Metal Dragon (Warriors of Galatea Book 2)

by Lauren Esker

  The centaur, his eyes huge, fired again and again at the monster that had suddenly appeared in front of him. Lyr closed his jaws around him, prompting a muffled cry and curses. Their shields prevented Lyr from being able to actually bite him. Instead, Lyr dragged him backward down the corridor—the centaur kicked wildly and then tried to brace his hooves, but it didn't help—until Lyr could push him out the hole in the side of the ship. For good measure, as the centaur began to drift free in his shield-bubble, Lyr delivered a powerful smack with the side of his head that sent the little green shield careening off among the debris.

  With luck, he'd run out of air or get crushed by some chunk of rubble too massive for his shields to withstand. Even if he managed to find somewhere intact to hole up, it ought to take him awhile to get back."Good riddance," Lyr muttered.

  The corridor was still decompressing. He shifted back to his smaller shape, and stumbled against the wind until he could close the section door. A plasma burst from his cuffs heated and warped the metal, sealing it permanently.

  "You'd probably approve of all that," he added to Tamir's unconscious form, hefting him over his shoulder again. "I'm not sure if you'd quite call it a diplomatic solution, but he is, regrettably, still alive. You're always telling me I'm too hot-headed and I need to learn to look for nonviolent solutions to my problems. How's that for keeping my head?" No answer, of course.

  One surviving pirate meant there could be more. He reached out a cautious question toward the human woman. *How are things where you are?*

  He was unprepared for her wave of relief and delight. Since she was still having some trouble controlling her mental voice, he was also treated to an uncontrollable rush of her surface thoughts. *You're okay! Oh, thank God! You're really hot! ... I hope he didn't hear that. What happened? Are we being rescued? Where are you?*

  *Calm, calm.* He found himself automatically sending soothing thoughts through the connection, helping her control her mental outburst, as he had done for his sept-sibs back in the old days. *What's your situation? Are you hurt?*

  *I'm okay.* Her mental voice faltered. *We're not being rescued, are we?*

  *I wish I had better news, but not yet.*

  He could feel her bracing and steadying herself. He'd meant to send reassurance to her, but instead, unexpectedly, he found her mental strength steadying him. *Okay then. Are there medical supplies on this ship? We have hurt people here.*

  *There should be some kind of medbay.* Where he needed to go anyway. *That place where you were processed when you first got here? It might have what we need.*

  Lyr received sharp flashes of memories not his own: rough hands pressing an injector behind her ear; terrified people being pushed around and forcibly subjected to disinfecting procedures. It did seem a likely place for medical supplies, a combination intake facility and infirmary.

  *I can meet you there,* the woman said. *I know right where it is.*

  *No!* It came out more harsh than he intended; the idea of having other people running around the ship, getting into danger—of having her in danger—*No,* he went on more moderately. *There are still pirates on this ship. I'll bring what you need.*

  Rather than backing down, he felt her doubling down on stubbornness, like steel walls going up in her mind. *I can help. I'm a nurse. I need to see what's available.*

  Through the connection, he understood enough of what she meant by "nurse" to know she had some kind of medical background, even if the details didn't translate.

  *Fine. Do as you like.* Let her get herself killed, if that was her choice.

  *Is everything all right?* the human woman thought anxiously at him. *Are you all right?*

  How long had it been since someone had worried about his welfare? *I am unhurt. Go find this medical place. I'll meet you there.*

  But she didn't back off. Instead, what came back was a question. *What's your name? Do you have one?*

  *It doesn't matter.* Harsh. He had to be. He didn't want that connection. Didn't want to be tied to another person when he'd barely survived those he'd lost.

  *Don't you want to know mine?*

  No. He didn't. And he especially didn't want what came with it over the telepathic connection, because a person's name was inextricably bound up with their sense of self.

  But she said it anyway. *I'm Meri.*

  And with her name came ... light. It was not the bright, cold glare of the electric lights on the Galateans' ships, nor even the harsh light of the midday sun. It was the gentle glow of lamplight, of the golden sun as it sank toward evening. It was a warm light that wanted to creep into every corner of his dark, wounded soul, a light that soothed hurts and left peace in its wake.

