by Adam Carter
While Hawthorn tended to Arowana in another part of the wrecked cabin, Hart stayed with the prisoner. It was a better job, for Arowana was already awake and cranky, while their prisoner was unconscious.
They had removed the armour and discovered she was wearing some kind of military uniform underneath. That was good, since Hart had been afraid the woman may have been naked. The storm was not presently too bad, but with no walls left in their cabin it was fairly chilly. The prisoner had been bound with stout rope, her arms above her head in the same manner as she had bound Arowana back in the pod. Her injuries were not severe, but Hart had treated them with a little water. A little water, since they hardly had any left.
She was aged somewhere in her forties, Hart would have guessed. Her appearance was craggy, her hair was cut short in a military way, which reinforced the uniform, and there were a few scars on her face, where she had apparently been clawed by an animal sometime in the past. Hart wondered who she was, whether the armour was military as well, and above all, why she was walking around pretending to be a robot.
The woman stirred and Hart prepared herself for the interrogation.
Her eyes opened and she immediately tested her bonds. Her legs were not bound, but there was nowhere she could go with her arms secured. Hart allowed her the time in which to figure all of this out and eventually the prisoner sagged in her bonds and gazed upon Hart.
“Bethany Hart.”
“That’s me,” Hart said. “You know a lot about us. But we don’t know anything about you.”
“Suits me fine.”
“Gordon made you some food.” Hart picked up a bowl by her side. It contained a light porridge which was not especially great but the best Hawthorn could come up with given the circumstances. Hart heaped a spoon with some and held it out.
The woman spat in Hart’s face.
Putting the spoon back in the porridge, Hart calmly wiped her face with her sleeve.
“You act like you’re used to that,” the woman said.
“You’d be surprised what I’m used to. Do you have a name? I assume Borissa’s made up.”
The woman narrowed her eyes in silence.
“Is it Ruby?”
“How could you know that?”
“So it is Ruby?”
“I didn’t say that. I … might not be called Ruby.”
“It doesn’t end with an A. I hear all women’s names should end in an A.”
“You’re so funny.”
“Food’s scarce, Ruby. You shouldn’t turn down food or water when you’re offered it. You want to try it again?”
“You want me to spit in your face again? You seemed to like it the first time, you weirdo.”
“More for me.” Hart sat and ate the porridge. Slowly.
“I know what this is,” Ruby said after a few moments. “You’re the good cop.”
“No. I’m just the only one available. Gordon’s tending to Iris. She’s fine, by the way, but he cares more about her than he does you. That leaves me with you.” She ate another spoonful. “Right now, I’m the only cop. When Iris is feeling a little better, then you’ll see the bad cop. Don’t forget, you tortured her. Cut off her finger and everything.”
“I didn’t cut off her finger. Is she saying I cut off her finger?”
“Why would she say that?”
Ruby snorted but refused to answer.
“I’ll be honest with you,” Hart said. “I don’t talk to people. Ever. I don’t like being around people, I can’t stand the thought of me talking to them and them talking back to me. I’m trying to overcome that, I’m trying to get back to the way I used to be. A part of me still blames myself for every bad thing I did, a part of me still winces whenever I do something wrong, expecting a brutal backhand to slap me across the face. But right now, I’m a little numb. It’s the way my brain’s decided to cope with things. I know my brain’s doing that because I’m a genius.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying I don’t much care who you are or what you want. You captured Iris because you wanted to understand human behaviour, and now here you are: my prisoner. And all I want to do right now is observe and understand human behaviour so I can go back to being one.”
“Are you threatening to torture me?”
“No. But if I’m the good cop, you don’t know the first thing about me.”
She heard a noise behind her and saw Hawthorn helping Arowana along. He set her down nearby before glancing to Hart, who continued to eat the porridge. Arowana looked in a bad way, but she was alive so had nothing really to complain about.
“You’re supposed to give that to the prisoner,” Hawthorn said to Hart.
“She didn’t want it. Is it poisoned?”
“No, it’s not poisoned.”
“Well, then. Don’t want to waste it.”
“What do you have?” Arowana asked and Hart realised she was talking to her.
“A name,” Hart said. “Ruby.”
“Ruby?” Hawthorn asked. “As in Ruby McAlister?”
The prisoner laughed. “You’ve met Elaine.”
“She’s your sister?” Hawthorn asked.
“What? Of course she’s not my sister. Do we look anything alike?”
Hart had not noticed, but the two women could not have been sisters. Elaine McAlister had very pale white skin, while Ruby’s was the colour of burnt caramel.
“Why did McAlister tell you my name anyway?” Ruby asked.
“She didn’t,” Hawthorn said. “She said Ruby was the name of her sister, who turned into a dragon.”
Ruby laughed for a few moments and stopped when she saw she was the only one doing so. “She said her sister turned into a dragon? And you believed her?”
Hawthorn and Arowana exchanged an uncomfortable glance.
“Dragons have been known to turn into people,” Hart said. “Well, not actual dragons, obviously, since they’re not real.”
“About as real as crazed killer robots,” Arowana said spitefully.
