The Dragon Circle (29 page)

Konner had seen the local equivalent of transactional gravitons crisscrossing the planet below. He'd used the energy in those blue lines when he needed to move heavy objects with his mind. Could he use them to throw his thoughts across great distances as well?

He sped onward toward the sealed door and the crystal he had to kill. Without the king stone, the crew would have to manually input each tiny correction into each driver and directional. The strain of the constant work allowed shifts of only two hours with the next four hours in heavy, drugged sleep.

Konner had seen men go mad after only two days of maintaining a crystal array. They became so atuned to the crystal matrix that they could no longer communicate with humans.

“St. Bridget and all the angels!” Loki exploded. He dove for Kat Talbot's knees. The heavy gravity made him sluggish. She sidestepped easily, buoyed by her counter-grav units.

Loki snagged her ankle with one fist. His palm covered the power unit of the counter-grav. He switched it off and yanked her foot out from under her. She fell atop him, unbalanced in the heavy gravity. The needle rifle skidded across the deck. She still had the stun pistol. Grasping it, she slammed both fists into his kidneys.

Loki rolled and gasped. Fire raced up his back.
Jaysus
! She was strong.

But the counter-grav units had reduced the force of her blow. He'd be bruised but would recover.

He twisted, pinning her beneath him. She writhed like a Denobian muscle-cat, spitting and hissing curses in at least three languages.

He had the advantage of weight and reach and a hundred barroom brawls where fair had nothing to do with winning. He made certain he switched off both of her arm counter-grav units. Her muscles grew slack beneath him.

Kim groaned. They both stilled. Loki watched as Kim's eyes rolled up and he passed out.

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, what did you do to my baby brother?” Loki stared into Kat's eyes.

“Baby brother? That's Kim?” she breathed.

“And you have no grudge against him. He was but a toddler when we lost you. You were barely two years older. Hate me, and Konner, we were teens and should have gone back for you. Hate Mum for failing to find you later. No way you can blame Kim.”

“You all look so much alike . . .” she said quietly. Beneath him, her stomach muscles contracted.

Either she prepared to deliver a massive blow to his head or she was going to vomit. He hoped the later, as he crawled over to where Kim lay.

Kat rolled to her knees and retched. Dry heaves. They had to hurt under these g forces.

Loki busied himself with checking Kim's pulse. Slow and steady. His eyes dilated when Loki rolled back the eyelid. He'd live.

Konner had taken responsibility for the king stone. Loki had to make sure they all escaped. That meant keeping Kat occupied and the corridor clear.

“The docking bay was empty. Should have been three more landers there,” he said casually. And another five in a bay on the opposite side of the ship. Plus a number of smaller shuttles and fighters.

“On the surface. Deployed in a broad search,” Kat replied. She seemed to have regained control of her stomach, but stayed on her knees, holding her head in both hands. She probably lied about the ships. All O'Haras inherited the ability to spin yarns at will. “I swear I only stunned him. He's not dead, is he?”

“You'd know if he was. You'd share the passing with him, maybe even let yourself pass beyond the barrier with him.” Loki grabbed a pair of force bracelets out of Kat's uniform pocket. Before she could recover, he slapped them around her wrists. Two thin strands of plastic, linked by an electrode. Every movement of the wrists and hands sent jolts of electricity through the special conductivity of the bracelets. Loki had endured incarceration with bracelets before. They were no fun.

Kat would have to have more endurance and will-power than he had to do more than sit quietly and answer his questions.

“How long will your captain keep this corridor free?” Loki grabbed her stun pistol and slid it through his belt. It rested neatly, as if it belonged there. The rifle he kicked farther down the corridor, never wanting to touch such a weapon again.

Kat stared mutely at the force bracelets.

“I asked you a question.” He grabbed the bracelets by the electrode.

Kat gasped and paled. Her lips remained sealed.

“You're tougher than I thought. But then you are an O'Hara.” Loki stepped back and thought a moment.

“Help me get Kim back to the lander.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no?' ”

“I am a prisoner of war. I do not have to aid and abet the enemy.”

“We aren't your enemies. We're family.”

Again she remained silent. But this time her venomous green eyes were riveted on him.

Loki squirmed. She looked very like Mum in that moment. He'd never been able to withstand Mum's stare. He always succumbed and told her everything when she fixed her gaze upon him like that.

“Very shortly, all hell is going to break loose and you will want to be in the docking bay.” Loki looked around for an easy way to get them back into the rabbit hole without impaling Kim on a directional crystal. Or better yet, convince Kat to escort them through the corridors.

The heavy gravity of this deck was wearing on his thought processes. Or maybe the Tambootie he had ingested earlier had worn off.

“What can you three do to bring down an IMP cruiser alone?” she scoffed.

“Never underestimate the ingenuity of your brothers,” Loki returned. He knelt and checked Kim again. His eyes opened and closed fitfully as he fought back to consciousness. Having him awake would help, but the numbness in his legs would take too long to wear off for him to handle the rabbit hole by himself let alone be of much use out here.

“Where is Konner?” Kat sat up straighter and looked around. “He disappeared halfway down that corridor.” She jerked her head in the direction she had chased the middle brother.

Loki smiled and held her gaze. He could be enigmatic, too, when he wanted to.

“If I remember correctly, and I remember everything in precise detail, Konner is the engineer in the family. He was always dismantling things and rebuilding them better,” Kat mused.

