Friendly Fire

by Michelle Levigne

  The Corona's children had been moved to guest quarters. Cobalt understood they were safe now, and that calmed the little drac. For a while, that had helped Flinders' condition. Now, induced healing sleep seemed just as vital for Flinders and Cobalt as it had been for Dulit and Poki. They kept feeding off and helping each other, a vicious cycle. Before she passed that recommendation on to Tahl, M'kar had something more important to do.

  Bits of images she had gleaned from Cobalt's mind had formed a hazy, sometimes fractured picture. Added to what the children said they had overheard their parents discussing, the situation of Hivers having access to an uncharted Chute and performing genocide on dracs had grown just a little more grim. Just when she thought that wasn't possible. M'kar debated going to Genys, to report directly to her what she suspected. However, she had promised Cobalt a dozen times over that she would stay with him, and he had to stay with Flinders. The drac was equal to a four-year-old child in understanding, but M'kar believed the existence of a soul and a heart didn't depend on the level of intelligence. She moved to a medical station, to request a secure channel. Genys would have to go to her ready room to talk privately with her, but M'kar wouldn't inflict her suspicions on the rest of the ship.

  "You won't hear any of this," she said, glancing over her shoulder at Brea while she waited for the captain to respond.

  Brea didn't even turn around, but made a show of putting her fingers in her ears and hunching her shoulders.

  "Problem?" Genys said when she answered.

  "I'm getting images Cobalt picked up from Flinders. He saw enough of the attacking ship to identify it as Ankuar make. Which would certainly go a long way toward explaining how any Humans would willingly ally with the insects and become Hivers."

  You're forgetting, Thyal offered, the reputation of dymcrait for enslaving entire tribes, and perhaps now races. The Ankuar may not have been willing partners at all.

  Shut up. The last thing I need is to feel sorry for Ankuar. She swallowed hard, grateful Genys was taking time to think over what she had said. M'kar hated carrying on two conversations at the same time, especially when she needed to apologize to her hearth-brother. Thy --

  It's all right. I must admit to taking some of my frustration out on you.

  You? She fought down a bubble of exhausted laughter that tried to come out as a burp.

  Mother and Father are torn. Irritation that I didn't tell them about our unbreakable mind-link. Impatience to see a drac. And fascination with figuring out how our link can exist despite the jump gates and galaxies between us. Be prepared to be scolded and wept on, when you come home for a visit.

  Duly warned. She sighed. I'm sorry.

  Will you slap me if I remind you that you haven't spent much time in contemplation lately, and you're overdue for some sleep?

  Are you asking me to slap you?

  His laughter wrapped her in soft, soothing warmth.

  "Recommendation?" Genys said.

  "My Nisandrian blood says to shred them. As much fun as it would be to declare war, we don’t have the time. Going through diplomatic channels won't do us a narding bit of good, either. Except prove to history we tried peaceful measures. The best justice and vengeance for those children and their parents is to find that Chute and lock it down, clearly labeled as Alliance territory, before those rotting ch'teps know what happened."

  "Thank goodness you learned some self-control on Le'anka," Genys said with a weary sigh. "Duly noted. How's the man?"

  "Doesn't look good. I'm monitoring him through my link with Cobalt. It's a vicious cycle, just like with Dulit. Learning a lot about dracs, just from exposure. I'm getting an impression of something like a hive mind. Chances are good he felt it every time another drac went under, pulled down when their Human parent cocooned. I think the mental silence is just as damaging as Flinders' injuries."

  "Ouch. Poor little guy."

  "He's holding on by his talons. Like a child fighting not to have a nervous breakdown."

  "Not that I'm eavesdropping," Brea said, stepping up to look over M'kar's shoulder. "I highly recommend putting them both out of their misery, which, to be totally mercenary, puts them out of our misery, too."

  "Do what you need to," Genys said.

  Brea walked over to Flinders' bed. M'kar could only see half of what she was doing with the monitors and feeds tending to the man's injuries. Cobalt let out a strangled little yelp, flapped once, and tried to rise up from his spot on Flinders' chest. Something yanked M'kar backwards, deeper into the chair, as the drac flopped across the wounded man.

