Ria's Visions (Hearts of ICARUS Book 6)

by Laura Jo Phillips

  “I understand what you mean,” Ria said. “Clan males do the same thing sometimes. It’s called a blood rage.”

  “Yes, that is a good description.”

  “I apologize for interrupting, Star.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Lonato stepped up to lead the pack.”

  “Yes, thank you. As the only surviving daughter of the alpha, he wanted me to be his mate. My mother approved the match and though I was hesitant, it was my duty to the pack. If I had refused, there would have been dissension.”

  “Did you like him?”

  “Yes, I did,” Star said. “He was patient and smart, leading the pack with cunning enough to avoid the Nomen for many months. He always treated me with kindness. He was overjoyed to learn he would soon be a father.”

  “But?”

  “My parents were intended for each other. They were mates to each other’s spirit, or soul as you say. My mother did not survive my father’s death by more than a handful of days. She lost her will to go on without him.

  “I wanted what they had. But all the other Brun in existence, or so I believed, had been called to hunt with the Cloud People, and the mate of my spirit was not in our pack. So I took Lonato as my mate instead, and I was not unhappy with that decision. Nor do I regret it.”

  “No, I wouldn’t either, in your place,” Ria said. “Especially since without him, we wouldn’t have these warm little bundles of happiness.”

  “Exactly,” Star said. “You are lucky to know the mates of your soul, and to have them near. It is something all wish for, and few find.” She paused a moment and flicked an ear. “Although, I would not say that if Thorn wasn’t proving to be different than he was when first I met him.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  ***

  Ria had just awakened from a long nap when someone knocked on the door. She glanced toward Star, whose head and ears were up and alert.

  “It’s the Katres.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can smell them.” Ria nodded, realizing she should have guessed as much.

  “Come on in guys,” she called as she pushed the blankets back. The door opened and the men entered with frowns that Ria couldn’t see, but had no trouble feeling. “What’s the matter?”

  “What if that had been someone else at the door?” Tee asked. “Someone like that transport operator.”

  “For one thing, I assume you didn’t program his prints into the door lock,” Ria said, not the least bit upset by their worry. “For another, Star smelled you.”

  “Oh,” Thorn said. “We should have thought of that.”

  Ria nodded her agreement. “I smell food.”

  “At the risk of extreme presumption, we brought dinner for all of us,” Talon said. “If you and Star would prefer to eat alone, we won’t be offended.”

  “I don’t mind in the least,” Ria said. “Star?”

  “I don’t mind either.”

  “Thank you, Star,” Talon said. They moved to the table and began unloading what looked to Ria like two large trays filled with objects that glowed red and yellow with heat.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, then went into the bathroom. When she returned she saw Star lying on a plastic mat spread on the carpet with a large roast in front of her. “Where’d the mat come from?”

  “Star asked for it earlier,” Thorn said. “She was worried about getting food on the carpet.”

  “How’s the food, Star?”

  “Excellent,” Star said, daintily picking up one thick slice. “I feel like a glutton with all the food I’ve been eating the past couple of days, but I cannot seem to help myself.”

  “Please don’t try,” Thorn said. “You have many meals to make up for, and it’s no hardship for us.”

  “Thank you, Thorn.”

  “That reminds me,” Ria said taking the empty chair at the table. She paused to inhale the steam rising from the plate waiting for her. “This smells fantastic. Thanks guys.”

  “You’re welcome, Ria,” Talon said. “What was it you were reminded of?”

  Ria paused a moment, then remembered. “Star and I were discussing exercise. She’s still too weak to waste energy on running, but she’ll get better fast now, and then it’s going to be a problem. I was wondering if she’d be able to run in the Roar Room.”

  “I don’t think so, but she’s certainly welcome to try,” Thorn said as he poured juice into a glass for Ria.

  “Why don’t you think so?”

  “The room is thickly padded and I’m afraid the surface would have too much give for her to run on.”

  “Don’t you guys run on it in your katrenca alter-forms?”

  “We do, but we have claws that dig in to the mats.” He paused, then shrugged. “We’re trying not to do that though, as it’s more difficult to replace the mats way out here, and we only have so many replacements anyway. It’s difficult for us to walk on them in this form, but we’ll take Star in there so she can give it a try.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Ria said, though she was frowning worriedly.

  “Stop worrying,” Talon said. “We’ll come up with something, or we’ll ask Lanok. What of you, Ria?”

  “Since we left Jasan I’ve been trying to regain my skills in tiketa after letting them go while I was in college.”

  “Why’d you let them go?” Tee asked, a question he’d often wondered about.

  “I’m not really sure,” she replied. “It was my first time alone, without Bean, I mean. She chose to go to a different school. For some reason it didn’t feel right to practice tiketa on my own. Probably because I never had. So I began using exercise machines instead.

  “I figured this expedition was a perfect opportunity for me to regain my skills. It’s been a lot more difficult than I expected since I’m so tall now, but I was making good progress until the explosion.”

