Preda's Voice (Guardians of Vaka Book 1)

by Carolyn Gross

  Laney felt disgusted. Linki were practically defenseless. Their main predators had been Vakans. Her parents had told Laney she would only ever see one in illustration in her lifetime. To think there were still some out there that could have been reintroduced into the wild and Macera Vank was eating them was vile.

  Jim whistled quietly under his breath. “What about Percin?” he asked.

  “Percin is loyal to me,” Preda answered.

  Laney was struck then with how brilliant her tribute to Frak had truly been. Whereas Percin might have turned a blind eye to Macera before, he was now indebted to the Vozia.

  Tamron then proceeded to list the information they had obtained from Ukra and the allegedly missing Ceren. Laney couldn’t believe the extent of Macera’s wrongdoings. The woman had been the conductor in a symphony of organized Vakan crime. Many activities she was being implicated in involved blackmail and piracy. Laney wondered why someone as influential as Macera Vank ever needed to involve herself in any of that.

  “All of it seems designed to incriminate the outer islands and keep the focus away from home,” Jim said as if he could read Laney’s thoughts.

  It was brilliant. Macera’s son had seemed obsessed with drawing the council’s attention to the outer islands. If what Tamron said was true, then the smuggling and illegal shipments the council had been concerned about were largely a result of Macera’s manipulations.

  Laney thought about Macera’s carefully controlled face during the last council meeting. What Laney had interpreted as grief over her son’s death might have just as easily been hatred toward Preda and the council. They hadn’t even landed on Vaka, and Preda had already managed to find a powerful political enemy.

  “The missing Ceren are to remain under our protection and custody until we land,” Al said. “No one is to know their whereabouts until we can accumulate enough evidence against Macera to formally accuse her. We have to tread lightly while still on the Feria.”

  Preda nodded resolutely. Laney saw no trace of fear in her face—only determination.

  “Ukra will remain hidden under my care until we land on Vaka,” Preda said. Laney saw the girl look at Preda with gratitude. “Can you think of anything to add, Ukra?”

  Ukra was still nervously wringing her hands under the table as she spoke. “Lady Macera is not going to play by these rules. I believe her goal was to see you dead before we landed.”

  53

  Preda was floating in space and looking at a planet with swirling green water. It hurtled around a bright purple-tinged star. She felt the now-familiar pull toward Vaka, and felt herself falling faster toward it. Pale green clouds whipped past her, and she felt as if she should be on fire as she hurtled toward the planet, but her skin stayed cool. The ocean was full of unfamiliar faces treading water just below the ocean surface. Just as Preda knew it would, the water caught fire right before she hit.

  Preda jolted upright in her bed aboard the Feria and tried desperately to catch her breath. Fiver grumbled beside her and readjusted himself dramatically. Preda could feel cold sweat dripping down her back and decided she should get up and take a shower.

  She swung her feet out of bed and padded to the bathroom on the cold stone floor. Once she passed by the light stone in the walls, it lit almost instantly. Maybe it was just Preda’s imagination, but the light stones seemed to be getting brighter as they approached their home planet.

  She shook her head at the thought and turned on the water. She made it as hot as she could. Before she got in the shower, she caught her reflection in the mirror. It had been four months since she had sat down to dinner with Frak Vank, but the scar on the side of her neck was still the first thing that caught her eye. The second were her eyes.

  Preda had attended and spoken during almost daily council meetings while aboard the ship. Her face had thinned and become simultaneously more alien and elegant, and her eyes had practically started to glow in the dark. The bright green reflected even the softest light. It unsettled Preda, and she tried to avoid mirrors.

  While she showered, she thought about the water planet Vaka. It didn’t surprise Preda that she had had that dream again. It was becoming more frequent now, but she thought it was just the knowledge that the ship was slowing down.

  The Landi reported at the last council meeting that there had been a noticeable shift in the control room. They expected the green planet to come into sight within days. Preda didn’t know whether it would terrify her more if the planet was exactly as she envisioned it or if it wasn’t.

  She was a little earlier than usual when she got out of the shower, but she threw her long black hair back into a ponytail and headed down to the track all the same. She glanced at her bed, and Fiver squinted at her before curling up to go back to sleep. Preda didn’t wish to wake Will for a run. Instead she stole out of her rooms as quietly as she could.

  She had tried to do this a few times over the past week, and Will had always been waiting for her in the corridor to walk her back when she was finished. He always looked amused about it, but she was determined not to bother him if she could help it.

  After all, they hadn’t even seen Macera leave her rooms for months, and no one else on the ship had received any threats. Macera seemed content to wait until they landed to resume whatever machinations she was involved with. As far as Preda was concerned, that was all right by her.

  Ukra seemed less convinced, though. The girl was a nervous wreck and had grown obsessive about Preda’s safety over the past couple of months. It was unnerving.

  The run that morning was perfect. Preda found that her body was made for this. Her training with Jim had made her much more muscular, and the running kept her lean and light on her feet. Not only had her face been changing, but her entire body was transforming on this journey.

