Dragon's Revenge: the Stargods #3 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  EPILOGUE

  “LESSON NUMBER ONE IN ADVANCED BUSH SURVIVAL: LOOK FOR WATER.”

  Kat shoved at the cockpit. It gave with a sudden jerk that threw her off balance and flailing into the control panel.

  Kat made the awkward climb out of the cockpit. She jumped onto the wing checking the area for specific landmarks. The sun made a fiery ball due west. Not much better landmark than that. It turned the area under her aircraft into an inky morass.

  An inky morass that moved and slithered.

  Kat scrambled back up the wing toward the cockpit in a hurry. She fished an emergency light out of the kit and shone it down into the shadows.

  Hundreds of black snakes covered the ground—all moving. Wedge shaped heads with venom pits and viper heat sensors lifted and tasted the air with rapidly moving forked tongues of blood red.

  And then one particular dark knot lifted to become a giant snake. Bigger than the biggest snake she had ever heard about. Its head was bigger than hers.

  As the monster rose up to stare her in the eye, it fluttered six pair of black bat wings.

  She could not run from it. She could not climb high enough to get away from it. She could not hide from it. . . .

  Be sure to read these magnificent

  DAW Fantasy Novels by

  IRENE RADFORD

  The Stargods:

  THE HIDDEN DRAGON

  THE DRAGON CIRCLE

  THE DRAGON’S REVENGE

  The Dragon Nimbus:

  THE GLASS DRAGON

  THE PERFECT PRINCESS

  THE LONELIEST MAGICIAN

  THE WIZARD’S TREASURE

  The Dragon Nimbus History:

  THE DRAGON’S TOUCHSTONE

  THE LAST BATTLEMAGE

  THE RENEGADE DRAGON

  Merlin’s Descendants:

  GUARDIAN OF THE BALANCE

  GUARDIAN OF THE TRUST

  GUARDIAN OF THE VISION

  GUARDIAN OF THE PROMISE

  GUARDIAN OF THE FREEDOM

  Copyright © 2005 by Phyllis Irene Radford.

  All Rights Reserved.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1344.

  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.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  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, November 2005

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16605-5

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is for Karen, Deb, Connie, Mike B., Bob, Mike M., Eric, Sheila, and Di Anne, the friends from “Digging Deeper” who reinvigorate my writing and keep me going when the books muddle in the middle.

  PROLOGUE

  THE NIMBUS OF DRAGONS has found a way to eliminate the foreign ship that orbits our home. We manipulated forces as a group that would elude any single one of us. Together, we have ensured the safety of our nimbus and those we protect. No more foreigners will plague us with their machines and their diseases. The rest of their vices we can manipulate or eliminate as we did their ship.

  A dragon dream is a powerful tool, and a dangerous one. We all agreed that this one must be given. Only if we all agree will we use one.

  If only eliminating the threat of the Krakatrice were just as easy. The snake monsters are resilient and more resistant to manipulation. Perhaps we should pit the humans against our enemy since we may not kill them ourselves. All life is sacred.

  One of us has gone rogue. We have no way of controlling the one called Hanassa. The purple-tipped dragon has developed a taste for human blood, human power, and living within a human body. He changes bodies at will until he finds a host strong enough of body and weak enough of will to destroy or imprison him. The dragon nimbus is out of options. We may not destroy one of our own any more than we may destroy the Krakatrice.

  There is one among the humans who needs our help. Which of us shall we dispatch to guide her in finding what she truly quests for and not what others tell her she must quest for? We have promised the God of All that we would aid the humans. We have promised to maintain the unity among every living thing in the universe. The Krakatrice add nothing to the unity. The one called Hanassa threatens unity with his every breath.

  CHAPTER 1

  LIEUTENANT KAT TALBOT, Imperial Military Police, wrestled the massive hydroponics tank through the listing shuttle bay doors. The six-meter-by-two-meter apparatus weighed nothing in zero G, but its bulk and mass were awkward. She couldn’t see around it and kept bumping into bulkheads. Commander Amanda Leonard, captain of this derelict ship, had chosen Kat because of her bushie height and strength as well as her experience in and affinity for zero G, more than anyone else among the scattered crew.

  Since Jupiter had stopped spinning two months ago, gravity had evaporated aboard. Atmosphere had leaked away before that. Unless Kat could find and replace the stolen crystal array and get the ship operational again, all she could do was salvage as much as possible.

  She paused in her struggles. The air in her EVA suit tasted stale. “Nothing for it but to get this thing aboard a lander so I can fire up some atmosphere,” she grunted.

