Star Dragon Box Set One

by Blaze Ward

  “Even if it means being stuck running to get coffee for a Senior Inspector?” he asked. “Just being on the back of the stage while the big shots get all the credit for the work you did? The sweat you gave? The blood you shed?”

  Something in his eyes told Eveth that Jackeith Grodray had been there. Had done exactly that. And let the politicians have all the credit.

  But it also made him very quietly a Level-7. Almost the top of the ladder. Hunting renegade humans would be at that level.

  “We are the law, Grodray,” she growled. “I would rather see justice done than worry about getting my face in the newspaper.”

  “In that case, we need to split up,” he said in all seriousness. “I’ll go make a few personal calls and get things rolling. You go home and pack some clothes for a sudden, extended vacation.”

  She stopped cold and grabbed his arm to halt him. One hand indicated her uniform, even minus the outer tunic he was wearing.

  “This uniform, this badge, is all I need, Grodray,” she said.

  “No, Eve,” he replied. “Where we might be going, that sort of thing will get you killed.”

  Eveth studied the calm certainty in his eyes and let go of his arm. There was only one place that her uniform would be a hindrance. A liability.

  If they were going undercover, into the very shadows where folks like Cinnra hid.

  Dreams

  It was something like Chinese take-out, on an alien world that had never heard of China, or dim sum. Still, it fit the bill, more or less. White, cardboard-like boxes, filled with a variety of things that had the textures of meat, or vegetables, or fish. Half a dozen bowls of sauce, arranged on the workbench on front of Gareth from sweet to hot, according to his palate. The Nari woman preferred things less salty, and the two Yuudixtl were looking for better umami. Whatever that was.

  Gareth had a low-sided bowl in front of him, and had learned to snag a quick sample and eat it before pouring more out. So far, he was batting better than average for taste, as long as he didn’t ask what anything was.

  He was quite confident he didn’t want to know.

  The smells, however, kept him eating.

  Talyarkinash sat directly across from him as she ate, watching him like a hawk. He couldn’t tell if she was still interested in him or fearful. Probably both, if her ears moved the same way a Terran cat’s did.

  Morty was next to her. Xiomber was on this side. Both were face-down, shoveling in food as fast as they could chew. Gareth was actually tasting his food.

  “What are the established capabilities of genetic engineering in the Accord of Souls?” Gareth finally asked the table, unsure who would answer.

  All three took turns staring at each other, hoping someone else would go first. They had been that way all afternoon.

  Gareth had decided it was finally time to wrestle with the eight-hundred-pound gorilla.

  “What answers are you looking for, Gareth?” Talyarkinash finally asked,

  “I realize the first question I want to ask is too open-ended,” he replied. “As you said earlier, the limits might be in our imagination and not in your science. Could you undo it later?”

  “Undo it?” Morty asked. “Kid, we’re grappling with the need to maybe make you over into a god, for lack of a better term. The most powerful being since the Chaa left. You want to give that up?”

  “Morty, you’re talking about making me something God never intended me to be,” Gareth said. “I get that. But if you can make me into a Vanir, could you reset me to a human later? Could you possibly undo what you did to Marc?”

  “Crap, Gareth,” Xiomber joined in. “Nobody’s ever wanted to downgrade. This has always been about trying to work our way around the Chaa’s limits and not die in the process.”

  “I’m not a god, Morty, Xiomber,” Gareth said. “I went to Sunday School when I was a kid, and there’s only one God.”

  “First off, up until very recently, humans had lots of gods, kid,” Xiomber said with authority. “Some of your cultures still do, from what research I did when we went looking for Maximus. So maybe you need a better pantheon.”

  “I need to know that we can undo it,” Gareth was firm. “I can settle for being a hero out here. That’s all I ever wanted to be. But making myself over into a monster just to fight Marc, makes me just as bad as him.”

  “There are no humans in the Accord, Gareth,” the Lynx woman pointed out. “Maximus is a Vanir now, by both scope and genetics. He could breed true with a Vanir woman.”

