“Agreed.”
“If you have ideas how to accomplish this mission, you’ll talk them over with one of my officers or me and get permission before you proceed.”
“Sure.”
“All right. You can bunk down with—”
“Me,” Dora volunteered. She’d always enjoyed Kirek, and she needed a distraction from thinking about Zical. Besides Ranth, she had the best all-around education and could help the boy along in his studies better than anyone. She was the logical choice to be a substitute mom and actually looked forward to the challenge.
“Do you know anything about children?” Zical asked, his eyes lasering in on her with sudden intensity.
Was he questioning her capability or her humanity? Either way, she didn’t appreciate his hesitation, sure that he wouldn’t have interrogated anyone else in the crew with such doubt. Raising her chin, she dared him to contradict her. “What I don’t know, I can learn.”
Dora wanted to rub her pounding temple, close her eyes against the streaking stars, and let her stomach settle. As if her body didn’t have enough to deal with adjusting to hyperspace, her arm spasmed and to stop the spasm, she had to grab her wrist with her other hand. All the while, she held Zical’s fierce glare.
She suspected he had more to say to her, but he didn’t get the chance. They were supposed to remain in hyperspace much longer, but suddenly the drive cut out, the ship lurched and shuddered, dumping them into normal space.
When Dora regained her balance, she motioned for Kirek to join her. Zical’s attention turned to his crew and instrumentation. “What happened?”
“The engine’s fail-safe device overreacted to the hull’s external heat,” Cyn reported.
“Where are we?”
“Near Rigel Five.”
“Preparing to jump back into hyperspace,” Vax said. Webbing dropped, and this time Dora made sure that Kirek was webbed in before she secured herself.
“Get us back in the groove,” Zical ordered. The drive hummed, and normal space once again disappeared. “How much velocity did we lose?” Zical asked.
Before he received an answer, the Verazen again plopped into normal space.
“Stars!” Zical checked the monitors. “Now what’s wrong?”
“We’re undergoing spatial interference that our scanners cannot identify,” Ranth said. “I’m working to modify our deflector shields.”
“Are we under attack?” Zical asked.
“Sensor readings aren’t picking up any ships within weapons’ range.”
But they didn’t know much about the races who lived in this part of the galaxy or what kind of technology they might have. Perhaps they had powerful weapons that covered much larger distances. Every second of delay was serious. As the ship traveled through normal space, they lost critical speed that they could never make up again, adding time to their journey.
“We’re at a crossroads,” Kirek told them, his face scrunched up, his little body trembling with eery intensity. “If we attempt to return to hyperspace, we’ll fail.”
“If we stay in normal space, we’ll fail.” Zical disagreed with the child, but not unkindly. “Unless we use the ship’s hyperdrive, it’ll take centuries to reach the galaxy’s rim.”
“There is another … path. You will find it.”
“Can you be a little more specific?” Zical asked, but the boy’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he collapsed.
The webbing held him in place until Dora rushed over to untangle him. She gathered him into her arms and carried him off the bridge, wondering what Zical would choose to do, but confident in his abilities. “I’ll take him to the medical bay.”
Dora didn’t bother to ask Ranth to tap her into the discussion on the bridge. Her head ached, and she was worried over Kirek. For the moment they remained in normal space, and she was glad.
The child’s statement couldn’t be ignored, even if they didn’t understand his meaning. The circumstances of his birth and his development were unique. Before they risked their lives in hyperspace again, she wanted to speak to Kirek, but when the child returned to consciousness, he insisted on going to her quarters, claiming he only needed to rest instead of visiting the medical bay.
“Ranth?” Dora used her psi to float down a level to her quarters.
“All Kirek’s vital signs have returned to normal.”
