Thunder Moon: Book 2 of the Chatterre Trilogy (Chatterre Triology) Page 4

  Thunder moved away from the gaping maw and looked over the fertile valley. Dragon Bridge was no more than a thin dark smudge against the glistening water of the river. How insignificant the beast looked from here! Yet the beast’s ancestors had burned the old world and it was his duty to see that it didn’t happen, again.

  Lungs burning for air, he hoped he survived long enough to do whatever destiny was directing him toward. GEA-4’s solution had to work because if his dreams were right, as they had been before, until the Star Bridge was closed, they were all in danger. He paced alongside the slick rock, heading back to the portal. GEA-4 still hadn’t returned. He slumped onto a rock, which wasn’t too far from the opening, resigned to waiting, but frustrated by feeling so useless.

  Beneath him, the rock shifted. They needed dirt and rocks to block the old cave, so he grasped the rock, glad to have finally found the reason why he’d come. By the time the fourth rock clattered into the old cavern, Thunder’s entire body was bathed in sweat, his eyes stung, his lungs burned and he wondered why Larwin had expected little GEA-4 to do this chore by herself. Even if he kept at this for the rest of his natural life, he didn’t think the project would ever get completed. He grimaced and glanced ruefully at his pack, which only held enough food and water for two more days.

  By the time he’d moved a dozen rocks, his eyes and nose burned from the combined sweat and dust. He held up bleeding, a soot-covered hand. Despite the pain, the burning need to protect his world drove him to keep digging up rocks and dumping them into the old cave.

  When he could do no more, Thunder sat down near his backpack, tried to wipe the grime off his hands, then retrieved his flask of water. He took a drink. If only the peak contained a convenient pond, he wouldn’t need to move the stones.

  But no water existed up here and wishing wouldn’t create any.

  He put his flask back in his pack and went back to moving rubble into the cave. As he carried a heavy rock to the opening, something tripped him. He dropped the rock, as he smashed to his knees, then staggered upright and kicked what looked like a layer of thick soot. Oddly enough, it didn’t move. Thunder squinted at the heap. Had the heat transformed it? Something seemed odd, but he couldn’t decide exactly what. With a shrug, he picked up the rock and hauled it to the opening.

  Several rocks later, the strange soot tripped him, again. This time he remained on his knees, and studied the strange area. He rubbed a bit between his fingers. Slick, like a glaze, yet pliable as a leaf in the breeze. It held together, instead of crumble, like normal dust. He frowned. Why had this mass transformed so differently from the other surfaces? Ever the researcher, Thunder dug through the dirt and grime at the edges of the odd deposit. As he excavated around the edges, he realized the section went deeper than a hand-span. What substance had reacted like this to the dragon? If he could figure that out, perhaps one of the potters could try to duplicate the phenomena in a kiln. Thunder paused and fingered the strange substance. Even if the process could be duplicated, he couldn’t imagine what use the stuff would have, but still, it was worth examining. After several minutes, his fingertips felt dried leaves, but the narrow, deep excavation he had managed to create prohibited a visual inspection. Rock chips flew, as he used Larwin’s special red light to expand the hole. This time, when he peered into the crock-sized hole, torn, dirty, dry maroon balata leaves were visible at the bottom. He tweaked a leaf from beneath the odd substance. Thunder’s heart hammered against his ribs with excitement, as he grasped the edge of the strange stuff and tugged, but rocks and debris still held it. He bit his lower lip and studied the substance. Nimri had often teased Larwin about his ugly, smelly suit. Larwin always chuckled his sister under her chin and joked that without that suit and the air it held, he would never have found her. Thunder bent down and sniffed the odd substance; a faint scent of sweat mixed with the vague scent of honey. This had to be the air suit. Thunder carefully cut a medium large slab of rock off it, then glanced at the gaping opening of the star bridge and began tossing everything, which covered the suit into the portal. By the time he pulled it free, he felt exhausted from the effort of unearthing the outfit. He yanked it free from its burial place. Amazingly, the filth fell away. Thunder held it up, then turned it around, but didn’t see any tears. The substance’s durability amazed him, as did the hawk emblem on the suit’s chest. It certainly did look like his family’s spirit-animal and the suit, as a whole didn’t look nearly as ugly as Nimri had always claimed. Thunder held it against his chest. It looked like it would fit him. Not surprising, since he and Larwin had similar builds and size. Thunder glanced at the miserable heap of rock, which had taken him hours to dump into the hole, then looked back at the fascinating suit.

