RAWN

by Bonnie Burrows

quarters instead. He had a suite with amenities such as more space, a sunken fire pit, a sunken bath, a larger bed, and large picture windows, one of them letting out onto a small balcony, which Rawn frankly considered out of proportion to his station.

  But he'd been unable to talk the Mentors out of accommodating him in that way. He was their conquering hero and an

  inspiration to dozens of planets and he had been feared dead for so long, they considered the honor entirely befitting his return. Out of deference to the Mentors, he accepted the rooms and the relative comfort they provided.

  He spent his first night in the suite alone. Information services set him up with a new Stellarnet account and Interconnect presence, and he spent an entire evening watching and

  listening to media coverage about his "return from the dead" and receiving one hologram after another from every part of the quadrant expressing congratulations and welcome. Public figures of every sort, from political and diplomatic leaders and athletes to entertainment celebrities, all sent him words and images of warm wishes.

  One such message came from Agena and her dragon Knight lover, Sir Thrax Helmer, who themselves had figured largely in the media after their exploits against the Scodax. After many hours, a large meal, and a long bath, he was tired of hearing about himself and wanted only to go to bed in something other than the cramped quarters of the Justice Claw. So, upon climbing from the bath, he turned everything off and stretched out naked on the bed, welcoming sleep as the greater galaxy had so heartily welcomed him.

  His nude and muscled frame drank in the sleekness of the bed linens and the softness of their thread count, and he felt as if his entire body were giving out a long, deep sigh. As a man and dragon of deep faith, Rawn had never given up believing he would feel this way again, but he had resigned himself to the long stretch of years before it would happen.

  This was the end of his long, long sojourn across vast and unknown space, in which one small ship had been Rawn's only home and his very life had been bound to it and his very future had depended on it. Those years had brought many deprivations and wants. Physical comfort was only one of them.

  That time had been lonely, a loneliness beyond imagining. He had missed the company of his own kind, and the company of humans. He had missed the camaraderie of the Knighthood and the Corps, and the sights and sounds and sensations of home. And without a doubt, he had missed the pleasure of sex.

  The life of a Knight included many sex partners, and before his disappearance into the Chimerian war nexus, Rawn had shared a bed with plenty of females, human and Lacertan. But he had spent the last fifteen years in reaches of space where there were no humans and no

  Lacertans. Whenever he’d found himself in a place where there were physically

  compatible females, he had taken a partner. But those intimacies were necessarily fleeting and transitory things, detours from the one overriding mission of his life: getting home.

  There was always a goodbye, always a return to his solitary voyage, always a renewal of the hope of one day finding his way home again. And now, he was here, and it was good. His people were embracing him, happily, joyously, and soon he would know again all the things he missed so much. He would stand and fly at the side of his fellow Knights in duty and service. And he would lie again with the females of his world and the women of the worlds of Earth. Down

  below, he stirred and stiffened at the thought of it.

  He touched and stroked his hardening member, pulling back the ample foreskin, and his thumb brushed against the blunt head and grew slick with the slippery nectar it produced. Rawn smiled a small, sleepy smile at the thought of slipping inside a weredragon or human female once again after so long a time.

  No doubt many females would be eager to be under him in bed. It was no arrogant boast; there would naturally be a great interest in him now, with everyone welcoming him back and wanting to know the story of what he'd been through while he was away. To be sure, many potential partners awaited him. He looked forward to their company.

  This one in particular, this Joanna Way: her media service had assigned her to cover his return. In the days to come, as he toured Lacerta to visit places where the battles with the Scodax had taken place, to greet his people and be welcomed home in the midst of rest and recuperation before returning to duty, this Joanna Way whom he had rescued would be his regular companion. She was lovely enough, perhaps she would prove to be an especially close

  companion. The staff at his loins throbbed approvingly at the thought of it.

  The sights and sounds and feelings--including sex--of home. Relaxing the hand that stroked himself, Rawn let his body and mind float away into sleep, with that as his last waking thought.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As part of his therapy and recovery, Rawn would require regular baths and swims in

  restorative waters, another thing he welcomed. Slipping his dragon body into the waters of the Draconite lakes of home was another pleasure he had missed so badly while he was away, almost as much as he had missed slipping himself into the bodies of the females of home. The next morning, after a generous breakfast, Rawn took a hoverboat away from the Spires and out across the countryside to Lake Shimmershine for a long and sensuous swim.

  Upon reaching the lake, he found Knights assigned to patrol Shimmershine swooping in to

  welcome him home, and he received their warm greetings with a deep warmth of his own. In the years of his absence, many new Knights had naturally entered the fold, and so there was no one that he recognized, but each of them in his or her own way was like an old friend because the Knighthood itself was a common bond in which they were all united.

  It was all very much like returning to a large and loving family after too long a separation. After receiving their good wishes, Rawn made himself naked, morphed to dragon form, tucked his wings tight, and dove horns-first into the water.

