That silence did not last. It was soon joined by the sounds of grunts and groans of the two opponents, sounds that matched the expressions of growing strain on their faces and the sheen of perspiration on each of them. Leanne half-expected the grunts of Kesta to become dragon roars in spite of the Dame being still in human form. She pressed ever harder against Kesta’s hand, and Kesta pressed ever harder against hers. She began to lurch Kesta’s hand down toward the table, until, with what sounded like a snarl of defiance, Kesta forced her hand back up and began to press Leanne’s hand downward.
Now, from around the tavern, a small, anxious hubbub began to well up, and Leanne kept her
attention focused on the test of sinews and tuned out any words that anyone might be saying. She did not care who was the favorite, though she expected they’d all be rooting for Kesta. It was only right they would. She was the Dame, the lady Knight. Leanne was only human.
Perhaps that made Leanne all the more determined to prevail. She pressed harder still, and Kesta’s hand once again started to shudder downward.
Centimeter by centimeter, Leanne brought Kesta’s hand lower, ever lower, and the two of them each gripped the edge of the table with her free hand to increase their leverage. I’m doing it, Leanne allowed herself to think. I’m taking her. I’ve got her…
And then, from some unknown reservoir of strength, Kesta began once again to bring her hand up against the force that Leanne exerted against her. She brought her hand up, and up, and up, resisting the power of the human woman’s muscles. Up and over…
Leanne released a sound that was both a gasp and a shout as, with one final, irresistible effort, Kesta forced her hand down onto the table with a thump! Leanne looked up, both shocked and exhausted, into Kesta’s face, then down onto the table where Kesta’s hand rested atop hers. They kept their hands clenched that way, as if their fingers had been welded together, and their full awareness of their surroundings returned with the WHOOP! that welled up all around them and the resounding cheer that burst from Coram, Willem, and Tarik.
Panting and puffing, Leanne managed to pull her hand from Kesta’s and back across the table. Coram reached over and gently touched her on the arm, smiling and nodding. His expression suggested that he was proud of her, and she found herself hoping that was actually the case, as if his approval somehow mattered.
Kesta leaned back in her seat and clenched and unclenched her fingers and flexed her arms. As the whooping from around the tavern subsided, Kesta said, “Well fought, Commander. The Fleet did well, choosing you for this mission. You and Coram will be successful, I know.”
Leanne nodded back to Kesta, her hunch about the Dame’s motives confirmed. Kesta was indeed testing whether Leanne had the scales, figuratively speaking, to stand alongside her friend. Breathlessly, she answered, “I’m glad you approve.” And in fact, she was glad, even grateful. Somehow, the opinion of Coram’s friends actually seemed to matter.
The next thing they knew, a bartender arrived, presenting five full glasses on a tray. Setting the tray down before them, the shirtless dragon man said, “Courtesy of the house. A reward for giving us a bit of sport tonight.”
Each of the five hoisted a glass, raising their glasses to the bartender in thanks. The man collected the tray and headed off to serve others at the bar.
It would be the last drink of the evening for Leanne and Coram. As the other
patrons of the Curling Horn returned to their places, the Fleet Commander and her Knightly liaison eyed each other over their drinks and silently acknowledged that it was time to retire for the night, to be ready for the tasks that awaited them tomorrow, on which this planet and so much more depended.
CHAPTER FOUR
At the end of the evening, Leanne, Coram, and his friends stepped out of The Curling Horn and into another typically perfect, weather-controlled night on Lacerta. Kesta, Willem, and Tarik all expressed how honored they were to be working with Leanne on the vital Chimerian Protocol project.
Leanne thanked them, not letting on that she was nursing a mild ache in her arm from the wrestling match with Kesta, and hoping that Kesta did not pick up on the fact. Then, Coram’s three comrades morphed to dragon form and flew off back in the direction of the Spires, and Leanne and Coram climbed back into the hovercar to make for the same place.
Like a gallant Knight, Coram saw Leanne back to the door of her quarters. They paused there to say their good-nights.
“Leanne,” said Coram, “I hope you didn’t find this evening terribly inappropriate. I understand what we’re trying to accomplish here and what it means not only to this planet but also the quadrant. But you know, I’m sure there are precedents for knights and heroes sitting down
together and lifting a glass or two and toasting the quest they’re about to begin or the battle they’re about to face.
It’s a way for comrades to bond, to express their confidence in each other and the importance of what they’re about to do. You see, I do have as serious a mind about this as you do. I suppose I just express it differently.”
“I understand, Coram. And frankly…I think you’re right,” said Leanne.
“I’m glad you understand. And…I hope you understand about Kesta as well.”
At the mention of Kesta’s name, Leanne wanted to rub her arm and her shoulder, but she refrained. She could do that once she was alone in her room. “What about her?” she simply asked.
