Vulf didn’t respond.
Not that Ivan waited for a response. He seemed to have forgotten his earlier decision not to answer the Meitj judge. The words just tore out of him. “I was in Ceph Sector. You’ve got a nerve,” he snarled at the Meitj. “Imprison the people, wipe them from history, but leave their name up there.”
“The Ceph Sector is empty,” Winona said. “It is too unstable for settlement or even for the risk of mining. Nor does traversing it lead anywhere. It is a dead-end.”
“So the Meitj would have you believe—would have everyone believe, but especially shamans. I travelled there.” Ivan tapped his chest. “Me. I felt the sha pattern. I had to go deep, past the asteroid belt, dodging comets, avoiding unmarked black holes. You guard your shame well,” he said to the Meitj. “But I got close enough to feel the sha pattern.” He turned to me. “It is an immense shield, complicated beyond imagination. It completely encloses a solar system and with a repelling force that no non-shaman could resist.”
“Ivan.” I could have wept or screamed. He had threatened an entire civilization for a delusion. “The Meitj aren’t shamans. They couldn’t construct a simple sha shield, let alone one such as you describe.”
I stared at the silently watchful Meitj. “Your medical assessment would be more thorough than the medbot aboard the Orion. Does Ivan have a tumor? Is there an organic reason for his delusion?”
“I am not crazy.” Ivan stepped toward me.
A guard moved.
I hadn’t known the Meitj were so fast.
Ivan hit the bar of the Meitj guard’s outstretched upper arm and recoiled. “Do you know how you find a lost civilization?”
The guard stepped back from the circle.
“I would be interested to learn,” Professor Summer said.
“So that you can complete the elimination of the Ceph? You won’t manage it,” Ivan said. “They are still there, still alive within the sha shield.”
The Emperor nodded. “The intent was to maintain them in stasis.”
“Wha-at?” The question exploded out of Vulf.
The other Meitj made squeaky sounds of distress or protest at their Emperor’s announcement. Except for Professor Summer. He studied Ivan.
“A confession!” Ivan stabbed a triumphant finger in the air. “There, you see! The Meitj have locked away the Ceph for millennia.”
“For forty two, to be exact.” The Emperor was still providing information.
I had to wonder if that was ominous. If the Emperor was openly sharing a secret that was forty two millennia old, were we all destined to die? Even the Chancellor of the Academy? A secret wasn’t kept for so long without ruthlessness.
“Tell me what you learned of them,” the Emperor invited Ivan.
My grandfather swelled with vindication. “I looked for the earliest records of the ancient species. I figured you lot would have triggers planted if anyone went digging in your history. But the mLa’an are equally ancient. I looked for the gaps in their early history, and I found them! An unknown species that the mLa’an warred against. They allied with you, and hunted through the galaxy—”
“Hunted?” Professor Summer halted Ivan with a single word. “No, we fled. There were desperate battles, but how do ordinary people combat shamans?”
I glanced at a disrupter in a guard’s hands.
The professor followed my gaze. “Sadly, we lacked such technology as disrupters, and not for lack of trying to develop them. But their development required shamanic input, and that, we could not get. The Ceph are all shamans, unlike humanity where shamanic talent is exceedingly rare. We have observed you closely—”
“That’s why Meitj visited Earth before humanity gained space travel,” Vulf said. “You weren’t exploring the planet, you were assessing our risk to the galaxy as a shamanic people.”
Winona was goggle-eyed. “Would you have destroyed us if you thought us dangerous?”
The President of the Imperial Court finally spoke. “We would have allowed you to destroy yourselves.” It was an effective reminder that the galaxy had taken humanity in when we’d brought nuclear winter to our birth planet.
“Don’t go thinking them heroes.” Ivan shook a finger at me.
“They’re not villains,” Vulf said.
Ivan glared at him. “How would you know?”
“Because the Ceph are still alive.” Vulf looked from Professor Summer to the Emperor. “They are in stasis for a reason. Jaya is right. You don’t have the shamanic talent to lock a species into stasis, so one or more of the Ceph must have helped you to do so.”
The Emperor looked at Professor Summer. “You were right to describe him as a strategist. And you, Vulf Trent, are correct. Theta was the Ceph who objected to his people’s decimation of all other sentient species they encountered. He believed that the Ceph could not develop their own potential until there was a power sufficient to challenge them. He believed in balance.”
“Bah. You won’t make me believe this Theta acted willingly against his own,” Ivan said. “Somehow you compelled him to create the crown.”
“Is that why you want the Imperial Crown?” I demanded.
My grandfather sniffed. “You are slow. How else could the Meitj guard for millennia the key to the shamanic shield that entraps the Ceph unless they made it literally priceless and irreplaceable, a treasure that even their ordinary people, ignorant of the truth of the Ceph’s captivity, would guard with their lives?”
“The Imperial Crown.” Winona sounded punch-drunk.
