Tynan

by Bonnie Burrows

  “It’s the most difficult and complicated thing they do,” Elaina added. “He has to remember Liona’s thought signature, then he has to send his own thoughts out over a wider and wider area, pinging on every mind he comes across—thousands of minds. It’s a huge effort when they’re in their top form, and Daxav has to do it after so long a time with his powers damped down. I hate to say it but playing telepathic bloodhound to track down one person could be too much for him right now.”

  Tynan looked down, shaking his head. “Please don’t say that.”

  “It’s true, Tynan,” said Elaina. “The effort he’s making, the strain could knock him completely out. Listen, you know we’ve done our best to work around this. We arranged with the Spires to have all the space traffic leaving Nimbus City and the surrounding communities down below suspended until further notice. We’ve done that. They can’t leave the planet without traveling well out of this zone, and we’ll have people on the lookout. We’ll catch them one way or the other.”

  “She’s right,” said Brogan. “They’re not going to get into space with her no matter what. So, let’s just give the little mollusk a chance to…”

  Suddenly there was a sharp cry over the comm systems in the badges of the two Corps officers, who had kept themselves patched in to the contemplation room. The sound of a voice suddenly raised in an incoherent wail snapped the two uniformed Lacertans and Tynan into action. They dashed for the portal of the room. It slid open before them and they burst inside.

  There in the grass by the pool lay Daxav, on his back, taking deep and labored breaths.

  Tynan crouched at Daxav’s side and pulled him up to a sitting position. He held the shoulders of the little being and asked gravely, intently, “What is it? What’s happened?” What he most wanted to ask was, Has she hurt Sierra? But he knew that it was all that Daxav could do—assuming that it worked at all—to pinpoint Liona’s location.

  Blinking at Tynan with bleary eyes, Daxav said, “I…I think…I think…”

  Tynan wanted to shake the words out of Daxav, but he sat still and firmly, holding onto the alien, and pressed again, “What? What?”

  Daxav stammered, “I…I’ve found her. I’ve…located Liona. I can lead you to her.”

  Wide-eyed, Tynan looked up at Brogan and Elaina.

  With a determination as sharp as a dragon’s claw, he said, “Then let’s move.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The silver foil-membrane fabric of the uniform, like all Lacertan garments, was made to adapt itself to subtle changes in the body of the wearer over time. Obesity in humans had been genetically done away with a long time ago, and Lacertans, being of human ancestry, shared this freedom from accumulating body fat.

  But age still had a way of making the body slightly more massive until later in life when excess pounds were shed. Thus, over the years since his service in the Dragon Corps, Tynan had taken on a few more pounds in the right places and in the right ways, and the suit stretched and conformed to the subtly changed body of its wearer. Studying himself in a full-length mirror in his chambers, Tynan reacquainted himself with the way he looked in the garb of the Corps. He looked almost as if he had never left.

  He took the old powerblade that he had not used in so many years from where it hung in his closet and returned to the mirror to study himself holding it. With the weapon in hand, he still looked as if he had hardly missed a beat. He switched on the energy blade function and the sword of photons leapt forth as brilliantly and efficiently as ever. Tynan thought he should look proud at this moment, but he was still shadowed by anxiety, by a gnawing fear that only the sight of Sierra alive and well would lift from his face and his heart.

  Sierra had mentioned to him that she had a powerblade of her own, given to her as a gift, and she knew how to use it. But she had not had it with her when she went to the spa and she did not have it with her now, wherever she was. In whatever plight she now faced, she very likely had only her wits on which to rely to get her through. And putting her through that was another thing that his old “beloved” Liona was going to pay for.

  Tynan retracted the energy sword and sheathed the handle of the powerblade in the holster pouch on the hip of his suit, and quickly exited the room.

  He found his family with Brogan, Elaina, and a very weary-looking Daxav in the receiving room. The faces of his friends and family lit up at the sight of him in uniform again. Like Tynan, they were all suddenly transported years into the past, into another time—a time when they could not have foreseen the situation in which they now found themselves.

  “You look like you never left us, buddy,” said Brogan approvingly.

  “Everyone always thought you were the handsomest dragon in the Corps,” said Elaina.

  Brogan cleared his throat at her, and Elaina gave him a little elbow jab in the side.

  Moira went to Tynan and put her hands on his shoulders, a gesture of a mother’s concern. “Son,” she said, “I’m so sorry for my part in this.”

  “What do you mean, Mother?” Tynan asked.

  “When you and Sierra came to dinner and told us you were going through with the project, you remember she asked me for a private moment. She wanted your first night trying to make a baby to be special, memorable. And I suggested she should go to the Dragon Cloud Spa for a layering.”

  “False scales, you mean?”

  “Yes. I suggested that to her, and she went, and Liona must have had people watching her… Son, if anything happens to her because of me…”

  Tynan touched his mother’s face soothingly. “If anything happens to her, Mother, it won’t be on you. None of us is any more responsible for Liona’s actions now than we were when she and I were together. This is only on her. And if Sierra comes to any harm, Liona is the one who’ll answer for it. Certainly not you.”

