Metal Dragon (Warriors of Galatea Book 2)

by Lauren Esker

  Without the ability to control their thoughts as his own people could, these people were uniquely vulnerable to telepaths. He could never have strip-mined their brains for information the way they thought he could, but he could scoop surface thoughts, which was one of the reasons why even the Galateans who liked him were nervous around him, aside from Tamir—the one person who had never viewed him with hate or suspicion.

  But he was also incredibly vulnerable to their psychic leakage. He constantly had to deal with unwanted feelings of hunger, anger, pain, or sexual arousal until he learned to strengthen his mental blocks to the point where he wasn't receiving telepathic leakage from the people around him. Since his people rarely associated with non-telepaths and did not have a habit of keeping slaves or allowing outsiders to live in their asteroid ship-cities, he had never been around people other than his own. Most dragons hadn't. Which meant they didn't know this.

  If the Galateans wanted to conquer his people, all they really had to do was torture some prisoners (any prisoners, it didn't matter) and throw the dying victims into the middle of a dragon city-ship. Every dragon in the vicinity would be paralyzed with pain and fear. Some might collapse into comas; some might even die.

  He could never, ever let the Galateans learn this. Which meant he could never let them know how vulnerable he really was, or what he could really do—for his people's sake, and his own. He refused to allow himself to become a tool of conquest aimed at his own people.

  So he had locked it all away, setting powerful mental blocks in place, forcing himself to avoid using his powers until even he had halfway forgotten what he could actually do. The only people he allowed himself to mindspeak were his sept-sibs, and once they were gone, he closed himself in an iron-walled prison, allowing no one inside.

  For a dragon, it was solitary confinement, the worst kind of torture imaginable. He had lived with it because he had to, trapped in an empty chamber in his own head. It was not only himself he was protecting; it was his entire people.

  With Meri, he had allowed a single crack of light to shine inside. Now he cracked the door a little wider and tentatively reached out into the ship around him.

  At first there was nothing, only emptiness. No other minds brushed his own. Perhaps he had lost the ability to touch others, and he'd almost rather be trapped in a mental prison cell than know for certain that he'd killed off the part of himself that was even capable of reaching out to others.

  But no, he knew that wasn't true. There was one mind he could always find.

  *Meri?*

  Her answer came back quick and bright, along with the candleflame warmth and the feeling of being gently wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket that was her mental signature. *Lyr! Are you all right?*

  *I'm fine. Just checking in.* He extended his awareness cautiously beyond her, turning his head blindly in that direction as if it would help.

  And—yes, now he felt the others. It was dim, not the same brilliant awareness that he had of Meri's mind, which had become so familiar to him. It was always so with his people; those they knew could be reached from afar, while strangers could be touched only at close proximity.

  But the prisoners' place of refuge was well within his range. The telepathic skills he'd learned as a child were coming back to him now, and he began to add to his mental map. There were two concentrations of other minds, one group with Meri and another near them. Those must be the prisoners remaining in what had formerly been their cell. It seemed that most of them had trickled over to join Meri's group by this point, but a few lingered, afraid to leave their prison.

  He cast his net wider. A handful of isolated minds, scattered in other modules of the ship, were probably the surviving pirates. He didn't want to make contact with them too closely; the connection was too intimate, and the last thing he wanted was to accidentally forge the kind of bond he now had with Meri with one of those murdering, raping monsters. But he did brush a few stray surface thoughts. Anger and intensity of purpose were their overriding feelings, where he'd felt mainly fear with Meri's bunch—so yeah, pirates.

  His head was starting to ache from the unaccustomed concentration. It felt a little like eyestrain from squinting too long at blurry text trying to make it resolve into something familiar. But he wasn't ready to stop yet, because he'd just picked up another gathering of strangers' minds in the opposite direction from Meri's group.

  Lyr allowed his awareness to swoop in on them. He felt panic. They were trapped somewhere. Scared. Uncertain.

  Meri was right, damn it. He couldn't just leave them.

  *Meri, I've found more survivors. I'm going to go get them out.*

  *Do you need help?*

  *No. Stay where you are. But stand by in case I need medical advice.*

  Probably without meaning to, she sent him an image—it might be a memory or what she was currently doing—of herself kneeling beside Tamir's battered body, feeling his pulse. *Did you find what you were looking for? Stasis pods?*

  *I don't think there are any. Either this ship doesn't have them, or they were in a cargo section that's too damaged for me to enter. We will not be able to save him that way.*

  *You'll find another way,* she thought reassuringly at him.

  *False hope brings nothing but sorrow,* he told her.

  *As a nurse, I have to disagree. Without hope, people give up. I've seen patients pull through when they should by all rights have died, because they refused to give in. And I've seen people who should have been fine, who went downhill and died instead, because they decided there was no point in trying.*

  *Are you saying we should all delude ourselves into thinking things are fine when they're not?*

  *No,* she said, and the tone of disgruntled, reluctant amusement came through loud and clear. *I'm saying that if you try to make things work out, and work hard for it, sometimes you get it. If you don't try, you won't ever have a chance at it.*

  He wasn't sure why her certainty annoyed him so much. *The universe is a cruel place, Meri. You can't get a happy ending just by believing in it.*

  What came through the link next was anger. *I know how cruel it is. Believe me. But the fact that you're out there trying to help the rest of us makes me think you're lying to yourself as well as to me.*

  *I need to concentrate on what I'm doing,* he said shortly, and cut her off.

