The Dragon Circle (22 page)

Konner shook his head at him. “Not yet, little brother. Don't reveal your cards until the last chip is played.”

“You've been quiet since we took off,” Kim said.

Duggan bellowed orders for the orderly dispersal of his troops. Kim did not think anyone heard his own comment over the noise.

Suddenly the cockpit emptied of excess people and noise. Even Loki had disembarked. The silence seemed alien.

“How did you live with yourself when you killed that man?” Konner asked suddenly.

Kim searched his brother's face for signs of distress that triggered his question. The incident had happened years ago, but he'd never told his brothers until after Loki had been forced to kill Hanassa. Like Kim, Loki had shared the moment of death with his victim, nearly willing himself to die in the process.

“I had to go through the motions of living. For Mum. For you and Loki. I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, day after day. Why? Did you kill someone on your adventures today?”

“No. I have not killed a man yet. But I had a precognitive experience. Must have been induced by the Tambootie. I haven't done the deed and I already feel as if my guts have been ripped out.” Konner slumped.

Kim had never seen him so upset. So . . . reduced.

“Then maybe you don't have to kill anyone. The one thing I have learned from experimenting with psi powers and Tambootie: the future is fluid. The few glimpses we get are warnings of one possibility. Each choice we make opens dozens of new possibilities. Maybe you were granted the premonition so you
won't
kill another human being.”

“I certainly hope you are right.” Konner looked a little brighter, a little less fatigued.

“Come on, big brother. Let's go get some supper.” Kim slapped Konner on the back and urged him out of the shuttle.

Outside, they found the IMPs grumbling about the hike across open country to their destination. Duggan commandeered Kim and his brothers to handle the lieutenant's litter along with the medic. They led the way toward home.

Home. Kim savored the word. This forgotten planet three sectors off charted space had become home. The villagers and Hestiia were his family now. He never wanted to leave, even to see Mum one more time and explain to her why he had to stay.

Mum would get over his absence. He didn't want Hestiia to try to get over it if he left.

The savory smell of roasting meat and vegetables reached the troop before they sighted the cooking fires. All around Kim, men and women started licking their lips and hastening their steps.

“I thought you told the girls no meat,” Konner whispered to Kim across the litter from him, and heedless of the medic in front of Kim.

“I did.”

“Meat won't stop this greedy bunch of hypocrites,” the medic snorted. “Every bush planet we encounter, that's the first thing they head for. I can't convince them they don't need meat to satisfy their nutritional needs. I can't tell them anything. They are too busy bickering among themselves to listen to anyone. You think the class system at the Emperor's court is strict? Try getting workshirts to sit down at the same table in the officers' mess with cleanshirts. Try getting the defense team to talk to the prosecution. Try getting forensics to talk to the Marines. Or one anthropologist to agree with the other on the time of day or day of the week. Then there's Captain Leonard and Judge Balinakas.” She looked as if she wanted to pound her fist into someone's jaw—anyone who got in her way.

“In that case, half the plan is already implemented.” Konner quirked up half his mouth.

But his smile did not convince Kim. “Must have been one nasty precog episode,” Kim muttered.

“It was.”

“Getting a headache yet?” he asked. His own head had begun to throb. Withdrawal from the Tambootie. He'd only ingested a small amount of the oils. His mouth salivated at the thought of tasting the oils again, of feeling the flavors burst upon his tongue and open his senses. His hands began to shake.

Just how addictive was the drug?

“Sometimes it takes a month to get the stink of meat out of the ship,” the medic continued her litany of grief. “Even with the best air scrubbers available.”

Kim looked closer at her uniform. In the gloom he thought he saw a name tag that said “Lotski.” Did she have any gamma blockers in her kit to break addictions? Maybe all he needed were a few judiciously placed micro amps to the affected brain synapses. Then he could use the Tambootie with impunity.

The troop crested the last low hill before the village. The glow from the central fire lit the ridgeline.

“Duggan,” Loki called the sergeant. “Best my brothers and I lead the group. Don't want you punctured by a spear or brained by a club. The blacksmith totes a really mean hammer.”

The IMPs halted their plunge down the hill to wait for Kim and his brothers. The weight of the litter had slowed them down considerably. Or was it reluctance to let these invaders into their home?

Several figures stood between the troop and the fire. Backlit, Kim could not distinguish features. But he picked out Hestiia at the front of the welcoming committee. He'd know her anywhere. His heart speeded up in anticipation of holding her close once more.

He hastened his steps, forcing the other three with the litter to match his pace.

The rest of the waiting figures became clearer. All women. They moved forward bearing armloads of flowers, greens, and gourds. Just as they began bestowing their fragrant gifts upon the IMPs, Kim realized each and every one of them was naked to the waist.

Including his wife.

D
ALLEENA SWALLOWED her embarrassment at having twelve strange men stare at her naked breasts. In her home village, and all the villages that had employed her as Tracker, she had been separate from womenfolk and their customs. She was Tracker, different, independent. She had worn men's clothing as a sign of her equality with them. Women had worn a simple sarong in spring and summer and little else until a man claimed them. Then and only then could they expect to cover their breasts in any but the coldest seasons.

Now Dalleena and all the other women exposed themselves to trap the invaders in their own lust. She swallowed her self-consciousness for the sake of the plan.

