Metal Dragon (Warriors of Galatea Book 2)

by Lauren Esker

  "It's a synth-skin sprayer. A sealant and disinfectant. It'll keep me from losing more blood until my body can deal with the injuries."

  "May I help?"

  He didn't put up a fight, just pulled out a stool from under the medbay's small counter and slumped on it. Meri set to work, cleaning around his wounds with the wipes and then spraying the plastic-like stuff. This would be awfully nice to have back home too, she thought. Maybe when all this was over, it would be possible to arrange some kind of trading between Earth and the Galateans for medical supplies.

  Skara popped back into the medbay. "I found us a nice piece of beachfront property where we can hang out for a little while," he declared, and then took a look at both of them. Lyr was blotched with patches of purple synth-skin and covered in dirt and blood, and Meri could only guess what she looked like. "Not to be rude," Skara added, "but have either of you considered a shower?"

  "You have showers?" Meri said eagerly. "Do you have clean clothes too?"

  "If it means getting you two out of those rags, I think I could dig something up." Skara waved a hand. "Come this way."

  Lyr swayed as he got up; Meri put her shoulder under his arm and ignored his attempts to shrug her off. Skara took them down the hall and touched a control panel to open the door to a small cabin with a bed and an open door showing what was recognizably a bathroom.

  To Meri, it looked like heaven.

  "I'll bring some clothing for you two," Skara said. "I suggest making an intimate acquaintance with the shower. Soon."

  As soon as they had stepped inside, the door slid shut behind them. Meri couldn't help grinning. "I think he's saying we stink."

  "And not subtly, either." Lyr sank onto the bed. He started to pull his boots off; then his hand dropped away as if he didn't even have the energy to do that. "I can't believe he's alive. And he's still a complete ass."

  "I can't believe we're alive." Meri unlooped the purse strap from across her chest and dropped it on the floor, feeling weird and light without the weight that she'd almost stopped noticing.

  She was beginning to tremble with reaction. She'd seen violence in the ER, even had to deal with it herself—people off their heads with drugs, domestic-violence abusers, even one time a bunch of teenagers had gotten into a gang fight with knives right in the middle of the waiting room. She'd seen people die so many times she'd become ... well ... not hardened to it, never that, but she'd been able to keep her head and comfort the younger nurses.

  But this was on a level beyond all that.

  Is this what Aaron had to deal with, over there ...?

  She leaned a hand against the wall, her knees suddenly wobbly.

  "Meri?" Lyr said, and then asked into her mind, *Are you all right?*

  She nodded, not quite trusting her voice, but when he held out an arm, she collapsed next to him and leaned into him and shivered for a little while.

  "How do you deal with it?" she asked, pressing her cheek against his chest.

  He didn't have to ask what she meant. "I don't know. It gets easier, I guess. You did great out there."

  She screwed her eyes shut, but that was worse; she kept seeing the fight in a dizzying replay. "I thought you were dead."

  "I'm not," he whispered into her hair. "You're not. Tamir's not. Skara's not ... somehow. We're okay. We're all going to be okay."

  "I know." She clung to him and slowly, slowly her heart rate calmed; slowly she began to feel less like she was going to shake herself apart. And finally, she grinned. "You know, Skara's right. We do stink."

  "You can have the first turn in the shower."

  She pulled back to look up at him. "Are you sure?" Then, with a cheeky smile: "Are you saying I stink?"

  Lyr brushed a hand across her cheek. "Never. But I can tell you'd be more comfortable that way."

  "Mmmm." She got up reluctantly, tottering on sore calves and even more painful feet, and got herself some ibuprofen out of her purse. "You want some of this? It's a mild painkiller. Though I'm not entirely sure it's safe for your species."

  "Don't worry about it. If I need anything, I'll call Skara."

  "Okay." She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the shower. "I'm going to, uh ..." It seemed stupid to ask him if he'd be there when she got out. But after all this time in such close proximity, she couldn't bear the idea of being separated. "You could join me, you know."

  "I think I'll rest, and imagine it. There will be time for that later." He lay down on his side atop the bedcovering, turned to face her, his eyes soft. "I'll be here when you get out, my love. Right here."