  He felt a pang of guilt immediately. It wasn't her fault. She was sheltered, he thought. That was her problem. What could she know of cruelty and pain on her nice safe world? The universe was going to kick her in the teeth soon enough, and beat that hopeful attitude out of her, just like it did to everybody.

  In the depths of his heart, he found himself wishing he could shield her from that.

  You can't protect anybody, he told himself. Haven't you learned that by now?

  And yet he kept heading toward the bright sparks of those other minds he sensed up ahead.

  A sealed emergency door, furred with frost, blocked his way. Lyr touched its bitterly cold surface. From the temperature, he knew one of the decompressed sections lay directly ahead, between him and the survivors. His mental map showed him no way around. And they were so close they must be directly in the decompressed part of the ship.

  They shouldn't be alive out there. Yet clearly they were.

  Lyr manually cycled the airlock and shifted as he stepped through. Immediately the cold was less severe, the loss of air less worrying. He closed the airlock absently with a claw and looked around. This looked like it had once been the ship's docking bay, or at least one of them; on a ship this size, there was probably more than one.

  Their sudden drop out of hyperspace had torn it open. Stars and the blackness of space were visible through huge cracks in the ship's metal skin, and another module had rammed the bay, flattening most of it and crushing whatever other small ships might have made it through the crash ... except for one. There was a transport ship similar to Tamir's chaser-class ship not too far from the door. He was pretty sur
e the life signs were inside.

  The artificial gravity was still working out here, so Lyr walked down the deck to the small ship, with his wings folded and spiky ruff flattened down in the chill. The little ship looked undamaged. He could think of no easy way to convince whoever was in there to let him in, so he tried tapping the airlock release. To his surprise, it disengaged and opened in a cloud of water-vapor-laden air. Huh. They hadn't even locked it. Clearly these people knew nothing of ships.

  His dragon's bulk wouldn't fit into the airlock, so he held his breath and shifted, flicking his third eyelids to protect his eyes from the vacuum and cold. He couldn't tolerate this for very long in his human shape, but a minute or two wouldn't hurt without bothering with the shield. He closed the outer airlock and opened the inner one without waiting for it to fully cycle.

  A purple-skinned, collared Polaran slave with straggling blue hair confronted him, brandishing a pair of cargo grapples like weapons, one in each hand. "Get back!"

  "Oh, stop it," Lyr snapped. He tapped his own neck, touching the ridges of scar tissue where his collar had been for so many years. "I was once a slave like you. I'm here to help you fools."

  He surveyed the interior of the ship. Rather than being subdivided into a crew and cargo compartment like Galatean chaser-ships, this one was stripped down for running cargo, probably on the black market. The interior was one large space containing about a dozen ragged people from several different galactic races. Frightened faces in a variety of hues stared back at him.

  "Who are you?" someone asked. "Are you with the pirates?"

  "Of course not, what do you think 'I'm here to help you' means?" He waved a hand up front, where a bulkhead door sealed off the bridge. "Is someone in there?"

  There were headshakes all around. "We don't know how to get into it," one of the prisoners said.

  "Or how to fly it," said another.

  Useless, Lyr thought. "What are you doing here in the first place?"

  "Our group was being taken to this ship to be sold, when the accident happened," a green-skinned man said. "Is that what happened? There was an accident? We crashed?"

  "Sort of. And then?" Lyr prompted impatiently.

  "You saw what it's like out there," the Polaran man said, his words clipped and angry. "We're the ones who were able to make it to safety. Everyone else was sucked out into space, along with the pirates who were guarding us. We all lost friends." He clenched his fists. "If you're planning to take us back—"

  "I don't have time for your paranoia." Lyr held up his hand, displaying his wrist. "Cuffs? Anyone have some?" Headshakes all around. "Well then, you're right, you wouldn't be able to get to the bridge without these, let alone fly the ship. Now move so I can."

  The door to the bridge, although sealed to the prisoners, yielded readily to Lyr's cuffs. He was braced to have to fight in case he found pirates sealed inside, but the bridge was empty. Lyr went to the pilot's seat and did a quick systems check.

  The ship was a little low on fuel, but otherwise all systems seemed to be functioning normally, set to power standby mode. Despite himself, Lyr felt a glimmer of something that might be called hope. Ships like this were jump-capable. With this, they could get to a nearby star system.

  If there were any.

  He powered up the small ship's long-range scanners and got the expected dismal results. It detected no radio signals, no power signatures from other ships, no signs of stations or civilization. They were in the dead emptiness between star systems, where no one ever went because there was no reason to.

  No one would be coming along to find them out here. They were on their own.

  He scanned out to the limit of the sensors' limited sweep, and detected two star systems. One wasn't promising, a red giant star that had probably already obliterated any life that might have existed in its system. The only planets in the system were a gas giant and some asteroids.

