The Dragon Circle

Table of Contents

 

 

The dragon called Irythros leaped free of the shuttle. Its talons screeched against the cerama/metal.

(
Forgive my trespass,
) Irythros said as he settled to the ground beside Konner.

The beast towered above him, as big as the shuttle. It spread its wings before furling them. The moonlight turned them into shimmering transulcent veils. For a moment, Konner thought he could see star maps in the vein network.

Konner shook his head free of his fanciful thoughts. Dragons were planet bound. They might speak enigmatically with a great deal of wisdom, but they did not carry star charts etched into their wing membranes.

“Why did you seek me out?” Konner asked.

(
Hanassa speaks to the stars. We need to know why.
)

“But Hanassa is dead.” Konner began to shiver with a new chill. Twice he and his brothers had thought they had killed the man. Twice he had recovered and come back to threaten their friends as well as themselves. The third time they had made certain he stayed dead.

(
The body of Hanassa died. Yet he still speaks to the stars. We need you to tell us why. . . .
)

Be sure to read these magnificent
DAW Fantasy Novels by
IRENE RADFORD

 

 

 

 

The Stargods:
THE HIDDEN DRAGON (Book 1)
THE DRAGON CIRCLE (Book 2)

 

The Dragon Nimbus:
THE GLASS DRAGON (Book 1)
THE PERFECT PRINCESS (Book 2)
THE LONELIEST MAGICIAN (Book 3)
THE WIZARD'S TREASURE (Book 4)

 

The Dragon Nimbus History:
THE DRAGON'S TOUCHSTONE (Book 1)
THE LAST BATTLEMAGE (Book 2)
THE RENEGADE DRAGON (Book 3)

 

Merlin's Descendants:
GUARDIAN OF THE BALANCE (Book 1)
GUARDIAN OF THE TRUST (Books 2)
GUARDIAN OF THE VISION (Book 3)
GUARDIAN OF THE PROMISE (Book 4)

Copyright © 2004 by Phyllis Irene Radford.

 

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

DAW Book Collectors No. 1301.

 

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

 

 

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Nearly all the designs and trades names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Printing, August

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

—MARCA REGISTRADA

HECHO EN U.S.A.

eISBN : 978-1-101-16701-4

 

 

S. A.

This book is dedicated to all my
Circle of writer friends
Who have kept me going
Through thick and thin.
Thank you one and all.
Karen, Lea, Lace, Mike, & Bob

M
ARTIN KONNER O'HARA stared at the tiny device. Hardly as big as his palm and yet so dangerous. A red LED blinked at him in an ominously slow pattern.

He could almost hear it shout across the light-years “Here I am. Come get me.”

It had to have been here for months, possibly a full year . . . since the last time he and his brothers had space-docked.

His ship
Sirius
was currently in silent orbit around an uncharted planet. While he made vital repairs, he had shut down all but the most essential systems, including spin. The star drive was quiescent, awaiting regrowth of a number of the directional crystals.

Konner and his brothers had just run out of time for repairs.

He pried the foreign device out from where it hid under the red directional crystal. It came away from the cerama/metal hull reluctantly. After a few curses, two broken fingernails, and a new set of bruises on his knuckles, he grasped the device in his palm, still blinking, still alerting authorities to his location.

How could she have done this to him?

Only his ex-wife Melinda could have taken one of his patented locator beacons and perverted it so. Many had a motive to track the O'Hara brothers and their . . . independent cargo shipments. The Galactic Terran Empire called Konner and his brothers smugglers.

The people who received highly taxed and increasingly hard to get essential goods, like food, from the black market, called them saviors.

Melinda had more personal reasons. She had probably sold the frequency of this beacon to the highest bidder. Or bidders.

She could afford to spend a great deal of money to retrieve the damning evidence Konner had secreted aboard
Sirius
and a number of other key locations.

Konner wondered if Melinda would brag about her betrayal to their son Martin. Did she know how her need to banish Konner from Martin's life would destroy more than just her ex-husband?

When the Imperial Military Police found the beacon, they would also find a pristine world ready for exploitation. Konner shuddered at the thought of thundering tractors, a myriad of people, mechanical threshers, and machine after machine throwing out air and noise pollution. Chemical fertilizers would seep into the groundwater and run off into the rivers, making them unsafe to swim in, drink from, or fish out of.

Nine tenths of what the farmers produced would be shipped off planet to feed a hungry empire. The Coros would lose not only their way of life, but would have to learn to do with less than they had now.

The Galactic Terran Empire would not stop there. They would strip this place of every valuable resource, beginning with the timber and ending with the minerals, until there was nothing left. Then the inhabitants would dome their cities, breathe artificial air, eat tanked food, and sue for full citizenship.

And another bush planet would have to be found to feed the growing empire.

He had to destroy the beacon. Now. Before the IMPs found the right jump point to bring them here.

Konner bent his knees and pushed against the climbing rungs of the rabbit hole that afforded access to the outer array of crystals. As his body sprang back from his push through null g, he launched himself forward. Every ten meters he touched one of the climbing rungs on the inside of the conduit to adjust his angle of glide to match the curve of the saucer-shaped spaceship. At his back, the red directional crystals hummed a muted chatter only he could hear. As he sped along, the crystals became less harmonious.

One hundred forty-four directional crystals lined the outer rim of
Sirius
. They linked to twelve green driver crystals by kilometers of fiber optic cable. At the center of the ship, the drivers were linked to a single blue king stone. The two-meter-high monster kept the crystal drive harmonious and connected. In gravity, the king stone would weigh nearly one hundred fifteen kilos. But an active king stone never entered gravity. It had to grow in concert with its family of crystals in null g and lived at the center of the vessel where gravity from spin never reached.

He came abreast of the source of the strident note. A tiny crystal bud kept the port open while a new crystal grew at the center of
Sirius
. Five other reds had to be replaced as well. The disharmony among the array gave him a headache.

“Soon, friends. Soon you'll be whole again,” he murmured soothingly. “And we can get out of here.”

All the while his guts churned. Melinda had betrayed him to the Imperial Military Police.

If the IMPs showed up in this forgotten star system, they would take him and his brothers prisoner. Konner would never make it back to Aurora in time for his son's final custody hearing.

No wonder the IMPs had been able to follow Konner and his brothers across the galaxy. Their frantic flight from the law had kept Konner from meeting his son Martin at summer camp this year.

His fist clenched around the beacon. Would the boy be disappointed? Or would he even notice that his usual counselor had gone missing.

Five months ago, with the crystals damaged and the IMPs closing in, Konner and his two brothers had jumped blind into this uncharted star system three sectors off the maps. They had plunged into the adventure of a lifetime and found a place they could call home. A place where Konner could bring Martin to experience his true family away from Melinda's self-centered greed, amoral manipulations, and emotional abuse. As well as her lies.