Exiles of the Belt (Void Dragon Hunters Book 4)
Page 11
I have driven her to run away to— “Saturn?” I circle back to that terrible revelation.
“Yes,” she says. “The only way we’ll survive is to do exactly what they expect us to do: defect to the Offense.”
“Good luck,” Hardy says. I think I would strangle him with my bare hands if I weren’t so weak with grief and guilt.
“We won’t let you go,” Francie yells. “You can’t betray us like this!”
Exactly how I felt eight months ago. My aunt was not a conspirator. She did not run. But now she’s running, because of me.
“Elsa!”
“You don’t need me, Francesca,” Elsa says sadly. “You just think you do. You’ll be fine. All of you will be fine.”
On that farewell note, she eases me and Hardy out of the way.
Opens the door of the people-mover.
She really is leaving, and I, typically, am frozen, conflicted, torn between a thousand different things I want to say. Shout. Scream.
She settles into the driver’s seat. Her gaze rests for a moment on me and Hardy. “I hope you two can work it out,” she murmurs.
Suddenly I find something to say. “Elsa! What did you mean, he looks so much like me?”
“Nothing.” She starts the near-silent electric engine.
I don’t trust her nothing any more than I did Hardy’s. I kick the side of the people-mover. “Tell me the truth!”
The vehicle rolls forward a few feet, then stops. Elsa looks back at us. “It’s not for me to tell you, Jay! Ask Jules.”
Jules, short for Juliette: her sister, my mother.
Hardy takes a short stride towards the people-mover, dragging me along. I stumble against him. Because of the handcuffs, we are uncomfortably close. I smell his sour breath and feel his voice vibrating through his body as he yells, “Fuck that bitch! I needed her, and she left! She took him, but not me! Fuck her!”
“Have some goddamn respect,” Elsa says and she slams the people-mover into gear. The crunch of dirt under her wheels swallows her last words, but I think they are: “—for your mother.”
Hardy swings around and stares at me, panting. Our eyes are on a level. He’s as tall as I am. His hair the same brown as mine, even though his is half gray. His eyes are the same gray-blue.
“I never wanted a brother, anyway,” he snarls under his breath.
It all comes crashing together in my mind like an explosion in reverse. “Major Scattergood was you.”
“Of course it was.”
“Why’d you use my mom’s name?”
“I’ve got a right to it, too!”
The people-mover screeches to a halt at the bottom of the drive, pointing out into the road. Its headlights shine on malachite wings. Ping ping ping goes the collision avoidance system. A snaky head darts down into the headlights, eyes glowing red. A wisp of fire licks the people-mover’s bumper.
Elsa starts to scream.
Tancred says in my head: Me stop her?
No burn! I yell.
But you no like her, Daddy. He sounds hurt and confused, in contrast with his menacing posture. He picked up my rage at Elsa and drew the obvious conclusion. Now I’m telling him not to hurt her. No wonder he’s confused.
That makes two of us. Saturn and the conspiracy and Hardy and my mother are all mixed up in my mind. I don’t want Elsa to go. I never want to see her again. “Just let her go!” I shout, at wits’ end.
Tancred lifts into the air. He drags his claws over the luggage piled in the back of the people-mover, knocking some of it into the road. Elsa madly guns the engine, drives underneath him and away.
Tancred thumps down in front of us.
I fall against his side. Tancred is the only one who never lies to me, never lets me down. I try to hug him. Unfortunately, I forgot I’m still handcuffed to Hardy. He stumbles into my back, curses me, and kicks me in the ankle.
I have to get away from him. But my head is such a mess that I can’t remember the combination to the fucking handcuffs. It’s gone, just gone. I spin and hold up the hand that’s cuffed to Hardy’s. Scattergood’s. “Tancred, burn this shit off me! Please?”
It is a tricky operation, requiring multiple rests, as the metal of the cuffs rapidly gets hot enough to burn through our EVA suits. We’re still attached by a thread when the military police screech up the drive in a vacuum-capable rover.
“Lieutenant-Colonel Scattergood,” they say, smartly saluting me. “Thanks for apprehending this fugitive. And holding onto him for us.”
14
I’m not sure how the last month’s passed.
Lots of paperwork. I often look out the window and see Jupiter dawn through the roof of the ARES dome, turning the lake rose-colored, while I’m still up to my elbows in paperwork from the day before.
I can’t keep relying on Sara for everything. So I do my own paperwork now.
This was one of those mornings. As the sky brightens, I leave my desk and walk out to the front yard. I’m barefoot. The grass prickles my feet and the dew washes my ankles. You can set your watch by the dew in this dome. It falls every day before Jupiter-rise.
I’m living in Elsa’s house. I threw out a bunch of her stuff. Cleared her junk out of the kitchen cabinets. The big kitchen table makes a good desk. And the garage makes a good den for Tancred.
On cue, I hear the shutter door of the garage clatter up. Tancred has learned to work it with his claws. He prowls out, rubbing his huge eyes with the tiny scrap of his blankie. He’s gone back to sleeping with it again. To be honest, if I had a blankie, I’d be sleeping with it, too. As it is, I often just sleep with Tancred.
When I drop off on the couch or someplace, I have horrible dreams. But when I zonk out on the floor beside Tancred, I just dream his dreams about chasing and eating ships. It’s much more restful.
But tonight, I didn’t sleep at all. I had to finish the paperwork for my new ships.
They’re not letting me keep the Squish. I knew that would be too much to hope for. Our top scientists are disassembling it as we speak. But I drove a hard bargain with the DoD. Leveraging my role in exposing the conspiracy, I got their commitment to give me ten ships—a whole wing—and the people to man them.
