Crystal Dragon

by Sharon Lee

  At least, Cantra thought with a sigh, she knew exactly where to find Jela.

  She eased herself out into a lull in traffic, thinking to check the needle-gun riding in its inside pocket. She'd left her heavy weaponry on the ship, not having expected to need it on a snoop job, and set out toward the garrison at a light jog.

  * * *

  FERN WAS WEBBED into the pilot's chair; Arin sitting co-pilot. Dulsey and Jakoby were strapped into the jumpseats behind each pilot.

  "How—" Jakoby began, but her broken whisper was overridden by Fern's crisp, "Co-pilot, report!"

  "My screens are clear, Pilot," Arin replied, his voice shaking only a little. "We are in transition."

  "We are," Fern agreed, her fingers busy on her board. "How and why can wait until we are certain that the ship is hale and functioning as it should. Systems check, if you please. All remain strapped in until the pilots give the aye."

  There was silence while the pilots worked. Then—

  "The ship is secure," Fern announced. "Unstrap at will." It was, Dulsey thought, notable that she herself did not unstrap.

  "If the pilot pleases," she said softly. "May we know our condition and course?"

  Fern sighed. "We're on course for Solcintra, Dulsey. Your M seems to have the means to enforce his ...suggestions."

  "No mere soldier could have instantly transported us from the workroom to our ship, already in transition, with a destination coded in!" Arin protested. Fern shrugged.

  "Can or can't, that's what we have."

  "We need to change course," Arin said firmly. "There's no need for us to raise Solcintra."

  "Yes, there is," said Fern, at last unstrapping and rising in a single, fluid dancer's motion. She met each of their eyes in turn. "The course is locked. Pilot's override is non-functional."

  * * *

  SOLDIERS WERE COMING out of the inner gate in pairs, moving with that same ground-eating quick-walk that was so frustrating in Jela. Wide-shouldered and solid, clad in military 'skins; heavy, dual-energy rifles held at ready; helmets on, face-screens down, they were disconcertingly alike, and not a little frightening. Cantra faltered, staring. Jela's mates, she thought. Those calm and faceless forces of destruction moving out quick and light to face the incoming Enemy—This is what Jela was bred to love.

  Which meant, she reminded herself forcefully, that the man was likely in the garrison, getting 'skinned up, and in need of a sharp talking to on the subject of getting to his ship and off-planet before jolly hell broke loose. She only hoped the garrison folks would count her friend rather than foe at the gate.

  She moved into the jog again, pushing past the crowd that had gathered to watch the soldiers march out, like it was some kind of play-parade, instead of an earnest deployment against a fast-approaching doom.

  "Cantra!" His shout was 'way too loud in her ear, his fingers too hard 'round her arm as he dragged her back out of the crowd.

  Concentrating on keeping her feet, she let him pull her clear, then dug her heels in, thinking it was going to hurt something bad if he dislocated her arm.

  Fortunately, he was paying more attention than that, though he did scowl at her, and if she didn't have bruises on her arm the size and shape of Jela's fingers for this day's work, it would be through no fault of his.

  "You've got to get to Dancer!" He yelled at her. "Now!"

  Jela wasn't quite in full battle dress, she saw with relief. He'd thrown on a flak vest and grabbed himself up a rifle, which was only prudent, given the circumstances, and he wore a light helmet with an embedded com-set. There were marks on the helmet that looked like some of that silly new-soldier script, and some bright silver bars on the shoulders of the vest.

  "I was coming for you!" She yelled back at him. "Let's go!"

  He nodded and started off at his quick not-run, she jogging after—and six full-'skinned soldiers fell in behind and at the sides, weapons up, status lights glowing ready.

  Might be the escort was heading to occupy the port, she thought, as the substantial wing of them sliced through the crowd. That would make sense. The port could need defending.

  It comforted Cantra some little bit that their party grew as they rushed on—it seemed that one in every ten or twelve of the soldiers was getting direction from somewhere, or saw Jela's helmet or vest and knew that they were heading toward the proper duty station.

  * * *

  SHE HADN'T RUN so far in a long time; and it was a good thing she'd had time to heal up from the strain of being a scholar. Their group moved with a quiet clatter; and now over all came new sounds, the sound of firing somewhere, out toward the mines Dulsey and her team were working—and of an attempt to bring order. The port gate was half-shut as they approached, a single forlorn police-type with a hand gun nervously eyeing them as they ran toward her.

  "Attention! Attention!" The autoshout gave out. "Enemy soldiers on the ground in Druidill Park. Enemy ground action to east and south of Wister. Enemy forces emerging from the Southard mines. Repeat! Enemy soldiers at the mines. The planet is under attack! All soldiers to stations! All civilians to cover!"

  Their group was through the gate, the policewoman giving way gladly to the soldiers, and flat-out running across the near-empty yard, Dancer before them. From the left, another, smaller, squad was approaching, their battle dress slightly different from—

  "Enemy in sight!" Jela shouted. "Intercept!"

  Three of their escort peeled off in the direction of the interlopers.

