“It’s darting from me, into you, and back.”
“Huh.” He rubbed just below my belly button where the last stitch had darted from him to me and out into the cabin and beyond. How had he known it emerged there?
“I felt something in my core,” he said.
Many martial arts taught a person to find their core, their energy center. “You sensed sha energy?”
“I felt a tug toward you.” A hint of color flushed the skin across his cheekbones. “Not just arousal. This was more than the mating heat.” He paused, perhaps waiting to see if I’d scramble away. When I didn’t, his hand splayed across my tummy.
His palm, warm and heavy, low on my body, and his fingers so close to intimate contact, pulsed a wave of pure lust through me.
He groaned and leaned his head back against the recliner. With his shifter senses, he was probably being bombarded with all the subtle signs of my arousal. “I’m trying to be good,” he said, but he didn’t lift his hand.
Nor did I remove it. My voice was husky, but I tried to be professional, objective. We had strayed from the purpose of our Origin visit long enough. “Was Professor Summer so open with us because he’s a long-time family friend, because he was intrigued to meet me, a shaman, or because whatever secret is wrapped up in the Meitj Imperial Crown, protecting it is important enough to risk involving outsiders?”
“If it’s the latter.” Vulf moved his hand to curve around the lower edge of my rib cage. He probably thought it was the safest, least sexy spot to touch me, if he couldn’t bring himself to release me—and the mating heat probably meant he wouldn’t willingly do that. “Then we have to stop Ivan.”
I nestled into him, seeking comfort. “When we find Ivan…what will the Meitj do to him?”
“I don’t know.” Vulf didn’t hide behind shaky reassurances. “Will you let me hand him over to them?”
My breath shuddered in a quivering sigh. “I can’t promise I will. It depends what Ivan says. If he swears an oath not to steal the Imperial Crown…but that’s wishful thinking. Ivan is stubborn. He’ll want to go ahead with his plan. I just can’t promise he won’t convince me that his reason is compelling.”
Vulf rubbed his palm along my arm, soothing me. “He’s your grandfather.”
“Yes, but—” I broke off and wrapped my arms around Vulf, forcing them between him and the back of the recliner, burrowing into him.
“Jaya? Stargirl?”
A sob tried to crawl up my throat at the spacer’s endearment, “stargirl”. I wasn’t Vulf’s mate. I was just the ridiculously impossible candidate the mating heat had selected. But I couldn’t blame the mating heat for my tangled loyalties. It was spending time with Vulf, learning about him, meeting his family, meeting Professor Summer, being held by a man who would defend me with his life, all of that had changed me. And on the other side of the balance, was the depths of Ivan’s betrayal.
“He hid knowledge of my mom from me. I could have grown up with Daisy’s stories of her.”
“Maybe he had his reasons.” Vulf’s voice lacked conviction.
I shook my head without lifting it from his shoulder. “On Tyger Tyger Ivan stole my sha crystal from me.” My whisper was croaky with emotion and muffled against Vulf’s throat. “I spent five years collecting sha energy in it. He knew how important it was to me. It’s how I hoped to test whether I could manipulate sha energy to enable shifters to shift form again.”
Vulf went rigid. “We lost that ability when we evacuated Earth.”
“But your wolf is still part of you.” I rubbed a circle on his chest. “There was a shaman on Earth, in nineteenth century Siberia, who wrote about the primal promise of shifters’ blessing. He believed that the spirits of Earth had gifted your ancestors with the ability to shift form so that they could guard the planet. I read the book when I was eighteen and researching shamanic history. It triggered an ambition in me. I’m only half-shifter. I wouldn’t have been able to shift form even on Earth. But I wanted to honor that half of my ancestors and unknown family.”
“No shaman has ever suggested they could help us,” Vulf said very neutrally.
Even through my own emotional pain, I understood his refusal to hope. “Shamans have never observed sha energy flowing through a shifter as they shift form. Even when they studied the first generation of shifters to evacuate Earth and tried to see the patterns of sha energy during their failed shifts, they recorded that sha energy was not involved.”
“But you believe differently?”