  It felt magnificent, cool and blue and as welcoming as his people themselves. He swam long and deep. His dragon physiology enabled him to stay under for a long time, and he took full advantage of it. For a while, he simply sank to the bottom and lay there peacefully, watching a few of his fellow Lacertans swim by through the depths or across the surface that sparkled from the sunlight. With every passing moment, he felt more at home.

  At length, he surfaced again and swam back to his craft. He stayed in dragon form and lay on the deck, sunning himself deliciously, before morphing back to human and heading back to the Spires. Awaiting him here was lunch--and over his meal, his first personal interview with Joanna Way.

  Joanna sat with Rawn at the table in his suite, Epaulette hovering at her shoulder and

  recording everything the two of them said and did for later editing and transmission. The first thing that Joanna noted, privately, was the size of Rawn's meal in comparison with her own.

  Lacertans were known to have large appetites in general (and the males, not only for food), but Rawn actually needed to consume more food than other Lacertans: for his body needed to store greater quantities of methane to fuel his fire-breathing powers.

  In her research on exactly what was done to Rawn, genetically, to create his powers, Joanna had learned that he had a slightly different internal anatomy than other weredragons. That large and powerfully-built body contained a pair of additional bladders specifically for the storage of methane, and his internal body tissues stored additional quantities of that gas to transfer to the bladders.

  When he morphed to dragon, his upper respiratory system had a pair of flint-like structures called metatonsils that struck against each other to create sparks when he exhaled methane to make his fiery breath. The way Dr. Phifer had adapted him was truly marvelous, almost as

  marvelous as the sight of Rawn himself.

  Over lunch, Rawn recounted for Joanna the story of that day that had begun in such pride and wonderment and ended in such betrayal and horror, when he first exhibited his powers only to face the fatal treachery of Sewall Sabia
n. It was a story told and documented many times by now, but to have it told again by the fire-breathing Knight himself, from his own memory and perspective, gave it a new immediacy for her reporting.

  And, truth be told, sitting and listening to him, looking so fantastically, beautifully male, and telling what happened in his own words, made Joanna shiver up and down her spine and in some other places that were not polite to mention. In preparation for this interview, she had looked back through historical holograms of the way Rawn was in those times.

  Back then, he was a magnificent young lad who’d surely had more than a few females eagerly lie down for him. She would have been happy to be one of them. But now, he was like something out of a myth and a dream at the same time. That face, that body, what she’d seen below his waist when he was suspended in the healing vat… No female in known space had helped herself to that in more than a decade. She envied the next one who’d have the privilege.

  “Have you seen the memorial to Dr. Phifer here at the Spires?” Rawn asked her.

  That was another thing Joanna had gone to check out, just this morning before coming to Rawn’s suite. Out on the grounds of the Spires was a black marble obelisk, carved with the name of Jacques Phifer and the epitaph, A transforming mind, A dragon in spirit. Remembering those words and hearing Rawn’s story from his own lips, Joanna could not help but be moved in spite of her journalistic detachment.

  “Yes, I have seen that,” she replied. “Can you tell me about your personal relationship with him?”

  The way Rawn exhaled at the question, Joanna would not have been surprised if he’d breathed out smoke in spite of being in his human form. She could tell how heavy at heart the question made him. He took a long gulp of his berry juice before answering. “He was a warrior in his own right. Not like a Knight, of course: he was a gentle, peaceful warrior, a Knight of the mind, if you take my meaning. He was a man who conquered not physical foes, but the

  unknown, which makes him every bit a hero to us. And…he was my friend.”

  “You didn’t become friends just from working together, though,” she guessed, “or just from being his subject.”

  “No,” Rawn shook his head. “He never treated me as just a ‘subject,’ not from the

  moment I set foot in his laboratory. I’ll never forget the day I met him. I entered his lab, and he looked at me not as a Knight or a warrior and not as an experimental subject. The look on him was more like the look of an uncle, even a father. He shook my hand. He gave my arm a squeeze. He told me that I mustn’t be afraid, that he would halt the project if he ever had reason to believe he was doing me harm. He said he knew that I was good and brave, and that he was proud to know me. And that was only on the first day. The first day. Jacques Phifer was the kindest, wisest being of any species that I’ve ever met. From the beginning, he earned my trust.”

  Joanna studied Rawn’s expression as he spoke of the scientist who had treated him so kindly. The warmth and fondness in his voice and manner were as fresh as if the whole thing had happened only yesterday. “I’m sure it was important to him,” she said, “to put you at ease, even knowing you were a Knight, that you had volunteered for this and were trained not to be intimidated by things.”

  “I’m sure he knew all that,” replied Rawn. “But Dr. Phifer took a personal interest in me, not only my position as a Knight and what I brought to the project physically, but in me. He did not address me as ‘Sir Rawn’ or ‘Sir Knight’ or even as just ‘Rawn’. He would call me, ‘my boy.’ Sometimes ‘my dear boy’. When you’re that age, and even later in life, it’s good to know that someone older holds you in some regard, is kind to you and approves of you.

