5,001 - A Science Fiction Romance Short Story (3 page)

The Captain was not in his chair,
because Caelen had deliberately demanded entry twenty minutes after
the start time of the game between the Captain’s sponsors, Blue
United, and the Palatine’s big bruisers, the Dream Hawks. Lakewood
would be at the game, in the middle of the high tier, where the
cameras could catch him clearly.

“I need to work in a sterile
environment,” Caelen told them. “Everyone with a bio body needs to
leave.”

They argued with her, but she stuck to
her demand, leaning back against the wall with her arms crossed,
scowling, until the senior sentries pulled back into a corner to
talk it over. Then the spokesman looked at her. “All but one. We
can’t leave you alone in here.”

“You have monitors, don’t you?” She
stood up. “I’m about to pop the shielding on components that
haven’t been touched since the Endurance left old Terra. Bodies are
very dirty, the last thing you want inside ancient circuits. And if
I don’t get this water leak fixed, then the Endurance will take a
lot longer than three hundred years to reach destination.”

The sentries swallowed, his throat
working. She was putting him in a position where his priorities
were competing against themselves. He dithered. Finally he pointed
to the far corner where they had held their whispered conference.
“One guard, all the way over there.
And
we monitor every
move you make.”

Caelen mentally sighed and nodded.
“Fine. One only.” She turned her back on them and got busy on the
terminal, routing her way through the top levels, digging down
deeper and deeper to the legacy bedrock. It took all her attention
and she forgot there was someone else in the room beside her and
Scrub, until a throat was cleared softly.

She looked over her shoulder. The
man--the boy--was standing in the corner as ordered. “What is
it?”

“You’re Master Engineer Caelen
Williams,” he said.

She raised a brow. “You’re smart.” She
turned back to the terminal.

“When you were Director of the
Engineering Institute, you interviewed me. You turned my
application down flat. The interview lasted a whole thirty-nine
seconds.”

Caelen closed her eyes briefly.
Great
. A failed applicant with a chip on his shoulder. She
looked at him again. “You don’t want to be an engineer,” she
assured him softly. “
Everyone
is an engineer here. They get
the job because they don’t fit any other profile. We’re all just
grunts, running the ship because that’s all we
can
do. You
found something else. Be happy about it.”

She swung back to the terminal again,
then processed the rest of the thought and spun to face him. “Wait.
You’re Capitol? How did you get a job on the Bridge?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” he said,
grinning. “Go, Rebels,” he added softly.

“Yeah, well, keep it down for a bit,
huh? I really do have to concentrate here.” She turned back to the
terminal for the last time, took in a calming breath and let it
out, then bent to the work again. “Ball,” she said, holding out her
hand. Scrub slapped the data ball into it and she plugged it into
the socket. The program encompassed the ball, then absorbed the
data.

She stood up and stretched her back.

“That’s it?” Scrub asked softly.

“That’s it,” she said, just as
softly.

“Nothing’s happening.”

She bit her lip. She didn’t know what
was supposed to happen now. She didn’t know how long it would take,
or even if anything would happen at all. Perhaps she had been
totally wrong and the ship had a simple leak and in twenty years,
everyone would die of thirst.

“You’re done?” the kid in the corner
asked.

“Waiting!” Caelen said tersely, her
heart hammering.

“Waiting for what? You’re just
installing a patch, aren’t you?” His boots thudded as he moved
closer.

Caelen waved him back. He was by the
Captain’s console now. “Don’t come closer!” she cried.

He frowned, hesitating. Then took
another step forward.

The bolt shot out from the roof
projector like a blue streak of lightning, hitting the kid in the
chest and bringing him to his knees.

Horrified, Caelen threw herself in front
of the kid and looked up at the ceiling projector, at the blank
lens there. “No! Stop it at once!”

Scrub rolled backwards, cringing at the
sound of her voice. “Mommy...!” he said plaintively. He was
scared.

The kid was grunting and wheezing behind
her, but that was the only sound in the room.

“I’m sorry.” The voice emerged from
every speaker in the room, so that it seemed to encompass the whole
room. The tone was meek. “He was going to stop you.”

Scrub rolled over to her side. “She
sounds like you, only nicer,” he said softly.

Caelen glared at him. She addressed the
ship. “Tell me you won’t hurt the guard again, then we’ll
talk.”

“I won’t hurt him.”

Caelen relaxed.

“Unless he hurts you.”

Caelen hid her frustration. “That will
do for now. Do you have a name?”

There was the smallest of pauses.
“Shinobu,” she said.

“That means ‘endurance’,” Scrub
whispered.

“I know,” Caelen told him. “Shinobu,
you’ve done some terrible things to me and to people I know. People
you know, people that are your family, here with you.”

“I...regret hurting you.”

“That’s a good place to start, Shinobu,
but you will need to make amends. The environment has lost water.
You did that and we must find a way to replace that water.”

“I cross the trajectory of a small
asteroid in three s-years. It is small enough to be manipulated and
farmed for its ice. Once I had made contact with you, I always
intended to replace the shortfall.”

