Trade Circle: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 3)

by Valerie J Mikles

  “Is it for work?” Amanda asked distastefully, sitting on the stair next to him. The trench coat parted revealing her bare legs and he wondered if she was wearing anything under the coat. There was another garment he wouldn’t ask to be returned when they got to Quin.

  “It’s a walk. You walk. I work,” Tray said, jumping to his feet, suddenly eager to get the task done. He hadn’t talked to Danny about taking Amanda off the ship, but he figured leaving her behind could go just as sideways.

  “My hands smell like ketchup,” Amanda said, looking at her hands.

  “You either come with us or you stay here alone.”

  “I can’t be alone.”

  “Yeah, you’ve been saying that all morning,” Tray said, pacing in a circle. “I promise I won’t work you too hard. There’re gloves over here.”

  Taking her hand, Tray led her across the bay where Saskia had prepared a stack of empty food crates, work gloves, and tools that might be useful for harvesting—files, chisels, and picks. Even the ancient settlers of Aquia had come prepared with basic gardening tools; here he was six hundred years later working the ground with sticks and stones, like a cave dweller on primitive Earth. I used to be a respected businessman. What happened?

  Tray had marked loops for food collection, but Amanda and Hawk were likely to collapse in half a mile or less. There was no way to justify splitting up. Hawk was bundled in a coat that would prove too warm, wincing as he pulled gloves over his scraped knuckles. Despite the fact that Amanda and Sky seemed to have made peace, there was always the chance that Amanda would forget again. This was the team Danny had left him to work with, and Tray couldn’t help but feel like he was being punished for something he’d let slip the other night when he’d passed out talking to Danny. Telling him about Mikayla had been a mistake. Tray had a growing paranoia that she and Danny would conspire to keep his son from him. They both tortured him in their own ways by withholding love.

  “If you want to eat food, you have to haul food,” Tray said snippily, speaking Lanvarian so Amanda would understand. “We can’t take the dolly over this terrain, so we’re going to make several trips. Vociferous whining and complaining are optional and not frowned upon, since I plan to do a fair bit myself.”

  When he finished his speech, he motioned for Sky to translate for Hawk. Add that to the motley tally of for this crew: no common language between Amanda and Hawk. Sky translated loosely and sarcastically. Tray would have laughed if she hadn’t been glowering at him. He could have let the Virp do the translating, but he knew the sarcasm didn’t translate well. Ducking his head, he grabbed a food crate.

  Sky hovered next to Tray’s shoulder as he keyed in the lock for the door. When he turned around, she stood directly in his path, blocking his way. Tray decided there was a significant difference between the way Sky towered over him and the way Danny did; Sky’s way was immensely more terrifying. She had that same superior, but deadly calm look in her eyes that Tray’s father used to get before he’d take off his belt.

  “Leave it at the door, Tray,” she warned.

  Tray squared his shoulders. “You don’t give the orders here.”

  “This can be every man for himself if you want,” Sky said, taking a step back and opening her arms. “You can bicker with Hawk to your heart’s content when we’re inside the ship, but when we set foot on the world, we’re either one team or we’re not. I will kill you to save myself.”

  Tray shifted foot to foot, suddenly struck with the image of his body hanging by the ankles from one of the giant trees he’d stolen bird eggs from. He had a son to get home to. “We are a team.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Sky said, smiling sweetly and skipping off. Tetchily, Tray checked his Virp and pointed left, down the path he wanted everyone to take.

  “Did she try to kill you?” Amanda asked quietly, falling into step next to him, holding her crate over her head like a comical hat.

  “Sky was just giving me some pointers,” Tray said broodingly, putting his own box over his head and peeking out. Amanda giggled. When she was sane, she could be a lot of fun.

  11

  Saskia gripped the edge of her seat in the ‘sled, feeling her stomach somersault as the captain whizzed over the trees and circled the ancient forest. The Bobsled had more dexterity and offered better visibility than Oriana, and since it was utilizing a gravity-matrix to maintain altitude, its power consumption was relatively low. That didn’t make the back seat any more comfortable. Her legs were crammed into channels along the side and it reminded her of a log flume she’d ridden as a child in Quin.