  I was accustomed to the praise of my fellow Knights and the respect and approval of the Mentors. But the kindness of Dr. Phifer…that was very special. I trusted him implicitly. I loved him. One day, he told me that he envied me a bit. He didn’t mean it bitterly or

  resentfully; he meant that he looked up to me in his own way.”

  “How did he look up to you?”

  “He said that as a young boy, younger than I was, he had fantasized about being a member of the Interstar Fleet, of going out into space, protecting and serving, perhaps even doing

  battle alongside us Knights of Lacerta. But he was never the type for it. He was a born

  intellectual, and science was where he belonged. He was not a big, strong, physically aggressive man. Many people would have dismissed him as simply a brittlehorn and thought nothing of him, but…”

  Joanna stopped him at that point: “I beg your pardon: a ‘brittlehorn’?”

  “An expression we have,” Rawn explained. “It means a horn that breaks from the head of an aged dragon when he is thought to be past his prime. Sometimes, we use it to mean an

  ineffectual or unaggressive person. Or a person who lives too much in his mind. It’s a bit of a mockery. But Dr. Phifer was no brittlehorn. He was as strong of mind as any Knight is strong of body. And I grew to love him.”

  Carefully, knowing she was treading on sensitive ground now, Joanna ventured the

  question, “And you also trusted Dr. Sabian?”

  The love faded from Rawn’s eyes at the mention of the other, younger scientist’s name. The affection on his face disappeared into a hard frown. “The traitor. The liar. These last fifteen years I’ve traveled across space alone, I’ve cursed that man’s name.”

  “His entire relationship with Dr. Phifer—and with you—it was a lie from the very

  beginning; that much the authorities learned.”

  “A lie. The most wretched, filthy lie of the most corrupt man… He cost the galaxy so much. He cost me so much.”

  “What was it like, working with the two of them together before he exposed himself as a disciple of the High Chimerian?”

  “It was a perfect deception,” answered Rawn bitterly. “They were the perfect colleagues; the older, accomplished man and the brilliant, younger man on his way up. I would sit and listen to them for how many hours I can’t count, not understanding half the things they said because I am not a man of science, but impressed with the ease of their scientific talk.

  Sometimes, they bantered like a teacher and a prize pupil; sometimes, they debated like friendly rivals -- students together in a classroom. Sometimes, they ended up laughing. Sometimes, they ended up exhausted. There were times when I felt as if I had disappeared from their sight

  because of how they were wrapped up in the ideas of their talk, as if science were all there was in the universe for them. But I sensed in them something like the paternal affection that Dr. Phifer had for me. And every bit of it…damn him, every bit of it was a flaming lie.”

  “How do you think the Chimerians got to him? I mean, I know they were shape-changers and, in the beginning, no one knew how to detect them, so it was easy for them to move about and approach people without anyone suspecting them. And I’ve heard and read all the psychological theories about how the Chimerians were able to turn a man like that to their side. But personally, from having known him, what do you think it could have been that really made him betray Earth and the Commonwealth and help the Chimerians?”

  “If you want my opinion,” Rawn answered, half-scowling, “it was greed. Pure greed. Not like the greed that once ruled Earth, the lust for money that took over people’s lives. This was something different: the greed for knowledge. The Chimerians were about controlling all life, shaping evolution and mutation to their will, transforming all living things into what one single intelligence wished it to be. They were genetic fascists, bent on ruling every man, fish, bird, and beast, and creating entire species at will to use in whatever way they liked without any thought to the consequences. And their ideas, their philosophies…I believe they were too seductive for Sabian to resist.

  I believe the High Chimerian must have offered him entire planets to use as his laboratories, even entire species to experiment upon. And as you know, from the records, they even
gave him the power to transform himself. The lure of such power, such knowledge—it must have twisted his mind.

  “Sewall Sabian must, at one time, have been a good man, even a noble man—but a very ambitious man. And the Chimerians must have known that and seen the way to turn his ambitions against him, and against all of us. All that they asked of him was that he stop Jacques

  Phifer, who was creating a powerful new force against him. And for all that they offered him…he did as they asked. And when he did, he set me on my own mission to bring him down no matter what the cost.”

  “The cost of what Sabian did was high enough,” said Joanna.

  “It was plenty high,” said Rawn. “The slayer virus that Sabian used on Dr. Phifer was thorough enough; there was no way to save him from that. But just as insidious was the techno virus that he used on Dr. Phifer’s work. It spread into all of the nested, encrypted computer memories where his work was kept for security.

  It sought out and destroyed all of his personal files that might have contained parts of the

  Mythos Project. It even attacked any physical documents that he might have touched, tracking them down by his DNA. In the end, there was no way to reproduce anything that Dr. Phifer had done. The Mythos Project was destroyed. All that was left of it…was me. I would be the only dragon Knight with the powers that Phifer created. And I made it my personal mission to avenge not only my friend, but what should have been his legacy to the galaxy, even if it meant my own life.”