“Yeah,” Ruby said, smiling in fond remembrance. “I did that to spook you. Figured it’d be a good way of gaining intelligence. You reacted, seemed to have some fear of CKRs, so I ran with it. Was sort of a joke.”
“A joke?” Arowana asked and would have gone for her if she was certain she would have made it. “You call torturing me a joke?”
“I didn’t torture you. Well, I prodded you a bit and twisted your limbs, but I don’t call that torture. And I tied you up, exactly like you’ve tied me up, so we’re even.”
“You pulled out a tray of medical equipment.”
“To scare you.”
“You cut me with a scalpel. You cut off my finger.”
Here Ruby looked confused. “No, no, I don’t think I did. Are you feeling all right?”
“What, you think I just made up being tortured?”
“No, but I do think you imagined it.”
Hart found the exchange fascinating, mainly because Arowana looked so uncertain. Hart could see her thinking, trying to work out what had happened. Whatever the truth, it was something Arowana would have to figure out in her own time.
“Are you working with McAlister?” Hart asked.
Ruby snorted. “I thought you lot were here to rescue her. That’s why I interrogated your insane friend over there. We’ve been here two years and then you people turn up in this place. I watched you for a while, got one of you alone and questioned her. Still wasn’t sure who you were. But if you think her sister turns into a dragon, you’re too stupid to be working with her.”
“Here to rescue her?” Hart repeated. “Who did you think we were?”
“You know, from the housing association.”
“The council? You think we’re here to rehouse McAlister?”
“The council? No, are you all nuts? McAlister’s a war criminal.”
“Fantastic,” Hawthorn said, sinking to a sitting position and covering his face with his hands. “
What war and what crime?”
“The war of life. And the crime of selling real estate.”
Hawthorn peered through his fingers. “Say what?”
“The war of life,” Ruby repeated. “And selling real estate. She was buying up property to sell to tourists.”
“Buying? Who exactly are you?”
“Colonel Glinda “Mad-Shine-Glistening” Ruby, fourth regiment of the Carpoan fifth infantry.”
“You’re Carpoan?” Hart exclaimed. She almost blurted out that Wraith was Carpoan, that their sword-ship was Carpoan and that both Wraith and the Glory were even now searching for them. But she managed to stop herself, because that would not have been healthy for any of them. “That’s nice.”
“Carpo is a small moon,” Ruby continued. “Not as small as this one, granted, but we’re limited for space. Every crime is a capital offence and everything we don’t like is considered a crime. We kill just so there’s more air for the rest of us to breathe, which means we’re in a perpetual state of civil war. The war of life.”
“And buying property?” Hart asked. “I take it property’s scarce on Carpo, so someone turning up from off-world and buying it is considered a crime.”
“And therefore a capital offence,” Ruby said. “When she was found out, she fled. I was given the task of following and bringing her back for execution. I caught her but we ended up here, won’t go into what happened there. I kept her chained up for a while, but since neither of us was going anywhere I eventually set her free. She can’t get out of the trench, anyway, and even if she could, she can’t get off Valetudo. We made a truce, which will last until I can get her back to Carpo for execution.”
“What a great situation for her,” Hart said.
“I thought so. I’ve been sending communications back to Carpo this whole time, but without response. I was thinking of piggybacking on your markers, but they don’t seem to be doing any good, either. I was hoping that pod meant something, but I couldn’t access the computer so looks like that was pointless as well.”
“And where does the dragon fit into all of this?” Hart asked.
Here, Ruby bit her lower lip and narrowed her eyes in silence.
“Excuse us,” Hart said. She walked off and motioned the others to follow. They reconvened just outside of the cabin, out of earshot of their prisoner.
“Well?” Hawthorn asked. “Any thoughts, anyone? I’ll be honest, I don’t have a clue what’s going on.”
“The dragon came down in the pod,” Hart said. “Ruby doesn’t know any more about the pod than we do, so it has nothing to do with her. The only recent changes on Valetudo are the dragon and the pod, so they must have come together.”
“Makes sense,” Hawthorn said. “The pod’s certainly big enough to hold the thing.”
“The pod’s also Carpoan,” Hart continued.
“How’d you figure that?” Arowana asked. “You’re guessing.”
“No, I’m a genius. I don’t need to guess. You don’t know anything about that pod, Iris, which means Securitarn don’t recognise it. Granted, they don’t know everything about everything, but there’s one thing no one knows much about: Carpoans. If your database doesn’t recognise anything at all in that pod, it stands to reason it could be Carpoan. Since there’s already a Carpoan involved here, and said Carpoan has been sending off signals, it’s possible the pod’s Carpoan. Then add in what we know about Carpo, that they don’t value life and see every transgression as a capital offence, then yeah, I’d put a lot of money on my theory being correct.”
“It’s still supposition,” Arowana said.
“Partly. But I watch and I listen and I learn. And then I piece everything together and reach a likely conclusion. That’s theorising. It’s what scientists do, Iris, and I’m a scientist.”
“Say you’re right,” Hawthorn said. “If the Carpoans received the messages and sent a dragon down here, why’s Ruby avoiding it? Hasn’t it come to rescue her?”
