A Laughing Owl Read online

  Chapter Two: El-Five Station

  Nick glanced at the forward viewscreen to take in the sight of El-Five Station again. The station consisted of one long rod stacked with five spinning, donut-shaped discs. The central disc was by far the largest, bulging out past the others. At each end of the central rod was an array of outward flung tubes, eight in all, each capable of docking a dozen ships. Space Corps had the higher set of docks, but the Laughing Owl wasn’t moored there. They were parked in a synchronous orbit a hundred klicks aft of the station’s direction of travel and five degrees above it, well out of the commercial travel lanes.

  Their position also effectively shielded the Laughing Owl’s presence from the majority of the station and prevented the crew from taking any shore leave, where they would presumably talk to people. And their jackets all bore the ship’s registration number and name—that was standard. So Cortez’s thought that admiralty didn’t want to advertise their presence in Sol system seemed accurate. In fact, it seemed to Nick that admiralty was going to a great deal of trouble to minimize the odds that Laughing Owl would be noticed.

  The station pinged eventually and Nick opened the channel. “Laughing Owl, Steele here.”

  “Laughing Owl, be advised we have a shuttle en route with orders. ETA ten minutes.”

  “Understood.” Nick broke the connection and pinged Cai. “Shuttle coming. Ten minutes.”

  “Thank you, I heard.” Cai sent the impression of a kiss over the net.

  The shuttle was on time and the docking was smooth. Once it was safe, the shuttle’s hatch opened, the staircase dropped into position, and two men climbed out, one bearing a familiar black case, the other unencumbered.

  Nick recognized the man with the case as Admiral Becher, but the other man, who wasn’t in uniform, was unknown to him. When Becher approached, Nick came to attention and saluted. “Sir, welcome aboard the Laughing Owl.”

  “Thank you, Captain Steele. It’s a real pleasure to be here. This is Senator Emphali of the Cassiopeia Sector.” Instead of using the astronomical classification and nomenclature for the sectors of space the way the Space Corps did, the United Republic broke the sectors up by constellations, which Nick had always thought was confusing and a little dumb, because two stars that appeared right next to each other from Earth could, in fact, be thousands of light years away from each other.

  Nick inclined his head. “Senator, welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” The politician seemed tense, for all that he smiled.

  A professional smile, Nick decided, not the real thing. He looked to Admiral Becher. “Can we interest you in some refreshment?”

  “We won’t be staying. I’ve brought your orders, but we need to discuss the situation with you first.”

  “Very well,” Nick replied. “There’s a briefing room just aft of the bay, if you’d follow me?” He turned and led the two men out of the landing bay and into the briefing room across the corridor. As he palmed the door open, Cai strode up.

  In the briefing room, Nick said, “Admiral Becher, Senator Emphali, this is Astrogator Cai.”

  Cai nodded to both and ignored Emphali’s outstretched hand. “What are our orders, Admiral?” he asked in a soft voice.

  Admiral Becher set the black case on the table. “Before you open this, hear me out.” When Cai nodded, the admiral continued, “We’re sending you to Brahe in the Tycho system. Something odd is going on there and we need you to investigate. There are reports of anomalies—floating islands, visual hallucinations, that sort of thing.”

  “We aren’t equipped for planetary action,” Cai pointed out. “I could maybe land in a large enough body of water, but I’m designed to withstand vacuum, not pressure.”

  “We’ll be sending a pair of scouts along with you for planetary reconnaissance,” Admiral Becher explained. “We are also sending a scientific team to supplement your crew. They will be under your orders, Captain, but are not military personnel and won’t participate in drills or battle. They’ll arrive in the scouts.”

  “Understood,” Nick said, wondering why something this cut and dried needed an admiral and a senator to explain it to them.

  “What is the nature of these hallucinations you mentioned?” Cai asked. “Will our crew be affected by whatever is causing them? Are there environmental precautions we need to take?”

