Star Dragon Box Set One

by Blaze Ward

  A spotlight suddenly illuminated an upright piano off to one side, it’s battered, wooden shell perhaps older than the young man playing it, as he slid a hand down from the top of the scale to draw all mesmerized eyes to the keys.

  He began to play. No, that did not do the act justice.

  The young man attacked the keyboard as though mortal combat had begun.

  Hard, rhythmic, almost bombastic, if one could use that term to describe someone with the apparent technical chops to challenge Rachmaninoff instead throwing himself into rock and roll. Royston found his foot tapping with that back beat, head bobbing ever-so-slightly to the immense, lyrical complexities of the pianist.

  One guitarist joined him. A full measure later, the other man gave meaning to the term Lead Guitar with a power and emotion that Royston had only known the best violinists and saxophonists to achieve. It was like a squall line had emerged from the stage and washed over the entire audience, a tide pushing them a little closer to shore, before the rip currents began to suck them out to sea.

  And then the woman opened her mouth and sang.

  Jazz was not generally known for its singers. The art form was in the instruments and the technical sophistication of the players. The few good scat singers had to work more to keep a hard beat with the musicians behind them, but rarely dominated, instead providing another piece of the rhythm section. Torch singers, on the other hand, were slow and emotionally-laden, immersing the hearer in sadness and longing.

  This woman was power. Raw and unrestrained. Anger and love, sophistication and destruction.

  It was like the ancient Hindu goddess Kali-ma stood before him on the stage, proclaiming the end of the world.

  Somewhere in the middle of the performance, Royston noted that the singer had an easy working range of three octaves, and had touched four across the breadth of her songs.

  At no point had a Master of Ceremonies emerged to work the crowd, and the woman never spoke. One song ended, everyone stopped to take a quick breath, drink some water while the crowd roared and clapped, and tune instruments.

  And then the next song began, without even an explanation from the girl. Just the next notes in her ritual magic.

  Royston felt one upbeat song end and the enchantress on stage transitioned into a love song that would have made the most embittered torch singer weep. He was suddenly nineteen again and meeting Elizabeth at that dance. In the middle of the first chorus, he realized that he had a young woman on each side leaning against him and weeping. Pippa and the unknown teenager had both unknowingly mirrored themselves, hooking an arm around his and pressing their heads against his shoulder while they listened.

  As a sociological experiment, it was astonishing, but Royston did not move. Could not move. Both young women apparently needed something like this, and his mind was still too focused on the music, the syncopation, the skills on display. The raw emotions that the woman could invoke.

  At the end of the song, Royston looked down at the young stranger on his left. She gazed up at him, blinked, and blushed so hard he thought she might pass out. He grinned a secret grin to her as she untangled herself and leaned away, lips pressed together to keep from speaking.

  Pippa just grinned at his discomfort.

  The woman on stage stood still in the quiet, and looked out over the audience. Her eyes seemed to find Royston in the stygian depths of the auditorium, boring into his soul with her medusa’s gaze. Royston fell into darkness with the rest of the auditorium as the stage went dark, but for a single spotlight on the girl.

  “One more,” she intoned in a throating alto. “Best for last.”

  And it was. The previous hour had been a tour-de-force of emotional manipulation unlike anything Royston had ever witnessed, in any jazz bar or orchestra. The last song was Joshua at Jericho, bringing the very walls down with his music and the power of his faith.

  Silence fell as the piano finally walked the last bits of tune away into the darkness. The spotlight went out and there was only darkness. Only emptiness.

  Royston felt beads of sweat wick into his undershirt as his emotions tried to return to anything approximating normal. It would be hours before something so mundane was possible.

  The lights came up suddenly and revealed the red, velvet curtains closed, sealing off the sorceress from her worshippers. The crowd of teenagers came alive and quickly made their way out of the auditorium, voices only slowly rising back to normal.

  His was not the only soul in shock.

  Even the teenager girl on his left stopped and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek before turning and fleeing silently with her cohorts.

