“Yes,” said the one dragon male, stepping forward while the other pulled himself up from the stone floor and assumed a respectful attitude. “I’m Sir Coram Dunne. I’ve been expecting you, Lieutenant.”
“Have you?” Leanne responded, arching an eyebrow and looking beyond Coram’s folding wings to the compatriot he had been busily pummeling.
Coram looked over his shoulder at his opponent, who bowed his dragon head slightly, as if to say the two of them were not finished and their competition would resume another day from where they left off.
“Don’t mind our little exhibition,” said Coram. “We engage in these little sports all the time. It keeps spirits up and skills sharp.” With that, he relaxed and let his dragon body go. Wings and tail retracted and disappeared. His neck shrank; his head morphed from horned reptile to human. Scales disappeared; taloned hands and feet returned to human shape.
Where a bipedal dragon had been, now there stood a dazzlingly handsome human male of Leanne’s age. Long, wavy golden-brown hair wreathed his princely head and just touched his shoulders. A dreamy-handsome face with deep blue eyes gazed out at her. A short growth of unshaven hair hugged the contours of his jawline and shadowed his upper lip.
The naked frame of his body was made of perfectly formed, lean muscles up and down; the chest, abs, and legs were dusted with bristling hair. An uncircumcised serpent of flesh was suspended from the golden-brown bush at his crotch. He stood with the typical casual and insouciant nakedness of a weredragon just morphed from reptile form. Whether one happened to be friend or foe, the sight of Sir Coram Dunne was arresting, especially at a moment like this.
The other dragon male behind Coram also released his reptile form, becoming a strapping, dark-haired specimen. One of his friends who had been watching the bout in the arena handed him his cast-off uniform, and he began to dress himself. Meanwhile Coram continued to address Leanne. “I’m sure you’re familiar with these little sparring matches we have, Lieutenant Shire. We fight hard, but it’s all bloodless. We save the bloodletting for actual
battle.”
“I know all about it,” said Leanne. “I’ve seen it many times. I’d like to get right to work on the Chimerian problem.”
Another Knight came up to the edge of the arena by Coram and handed him his uniform. Coram took the pieces of his armor skin but did not put them on directly, opting instead to continue his talk with Leanne. “Isn’t there the matter of your field promotion first?” he asked.
“Yes, there’s a Fleet Officer waiting at the Spires to take care of that now. I frankly wish Captain Hillman had done it on the way here, but the Spires has its own regulations and procedures, and I’d like to get through them as quickly as possible. If you wouldn’t mind getting dressed now…”
Keeping himself still naked as the crowd of spectators parted, Coram stepped down onto the grass next to Leanne and smiled at her in a manner not disrespectful but in marked contrast to her no-nonsense demeanor. “I’m not accustomed to females being in a hurry to see me with my uniform on,” he remarked. “You’re quite ‘all business,’ aren’t you?”
“Knowing what’s at stake, Sir Knight, you should be ‘all business’ too,” Leanne replied. “Now, if you please…” She gestured at the parts of his uniform hanging from his hand.
“Of course, Lieutenant,” said Coram, “I’ll only be a moment. And yes, I know exactly what’s at stake, and I mean to protect our worlds as much as you. But if the Chimerians take away our ability to live in the moment, as far as I’m concerned, we’re as good as dead anyway.”
Leanne said nothing further, standing by and watching him slip into the metallic fabric of his suit. This Knight came with the highest recommendations of the Spires. His record was impressive and impeccable. He knew the gravity of their situation and the danger that every planet in the quadrant could be facing. Why then did he seem to have such a nonchalant air about him? What kind of Knight was Sir Coram Dunne, really?
Watching him cover up that body—or at least his legs, abs, and chest, leaving his arms bare except for his armbands and his back exposed to let out his wings and tail when he morphed—Leanne conceded that whatever kind of Knight this Coram was in terms of duty and
discipline, there was no denying that he was a beautiful man. The Knighthood and the Corps were full of beautiful men. She had known her share of them, in bed and out.
Still, Sir Coram was said to be exceptional. No doubt she would know how exceptional he was soon enough.
CHAPTER TWO
Leanne and Coram went directly to the great Main Auditorium of the Spires, where Dr. Jacques Phifer and the treacherous Sewall Sabian first presented Sir Rawn Ullery for the demonstration of his newly acquired powers. In front of a much smaller assemblage of people than had been present for that event—just the gathered Mentors of the Knighthood—Leanne received her new commission from Fleet Admiral Ahmed Hamilton.
The Admiral, a robust but dignified black man who was fortuitously passing through the Catalan system on the way to another appointment and had volunteered to detour to Lacerta to promote Leanne, let her be on her way, as he was anxious to be on his. Hamilton congratulated her and said he looked forward to hearing of the success of her endeavors, and they and the Mentors quickly dispersed.
