Her Robot Wolf: Gift of Gaia

by Jenny Schwartz

  Vulf had strapped the belt for his blaster to the outside of his coat. What other weapons he carried, I didn’t bother to guess.

  “I want to go with you,” I blurted.

  His remote expression didn’t change. He was mentally, as well as physically, prepared for combat. “If I haven’t returned in twenty four hours, Ahab has orders to depart.”

  “Vulf, I can help.”

  He strode through the recreation cabin and into the converted cargo hold. I trailed him as he unlocked the hatch, preparing to exit.

  “Vulf, please.”

  The hatch closed behind him.

  “Drat you.”

  “If Ivan Mishkin is on the station, Vulf will return with him,” Ahab said.

  “Is that meant to reassure me?”

  There was a momentary pause.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it doesn’t!” All of my frustration and fear for Ivan, and even, double drat him, for Vulf, coalesced and escaped in a scream of rage. Sha energy streamed with the sound, and I acted instinctively, not able to touch it because of the disrupter in operation, but demanding, as a child would, that the block preventing me from reaching the sha be destroyed. This wasn’t using sha energy as the Academy taught. This was raw shamanic talent.

  And it worked.

  I felt the moment the disrupter disintegrated as sha energy blasted wildly around the Orion. The sha immediately flowed back to me, easing through me in the familiar streams that linked me to the universe.

  Dear heaven, it felt good.

  “Jaya, what have you done?” Ahab sounded apprehensive.

  I grinned, lips peeling back over my teeth. “Apparently, disrupters aren’t as unbreakable as their advertising claims.” I laughed and reached into the pocket dimension that I’d tied to myself years ago, but which, without access to sha energy, I’d been unable to enter.

  Not that I ever entered fully. No, pocket dimensions were a trick Ivan had showed me. A shaman could create one to carry around things that a person might need. It was never a good idea to place anything important into a pocket dimension, though. Things could randomly disappear. But I kept a couple of changes of clothes, plus food and water, some books, a knife and other goodies.

  Absently, I shaped sha to push away the gas Ahab released into the cargo hold. “You might as well stop trying to knock me out. I know you’re following Vulf’s orders, but you’re wasting your efforts.”

  I fastened the coat I’d retrieved from my pocket dimension and zapped sha at the hatch, opening it.

  “Truly, Jaya, you’ll be safer on the Orion. Vulf will return with Ivan if it is humanly possible. He’ll be angry if you’re not here.”

  “Maybe I’ll return,” I said to Ahab. We both knew I couldn’t. Now that I had access to sha energy again, I’d follow Vulf. Without his disrupter, he wouldn’t be able to overpower two shamans. I’d steal—save—Ivan from him. And Vulf would never forgive me.

  Still, my loyalty had to be to Ivan, for all that he’d kept my mom’s memory and my history from me. Now was so not the time to have second thoughts. I was committed. I needed Ivan alive and free so that I could yell at him.

  I descended the ladder from the hatch to the storage hold beneath. The exit was obvious. I’d have to go through the secure decontamination unit that all modern starships situated at the entrance. The door to it opened as I approached. I experienced a wave of gratitude for the AI. “Thanks, Ahab.”

  Then I choked on the words.

  Vulf stood in the entrance.

  Heckfire! I’d overlooked the obvious. Ahab would have communicated my destruction of the disrupter and imminent escape to Vulf.

  “I guess I can’t follow you to Ivan, then,” I said.

  He watched me. He didn’t go for his blaster, and he could have shot me with it as the door opened. I’d been recklessly, stupidly over-confident.

  I sighed. I couldn’t hit him with sha energy, either. The thought of hurting him sent a chill through me. My shoulders sagged.

  He moved to the side of the door. “You’ll be safer with me, than on your own.”

  I took two hurried steps forward, then stopped. “You’ll take me to Ivan?”

  “To his starship. I don’t know if he’s there.”

  “Why trust me, now?” I closed the distance between us.

  “Why do you trust me?” he countered. “I could lead you anywhere.”

  It was true, but I stared at him, shocked. “You wouldn’t.”

  He nodded. “There’s your answer.” He strode across the decontamination unit to the exit.