She sat in silent thought for a moment. “Oh, my God!” She struggled to stand. She winced several times as the force bracelets shot jolt after jolt of electricity through her.

Loki did not offer to help her.

“He's going to destroy the king stone. Why?”

“If you'd paid attention to the surveys of the planet below, you'd know,” Loki replied.

“Every crewman and officer not assigned otherwise has their noses glued to portholes and surveys. This is an uncharted system with a habitable planet. They are all excited.”

“And getting greedy. Big bonuses for discovering habitable planets. Bigger bonuses for discovering lost colonies,” Loki said.

Kim stirred and moaned. But his eyes opened and stayed that way. He moved his head cautiously, checking his surroundings. Then he opened his eyes wide and moaned.

“She shot me. My own sister shot me.”

“Yep. And she'll do it again if we give her half a chance.” Loki handed the stun pistol to Kim. “Use it if she tries to escape.”

Kat snorted.

Loki helped Kim to sit up, bracing his back against the bulkhead. His long legs straddled the hatch to the rabbit hole.

“You getting any feeling back?” Loki ran his hands down Kim's legs, looking sharply for any muscle reaction at all.

“Flashes and tingles,” Kim replied.

Loki could not read his reaction as his youngest brother eyed their sister.

Come to think of it, she was mighty quiet, concentrating on the electrode of the force bracelets.

“Try to move your legs, Kim. You've got to be up and running by the time Konner finishes.”

Kim's knee twitched under slight pressure. “Breathe deep and even. Concentrate.”

Kim flashed him a grin as if he knew more than Loki about the subject of breathing.

“He recovers fast,” Kat said. She finally looked up from her study of the bracelets.

“We all do. A matter of survival.”

“And possibly something else?” She twisted her wrists. The bracelets flashed. She winced.

The bracelets weren't supposed to flash. The current threading through the conductive plastic was designed to be silent and invisible.

Loki shifted his attention to Kat and the bracelets. Did they rest a little looser on her wrists than they had a few moments ago?

“You can't open the bracelets without a key,” Loki said, somewhat puzzled. “I'm an expert with those things and I know the locks inside and out. You can't open them.” He walked over to her, bent on examining the lock to make certain.

While he crouched beside her, Loki relieved her of the counter-grav units and strapped them to his own arms and feet. All the while he studied his sister and how she held her wrists.

“Wanna make a bet I can't open my own bracelets?” She smiled sweetly even as she lunged to her feet. She kept her hands together as she shoved them into Loki's jaw.

She no longer had the counter-grav holding back her blows.

Black-and-yellow stars burst before his eyes. His balance tilted. He shifted his weight forward. Veteran of too many brawls, he knew how to compensate and stay upright under a sucker punch. Without thinking, he swept one leg behind Kat's feet.

She fell backward. The bracelets dangled from one hand only. Her left swung back, preparing a new blow. If she was like the rest of the family, her dominant left hand was free.

Bad news.

Kat twisted as she went down and caught herself. She drew her feet back under her and jumped upright, only slightly hindered by the heavy gravity.

But she jumped back, toward the cross corridor.

Loki cursed himself. He should have manacled her feet as well. She had two more sets of force bracelets in her uniform hip pocket.

He dove after her, still fighting for clear vision and balance.

He caught up with her easily, propelled by the purloined equipment. She did not go far before he grabbed her right shoulder.

Too late.

Her left hand slapped a comm unit set into the bulkhead just below a ship's diagram.

“Captain Leonard. They're going after the king stone!” Kat yelled.

K
ONNER FLEW into the crystal room at the exact center of the ship. The king stone and the first twelve drivers lived here.

He could not think. He just had to do.

An engineer turned at the sound of the portal irising open. Konner let loose with a blast from his stunner. It caught the man square in the chest before he had time to sound a protest. His body plunged backward, toward the bulkhead. In null g he bounced off the exposed pipes and conduits and spun in a new direction.

The recoil from the gun sent Konner into a roll. He compensated, firing in the opposite direction.

But the crystals' chatter rose to an unharmonic seventh chord.

Konner braced himself low against a driver crystal to prevent recoil from his weapon that would send him flying about the room.

A second and a third man went down as easily as the first. They, too, were propelled from wall to wall.

The crystals shrieked at the disruption of their routine maintenance.

Konner closed his ears and his mind to them. Deftly he caught each of the engineers and tethered them to the leashes attached to the bulkheads. If the ship had to dive into evasive maneuvers, the momentum could severely damage vulnerable humans. They had to have the leashes handy at all times.

Crystals, however seemed to glory in the challenge of rapid changes of direction and speed. As long as they were connected to the king stone. Without it, they grew confused and spurted energy in odd, and often dangerous, directions.

At the consoles around the room he checked each display. One of the drivers was out of alignment. It needed to be rotated a micrometer or two. It happened sometimes after a magnetic storm or when the ship achieved too low an orbit too quickly. The unusual planetary magnetics of MKO-IV could be playing havoc with the crystals.

Every instinct in Konner demanded he perform the adjustment.

Blindly, he slapped every console into sleep mode. Each crystal had to come off-line in order. No time for the long safety protocols. He had to get the king stone disconnected quickly.

First he cut the flow of nitrogen to the stones. The gaseous fuel flooding the crystals caused the mono-poles to spit energy along the miles of fiber optics to the directional crystals. He could shut off the fuel source, but the stones still had massive amounts of energy contained within their force field.