  Moira hugged Tynan fiercely. “She is positively venomous. I don’t want her to hurt you any more than she already has.”

  Tynan hugged his mother back. “Her days of hurting people are over.”

  Elaina said, “Your emergency reactivation with the Corps has come through, Tynan. Naturally your name speeded up the process with the Spires. Your badge will work now. You’re back in.”

  “Thanks,” said Tynan, his mother breaking the hug but staying close to him.

  “I expect all your training will come back to you like an old reflex,” said Leland. “The way the Spires trains Knights and Corpsmen, you shouldn’t have forgotten. You should have just put it all away. I second what your mother said. Watch your tail with Liona.”

  “We’ve still got his tail, Sir,” Brogan reassured Leland. “That hasn’t changed.”

  Through all of this, and through the waiting for Tynan to change from civilian skin into the armor skin of the Corps, Daxav had sat quietly and uncomfortably off to one side, lying back in one of the plush chairs of the Morans’ receiving room, struggling to stay awake and feeling decidedly out of place there. The Visanian could pick up the surface thoughts of Tynan’s family, remembering how he had once aided and abetted Tynan’s felonious lover.

  \He felt tolerated in the home of the wealthy dragons and nothing more. He felt both their watchful eyes and their lingering judgement on him and had kept silent and very humble—and very sleepy after his mental exertion in the contemplation room—in the time that he had been here. He slowly tilted his head in Preston’s direction when Tynan’s older brother acknowledged him.

  “What about you, mollusk?” Preston asked. “Are you going to be up to the job of helping them anymore?”

  Meekly, Daxav found his voice. “Not physically. Locating Liona and keeping her in my telepathic sights has taken most of my energy. But I still want to help. As I’ve sensed Prince Tynan’s thoughts about Ms. Smith, I’ve also sensed his…feelings for her. They are very…mammalian and reptile feelings. But they are very strong. And they are…something more than the desire to breed. It’s a very mammal and reptile thing that I sense from him, very alien
to me.

  It makes me see and feel the skins of mammals moving against each other. It’s very unpleasant. But I sense the emotions along with it. The emotions—the concern, the care—she has become deeply important to him. It makes me want to help. I want to help Prince Tynan feel that again, if I can. And then I would prefer not to have to feel it anymore.”

  All eyes went to Tynan for his reaction to that. The youngest Prince simply nodded, accepting the mollusk’s perception of his weredragon feelings. In his Visanian way, Daxav had honestly and accurately described what Tynan felt.

  “You can ride with us, Daxav,” said Tynan. “We’ll still need your help. But you can stay in the car and be safe. You won’t have to do anything but keep a mental watch on Liona and whoever she has with her. Maybe you can even pick up Sierra’s thoughts by matching them with mine…if it’s not too difficult for you to sense her.”

  “I’ll help all that I can,” said Daxav, making himself sit up straight, but still showing his fatigue. He now sensed that in spite of his past, the others in the room were now viewing him with a new respect. It was helping him to feel a little stronger, at least.

  “Then we’re ready to go,” said Tynan.

  _______________

  “They have blockaded space travel within five hundred kilometers of here.”

  Kharno hunched over the forward control panels on the bridge, pressing his three-fingered fists into them. His voice rumbled on the edge of a shout. Liona stood by, bracing for the Chithisian to fly into a rage. A Chithisian was not a pretty sight in any circumstance. An angry, frustrated Chithisian was even less so.

  Trying her best to mollify the alien, Liona said, “We knew a thing like this might happen. That’s why we made certain the Corps and the Knights couldn’t track her by her comm when we took her. We’ve removed her from the grid. All we need is to move from here far enough out of the blockaded area, then we can get into space and be out of this system. The stupid little human is ours.” She paused for emphasis. “She’s yours.”

  Kharno spun around to face her, closer to the edge of the rage for which Liona braced herself. “And she had best learn the fact! Her body, her life, are in my hands now! If she defies me again, it will be a most harsh lesson for her!”

  “And a lesson she’ll deserve,” said Liona. “Let’s just get on the move, through the back-air traffic lanes where we’ll attract the least attention. We’ll be gone from here before anyone is the wiser—including my ex-lover who was never that wise to start with.” She half-smiled, half-frowned at the thought of her former relationship with Tynan. “He did his best thinking lying down naked, after all…”

  “Spare me your carnal dragon memories!” Kharno barked. “The crew is coming back from their supply run. As soon as they are on board and the cargo hold is stocked, we’re taking off. You have the pain inducer. Take it and prepare the human for departure. If she resists…”

  Liona held up the device and grinned sadistically. “I only hope she does.”

  Walking through the Chithisian ship’s inner passages on her way to the pleasure room, Liona was grateful that she hadn’t mentioned to Kharno the swift efficiency of the Lacertan Knighthood and Dragon Corps. She remembered those two Corps members with whom Tynan once served, with whom he was still do damned friendly.