“Okay.” She carried the boy into her cabin. While space on a starship was always at a premium, her quarters had a small living area with a food materializer and a sleep room. However, she was reluctant to put him down. She’d never held a child before and marveled at the protective feelings that touching him brought out. His skin was softer than an adult’s, and he smelled sweet. His breath on her neck and his arms over her shoulders made her want to hold him tight; however, he was already squirming for her to let him loose.
She placed Kirek near a viewscreen, figuring the starscape might comfort the boy. “Kirek, those things you said on the bridge—”
His big blue eyes looked at her sadly. “You don’t believe me?”
“How do you know that we mustn’t return to hyperspace? Not that I’m complaining. It gave me a terrible headache.”
“My mom says to drink extra liquids for a headache. Water is best.”
Kirek sounded as if he missed his mother already. Dora stroked his forehead and cuddled him. “I’ll get a drink in a minute.” Then she waited for him to answer her question.
“Sometimes our future comes to me.”
Was Kirek clairvoyant? Throughout history people had claimed to see the future. On Earth, over a thousand years before World War II and Hitler, Nostradamus had claimed a man called Hisler would start a great war. He was off by one letter. On Zenon, a Zenonite by the name Yulandros predicted the rise of the Federation before the Zenonites had rocketed to their moon. Others had correctly foretold great disasters, predicted inventions that others wouldn’t create for hundreds of years. But did that make them prophets or good guessers?
“Do the visions come to you in a dream?” Dora asked.
He shook his head. “Never when I’m sleeping. Things just pop into my head when I’m awake—like a holovid, but I rarely get the beginning or the ending, only a small piece.”
“What kinds of things do you see?”
Kirek crossed his legs under him and floated by the starscape, staring at the unfamiliar view, but she had the feeling he was looking inside himself, rather than outward. “I see an alternate future.”
“You don’t see our future, but an alternate one?”
He sighed, his eyes closing with weariness. “That depends on the choices we make.”
She didn’t like pressing him when he was so exhausted, but she knew Zical would want answers. “Can you be a little more specific?”
“I saw what would happen if we stayed on our original course, but not what will happen if we take a different turn.”
“And if we go back into hyperspace?”
“We will all die.”
“How do you know that this will happen now and not in the future?”
“It’s a … feeling.”
“These feelings are always correct?”
“I don’t know. If we turn from the path and avert disaster, how do I know what would have happened if we stayed the other course?”
“How certain are you of these feelings?”
“When you are hungry, you know it, yes?”
She nodded, pleased that she understood the concept of hunger on more than an intellectual level. If she forgot to eat, a hollowness in her belly reminded her and if she ignored her body’s need for nourishment, the ache turned into severe discomfort. Tasty foods had always been close by, so she thought of the hunger/feeding cycle as one of the pleasures of being human.
“This feeling is not the same as hunger,” Kirek said, “but I recognize it as strong and clear.”
“Thank you for telling me. You sleep now.” Her last statement was unnecessary. The ex
perience clearly exhausted him, and Kirek was already asleep.
Chapter Ten
NO LONGER WEBBED in on the bridge, Zical was free to pace while his crew worked to figure out what was wrong with the hyperdrive. Meanwhile, he needed to send back a report on the ship’s status to Kahn and Tessa and to explain Kirek’s prognostication, a prediction that could delay their journey to the galactic rim by centuries.
Zical didn’t know whether he believed in prophecy, but he had been part of a healing circle when Kirek’s mother had been pregnant with the boy. Even before his birth, Kirek had demonstrated a psi like no other. When he’d added his psi to the rest of the family’s powers, his dominant energy force had helped save both Tessa’s and Kahn’s lives. So Zical didn’t discount the boy’s words, but wished he could make a decision on whether or not to return to hyperspace based on science. Eager to hear what Dora might have learned from further conversation with the boy, he put off his report to Mystique.
“Purple alert.” Ranth’s voice resonated throughout the bridge. Warning lights blinked. “Purple ale—”
In mid-warning Ranth’s voice went silent.