“This.” The Emperor reached into a gap that opened in the floor in front of him and pulled out the circlet of rhodium inset with three giant rubies that was the Imperial Crown. His upper claws handled it carefully, while the gap in the floor closed silently. “Theta designed it carefully. He activated the sha shield around the Ceph’s home world when a festival had drawn them all back. There were never as many Ceph as there were of other sentient species, so they could fit on one planet. But Theta worried that perhaps a Ceph or two might have been delayed in reaching the festival, and that we, his chosen allies, would have to handle them. He created the crown so that a non-shaman could activate it to erase a shaman’s talent. The method has been passed down through the millennia, along with the history and our duty. But never before has there been a shaman we had to use it on.”
“There were no shamans till humanity emerged,” I said. And now there was Ivan, a self-proven threat to the Meitj.
“Would you like to leave before I strip your grandfather of his shamanic talent?” the Emperor asked.
I suspect he meant his offer as a kindness. “No, I…no.”
“Is it safe for Jaya to be here as a shaman?” Vulf asked.
Winona startled. “Are our powers threatened, too?”
“No, you are innocent,” the judge said.
The Emperor crossed the circle to stand in front of Ivan. He stood a head higher than my grandfather and his multi-faceted eyes gleamed with a crimson the same shade as his shell. The same shade as the three rubies. His upper claws held the Imperial Crown, while his middle claws pried out the two smaller rubies. Whatever method Theta had developed to enable a non-shaman to activate a sha pattern, it evidently included use of the rubies. Perhaps he had stored sha in them in some similar method to how Ivan had triggered the wraiths from a distance. But Ivan had been able to use sha.
“Guards,” the Emperor ordered.
The disrupters snapped off.
I had two seconds to enjoy feeling the flow of sha energy again, and how it swarmed the Imperial Crown, before the room exploded.
Chapter 12
The court room exploded. The roof fell in and the floor burst upward. But it wasn’t masonry that hit me. It was Ivan.
His fist, holding the Imperial Crown, hit my jaw and I saw stars.
When my vision focused again, we were outside the Imperial Palace and Ivan was shoving me into a bubble car. “H-how?”
“Every security sy
stem has its weaknesses. I hired someone to set the explosives in place months ago, before I even attempted the first theft of the Imperial Crown.” He closed me inside the bubble car, set its destination for the space dock, and concentrated on returning the two loose rubies to their rhodium setting.
Around our car, absolute chaos reigned. The Meitj had spent so long in calm control of their environment, that the destruction of part of their palace, the part containing their Emperor, had caused absolute disarray. Kicking an anthill would have much the same effect.
Unfortunately, my brain was in a similar state, and I couldn’t collect my thoughts and energy together for long enough to act. In fact, I blinked in and out of consciousness.
When I opened my eyes again, we were inside the space dock. “Ivan, let me go.”
His grip on my right wrist was like a manacle. “I’m saving you. The Meitj would use you or kill you. They’re collecting shamans, and you’ve proven yourself powerful. The bounty hunter delivered you. Two bounties for the price of one. Grandfather and granddaughter, a matched set.”
“I am not like you.” My jaw hurt from his punch and the pain radiated into my skull, bouncing around in my brain. When I tried to concentrate and reach for sha, bile rose in my throat. By my symptoms, I had a concussion.
“Vulf Trent used you,” Ivan continued furiously as he hauled me along the arm of the dock to where the Orion waited.
I screamed, but nobody in the panicked crowd noticed.
“Sha bubble,” Ivan said. He’d isolated us inside the crowd.
My confused brain couldn’t work out why he was heading for the Orion, but I clung to hope. Ahab would be there. The AI would help me.
Painfully, I turned my head, but there was no Vulf in pursuit, hell-bent on rescuing me.
Dear heaven, what had happened to my stubborn wolf in the explosion?
“Vulf used you, Jaya.” Ivan was trying to ram the notion into me, his voice thundering in waves that rocked through my painfully beating brain. “He used your need for affection, for someone to belong to.”
“You did that.” Did he not see he was accusing himself?
The sha energy that had carried me unobtrusively a hair’s breadth above the ground released me and the soles of my boots landed on the dock with a faint thud, enough to vibrate up my spine and elicit a groan from me.
Why hadn’t anyone noticed that while I moved through the space dock, my legs weren’t working? Surely that anomaly would be noticed by an alert security force and be worth investigating?
But the answer was obvious. The explosion at the Imperial Palace had ruptured the Meitj Guard’s usual efficient system.
Ivan slammed his fist against the communicator button beside the Orion’s hatch. “Let Jaya and me in, or I kill her here.”
I vomited over the dock.
My grandfather yanked me away from the puddle and through the hatchway, into the decontamination unit.
“Jaya requires a medbot,” Ahab’s voice sounded unlike him, unnaturally even; mechanical.
Or was my concussion affecting my hearing? Colors swirled in my vision and everything slid sideways, me included.
“Jaya, wake up,” Ahab whispered to me. “Your grandfather is a devious man. We all underestimated him. He has the code to override a mLa’an artificial intelligence’s command of a starship. I am no longer in charge of the Orion. He is, and I can’t act against him. I can communicate with you because the well-being of guests on the Orion is a programmed priority for me.”