  He dusted off his clothes, then stepped into the amazing outfit and flexed his shoulders. Though the front gapped open, the fabric moved with his muscles and felt comfortable. If he had the laces, gloves and shoes to go with it, maybe he could go to the old world and help GEA-4.

  Thunder walked to his backpack, removed his water flask and studied the trench. Fascinating how the suit had protected the fallen leaves underneath it. Though all were dry as the surrounding dust, many had retained a hint of their lustrous magenta color, making them a pleasant sight amid the black.

  He took a swig of water.

  At home, when Larwin undressed, he always left everything in a heap. That should mean the other parts were close to the suit. He shrugged out of the frame-hugging uniform and began enlarging the trench. When the hollow was nearly double in size, he found a glove. It fit his left hand perfectly. Since the landslide appeared to have moved it downhill, he concentrated his efforts there. In quick succession, he unearthed both shoes. Several breaks later, he found the second glove.

  He tried on the ensemble and wished he had a clear pond to see his reflection. A quiet movement caught his attention; GEA-4 emerged from the opening, her arms filled with a large, lumpy bag.

  “Have you finished setting the explosives?”

  “Not completely.” She placed the sack by the stone feet. “Have you found the helmet?”

  “The what?”

  “The head covering.”

  He grimaced, as he recalled Nimri’s comments about Larwin’s horrible bubble-hat. “No.”

  GEA-4 stared at the ground as if she could look through solid stone. As amazing as the odd little woman-child was, he wouldn’t be surprised if she could see all the way to his distant home. “It is there.” She walked far down the slope, then pointed straight down. While he blinked in surprise, she bent double, and hands moving too fast to see, dug through the rubble. A moment later, she straightened, holding something round in her hands.

  Nimri had said the head covering was clear as water and round as a bowl. “How did you know it was there?”

  “Everything else was packed solid and had uncomplicated chemical structures,” she said. He massaged his temples, and tried to understand the information she had given him. She brought him the helmet. “Would you like me to show you how to secure the spacesuit?”

  Would he? “I haven’t found the laces.” Thunder glanced hopefully at the mouth of the star bridge. “If you could find them, I could assist you on the old world.”

  Instead of immediately responding, GEA-4 turned her eerie silver stare to the helmet in her hands, then she fixed her attention back on him. He barely breathed, while he waited for her answer. Finally, satisfied by whatever her mysterious eyes could see, she gave a decisive nod. Before he was quite certain what she intended, GEA-4 began to dress him. Amazingly, she overlapped the edges of the suit and patted them in such a way that the seam disappeared, then she put on the boots and gloves. She made several odd movements that reminded him of an artisan checking their creation. Then, she put the ‘helmet’ on his head. A moment after she clamped it in place, she did something at his shoulders. A faint snicking sound alerted him that the suit now held him trapped inside, but there was no fresh air, as Larwin had claimed, there was onl
y the scent of ashes long cold in a hearth. He could barely see through the grimy bubble. Couldn’t breath.

  “Let me out!” he bellowed as panic set in.

  GEA-4 stepped back. He grabbed for her. She grasped his arm in her shockingly strong grip and tapped one of the barely visible bumps on the forearm. “I have set the oxygen at normal rate. You will now come to the Pterois Volitan and assist me determining which components will have the most salvage value.” Shoulders square, she turned and went back into the star bridge.

  She’d said he would have enough air in the suit. And he hadn’t collapsed – yet. Thunder swallowed his fear of suffocating, then leapt into the star bridge and moved as fast as he could to get a glimpse of the fate he wanted to save Chatterre from.