  She doubted anyone would recognize the small, timid girl on Earth who had hidden in her clothes. Her thoughts distracted her, and she tripped on her next step but caught herself just in time. As it turned out, no amount of conditioning could make her less clumsy.

  After at least an hour run, Preda decided to use the walk back to her rooms as a cooldown. When she opened the door to the corridor, Will was leaning casually against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He looked as if he had been there the entire time. Preda sighed in dramatic frustration, and Will laughed at her.

  “Bad dream again?” he asked.

  Preda nodded. She was resigned to the fact that her shadow would always be one step ahead of her. “I’m sorry if I woke you,” she said.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said, and he matched her stride down the hall.

  “You know it is. It’s not as if I asked for your permission or had you weigh the pros and cons of this job,” she said.

  It was not the first time she had expressed her guilt for making him her guardian. He smiled a crooked smile at her. “We’ve been through this, Preda. I was born to be your guardian.”

  Just as she was about to retort that he had probably been meant for greater things than being her watchdog, the ship shuddered. Preda was almost thrown into the wall behind her, and Will’s strong arm wrapped around her. Preda found herself pulled against him. When the ship stabilized, she asked, “What was that?”

  “We’ve slowed down,” he said and smiled.

  Preda pulled away, and he quickly let her go. She could have sworn there was a faint tinge of redness creeping up his neck. She shook her head, though, and started running down the corridor to the control room. Will was right on her heels.

  When they entered the control room, the scene was chaotic. Preda couldn’t even spare a glance for the people scrambling around the controls. The screen in front of her was the only thing she could see. The swirling green planet and giant purple star occupied the entire wall. It was exactly as she had envisioned it in her dreams. The green was the exact shade as her eyes. Preda felt sudden
ly disoriented, as if she was falling.

  54

  Will had seen Vaka from space when he left his home planet years earlier, but the vision was no less spectacular. He watched Preda closely while she held on to the back of a chair for balance. He felt her disorientation momentarily pass through him. It was like having double vision. He reached out briefly to steady her, but the feeling had already passed.

  She had woken him up early that morning with a nightmare. Will wished she would tell him what it was, but she always kept quiet about it whenever he asked. He suspected it involved Vaka, because she would occasionally question him about his home planet afterward to change the subject.

  He had followed her at a discreet distance to give her space and waited in the corridor outside. As much as he wanted to run with her, Will suspected she needed to be alone. Oddly enough the Ceren girl Ukra had walked past him this morning with her usual guard trailing her. Will had greeted her, but she had just bowed shyly and walked by.

  Ukra had been nothing but devoted to Preda ever since she had been in her care. Her behavior, however, had been too sycophantic for Will’s comfort over the past few weeks, and there was something about her he couldn’t put his finger on. His urge to follow Ukra had dissipated as soon as Preda entered the hall after finishing her run.

  Will looked at Preda now. She was standing in the control room with tears shining in her green eyes. The similarity between them and the green ocean currents in front of them was uncanny.

  “It’s exactly the same,” she murmured while she gazed at the planet floating on the screen in front of her.

  Will was taken aback. He thought she could only mean the color of her eyes. “The same as what?”

  “My dream,” she said. “Even the purple star.” Then she looked at him and said something that made his blood feel cold. “I’m not going to let it burn, though.”

  Will felt more than saw that she was about to pass out. He grabbed her arm and made her sit down in the chair she had been using for support. Preda smiled weakly up at him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Will wondered what she could have been sorry for—besides terrifying him. Once he was sure she was not going to lose consciousness, he asked the nearest engineer, “How long until we descend?”

  “Hours,” the engineer answered.

  The Feria ran on radiation that it pulled from the surrounding stars. That meant that although the Vakans had control over the final destination, they had little control over anything else. Hence the surprise morning descent.

  Will turned when his father entered the room. Tamron glanced at the screen and then at Preda. He looked at Will. “She OK?”

  “I have a voice, Foxy. I can answer for myself,” Preda said grumpily before Will could reply.

  Tamron laughed. Will had never known his father to have a sense of humor before. When he had first heard Preda’s nickname for him, he could not have been more shocked. Now it seemed as if the older Kait actually embraced it. Still, Will didn’t think he wanted to see what would happen if anyone else tried calling the great Tamron “Foxy.”

  “We need to call the council,” Tamron said after a moment of staring at Vaka.

  Preda nodded in agreement. Will helped her stand and steady herself. She looked back once at Vaka before leaving the control room. Once outside she seemed able to clear her head of whatever had affected her. She smiled at Will and said, “Finally, we’re there.”

  They made their way to the council chamber after stopping briefly for Preda to change. Will was not surprised to see that almost everyone else had already gathered, including Jim and Laney. He noted that the two had become inseparable while aboard the Feria. Although everyone else could see what was between them, it was only a matter of time before they admitted it to themselves.