  The Katres exchanged slightly guilty glances since they already knew that. Talon gave his head a little shake, letting his brothers know there could be no confession. They could not reveal to anyone, not even Ria, that they kept an eye on all three ships from the Hilgaria.

  “Have you been able to exercise since then?” Tee asked since they really didn’t know. They’d watched very little of Ria since learning she was their berezi.

  “No. For the first couple of weeks I couldn’t see at all, and then when I could see in infrared I realized that my sense of balance felt different. I was scheduled to start working with Lanok on the afternoon of the day we found Star. Obviously that didn’t happen, but I have to start in again soon or lose all the hard work I’ve put in already.”

  “I’m not sure that’s wise,” Tee said.

  “I have to do something. I do like to run, and I don’t mind using a treadmill if necessary. But that isn’t enough.”

  “I don’t mean that you shouldn’t train,” Tee said. “I mean only that you shouldn’t try to do something that isn’t natural to your body.”

  “I don’t know anything else, though, and I really don’t want to start over from the beginning again.”

  “You wouldn’t have to start at the beginning. You can take the skills you have from tiketa and apply them in a different way.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure Lanok will. You should discuss the matter with him.”

  Ria nodded. “I will, Tee, thanks.”

  After dinner Talon asked Ria if she’d like to go on a tour of the Hilgaria.

  “I’d love to, but Dr. Jula made me promise not to do much walking.”

  “We know,” Talon said. “We figured we’d carry you.”

  Ria wrinkled her nose, not liking the idea of being carried around the entire ship. Thorn deciphered her conflicting emotions first.

  “How about we take you to the observation deck?” he suggested.

  “I’d like that,” Ria replied. “Will you be okay on your own for a while Star?”

  “Of cou
rse,” Star replied. “I’m going to sleep after I feed the cubs, anyway. Before you leave, would you mind putting some fresh water in that bowl for me?”

  “I’ll do it,” Tee said, going to the bowl near Star’s bathroom door. He picked it up and carried it into Ria’s bathroom.

  “We need to get the engineers to work on a water fountain for Star,” Thorn said. “Something she can fill, drink from, then empty when she’s finished so she can always have fresh water.”

  “I agree,” Talon said. “We’ll memo them later.”

  “You are very generous to think of such things for me,” Star said. “I would say it’s not necessary, but the thought of getting fresh water for myself is too tempting.”

  “That’s certainly understandable,” Tee said, returned the bowl to its place. “Try to remember that we’ve been on these ships for more than five months now. Any new project is welcome. The engineers will be happy to design, build and install whatever you need.”

  “I will remember that,” Star said. “Thank you for the water.”

  “See you later, Star,” Ria said after she finished stacking the dishes on the trays. Then Talon picked her up and they left the room, locking it behind them.

  “It just occurred to me that you can’t see anything through the observation deck windows,” Thorn said. “I apologize for that.”

  “Please don’t,” Ria said. “I already knew that. I just thought it would be a nice place to spend some time together. And oh I can’t believe I’m so stupid!” she ended, startling the men.

  “What’s wrong?” Talon asked.

  “Sorry, it’s just that I haven’t even thought about using the new vision to check for planets with gravity since we found Star.”

  “New vision?” Tee asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I finally find one thing that I can do to make myself somewhat less than useless and I forgot to use it.”

  “You are not useless,” Thorn said a little sharply.

  “Please explain what it is you’re talking about,” Tee said.

  “What do you know about my vision?”

  “Very little,” Talon said. “We know the part of your brain that processes what your eyes see is damaged, and that the nano-bots left behind from the sliver Dr. Jula removed somehow managed to connect together so that you can see, but only in infrared.”

  “That’s mostly right,” she said. “It seems that I can see the whole range of infrared frequencies, plus I’m seeing other things that aren’t visible light but that we assume are other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.”

  “You assume?”

  “Well, once the nano-bots finished doing their bridge building, I was able to see, but there was so much input that I couldn’t sort through it well enough to see anything at all. It was worse than seeing darkness. I thought some of what I was seeing was familiar and after a little while I realized the familiar parts were infrared. So I concentrated on seeing just infrared. It only took a couple of minutes to filter out everything else.”

  “It took only a few minutes?” Thorn asked in surprise. “How is that possible?”

  “I’m used to being able to pick and choose what I let in, and what I block.” Once again the Katres exchanged looks, this time of surprise and pride.

  “Unfortunately,” Ria continued, “it wasn’t so easy after that. I don’t know what microwaves or shortwave radio waves look like, for example, so I can’t picture them in my mind like I did with infrared, which I’d seen before. I don’t know what gamma rays or x-rays or ultraviolet rays look like, either. I just kept working at trying to filter and understand what I was seeing. It took several days, but eventually I saw something else.”

  “Which was what?” Talon asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said with a shrug. “What I saw was a ring of light surrounding a black circle. Vari told me it was something that I saw as light waves being bent by the gravity around that planet we found Star on. I never did find out exactly what the rays I was seeing are called, though. Between that and another person’s ability to see through Blind Sight, we identified it as a Doftle held planet.”

  “Can you see in other modes?” Thorn asked, smiling a little at her careful avoidance of naming Nia. “Ultra-violet, radio waves?”

