CHAPTER 36, Dragon's Revenge

Satisfied that she was not the source of his disquiet, he slid from beneath their sleeping furs and peered out of their lean-to.

The campfire embers glowed, ready to be stoked into brightness with fresh tinder and wood. The surrounding trees and shrubbery rustled faintly in the night breeze.

He listened closely. Perhaps the baby?

Even Ariel, the two-week-old infant, slept quietly for a change.

Pressure in his mind sent Konner prowling around the perimeter of their clearing. He knew there was something wrong, something out of place. What?

Finally, he checked the other lean-tos. Taneeo had moved back to the village once he’d freed himself of Hanassa’s possession. That left two more sleeping places.

“Loki,” Konner whispered outside his brother’s shelter. “Loki?” he said a little louder.

He rapped upon the side of the structure and crouched to peer inside. The sleeping furs lay in disarray. Both Loki and his boots were gone.

Konner stood up in alarm. He searched the clearing with all of his senses. Maybe Loki had just stepped out to the latrine. Maybe, but not likely. He would not have bothered with his boots for such a mundane errand.

“Kat?” Konner stepped over to his sister’s lean-to. He skipped politeness and peered in as soon as he spoke. Her bed looked undisturbed, or neatly made up. Her boots were missing, too.

Where could they have gone?

Konner stoked the fire for light and searched the clearing one more time.

The pressure in his mind increased.

Wake up, a voice nagged him. He listened more closely. Wake up and pay attention.

Some of the pressure decreased, as if the speaker paused to draw breath.

Traitor. Kat betrayed us.

Not so much words as an impression of guns and Marines and Kat and Amanda together.

“Loki?” Konner asked the pressure in his mind.

The only reply was a vague sense of assent.

“Let me get Kim. He’s better at this than I am.” Konner ran the few steps to the one-room cabin Kim shared with Hestiia and the baby.

Abandoning politeness, he crashed through the doorway. He paused only a moment to orient himself and then felt his way to the far wall. “Kim,” he whispered as he shook his brother’s shoulder.

“Jaysus, I just got to sleep,” Kim mumbled.

Ariel whimpered in her basket beside the bed. Kim picked her up and stumbled toward the doorway, a patch of slightly lighter darkness than the dim interior. He aimed for the central fire pit, holding Ariel against his shoulder, patting her back and murmuring soothing words.

“Now what is so all-fired important you had to wake me,” he demanded querulously. “I swear I haven’t slept more than ten minutes all night between a fussing baby and Hestiia’s restlessness.

“Loki’s in trouble. He says Kat betrayed him to Amanda.”

Kim swung around to face the lean-tos.

“They’re both gone. Took their boots.”

“How?”

“There is this pressure in my mind. When I stopped to listen to it, Loki contacted me telepathically. You’re better at this than I am.”

“Not on no sleep. I need Tambootie to concentrate.”

“You need that drug for everything.”

“Do you want to clear up this mess tonight or not?”

“Okay. You get Ariel settled and I’ll find you some fresh leaves.” Fortunately, Konner did not have to go more than a few steps beyond the edge of the clearing. The first rays of dawn showed the distinctive umbrella outline of the deciduous tree with aromatic bark and toxic sap. The green leaves grew fat with pink veins. The moment he touched the first one, it dripped oil onto the back of his hand. It tingled immediately.

Before he could stop himself he licked the essential oils off the leaf.

His mind brightened. Every object in the clearing took on auras, highlighting their silhouettes. He wanted to study each rock and blade of grass, delving into the secrets contained in those subdued coronas of living light.

Another lick of Tambootie oil. Just one more. Well, maybe another a well.

Suddenly the pressure in his mind eased and became coherent communication.

They locked me in the fuel bay of a lander. Strapped me down so I can’t move more than my eyelids. Insulated the hull so I can’t hear anything. No light. Makes it easier to concentrate.

“Loki, we’ll get you out.”

No! The word sounded loud inside Konner’s skull.

They think I am you. As long as Amanda is under that delusion, we have leverage. She hates us all, but you more than any of us.

“How did she get the impression you are me?”

Kat . . . Oh, Saint Bridget. She deliberately misled Amanda. She’s laid a trap of her own. But Amanda decided to punish her before rewarding her. Kat’s locked in another lander.

“How did you get to Base Camp?” Konner tried to fume over the misuse of his precious fuel.