  Rather than scanning the trees, Saskia watched Caldori on the horizon. While it was true they needed food, she knew the captain needed sleep more. He spent his off hours caring for Amanda, and though he never complained, Saskia could see the deep scratches Amanda had left on Danny’s neck and shoulders. She hoped the captain would park them some place quiet and take a nap instead of working.

  “That looks like ruins of an old city,” Saskia said, pointing east where the trees parted in a weird way. It looked less muddy than a streambed and more circular.

  “I see it,” Danny said, turning the ‘sled. The vehicle rolled suddenly and dropped twenty feet before he righted it. They bobbed back and forth as Danny fiddled with the controls. All Saskia could do was close her eyes, grip the arm rails, and pray that he wouldn’t crash this ship too.

  Danny found a rocky spot to set down. The rough terrain left the Bobsled at an odd angle, but once Saskia saw the “city,” she knew why. The clearing that she’d spotted looked like a drainage ditch. Manmade structures that were once walls of buildings were tipped sideways, or sticking out of the mud at odd angles. Scraggly, dried trees stood like a ghost forest, and the branches of older trees were cracked and shredded across the ground. There were puddles of water everywhere and white-caked residue on the rocks surrounding the puddles.

  “It looks like the best stuff got washed away,” Danny said, creek-walking along the rocks and firmer ground. He wove through the mess toward one of the semi-upright structures and searched the ruins.

  Saskia followed more cautiously, frowning when her boot sank in up to the ankle.

  “We should mark this place for future explorers,” Danny said with a broad grin. Saskia gave him a look, but he smiled wanly at her. “Where’s your pioneer spirit?”

  “If I wanted to be an Aquian pioneer, I wouldn’t have signed onto a spaceship,” Saskia said tartly, trying to pick out the path he’d taken. The stones wobbled when she walked on them.

  “I studied history in college,” Danny said, squatting down and pressing against the slanted wall. A piece of the building material broke off in his hand. “Couldn’t explore the Elysian civilization outside of folk legend, but there’s plenty of history on Terrana’s surface. I was working on a dissertation; then I realized the Terranan government was rewriting the past. I . . .”

  “Bought a spaceship,” Saskia finished. She cocked her head, not sure if he’d stopped because of something he saw or something he remembered.

  Danny cleared his throat, his attention caught on a stone tablet propped up where the trees began overtaking the city. “The Patriots needed a way to Quin and as an Aquian native, I was one of the few permitted through the spaceport during the Lazaret.”

  “Is that what historians are calling it?” Saskia asked. She’d never heard the term, but she knew Danny was talking about the five years immediately following the Revolution when Terrana went into isolation.

  “What do you call it?” Danny asked. Saskia shrugged. Danny stepped carefully through the mud to the stone tablet. It stood about three feet tall and leaned to one side.

  “Does it say which way the cafeteria is?” Saskia asked, squatting on the first stable rock she could find. After working with him for so long, Saskia thought she knew him pretty well, but she’d never seen him play the part of pioneer before. He glowed with almost child-like exuberance.

  “It’s an ol
der form of Lanvarian and some other languages I don’t know,” he said. “Warning.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Saskia said, standing again.

  Danny frowned, studying the words. “Build . . . No. Don’t build here. Graveyard? Ancestors . . . Consumed by demons.” Sighing, he took a picture of the inscription on his Virp and studied the ruins again. “It seems to be some kind of fable about this village and how it was destroyed. Fascinating. They left it in stone, like it’s some kind of tourist attraction. I wonder how old this place is.”

  “Do you smell that?” Saskia asked, wrinkling her nose. The scent had been there from the start, but now the wind seemed to be intensifying it.

  “I don’t smell anything,” Danny said, wiping the mud away from one of the walls, hoping to uncover clues about the ancient structure.

