The Dragon Circle

by Irene Radford

  (Would you?) The voice in his head flitted by so quickly he almost did not hear it.

  “Yeah, I’d know,” he replied, as much to himself as that obscure mental intruder. “I’d feel her in my thoughts and dreams. I’d know. It’s my responsibility to know.” He kept walking toward the two landers and whatever encounter lay ahead, wishing he’d never discovered this godforsaken planet MKO-IV.

  Commander Leonard drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair on the bridge. “What is going on down there?” she asked the air.

  Beside Kat, Josh Kohler hunched in on himself as if trying to make himself invisible. He did not want to capture the captain’s attention when she was tense, concerned, and thinking out loud. He could end up cleaning bilges for breathing wrong.

  Any of the bridge personnel could.

  “I told you this detour was unnecessary and dangerous,” Judge Balinakas said calmly. He punched notes into his handheld, recording every misdemeanor.

  Kat presumed on Leonard’s superior rank by answering her question without having been specifically addressed. “If you ask me, sir, the O’Haras have begun a guerrilla warfare campaign.” She sat up straight and caught the captain’s gaze with her own. She had too much at stake to let a superior officer’s bad mood get in the way.

  And she did not trust M’Berra or any of the Marines dirtside to complete their mission successfully.

  “I did not ask you, Lieutenant. But go ahead, explain your thoughts.” The captain leaned forward. She kept her face and expression neutral. Her right fist continued to clench and release her electronic pencil.

  “Classic opening sortie, sir. Ambush and retreat. Force the enemy to commit more troops. Those, too, will be sabotaged. Cut communications and supplies. Lure more troops dirtside. My guess is that they will try to eliminate, incarcerate, or seduce most of ship’s personnel to the planet, then sneak aboard and steal Jupiter.”

  Leonard’s electronic pencil snapped loudly in the silence that followed Kat’s words.

  Kohler flinched as if his neck had been the intended victim instead of an inanimate tool.

  Leonard turned and glared at Balinakas, daring him to add his now familiar diatribe.

  “Alert. All ship’s personnel. Secure all launch bays. I want armed troops stationed in or near each hatch with full counter-grav gear,” Leonard nearly shouted into ship’s comms. Without equipment to neutralize the heavy gravity of the outer sections of the ship, troops would have to be rotated every hour to avoid undue fatigue and physical stress. “No ship comes aboard without command codes and passwords. Sight recognition is not enough.”

  Somewhere deep in the ship an alarm blared in response to the captain’s orders. Faint echoes filtered through to the bridge. Leonard did not relax.

  Kat grinned to herself. She’d taken steps to prevent a mutiny without violating her orders not to speak of the complaints she’d overheard.

  “Captain, if I may suggest . . .” Kat prompted.

  Leonard pursed her lips in disapproval, then nodded for Kat to continue.

  “I would like to set a trap for my . . . for the outlaws. Let them come aboard. Lull them into believing we are unaware of their presence. Then set an ambush for them in the heavy grav section, where their maneuverability is limited and we have the advantage of counter-grav units.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Leonard looked long and hard into the eyes of every person on the bridge. No one offered her any alternatives.

  “Dangerous,” Balinakas said. “But I like it. Easy to set up and execute and we get out of here all the faster.”

  “What makes you think they will come aboard, Lieutenant Talbot?” Leonard ignored the judge.

  Kat noted a few drops of blood on the captain’s fingers where the broken electronic pencil had cut her. She proffered the first aid kit from beneath her console. Leonard nodded brief acknowledgment of needing it. She sprayed an antibiotic cleansing compound onto her fingers, followed by a touch of sealant. The blood evaporated and only a little telltale swelling lingered from the injury.

  “I have studied these men, Captain,” Kat said. “None of their operations have been on this scale before. But they’ve never had an entire bush planet at stake before. They will fall back to patterns that have worked in the past. Just bigger and a little more complex.”

  “An entire bush planet at stake,” Leonard repeated.

  “Aye, Captain. What else would make them linger here long enough to risk capture?”

