The Dragon Circle (33 page)

Konner watched his brother's eyes swivel right to left, left to right, and back again.

“Standard protocol is left to right,” Loki protested.

Konner felt like shaking his older brother. “Kat is left-handed. Like the rest of us. Her brain wants to read right to left even though she's been forced to learn to read left to right. Give me the codes backward.”

Kat opened her eyes wide. Her nostrils pinched and she clenched her teeth. He had guessed correctly.

“Alpha 7997367, beta, omega, pi.” Loki looked deflated.

Konner punched in the code. His fingers moved rapidly over the interface. The countdown stalled at
three.
The bay doors creaked open, slowly. Oh, so very slowly.

He breathed in short gasps.

Kat slumped against her jump seat.

“Strap in, everyone. We're blasting out of here. Fast. Before Commander Leonard has a chance to scramble fighters.” Before the doors finished opening.

Konner punched in the launch protocol. Engines fired beneath him. Cockpit lights dimmed.

He felt lighter. His lungs drew in air more easily. Gravity lessened its drag on his muscles.

That had to be his imagination. His body reacted to the surge of adrenaline and made him feel lighter. Momentum should keep
Jupiter
spinning and, therefore, the gravity at a normal rate far longer than this. Planetary gravity should only assert a minute influence on the ship at this time.

He prayed. All they needed now was for the ship's orbit to deteriorate too quickly, before Commander Leonard had time to evacuate all personnel and salvage much needed stores.

Would hearing the death screams of hundreds of trapped innocents be worse than his vision of Lieutenant Pettigrew dying?

He had to weigh the loss of innocent lives among the Coros if he failed in his mission to ground the IMPs for all time.

Konner's hands began to shake.

“This is going to need some finesse, Loki. Can you take command?”

“Finesse is my middle name,” Loki said on a big grin.

“No, it isn't. You are Mathew Kameron O'Hara,” Kat said.

“A lot you know,” Loki said back. “Let me show you some real flying. Hang on.”

Kat snorted. But she held on to the edge of her seat between her knees as best she could. The simple waist restraint on the jump seat offered only minor protection.

Konner's head snapped back as Loki slammed the lander forward. Gravity increased with acceleration as it compounded the spin on the primary vessel. Pressure built in his chest. He found it difficult to breathe.

He heard metal scrape against metal. His teeth ached and his spine cringed. The lander edged through the partially opened doors with no room to spare.

Then they burst free of the cruiser. Gravity fell back to an acceptable level. Loki flipped the lander around to circle
Jupiter
and aim for the planet.

A squadron of fighters scrambled into position to block them.

“We'll have to shoot our way through,” Loki muttered.

”The weapons array lay at Konner's fingertips. Everything looked odd, out of reach, misplaced. Kim monitored sensors and engineering. The layout was backward from
Rover
. Konner should have engineering and communications. Kim should have sensors and weapons.

“If I know Captain Leonard, she's ordered her flyboys to take out the cockpit,” Kat said. A smug smile crept across her face. “They'll leave the cargo area intact. She wants the king stone back. She won't let your death stand in her way.”

“We've a few tricks up our sleeves,” Loki muttered.

“Why didn't you just smash the crystal, Konner? Life would be easier,” Kim asked.

In the back of Konner's head, he heard the king stone crying out to its family of driver and directional crystals. It had never been alone since before it was a tiny seed in an omniscium bath.

“Look out! Vultures at three o'clock,” Kim shouted.

Konner slammed his palm flat on the interface, firing whatever responded. He closed his eyes and prayed that the fighters would veer away and no one would get killed. Least of all the king stone.

Loki closed his eyes and pushed the throttle forward. One nice long smooth motion. Acceleration pushed him back into his chair. He listened to the ship. Listened to the constant hum of active minds. Waiting. Waiting until it felt right.

He jerked the ship right and “down” relative to his internal horizon. Only when the ship began to shudder from the speed and angle of reentry did he ease up. Still without looking he thrust the controls to port, up, down, starboard, down.

To his right he heard Konner mutter a prayer every time he fired weapons. Kim shouted orders to both of them. Kat sneered at every word said, every action taken.

Loki tuned them out. Now he listened for the planet. The obscure, primitive, raw, and unforgiving place that had grabbed his heart and promised him everything he'd dreamed of. The place he had to protect at all costs.

Without the king stone, the IMPs could neither leave, nor communicate with civilization. If every crystal tech aboard took continual shifts of two hours on, four off,
Jupiter
might achieve something close to light speed. Not enough to make it to the jump point in less than a year. Without the king stone, they could not jump. He had to keep them from retrieving the stone. Even if it cost him and his siblings their lives.

Why hadn't Konner smashed the crystal when he had the chance? But he could not read his brother's mind and evade the fighters.

Up, down, port, and starboard, always angling closer to the planet. The green atmospheric layer glowed beneath him. He plunged into it. Leveled out. Shot to port.

His right side tingled where a bolt of energy seared the edge of the cockpit. A strange whistling came to his ears. More than tinnitus ringing against his eardrums from the rapid changes in direction and acceleration.

“Sensors clogged,” Konner said on a sigh of relief. He'd not be shooting any weapons for a while.

“Femto point hull breach,” Kim reported. As he said the words, he unstrapped and reached for the repair kit.

“What is that stuff?” Kat leaned forward to peer out the windshield.

