“Well, it probably couldn’t get much worse than our initial introduction,” Scott said with a chuckle.
“Oh, it could have. You might have been found by a Two-Chuck scouting party,” Tamara said.
“Two-Chucks?” Scott asked. Then he shook his head. “Later. We’re running out of time. Let’s do this.”
“I’ll lead out,” Tamara said.
Scott nodded and pressed his hand against the panel. The outer door hissed as it opened, letting the hot and humid air outside into the airlock. He was drenched in sweat within seconds. No wonder these people kept to lightweight clothing.
Tamara slipped out through the door, dropping down onto the nearest ladder rungs. Scott peeked out after her. Three of the men had already gathered around the bottom of the ladder. Two were gesturing at her to hurry down. The third had noticed Scott and raised his spear to throw it.
“There is a dragon,” Tamara hissed, trying to whisper and pitch her voice to carry at the same time. “Be silent!”
But the men must not have heard her. The other two spotted Scott and raised their spears as well. He had one leg outside the ship because he’d been planning to follow Tamara down. One of the spears flew skyward, banging into the hull half a meter from his leg. Scott darted back into the airlock opening.
“Did that wake our friend?” Scott whispered into his comm unit.
“No, but she’s shifting. Better hurry them out of there,” Toby replied.
Scott peeked outside, curious but preferring caution to being turned into a kabob. Tamara was halfway down, gesturing with one hand for silence, but the men didn’t seem to be getting her message. Finally her father stalked over to the base of the ladder. If anyone would understand the woman’s desperate gesturing, it would be her father.
But he didn’t. Instead, he stood at the base of the ladder, hands on his hips, and called up to her in a booming voice.
“Tamara, you are in a heap of trouble. Get down here this instant, girl! Move!”
The other men joined their chief in calling for her to climb down, even as she continued trying to hush them all. Scott groaned and leaned against the inside of the airlock.
“Status on our girl?” Scott asked over the radio.
“What do you think?” Toby replied.
A deafening roar came from somewhere above. Oh, yeah. The dragon was awake all right. Shit.
Twenty-Two
That had torn it. The dragon was awake. The entire ship shook as it rose and clambered up to the edge of the rocket cone. It shrieked rage at everyone in the vicinity. Scott clapped his hands over his ears. The dragon’s call was more terrifying than anything he’d heard before.
The Stargazer shook again as the dragon lifted off. He could feel the wind from its wingbeats even inside the airlock. For those on the ground it must have been like getting caught in a sudden storm. And Tamara!
Scott peeked back outside. She clung to one of the ladder rungs, halfway between the hatch and the ground. The blasts of air buffeted her, but she gripped the rung with tenacity. She wasn’t going to be knocked off easily.
The dragon was coming. He had to get her back inside the ship. Scott leaned outside. Tamara’s eyes met his own.
“Come on! Climb up!” he called.
She shook her head and lowered herself down another rung toward the ground. Damn it, she wasn’t going to retreat. Scott couldn’t really blame her. If it had been his father at risk, would he have fled or tried to help? He knew the answer well enough.
Hector was in the center of a ring of his people. They stood around him, spears up, hopeless looks of fear on all their faces. They were in deep shit, and they knew it. The space beneath the high canopy of the trees was too open to hide. It was thick enough to screen the ground from the air pretty well, but if the dragon came down to ground level there would be precious few places left to hide.
They were all going to die, unless he did something.
Scott patted the pistol at his side to make sure it was still clipped there. He wasn’t sure the weapon would do anything against as big a creature as the dragon, but at least it was a high enough caliber that it ought to feel the shots. Then he swung his body out of the airlock and down onto the top rung.
“God-damned-stupid-ass cave people,” he muttered under his breath. “Don’t know enough to keep quiet when a dragon is sleeping over their heads. No, they have to go wake the thing up. Then I have to go rescue their sorry asses...”
He kept up the steady litany as he descended the ladder. It was as much to keep his fear at bay as anything else. If he gave himself more than a few moments to think about what he was doing, Scott figured he’d be gibbering in terror.
A tearing noise that sounded like the entire world was coming apart at the seams drowned out all other sound. Leaves crackled and hissed, tree boughs shattered into splinters that flew everywhere. The shards pattered against the Stargazer’s hull all around him. Scott clung to the rung, half expecting massive claws to drag him away.
But the dragon couldn’t fly well below the canopy. Its wingspan was too broad for flight on the ground. Instead, it crashed into the brush next to his ship. One of Hector’s men was caught inside a massive front claw. He gave a brief cry and then was silent.
Scott winced and looked away. There was nothing else he could do for that one.
Then rest of Hector’s men rattled their spears at the dragon as they backed away. It snorted at them. Then its head snapped out, snakelike in its speed, and grabbed one of their weapons in its teeth. The spear snapped in half instantly, the man holding it dragged from his feet. He tumbled forward to the ground.
The dragon didn’t hesitate. It struck a second time, this time grabbing the fallen man in its fangs. He screamed as it lifted him up and away from the ground. The dragon shook him back and forth, biting down harder, but he was still alive.