  The rest of them ran for the ship, and there were more soldiers in those subtly different battle 'skins coming in, Cantra saw. Hundreds of them.

  "Perimeter three!" Jela ordered, without breaking stride. "Expanding circle!"

  Half their little troop responded instantly, deploying toward the advancing enemy.

  "Go!" Jela roared, and the rest of their escort was gone, running and firing, and it was only the two of them and Dancer's ramp right there!

  Around them the sounds of firing intensified, and in the distance the chatter of heavier weapons sounded. There were sounds of ricochets, likely off the space-hard hull of Dancer herself.

  "Up!" Jela shouted, a solid presence behind her; his weapon up and firing ad they advanced. She jumped the "Captain's Out" barrier, landed light on her feet and ran the rest of the way, never faster, knowing he was behind her, triggered the hatch, ducked in, turned—

  He halfway to the unstoppable wave of the enemy, dodging and firing, and there was no way—

  "Jela!" She screamed, but he didn't hear her. Couldn't possibly hear her.

  "GO!" His voice came back to her over the terrific noise of the fighting. "Damn you, Cantra, GO!"

  She took one more look out over the port and the plain beyond, at the steady stream of soldiers in the wrong color 'skins—and she went.

  * * *

  "...GO!"

  The plan, in so far as there was a plan, was working. He'd brought troops to the port, intercepted a rash attempt to take the field, gotten Cantra to her ship. Now to clear launch room...

  "Expanding perimeter!" he ordered. "Charge fifty paces!"

  He was among them now, his troops, and they were doing well. They were advancing, they were pushing the stunned enemy back against their own on-rushing troops, creating consternation.

  Into his head stormed the largest dragon the tree had ever shown him, wings black and terrible, scattering dozens of the less mighty with roar, tooth and talon—

  Before him, he saw the enemy scuttle, retreat, fall.

  He picked a target, fired; fired again, a head shot, then the next...

  The cermacrete trembled as the mass of Spiral Dance lifted on maneuvering jets behind him.

  "Down all!" he shouted.

  Following his own order, he fell forward, let the steam and gas wash over him, and rush out toward the enemy, obscuring everything. He laughed and the dragon in his head echoed him.

  There was a glow within the steam; the pulse of low carrier power bo
oming ... and he knew the plan could work. The ship's rising would give them time to gather their strength....

  And now the steam was thinning. Time to move.

  "Ahead fire four count, charge ten paces!"

  He came up with his troops, never doubting that they'd drive the enemy back to the perimeter. The dragon in his head screamed defiance and he echoed it at full volume into the mic and across the field!

  "Back to their holes! Chase them back! No prisoners, no surrender!"

  He jumped a downed comrade, and another, fired ahead, felt the presence of someone too close, had time to swing the butt of his gun into a yielding face, fell, got up—numbness was growing in his left leg, but he refused to notice it, shot again, but now the noise wasn't right, he couldn't separate his own yelling from the sounds of the weapons.

  A quick glance behind showed three of his own and an X with a bloody grinning face, firing his weapon one-handed, screaming along with him. His right arm went numb, and the gun slid away—but no matter—his knife came to his left hand and he brought it about, his leg not quite giving him the distance he wanted and not working at all, really, but there was the enemy within reach—

  Black wings roared in his ears, or it was it Dancer lighting up full thrust? Hah! The ship was lifting! His knife was gone, wrenched out his hand as the enemy fell. He snatched at his belt, freed the wicked ceramic whip with a snap that took the arm off an approaching soldier. Another snap, but his leg gave out and the whip flew out of his fingers—

  It was silent on the field; in his head, he could hear the black dragon singing.

  Jela sighed a last sigh, and the black dragon lay down beside him. Above them, wings flashing against the brilliant sky, a golden dragon danced.

  * * *

  SHE HIT THE CHAIR hard, called up systems, and screens. She found him almost at once, surrounded, firing, each shot taking its target, but there were too many, too—

  They were charging the enemy like a bunch of madmen, giving her room for lift off. She had her eyes on him, and watched his back in the screen as the maneuvering jets puffed their first lift...

  "Override, dammit," she spat as the warning bells screamed. "I need some room..."

  The ship started a lazy drift, and she lost sight of him, hit the jets harder, setting an auto-orbit switch, saw his back again. Far away, he looked, and so small, leading a knot of soldiers into a sea of Enemy. They'd gained ground somehow, but the tide was turning and—

  Down.

  No, he was—there. No—

  No.

  The fighting stilled—the Enemy had the field.

  The tree screamed. Or she did, or all the tiny dragons in her head.

  Her fingers moved on the board. Dancer leapt, spun on its axis and flared, flames incinerating soldiers where they stood. Her fingers moved again, and she flew as low as she dared over the field, sweeping with flame and jets, sweeping again, and when all was obscured by streaming fire she savagely slapped the lift to orbit button, and relished opening the armament switches. Firing Jela's precious cannon she launched the Jayfours still on board across the seething mine shafts, dropped flares and test rounds—whatever there was—until the magazines were empty.