  Chapter 4

  Raine frowned at the determined mooncalf, then studied Nambaba’s scrolling data stream. What held the rogue mooncalf’s attention enough to tempt it across several quadrants of space? Plutonera, or some equally volatile chemicals were the only things which she had ever heard them pursue, but, to the best of her knowledge, none had ever ventured this far away … with the possible exception of the dragon Otami’s crew had lost fourteen cycles ago, and which had never been found.

  Had it come this direction, too?

  If so, had it been injured?

  "Check for signs of a second mooncalf."

  The data stream froze for a moment, then Nambaba responded, "Nothing within scanner range." The scrolling information resumed.

  Raine rammed the collective forward. As her antiquated ship surpassed its design specifications, it vibrated. "Continue scanning for ships. Especially the telltale emissions from cloaked ones."

  "No ships within five light years."

  Raine could not position Nambaba between the mooncalf and its destination, so she set the ship’s targeting sights on its objective and fired a hydro jet. Nambaba shuddered. From Raine’s vantage point, it looked like the gush charged directly toward mooncalf's gleaming red eye. “Turgamatory! The Zar will have me recycled for killing the serpent!”

  “Please re-state command,” Nambaba said.

  Raine ignored the overly polite computer and stared at the jet, willing it to miss the mooncalf.

  Insolently, the creature turned its head to look back at her, then, it spotted the speeding water and desperately twisted in a backward arc. The hydro rocketed beneath its flailing forelegs and impacted the planetoid's residue-covered surface.

  The tension went out of Raine’s muscles and she wept with relief. “Thank you,” she whispered. As a black opaque plume billowed from the surface, the mooncalf's movements became uncertain.

  Yes. Raine pressed her shepherd-ship to close the gap between the beast and the desolate planetoid, then she fanned Nambaba's tentacles into a threatening halo, which had always given her control over the animals.

  Instead, this mooncalf came directly toward her. "What's wrong with you? Turn back!" Loosing the dragon would be as bad as killing it.

  She glanced out the panorama window, where the soot-like planetoid occupied half the view. She swiveled the ship, calibrated the targeting array, and fired at the dragon's new destination.

  The beast wavered for a moment, then continued on. Its objective was either freedom or a dark spot on her screen.

  Had there ever been such an obstinate creature?

  She aimed a third shot.

  "Warning, life-signs," Nambaba said. "Weapons lock-out."

  Raine screamed with frustrated fury, then checked the view-screen, which displayed a chartreuse blinking point appeared on the facsimile of the planetoid's surface. Worse, the blip's rhythm rapidly diminished. Impossible! “What sort of thing could live on such a forsaken speck?”

  "Life-signs are humanoid."

  Surely a shadow warrior wouldn’t have humanoid life signs. The moon calf’s course never wavered. How had it known where to find the defenseless person? She looked at the walls protecting her, wondering if the calf would attack her if given the opportunity. She shuddered. Turing back to the navscreen, she felt torn between her life-sworn duty as dragon-shepherd and the desire to kill the horrid beast. A scream of frustration escaped.

  "Command does not compute."

  The mooncalf moved toward the blip.

  Raine rammed the collective forward. Nambaba shot ahead of the mooncalf. As the ship hurled toward the surface, the flight-straps tightened across her chest. At the last moment, she flared Nambaba's tentacles. The ship landed with a jolt. Raine’s head hit the headrest with a dizzying thud. Her teeth clicked together and she tasted the copper-salt flavor of blood. A black curtain appeared to cover her panorama-window and blocked out the stars. She blinked and took a quick look at the view-screen, which appeared blurry, but still revealed that the life-signs had become a slow, dim pulse. Worse, the mooncalf was still heading toward the poor humanoid. In her entire nine years as shepherd, she'd never encounter such a willful calf.

  By the instinct and practice earned over years of service to The Zar, Raine locked the controls and unbuckled her restraints. "Nambaba, continue scanning for ships." Raine touched the collar of her spacesuit, which covered her golden dragon medallion. The coveted emblem, with its wave-crest design, designated her a Captain and gave her near-nobility status. Unfortunately only true aristocracy could fail at their duty and live. Die now or die later, either way, Dalf would perish.

