Last Ship Off Polaris-G: A Central Galactic Concordance Novella

by Carol Van Natta

  After ten minutes of steady, quiet operation in transit and no system alerts anywhere, Gavril relaxed his vigilance enough to make an announcement to the crew. “You can unseal exosuits. All hands to the galley in fifteen minutes.”

  The Diamantov’s newly remodeled galley strained to hold fifteen people, four purebred Thunderbolt shepherds, and one muscular, bobtailed, tufted-eared cat that kept pouncing on the cleaning bots. Gavril deliberately activated his talent long enough to make sure everyone was all right. Youssef was tightly contained, probably a result of dealing with the passengers. Anitra was the usual oasis of nothingness, but she smiled and gave him a slight nod of approval. Lizet kept her head down, refusing to look at anyone, but her colors were more wary than afraid.

  “I’ll want to hear about the passengers in a minute, but first, we have to talk about where we’re going.” He started to shove his hands in his pockets, but the exosuit didn’t have any. He settled for hooking his thumbs through the tool loops. “I probably shouldn’t have tweaked Space Div’s noses with my last comm, but I’ll bet my share of the onboard ale that they ordered a squadron to meet us at J’Letha the moment I sent our itinerary. Which is why I propose to bend transit space and send us to Sivari Intalo.”

  Lizet looked up, startled. “We can do that?”

  “Yes, dear.” Sinjin, Lizet’s elder, patted her hand. “It’s why he had you keep the thirty-percent reserve of flux in your nav plots.”

  Gavril nodded. “No matter how well we schedule our limited resources, it’ll mean eight increasingly uncomfortable days for our passengers. Those of you who have spent time with them, tell me now if you think they can’t handle it.”

  Elongo spoke first. “Twelve have already told me about health issues, and I’d put another thirty or so on the watch list, mostly for addictions. With four thousand people, we’re guaranteed to have more. The good news is we have five trained healers in the group who volunteered their services. Not everyone will agree to be treated by a minder, but that’s their problem.”

  Youssef stood up from her slouch against the restaurant-sized cold box. “For those of you who don’t know, I’m a sifter and a low-level telepath. No one’s feeling violent right now, but that’ll change once they get sick of mealpacks and sick of their neighbors, with no way to blow off steam. We need an exercise room and maybe a sparring arena. We’ll also need some isolated spaces for people who can’t handle crowds.” She frowned. “The Citizen Protection Service’s official line is that fifteen percent of the galaxy’s population are minders, but anyone in law enforcement knows it’s more like thirty or forty percent. And even higher on Polaris-G, because word got around that they told the CPS to bugger off. When tempers flare, it’s easy to blame minders for any trouble.” She crossed her arms. “I can usually tell who’s a minder and who isn’t, but I won’t have any part of treating minders differently from non-minders. That separate-justice, assumption-of-guilt bullshit is why my family moved out of the Concordance to the frontier in the first place.”

  Gavril felt some threads of discomfort arise in some of the crew, but no one seemed outraged, or even challenged, by Youssef’s declaration. It probably helped that they’d hired the crew from personal referrals, rather than out of the spaceport job lists. He turned to look at Anitra when she cleared her throat.

  “I’m a shielder and a low-level empath… and an illusionist. I was CPS-trained as a crowd-control specialist, but I like teaching better. If we have minders who are just coming into their talents and don’t know what’s happening, I can help. The mood of the passengers is surprisingly good, considering they were royally screwed by people they trusted, then shoved onto glorified bread racks in five freighter holds.” She waved toward Youssef. “Salma is right about needing more space for quiet time and exercise. We’ll need a playroom, too. Nothing like cranky kids to give everyone in hearing distance a headache.”

  “Our dogs can help,” offered Sinjin. “We breed them for companionship. They’re good for calming people down and playing with the children.”

  Cargo Handler Y’Nah raised a hand. “If we ask for volunteers, I bet we get more help to fix up more holds. Give ’em room to spread out.” Her unidentifiable polyglot accent suggested a childhood on the mean streets of an old city. Most older planets in the Concordance had at least one. “Give ’em something to do ’sides count the bulkhead seams. Settlers ain’t good at sitting on their asses.”

