“You’ll definitely want to go for less, I’m sure,” Coram said.
“And right now, I’d like to get out of here. The Knighthood and the Corps have got the city secured, and the Fleet is at work studying the dragons. Though to be honest, everyone already knows what they’re going to find.”
Coram sighed heavily, knowingly. “The Chimerians. They’re here already. They did something to the grass dragons, no doubt about that. And there’s no guessing what else they’ve done or what else they’re going to do. And there’s no way this story isn’t getting out. It’s
already all over Lacerta, and by the morning, the whole quadrant will know. The tension is going to get thick enough for a dragon to slash with his tail.”
Leanne frowned. “True enough. And until Fleet Research makes its official report, we’re going to have to do the one thing I appreciate the least.”
“What would that be?”
“Wait,” she replied. “Wait to make our own report. Wait for further orders from Fleet Command. Wait to come up with a plan for what to do next. I know it doesn’t sound that disciplined, but…”
“But you prefer action to waiting in any event,” Coram finished for her. “And sometimes, there’s nothing else to do but wait.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“And I’ll wager there’s something else you already know.”
“What’s that?” Leanne asked, her curiosity piqued.
“We may not like to admit it, but every Knight, deep down, feels exactly as you do.”
Silence followed this. Leanne rolled her eyes to one side, and Coram watched for her
reaction, harking back again to that moment when he’d pointed out the motives of some humans for coming to Lacerta. He’d wanted to see what she thought of what he’d just said.
Returning her eyes to his, Leanne said, “I’m under doctor’s orders to go back to my
quarters and stay there ‘til tomorrow morning—waiting.”
“Would you care for some company?” Coram asked.
“Right now, no,” she replied. “It’ll distract me from doing nothing.”
“We’ll distract ourselves with a dinner that we’ve more than earned,” he said.
“All right,” said Leanne. “But we might as well get cleaned up first. Go back to your quarters and have a bath, and I’ll go back to mine and do likewise, and meet me at my quarters later. Deal?”
Coram grinned, acknowledging. “Deal.”
_______________
It was a custom of the planet Lacerta that its inhabitants preferred baths to showers, which they owed to the reptile side of their nature. Homes, bathing facilities, and dwelling
places that were built primarily for the use of Lacertans did not usually have showers. There was not a shower stall to be found anywhere in the spires. So, to clean up after everything she had been through today, Leanne’s only choice was to settle into the sunken bathtub for a long, warm soak.
The water could not penetrate the protein seal on her leg, so that was not a concern. And truth be told, a little time by herself soaking in a warm bath might at least distract her for a while from her impatience. Upon returning to her quarters, she took another mutagenic inhibitor and undressed for the bath.
Setting herself down in the water, leaning back, and shutting her eyes, Leanne pondered what it really was, beyond just the inaction of waiting, that was making her impatient. It was the uncertainty of wondering and of not being able to plan for the unexpected, so that everything she did would be reactive rather than proactive. That was what really nagged at her now: having been completely unprepared for the swarm of mutated grass dragons, and now being in a reactive position. She much preferred taking the initiative. She would have to find a way to turn this around, and soon.
Leanne was mildly surprised at how quickly a mood of calm came over her. Why should she be calm now? She guessed that it was only the lull that one experiences in the eye of a storm. Soon enough, she expected, the eye would pass over, and the other side of the storm would hit. Well, let it come, she thought. Whatever it is, whatever they do, we’ll meet it just like we met the…
She snapped her eyes open again. She had thought we. Not I, but we. As in us. As in Coram and I.
Well, of course she should think of it that way. She was not alone in this, after all.
Coram had been assigned to work and, when necessary, do battle at her side. The Fleet and the Knighthood had designated them partners in the effort of securing Lacerta. They were a team. Leanne was well accustomed to working with and leading teams. This mission was no different from any other.
Except it was different. This time, she was protecting the planet Lacerta, a place that had loomed even larger in her imagination and her heart than Earth, the planet from which her family came. This time, she was protecting the people of Lacerta, who had taken up as much of a space in her heart and her spirit as the human race to which she belonged. She was defending Lacerta alongside a Lacertan. He was her partner, to whom she would trust her life, even as she had trusted another like him to save her life on that awful day when she was just sixteen. This time, it could not help but be different.
After a while of relaxing in the water—and ignoring the little gnawing pang of guilt that she felt over relaxing while some unknown jeopardy was out there somewhere waiting to catch her unawares—it occurred to Leanne that Coram would be arriving soon, and she ought to get ready for him. She got herself out of the bath and over to the bench nearby to towel herself off. The seal on her leg was beginning to absorb into her skin; she guessed that by morning it would be a squarish patch, barely distinguishable from her flesh. It would take with it any trace of the wound she’d received.