  “That’s…why we’re here.” Admiral Becher shifted uncomfortably in his chair and cast a glance at the senator.

  “The hallucinations, if that’s what they really are, appear harmless. The colonists all report seeing the same thing, which never approaches too closely and never offers any form of aggression,” said Emphali. “We aren’t sure what causes it, that’s what we need you and the scientists to find out.”

  “Could it be an alien species?” Nick asked. “Brahe wasn’t terraformed, if I recall correctly.”

  Both the senator and the admiral stared at him for a moment. Becher broke the silence, “That would be a possibility, except the colonists are all reporting seeing something that eliminates that from consideration.”

  “What are they seeing?” Cai asked again.

  With a face flushed almost scarlet, Emphali said, “Santa.”

  “Come again?” Nick requested. “Santa, as in the Santa, of Christmas renown?”

  “Yes.” Emphali now looked like he’d swallowed a live toad.

  “How do they know it’s Santa and not just some jolly, overweight hermit with a white beard?”

  “Because,” Becher said, when it was clear that Emphali had lost the ability to speak, “he’s only ever sighted in the air, in a red and green sleigh being pulled by eight flying reindeer. He doesn’t deliver any gifts, though, in case you were wondering.”

  Nick was having a hard time controlling his laughter. He racked his brain to come up with a serious response.

  “If my calculation of the space-time distortion is correct, today is the first of April on Earth,” Cai said serenely. “I do appreciate the effort that has gone into this fine jest, but please, can you tell us our real mission now?”

  Emphali scowled and banged his fist on the table. “This is no joke, young man. We are deadly serious. There is something very wrong on Brahe, and we have to figure it out. Brahe’s too valuable to just pull out. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your levity to yourself; it has no place here.”

  Cai’s eyes flashed dangerously. With his power, that flash was quite literally a momentary glow of blue light. “I may be young, but I am a full Astrogator, and you will respect that or I will have you booted out my airlock.”

  Emphali paled and stammered an apology.

  As well he should, Nick thought. The Astrogator’s word was law aboard his ship, the equivalent of a reigning monarch. If Cai so chose, he could kick the senator out the airlock, and nobody would stop him. The Guild was the only organization with the power to punish a Gator, and they only did that in extremis. However, if Cai booted the senator out the airlock here and now, there would be trouble about it because they weren’t docked to the station, so all their airlocks currently opened onto the vacuum of space.

  Cai nodded to the senator, accepting the apology. He appeared more relaxed now. “What accommodations will the scientists require?”

  “That’s all in here,” Becher said, passing Cai the case that contained the orders. “I am sure you both understand the delicacy of this mission? I don’t want a word of this being blabbed.”

  Cai took the case and opened it as Nick asked, “Are you authorizing memory blocks for this mission?” The truly classified missions were always accompanied by memory blocks, which didn’t actually affect a person’s memory of an event, just made it impossible for the person to speak or write about it, even years later.

  “That will depend on what you find,” Becher said.

  Fair enough, Nick thought.

  Cai positioned the half orb on the crystal embedded in his palm and his
eyes glazed over as he linked to the shipnet to upload their orders. It didn’t take long before he said, “Orders uploaded, routed and hardcopy printed in three places per regulations.” He returned the crystal to the case. It would go to a special, heavily shielded storage room.

  Nick asked, “Is there anything else we need to know that isn’t in the orders?”

  Becher shook his head. “I think we’ve covered everything.” He stood up. “We’ll get out of your way and let you make preparations for your new crew.”

  “Of course, sir,” said Nick, standing in turn.

  Cai also rose, but he gestured for the others to precede him.

  Nick recognized the tactic for what it was—Cai was minimizing the odds of accidental physical contact with either man.

  They escorted the senator and admiral back to the shuttle, but once the men were aboard, they retreated out of the bay and Cai immediately cycled the atmosphere out of the bay so that the outer doors could be opened. The system was so efficient, it only took a minute before the lights indicated the bay was in hard vacuum. Cai opened the outer doors and gave the shuttle permission to depart.

