The Dragon Circle

by Irene Radford

  “Kim?” Loki’s voice summoned him from outside. “Konner just commed. We’ve got trouble.”

  Kim closed his eyes and regrouped his senses. Already he longed for the clarity Tambootie gave his mind.

  Clarity or hallucinations? He swallowed deeply and kept his hands out of the pocket that held the Tambootie.

  Without another word he ducked out of the hut to join his brother.

  Taneeo’s grunt of satisfaction bothered him more than all of his other questions.

  CHAPTER 14

  ”WHERE ARE the IMPs now?” Konner asked, closing down his comm unit.

  “The Others come closer,” Dalleena whispered. A glaze covered her eyes and she kept one hand extended toward the windscreen, palm questing outward.

  “How much closer?” Konner spared her an extra few moments from his instruments.

  The shuttle flew clear of the continent. The sea sparkled in the autumnal sunshine. He picked out the frolicking forms of dolphinlike creatures. The locals called them “mandelphs” and considered them warriors of old who had angered the gods. Their souls had been condemned to wander the seas for eternity. Their hunger for their lost humanity made them follow ships and rescue drowning sailors.

  “Less than one third of daylight.”

  “Then they will have to orbit to pick their parking spot and deploy a lander. Six hours until they home in on the beacon’s last location.” He prayed to his mother’s god and St. Bridget and whomever else might be listening that he destroyed the thing in time to confuse the enemy.

  “Is it enough time?” she asked. At last she turned and looked at him full on. Other than wide eyes, she showed no trace of fear.

  “Since I do not have to return you to the village first, we have enough time. Thank you.”

  She cracked half a smile.

  “You realize that once we destroy the beacon, we will have a long and hard trip back to the village. Many days, with minimal provisions.”

  She nodded.

  “Good girl.” He patted her hand.

  “I must see the task through to completion. ’Tis part of the code.” She did not withdraw her hand from his touch.

  This could get interesting.

  “Whose code?” he asked, leaving his hand atop hers. “I wasn’t aware there were any laws at all except for the ones Hanassa made up in the name of Simurgh to suit his own desires.”

  “The code of my father and his father and grandfather before him. ’Tis part of being a Tracker, seeing the lost thing returned to where it needs to be. Your bee-kan needs to be destroyed in the fiery mouth of the volcano. I will see it through.” She looked off to their left, staring at the empty sea.

  “I do not think that Sam Eyeam has the same Tracker code that I do.”

  “Why do you believe that?” Konner wished he understood why she considered the freelance agent a Tracker. Now if the man was a bounty hunter, a Tracking talent might come in handy.

  “He did not acknowledge the secret sign I gave him.”

  “I did not see you . . .”

  “I told you it is secret, passed from one Tracker to the other. Only we may know it. He does not know it. He does not follow the code.”

  “In other words, don’t trust him.”

  They flew on in silence. Dalleena raised her free hand occasionally to sense the approach of the IMPs. As much as possible, Konner slipped his fingers around hers. Sometimes she seemed hesitant to continue touching him, then she’d sigh heavily and relax into the gentle bonding.

  “My villagers welcomed you without question. They honored you. I do not understand,” he said after a while.

  “Trackers are rare. We provide a service no other can. We earn our keep.” Sam Eyeam could make more than his keep if he had a true tracking talent. A lot more.

  “But my people did not question your word that you are a Tracker.”

  “I showed them this.” Dalleena swept her mass of dark hair off to her back, then slipped vest and shirt free of her left shoulder.

  Konner’s gaze rested upon a small blue tattoo of a right hand, palm out. Meticulously drawn, he could almost pick out her fingerprints on it.

  He dared look no further than the emblem. Her breasts swelled nicely above their confining band. He traced the tattoo with a delicate finger, wishing he dared drop his hand lower.

  “Only Trackers are honored with this symbol. I had to successfully find three lost ones and return them home alive before I could call myself a Tracker.”

  She replaced her shirt and vest and raised her hand in questing pose once more. “They come. More quickly,” she said quietly. Her grip on his hand tightened.

  The shoreline of the Great Bay smudged the horizon.

  A quick glance at his instruments confirmed the presence of a ship near parking orbit. Had they found and boarded Sirius? Had they left his ship intact? Or did they simply follow the beacon?

  “They didn’t stop to take in the sights, that’s for certain,” Konner quipped. But then, they’d had the beacon to follow and didn’t need to do full surveys before making decisions about landing. How did they make it through the blasted asteroid belt so quickly? “We’ll beat them to the volcano. Just.” He boosted speed, heedless of the sonic boom he created and the vast amount of fuel he consumed.

  Within a few moments, Rover’s instruments lost track of the IMP cruiser. “Damn. No satellites to bounce signals!” He slammed his fist into the console. He couldn’t even tap into the more extensive sensors aboard Sirius. He’d parked her over the horizon to keep the locals from noticing a new “star” in the firmament.

  The IMPs would not be so careful. They had no vested interest in keeping the locals ignorant of the outside and tied to a self-sufficient agrarian economy.

  “Where are they?”

  “They have not yet launched a . . . ‘lander?’ ” Dalleena made the last word a question.

  He jerked an abrupt nod that she had remembered the word correctly. Then he eased his speed up a notch. Inwardly he cringed at the thought of the noise his passage must create for the inhabitants below.

  The Southern Mountains loomed ahead. Konner shed altitude and speed. The butterflies in his stomach grew to the size of bats.

  Dalleena’s knuckles turned white where she gripped her seat. Her sensing hand came up once more. She’d checked on the IMPs a lot since they had left the sea behind. And removed her hand from his, leaving him isolated and alone. “The . . . ship splits. Two pieces. One very large. One smaller. Moving fast. The lander?”

  Konner gulped. Moving fast could mean any speed to Dalleena who had grown up expecting paces no faster than the hybrid horses domesticated by the tribes.

  “Faster than us?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

  “Much faster. Spiraling through the air. Aiming for us.”

  “Damn.” After a few seconds’ thought he half smiled. “I’m not the pilot Loki is, but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

  Dalleena cocked her head in question but said nothing. If she did not understand the phrase, she’d figure it out soon enough.

  He liked that.

  Abruptly he changed course and dropped altitude. Mountain peaks now rose above him. His magnetic readings began to spin. He let his mind go blank a moment before looking out the window. Spidery blue lines flickered in and out of sight. Lines of unexplained energy akin to transactional gravitons. Pryth and the dragons called them ley lines. They dribbled away to nothing in the foothills of the blown-out volcano. The eruption must have exploded with massive power to disrupt magnetic forces and the ley lines.

  Konner could use the disruption to lead the IMPs a merry chase.

  He popped up above the mountain peaks and the electronic magnetic fluctuations or EMF disruption long enough to give the IMP sensors a glimpse of him, way west of his target. Then he dropped down again and wove a serpentine course back north. When he judged himself far enough away from the volcano, he rose up again, briefly. Only long enough for the sen
sors to blip before he dove back down again.

  If this IMP captain was even a degree less perceptive than the last one who had chased the O’Hara brothers, he should plot a trajectory based upon the last two sightings and look for the shuttle along the line of mountains running north and south to divide the continent nearly into two equal parts.

  Konner circled around and took the fastest course toward the volcano, as high as he could, giving himself sufficient distance from the ground, but not to be out of the mask of EMF.

  Dalleena bared her teeth at him in a half grimace half smile. “Is this what living in your world is like?”

  “Pretty much.” Konner suppressed a laugh of exhilaration as the broken mouth of the volcano crater came into view. He did not bother with finesse. He did not bother with comfort. He needed to set the shuttle down within the confines of the crater as quickly as possible.

  Rocked and jolted by rapid changes from the VTOL jets he barely secured the vehicle before grabbing the beacon out of Dalleena’s lap and diving out the hatch. She came right on his heels, not even wrinkling her nose at the hot dry air stench.

  “What about the lander?” she gasped, trying to keep up with him.

  “We’ll worry about that later.”

  They maintained silence on the trek down into the heart of the mountain. Konner could tell that Dalleena was fairly bursting with questions. Still, she saved them. She even took his lead in sipping from the sulfurous stream, rolling the precious moisture around in her mouth before swallowing. The grimace on her face gave him a brief chuckle.

  “You like this stuff no better than I,” she retorted, then took a second, longer drink. This time she raised her eyebrows in puzzlement. A third mouthful and she quirked her mouth up on one side. A delightful dimple made the expression into a silent exclamation point. “I could get used to this.”

  “You may have to. The lava pit is over here.” With careful, almost reverential steps he wound his way around the obstacles in the big cavern, through several smaller ones, each housing a generator or transformer, into the room where Big Bertha, the monster steam generator, dwelled.

  Thankfully the dragongate remained silent, between cycles. He did not know if he would be able to think straight with the hum in the back of his head.

  Dalleena stopped short at sight of the machine that filled nearly an acre of cavern. Her questing hand came up. She shook her head and thrust the hand forward with determination.

  “Big Bertha is not lost,” Konner chuckled.

  “Perhaps not. But I think I may be.” Tentatively, she used her questing hand to touch the metal surface of the generator. The first contact led to a more thorough tactile exploration.

  “Come, we still have a chore to perform.” Konner stepped into a side tunnel well away from the dragongate. No sense in taking a chance on the wormhole opening and taking the beacon to yet another destination. Though, if he could send it to the south pole, it might divert the IMPs long enough to finish repairs on the Sirius so that the O’Hara brothers could get the hell out of Dodge.

  But that would not protect Dalleena and her people from the ravages of civilization that must follow on the heels of the IMP invasion.

  He balanced on the edge of the lava pit.

  The beacon weighed heavily in his hands. A stream of molten rock shot upward. Heat blasted him. Sweat broke out on his brow and back.

  He had to destroy it. He and his brothers would deal with the IMPs somehow. He could not take a chance on another ship following the beacon here.

  Without further thought, he hurled the beacon far out over the pit. A pitiful distance compared to the wide stretch of the opening. He watched it arc gracefully, a diminishing speck that dropped and dropped, a thousand feet or more into the roiling mass of the pit.

  “Good-bye, Melinda. So much for your treachery,” he sighed. He prayed that Sam Eyeam had taken the second beacon out of the system.

  But it was already too late. The IMPs had found the O’Hara brothers and a pristine planet ready for exploitation.

  The dragongate hummed loudly. Dalleena jerked her attention away from the tiny burst of flame that was the beacon. She cocked her head, listening acutely. Her right hand came up. Konner steadied her balance.

  The gate silenced abruptly. Too quickly. Normally, it took a full minute to open completely and then another to close. This opening had lasted only a few heartbeats. Or had he been distracted with thoughts of the beacon and not heard the beginning of the cycle?

  Too soon the thing began to hum again. He headed back to Big Bertha’s cavern. Before he could gain a sighting on the dragongate tunnel, the thing reached a climactic pitch and grew silent.

  “What the . . . ?” Konner nearly ran to the edge of the portal, Dalleena close upon his heels.

  All he saw was the roiling mass of molten lava shooting flaming rock high enough to force him back from the lip as he flung his arm over his eyes to protect them.

  The enemy is come. They cannot be allowed to destroy us or our home. We are responsible for the safety of this world. We will guard it at whatever cost. Even the death of the Stargods.

  What is this? Sam Eyeam returns to my senses. He is stranded. He has no device that is the voice of Hanassa and speaks to the stars. He has no shelter, no food, no transportation. I must return him to the land of the Coros. But not too close. A band of Rovers will protect him as they wander westward. They will also keep Sam Eyeam from returning to the land of the Coros until his time is proper. Stargod Konner will find him later.

  CHAPTER 15

  KONNER STOOD in the dragongate tunnel for many long moments. He wished for a wrist chrono to time the portal. He’d left his on Sirius. What need of digital time in a society that measured its passage in seasons and generations.

  He sighed heavily. What two places had it opened to in rapid succession before he watched it so diligently?

  As best he could guess, the portal had not opened in half an hour. He could not wait any longer hoping that in the next few heartbeats he would see the green clearing across the river from his village.

  In the last battle with Hanassa, he had destroyed the only remote that controlled the gate. The dragongate reverted to its own unmappable schedule.

  “Dalleena, we’ll have to take our chances with the desert.”

  “Shall we fill the waterskins at this creek?” She looked reluctantly at Big Bertha. He could not read her thoughts or emotions.

  “There is a plateau nearby where the water is sweeter. We can harvest a few fresh greens there to supplement our rations.” Time was he’d have been perfectly happy with reconstituted vegetable protein. Now he knew the true joy of flavor and texture, spices that burst upon the tongue, crisp vegetables, and juicy fruits. He had learned to appreciate sharing his meals. True food nurtured the palate and the soul as well as the body. After five months of eating food cooked over an open fire, he’d never settle for ship’s rations in their Insta-hot® packets again. No wonder fresh food was the most valuable commodity in the Galactic Terran Empire.

  On the trek back to the surface, Konner paused in the throne room. He scanned with his senses as well as his portable instruments for signs of recent habitation. The throne carved of silver bloodwood remained where he’d last seen it. The dust around the throne and the half finished altar remained free of new scuff marks since he and his brothers had been here . . . was it only yesterday?

  The remnants of an old fire in one of the outer caverns looked cold and undisturbed. Whatever body Hanassa might inhabit, he had not come back since stealing the beacon and selling it to Sam Eyeam.

  “Konner, wait,” Dalleena whispered. She clutched at his sleeve.

  Instantly, he froze in place. “What?” he mouthed. She cocked her head toward the narrow opening with harsh sunlight streaming through it.

  Then he heard what she had sensed. Voices. Footsteps. The hatch of a shuttle opening. The IMPs had penetrated Rover.

  “Hide!” Konner shoved her behin
d him. Together they crouched behind an outcropping. He wrapped his arms around her, making them one object. With luck, and if God and all the saints looked upon them with favor, the desert heat concentrated into the bowl of the crater and the screwed magnetics would scramble their sensors.

  “Lieutenant, I’m picking up a reading,” an anonymous female voice announced in excited tones. No doubt she already had designs on the reward for the capture of any O’Hara. Doubled by Melinda if Konner were the one captured.

  What could he do?

  “We have to run back to the pit,” Konner whispered to Dalleena. “The heat will confuse their instruments, and maybe the dragongate will open for us.”

  She nodded mutely.

  With one ear tuned to the proceedings outside, he whispered, “Ready, set, go.”

  They pelted back the way they had come as fast as they could.

  “Two of ’em. Running,” the same female voice cried.

  Dozens of feet pounded the baked dirt. Then came the distinctive thud and “Oof,” of someone measuring their length against the ground, or one of the columns.

  “Lights! Someone get some lights,” an authoritative male voice called.

  Konner ducked into the throne room. He risked his own light to orient his sense of direction to the exit. Together, he and Dalleena skidded around the corner and into the long tunnel that led downward. Ever downward.

  Sweat dripped into his eyes and drenched his shirt. His mouth dried and his heart pounded too fast. The full length of his thighs ached and the soles of his feet burned.

  At the creek, both he and Dalleena paused long enough to scoop up a few mouthfuls of water. If they were hurting from the mad dash through rough terrain with the intense heat, the IMPs must be in a sorry state. They had a few moments to breathe. And think.

  “How do we get out of this?” he asked the air, not expecting an answer.

  The dragongate hummed in the back of his mind.

  Footsteps pounded on the long downgrade of the tunnel.

  “Come.” He grabbed Dalleena’s hand and dragged her back through the maze of caverns.