Other people, as humans, half-dragons, or full dragons, ran and played, burst into flight or came in for landings. When Sierra and Tynan reached the edge of the circular fountain to sit down on the stone ledge, they noticed nearby that a young couple had an infant with them. They watched as the woman sat in the grass with the child while the man walked a few paces away. Then the father knelt and called out to the little one.
Tentatively at first, the child, who had recently begun to walk, started towards his father, who beckoned and encouraged him. After a couple of slightly halting steps, the little one began to morph. With every little step, the infant was less human and more dragon, until it was a fully transformed dragon walking on four legs on the grass.
The little dragon gave a rasping sound that might have been the equivalent of a yelp, then took a hop into the air, spread and flapped his wings, and flew the rest of the way into his father’s arms. The parents laughed and cheered their little one, and Sierra and Tynan looked from the little family to each other. Without words they could tell what they were both thinking. That could be us one day soon.
“I asked your parents before if they thought I was being selfish,” said Sierra. “I might have just as well asked them if they thought I was being vain, saying all those things about wanting to have a child to tell things and teach things, maybe to shape into another little me.”
“Look at them,” said Tynan, nodding his head in the direction of the little family again. “Are they vain?”
Sierra glanced over again at the young mother and father playing with their little dragon, who squirmed in their arms and flapped his wings and twitched his tail at their attention. It was not an entirely human sight, granted, but it was a sight that spoke a very human language, a touching language of contentment and love.
Back to Tynan, Sierra said, “No, they’re not. They look sweet.”
“If you’re vain,” Tynan told her, “so are my family and I, wanting to make a baby who’ll change the world. Sometimes you want to do something because it’s not only about you, but what you can do for everyone else. What we’re doing will put a lot of attention on us. It’ll make people love us and it’ll make people curse us. But we do it because we can, and we know it will be good for everyone. I don’t think I’m vain. I think I’m…maybe interested is more the word for it. Interested in doing something good, because I can.” Then, after a beat: “And…interested in how I’m going to do it.”
Sierra did not respond directly to that. She just grinned and chuckled—and noticed how close to one another her hand and his were resting on the stone rim of the fountain. If one of them were to edge their way just a few centimeters one way…
A whirring of engines interrupted the thought. Startled, Sierra looked up from where their hands were resting, and Tynan looked up as well, to where another topless hovercar with official markings on it was descending vertically to float in place over the grass. A man and a woman of their same age, clad in silver armor skins, were on board. The man called out, “Moran! What are you doing loitering in a public place! Move along, there!”
Amused, Tynan called back, “Oh, bite your tail and push off yourself!” He stood up and motioned for Sierra to join him. It was fairly obvious to Sierra that Tynan knew these two members of the Corps.
Tynan and Sierra walked over to the now stationary floating vehicle of the Dragon Corps, and Tynan introduced its occupants. “Sierra Smith, this is Squire Brogan Holt and Squire Elaina Hood, who used to get me into all kinds of trouble when I was in the Dragon Corps.”
“I’ll bet,” said Sierra. “Nice to meet you too.”
Squire Brogan was an affable-looking weredragon male with a handsome and almost boyish face and sandy hair that reminded Sierra of Dr. Clark, back at New Canada. She could only imagine that Brogan would be just as much fun in bed as Dr. Clark was, if not more so because Brogan had the extra libido and sexual stamina of a dragon man. If Sierra did not have other prospects for being on Lacerta, she would happily have invited this dragon into her cave. The other Corps officer, Elaina, had short, close-cropped dark hair crowning a face that Sierra was sure could only make her look delicate.
“Don’t listen to him about getting into trouble,” Elaina said. “He could find trouble all by himself; he needed no help from us.”
“I’m sure,” said Sierra, casting a wry glance at Tynan.
“Sierra Smith,” said Brogan. “You’re the one, then? That is, the one that Tynan settled on from the final choices of the…”
“…of the Lottery computers, then, yes, that’s me,” Sierra finished for him. “We’re, eh…I guess you could say we’re discussing it.”
“Well, you be sure you have a long, careful talk,” Brogan told her in a mocking tone while fixing a playful gaze on Tynan. “You’ve got no idea what you’re getting into with him. We’ve gotten thrown out of half the bars in Talontown because of him.”
“Hey!” Tynan barked in a pretense of annoyance.
“Be fair, Brogan,” said Elaina, chiding him. “We have not been thrown out of half the bars in Talontown.”
“Thank you, that’s better,” said Tynan.
Elaina snickered, “We’ve been thrown out of half the bars up here too.”
Both Corps officers broke into laughter that Sierra found infectious. She joined them, but put an arm on Tynan’s shoulder, understanding that it was all in fun. Tynan played along and pretended to be insulted.
“See that?” Tynan groused. “After you get discharged from the Corps, you find out who your friends are.”
“Oh, we’re absolutely your friends,” Elaina cackled. “We’re the ones who put up with you the best.”