  Perhaps if she figured out what had lured the mooncalf across so many sectors of space, she could coax it to follow her home. She gave the navscreen a half-focused glance. Right now, its objective seemed to be attacking Nambaba.

  She snapped her visor shut and yanked on her thick gloves, then slammed her shoulder against the air lock. The portal groaned open. She jumped blindly into a cloud of soot. Strange that the particles remained suspended.

  The mooncalf's golden sheen, which hovered above, was the only contrast in the featureless fog. Raine stood still long enough to watch the obstinate beast's course. Situating herself on the same vector, Raine put her arms forward and took a cautious step forward. Eighty-three wary paces later, her toe came down on a lump and she pitched frontward. Falling in the low gravity made the world seem to slide by in slow motion. What kind of insanity had she succumbed to when she stepped outside Nambaba's security for the sake of a stranger?

  Possibly even an enemy?

  She grimaced and hoisted herself to her feet. As she rose, her gloved hand touched a familiar shape. Grouping along, Raine determined that she'd tripped over her quarry. A glance overhead assured her that she had time to save herself and whoever she must have injured with the last hydroblast.

  Maybe she’d even succeed before the mooncalf arrived.

  For the first time in the long, harrowing shift hope blossomed that something might actually go right.

  Raine felt along the dust-shrouded form. Her victim seemed much smaller than her own five-foot ten-inch frame. Raine situating her hands under the unresponsive armpits and heaved the body toward the mooncalf's glow. Within two paces intense heat engulfed her as the matt-colored dust began sparkling and swirling upward. She’d been wrong, there wasn’t time to save the stranger.

  ooo

  When the sound of thunder echoed through her ctenophore class ship, Tem-aki looked at the holograph in the corner of her lab where tiny rocks rained into the new cleft she had concealed her ship in. Each miniature iridescent speck which struck the luminous holographic hull reverberated through the actual hull until it sounded like she was in the middle of a metal stadium with thousands of spectators stomping their feet. A glance at her instruments showed the asteroid to be as stable as when she’d entered the cleft. Then, movement in her peripheral vision yanked her attention back to the hologram, and she saw another madrox, or perhaps it was the same one coming back to her research site. Tem-aki sprinted out of her lab heading toward the cockpit. By the time she’d secured the straps of the pilot’s seat, commonsense kicked in and she realized starting the ship's engines w
as the worst thing she could possibly do.

  Heart slamming against her ribs, she waited for the inevitable. But the only thing that changed was that silence returned. This beat everything her instructors had ever taught her about madrox, which supposedly attacked ships that didn’t quickly go to warp. Why had the madrox hovered above her spacecraft, but made no move to touch it? What, aside from the throbbing of the propulsion system, attracted them?

  Did movement triggered a dragon's predatory instincts, as it did with so many other predators?

  If so, she should be safe for the moment.

  What if noise attracted it? She placed her hand over her pounding heart.

  Madrox didn't follow scent. Did they?

  Surely scent would not be something a space-based predator followed, so it was more likely that sight or sound triggered them.

  Tem-aki tiptoed back to her lab being careful not to make a sound, then she stood in front of the hologram and studied its display. Now, the other ship was making strange maneuvers, which would never get it away from the dragon. The pilot’s clumsy movements made it look like the strange ship was either racing the beast to a nearby planetoid or trying to put itself in harm's way. Tem-aki leaned so close that a stray curl brushed against the hologram. She could feel the energy vibrate through it and shoved the annoying red strands behind her ear.

  Everyone called madrox 'energy-loving-beasts'. What if energy attracted them? She swallowed, glad that most of her ship's systems were shut down and the frayed looking one held it's attention.

  Leaning forward, again, she studied the other ship, wondering if there was a possibility that it could have had something to do with Larwin's disappearance. Her brother had vanished near this sector the year before while training an android prototype how to fly... It didn’t look like this pilot knew much about flying. “Computer, identify the vessel on display.”

  “It is a scyphozoan style spacecraft,” Dasya Voltain said.