  “And if you also make me one, like you plan, you’ve forever taken away from me the only woman I’ve ever loved,” Gareth replied, trying to hold the heat and anger in, at least as much as possible.

  “Who is she?” Talyarkinash asked carefully.

  Gareth stewed for a moment and then reached for his wallet. The scent card was still there. But so was a picture he pulled out and handed to the woman criminal scientist.

  “Philippa Adeline Loughty,” he said. “Pippa. A human woman I’ve been in love with for many years. I was just about to go see her and finally propose when someone opened an illegal, cataclysmically-dangerous, private wormhole and upended my entire life. If I’m a Vanir, we can never have kids. Never raise a family. Nothing. That’s what you’ll have taken away from me.”

  “Gareth, you can never go back to Earth,” Morty said. “You know that.”

  “You don’t know that, Morty,” Gareth anguished. “Like Xiomber said, maybe you’ll be able to completely wipe my memory, one of these days and just deposit me back at the Arsenal like nothing happened, except for a hole in my memory.”

  “Would she wait for you? Talyarkinash asked.

  “Yes,” Gareth stated categorically, thumping the tabletop with a finger. “She already has, because I wanted to wait all these long years until I made it to Field Agent. If she disappeared, I’d wait for her.”

  “Wow,” the woman murmured.

  The others fell silent. Gareth listened to his heart pound, sure they could hear it as well.

  Gareth poured a cluster of purple things that looked like barbeque pork slices onto his plate and added a dollop of the yellow sauce from the middle. It wasn’t mustard, but that wasn’t pork, either.

  He was eating ashes, either way.

  “I have an idea,” the Nari said quietly. “I don’t know if it would work, but it might be worth a try. Gareth, what do you know about biomimetics?”

  “I’m not even sure how to spell it, Talyarkinash.”

  “It’s a study of natural creatures and how evolution has produced various biological solutions to mechanical needs that we can mimic, shaving off development time in prototyping and adapting things,” she tried to explain.

  Gareth listened, but the words went over his head.

  “Modifying spiders to make their webbing super strong so we can use it as thread. Or inserting useful vitamins directly into milk in the cow. That’s our cover here. The lab upstairs does a little work, but mostly it’s a front for money laundering and giving people new lives by modifying their face and genes to hide from cops.”

  “Okay?” Gareth asked.

  “I’m frightened with the raw potential that humans have for manipulation,” she said. “But also a little excited. We absolutely need to make you over into a Vanir just so you can hide in plain sight afterwards, but maybe we can limit the major modifications by using biomimetics as a basis.”

  “Did any of that make any sense to you?” Gareth asked the two Yuudixtls.

  “She’s talking about building you toys, Gareth,” Xiomber finally said. “Baking all the powerful enhancements into biologically-powered genetic systems that you could maybe undo later. Or at least turn off.”

  “That true?” he turned back to the woman.

  Excitement brought out the beauty in those tanzanite eyes. Brought it back, and pressed the underlying fear of a berserker loose in her lab to the back. Mostly.

  Probably about as good as it was getting for
now.

  “More or less,” she said. “The possibilities are absolutely a blank page. I’m not even sure where I want to start. But I can turn you into a pseudo-god, with a little effort.”

  “Dream bigger,” Gareth said.

  Morty and Xiomber turned to him, jaws agape. Hers fell open a moment later.

  Gareth just fixed them with a hard gaze.

  “Whatever it is, you’re already thinking too small,” Gareth said.

  He drew his inspiration from the two scientists across from him. Two criminals that were responsible for him being here, but were also going to give him the chance to stop Maximus and make it all right.

  Two hard-headed Yuudixtl that reminded him of dreams from when he was a kid.

  If he could not go home, he could still become a hero. He would just never allow them to make him a God. Mom and Dad wouldn’t stand for that level of arrogance from their oldest child. Pastor Jacob would cast him from the kirk. And rightly so.

