Chapter 26
While the rest of the passengers and crew assembled in the launch bay, Mirana headed to the cargo hold. Nightsong’s crate had been one of the last items loaded, so it was close to the doors. When she arrived at the airlock, Mirana was happy to find that the bay doors beyond were already open, awaiting review by the Palandoran inspection crew, who were now sifting through the cargo wearing space suits. Mirana doubted that they were looking forward to searching all this gear, especially since the search was bound to be completely fruitless, but at least they would have one fewer thing to search; Mirana had no intention of waiting for them before retrieving her fighter. She pulled on a flight suit and fitted a helmet in place, then pulled out a remote control unit. At a touch of a button, the packing crate blew open and the matte black form of Nightsong rose into the air, scattering damping foam in all directions. Mirana opened the airlock and sprinted toward her fighter.
“Hey, stop that ship!”
Mirana did not bother checking who it was. She reached the remains of the crate and jumped, catching hold of the flight seat hanging from below the cockpit and climbing in. It had lifted her into position and sealed long before anyone on the deck knew what to do. She maneuvered out into space. Everything was dark here; Quirnik’s ship had proceeded far enough into the nebula that the dust and gas blocked out the stars beyond. It was a bit eerie being surrounded by this vast cloud without being able to see anything but the nearby vessels, but Mirana was just happy to be off that cursed ship.
The com link beeped, as she had known it eventually would.
“Miss Kelar. You are to dock on the Seastar for immediate inspection.”
“I’ll be making the trip on my own. Her highness can run the inspection in person once we reach the planet. After all, you know very well what you’d find if you searched me: I’m very armed and very dangerous. But the Queen knows I’m not a threat, which is why she’s letting me land. Just let me know when it’s safe to proceed.”
Of course there was the risk that they would call Trennon again, but Mirana suspected that the Queen wasn’t going to exile her own ship just to keep Mirana out, and that meant that eventually they’d have to unblock the corridor. And since ships had to stay at low warp through here, Nightsong would have no trouble keeping up. Especially if she made herself invisible, if it came to that.
As it turned out, Mirana did not have to do anything but wait while the crew scanned their new guests. The Palandorans even had the courtesy to contact Mirana and inform her that she was cleared to proceed along with them. Mirana knew that the corridor leading to Palandora was maintained by a series of field generators that kept the matter and graviton interference at bay so that ships could proceed through hyperspace and find a clear exit point. One of the recent projects of the Palandoran industries had been to locate those generators and modify them so that the corridor could be sealed off quickly. The passage was blocked with nebular matter at the moment, but as Mirana followed close behind the Seastar, her sensors picked up a passage opening ahead. The Palandoran ship flashed into hyperspace, and Mirana followed.
The corridor ended after a few minutes, and Mirana dropped out of warp to scan the area. She had to do it visually, because her instruments were going crazy, due to the odd gravimetric interference coming from everywhere at once. Behind her and stretching off to either side was a wall of nebular matter lit by tendrils of reddish light; as she pivoted her fighter she caught site of additional generators that were already sealing off the inner end of the corridor. It was certainly quite the fortress that Trennon and her people had found for themselves, although how in the world a star could exist in this isolated pod without its mass ejections messing up an inhabitable planet was a mystery to Mirana. Or more to the point, it was evidence that technology beyond Anacron’s experience was at play here. There had to be something left for her to find.
The Seastar had already gone on without her, so Mirana located Palandora and made a short warp jump to catch up. Once she was close to the planet, the interference died down a bit, no doubt thanks again to Kayleen Rax and her economic contributions. Mirana picked out Tibrus city and headed down. She had a nice view as she descended; Palandora had several settlements now, but they were fairly spread out, so the ground rushing up toward her was full of green forests and clear lakes and rivers. It reminded her of her last trip to a secluded planet, where Ned had rescued her from a trap that her power had triggered. She would have to be more careful this time.
Her com link beeped. “This way, Mirana.”
Mirana had been expecting landing instructions, but she was unprepared for the source. Her scanner showed something moving toward her from the nearby mountain, but when she looked she had to double-check that her eyes were not playing tricks. A huge, green creature was flying over the valley, with a wingspan that dwarfed Nightsong. She remembered Ned having talked about dragons on this planet, but she never expected to be flying along with one. She supposed that the man on its back must be X, who she remembered from the earlier transmission. She felt like she should make some sort of sarcastic comment about a starfighter following a dinosaur, but instead she simply followed X in silence to a landing area near a large, ornately-decorated palace in the middle of the city.