I wriggled off his lap to grab a clean handkerchief from my pocket dimension, turn my back for privacy, and blow my nose. Enough with the emotional storm. Discussing my dreams for shifters’ future deserved dry eyes.
Vulf’s arm snaked around my waist, urging me to lean against him.
It was tempting, but I remained balanced on my own two feet. “Ivan was the only person I confided my shifter research breakthroughs to. He’s not a registered shaman, not trapped in the Academy’s thinking. He always seemed to believe that I could do it.” I stopped to clear my throat.
Vulf waited tensely.
“I decided to start by assuming that the nineteenth century shaman was right to define shifters as Earth’s guardians.”
“If we were, we did an appalling job,” Vulf interjected.
“No one could have shaken Earth’s governments from their self-destructive pattern. All the history texts acknowledge it. The governments, controlled by corporations, were locked in a race to exploit rather than sustain Earth’s planetary system. Shamans couldn’t save the Earth either,” I added, trying to comfort him by spreading the blame around.
He rejected that argument. “My understanding is that shamans didn’t understand the extent of their power till they evacuated Earth and encountered the other sentient species who valued them so highly that Shaman Justices were written into humanity’s Charter of Galactic Union.”
“So we were ignorant as well as useless,” I said tartly.
He laughed, and rocked me side to side.
For a moment, I felt comforted. I put a hand on his arms at my waist. “Vulf, my hypothesis is that shifters shifted form using a pattern of sha energy unique to Earth. When a shaman terraforms a planet, the sha energy has to be guided into new rivers and streams, new patterns, and held there by the shaman till the flows of sha energy establish a sustaining framework for the planet. Earth developed that framework organically. It was called Gaia.”
I turned to face him. “Part of that framework included a flow of sha that your ancestors tapped to shift form. When they evacuated Earth, that particular flow of sha energy was no longer available to them. Hence, they couldn’t shift.”
“It’s not a theory I’ve heard before,” he said. “I’ve heard it described as a curse or even the result of exposure to increased radiation levels before we evacuated Earth. Even if you’re right, though, how would you identify the pattern of sha energy needed for us to shift?”
“That’s why I’ve been collecting sha energy for five years,” I said. “I need to return to Earth and study its sha patterns. I need to map them and duplicate them on a small-scale.”
He gripped my shoulders as if he needed to hold me still so that I heard him. His face was set in grimly urgent lines. “It’s not safe.”
Earth was uninhabitable, shrouded in a nuclear winter. Humanity’s evacuation had been required as conflict over Earth’s few remaining resources spilled over into unsurvivable nuclear war. Part of the Galaxy Proper’s requirements for humanity to join had included the total disbanding of all existing human governments. New authorities had been selected from those who’d lacked power on Earth. Proper University had provided experts to educate and guide humanity through its awkward first generation as a homeless species.
Fortunately, thanks to the Galaxy Proper’s early intervention, sufficient seed and animal life had been scraped and saved from Earth before its holocaust and we were able to re-establish ourselves. Humanity’s new governm
ent’s first act after signing the Charter had been the purchase of the semi-terraformed Sidhe planet Utopia. Humanity settled it, and from there, within seven generations we had expanded out across space.
Humanity was far from the most populous species. But we had taken to galactic life with enthusiasm. Those who cared to think about such things knew we’d been extremely lucky to be given a second chance after we destroyed our home planet.
“Shamans can survive radiation,” I said to Vulf. “I can shape sha energy to protect myself, the same way I enclosed Edith, you and me in a bubble in the Capricorn’s officers’ mess.”
He scowled at me. “You need to wear a spacesuit as well. What if you were distracted and dropped the protective bubble?”
“I’ll wear a spacesuit,” I promised.
His scowl remained. “Won’t the nuclear winter have altered Earth’s sha patterns?”
“No. Sha isn’t affected by radiation. Despite everything humanity did to the planet, its life-sustaining flows of sha energy remain in place. Ivan says they look stunning.” I stopped. My eyes widened. I stared at Vulf and a moment later, understanding dawned in his eyes.
