by Leslie Chase
Swallowing, she pulled herself out of that fantasy and tried to focus on the reality. It wasn't easy to ignore his presence, and she thought that she could feel the heat radiating from his body as he leaned past her to look at the screen.
It would be so easy to touch him. But she couldn't give in to the urge, because she knew where that would lead. She needed a clear head.
"Vordak wrote this," Kosar said, shaking his head. He was trying to hide his feelings, too, but Ashley could hear the strain he was under this close to her. It would be so easy for him to snap, to reach out for her and... No! Stop thinking about that!
He stood abruptly and stepped back, almost as though he'd heard her thought. Or maybe thought the same thing himself. His wings flicked out wide, showing an emotion through body language she couldn't read, and he turned away from her.
Biting her lip, Ashley looked back at the screen. She could still feel his presence, his warmth, but it was easier to ignore him if she wasn't looking at him
"Vordak... he means well, but I think he wrote down everything he could possibly think of," Kosar said. "He's more of a poet than an engineer, and I wouldn't look to his notes for detail."
"Then why are his notes here?" Ashley asked, exasperated.
"Because he spent a lot of time in the engine room of our transport ship," Kosar explained. "He saw a lot of details the rest of us didn't. If only he was better at describing what he saw, it would be a real help. Alas, he was more interested in the cute engineer he was visiting than the engine that she was working on."
Ashley groaned. That explained it, but it didn't help. There wasn't much information here, even if she could figure out a way to get it off site and to her employer. Would they even believe that this was all the dragons knew? It certainly wasn't enough to build a stardrive from.
Dr. Cooper's methodical exploration of the engine's inputs and outputs provided a starting point, but that was all it was. And no one human knew how to grow the crystal structure — at least, not as far as she knew. Ashley reminded herself that people had been smuggling the dragons' crystal technology off Mars for years now. All the big Earth corporations would be studying it, and maybe someone had secretly figured out how to make their own.
"How am I meant to figure anything out from this?" she asked, throwing her hands in the air and addressing her question to the ceiling. "Poetry and a broken engine and the guesswork of a dozen soldiers pretending to be scientists!"
Kosar laughed, a rough and powerful sound that sent a shiver through Ashley. Turning to glare at him, she saw at once that he wasn't laughing at her but at the situation. "This is exactly why we brought you in. None of us can do anything with this, so we hoped that someone with your skills might be able to work from what we've put together. Your file says you're good at using incomplete documentation, right?"
Ashley narrowed her eyes, but he had a point. She'd done a lot of work with less information than this, just not under anywhere near the same pressure. When she dug something out of a ruin, it either worked or it didn't, and if it didn't she could just move on to the next task. Here there was only one thing to repair, and if she couldn't manage that, then it would be a disaster. Not just for her, either.
Her brother was relying on her to get this done. Failure was not an option. Damn it.
Carefully hiding that thought, she shoved aside the documents and looked at the engine again. The pulsing light inside seemed to be taunting her, a secret just out of her reach.
"Okay, let's try this again," she said. "If I can get at the diagnostic displays, you'll be able to read them, won't you?"
Kosar rose and came closer, and Ashley could almost feel the concern radiating from him. "Be careful. The drive is dangerous."
"You keep saying that," she said, rolling her eyes. "But if we don't do something I'll go mad staring at the work you've already done. Let me work."
The rumbling growl that Kosar let loose wasn't a happy sound, but he didn't tell her no. He couldn't, really — Ashley knew that he needed results as much as she did. Stepping up to the drive she glanced at her notes and found her way to the inspection panel.
It was broken, of course. If it had been easy to open, Cooper would have already looked inside it. But the scientist had been terrified of damaging his precious Baby. Ashley, on the other hand, was a scavenger. She was used to dealing with technology that was reluctant to cooperate. The gap around the edge of the panel was almost too thin to see, but with a little effort and care Ashley managed to get a pry bar into it and put her weight against it.
Nothing. The panel was jammed shut.
"Oh, for God's sake," she complained to no one in particular, throwing herself against the bar again. There was a tiny movement, just enough to make her certain that it was jammed rather than locked. That it could open, but wouldn't.
Before she could do any more than swear at the problem, powerful arms reached around her. Kosar was there, his body pressed against hers, and the musky scent of him filled her senses as he added his strength to hers. Even through her clothes she felt the burning heat of the dragon, his strong body moving with deceptive grace as he pushed down.
For a moment, Ashley forgot about work and pressed back against him instead, enjoying the touch of his skin, the feel of his body. His hands were beside hers on the pry bar, and she found herself biting her lip as their fingers brushed. Heart pounding, mouth dry, she lost herself in the moment.
Then the panel snapped open, Kosar's strength more than enough to break the jam. Ashley staggered back into him and he folded his arms around her, holding her tight against his body. There was nothing else in her world, nothing but his touch and warmth.
I can't. It's not fair on either of us. God. Damn. It.
Pulling away from the dragon's grip was harder than heaving open the inspection panel had been, and she knew that if he'd held tight there was no way that she'd be able to escape. Half hoping that he wouldn't let her go, she stepped away, her heart falling when he let her. It was ridiculous, she knew. What would she have done if he'd kept hold of her?