  “Do it, Kat. Do what you have to. I want those bastards captured, tried, locked up, and mind-wiped by shift change in the morning.”

  Kat jumped to her feet, saluted, and jogtrotted to the exit hatch. Her heart nearly skipped a beat with excitement. After twenty years, she’d have vengeance.

  CHAPTER 24

  ”WHO’S ABOARD the lander?” Konner asked. ‘He and his party lay flat in the tall grasses one hundred meters from the first parked lander. The second lander lay two klicks west and out of sight. Dalleena had led them to this spot without hesitation and without error.

  “Pilot and copilot, both armed, and a sentry, probably a corporal armed to the teeth and capable of killing you with one hand tied behind his back and both feet in shackles,” Duggan replied.

  “I thought IMPs weren’t allowed to kill anyone,” Kim muttered.

  “Marines are trained to the extreme. Have to know how to kill in order to disable. At least that’s the theory. A lot of bushies go into the Marines. Their viewpoint is slightly askew of standard GTE.” Duggan grinned sideways.

  The sentry emerged from behind the lander, making a circuit of the craft, rifle at the ready, two pistols holstered at his hips, a knife in his belt and another in his boot. He scanned every sector warily.

  Konner kept his head down, hardly daring to breathe. The sentry returned his gaze and his rifle aim to their direction several times before moving on to the front of the lander.

  They’d not approach him undetected.

  “I haven’t done anything like this before unless I was desperate with the adrenaline pumping like mad,” Konner whispered to himself. He hefted a palm-sized rock he found conveniently by his hand.

  “A simple thrown rock won’t divert him for long,” Duggan warned.

  “I’ll just graze his temple a bit. Enough to knock him out without hurting him,” Konner replied, weighing the rock and judging its mass.

  “At a hundred-meter distance?” Duggan raised his eyebrows skeptically.

  “Try some of this. It might improve your aim.” Kim handed Konner a Tambootie leaf with a grin. His eyes looked a little bloodshot and unfocused. How much of the weed had Kim taken?

  The leaves looked a little dry and wilted. Kim had probably been toting them in his pocket since yesterday. No oils to lick off. Konner nibbled a bit of the leaf tip.

  Kim nodded approval.

  Loki took a second leaf from Kim and devoured the entire thing in three mouthfuls. He smiled dreamily.

  “I am champagne and my body is the bottle that barely contains me,” he said wistfully.

  Konner took a bigger bite of the leaf. He felt too light to remain lying prone on the ground. He wanted to fly!

  Kim offered Tambootie to Dalleena. She shook her head and kept her hands tightly clasped.

  Duggan’s eyes grew wide, but he did not take any.

  Konner hefted the rock in his hand one more time. Then he peered at the sentry. His vision focused in on the precise spot on the man’s temple he wanted the rock to hit. High enough to render him unconscious, low enough to avoid permanent injury.

  As he narrowed his focus, fuzzy blue lines snaked across the land beneath his feet. The same web of energy he likened to the transactional gravitons that held the universe together. He shifted his balance a little. His left foot touched one of the lines. Energy pulsed up his leg to his arms and his eyes.

  The Tambootie hit a high note in his blood, threatening to shatter glass, or the stone in his hand.

&nb
sp; And then he tossed the rock. He followed it with sight and mind. The gravity-defying flight made him laugh.

  The sound must have alerted the sentry. He turned to face him. The rock thudded against his forehead, right between the eyes. He sagged. His knees collapsed. He fell forward.

  “St. Bridget and all the angels, have I killed him?” Konner immediately sobered. His heart beat too fast. Black spots burst before his eyes followed by a too white light.

  “Easy,” Kim whispered. He clamped a hand on Konner’s shoulder. “Not dead. Just unconscious. I felt it, too. He’s not dead.”

  Konner clung to those words as he gasped for breath. If he shared this much with a man he merely injured, what would it feel like when he had to kill someone?

  He crossed himself, muttering prayers.

  Loki jumped up and ran toward the lander, Duggan right on his heels.

  Dalleena helped Konner to his feet. He fought for balance, leaning too heavily on her.

  “Go,” she said to Kim. “Help your brother Loki. I have Konner. I will protect him.”