  21

  ___

  T HE SHOWER, AT LEAST, was basically a normal shower. The controls were easy enough to figure out, and a recessed alcove in the plastic wall dispensed a sweet-smelling substance that foamed like the soap powder when she rubbed it between her hands. Meri wasn't sure if it was meant to be shampoo or shower gel, but she used it for both.

  It felt unbelievably good to get really, truly clean. She washed and washed, sluicing dirt and blood down the drain, wincing as the hot water stung her scrapes and trying to be gentle with her bruises. Carefully, with her fingertips, she picked out her unraveling twists and plucked leaves and twigs and bugs from her hair.

  She had never thought it could feel this good to get clean.

  And some of the stress and tension seemed to wash down the drain along with the dirt and leaves. By the time she finally shut off the water with wrinkling fingertips, she felt ... not okay, exactly, but maybe like she was getting there.

  When she turned off the water, the shower switched to a drying cycle that blew hot air all around her. After a moment of surprise, she just relaxed and enjoyed it, stepping out finally on wobbly legs.

  Lyr was still on the bed, lying on top of the covers just as she'd left him, and looked fast asleep. Meri thought about dropping into bed next to him, but she was too hungry, and she wanted to check on Tamir. Instead, she got dressed in the clothing that Skara had left in a neat pile just inside the door—a clinging strip that she eventually decided to wrap around herself in lieu of underwear, loose brown pants, and a dark red shirt. There were slippers, much too big, but it was better than trying to squeeze her sore, swollen feet into her shoes. She was in for a surprise, though, when she put them on; they shrank to fit her feet. Something about the way they adapted to the exact size and shape of her feet made them feel almost like they weren't there, even soothing her blisters a little.

  She figured out how to open the door after poking at the controls, and poked her head out into the corridor. The lights were dim inside the room, but bright out here, and it fascinated her to see that the walls of the corridor, like the outside of the ship, were painted with bright, swirling patterns. The hallways on the pirate ship had been a dull industrial-looking gray.

  Cautiously, looking around, she padded down the corridor. The sound of rattling and clinking drew her to a small kitchen where she found Skara. He'd taken a shower too, and put on a loose white shirt, open to the waist, that made him look even more piratical but also somehow softer.

  "You're human, right?" he said. "Some kind of human. So you should be able to drink tea." Without waiting for an answer, he pushed a cup into her hands.

  The liquid within was light blue and looked like no tea she'd ever seen, but when she sniffed it, the smell was something like tea with a coffee-ish undertone. She took a cautious sip. It was intensely bitter, and Meri made a face. "Is there sugar?"

  "But of course." Skara took a small stick out of a canister and swirled the end in her blue coffee-tea. "How's that?"

  Meri sipped again. "Better."

  "It's a bit of an acquired taste. How's tall and grouchy?"

  "Asleep. He has every right to be angry at you, you know."

  "I know," Skara said, sobering enough to give her another glimpse of someone much more serious and thoughtful beneath his light, devil-may-care facade. "Tamir is still out too, by the way—another person who'll be qui
te angry at me when he wakes up, I'm sure." He flashed her a grin, the cheery facade sliding back into place. It made her think of the way Lyr had been when she'd first met him, except in Lyr's case, his defense mechanism was a wall of ice covering his warm heart. Skara covered up with a careless playboy demeanor, but she was starting to think it was just as fake.

  "How did you find us, anyway?" she asked, sipping cautiously at her weird blue space tea. "Not that I don't really appreciate the save."

  "Couldn't have planned the timing better myself," Skara said cheerfully. "Well ... maybe a few minutes earlier would've been a little better. But yeah, I'm on the pirate-net—don't look at me that way, I never claimed to be a saint—and I picked up their distress beacon, then I found out that Lyr and Tamir were both here, which was enough to get me intrigued."

  "How did you know that?" Meri asked, but checked herself, remembering what Lyr had said about Skara when he was telling her about his siblings. "Wait a minute, Lyr said you can find people."

  "Yep. It's an Iustran thing."

