Star Dragon Box Set One

by Blaze Ward

  What else might it do?

  “Can you track my airspeed?” Gareth asked as he flattened out and pumped his wings to keep him level and running, about twenty meters above the concrete apron below.

  He would pass below his audience, if he was careful.

  “Two hundred and eighty kph, Gareth,” Talyarkinash replied after a few seconds. “Peak during your dive was three hundred and fifteen.”

  Wow. Faster than anything on the ground, and fast enough to catch most flying vehicles under computer control.

  For fun, Gareth pulled back a little and shifted into an Immelmann maneuver, holding his wings still as he went straight up and stalled. An aircraft losing forward momentum like this would have to flip over and undo a stall, falling initially onto its tail.

  Here, Gareth started his stall like normal, and then folded himself in two, pulling his wings in, reversing course like a diver coming off the high board. After a moment, he extended his wings again and flapping hard enough to hover in place fifty meters in the air.

  For fun, he slowly pivoted on his tail at the same time, until he was facing the threesome in the tower from around seventy-five meters away, like the galaxy’s biggest hummingbird.

  Not the meanest. Hummingbirds back home had attitudes like tiny T-Rexes, all bluster and fury, while still small enough to fit in your hand. He could gulp one down in a single bite if they decided to get feisty with him today.

  Let’s see, speed, maneuverability, and hover displayed.

  Gareth winged over and landed, more or less below the control tower window. Glancing up, he could see three faces leaned out and looking down, so he reared back and triggered the two glands in his upper chest, pressing out paired streams of liquid that ran up into his mouth.

  One turned into a spray, and then the second mixed with it and ignited, reacting to the oxygen in the air and the misty spray to turn into a column of fire nearly thirty meters long for a second. There was nothing to burn, but he knew he would leave a scorch mark on the concrete that newcomers couldn’t explain.

  Folks who had been there to watch him before would know. He was sure rumors were already floating about the Accord of Souls.

  Fire-breathing-dragon. Gareth was pretty sure that both Grace and Nari would react with the same awe and trepidation as humans did.

  “Did you need a strength demonstration?” Gareth rumbled. “I could lift one end of the transport, but I don’t think I could get the whole thing off of the ground.”

  “That’s okay, Gareth,” Grodray was back on line. “Go ahead and return to normal for now. I want to talk about next steps.”

  Gareth had landed on all fours for stability. He reared up now and let go of the terrible fire in his soul, feeling the energy collapse back down inside somewhere.

  Talyarkinash had said that the ability was psionic, whatever that meant. Except that he didn’t have any biology or physics that could explain what he did. Neither did she.

  Magic was as good a description an anything, he supposed. He wondered if Dr. Loughty would be able to do any better, but he doubted it, as far beyond Terran culture and technology as he found himself these days.

  Still, he was happy when he looked down and his skin was covered in a blue scaled jumpsuit. He had believed the Nari scientist and her equipment, but there was always that least bit of doubt in the back of his mind.

  Grodray emerged first, with Baker close on his heels. Talyarkinash was several seconds behind, but she probably went down every step, when the taller twosome didn’t have to. Not necessarily fair, but not a lot he could do about it.

  “I had to see it with my own eyes,” Grodray said by way of apology. He held out a hand for Gareth to shake.

  “Understood, sir,” Gareth replied. “I still don’t always believe it myself. What’s next?”

  Something in the man’s face was off, the way Grodray’s eyes found Talyarkinash and he lost all emotion.

  “Field work,” he said.

  Gareth was confused. Doubly so when Talyarkinash smiled.

  Prime Investigators

  Eveth waited until they had returned Dankworth and Liamssen to the base, and then cleared that on their way back to town.

  “Out with it,” Grodray said from the bench across from her. “You’ve been stewing for an hour, and too polite to say anything in front of those two. What’s eating you?”