Devious, indeed. Just how long had Ivan been planning his theft of the Meitj Imperial Crown? He’d deduced which bounty hunters would come after him, and the one most likely to succeed, and he’d taken precautions. But why had he bothered to bring me with him?
“He should have categorized me as a prisoner,” I muttered.
Ahab hushed me. “And don’t move.”
I cracked open one eye. My headache and nausea had gone. The Orion’s medbot was effective. “How long?” I barely vocalized the words, although I seemed to be alone in the cargo hold. Strapped into a bunk. My life had turned full circle, only this time it was my grandfather, not Vulf, kidnapping me. “Vulf?”
There was a silence long enough to wake me fully as adrenaline flooded my body in a tsunami of dread.
“Ivan has closed all communication channels. I cannot tell what is happening on Naidoc. Fortunately, Ivan has not ordered that I communicate with him.”
My heart beat strongly in my chest. If Vulf was dead, I’d feel his absence from the world, wouldn’t I? I had to concentrate. I resisted the temptation to reach for sha. Ivan would feel it as soon as I did. I would have only one chance to take him by surprise, and I needed to use it.
“Why aren’t I constrained?” I asked Ahab. It was reckless and against Ivan’s calculating nature to leave me capable of attacking him.
“He set the medbot to sedate you heavily. In his determination to keep you unconscious, he ordered a sedative dose that exceeded recommended levels. As I mentioned, my priority is the Orion’s guests’ well-being.”
“So you woke me early. Clever, Ahab. What is Ivan doing now?”
“That is not the question you should be asking.” Ahab fell silent.
I reran our hurried, whispered conversation in my mind. “If Ivan ordered you to communicate with him, what would you have to tell him that you’re keeping secret.”
“He could be monitoring us,” Ahab said.
I was about to accuse the AI of paranoia, but it did seem that Ivan achieved his goals, albeit in a convoluted fashion. Maybe Ahab’s paranoia was warranted and Ivan had somehow shaped sha to eavesdrop on us.
“We are ninety eight clicks from Naidoc,” Ahab reported.
It meant that the Orion was well clear of Naidoc’s planetary defenses. Ahab’s ability to assist me was severely compromised, and the AI had to act furtively. I would have to rescue myself from Ivan, save the Imperial Crown, and return it to the Meitj—maybe.
The shocker of the Ceph species forty two millennia long stasis spell and what to do about it could confound me later. The immediate question was what would Ahab consider more important than knowing what Ivan did now?
Ahab’s voice was excessively neutral as he said, “The Captain requires an outside entrance to the Orion.”
There was only one person whom Ahab called “Captain”. Vulf was alive! and somehow he was here. My heart slammed into overdrive. Vulf!
I tried to bolt out of the bunk, but the straps held me.
A huffing sound of amusement answered me. I didn’t hear it or feel a breath, but as with sha energy, I still sensed it. And underlying Vulf’s amusement was a profound relief and gratitude.
He ignored my statement of the obvious.
I worked on unbuckling the straps that held me in the bunk.
“What are you doing, Jaya?” Ahab demanded.
“I need to be free. Don’t distract me.” Participating in two conversations at once took concentration. Thank goodness the medbot had dealt with my concussion.
“Jaya, Ivan has seen you’re awake in the video feed.”
“I noticed, Ahab.”
I’m not sure how much of the situation Vulf got from our telepathic connection, but the next second, an automated alarm was blaring an intruder alert. I stopped concentrating on shielding myself from Ivan’s sha assault and battered at him with sha energy.
He seemed stronger. Possibly the Imperial Crown enhanced a shaman’s abilities. I had expected to defeat him in a one-on-one sha battle, but he
blocked about half of my grabs for sha energy streams.
Vulf burst up in human form through the hatch.
I lacked the time to swear. The Orion had defenses and I’d forgotten that Ivan controlled the starship and would use them against us. Hurriedly, I hurled more sha at Ivan, and simultaneously diverted one stream to enclose Vulf and me in a safe atmosphere.
“How the Hades did he get in here?” Ivan’s angry shout carried through the Orion’s communication system.
Ahab was still sneakily helping us. Now we knew that Ivan hadn’t seen Vulf as a robot wolf, neither on Earth nor breaking into the Orion. It would have given us an edge, if Vulf’s robot wolf form could have fitted through the Orion’s doorways and passages.
That was easily answered by identifying where the sha energy concentrated.
Vulf shifted back to robot wolf form. Apparently, he wasn’t keeping it as a secret weapon.
However, when his claws punctured the door between the cargo hold and the recreation cabin, and dragged it screeching from its frame, I understood. He needed his claws.
I also felt Ivan’s concentration stutter, and took the opportunity to block some of the sha energy he held.
In the recreation cabin Vulf shifted into his robot wolf form and snarled his displeasure at my news. The door that led to our cabins and the bridge tore like tissue paper under his claws. The thud of its fall was still echoing when he shifted back to human.
Her Robot Wolf: Gift of Gaia Page 19