  “That’s no answer.”

  “If you think on it.” The exit opened. “You’ll understand.” He gestured for me to step past him and out. “Maybe.”

  “Be safe,” Ahab called.

  The entrance to the Orion closed.

  Unlike on standard planets where protecting the atmosphere was paramount, Station Drill had its docking arrangements planetside. All the starships arriving and departing took a toll on the artificial atmosphere, but it was one factored into its maintenance. The air was breathable, not healthy.

  I manipulated sha as I’d done before on other independent stations and filtered the air around Vulf and me.

  He glanced at me sharply, his shifter senses acute enough to detect the change.

  “I like to breathe easy,” I said obliquely. There was no gain in revealing my shaman abilities to any surveillance system in operation. Just because I hadn’t seen a drone or a long-range camera with audio didn’t mean they didn’t exist. How closely the station was monitored depended on the ruling crime boss’s paranoia, and/or whether he was at war with a rival gang.

  Vulf nodded his understanding and signaled for us to go left, away from the massive, if ramshackle hangar two starships away on the right.

  Day and night were artificially maintained on Station Drill. Currently, it was night time, but looking at the sparsely set light posts, I suspected that even in “daylight” the area where Vulf had landed would hold more shadows than clarity. It was a place perfect for dark deeds and secrets.

  We skirted a merchant ship, an ungainly structure as awkward in space as it seemed stranded planetside. But awkward or not, merchant ships were the workhorses of the galaxy. They could, and did, carry everything. Once around its bulk, the haphazard row of starships gave way to a collection of human-sized buildings. Five low, squat, flat-roofed buildings faced each other across a “street” that went nowhere. A light post at either end of the street and what light escaped the windows of the buildings provided the sole illumination.

  I was so busy gawking, that I tripped over half of a metal cage abandoned at the edge of town. The bar of the frame hit me just under the knee and I’d have fallen on my face, if not for Vulf’s speed. He spun around and caught me.

  “You hurt?” His voice was less than a whisper against my ear.

  The bar across my knees had hurt, but didn’t incapacitate me. When we were safely back on the Orion, I’d manipulate sha energy to heal. It wasn’t a natural skill for me, so I wouldn’t attempt it out here where the dangers were unknown and far worse than what would settle into a dull ache, sufficient to remind me to be more careful. I shook my head in a soundless reassurance that I was fine.

  Vulf released me, and began circling the town.

  I could shape sha to generate light, but I followed his example and lurked in the shadows. I suspected that his coat, like mine, was designed to obscure its wearer’s heat signature. We were phantoms in the night, wolves on the prowl—

  “Let me go!” A desperate voice cut through the silence, and effectively banished my silly imaginings.

  “Stay there,” Vulf ordered me fiercely, and without waiting for my agreement, slunk deeper into the shadows, heading for the sound of the male voice. My pulse had quickened with adrenaline, but the voice was too young to be Ivan’s.

  I shrank back into the shelter of a shuttle that had been stripped for its parts and aba
ndoned to corrosion. The level of corrosion that dusted my fingers when I touched it convinced me that the air quality on Station Drill was worse even than I’d suspected. I brushed my fingers against my coat and stared at the patch of darkness where Vulf had vanished.

  I was startled to think that he would deviate from his mission to capture Ivan even for the desperation in that shout. I’d heard nothing since. Not another plea nor cursing from whoever held the guy, nor the unmistakable thuds of violence. I couldn’t even hear noise from inside the buildings. Then again, given the toxic air, the buildings would be well-sealed so as to give their occupants some respite from breathing it.

  Crouched behind the shuttle, I continued to use sha to filter the air around me, keeping the bubble wide enough to enclose Vulf when he returned. Then I coaxed another strand of sha to wind outward from me, ready to alert me if a stranger approached. If someone had shouted to be set free, panic and pain edging their voice, it boded ill for how people here treated anyone found lurking. However, with my warning system in place, I dared to direct most of my attention into a complicate sha pattern; one that sought for disturbances in sha such as another shaman’s activities would create.