“Ivan’s hiding on Earth,” he said slowly. “There’s a wormhole within seventy clicks of it. Ahab! I want a star map of the River Serpent Sector.”
A map blinked up on the viewscreen.
“May I remain and participate in the conversation?” Ahab requested.
I had the sudden, startling realization that the AI was lonely. Usually it was just Vulf and him on the Orion. But now Vulf had ordered privacy, choosing me over the AI. For a being as seemingly social as Ahab, the isolation had to be tough. “Of course you can join us,” I said impulsively.
Vulf’s eyebrows lifted fractionally.
I stumbled on. “Ahab, do you remain connected to the other mLa’an artificial intelligences? Do you have someone to talk to?”
Vulf’s eyebrows relaxed. He smiled faintly and headed for the food dispenser.
“I am connected to the mLa’an network,” Ahab answered. “My friends and I chat frequently. Obviously, not of matters confidential to our duties.”
“Obviously not.” I smiled. The AI made a good ally. “Vulf and I are considering whether Ivan is hiding on Earth. If he acquired a starship from whichever location he reached via portal, it wouldn’t take him long to hop wormhole to wormhole to Earth.”
“Is not Earth uninhabitable for humans?” Ahab queried.
“Not for shamans,” Vulf replied. “And if Ivan stayed on his starship, he’d be safe regardless.” Starships were shielded against the radiation bombardment of space. They could survive a nuclear winter. Vulf handed me a mug of coffee.
I sipped the hot liquid as I studied the star map. I reduced it so that I could plot our route to Earth. Humanity’s abandoned planet was surprisingly close to Origin—if you were willing to travel via wormholes, two of which were marked perilous on the star map, and a third which was starkly labelled “do not attempt”.
Vulf didn’t question my confidence in attempting the impossible wormhole. We set course for Earth while considering our biggest problem: what would we do when we located Ivan?
“I’ll try to communicate with him,” I said. “Ahab, as soon as we’re in range, attempt to contact any ship located on or near Earth. It’ll be Ivan’s. No one else would be mad enough to return to Earth.” I spoke confidently, which just goes to prove how wrong a shaman can be. Or how naïve.
Chapter 8
“I’m detecting three starships and a suggestion of an underground settlement,” Ahab reported.
I raised my head from the sofa in the recreation cabin on which I was recovering from guiding the Orion through its final wormhole jump. “That can’t be right.”
Vulf’s voice came over the internal communication system. He was on the bridge. “Two of the starships are on the ground near the settlement. The third is by the South Pole.”
I swung my legs from the sofa to the floor. “Where is the settlement? Who would base themselves on Earth—apart from my crazy grandfather?”
“The settlement is in the wider half of the land mass once called Africa. I’m overlaying the long-range sensor report with an old map from pre-Evacuation. The settlement is near the Congo River. Diamonds and what our ancestors called rare earth metals were once mined there. This could be an unauthorized mining camp.”
“Extracting anything from Earth is banned.” I continued talking as I walked to the bridge, trusting that Ahab would broadcast my voice to Vulf.
As I entered, Vulf was studying a sensor image of Earth that had removed its obscuring clouds, leaving the thick, white blanket of snow coverage on display. “Apart from a warning beacon broadcasting that Earth is an abandoned planet entered at a person’s own risk and that removing anything from it is, as you say, illegal, there’s no other technology monitoring or barring access. It would make a good hiding place for Ivan.”
“His starship has to be the one off on its own in the southern polar region.” Ahab split a quarter of the screen to show a starship starkly outlined against the all-obliterating snow. It couldn’t have been there very long or a snowstorm would have hidden it, as the consequences of Earth’s nuclear winter had hidden everything humanity left behind when we evacuated.
I slipped into the copilot’s chair. “They used to call it Antarctica. Humans couldn’t survive there. They’d bring in supplies because nothing grew on the frozen land. But the waters were home to a lot of aquatic life. There were penguins.”
Neither Vulf nor Ahab interrupted my blathering. Perhaps they understood that I was thinking while I regurgitated my early Academy history lessons.