  Anitra snapped her fingers. “We’ve still got that flat storage area full of bond paints that were used to paint the monster airlock. I could teach art classes. If we can make the little holds habitable first, we could ask for volunteer teachers in other subjects, too.”

  “We need an activity director, or it’ll be chaos,” said Elongo. “Can’t be any of us. We’ve got a ship to run.”

  Gavril nodded. “Let’s ask the passengers for volunteers. We should tell them what’s happening, too. We don’t want to be like the shithead city managers who lied to them.”

  They spent another twenty minutes making shift schedules for duties, meals, and sleeping, and making a prioritized list of habitation projects. As individual crew members, they had very little in common except their shared history on Polaris-G and a shared purpose of escaping it, but it seemed to be enough to make them into a team.

  “Come on, Lizet, and I’ll teach you how to bend space.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Don’t tell your parents who taught you. I like living.”

  Sinjin and his husband Maruk laughed. “We’re old and deaf,” said Sinjin. “We didn’t hear anything.”

  “Eh?” said Maruk.

  Lizet giggled.

  Eight hours later, Gavril found Anitra in their shared quarters, reading her tablet and serving as snuggle pad for a couple of the two-week-old kittens from the open yellow habitat that took up half her bed. The kittens’ eyes had just opened the day before, but they were still wobbly, warmth-seeking bundles of spotted brown fur with striped heads. She wore shorts and a loose, paint-spattered top, and looked more comfortable and relaxed than he’d seen her in weeks. She gave him a wide smile when he came in. “Is Lizet now an honorary member of the pirate clan?”

  Gavril chuckled. “Yeah, she’s in bliss. I just know the technique. She’s trying to work out the math for it.”

  “Good. I get the impression she hasn’t been allowed to shine.”

  He took off his coat and hung it by the door. “Where did you put your exosuit?” He waved his hand over the control that unfolded his bed.

  “Fresher.” She tilted her chin toward the sliding door. “I installed extra hooks, in case you wanted to air yours out for a bit. Mine got pretty rank, and I only wore it for a few hours. I ran its cleaning cycle.”

  He looked down at his waist, where his belt kept his suit half on, hanging down the back. “As the on-call pilot, I should wear it at all times, but to hell with it. I don’t want people to smell me coming down the hall.”

  He pulled off the exosuit and found the cleaning controls, then carried it to the fresher and put it on the hook next to Anitra’s. Seeing the tiny built-in clothes sanitizer inspired him to strip off his sweaty pants, shirt, and underwear and put them in it. He stepped into the chemical mist shower and rubbed himself down. As captain, he could have exempted himself from the no-water-for-showers rule, but he wasn’t better than anyone else, just lucky to be the person Anitra thought of when she found the ship.

  He wrapped a towel around his hips and went back to his bed and sat. Without the stim drugs, he should be dead on his feet, but he still felt wide awake. He wasn’t used to sharing a room, either. He cautiously sent a thread of talent toward Anitra. He encountered her shields, as expected, but they seemed more porous than usual, with shades of emotion almost visible. A mix of inspiration and worry, maybe. “What are you reading?”

  “Recipes.” She made a holo of a pot of stew appear. “We don’t have a stasis box, so the fresh fruits and vegetables Ferrsi gave us will only last a week
in the cold box. They’ll last longer if I cook them into things now and freeze them for later.”

  One of the kittens on her lap began to mew piteously, so she put both of them back in the habitat, then gave the mother cat soft strokes and murmured praise as she checked the habitat’s food and water supplies.

  “You don’t mind cooking for the crew?” She’d volunteered during the first meeting and had already cooked two meals and made a variety of snacks.

  “I like being useful, and to use Salma’s phrase, I don’t know jack about running a ship.” She sat on her bed again, next to her tablet. “That reminds me. How hard would it be to change the name of the ship?”

