Her Robot Wolf: Gift of Gaia

by Jenny Schwartz

  “When did you meet? How did you meet?” Kenner demanded. For a kid who’d just been rescued from a nasty situation, he sure bounced back fast. Or perhaps he was trying to distract Vulf from his questions about how the kid came to be alone on Station Drill.

  “Vulf and I want to find the same person.”

  Kenner ceased gobbling pizza for a second. His gaze darted from me to Vulf and back. “You mean you hired Uncle Vulf to help you?” He sounded disappointed.

  I hesitated. Did I really want to admit to anyone, even if it was only Vulf’s nephew, that Vulf had kidnapped me? As a shaman, I ought to be better able to protect myself.

  Vulf finally intervened. “Never mind my employment status. I want an explanation of why I had to abort my mission to rescue you.”

  “Oh. That.” Kenner hastily stuffed more pizza into his mouth.

  “Yes, that.”

  Kenner swallowed, then began cautiously. “There’s this girl at school.”

  It was my turn to stuff pizza in my mouth. If I smiled, I’d ruin Vulf’s stern parental act.

  Still, Kenner seemed to sense my amusement because he directed his next sentence at me. “She’s really smart, like you.”

  “Kid,” Vulf growled a warning.

  “Well, Ellis is.”

  Vulf didn’t move a muscle, but suddenly the mood was electric, ominously so. “Ellis Dalir? Leopard family?”

  Kenner nodded jerkily. His eyes were huge and wary. “You heard about what Scipio stole from her?”

  “I heard how she meddled with things beyond her.”

  “Uncle Vulf, that’s not fair. Ellis was trying to help, to stop those awful fights.”

  Vulf stared down his nephew.

  Kenner flung himself back in his seat. He didn’t even wince from his wound, so it had to be healed already. “It wasn’t like anyone was in any danger. We were at school!”

  “Which meant that Scipio backtracked her program to Corsairs.”

  Kenner winced.

  Corsairs was colloquially known as the Pirate Planet. When shifters had gone rogue generations ago, they’d claimed a barren planet and invested much of their plunder in terraforming it. Thanks to the terraforming work of a legendary shaman, the planet was now reportedly a modern day Eden. Three major continents and innumerable islands contained all the habitats Earth had hosted. But unlike Earth, environmental controls on Corsairs were strict. There were no metropolises, only cities sized to respect the resources available to them and well-scattered smaller townships. Farming, hunting and artisanal trades were encouraged.

  Primarily, Corsairs served as a place for the shifters to raise their families. Their schools were galactic-class, and took in students from non-shifter families, as well. A number of organized crime families sent their children to board on Corsairs, taking advantage of the shifters’ fanatical protection of the planet to ensure the safety of their children. According to the shifters’ code, no one ever used a child to gain an edge over a rival. Even the Galactic Police left well enough alone and stayed clear.

  I suspected that the shifters used more than the threat of their pirate fleets to guard Corsairs. Bribes, high level lobbying and exchanges of favors would be underpinned by personal intimidation of key decision makers in the Galactic Government. And just as the shifters physically protected the planet, they’d need to protect its digital security. Whatever this Ellis Dalir had intended, it sounded as if she’d compromised Corsairs’ digital security by allowing someone to trace her back to it.

  “Ellis never meant for that to happen. None of us expected Scipio to have the smarts to hitch a ride on her program before he stole it.” Kenner infused the word “stole” with immense outrage.

  Outrage that Vulf ignored. “You said ‘us’. Has anyone else left the school on a jaunt like yours?”

  “I wasn’t jaunting!” Kenner’s voice cracked. “Someone had to do something. Scipio stole Ellis’s program. She was crying constantly, saying the animals would suffer even more, and it was her fault because now he could disrupt their enhancements, twist and use them against them.”

  I forgot my observer status. I wasn’t family, so I had no place asking questions. However, the mention of enhancements in connection with animals suggested something I’d only heard a whisper of on the lower decks of a couple of starships I’d acted briefly as shaman for. “Are you talking about the illegal tournaments, the ones where animals are bio-augmented and released into pits to fight to the death?”

  “Yes.” All the idealism of Kenner’s youth, as well as his anger at the cruelty people were capable of, showed in his pale blue eyes. “Ellis hacked the software that operates the enhancements. She wanted to turn the animals to attack their handlers and the evil bastards—”

  “Language,” Vulf snapped.

  “Sorry,” Kenner muttered with a sheepish look at me. “Ellis wanted to stop the fights, and initially it worked. But at the third fight, Scipio was ready. He copied Ellis’s hack, and then, he traced her back to Corsairs. Not to the school,” Kenner said to his uncle.

  “That was the one saving grace of the whole debacle.” Vulf cleared our plates.

  I had the impression that he did so less because he wanted a clean table, and more because he had to move.

  Vulf continued. “If Scipio had traced Ellis’s hack to a particular family, he could have made this personal. He may still, if he’s identified you.”

  “He wasn’t on the planet. His team were waiting for him.” Kenner folded his arms. It was a defensive posture. Kenner had stuffed up, and he knew it. “I was following him. I’d heard a rumor on the darknet that the next tournament was to be on Station Drill. Since no one else was doing anything, I was going to take photos and names and gather intelligence, and give it all to the Galactic Police.”

  “Kid, your self-righteous arrogance gives me a headache,” Vulf said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Vulf returned to his seat, his shoulder brushing mine, again. “I mean that just because you don’t know of something doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Have any of us ever let an attack, any sort of attack, on Corsairs go unpunished?”

  “No,” Kenner muttered.

  Vulf sighed. “I’m going to tell you this so that you understand just what you’ve put at risk. After Scipio attempted to hack the Corsairs network, we put together a mission to take him down, legally. We’re working with Galactic Police.” He held up a finger as Kenner tried to interrupt. “Working with, not feeding them unverified information as you aimed to do. But the people on the ground and flying in, those people could be at risk if your intrusion and my extraction of you makes Scipio suspicious. And Scipio is suspicious by nature.”

  Kenner gulped.

  “Do you understand what you’ve done?” Vulf asked quietly. “I chose the life of a lone wolf. That’s me. But even I don’t burn allies. I don’t wreck things by letting my ego inflate beyond my abilities and my position.”

  Kenner’s adolescent rebellion spluttered into nothing. “I’m sorry.”

  “Learn from this,” Vulf said.

  “I will.” There was a beat of silence, then Kenner drew a shaky breath. “I’m sorry.”

  Vulf nodded.

  “Uncle Vulf? Can you explain things to my parents? They’re going to be upset and…”

  “Your parents won’t punish you.”

  The words were reassuring. Vulf’s tone was anything but.

  Kenner shrank, eyes wary, body tense and folding in on itself.

  Vulf stood, looming so much taller and broader than either Kenner or me. “Kenner, by your actions in leaving school and Corsairs, you’ve declared yourself independent. So the fact you screwed up an operation with Galactic Police will be dealt with under crew justice.”

  I had no idea what he meant.

  Kenner scraped up some backbone. “Who?”

  “The nearest flotilla is Bree’s.” Vulf’s tone might have eased a margin. Maybe from granite to sandstone. He was sti
ll unyielding. “Get some sleep. We’ll catch the flotilla tomorrow.”

  “Can I call Mom and Dad?”

  “I think you’d better.”

  Kenner slunk out of the recreation cabin and into the cargo hold. The door closed.

  Alone, Vulf and I stared at one another. I had no idea what was going on behind his stern expression. For myself, I couldn’t work out if Kenner wanted to contact his parents or was dreading it. Parents weren’t something I had experience with.

  But Kenner had his problems, and I had mine. Or rather, I had Ivan’s. I crossed to the sofa and leaned against the back of it, facing my nemesis. “Vulf, when you said we’ll be at the flotilla tomorrow…”

  “Kenner’s a pain in the ass.”

  “He’s a teenager.”

  Vulf stalked from the table to stand just in front of me. “No difference. But as annoying as he is, and as much as he deserves whatever punishment he gets, I can’t bring him with us chasing Ivan. His mom is my sister. She’d skin me alive if I took him on a job. And he’d probably think it was some reward for misbehaving. So I have to drop him off with family. Bree is the nearest. She’s a captain on the Capricorn, which is part of the flotilla.” He paused. “Kenner won’t actually receive crew justice, but Bree’ll find him some dirty jobs to do on the trip back to Corsairs.”

  “I understand that chasing Ivan is too dangerous to involve a kid.” Which sounded even more daunting when I said it aloud. What the heck was I doing getting involved? Still, I hid my doubts and stared up at Vulf. I’d had years of presenting a confident façade, an I-don’t-need-anyone attitude. I wasn’t going to let that spirit of independence fail me now. “I’ve heard that the pirate flotilla is a closed shop. You know, no outsiders. You can drop me off—”

  “I can’t. I can’t let you go,” Vulf said.

  “You can,” I encouraged him despite the way my stomach hollowed out at the thought of leaving him. I tried to convince myself that it was only because with his help I’d find Ivan faster. But once Ivan was found, we had different intentions for him. I wanted Ivan’s freedom. Vulf wanted the million solidus bounty. We couldn’t stay together. “You can set me down anywhere. I’ll negotiate passage on a starship easily enough.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re not thinking this through.”

  I had been thinking clearly, but his touch messed all that up.

  His hand moved closer to my throat, his thumb caressing my collarbone in the tiniest of movements. “You’re publicly linked to Ivan now. We don’t know if Mike Seymour or some other bounty hunter bugged the Spotted Toadstool and heard Daisy’s identification of you as Ivan’s granddaughter. We have to assume that they know you’re with me on the Orion, and perhaps, that you joined me on Station Drill. You’re a target. Either you can provide information or you can be used as leverage against Ivan. If you leave the Orion, I can’t keep you safe.”

  “I can—”

  He tipped my chin up. “I believe you can protect yourself from ordinary threats, but anyone going after Ivan is prepared to tackle a shaman. You’re powerful. You’re not a warrior.” He was.

  “I can keep myself safe.” I was determined to make that point clear. “However…”

  His hand slid from a fingertip hold on my chin, to slide along my jawline and brush under my ponytail to cup the nape of my neck.

  My stupid eyelashes fluttered at the intimate hold. I snapped my eyes wide. “I will concede that there may be advantages in travelling with you.”

  “Might there?” An amused, very masculine, anticipatory smile curved his mouth. “And what would you consider those advantages to be?”

  “I know what your motivation is.”

  His smile sharpened, speculation narrowing his eyes. “You do?”

  “A million solidus bounty. Duh.” I stepped back, breaking his hold.

  “Oh, that.”

  “I like to know who I’m dealing with, their motivations and all that.” I waved a hand as I crossed over to the sofa, putting space between us, but hopefully not looking as if I was retreating from an encounter that had gotten heated.

  “I’m sure you do.” He was smiling again.

  It was difficult not to respond to his gorgeous and rare smile, but I managed it. I think. “The mortgage to buy a mLa’an starship must be huge. Will the bounty cover it?”

  The blackness of space through the one-way glass of the viewscreen was soothing even if the topic wasn’t.

  “There’s no mortgage. The Orion was a reward.” Vulf stretched hugely, then dropped into the recliner. The solidly built chair rocked, but withstood the impact of his weight.

  I kicked off my boots and curled my feet up on the sofa, prepared to engage my curiosity. “What by Gaia did you do to warrant a mLa’an starship?”

  “I rescued a child.”

  My eyes widened. “A mLa’an child?”

  “Uh huh,” he agreed. “Blues music, Ahab. Surprise me.”

  The low, haunting sound of a saxophone started.

  “The mLa’an have so few children, each one is sheltered and protected.” I told Vulf what he had to already know. “How did one get into a situation where they had to be rescued by a human?”

  Ahab must have felt that since Vulf had told me of the kidnapping, he was at liberty to tell me the details. The AI launched into the story.

  “Vulf was twenty one. He’d been a bounty hunter for three years, honing his skills. He’d moved from minor skip-traces to people capable of resisting their return. He was ready for something more challenging.”

