“Jaya will be guiding the jump with me on the bridge.” Vulf stood and helped me up.
I didn’t need help, but I shared sufficient shifter instincts to seize every chance to enjoy my mate’s touch.
“I won’t interfere,” Alex said, tacitly accepting that he wasn’t invited to the bridge.
The door to the recreation cabin closed behind Vulf and me.
Ahab lowered his voice. “Alex Ballantyne is scared.”
“Of the jump?” I asked. Surely Shaman Justices traversed wormholes all the time?
“No,” Ahab said seriously. “He’s extremely competent, professionally. It’s in his personal life that he’s terrified. I’ll send you what I found on his childhood. In many ways, his is an insecure personality.”
“Ahab!” I buckled myself into the co-pilot’s chair. “You can’t just dig into a person’s past.”
Vulf cleared the viewscreen of the star maps it held and chose a current coordinates display. The wormhole entrance was three minutes away. “Ahab can and does. He’s the best investigator I’ve ever met and Alex matters to you, Jaya, so I asked Ahab to find out all he could about him.”
“Alex ceased to matter years ago,” I said.
Ahab wouldn’t let the issue drop. “He had a worse childhood than you.”
“So?” I gathered sha energy, feeling the uneven surge of it so near the perilous wormhole.
“The only person who ever claimed Alex was his wife Celine. Everyone else…read the report, Jaya.”
Thank goodness the Orion entered the wormhole. Rather than answer Ahab, I concentrated on the sha energy. It flickered and pulsed erratically. “I want to try something different.”
A starship shaman’s role was primarily to ensure a ship’s safe passage through a wormhole. Secondarily, we aimed to speed up the ship’s journey. I intended to do both, although with a slight variation.
“We don’t know what we’re facing on San Juan, and if our plans change, if we’re recalled to Corsairs, we mightn’t reach the Ceph Sector for weeks. I intended to search it for pools of sha energy that I could siphon into a crystal to replace the one Ivan stole and drained.”
Vulf knew all of that, just as he knew that the unexpected result of Ivan’s treachery had been Vulf’s first shift into robot wolf form. It was why, despite having lost five years’ worth of sha energy collection, I couldn’t be completely furious with my grandfather—well, not about the theft of my crystal. I was furious, disappointed and frightened that Ivan had attempted to kill millions of Meitj in his self-appointed crusade to free the Ceph. Not that he could continue his crusade in his current circumstances, stuck in a Meitj prison.
“The thing is—one tick.” I concentrated on the sha energy that suddenly exploded to the Orion’s portside. Elongating the wave of sha energy was easy enough. Then I shaped it into an arc that would weave the force back into the wormhole, strengthening the energetic structure. “Okay. Remember when we followed Ivan into the wormhole and he crashed through the side of it and we followed?”
“Yes,” Vulf said. It wasn’t the kind of experience a person forgot.
“At the Academy we were taught that wormholes could only be entered and exited at either end. Breaking through the sides was considered impossible…and I wouldn’t try it with a wormhole that others used regularly, a normal, stable wormhole.”
“You want to crash the side of this wormhole?”
I crossed my fingers. “Hopefully, not. But I do want to skim the sides of it. I have a theory that wormholes like this one—the perilous, do not enter kind of wormholes—are unstable due to an excess of sha energy. Usually, collecting sha energy means hunting for the condensed pools of sha scattered randomly through the galaxy. But there’s excess sha energy here even if it’s erratic, and I think it’s what is destabilizing the wormhole. So, in theory, when I siphon the excess sha energy into this crystal.” I held up the crystal I’d bought in Indy, the town across the bridge from the Academy. “It will make traversing the wormhole safer.”
Vulf frowned at the crystal, then at me, before he nodded. “Go for it.”
I smiled, not that he could see. He was studying the viewscreen again, his hands on the controls for the starship. “And if it all goes wrong, we have a Shaman Justice onboard to save us.”
He snorted. “Should I pilot the Orion to the side of the wormhole or do you want to?”
“You,” I said. “Take it at an angle and keep moving forward.”
