Unfettered

by Terry Brooks

  As a second lieutenant, Laurence had once needed to step outside the Goliath mid-journey, to oversee repairs when a diagnostic system had failed; he had stood upon the hull with the slip-stream coursing past in a glittering stream and felt himself a small almost parasitical creature clinging to some immense and curving whale, dwarfed into insignificance; the present sensation was not unlike that, except the Goliath had never glared down at him, and bared serrated jaws in his direction, and complained of his presence.

  Temeraire was not the size of a full warship, of course, but he would not have fit inside the Reliant’s hold, either: twenty tons at least, and forty meters long. Laurence looked down at the cradle and could see faint indentations in the casing where Temeraire had plucked it from the sky with his metal-sheathed talons, as easily as a hawk catching a squirrel.

  But Laurence had stood on the Goliath’s hull, despite the low shrilling whine of the ship’s engines and the slip-stream ready to take him off in an instant and fling him into the gravity wells, to be crushed or torn limb from limb; he had done his duty. He drew a single breath, deeply, and did not quail. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I assure you that I have not been frivolously sent: we have reason to believe that the Bonapartists have learned of the trinium deposits as well, and if you do not have military protection you will certainly be under attack in short order.”

  Temeraire frowned down at the Navy officer in some irritation: he had been assured via comlink, by his aunt Lien, that he needed only be certain to surprise the fellow, and speak threateningly, to cow him into immediate departure. “Humans are not used to proper dragons, anymore,” she had said, “—not our kind. If he is old enough, he may fall down stone dead from fear: I have seen it happen,” and while Temeraire did not really care to make anyone fall down stone dead, he had relied on her assurances; he had not bothered to work out what he would do if the officer did not choose to go away at once, and that left the present circumstances quite awkward.

  This news about the Bonapartists was also a puzzle. Temeraire knew about the wars, of course, in a distant, vague sort of way, but it was not the sort of thing that Celestials were supposed to pay attention to. He had considerably more immediate matters to attend to, in any case. The colony was not at all what had been promised, and they had all heard the promises in the shell, along with what now seemed a most unrealistic program for the careful, painstaking development of a lush and welcoming world, which had fallen apart in almost every particular. Instead they had met an unending stream of problems. It had proven impossible to establish any kind of mine at all with the equipment they had been provided, and it consumed a week to bring down even a single tree and make it usable, which in turn stifled all their hopes for agriculture.

  It was very difficult to have been promised so much—and for their progenitors to have paid so much—and received so little. With every fresh difficulty, one felt as though one had been robbed, despite all the technical protests which the developers’ lawyers and insurers made, and the laws—quite unreasonable in Temeraire’s opinion—which shielded them from liability, under this supposed excuse that it was impossible to imagine every potential challenge which a colony might face. The surveyors might have tried to cut down one tree, or dig at least one small hole; they might have been a little curious what permitted the trees to grow so large, instead of merely taking a great many falsely attractive holographs.

  He prided himself on how well they had risen to their challenges, but six years of effort had only been sufficient to make them halfway secure and not comfortable, and everyone’s tempers were grown short. Their elephant and bison herds were not properly established despite all their best attempts, so they had to keep eating out of rationed protein vats, which left everyone hungry and disconsolate; they had not had sufficient time to establish proper schooling practices, and several dragons had even failed to learn to read before they had grown too old, from the necessity of pursuing mere subsistence. Temeraire had to write letters for them, often, to help them conceal the painfully embarrassing lack of skill. Even now they still did not have enough pavilions for everyone to sleep inside at night, which meant there were a dozen outstanding quarrels of precedence demanding his attention.

  The only thing worse than having been saddled with this world would be to have it snatched out from under them after so much labor and effort: and all because of the trinium that was the source of their difficulties in the first place. Temeraire would not stand for it; none of them would stand for it, they were all in perfect agreement on that, if on virtually nothing else. However unsatisfactory this world, it was still theirs; Temeraire did not mean to see it torn quite apart, all so that a war about which he cared very little should be forwarded. But he did not in the least know what to do with this Navy fellow, and if it was not all just made-up nonsense about the Bonapartists, he was not sure what he should do if they did come.