“What I mean is, I hope you understand what she intended. She respects you, and she honestly wants to be a part of what we’re doing. In a way, I suppose she wanted to take the measure of you, to see for herself that you’re everything she expected you to be. I think she knows for certain that you are, now.”
Leanne nodded. “She wanted to see how much of a dragon I am at heart.”
“You could put it that way, yes,” said Coram.
“Well,” said Leanne, “I’m glad she approves.”
“We all do,” Coram assured her. “Though this is our planet and we are the Knights, the Knighthood accepts that Earth and the Fleet initiated these measures against the Chimerians, and we’re ready to do everything to help them along for the good of everyone. Which means that even though we’re Knights and dragons…we’re prepared to follow your lead. You have the full support of the Knighthood, Leanne. From the start to the end of it, you’ll have dragons at your back every step.”
“I know,” she replied, allowing herself a bit of a smile. “And…I’m glad. There’s no one I’d want more at my back or at my side than the Knights.”
“Then I’m glad too,” said Coram, smiling back. And for a moment, they stood at the door to Leanne’s quarters, not saying anything—or wanting to say any number of things but not finding the words for them. Leanne had been in Coram’s company all day and had found his handsomeness distracting from the moment they introduced themselves—but his looks were never more distracting than they were right now.
Finally, Leanne spoke up: “We’d better say good night. We’re getting an early start
tomorrow.”
“True,” said Coram. “Good night then…Leanne.”
“Good night, Coram.”
With a nod, he turned and started away down the corridor, showing the open back of his armor skin and the musculature of his shoulders and back. Leanne allowed herself just a
moment to watch the way those muscles rippled when he moved. Then, she pressed the release to slide open the door and stepped into her quarters.
Alone in the room, Leanne let out a long exhale, feeling everything she had done that day catching up with her. Now, she allowed herself to feel the way her arm was nagging at her. She was surprised at herself, that she would feel that way after her tabletop bout with Kesta. As a member of the Fleet, Leanne kept herself in shape as regulations required. The way her arm felt now was not something she expected of herself. Frowning, she went to her baggage and picked out a tube of muscle balm that she hardly ever used but was glad that she had
packed, in her compulsive and trained way of not overlooking details and always being prepared.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and stripped off the top of her uniform, applying the balm to her shoulder, bicep, and wrist. Rubbing in the warming and cooling mousse and letting her skin absorb it and pass it into her muscles, Leanne contemplated the day just past. She felt a bit guilty that her feelings about being with the Knights—and being with Coram—were as strong as her feelings about the duty that had brought her here.
It was natural that Coram’s support and Kesta’s approval would mean something to her. After all, she had come on a mission to protect the entire quadrant and Commonwealth, but it was their planet. If she were honest, though, it was about more than just whose planet Lacerta happened to be. It was about the Knights.
Her own words came back to her: She wanted to see how much of a dragon I am at heart. Leanne wondered if Coram had sensed any other meaning in those words than just what lay on the surface. There was another level of meaning, and there were times when Leanne felt that meaning very keenly. Today, tonight, was one of those times.
When she’d gone into counseling and therapy after the death of her parents, there had been one thing she put in her journals that she had never expressed to her counselors. She had always wondered if they had guessed it, but then if they had guessed it, they would have mentioned it to her and made her examine it.
Leanne had kept this in her journal, and in all the years since she’d lived on Dorian III, she had never mentioned it to anyone, not even the psychologist who examined her as a condition of her acceptance for Fleet training. It had stayed with her through all these years since Sir Hagen Maxon rescued her and the Knights took care of her, taken up its own little space in a corner of her mind. And whenever she was with the Knights—on duty or socially, or when one of them took her to bed—it always loomed a bit larger in her thoughts, the way it did now.
Leanne reached into the pocket of her uniform top which lay on the bed beside her and took out the container of inhibitors. She opened it, took out one of the little jellies, and popped it into her mouth. She then went to the fountain near the bed and dispensed a glass of cold water for herself. The inhibitor melted on her tongue, and she took a swallow of water to wash it down, thinking about what the inhibitor would do in her body to counteract the minerals in the water.
All she had to do was stop taking the inhibitors, and a process would begin that could not be
reversed, a process that would change her life and everything about it forever. At the end of the process, she would still be the same Leanne Shire that she had always been—but she would be something more as well. And in her heart of hearts, Leanne sometimes thought she should very much like to be something more.
The ramifications of it were huge, one of the most enormous things that any human could ever face. It meant becoming two species in one, or one being with two distinct shapes. And her body having another shape meant that her mind, her very being—her soul, if one wanted to be spiritual about it—would have another shape as well.
There were people who deliberately sought this out, who came to Lacerta for this very reason. They were not always successful. The Lacertan government imposed rigorous regulations and psychological standards on it, as not just any human was deemed mentally and spiritually fit for it. This went back to the earliest days of the colony, when lost humans stranded on a strange world discovered that mutagenic minerals and traces of fossil dragon DNA in the water on the planet were having profound-life changing effects on them, effects that they would pass on to their children.