  “You give me too much credit.” Vulf had tipped back his recliner and now stared at the ceiling. “I was young and stupid. I’d gotten just enough experience to become reckless. I over-reached.”

  “And succeeded!” Ahab said triumphantly, and then, to me. “The mLa’an are a small and private culture. They like to handle things themselves. However, on occasion that is not the most efficient method. They’re too noticeable, and hence, attract trouble if they venture into unsavory sectors of the galaxy.”

  Like the Boneyard Sector, I thought wryly. But the truth was there were far more lawless sectors. We were relatively safe traversing its starlanes. Whilst the Galactic Police didn’t intervene on commercial stations, they would act on criminal activity on the starlanes. Which wasn’t to say that piracy didn’t happen here, just that it was punished.

  Ahab continued. “When a thief stole a prototype of a cold fusion globe, the mLa’an Regent decided to regain it—and the thief—via a bounty rather than approve mLa’an operatives to retrieve it themselves. Of course, the Regent was discreet. The globe was described as a treasure of the Regency rather than a technological advance.”

  “Clever,” I observed. “He didn’t want to stir up commercial interest and risk rivals pursuing the thief for their own purposes.”

  “Indeed.” Ahab’s voice held the sort of courtesy that would have found physical expression as a bow, if he had possessed a body.

  The situation also somewhat resembled the mess Ivan had gotten himself into: a powerful and mysterious species, a stolen treasure, an irresistible bounty, and Vulf in pursuit. I was curious. “Did the thief know what he’d stolen?”

  “She,” Vulf answered. “And yes. She was a trained Sidhe intelligent agent who’d decided to freelance. In her work, she’d come across reference to the mLa’an’s project to develop a cold fusion globe. The mLa’an believe she monitored their progress. When the first tests of the globe were successful, she broke into the laboratory and stole it.”

  I had so many questions; not least, if the globe had worked. I hadn’t heard of a cold fusion globe and had no idea how it was meant to work. What did a globe do that an engine couldn’t? Was a globe smaller?

  “The Regent offered a 100,000 solidus bounty for the return of the Regency treasure,” Ahab said. “It was sufficient to attract interest, but not raise any flags that the globe was of special interest.”

  “It caught my att
ention,” Vulf said. “I couldn’t afford a starship of my own back then and had to either trade favors or buy my passage on jobs. But 100,000 solidus would buy me a decommissioned military kite. I had family and contacts that I could then use to gradually improve it. As long as it flew.”

  Kites were the military’s smallest logistical support starships. They took a lot of abuse during their working lives, and were often simply scrapped at the end of their tri-decades’ service. They were neither especially fast nor maneuverable, and their capacity to defend themselves was limited. However, they were reliable and could operate with a single crew member, or carry four people in what the military considered “comfort”. In short, I could see why a decommissioned kite would appeal to a newish bounty hunter.

  “Long story short,” Vulf cut off Ahab’s next words. “I caught up with the thief here in the Boneyard Sector. She was trying to get back to the Psy Sector, her home territory, to set up a secret auction on the cold fusion globe. She offered to cut me into the action. I refused. Earning a mLa’an bounty was almost as important to building my reputation as the bounty itself was to buying a starship.”

  “What happened to the thief?” I asked.

  Vulf’s gaze came down from studying the ceiling to observe me. “I handed her over to the mLa’an Regent’s private guard.”

  The statement deserved a beat of silence, but Ahab didn’t give it. The AI was bursting to resume his storytelling role. “The Regent contacted the Sidhe Circle.” The Sidhe government. “For a Sidhe intelligence agent—and the woman was still officially employed as such—to steal from the mLa’an was grounds for war.”

  I gasped, looking around, but of course, there was no way to “look” at Ahab unless he put up his shadow form on the wall of the recreation cabin. “Would the mLa’an really have gone to war over the theft of the globe?” Obviously they hadn’t, but it was scary to think how such a relatively small treachery could ignite a conflict that might take thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives. I didn’t even want to think of the insane wars of galactic history that had destroyed planets and killed millions upon millions of sentient beings.