  Within minutes, Royston found himself alone in the space, with only Pippa as company. She was withdrawn and quiet, but that was an understanding on her part that his brain was seeking some higher answers.

  Finally, he rose, handing her to her feet.

  Royston Loughty, PhD, FRS, CBE, CStJ, felt thirty, perhaps forty years younger. Energized in ways he could not remember.

  He smiled at Philippa as he made his way to aisle.

  Syncopated Jazz was a controlled thing. Technically sophisticated but somewhat emotionless. Symphonic music had more of the emotion, but it was filtered through a hundred musicians before it reached the audience.

  This had been powerful. Primal. All the amazing skill of the best jazz musicians, but raw and uninhibited.

  He nodded at Pippa and took her arm, emerging into the warm night at the tail end of the crowd.

  “Did you find it?” she asked hesitantly. “Whatever it was that drew you here?”

  “Perhaps,” he replied quietly, drawing a breath of the magic deep into his lungs to take home with him to orbit.

  Mathematics and physics were like jazz. Sophisticated and technical, without the powerful emotions that rock and roll brought to the table. They had not led him astray so much as merely fallen short of that place where his mind, his soul, needed to go.

  He had needed rock and roll to show him the path.

  Yes, perhaps he indeed had found the way.

  Hunters

  “He did what?” Omerlon demanded angrily.

  Rage drove the Elohynn to his feet, which was an impressive task, considering how far overweight Omerlon had grown, over the years. On bad days, his wings could barely lift him into the sky, and he didn’t have the endurance to fly for long.

  But no Elohynn ever walked.

  That was why he had dedicated vehicles, customized to carry him around. That, and it was far easier to hide inside a closed vehicle than be out in the open where any goomba thug might take a shot at him. Or narc him to the cops.

  This vehicle had been converted from a panel van, giving him three meter ceilings and a thick, brown shag rug. He used it to pace right now. They still had time before arrival at the next destination.

  The Warreth stayed seated across the way cringed, but didn’t clam up.

  “Reporters got a tip, boss,” Danzeekar replied. “Damabiath had been tied to a chair and his left wing had been stripped to the flesh. Not a single feather left. And he was dead.”

  Omerlon hissed in rage. There was no greater insult anyone could give to an Elohynn. None. Anywhere. Bodies would pile up at the morgue over something like this. His Warreth captain agreed, from the set of his headcrest and the way his feathers all puffed out a little.

  “And Maximus did it?” Omerlon snarled. “We have confirmation?”

  “I got someone close to his inner circle, feeding us tidbits now and again,” Danzeekar replied. “Never much, but never wrong in the past. They know which way the wind is blowing, but can’t get out right now. Maximus is a wild card and nobody’s sure what he’ll do next.”

  “If he wants a war, I’ll give him one,” Omerlon growled.

  All his life, he had been an outsider kid. Too heavy compared to those sleek bastards at the aerie who made fun of him. Too short. Too ugly.

  Always too something.

  He didn’t know if
he had been born broken and didn’t find out until later, or if the anger had just built up over enough years and twisted something inside him. Most people couldn’t kill someone without a lot of anguish up front, as well as afterwards.

  Omerlon had gotten over that crap pretty quick. It had gotten him in with a series of ever-more-dangerous criminal gangs, until he ended up in charge of the biggest on Orgoth Vortai. An Elohynn ruling an underworld largely composed of Grace, but still the dregs of any society.

  Omerlon stopped pacing and turned to face Danzeekar. They would be close to their destination and landing soon. He needed time to get himself together and look the part of the lord of the underworld, especially if he had to go to war with Maximus.

  “Do we know where the bastard’s hiding?” Omerlon asked quietly, his voice honed down to a razor’s rusty edge.

  “Negative on that, boss,” Danzeekar said. “I get my notes third-hand through delivery boys right now. Hasn’t been worth trying to push back up the chain yet, because we’re likely to blow our mole and it hasn’t been that important yet.”