“What’s wrong?” Zical spun, his gaze searching the monitors. He saw nothing on the viewscreen to warrant a warning. No ships in regular space. No ships coming out of hyperspace, either.
Ranth remained silent. Then every monitor on the bridge died. Every light, every hum, every vibration ceased as if some space creature had wrapped them in an invisible net and smothered their machines.
“Status?” Zical snapped.
“Hyperdrive is down,” Vax reported. “Ranth is down. Shields aren’t functioning. Weapons are offline.”
Shannon let out a sharp scream. Zical glanced her way to see that she’d careened into the ceiling and was scrambling for a handhold. Naked.
All of them were naked, their suits shedding from their bodies like old snakeskin. Shapeless, the suits floated around the bridge.
“What in Stars is going on?” Zical asked more concerned over the ship than his modesty. Never in Federation history had the Perceptive Ones’ suits been known to break. For them to fail all at once was not only bizarre, but life threatening.
Vax frowned. “Our suits have been deactivated along with the ship.”
Weightless, not from the null-grav in his suit, but from the effects of deep space, Zical tried to adjust to the differences. With his suit he employed psi to activate null-grav, now he had to use his muscles instead. The adjustment wasn’t easy. He either overcompensated or under-reached and finally held firmly to a console to steady his position.
Shannon’s voice pitched high. “Don’t look at me. Don’t—”
“Life support?” Zical kept his voice calm, knowing his crew would imitate his demeanor, but the sinking feeling in his gut warned him their difficulties were only beginning. Starships were equipped for humans with suits and psi abilities, the decks connected by vertical tubes that his crew traversed by employing the null-grav in their suits. Now they would have to use muscles to navigate, and their movements would be slow and ungainly compared to using their psi.
Worse, without suits to protect them from the pressure differences, solar radiation, and lack of oxygen, they couldn’t survive for long if life support went down with the other systems. They couldn’t even leave the ship to make external repairs.
At the sound of dripping liquid on the deck, Zical realized they had other problems, too. The suits not only expanded their lifetimes tenfold, clothed them and protected them from harsh temperature and pressure differentials, and filtered the air they breathed, the suits kept them clean and absorbed bodily wastes. Since there had never been a suit failure in recorded Federation history, and since every citizen wore a suit from birth until death, no starship contained waste or bathing facilities. Shannon was trying to cover her breasts with her hands, her face flushed bright red. His crew tried not to look at one another.
“What’s the status of life support?” he asked.
Vax stood and carefully raised his hand to an air vent. “Air circulation appears operational. I can’t be certain with Ranth and our monitors down.”
“Do we have any other functioning equipment on this ship?” Zical asked.
The ship shuddered, and he tightened his hold on the console in order to stay on his feet. His crew hadn’t adjusted so quickly. They’d automatically relied on their psi to compensate, psi that didn’t work without suits, and some crew members ended up floating from their stations.
Vax grunted and kicked off the wall to return to Zical’s side. “Captain, there’s a ship off the starboard bow. She’s towing us with a tractor beam.”
Zical stared out the viewscreen, gazing at the tiny ship. What kind of technology did the alien ship employ to render them so helpless? Who was manning that ship, and where were they taking them? “Since there’s been no communication, we have to assume their intentions are hostile. Vax, find a way to break us free.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Cyn, assign a team to rig a place for us to void our wastes.” He wrinkled his nose. “Someplace not on the bridge. Put another team to work on the food materializers.” Zical turned to Shannon. “Since communications are down, Dr. Laduna’s scientists must be frantic with worry. You and Cyn make your way to their deck and tell them we’re working on the problems and that their cooperation is necessary. Assign them some task to keep them busy. Then, Cyn get on the engines. I want to know why they aren’t working.”
“Aye, sir.”
The green-skinned engineer had taken to nudity the way a gilfish took to flight. Zical recalled that the women from Scartar rarely wore clothing except for ceremonial purposes. However, she was not pleased with her orders. Cyn didn’t like the Jarn scientist and avoided Dr. Laduna whenever possible, but didn’t protest her assignment.