The thoughts that flashed through her mind at that flustered her and left her cheeks red. How easy it would be to just relax into those strong arms and forget about what had brought her here. What she needed to do. Forcing those thoughts down she drew a shuddering breath and took another step away.
"Don't fight your feelings," Kosar said, but he kept his distance. Didn't pressure her, beyond the oh-so-tempting presence of his wonderful body and his evident desire for her. It would have been easier to cope with if he'd been overbearing, Ashley was used to men like that. Used to pushing them away when they wanted more from her than she did from them. Like Cooper did, for example.
The dragon shifter was different, though. Kosar made no secret of the fact that he wanted her, but he never made her feel unsafe or like he wouldn't respect her choice. Perhaps it was because of his unshakable insistence that they belonged together, Ashley thought. From any human that would have come across as arrogance, but from this man it seemed like a simple statement of fact.
Turning away from her confusion and desire, she tried to focus on the work again. On the open panel, and the displays behind it. They were broken like the rest of the engine, static washing over the images projected into thin air, making it impossible to read the details. But there was something there, and it was progress. New information, something that she could build on. And the engine hadn't exploded or broken down or anything.
Ashley let herself smile, enjoying the moment. She'd taken a risk, yes, but it had paid off. It was a start.
"Cooper never dared to force anything," Kosar said behind her. "He was too afraid of damaging the engine to risk it. So was everyone else, me included."
The note of admiration in his voice made Ashley's cheeks heat and she shook her head. "If you don't take a few risks you'll never work anything out."
"True," Kosar said, "but this stardrive is unique. If you break it—"
"�
�there aren't any more to play with," Ashley finished for him. "I know. Believe me, I know that as well as anyone. Do you think that I wasn't worried about that? I just won't let that fear stop me doing what I have to."
Picking up her camera she started to document what they'd found. Suddenly there was a lot more work to do.
6
Kosar
Watching Ashley work was the hardest thing Kosar could remember doing. All he wanted to do was sweep her off her feet and fly her off to his lair, but he couldn't. Not while she was doing work for the Empire, and not until she accepted him.
"It wasn't like this in the old days," he grumbled to his deputy after work one evening, and Davenport laughed.
"In the old days you just had to carry a princess off from her castle," she retorted. "Of course it's a bit more complicated with a woman who has a life beyond sewing a tapestry."
Kosar laughed at that, downing his beer and shaking his head. The team often shared drinks after a shift, and the Barsoom was full of Research Center personnel unwinding after a long day. Ashley wasn't amongst them, to Kosar's disappointment — so far, the newcomer hadn't made any real friends here and she didn't seem to be making an effort to. That was a pity, and a worry: Kosar didn't want Ashley to be unhappy.
He shook off those thoughts and turned back to Davenport, who was grinning at him as though she knew what he was feeling. His glower only made her laugh.
"Don't blame me for her not being here, boss," she said, holding up her hands. "It's not my job to drag the science staff out to drink."
Kosar grumbled to himself but he didn't argue. "I'm her mate. Why isn't that enough?"
"Maybe because humans don't work like that? Look, I've been on Mars long enough to know how it goes for you dragons. You find your mate, you know it, and then it all works out, right? It's not like that for us. At least, not when dragons aren't around."
Davenport sighed. "I wish it was that simple, sometimes. But it isn't, we have to work with trial and error. And some guy comes up to a human and says, 'oh this is fate, we're meant to be together' — well, it sets off warning bells."
"You're saying I shouldn't have told her?" That idea was foreign and horrifying to Kosar. Ashley was his mate, and she deserved to know that. They'd be happy together, they belonged together, a dragon's sense for that couldn't be wrong. Hiding it wouldn't just be stupid, it would be cruel.
But Davenport shook her head. "Did I say that? No, I did not. It's just that she might need a while to adjust and figure out that it's real, not just some line you're using."
Kosar gave her a hard look. Humans could be so confusing sometimes. With a dragon it would be easy, they'd both feel the pull of fate and know what it meant. But he knew that Davenport was right, and that Ashley might not understand what was between them. He had to give his mate time to relax, to find her own way to accept the truth the universe had put in front of the two of them.
It was the most difficult task he'd set himself in his years of service to the Dragon Throne. Even learning the secrets of the accursed stardrive seemed easier. But it didn't matter how hard the task was, for Ashley's sake he'd do it. He'd give her the space she needed, and he'd show her that he was sincere. If the males of her own species made her distrustful, then he'd prove himself better than them — whatever it took.
Grabbing another beer, he took a deep drink and then nodded to Davenport. "Thank you for your help," he told her, rising to his feet and spreading his wings. Pain shot through him at the motion and he staggered, taken by surprise. The pain must have shown on his face because the sergeant was on her feet trying to help him.
"I'm fine," he said, waving her off. She looked at him dubiously.
"You don't look fine," she pointed out. "You're in pain. Should go back to the doctors."
"They don't know any more about this than I do," he complained. "They'll want me locked up and under observation, and I don't have the time for that."