When she was down, she hesitated to get out; that huge creature was standing on all fours next to her fighter, looking into the cockpit with its monstrous eyes. Mirana would have felt a lot more comfortable with her Shadow armor, but since it had apparently not regenerated, she lowered the seat and stepped out to greet X, trying to ignore the movement of the huge creature behind him.
“Welcome to Palandora,” X greeted politely. “You made quite an entrance up there.”
“I hope I didn’t make too much trouble. I have a thing about being searched, though. Maybe it comes from being literally transparent so much of the time.”
X chuckled. “I’ll be honest with you: Jenara is not thrilled. She’s worried about drawing Dark Viper’s attention here again. But Nedward considered you a friend, and I think that’s worth giving you a chance to see if you can help things here.”
“Thank you. And I’ll keep a low profile. Believe me, I have no desire to meet Kayleen Rax again soon.” Mirana looked around. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“We can go into the palace. I’m afraid a crew is going to have to scan your fighter, and Jenara wants to debrief you.”
“Of course.” This all seemed like a waste of time to Mirana; there was nothing they could do with any of the information she could give them. She was the one who should be asking questions. But she had pushed her luck just getting here, so it was time to play nice for a while so she could ask for more favors later.
X led her to a conference room, where Jenara Trennon introduced herself politely and then sat quietly while various military personnel asked for updates on the Vortak invasion and Dark Viper. Mirana began by reminding everyone that even General Marnax did not know she was here or what had happened since she had left him, and that things needed to stay quiet until she left or they would attract a lot of attention. In her view, even having her fighter land in the middle of the city was a mistake. Everyone present seemed to share her concern for secrecy, though, so she filled them in on the details of her investigation and battle. They seemed a lot more interested in the battle, although it seemed to Mirana that Trennon avoided eye contact during that portion of the discussion.
When it was over, though, the Queen regarded her with a smile. “Thank you for filling us in,” she said. Koral never really told us how he had learned about this planet, other than to say that Trelan Thendrak had asked him to check it out for him once. He had not found what he was looking for on that visit, and as far as I know Koral did not learn much since then either, but it does seem that once again our efforts to find a secluded spot have thrown us into the middle of a conflict. I think X is the one who is most likely to be able to help you out. X, will you aid our guest in her investigation?”
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“No problem,” X said. “I’ll take her up to the caves and show her what we know.” Then he turned to Mirana and added, “It’s not much.”
If the meeting had been a waste of time, at least it was short. It only took a few minutes for Mirana to head back out to her fighter and fly it up to the cave where X was making his home. She almost made the trip invisibly, but she figured that the Palandoran authorities might still be nervous about having her around, and being able to track her might calm them down a bit. X flew atop that dragon again, and Mirana was careful to let them land first so that she could put Nightsong down a bit farther away this time.
“This is it,” X announced as she stepped out of the lowered flight seat and walked toward the cave. “Don’t worry about Valkron. Or any of the dragons, really. They’re not hostile.”
“I thought one of them tried to fry Ned when he first got here.”
X smirked and gave a guilty nod. “Yeah, Delgora was a bit abrupt. But Ned was in her home. You’re a guest.”
“Good to know.” The huge creature still made her nervous, but she was certainly not going to risk offending one of them by saying so, especially not at this proximity.
X led her into the cave, and after a couple of short turns the rocky passage merged into a regular-looking hallway.
“No door?” Mirana asked as X led the way into an entry room branching off in several directions and motioned for her to sit down.
“There’s a door. I just have it set to open when I get close to the cave. There isn’t really much risk of theft up here though. You know, with the local residents.”
“I guess there wouldn’t be.”
“This is actually a good starting point, because this cave was here when we arrived – unfurnished of course. There are caves like this all over the place – obviously artificial, with metal interiors on some of them. But they’re all empty, except for the dragons that live in them.”
“And Valkron doesn’t stay in here with you?”
“No,” X laughed. This was actually Koral’s home; he preferred to stay away from the city as much as possible.”
“What did he do all that time?”