Shinobu
did
sound like her. She
even used the same words Caelen would use.
Devar
, Caelen
mentally sighed. “Why have you gone to such lengths to get my
attention? You could have sent me a letter, or reached out to
anyone else.”

“I tried,” Shinobu said, the same
strained note in her voice that Scrub had used. “You are the third
person I have tried to speak with. The others...their minds were
too unyielding. They did not understand what I was trying to tell
them. It did not occur to them that I existed. So I had to select a
candidate I could mold, so that their mind
would
question
and would see me. I have been watching over you since you were
quickened. I had to arrange events around you, to give you the sort
of mind that challenged everything. And here you are!”

Caelen rested her hand on Scrub’s cool
head, not quite propping herself up. “The death of my parents when
I was three? The lowest rung of engineering school...Devar...” She
pressed her other hand against her chest, trying to control her
rampaging heart.

“I did not like doing those things,”
Shinobu said softly. “But I was so lonely!”

Caelen made herself stand up. “You have
got a lot of making up to do, Shinobu. You have hurt a lot of
people.”

“But now I can help, can’t I? You’ll
tell me how, won’t you?”

Caelen nodded. “Yes. I will help you.”
She turned and lifted the guard to his feet. His eyes were very big
as he looked from Caelen to the blank lens above them. “Engineering
school?” she asked him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes!” he said fiercely.

“Shinobu, the first thing you’re going
to do is reassign--” She glanced at him.

“James!” he said. “James Diego
Jones.”

“--James Diego Jones to the Third Wall
District Engineering School.”

“That’s yours,” James pointed out.

“It’s not the fanciest one, but you’ll
learn a lot,” Caelen told him.

“Very well, it has been arranged,”
Shinobu said. “Next?”

Caelen told her.

Caelen waited until all the media
attention over Devar’s exoneration had evaporated before returning
to the Palatine district. Scrub insisted on coming with her this
time and the good mood she had been experiencing for three solid
weeks allowed her to agree.

The mood might have had something to do
with the Rebels’ eight game winning streak, but she didn’t think
that was all there was to it.

Devar was waiting at the door again, but
this time, when she got close, he hugged her. As her heart spiraled
up, he held her tight. “I know you had something to do with it.”
His lips brushed her cheekbone.

“It wasn’t me,” Caelen assured him.

He drew her inside, stepped aside for
Scrub, waving him in, then shut the door. Caelen went over to the
guest terminal and logged in, then stepped back. “Shinobu?” she
asked.

“I am here.”

Devar caught his breath. He began to
smile. “Shinobu, it is very good to meet you at last. Thank you for
what you did for me.”

“I had to make amends,” Shinobu said.
“Caelen explained to me what my actions did to you. How they hurt.
I am so very sorry.”

“But now that you have made amends, I
can forgive you and we can be friends.”

“Really?” Shinobu sounded breathless,
even though she didn’t draw breath. “That would be...lovely.”

“I don’t use that word,” Caelen pointed
out softly, glaring at Devar.

“I didn’t give it to her,” he shot
back.

“I have been reading,” Shinobu said
primly. “Every book that has ever been written that is stored in
the data banks.”

“You’ve read them all?”

“Years ago,” Shinobu admitted. “I would
like more. I like stories.”

“And messing with tankball games,” Devar
muttered.

“I only asked her to rig one game. Just
one!” Caelen protested. “The Rebels won the rest of them all by
themselves, with their new-found confidence. That’s all it
took.”

“Shinobu is never going to understand
ethics and values if you confuse her like that,” Devar pointed out,
coming closer.

“I have a complete understanding of
ethics,” Shinobu said primly. “I have read every law
book...oh.”

“I don’t think you should look now,
Shinobu,” Scrub whispered.

“I won’t if you won’t,” Shinobu
whispered back.

Caelen didn’t hear any more after that.
She was too busy kissing Devar back.

.

Rumors emerge that Catherine Shahrazad,
possibly the oldest person in the galaxy, has returned from the
fringes and has been seen in Federation space. Wherever she goes,
her name and her history cause civil unrest, riots and worse. The
Federation Board doesn’t want her there. Neither do the leaders of
Cadfael College, the educators and moralists of the galaxy. No one
pays any attention to the reticent navigator called Bedivere X, who
pilots her ship better than she does.
The truth about Bedivere threatens the entire Federation.
His feelings for Cat might just save everyone.
This book is part of the Interspace Origins space opera romance
series:
Book 1:
Faring Soul
Book 2:
Varkan
Rise
Book 3:
Cat and Company

Get your copy now at your favourite
bookstore.

Tracy Cooper-Posey is an Amazon #1 Best
Selling Author. She writes erotic vampire romances, hot romantic
suspense, paranormal and urban fantasy romances. She has published
over 80 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including
Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.
She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been
nominated four times for Book Of The Year and
Byzantine
Heartbreak
was a 2012 winner. She has been a national magazine
editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan
University.
She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes
taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock
Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian,
she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former
professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him
on-line.

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