Star Dragon Box Set One

by Blaze Ward

  So far, so good. Probably would have set things on fire if they were down on the surface, but there was no air to burn up here.

  Morty and Xiomber looked quite thrilled at the spectacle. The Grace had turned almost green by now. Probably not the day he envisioned when he got out of bed.

  Baker’s car had moved off and out of the way. Physics was physics, and this was probably going to be impressive as hell when she replayed the video later for Grodray and whoever else was cleared for this level of secrecy.

  Okay, now to get crazy.

  Strength, like flight, was a matter of mind. Or mind over matter. Or something. He hadn’t been strong enough to lift this truck when it was falling, but maybe Talyarkinash could upgrade him again later. Maybe a Greater Star Dragon form to improve upon the first?

  But he didn’t need to carry the damnable thing, just damage it.

  Eight, razor-sharp, front claws found the weakened seams where the pieces had been welded together, once upon a time. But heat/cool cycles unquenched metal, had it ever been done right, and made things brittle.

  And Gareth was still a little angry at having failed earlier. He sank the tips through the welds like butter and pulled.

  In space, everything is relative leverage.

  And dragonrage.

  He heaved.

  A seam parted. Not much, but a crack suddenly ran nearly a meter. Good enough. He shifted his grip to the other side of the stern and did the same thing. This was easier. He had a feel for where it was going to tear.

  The sides were going to be harder, except that he could just shift himself around the truck ninety degrees.

  Oh, yeah.

  He slithered to his right and found a new spot to dig in his toes. Couple of good, solid kicks and he was firmly anchored to the carcass.

  This might even work.

  Reach around the aft end and grab the side. This weld felt softer than the others. He wondered if the verticals hadn’t been anchored as heavily as the horizontals. That would certainly make this easier.

  Torque, and he could see a gap run the entire side of the vehicle.

  Gareth had planned to hit the top next, but a lazy welding crew might make this far easier than he had planned. He shifted one hundred and eighty degrees this time, so he could get a grip on the passenger side and attack across.

  Sure enough, this set of welds had been seals, rather than structural, like the top and bottom. Possibly to make it easier to get at lights and wires later, but he gave it a good tug and the side came across from the quarter panel.

  Okay, now the fun part.

  Gareth returned to his original overhead spot, rather than climbing underneath, like he had planned originally. Quick double-check, but Baker was back and staying out of his way, about fifty meters off to his right.

  He took a deep breath. Or whatever a Star Dragon did in deep space where there wasn’t any air.

  Settled his toes into their holes and grabbed on, foot-fists holding him tightly in place.

  Stretch out and over the back of the truck. Grab hold of that panel, right below the door, where the seam had failed earlier.

  Pull.

  Nothing.

  No, unacceptable.

  PULL.

  Movement. Not much, but proof of concept.

  Gareth focused his entire being on that top weld and flexed all the way to the tip of his tail.

  It started slowly, failing by millimeters and fighting him for every bit, but it moved. After about three centimeters, something snapped somewhere inside, and the metal began to deform. He pulled more, but the door was warping now as much as it folded. Still, good enough for his purposes.

  He let go and flowed around into the opening he had ripped. The back plate gap was about a meter wide, which was enough to get his head, arms, and shoulders inside.

  His snout was actually touching the emergency bubble now, and Morty, being Morty, just had to boop him on the snoot with a finger and a laugh that the membrane transmitted.

  Gareth rumbled with a laugh, and then set his arms on the floor, using the Elohynn’s throne-like chair as an anchor point. He flexed his shoulder and back up and out, growling with the intensity. The metal moved more, failing under the torque Gareth was forcing into it.

  It failed with a snap, breaking loose.

  Gareth had hold of the chair, so he didn’t embarrass himself again, with witnesses this time. Instead, he glanced back and caught the back plate with his left foot, holding it in place, more or less. The throne was in the way, so he found the pins holding it to the deck and snapped them off. He slid it around to the side and stuffed it into the front seat, out of his way and the bubble.

  He let go and backed out of the cabin, flowing up and over to the driver’s door. His arms weren’t long enough in this form, so he pulled open the door and stuck his head in.

  Just because Morty had started it, Gareth head-butted the emergency cocoon once, his own boop that picked it up and shoved it softly out into space, now that the entire rear of the vehicle was wide enough for it to get out without catching on anything.

  “Baker,” Gareth rumbled over the radio. “All yours.”

  He moved to the top of the truck and snagged the floating panel. After a moment of thought, he stuffed it inside and wedged it well enough to hold. At some point, a tow ship would have to grab the truck and move it to an impound yard. Otherwise, it might fall to earth and maybe have enough metal to survive reentry.

  Not good.

  Baker was EVA now. Her suit had little jets on the backpack that she used to capture the cocoon, like a sheep dog, and herd them into the open rear door of the truck. The door closed and the three were safe.

  Under arrest for a variety of crimes and in really deep doo-doo, but safe from death today, and that was all that mattered right now.

  “What about you?” Baker asked, turning her jets to face him as she waited outside the airlock for it to cycle.

