Star Dragon Box Set One

by Blaze Ward

  Except he was already out of uniform. It had been packed early, and hidden. He was undercover. Should he grow a beard?

  He’d never gone more than three days without shaving, since he started.

  What kind of Undercover Agent could he be, with hair already a week past the point he should have gone to the barber, and a beard?

  Gareth hadn’t come to any conclusion by the time he rejoined the woman scientist, but his brain was percolating like a proper coffee pot.

  She must have been up for a while, because she had already gotten cleaned up and changed from her pajamas into an outfit similar to yesterdays: harem-like pants in baby blue with a lavender tunic over that, wrapped by a cute belt in black leather with all sorts of decorative, silver bangles.

  She handed him a mug of steaming tea and smiled.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” she asked.

  “Refreshed,” he discovered as he said the word.

  Really spot-on. Like he had just slept twenty-four hours after eating the best ribeye possible.

  “Good,” she said. “Come with me.”

  He followed her into the bathroom. She pressed a hidden catch and the back of the linen closet opened into a hidden room beyond. They went through, and Gareth found himself back in the room with the dentist chair, but the walls were more of a brown color.

  Beyond it, the same kind of control room as at her lab.

  Back where her bedroom would have been, in the other apartment, a working space like what he was really expecting. Just a single workbench with the black top, scarred and stained and melted in a few places.

  A computer on a desk in the corner.

  Restaurant-sized refrigerators took up the whole back, three of them.

  She moved around the workbench and gestured him to stand across from her.

  “You here,” she ordered mildly. “I need to take some blood, and then test how it will react. Take off your outer shirt, please.”

  She was more relaxed today. That much was obvious. Maybe it was escaping, and being saved, and escaping again. Plus a good night’s sleep, even if she had to have a human to do it.

  The plaid shirt in the colors of Sky Patrol came off, leaving him with only the tucked-in white t-shirt. Talyarkinash pulled some strange medical device out of a drawer and held it out. With her other hand, she grabbed his wrist and turned his arm over.

  She touched the inside of his forearm briefly. It was more like a puppy’s lick than anything, and then she pulled it back.

  Gareth looked down and realized that it had left a tiny, red spot. Had she just drawn blood? That painlessly? That quickly?

  There was another invention to take home, if he ever could.

  The machine beeped after a few seconds. Talyarkinash hmmm-ed a bit and read some readout.

  Rather than speak, she put it down on the counter and began to pull vials out of the farthest-right refrigerator. From underneath Talyarkinash pulled out a small crucible and a pair of eyedroppers.

  It all looked incredibly sciency.

  First, she poured some of a vial into the crucible. Then she added exactly three drops from the second bottle. The second eyedropper went into the side of the first device, and came out filled with a bright red fluid.

  Blood? Wow.

  “Ready?” she asked, looked up at him with an unexpected smile.

  Gareth smiled back and nodded.

  Talyarkinash dropped a single drop of Gareth’s blood into the crucible, and stirred it with a glass rod that had appeared from somewhere when he wasn’t looking.

  At first, it started to steam a little.

  And then a lot.

  Before Gareth knew what was happening, the sides of the crucible cracked and the mixture inside poured out and started to melt the surface of the counter.

  When Talyarkinash managed to splash it with some fresh water from the sink, it had eaten a disk about an eighth of an inch into the surface, which looked like a plastic of some sort.

  “Fardel,” she whispered under her breath.

  Gareth felt like he should blush at this point, to listen to a lady curse in public.

  “Everything okay?” he ventured, unsure of his footing.

  She looked up and there was almost no color in her eyes, just slitted-open irises like it was all black to bottom of her soul.

  She sucked a loud breath in and blew it out.

  “Had that been my blood, Gareth, or Morty’s, or anybody else’s, there would have been the slightest puff of steam,” she explained. “Just enough to see, but you might miss it if you blinked. Normally, the second experiment is to do the same thing in a genetic spectrometer to see where we might manage adjustments, if someone had any space left.”

  “Okay?”

  “I didn’t do this with Maximus,” she continued. “We were just upgrading him slightly by causing him to resize into a Vanir, so it was a simple enough cut and slice job.”

  “Cut and slice?” Gareth felt his hair want to stand on end.

  “I program a virus like a phage, Gareth,” she looked up in deadly seriousness, even if the meaning of some of the words eluded him. “Once we inject it, it infects every one of your cells and reprograms them to make you someone else. In the case of Maximus, he went to sleep for a few hours, and then ate like a horse for a week as his body suddenly grew a foot and he put on almost a hundred pounds of mass. After that, I never saw him again, but Morty and Xiomber said they did something similar to raise his IQ to genius levels.”

  “But we aren’t stopping there,” Gareth observed.

  “We’re not,” Talyarkinash agreed nervously. “Especially with all the changes I needed to program. This goes well beyond just making you Vanir-sized, since I need to program the changes with a morphic level clear out at the limits of anything anybody has ever done.”

  Gareth reached out and took her hand before she could pull it back.

