Supergiant (Gigaparsec Book 2) (15 page)

Roz pointed to Yenang and used her
father’s sarcastic tone. “We brought a weapons specialist to inspect the goods.
What do you think we were shopping for, lingerie?”

The gang members looked at each
other in fear and confusion. “We know a few arms dealers.”

Alyssa blotted Ivy’s bloody lip
with a handkerchief. “For your mistake, the finder’s fee drops to 10 percent.
Fifteen is too good for you.”

“Ten is fine,” said the man, holstering
the pistol and moving close enough to whisper. The man at the rear had a
crossbow of all things. A bolt would go straight through Roz’s new armor. “What
sort of weapons?”

“Government knights have boarded
our ship and taken what they wanted. We want to discourage this,” Roz said. “At
least one shoulder-mounted rocket, six rifles, and a pistol to go with my new
outfit.”

The lead thug rubbed his chin fur.
“I know where to find four rifles and some grenades.”

Roz rolled her eyes. “Then you’ll
throw in your own pistol, or it is no deal.”

“You want my gun in your holster,
baby?”

Yenang’s head bopped back and forth
during the exchange. He conspicuously placed himself between the leader and the
woman. In Bat, he said, “Sir, do not offend her. She’s the consort of the Magi
you just shot.”

The head thug made hyena sounds of
amusement until the man with the crossbow collapsed due to tranq darts in his
back. Max stepped into view and pointed his pistol at the lead thug. Max’s vest
hummed with power that could only come from rare Turtle technology. It dawned
on her that he could have killed all the thugs without receiving a scratch.

Reuben showed up at the other end
of the alley with his neural staff to coldcock the machete owner. Comfortable
with role-playing, he said, “Nobody laughs at
La Generala
.”

****

The women returned to the shuttle while the men completed
negotiations for the black-market weapons. Kesh would bargain the price per
grenade down to the equivalent of ten cheese fobs. The market was overrun with
military surplus.

Alyssa asked, “Why did the Bats
think Ivy was your Magi lover?”

“You mean other than the fact that
she wouldn’t let us take her to a clinic for fear of blood samples or a brain
scan?” Roz knew that Llewellyn Intelligence wouldn’t appreciate any genetic
samples leaking. “Her psi level is off the charts, and Yenang saw her banking
at the Magi desk. As for lover—”

“The kiss was probably too much,”
Ivy rasped from the new mattress on the floor of the cargo module.

“Hmm. What did Max, your knight in
shining armor, say to you back there to upset you so much?”

“He’s really angry at me,” Roz
replied.

“That’s hardly fair. You reacted
well in the crisis.”

Roz looked down at her still-groggy
friend. “Ivy got shot because I was mad at her.”

“What the hell did
I
do?”
Ivy asked. “I didn’t use tongue, and I still had my chewing gum after the
kiss.”

Roz propped a blanket under Ivy’s
head as a pillow. “You wouldn’t let me talk to Alyssa in private. I don’t want
to air my family’s dirty laundry. I don’t want everybody in the bloody galaxy
knowing who she is!” As Roz shouted, another shuttle passed by, causing a plastic
bottle of water to fall off the shelf toward Ivy’s head.

Alyssa caught the water bottle
before it struck. “Your talent is the strongest and wildest I’ve ever seen.
Calm down.”

Ivy groaned. “You spent time with
Reuben, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Roz said. “I made him
cookies, hoping his talent could help me solve some equations for Echo. By the
way, his choice of music is incredibly discordant. At least translate it to Bat
instead of English.”

“You listened to music with my
boyfriend just so he’d
boost
you?” Ivy asked.

“It was nothing personal. Purely
scientific,” Roz insisted.

“And you called me a slut.”

“That’s different,” Roz said,
softening. “You
are
one.”

“Prude.”

“Am not.”

“Prove it,” Ivy said. “Show Max the
full pirate outfit and use the word ‘booty’ in a sentence.”

“I will not,” Roz said, blushing.
“That’s disgusting.”

Alyssa cleared her throat. “That’s
what you’re advertising. Dress for the job you want, and all that.”

Roz swallowed hard. “Max wants to
meet with me in my room alone when we get back. He’s really angry.”

Ivy said, “Tell him you deserve a
spanking, and it’ll be the best night of your life.”