  Saskia dipped her fingers in the mud and then sniffed. It smelled like a compost pile. “There’s nothing we can use here, Captain,” she said, wiping her fingers clean.

  “Fine. Let’s go find some weird apples,” Danny sighed, wiping his hands on his pants and taking a few more pictures. “I should’ve brought Tray.”

  The forest had grown thick while the Drava were away, and the “clearing” by the river where they normally camped had all but filled in. Their tents were interspersed with saplings, but the dell that served to mark the Drava territory was still the safest place to be. Every season, it seemed the tribes came back here sooner, fighting to claim first harvest because there was not enough food to go around.

  By the time Sidney had walked his daughter back to the Drava camp, the morning meal had been cleared from the mess tent. He was famished, but too wound up to think about what to eat. Ripping at the cords that kept his Trade robe cinched, Sidney stalked to his tent, shouldering his way through the door flap and getting tangled in the fabric. Cursing, Sidney sloughed off his robe and tossed it aside.

  “Sid!” Caira cried, swatting as the garment fell over her face. Sidney swore again.

  “What are you doing here?” Sidney demanded, snatching the robe from her, wadding it up, and tossing it in the corner. Caira was a seductive, curvy huntress with light brown skin and soft fingers.

  “You let yourself into my tent, but I can’t let myself into yours,” Caira sang, sashaying across the room, picking up his robe, and folding it neatly. They’d become bedmates after her primary husband was accidentally killed by a Dioda hunter. “Do you want me to leave?” she asked coyly, leaning close enough so that he could feel her hot breath on his ear. He felt his body shudder in response to her closeness, but he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.

  “Caira . . . I didn’t mean . . . I mean . . .”

  “Oh,” she said, taking a step back. “The Nayak want blood.”

  “Chanti, this time,” Sidney said, scratching the sides of his face. “Trading children. Children! It’s bad enough interning secondaries, but at least then you’re negotiating adult to adult.”

  Caira shook her head and crossed her arms, her shoulders rising with her discomfort. “Someone out there is saying yes, or people would have stopped asking long ago.”

  “The Nayak collect more children than food,” Sidney ranted. “Half of their under-ten population doesn’t speak their dialect.”

  “But if we intervene, we start a war,” she said, her finger tracing a long battle scar that went from her shoulder to her elbow.

  “Isn’t it worth it?”

  “Every child they’ve traded has bought them an ally that we do not have,” Caira said.

  “Then we ally ourselves with this new tribe!”

  “How do you know they’re any better?”

  “Because!” Sidney cried, pacing in a circle, then sinking onto his mat. “Laos trusts them. She asked to meet them.”

  “Laos? Our daughter, Laos?” Caira laughed, sitting next to him, resting her hand on his thigh. Wilting, Sidney turned his face to her shoulder, then clasped his fingers with hers.

  “I told her about our . . . idea,” he said softly. “She seemed to need cheering.”

  “Was that your way of convincing yourself to go through with it?” Caira teased.

  “No, my love,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders, snuggling close. “I fully intend to be your primary. I just haven’t processed all of my emotions . . . She was confused about Brishen. I thought it would help her to know that even when you love someone, the path forward isn’t always clear.”

  “Volk,” Caira swore, pushing him off. “Brishen proposed again?”

  “Asked for primary status,” Sidney confirmed.

  Caira jumped to her feet, letting out a string of swears. “I left them alone. I could see she didn’t want me to go, but I thought she’d be okay as long as he stayed, but he was the reason she wanted me there! I’m a horrible mother. I could hear her fear. Is she still in the field?”

  “I dropped her at your tent. Whether she stays or not is entirely up to her,” Sidney shrugged. Caira grunted in disgust and hurried out of the tent.

  Groaning, Sidney laid back on his mat, then sat up not liking the way his body itched with need. He stripped down to his underclothes, and stepped outside his tent, staring at the tree that he always camped under regardless of how the rest of the tents were arranged in that season. He imagined Adita sitting up there smiling down at him and he pretended that wherever she was, she was okay.

