Dragon Lord's Hope

by Leslie Chase

  Still, it had to be Karaos. And he had to have a reason for digging here: it was far enough from any source of air that it couldn't have been easy. Aside from the ice farm, the air would be at Fuller Station and that was far enough to make the round trip a pain. A dragon flying out from there wouldn't have been able to work for long before needing to go back and breathe.

  There's only one way to find out what they were looking for, he thought, following the humans inside. Ahead of him, Gillian stared around at the passage as she walked, her shock palpable.

  13

  Gillian

  What on Earth—" Gillian said, looking at the hole melted into the cliff face. Realizing that no one could hear her, she shut her mouth with a snap. The static was worse here, and seemed to get stronger the deeper she went into the tunnel. There was no way her signal was getting through.

  Anyway, we're not on Earth, she reminded herself. And what did this on Mars is clear. It had to have been a dragon.

  Melting this much ice, in these temperatures, would be difficult. But a fire-breathing lizard the size of a bus? That might be able to do it, she thought. Not quickly or easily, perhaps, but it would work.

  Harry ran ahead to the end of the tunnel, excited by his discovery, and for once Gillian couldn't blame him. This was amazing, and the way the light reflected from the tunnel walls was beautiful. Turning, she looked to see what Zardan thought of it, only to see him frowning through his mask.

  She started to ask why, and caught herself in time. Stepping close to him, she pressed her faceplate against his so that they could hear each other.

  "Okay, what's wrong?"

  "I don't like this," he said. "The dragons who dug this out must have been the ones who tried to kill you. This place, whatever it is, brought danger to my mate and I don't like that."

  Gillian hadn't thought about that, and she felt her face pale as his words sank in. The ice cavern seemed a little less inviting once she considered who'd made it. Swallowing, she forced herself to smile. "It's still good that we know what they're doing here, right? I mean, if they wanted this place hidden, then we don't. Maybe once it's not a secret they won't be interested anymore."

  Zardan looked dubious, and Gillian didn't need him to tell her why. Going on past form, they'd try to cover up the find by killing everyone here before they gave up on it... and she still didn't know what it was that they'd found.

  Better fix that, she thought, smiling with a dark humor. Wouldn't want to die without knowing why I'm being killed, after all.

  "The ice could have lifted something from the surface as it froze," she thought aloud. "But it would have crushed whatever it was. Wouldn't it?"

  "I'm not sure," Zardan said, sounding unhappy at the admission. "Dragon technology is tough, very tough. Something of my family's might have survived. but the weight of this ice..."

  He trailed off, and in the silence that followed, Gillian was very aware of just how close their faces were to each other. If it wasn't for the glass between them his lips would be close enough to kiss, and the thought was infinitely distracting.

  The two of them stared at each other, and a tremor of desire ran through Gillian's body. Her breath caught. Swallowing, she pulled back and tried to keep her mind off his oh-so-kissable lips. Anger was a refuge, something to hide behind, and she wrapped it around her like a cloak.

  He's not here to help me, he's here to reclaim his land. She had to keep reminding herself of that. Zardan was an ally, perhaps. He was gorgeous, certainly. But for the sake of her family, she couldn't afford to trust him or let her attraction to him blind her.

  Before she could decide what to do next, Harry came bounding back up the tunnel towards them. Skidding to a stop beside her, he untangled a connector cable from his suit and linked it to hers. Their communicators linked directly, and the static faded to a manageable hiss as he spoke.

  "Stop messing around up here, sis," he said, pointing back down the tunnel. "I can see something in the ice. I think there's a light!"

  "What?" Gillian's head snapped around to look where Harry had been. Was that a dark shape behind the far wall? She couldn't be sure, but it seemed possible. Or maybe it's just darker ice. We can't tell, not like this.

  Killing her flashlight, she waved for Harry to do the same. Plunged into darkness, Gillian's eyes adjusted and there it was. A faint, almost imperceptible red glow from under the ice. There really was a light down there, frozen into ice that hadn't melted in centuries.