  “Is he ready?” she asked simply, compacting any number of arguments into those few words. Grodray was her boss, and a Prime Investigator, however secret that designation was. He made his own job, as he saw fit.

  And the highest echelons of the Accord of Souls would back him. She could have opinions, but she was only a candidate to become a Prime Investigator herself, so she needed to be a team player right now, working within Grodray’s framework.

  Grodray surprised her by smiling.

  “Not really sure it matters, Eve,” he said. “I’m up to no good here.”

  “How so?” she asked, a little lost.

  Normally, Jackeith Grodray was deduction itself. Cold, calculating, logical. That was one of the reasons she had been given about why she’d initially been paired with the man, as her own approach was much more inductive. She could make fantastic, intuitive leaps, so he balanced her, so the story went.

  Since the mask had come off, revealing that a well-respected Senior Constable, a simple Level Four, who was actually a Level Seven, she had seen a side of the man she had never really imagined.

  “Playing a couple of hunches,” Grodray said.

  “You?”

  He laughed and leaned back into the chair with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “One, Maximus has a deep and abiding hatred of Gareth,” Grodray said. “You’ve read the debriefing reports and the bio that Gareth helped assemble on the man.”

  “Stalking horse,” Eveth replied, nodding with understanding. “Put him out in the open and see if you can draw Sarzynski out of the shadows to take a shot at him.”

  “Correct,” Jackeith nodded. “But there’s a second element at play, and I want to see how that works.”

  “What’s that?” Eveth pressed. What else could there be?

  “I’ve watched a number of female officers and researchers around Gareth,” Grodray said. “Plus the original reports, and that young woman in the tea shop when he was first pulled through to Orgoth Vortai.”

  “What about him?” she asked bluntly.

  “And that’s the best part,” Grodray said with a dry chuckle. “You appear to be immune, but every other female Gareth Dankworth comes into contact with has a serious, visceral reaction to the man. And they did even when he was human, but becoming Vanir hasn’t changed it.”

  “The fact that every woman wants to jump his bones?” Eveth asked.

  “Except you,” her partner grinned.

  “He’s human, Jack,” she snapped, finding a seam of coal underneath her words to ignite. “That’s disgusting.”

  “They don’t know that,” he countered. “And if it works, I want to turn him loose in a few places, to see if that charm and magnetism can get us into a few areas where pure police work has failed.”

  “And if it does?” she sneered.

  “Then he breaks our case even further open, Eve,” the man turned serious. “I’ll get all the glory on this one, but you’re doing the hard work, and you’ll get credit in the right places.”

  She liked that thought. On the one hand, that would be her ticket into the big leagues.

  And maybe, if she was lucky, the two humans would manage to wipe each other out and save everyone else a lot of trouble.

  Omelets

  It was getting old.

  Morty knew they were in the top ten most wanted people in the entire Accord of Souls, but it would be nice to be able to stay in the same apartment for more than a week before somebody tipped either the cops or his old friends from Zathus, as to where he and Xiomber were staying.

  Today, supposedly, it had been the bad
guys who got the call.

  Fortunately, Xiomber had friends. Or was owed enough favors. Or maybe owed enough other people that they wanted to be able to collect on those debts in the future and couldn’t if he was dead.

  Whatever. The phone had rung. A message had been conveyed. And they ran like hell for the door.

  Somewhere, there was still a pot of tea cooling on a kitchen table with a fantastic view of that giant bronze statue: “Walking into Discovery.” It was a stupid name for a piece of art, but the Grace were weirdoes to begin with, so he wasn’t going to argue.

  And Xiomber had found them a nice dive on the edge of downtown to get breakfast. Not too close to the old place, where someone might see them accidentally, but only three stops away on the first bus that had driven by.

  Fortunately, after a month on the run, Morty’s entire life pretty much fit into a single bag. He had a few bolt holes scattered around the Accord, and he and Xiomber had set up a few joint efforts beyond that, but these days it really was possible to grab his comm off the counter, and his bag by the door, and walk out of an apartment forever.