  She was a warm person, this Meri. She was light and laughter and peace. She was everything he was not. He found himself turning away from her, not wanting her to see the jagged, broken edges of his soul. She couldn't fix him. All he would do was steal the light away from her.

  But she hadn't pulled back. She was open, curious. Waiting.

  *Lyr,* he sent back, against his better judgment. *I'm Lyr.*

  7

  ___

  L YR. AS HE INTRODUCED HIMSELF, Meri understood not only the word, but she also caught a sense of something ... bright. Hot. Fierce. Overwhelming. Like the presence she'd touched before, when she had tried to reach out for him with her mind.

  Someone shook her shoulder, jolting her out of her concentration. It was the green woman, Preet, who asked her a shy question.

  "I'm sorry, I can't understand you." But it was odd; she was almost starting to. It was like there was a whisper at the back of her mind, telling her words she could nearly understand.

  So far, Meri had found that confidence, friendliness, and rudimentary medical skills went a long way toward overcoming a language barrier. The other prisoners had quickly realized that she was treating the injured and the sick, and she had a steady stream of patients pressing around her—patients she could do very little to help, without access to better medical supplies. And now she might know a place to get them.

  "Preet, will you come with me? I'm going to look for help."

  It took a minute, but with pantomime, she was pretty sure she managed to get her point across, at least the basic gist of it. But then she looked at the green woman with her sticklike, bruised arms, and thought, I need better backup than this. I need to find someone with weapons.

  She looked around for any of the people who had gotten the bracelets or the stun-stick from the pirate they'd killed. The most approachable-looking of these was a young woman with cat fur and ears who was sitting with an older woman. When Meri went over to them, the cat-girl raised her hand threateningly, the bracelet glittering on her wrist.

  "Wait, wait! I'm not here to hurt you." Meri pointed to the bracelet. The girl quickly folded her hands under her arms as if she thought Meri was trying to take it away. "No, I don't want to steal it. I just want to know if you can defend us if we meet pirates. I'm going to look for help. Do you understand? Help?"

  Preet had followed her over, and began talking to the cat-people. Whatever they said to each other, the cat-girl hugged the older woman and got up. Preet touched Meri's arm and pointed to the cat-girl. "Edrin," she said.

  "Hi, Edrin. I'm Meri." Meri touched her chest. "Meri."

  The girl smiled shyly, her collar flashing under shaggy lion-tawny hair.

  It was very dark and very quiet out in the hall, and Meri was glad she'd decided not to go alone. Lights were few and far between. She was just wondering if she was even going to be able to find her way in the darkness when a sudden bright blue-white light flooded the corridor. It was coming from Edrin's bracelet.

  "That's a nice trick," Meri said. "You're going to have to teach me how to use those." Edrin just gave her a puzzled look and jerked her hand away, like she still thought Meri was going to steal it.

  She was so young. Maybe seventeen or eighteen. What kind of life had she had, to cause the wary distrust that Meri
saw in her face and body language?

  As if you have to ask. The collar glinting on Edrin's neck said it all.

  Meri wasn't as confident about her ability to find her way back to the processing room as she'd tried to sound when she was talking to Lyr. But it actually turned out to be very easy; they weren't far away. When they entered the room full of tools and equipment, Preet made a tiny whimpering sound and Edrin shrank back. The bracelet's fierce blue-white glare filled the room with dancing shadows. The only other light came from one of those dull-red emergency lights above each door.

  "Shhh," Meri whispered. She put an arm around Edrin, who resisted for a moment and then leaned against her. The girl was trembling. "It's all right." She hoped.

  They both stood still for a moment. Meri didn't know what Edrin was doing—reliving past horrors, perhaps—but she herself was straining her eyes and ears for any sign of someone lurking in the dark room. Nothing moved, and there were no sounds ... none at all. Not even a whisper of air.