Davenport grimaced but didn't argue. They both knew it was true. "Promise me you're taking it easy, then. If we can't spare the time for you to get examined, we can't spare the time for you to recover if you push yourself too hard."
"It's nothing, just some pain in my wings," Kosar grumbled, then relented. Why have a deputy if he wasn't going to listen to her advice? "Okay. I'll rest my wings, I promise. Now can I go?"
Davenport shook her head.
"There's one other thing we need to talk about," she said quietly. "I think someone's been taking data from the Center."
That brought Kosar up short, and he blinked as he readjusted. "Why didn't you start with that? For that matter, why didn't you bring it up in the security office?"
"Because I'm not sure who's doing it, and I don't know if the office is secure," Davenport said slowly. Looking around Barsoom, Kosar knew she had a point. The bar was busy enough and noisy enough that no one would be able to overhear them here. A bug planted in the office could tip off whoever was behind the theft, and they had to be careful.
"What have you seen?" he asked, sinking back into his chair.
"Nothing conclusive, but the quantum communications laboratory reported some odd results and I've been looking at them," Davenport said quietly. "The best I can work out is that a working quantum communicator inside the Center is interfering with their experiments."
Kosar felt his jaw tighten and his dragon rage rise. The human quantum communicators were rare and expensive pieces of technology manufactured by LakeTech, one of the largest human corporations on Mars. They were used for communications between executives, and sometimes their bodyguards. There was no reason for one to be in the Center.
Whoever had brought one in without telling him had to be a spy. And one with a lot of resources behind them to get hold of such an expensive piece of technology. That was a bad sign, especially since it was almost impossible to detect one quantum communicator without another. The Center had recently started trying to reconstruct the more powerful dragon empire version of the technology, a system that had once linked planets across the gulf of space. Without those experiments they'd never have known about the spy.
Hell, if Davenport hadn't been paying attention, they still wouldn't have noticed anything.
"Can you pin it down? Find out where it's coming from, who's using it?" he asked. Davenport's headshake was no surprise.
"Sorry, boss. Not without a lot more data."
Growling, Kosar carefully put down his glass. Gathering more data meant waiting for whoever it was to send more messages, and that was dangerous. The only comfort he had was that the thieves couldn't get hold of anything too bad. Oh, there were valuable secrets, but none that would break a world open. Not yet.
But now Ashley was making progress with the mysteries of the stardrive. Sooner or later, Kosar was sure, she'd crack the problem — and that would mean a secret that they couldn't afford to see fall into the hands of the unprepared humans.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on them, he thought. They've come a long way since the knights in armor that I'm used to.
But while it was true that they'd advanced to the point of getting into space on their own, the humans had also wrecked their home planet pretty badly getting there. Kosar didn't trust them to keep a new and dangerous technology safe, and he knew that the Emperor didn't either. I'm in charge of keeping the stardrive safe, and I will not fail in my mission.
"Careful, boss," Davenport said, and Kosar looked down to see his hands were crushing the metal armrests of the chair he sat in. Sighing, he forced himself to let go and wondered how much he'd have to pay to replace the chair. At least it was a change from having to replace a broken glass.
"I'm not going to let whoever this is steal my mate's research," he said. "Not going to happen. We have to track down that transmitter or stop it."
Davenport snorted at that. "Sure. I'll just tell the quantum researchers that they have to break the laws of physics faster, they'll be perfectly happy to do comply."
Ko
sar glared at his second in command, but he couldn't argue with her. The researchers were working as fast as they could to make their breakthrough, and nothing either of them could do would speed them up. He sighed.
"Then we'll just have to track down the spy the old-fashioned way," he said. While a quick solution would be best, he couldn't deny that the idea of a hunt pleased him. Being around Ashley constantly was frustrating when she didn't acknowledge that she was his mate, and if he found the spies he'd have someone to take that out on. The only question was where to start his search.
7
Ashley
The data just kept coming in now that Ashley had a way to see what was happening. For a few days technicians had swarmed around her and the stardrive, a bustling hive of work as they took advantage of the diagnostic displays. The best bit, for her, was that Kosar spent more time in the room with her, translating the alien script.
Most of it was a recitation of things that were broken, and often the terms meant nothing. What was a 'median hyperflux modulator' anyway? But at least it was progress. Now they could see what they were doing.
The problem was the guilt. All the technicians congratulated her and Kosar had a pleased, almost smug, look that said that he'd known she'd achieve something. For a moment at least she was the star of the Imperial Research Center, which made her plan to steal from them feel even worse than it already had. Only Cooper didn't seem happy with her, watching with a petulant expression as she became the center of attention.
"Taking risks like that isn't science, it's reckless," he told her once he managed to catch her alone. They were in the center's cafeteria, both late to lunch, and there was hardly anyone in the huge room.
"I'm not a scientist," Ashley reminded him with a sigh, dropping her spoon into her bowl. She had no idea what the food was — it was produced by the dragons' almost magical foodmakers, and all the meals were alien foods. What she did know was that it was delicious, and she resented the intrusion into her mealtime.