  "A what?"

  "Iustran? My people?" He waved a hand at himself. "We're shapeshifters, and there aren't that many of us, so we'd never have lasted as a species if we didn't have the ability to recognize our own kind. We always know a fellow Iustran, and we can also imprint on individuals and then recognize them again. Contrary to what some people think, it's not an unerring ability to home in on people from anywhere in the galaxy, but I could definitely tell Lyr was on the planet once I got here. Actually ..." He held out a hand. "May I imprint on you? It might come in handy."

  "Uh ... it won't do anything weird to me, will it?"

  "No, you won't feel a thing."

  Hesitantly, she held out her arm. He closed his hand lightly over her wrist and shut his eyes. Meri was pretty sure that she did feel something, a slight tingling like the feeling of Lyr putting his shields up, but it passed as Skara withdrew his hand and opened his eyes.

  "That's it?" she asked. "You can find me anywhere?"

  "No, I can find you from relatively nearby, on this planet, say. Otherwise it's more of a gamble, usually just a vague sense of 'thataway,' if I even get that much. And a light contact like that will fade quickly; it won't last very long unless I renew it." Skara leaned a hip against the counter and gave her an appraising look. "But now I'm even more curious about you. Where are you from? You don't know about Iustrans, you don't even have Galatean cuff mods, and I've never seen anyone quite like you. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were pure unmodified Birthworld human."

  "I ... think I might be, from what people tell me," she said slowly. "I come from a planet that we call Earth. Lyr says it might be what you people call Birthworld."

  Skara's scruffy red brows went up, and his gaze fixed on her in fascination. "I've heard rumors in some of my circles that Birthworld had been rediscovered and unmodified Birthworld DNA was starting to show up on the black market. Never figured there was much to it. Someone's always passing off a shaved Galatean or a dyed Rhuadhi as 'pure, unmodified human' and trying to walk off with a profit before the buyer realizes they've been conned."

  "Not in this case. At least, they seem to think so." Curiously, she added, "People don't really pay that much for human DNA, do they? Lyr said something about that, but it seems so hard to believe."

  Skara laughed. "Ah, sweetheart, it's just about the most valuable thing there is. You know, all humans in the galaxy were descended from Birthworld stock, originally." He swept a hand down his body, with its violet skin and swirling tattoos—or at least what she assumed were tattoos, though she suddenly wondered if they were a natural part of his body. "We've all been modified heavily from the originals, and there was never that much diversity to start with, so over the years, some of the disadvantages of inbreeding are starting to show up. A drop in fertility, for one."

  She couldn't help bursting out with an abrupt, incredulous laugh. "You mean aliens are really trying to kidnap our women to breed with them? Are you telling me that's a thing that actually happens? I always thought it was just a silly thing in some of the books that my co-workers used to read."

  "At the very least, an influx of fresh blood is sorely needed." He shook his head, looking at her. "Birthworld. I can't believe it. I have to see it someday."

  "Can't you just use your ... teleporter thing and go there anytime you like?"

  Skara smiled and shook his head. "I can only portal to somewhere I've seen or, preferably, been. And I can't do it over that kind of distance. To different parts of a planet, yes. Across light years, sadly, no."

  "How does it work? How can you do that?"

  "Magic," Skara said, tapping the side of his nose. "But you have magic all your own, Birthworlder. That magic genetic material of yours. I don't suppose you'd mind me collecting a sample as a gesture of goodwill for helping you ...?"

  "Skara!" Lyr arrived behind Meri in the small kitchen and put his arm around her. He smelled of the soap from the shower, and wearing a pair of clean but too-short pants and nothing else. The purple patches of synth-skin stood out vividly on his freshly washed torso and bare feet. "You may not sell my mate's DNA, Skara. Do not even ask."

  "It wouldn't hurt her," Skara said.

  "Don't I get a say in this?" Meri protested. "And I refuse to think about this until I eat something. I'd even eat one of those terrible ration packs at this point."

  Skara's eyes lit up. "Oh, I can feed you much better than that."