  Kim nodded and followed Loki. He caught up with him and Duggan at the open hatch.

  “Do you know how dangerous that Tambootie is?” Dalleena said. Anger deepened her frown.

  “Yeah, I am getting that idea.” His vision flashed and once more he felt the splitting ache in his head. His knees threatened to give out, just as the sentry’s had.

  “The more you use, the more you need to use. And more often. The need for the leaf never leaves you.”

  Konner’s view of the dangers were decidedly different from hers. Addiction was moot with gamma blockers, available in any advanced med kit. But this awful sharing of emotions could kill him eventually. Especially if he managed to end someone’s life while in a Tambootie thrall.

  “My father used the Tambootie to increase his tracking skills. The stuff killed him in the end,” Dalleena continued.

  “We have to help my brothers,” Konner muttered. He took one hesitant step. His knees held. He took another and almost fell. Dalleena kept him upright though he could see the strain in her arms and face.

  “I can walk,” he insisted. He visualized himself darting the one hundred meters to the lander. Then he was doing it, faster than he should have. His breathing came easy and his heartbeat did not rise.

  Dalleena had a hard time keeping up with him.

  One of the pilots glanced out the cockpit windscreen at that moment and spotted Konner. A hasty conversation ensued between the two. Konner read their lips and knew they quickly organized their own defense. They drew their weapons.

  “Why can’t these things ever go easy like we planned?” Konner asked the sky.

  (Because life is never easy.)

  “You got that one right.”

  Still feeling as if he could fly, Konner launched himself into the open hatch. His head connected with the midriff of one of the pilots. They went down in a tangled heap. While the IMP fought to catch his breath, Konner knocked the stun pistol from the pilot’s grip and restrained both wrists in one of his hands.

  “Get up very slowly and raise your hands,” the other pilot said. His voice was low and menacing.

  Konner looked up to find a stun pistol aimed at his eyes.

  Very slowly he disengaged from his victim. The man still breathed heavily, but he no longer gasped from the stunning blow to his diaphragm.

  “Now who are you and why did you attack this vessel?” the IMP asked. The pips on his collar made him a first lieutenant. The sprawled man was a junior grade. He’d be the copilot. The senior officer held him captive with that stun gun. Was it larger and more powerful than most?

  “Martin Konner O’Hara, at your service.” Konner made a slight bow, still keeping his hands up.

  Where were his brothers?

  In his mind, he saw Loki beckoning him to ease backward.

  Konner shuffled his feet and nearly tripped over the copilot. He flailed his arms seeking a balance he did not need. The Tambootie in his blood kept him light and placing his feet without error.

  The pilot stepped forward instinctively to keep Konner from falling.

  Loki’s hand shot out from the cover of the hatchway and grabbed the pilot’s ankle. He yanked. The pilot fell. His gun spun away.

  Konner caught the weapon neatly and trained it on both men.

  “Tie them up and leave them outside,” Konner ordered. “Kim, use the comm system to jam all dirtside frequencies. Loki, fire up the engines. Dalleena, you and Ross go back to the village. Keep track of the others.”

  “Konner . . .”

  “I’ll be back. I promise.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Aren’t I always?” He cocked her a wide grin.

  “No.” She sounded remarkably like the dragon with that comment.

  Their tasks accomplished, Loki slammed the hatch shut. “Let’s go kill a king stone,” he said with glee.

  “Kill a king stone. I have to kill a king stone.”

  In that moment Konner knew he couldn’t do it. He had to find another way.

  (There is always another way.) Was that the dragon or Mum who spoke?

  Konner, you travel too far and too fast. Betrayal awaits you where you go and when you return. Look before you leap into the void. Reach for us when you do leap. No one else can catch you. We will aid you the only way we can. The invaders will not survive.

  “This is too easy,” Kim said quietly.

  Loki edged the nose of the bulky lander into its docking clamps. “Just like we planned,” he chortled. “They asked for codes. We gave them codes. They opened the bay door and we docked.”

  “They will wonder why twenty-plus Marines and three prisoners do not pour out of the hatch at touchdown,” Kim reminded him.