“Hello, the bridge.” A female voice echoed up the tube.
Zical leaned over to see Dora standing down a deck, her face turned upward.
“Catch.” She tossed him a rope but her throw fell short.
While she tugged in the rope and rewound it for another try, he peered down at her and tried not to stare, pleased she was already working out a solution to one of their problems. “Where did you get that?”
“One of Dr. Laduna’s scientists was in the cargo bay when our systems went down. He and the scientists are rigging ropes between decks all over the ship so we have handholds to help guide us.” She tossed the rope again.
This time he caught the line and tied the end to a hatch handle. Cyn and Shannon used the handhold to slide down, and then Dora climbed up. He held out his hand and helped her maneuver the last two feet. With the ship in jeopardy, now was not the time to notice her body, but damn, she had sexy legs, curvy hips, and her generous breasts … He forced his gaze to meet her eyes. Unlike Shannon, Dora wasn’t the least embarrassed. Instead, she seemed to be waiting for some compliment from him. But he’d be damned if he’d give one about her figure.
“Good work.” He gave a nod toward the line, hoping the rest of his crew would be as adaptable. He had to admit, so far, Dora had been an asset. She’d offered to help out with Kirek, and she had taken initiative with the rope.
With an unknown enemy dragging them who knew where, and all ship functions on the bare minimum, their lives could be at stake, and he tried to focus on the danger. Still, it wasn’t every day that one’s nude fantasy woman floated onto the bridge, and he’d have to be inhuman not to notice.
“Ranth is down.” Zical told her. “Can you communicate with him?”
Dora remained silent for a few moments, her gaze taking in his anatomy with a slight grin that he could have sworn was pleasure. Yet, her voice remained professional. “I’ll try plugging in direct, but I’m not sure what will happen. Ranth is a combination of bio-neuro-circuitry that’s living membrane and tissue and massive amounts of hardware. I suspect the neuro-circuitry, which is mostly organic cellular matter, is alive and well since we seem
unaffected, but the part of him that is machine is nonfunctional like our other systems.”
“Is there any risk to you linking into Ranth?”
Dora shrugged and her breasts lifted. “Life is a risk. This mission is one giant risk.” She glanced down the tube where Cyn had already disappeared. “I’ll have to return to my quarters for the hardware to plug in.”
“Hold on.” Zical stopped his natural inclination to grab her shoulder. He didn’t need the added distraction of touching her lush skin. Her flesh, bronzed and firm and tight, glowed with vitality. Her magnificent breasts would make any man’s breath hitch in his chest. Those legs … Stars … No woman should have that many gorgeous parts. Only an occasional muscle spasm marred her perfection. But it was her offer to risk her safety for their welfare that stunned him and made him think that she was growing into a woman he’d like to know better. He’d always found Dora a beautiful woman—but that was because she’d made certain to form her body to his preferences. Now she was developing into the kind of woman he could admire.
She was developing courage, and he was pleased by her bravery on many levels. Still, he worried about losing not just a friend, but a valuable crew woman, and her offer to link upset him. “If you link with Ranth, what will happen to you?”
“I don’t know.”
He admired that although her shoulder twitched, she looked him straight in the eyes. “Please elaborate.”
“If Ranth’s dead, injured, or insane, the link may simply not work.”
“But, if it does work?”
“Communication may or may not be normal.”
“I meant if he’s damaged and the link works, could your brain be fried?”
“Possibly, but it’s a risk we must take. We’re prisoners. We have to escape.”
Zical wanted to order her to forget the idea, but of course, he couldn’t—not when the lives of everyone on board might be at stake. To continue their mission, he needed their ship’s computer, but he prayed Dora wouldn’t be harmed by her effort. “Get the plug. But don’t tap in yet. First, I want to evaluate other options.”
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