  “I’ve met Nari and Grace,” Gareth said. “Seen Vanir and Elohynn, Borren and Moisa, at least at a distance. Yuudixtl, however, give me an idea. I could look it up, but I’m pretty sure the Chaa didn’t do it, or the Yuudixtl would have turned out differently.”

  “What are you babbling about, Gareth?” Morty sputtered.

  “You’re going to make me over into a Vanir,” Gareth conceded. “I get that, since the only other choice I could see easily made would be an Elohynn, but I don’t want to have to deal with wings all the time, as cool as that might be, and every kid’s fantasy when they’re eight.”

  Talyarkinash started to say something, but Gareth cut her off, even as rude as it was when a woman was talking.

  “You’re building me tools?” he asked her, eyes boring in. “Weapons that I’ll need to fight Maximus and his gang? Going to make me a god, according to the old stories?”

  She nodded, apparently breathless with anticipation.

  Gareth shook his head firmly. Locked eyes with Xiomber first, and then Morty before returning to her.

  “No,” he told her firmly. “I want you to make me a dragon.”

  The Hunter

  Marc realized he had finally been in the Accord of Souls long enough to learn the patterns of a multi-species population, but cities as things never really changed. Olehmmishqu, on Hurquar, was really no different than New Metropolis, or reborn Shangdu, north of the ancient capitals of Nanking and Peking.

  People were people, regardless of shape, color, or religious affiliation.

  He was surrounded now by an entire restaurant full of them, unknowingly sharing their air with the single most wanted person in the Accord, at least until more people heard about Gareth Dankworth. After all, Marc was a cipher, a Vanir with a shady past working in the shadows of crime. Dankworth was still the thing parents warned their children against, human.

  The man couldn’t hide for long.

  Marc sipped a glass of wine and studied his three dinner companions. The two Warreth sisters, the crimson raptors Maiair and Yooyar, were part of his inner circle for this mission. Zorge, the Nari scientist/spy, took the other spot. Marc might have brought others, but these three were fitting well into his needs, and some of the others might be a little too well known to openly dine at a fancy joint like this.

  And Marc really had a hankering for a good ribeye steak, something close enough to a baked potato, and a slice of pie afterwards. Gareth was out there, but he could wait. Marc knew how this city flowed.

  Money went to the nice places. Here, that meant down on the river that ran slowly along a park-like Promenade. At least for the younger set. If your wealth was established and generational, you had a place up on the hills to the west.

  Both were places he didn’t really want to see. The two traitors wouldn’t have ended up there, even trying to hide from him.

  No, he needed to look in the rougher places. The warehouse district, out at the edge of town, where miles of identical blocks held tomorrow’s stock in trade. Or the meat-packing district, where refrigerated transports from various farming counties and planets coalesced with their exotic products, feeding their stock to the middlemen that served the boring, banal, cultural backbone of the Accord: the middle classes with their presumptions and small-minded ways.

  Marc needed to be down with the bohemians, the artists, and the hustlers if he wanted to find a man trying to hide. The places where crime could be contained, and concealed, but still readily ignored for a good enough bribe to the right people.

  Not the Constabulary. Those people had no sense of commerce. But they also weren’t that thick on the ground. No, Marc preferred the local beat cops. The men and women who knew their neighborhoods and would overlook the petty crimes for a little money on the side, as long as you kept a lid on your activities and the only victims were outsiders.

  Always protect the neighborhood. Being in Olehmmishqu was really just like being home in Little Krakow, back in New Metropolis.

  “What have we learned?” Marc turned his attention to Zorge, seated directly across and just finishing his salad with a crunch.

  The older scientist also had the best manners of anyone Marc had kept when he thinned out some of the less-loyal elements. Zorge paused, set his fork down, dabbed at his mouth with a napkin, and sipped a bit of water.

  Most of Marc’s crew probably didn’t know which of the forks on the table did what. At least the sisters had learned quickly when Marc told them what they needed to do to get ahead.