“Tamara, we have to get back in the ship!” Scott called. There was nothing they could do against this monster. She was only a few rungs below him. If he could just reach her, drag her upward, maybe he could at least save her life from the beast.
The dragon was almost directly below them, still stalking closer to the remaining humans. It discarded the body of the man it had been holding in its teeth and snapped those massive jaws together again as it advanced.
Scott saw Tamara tense. Before he could ask her what she was doing, she dropped from the rung. He watched, helpless, as she plummeted the remaining feet toward the ground.
She landed square in the middle of the dragon’s back. Scott saw her lash out with something. She was holding a knife! It rebounded from the dragon’s scales the first time, but the second blow seemed to penetrate. The dragon thrashed about, trying to dislodge her. Tamara clung tightly to one of the creature’s ridge spikes with one hand and her embedded dagger with the other, refusing to be bucked off.
It was time to put up or shut up. If Scott didn’t do something fast, Tamara was done for. She could only hold on so long before the dragon shook her loose and ate her. He looped his left arm over the rung and drew his pistol.
Scott’s hands were shaking. He used both to steady the weapon, aiming it down at the dragon. He had to be careful not to shoot Tamara, so aiming at the dragon’s back was out of the question. Its head was another thing entirely, though. He took careful aim.
The pistol bucked as it fired, the sharp report reverberating through the forest. The round slammed into the ground next to the dragon’s foreleg, churning up a big clod of dirt. The dragon noticed and turned its attention toward him. It roared, maw open toward Scott. He thought he was high enough to avoid its bite, but as he watched the neck continued rising. It was lifting its front legs from the ground to close the distance.
“No, you don’t!” Scott yelled. He fired three more times, each report sounding like thunder. This time he didn’t miss. The dragon roared and whipped its head away as the slugs slammed into its body.
It snapped the mouth shut, shaking its h
ead in pain. Then it lunged upward again.
“Shit!” Scott shouted. He swung his body hard to the right, barely holding on to the ship with his left arm. The dragon’s teeth snapped closed where he’d been standing a moment before.
Apparently a couple of bullets weren’t going to be enough to do the job. Or at least, he’d have to hit something a lot more vital than he had so far. Scott turned the pistol and tried to aim at the dragon as its head reared back, but it was moving too swiftly to get off an accurate shot.
It roared again and took a step backward. Scott watched as the men lunged in with their spears, stabbing at the dragon’s legs. He had to hand it to them, they had guts. He wasn’t sure he could handle being down there with just a hand weapon. The dragon reached up with one large paw and swatted one of the men sideways. His body cracked into the ship’s hull and slumped to the ground.
The others maintained their attack. They were backing the dragon up. Tamara continued hacking into its back, further enraging the animal. Swinging himself back onto the ladder, Scott took aim again. How many rounds had he fired? How many remained in the magazine? He hadn’t counted, so he wasn’t sure.
“Just need to make each one count,” he said.
Squeeze the trigger gently, he reminded himself as he tried to slow his breathing enough to aim. The report startled him. The pistol bucked in his hand. He steadied his aim again and fired a second time. There were two splashes of blood on the dragon’s neck where his rounds had entered its body.
It shrieked in pain and rage. But it must have decided this prey was more trouble than it was worth. The dragon beat its wings, blasting air back toward the men on the ground. The wind almost knocked Scott loose as well. He clung desperately to the ladder.
Three heavy wingbeats, and the dragon was airborne. It climbed up toward the canopy, turning as it rose. That was when Scott saw Tamara. She was still on the dragon’s back, hanging on for dear life as it shot skyward through the trees and landed back on the rocket’s cone far above.
Twenty-Three
Scott watched the dragon shoot upward through the trees, breaking out into the sky above. He half expected to see Tamara’s body tumble down. Holding on through all that would be next to impossible. But she was made of stern stuff. Somehow, she managed to cling to the creature.
A rattling thud vibrating through the ship told Scott the dragon had landed back on its perch. He must have hurt it worse than he’d thought for it to retreat back to its nest. That was the good news — his weapons could do some damage. He’d been half afraid that even the hardest hitting weapons he had available wouldn’t be enough to damage the dragon. Clearly he could hurt it, and he’d already seen firsthand that they could be killed.
Killing this one might be a little harder, but he wasn’t sure there would be any other way to rescue Tamara. If she could be saved at all.
“Toby, you’ve got eyes on the dragon?” Scott asked over the radio.
“Affirmative. It has returned to its eggs. The woman is still on its back.”
Still? How the hell was she managing to hold on? That wouldn’t last. The dragon had plenty of space up there to knock her off.
“It’s rolling over,” Toby said. “She dove off.”
He felt helpless down there. Even if he started climbing now, by the time he got up to the top of the ship it would all be over. If Tamara was going to survive it would be up to her.
“Smart woman. It tried to bite her, but she used one of the eggs for cover. The dragon is being careful around its eggs,” Toby said. “Now she’s slipping into the laser apparatus. It can’t reach her there, although it’s trying to claw its way in.”
“It’ll probably manage, if it has enough time,” Scott said, recalling how the first dragon had chewed chunks out of his ship.
“Probably. She has at least a few minutes, if she’s careful.”