  A flicker of movement off to her left made her stop and look around. Nothing.

  She shivered. Just her imagination running wild. Ghost ships were notorious for evoking atavistic fears. Jupiter was very much a ghost ship. Derelict and drifting in space.

  Nine months ago, the three outlawed O’Hara brothers had stolen the crystal array from Jupiter. Without the star drive the ship was doomed, her crew stranded in the back o
f beyond.

  For nine months she’d been salvaging essentials for survival and still life dirtside resembled a tribal huntergatherer society more than civilization.

  “How long, Kat?” Lieutenant Commander Jetang M’Berra called over her helmet comm.

  “Ten minutes,” she panted. She’d spent too much time dirtside breathing real air. Getting used to recycled oxygen mixtures again would take time.

  The hydroponics tank tilted and jammed in the partially open hatch. No power to open the doors further.

  “S’murghit!” she borrowed an epithet from the planetary locals. “You could have made this easier by assigning me an extra crewman.” She didn’t care if M’Berra heard that comment or not. She didn’t care if Commander Amanda Leonard heard it either.

  Her superior officers had gotten too used to her initiative as well as her bushie height and muscle mass for doing their dirty work.

  “My sensors read you are running low on air, Kat,” M’Berra advised her. “You have less than ten minutes to get that tank aboard a lander and fire up life support.”

  “Acknowledged.” No wonder her air tasted stale. Her EVA suit’s monitors hadn’t operated properly in months. But the suit worked. That was more than she could say for most of the high-tech equipment they’d salvaged.

  She heaved and levered the tank free of the obstruction. A gentle shove sent it gliding toward the open bay doors of a lander.

  She wished for her more maneuverable and sleeker fighter. But she needed the extra cargo space and fuel efficiency in a lander.

  “Kat, what did you do in med bay?” M’Berra’s voice contained an edge of worry.

  “Didn’t go near the place,” Kat grunted as she shoved the tank into the hold of the lander. It was a small lie. She’d passed the med bay on a private errand to her own quarters, but M’berra didn’t need to know that. Besides, she hadn’t actually gone into that med bay.

  She climbed in after the hydroponics tank and closed the hatch. Still eight minutes to spare on her suit air. She reached the cockpit and keyed in comm system and life support before settling into the pilot’s seat.

  “What’s wrong in med bay?” she asked. Good thing she’d set the entire lander’s systems on standby before going after the tank and her own personal memento. She’d have air and heat before her suit emptied.

  “Get out now, Kat.” M’Berra didn’t mask the anxiety in his voice.

  “Can’t. I need two more minutes to fire up all systems.”

  “Don’t wait!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  M’Berra’s panic was contagious. Kat skipped the usual safety protocol in favor of faster engine ignition. Life support would come on faster that way, too.

  “Something sparked in med bay. The volatile chemicals . . .”

  “No air to support a spark,” Kat reassured herself and M’Berra.

  That flicker of movement had been in the direction of med bay at the center of the ship.

  “Still some air in med bay. It’s sealed better than the rest of the ship. A spark. Kat, the whole ship is going to blow with you in it.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  In the background she heard a dull roar. Something flashed on the periphery of her vision.

  Without thinking, she tapped an override sequence into her interface. Before she could inhale one last gulp of rancid artificial air, she launched out of the shuttle bay.

  The explosion rushed through the confined passageways seeking an exit and expansion. The force behind it propelled Kat’s lander through the open bay doors faster than safety dictated. Her tail fins nicked the edge.

  More flashes of light sent her adrenaline surging. With a teeth-grinding screech she broke free. A hard bank to starboard brought her looping around the mass of the space cruiser and back within view of the planet below.

  Large chunks of cerama/metal hull followed her and greeted her. Another sharp veer, this time to port. A flying mass just barely missed hurtling into her viewscreen.

  Was one of those chunks a fighter headed dirtside?

  No way to tell. No time to think.

  Kat exhaled and realized she had nothing left to inhale. Quickly she ripped off her helmet and gasped the first faint traces of atmosphere generated by the lander.

  “What did you do to my ship?” Commander Leonard’s voice screamed through the ship comm. “We saw the explosion from here, Talbot. What did you do? I’ll court-martial you here and now.”

  “A lot of good that will do you, Capt’n Leonard, sir,” Kat grumbled. “We’re three sectors off the star charts and no way to communicate with civilization.”

  Friction from the planetary upper atmosphere began to glow around the nose of the lander. Kat hit the control to extend the rudimentary wings to slow her descent. She overrode the command just as quickly to avoid having the wings torn off by another burning chunk of debris that flashed past her.

