Page 15 of Escape from Nova Nine
Lantham snorted in his sleep and scratched at his nose.
Zade darted glances at Sutrio, nearby prisoners, and the guards. No one seemed to be awake or remotely interested in their conversation.
Nonetheless, the last thing he wanted to do was to irritate Julke. He was aware he talked too much. “Worse than a therapist’s AI,” as a previous drunken crewmate had described it, right before nailing him with a shockstick.
He sat upright, then rolled down to lie on his back and gaze at the ceiling, one hand resting on his diaphragm, the other arm cradling his head to protect his scalp from the cold floor, since his hair was growing back too slowly to do any good. He firmly ignored the new questions bubbling in his head, such as how many meters the refinery was from the asteroid’s surface, or how close they were to the landing zone. If he kept his eyes on the shadows, maybe he’d see a draco griffin.
“You don’t have to answer this,” said Julke quietly, “but how did you get caught?”
He glanced at her, but she was bent over her knee, fiddling with her boot, so he couldn’t see her expression. Her emotions hinted at the briny taste of loneliness and the tannin taste of remorse before he contained his wayward talent. That kind of prying wasn’t the way to treat friends. Especially since it made him want to offer to hold and comfort her, and never let her go. Empaths were susceptible to touch starvation.
“Desperation. My former crew wanted to use what I have or sell it. I chose option three and jumped ship at the next space station. I took the next gig I could find. Should have looked a little closer.” The admission was out before it occurred to him to hide his stupidity. He blew out a noisy breath. “Knowing Captain Fazhian, they’re still scouring the galaxy for me. She doesn’t like to be crossed.”
“What do you have?” The tone was gentle, inviting.
His rational brain told him to deflect like always, but heart told him to trust her. The universe wasn’t just a collection of meaningless random events. He had to believe the compatible mesh of their empathy was more than just luck.
“A... talent. Maybe.” Describing it turned out to be harder than he thought. “The Citizen Protection Service doesn’t list it in their official classes or categories.” He sat up again, then twisted slowly toward her and back in a slow-motion stretch. “I can make people want to like me. Trust me. Even shielders, if they’re not on alert.”
He hesitated, then decided to tell her the rest. In for a micron, in for a meter, as his engineering instructor used to say.
“I don’t use my… whatever-it-is often, but I foolishly pushed it hard to get me and some shipmates out of a trade deal about to go fatally twisted. One of them told Fazhian. She promised to make me wealthy if I used it to benefit her. When I didn’t jump at the chance, she made it clear that if I didn’t cooperate, she’d sell me to the Citizen Protection Service. They pay bounties for uniques. No one knows what happens to the CPS recruits.”
The only sign she heard him was her fingers paused in their fidgeting for several long moments. “The CPS are void-brains. My people call itbekorensgave. The gift of charm.”
It was oddly comforting to know it had a name. That meant his talent was real, at least to the Volksstam, and not just a defect to be dissected. Maybe whoever had abandoned him at the medical center as a baby had Volksstam heritage.
“We also havenegerensgave. To make people ignore things that are right in front of them.”
Something in her words made him glance at her.
“You?” He found it hard enough to even look away from her, much less ignore her. She lit up a room without even trying.
His skepticism must have shown on his face. With a subtle pulse, her empath talent lightly brushed his, then skittered away like a griffin in flight, leading his full attention upward.
Stunned, he caught himself blinking in surprise. If she seriously activated, he bet she could have picked every pocket he had and walked out the door before he noticed.
“Brilliant,” he murmured, meaning it. That kind of talent could have gotten him out of parsecs of trouble. The more he learned about her, the more he wanted to know. “How did they catch you?”
Despite his containment, he sensed a flurry of emotions from her before she bottled them up. “Betrayal.” Her jaw tightened briefly. “I have time-sensitive information my people need. A former lover was sent to kill me to shut me up, but he sent me here instead. I’d like to think he didn’t know it’s a one-way trip.”
Disparate facts about her clicked together in a pattern. Every trade representative he’d ever met was part diplomat, part info broker, and part spy. Why should the Volksstam be any different? “Politics?”
“Yes.” Her eyes flashed in challenge. “You know there’s big trouble coming, right?”
“Yes.” It was a relief to find someone else who recognized it. “I don’t know if your people have heard of the Ayorinn’s Legacy prophecy about freedom for minders, but it terrifies the Citizen Protection Service. It’s flared up again and again over the years, and lately, it’s in every other planetary newstrend. I think the CPS would destroy just about anything to stop it.” His chest felt tight. “But the rest of the galaxy is in deep denial. If you want to start a fight, stand up in a pub and tell them that the Concordance isn’t too big to fail, and that two hundred years of peace don’t mean jack shit when it comes to predicting the future.” Shaking his head, he sighed. “It’s not going to go well.”
“True.” A hint of sadness flitted across her face. “Our leaders know about the Legacy, and we track the news, but they think it doesn’t apply to them. I’m not so sure. The Volksstam are splintering. Somefamiliestamswant to move beyond the galactic frontier and wait for the CGC to burn. Others want to light the fuse so they can claim everything not tied down,thenmove to the frontier. And some want to help the non-combatants survive the conflagration and rebuild because the universe is unforgiving and we need each other.”
His talent detected the anise flavor of determination when she mentioned the third option.
An earsplitting clatter of multi-band static suddenly boomed and echoed through the facility. It stuttered like a faulty comm system, then went silent. Or maybe that was his implants interfering. The medics told him they’d only left them operational because he didn’t have a controller. Otherwise, they’d have had to keep him offline another day while they removed it. Another of the warden’s weird little rules, like forbidding autonomous AIs from running anything, meaning human staff had to do it.
Whatever the sound was, it was enough to wake some of the prisoners, including Sutrio and Lantham.
Zade watched the guards have an animated discussion, pointing toward the lifts and sealed blast doors. Four of the guards fanned out among the prisoners.
A few moments later, Lhap Cho, the guard who’d been assigned to their shift, approached their group. He checked off each of their names on his tablet. The man looked tired. No naps for the guards.