  “I suppose I cannot only leave you here,” Temeraire said, feeling disgruntled: they were a good hour’s flight from the capital, and the Green River was between there and here, which this tiny creature could scarcely have crossed on his own.

  “I would be grateful if you did not,” Captain Laurence said dryly. “I hope you will forgive my saying that stuffing your ears makes a poor kind of answer, however much you may dislike my intelligence.”

  Temeraire flattened his ruff, but consoled himself with the thought that it was sensible to bring the officer in and hear him out, not because there would be any sense to his proposals, but to know what those proposals were: it was surely the best way to be prepared for whatever the Navy might do. “Very well,” he said ungraciously. “You had better climb up, then, and try not to fall off, for I dare say I would be hard-pressed to catch you if you should happen to do so.”

  Laurence could not say that he inwardly met the prospect of climbing aboard this monstrous creature with any great equanimity: and how he was to hold on, during flight, was an ominous puzzle. But he dug his survival kit from the cradle and slung it onto his back, and then hesitatingly looked up the enormous column of the foreleg: muscles larger than his body, tendons and sinew sheathed in the tiny overlapping scales of gleaming black horn, under the netting that supported the dragon’s wing-bracework. Laurence took a cautious grip of one jutting spur and pulled himself up, searching for footholds as though he were creeping over a ship’s hull in dry dock.

  The bracework netting broadened as he climbed, attaching at last to a massive gleaming band molded to the dragon’s shoulders, glittering with electronics and the thickness of Laurence’s wrist; when he had managed at last to drag himself up along it onto Temeraire’s back, he drew out a length of cord and tied himself onto it, as securely as he could. He took a grim hold as Temeraire said perfunctorily, “Are you ready?” and without waiting for an answer launched himself aloft.

  The air came rushing into Laurence’s face, cool and sweet and startlingly fragrant, full of earthy, organic musk: rot and nectar all together, the sulfurous tang of the dragon’s body, all of it somehow magnificently real even if anyone might have called it unpleasant, if it had been offered in a scent bottle. Temeraire beat up in shocking, enormous strokes, purely physical; the wings moved past Laurence on either side like vast black sails, limned with their silvery netting, and then Temeraire turned into the wind and his bracework hummed faintly, coming online, as he launched himself forward.

  The air tore from Laurence’s lungs. Temeraire’s body and the bracework’s shielding protected Laurence from the full force of their passage, but that only saved him from being torn off, shredded; he still felt with all his body the ferocity of the wind as they shot forward through the air. He clung to the bracework and stifled an involuntary burst of wholly inappropriate, delighted laughter. He had begun as a fighter pilot, had fought in five actions and a dozen skirmishes—once even manually, during the battle of the Lilienthal Belt, when all their navigation systems had been compromised by the Tricolor virus. He had always loved
the sheer intensity of a small starship, the speed and physicality of their flight; but nothing to compare with this: bare to the open sky, exposed, breathing real air, with the green world rolling endlessly below.

  “Of course I can go more slowly, if you find you cannot endure it,” Temeraire said, the voice amplified and coming from the neckband.

  “No,” Laurence said; he felt himself grinning like a child. “No; I thank you, I am perfectly at ease.”

  He could with pleasure have stayed aloft for hours. Temeraire swept with dazzling speed and skill between the massive treetops, the shining trunks like the polished columns of some endless cathedral; Laurence pulled on one of his gauntlets from the kit and reaching out blindly caught one leaf as they tore past a branch: it was wider across than the breadth of his shoulders, the veins gleaming faintly silver, the translucent skin mottled green, with one irritated creature rather like a starfish clinging to the underside, perhaps trying in some slow, slow way to digest a scrap of it. “How long a flight have we?” Laurence asked, letting the wind take the leaf away again, when they passed the next tree.

