Dragon Lord's Hope

by Leslie Chase

  Which had to be the point, but why? Why would a dragon get involved in this human dispute over a single farm? It was different for him, Gillian was his mate and her well-being was the most important thing in the universe to him. But that couldn't be true for the other dragon, surely, they weren't both fighting for their loves?

  In the end, it didn't matter. Whatever the other shifter's motives, Zardan wouldn't allow him to endanger Gillian or her family, and that was that. The rage inside him was almost overwhelming, and it took all his self-control not to charge out to the attack. With the device that close to the oxygen tanks, a fight could kill the humans whether he won or lost the fight. He couldn't risk accidentally triggering the bomb.

  Instead, he watched carefully as the dragon wedged the device into a gap between two pipes and cautiously stepped back. It looked to Zardan as though the other dragon had no confidence in the bomb either.

  He ducked back as the shifter turned to retrace his steps, lying in wait for him behind the dome. This bastard was threatening Gillian, and that wasn't something that Zardan would permit.

  As soon as the other shifter stepped around the curve of the dome to face him, Zardan sprung.

  He couldn't see his opponent's face behind the mask, but he still saw the shock his appearance caused. The surprise was written in every line of his enemy's body as Zardan leaped at him, and the shock held him motionless long enough for Zardan's punch to connect with punishing force. Zardan's dragon wanted blood, wanted to protect his mate and to take out his injury on someone. This man was responsible for one if not both, and there was no way Zardan could simply let him leave.

  But the other shifter had just as much training as he did, and didn't have the injuries slowing him down. Zardan's second punch glanced off his enemy's block, and a punishing counter rocked him back. Zardan didn't let it slow him down, twisting and lashing out with a sweeping kick that knocked his enemy's legs out from under him. The man tumbled to the ground.

  He dove after his enemy, fist swinging hard into the dragon's masked face, and then he grabbed at the airmask itself, pulling back hard and tearing it off. The panic in his opponent's eyes was very real as his only source of breathable air was snatched away, but that wasn't what Zardan was after. He wanted to know who he was fighting.

  Karaos. Not a surprise. Zardan had expected it to be one of the shifters he'd seen at Fuller Station — the odds of another dragon shifter being involved were simply too slim. This simply confirmed what he'd already suspected.

  The shock of recognition froze Zardan just long enough for Karaos to knock him aside and grab for the mask, but Zardan wasn't letting it go. For a moment they struggled, but without a way to breathe Karaos's strength faded fast and Zardan got the upper hand. He could see the desperation in Karaos's eyes, but he felt no pity. You were trying to suffocate my mate, Zardan thought. I'll feel no guilt if you die the same way.

  Karaos was tougher than that, as deep down Zardan had known he would be. Pulling away from Zardan's grip he launched himself skyward, wings beating hard and racing towards the docked skyship. Zardan threw himself after his enemy, furious at the thought he might get away, but as soon as he extended his wings he knew it was a mistake. The fiery pain that shot through his back sent him tumbling back to the ground, and he gasped in agony.

  Karaos was in the airlock by the time he looked up, and Zardan knew that following him would be foolishness. The skyship was already undocking, lifting skywards and turning south.

  If I shift, I could catch it, he thought, and then shook his head. He didn't even know if he'd survive a shift with his injuries, let alone be able to fly. And once Karaos had some air in his lungs, he'd be able to shift too.

  Zardan might have chanced it, though, if the real threat wasn't still at the ice farm. He couldn't take any risks, not with the bomb still in place, so instead of following his enemy, Zardan turned back towards the atmosphere processor. The bomb might be set to go off at any second, or worse, maybe it could be remotely detonated. In that case, it would explode as soon as Karaos could get to the controls.

  Zardan ran as fast as he could, shooting a final glare at the skyship as it accelerated into the distance. Karaos could wait, right now he saving his mate was more important.