  “So who called?” Morty asked as the waiter delivered menus and a fresh pot of tea.

  They were seated clear down at the back of the narrow joint, tucked into a tiny table that was invisible from the front door and most of the windows, back around where the counter wrapped and led to the restrooms. The joint had been decorated in white: walls, counter, floor, aprons; but it still had a dinginess that no amount of soap would ever get out. Too many cigarettes and plates of greasy bacon and eggs had passed through here over the years.

  And the crowd was just starting to wind themselves up, but Morty could see three tables left for whoever managed to get here next. After that, he was pretty sure the line would be out the door, just from the smells coming from the kitchen.

  Seriously, there were what looked like a couple of farmers at the counter, enjoying a break between milking cows and whatever else folks like that did in the morning. Except they had to have come all the way into town to eat here, because the nearest farms were like thirty kilometers away. Above them, a television was showing two pretty talking heads doing morning news and fluff, but the sound was off.

  Morty studied the menu while Xiomber ruminated on the question he had posed.

  “Nobody you know,” Xiomber finally said. “Old girlfriend I did striped scales for, back when she got married.”

  “Ah, her,” Morty said. “She must still like you?”

  “Enough,” Xiomber allowed with a vague shrug. “She got a whisper and put two and two together.”

  “Do we need to get off this rock?” Morty asked, pouring some tea and letting it warm his mug.

  “I don’t think we’re totally screwed yet,” his egg-brother nodded, pouring his own tea. “The old gang didn’t have many fingers here, so finding us requires that they use the locals. People will talk.”

  “Yeah, but how soon until you run out of friends, or they get lucky?” Morty asked.

  Xiomber shrugged.

  “I had hoped that we could drop down the rabbit hole here, Morty,” he said. “Find someone to take us on faith and let us work for them for a while, at least until the heat died down, ya know?”

  “The old man’s getting more desperate, not less,” Morty noted. “You saw what he did to Damabiath. I don’t want to know what a scaleless Yuudixtl looks like, m’kay?”

  A sudden sound caught them both short, a low moan of surprise and shock rippling through the crowd. Morty and Xiomber both turned, but Morty had to half-stand out of his seat to see over the counter and know what was going on.

  All heads had turned to the television screen over the counter, by the front door.

  “Turn up the sound,” somebody yelled.

  A Warreth waitress fumbled with a remote control for a few seconds before she found the right buttons.

  “…repeating our top story, an explosion occurred just a few minutes ago in a downtown apartment tower, blowing out windows across the street, but apparently confined to just one apartment. Fire and police are responding, and we’ve got the first images from our Morning Three Eye In The Sky drone,” the female, a Grace, was saying.

  The image was zoomed in on a blackened window, smoke oozing out, before the camera pulled back to show the rest of the tower and part of the street. The operator slowly rotated the hovering camera in place to show windows shattered, but it looked like a pretty clean explosion.

  It helped that tower blocks like this were generally self-contained reinforced-concrete shells. All the boom would tend to go outward, and usually a fire would be contained to just one flat. Defensive architecture was a hallmark of the Accord. Keep everybody safe.

  Morty blew the air out of his lungs and sat down hard, muttering profanities under his breath.

  “Yeah,” Xiomber said. “I saw the same thing. Now I’m really glad we left when we did.”

  Morty wasn’t sure exactly how somebody had killed their apartment. Explosive shaped charge on the front door? Missile in through the kitchen window?

  Maybe they had kicked in the door, found that Morty and his egg-brother gone, then lost their temper? Morty would have been tempted to stake the place out, on the off-chance that the two fugitives would return, but apparently Maximus and his people already knew they had flown the coop.

  That looked like a message. And an unpleasant one.

  Morty sighed and picked up the menu.

  “We owe your old girlfriend big time,” he muttered.