  He dug in cabinets, and began squeezing pouches into a large pot, rebuffing all their offers to help. Meri's skepticism turned to interest when the pot turned out to provide its own heat and the contents began to bubble. "How does that work?" she asked, reaching for it and then pulling her hand back.

  "It's not hot." Lyr touched the outside to demonstrate. "It's just an ordinary cooking pot."

  "We have those too, but they don't do their own cooking."

  "You know what, it's getting crowded in here," Skara said, glaring over his shoulder while briskly unwrapping what looked like uncooked flatbreads. "Why don't you two go outside and I'll bring the food out to you when it's done, if you haven't gotten yourself eaten by anything in the meantime."

  "Wait," Meri said, "are we still on the same planet?"

  "Of course we are. How long do you think it takes to get to another planet?" Skara waved a floury hand at them. "Go go."

  Lyr grabbed a couple of something that looked like foil-covered granola bars from a rack on the counter. Skara growled and swatted at him, and Meri was caught off guard by Lyr's quick, mischievous grin.

  "I forgot he used to cook," Lyr said thoughtfully as they left the galley, handing her one of the bar-things before unwrapping his own. "He was actually pretty good at it."

  Meri was still stunned by that glimpse of a playful, boyish Lyr. This was the person he'd been with his siblings, she thought—before the Empire was done with him. But that person was still inside him, and Meri hoped he'd get a chance to come out more often.

  "Is something wrong?" Lyr asked her.

  "Nothing," she said. "I think ... things are right, actually."

  They stopped by the infirmary to check on Tamir. He was still deeply unconscious, but his vitals seemed strong. After watching him recover once from injuries that should have killed him, Meri was a little less worried that he wouldn't make it this time. Still, she tucked the blanket around him, and Lyr brushed the back of his hand across Tamir's fingers before they left the infirmary.

  This ship was bigger and more complex than the one they'd crashed in, but they made their way through its colorful corridors to a cargo hold that closely resembled the one in which they'd been sleeping for the last few days, aside from having a lot more crates and barrels in it. Lyr opened the airlock and raised a hand to keep her back.

  It was late afternoon outside, the light warm and golden. Skara had landed the ship on top of a dune. She could feel heat shimmering off the sand.

  Lyr looked around, then jumped
to the sand a couple of feet below the door and turned to give her a hand down.

  Meri wondered how close they were to their original campsite. It was impossible to tell; the beach and ocean looked just the same to her, and when she turned to look up at the towering ramparts of the mountains, she couldn't figure out which cleft in those jagged peaks was the one where they'd nearly died.

  "This must make you feel at home," Lyr said. Her puzzlement must have come through. "The oceans, I mean. Your world has vast oceans."

  "Yes, technically, but I've never been to one."

  "Never?" he asked in surprise.

  "No. Never. I went to the beaches along the Great Lakes—which I guess means nothing to you, but I used to live near there. The actual ocean, though ... not at all." She laughed. "I can't believe we've been this close to a real ocean for days and I never even dipped my toes in the water."

  "Well, then." Lyr took her hand. "Let's do that."

  They started down the dunes, although as it grew steeper, Meri slowed and began to stumble, her sore calves protesting.

  "I've got you," Lyr said. He shifted in midstride, and Meri, startled, found herself swept off her feet by a flood of rising bronze scales. She clutched wildly at the spikes on Lyr's neck before finding equilibrium astride his back.

  *Comfortable?* Lyr asked, twisting his head around on his supple neck.

  "I—I guess so." Lyr's stride was smooth and swift, like riding a fast-moving horse. His flanks rippled between her thighs with the rhythmic movements of his legs. By the time they reached the edge of the water, she was breathing hard for reasons that had nothing to do with climbing.

  Lyr shifted in mid-motion again, this time twisting around to catch her deftly as he changed back. "How was the ride?" he asked, steadying her, with a spark of joy in his silver eyes.

  "I'll ride you anytime," she said, and laughed. "Okay, I don't think I'm cut out for dirty talk if I can't even get through it with a straight face."

  "Join me in the water instead."

  "I don't have anything to wear. And Skara could show up anytime."