  “And it still isn’t,” Omerlon decided.

  He flexed his head back and snapped a shudder through his wings to loosen them up. Had there been space in here, he would have run them out to points. He would probably need that level of intimidation shortly, especially with some of the people around here having second thoughts.

  “Find me those two physicists that disappeared,” Omerlon ordered. “We’ll use them as bait to bring Maximus to us, and then crush that weasel.”

  “You got it, boss,” Danzeekar nodded.

  Outside, Omerlon felt the truck shift as it started its descent. The Mayor of Londra, the biggest city, needed to be reminded how little wiggle room he had if he wanted to stay out of jail, and keep his entire, corrupt family free with him.

  Omerlon looked forward to venting some of his spleen on the bastard. Maximus wasn’t going to get away with killing his people.

  Fugitive

  “Heard any news?” Morty asked as he emerged from his bedroom.

  Xiomber looked up from his morning paper, tea mug in one hand and a sour scowl on his face as he sat in the dining space and enjoyed his quiet.

  “News news, or real stuff?” Xiomber asked.

  Morty walked over to join his egg-brother at the table. The place was cheap, but their needs weren’t all that great right now. And a month on the run had given Morty a far-greater appreciation of the simple things in life, like hot food that didn’t come out of a convenience store refrigerator. And a roof over his head when it was raining.

  The table even a had a pretty good view of the city from about seventy stories up. Churquark was the name of both the city and the planet. It was mainly a Grace world, so there was art everywhere, but the window next to the kitchen table looked out over a two hundred meter tall bronze statue of a Chaa, one of the Elders, poised apparently at that moment of awakening that had transformed them from amazingly-advanced scientists into gods.

  And that wasn’t even the weirdest thing Morty could see from here, as he pulled up a seat and poured himself some tea.

  “Whatever news you got, Xiomber,” Morty replied to his partner. “You always wake up at dawn and scour the boards and papers for things. I need my beauty sleep.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” Xiomber nodded.

  Morty just grinned and let his egg-brother’s sarcasm roll off his scales. He was feeling especially feisty this morning.

  “So talk to me,” Morty prompted.

  “We been here three days, Morty,” Xiomber sighed.

  “And we’ve been on the run for five weeks,” Morty countered. “Maximus ain’t taken over the galaxy in that time, and nobody’s heard anything about Gareth or Talyarkinash, so either they got away, or the Constables really did catch them and have been hiding them someplace.”

  “We better hope that the Constables didn’t catch them then,” Xiomber paused and sipped his tea noisily, like an alligator running low in the water, eyes and snout above the steam. “Prices for gear had gone through the roof on the black market.”

  “Everything?” Morty felt a metaphorical scorpion perch on his shoulder and eye the side of his head hungrily. Never a good way to wake up.

  “Everything we would need to build a new lab,” Xiomber explained. “Generators, control surfaces, secondary coils, even the sensors like we used to locate Sarzynski and Dankworth in the first place.”

  “They know the truth, then,” Morty was sure.

  “That’s my guess, too,” his partner nodded. “Somebody rolled, or maybe they finally raided the palace back on Zathus. Rumor on the street was that Maximus shut the place down when you and I bailed, and nobody cleaned it up afterwards. Wouldn’t take much to put two and two together, ya know?”

  “No way to build a new lab?” Morty asked, just in case.

  “Not an underground one,” Xiomber said. “And I’m guessing all the legitimate physicists in the family are probably cursing our names right now for the amount of paperwork they suddenly have to go through to replace or upgrade anything.”

  Morty shrugged. Small price to pay, if they wanted to ensure that the Accord of Souls was still here in a year.

  Ya burn the house down, you don’t get to complain about sleeping in the backyard when it rains. Summoning a human like Maximus had to be the dumbest idea he’d ever let himself be talked into. Summoning Gareth to stop him had perhaps balanced the scales a little. Hopefully enough.