  Nick followed everything Cai did on the shipnet out of simple enjoyment of Cai’s deft skill at this sort of thing. Once the shuttle was gone, they retreated to Cai’s chambers where Cai then put Nick through his paces quite enjoyably.

  “How many scientists are we hosting?” Nick asked in the drowsy aftermath, his mind having snapped back from pleasure mode to duty mode.

  “Six, each with two doctoral assistants,” Cai replied. He stretched languidly, his body so achingly beautiful that he almost sparked off another round of sex.

  “That makes eighteen of them,” Nick said dryly, wondering where’d they put so many bodies. Laughing Owl wasn’t that big.

  “There is barely enough space on C-deck. I have transient quarters there, forward of the working spaces. It’s too inaccessible for cargo, so it was set up as a place to put passengers where they’d be out of the way of the crew.”

  Nick reviewed his mental map of the ship. “I’d forgotten they were there, honestly.”

  “I’ve already set the quartermaster on making them ready. Linens and whatnot.”

  “You’re amazing,” Nick sighed.

  Cai rolled on him then and another round of sex ensued.

  Right on schedule, two small scout-sized vessels undocked from the station and headed their way. Nick was already jacked in, so he used the shipnet to focus the sensors on the scout and took due note of both the Space Corps designation of the registration numbers and the Psionics Guild logo stenciled across the bows.

  Cai told him, “Here they come. I’m opening the landing bay.”

  “Will they fit?” Nick allowed his dubiousness to color his net voice.

  “Barely. And I won’t be able to recover any fighters as long as those scouts are in my bay.” Cai’s anger simmered through the net.

  “We don’t have any fighters out at the moment,” Nick pointed out mildly.

  “I know; I just don’t like not being able to recover my fighters if I do have to launch them.”

  “If we have to launch our fighters, we’ll make the scouts leave the bay and use mag-lines to secure them to your hull.”

  “That would work,” Cai agreed, and as easily as that, the Astrogator calmed.

  Nick refrained from smiling. Cai was a superb Gator, in a class of his own as far as psi and skill at jumping a ship went, but he wasn’t much of a strategist. Strategy was Nick’s job.

  The first scout pinged them from ten klicks out. “Laughing Owl, this is Owlet, inbound with passengers.”

  “Laughing Owl acknowledges,” Cai replied, for it was the Gator who spoke for the ship in a matter such as this. “Owlet is cleared to proceed to the landing bay.”

  A minute later, the second scout pinged. “Laughing Owl, this is Eyas, inbound with passengers.”

  “Laughing Owl acknowledges. Please hold station until Owlet has landed.”

  “Understood, Laughing Owl. Holding station.”

  Nick knew that Cai would remain in his Chamber until both scouts were safely aboard. He tried to control his disappointment when he realized that he’d have to meet with the passengers of the scouts and couldn’t be there for Cai when the Gator exited his Chamber. He sent, “I’m sorry, my dearest, but I’ll have to see to the scouts.”

  “I know,” Cai replied, and he didn’t sound upset. “I expected that. I don’t mind, duty first, my handsome stud.”

  Once the second scout was safely parked, the bay doors closed, and the air was being pumped back into the room, Nick left the bridge and headed for the landing bay, aiming to arrive just before the hatches could be opened. He got there sooner than he’d expected, so he stoically crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the bulkhead and proceeded to wait. And wait. Why is it that it takes a minute to evacuate the air and ten to put it back?

  “You look far too handsome like that,” Cai told him telepathically, breaking his train of thought. “Stop it before I have to come down there and ravish you again.”

  Nick glanced up at the nearest sensor array and raised an eyebrow. “I’m game. Just as soon as I get these people settled, I’ll come up.” He could think of nothing better than to be full of Cai’s meat. He even enjoyed the residual soreness he felt from Cai’s hard usage of him.

