The Hidden Dragon: the Stargods #1 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  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

  EPILOGUE

  “IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS?”

  As Konner spoke, Kim finally dared shift his eyes from the impossible beast outside the Rover’s viewscreen to his sensor array.

  “If we all see the same thing, it can’t be a hallucination. Sensors don’t read anything. It has to be a holographic projection,” Kim replied.

  “From where?” Loki asked. “There’s nothing remotely mechanical on this whole planet. All the science in known space agrees that dragons cannot exist,” Loki stammered. “But I see one. Right there on the shuttle nose.”

  “All the science in known space today says a flying pussycat can’t exist,” Kim retaliated. “But there is a black one strutting into the cockpit right now as if he owned it.” Sure enough, the black critter sniffed each of them before jumping on the pilot’s console with only a little extension of his wings. He perched on the narrow ledge between the controls and the viewscreen and peered at the crystalline dragon outlined in royal purple.

  Suddenly the winged cat began to squeak and chirp. The sounds were alien. A sense of their meaning tickled the back of Kim’s mind. Questions! The cat asked the dragon questions.

  And the dragon replied!

  Be sure to read these magnificent

  DAW Fantasy Novels by IRENE RADFORD

  The Stargods:

  THE HIDDEN DRAGON (Book 1)

  The Dragon Nimbus:

  THE GLASS DRAGON (Book 1)

  THE PERFECT PRINCESS (Book 2)

  THE LONELIEST MAGICIAN (Book 3)

  THE WIZARD’S TREASURE (Book 4)

  The Dragon Nimbus History:

  THE DRAGON’S TOUCHSTONE (Book 1)

  THE LAST BATTLEMAGE (Book 2)

  THE RENEGADE DRAGON (Book 3)

  Merlin’s Descendants:

  GUARDIAN OF THE BALANCE (Book 1)

  GUARDIAN OF THE TRUST (Books 2)

  GUARDIAN OF THE VISION (Book 3)

  Copyright © 2002 by Phyllis Irene Radford Karr.

  All Rights Reserved.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1214.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  First Printing, February

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14381-0

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S. A.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to all my loyal readers.

  I love you all.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First off, I need to thank Beth Gilligan, Lea Day, and Karen Lewis for all their help and advice in getting me to finish this book when all I wanted to do was whine and complain.

  The final draft would not have happened if Dr. Ken Wharton, PhD, had not redesigned my spaceship just so I could trash it. Thank you once again, Ken, and good luck with your own career as an SF author.

  Of course, my agent, Carol McCleary of the Wilshire Literary Agency, always inspires me with advice, sympathy, and kicks where I need them most.

  Sheila E. Gilbert, editor extraordinaire for DAW Books, gets virtual hugs from all the way across the country for her help and dedication to making my work the best book I can possibly turn out.

  Thank you one and all,

  Irene Radford

  CHAPTER 1

  “HOLY Mother of God!” Kim O’Hara’s stomach ‘somersaulted repeatedly. His balance skittered in several directions.

  Reality blurred.

  Then the saucer-shaped Sirius dropped back into normal space from an unplanned jump. Kim said a brief silent prayer of thanks and wonder—all his body parts seemed intact and functioning.

  An inner awareness of his two brothers reassured Kim that all three O’Haras had made it through the jump intact. He didn’t need to see them, merely feel them breathing beside him on the circular bridge of the family cargo vessel.

  “All present and functioning,” the computer’s voice, sounding as much like his mother as artificial vocal cords could, reported Kim’s own observation.

  “Thank you, Mum, but I’m busy!” Loki, the oldest brother, replied as he slapped the mute. None of the brothers would speak so rudely to Mum in person, but she wasn’t on this frantic journey and the computer obeyed them.

  No two FTL jumps were alike. Some happened so fast Kim barely felt them. Others lasted as long as a dream with detailed images fixed in his brain afterward. A very few offered glimpses into some Wonderland where dragons were real and magic worked. Some just hurt. This last one seemed a mixture of all three types.

  He was anxious to find out where the miracle of crystal drives and technology had taken them. He extended his prayer that they had managed to leave the pursuing IMPs behind. Three jumps and thousands of light-years had passed since the law had first ordered them to stand down and prepare to be boarded.

  Kim and his brothers couldn’t afford to let the Imperial Military Police confiscate their cargo of Nautilus pearls. They needed the money from the contraband.

  Mum would never forgive them if they let the cargo go.

  Kim surveyed the sensor board. He scrunched his eyes and forehead trying to read and decipher the numbers too rapidly.

  “Uh, Loki,” Kim asked his oldest brother, “where’d you dump us? There’s an IMP vessel directly in front of us. Two million klicks to firing range.”