  “When you get back, open a tube and I’ll fly through it,” Gareth replied.

  She was silent for a moment, deep in thought or maybe talking to Grodray on another channel.

  “Sun’s coming up over Londra,” she observed. “You’ll be visible.”

  “You would never be able to keep something like this secret now anyway,” Gareth retorted. “Might as well make a splash.”

  More silence.

  “You sure about this, Gareth?”

  He heard Grodray’s voice on the line this time. Senior Constable Jackeith Grodray who was secretly a Prime Investigator. A Level-7 instead of a Level-4. The man in charge, but still keeping a very low profile. And he could hide even better in the shadow of a Star Dragon.

  “I am,” Gareth rumbled back.

  “Very good,” Grodray said. “Stand by.”

  A golden portal opened in front of the rescue truck, and the vehicle moved carefully into it, disappearing like a soap bubble on a sunny day.

  Gareth waited.

  “Okay, Gareth,” Baker said. “We’re clear of the landing point and moving away. You have a clear flight path.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  The golden tube in front of him represented all the weirdness that had upended his life over the last two months. Perhaps it was appropriate that it would open the next phase in his cursed, or perhaps charmed existence.

  The underworld had been rife with unbelievable tales of a giant, flying lizard hunting bad guys. Nobody would doubt them after this.

  And he was also a good guy, rescuing people from certain death.

  That legend would take shape as well.

  For the briefest, scariest moment, Gareth wondered if his appearance might trigger some bizarre new religion. None of the known species could become a dragon, and nobody would know the truth except a very few on both sides of the law.

  Would people think he was one of the Chaa, returned to the Accord of Souls to help fight evil? Would they worship him?

  He was sad that Pastor Jacob wasn�
��t here to advise him, but the man had helped shape him along the way. Gareth would do what was right.

  Whatever the cost.

  He turned to the golden portal and began to flap, building up speed.

  There was a flash of light, over almost before it began, and he was suddenly at gravity’s mercy again.

  Down became down, and the morning air had turned so cool that his breath steamed when he let go and drew a new breath into his lungs.

  The sun was just above the horizon over Londra, painting the cotton-candy sky almost the same reds as that painting he had experienced last night. She hadn’t been painting the sunset, that Grace woman.

  She had been facing the dawn. The new beginning.

  Hope.

  Gareth let loose a cry of pure joy as he banked over and began to slowly orbit the Hall of Art.

  His story was finally beginning.

  Yet Higher Mathematics

  “I’m concerned about his paper, Loughty,” the man said.

  Royston held his tongue. The cluttered oak desk between them, stacked with papers and old tomes, might as well have been a battlefield drawn up between two armies. He had expected what was coming, and wasn’t about to back down one scintilla on this.

  Not even to this man could make him: Dr. Sir Westfield van Duren-Abbott, PhD, FRS, GMU, KCB, GBE.

  Fellow of the Royal Society. Past Guardian of the Mathematical Union. Knight Grand Cross, Order of the British Empire. Knight Commander, Order of the Bath. Even the best-selling author of a popular book on the shape of the universe and humanity’s place in it.

  Sir West was probably the only mathematician alive that the man on the street might recognize by name. Professor Emeritus, King’s College, and all that.

  Royston smiled grimly at his old mentor and set his teeth to prevent the growl from escaping his mouth. Now was not the time. Even with Sir West’s office door closed, this was not the place.

  Royston leaned himself into the wingback chair and forced his muscles to relax. The walls on three sides of the oversized office were covered with bookshelves, and at least four of his books were in here somewhere, along with all twenty-three of Sir West’s.

  When the man realized that Royston wasn’t going to rise to the bait, Sir West sighed.

  The man looked every one of his eighty-three years, with a wild fringe of white hair surrounding a sea of liver spots on the bald top. Even his tweeds might be older than Royston. The eyes were hazel most of the time, and gave utter lie to the rest of the man’s unkempt appearance as a fussy old duffer headed down to the pub for a pint.

  Sir West had lost barely any of the genius that put him at the top of the field sixty years ago and kept him there.

  “Yes, concerned that you’ve gone about this all wrong, Loughty,” the man repeated himself.

  “Why is that, Sir West?” Royston finally asked.

  If they were going to have to play this game, he was going to make the old man work for it. Simple as that.

  “Your co-author, Roy,” Sir West intoned in a severe, almost condescending voice.

  “Oh?” Royston fired back innocently.

  As if he hadn’t woken up this morning and spent his breakfast and the flight down here to England preparing for this battle.

  “I appreciate that she is your daughter,” Sir West equivocated. “And a very sharp girl, but this paper has the potential to utterly destroy your reputation, Loughty. I wouldn’t want hers to suffer any collateral damage.”

  “What’s wrong with the contents of the paper, Sir West?” Royston challenged, letting just the thinnest edge of his pique show through.

  The man had been his mentor for nearly three decades now. Challenging his genius was like arguing with God himself about things.