  “This is necessary,” he said. “I understand that you might kill me accidentally in the process. It might be the single dumbest idea I have ever had, but it was the only context I could find for myself to encompass what I needed to stop Marc from taking over the entire galaxy.”

  “Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sure it is probably suicidal. But I don’t know any other way to handle it. And the clock is running.”

  Warlord

  “That fool should consider himself lucky that he didn’t get away from the police,” Marc snarled as Maiair finished her report. “He had the human dead to rights, and let Dr. Liamssen shoot him? Let him rot in prison. Make sure nobody posts bail for that fool. If someone does, I want them both brought to me in chains.”

  “As you command,” Maiair replied, turning to signal to her younger sister with the message to convey.

  Once the younger woman was gone, Marc was alone with the older in his outer chamber. He moved to the table and took a seat, gesturing for her to do the same. Normally, he would enjoy a glass of wine right now, but he was too angry for that to settle him.

  This was why he needed to go get some of his old gang, even if he had to break them out of prison. He knew of the perfect tool for a jailbreak. However, right now he was surrounded by fools that would rather talk than shoot. Cleveland Eddy and Two-gun Kowalski wouldn’t have made that mistake.

  “What do we know about Talyarkinash Liamssen?” he asked, rubbing his eyes in frustration.

  “Best in the field,” Maiair replied. “At least among those willing to work for us under the table. Probable a few better geneticists out there, but not that much better.”

  “Make your plans on the assumption that the man coming after us is my size and at least as smart as me,” Marc warned her.

  “As smart?” Maiair asked.

  “She’s the one who did my physical structure, Maiair,” Marc said. “Morty and Xiomber did the programming that upgraded my mind. At a minimum, you’re now facing me, but as a co
p.”

  “Then we might have a problem, boss,” she said carefully. “You’ve managed to whip the rest of the gang into shape, but in doing so, you’ve intimidated the hell out of them. Which was a good idea at the time. Will another human echo that and cause them to freeze up? We don’t know what happened to Cheepsath. He might have frozen, thinking about facing a human.”

  Marc sighed.

  “That’s my one fear here,” he said. “Having to rely on a gang I didn’t build, to go up against the most competent, most capable enemy I’ve ever known. Once I get past you, your sister, and Zorge, I’m not sure how many more managers I’ve got, versus a lot of make-weight street criminals.”

  “Managers?” Maiair asked, at a loss.

  “This organization is going to have to get much bigger, Maiair,” Marc replied. “And soon. We’ll have to come out of the shadows at some point.”

  “But we are the shadows, Marc,” she said, headcrest bobbing in confusion. “Why would we come out?”

  “Because I’ve got bigger plans than just ruling Zathus’s underground, Maiair,” he explained. “At some point, we need to take over the whole godforsaken planet. We’ve already made a good start on that, with corrupt politicians we can bend.”

  “What’s your ultimate goal, Maximus?” Maiair asked, headcrest now fully up and puffed sideways a little bit. Not challenging, but fierce.

  “Taking over the entire Accord of Souls, Maiair,” he said simply, saying it out loud for the first time.

  “How in the nine hells do we do that?” she probed, headcrest puffing even more sideways with energy.

  “I have a check list, actually,” he said with a small laugh. “Fringe benefit of a bigger, faster brain. Who to turn. Who to kill. Things like that. At some point, I plan to import some of my old killers from Earth and their families, and start a new government.”

  “Would you make them Vanir, like you?” she asked carefully.

  “No,” Marc understood where her mind was going. “We’ll leave them as humans. That way, the Vanir can still fight them on relatively even terms: Vanir might against human ruthlessness. The only real advantage the Vanir and other species will have over the next millennia will be numbers, because I won’t bring that many humans over. Who knows where I’ll be in a thousand years.”

  “Won’t you be dead, Maximus?” she asked. Her headcrest had bobbed back down again. It was better than watching eyes and mouth on a human, to read their internal monolog.

  “Not if all goes to plan,” he explained. “The Chaa never programmed limits into humans. Why bother, since we were still stone-age cavemen, little better than animals, when they left. No, I will need a few geneticists to work on a project I have in my head, but I should be able to live forever.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Maiair asked.

  The way she said it left a question in Marc’s mind, but Maiair was a Warreth. Not the sort of creature he was interested in, except as a means to an ends.

  Still, he fixed her with a stern gaze.

  “You’ll have as much responsibility as you can handle,” he said. “For as long as you can handle it. That’s decades, for your kind. I’m just sorry we can’t do anything to extend that.”

  Her headcrest collapsed. Her head hung as well.

  This creature couldn’t have been hoping he would make her immortal, as well? Perhaps more? Did she think he needed a Warreth empress to rule with?

  Marc’s mind flitted back to the one woman who might have been a perfect queen, a decade ago. Before she made her choice. Maybe one of these days he might bring Philippa Loughty, the little maid of the lake, here, just so he could show her what a bad decision it had been, picking Gareth Dankworth over Marc Sarzynski.

  If the machines were still available, he might have even chosen to bring her here now, just so she could be there when he finally caught up with the man and finished him off.