  Loki slammed his fist into his pilot’s console. The Sirius jerked half a degree to starboard.

  “A different ship?” Konner, the middle brother, asked. He unlocked his chair from jump safety protocols and slid it between engineering and the crystal networks stations. He played with the nitrogen feed to the driver crystals. None of the numbers on his console changed.

  Magnetic monopoles could only shoot out so many electrons no matter how much nitrogen you fed them.

  “The . . . Shite! It’s the Valiant, the same friggin’ ship that’s been on our tail since the first jump out of Nautilus.” Kim wanted to hit something, too. Didn’t dare. The weapons interface was directly under his left hand.

  “That captain is ou
tthinking us. Anticipating our actions and our knee-jerk reactions.” Loki made arcane gestures over his helm interface.

  Kim’s sensors showed the Sirius rotating and diving away from the previous plane of reference. The Valiant followed, rapidly closing on their tail.

  “How’d the IMP get here first?” Loki muttered on a deep exhale. He continued evasive maneuvers. Thrusters screamed each time he shifted away from the current horizontal so that the ring of directional crystals on the circumference of the saucer-shaped ship could find a new “forward.”

  The Valiant, an efficient teardrop shape with a full globe of directional crystals, matched them, barely a femtosecond behind.

  “We didn’t know where we were running to until we jumped,” Loki muttered.

  “Could be a ‘her’ at the helm.” Konner fussed with his interfaces. “Someone like Mum, who can outthink us.”

  All three brothers shuddered.

  “Wonder if the law co-opted Katie to work for them?” Konner found his readouts more interesting than risking eye contact with Loki.

  Kim looked away, too. He chewed his lip trying to suppress a laugh. Nothing riled Loki like the possibility of running into the sister who had been missing from the family for nearly as long as Kim could remember.

  “Not a chance your sister commands that ship,” Loki sneered. He kept up his squiggling path out of firing range from the Valiant. “No O’Hara, let alone Mari Kathleen, ever worked for the law.”

  Out of six available jump points Kim had selected one at random. Loki had told him to jump without planning. The pursuing captain had learned Loki’s tactics well and anticipated them, but how had the IMP captain guessed Kim’s jump point and gotten here first?

  “Valiant closing. Firing range in five hundred thousand klicks,” Kim announced.

  The pursuing ship was catching up at an awesome rate. Kim played with his sensors. Sometimes jump distorted the sensitive instruments, tricking them into believing dragons lived in jump space and ships dissolved into nothing.

  Fine tuning only verified the speed of the ship on their tail. There was something different about this vessel, something special and so top secret none of the underground networks had predicted it. Unlike Kim’s brother, Konner, the engineering genius of the family, IMP engineers didn’t tinker with their ships outside of base protocols. And the brothers would have heard if a new vessel—no matter how top secret—had been launched, even if they didn’t know the exact technology aboard.

  “What has this IMP got that he’s gaining on us? We should have lost them at the last jump point,” Kim said, puzzled by the configuration showing on his sensor readouts.

  A surge of adrenaline sent Kim’s hands flying over his weapons array even as he began to doubt the effectiveness of his ancient laser cannon.

  “One more run,” Mum had promised. “Just one more score and we’ll have money enough to find Katie.”

  When Mum reunited the family, then each of the brothers would be free to follow their own private daydreams. They could put the smuggling business and its inherent dangers behind them.

  “Can’t you get any more speed out of this hangar queen, Konner?” Loki shouted. “I thought your last round of modifications were supposed to help us outrun the IMPs, not slow us down!” He looped their flight path onto a new vector, passing across the Valiant’s bridge.

  “I’m trying,” Konner grumbled, sounding equally distracted—unusual for the calm mechanic, the middle brother, the placater. “We’re already five percent over my expectations for the modifications and twenty percent over specified optimum for this drive.” His eyes glazed a little. Kim recognized the trance his brother used while computing figures in his head. A femto later, Konner laid his palm flat upon his terminal. He touched no particular interface. Kim wondered if he actually stretched his senses and grabbed hold of all of the controls at once. His flesh seemed to merge with the flashing lights and bouncing graphs.

  The Sirius shuddered and whined.

  “IMP coming up hard on our heels,” Kim said again. “One hundred thousand klicks to firing range and closing.” He closed his eyes a moment and entered a new firing sequence.

  IMP weapons only fired one at a time, each blast requiring all the power they could generate. For some unknown reason, gunnery sergeants always seemed to fire the first warning shot from the port side. A few femtos later, their power would rebuild for the second killing blast from starboard. A single heartbeat of vulnerability between the two.