  Gillian shivered. It was one thing to know that there were ruins of a thousand-year dead civilization buried on Mars. It was quite another to see the lights of one shining back at her.

  That's enough to make me believe in ghosts, she thought, swallowing nervously.

  "That's impossible," Zardan whispered as he stepped up beside her, pressing his helmet to hers again. His presence comforted her, though she didn't want to admit that. He'd keep her safe from whatever ghosts haunted the ruins, surely? Or would he attract the ghosts of his own kind?

  There's no such thing as ghosts, she told herself firmly. It didn't quite stop her trembling as they approached the wall and its faint red glow.

  "What do you think it is?" she asked him, reaching out to tap the ice with a shaking hand.

  Zardan shrugged, and though she could barely see him in this darkness, she could imagine the frown on his handsome face. The look of irritation at the unanswered question in front of him, the focus in his alien eyes. Stop daydreaming about him, she told herself, trying to focus on the mystery ahead of them. It wasn't easy when he was right there, so close to her.

  Eventually, Zardan brought his helmet back into contact with hers and answered. "I do not know what it is, but I do know how to find out. I can finish what they started."

  Gillian snapped around to look at him, shocked at the idea.

  "You're too badly injured," she objected. "You can't shift, you said so yourself!"

  "I can't fly," he corrected. "And I probably shouldn't shift. But we need to know what's in there. I can manage."

  "Don't be ridiculous. I'll get one of the robots to dig through."

  "Sis," Harry said, startling her. He'd been so quiet that she'd forgotten he was still connected by cable. "I don't think that'll work. I mean, this tunnel is big, maybe even big enough for a mining robot — but how would we get one down here? That ledge outside isn't going to support one, I'm pretty sure."

  Gillian opened her mouth to argue, and then shut it with a snap. He wasn't wrong. With a frustrated groan, she shook her head and started to speak, only for her brother to talk over her.

  "Plus, you know, we've been losing control of the robots around here. I don't think that—"

  "All right, Harry," she snapped, throwing up her hands. "Fine, you're right. Robots are out. We could fetch hand tools, though."

  Even as she said it she was losing confidence in the idea. Going back and fetching them, then digging through however many yards of ice, all of that would take a long time. She peered into the ice again, trying to work out how far away that light was. It wasn't easy to make out, but it was still deep in the ice. Digging that far would be a lot of work, and she was impatient for an answer. All of them were.

  The silence stretched for a long moment, and then she nodded. "Okay, okay. Fine. If you think it's safe, Zardan, shift and see if you can get through. Don't come complaining to me if you hurt yourself, though. I warned you."

  Zardan didn't dignify that with a response, shooing the two humans back up the cavern towards the exit. Grabbing Harry, Gillian pulled him up the tunnel and onto the ledge outside.

  "Harry, I want you to go back to the farm," she said. He started to argue, but she didn't give him a chance to speak.

  "Just do as I say for once, Harry. One of us has to be up there, in case there's news from Dad."

  "Why does it have to be me, though?" Harry's voice was a petulant whine and she pursed her lips.

  "Because you're the youngest, and I say so," she
snapped. As soon as the words were out she knew it wasn't a good answer. Sighing, she tried again. "Okay, no. I can do better than that. It's because I'm terrified that something'll happen to you if you stay. Whatever's in there could be dangerous, and I'm supposed to be looking after you, Harry. I love you."

  Harry glared for a moment, then looked away. Through the glass of his helmet Gillian thought she could see him blush. "That's not playing fair, sis."

  "I know. I'm not trying to be fair." Gillian hugged her little brother. "This isn't a game, and there's no prize for sportsmanship. I can't have you risking your life here. Please go home."

  After a long pause, Harry nodded. "Okay, okay. I'll go back home, and you can play with your dragon boyfriend."

  "He's not my—" Gillian caught herself, felt her cheeks heat, and started again. Don't argue when you're winning. "I mean thank you, Harry. I really do appreciate it."