  Given my violent outburst of liberating sha on the Orion, Ivan would know I was here if he was attending to the flow of sha. But if he was distracted by other issues, and given the bounty on his head and his thievish obsession, he probably was, then there was still a chance that I could sneak up on him.

  A shamefully vindictive streak in me wanted to be the one who surprised Ivan, for once. Instead of being his patsy. I touched my chest, seeking the sha crystal that had hung there for five years, and its absence underlined his treachery.

  The strand of sha alert for a stranger’s approach vibrated before I could focus on releasing other sha into the search for shamanic activity on Station Drill. I concentrated on the stranger-danger sha alert, only to sigh with relief as Vulf materialized out of the shadows.

  He gripped a young male by the arm, half in support and wholly to imprison. “Back to the ship,” he ordered.

  One glance at his murderous expression and the residual terror on the teenager’s face, and I obeyed.

  “Ahab.” Vulf had his communicator on. “Ready the ship for an emergency launch.”

  Without him needing to ask, I picked up my pace. “I can’t sense anyone coming toward us,” I said.

  “They’re unconscious,” he said curtly. “But someone will find them.”

  “I really am sorry,” the teenager said.

  Vulf growled. “Shut up.”

  We hustled onto the ship. Vulf dropped the teenager on my bunk, the only one folded out in the cargo hold, and kept going. He vanished through the door that led to the bridge. A minute later, I felt the faint rumble as we lifted off with an efficiency that spoke either of urgency or rage.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where the bandages are?”

  The kid’s question jerked me out of my bemusement. I’d been standing in the doorway to the recreation cabin, bracing myself against the frame.

  Unprofessional, I chastised myself. I knew better. For an emergency launch, I ought to have been seated and strapped in. Only the fact that Vulf had launched vertically had kept the kid and me from falling about.

  “Bandages?” I echoed.

  The kid lifted a hand red with blood. “I had a bit of an accident.”

  “It was not a damn accident.” Vulf’s voice thundered over the communication system. “You should be in school.”

  “I’ve activating the medbot,” Ahab said calmly. “Please, lie down on the bunk and lift your shirt, Kenner.”

  “You know him?” I asked Vulf and Ahab and the universe generally. I was so confused. We’d gone to Station Drill to locate Ivan. We hadn’t. Instead, Vulf had aborted the mission in response to a cry for help from a young male, presumably the wounded Kenner, and now, it seemed that Vulf knew the kid. “Is Kenner your informant on Station Drill?”

  “No.”

  The medbot got to work. Kenner winced, either from the first assessment before pain relief was administered, or from the fury in Vulf’s single syllable.

  Then Vulf appeared in person, crowding me in the doorway to the cargo hold. “That idiot is my nephew.”

  “Your favorite nephew.” With pain relief administered, a certain cheekiness was resurfacing in Kenner.

  “Least favorite,” Vulf gritted out. His hands were gentle though as he put me aside before striding to the bunk where his nephew lay. Vulf observed the medbot’s operation in silence.

  Kenner cleared his throat. “Uh, Uncle Vulf—”

  “Shut up.”

  The kid mimed zipping his mouth. He was average height and skinny. His hair was spiked up and bleached blond. Only his eyes were like Vulf’s, blue and haunted by the wolf that neither could shift into; as no shifter could, not since humanity evacuated Earth.

  “How old are you?” I asked him, then remembered Vulf’s order for his silence, and corrected myself, looking at Vulf. “How old is he?”

  “Fifteen. Too young to be travelling alone.” He scowled at his nephew. “Look at the situation I had to rescue you from.”

  This parental aspect of Vulf completely surprised me, but he had the disapproval element down pat.

  Kenner lost his bravado. “I didn’t think they’d make me, Uncle Vulf. I had an awesome cover story. I was a kid from—”

  “Save it,” Vulf said. “Ahab?”

  “The wound is minor. The medbot has cleaned and sealed it. In two hours, when the pain medication wears off, Kenner’s accelerated shifter healing will have healed it completely.”

  “Good.” Vulf’s expression didn’t reveal any satisfaction. “Kenner, get your ass out of bed, shower and dress in the clothes Ahab will provide. You stink.”

  “It was part of my cover.”

  Vulf wasn’t listening. With a hand at my waist he guided me out of the cargo hold. “The kid can stay in the hold. You’ll want to shower, too. I do. These stations aren’t healthy.”

  It was true that the acrid element in Station Drill’s atmosphere was now in my hair and on my skin despite the sha air filter I’d used. However, why would we bother getting clean now? “Aren’t we returning for Ivan?”

  The door from the recreation cabin to the bridge opened. Vulf nudged me through before lowering his hand. I took three steps along a narrow passageway with a door either side.

  “My cabin.” Vulf tapped the right side door. “Yours.” He reached around from behind me and opened the door to the left. “It’s a cabin for guests.”

  And Kenner now had the cargo hold. I’d been upgraded. I decided to appreciate that at a later moment. I turned to face Vulf—and caught him stripping off his shirt. He seriously wanted a shower.

  Now, me, I’ve always had excellent control of my hormones. I’m as capable as the next person of appreciating masculine beauty, but I’d never, ever had to bite my tongue to stop myself from offering to wash a man’s chest, and back, and…

  Vulf stared at me, heat building in his eyes.

  “I’ll take that shower,” I squeaked, and hid myself in the guest cabin. My heart thudded. Boom-a-boom-boom. I set the shower for cold and dived in.

  The cold water dealt with my irrational hormones. How dare they confuse a kidnapper’s concern for me with a potential for romance? And as the cold water pounded some sense into me, it also cleared my head.

  Of course Vulf couldn’t return to Station Drill in the Orion. His arrival and swift departure would have been logged, and easily linked to Kenner’s rescue—even if that hadn’t been our intent on landing.

  The guest cabin’s tiny bathroom was luxurious in comparison to the utilitarian one fitted in the cargo hold. Shower complete, I set the control for “dry” and basked in the warm air that gently dried my body. I reached into my pocket dimension and retrieved my favorite body lotion. While the dry setting evaporated the last of the water from my hair, I smoothed cucumber and mi
nt lotion over my skin.

  It felt just as good to dress in my own clothes. I chose a utility suit from my pocket dimension, but it wasn’t dark gray like all of Vulf’s uniforms. I wore a deep red shirt tucked into black trousers. I hesitated. My own boots were comfortably broken in, but while I’d been showering, a robot had cleaned the boots Vulf had bought me. Out of some impulse I refused to analyze, I laced those up. I left my hair loose.

  Vulf and Kenner waited for me in the recreation cabin. Vulf stood by the food dispenser, turning from it at my entrance. Kenner sat at the table, at the end of the bench, nearest the cargo hold’s door. Where I usually sat.

  “Uncle Vulf’s ordered pizza.”

  I’d eaten ersatz pizza before. A lot of starship crew members enjoyed it. It was tasty, if you ignored the sometimes dubious crusts. But it was never a real substitute for traditional pizza made planetside in a wood-fired oven. “Sounds good.”

  Heat crawled over my skin, an awareness of Vulf’s gaze. It would be too awkward to walk all the way around the table just to avoid sitting next to him. So I sat opposite Kenner, where Vulf would be beside me. Unless he chose to change his habits and sit on Kenner’s side of the table.

  He didn’t. He dropped a large pizza onto the table before sending plates sliding in front of Kenner and me, and bringing his own plate with him as he sat beside me. His shoulder brushed mine as he settled on the bench.

  Kenner watched avidly. “I don’t know your name,” he said to me. “And Uncle Vulf won’t tell me.”

  I glanced at Vulf, surprised. “Is it a secret?”

  “Only if you want it to be.”

  I couldn’t think of any reason to hide my identity from the kid. “I’m Jaya Romanov, a starship shaman.”

  Kenner choked on his pizza.

  I half-stood, concerned.

  Kenner waved me down. He gulped half a glass of fizzy drink colored a revoltingly bright blue. “Uncle Vulf’s with a shaman!”

  I ate some pizza while I tried to decide if Kenner was excited in a good or bad way, and why my shaman talent mattered. Did Vulf have something against shamans? Was it a general shifter prejudice I hadn’t heard of?