Joanna was, all at once, very conscious of the fact that she was frowning, and she forced herself to stop. She had no claim on Rawn. She was who she was, and he was who he was, and as Shakespeare had put it eight hundred years ago, “never the twain would meet.” She felt
relieved, in a way. After the ball, her assignment to cover Sir Rawn’s return to Lacerta would be over.
Philosophically, she realized she should be grateful for all this. She had come to Lacerta for one choice story, the recovery of the planet from the Scodax invasion. In the bargain, she had gotten a second, even bigger story and had been a personal—very personal—witness to a legend returning from the past, to history coming back to life. It was a huge professional coup. From this, she would no doubt get her choice of the best assignments from now on. Her career was on its way up, like…
…like a strong, proud, handsome, beautiful dragon spreading his wings and taking flight.
After the effort of recovering her composure, Joanna actually winced at the thought. She really had to put it that way, didn’t she?
None of this was doing her any good, she knew. She had a job to finish. A few nights from now, she would go to the ball and cover the event and do her usual impeccable job. Then, she would return here to her guest quarters and get a good night’s sleep. And first thing the next morning, she would head for the spaceport and leave the planet Lacerta and its Knights—including that one Knight—behind. With his Princess or whatever other fetching female he liked. And that was as it should be.
Joanna picked herself up from the bed and headed for the bath. She had a job to do, and a job was all that it would be.
_______________
The spaceship cruised halfway between Catalan, the star, and Lacerta, its inhabited
planet. Careful to stay just outside of Lacertan space, where it would not be picked up on the routine security scans and patrols of the Knights, it had been there since the upheaval with the Scodax, monitoring every transmission that came from Lacerta and everything that took place
in the vicinity of the planet. Things had been very eventful as of late. Very eventful indeed.
The solitary occupant of the craft sat calmly on the bridge, watching the telescopic view of Lacerta and the images on his monitors and the holograms in the air around him. The broad-shouldered man with dull blond hair and narrow eyes looked much the same now as he had looked on the day when he first tipped his hand and struck a blow for the High Chimerian, removing that fool, Phifer, as a threat. He had changed very little, thanks to anti-aging science, in general, and the genetic mastery of the Chimerians, in particular.
Of course, he had recovered perfectly from the injuries dealt him in that last battle with his most hated foe, the battle that had cut short the vision of the High Chimerian and deprived the galaxy of that glorious genetic unity that the Chimerians had promised. But soon, that magnificent vision would have a second chance.
It was, perhaps, poetic justice that before he initiated his future plans, there was one critical detail to be dealt with. If there was such a thing as fate, naturally it would have decreed that at the same time as the man aboard the ship returned, so would his enemy.
He had filled every monitor and every hologram with the media reports on what the quadrant had greeted with such wonder and excitement. Arrayed before him were images of that upstart young Knight who had been the recipient of Phifer’s foolish genius. If anything, the passing years had made him look even more like the insufferably righteous hero he had been way back then.
The quadrant was swooning and fawning and genuflecting over him now even more than it had fifteen years ago, if such a thing were possible. And why not? After all, was he not their lost hero come home? Was he not their living miracle? No doubt all the worlds of the Commonwealth and its allies would look to their long-lost champion as their savior or their
rallying point once again in the days to come.
They would—if Dr. Sewall Sabian was not going to destroy Sir Rawn Ullery, as he should have succeeded in doing at the Chimerian Nexus.
Sabian watched all the images before him, and in his mind, he relived all the
confrontations, all the battles, all the times he’d had to beat a hasty, last-minute escape after the wretched, upstart, fire-breathing Knight had undone some Chimerian plan to bring the galaxy to heel. And he cursed himself for not removing the Chimerians’ nemesis in advance.
He could have simply sabotaged Phifer’s experiments in progress, doomed the self-righteous boy while they busied themselves at mutating him, and ended his career of defying and thwarting the Chimerians before it ever started. But no, he had kept to the plan and made Phifer his target, leaving Ullery to become the spearhead of the Knights’ opposition.
Well, that was the good thing about second chances. They brought with them the
opportunity to correct past mistakes. This time, before he struck at the Commonwealth of Worlds, he would first eliminate its champion. This time, Sir Rawn Ullery would fall at the
beginning, and the Chimerians would triumph at the end. Sabian required only the means to
accomplish it. And in the images before him, he found what he needed.
For all his strengths and powers, Sir Rawn Ullery had one inherent weakness, one very necessary weakness. It was a weakness that all the Knights shared in common. Even more than he was a dragon, Sir Rawn was a man—a man with feelings, needs, and appetites of all men,
appetites that he had never failed to satisfy, hero that he was. There were some things that Rawn needed even more than he needed to be the great hero of his people. And there before him were two images of those needs.