  “Only half an hour more,” Temeraire answered him, more cheerfully. Perhaps the flight was improving his temper; Laurence could scarcely imagine any irritation that could survive this experience, although perhaps it was less remarkable to a dragon. “That is the Green River, over there,” Temeraire added, and Laurence, looking, saw it first merely as a great canyon-like break coming in the treetops, a wide chasm, until they came overhead.

  It was astonishingly broad: on another world, in more welcoming soil, it would surely have long since carved itself a deeper passage; here, however, fifty million years had only sufficed to make and slowly widen a gentle indent, that nevertheless gathered runoff to itself. The far side was visible only because they were aloft, and even then only by the upper boughs of the trees that stood there. Masses of green leaves floated upon the surface in great mats, small saplings rooted upon the largest and a few, trapped against the curve of the river, had become veritable islands.

  Laurence looked, breathtaken and dazzled; in either direction the river ran through the towering heights of the trees in immense silence, unbroken by birds, by cicada-hum; only a soft endless whispering noise of water running.

  He and Temeraire were the only things in sight moving with mortal speed. He knew the youngest of the trees, those the height of yearling oaks, were a century old; the giants were a million years and more. They conquered the unforgiving earth with patience, slow sipping of nutrients by degrees. Those few native living things that were mobile moved only a little, and then carried by the wind; this was not a world that encouraged haste.

  “I suppose,” Temeraire said, heavy with scorn, turning his head back to look at Laurence, “that the first thing you will say of the river is you think we ought to dam it up.”

  “At the moment,” Laurence said honestly, “I only think it lovely; but I suppose that you would dam it, somewhere, if you could. Can it be done?”

  “Oh,” Temeraire said, sounding a little mollified. “Well, no; we did try, but it is just too shallow. We cannot really carve a basin, so the water only runs off, and the trees drink it up so quickly if it gets anywhere near them that it is no use. We have set up some turbines, anyway,” he added, “but they do not do very much good. There are no falls anywhere.”

  Laurence felt his great sigh, the dragon’s sides belling out and the hide rising beneath him. He looked and saw a glitter of metal and light, in the distance along the river’s length, and asked, “Are those the turbines there?” Even as he asked, he knew it wrong; those were not turbines.

  “No, they are much farther north,” Temeraire said. “That is the capital, where we are going, although what those lights are—” He paused mid-air: his wings described an endless circling wave in the air, while his bracework hummed.

  The lights came again: a flickering pattern of green and gold. “Scatter guns,” Laurence said abruptly, cold. The Bonapartists had somehow beaten him here.

  Temeraire flung himself as quickly as he could down the river: the guns were flickering again, and as he drew nearer he could hear their faint singing whine, and more dreadfully the acrid, terrible smell of burning plastics. He had never before pressed his bracework to its limits, much less beyond.

  “Reliant,” the Navy officer was saying upon his back, “this is Captain Laurence; answer, if you please.” There was a low anxious note of worry deep in his voice. “Reliant, please respond,” and then he shook his head and dropped his arm, a grim expression on his face. “I do not think they could have managed to corrupt or block my connection to the ship. Not without having taken her. What grade is your planetary shield?”

  “The very highest, of course,” Temeraire said. “It is up to primary-world standards; you cannot suppose our families would have consented to anything less.”

  “And you are self-sufficient?” Laurence asked. “They cannot starve you out?”

  “I suppose not,” Temeraire said dismally, although he by no means relished the idea of going back to a diet entirely from the vats. “But they will surely try and destroy those at once,” he added anxiously, “and our power supplies, and bring down the shield itself: everything is in the capital.” He pressed on for more speed, but Laurence reached forward and lay a hand upon his neck, restraining.

  “Governor—I beg you listen to me: they will certainly have at least one gunship for aerial support. You cannot come in underneath their fire, or they will bring you down as soon as you are within range. Does your bracework have any stealth capabilities?”