  “Simurgh take you, Konner O’Hara, and both your brothers. Once again, you’ve destroyed my home,” she cried. Unwanted tears touched her eyes. She blinked them away and concentrated on keeping her trajectory shallow. Kat’s curse, while not exactly accurate, reflected the emotions welling in her chest.

  Somehow the outlawed brothers had something to do with that stray spark. They had to have. Just as they had stolen the crystal array. They had given the ship and its crew a death sentence, stranding them on the primitive planet below, without possible communication with the rest of the galaxy.

  Atmospheric stresses screamed through the lander.

  “M’Berra, this lander steers like a garbage scow. I’m having trouble keeping to flight plan.” She turned as tightly as the ship allowed, trying to bring the big vessel back to the proper coordinates. Three G’s of pressure pushed her against her restraints and flattened her face. At the end of the tight turn, Kat breathed heavily. Sweat dotted her brow. She checked her sensors.

  Chunks of Jupiter still fell around her, just a small percentage of the ship. The explosion had directed most of the debris out of orbit and away from the planet.

  As the stray pieces hit the upper atmosphere and encountered friction, they became various sized fire-balls, shedding bits in their wakes. The westering sun added red brightness to the mass.

  “Report, Lieutenant Talbot,” Commander Leonard barked over the comm unit. “How much of the ship is lost? Can we make it spaceworthy once we reclaim the crystal array from those thieving O’Hara brothers?”

  Kat grimaced and dodged another piece of glowing debris from the once-proud vessel. She checked her rear visual screen. “Not much left, sir.” She flashed the sensor view of the scene to ground communications.

  Commander Leonard wasn’t going to like it at all.

  “Salvage?” Leonard said. Her voice lost none of its bite.

  “Unknown,” Kat spat back. In the last nine months her captain had lost her sense of reality in her obsession over restoring Jupiter and, with it, her command.

  Kat pictured Amanda Leonard in the back of her mind as she had last seen Jupiter’s captain: a black patch over her left eye, pacing Base Camp with the comm pressed closely against her face, her uncovered eye looking black and sunken from lack of sleep. The uniform she insisted upon wearing was clean and pressed, but it hung on her wasted figure. More than lack of sleep and poor appetite ate at Leonard’s once buxom and robust body.

  “Not good enough, Talbot. I need a clearer picture. I need evidence to condemn the O’Hara brothers for sabotaging my ship,” Leonard sneered. As if she didn’t have enough evidence already.

  To convict, first they had to capture the outlaws.

  At the moment Loki, Konner, and Kim O’Hara, though outlaws, virtually owned the planet except for Base Camp.

  What’s more, the locals revered them as Stargods.

  “May a Denubian muscle-cat scratch the balls off all three of the O’Hara brothers,” Leonard cursed. “They cost me an eye and now they’ve cost me my ship.”

  Kat
smiled. She’d wished similar fates for the O’Hara’s—as well as their infamous Mum—many times herself. She’d sought revenge upon them for twenty years, long before their sabotage had stranded the crew of the Jupiter on this forgotten planet three jumps beyond nowhere.

  She fingered the bracelet of braided hair she had retrieved from her own quarters on this trip. The detour had cost her time and air. But she was glad now that she had this last memento of her mother and the family she had lost at the age of seven.

  “Get that hydro tank back here, Talbot, then report to me. Directly to me. Not to First Officer M’Berra, not to your buddies in the flight pool, and definitely not to any enlisted personnel.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kat replied in her briskest military voice. If she’d been face-to-face with the captain, she’d have snapped a salute. She discommed and returned her focus to her sensor screens.

  Pieces of Jupiter, large and small—too many big ones—descended toward the surface at a steep angle. Cerama/metal flared brightly against atmospheric friction. Kat’s viewscreen darkened automatically. The afterimage of flames streaking across the sky lingered on her retinas.

  “I will never forget this,” she said to herself through gritted teeth. “Nor will I forgive you, O’Hara brothers, for causing this.”

  “What is happening, Talbot?” the captain’s voice demanded through the comm unit.

  “What you see is what you get, Captain,” Kat muttered.

  “Will any of it hit Base Camp? Do we need to seek shelter?” Leonard continued her barrage of questions.

  “Looks like most of the larger pieces are east of you,” Kat reassured her captain.

  Silence from Leonard.

  “Captain, you still there?” Kat dreaded silence from her commanding officer more than she would a string of curses.

  Proximity alarms blared. A sensor array flew directly toward Kat. She banked the lander to port and barely missed the aerial.