  11

  Gillian

  The way the skyship lifted off as soon Danforth was aboard worried Gillian a little. In the end, though, she was just glad to see the back of him. If he'd hung around, maybe she'd have changed her mind. As soon as the airlock door closed behind him she'd started to second-guess herself and wondered if she should maybe have taken his offer. It wasn't a good offer, or even a merely bad one, but if the alternative was for her and Harry to be kicked out onto the streets of Olympus with nothing, maybe she shouldn't have been so stubborn.

  If my temper leaves us homeless and starving, no amount of being right is going to help feed Harry. She leaned against the wall and sighed heavily, wishing that she knew what to do. A quick glance at Harry's worried face got her to straighten up and smile, though. She had to be strong for him, no matter how much she wanted to curl up and cry.

  "Why don't you go and check on Zardan?" she said, forcing a note of cheer into her voice. From the look on his face, she wasn't very successful. "Come on Harry, please? I'm worried that he didn't show himself when Danforth was here."

  "You asked him to stay out of the way, didn't you?"

  "Did you really expect him to listen?"

  "No," Harry said reluctantly. "I kept expecting him to burst in and, I don't know, rip that bastard's arms off."

  "Harry! Language!" Gillian tried to sound stern, but she couldn't quite make it work. Not when she basically agreed with him.

  Harry couldn't restrain a giggle, which Gillian had to admit it was fair. She hadn't exactly condemned his swearing at Danforth, after all. After a moment he managed to get control of himself.

  "Sorry, sis," he said, sounding almost contrite. Almost. "I'll go see if Zardan's okay."

  With that he vanished, leaving Gillian a precious moment to relax and slump against the insulated window that looked out onto the landing field. Her gaze went to the southern horizon, and the skyship sailing towards it. Why did he rush off so quickly? I thought he was going to give us more of the hard sell or a chance to change our minds. This was a long way to come for just that meeting. The bank can't sink so much into every foreclosure, surely?

  She didn't understand what was happening, and couldn't shake the feeling that her father would have known. Despite his shortcomings, he'd always had a knack for the business side of things that Gillian hadn't picked up. Thinking about him left her caught between worry and disappointment. "You'd better not have drunk all our profits, Dad," she whispered to herself. "But dammit, I'd rather find you curled up in a whorehouse under a pile of bottles than find out something's happened to you. Come back alive, okay?"

  The sound of the door opening behind her warned her to wipe her eyes and straighten her face, and when she turned she hoped that she looked composed. Harry looked too distracted to notice though.

  "He's not there."

  "What do you mean?" Gillian asked, frowning. "Who's not there?"

  "Zardan. He's not in the dome, I checked. He’s gone. And so's that oxygen mask we gave him."

  "Fuck." Gillian swore before she could remind herself to set a good example, and once it was out it was too late. The floodgates had opened. "Where did that fucking idiot think he was going to go? God fucking dammit, didn't we just start to get him fixed up?"

  Harry looked at her, grinning a nervous grin at her stream of profanity. For once, though, he had other things on his mind than telling her off for it. He pulled open the suit locker and started to pull out his spacesuit. "I'm gonna go find him."

  "No, you're not, I'll go," Gillian told him firmly, grabbing her own suit. "It's too dangerous out there, you stay inside and watch the radio."

  Harry paid no attention to her, stomping his feet into the suit's boots. Annoye
d, Gillian reached for his shoulder, about to tell him 'no' more forcefully.

  Then the alarm sounded. The one that they all dreaded — oxygen failure. Not the urgent beeping of a minor leak, they had to patch one of those every few months. This was the full-throated scream of the emergency alarm which they'd only heard in tests. The lights flickered red, and Gillian thought she could feel the chill grip into her bones.

  Harry froze, and she nearly did too. But she couldn't afford to. "Get your suit on," she shouted over the alarm, pulling at Harry's suit and practically shoving his arms into it. The air felt thinner already.

  The practice sessions came back to her — put your own suit on first, she remembered her father telling them, then you can help someone else. It was no use, though. It might not be smart, it might not be the right thing to do, but she had to look out for her brother first.