  It was too quiet. Like a building during a power outage. Wouldn't a ship like this need some sort of fans to circulate the air? Bad thought—and nothing she could do about it. She had to hope someone, somewhere was trying to get the engines running again.

  ... well, perhaps not, because "someone" probably meant pirates. Lyr had said they weren't being rescued yet. Did that mean someone was coming later? She had a bad feeling the answer might be no.

  As she and the women started to look around for things they could use—blankets, bandages—there was a sudden thump from somewhere nearby. Edrin cried out and jerked back, then curled her hands into shaking fists. Preet backed away and hid behind Meri.

  Another thump, followed by a metallic clang. Meri thought fiercely in Lyr's direction, *Tell me that noise is you!*

  *It's me.* He sounded distracted.

  Her knees wobbled. *Don't do that. I thought you were one of them.*

  Absent-minded apology came through the connection. *Listen, I need you to stand back. This door is sealed and I'm going to open it.*

  "It's okay," Meri told Edrin and Preet, pulling them back with her. "It's a friend. Friend, you understand? It's someone who won't hurt us."

  In the dimness, she was able to easily make out a glowing reddish spot that appeared on the surface of the door. It traced a slow path sideways, then down.

  Edrin gasped and raised her hands. "No!" Meri told her. She put a hand over Edrin's wrist and pulled her hand down. "Friend. Friend!"

  The bright red ember traced its way up the other side of the door, and the severed section of the door, still glowing dully at the edges, fell forward with a nerve-rattling clang. Lyr stepped carefully through the glowing edges of the seared doorway, bending his head low and hunching his shoulders to avoid brushing his horns against the top of the opening he'd made. *Help me.*

  "With what?" Meri started to ask, before realizing that he wasn't alone. What she'd taken for some kind of cloak flung over his shoulder was actually a person, a huge block of tiger-striped fur who Lyr now lowered gently to the floor. Meri ran forward to catch the stranger's shoulder, helping Lyr ease him down.

  Lyr's bracelets shed a pale moonlight glow, giving Meri a look at the man Lyr had brought in with him. Now that she was starting to get used to the cat-people, she realized how human they actually appeared. This man was even more so than Edrin, because the girl had catlike ears, furry and erect on top of her head, but this man's ears were normal human ones. In fact, the only visible difference from a normal human was the soft tiger-striped fuzz covering his face and lengthening into short fur on his shoulders and chest. If he had a shave, he'd be indistinguishable from anyone on the street. He'd also been through a rough time recently. Blood crusted his nostrils and the side of his head, dark in the glow of Lyr's light. His pulse was weak and rapid.

  "What happened to him?" she asked, counting heartbeats against her watch—she'd done this so often she could easily multitask—while Lyr picked up the stranger's limp arm and pressed his silver bracelet to the gold one around the man's lightly furred wrist. Then, remembering he might not be able to understand her, she repeated it mentally.

  *A number of things. He was recently exposed to deep space without protection, but he also took damage from impacts with debris.* She could sense Lyr's distraction; he was focused inward. Concern was visible on his face; this man was important to him, not one of the pirates. *Internal injuries, broken ribs, shattered pelvis, hypothermia—*

  "Your bracelet is telling you all that?" she asked in fascination. What she wouldn't have given for a diagnostic tool like that back home! "Who is this? What's his name?"

  *Tamir.* Along with the name, through the connection came an impression of warmth, admiration, and a startling flood of emotion that was gone before she could catch it. *Can you help him?*

  "I don't know. We have to get him warm first, get an IV in him." She looked around for the others. "Edrin, Preet, can you bring me some blankets?—oh, I forgot you can't understand. Lyr, can you translate for me, please?"

  Lyr spoke aloud in a flowing, musical language, and the pain in her head abruptly spiked. Meri was only vaguely aware of Edrin and Preet hurrying off to search cabinets in the room. She reached up a hand to feel behind her ear, probing at the small hard point under the skin, like an embedded nodule of sand, where most of the pain seemed to be concentrated.