  If the Chaa really were gods, he was going to have to do a lot of hand-waving, when he got to his final reward. Angry deities weren’t going to be happy at what he had done to the galactic commons they had carefully built and arranged before leaving. And they sure weren’t going to like humans running around outside their house.

  “Any good news from all that?” Morty continued after a moment of thought.

  “We’re connected into the underground here,” Xiomber said in a careful voice.

  “But?”

  “But both the Constables and Maximus are hunting our asses, Morty,” his egg-brother said. “And offering threats and rewards that are going to get somebody to roll on us, eventually.”

  “You’re the street etiquette expert,” Morty replied. “Is there anybody who could protect us? I’m willing to work for my keep, as long as they don’t go down Cinnra’s path and decide they need more humans. Even cops. At some point, someone will talk.”

  “Or a human will walk into a teashop and get tasted by a Grace?” Xiomber sneered.

  “Hey, you left him alone, too,” Morty said. “If she knows what he tastes like, my greatest hope is that the cops scared the wits out of the girl. You saw what that Vanir chick was like when she took off after Gareth.”

  “Yeah,” Xiomber shuddered, eyes flickering with memory. “Ain’t going there again.”

  “So find us someplace to set up shop,” Morty said. “Even half-legit works for me. I haven’t completely forgotten how to write code for responsible companies. I really don’t want to have to go back to Yuudix and hide among a billion grains of sand. Don’t think that would stop the Constabulary.”

  Xiomber nodded in agreement. He started to say something when his pocketcomm beeped.

  The two Yuudixtl looked at each other for a moment, and then Xiomber shrugged and answered it.

  “They’re your kopeks,” he said into the phone and then listened.

  “Yeah?” Xiomber said a moment later. “Okay. Thanks. I owe you one for that. Later.”

  He hung up and stared at Morty

  “We got a problem.”

  Officer of the Court

  Gareth walked into the briefing room expecting to find a mob waiting. Instead, he found an empty conference room with Talyarkinash Liamssen quietly waiting, sipping from what smelled like a glass of juice from here. Gareth blushed slightly as he realized that no human, nor Vanir, should be able to smell that well. Even a Nari like her might be hard pressed to match it.


  And yet.

  She rose as he entered and stepped away from the big, rectangular table to hug him. Nothing more, just physical contact that she seemed to find reassuring. If Gareth had given up everything in order to stop Maximus, Talyarkinash had come close in terms of cost.

  She had lost her entire existence, being arrested at the same time Gareth was and quickly disappeared into police custody. However, she had been a willing witness once everything was explained to her, turning over names and addresses to the two Constables. It was the least she could do to help undo all the evil she had done, unwittingly or not.

  She had burned all bridges, but still had a future in front of her. She was still Nari. Still five-foot-eight, approaching six feet at the tips of her ears. Her Imperial Blue fur was still sleek and shiny with gorgeous stripes, complimenting her eyes. Gareth had even gotten used to a woman with bigger and more luxurious muttonchop sideburns than any man he had ever known could grow.

  He would have guessed that the Chaa, the Elder race responsible for the Accord of Souls, had taken a Canadian Lynx and transformed it into a woman-like creature. The eyes slitted vertically. The snout was ever-so-slightly prominent. She smiled with teeth that had more points than his did when she smiled at him.

  But she had become a friend. And he, hers. She would have gone to prison forever, according to the Constables, but for her willingness to work with them to understand everything she had done to Gareth. And what some greater fool might do, next time.

  Someone like Marc Sarzynski.

  Gareth took his seat and considered coffee. Or whatever the thing in the silver urn on the side table should actually be called. It was close enough for his taste buds, raised on the instant stuff kept in a big can in the freezer, rather than freshly-roasted beans ground on demand.

  Sounded like too much work. Like shaving had turned into as his beard came in. Or getting his hair cut.

  Gareth wondered if he was going through teenage rebellion, or a very early mid-life crisis. Being turned into a giant alien creature would probably have that effect on a guy.