The female dragon, Irisey.

“If the dragons cooperated, then they have to agree with Kat. She didn’t betray us, she used us to further her own stupid plan. Was Gentian with her?”

No.

Kat, how stupid can you get? Konner asked himself as much as his absent sister. Couldn’t you have confided in me? Of all three brothers, Kat seemed to have bonded most closely with Konner. They had sat for hours these last few weeks just talking. He had rescued her from the snake monster.

She blamed him for abandoning her at the burning house back home when she was seven.

“Have you got some of those leaves for me?” Kim asked. He’d stopped long enough to put on his trousers.

Konner still wandered the clearing in his underwear. Strangely, with the Tambootie coursing through his system he did not need clothing for warmth.

He handed Kim a fistful of leaves. His hand nearly burned with the power they gave him.

Briefly, he outlined the situation to Kim as his younger brother licked and nibbled his Tambootie.

“Can you get out of your restraints, Loki?” Kim asked. His eyes crossed as he focused on something inside him. He stared blankly into the now burning central fire.

That’s Konner’s talent.

“And telepathy is yours, but he heard you. Now concentrate, both of you.”

“Loki, you must have seen the restraints when they put you in there. What do they look like?” Konner asked. He dragged his thoughts away from the need for more Tambootie. The drug would help him blot out his disappointment in Kat.

He concentrated on the fire and what needed to be done.

Sticky webbing from med supplies.

“Good, they aren’t force bracelets. Now picture the webbing in minute detail in your mind.” Konner waited a moment to allow Loki to get the image firmly fixed.

The trail of Loki’s thoughts, like a brightness in Konner’s mind faded. He hadn’t known it was there or what it looked like until it was gone.

“Once you can see it clearly in your mind, think about the stickiness dissolving. Watch each molecule of glue separating and becoming inert.”

I can’t.

“You can. Concentrate. Forget about talking to me. Forget everything but the webbing. Watch it dissolve.” Konner waited a few more moments. “Now, the two layers that overlap are no longer sticking together. All you have to do is lift your wrists and the restraints will fall away.”

A few more moments passed. The fire burned down. Kim added more fuel.

When it flared up again, Konner thought he saw a holo image within the flames of Loki lying in the darkness fighting the webbing.

In a few moments the restraints flew off Loki’s wrists and legs. Nearly sobbing with relief, Loki released the head and throat bands.

“He’s free,” Konner breathed.

“Loki, you have to get out of there quickly. Dawn is just breaking.” Had only a few moments passed? Konner felt as if he’d been staring at the fire for hours.

Where?

“Get to the village at the confluence of the river and the bay. Hide there. We’ll come to pick you up.”

What about Kat?

“I think we have to leave her to Amanda’s not so tender mercies for a while.”

“Ask him to steal a fuel cell or two,” Kim prompted. He already nibbled on more Tambootie, as if the first dose had worn off and dropped him out of rapport with Loki.

Konner began to shiver. His own dose of Tambootie grew thin in his blood. He conveyed Kim’s message quickly and received a tentative reply.

Then his hands began to shake and his stomach revolted. He dashed to the nearest bush and vomited up the shreds of the leaves he didn’t remember eating.

“Try it now, Kurt,” Martin called from under a control panel on the bridge of Margaret Kristine.

“No change in any of the sensor readings,” Kurt called back.

“Maybe if you up the UV sensitivity,” Jane said. She stood behind Kurt, watching his screens as closely as he did.

“We’ve tried UV, how about tachyon emissions?” Bruce offered. He swiveled idly in the copilot’s chair.

“These instruments can’t go any higher on either read,” Martin spat, disgusted with the whole process.

“Martin, there is something else you have not tried,” Quinn said quietly. He watched the viewscreen directly in front of them at the real-time display, as if he’d get to see a jump point open.

As far as Martin knew, no one had actually seen a jump point. They appeared as energy fluxes in the data stream.

“What?” Jane, Bruce, and Kurt all asked at the same time.

So much for keeping the illegal miniature king stone secret.

Martin scooted out from his supine position beneath the panel. He had to stand up to fish the crystal out of his pocket. Maybe Bruce had a point in wearing pantaloons. But he couldn’t change clothes now; they had only the limited luggage Quinn had stashed in the van ahead of time—mostly changes of underwear and personal hygiene items.