“I won’t be vulgar. Echo says this
process is sacred. I won’t end up an unwed mother like mine was.”

Alyssa handed Ivy the water,
refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. “How did you find out? Did Max tell you?”

“No. You dropped enough clues. Once
I knew Niels was my real father, the rest was simple,” Roz said.

Alyssa wrapped her arms around Roz.
“
Querida
, can you ever forgive me?”

Roz shrugged. “I understand. You
didn’t want to hurt Carmen, but I knew I never fit in. Someone should have told
me.”

Sobbing, Alyssa said, “I wanted you
to have a normal life. I had to escape that place before it killed me. You felt
the same way.”

The conversational jump felt like
Roz had turned two pages in her math book instead of one, making the problem
surreal. “When I didn’t make the exam, I figure Niels phoned me to wake me up.
It saved my life. Your blackmailing him a second time—”

“I never blackmailed him,” Alyssa
said sternly. “He was too sweet. He volunteered after we made love five or six
times.”

Even Ivy sprayed water all over the
room at this admission.

Carmen and Alyssa both seduced
my biological father? That’s sick.
Her brain reeled until she realized: if
she didn’t get the PM gene from Enrico Mendez, which Mendez had it come from? No.
That would make Alyssa … her mother. “You got pregnant with me before you left
Napa on your scholarship.”

“I was three months along when I
took the test. I left a week after I gave birth,” Alyssa said.

“Because I was a life-ruining
mistake?”

Another shuttle flew by, and all
the women were ready for the next plastic bottle that dropped. “Jeez,” Ivy
said. “Ease up. It’s been thirty years. She’s moved heaven and Earth to meet up
with you again.” Roz glared at her, but her friend continued, “My parents were
sperm and egg donors. I never met them. I wish I had a cool interstellar-class
talent from my mom. Hell, I’d be happy if she ever met me.”

Alyssa licked her lips. “Carmen had
a miscarriage. It happens about one time in four on that poison planet. She was
inconsolable until I suggested that she raise you with the dead child’s name
and record the dead child as mine. She loved you so much that over time, I’m
not sure she knew the difference.”

Roz couldn’t see through her tears.
Herb was right; this woman had a closet full of other shoes to drop. “What was
my name suppose to be?”

“I have only ever called you
Querida
,
my dearest.”

Even life-hardened, Ivy cried. The
floor of the shuttle was wet with drops. When Reuben returned, he asked, “What
happened in here?”

“It rained,” Roz said.
It rained
shoes.

****

Roz stood rigid in her new armor, while Max circled her like
a recruit in boot camp. “If I have anything to do with it, you will never leave
this ship again.” He huffed with suppressed fury.

She bowed her head. “Forgive me. I
acted irresponsibly today. I endangered my best friend, my mother, and our
mission. I have you to thank for all three surviving, and my discovering the
truth.”

Her acceptance of responsibility
took him off guard. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Tomorrow, my mother and Ivy will
begin teaching me how to shield. I will become a wall no one can penetrate.”

“Good. Why not tonight?” Max asked.

She unbuttoned her heavy jacket.
“Tonight, I wanted to thank you. No man will see what’s under my armor except
you.” Her heavy jacket slid to the floor, causing him to hold his breath. She
thought he was going to have heart failure when she bent over to pull off the
boots. She enjoyed having that sort of effect on him, as powerful as she had
been at the helm of the ship. Barefoot, she approached him. Only his eyes moved
to track hers. “When we’re alone like this, and when you whisper my name, I
want you to call me
Querida
.”

Their clothes stayed on, but she
denied him nothing else. So many sensations bombarded her that she thought she
might explode.

When he finally invoked her real
name, she could tell he meant it sincerely. He knew who she really was and yet
almost worshipped her. She also knew she would follow him anywhere and support
anything he needed.

The tumblers of the universe turned
at the feather touch of kisses.

Max had prescribed Ivy a few days of bed rest. She grinned
when Roz visited her the next morning. “Your clothes have changed to white.”

Roz wore her new boots and a lab
coat to hide the new tights she had never changed out of. A light-blue pattern
of stylized M. C. Escher birds crossed her legs like fishnet stockings. “Hah.
Max must have accidentally found the controls for my pants.”

Her friends laughed long and hard.
“Honey, it was no accident. That man has navigated several pairs of pants in
his day.”