  “You claim to have invented an entirely new mathematics, Loughty,” the older man was exasperated. “As if your place in history is to rival Newton and Leibniz. Higher dimensions of space? Wormholes? Ye gads, man, that’s the fanciful conjecture of the worst speculative fiction writers. Newton was surpassed by Einstein, but nobody in the last five hundred years has been able to prove the German wrong. And everyone has tried.”

  “I’m aware of that, Sir West,” Royston replied with a sniff.

  “This paper will get you laughed out of the Royal Society, Loughty,” Sir West pleaded. “Burn it, before anybody else finds out, and I swear I will never mention it again.”

  “I’ve already begun designing the first generator, Sir West,” Royston replied.

  “You’ve what?”

  “The theory supports a certain type of radiation, previously unknown anywhere in any proposed model of physics, being a residue from such a device as an electromagnetic signature,” Royston said.

  “So?” the man shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “I’ve seen that radiation,” Royston replied, eyes squinting with fury. “Detected it under circumstances that were utterly impossible to explain. If the security clearance around the incident wasn’t so high, I could tell you about it. Instead I might suggest you ask the Queen when you next have lunch with her. Perhaps a tour of The Arsenal and a look at the bleeding edge of research might be in order, sometime soon.”

  He left it at that. That was exactly as much hint as he could offer without getting himself in trouble, but Sir Westfield van Duren-Abbott was a bright enough fellow to understand the clues and follow the breadcrumbs to enlightenment.

  If he really wanted to know the truth.

  “And this?” he gestured at the folder between them on the desk.

  The paper was amazingly thin, as those things went. More than half of it was an Appendix filled with the new vocabulary of terms and symbols Royston had been forced to invent, to try to explore the ideas that took shape under the influence of that young lady’s rock and roll.

  The paper itself was an exploration of several higher orders of dimensionality, arranged like layers in a puff pastry and separated by walls of radiation that might be some bizarre, previously-unsuspected residue of the Big Bang itself.

  That awaited a future paper to explore. And possibly entire generations of science fiction writers to prove right. He looked forward to dropping a small and rather polite bomb on the Royal Society sometime soon. Possibly by opening a wormhole across the length of a desk and rolling a marble through it. That demonstration might require an entire atomic pile to power it, but the expressions of shock on those old fart’s faces would be worth every pfennig.

  “How would you classify this?” the older scientist pressed.

  “A roadmap to the future, old man,” Royston snapped. “I don’t know what’s out there, or who, but I have strong suggestions that we’ll find someone when we get there. The rest is just the work of some extremely competent and creative mechanical engineers. I have a number of those on call, up in orbit.”

  “So you’re going to go through with it?” Sir West demanded abrasively.

  “Indeed,” Royston smiled. He leaned back again, when he realized he had leaned forward far enough to put his hands on the desk again.

  “And you will share credit with a woman?” Sir West’s voice got ugly.

  “Did you know that King’s College used to admit women into their doctoral programs, Sir West?” Royston purred icily. “That many schools did, back in the old days before Earth Force? Back at the dawn of the Space Age?”

  “And next I suppose you’ll tell me that the Etruscans were a co-equal society. And the Vikings and so many others. Ancient history, and she has nothing more than a basic degree.”

  “Truth,” Royston acknowledged. “And since no admissions council would grant her leave to attend, she has instead been my principal assistant for several years, when she might have been successfully pursuing such advanced degrees. After me, she’s the only other expert on the topic. If people intend to be snotty enough to me on the matter, I might send her to make all my presentations and remain in my lab in orbit.”

  That got the man’s attention
. Royston could see Sir West envisioning a woman standing before the Royal Society, dressed in that red skirt and tunic, representing Sky Patrol. They had admitted women once, as well. In the so-called Dark Ages of Technology.

  Royston smiled at the possibility of her on the talk shows, describing the work as an equal partner, and not just the daughter of the inventor.

  Sir West leaned back in turn, cooling his ardor by force of will. He could see the precipice that Royston had walked him to, like a bear trap hidden in the low grass.

  “Let me make a few inquiries,” he half-promised, suddenly understanding the lever Royston held.

  Archimedes had warned these bastards, but not enough of them had listened.

  “How soon until you build a device?” Sir West asked carefully.

  “This one will exceed my current budget,” Royston replied. “I’ll be sending this paper up the chain at Sky Patrol, requesting additional funds and assistance. They have a powerful, vested interest in the topic that I am not at liberty to discuss, currently.”

  “Would you consider building it at King’s College?” Sir West asked, dancing expertly around the topic.

  “When the Sky Marshal asks me to present my theories to the Secretary, it might be helpful if Her Majesty was willing to chat with the Chancellor on the topic,” Royston allowed.

  The Americans would also be quite interested, and willing to throw money at him. And they dominated both Earth Force in general and Sky Force in particular.

  Very interested.

  Because someone had kidnapped Gareth St. John Dankworth.

  The Americans would want to have a friendly chat with those folks.

  At least it would start friendly. Americans were like that.

  “I shall make some inquiries, Loughty,” Sir West finally temporized. “Will this really potentially give us the galaxy?”

  “That is my hope, Sir West,” Royston replied. “That is my goal.”

  Witness