He tried to keep the crystal in his palm, hidden from the others as it emerged from its hiding place.

Jane was on him in a flash, opening his hand. “By Gaia, its beautiful. Perfect,” she gasped. She stroked the crystal as if it were a living being.

Perhaps it was.

Quinn swung around in his chair to observe the scene.

Kurt and Bruce reached simultaneously to grab the thing from Martin for closer examination. A spark lashed from the crystal to their fingers.

Instinctively, Martin closed his finger around it protectively.

“Acts just like a real king stone, too,” Quinn remarked. A half smile quirked his mouth. “It seems that Martin here is attuned to the crystal. I’m surprised it doesn’t hum.”

“It does. It’s in harmony with your crystal drive.” Martin didn’t know what else to say.

“All crystals are monopoles. They seek a crystal family to complete them, just as a bipolar magnet is attracted to its opposite,” Quinn said casually.

“Where’d you get it?” Bruce asked. He kept his hands safely in his voluminous pockets as he peered at the little bits of blue light that were visible between Martin’s fingers.

“My dad. Two summers ago.”

“Where’d he get it?” Bruce acted offended that their favorite camp counselor hadn’t honored each of them with something similar.

“Why didn’t it reject Jane?” Kurt asked.

“She only touched it, she didn’t try to take possession of it.”

“It burned my fingers a little,” Jane added trying to mollify her comrades. She shook her finger as if to emphasize the crystal’s reaction to her.

“Enough speculation. Plug that into the computer matrix before we lose the jump point,” Quinn ordered.

Grateful for the excuse to avoid further discussion of the crystal, Martin slid back beneath the panel. He fished around for a suitable nest of fiber optics to accept the crystal. At last he found a place deep into the sensor wiring.

“No map this time. Just a look at where the jump point is,” he whispered to the crystal as he attached three fiber optics to it.

“Nothing happening to the sensor array,” Kurt called back to him, a little too loudly, as if the panel and bulkhead muffled more sound now that Martin had the crystal in hand.

“King stones like multiples of twelve,” Quinn reminded him.

“I know. I’ve studied crystal drives intensively since I started using this,” Martin muttered, not caring if anyone heard him.

The next thee connections came easy. Then he had to seriously look for the next five. The last was the most elusive of all.

“I’ve used up all the fiber optics, and I still need one more,” he complained.

Look deeper, someone said.

Martin thought the deep voice might be Quinn’s. Yet it didn’t sound exactly like the Imperial agent. Who could tell for certain halfway between the bulkhead and the hull?

“I am looking deeper.” Blindly, he reached above his head and grabbed whatever came to hand.

Three fiber optic cables broke free of their connections. Which one was best? They all looked great. Two of the ones already connected came from secondary systems.

Martin sighed and began rearranging.

As he touched the final cable to the crystal, before he had firmly attached it to the facet, the miniature king stone began to glow. Flames seemed to shoot from the deep heart out along the cables. Quickly, he finished the last connection and nestled the crystal into a safe niche.

Jubilant music burst upon his ears.

“Are all the crystals singing?” Jane asked.

Martin clawed his way free of the dim bulkhead and blinked in the sudden brightness of the bridge. More than the usual change of contrast brightness. Every screen sparkled with new light.

“Wow,” Quinn said, leaning back in his chair to take it all in. “That is some enhancement. Don’t suppose I could persuade you to leave that crystal onboard?”

“Not on your life. My dad will need it when we find him. More than you,” Martin said. He turned a full circle, trying to take in all of the new data that blazed across the screens.

“Jump point coordinates on screen!” Kurt nearly jumped up and down with excitement.

“Strap in, now!” Quinn called. “It’s practically on top of us.”

Martin fumbled for the nearest seat and found Jane already there. The klaxon blared its three-note warning. The ship tilted. Martin slid across the floor, flailing for balance. He slammed into Bruce in the other chair. He landed flat on his back on the deck.

The klaxon sounded again.

“So soon?” Less than twenty seconds had passed between warning and jump.

Martin grabbed whatever was handy. One hand wrapped around the support column of the copilot’s seat. The other lay flat upon the deck, clawing at the cerama/metal for purchase. He stretched a foot to brace against the same place as his left hand.

The deck thinned to transparency, then disappeared. Martin held his breath. The ship dissolved. Only his mind kept the killing vacuum of space at bay.