  Hover-globes reflect pale light from the city’s abali-white towers on an unremarkable face, contours carefully obscured by a neatly trimmed sandy beard. Zin pulls his hood just far enough across his face to avoid blocking the micro-lens concealed above his left eye. A normal enough reaction to the bone-chill of yet another northern storm building over the ocean.

  He checks no one’s watching him too closely. They might notice him turning his head just a little more than normal for someone apparently browsing stores and stalls in the market area. Or notice him adding sub-vocal commentary to his holo-vid recording, ready to pass on to their resident gestalt for analysis.

  It’s not easy to keep impatience out of his report. Each day without answers is another day of unexplained prisoner disappearances. No one seems to know why it’s happening.

  Or why the laws were changed to designate them offenders in the first place.

  The service wasn’t set up to spy on its own government. His plan to access the archives in the presidential palace risks bringing their investigations to the attention of the shadowy group in the administration at the root of all this.