Not much time to mount a rescue. Scott holstered the pistol and looked up. He had a lot of climbing to do if he was going to get up there and help. First he’d better get more ammunition. He had a feeling he was going to need it.
A spear slammed into the hull just next to his fingers as he reached up to climb. Startled, Scott lost his grip on the ship. He tried vainly to grab hold again but tumbled backward toward the ground.
The impact knocked all the air from his lungs. He rolled over, gasping for breath. At least he hadn’t blacked out this time. His shoulder hurt like hell from the fall, though. Scott glanced up and saw a trio of spears leveled at his head.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Scott said.
“This is your fault,” Hector growled, stepping between his men. “Tamara is dead. Now you will join her!”
Scott wanted to reason with Hector. Wanted to tell him that his daughter was still alive. That he was trying to rescue her. But the look on Hector’s face was pure rage. Scott didn’t think he was going to be able to reason with the man.
Hector snatched a spear from one of his men and took a step forward, raising the weapon to strike.
Scott launched himself back to his feet, half-stumbling backward as he rose. He pulled the pistol loose from its holster as he stood. Damn it, he didn’t want to kill these people, but it was fast looking like they weren’t going to give him much choice. Still, maybe he could convince them to at least stop and listen to him.
He fired the pistol. The crack of its report made two of the men jump back. The round struck the ground between Hector’s feet, splashing dirt all over his legs. He stopped moving and eyed Scott warily.
“A weapon?” Hector asked.
“Yes. The same one I used to drive the dragon off,” Scott replied.
“With my daughter,” Hector snarled.
“She’s alive, Hector. But she doesn’t have much time,” Scott said.
“How can she be alive? The dragon took her!”
Scott held the pistol steady with his right hand and reached into his pocket with the other, pulling out a small tablet.
“Toby, route the rocket camera to my device, please,” Scott said.
“Done,” the dog replied.
The tablet screen lit up, showing Tamara huddled beneath the struts supporting the massive cone. She was practically on top of the photon drive itself. Scott winced. That had been their ace in the hole, the one weapon he was pretty sure would fry the dragon instantly. But he couldn’t fire up the drive with Tamara in there. She’d cook even more quickly than the big lizard would.
Scott turned the display around so Hector could see his daughter. He shook as he watched her hide from the teeth still trying to gnaw their way down to her. The spear dropped from his hands.
“How can you do this? What sort of device shows you her image?” Hector asked.
“It’s a camera,” Scott said. He sighed. These people had no inkling of technology beyond the basics. Had humanity lost everything? “Once, almost everyone had one of these in their pocket.”
“Not in my lifetime,” Hector replied.
“Not in many lifetimes. Listen, I can explain more. But Tamara is running out of time.”
“How can I help?” the chief asked.
Thank god. Now that he’d seen his daughter alive and fighting to stay that way, Hector was on board. That improved their odds of saving her life from virtually no prayer to maybe having a snowball’s chance in hell.
“We’re going to need to get the dragon away from her. Once it’s distracted elsewhere, someone has to go in there and help her out,” Scott said.
Hector’s men glanced at their feet. Scott wanted to chuckle, but held it back. The dragon was scary enough for him to face, and at least Scott had the benefit of watching movies about people killing the damned things. It made it easier to imagine himself in the starring role of some sort of motion picture.
But if what he’d heard was right, none of these people had ever killed a dragon or even heard of one being killed by a human. These creatures were the ultimate boogeymen for them, brutal killers that t
hey were helpless to defend themselves against.
Well, they weren’t helpless anymore. Scott had weapons that could put a dent in even a dragon. It was time to put them to use.
“Are you with me, Hector? I need to go, whether you’re coming or not. She’s almost out of time,” Scott said.
“You would try to rescue her regardless of whether I come or not?”
“Of course. She helped me,” Scott said. “She’s my friend. I’m not letting her down now.”
The chief snapped him a sharp nod. “A man of honor. I will come with you, Scott Free. Assuming we survive, I will owe you a great debt.”
Hector reached out a hand. Scott held out his own, and the two men shook hands in a gesture of friendship that had survived in spite of all humanity’s troubles.
Twenty-Four
The climb back up the ladder hurt less than how he’d gotten down, but sore as Scott was it was still a painful ascension. He wasn’t looking forward to the second half of the climb. At least he’d gotten back to the airlock door. Now, how to get back inside to grab some more ammunition without giving Hector a close-up of the inside of his ship?
They were on the same side, for now. But he wasn’t willing to just forget that the man had imprisoned him just the day before. Allies of convenience were just that. As soon as it became less convenient, Scott knew he might find himself back in a cell again. Better to keep some secrets to himself.
“Brought you a few things you might need,” Toby’s voice said from just above his head.
Scott jumped and almost lost his grip on the ladder again. “Toby! Don’t surprise me like that!”
“Sorry. Not sorry,” the dog said, chuckling. “Thought you could use some additional firepower. Brought you more rounds for the .44 and the biggest bore rifle we have on the ship.”
“It speaks?” Hector asked from a few feet below.
“Woof?” Toby barked.
The Quantum Dragonslayer Page 9