Roz felt too mellow to react. “This
time is different.”

“I hope so,
Generala.
You
know that’s what we’re going to call you behind your back from now on when
you’re being a control freak.”

“I’m a control freak? Max won’t
even let the engineer candidates meet me. Each time Kesh finds another one for
export to the frontier planet, they stick him in stasis.”

Ivy nodded. “How many living people
can this ship hold?”

Blowing a strand of stray hair out
of her face, Roz did the math. “
Sphere of Influence
was designed to run
for a few thousand years with three people. With periodic scrubbing, it holds
three times that easily—nine like we have now. Magi safety standards dictate we
could run with up to three times that number for a limited period—twenty-seven.”

“What is it with them and threes?”
asked Ivy.

“I could tell you, but I’d have to
kill you,” Roz joked. “How are
you
feeling? Max said there should be no
permanent damage from the neuro scrambler.”

Ivy shook her right hand. “My whole
right side still feels like I slept on it wrong, and the circulation doesn’t
want to come back. Shooting pins and needles on my skin. My hand is still
paralyzed. I’m frilling lucky I didn’t take a head shot, but losing even a
little bladder control was mortifying. Reuben had to change the sheets already.
He’s been very attentive.”

“So how does repeated exposure to
Reuben’s talent affect you?”

“That’s a personal question.”

“Hey, I’ve shared my love life with
your whole family.”

“Fair enough,” said Ivy. “My being
a genius who can see every living thing on the ship, except Max, is a rush.
Some of it lasts up to a day beyond our contact, so I’ve been studying, trying
to permanently etch new pathways. I figure I can parlay the new expertise into
an analyst job when I get home. That would be better than a baby factory.”

“Any immediate benefits?”

“I’ve planned our best choices of
cargo for the whole journey to the prison’s doorstep and back to Magi space.
The exact week we arrive is important. For example, the best crop we’ll get from
Butterfly of Doom is potatoes. Barring that, we’ll settle for oil beans.”

“Butterfly of what?”

“Ironically, there are no
butterflies on the planet. The translation isn’t exact, but the constellation
name is from one of their myths. This large, black insect appears as a
harbinger of trouble in the mountain kingdom.”

Roz knew from her tour of the
border planet that Bats were originally insectivores. Perhaps the ominous bug
was only dangerous if someone ate it, like the forbidden fruit.

“If you like Reuben so much, why
did you screw around with Deke and risk it all?”

Ivy swallowed hard. “Sometimes I
want to stop thinking and forget who I am for a while.”

“How many times have you done
this?” Roz asked, her pitch increasing.

“You don’t want to know.”

“With Max?” Roz asked, panicking.

Ivy put her hand over her head to
avoid falling objects. “No. God, no. I would never.”

“Damn straight. Any woman messes
with my man, meteors are going to rain down on her head.”

“Stop it,” Ivy said. “This is what
gave your mother brain tumors. Every time you mess with probability, it affects
your cells, risking mutation.”

“So? You’re going to show me how to
control myself.”

Ivy shrugged. “I can give you the
tools, but you have to provide the control. We’ll start with basic meditation.
Once you master that, we’ll set you up with a monitor so you can control pulse
rate and theta activity. Echo and Alyssa will teach the advanced classes.”

At the end of the hour, Alyssa
tapped on the door. Her mother gave a sad smile. “Max brought me something for
you.” The regal woman held forth a branch from a fruit tree covered with white
blossoms.”

Ivy said, “Ahh. See, Reuben eats
that sort of thing. Teach Max about jewelry, and you have a keeper there,
honey.”

Roz accepted the branch, holding it
to her chest and enjoying the aroma of new love.

Alyssa sighed. “I checked in the
jungle, and most of the plants are flowering today.”

“We could all go for a picnic to
enjoy it!” Roz said.

“I’m afraid this isn’t good news,”
her mother warned. “They’re not supposed to bloom all at once, but over the
course of several months.”

“Then how?” Roz asked. Both the
other women stared at her until she guessed. “Oh. I guess I felt a little
(ahem) happy last night.”

Ivy chuckled throatily.

Roz hastened to say, “Just necking.
No sex.”