As we neared the side of the wormhole, the sha energy increased. I pulled strands of it toward the crystal as if I pulled on electrical taffy. To my shamanic sight, the sha pulsed with light and otherness, a quality of sha that even shaman-poets couldn’t describe. As the sha energy streamed steadily into the crystal, I diverted a thread of sha energy to dance around the Orion, flickering like fireflies, and to tease Vulf with a phantom kiss.
I laughed, intoxicated with the wild sha energy, but not so lost to it that I couldn’t split my attention to guide the Orion swiftly and safely to the wormhole’s exit.
“We’re out,” Ahab said as the starship emerged into real space.
“Engage autopilot.” Vulf unbuckled his seatbelt and stood. He didn’t help me unbuckle, pirate that he was. Instead, he braced himself with a hand on either side of me, caging me in the co-pilot’s chair, and stole a pulse-pounding kiss.
I dropped the sha crystal and clutched onto him. Fortunately, it was a short distance from the bridge to our cabin, and Vulf proved adept at getting me out of more than my seatbelt.
The second wormhole jump happened after breakfast.
Alex hadn’t questioned me about the sha energy that he had to have sensed flowing to the bridge and my crystal pendant during the first jump. Perhaps it was merely a lack of opportunity.
Vulf and I left our cabin with only a few minutes in which to grab breakfast before we returned to the bridge. I definitely hadn’t had time to read Ahab’s report on Alex. In fact, I decided not to. A person’s past, especially a tragic one, was their own business.
The dedicated, sensible part of me—the good girl who’d trained at the Academy—nagged that I had no such excuse for my failure to have devoted a couple of hours overnight to reading the mediator AI’s various scenarios, all of which apparently included me. However, I ignored the annoying voice of inculcated duty in favor of my more primal inner nature that was smugly sure that spending time with Vulf was the best of all decisions.
My mate was the world to me.
As he skimmed the Orion along the side of the second wormhole, spiraling through it, I siphoned more sha energy into the crystal. By the time we exited the wormhole, I’d have enough to create a couple of portals without tapping any of the sha energy on San Juan, not that I’d need two portals, but it was nice to have some stored sha energy on me, again.
I hummed as the Orion completed a final revolution and spun out of the wormhole. That final jet of speed would bring us to San Juan ahead of time, even with the delay due to my sha energy collecting.
Vulf locked in autopilot and suggested coffee.
“Coffee is always the answer.” I stood up as eagerly as him. “And maybe another bowl of chocolate puffs.”
“Got to keep your strength up,” he agreed. The leer he attempted was hilarious.
“Incoming transmission,” Ahab said as we reached the recreation cabin.
Alex sat at the table, and looked up both at our entrance and Ahab’s disembodied voice.
“From Captain Jekyll of the Stealth,” Ahab continued. Then broadcast the transmission.
“Ahoy, the Orion. Captain Kohia Jekyll—” The woman’s authoritative hail was ruthlessly interrupted.
“Hey, Vulf.”
I recognized his sister Edith’s voice instantly, and yet, Vulf was faster yet. She’d only gotten the “Hey” said and he’d launched himself over the table, knocking out Alex with a jaw-slamming punch.
“O-kay,�
�� Ahab drew out the word. “Next time Alex is onboard and awake, I’ll send transmissions for the Orion privately to your communicator, Vulf.”
“Medbot,” Vulf ordered curtly. “Check he’s okay, then sedate him for an hour. Remind me five minutes before he’s due to wake.”
“Captain Trent?” Captain Jekyll’s cool feminine voice queried.
Jekyll was my father’s name. Was this woman related to me?
“Re-open communications, Ahab,” Vulf said. “Captain Jekyll, why is my sister aboard your ship?”
“Mom and Dad agreed,” Edith said hastily. “Oops. Sorry, Kohia. I forgot again. It’s your transmission.”
“It’s my ship.” But despite the woman’s firm tone, she sounded amused.
Belatedly, I caught up with Vulf’s reasoning. If Edith wasn’t meant to be near enough to San Juan for real-time communication—and San Juan was nowhere near Corsairs—then he didn’t want Alex as a Shaman Justice overhearing the reasons for her presence. If there were to be consequences for Vulf’s assault on Alex, he—we—would deal with them later. His first instinct was to protect his sister, and whoever she was with. I agreed.
