Dragon and Thief

Chapter 3

Commander Chayd did his best, as did all the remaining Shontine and K'da. But the Havenseeker was too big, its control areas too widely scattered.

In the end, there really was no hope.

Draycos regained consciousness slowly, to find himself lying beneath the nav bubble's control board. He was curled up tightly with his back to the bulkhead like a K'da cub trying to keep warm on a cold night, a mound of broken tiles and shattered equipment pressed against him. The descent through the atmosphere—the heat and buffeting, the tension and Chayd's calm orders—was etched on his mind like the brilliant sunlight of morning. But the crash itself was only a vague memory of noise and chaos, of being thrown violently about as the ship's hull crumpled beneath him and the nav bubble shattered above him.

For that matter, he couldn't even remember leaving the relative safety of Polphir's back and becoming fully three-dimensional again.

He had no idea how long he'd been lying there. Long enough for what was left of the Havenseeker to grind its way to a halt, apparently, because all was now silence and stillness. On the other hand, the cloud of dust that still hung thick in the air around him showed that the ship hadn't been down for very long, either. An hour, perhaps. Maybe less.

Carefully, trying not to choke on the dust, he took a deep breath, concentrating on the feel of the muscles and bones in his torso as his chest expanded. There were a few aches and pains, but nothing that indicated anything more serious than bruises and a few cracked scales through which blood was slowly oozing. He tried his legs next, carefully moving and twisting each in turn. The middle joint of his left rear leg jolted him with a brief stab of pain, but after a little experimentation he concluded it was only a mild sprain. He catalogued a few more bruises and cracked scales on various limbs, then moved on to his neck and tail. Again, he found nothing serious.

Pushing away the collected debris hemming him in, he worked his way out from under the control panel. Polphir was nowhere to be seen, the chair he'd been strapped to apparently torn straight off the deck. Wincing as shards of plastic and metal crunched under his paws, Draycos walked gingerly to the edge of the bubble floor and looked down to the main deck.

There, lying amid the rubble, was Polphir.

Draycos's injured leg and the uncertain footing on the main deck would make a standard K'da leap risky at best. Fortunately, the ladder he'd climbed up earlier was still in place, though hanging precariously by a single connector. Climbing down as quickly as he could, he crunched through more plastic and metal to Polphir's side.

The Shontin was dead.

Draycos would not remember afterward how long he crouched there, sifting quietly through his memories and saying his silent farewells. He thought back to their first meeting, after Draycos's host had died, and to those first few tentative months as symbionts. He had missed Trachan terribly, and only much later did he learn that his surly attitude had nearly persuaded Polphir to turn him over to someone else instead.

But the Shontin had been patient, and Draycos had managed to grow up a little. In the end, they had worked things out.

It had been lucky for Draycos that they had. At least twice in their time together it had been only Polphir's quick thinking in the face of danger that had kept the two of them alive.

But it hadn't all been merely experience and quick thinking. Polphir had had a fierce loyalty to his symbiont, a loyalty he'd demonstrated at the Battle of Conkren when he'd deliberately put his own life on the line for his friend. Draycos still shuddered at that memory, and still marveled at the miracle that had gotten both of them out alive.

Now Polphir was gone. And Draycos had been powerless to save him.

Or even to properly mourn him. He and Polphir had been together for over ten years, as companions, symbionts, and fellow warriors. A proper farewell to such a relationship could not be accomplished in less than a week, nor without all of Polphir's close family and friends on hand to weave their own memories into the great tapestry that would close off his life.

But what remained of Polphir's close family was a long ways away. Most of his friends lay dead around him here on the Havenseeker's deck.

And Draycos certainly did not have a week for a proper mourning. In fact, unless he could find another host, his own life could be counted now in hours.

"Steady, K'da warrior," he said aloud to himself. His voice was startlingly loud in the silence, the words echoing oddly from the new contours and gaps the crash had created. "Rule One: assess the complete situation before coming to unpleasant conclusions."

As a pep talk, it was a dismal failure. As good military advice, though, it made sense. Picking his way through the debris, favoring his injured leg a little, he began to search the ship.

It was an unpleasant duty. The Havenseeker's bow was completely crushed and buried, the few Shontine who had been up there apparently buried with it. Those who had been below him in the control complex had also died in the crash. From the control complex aft, the ship was clogged with debris but otherwise relatively undamaged, and for awhile Draycos dared to hope that their attackers' sweep with the Death might have missed someone.

But no. They had done an efficient job of it, leaving nothing behind but Shontine bodies. Some lay where they had fallen, most where the crash had sent them sliding. The K'da bodies, of course, were long gone. Slowly, his head held low, Draycos turned and headed back forward to the control complex. It was, he thought more than once along the way, worse than any battlefield from which he had ever faced the Valahgua. On battlefields, at least, there were always a few survivors. Here, there was no one but him.

But he would be joining the rest of them soon enough. He had survived an attack with the Death, and even made it through a ship crash. But he could not survive for long without a host. Another two hours, perhaps, and he would fade into a two-dimensional shadow and disappear forever into nothingness.

Still, he had those two hours. He might as well put them to use.