“Still, you can’t be alone with Max
again until you learn conscious control,” Alyssa warned. “There are some things
you want your talent to affect instinctively, like avoiding a fatal bullet.
Everything else is playing with fire. Lesson number one: when you push
probability curves, sometimes they push back to normalize the world.”

“That isn’t fair. Max and I need
bonding time. Ask Echo. She said separately, the three of us are like sand,
cement, and gravel. We need water, stirring, and time to cure to become
concrete that will last forever.”

“It’s that wet and stirred-up state
that bothers us,” Ivy said.

“I’m over thirty, and you’re not my
damn mother.” Recalling that her actual mother was standing next to her, Roz
said, “I didn’t mean anything by that.”

Alyssa ignored both the slight and
the innuendo. “Start a poker game. Invite the other partners. That will be an
excellent time for neutral interaction, as well as exercising your talent.
First you can practice feeling probability flows. Dice are too simplistic and
take too much energy to manipulate. Cards are longer term, and that sort of
luck is easier to bend gradually. Lesson two: pick your battles and aim for the
long run.”

When contacted, Echo sided with the
others. “Until our marriage, you will be chaperoned at all times. Before the
wedding can transpire, you must learn not to kill Max if he says something that
angers you.”

“Fine,” Roz said with disgust.

****

The next day, Roz took her copilot to dinner before shift
change. Deke said, “This is very considerate. Thank you.” He began shoving
sweet-potato fries into this mouth like they were trying to escape.

“Not a problem,” Roz replied. “I
just wanted to get away from women talking about their feelings for one hour.”

Deke stopped, fries in hand, mouth
open. He correctly deduced, too late, that he had made himself a captive
audience. He couldn’t leave mid-meal, certainly not without spilling the honey
dipping sauce. “Ready for the long hop?”

At fifty days end-to-end, this jump
was a little longer than average. She just grunted. “Max wouldn’t put the last
engineer into stasis, even though I told him that I fixed the flutter in the
unit’s power coupling. So now I have to find things for a plasma specialist to
do around the ship to earn his stateroom.”

Deke’s eyes moved to the ladder
where Max could reappear at any moment. “I find it is best for one specialist
not to meddle in the domain of another.”

“It’s okay. I’m not asking you to
choose sides. I trust him with all our lives. He just made a boatload more work
for me.”

The Bat feigned interest in his
meal.

Roz said, “If this trend keeps up,
we’re going to have a significant Bat crew, and specialists don’t like to
listen to people through the translator.”

“I’ve been meaning to tell the
astrogator that the jump to Little Flowers was exceedingly smooth. The engines
are also much quieter.” Deke shoved more food in to finish faster.

“Thanks. We did a lot of work
tuning them in Prairie.”

“No, I could still sense
cavitations on the jump to Phoenix,” Deke said.

“Well that just means my
modifications to the ship are moving in the right direction.”
And my
theories are correct.

Deke nodded. “If something is too
noisy, that means energy is being wasted.”

“A philosophy for management if
ever I heard one,” Roz said. “Congratulations, you’ve been promoted to Bat
manager.”

“What? No. I can’t.”       

Roz hit a few virtual buttons and
displayed the contract on the wrist of her uniform. “Actually, as of this star
system, you’re obligated to as a partner.”

“No, I didn’t agree to that.” Deke
read through the legalese franticly.

“Shares bring responsibilities. If
I have to find them work, you have to make sure they’re happy and understand
their roles.”

He looked genuinely distraught.
“Now I’ll never have time for my carvings.”

“Your what?”

“I make architectural models out of
small pieces of wood.”

Roz smiled. “Awesome. The new
engineer might even be able to help you with your little houses.”

“This is no child’s toy. I’m
constructing a scale representation of the Veekarat Cathedral to bring me
closer to the Void.”

“Sure. Might I suggest bonding with
him about what an unreasonable perfectionist I am?”

Deke nodded. “That would be an easy
entrance to any conversation. I will use that to begin each weekly meeting.
What will the agenda be?”

“Improvise,” Roz said.

“In what way?” Deke asked.

“Have you ever played Human cards?
Max and Reuben like to play, but they need at least four guys. Kesh can’t hold
little pieces of paper in his claws.”

“And this would be considered
management?”

“If you do it a couple times a week
and make an effort to address any problems for the Bat crew, I’ll even provide
the snacks.”

Deke licked his lips. “In that
case, I accept this promotion.”