She couldn’t think of a single ritual that might bolster her flagging strength and blossoming confusion.
“Can’t. There are no more jokes left in the galaxy, my Angel of Salvation.”
“Oh, yeah? What did the Zombie say to the Opera Singer?”
“I don’t know, what?” Jake asked, not looking up from his computer.
“Let me give you a hand!” Martha shot back at both of them.
Ianus smiled.
“You have to keep fighting. We’re winning, but we haven’t won.” Martha searched his mind and her own for answers. All she found was a pudding of jumbled thoughts that didn’t connect, and a longing for sleep; more than sleep, Ianus was ready for oblivion.
Doc Halliday shook her head. “There’s nothing more I can do at this point. I don’t know if he’ll absorb food or not. A stimulant will stop his heart within seconds.”
“No! I can’t let you go. I still need you, Ianus,” Martha said decisively. Her mind took a firm grip on his before it slipped away like mist on the morning dew.
One by one his rambling thoughts closed off, as if he’d pinched the smoldering ember from a candle wick.
“There is nothing you can do to bolster him,” Janae said, gently placing one hand on Martha’s shoulder and the other on Ianus’.
“Can . . . can’t you do anything to help?” Martha asked. Panic set her gut churning and weakened her knees. Her mind started closing down, not listening to anything but her own panic.
“I can read Hes. No other. Ianus, as the assistant to Mag, the head Banker, the Keeper, is the only one who had access to the minds of all the Dragons,” Timæus explained. “I can only read Bok.”
“Then get the others up here. All of them. I . . . I think I can hang on to Mag from my connection to Ianus. I can slip in through the Banker’s memories undetected even though Mag has severed his direct connection to Ianus.”
“But not my connection to him,” Ianus replied weakly.
“Have you ever tried to read another Dragon?” Martha asked Janae and Timæus. “Or did you just accept what the Dragons told you?”
They looked to each other in silent communication. “We can try. But we still need the others.”
“Better do something quickly,” Jake growled. “I’m losing ground on the legality of their mortgage.” He kept his head down and his hands on his screens, fingers working frantically.
“They’re fiddling with the forensic accounting, changing dates and percentages,” the accountant called from the other room.
“I’m almost done with the lawsuit . . . but can’t tell which authority I should file it with. Who do the Dragons recognize as an authority?”
“Themselves only,” Ianus whispered.
They all heard him.
“How in the hell can I sue them if they are the only authority?” The lawyer fiddled some more with his own screens. “I can’t sue a pirate.”
“File it with them and see if figuring out your convoluted clauses slows them down a bit,” Jake ordered. “File the same copies with the CSS, Harmony, and Marilon.”
“Covering my ass as we speak.”
“That’s more than Mag can do,” Ianus said. Martha caught a mental glimpse of a red cloak riding up over a broad buttocks.
“Send it to Labyrinthe Prime too,” Pammy said.
“And the other Dragon ships!” Martha chimed in. “Trouble for Mag’s crew means a different Banker can rise to supreme whatever.”
“Did the Dragons ever colonize another planet after D’Or died?” Sissy asked. “That might represent something Mag respects more than himself.” She came up next to Martha, adding her own touch to strengthen and soothe her.
Martha drew a deep breath for shared strength, another for restoration, and a third for clarity. She used her finger to draw the glyph of Harmony in the air. And then she blew the Goddess a kiss in thanks for all that She’d given Martha, including the gift of telepathy so she could help Jake and Sissy in this battle.
Her mind cleared and ideas stumbled around, finding an orderly line up similar to Jake’s lists. “If all the telepaths hold hands, we can . . . we can expand our individual contacts.”
“A burden shared is a burdened lessened,” Sissy added. Her eyes grew glassy and her voice echoey.
“Calling the others,” Janae said. “We can do this.” She took Martha’s hand in her right and Timæus’ in her left. Nine other telepaths filed in and added their presence to the circle. The last one, Scylla, reached across Ianus to take Martha’s hand.
“No. We have to keep him in the loop, even if he’s asleep. He has to be a part of this until the end,” Martha protested, firmly keeping her right hand wrapped around Ianus’. A light squeeze from him, more a twitch than a squeeze, reassured her that a part of his mind lingered in this grand effort to end the tyranny of the Dragons, over the station and his people. “For the freedom of all of you as well as those aboard the station, we have to do this together. All of us.”
Sissy found a dormant corner on Jake’s desktop. A series of graphs faded because no one had touched them in a while. She pressed her fingertip to the center of that neglected screen. The colors jumped to brightness and they moved quickly, updating since Jake had thought to work with them.
The printing beneath each colored bar blurred before her eyes, too tiny to interpret. She expanded the image a little, not enough to interfere with Jake’s hands flying about, just enough to see what the graph was about. It was important, or Jake would not have left it active. But other things occupied him more urgently.
“Environmentals,” she muttered to herself.
“Where are we on those?” Jake asked. “I lost track.”
“Mercury is gone. Security could open the airlock and invade if necessary.”
“Last resort. Might bring down the wrath of the other Banker ships.”
“Temperature stabilizing at six degrees centigrade below normal.”