Coram had watched Leanne from the time they’d left the field where the arena was to their arrival at the auditorium and through the brief ceremony in which Hamilton swore Leanne in to her new post, adding a third bar to the top of her uniform. His general impression of her was that she was as focused, purpose-oriented, and duty-driven an officer as had ever served in the Interstar Fleet, just as he’d expected her to be.
His personal impression was that she was quite attractive in her way, as attractive as any human female with whom he had ever served and any with whom he had ever slept—and like any handsome heterosexual male Knight, he’d been to bed with his share of human females. Coram
expected that this Leanne Shire might even be the most attractive human female he’d yet seen.
But he could not be sure because he had yet to see her smile. It was perhaps an archaic and even patronizing way of judging a woman’s beauty, but to Coram, a humanoid female was always at her most beautiful when she smiled. He wondered what it might take to coax a smile out of Leanne Shire. He wondered, too, whether the gravity of their shared assignment would even present any opportunity to find out. It was a critical and paramount duty for which they had been chosen and put together, and Leanne Shire did not seem to be the type to be anything but deadly serious until it was done.
Every city and settlement on Lacerta had a Fabrication Center. These were large structures with cavernous interiors, but not at all the kind of grungy and colorless places typical of factories on Earth hundreds of years ago. The Fabrication Center for Silverwing was a large complex of shiny white walls and polished windows. Inside, where the machines and personnel went about their work, was an open and brightly lit space where things were made by different methods.
There were large vats and pools of nanotechnology-rich liquid in which some things were grown from molecules to finished objects. Parts of spacecraft and vehicles, and sometimes even entire ships, were grown in vats, as were other devices including the weaponry used by the Knighthood and the Corps.
And there were manufacturing stations where other things were drawn and brushed into the air by airbrush-like devices that produced lines and shapes made from whatever material or
materials a given object required. The devices drew the vectors and contours of objects and layered the masses, “painting” things into three-dimensional reality. These 3D pens and brushes were mounted on engines and armatures that either descended from the ceiling or were mounted into the floor.
Their “canvases” were surfaces built into the floor, on which the pre-designed and programmed object took shape. The whole place had more of the effect of an art studio than a factory, and miniature versions of it existed in homes,
offices, and studios all over the planet and everywhere else that people lived and worked, creating everything that people needed.
Visiting the Fabrication Center, Coram brought Leanne through the busy space where workers and robots oversaw things being made, unloaded them from their platforms, and lifted them from their vats to be dried. At one end of the sprawling interior lay a manufacturing station where two object painters mounted on the floor were painstakingly drawing and filling in a large polymer-ceramic gargoyle in the shape of a dragon. The dragon’s head with still-hollow eyes, neck, upper body, and forelimbs were already done; the lines for the structure of its wings, rear body, legs, and tail were already in place and waiting for their shape and mass to be finished.
A male human monitor happened to be standing by, watching the devices go about their work and noting their process on a holographic tablet on his shirtsleeve. He looked up and acknowledged the Knight and the Fleet officer as they approached. “Hello, Sir Coram,” he called. “This,” he referred to Leanne, “is the Lieutenant Commander you were telling me about?”
Coming up to the man, Coram said, “Yes, this is Lieutenant Commander Leanne Shire, my liaison with the Interstar Fleet. Commander, this is Jeffrey Fairstein, one of the monitors here.”
“How do you do?” Leanne said. Referring to the gargoyle-in-progress, she asked, “And this is going to be one of the Chimerian Protocol devices?”
“Yes, it is,” said Fairstein. “It will be kept hollow, and the technology will be installed inside it. The eyes, when it’s finished, will be a sensor-transmitter combination that the interior tech will work through. We’re making them in the shape of dragon gargoyles because I’m sure you’ve seen that Lacertan cities have gargoyles like this in buildings all over.
They’ll blend in with the natural architecture of the cities this way. Silverwing will have five of these, one in the center of the city and the others at equidistant points across the city, creating a sensor network that will be coordinated with the Protocol satellite that’s being fabricated in orbit right now.”
“Yes,” Leanne said, remembering the specifics of the project. “The satellite will coordinate all the operating data from all the cities and settlements, and the sensor network will cover the whole planet. Every city will have five sensor gargoyles, just like Lacerta. The network will pick up any Chimerian or any Chimerian-controlled creature in any populated area, and the Protocol tech will go to work.
Protecting the populated parts of the planet is the first step. The bigger part of the job will be covering the unpopulated areas, where the Chimerians might be working in secret. That’ll be our long-term work.”
“That means you’ll be having a good, long stay with us,” said Coram, looking not at the partially fabricated gargoyle but at Leanne, and smiling subtly at her.
Leanne gave Coram a sidelong glance, courteously but without the smile. “It’s a big
project. As it goes along and things get installed, you and your fellow Knights and the Corps will become more involved.”
His smile unwavering, Coram replied, “I’ll look forward to that.”
Leanne chose not to pick up on Coram’s warm geniality but remained just as courteous. “There’ll be plenty to look forward to.”