  *Don't touch it.* Dry, warm fingers caught her own. *It's a translation implant. It'll start working once it has a chance to learn your language.*

  She looked up at him, his face suddenly so close to her own. Their eyes met, and he pulled his hand quickly away. Meri had to catch her breath; he was very ... intense, at close range.

  "A translation implant." She started to reach for it again, but stop herself. "How does that work? They couldn't possibly have injected it into the mastoid process, could they?— no, focus, Meri."

  She turned her attention back to her patient. Fishing her little keychain pocketknife out of her purse, she began cutting Tamir's shirt off so she could get a better look at his injuries. The shirt was blue and sleeveless, with gold piping. She'd seen something like this before, and oh, now she remembered—he was one of the space marines from the planet.

  "Can those magic bracelets of yours tell me Tamir's blood pressure and his blood oxygenation levels?"

  As she would have expected if she'd stopped to think about it for half a second, the numbers that he told her made no sense on any scale she knew, but she was able to get a sense from Lyr's reaction that they were dangerously bad.

  *There's something I can try.* Lyr pried open Tamir's gold bracelet with his fingernails. Though it might only be a trick of the light, Meri thought she saw his nails elongate like needles as he worked at it, only to slide back into blunt human fingertips afterwards. Lyr pulled out a hair-fine wire and connected it to his own silver bracelet.

  "What are you doing?" Meri asked.

  *Syncing our cuffs so I can direct his nanites to help him begin healing.*

  Meri started to ask what any of that meant, then decided to save the questions for later, when she wasn't trying to treat a critically wounded patient. As she cut away Tamir's shirt, she saw signs of severe trauma; his ribs were so badly broken they were noticeably deformed, with bruising visible even through his orange-and-black fur. But there was some good news, at least—his breathing, though fast and shallow, was unimpeded. No punctured lung, no flail chest.

  Edrin came back with an armload of silvery blankets. Meri nodded her thanks and began arranging the blankets around the injured man. "Lyr, you said he had a broken pelvis? I need both of you to help me move him carefully—very carefully—so I can use one of the blankets to wrap and stabilize his hips."

  She hadn't ever done it before herself, but she'd received patient transports from automobile accidents with pelvic wraps during her ER rotations. God, she wished she had a backboard. She wished she had a surgeon. She wished she had a hospital. It was going to be a dam
n miracle if he survived this.

  Tamir remained deeply unconscious throughout the process of wrapping and stabilizing his broken pelvis. Meri directed Lyr to start packing blankets around him, while she took off his boots and checked blood flow to his feet. Capillary response in his toes looked good (and she tried not to allow herself to be too fascinated by the fur on top of his feet, or the toenails curved and pointed like claws).

  "Lyr, can you and the others look for an IV, or whatever your people use for it? Something to administer liquids intravenously. And any drugs you can find."

  Lyr nodded and started to get up—taking her light with him. Her dismayed cry made him stop. He crouched down and clicked his bracelet against Tamir's again. The gold cuff on Tamir's wrist began to glow with its own brilliant light.

  "Thank you!" she said.

  Lyr nodded again, unsmiling. He hesitated, touched Tamir's arm lightly, and hurried off.

  Meri didn't want to get her own hopes up. Tamir needed so much more than she could do for him. Internal bleeding and organ damage were not only likely but, based on what she could see and Lyr's mention of a broken pelvis, a near certainty. With a full surgical suite and a modern ICU, he had a pretty good chance as long as they could get him there fast. He'd be looking at a long, slow recovery, but he could make it.

  Without it, he didn't even have a chance. There was no way he could recover with nothing but IV fluids and supportive care.

  How could she tell Lyr that his friend was going to die?

  We're on a spaceship for crying out loud. There must be advanced medical equipment here somewhere.

  Lyr returned and handed her a fat cuff of translucent plastic. Puzzled, Meri turned it over to examine it. There was a multitude of little dots on the inside, protected with a clear sealant strip. She wondered if Lyr had misunderstood.

  "This is for fluids?"