  One of the more difficult parts of her relationship with Tynan was pretending that she could stomach those two and their insufferably easy camaraderie with her lover. She had told herself that tolerating Tynan’s uniformed, badge-wearing friends was the price she must pay for the life of a Princess. But more than once she’d wished she could simply hurl Tynan’s friends out of an airlock, especially that Elaina creature whom Liona always suspected would like to sleep with Tynan herself. Not that Elaina would ever admit it, of course. It might hurt the insufferable camaraderie.

  Well, soon Liona would be far away from this planet of her birth, and she would never again have to see Lacerta or be reminded of the Prince who threw her away for not being the virtuous thing he’d thought she was. If Tynan no longer loved her because she was capable of living outside the confines of the law, then so be it. But at least she would have the satisfaction of depriving him of the human trollope with whom he’d expected to make his nest.

  She reached the hatch to the pleasure room and slid it open, revealing Sierra still sitting on the edge of the bed. The faux scales still adhering to her, and the expression of loathing on her face, made her look as much like a caged Carcallan tigress as a captive human. Liona entered the room and looked Sierra right in her glaring eyes. “Come along, woman,” she said. “We’re leaving Lacerta. It’s time to get you ready.”

  “And just where is it we’re going?” asked Sierra in a tone that was anything but submissive.

  “That’s not for you to know now. Kharno knows and that’s enough. Get up from there and come with me.” She held up the pain inducer. “And remember what happens if you resist.”

  Sierra just sat there, digging her nails into the bedspread, wishing it were Liona’s throat.

  “You heard me, woman,” Liona snapped. “Get. Up!”

  With a heavy and hateful exhale, Sierra stood up from the bed and stood in place.

  Liona called out to the ship’s systems, “Retract furnishings.” At once the pleasure room responded. The pillows, furnishings, cushions, and curtains all compressed and withdrew into compartments in the walls and bulkheads. The bed shrink-wrapped itself and compressed like a falling soufflé into the floor. “Now,” said Liona, “come with me. Walk ahead of me and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  When Liona stepped to one side and gestured to the hatch, Sierra, feeling all the angrier for being led around while dressed like something out of a harem, marched in that direction. She did as Liona told her and kept her hands in plain view—but she let her fingers grow tense, bracing…

  …for what she did just before she came near enough to the hatch to trigger it. With a speed fueled by pent-up adrenaline, she whirled around and moved on Liona as fast as a striking python. Before Liona knew what had hit her, she’d taken a chopping blow to the shoulder and a foot to the stomach and went flying back onto the red surface of the compressed bed. Stunned and startled, Liona dropped the discipline device and it went whirling away onto the floor.

  Sierra dove for the fallen device, determined to grab it and turn the tables on her captor. She lunged forward and down, past where Liona was lying, and had gotten no further than another stride in that direction when she felt a sudden, cruel choke and lurch. Pulled viciously back, she managed to turn and gaze through squinting eyes at Liona, who had quickly come up on her knees and shifted partly to half-dragon, just enough to unfurl her tail and lash out with it, seizing Sierra by the neck.

  Snarling, Sierra grabbed Liona’s tail and dug her fingernails into it as she had done the bed. Dragon scales, however, were much tougher than fabric and foam; the morphing, hissing Liona’s only reaction was to slash out with her tail and release Sierra, letting the human go spinning and crashing into the far wall. Sierra thudded against the wall and slid down to the floor, as stunned as Liona had been. But she collected her wits in time to see Liona, now fully morphed to half-dragon, stalking across the floor to reclaim the pain unit. Sierra moved, and in a second, she was upon Liona again.

  She got one of Liona’s wrists in each of her hands, and the two females grappled, pushing and pulling at each other. But Liona was a dragon and Sierra, merely a human, quickly learned that she was grappling with more than she could handle. While holding Liona’s wrists to keep the dragoness’s claws at bay, she also had to lunge back to avoid the Liona’s serpent-like strike and snap. This threw Sierra critically off-balance and gave Liona the opening she needed to curl her tail up between them and swipe it hard across Sierra’s jaw, breaking the human’s grip and sending her toppling back down again.

  This time, Sierra found herself sprawled on the floor, watching Liona cover the last steps between herself
and her prize. Desperately, Sierra sprang back to her feet. But Liona was faster. She grabbed up the punishing device, spun around, and gave it a thumb squeeze. The response came in a heartbeat. The sudden searing in her nerves sent Sierra lurching and tumbling back, crashing back to the floor and writhing with screams that left her almost breathless.

  Liona stood over her, sadistically maintaining her thumb pressure on the device, enjoying once again to watch what it was doing to Sierra. She loved watching the human thrash and scream and gasp on the floor. She wanted to give Sierra a moment of pain for all the pleasure she must have taken in Tynan’s bed. But at length she relented. If she presented Kharno with a dead or comatose female instead of a living prize to sell, Kharno would have any number of painful punishments in store for Liona.

  When Liona released her from the pain, Sierra lay crumpled on the floor, gasping and choking, refusing to give her enemy the chance to hear her make another sound of pain. But now she was limp and weak and in no condition to fight any more—for the moment.