  "Yeah, yeah." With that, he unplugged the cable from her suit and headed up the narrow path along the cliff. Gillian watched until he was out of sight, hoping that she'd made the right choice in sending him away. If Danforth or Karaos came back, the farm might be even more dangerous than here. It was too late to change her mind now, though. Even if she'd wanted to, there was no way to call Harry back through the static.

  She sat back carefully out of the way of the opening, waiting for Zardan to re-emerge. It wouldn't be safe in the confined spaces in there, not with a dragon breathing fire.

  As though to prove that point, a tremendous rush of steam and fog burst from the opening, freezing in the thin air and falling as snow. Another, and then another followed as Zardan worked his way through the yards of ice.

  Each burst was beautiful as it caught the light, shimmering with a rainbow of colors, and Gillian watched, transfixed. But the work wasn't quick, and she shivered as Zardan sent cloud after cloud of steam rushing out to freeze in the rift.

  Eventually, though, Zardan reappeared from the ice cave. He looked exhausted behind his mask, but he managed a smile and a bow, gesturing for Gillian to go and look at what he'd found. She frowned, wanting to make sure that he was okay first. But she wasn't sure how she could do that, and her curiosity got the better of her anyway. Setting off down the tunnel, she went to see what he'd uncovered.

  The tunnel felt strange underfoot, freshly-frozen ice crunching as Gillian made her way through it. It looked different, too. The red light was bright now, enough that her helmet darkened automatically to cope with the glare. That meant that the ice had been thicker than she'd thought, and sure enough, the newly-cleared area was deep. She was very glad they hadn't tried to excavate it with hand tools.

  At the end of it was a gleaming metal surface, the light coming from a square in its center. Gillian swallowed nervously as she approached it. Knowing there was something stuck in the ice had been bad enough, but seeing it made it feel real. Real and frightening.

  The new ice was treacherous underfoot, and her eyes were locked on the end of the corridor of ice rather than watching where she was stepping. Gillian stumbled and almost fell, would have fallen if Zardan hadn't been there to catch her. Blushing, she pulled away and straightened up.

  She hadn't forgiven him the indignity of the way he'd carried her down the slope, and wasn't going to give him another excuse to do that here.

  Was it really that bad? Part of her argued his case, and she wished it would shut up. Being carried in his arms was too much like something out of her dreams, and she wasn't sure what to think of that. Half infuriated that he'd done it, half regretting that the bulk of her suit had been between him and her skin, she did her best to put it out of her mind.

  As she reached the end of the tunnel, she realized what she was seeing and that drove everything else from her thoughts. It was unmistakably a door. Approaching it carefully, Gillian looked at the controls Zardan had uncovered and swore under her breath. The writing was alien too, of course, but there was no disguising that this was an airlock.

  Why? The dragons had an atmosphere shield around Mars, didn't they? That was what the scientists said, anyway, according to the news shows she'd seen. If Mars had an atmosphere back then, though, why would a building have an airlock?

  Because it's not a building. The thought turned up unbidden, but it fitted. The whole wall was at an odd angle, and it curved softly. And, she reminded herself, it was embedded ice miles above the Martian surface. It had to be something else, something mobile.

  It had to be a spaceship.

  Her heart hammered at the thought. An alien spaceship. This would be the first one that anyone had found, and that made it a prize worth killing for. People would pay any amount for it, especially if it still worked. And the light that still shone showed that at least some of it was functional.

  Stepping up to the airlock door she tentatively reached out with a gloved hand to touch the smooth metal surface. Zardan joined her a second later, reaching past her to the controls. He seemed as surprised as she was when they responded to his touch and the door slowly ground open. Nervously, Gillian shone her light inside.

  It wasn't like a human airlock, a small space with another door at the far side. Instead, it opened into a large room, dark and foreboding. Gillian took a step forward, planning to explore, but Zardan was having none of that. Grabbing her, he turned and put her down on the ice behind him. This time, Gillian didn't bother trying to struggle. There wasn't really any point, not when he was strong enough to casually carry her around.