“Coldblooded creatures should become sluggish, slow their reaction time.”
“Do we have visual of the lair?” she asked. “Pammy has visuals everywhere else, even where she’s not supposed to.”
“I heard that!” Pammy replied. “Sending you feed from my camera. Sorry it’s not seven screens at one time. Only enough computing power for one at a time anywhere but my desk.”
A silent image of Mag, the big red and gold Banker Dragon, popped up to replace the environmental graphs—which reduced to a tiny winking icon. Mag paced, much as Jake did when he wasn’t anchored to the desk. But he slapped his hands against his arms and thighs and midriff in an asymmetrical pattern. He opened his mouth, displaying many rows of sharp teeth. Sissy imagined the roar that rolled out of that massive mouth.
“He’s cold and he’s upset,” she whispered.
The image flickered and refocused on a slightly smaller Hes, sapphire and silver in coloration. She kicked at imaginary obstacles as she paced around Mag. Amb, the emerald and gold monster, boxed with shadows that weren’t there.
“They’re hallucinating in the cold,” she said out loud.
Janae nodded to her, barely looking up from her deep concentration with the circle of telepaths.
“Legal: find the sub-file marked briefs,” one of them said.
“Accounting: look at the control column on the far right, bottom, and read it right to left, next line up left to right. Work from bottom to top,” another chanted.
“Lawsuit: address the copy going to New D’Or care of Her Royal Holiness S’reme at the following co-ordinates.” That telepath rattled off a long chain of numbers.
On Sissy’s screen Mag came back into view and began scratching himself, digging long claws beneath scales until he bled. He began to open and close his mouth as if speaking.
Deep in her memory, Sissy remembered her hyperspace hallucination. A deep bass chant felt as a vibration to the gut more than heard.
Then Mag affixed five long chains of gold and ruby beads to his fully
flared crest—like inserting an ear bob into a pierced ear. Hes and Amb and each of the lesser Banker Dragons did the same with two or three symbolic decorations in their own colors.
“Pammy, I need to talk to the historian who recorded Ianus’ memories,” Sissy said. “I need to know precisely why they fear Harmony.”
Jake skimmed the list of the station records. For the moment, the Dragons were quiet, and the computer war at a stalemate. His people couldn’t get in to the Dragon system, and the Bankers were shut out of his.
And Ianus was dying. He might not live through the night. Martha and the other telepaths had gone back to Medbay with him, to be with him at the end.
Jake pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping the discomfort would postpone his grief. Sissy sat crossed legged on the floor in the corner where Gregor’s ghost lingered. Neither touched the other. Patrick, the historian, sat beside her, showing her something on his portable.
Rather than give in to emotions that would cloud his mind, Jake started pacing, making certain his path came close to Sissy where he could touch her hair at each pass.
That left him with Sissy’s earlier request. He didn’t know if confronting Dragon spiritual beliefs would break the stalemate or blow up in their faces. Anything was worth a try.
He closed his eyes, willing the stabs of pain in his head to go away. Doc Halliday’s miracle drugs were wearing off. Or he’d overtaxed them.
“Found it, sir,” Mara said.
“Where was it?” Jake looked up, feeling his eyes burn from too many hours staring at screens. The headache remained dormant, squirming around the edges but not launching an attack yet.
“In the Harmony Temple records,” Mara replied. “Where else?”
He wanted to slap his forehead. Of course Harmony Temple Caste was more interested in preserving records of every public, and some private, rituals Sissy performed here. They needed to review every last second of them to make sure she didn’t violate Harmony out here in the godless reaches of outer space.
Jake bent over Mara’s desk and reviewed the recording quickly. Miniature holographic images sprang to life. Sissy and her acolytes, clad in black and gray mourning robes, chanted, lit incense, burned candles, set crystals to chiming, and sang glorious hymns that relieved the heart of grief.
“Sissy, we found the recording of the Grief Blessing you performed for the entire station after the Squid ship crashed into us,” Jake called to her.
“Good.” She didn’t raise her head from her consultation with Patrick.
“I did some deep research,” Patrick said aloud. “It seems that when Harmony was first discovered, Earth sent out the usual first survey teams. The forensic geologists said that the planet was subject to cycles of natural disasters every three to five hundred years. That put a hold on archeological and survival teams. Then before the planet’s status could be confirmed for terraforming and relocation, the True Believers of Harmony grabbed the co-ordinates and left to colonize it.” He pointed to various documents on his portable.
“We know that the Maril identified Harmony as a spiritual retreat between seven and eight hundred years ago. The first wave of settlers from Earth arrived about seven hundred years ago, and they suffered a cycle of instability not long after arriving. That triggered the war with the Maril,” Sissy said quietly.
Jake knew that acknowledging the ancient history of her people was hard for her. Temple and Noble had reinvented the history, including new origin stories, and taught it as the truth. Sissy had believed those teachings until she became High Priestess and learned differently.
“I understand Harmony is undergoing a similar cycle right now,” Patrick added.
“Which means the Dragons visited the planet about one thousand to twelve hundred years ago in the middle of one of those cycles,” Sissy confirmed. “They must have been overwhelmed by killer storms, quakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, floods, and everything else happening all at once. They were newly enough arrived that they had no permanent shelters, no place to hide.”