In the midst of the trauma of being lost and cut off from Earth came this other trauma, the trauma of becoming something more or other than human. When Lacerta reestablished contact with Earth and more humans began to visit the planet, it was resolved that no other humans would
ever be allowed to face the shock and trauma of metamorphic powers for which they were not prepared. When people from Earth came deliberately seeking the Lacertan mutation, they were accepted only after the most stringent screening of their mental and emotional fitness. One did not simply, casually become a weredragon. The laws of the colony expressly forbade it, and Earth agreed.
Leanne had never acted on the unspoken desires she had written in her journals. She had passed through the tough and rigorous training to enter the Fleet and stopped at that. But she had also requested any duty that would put her near or in contact with the Lacertan Corps or Knighthood. If she could not be a dragon, at least she could be in the company of dragons.
She found that in her reflections on her feelings about the Knights, she had wandered back to the bed. Leanne put the glass of water on the nightstand and sat there looking at it, contemplating the invisible strands of molecules in it that could work such a profound change on her if she and the colonial government allowed it.
The ache in her arm was gone, and now she was tired. She lay down across the bed and shut her eyes. In a little while, she would get up again and finish undressing, slipping between the covers to go to sleep. For now, she just wanted to lie here and think. And in the dark behind her eyelids, she saw the handsome face of Sir Coram Dunne.
Leanne found she envied Coram, as she envied all the Lacertans. He never had to make a conscious choice about being both a man and a dragon, never had to go through the process of being accepted for the mutation and the physical, mental, and emotional disciplines that were required once the change was made, to acclimate to his powers.
He was simply born that way. It was as natural for him as being only human was for her. She thought she should feel guilty for the way she felt, and in fact, expressing that kind of guilt and learning to live with it and with the possible reactions of other humans was a part of the discipline. Few humans ever made it through even the beginnings of the screening and vetting
process. There were times, Leanne admitted, when she dearly wanted to try.
To be a dragon. To have scales and talons and horns and wings and a tail. To fly without a ship or a vehicle. Just to be a dragon. How glorious that must be, to be what had once rescued a terrified girl who would never see her mother and father again.
Coram knew what that was. He was born to it. They all were.
There were times when Leanne thought she would give anything to know it as well.
_______________
The colonial government that legislated for the entire planet Lacerta was located at the Ruling Aerie. But the local government that administered to the capital city of Silverwing lay at the center of the city, in what was now called the Ullery Tower.
It was the tallest building in the city outside of the Spires, a tall, elegantly tapering, four-sided structure with a dome at the top and at each corner of the roof a dragon-shaped gargoyle. Today, an addition was being made to the top of the Ullery Tower dome, which would preside over the entire city: a new rotating dragon gargoyle, equipped with the Chimerian Protocol tech whose sensors would sweep the entire city with every rotation.
The dome had already been prepared; an opening had been drilled in the top, and the engine to provide the rotation had been installed. All that remained now was to attach the new gargoyle. And that was the task that fell to Sir Coram Dunne and Lieutenant Commander Leanne Shire this morning.
Similar installations were being done in each corner of the city at the same time. In the southwest, Kesta and Willem would place another of the Protocol gargoyles atop the tallest structure. In the northeast, Tarik and another Knight would busy themselves with the placement of another. In the two other corners of Silverwing, two other pairs of Knights were even now readying themselves to place two other gargoyles at the appropriate locations.
The five teams had left the Spires at the same time, first thing in the morning. Once their work was done here in the city, the five gargoyles would be brought online and synced with each other and with the master satellite in orbit, and Silverwing would have its invisible blanket of protectio
n against the shape-changing encroachers.
The large transport hover van, piloted by Coram with Leanne riding shotgun, glided over the rooftops of Silverwing towards the center of the city. During the ride, Coram noticed Leanne’s silence and inquired, “Anxious about the job? I’m sure it will go smoothly.”
“I’m sure it will too,” said Leanne. “It’s not that. I was just thinking…the capital administrative building was just renamed the Ullery Tower recently, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” answered Coram. “What of it?”
“It made me think about Sir Rawn Ullery,” Leanne said. “I followed the story about his return from being lost and presumed dead, all the celebration of his homecoming, the parties and the parade and all that. I was wondering how I would have felt in his position.”
“I’m sure he was grateful to be home,” said Coram.
“Of course, he was, as anyone would be. That’s not what I mean. I was thinking of the usual psychological profile of someone like that. Sir Rawn knows he’s considered a great hero. He knows what kind of a place in history he has, being the only genetically augmented Knight with enhanced strength and the power to breathe fire. And the part that he played in stopping the Chimerians the last time, no one will ever forget that or his sacrifice, and everyone will always love him for it.
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