The Dragon Circle (38 page)

And military discipline had broken down. Severely. Why wasn't the infamous Commander Amanda Leonard commanding an orderly escape? Where was the captain of
Jupiter
anyway?

“While they run to and fro without thinking, we can move in with minimal interference.” Kim sounded defeated already. His guilty conscience must really be bothering him.

Or was it the Tambootie he had stuffed in his pockets before liftoff? The kid definitely needed a long treatment with gamma blockers.

Loki did not have the luxury of a conscience or an addiction. As the eldest, he was responsible for the family's safety and their success.

“Let the droids refuel,” Loki told Raaskan. “After that, no one but us gets aboard these two ships. And keep an eye on Kim. Don't let him do too much. Think about his orders before you do anything.”

“I shall lead the foraging party for the red crystals,” Raaskan said quietly. “I have memorized the plans. Stargod Kim should remain here to help guard the ships.”

Loki nodded agreement. Under the influence of so much Tambootie, Kim might bond with the directional crystals and take off on some lumbird-brained excursion of his own.

“What about the people pounding on the doors?” Hestiia asked. She looked as if she wanted to throw the hatch open, or maybe grab a spear and run all of the IMPs through.

Part of Loki wanted to give in to the pleas of the people waiting outside the doors and give them a ride back to the planet. He did not dare. They had other means of escape.
Jupiter
should not crash for several weeks yet. Possibly months or even years. Plenty of time to strip the ship of everything usable.

Except the spin had already begun to slow. Momentum should have kept it going for weeks. Why weren't the techs making corrections manually?

Raaskan relayed the orders to his small band of warriors. Each was armed with iron knives, clubs, and/or iron tipped spears. They looked a fearsome bunch. More fearsome than fearful, he hoped. Bringing them along had been a calculated risk. They'd never encountered null g before. They'd never seen a spaceship.

But they were survivors one and all. And they obeyed the Stargods with unflinching loyalty.

Kim grabbed two antigrav cargo sleds from the racks along the bulkhead. Raaskan relieved him of the burden. Hestiia and Poolie each grabbed two more. Loki took the last two and parceled them out among the villagers. That left four men, including the two brawny blacksmith apprentices to guard the shuttle and the lander. And Kim. Enough.

Gravity remained here in the outer section of the ship, not as heavy as the last trip. Enough to make the antigrav sleds necessary.

Kim directed four men from his crew to begin loading the sleds with the small red directional crystals from the nearest rabbit hole. One hundred forty-four of the small red stones would take time to load, but should offer no great challenge.

“I'll stay here and supervise. Can you get the drivers?” Kim asked. His eyes looked bloodshot and he moved sluggishly.

“Twelve greens shouldn't present a problem. Getting from here to the crystal room and back again will be the problem. Konner insisted we need the drivers from the midship array. They are a fraction bigger than the aft and bow circles. How do we keep the evacuees from breaking in here and stopping us?”

“Give me two minutes at the sensor terminal.”

Kim grinned, more sarcastic than humorous. He nibbled on a leaf of the Tambootie. Then he nearly skipped toward the computer terminal near the hatch into the corridor as if no more than normal g pressed upon him.

Loki shook his head at the immediate change in his brother. He vowed to himself that as soon as they returned dirtside, he'd get Kim those gamma blockers.

“Can you hack your way into bridge controls from here?” Loki asked Kim. Meant for recording quartermaster manifests, the terminal had limited access to the primary systems.

“Doubtful. But I can screw up a lot of signals. Anyone bothering to look at screens will see that the bay doors are damaged and the bay is empty and open to vacuum.” Kim began working away at the touch screen.

Within a few moments, the line of desperate people fled the corridor, seeking another escape. Loki heard cries of dismay. They pushed and shoved each other ruthlessly. One small woman had trouble turning and moving with the flow. A heavy duffel bag on her shoulder already overbalanced her.

“Out of my way, SB,” a squarely built man with a blind justice insignia on the collar and cuff of his black uniform snarled. He had a prow of a nose beneath black hair and beady eyes. “I'll have your stripes for blocking my way. I'm the judge. I ordered this evacuation. Now everyone out of my way. No one gets off this boat until I do.” He shoved the woman viciously, slamming her into a bulkhead.

Her head smacked against the cerama/metal walls. The judge did not even look back at her. Blood trickled down the side of her face.

The crowd ignored her. They stepped around her. One slight man tromped on her sprawled legs trying to get out of the way of a bigger man.

Loki bit his lip. He gulped hard. She needed help. He should go to her. He didn't have time.
She
was not his responsibility.

Hestiia prodded his back. “We have to get going. She is the enemy. Not our concern,” she said.

“I can't just leave her.”

Loki's stomach sank. He had to obey his conscience after all.

Kat looked up at the thick cloud cover. A raindrop plopped onto her cheek. Then another struck her eye. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision.

“Nacring Nebulae!” she cursed. “First they abandon me. Then they kidnap me. Now they've stranded me in the middle of the bush in the middle of a rainstorm with only a primitive iron knife.”

She turned slowly, trying to get her bearings. Which way led back to the village where her crew-mates had landed?

Thick clouds obscured the sun's position. She'd never find north without help.

“I don't dare strike out on my own.” She almost wept. “I don't even know which direction to go, even if I knew which direction to take.”

She clenched her fist around the hilt of the weapon. The chunk of horn hacked from some poor animal warmed under her touch, seemed to mold to her grip. She stared at it a moment.