“From what I have learned from the telepaths this afternoon, the Dragons left their home world for good about the same time they visited Harmony. Their planet had fallen into a similar cycle. Their sun began the final stages of decay, making their world uninhabitable. Harmony was considered young and unstable because it hadn’t settled. Dragon scientists had been warning them for generations that pollution, over-exploitation of resources, and overpopulation would hasten the process of planetary decay. In their quest for more and more assets, they ignored science and continued exploitation of their own world and several others until the last moment.”
“When did they take to the stars?” Sissy asked.
“Many thousands of years ago. They maintained dozens of colonies and began acquiring mortgage interests in alien worlds.”
“The timing of their home world becoming uninhabitable and Harmony feeling too dangerous to inhabit must have . . . Is that why they live on their space ships and rarely visit the few planets their kin inhabit?” Sissy mused.
Jake felt like he should add something to the conversation, but his head hurt. Thinking too hard about “why” made his peripheral vision close in and the top of his head disconnect from the rest of him.
“Sounds reasonable,” he muttered. “What kind of god would they believe in? If they believe in anything.”
“Oh, they believe. I’m certain of it. They worship a god embodied or symbolized by precious metals and jewels.”
“But why do they shy away from the symbol of Harmony?” Jake asked.
“Because that is the symbol Harmony assigned to Her planet. It has always been her symbol,” Sissy replied without hesitation.
Jake had to shrug. In the galactic lexicon, every planet was assigned a symbol. Harmony had always been Harmony, the glyph a part of natural history. He had no other explanation. Unless . . .
“What if that is the symbol of their original homeworld and they took it to Harmony, hoping to make it home. They got kicked off of one world, took their goddess to another, and got kicked off that one, too.”
“That would explain the veils of beads!” Sissy exclaimed, jumping up from her seat.
“What about those veils?” Jake asked, fingering the Badger Metal stars on his collar. They’d come from Sissy’s veil. Her gift to him.
He left the holo of the Grief Blessing paused and joined Sissy and Patrick at his own desk.
“You’ll see about the veils,” Sissy said on a smile. “I should contact Mr. Guilliam about some of the cave murals in the Southern Continent, where it is hotter, where the Dragons might have landed.”
“We called their bluff, both physically and with software,” Pammy said. “I doubt anyone has done that since they fled both their own world and Harmony. I’m getting too old for this.” She looked tired, and older than her middle years, as she rested her head on her crossed arms atop the conference table. They were all tired.
Zachariah and Yankowitz dozed over their portables in the conference room.
Jake had tried to read the documents they had compiled and sent to everyone who might have an interest. It was so convoluted with vocabulary about three PhDs above him, he doubted even the Bankers of the galaxy would decipher it in less than a month.
“So what do we do now?” Jake asked.
“We use one of Pammy’s projection devices, full sight and sound, and put the Grief Blessing on endless loop in all four Dragon wings, even the empty one,” Sissy said. Her breathing remained clear and even, not a hint of asthma. “We teach them to placate the Goddess, not intimidate Her.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“The Dragons are coming out!” Pamela called. Adrenaline rushed through her veins with a fizz better than champagne. The fatigue and ache in her bones and her head vanished.
She jumped toward the hatch, punching orders into her link. This was what she was born for, commanding operations that hinged on life and death. And doing it sneakily.
�
��Aren’t you forgetting something, Pammy?” Jake snarled sarcastically.
She turned slowly to face him. He held up the portable holo projector with the recording of the Grief Blessing newly embedded. “I hope this works. My Laudae, I suggest you don formal regalia just in case we have to wing it. The object is to herd the Dragons into the Diamond and have them cast off voluntarily.” Pamela snatched the holo from Jake and fled toward her own wing and her systems. “Jake, send me Cortini from Control. I need him to guide the ship to the jump point.”
“They will protest having to do it themselves. Their bridge is designed for humans,” Jake said. He sounded like he was doing things with the screens on his desk.
“I don’t believe they are stupid enough to trust the bridge to human slaves alone. I’m betting they have a secondary bridge accessible to their pet lizards, or even themselves,” Pamela insisted. “They might even have remote control from Mag’s private quarters. Remember they’ve been traveling the stars for thousands of years, and kidnapping telepaths and inventing mortgages for almost as long.”
“If you say so. They will still object to losing their slaves—their assets—along with this station that they covet,” he countered.
“Different issue. Their issue. Let’s scare them off-station first.”
Pamela set about directing the grandest drama of her career.
From a monitoring station near the Temple wing, Sissy watched the Dragons emerge from their wing one by one. The airlock doors surrounding their lift listed at drunken angles, as if they’d been opened by explosives. The glyph of Harmony she’d painted on the exterior was hidden from view by the door plastered against the bulkhead. Mag stepped off the lift and into the hub first. He had five chains of red and gold beads, each clamped onto a different crown of his crest.
Hes followed him with four chains of sapphire and crystal. She crowded against his back too closely, like she was ready to shove him aside and assume leadership.
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