  He finally started to move, helping her get his arms in place and then his helmet down. With her brother safe, Gillian could focus on what was happening. Outside, there was a bright light from the direction of the air recycler. Fuck. What the hell could have caused that?

  She didn't know, and it didn't matter. If the tower was gone, that was the end of the farm. They had perhaps a day's worth of stored oxygen in tanks, and no way of getting more.

  "Go find the leak," she shouted, shoving Harry towards the living area. The computer would be able to tell him, even if there wasn't an obvious hole. And it was a lot safer than what she was going to do.

  For once, Harry didn't argue. With a shaky nod he set off into the farm at an ungainly run, not used to wearing the bulk of the suit inside. Gillian watched him bounce off the door frame with a wince, and then he was out of sight.

  Leaping into the airlock, she slammed the button to cycle out the air before finishing putting on her suit. Every second counted if there was still any chance of saving the farm, and she rushed through the suit's activation process as fast as she could. The emergency repair kit kept in the airlock was heavy, but she managed to sling it over her shoulder by the time the outer door of the lock slid open. As soon as it was wide enough for her to get through the gap she jumped down and ran towards the recycler tower.

  Rounding the dome, she skidded to a stop on the ice, staring. The tower still stood, though it looked battered and a plume of oxygen was spraying from one of its pipes, burning brightly as it escaped. Around the station, debris glowed hot and melted into the ice, and a massive hole in the side of the dome showed where some of it had ended up. I guess I've found the leak, Gillian thought, shocked.

  But most surprising of all was Zardan, pulling himself off the ice where he'd fallen. Gillian's heart was in her mouth as she looked at him, but he didn't seem injured. At least, no worse than he had been the last time she saw him. There were cuts and abrasions on his skin, but no deep injuries, and she was surprised at the sense of relief that flooded her.

  "What happened?" she demanded, covering that relief with anger. That was easier than facing her feelings for him.

  Zardan didn't waste any time on explanations. Gesturing at the fire he shouted something that Gillian couldn't quite make out over the crackling radio channel.

  The words weren't needed, anyway. If that fire spread into the oxygen tanks in the recycler, there'd be an explosion big enough to finish off the farm for good. Whatever had happened here, it was a miracle that hadn't already happened.

  A miracle, or Zardan? Gillian shook her head. Figuring that out could wait, too. Right now, all that mattered was getting that fire out.

  "Harry, are you there?" she asked over the radio as she opened her repair kit.

  "I'm here." He sounded scared but determined. "There's a hole the size of my head letting out the air from the dome."

  "I'm going to need you to switch off the airflow from the condenser," Gillian told him, pulling out the biggest patch she could find in the repair kit along with the sealant gun. "There's a fire in the oxygen pipe."

  In other circumstances the way Harry bit down on a swearword might have made her laugh, but right now she was focused on other things. Like how on Mars she was going to get up to the torn pipe to patch it, and whether she could get there fast enough to do any good. The air rushing out of the gaping hole in the pipe was irreplaceable, as was the air they'd already lost from the dome. Lose too much more, and it wouldn't matter if the recycler survived. They had to get the fire out and the hole patched, fast.

  Suddenly, Zardan was at her side. Gillian thought she could feel the heat of his hands through the insulating layers of the spacesuit as he gripped her waist and lifted her as though she weighed nothing.

  The plume of escaping gasses died down as Harry managed to switch off the oxygen flow, and she slapped the patch down to smother the fire that was left. The flow hadn't died completely, and Gillian felt the pressure of the gasses push against her. Holding the patch in place while she applied the sealant wasn't an easy task, not when she hung in the air in Zardan's grip, but she managed. Fortunately, the sealant gel was designed to harden quickly in a vacuum, and it only took a few awkward minutes before it darkened to show that it had set.

  Cautiously, she let go of the patch. It didn't move. Just to make sure, she sprayed a layer of sealant over the top of it to make certain it would hold when the pressure came back. Then, finally, she let herself relax. The worst had passed.

  Suddenly, she was acutely aware of Zardan's hands on her waist, his powerful arms holding her up so that she could work. The bulk of her suit was between them, but still she blushed, unable to stop herself imagining him touching her skin directly. There's still another hole to patch, she told herself, but her imagination wouldn't listen. What would those powerful hands feel like? Could she risk finding out?

  He must have felt her tense. Setting her down on the ice, he took a quick step back and looked at her, his strange alien eyes intense. Gillian knew that she was blushing, but she couldn't look away. The adrenaline hit of the alarm was wearing off now, and she felt her body start to shake. I should go inside. There's more work to be done, dammit.

  All she wanted was to throw herself into Zardan's arms and let him hold her while the terror wore off.

  "Sis?" Harry's voice crackled over the radio. "Sis, can I switch the air back on?"

  The moment passed, and Gillian broke eye contact with the shifter, her blush deepening. I can't afford to be weak, she told herself. Harry's relying on me.

  Fighting down her weakness, she turned her back on Zardan and marched towards the airlock. Her feelings were too confused and the sooner she was inside and away from this moment, the better.

  The farm's control room looked like a bomb had hit it, appropriately enough. The rush of air leaving the dome had thrown papers everywhere, and everything was in chaos. One corner of the room was an unsightly glob of sealant where Gillian had emptied the remains of the can over the patches they'd put on the hole.

  It was overkill, but Gillian wasn't taking any chances with the leak. Now that they'd pumped the air back in, the room stank of the sealant, the thick acrid scent giving her a headache. But at least there was enough air to breathe and the recycler was back in action. Automatic cutouts had kept most of the crops sealed from the breach, and that seemed to have saved them. Gillian shuddered to think how close they'd come to losing everything.

  That feeling only got worse as Zardan told her what he'd seen.

  "A bomb?" Gillian had listened to Zardan's explanation with growing horror. "That bastard tried to bomb us?"

  "Yes." Zardan looked uncomfortable, and Harry's face darkened with anger. Gillian hadn't wanted to include him in this meeting, but it concerned him as much as it did her. It felt wrong to keep him outside.

  "If I hadn't moved it, it might not have gone off," the dragon shifter continued in an angry growl. "I might have killed you both by accident."

  "If you hadn't moved it from the oxygen pipe, it would have destroyed the atmosphere recycler for sure," Gillian said, cutting off his apology. "T
hen we'd definitely be dead, so don't blame yourself for what the bad guys did."

  "Yeah," Harry said. Of the three of them, he seemed the least affected by their brush with death. Gillian felt terrified, Zardan looked furious at both the people who'd planted the bomb and himself, but Harry looked excited as well as angry. "You saved our lives. You beat up one of the bad guys. Come on, Zardan, you did great."

  Zardan shook his head and looked across the table at Gillian. All she could do was shrug. Maybe teenage boys processed this stuff differently? Harry seemed to think that this was a wonderful adventure, but all Gillian could think was that Danforth would hardly stop here. The bank would be back, and next time they might try to be subtle.

  "The bomb isn't my main worry," Zardan said. "The bigger issue is who planted it. A dragon working for a human bank and trying this? I can't believe it, even of Karaos. He might be a nasty son of a zrell, but he has his pride. There's more going on, and I don't like it."

  "I can hardly imagine that a human bank would do something like this, either," Gillian said. "Foreclose on us, sure. That's what banks do. But this? Killing us and wrecking the farm doesn't make any sense, does it? There are thousands of miles of ice up here. If they want to start from scratch, they could just stake a claim somewhere else."

  Zardan frowned, and the two of them were silent. It really didn't make any sense, on either side. The idea that a dragon shifter would take a job as a leg breaker for a bank didn't seem right to Gillian, and she couldn't see how the bank hoped to make money out of this mess. Wasn't that the whole point of a bank? There had to be profit here, somewhere that she couldn't see it.

  "So that means there's a reason they want this land," Harry said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. Gillian and Zardan looked at him, and he grinned excitedly. "Come on! Hidden dragon treasure, or some kind of alien weapon, or something. Got to be, right?"