The sensor station in the control complex had been completely demolished in the crash. But the piloting console had its own recorder, which turned out to be relatively undamaged.

The data diamonds, unfortunately, had been jolted out of their recording slots by the impact and mixed together in a random heap at the bottom of the recorder housing. Digging them out, he found a handheld reader and began sorting through them. Before death took him, perhaps he could at least learn who had done this to them.

Though even as he set to work, he knew down deep that he was merely distracting himself. Whatever he learned here, that knowledge would die with him. No K'da or Shontin would ever find this tomb.

The dust slowly began to clear from the air as Draycos worked, gradually settling into a soft coating that seemed to cling to every surface. The faint sounds of wildlife began to be heard, too, bird and insect twitterings as alien as the world they inhabited. Occasionally Draycos noticed his ears twitching as another new noise entered the mix, but he paid no conscious attention to the sounds. His entire focus was on the diamonds.

But all the concentration in the universe couldn't make up for what was no longer there. Damaged in the crash, the diamonds no longer held the full record of the ambush. Only bits and pieces remained, images here and there. Nothing he could use to positively identify the ships that had attacked them.

As slowly but inevitably as the settling of the dust around him, he felt his strength begin to drain away. The data reader slipped first from his grasp, the diamonds themselves became too difficult to hold, and all too soon he found himself huddled on the deck beside Polphir's body. He was still three-dimensional, but as he gazed at the tips of his forepaws he thought he could see a hint of flattening in the ridges around the claw sheaths.

It was an odd sensation to be alone this way for so long. Much like the difference, he decided, between missing a meal and starving to death.

Still, on one level, it was only fair. All his friends and comrades were already dead. It was merely his turn to follow them.

And then, from somewhere aft of the command complex, he heard a sound.

At first it was so soft he thought it was his imagination. Even as it grew louder he was convinced his dying mind was simply playing tricks on him.

But no. It was real, all right. The sound of footsteps, coming toward him.

The attackers had arrived to finish the job.

Draycos took a deep breath. He would have time, maybe, for a single attack before either the weakness or their guns got him. A useless gesture, really.

But he was a warrior of the K'da. Better to die fighting than to do nothing at all.

Taking another breath, drawing together every bit of strength that still remained, he silently drew his legs beneath him and waited.

The footsteps came to the aft doorway. Draycos closed his eyes to slits; and then, suddenly, the intruder was there.

He was a human. No surprise there—the use of their contact's recognition signals had made it clear that their attackers either were humans or were allied with them. But aside from that single fact, he was not at all what Draycos was expecting.

He was young, for one thing, if his size was any indication. Humans and Shontine shared many physical similarities, and this human was no larger than a twelve-year-old Shontin boy.

Of course, Draycos had seen Shontine boys and girls that young pressed into military service in times of desperation. But it was clear that the boy standing in the doorway was no warrior. His clothing was all wrong, for one thing: no helmet, no body armor, no uniform. All he was wearing was a tan shirt and light blue pants, with low brown boots on his feet. He had a heavy-looking brown jacket slung over his shoulder; apparently it was warmer in here than he found comfortable.

He was at least armed, with what appeared to be a handgun belted at the left side of his waist. But the weapon was far too small to be a proper soldier's field gun. Besides that, a trained soldier should have had it ready in his hand when checking out enemy territory.

But if he wasn't one of the attackers, who was he?

"It's just like back there," the boy said, still standing in the doorway as he looked around the control complex. A trained warrior wouldn't stand that long in a doorway, either. "More of the same, only worse."

Draycos stayed motionless, struggling to understand the words. All the members of the advance team had learned the humans' chief trade language during the long voyage, but with his waning strength even something as simple as translation was becoming difficult. Perhaps he wouldn't have the strength for an attack after all.

"Wait a second," the boy said suddenly. "There is something new here."

"What is it?" a much fainter voice asked. Draycos looked around as best he could without moving his head, but he could see no one else. A communicator, then. An advance scout, perhaps, in contact with the true warrior coming behind him?

"Looks like a little dragon," the boy said, starting across the room toward Draycos. "No kidding—it really does. About the size of a small tiger, all covered with gold scales."

"Is it alive?"

"Doesn't look like it," the boy said, still moving forward. Almost within attack range now. "I suppose you want me to check."

"If you would be so kind," the other voice said. Draycos braced himself...

And for a moment the mental haze of his approaching death cleared, and a strange thought occurred to him.

Yes, he could attack this intruder as he'd planned. He could probably even kill the boy before he lost his hold on this universe and vanished into death and oblivion.

Or, instead, he could use that same last bit of strength to try to connect with him.

"Still not moving," the boy said. "I guess it's dead. Too bad—it's pretty neat looking. Huh—those gold scales have little bits of red on them, too, right at the edges. Cool."

It was a gamble, Draycos knew. A terrible, desperate gamble. Throughout their history, the K'da had met only two species who could act as hosts to them. There wasn't a chance in a hundred that these humans could do so.

And if the connection failed, there would be no attack. Draycos had strength enough for only a single action.

"Still not moving," the boy reported.

Draycos came to a decision. He was a K'da warrior, and he could not attack an untrained and unprepared opponent without clear cause. The boy stopped and leaned close....

Draycos leaped.