“We’re twenty minutes from rendezvousing with you on your current course,” Captain Jekyll said.
The viewscreen in the recreation cabin lit up, a star map showing our current route out from the wormhole to San Juan, and another dot indicating an approaching starship.
“Thanks, Ahab,” I whispered.
“We have matters to discuss,” Captain Jekyll continued. “Your parents and my uncle, Rick Jekyll, sent us to observe San Juan and be in position to provide support if Jaya returned to it. Jaya, if you’re there, I’m your cousin Kohia.”
“My cousin?” I’d never had a cousin. Well, technically, she’d existed before now, but I hadn’t known about her. “Hi.” I felt suddenly shy.
“Hi.” Kohia sounded amused, again.
I got the impression that she was never shy.
“Vulf.” Kohia returned to business. “I have a crew of seven, including your sister. With your permission, I’ll leave them on the Stealth, and Edith and I will cross over to the Orion. Permission to come aboard?”
“I have lots to tell you,” Edith contributed.
Vulf stopped frowning at the robot and medbot currently trundling the unconscious Alex back to his bunk in the converted cargo hold. He looked at me.
“Yes!”
His mouth twitched upward in a hint of a smile. “The coffee’s hot, don’t be long.”
Kohia and Edith laughed before the transmission ended.
“I have to get changed,” I exclaimed, rushing for our cabin. I left a dumbfounded male behind me.
“Why?”
“I’m meeting my cousin!”
Vulf must have muttered a question to Ahab because the AI answered loudly enough for me to hear. “The mysteries of human females are beyond my ken.”
The Stealth proved to be a corvette, small and fast with a design as sleek and evasive as its name.
An ordinary gray utility suit with my most comfortable boots had been fine for travelling to San Juan in, but for meeting a cousin my own age I couldn’t look like a frazzle. Nor could I look as if I was trying too hard.
The compromise was a utility suit in a dark wine-red color with my best boots—no clunky toes, but nicely shaped semi-points—my black hair rebraided and tied off with a silk ribbon and—I’d left no time for make-up! Fortunately, my color was high from excitement. I swiped on some lip gloss and ran out of the cabin, found the recreation cabin empty of both Vulf and Alex, and spun around to run for the bridge.
Vulf was in the process of locking with the Stealth. Of course he’d be on the bridge for that. Ahab could handle the procedure, but Vulf was a captain who took his responsibilities seriously. Nothing big happened on or to his starship without his say so.
He whistled at me as I entered.
“I’m not trying to look sexy,” I said instantly.
“You’re gorgeous.” He held out his hand. When I accepted it, he pulled me onto his lap. “Your cousin isn’t going to reject you. I’ve met Kohia before.”
“What is she like?”
The viewscreen showed the locking procedure. It was almost complete. Edith and Kohia would board in minutes.
“She’s a tiger shifter, about my age. We didn’t go to school together. Her clan lives on Aeaea, the island continent. Lots of jungle. She’s a pirate.”
I twisted around to look at him. “Really?”
“Yep. She specializes in intelligence gathering and swift, targeted strikes. I’d say her starship helps with that. It’s a Jekyll design. One of your father’s.”
I was silent as I processed that.
“We need to greet them.” Vulf slid me off his lap.
They’d be entering on the lower deck, and since the decontamination unit was unlikely to find any reason to halt their entry, we needed to hurry if we were to be there to greet them.
There was a narrow hatch from the bridge dropping down into the engine room beneath, and then, we could weave through that, into the lower deck cargo hold, and so, to greet Edith and Kohia as they exited the decontamination unit.
“Dirt and grease,” I said to Vulf, shaking my head as he approached the hatch.
His cheeks indented at the corners of his mouth the way they did when he suppressed a grin.
I huffed at him and led the way back through our clean living quarters. I checked on Alex without slowing my pace through the cargo hold. He was fine, sleeping in his bunk with a blanket over him.
“Ahab,” Vulf said. “Keep him sedated till Edith is gone, and give me a ten minute warning before he wakes.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
We climbed down to the lower deck and kept going till I nervously faced the entrance.
The reassurance Vulf sent through our mate bond helped. I drew a deeper breath. Then all breath left me as my cousin entered, evaluated her new environment in one all-encompassing scan, then leapt at me.
In any other situation, Vulf would have intercepted an attack on me. Heck, my own shamanic powers would have defended me; at minimum, snapping a shield into place for Kohia to bounce off. But this was my cousin. Unknown and unpredictable, but mine.
She hugged me, and I hugged her back just as tight. I was tall for a woman, taller than Edith, but Kohia matched my height.
Kohia was broader across the shoulders, though; lean and rangy with obvious strength. She had bright red hair, vivid green eyes, and a laugh that broke with a hint of a sob. “We’re a small family. I always wanted a sister.”
Vulf had been right. Kohia wasn’t here to judge me on behalf of the Jekyll family. As far as she was concerned, I was family. And with her, there was none of the tangled old feeling of loss and betrayal (fair or not, given that he hadn’t known I existed) that had accompanied my meeting with my father.
“You’ve got one, Kohia. I never believed I could have a family.” I reached back with one hand, knowing instinctively where Vulf was. “And a brother.” Cousins could be as close as siblings for shifters, especially in the smaller clans.
For a second Kohia studied Vulf.
One day I’d discover what Vulf’s reputation was with the other shifters. Being a lone wolf bounty hunter wasn’t usual for gregarious shifters.
But whatever Vulf’s reputation, Kohia evidently chose to put it aside. Her face with its broad cheekbones and wide mouth broke into a grin. “Oh heck.” She hugged him hard. “A wolf brother. Edith did warn me.”
Edith laughed and I smiled at her, hugging her with an ease I would never have shown before Vulf and his family showed me how simple it could be to love.
Walking back to the recreation cabin, Kohia saw Alex’s unconscious body. She stopped, her hand reaching for the blaster that hung from her belt. “I thought you were alone on the Orion?”
We all stopped.
Vulf frow
ned at her. “Didn’t Cyrus or someone inform you that Alex Ballantyne hitched a ride from Origin?”
“The Shaman Justice?” Edith’s eyes went wide.
Kohia’s gaze snapped back to Alex’s unconscious face. “No. And Cyrus would have reported it if he’d known, which means your passenger arranged for the record of his boarding to be wiped. Out of interest, why is he unconscious?”
“Ahab shared your transmission over the open comm—” I broke off. “Have you met Ahab? He’s a mLa’an AI embedded in the Orion.”
“We met when Edith entered the decontamination unit and greeted me,” Ahab said.
I smiled at Edith, grateful that she’d acknowledged Ahab’s existence. I should have trusted her to. When her dad had welcomed Ahab via communicator to the family, he’d meant it. Ahab belonged to us. Very soon I needed to talk with Ahab about what that meant, to what extent he considered himself one of us, and what he wanted for his future. The conversation would need to include Vulf. The Orion was his, but Ahab was embodied in it.
I’d been selfish and focused on my happiness with my new mate, but Ahab needed a happy future, too. Alex had hinted at the issue during our breakfast on San Juan: the galaxy’s artificial intelligences were approaching full citizenship. Decisions Vulf, Ahab and I made would partly shape how that citizenship negotiation evolved.
But right now, we had more immediate concerns. “Vulf punched Alex, knocking him unconscious so that he didn’t overhear whatever Edith had to say, or be awake for whatever brought you here to meet us. Taking a shaman by surprise is the best way to overpower one of us.”
“I thought I was reckless.” Kohia shook her head. “You hit a Shaman Justice, wolf.”
“He was Jaya’s foster father till he abandoned her at the age of eight.” Abandoned had a growl to it in Vulf’s deep voice.
Kohia contemplated that answer. “When he’s awake, I’ll kick him.”
Ooo-kay. Since Vulf had ordered that Alex remain sedated till Edith was off the Orion, I decided not to protest Kohia’s promise.
We sat down at the table in the recreation cabin with coffee and cookies. By her roaming gaze, Kohia was interested in the Orion and its conversion to human needs from its original mLa’an design, but she focused on what had brought her and Edith here. And when she looked at me she smiled. “Uncle Rick sent us to kick some ass.”
Cosmic Catalyst (Shamans & Shifters Space Opera Book 2) Page 11