“I’m sure there will,” said Coram with a hint of a twinkle in his eye.
Returning her attention to Fairstein, Leanne asked, “How far along are you with the
fabrication?”
Fairstein replied, “This is the second of the five. The first one is having its tech installed in the machine shop right now. We’re working round the clock on these; we expect to have all five done and all the tech installed first thing in the morning.”
Leanne nodded. “That’ll be right on schedule; that’s good. Before noon tomorrow, I expect to have Silverwing online and ready to establish the connection with the satellite, and all the other places ready by the end of the day. You have my code; you can link me in the morning when you’re ready.”
“Yes, we do, Commander,” said Fairstein. “And we will be ready for you promptly.”
“Thank you,” said Leanne. “Carry on, Mr. Fairstein. Sir Coram, let’s be going.” And without another word, she turned and started back across the Fabrication Center in the direction she’d come.
Coram lingered just long enough to give Fairstein a parting glance. “Knows her business, that one,” the monitor said softly.
“That she does,” replied Coram in a similarly hushed tone. “Can’t say I blame her; the Chimerians are a real danger.”
“There won’t be much relaxing with her, I’d say.”
“It’s not a relaxing time. The whole quadrant’s on edge, especially here. Still, the more we work together, the better I’ll get to know her. She’ll warm up when it’s appropriate.”
Fairstein looked knowingly at Coram, who had a reputation for his ways of warming people up. They both snapped to attention at Leanne’s voice, calling from a few meters away: “Are you with me, Sir Coram?”
Coram called to her, “Coming!” Then, with a nod and a wink to Fairstein, he dashed off to catch up with Leanne.
Fairstein watched the two of them walk quickly away across the vast roomful of devices and objects, and guessed at how long it would take for Coram to “warm up” the Lieutenant Commander in the midst of the serious business of protecting the planet and, by extension, the quadrant. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, I think,” he said, knowing they were both out of earshot, before turning back to the work at hand.
_______________
On the wide, manicured lawn outside the Fabrication Center, Leanne walked briskly back to the hovercar while Coram kept pace—until she saw the small, green forms leaping and scampering about. She paused to look at them, squinted and frowned at them. They looked completely innocent. But if example and experience, especially recent experience, were any indication, not everything could be trusted to be the way it looked. Not even the little grass dragons that were such a common sight all over Lacerta. They were holdovers from the time, ages before human colonists first came to the planet, when much larger dragons, some as big as terrestrial elephants, ruled and roamed the world.
Now, these little cousins of the giant flying reptiles were all that remained of their line, and they were everywhere. In the cities and other colonial settlements of Lacerta, the grass dragons were like pigeons and squirrels on Earth. They congregated in fields and parks and scampered along the roofs and ledges of buildings. They made their homes in the trees. Leanne took a moment to watch the little reptiles catching insects, digging up worms, hunting for little furry rodent-like things. She watched them leap into the air and fly about, sometimes playing and tumbling with each other. Coram stopped to watch both them and Leanne.
“You’re thinking of the grass dragon that the spy controlled, the one he used to help him gather intel,” Coram guessed.
“I am,” said Leanne. “I was just thinking, if I were going to weaponize one species on Lacerta…” She didn’t finish the thought. A glance over at Coram told her she didn’t need to finish it; his mind was going right to where hers was.
“That’s what our work is going to prevent,” Coram said. “Or what we’re going to stop.”
“I’d like to get over to my quarters back at the Spires now,” said Leanne. “I need to make my first report to the Fleet.” She started back for the hovercar, Coram keeping up with her now. The dragons on the lawn scarcely paid them any attention, being well accustomed to
humanoids. They behaved mostly as squirrels and pigeons, warily drawing near when there might be food to be had, flitting away only when one came too close.
“And have a look at where you’ll be staying for the duration of your time here,” Coram added.
“I’m sure everything’s already in order there. My baggage will already have been delivered.” She came up to the pilot’s side of the car and climbed in. Coram went around to the passenger’s side and did likew
ise. Hitting the starting surface, she said, “And I’ll want to look at a link up to the satellite fabrication, make sure that’s going smoothly.”
The car peeled out of its parking hover and skimmed its way along the road into town. Coram suggested, “Perhaps we can look at the link to the satellite over dinner. I know a place…”
“That’s against procedure; you know that, Sir Knight,” said Leanne, keeping her eyes on the controls and the road. “All official communications involving data pertaining to Fleet operations…”
“…are to be conducted in private or official spaces,” Coram finished for her. “I’m sorry; the breach of procedure wasn’t intended. But the place I had in mind doesn’t get much traffic from civilians. It’s mostly Knights and Corps who go there. It’s dark and has plenty of booths for people to keep to themselves…”
Now, Leanne did glance over at him, her brow wrinkling at the suggestion. “It’s still a public space, and even if it is all Knights and Corps, they’d still be unauthorized personnel. I’m surprised at your attitude on this, Sir Knight.”
CORAM Page 3