  “Middling hard. The name is easy, because that’s just a convenience, but the unique registration ID is squirreled away everywhere. Lizet knows the shipcomp better than I do.”

  “Salma and I think it might help us slip under the scanners before the CPS at Sivari Intalo notices. Since your bend-space trick means we can’t drop into realspace to pick up comms packet updates, we’re flying in blind. A lot can happen in eight transit days.”

  “Good point.” He should have thought of it himself. Maybe he wasn’t as alert as he imagined. He dropped his chin to his chest to stretch out his neck muscles. He needed a massage.

  “I’m going to need a new name, too.”

  Her words were matter of fact, but a thread of forlorn dull green leaked from her shields. He looked up. “Because of the phony detain warrant for you on Pol-G?”

  “Yeah, that, plus… ” She sighed. “Once upon a time, an idealistic young woman with multiple minder talents graduated from the prestigious CPS Minder Institute and was proud to accept what she thought was a needed-service job with the CPS Minder Corps. She stopped countless people from getting hurt, stopped cities from burning. And when she wasn’t using her talents, she trained others how to use theirs.”

  He cautiously activated more of his talent. Her shields leaked threads of guilt and a deep sense of betrayal. He wanted to comfort her, but was afraid he’d derail her story.

  “She stupidly, stubbornly disbelieved the rumors about what people like her did with their talents, and refused to see the pattern of unfortunate civilian deaths that coincided with her team’s deployments.” She slid a small pillow onto her lap. “This woman fell in love with a man outside the service, but the relationship was strained by his attempts to get her to see the truth. To prove him wrong, she monitored traffic in a key office, sure she’d find nothing. When the facts proved her cohab right, she monitored other comms, convinced it was just one bad apple. It wasn’t.” She toyed with the pillow’s tasseled corner. Her shields were barely containing her sense of loss. Gavril clasped his hands together to keep from reaching for her and distracting her.

  “Long story short, she gave all her evidence to the Office of Internal Investigation and a famous journalist, faked her death, got a makeover, and paid the settlement price on the frontier planet with the least contact with the CPS she could find. It took her three months to recover from enhancement drug withdrawal. The ex-cohab she left behind and the journalist are dead. If the CPS catches her, she will be, too.” She pulled the pillow up and cradled it against her stomach. “So, I need a new name. Again.”

  She shook her head once, then set the pillow aside and squared her shoulders. He felt the indigo-colored resolve brush aside the charcoal threads of loneliness and isolation. He marveled at her strength of will. “I’m keeping you from sleeping, and the ship needs you well-rested.” She pushed to her feet. “I’ll go check on the galley.”

  “Please stay.” Gavril patted the bed beside him, then held out his hand. When she hesitated, he added, “This clever woman I know said empaths like you and me need physical contact.”

  A corner of her mouth lifted in amusement. “Oh, yeah, it’s for our health.”

  “I don’t mean sex. Not that I don’t want you, because I do, every time I see you, but my talent says you’re hurting right now. Let me help.”

  She hesitated a moment more, then put her hand in his. He gently reeled her in to sit beside him, and snuggled her under his arm. He felt her shields thin, but they were still there. He set his containment free to enjoy the muted texture of her emotions and share his. “I’d like to earn your trust again.”

  She turned to look at him. “What are you talking about? I trust you.”

  “Not with my talent, you don’t.” He shook his head. “And you shouldn’t. I don’t trust me, either. I hurt you.”

  “Once, and not maliciously. I hurt you, too, by pushing too hard. You’d learned more in two months than others take years to learn, and I forgot you’re still a beginner.” She slid out from under his arm to face him more fully, taking his hand in hers. “We both hurt and got hurt. Let’s try not to do it to each other again.”

  She put her hand on his towel-covered thigh, and with that, her shields melted away. Her talent and emotions rose to mingle with his. He’d never felt anything like it. She was a compelling, complex tapestry of moving colors and threads, vibrating with an energy he had no words to describe. He held nothing back from her.