Tynan crossed his arms and shook his head at them. “Don’t listen to these two lizards, Sierra. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“Yes, we do,” Brogan chortled. “When this one enlisted, he was the only cadet who was as green in his human skin as he was in his scales.”
“Like you were any better,” Tynan objected. “We were cadets together, remember.”
“The three of you must have driven your Mentors crazy,” Sierra grinned.
“Oh, they’re still telling stories at the Spires,” said Elaina.
“I’d love to hear them,” Sierra said.
“Better set aside an evening,” Elaina told her. “But just be careful where we go.” She cocked an eyebrow at Tynan. “There are some places where they still remember us.”
“Oh, damn your horns,” Tynan half frowned.
And so, they went with this bantering talk, Sierra enjoying the company of Tynan’s taunting but loving friends, sensing the camaraderie between them that let them jibe at one another and the love beneath the taunts. She could sense that their affectionate sparring was born out of years of shared challenge and danger. These two, she could tell, were as close to Tynan as his brothers, and in some ways closer.
Their visit ended when Tynan pointed out, “Don’t you two wyverns have duty to get back to? I’d do well to report you for shedding the job.”
“You know that you can shed,” Brogan taunted back. Then, to Sierra: “He’s right, though. We ought to be going.”
“But I’m serious about getting together for that talk,” insisted Elaina. “If you and Tynan are really going to do this thing, we want to know everything about who it is he’s doing it with.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” said Sierra.
“And maybe we can talk some sense into you while we’re at it,” Brogan said, offering one last jab at his friend.
“Push off, you,” said Tynan, smiling.
With some last farewells, Brogan piloted the craft into a vertical takeoff and peeled away into the air, leaving Sierra and Tynan alone in the park again.
“I like your friends,” Sierra told him.
“They like you,” Tynan said. “I would trust Brogan and Elaina with my life. Or anyone’s life that I cared about.”
“You have already, haven�
�t you?”
“Like they said, there are stories.”
They began to walk again, further into the park. “I think it’s interesting,” said Sierra, “that you and your brothers were all in the Corps.”
“How so?” Tynan asked.
“Well, I mean…you didn’t really have to be. The Corps can be risky work, risky and dangerous. There was no reason you should expose yourselves to any of that.”
“Why? Because of the nest we were born into, and the kind of life we were raised in? Because we were raised for gentler things, or brought up to be the ones who give the Corps their orders?”
“I wasn’t going to put it that way,” said Sierra.
“But it’s a natural question, isn’t it? I’ll tell you why Preston and Evan and I did our tours with the Corps, where we were treated the same as any other Cadets and any other Corpsmen. We didn’t look for special treatment and we didn’t get it. But we joined…if you really want to know, we joined because we were raised for gentler things, or brought up to be the ones who give the Corps their orders. And we knew it.”
“And you felt guilty?” Sierra wondered.
“Not necessarily guilty,” Tynan replied. “More like…aware. Just aware of who we were and where we stood. And where we didn’t have to stand. We thought maybe it was a good thing to be ‘of’ the world instead of ‘above’ it. We thought it would help us understand people who weren’t born into our kind of life, and maybe not be quite so…separate from them. And because we were younger, and maybe we wanted to breathe our young fire a little.”
Sierra was curious at the expression. “‘Breathe your young fire?’ Is that like a human male ‘sowing his wild oats’?”
Tynan nodded. “That’s exactly what that is.”
“So, you got it all out of your system, then.”
“Most of it,” Tynan replied. “Some fires die down. But others…listen, I’m male and I’m Lacertan. I’ve got plenty of fire left to last me the rest of my life.”
Sierra did not respond to that in words. She only looked knowingly at him, grasping exactly what he meant—and knowing it was more than possible that this would be only the beginning of the things she would grasp.
_______________
The private hangar of Nest Moran lay at one side of the orb-like structure of the aerie. The hatch let out onto a railed promenade that encircled the structure like an equator, and at the midpoint of the promenade was the ornate main entrance hatch to the aerie itself. When Tynan glided the hovercar back into the hangar and he and Sierra stepped out onto the promenade, they should ordinarily have expected to see nothing but a spectacular and panoramic view of the interior of Nimbus City’s upper dome and the canyon-like circular opening at the center of town loading down into the other sections of the city, through which vehicles and flying weredragons passed both ways.
What they saw instead was a gathering of hovering vehicles off the access ramp just outside the entrance, and another gathering of people outside the doors to the home of Nest Moran. They halted in their step at the sight of whom and what was awaiting them at Tynan’s family’s dome. Neither of them needed to guess or be told.
Mediates. Journalists from the city, from elsewhere on Lacerta, from elsewhere in the quadrant. Members of the free press of the Commonwealth. They were inevitable. As soon as the mediates spotted them, Tynan and Sierra knew there was nothing to do now but walk on ahead and face them. Though, truth be told, Sierra would rather face the knife-throwers of Eldirol IV than the coterie of beings towards whom she and Tynan were now headed.