“Penguins are cute.” I squinted at the screen. “Do you think whoever is running the settlement is aware of Ivan’s presence on the planet? Will they detect our approach?”
“No,” Ahab said confidently. “Their starships are old tramp ships and their surveillance system is primitive by mLa’an standards.”
“Which means it’s adequate by human standards, but won’t notice the Orion in stealth mode. Activate stealth mode.” Vulf thumped his fist softly against the arm of his chair. It was a habit of his when thinking. All of us were busy trying to understand the unexpected settlement and how it impacted our plan to contact Ivan.
“Stealth mode already active.” Ahab sounded a mite reproachful. He knew how to act on a mission to capture a sneaky shaman.
“Can you contact Ivan on a secure communication beam, please, Ahab?” I checked with Vulf, who nodded. “The illegal settlement is unlikely to be a problem for us.” And as curious as I was about it, my attention had to be solely on convincing Ivan to stand down from his plans to steal the Meitj Imperial Crown.
“Communication beam secured,” Ahab said.
“Ivan?” I said instantly. “Ivan, it’s Jaya. I’m onboard the Orion with Vulf Trent.”
Ivan’s distinctive irritable rasp crackled over the communication beam. Earth’s radiation was interfering with it. “Girl, why the hell did you lead him straight to me?”
My spine snapped straight. “I’m not the one in the wrong, here. You can’t steal another species’ treasure.”
“Why not?” Ivan challenged. “They stole—” The communication broke off for a count of five. When it resumed, Ivan’s tone was mournful. “Betrayed by my own blood.”
“You betrayed her first,” Vulf said. “Denied her her mother’s name. Stole her sha crystal.”
“Be quiet, dog boy,” Ivan ordered.
“Ivan!” The insult to Vulf’s shifter status was crude and offensive—and Ivan knew that I was half-shifter even if I didn’t know what animal self my father had. So his insult included me, too.
Vulf reached across and put a hand on my knee. His shook his head once.
I closed my eyes for a second as I comprehended his silent warning. Ivan was trying to distract us, and with me, at least, he was succeeding. “Ivan, why do you want the Meitj Imperial Crown?”
>
“I’m not telling you with the bounty hunter listening in. He’d hand a man over to the Meitj for a million solidus. There’s no telling what he’d do with the information I have. If you want to understand, come down and speak in person.”
Vulf switched off the communication. “No.”
I stared at him. “Ivan’s not going to hurt me. We discussed this, Vulf. Ivan was never going to chat over a communication beam. I need to talk to him in person. Ahab got out a spacesuit for me. I’ll leave its remote surveillance system on. Of course, Ivan might scramble it.” Which was another risk we’d discussed. “You have to trust me.”
“I do. It’s Ivan…” He pushed a hand through his hair. He switched on the communication beam. “I’ll be escorting Jaya.”
“That defeats the purpose of her visiting to speak privately,” Ivan said.
“Not for shamans.” Vulf frowned at the viewscreen as we hovered over Earth’s South Pole. Ivan’s starship was center screen, a decommissioned military kite. “One of you can manipulate the sound waves so that they don’t reach me.”
It didn’t make sense. If he couldn’t hear what Ivan and I discussed, why did he want to be there? Vulf had promised me that he wouldn’t grab Ivan. My discussion with Ivan had two purposes: the first to learn why my grandfather wanted the Meitj Imperial Crown; and secondly, to convince him to surrender himself to the Meitj justice system. Only after Vulf and I had a chance to talk about how my discussion with Ivan went would he be free to grab Ivan—if Ivan proved recalcitrant.
Ivan snorted over the communication beam. “How can we manipulate sha if you’re running a disrupter.”
“Jaya destroyed my disrupter,” Vulf said flatly.
Ivan crowed. “That’s my girl! All right. Okay, then. You can both come down for a visit. Don’t jostle the kite when you land.”
The spacesuit Ahab had found for me was on the bridge. “I need to suit up.”
“Shape sha,” Ivan said.
“She’s wearing a suit,” Vulf growled. “We’ll be with you in forty minutes.” He went to end the communication, but I shook my head.
Her Robot Wolf: Gift of Gaia Page 13