  Fuming silently as he went ahead of her, she watched him step carefully through the doorway. A second later he turned to her and beckoned her to follow him. Why does he have to be so infuriating? she asked herself as she followed him inside. Perhaps he was only trying to keep her safe, but still it irked her that he had to be the first one inside.

  She forgot about her irritation when she saw what her suit's environmental scanner was registering. Her suit was picking up pressure outside, despite the wide-open door behind her. That ought to be impossible.

  Low pressure, not enough to breathe, but it was there. And growing. She watched the needle creep up the dial for a moment, and looked back to make sure that the door hadn't shut behind them. No, it was still open to the near-vacuum outside, but whatever was filling the room with air didn't seem to care about that. Some kind of forcefield held the air inside.

  She'd heard that the dragons had technology like that, the same thing that they'd used to give Mars an atmosphere but on a smaller scale. Knowing the technology existed and seeing it in action were two different things, though. This ought to be impossible, and she shivered.

  Zardan didn't seem to find that wonder out of the ordinary, though. His focus was on the ship itself, looking around as though he'd seen a ghost. Gillian felt the pain washing through him as his face tightened. Whatever this place was, it clearly woke memories for him. Memories that, from the look of him, he'd rather leave buried. Going to his side, Gillian put her arm around his waist — no matter how angry she might be with him for manhandling her, she didn't want to see him suffer.

  He hugged her back fiercely, as though she was an anchor that could keep him from drifting off into the darkness. Gillian gasped as his embrace squeezed the air from her lungs, but she didn't pull away. Instead she took comfort from the contact too, leaning into Zardan's perfect body and closing her eyes.

  A loud beep filled her helmet as the suit announced the atmosphere outside safe to breathe. Gillian pulled back from Zardan, looking at the readout and wondering if she could trust it. Zardan showed no such worries, though, pulling off his airmask and dropping it. When he didn't show any signs of distress, Gillian followed more carefully, undoing her helmet and clipping it to her belt.

  The air wasn't just breathable, it was warm. Warm in a way that the ice farm rarely got, warm like she remembered from summers on Earth. A faint, unpleasant smell, like plastic burning, carried on the soft breeze that flowed through the room, but it was breathable. After a thousand years, that
was more than remarkable. It was a miracle.

  "What the hell is this?" Gillian asked as she looked around the room. The walls were intricately carved with an abstract pattern that glittered in the beam of her flashlight. It was beautiful but overwhelming. "How can we breathe?"

  "An airmaker," Zardan replied, running his fingers over the patterns beside him. The pain in his voice was unmistakable. "It can pump out air as long as there's power. I think it's been in standby mode, and only switched on now that someone's here to breathe the air it makes. No point in wasting it on the dead."

  That bitter sentence hung between them for a second before Zardan sniffed and continued, frowning. "It's been damaged since I was last here, though."

  "You've been here before?" she asked impatiently. He might be suffering, but she still deserved answers. "Where are we, then?"

  Zardan turned to her, looking her in the eyes with his distractingly intense gaze. "Unless I'm mistaken, this is my aunt's yacht, the Grace of Herendar."

  Hearing it said aloud made it more real. This was a spaceship. An actual alien spaceship. Gillian felt dizzy at the thought.

  It wasn't like the human spaceship that she'd ridden on the journey from Earth. The dragons had been able to travel from star to star, and the secrets of their engines were lost in the fall of the Empire. If this ship had been able to travel faster than light, then it was a jewel beyond price.

  "Is this... is it a starship?" Gillian asked, steadying herself against the wall. That would be like striking gold — valuable, crazily valuable, but dangerous too. No wonder people would kill over this find, it was worth far more than an ice farm could ever be.

  Zardan nodded, moving to her side. "It was. Who knows if the drive will still function? But it hardly matters, because even if it's broken there are people who will pay a fortune for a chance to learn from it."