  It wasn't until Dancer was safely up and out that she realized she was crying, silently and steadily.

  Twenty-Two

  Long Savannahs of the Blue

  THE SCREENS SHOWED BLACK; the only sounds in the tower the soft mutter of machinery, the whisper of the ventilating system—and the ragged breathing of the woman in the pilot's chair.

  She sat with shock webs engaged. It had come to her that it might not be safe to let those straps loose just yet. No telling what she might do—she'd thought that without stipulating what it might mean. She was cold to the point of shivering, and her chest ached, like she'd been working too hard in thin air—hyperventilating, that's what, she told herself, raising a hand to brush at her face. Her fingers came away wet. Deeps.

  Behind her closed eyes, an image formed, tentatively: the shadowy outline of a too-familiar black dragon.

  "Don't," she snarled, or tried to, her voice thin and unsteady in her own ears. "I'll break you into toothpicks if you try me now."

  The dragon-image faded, and she was alone in her head. Alone on her ship. Alone—

  "Shift changes, Pilot," Jela said, his voice easy and warm. "Time to get some—"

  "Stop it!" she screamed, surging upward—the straps grabbed her, pressed her into the chair, and she fell back, eyes shut but seeing it again—Jela falling, rising, shooting, losing the gun, cutting someone, down...

  Dead.

  No harm in grieving a good friend lost, Garen whispered from memory.

  "No harm..." Cantra whispered, ragged. "I think—" she cleared her throat. "Garen. Listen to me, now, I've got something in my mind. I know you done it for the best, and we gave it a good run—but I'm thinking what you did there at Tanjalyre—I'm thinking you skimped on the planning. What was the use of flying under the Director's scans when Veralt found you anyhow? What's the use my carrying on, all alone and not fit for it? Dammit, Garen..." Her voice choked out, and she wilted sideways against the straps, like she had ribs stove, or maybe'd taken a bad cut. The tower faded—maybe she passed out, or maybe she just fell asleep, exhausted, adrenaline-lagged as she was—no matter, really, other than to say that when she blinked back to consciousness, she wasn't crying any more.

  She straightened and released the webbing, though she didn't try to stand up. Her muscles were like water, and she felt ...unconnected... to the reality around her.

  Saving one.

  "You," she whispered.

  Call it a change in the air inside the tower—whatever. She knew it was listening to her. Jela's tree, that she'd promised to take to safety. Whatever that meant.

  "You," she said again. "You tell me straight. I'm figuring Jela was bred sterile—military wouldn't want those special tailored genes crossing out to the general population, now would they?"

  Silence, saving ship noise; no pictures took shape behind her eyes. Cantra sighed.

  "Right. I'm also figuring you didn't find that little fix too much of a challenge, considering all else you put yourself to—and accmmplished. I'll just mention the tiny inconvenience of my own deliberately non-fertile state."

  More silence, the air in the tower fair a-quiver with attention.

  Cantra levered herself onto her feet and walked unsteadily to the end of the board. One hand braced against the wall, she stared at the tree, noting more than a few leaves drooping and showing some brown along the edge, and a couple undergrown pods turning yellow on the limb.

  "You tell me the truth, now," she whispered. "Am I carrying Jela's true and biologic child? Yes or no'll be fine, stipulating I don't want to hear his voice."

  The air in the tower shifted in some indefinable way, and the top branch of the little tree snapped, as if in salute.

  "Yes," her own voice whispered raggedly back at her from the walls. "Jela's true and biologic child."

  She closed her eyes. Took one breath, then another—and another, concentrating on keeping them uniformly deep and unhurried.

  "I see," she said at last, opening her eyes. "I'm grateful to have the information." She pushed away from the wall.

  "I'll be in my quarters," she said.

  * * *

  ENERGIES MOVED IN slow, scintillant waves, melding and separating; nothing more than a turgid eddy among the exuberant forces that defined the leading edge of the galaxy.

  A star fell into the eddy and was instantly absorbed, cleverly woven ley lines confining its renegade brilliance.

  "Again?" The lady lounged on her velvet chaise, a dope stick in a long, gem-sprinkled holder in one indolent hand; the other tucked beneath her head. She considered him out of half-closed emerald eyes, her hair a honey swirl against the tasseled pillow; her long limbs sheathed in light. Beside the chaise, her submissive knelt on the thick rugs, his back crisscrossed with old scars
and new stripes, his will concentrated on the form and the substance of the cage.

  "Lady." Rool Tiazan said respectfully. "I come to you once more at the behest of my dominant."

  "Who perished foolishly, which might have been the greatest folly of her existence, had she not first performed a greater." The lady paused to draw on her dope-stick; illusion, of course, as was everything in this place, saving the cage formed of ley lines. "It astonishes one, the choice to insure the survival of the lesser part. Surely, she might have more easily preserved herself, and absorbed your energies at the instant of your destruction."

  "Such a course would have served my purpose not at all," his lady said tartly, moving to the fore within their shared essence. "Sister."