  She slid off the chair, onto the floor, feeling oddly boneless. Darkness seeped through the air around her. Cobalt let out a piteous wail, the sound cut off mid-cry. The darkness vanished with a nearly audible snap. M'kar scrabbled at the edge of the desk to pull herself to her feet. She got to the doorway of Flinders' room before she quite had her legs steady under herself.

  Cobalt sprawled across Flinders' chest, wings spread, as if he had tried to leap into the air. M'kar stroked down the little drac's spine. He shuddered, then every muscle in his body went limp.

  "It's all right," she murmured. "Sleep. We'll take care of both of you, and the children."

  ~~~~~~

  "From the impressions M'kar picked up, the bio-signs we got from Flinders, the drac's reactions as his condition deteriorated …" Tahl put down her screen on the conference table. "My preliminary assessment confirms M'kar's analysis. The dracs' bonds with Flinders and Dulit shared both healing strength and suffering. What was killing both men was killing the dracs. The bond was so tight that putting them into healing trance and healing coma took the dracs also. Not that I have any reliable bio-data on dracs." She raised one elegant eyebrow and glanced at M'kar.

  "I'm working on it," M'kar said. "If you can't bring Dulit out to answer our questions, then you're welcome to sort through the mess he gave me and find it for yourself."

  "I doubt we would find it any faster," the chief medical officer muttered. "When both pairs wake up and we can start gathering the data, this could double or triple our understanding of psionic bonds, plus all the possible implications on healing. If the Corona's scientists figured some of this out already, this increases the crisis situation we face in terms of the dracs. It isn't just finding that Chute and making sure the Hivers aren't still there, decimating the species. The Corona knew the trouble they were in if the wrong people got their hands on dracs. What can heal can also kill. Imagine killing your enemies by remote control, using little teleporting, flying lizards."

  "Who can also breathe fire, don't forget," Decker offered from his seat at the far end of the table. He was working between the screen built into the table and a tablet in his hand. Jasper was absent, along with his top assistants, trying to narrow down the optimal location to search for the Chute to the drac world.

  "More reason to keep dracs away from the Hivers and Ankuar. Who might be both at the same time. The situation just gets better and better," Genys muttered.

  "You're forgetting something," M'kar said. "The psionic bond goes both ways. The dracs could be healers, but they'll also draw energy from their Human partner. That's good and bad, if they get caught in a downward spiraling cycle, like with Dulit and Flinders. Do we dare let anyone know what we've found out so far?"

  "We have a responsibility to thoroughly investigate all this before we turn in anything to the Academy," Tahl said. "I trust the Le'ankan authorities, simply because they put Enlo's guidance and Neoma's teachings above all things. However, we shouldn’t just dump all the data on the Academy and let them figure out the ethics. Too many ordinary Humans think Enlo is a good idea until logic and mercy get in the way of what they consider higher priorities." She shuddered. "Turn dracs into living, portable, self-propelling healing tanks? It would be a boon for all of us, but from what I saw of Cobalt in action, I wouldn't do that to anyone. He was like a little kid, wearing his heart on his sleeve. And don't give me any guff about dracs not having slee
ves."

  She scowled around the table. A few of the command crew looked away, some of them with guilty looks.

  "It would be wonderful if we had living healing units. Bonded to our people who go dirtside. Able to sense what is truly wrong with an injured crewman and react faster than medical scanners. But can we condemn innocent creatures to death for the sake of better monitoring? And yes, what M'kar said -- the bond goes both ways. What would the sudden death of a drac do to the person bonded to him?"

  "Didn't think about that," Taggert admitted, settling back in his chair and slumping a little.

  "I did," M'kar whispered.

  "I have compared Cobalt to the other dracs," Tahl said. "Just judging by the range of size to estimate maturity, Cobalt and Poki are the same age, perhaps the equivalent of an adolescent. Adults might be better able to pull out of the bond, and might be better skilled at healing, also. An older drac bonded with Flinders might have had a different result."

  "We can't risk it," Genys said. "On the other hand, it's not up to us. No matter which priority is higher, dracs or Chute, our duty stays the same. We need to find that Chute, find the planet, set up a blockade, whatever it takes." Another sigh. "While I'm sure we all would love to go racing off across the stars, we need to know where to go, and we can't go anywhere until Fleet responds. Hopefully they’ll send a medical ship, or at least a rescue and salvage ship, to take charge of the Corona and its crew. Certainly can't tow it, and I'm not leaving it for Gleaners to tear into little bits."

  "If it is the dracs…" Treinna had reported on the condition of the survey ship's children. "If the dracs are the target … I say we get there fast and put ourselves between the end of the Chute and the planet. And be ready to shoot anything that comes out and isn't broadcasting the latest episode of Starfarers. Not that I'm trying to get access before anyone else, I'm just saying …" She batted her eyelashes as chuckles went around the table.

  Ships on patrol, especially E&D ships, usually were half a year behind on the latest entertainment seasons and had to wait for someone to ship the cubes out to them.

  "Agreed," Genys said, when the smiles faded far too quickly. "Maora and Treinna, learn everything you can from the children about dracs. If the survey crew brought them on board their ship, then they had to believe they were safe enough to expose them to their children. Maybe the children went dirtside and can tell us about the planet. Taggert--"

  "Already on it," he said, standing and sweeping his reading screen and a handful of printout transparencies off the table into his bent arm. "All Gate-search teams are focused on the energy signals and frequencies associated with Chutes. Our organic matter sensors are tuned as high as we can get them. Everything we find is going to Jasper, for him to put into his newest gizmo. That new man, Choyan, has a gift for adaptation and modulation. If we're lucky, he'll get us to where we can smell the planet from the other end of the Chute."

  "If only." She rubbed her temples twice with her forefinger knuckles, then turned her chair to stand up. "Thank you, everyone, for staying on top of this beyond your duty shifts."

  "It's for children," Anya murmured, and the others nodded and made other sounds of agreement.