“Well, if you want to work, best we get started.” She clamped her mouth shut on the last words. “What am I doing, talking to an inanimate object. A knife, by St. Bridget. A bloody
knife.
”

The barbaric weapon did not answer her. Of course it wouldn't. She hadn't expected it to. She just needed to hear the sound of her own voice to convince herself she wasn't dreaming. That wasn't stepping over the line into insanity.

Was it?

Insanity? She'd invoked a saint she had not thought about since early childhood. Governor Talbot—Dad—had followed a different faith from her birth mother. She no longer believed in saints and miracles, or dragons and unicorns. She believed in her own hard work and intelligence.

Surely she could tame one wild clearing in the middle of nowhere long enough to give herself shelter and some food.

Her stomach growled. “Why didn't I bother with lunch before those barbarians invaded my ship?” she moaned.

(
Because you were too excited at the prospect of meeting your family to eat.
)

“Who said that?” Kat turned rapidly, scanning the clearing for intruders. She kept her knife at the ready. It balanced easily in her hand. She saw no one to use the weapon on. Not even a small rodent that might become dinner.

Then she shuddered at her primitive thoughts. No matter how desperate, she would not succumb to killing an animal, taking a life, merely to serve her noisy stomach. Maybe if she missed a meal or two a few of the extra inches on her hips would dissolve.

(
You must eat to keep your energy and your mind at peak functioning.
)

“Who is hiding in the bushes?” she demanded. She charged a large clump of greenery slashing with the knife. She bounced against flimsy branches. Her weapon embedded in the trunk. As she wrenched it free, she kept looking over her shoulder for the speaker.

A low chuckle came from behind her.

She whipped around, brandishing the knife. Nothing. No one. He had sounded so close.

Who?

Maybe she was going insane. People stranded on bush planets did that.

Maybe she was only hungry. Konner had said something about the bulb of a plant with yellow flowers, down by the creek.

Where in the frocking black hole was the creek?

(
Listen.
)

Sound advice. Her brain must be working properly and her imagination only put voice to it. A bright tenor voice. Too high to be one of her brothers. Too slow and drawling to be one of her shipmates.

She stood still and listened to the clearing. Birds chirping. Insects buzzing. Wind and rain. Grass growing. Trees reaching out with gratitude for the moisture . . .

“Stop that!”

Another low chuckle.

Then she heard it, beneath the other sounds, a soft ripple of water, faster than the dripping rain, gentler than the wind. She headed toward the sound.

Her nose worked in wonder. Gone was the citrus smell that permeated ships and domed cities. Green growth, falling leaves, sap from a softer wood, and the faint musk of an animal in rut flooded her senses. And over it all she inhaled the clean scent of vibrant life.

Her skin prickled from the cooler air. She rubbed her arms for warmth. The ground beneath her feet became spongy and descended at a gentle angle. Kat pushed aside drooping ferns. One of the fronds sliced her palm. She jumped back startled. Then she stared in fascinated horror at the drops of blood welling up from the wound.

A string of curses escaped her.

(
Suck it,
) the voice in the back of her mind suggested.

She knew she should. Enzymes in her own saliva would begin the clotting and healing process. But the thought of tasting blood sent waves of revulsion through her. All of them knotted in her stomach.

If only she had a med kit she could spray the wound with a cooling gel that would clean and disinfect as well as seal it. Cool. She needed something cold to slow the bleeding. Then pressure and elevation.

(
The creek.
) This time the voice coaxed as if dealing with a small child.

In the bush she was an infant.

Not quite an infant. She'd taken shore leave on bush planets before. She'd aced three advanced survival courses. St. Bridget, she'd been born and raised in the bush. She knew what to do.

Always before, she'd had the option of an emergency beacon and extraction if she became overwhelmed, or hurt, or ill. Not here. Not now. She had to think and act in her own defense.

“The creek it is. I just hope I don't get infected with some exotic bacteria that causes my flesh to rot and slough off, leaving me a living skeleton.”

(
Hardly.
)

She was getting used to the voice now.

Avoiding the ferns and placing her feet carefully, she descended a few more steps to find a wide pool fed by a small waterfall and draining by a narrow defile into another steeper fall. She plunged her hand into the pond. Cool water soothed the slight burn of the wound. After a few moments she lifted it free of the gently lapping water. Several moments passed and only a few beads of blood appeared. Satisfied, she looked for something to press against the wound.

All she could find was her trouser leg. Dared she risk getting her hand dirty again on her grubby uniform? Captain Leonard was finicky about uniforms. Kat followed her example and never allowed anything to mar the sharp crease on her trousers or the grime to show. Instantly, she felt grubby and itchy. The rain did nothing to cleanse her of the sensations. Surely kidnap and stranding in the bush offered an adequate excuse for a less than pristine uniform.

She pressed her palm against her thigh. What was one more stain? Still she wanted a bath and a clean uniform. NOW.

“I'm as bad as a dome breather,” she admonished herself. “This isn't building a shelter or providing me with fuel.”

She looked for yellow flowers. Three stalks of them to her left drooped under the weight of the rain. A few thrusts of the knife loosened the soil at their base. She tugged them free. Sure enough a fat bulb grew at the end of each plant.

She shook off loose dirt. Too much remained. Back to the pool. She had to kneel in the muck at the edge, further staining her uniform. After swishing the knife and vegetation in the water, some splotches of soil and rotting vegetation clung to both. Nothing for it but to use her hands to scrub.

A little pressure from her fingers cleared off any remaining debris. She let her hands linger in the soothing water. Not as cold as she expected. The feeder creek looked like it cascaded straight down the nearest mountain glacier. It should numb her skin by now.