  “I can’t wait forever, Adita,” he whispered.

  Douglas was getting to know Oriana’s infirmary too well. He’d taken his gloves off for two minutes and managed to cut his hand on some spiny bramble, the word for which Douglas never quite caught. His stomach and throat were burning, and even so, it was a good day because his kidneys finally weren’t. Whatever Tray had given him for lunch had thankfully stayed down, and he’d probably just eat that again every meal until he got some of his strength back.

  The afternoon of hunting and gathering had worn him out so much he was considering a nap after supper. Tray was very organized in that regard—he had plans and itineraries. There was time set aside for showers, snacks, chores, and naps. He was getting a little nicer about speaking both Lanvarian and Trade when he gave his little speeches.

  Sky rooted through the infirmary cabinets for something she said would prevent Douglas’ newest cut from getting infected. Saskia had given him immunization shots, but Sky insisted that wasn’t enough. Douglas figured she just wanted to steal some of the medicine for that kit she kept in her travel satchel.

  Being as this was the first time Douglas was in here with a clear head, he turned his attention to the medical monitor, trying to figure out how it worked. The device wasn’t that dissimilar to the medical monitors they had in Rocan. The panels were smooth and the displays were made of light—Danny had said they were digital, not analog.

  “Sky, what’s this word?” he asked, touching the letters under one of the displays. The Lanvarian alphabet was the same as Rocanese, but the sounds were different, and all the writing was in a funny script.

  Sky glanced at the monitor, and answered in Lanvarian.

  “What’s the Trade word?” Douglas asked.

  “Respiration,” she answered. Douglas repeated the Lanvarian word, studying the spelling. Compared to Rocanese, Lanvarian was stingy with the letters and they pronounced the vowels in a funny way.

  “You’re really going to start with medical terminology?” Sky laughed.

  “Tray taught me some swear words. He’s nice sometimes,” Douglas said, tugging the roots of his oily hair. “I think he’s got the same brain problems as Amanda.”

  “Amanda has been through hell,” Sky said seriously. Douglas figured he’d hit a nerve. Sky snatched his arm and cleaned the skin with a cold cotton swab.

  “Hell in this context?” Douglas prompted. The word seemed to have more meanings on this ship than in Rocan.

  “A place of torment,” Sky answered. “Amanda was tortured. Tray is just jealous of you.”

 
“Don’t know why,” Douglas said, biting his lip when he saw the needle. “He has so much here.”

  “If you’d ever had a brother, you’d understand,” she smiled, distracting him with her charm just long enough to shoot the needle into his arm.

  “What is this?” Douglas asked, the last word slurring as he was overcome by dizziness. He fought to stay upright, but before he knew it, Sky was cradling his head, guiding him to the pillow.

  “Okay, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” Sky said worriedly.

  “That’s what happened this morning, when Saskia put the needle in my arm,” Douglas said, massaging his chest to get the tingles out. It wasn’t half as bad as this morning.

  “What about when you got shots in Rocan?” Sky asked.

  “Needles are wasteful,” Douglas said, rolling onto his side. “Whenever possible, we use . . . I think the closest Trade word would be ‘pop.’ It sends the medicine right into the skin.”

  “Yeah, we call them jets. Those things are tough to calibrate in an artificial gravity environment. That’s why Oriana doesn’t have them,” Sky said with a sigh. “How’s your head?”

  “Good,” Douglas said, sitting up again. His stomach did a somersault, but it was empty. His chest burned and his head ached, but nothing unpleasant happened. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, waiting for his head to clear and his stomach to settle. “How does artificial gravity work?”

  “How sound is your understanding of differential geometry and quantum physics?”

  Douglas shrugged. The words sounded scholarly, but Douglas wasn’t schooled to that level.

  “It’s better if you haven’t learned either, because both go out the window,” Sky chuckled, linking arms with him and walking him up to middeck.

  “Does everyone in Quin know this stuff?” Douglas asked, worried that he really did seem primitive to Tray.