  But this guy was different. Kim set coordinates for a first shot to his pursuers’ port side. They’d dodge the required warning shot—most likely from starboard this time. Then he’d take out the port gun before it could sweep through the bridge of the Sirius—the easiest path to the king stone at the heart of the crystal drive.

  “We’ll dodge the warning shot, Kim. It’ll come from the starboard. Be ready to blast their port weapons array before it can recharge,” Loki ordered.

  Kim half smiled. As usual, Loki had voiced Kim’s suggestion before he’d fully thought it through.

  “We need more speed, Konner!” Loki yelled.

  “Or a miracle,” Kim muttered to himself. “I promised Mum this one last run and, by St. Bridget, we’re going to survive with our cargo intact! I don’t want to be on the receiving end of her tongue-lashing.” Or be the author of her disappointment.

  “Environmental’s running at half power, laser cannon at twenty-five percent,” Konner reported. “We cut the artificial gravity an hour ago to save power and increase response time to the directionals! Everything we’ve got is going into the driver crystals for speed. But we’re running low on nitrogen. Magnetic monopoles don’t shoot out energy without fuel. I’ve only got one last miracle in my arsenal.”

  “Not again, Konner. That never works,” Loki muttered. He shook his head without taking his eyes off his instruments.

  Konner sighed, ignoring his brother’s comment. He rose from his place at the engineer’s station with elaborate care. Every movement had to be precise with an equally precise counteraction in null g.

  Loki buried his head in his hands. The ship flew straight. The IMP veered.

  For once, the other captain had guessed wrong.

  Konner opened the bulkhead and looked in dismay over his connections to the crystal network. “It’s our only option.”

  He kicked the interface panel on the bulkhead. Vibrations rippled around the deck. Lights flickered across all three terminals.

  The temporary gravity of acceleration snapped Kim’s head back into the pressure-absorbent neck rest of his chair.

  “I’ll be danged. We just boosted our speed another three percent,” Loki gaped at his display for a split femto, then fed a new configuration to the computer. He tipped the ship to starboard, raising the port side. A bolt of energy slid beneath them.

  The teardrop-shaped Valiant recoiled. Why? Laser cannon didn’t work that way. Not like the ancient explosive weapons of planet-bound sailing ships.

  What about an ion cannon? Last Kim had heard, that weapon was still only a theory.

  The Valiant’s flinch presented Kim a clear shot at the bridge. He could take them out with one extended blast.

  The entire bridge crew would die.

  He couldn’t do it.

  “Warning shot clear. No damage,” Kim announced with relief.

  “Just,” Konner sighed.

  Kim’s hand hovered over the cannon trigger. He had to fire, had to take the chance he’d only disable the ship, not be responsible for the deaths of other sentient beings.

  Loki continued jerking the ship through an unorthodox series of flips and twists. Difficult to lock on target with neither ship following a set course. Kim lost his clear shot to the bridge. He’d take the next target he could latch onto.

  There! He locked targeting onto the forward crystal array compartment. “Returning fire!” Kim poised his hand over the trigger.

  “Not yet!” Konner shouted. He ki
cked the interface once more. A little jolt of power surged them forward. Temporary gravity reasserted itself.

  The IMPs fell behind ever so slightly.

  “Guess their superior technology isn’t a match for O’Hara modifications,” Konner chortled as he made a micron adjustment to something. He reared up from the bulkhead frowning.

  “Find a new jump point quick, before this burst of speed fizzles!” Konner shouted, clinging to the ports behind the bulkhead as if he added his own energy to the crystal drive.

  “Nothing on the charts except back the way we came, but I’ll take it,” Loki said around a huge smile. “They’ll never expect us to go there.

  “Worth a try,” Konner agreed.

  The gravity faded as they ceased acceleration and cruised.

  The Sirius shuddered again, and Kim’s screens went dark.

  “What the . . . ?” Konner stared at his blank screen.

  “St. Hildy Wonstead’s tits! They’ve knocked out our sensor array with . . . with I don’t know what.” Loki followed with a string of more colorful curses. His face flushed with anger as he tried desperately to coax some kind of signal back into his nav port. “I should have anticipated this. I should have known.”

  Kim’s face went numb. His fingertips lost feeling. More than just the mechanical sensors had shut down. One by one, he lost each of his own perceptions. He tried to open his mouth, alert his brothers. He couldn’t hear himself speak, couldn’t feel his mouth moving.

  Not now. I don’t need a vision now. I need reality.

  He drifted in absolute darkness. Only his mind existed. Only his thoughts had meaning.

  A string of flames streaked across his inner vision followed by images of the Sirius tumbling, tumbling into an alien atmosphere. A huge winged creature flew straight at them, blasting flames.