Sabian watched the recordings of Rawn’s interviews and personal flight with the mediate, Joanna Way, and he knew what must have been going through the young Knight’s mind. After so many long years away from his home space, the beautiful journalist must have looked so very inviting for something more than just sessions of questions and answers.
There must have been such hunger in the young dragon man as he sat with her, talked with her, held her in his arms in flight over Silverwing. Sabian should not have been at all surprised if, after the flight interview, the noble Knight had not stolen away with her for hours of naked satisfaction of pent-up needs. Or if he had not, he had surely wanted to.
And then there was the Alpha Dragon’s daughter, perhaps an even more tempting choice, and one free of the professional detachment of a mediate. Evette Veles was beautiful, graceful, charming, refined, high-born—and being a dragon herself, she was no doubt every bit as
ferocious as Ullery would like between the sheets. If Sir Rawn had not slept with Joanna Way, in all likelihood, he would soon be offering his dragon manhood to Ms. Veles.
Sabian settled in his chair, folded his hands, and watched and considered. The process of life was, after all, about solving problems. And the way to solve the problem of an interfering dragon was to strike where he was most vulnerable: to attack him at his loins.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Joanna stepped out of the tub after her shower, it was to the sound of thunder in the distance.
Immediately, her nerves were on edge. She pulled her robe on more tightly and went to the window of her bedroom. Everything outside seemed normal. There were no sounds of screaming, no sounds of explosions or destruction. But again, there were those thundering sounds—BOOM, BOOM, BOOM—like something being fired from an enormous gun or a
massive cannon.
Her mind raced through all the possibilities of what it could be. A sense of dread overtook her. Was this another Scodax booby trap being sprung? Was this more trouble for Lacerta? Having come here to cover the aftermath of an invasion and ending up covering the return of a long-lost hero, would she now be documenting a disaster in progress, or even be thrust into the role of a war correspondent?
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. Joanna listened intensely to the ominous sounds, trying to hear from what direction they were coming.
She looked in the direction of the trees over which Rawn had flown when he dropped her off at the end of their flight, and suddenly she knew.
They were coming from the Spires. Something was happening to the Spires.
Epaulette was lying on her bed next to the ball gown that Joanna now wondered whether she would have the chance to wear. She ran to the bed and picked up the AI, and asked it,
“Epaulette, search all incoming data. Identify sounds coming from the general coordinates of the Spires.” BOOM, BOOM, BOOM.
The device in her hand took only a second to produce an answer. It said, “Dragon games are now in progress at the Spires.”
Joanna was perplexed now. “Dragon games?”
“A form of practice centered on agility and speed in flight and accuracy in tracking and acquiring a target. Now displaying.”
In the air around Joanna appeared a collection of holographic recordings of the event that her AI described. On the grounds of the Spires, a rail gun was set up to fire polymer spheres into the air, composed of a porous material strong enough to withstand the rigor of being launched from the powerful device and the puncturing force of being caught in weredragon
talons at a high velocity in mid-air.
The object of the “dragon games” was for the participants to chase the polymer spheres through the air, overtake them, snag them, and return with them. Joanna watched the recordings, her fear and anxiety turning to fascination, and saw the Knights in dragon form take part in the training event. It actually made her smile to see them take off like scaly, winged rockets in pursuit of the porous projectiles and go arcing swiftly up into the sky after them. They reminded her not so much of strong, brave, bold Knights as they did a lot of flying dogs playing fetch.
“Discontinue playback,” Joanna said. The holograms disappeared. Then, setting
Epaulette back on the bed, she looked up towards the window and once again heard, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. To herself, she said softly, “I have to see this.” And she darted off in the
direction of her closet to find some casual clothes.
_______________
Joanna’s press credentials got her readmitted to the grounds of the Spires, and she went quickly in the direction of the sound of the rail gun. Soon, she came to an open field where the device was set up at an angle to fire the spheres high overhead, as she had seen in the recordings. A dragon Mentor was operating it, and standing in small groups all around were Knights of varying ranks and a few members of the Corps in their reptile forms.
To her continued amusement, the Mentor fired off the spheres three at a time, as she had heard—BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!—and at each launch, three dragons hurled themselves up with furious beats of their wings and thrashes of their tails, and were away like missiles. She peered upwards into the cloudless sky and could make out winged, soaring forms chasing little flying dots.
Something caught her attention back on the ground. One Knight, standing patiently by with arms crossed and wings folded but twitching, seemed to have smoke hanging over his head. No, not hanging over his head—rising from it. Of course: who else would it be?
Joanna called out: “Rawn?”
The dragon turned and showed his face and the curls of anxious smoke wafting from his nostrils, and in a familiar voice, he called back, “Joanna!”
She walked up to him, imagining from the tone of his voice that, if he were wearing his human face, he would be smiling at her. “Rawn,” she said, “I heard the noise from this and didn’t know what to think at first. Or I should say, I'm glad this didn’t turn out to be anything like what I was thinking.”
“Yes,” he replied, the smoke from his nose ebbing away, “I can guess how this would be startling to someone not from Lacerta, who did not live in Silverwing and was not accustomed to it. This is one of our favorite games.”
“I know it’s a training exercise,” Joanna said, “but it certainly looks like everyone is enjoying it.”
They both returned to watching the figures flying up above. “When I finished with my swim at Lake Shimmershine today,” said Rawn, “and I returned here, they asked me to join them in dragon games. They said they would be honored to have me play. Actually, the
honor is mine. To be in the company of my fellow Knights, to practice skills with them, is one of the things I missed the most in the years when I was away. Alone aboard my ship, I would often dream of this very thing.” His voice took on a faraway tone, as if he were lost and adrift
somewhere inside himself, even as he was lost in alien space for so long a time.
“I’ll bet you were one of the best at this,” Joanna said.
He looked down and over at her, and she could swear that she saw a twinkle of
appreciation in his dragon eyes.
On the other side of the rail gun from them, a Knight clutching a ball in his gauntleted hand came swooping in for a landing on the grass, and in the air just above him, two more were flying down with their own catches in hand. The incoming Knight flew in a circle before he touched down, and the ones on the grass before him applauded. Joanna recognized this as the dragon equivalent of a victory lap.
The other two flew laps of their own, to similar applause, before they landed on the grass with their friend. Joanna could not help but be charmed to see these fearsome, powerful beings at play. For all their power and ferocity, the Knights seemed so innocent now.
Standing nearby were a pair of young dragon Knights, one male, one female. The male called, “Sir Rawn, we’re up. The Mentor is about to launch for us.”
Rawn acknowledged the young dragon and said to Joanna, “My turn has come.” And another little pair of smoke curls blossomed up from his nostrils. Joanna understood that this was Rawn’s unique expression of being happily keyed up. There was a fire of excitement inside him. She could guess at other things that must stoke his fire as well.
She let him go to join his companions, and stood by and watched as the Mentor placed three new spheres in the long, upward pointed barrel of the training device. The dragons spread their wings and tensed their tails. The Mentor pressed down his hand on the firing mechanism, and again came the sounds that had brought Joanna out of her quarters:
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! This time, as she was right by the rail gun, the sounds were much louder, and she could feel the concussive thunder of their firing in her bones. She blinked and took a little step backward with a hand on her chest. But the reaction from the trio of dragons was much faster.
In the same instant that the spheres went shooting in a blur into the air, Rawn and his two friends leapt up with slashing tails and furious wing beats, and took off. Smiling, Joanna watched them go. She almost laughed at how quickly Rawn and the other two receded into the distance above and became tiny winged figures against the blue canopy of the sky.
Joanna kept her eyes fixed on Rawn to follow his progress as he went hurtling after what now looked like a little speck high above the trees. She watched him follow a swift and unerring arc in the direction of his target, going into a curling turn before looping back around. In seconds, his dragon figure started into a new arc, speeding back in the direction he came, and swiftly began to loom larger against the sky. Gradually, she began to hear the beating of his wings as she made out the details of his form and his armor, and he quickly descended back, his tail curling proudly, his wings braking his descent with strong beats. His feet touched down on the grass, and he held high in one hand the sphere that he had expertly retrieved.
The other Knights around him threw up their arms and flapped their wings and gave forth a sound of exuberant whooping, a noise that Joanna did not know weredragons were capable of making. She smiled at them, watching the other Knights mill around Rawn and the other two who had gone up with him come in for landings of their own, holding up their own recovered spheres. Though this was a moment that Joanna could not really share with them, she could feel how happy and proud they were just to be who and what they are and to do what they, unique am
ong all the creatures in the galaxy, could do.
Joanna spent the rest of the game session there, standing with Rawn to watch the others go up, and watching when he went up on a couple of other runs. She appreciated that she was seeing a side of the Knights of Lacerta that few other outsiders had ever seen, and she was glad to be able to be there and share this with Rawn. She hoped that at least some of the curls of smoke from his dragon snout were for her.
Late in the afternoon, the gaming session ended. The Mentor deactivated the rail gun, and the throng of Knights all morphed back to human and walked off across the field to whatever other concerns they had for the day. Rawn, taking back his human shape from his reptile form, walked from sharing salutations with his companions back to Joanna. Again, he faced her as the most magnificent man she had ever seen. Smiling softly at her, Rawn asked, “Would you like to have a walk with me?”
“Yes, I would very much,” she replied.
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