  Perhaps another day.

  But he would need to return home and scout for a future wife at some point. Someone he could turn into the physical form of a Vanir, while he made the changes she would need to breed up the generation of advanced humans he would need as a new nobility for the star empire he envisioned. Which he planned to rule forever.

  But first, he needed the loyalty of his closest people.

  “Maiair,” he said softly, causing her head and headcrest to come up some. “I would grant you immortality, if I could. And we’ll look into what gaps your genetic bonds have to improve you. I fear that the Warreth generally got the short end of that stick from the Chaa, along with the Tree People and the Borren. But who knows what we might be able to do with human science thrown in.”

  That brought some color back to her eyes. Some luster to her feathers. As much as he could do, for now.

  It wouldn’t do to alienate the very criminals he needed.

  At least not until he didn’t need them anymore.

  Once he had enough humans to rule the rest, all bets were off.

  Square One

  Eveth was beginning to develop a deep and abiding antipathy towards Olehmmishqu. It was still a beautiful place, well ordered and filled with wonderfully-grand buildings and park. They were close to the river today, running down a tip that had turned out to be a miscommunication about a Moisa hairdresser. Or an old enemy with an axe to grind.

  Because right now it was the people of this town that were driving her a little crazy.

  Since the local police had put out a full description of the Nari scientist, Dr. Liamssen, she and Grodray had been overwhelmed with tips and leads, all of them leading to dead ends.

  Grodray had made a few calls, and the Constabulary had dropped a number of officers into place around the fringes of the investigation as help, but kept things exceptionally quiet, otherwise. According to her partner, she was getting as much rope as she wanted to buy, until she decided to throw in the towel on this one.

  The city was reasonably well locked down, but there were still over three million sentient creatures to watch coming and going. Any Nari, Vanir, or Yuudixtl in an auto-taxi or taking a ferry got a second look, to make sure it wasn’t one of their four quarry making a run for it. All that had happened so far was that a number of innocent civilians were being inconvenienced for reasons nobody would explain.

  Most of the officers involved couldn’t anyway.

  Worse, the words of that dumb punk kept coming back to haunt her.

  A camera on the back of a smoke shop had caught enough audio to be cleaned up and useful. The man had known about the human. And worked for someone called Maximus, which was a new name circulating, one connected with some sort of crime ring thought to operating out of Zathus.

  And the human had a name now. Gareth.

  But she was under observation by those same criminals. Her, personally.

  Someone on the inside was feeding the thugs her itinerary. Had been for several days. Possibly, any clues that might be good ones were being filtered out by corrupt members of the local police.

  Who could she trust, besides Grodray?

  This Gareth fellow had tried to suggest to the crooked doctor that they were on the same side.

  A human? Please. Got a sued spaceship you want to sell me?

  “Let’s lunch,” Eveth offered as they walked out of the latest office and back onto the main street.

  The river itself was two blocks over, just past a long park fronted by a variety of interesting restaurants with sidewalk dining. But she wanted an inside table today.

  Grodray raised an eyebrow, but nodded and gestured for her to lead.

  She found a Borren-homeworld-style café, heavy on fish in cream sauces, that had the layout she wanted. Asked for and received a booth clear at the back, as far from the restrooms as possible. Got far enough away from anyone that nobody would ever have a need to get close enough to eavesdrop.

  Had even flashed her badge quietly when asking to be seated away from everyone.

  It was as much privacy
as she could get on short notice.

  “What’s up, Baker?” her partner asked as they got their orders taken.

  Food wouldn’t be long, as they were on the early end of lunch and had the place almost completely to themselves.

  “I’m not sure our communications or our investigation are secured,” she said simply.

  “The information we’re getting makes no sense unless someone is filtering things before they get to me. Normally, we would have several decent leads, none of which was critical, but all pointing in the same rough direction. We’ve gotten nothing here.”

  “I agree,” he nodded. “Asked a few friends to look into some things without sharing with the locals.”

  “You think the local Constabulary is bent?” she pursued.

  “No,” he replied. “The police probably are, given how much underworld activity we seem to keep finding. They should have kept the place cleaner if they were doing their jobs. My gut says that we have a couple of bad apples inside our organization.”

  “You never listen to your gut, Grodray,” she snapped.

  He actually smiled at that. A twinkle came into his eyes that she had rarely seen before.

  “Let’s hope they believe that as much as you do, Eve,” he grinned. “A reputation is a powerful thing, especially if you can lead folks astray with it. So, what do we do to shake things up?”

  “I want to rattle some cages,” Eveth replied. “Liamssen disappeared, which suggests that she planned ahead, and had help. We need to find who might have helped her set up her escape plans. What have we got that we could offer a low-level punk to roll on someone?”

  “If we could trust the prosecutors on this planet, I would say we could offer some punks sentencing bargains for information,” he noted. “But I don’t know which ones are the safe ones. I can promise you that a couple of forensic accountants will be making unannounced visits in the near future.”

  “What do they do?” Eveth asked, lost at the term. Forensics and Accounting seemed miles apart.