  “That’s exactly what she said,” Xiomber smiled back grimly. “She said it would probably make the morning news, whatever it was, and we should walk out immediately. Thoughts?”

  “Omelet with everything,” Morty replied absently. “Gimme lots of carbs and protein this morning because I got a feeling it’s only going to get worse from here.”

  “I meant about us,” Xiomber groused.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Morty snapped. “I’m beginning to wonder if we’re out of rope, Xiomber. Like we have to finally do something amazingly stupid if we want to survive all this. Lots of broken eggs in our future.”

  Xiomber’s eyes slitted down tight, and his lids dropped halfway.

  “How stupid?” he asked.

  The waiter interrupted at that moment. Morty went all in, obviously afraid that this might be his last nice meal for a while, and he could always stuff the other half into a to-go box and carry it with him for lunch.

  Xiomber started easy, but saw something in Morty’s eyes that appeared to unsettle him. He ordered the ribeye with eggs and hash, instead of a fruit and greens salad. The waiter smiled and departed.

  “How stupid?” Xiomber repeated, but his heart wasn’t filled with anger. Morty could see that.

  “Let’s find Gareth,” he said quietly.

  “You know who has him,” Xiomber snapped, keeping his own voice as low as possible.

  “Yeah,” Morty acknowledged. “But I’d rather spend the next forty years complaining that I’ve read the entire prison library than be dead by lunchtime, okay? We can always get ourselves rehabilitated later.”

  “You think they’ll let us out of prison in this lifetime, egg-brother?” Xiomber sneered.

  “The crazy lizard who started all this has had a significant change of heart, brother,” Morty said. “I screwed up, big time, and nearly brought the entire Accord of Souls down. I own that, yes, but I’ve spent the last two months trying to save civilization from all those crazy bastards. Do you want an immortal super-human ruling the Accord for the rest of time? No. Hell, I’d be happy if anyone ever figured out how to summon back the Chaa and let them fix everything.”

  “You’d be in hell, Morty,” his brother said. “And I’d be with you.”

  “And the galaxy would survive, Xiomber,” he snapped. “Maximus would be dealt with. Gareth’s people would either be stuffed back into their hole or modified enough to be added to the Accord. People like you
and I could go back to whatever petty crime and juvenile shenanigans the Elders left us as crumbs if they didn’t just wipe us from existence. But the galaxy would be safe.”

  “Gareth?” Xiomber asked morosely after a moment. “You realize all the cops on this planet are pretty bent, right?”

  “Yeah,” Morty said. “I figure either Hurquar or Orgoth Vortai should be our next step. Those two Constables were from Hurquar, but I don’t know if they went back.”

  “No, I like Orgoth Vortai,” Xiomber said. “Let’s take it back to where it began. Is Orgoth Vortai going to be safe? That’s the next question.”

  Morty nodded.

  “No place is safe,” Morty said. “But Omerlon’s got no reason to like Maximus. Less if that’s who did Damabiath.”

  But Morty liked the thought of Orgoth Vortai as well.

  Knowing the Grace, they would see the whole thing as a giant piece of insane performance art.

  But for the bombs going off, Morty would, too.

  Tip

  A knock at the door brought Gareth’s head up. He had been quietly reading criminal statutes, and making notes on a pad of paper as a cross-referenced index, comparing the Accord of Souls legal system to Earth Force. The table was covered with piles of paper and note cards, but he was almost done. After this, time to begin memorizing some of the more interesting details of the seventeen species that made up the Accord.

  “Come in,” he yelled.

  The door was never locked. He had no reason to lock it as most of the people at this facility generally stayed well away from him anyway.

  Oh, they were friendly enough, but all of them belonged to species that were within two or three percent of the absolute limits of genetic engineering and there was always some element of jealousy as to what he could do.

  And nobody else could turn into a dragon, so he had to be an alien of some sort, masquerading as a Vanir. Eventually, someone would probably figure it out. All hell would probably break loose when they did.