“Diatomaceous plant life, lives in the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere,” Kim replied. His hands were busy with a caulk gun filled with liquid cerama /metal. It would harden quickly and seal most small holes up to the diameter of a man's pinky finger.

“It eats the metal out of the hull alloy unless we bathe the shuttles every trip,” Loki added.

“No wonder the planet looks green from space,” Kat said. Curiosity seemed to have calmed her antagonism.

Loki felt like he had to say something. Anything. He couldn't think what. The ship and his evasive course demanded all of his attention. If he thought about his maneuvers, he'd overthink and make a mistake.

He kept up a course that made the foothill approach to the volcano look flat and easy. Occasional shots zinged past them. A few came close.

“They are shooting blind,” Konner said quietly. He looked pale and shaken. Shooting back at IMPs had never bothered him before. Why now?

Loki was a fine one to ask. He'd killed a man, Hanassa, and nearly followed him into death, linked to his mind by psychic talents.

Another shot pinged the tail of the lander in a glancing shot. Enough to send him careening into a spin.

“Have the fighters got new technology for listening to us?” he asked, not expecting an answer. “Tech we don't know about.”

Kat said nothing. She looked pointedly at the ceiling rather than return his gaze.

“Not that I've heard,” Konner said. He usually heard about every innovation, public and military. “But we've been gone for months. Between civilized worlds for months before that. I thought I was up to date when we jumped to this planet. Maybe I wasn't.”

Kat bit her cheeks and kept her mouth closed.

“Okay, little sister,” Loki whispered. “I'm trusting your silence to be a ‘yes' answer. Not a word out of anyone. They may be listening to echoes of our voices.” Loki abruptly changed course. He nosed upward. A sharp climb almost took him out of the green layer of microscopic plants that should have blinded the IMPs' ship as well as the lander's sensors. He'd never spent so long a time in the green and wondered how much damage the plants would do to the hull before they safely hit dirtside.

The shots continued, barely missing. They must be following engine emissions.

“Going back to surrender?” Kat asked hopefully.

Kim grabbed the ubiquitous duct tape and started strapping it over her mouth.

Loki put the lander into a dive and shook his head at Kim. No sense in maintaining silence.

“Not on your life. I wouldn't give Captain Leonard the satisfaction,” Loki whispered.

“You may have severed communications, but we have a diplomatic attaché aboard. Her father will move galactic parliaments to get her back.”

A funny feeling began jumping in Loki's sternum. Kim moved to close Kat's mouth with duct tape anyway. Loki shook his head “no.”

“You haven't been in orbit long enough for the GTE to triangulate your position,” Konner said, also on a whisper. He didn't sound as happy as he should. “And I'm betting that when you found the jump point you did not have time to transmit the coordinates.”

Kat just sat there smiling smugly.

Damn.

“The diplomatic attaché can't be too important if she allowed the captain to divert onto a wild lumbird chase,” Kim said. He shrugged.

Loki breathed a little easier. The last time he'd communicated with Cyndi she had said she'd enter the diplomatic corps before she married the sniveling flunky her father had selected for her. But Cyndi would never allow a mere commander captaining an IMP cruiser to divert her for long.

Unless . . .

“Whose idea was it for
Jupiter
to sit long enough to search for the jump point?” he asked Kat, looking directly into her eyes, praying that he'd be able to detect a lie.

“Mine,” she replied. “I knew you had disappeared at those coordinates. I've been searching for you guys for a long time. Easy to convince my captain that IMP priorities required us to investigate outlaws and smugglers before shuttling a dippo around the galaxy.”

“And you just happened to mention to your blonde dippo why you could not deliver her to her destination on time,” Loki said quietly. His gut wanted to sink to his feet.

“Of course.” Kat did not contradict the dippo's hair color. “As soon as I mentioned the name O'Hara, she agreed wholeheartedly that we must pursue you. In fact, Lucinda Baines even took a turn at the sensors.”

“Shit.”

Loki forgot evasive maneuvers. He forgot the king stone. He did remember to polarize the hull as he put the lander into a steep dive into the atmosphere. Like he should have done in the first place. Instead he had needed to show off for his long-lost sister and impress her with his piloting skills.

Nothing would impress Kat. She was an O'Hara. Dirtside, he and his brothers had allies. The O'Haras were gods on the planet below. A few fighters would not have a chance there.

But he left his heart and his enthusiasm aboard
Jupiter
.

“Cyndi,” he muttered over and over. Lucinda Baines. “Cyndi” to friends and her lover. How could he justify stranding every last person aboard
Jupiter
dirtside when one of them was the love of his life. The reason he had endured Mum's manipulations and obsessions just to get enough money to bribe his way back to citizenship.

He'd never get that precious change in status on the official database.

And he'd never earn Cyndi's forgiveness for hijacking her transport and stranding her in the middle of nowhere.

(W
ELCOME! Welcome, welcome,
) Irythros chortled in Konner's mind. The red-tipped dragon flew loops and twirls around the fighters and the lander.

“You're going to crash into that thing!” Kat choked.

Konner's respect for her courage rose a facet. She didn't scream, though clearly she wanted to. She clenched her eyes closed and began murmuring some personal prayer. He couldn't catch the words.

“Irythros is smarter than we are,” Konner replied, almost chuckling at the sight of the red-tipped dragon. “He will avoid us.”

(
Of course I will. Only a yearling silver dragon just out of the nest has so little control over his wings that he would make contact with
Rover,) the dragon crowed.