Sierra recognized some of these people from news reports on the holovision, and one of them in particular, standing nearest her and Tynan as they approached, stood out in Sierra’s mind. Joanna Way, with her personal AI hovering at her shoulder and recording everything that was said and all that happened, first came to Lacerta to cover the Scodax invasion and ended up covering a story just as big: the return of the long-lost and presumed-dead Sir Rawn Ullery, the genetically enhanced warrior who was the mightiest and most powerful—and most celebrated—of all the Knights of Lacerta.
Covering Rawn’s story, Joanna had ended up between the covers with him and gotten herself suspended from the Terran News Service for her sexual relationship with the subject of a story. Evidently Ms. Way had either been reinstated or joined another bureau: for here she was, at the forefront of a major breaking story in keeping with her reputation. If it were only Joanna, who was known to be still sleeping with Sir Rawn (and loving it), Sierra might not have minded so much.
Sierra might have wanted to “interview” Joanna about what it was like to enjoy the sex of a stunningly gorgeous weredragon strong enough to crush a spaceship’s hull in his bare hands. Sir Rawn’s stamina in bed must have been limitless. Joanna’s floating AI, one of many such devices hovering and floating about, captured Sierra smiling at the thought of it.
As soon as Tynan and Sierra were within shouting distance, the barrage of questions began. Of course, Joanna’s question came first.
“Joanna Way, Lacertan Intermedia,” she introduced herself. Well, that answered that question. Now she was the lover of a Knight, Ms. Way had switched news bureaus to one headquartered on her lover’s planet. “Ms. Smith, sources inform us that you’ve just arrived on Lacerta today. I’m sure you’ve been aware of the controversies surrounding the Proliferon fertility project. What are your feelings about some of the charges that are being brought against the project?”
“Charges?” asked Sierra. “I didn’t know anything illegal had been found out about it.”
“I’m referring,” said Joanna, “to the complaints of Lacertan conservative groups against the Proliferon treatment and the possible effect on Lacertan society.”
“What will Proliferon do?” Sierra responded. “It’s meant to set the people of Lacerta free and promise a better future.”
Another mediate, a male—Lacertan, by his manner of dress—spoke up. “But Ms. Smith, don’t you see the risk that this project presents?”
Sierra balked slightly. “What risk? As far as I know, I’m not in any danger and neither is Prince Tynan.” She glanced over at Tynan with an unspoken apology for using that title he didn’t like. She thought it was fitting under the circumstances.
“The question,” the male mediate said, “goes to the way this drug, if successful, will undermine the institution of the Lotteries that have served the Lacertan people for generations.”
“Has it really ‘served’ the people or has it turned having families into a competition?” Sierra asked back, bluntly.
The mediate grew more aggressive. “By that, do you mean to judge the Lacertan way of life?” The tension in the crowd went up a notch at that.
“If you want to call it a ‘judgement,’ I can’t stop you. All I know is how the Lotteries work and it looks a lot like a spectator sport.”
That provoked a hubbub and a minor clamor from the assembled reporters. Sierra looked at Tynan again, to see if he shared her nervousness. From his look, he did.
Every Lacertan knew the workings of the Courting Lotteries. Sierra’s comparison of them to a sporting event was very apt. They were held in places like the Silverwing Stadium in the planetary capital. Onto stages in these venues were brought Lacertans and humans to be paired after being cleared by computer in advance for genetic suitability. Their pairing by computer was done publicly, in full view of throngs of people in stadium seating, and even transmitted to the entire planet and quadrant, like a sexual and reproductive version of a gladiatorial match.
Couples, once paired up, were then taken to Courting Chateaux where all their needs would be met and all their expenses covered while they set about the business of relentless shagging until, it was hoped, they overcame the sparse breeding of Lacertans and yielded pregnancies.
Against all criticism of turning what was rightly a very private matter into a public spectacle before a quarter of the galaxy, the Lotteries had persisted for longe
r than anyone had been alive and become deeply embedded in Lacertan life and culture. It was the planet Lacerta announcing with stubborn and impassioned pride to all of known space that their colony, their world, would not succumb to the limits of their biology.
As they had conquered the planet, so would they conquer their own reproduction. And further, it was a show of strength, a warning to predatory worlds in the galaxy that Lacerta and its resources were not there for the taking. Beware the fangs and claws of the dragon people. Attack us at your peril.
The Lotteries were a part of Lacerta’s identity and all but synonymous with dragonly pride. And in weredragons, pride could be every bit as fragile, every bit as easily threatened, as in pure and common humans. Seeing these reporters and facing their questions, Sierra was truly struck for the first time by how she was potentially treading upon this planet’s sacred ground. If she were a more easily frightened and threatened person herself, she might have pressed closer, defensively, to Tynan. But she was Sierra Smith and she stood her ground.
TYNAN (Planet Of Dragons Book 5) Page 7