  ”Requesting decontamination and temporary quarantine.” Konner spoke into the comm.

  ”State your problem, Lieutenant,” a brisk feminine voice filled the cockpit.

  Shivers of familiarity ran up and down Kim’s spine. Where had he heard that voice before?

  “We encountered some bushies, ma’am. The prisoners have been living among them for quite some time. They may be carrying a local plague. We have all been exposed.”

  Loki grinned from ear to ear. “We did encounter a local plague and were exposed to it.”

  That was months ago. Kim remembered his own bout with the debilitating fever, locking jaw, and dehydration. He’d almost lost Hestiia to the bioengineered disease left over from the original colonists and their civil war. Hestiia had lost their child before she knew for certain she carried it.

  Kim still ached for the loss of the babe. They needed to wait another moon or two for Hestiia to fully recover before they tried again. A secret smile crept across his face.

  “Docking bay three cleared of all personnel. Decontamination in progress,” the feminine voice came over the comm.

  The shiver of familiarity became a frisson of disquiet. Kim knew that voice. Knew that woman from somewhere.

  “Now we get out of here, before they realize this ship is empty,” Konner whispered.”

  “The hatches are sealed until the decontamination is finished,” Kim replied in an equally hushed tone. He had a feeling that familiar female was listening.

  “There is always an emergency exit. Into the rabbit hole with the crystals if nothing else,” Konner said. Any ship that used a crystal drive had to have access to the outer circle of red directional crystals. In the torpedo-shaped cruiser, three separate circles, evenly spaced the length of the craft, kept it on course and spinning for gravity.

  All three brothers scanned the bay for signs of an access hatch.

  “There.” They pointed to the imperfection in the hull plating. Just the barest sign of a crack and latch. With the uniform gray-green paint on bulkheads and hatch, only those looking for it would notice it.

  They made for the exit. Konner led them along the rabbit hole. They climbed. Gravity pulled at their muscles. In
moments Kim was sweating, breathing heavily. He felt as if he crawled two hand-widths above the floor. Every meter presented a new, sharply-pointed red crystal ready to spear him if he lost his grip.

  Konner had suffered a similar injury aboard Sirius. Kim had healed him with magic, without knowing how or what he did. He had no confidence that his brothers could tend him as well.

  He needed more Tambootie to strengthen his body and his will.

  Sirius didn’t produce this much gravity while spinning. But this was a much bigger ship. It had to spin faster to generate gravity in the interior portions, making the outer rim proportionally heavier.

  At last Konner paused. Seemingly, they had traversed half the diameter of the cruiser. But they had passed only one other hatch. If he remembered correctly, they had come only one eighth of the way around.

  “Loki, can you sense another mind beyond this door?” Konner whispered.

  Loki held his hand flat against the bulkhead beside the hatch. After a moment he shook his head and shrugged.

  “There’s a long tunnel to the main corridor about as long as the docking bay is wide. It’s empty. Can’t tell what is beyond.”

  Without another word, all three pulled stunners and aimed at the hatch. Konner flipped the latch and waited. The hatch opened a crack. No voices. No unseen hand eased the portal farther open. Loki nodded and swung through, pushing the hatch with his feet. Another uphill crawl. Because of the spin, “down” seemed to be the rabbit hole. At the end of the tunnel he shifted his angle of approach. A cautious look around the exterior and he pushed up through a hatch in the deck of the corridor. He rolled onto the deck and came up in a crouch, weapon at the ready.

  Kim counted to ten and followed his brother. Eventually he, too, rolled to his feet, alert and ready to fire his weapon, or jump back into the tunnel. The corridor was empty. He scooted to the side to make room for Konner.

  Konner heaved himself upward onto the deck. He stayed on his knees, breathing heavily, pale and sweating.

  “Maintenance,” Loki mouthed. “Mid shift. Bet they are all in the mess hall.”

  Kim nodded his acknowledgment of the assessment. But something wasn’t right. With nearly three hundred people on board, in uncharted territory, with men and a lander missing, surely someone should patrol every corridor at all times.