It would be as if she were a weredragon herself and had erased the injury by morphing from her scaled form to her human self. At this, she raised her head and stared out, seemingly into space but really into her most private, personal imagination. How many times had she unfurled in her mind the vision of herself in one of those other bodies, of being able to stretch wings of leather and lash a tail of scale-jacketed sinews? How many times in the private space of her daydreams had she raised a horned head on a serpentine neck and hurled a shriek or a roar up to the clouds? And how many times had she dismissed the idea? Indeed, why had she always dismissed it?
Leanne shook her head, dispelling the vision once more. She had no time for it now. He should be on his way, and she was not ready. She hardly wanted to greet him wearing nothing but a towel when he came to the door, even though at her first sight of him in person, he had been wearing nothing at all. Yes, nothing at all—gloriously nothing. She had seen every centimeter of him—and every centimeter of what he had below the waist. At this, Leanne could not help but slip back into the memory of that moment as she had slipped into her fantasy of being what he was.
Unbidden from her memory came flashes of all the times she had seen men of Coram’s kind the way she first saw Coram—seen them, and been kissed by them, and touched them, and lain
under them, and taken their maleness into herself. Why was she remembering these things now? It was out of place. It wasn’t fitting—not now. She chased the memories of the other dragon men, and of Coram’s nakedness, from her mind. She needed to concentrate.
She refocused her thoughts: I need to get dressed. Leanne wrapped a towel around herself and walked back to the bedroom of her quarters, realizing further that all she had packed in the way of clothing was a set of uniforms. Well, what of it? She shouldn’t need any other
clothing but her uniforms during her stay on Lacerta. She had come to do a job, and a vital one at that. She was here in her official capacity as a member of the Fleet. And though Coram was coming to dinner, it would be a dinner with her partner.
That was, after all, what they were to each other—partners, assigned and designated by the Fleet and the Knighthood. Mission partners, set to perform a task vital to the security and well-being of Lacerta and, ultima
tely, hundreds of other planets. That was their relationship. Coram was her mission partner.
Yes—her mission partner, with a face of swoon-inducing handsomeness; a body hotter than the fires of any dragon, real or imagined; and something suspended at his loins that was a weapon more potent than any power blade.
Stop it! Leanne admonished herself and went to her closet to find a fresh uniform. She had it on and had her hair combed just in time for the door to sound. When she hit the control to slide it open, there he was on the other side of it, wearing a fresh armor skin without gauntlets, and a smile—and carrying a bottle of wine.
“Evening, Commander Shire,” said Coram.
“Good evening,” replied Leanne, eyeing the bottle in his hand. “That really wasn’t
necessary…”
He stepped inside, and the door slid shut behind him. “Of course, it’s necessary,” he said back. “We earned this today. You earned this today. This is my favorite Lacertan vintage.” He held up the ornately labeled bottle to show her. “I always keep a bottle on hand for the most memorable occasions. This day qualifies. Today, we came through a battle together and were triumphant. That…earns this.”
She wrinkled her brow at him slightly. Of all the Knights that Leanne had ever known—some as intimately as it was possible to know anyone—she had never met one quite as Devil-may-care as Coram Dunne. He was a Knight, through and through: strong, brave, valiant, fearless, fearsome. But there was another quality about him. He was so unaffected, so insouciant, so seemingly casual about everything he did. In a way, she realized, Coram confused her. Was he always so casual, so relaxed and unaffected?
Leanne could guess well enough that he was more than casual about one particular thing—and yet also as ferocious about it when he got down to business as he was in the face of an adversary. When all was said and done, Coram was a Knight, and there was one thing that every male of the Knighthood had in common.
“I’ll get some glasses,” she said. “What do you want for dinner?”
They quickly decided to have the food fabricator prepare a couple of Lacertan steaks with potatoes and vegetables, and while waiting for their meals to process, they sat down at the table, and Coram opened and poured the wine. It was strong, sweet, and delicious. In spite of her wanting to maintain at least an air of seriousness, the first taste of it made Leanne smile.
“You see why it’s my favorite?” Coram grinned at her over his glass.
“It is very good,” Leanne replied.
“I knew you’d enjoy it,” he said. “Would you allow me an observation?”
“What?”
“You fit in very well on our planet.”
“I do?”
“Yes,” Coram said. “You do. You seem very much at home here.”
“You know I’ve always been fond of your people,” Leanne said.
“Very fond, I know,” Coram replied. “But there’s something about you that’s very
natural in our company.”
“A lot of that just goes with being a member of the Fleet,” said Leanne. “Visiting other planets, circulating in other cultures, dealing with other species—you get used to it.”
“You could stay on Earth and be just as used to it,” he pointed out. “Everyone goes
everywhere, whether they’re in the Fleet or not.”