Then she caught sight of Konner staring at her. A deep frown creased his face. She straightened her shoulders with pride and met the next foreigner with a proffered blossom and a smile. Konner's scowl deepened.

Her assurance firmed.

The few women in the group of foreigners mimicked Konner's expression.

Then Raaskan, headman for the village, and three other men, wearing only their short buckskin trews and vests moved up and bestowed flowers upon the females. Bright smiles spread all around.

“Remember what happened to the
HMS Bounty
when they received a similar greeting from primitives,” a man shouted even as he accepted two flowers from Poolie, Raaskan's wife.

“The mutineers from the
Bounty
succumbed to the allure of the native women and embraced a primitive way of life,” Konner whispered in Dalleena's ear. “They went bush.”

Dalleena just twitched her hips and moved on. She had one more flower to give. She stared at it a moment. Then she stepped daintily back to Konner and gave it to him. He dropped his corner of the litter abruptly. The injured man moaned and thrashed. The others set down the rest of the litter with a little more care. Not much though.

Kim rushed to Hestiia's side and draped his arm possessively about her shoulders.

Loki ambled toward the center of the group. He accepted a cup of ale and began a jolly round of swapping tall tales with the visitors.

Konner grabbed Dalleena about the waist with both hands. He looked at her long and hard from beneath heavy eyelids. Then he kissed her. Hot. Possessive. Insistent.

“You know what you have to do?” he whispered into her ear.

“But what do you
want
me to do?” Languor made her limbs heavy and her mind slow. The heat throbbing from his hands where he grasped her tightly sapped her strength and her will. She could no more separate from him now than she could cease to obey the tracking instinct.

“Later.” Konner kissed her quickly and thrust her aside.

She almost stumbled. Strange, rough hands steadied her from behind. Those same strange hands began wandering all over her chest.

Dalleena gritted her teeth and turned to her would-be rescuer with a smile.

“You giving her up for the night?” a voice as rough as the hands asked Konner. The man had slowed his speech to a recognizable dialect. Probably the effect of hastily quaffed ale.

“Her choice,” Konner replied. He turned his attention back to the now thrashing figure on the litter. “Always the woman's choice here. Not the man's.” His voice grew heavy with warning.

Did she detect reluctance to leave her in his posture?

Pryth waddled over with her pouches of herbs and salves. She, too, had left her breasts uncovered. The pendulous sacs swung as she moved.

She and the blonde woman who had helped with the litter entered into a detailed discussion of infection that led to locking jaws.

Dalleena detected a sneer on the face of the man who tried to hold her. Then he turned his disproving gaze back to her and smiled.

“I don't like a lot of fat on my women,” he muttered.

Dalleena decided not to take offense at his comment. Today. Tomorrow might be different. Deftly, she inserted her arm in his and led him to the cask of ale. His hand grabbed her bottom as she walked. She let her own hand drift about his hips until she found the square outlines of a comm unit in his pocket. She slid it free and tucked it into the waist of her sarong.

All around her the Coros, male and female, relieved their guests of every trace of contact with the mother ship. As they passed a one-eyed old woman, seated just outside the circle of light from the fire, they dropped the instruments into her lap. She then secreted them about her person with a near toothless grin.

Taneeo sat in the place of honor beside the fire with his splinted leg stretched out before him. He scowled into his cup of ale, never meeting the gaze of any who greeted him.

A shiver ran down Dalleena's spine that had nothing to do with the evening breeze on her bare skin.

Loki grabbed a handful of fresh vegetables from the heaping bowls scattered around the village common. The sweet yampion root crunched under his teeth. He let the tastes and textures linger in his mouth a moment before launching into his next recounting of his adventures. He carefully avoided mentioning that he had pulled the trigger on the needle rifle that finally felled his nemesis. This bunch of IMPs might be a bloodthirsty lot in comparison to most civils—those raised on civilized planets as opposed to those raised in the bush. Still, IMPs had taken oaths to uphold the sanctity of all life, even the lives of outlaws such as himself.

“So this guy actually slit the throats of his victims?” Sergeant Ross Duggan grimaced. Then he quaffed a cup of ale.

“And he enjoyed it,” Loki said. “Three times we thought him dead. Twice he came back to life.” And maybe a third time.

Loki looked around hastily. The hairs on his nape prickled as if someone watched him. Pryth, the ancient wisewoman and local healer seemed to follow his every move with her eyes. Had she been corrupted by the spirit of Hanassa as Taneeo suggested?

Pryth was strong of will as well as body. She had never succumbed to Hanassa during his lifetime. Yet Loki could not trust her. She never accepted help if she had any other option. And she made her own decisions.

She was too much like Mum.

Loki could not trust her.

“We had no choice but to take him out the only way we could,” he finished the story. He repeated to himself that he had had no other choice. He had to pull the trigger of the needle rifle and end Hanassa's tyranny over all of the Coros. He had to end the wholesale slavery. He had to destroy the bloody worship of the false god Simurgh.

No one else could have done it. No one else would have done it.

“Yeah, this place would never grow with a meat eater like that keeping the population down and in-stilling superstition and actually fostering slavery.” Sanchez munched on a handful of crisp wild onions. She moaned in ecstasy as she savored each bite. “This place is some kind of Utopia. Can't see why you guys want to leave.”

Loki grinned and handed the corporal a bowl of stewed sweet yampion. She had the compact stature of a civil, but something about her accent and the fierceness in her eyes suggested a different ancestry.