  “I’m working on one fundamental assumption that you should pause and reconsider,” Zorge said, at once vague and specific. “You are now seven foot two. Dankworth is only six foot one, from what you’ve said, and thus will stand out as a very short Vanir, anywhere he goes. My presumption is that Morty and Xiomber, being geneticists, will want to do the same thing to him as they did to you, possibly with a five percent increase in his physical capabilities, if that’s possible.”

  “That was my thought, as well,” Marc agreed. “I don’t see him becoming an Elohynn, as interesting as the symbolism of that would be.”

  “Sir?” Maiair asked, obviously a little lost at the turn of phrase.

  “Back home, one could make the case for me as the Fallen One of one of our primary religions,” Marc said. “An angel who was cast out of heaven. A man who would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. Giving Gareth Dankworth wings would make him over into Michael, the warrior archangel. Rather fitting, all things considered, but not worth discussing at this time.”

  “Right,” Zorge said. “But that brings me to a possible logical fallacy. Would he try to outthink us by turning himself into a Nari, or a Grace? He could walk right up to this table, disguised, and none of us would be the wiser.”

  “I don’t think so,” Marc said, racing the newly-enlarged confines of his mind back over the years he had spent next to the man who had once been his best friend and greatest rival. “His ego would never let go of being human, so he’ll want to stay as close as possible to that baseline. Vanir are the best place to look.”

  “Good,” Zorge looked relieved. “I have my teams out pounding the pavement, looking for shadow-shops that specialize in that level of genetic modification. There aren’t many, and we have to approach them quietly enough, politely enough, so that we don’t burn bridges later with any of them that aren’t hiding our prey. Second question. Do we think they went to ground on Hurquar?”

  “It is an interesting parlor game,” Marc replied. “They didn’t want to bring him to Zathus, because that was our base and I have fingers everyplace they might have wanted to hide. They didn’t stay long on Orgoth Vortai. Really just enough time to distract us and vanish. My guess is that their ultimate goal was Hurquar and no farther, at least until we find them, or the cops do. They’ll need time to do whatever they have planned, so they needed to get ahead of us, but they have to stop running at some point so as to complete the work. After that, they can hide better. Yuudixtl and Vanir are two of the m
ost common, least-insular species in the Accord. What do the authorities know?”

  That last in a quieter voice as their waiter swooped by to refill water, replace bread, and pour more wine. This place really was top notch. Marc couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten bread that good.

  Possibly Gareth’s mother’s bread, at a winter break celebration, but that would have been nearly eight years ago. He would have to come back to this town more.

  “They got really quiet, there at the last on Orgoth Vortai,” Maiair took up the thread. “We’re facing Senior Constable Jackeith Grodray, one of Cinnra’s worst enemies, and his new partner, Eveth Baker, another Vanir like Grodray.”

  “How good is Grodray?” Marc asked. “I’ve read Cinnra’s notes, but he left out too much and self-aggrandized with the rest.”

  “He’s good,” Maiair replied. “Came close to unraveling us on a couple of occasions, back in the old days, when Cinnra first deposed Jeffrak and hadn’t gotten rid of all the trouble-makers with axes to grind. Forced us to go much deeper underground than we ever had been before.”

  “Grodray’s not the problem,” Yooyar injected. “Baker is.”

  “How so?” Marc turned his attention to the youngest member of the gang, both in age and seniority. But the latter was just a matter of time, as he stared to recruit again. Then, she would suddenly be in the middle and need some responsibilities, to see if her natural talents could be honed down and polished into something like her sister.

  “Grodray is methodical,” Yooyar said. “Slow, careful, numbers-oriented. According to some of the old timers, he actually tracked us down with bank statements, wading through all the different transactions as we laundered things, spending a year just reading printouts. That’s well and good. We learned to hide better. Baker is all action. She’ll be the one that kicks in the door and stuns everyone in the room just so nobody gets away while she sorts out villains from innocent bystanders.”