  The other, though ... He was still getting no readings indicating civilization in the area, but it had a yellow main-spectrum star and several planets, one of which contained liquid water and an oxygen atmosphere.

  We can go there.

  They would still be stranded in the middle of nowhere, but it might be a survivable middle of nowhere, as opposed to their present location.

  But there were still two problems.

  Jump travel was incredibly energy-intensive, and small ships like this one could only manage one or two jumps before recharging their jump drive. He could get them to the star system, but he wouldn't be able to take multiple trips.

  And he didn't think all the survivors would fit in here. It might be possible, if they crammed everyone into the ship's hold, but it would be straining the life support to the maximum. It wouldn't be a good idea. They were going to need to take multiple trips. But they couldn't.

  Lyr tapped on the control panel, thinking. The practical thing was to leave some of the prisoners behind. Draw lots, maybe. There was always a chance they could come back for the rest ...

  Who was he kidding. He knew it wasn't likely; to be left behind was a death sentence.

  Maybe we could lie to them and tell them we're coming back even if we're not—

  He couldn't believe he'd even had that thought. It was honorless. Cowardly. His skin crawled at the very idea.

  No, there had to be another way.

  "Hey, is everything okay in here?" a voice asked from the doorway.

  Lyr looked up and saw the prisoners crowded in the door, watching him. "Everything is fine. Don't bother me," he snapped, and they withdrew in haste.

  Remind me again why I'm trying so hard to save these useless idiots.

  Anyway, even if he could get them all crammed into the smaller ship, it would mean jumping them to an uninhabited system with no food or medical supplies or anything else they might be able to take with them. It would still be a death sentence, just a longer one.

  And then he thought of a way.

  He turned it over in his head. That would work, wouldn't it? It ought to get them to the star system, at least, with the module and everything it contained. They would have a place to live and whatever supplies might be stored in parts of the module they hadn't explored yet.

  Experimentally, Lyr slid his hands into the ship's pilot cradles, engulfing his arms to the elbows, and gripped the handles inside. His cuffs clicked into the control system and connected to the pilot implants in his brain. There was no security system in the computer to keep him out, as there would have been on a Galatean military ship. The pirates had either hacked it to allow them to fly this ship, or picked this up on the consumer market. Most civilian ships had little security since only people with pilot implants could fly them and most people didn't have those.

  He fired up the engines and disengaged the ship from its docking clamps, producing a few screams from the back that reminded him he'd forgotten to warn anyone. Well, it wasn't like they couldn't figure it out as the ship started to move. He nudged the ship over to the airlock where he'd come in, carefully maneuvering it until the two airlocks clicked together.

  Lyr powered down the ship and pulled his hands out of the pilot's cradles. "We're leaving," he ordered peremptorily, striding into the back of the ship. After a few nervous looks, the former prisoners fell in line behind him like hatchlings.

  Maybe Meri was right about this optimism thing, after all.

  9

  ___

  M ERI TRIED TO RATIONALIZE the rush of relief she felt when a commotion at the door let her know that Lyr was back and she glimpsed his tall, horned shape through the crowd. It was only because they were safer with him there. Nothing at all to do with how much better she felt whenever he was around.

  Goodness, he was tall. Seeing him among the others made him even more aware of it. Tamir might be about as tall as he was, if she ever found out what Tamir looked like standing up, but Lyr was one of the tallest people she'd ever seen.

  And it looked like he'd found more survivors, to
o. Something was causing excitement in the others, Meri scrambled to her feet, frustrated by her inability to understand them. *Lyr!* she thought at him. *What's going on?*

  Lyr glanced around and his silver eyes caught hers. He made his way through the crowd to her. *I found a transport with a jump drive,* he told her. *There is a star system near here. I think I can get us there.*

  He sounded dubious for someone delivering good news. "That's great, right? Should we start moving everyone onto it?"

  *No. It's not going to be that simple. We won't all fit on the transport. But I have a different plan.* Pictures came into her head, illustrating the concept. *I'm going to detach this module and use the jump drive on the smaller ship to jump the entire thing to the star system. That way, we'll also still have any supplies on the module, and the module itself to use for shelter.*

  "Way outside my area of expertise," Meri said, "but just tell me what you need me to do."

  Lyr glanced around. His gaze came to rest on Tamir in his cocoon of blankets.

  *I want all the civilians together here, but critically injured patients can ride it out in the ship I found. It'll likely be a smoother ride than inside the module. Can you help me with that?*

  "I—yes, sure. He's the only one like that we've got." Bruises and broken bones were what she'd mainly had to treat with the others.

  Lyr looked around thoughtfully, and then went to a yellow panel on the wall, one of an endless number of things in the room whose purpose she didn't know. He touched it, flipped up a couple of clamps, and it swung down and skidded free, floating a few inches above the floor.

  With little visible effort, Lyr lifted Tamir's inert form onto the floating ... well, she supposed it must be the future-spaceship version of a pallet lift for moving goods in a warehouse. Lyr put a hand underneath and lifted, and it slid up to waist height, where it could be easily pushed along.