“Were you listening, Gordon?” Hart asked. “Carpoans don’t care about anyone. They want McAlister dead for her crimes and Ruby failed to do that. They still want McAlister dead, but now they don’t care what happens to Ruby. The dragon’s here to kill them both.”
“OK, that makes sense, too. But where did it come from? We don’t know much about Carpo, but they can’t be breeding dragons. For one thing, there’s no genetic stock for them to get started. Plus, that dragon’s huge. If space is at such a premium on Carpo, they’re not going to want big things like that around, using up all the air. Dragons breathe fire, so that’d burn off even more oxygen. It doesn’t add up.”
“I know,” Hart admitted. “That’s the one part of all this I can’t figure out. I have no idea what that dragon is or where it came from. Maybe the Carpoans have a trade agreement with someone off-world who can make the things, I don’t know.”
“I think I do,” Arowana said, deep in thought. “While you’ve been congratulating yourself on how wonderful your theory is, I’ve been thinking. I think I know what that dragon is and where it came from.”
“And?” Hart asked.
“McAlister. She was excited when she thought we’d brought the dragon into the trench. She told us it was her sister transformed.”
“And?”
“And, I think if I’m going to prove my theory, we need to take that dragon back to the trench.”
“You mean fight it again?” Hawthorn asked. “Are you mad?”
“Nope. Because now we have a weapon. Now we have something we can throw at it, something we’re not all that bothered about breaking.”
Hart saw Arowana was looking back into the cabin and her heart sank. “Are you suggesting we send Ruby out to fight the dragon?”
“She’s been avoiding that dragon long enough. I think it’s time we set up a fight here. A fight between a dragon and a crazed killer robot.” She smiled cruelly. “If you want to bet on something, Beth, you can bet on that.”
“It’s not right,” Hart said, “but I’ll go explain it to her.” Hart did not agree with using Ruby as a weapon, but she was Carpoan: she was hardly going to say no. Even so, that still did not justify what they wanted her to do.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the old Chinese tales, dragons were masters of storms and oceans. Mariners praised them when seas were calm and feared them when they were raging. Arowana understood most myths of such nature had sprung up because of human desire to make sense of everything. A loved one would die and there would have to be a reason, a home was destroyed and it could not have been pointless. Gods and religions, monsters and heroes, had formed out of the basic human need to understand the world around them. Most of these ideas were ridiculous, many did not even need disproving since by today’s standards they were so ludicrous. The heavens were not prevented from crashing into the Earth purely because Atlas was up there holding everything apart; all the bad things people did could not be blamed on Pandora opening a box; great white sharks were not monsters just because someone had made a film out of a book.
She tapped the side of her head. Her thoughts were becoming garbled and she was again having difficult telling fiction from reality.
“You all right?” Hawthorn asked. “Only, you keep doing that.”
“Keep doing what?”
“Hitting yourself in the head.”
“It’s my head, I’ll do what I want. I was just thinking about how most myths don’t seem to have any basis in reality, but how the Chinese thought dragons controlled the storms. And here we are facing a dragon in a storm.”
“Oh.” He paused. “And thinking things like that makes you hit yourself in the head?”
With a howl of rage, the dragon appeared before them. It had not proved difficult to track, for there were only so many places a dragon could hide, and they had located it within an hour. Arowana, Hawthorn and Hart stood alone facing the beast, watching as it shook its great head to clear it. The eye Arowana had pierced was closed, with a
scab forming but no sign of infection. It could see them with its one remaining eye and did not look at all pleased.
The reason for its rage was because, having located the beast, Hawthorn and Hart had rigged up an explosive device and set it on the ground in its path. The dragon had just stepped on it and received a painful stab through its foot.
“We made it mad,” Hart said. “Phase one completed.”
The dragon lowered its head, like a beast readying itself to charge, and Arowana began to have doubts about their plan. “Uh, guys,” she said. “You do realise we’re standing out in the open here?”
“All part of the plan,” Hawthorn said.
The dragon bellowed and began its charge.
“What if Ruby doesn’t show?” Arowana asked.
Hawthorn and Hart looked at her from either side and Arowana could not believe they were so calm.
“You don’t trust her?” Hawthorn asked.
“That dragon’s awfully close.”
Two steps later, the dragon’s foot touched something else, an incredible explosion tore through the ground and its leg disappeared down a hole. The beast collapsed, its body struck the ground and its neck slapped into the rocks like a discarded hosepipe. Its great head, not ten paces from them, thrashed madly in rage.
“See?” Hawthorn said. “Nothing to worry about.”
“What about the breathing fire thing?”
“Ah hell.”
The three of them scattered as a spray of fire shot from the dragon’s maw. It was not a continuous vomit of flame, but more a heavy rain spattering out horizontally. As Arowana landed and rolled, she wondered whether something in its throat had been damaged in the fall.
She had landed on the side of its good eye and Arowana was thankful at least that Hawthorn was on what was literally its blind side. The dragon slowly turned its head towards her and Arowana caught recognition in its eye. Here was the woman who had dared to tame it, the woman with whom it had shared affinity. The woman who had blinded it.