  “Yes, but again, it’s all jumbled together so that none of it makes sense. The theory is that if I work at it, I’ll be able to separate them, but I haven’t worked on it since we found Star. I’m really upset with myself right now though, because who knows how many planets I’ve missed finding. How many people, or Brun we could have saved.”

  Talon stopped in front of the door to the observation deck and waited for Tee to hit the panel. The door slid open and he carried Ria in, glad to see that the room was empty.

  He set Ria down on a chair, then nodded to Tee who locked the door behind them. “Well, there’s nothing out there now,” Ria said, startling him a little.

  “You just looked for what you saw before?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “But how can I go back and check what we’ve missed?”

  “You can’t,” Talon said. “Ria, there are secrets that we’re unable to share with you, or anyone. I will tell you that this expedition has more than one purpose, which is a secret in itself. The other purpose is critically important.

  “We can’t risk stopping at every Doftle held planet. If we do, the Doftle will eventually figure out we’re here, if they don’t know already, and that’s a risk we can’t take for the safety of the Thousand Worlds.”

  Ria nodded. “I understand, Talon. My parents deal with top secret stuff all the time, so I know how important it is that you keep things to yourself, and why. I’m not the least bit offended by it, and I won’t attempt to get you to tell me anything.”

  “We appreciate your understanding, Kitelle,” Talon said, relieved. “If you see more planets, we’ll mark their location and send the information back to Jasan. If possible, we can try to stop on our way back to aid those we find.”

  “Thanks. What’s a Kitelle?”

  “A particularly sweet kitten,” Talon said.

  “What do you call a not so sweet kitten?”

  “The same thing.”

  “Good, then I’ll never know which one you mean,” she said, smiling. Her head tilted to the side as she looked toward Thorn who stood near the window. “What’s troubling you Thorn?”

  He turned to face her, shook his head a little, then walked over to kneel in front of her. “I find myself enormously torn right now.”

  “Did I do something?”

  “Of course not,” Thorn said, taking her small hand in his. “Has it occurred to you, Ria, that by undergoing the conversion, soul-linking with us, that your normal vision would be returned to you?” She dropped her eyes, an expression of sadness crossing her face before she tried to hide it.

  “It would be a normal question to wonder about,” Thorn said carefully.

  “Really?” she asked, her doubt unmistakable.

  “Of course,” he replied.

  Ria sighed. “The truth is that no, I didn’t think of it. But Vari did. The first day I woke up and asked her if I would always be blind, she said that one day I would find my Rami and the conversion would probably restore my vision.”

  “Why does it make you so sad?” Tee asked.

  “It just seemed like a self-serving thing to do, and it bothered me that she thought so little of me.”

  “Had you told her that you were our berezi?” Thorn asked.

  “No, I told no one,” Ria said. “I’d never treat soul linking with so little respect, though. I hope you know that.”

  “Of course we know that,” Talon said, meaning it.

  “What is it you’re torn about, Thorn?”

  “I was, and am, torn about insulting you.” He looked at Talon and Tee and saw they had no more idea of what he was talking about than Ria. “I want you to link with us, Ria. More than anything, in fact. And I hope that in the process,
your sight is returned to you. But I don’t want you to link with us only to regain your sight. That’s selfish of me.”

  “No, it’s not,” Ria said. “It’s not selfish to be wanted for yourself, rather than something you have or can do. I wonder if it would even work.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Ria said. “The nano-bots in my head aren’t Controller nano-bots, and we know almost nothing about them. One thing I do know is that I won’t be linking my soul to yours to regain normal vision. I want more than that, and I imagine you do, too.”

  “You’re right, we do,” Thorn agreed. “Thank you, Ria.”

  “For what?”

  “For not being offended.”

  “I could say the same to you,” she said, smiling. “Now, not to change the subject, but where are we?”

  “The observation deck,” Tee said, frowning.

  Ria laughed, which made all of them smile. “I mean, where are we in terms of distance from Jasan, or how close are we to Kinah?”

  “By our calculations, and from what Vari has learned from her friend, we’re more than half way,” Talon said.

  “How long have we been traveling now?”

  “Just short of twenty-two weeks,” Thorn replied.

  Ria nodded, then shrugged. “I have to tell you that I really don’t have any idea of how far we have to go, or how long it should take without being able to jump, or even why we can’t just make one jump and be there.”

  “You know about the jumps, though,” Tee said.

  “Yeah, but I never spent a lot of time with Vari and the Dracon-Bats. No one needs a sister hanging around all the time. And I never thought to ask. Is it classified or something?”

  “No,” Talon said. “It’s not like we can keep it secret from everyone, though even we knew nothing of the jumper until after we left Jasan.”

  “Would you like to know more?” Tee asked.

  “Yes, I would, but please keep it really simple. I’m not all that sharp on space or math.”

  “Our best guess from what we know of our galaxy is that Kinah is about eighty thousand light years from the Thousand Worlds. Because we can only jump to points we can confidently expect to be empty, that limits each jump to about 500 light years.”