  The indicator light above the hatch turned from red to green, so Nick palmed it open. There was the faintest of hisses as the air pressure equalized, and Nick waited for the noise to subside before entering the landing bay.

  The two identical scouts filled the bay. They resembled a needle that had been flattened at the bottom. The hen spars had been modified into atmospheric wings and the cock spar into a tail. They were just over thirty meters in length and ten meters wide. Their large shuttle, by contrast, was ten meters by five meters.

  The scout’s airlock popped open and the lift apparatus emerged from the opening. Once it was locked in place, people began descending three at a time—all that would fit on the lift platform. Nick nodded acknowledgement to the cargo team, which moved purposefully on the cargo hatches. They’d have the scouts emptied with their usual quick efficiency.

  The first three scientists exited the loft and walked over. Two men and a woman, who spoke for the group, “I’m Doctor Isabel Frank, geology. These are my assistants, Marvin and Rusty.”

  “Welcome aboard, Doctor, interns. I am Captain Nick Steele. We have visitor’s quarters ready for you on C-deck. Crewman Barnes will show you the way; your belongings will be delivered.”

  They thanked him politely and followed the designated guide out of the bay. Two more groups and arrived in the interim. Three botanists and three parapsychologists. Those last three gave him pause—they were Guild members. Quickly, he said, “Once you’re settled, please make yourself known to Astrogator Cai.”

  “We shall,” intoned Doctor Simone Alvarez, the senior of the three.

  They have full names, Nick thought, and he wondered about that. Cai was obviously a made-up name. So why did some Guild members have made-up names and others have their own birth names? He resolved to ask, if he could figure out a way to phrase it delicately.

  He sent them off with another crewman and turned to deal with the next batch, and his mouth fell open in surprise. He recovered quickly and exclaimed, “Evie, what are you doing here?”

  His little sister responded with an impish smile and the senior scientist of her trio looked from Nick to Evie and back. “I take it you know each other?”

  “She’s my sister,” Nick said. “So you must be my biologists?”

  “That’s right. I’m Doctor Hull, this is Ryan and you already know Evelyn.”

  Nick yanked his mind back on track and looked to the trio from the second scout.

  “Blake Rowland, Doctor of Pharmacology,” the man said in clipped tones. “Darrell and Minerva are my assistants.”
r />   A third trio arrived in the meanwhile, so Nick turned to them next. By his mental count, this should be the last of them.

  “Doctor Aldric Sartre,” said the grey-haired man with only a trace of a French accent.

  “Any relation to the philosopher?” Nick had to ask.

  “A distant relative,” Dr. Sartre replied, looking pleased. “And this is Mitsu and that is Owen.”

  Nick delivered the spiel and sent them all with a third crewman. By now, the unloading was proceeding apace, so once the last scientist had departed the bay, he left also to keep his promise to Cai.

  Chapter Three: En Route to Tycho

  He couldn’t avoid the scientists entirely, even if he’d wanted to. Nick decided to make an event of it, though, and gave orders for a formal welcoming banquet to be held the next evening. Cai had broken orbit while Nick was seeing to their passengers and they were already above the plane of the ecliptic and outbound along a line that would take them to a hardpoint that would eventually lead them to the Tycho system. Originally, the star had been designated Tycho G, but when it proved to be the one that had contributed to Tycho’s Supernova, it had earned the distinction of bearing the astronomer’s name and the other stars had been renamed. The star, and thus its planets, was actually within the bubble of Tycho’s Nebula, the remnant of the massive supernova, which gave the whole region its name.

  Nick settled in his office and jacked into the shipnet. He spent an hour on routine chores—reading section reports, drill results and other minutiae of shipboard life then moved on to updating the ship’s log and his own personal log. A knock on his door distracted him. He did a quick, but routine, check then pulsed the open command to the door.

  A moment later, Evie walked in. “Hey, Nicky.”

  “Hiya, Evie.” Nick unjacked and set the connector in its holder. “Have a seat.”