“Then what’s your point?” Leanne asked.
“My point,” said Coram, “is that I’ve watched you since you’ve been here. There’s something very natural and instinctive about the way you are with us. I watched you in the aerial maneuver against the mutant dragons. You flew with us as if you’d been born to do it.”
Leanne shrugged. “I’ve been trained for that kind of maneuver, Coram, the same as any officer. There’s nothing special about it.”
“Isn’t there?”
The question hung in the air, and a world of meaning hung there with it. Their eyes locked together across the table until the ping of the food replicator broke the moment.
“I’ll get dinner out now,” she said.
Leanne stood up from the table, and Coram, the Knightly gentleman in spite of his rakish ways, stood up with her.
They began dinner in silence. There was a gratifying and sensuous pleasure in biting into hot beef after everything they’d endured today. But Coram did not care for the quietude, not when there were things he wanted to know, and once again, he had made her withdraw into
herself, which was not where he wanted her. He would have to do something about that straight away. He started the conversation again.
“Tell me about Dorian III,” he said.
Leanne looked up at him over a forkful of steak. “Dorian III? What about it? You
already know about that; it’s in my files.”
“The flat facts are in your files,” he said. “I want to hear about it from you, not the Fleet records. Tell me about it.”
“It’s an old story,” said Leanne.
“It’s important to you,” Coram said. “And…I really want to know. Tell me about the day that Sir Hagen Maxon rescued you.”
She looked away from him, troubled at his curiosity. “There’s no need to go into that.”
“Why?” Coram asked. “We’re going to be working together, Leanne, working together closely. We should be able to talk to each other, trust each other. We should be able to know things about each other. You do trust me, don’t you?”
Now, she returned her eyes to him, and he was pleased to see in her eyes the answer to his question. “Yes, I trust you.”
“Then you can tell me. I want to hear about that day.”
“I lost my parents that day, Coram.”
“I know,” said Coram softly. “I want to hear about it.”
She paused a bit, gathering her thoughts. Coram waited for her to go on. Then, she asked, “What do you know about Dorian III? Did you look it up?”
“Only what happened to it,” said Coram. “That is, only the reason you left.”
“Where my parents and I lived, New Massachusetts, was the oldest settlement on the planet. In the center of town, they put up the first Earth ships that landed there as a permanent exhibit. That area, near the old ships, was a beautiful place. It was all tall trees and vines and flowers. The buildings were all shaped like different kinds of mushrooms, and there were bridges between the tops of them. You would go out and walk over the bridges and look out on the whole city.
And there were places where the bridges crossed, where they had little parks. People would go up and have picnics there. That was our favorite place to go, my parents and I. We went up there one day, and some friends of mine were supposed to join us. It was supposed to be a perfect day. It was supposed to be fun. My friends never made it. They were late. We wondered where they were. That was when we heard the noises. And then, we looked out and saw what was happening.”
Coram leaned forward a bit, listening intently. This was going to be the part that he knew, the thing that was in the official record. Now, he was going to hear it first-hand.
“Everyone knew what was going on with the Chimerians. Not a day went by without you hearing something about it. The stories were scary; it seemed like half the time people were trying to distract themselves from knowing about it. But on Dorian III, we thought we were okay. We thought we were far enough from where the main part of the conflict was. We thought it wouldn’t get out as far as we were. And we had Lacertan Knights stationed on the planet to help out in case anything happened. And then…something happened.
“We heard something—people screaming, things breaking and crashing. And we looked out at the city, and we could see them growing everywhere. They were growing so fast we could see them grow. They climbed and crawled, wrapped around things, grabbed things. And from the sounds we were hearing, they were grabbing people. Have you ever seen a Coradan predator plant?”
“Not personally,” said Coram. “I’ve seen vids of them.”
“They�
��re carnivorous plants—big ones. They’re like pythons. Big, hungry pythons or giant squids on land with hundreds of tentacles. They’re carnivorous plants. And they’re
dangerous. There are places on Corinda II where you don’t want to go because of them. And suddenly, there they were on Dorian III—our planet, our home. In their natural form, they’re ambush predators. They lie in wait or they sneak up on their prey. These were different. They were fast-growing, and they could chase things down. And they were there, on Dorian III, on our planet. And my parents and I knew how they’d gotten there.”
“The Chimerians had taken on some of their genes and were using them to attack your planet,” Coram pointed out, obviously.
“Coradan predator plants, mutated by the Chimerians and turned loose on our home. And they were everywhere, all around, and they were coming after people. My parents and I looked, and we could see them wrapping around buildings and fixtures. They were whipping and snapping into the air, grabbing vehicles in flight and making them crash. And they were catching people. We saw people lifted up off the ground by vines coiled around them; the vines were dragging them off.
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