  He cradled her face in his hands and kissed her once, then a second time, because she tasted so good. She slid herself into his lap and kissed him back as if she were an explorer on a sensuous expedition. His talent felt her rising passion, and he couldn’t have hidden his body’s response to her if he’d wanted to.

  “You are always,” she said between kisses that trailed along his jaw, “the sexiest man in the room.”

  He chuckled “I’m the only man in the room.” He glided one hand up the contour of her hip to slip under her top and stroke the skin of her stomach. She found his earlobe with her lips. Her soft gasp of pleasure into his ear raised goosebumps on his arms, despite the warmth of their quarters. He reluctantly pulled back to look at her strong, beautiful face. “I didn’t mean to take advantage of you while you’re vulnerable. Sex with you is amazing, but last time, we let it stop us from talking.”

  She flattened her palm on his chest. “What does your talent tell you?”

  “That right now, you want this as much as I do.” He brushed a thumb across her cheek. “But emotions are ephemeral, driven by thought, and I’m no telepath. I don’t want to break your heart, and I don’t want you to break mine.”

  Tears formed in her eyes, and one dropped. Because of their connection, he knew she wasn’t sad or angry. She slid her hand up to his shoulder. “I’ve tried to picture making a quiet living somewhere on Sivari Intalo, but the presence of that CPS base worries me. My shields aren’t strong enough to keep a high-level telepath from discovering the secrets I carry.” She shook her head. “I truly believed the Citizen Protection Service was a good organization, and offered a safe haven for minders in a galaxy that hates us. Now I’m afraid of it.” Threads of betrayal and resentment surfaced in her, then subsided. She wiped away the tear. “What do you want?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You,” he said bluntly. “I was thinking of claiming to be a Pol-G refugee, so Sivari would let me settle with you.”

  That startled her. “But you love your trader career… your ship.”

  “I do, but not as much as I love you.” He brushed her soft hair back off her face. “You knew that from the moment you dropped your shield, but words are important.”

  “Yes, they are.” Another tear fell. “I love you, too.” She gave him a trembling smile. “You may as well get used to the waterworks. I’m a crier.”

  “I don’t mind, as long as you don’t shut me out.” He kissed her forehead. “I know you can’t go around unshielded, but you can still tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’ll try.” She tapped his chin with her finger. “You, too. You liked living alone.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t. I told myself I didn’t like people, but it was just people in crowds I couldn’t handle. I missed having friends.” He sent her a mental caress of love. “I missed you a l
ot after we broke up.”

  She tilted her head, a speculative look on her face.

  He felt the energy of creativity rise to her surface. “You have an idea.”

  “Is the offer to come with you on your ship still open?”

  “Yes, but the trader’s life would be a waste of your considerable skills and experience. And you like people. That’s why I was thinking of becoming a settler.”

  “My first thought about a new career was to become a cook, but now, I’m thinking of becoming a teacher. I’d focus on art classes, but I’d also like to quietly teach people like you to use their minder talents, without involving the CPS.” Her eyes took on the faraway look she got when she was envisioning possibilities. “I have funds… well, anonymous cashflow chips, to buy into your business. We could trade a little, teach a little, and see if we can find a place in the galaxy that suits us.” She twitched an eyebrow at him. “Since my family, such as it is, thinks I’m dead, you can introduce me to the pirate clan side of your family.”

  He chuckled. “I’d have to introduce myself first. My parents split when I was five, and when I was fourteen, we got the news my father had died. My mother gave me his vest, but refused to tell me anything about him or his clan. I romanticized them as a kid.”

  “Understandable. I wanted to be an exploration spacer.” She snorted. “Then I met some of them, and they’re worse than CPS Institute graduates for their sense of entitlement.”

  He kissed her nose. “Even worse than pilots?”

  “Pilots aren’t arrogant, they’re just crazy.” She trailed delicate fingers down his chest. “How long until you have to go back on shift?”

  “Hours.” He tilted up her chin and kissed her until they both were shuddering with desire. “Hours and hours.”

  12

  * Frontier Planet “Sivari Intalo” * GDAT 3233.068 *