  “Whyever should it?” Temeraire said, beating on. “It is not as though I had ever needed to hide from anyone; oh! How dare they come here.” He was deeply infuriated, and he did not care in the least that the Bonapartists would try and shoot at him: he would not merely stand by and see their colony wrecked, and torn apart. Perhaps he might dodge their attacks—

  “Then you must have more elevation,” Laurence said, “and as far as possible, keep to the cover of the trees until you can get a clear run at the gunship: if you can get us aboard, they cannot shoot us, not once we are among them.”

  Despite his distorting wrath, Temeraire could not deny that this sounded like highly reasonable advice; he angled himself aloft and beat up and up, the air thinning to unpleasant degrees and making for cold and difficult flying: but he persevered, darting among the silvery thicket of branches, thin enough at this height that they yielded to him, bending if he caught against one, until he caught sight of the capital.

  It did not really deserve the name of capital or even of city: they had only a tiny clustered handful of real buildings, all of them quite small—Temeraire could only just fit through the doors of the main warehouse, and not at all into the defense center; that was Perscitia’s domain. These buildings were ringed by the more skeletal frames of the sleeping-pavilions they had managed to erect—nearly all of which were presently wreathed in flames: their marvelous silken hangings, brought all the way from Earth, were smoking into ruin. Temeraire hissed in fury, trembling; it was not to be borne.

  But Laurence had been quite right, there was indeed a gunship, a simple boatlike oval hovering, with half a dozen men and two smallish dragons aboard it. A boiling storm of black smoke below them illuminated in flashes as they continued to fire the guns.

  “Seven o’clock from their center,” Laurence said. “They are only twenty meters from the tree cover: wait until the rear guns have fired next, and then make the attempt.”

  Temeraire saw at once what he meant, and dropped himself spiraling through the thicker branches until they were on a level with the boat; another glittering cascade of fire went off, and this close Temeraire could see the cartridges themselves: long thin silver casings with their green running lights blinking like cold, cruel eyes as they plumed with yellow-gold smoke and darted down, looking for something to destroy. As soon as they had gone, he flung himself across, his bracework straining,
and the entire boat shrieked like a living thing as he came down upon it.

  The soldiers recoiled, shouting, bringing up their guns; but Temeraire roared at them in fury, wings and ruff spreading wide, and the two dragons quailed back, fumbling their weapons. He lashed his head forward on instinct and seized the larger by the throat, shook her violently; he felt the sharp taut strands of her bracework scraping against his teeth with a horrid sound, and she shrilled in pain. He threw her off the platform, sweeping several of the men away with her body; the rest of them leapt of their own accord, chutes opening up like blossoms as they plummeted away into the ruin they had created, and the other small dragon darted after them.

  “Perscitia!” Temeraire cried over his comlink, “can you hear me at all?” He dug his talons into the edges of the madly rocking platform and looked over the side, but he could see nothing below of her, or any of the others who worked at the capital ordinarily: there were four of them, all of them smaller than this very platform; they had surely been taken by surprise, quite vulnerable.

  The platform made low whining noises, and he could feel a grinding of steel beneath him, but it did not cease firing. “They will certainly have disrupted your networks,” Laurence said, sliding down from Temeraire’s side and darting to the platform’s controls. “One moment—”

  He drew off the cover and was tearing cables out by the handful, with great abandon; at last the firing stopped, but a moment later the platform went listing even further over and then abruptly plummeted. Temeraire snatched Laurence up and flung himself off and free; the platform fell away end over end beneath them until it smashed with a roar of foam half into the river, upside down, and yellow flames erupted out of its belly in massive spurts.

  Temeraire put Laurence back up onto his neck and circled warily around while the officer latched himself back onto the bracework. At first glance the capital looked dreadfully, plastic smeared in great blackened puddles over everything, any exposed electronic equipment a shattered sparking tangle of wire and shards of metal, but Temeraire was heartened after a moment to see that beneath the mess, the buildings they had so laboriously raised, built from the native trees and mortared with a concrete they had mixed from the riverbed sand, were quite undamaged.