Maybe the dome’ll feel less empty after they move in.
I don’t think my heart ever will.
Elsa took all her people with her. She can’t have been thinking straight. It was a repeat of Hardy’s convoy, except the other way round: instead of intercepting them, my dragons protected them until they escaped from the Belt.
I thought, if she wants to go, let her go, you know?
Yeah, the DoD was plenty pissed at me for that.
But they couldn’t exactly do anything about it, so they split the difference by giving me a promotion.
Another one. I’m a full colonel now. I got a special eagle that looks like a dragon.
Patrick’s a major and Francie’s a captain. They helped to protect Elsa, of course. Everyone helped. She had half of BeltCOM chasing her at one point, but they didn’t dare try and get past Smaug, Beelzebub, Nightmare, Jade, and Rude Boy. We followed along in the Squish; after Elsa was safely away into Offense territory, we brought the dragons back to Ceres. Walk out onto the tarmac and there’s a rear admiral offering us some new shoulder jewellery.
Each member of the Dragon Unit will command a ship in the new, expanded Dragon Corps, and each of them got to pick a house that once belonged to some ARES high-flyer. Car, private gym, the works.
Gutmangler picked the former ECAPP lab, as it has nice high ceilings. Media people come to interview him all the time. He loves the attention.
But right now, the dome is quiet. With Tancred, I walk around the front of the house and gaze across the lake. All I see is reflections of the sunrise. Doesn’t look like anyone else is awake yet. I don’t mind. I like being alone.
We pace across the dew-jeweled front yard, man and dragon, heads down, not talking even with our minds.
I don�
��t want to burden Tancred. And yet I think he knows. He’s a lot more mature than he used to be.
Eventually I cave in.
I got an email last night, I tell him.
From HIM?
HIM, between me and Tancred, now means only one person: James Scattergood, alias Jim Hardy.
I shake my head. He’s languishing in a maximum security facility on Earth, with no access to email. Serve him right.
It was from my mother.
Understanding and concern radiate from Tancred. He has a unique view of mothers. His mother ate the sun.
It was just one line.
I picture it in my mind, the way it looked on my screen before I deleted it and buried myself in paperwork:
Please get in touch, Jay. I need to talk to you.
P.S. I’m FINE.
THE STORY CONTINUES IN
KNIGHTS OF SATURN
BOOK 5 OF THE VOID DRAGON HUNTERS SERIES.
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VOID DRAGON HUNTERS
Military Sci-Fi with Space Dragons
In 2160, a Void Dragon ate the sun.
In 2322, eight-year-old Jay Scattergood found a Void Dragon egg in his garden.
Humanity survived the death of the sun, but now we're under attack by the Offense. These intelligent, aggressive aliens also lost their sun to a Void Dragon. They lost their home planet, too. Earth, now orbiting Jupiter, is still habitable - though much colder than it once was. The Offense will do whatever it takes to destroy humanity and take Earth for themselves.
Our last hope against the alien aggressors is Jay Scattergood ... and his baby Void Dragon, Tancred.
Guardians of Jupiter
Protectors of Earth
Soldiers of Callisto
Exiles of the Belt
Knights of Saturn
EARTH’S LAST GAMBIT
A Quartet of Present-Day Science Fiction Technothrillers
Ripped from the headlines: an alien spaceship is orbiting Europa. Relying only on existing technology, a handful of elite astronauts must confront the threat to Earth’s future, on their own, millions of miles from home.
Can the chosen few overcome technological limitations and their own weaknesses and flaws? Will Earth’s Last Gambit win survival for the human race?
The Signal And The Boys (prequel story, subscriber exclusive)
Freefall
Lifeboat
Shiplord
Killshot
EXTINCTION PROTOCOL
Hard Science Fiction With a Chilling Twist
Humanity has reached out into the stars - and found a ruthless enemy.
It took us two hundred years to establish fifteen colonies on the closest habitable planets to Earth. It took the Ghosts only 20 years to destroy them. Navy pilot Colm Mackenzie is no stranger to the Ghosts. He has witnessed first-hand the mayhem and tragedy they leave in their wake. No one knows where they came from, or how they travel, or what they want. They know only one thing for sure:
Ghosts leave no survivors.
Save From Wrath (short story, subscriber exclusive)
The Chemical Mage
The Nuclear Druid
THE SOL SYSTEM RENEGADES SERIES
Near-Future Hard Science Fiction
A genocidal AI is devouring our solar system. Can a few brave men and women save humanity?
In the year 2288, humanity stands at a crossroads between space colonization and extinction. Packed with excitement, heartbreak, and unforgettable characters, the Sol System Renegades series tells a sweeping tale of struggle and deliverance.
Keep Off The Grass (short origin story)
Crapkiller (prequel novella, subscriber exclusive)
1. The Galapagos Incident
2. The Vesta Conspiracy
3. The Mercury Rebellion
A Very Merry Zero-Gravity Christmas (short story)
4. The Luna Deception
5. The Phobos Maneuver
6. The Mars Shock
7. The Callisto Gambit
THE RELUCTANT ADVENTURES OF FLETCHER CONNOLLY ON THE INTERSTELLAR RAILROAD
Near-Future Non-Hard Science Fiction
An Irishman in space. Untold hoards of alien technological relics waiting to be discovered. What could possibly go wrong?
Rubbish With Names (prequel story, subscriber exclusive)
Skint Idjit
Intergalactic Bogtrotter
Banjaxed Ceili
Supermassive Blackguard