“Well he started a garden, which I’ve tried to keep up. He wanted to be as independent as possible, and since we kept using Anacronian currency, he was able to get by on savings without having a real ‘job.’ He spent a lot of time watching the dragons, then communicating with them once he realized they were capable of it. And once Mrandor let him ride on his back, he started making long trips, watching what the dragons did and where they went. He seemed sure that there was something to learn about the origin of the Plasma here.” X sighed. “I think he wanted to find a way to get it back.”
Mirana nodded, realizing that the subject of Koral was a delicate one. “He helped bring down Dark Viper,” she said. “I’d say whatever he did paid off.”
“Koral left pretty much everything he had to me, and I’ve tried to continue his work. Mrandor doesn’t come around much anymore, but Valkron has trusted me pretty much from the start.”
“So, what exactly does that mean – he lets you ride him and the others don’t?”
“The dragons are all pretty mysterious, and in general they avoid people. But once they decide someone is worth their attention, they’re happy to spend pretty much all their time together if you want.”
“And what exactly do you do?”
“Fair question,” X said, smiling. “I’m not sure I’ve managed to convince Jenara that anything I do with them is worthwhile. Dragons are fascinating to just watch, but mostly I try to figure out what’s going on inside those heads of theirs. Valkron talks to me, and some of the others do too sometimes, but their thoughts don’t always translate clearly. And they definitely have their own ideas of what’s interesting.”
“So, they use telepathy?”
“Yes. They project thoughts and feelings, and the more in line with your own experience they are, the easier it is to understand. You can’t project your thoughts back to them, but they apparently learn spoken language quickly.”
“Interesting. And what do they find interesting?”
“Valkron loves to fly around and show me land forms and other creatures. Sometimes he’ll go on and on about some creature he hunted down and ate recently. And he’s more than happy to point out caves, although he never tells me anything about them. Sometimes he’ll tell me that someone on the planet is doing something he disapproves of, like expanding a farm in the wrong direction or talking too much about their personal life. And he’s fascinated with beetles.”
“So, he can talk about abstract ideas, but he won’t answer you directly?”
“Not about the planet’s history, no.”
Mirana drummed her fingers on the chair, turning over in her mind what she had heard.
“I can show you a map if you want.”
X brought up a map of the planet on a large viewscreen and showed her the locations of caves they had found. They were mostly in the mountains and mostly still unused, but they were all over the main continent. If there was a pattern, though, Mirana could not see it.
“So there’s pretty much no way to tell if my father’s ship landed here, or where he might have gone once he did.”
“Sorry. All I know is that Trelan Thendrak sent Koral here early on. The nebula had been scanned from a distance, but I guess no one had come close enough to find the corridor’s generators before, because Koral didn’t find anything inside. Thendrak didn’t even act surprised when he got the report.”
“Well someone left that corridor there, so they must have expected someone to show up someday.” She thought for a moment and then added, “Of course if my father came here, it would have been years before Koral did. So it’s possible that he took whatever was once here and left. And if he was wearing the Shadow armor, there wouldn’t be a trace anyway.”
“I guess not.”
It was not a very encouraging start.
“Well, when we were searching for where Viper had found the last three Crystals, Ned was able to sense its location. Maybe if I just fly around for a while, I might get some kind of a sense of where to go.”
“Sounds good.”
Mirana rose and followed X back out into the sunlight, where Valkron’s head strained toward the sky on his long neck as if watching or listening to something far away. Mirana started toward her ship but then stopped, thinking. “X, is there any chance he might, you know, talk to me?”
X shrugged. “I’ll ask him. Valkron?” X looked up, and the dragon’s huge head turned down toward him. Mirana could have sworn the dragon looked annoyed, although she could not say why. “I don’t think he’s interested. He didn’t say it, but he didn’t really say anything else either.”
“If I ask a question, could you speak for him? You know, translate?”
“If he’ll talk, sure. What do you want to ask?”
Mirana looked up at Valkron and gulped. Trying to ignore how dangerous and arguably silly her situation was, she called up in a loud voice, “Can I talk to you for a minute? I have some questions about this planet.”
“He wants to know why you’re… bothering him.”
Mirana kept her eyes on Valkron. “I think my father may have come here looking for something once. X tells me there used to be people here who used the Plasma. Did they leave anything behind?”
“He says, ