The Dragon Circle

by Irene Radford

  The Tracker didn’t know how to be soft. The men of the village had welcomed her as an equal. No questions about her masculine garb, her father, brother, or husband. She was a Tracker and that was all that was important.

  Well, he could be strong and insistent as well.

  “Try again, Tracker,” he ordered. “I have to find my brother before the IMPs take him back to their ship.”

  She held up her right hand, palm out, and once again made a full circle. She paused briefly as she faced south by east, shook her head, and moved on.

  “Nothing.”

  “What about where you paused?” Loki turned to face in that direction. All he could see were undulating hills of forest and meadow. Great swaths of pristine land waiting to be to put to the plow.

  If the IMPs were already here, then the process of destruction was about to begin.

  Unless . . .

  “We can’t let any one of those twenty IMPs from the lander, or the rest of the ship’s complement leave the planet. We have to find and destroy the second beacon before another ship comes.”

  “We must kill the Others for what they have done to Stargod Konner,” Dalleena said. Her voice sounded neutral, but her clenched teeth and fists told another story.

  Loki’s face grew cold and his stomach knotted. He’d taken one life. Even in self-defense, the death throes of Hanassa, the agony Loki’s soul had shared with the man, haunted him still.

  “I will not countenance their deaths. I must find a better way.”

  “Stand down, Lieutenant Talbot,” Commander Leonard ordered.

  Kat pursed her lips, biting back the angry words on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to pace the tiny office of the ship’s captain. Protocol demanded that she remain at parade rest. She felt hunched and confined beneath the low ceiling. Her bushie height and long legs made all standard military living quarters claustrophobic.

  Rigid training kept her posture erect even if her cap did brush the ceiling.

  “May I ask for an explanation, Captain, sir?”

  “If I give you one, it is not because I cater to your bloated sense of superior knowledge in this issue.” Commander Leonard sighed. She fiddled with her electronic pencil and the series of screens built into her desktop.

  A long stretch of silence. Kat did not break the tension with further questions.

  “I do not want you taking point on the pursuit of the O’Haras because I believe your emotions are overriding your judgment,” Leonard said at last. She did not look at Kat. For some reason, her screens seemed more important than her helmsman.

  “Accompanying the next contingent of Marines dirtside is hardly taking point, sir.” Kat almost snapped a salute to emphasize her words. At the last moment she realized the reflexive gesture was not necessary.

  “I know you, Kat. You would not allow any mere Marine to lead.” In the ship’s convoluted hierarchy, the Marines ranked well below those who actually ran the ship, and below the judiciary arm that directed criminal investigations and capture.

  Kat almost smiled.

  “I obey your orders, sir. I take them very seriously. Leading the Marines is not an option, though most of the time they need to be led.”

  Commander Leonard swallowed a smile.

  “You are too close to the issue, Kat. I will not have you turning a normal police pursuit into a personal vendetta.”

  “Sir . . .”

  “I know your history, Lieutenant Talbot.”

  Kat clamped her mouth shut on her protest. No one knew her full history. No one. She’d made certain all records of her first seven years of life had been destroyed.

  “I know that Governor Talbot adopted you when you were quite young. I also know that the O’Hara clan originated on your home planet. The connection is there. For some reason I will leave unexplored, you have a connection to the men we chase. You will have your opportunity for confrontation after they are captured. Not before.”

  Kat opened her mouth to say something, anything to get herself on the next lander.

  “You will not sneak aboard the landers even if I have to confine you to quarters under armed guard, Lieutenant. Dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kat saluted crisply, did a precise about-face, and marched out of the captain’s office.

  She muttered seven oaths in six different languages, none of them Terran Standard. If she disobeyed orders and sneaked aboard a lander, then her career was over. Everything she’d worked for, all of the disadvantages she’d overcome, were for naught.

  Was revenge against the O’Haras worth it?

  CHAPTER 17

  ”GET YOUR NOSE out of the book, professor, and come help us.”

  Kim looked up from his journal, blinking at Loki’s silhouette in the open doorway. Dalleena stood just behind him. “What?” he managed to stammer, his thoughts still on the sequence of events he was cataloging for preparing the body to engage psi powers—or magic. He needed help if he was to understand how and why Taneeo had become Hanassa’s victim once more. Kim was also puzzled about Taneeo’s sudden antipathy toward Pryth. A few days ago they had been great friends, heads together discussing the value of this herbal infusion over that salve to treat a rash among the children who played too close to the wetlands.

  Did his sudden dislike for the old woman indicate a residual of Hanassa’s hatred for Pryth. If so, could that kernel of distrust leave a pathway for Hanassa’s malignant spirit to return to the village priest?

  Something about Konner’s earlier communication. A warning of some sort. The locals and the planet were in danger from . . . His mind refused to focus on anything but the text he input to his reader. He needed to finish before the Tambootie wore off.

  “You know we really should name this planet,” he mused. “I think we should start calling it Kardia Hodos, the name you suggested.” Consolidating his thoughts on developing their psi powers was much more important than Loki’s panics. Perhaps a little more of the Tambootie would inspire him.

  “Later, Kim. We have a problem.” Loki yanked the reader out of Kim’s hands and tossed it aside. It landed with a thud on the mattress.

  Kim winced. Loki’s violent treatment of a reader indicated more than just his usual simmering temper.

  “What is so important that you have to interrupt . . .”

  “The IMPs have Konner.”

  The world stilled for a moment. Kim heard his own heartbeat.

  “They’ve landed? Already?”

  “Already.”

  “We have to evacuate. Raaskan mentioned some caves to the southeast. The harvest is almost in and stored. We can take everything. Pack it onto the backs of the cattle and the steeds. The women and children need to go first. The men should stay behind to dismantle the village, obliterate all trace of us . . . Hestiia. Where is Hestiia?”

  “We need to rescue Konner.”

  “We need to rescue Konner,” Kim echoed. His brother’s words sank in. “We still need to evacuate. Raaskan can handle that while you and I find Konner.”

  “If we make certain none of the IMPs ever leaves this planet, we don’t have to evacuate.”

  That thought stopped Kim. Could they strand the entire crew on this planet? Tantamount to a prison sentence for life. For future generations. That would be treating the IMPs worse than they had treated Kim and his brothers.

  “They are foreign invaders. We are defending the planet and its people by doing this,” Loki said with force. Obviously, he had read Kim’s mind again. He grabbed the front of Kim’s vest and stared directly into his eyes. “We have to do this.”

  “How?” Kim swallowed his misgivings. For Hestiia and her people, for the future of an entire planet, they had to do it. They had to defend themselves against foreign invaders, just as Earth had defended itself against the Kree.

  Kim did not like that analogy. Humans had stolen tech from the winged aliens and used it to expand their own empire beyond their own solar system.

  “I shall gather warriors
from all of the villages. We shall ambush the Others and kill them all. There are only twenty of them,” Dalleena said from behind Loki.

  “Oh, there are a lot more than twenty of them,” Loki replied almost on a sneer. “Twenty came down in the lander. That was just the first wave. There are probably three hundred more up on the cruiser.”

  “Three hundred?” Dalleena looked as if she needed to sit down. “An entire city of the Others.”

  Then she jerked her head up and over to her left. Her nose worked like a cat’s did when scenting the air. Then she raised her right arm to shoulder level, palm forward. She waved it back and forth until she settled on a generally easterly direction. “Konner,” she breathed. A great deal of relief flooded her face.

  Kim felt the same emotion.

  “Where?” Loki and Kim asked on the same heartbeat.

  “There,” she pointed due east, toward the river mouth.

  “Near or far?” Kim asked. He’d seen the woman in action last night. This was another talent he needed to record. The basket of Tambootie and his reader called to him, in an almost audible siren song.

  NO! he told himself. First they needed to rescue Konner.

  “Not across the ocean, but far.” She began walking out of the village and along the riverbank toward the bay.

  “I did not hear the shuttle go overhead,” Kim said.

  “You wouldn’t with your nose in a book,” Loki replied.

  Dalleena just kept walking.

  “Is he safe?” Kim asked her.

  “Cannot tell.” She stepped over a moss-covered log.

  Last night she’d been oblivious to obstacles. Did distance from her target weaken her trance?

  “We may need help,” Loki said practically. “Raaskan, Yaakke, a few of the men with warrior experience. Weapons.”

  “Hestiia. I can’t leave without telling her.” Kim turned back. His wife would be in the fields with all the others, bringing in the last of the harvest. The wheat he had helped plant. The people he had helped rescue from a bloodthirsty priest. The village he had helped build. “I have to stay and defend this place.” If he left now, he might never return.

  Dalleena just kept walking.

  “What about Konner?” Loki stopped long enough to stare at Kim. “What about rescuing our brother?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t just . . . I . . .” For the first time in his life Kim knew the terrible indecision of choosing between protecting the people he loved as family and his brothers who had shared most of his life’s adventures.

  Dalleena just kept walking.

  “I’ll catch up. I’ll bring men and weapons.” Light dazzled around the edges of his vision. His gut churned with premonition. “I have to hold Hestiia in my arms one more time.”

  Kat prowled Jupiter. Each long stride only fueled her frustration. The ship’s passageways were too small for her. The half-mile circumference and the one-mile length of the torpedo-shaped vessel were too short. There was not enough space to burn off the energy that pulsed through her system. She headed for the outer areas of heavier gravity. The constant hum of the king stone at the exact center of the ship quieted just a little. She breathed easier.

  Good thing Jupiter possessed only one king stone. If each of the three arrays of twelve drivers and one hundred forty-four directionals—equally spaced along the length of the ship—fed into a separate king stone, she’d probably go crazy.

  Or was that crazier?

  Despite Commander Leonard’s orders, she still sought a way to get aboard the next lander to the surface. She needed to confront the O’Hara brothers face-to-face. She needed to be the one to bring them to justice.

  Her path led past the Marine ready room. Twenty men and women strapped on spider silk armor, cleaned and charged weapons, checked EVA suits, and excitedly traded insults. Kat itched to share in the precombat camaraderie. She’d done her share of combat training. But since going into space, all of her preparations had been with ship’s weapons and shielding, space tactics, and flight plans. Her dirtside skills must be getting as stale as unscrubbed air.

  Could she use that as an excuse to get a Marine officer to request her presence in the landing crew?

  “Balinakis is going soft. He’s afraid of a tough criminal recovery,” a female corporal muttered. Her short, squarish figure suggested civil lineage. But her speech patterns and diction had a lisping whistle that came from a bush planet on the outskirts of GTE space.

  Kat paused outside the ready room’s open hatch to listen.

  “I heard that the judge actually ordered Capt’n Leonard not to follow the marking beacon attached to Sirius,” a tall, blond sergeant, decisively bushie in his size and speech, replied. “Clear violation of judicial protocol, if you ask me.”

  Kat knew that gossip and rumor flew through the ship at faster-than-light speed. Eavesdropping on enlisted personnel often provided her with more accurate information than official notifications. She pressed herself against the bulkhead, willing herself to remain unnoticed by the Marines.

  “I’d like to see us strand the judge on a Bush planet and let Captain Leonard take his place. She’s fairer and just as knowledgeable about the law,” Sergeant Kent Brewster grumbled. That tall, dark-haired noncom had beaten her three times in poker, the only person aboard who could.

  “We’re Marines, not SBs,” a young private protested. “We owe our loyalty to the judiciary, not the ship’s crew.”

  “We owe our loyalty to justice,” the female corporal sneered. “Fat lot of justice anywhere in the GTE.” Her last statement was so quiet Kat had to strain to hear it.

  A rumble of agreement rippled around the ready room followed by silence.

  If she were leading this squad, she’d be hesitant to have so many bushies in the group. They sounded angry enough to find excuses to strand themselves dirtside. If this lot of combat veterans sided with the natives and mounted a defense against the rest of the crew, they’d have a full-blown mutiny aboard.

  It had happened before. Three times in the last decade. Bushie crews had deserted ship en masse and sided with Free Market merchants. One crew surrendered to the Kree rather than serve under a particularly harsh civil captain.

  Kat hastened back toward Captain Leonard’s office. Now she had a reason to join the landing crew. Someone had to keep the Marines in line and fighting for the right side.

  She ran right into Lieutenant Commander M’Berra.

  “Excuse me, sir. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “Stand down, Lieutenant,” M’Berra smiled. His large white teeth bit at his lip.

  “I have serious breaches of loyalty to report, sir. I need to get to Captain Leonard.” Kat tried edging around the big black man.

  “I heard the talk as well, Kat.” He looked back toward the Marine ready room. Still he did not budge from the narrow passageway.

  “Then you know, sir, that I must report . . .”

  “Consider your report given, Lieutenant.” He stared at her with a stern expression Kat could not read. She was too far away from a crystal array for her senses to open and look beyond the surface of the man.

  “Sir, in Jupiter’s best interest I believe I should accompany the next landing mission.” Kat squared her shoulders and stared the man in the eye. They were nearly of a height. She could match him stubborn for stubborn.

  “In Jupiter’s best interest, I am leading the next landing mission. You stay here and keep an eye on the rest of the Marines.”

  “But . . . sir.”

  “Stand down, Lieutenant. You have your orders. And not a word of this to anyone else.”

  “Yes, sir.” Her words lacked her usual enthusiasm.

  Konner ran his hands lovingly over the control interface of the IMP lander that had carried him far away from his enemies. Such an efficient machine, well maintained, responsive, and fast. It leaped to obey his slightest touch on the control screens. He didn’t even need an electronic pencil to trigger the ignition
.

  But it had no personality. The ship’s voice had no expression, no quirks, just the bland computer-generated tones, neither male nor female. Obedient and unthinking.

  “Sorry to do this to you,” he said to the colorless voice embedded in the computer.

  No response. He hadn’t asked for one. That blind obedience of a machine made his task so much easier. He’d never be able to consign Rover to the same fate. Rover, like Sirius, was nearly a member of the family.

  “Autopilot on,” Konner said firmly.

  “Autopilot on,” the computer confirmed. The sound irritated Konner with its artificiality.

  He punched in the coordinates he wanted.

  At the last moment he remembered to program in a thirty-second delay. Then he dove for the exit hatch, quite convenient to the pilot’s seat rather than halfway back in the vessel as on Rover. The hatch closed automatically as soon as he cleared it.

  With a roar that set Konner’s teeth on edge and sent a flock of birds into squawking flight, the lander lifted straight up. Beach sand, small rocks, and bits of shell blasted his face. He had to turn and cover his eyes until the debris settled. He risked a look at the vessel as it reached an elevation of thirty meters. At that moment it shot forward. A nice arcing flight up to thirty-five hundred meters, then a straight plunge down into the watery depths at about the center of the ocean.

  He watched it fall. “It’s just a machine,” he reminded himself. “The thing needed a bath anyway, to get rid of that green plant stuff in the outer atmosphere that eats metal.” He needed to wash Rover. His mission to destroy the beacon had consumed his thoughts for the last full day to the point where he’d forgotten that little idiosyncrasy of this planet. If he left that chore another full day, the plant would begin to compromise the outer hull of his shuttle.

  From orbit this world looked green because of a layer of diatomaceous plant life in the upper atmosphere. Passage through the layer left a coating of the metal-eating substance on the vessel. A quick dunk in the bay seemed to take care of it.