  Laney looked particularly nervous this morning, and Jim had his hand subconsciously resting on her shoulder in a comforting gesture. Laney’s identity as a human being had not been made public knowledge, and still only a handful of people knew. Although Artem was convinced the water filter would be enough to make her safe, they knew it could never replace the generations of evolution and adaptations humans had undergone to live on Vaka. Will smiled at Laney encouragingly, but her return smile was unconvincing.

  Preda took her customary position at the head of the table and wasted no time in starting. The room felt electric, and everyone fell silent and waited for her to speak. As she often did, Preda made eye contact with Percin before starting. She had recognized his value as an ally, and their trust in each other had grown over the past few months. Despite Percin’s best efforts, Macera avoided him as if he was a Kait. Will thought Percin had aged while on the ship, and he could hardly reconcile him with the man who had left Vaka years before.

  Tamron and Al stepped forward to outline how security would be handled once they landed on the planet. They had been careful not to mention Macera to the remainder of the council, but Will knew she would be closely watched once they had landed. The remainder of the meeting went smoothly. Brief points were brought up and discussed one final time before arrival. Finally the meeting drew to a close.

  “Thank you for meeting with me one last time while aboard the Feria,” Preda said. “I know this has been a longer journey for some than others. I can only hope your faith in me will be rewarded with peace and prosperity on Vaka.”

  It never ceased to amaze Will how Preda knew how to speak with no prior exposure to their politics or culture. She had been born to them and grown apart from them, but she was finally being returned home.

  55

  Preda was relieved when the council meeting ended. The Feria would be descending toward the green planet within the next few hours, and she wanted to watch as the ship hurtled into Vaka’s atmosphere. Will had tried to advise against it—especially after the episode she had just had in the control room after seeing Vaka for the first time. Preda knew her reaction was not motion sickness, though, and she insisted on watching.

  She and Fiver shared a seat in the back of the control room for the descent. She was told it was the same one Will had strapped her into when they left Earth, but Preda had no memory of that. It was chaos in the room now, and Vaka filled the entire screen in front of her as they drew ever closer.

  Amidst the pandemonium, everyone’s actions were perfectly coordinated like in a well-rehearsed dance. It was mesmerizing to watch. Suddenly a countdown began at the corner of the wall, and soon the people in the room stopped moving and strapped themselves in.

  Before long the ship was flying through the outer layers of the atmosphere toward the green planet. The rumbling around Preda grew deafening. Clouds were visible before disappearing behind a curtain of smoke and flames as the outer layers of the ship seemed to catch fire. Once through the atmosphere, the Feria abruptly halted in a jerking motion. The smoke slowly dissipated.

  Preda gasped, and Fiver jumped down off her lap. She fumbled with her straps. She was unable to peel her eyes away from the screen in front of her. The sparkling green oceanic vastness opened before them, and it was unlike anything she had ever imagined.

  Huge plants could be seen sprouting out of the ocean itself. Their enormous root systems were visible beneath the crystal clear water. Currents could be seen driving waves in seemingly random directions. Swaths of ocean flowed in currents toward the ship and ran parallel to pieces that flowed in the opposite direction. The swirling currents created beautiful patterns in the water.

  A flock of flat-headed, white-winged creatures wheeled away from the now slowly moving Feria. To Preda they looked like birds, but they were smooth with no feathers. Their wings spread outward like enormous, thin, white bat wings. One of them opened its jaws to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth before flying away to rejoin the others. The sky itself had a slight purple tinge to it, though it was perfectly clear. As the ship continued to move, a city could be seen on the horizo
n.

  Preda was holding on to a railing in front of her, and she saw Will looking at her out of the corner of her eye while she drank it in. When they neared the shining metallic city in the distance, she could discern that stilts supported the entire monstrous habitat.

  The city sat at least a hundred feet above the waterline on hundreds of these stilts. Evenly spaced towers, taller than anything handcrafted Preda had ever seen, surrounded the island’s perimeter. When the Feria passed between two of these towers, Preda could see a faint glimmer in the air dissipate.

  “That’s an electrical field surrounding the city,” Will said quietly next to her.

  He pointed to the crew members furiously entering codes on the consoles before them. Preda nodded in understanding.

  She looked down as far as the screen would let her and saw that tiny vehicles moved suspended on cables throughout the city. Preda could not see any roads—only cables. Occasionally a free-flying vehicle wove in and out of the cable traffic. The towers rose so high, she couldn’t see the bottoms or tops of them as the Feria passed between.

  “The city has had to build upward,” Will said. “After the Vozia family was attacked, expansion outward became prohibited, to maintain the electrical field.”

  Preda considered how afraid they must have been, for the city to choose to stop all lateral growth. The thought was staggering. She tried to imagine how a Soundless ambush could possibly have occurred on such a scale. Preda would have to remember to learn the details of that invasion in full once off the ship.

  The Feria wove between two tall buildings juxtaposed diagonally, interrupting her thoughts. The vision on the other side of those buildings stole the breath out of Preda’s lungs. The word “palace” was not an accurate description for what stood before her. The entire structure was a spiraling and twisting briar patch of red stone, a work of art that sat on the very edge of the city with the purple sun rising behind it.