  ~~~~~~

  Dulit’s data wafer yielded the first visual records of dracs and environmental reports on their homeworld. Combined with what the children said about the dracs, some theories about the fascinating creatures were shredded and others revised. Some adult crew had special dracs, who rode on their shoulders and slept on their beds. They were all young. Older dracs came on board the ship, and they ordered around the ones who chose people as their friends. While the older dracs played with the children, bossed them around, and acted like babysitters, they wouldn’t allow the young dracs near them. The children didn't go down to the planet until after their third trip, when the relationship had solidified with the dracs around the Corona’s camp.

  "Could be an age thing," M'kar said, when Genys joined her in the rec deck. She had duty shift watching over the children when she took a break from decrypting the data wafer.

  She perched on the high divider wall around the play area set aside just for the children. The high spot gave her a vantage point where she could see them all, no matter where they wandered among flowering vines and artificial trees. A tiny waterfall trickled down the polymer rock wall, collecting in pools at its base where the children could splash each other or just sit on a rock with their bare feet in the water and talk. Most of the children seemed content to do that. The Corona’s children and the Defender’s children seemed to be making friends, which pleased their caretakers.

  "Age?" Genys settled down at a two-seater table a few paces away, that let her look up at M'kar without a crick in her neck.

  "Dulit made a lot of recordings of social interaction. The bigger ones seem pretty independent. The smaller the drac, the more dependent they are on the adults. Some mirroring behavior made me twitchy."

  "Mirroring?" She muffled a comment that anything that could make M'kar twitchy had to be trouble.

  "The dracs were flying, playing games. It looked like they were teamed up to play a kind of tag between dracs and humans. Kind of fun. The dracs with Human friends stayed close to them, flying formation above them. The little dracs that were hanging on older ones … they were flying in perfect formation, not a second of delay when they changed direction. They even had the same up-down rhythm with their wings. A little freaky. I asked Wickersby to run an analysis, try to find a pattern. The computer couldn't find any variation or hesitation or delay, not even by a tenth of a second."

  "The hive mind idea again." Genys turned the theory over in her mind. "Okay, what does that have to do with the children and not having special friends among the dracs?"

  "They're children -- and children bond to adults. Maybe that's how they learn, to hunt and socialize and communicate. The dracs didn't bond with the children because … I don't know, maybe their minds aren't mature enough, they don't give off the right signals."

  "That's kind of comforting, when you think about it. I wonder how long it took for the Corona's crew to realize that, and figure it was safe for them to bring their children dirtside."

  "I was thinking about what could have happened to the children when the Hivers were shooting dracs out of the air," M'kar offered quietly.

  "Do you think it'd hurt the children, or help them, to see the images that were salvaged from the ship?"

  "Ask Millson. He's the head-doctor."

  "And you're the mean old mama wolf protecting her cubs," she shot back, earning a thin-lipped smile. "What do your instincts say?"

  "We could trigger a lot of memories, good and bad. Even crying and nightmares can be healing, if they open up the wounds and let them drain." M'kar glanced away from the children. "Something skulking at the edge of what the children said …"

  "What's nagging at you?"

  "The interference from the adult dracs." She turned and slid down off the wall. "The adult dracs kept the children from bonding with the immature dracs. What does that tell you?"

  "Well … the dracs know what's going on in their heads. They've got social rules and regs." Genys sat up straighter as something nebulous churned at the back of her mind. The harder she tried to identify it, the more it slipped away.

  "What if age is important? The little dracs bond with the older dracs to learn how to do things. It's like baby fingernails."

  "Excuse me?" She shook her head, knocked totally off course with what was trying to solidify in her head.

  "You know how sharp baby fingernails are? They just latch on. You can't make the little monsters let go and you think those tiny little fingers, so soft and weak, are just going to dig holes right through your hand or the end of your nose or …" M'kar dropped into the chair opposite Genys. "Babies don't have any control. The adults kept the baby dracs from bonding with the children because they knew it was dangerous."

  "O … kay … and now you've given me a good reason not t
o go anywhere near the drac homeworld, if we ever find it, with our shipload of children."

  "On the other hand, some things I've seen in the social records indicate the presence of the children made it possible for the Corona crew to make progress with the dracs."

  "Come again?"

  "Who would you trust more? People who only sent their adults to meet with you, or the ones who showed up with their children along for the ride?"

  "Ah. Thanks very much for doubling my headache."

  "Cobalt proved the dracs can look into our heads."

  "Meaning?"

  "They'll know, eventually, that we have children with us, even if we don't take them dirtside." M'kar sighed and slouched in the chair. "And that means keeping the children on the ship won't really do a whole heketar of a lot of good, because dracs can teleport. If they want to get to the children, several kilometers of empty space won't do us any good."

  "There's that headache again."

  "Like my great-grandfather used to say, sometimes you have to trust the universe will act with honor and step out into thin air."

  "He sounds like a lunatic." Genys smiled. "But I get what he was saying."

  "Do you? Because yes, he was a lunatic. Certifiable. But on Nisandros, lunatics are sacred, supposedly able to hear the voices of the ancestors. Which explains a lot of really stupid decisions my relatives made over the centuries." She offered a crooked grin.

  When Genys returned to her office, she dictated a memo to the officers who would lead any landing parties. She worked through the wording, revising several times until she was satisfied that it sounded official and logical, and not something dredged up from a brain long overdue for sleep.

  No child under the age of sixteen Standard years would be allowed to go to the surface of the drac homeworld. Until they could determine the strength of the psionic bond between Humans and dracs, what encouraged or prevented it, and who was most susceptible, only those with psionic talent and certified training in mental shielding on Le'anka would be permitted to go down to the planet. Dracs looked cute and the Corona's children certainly seemed to love the dracs on their ship, but Genys refused to risk losing even one crew to a bond with an animal that they still knew hardly anything about.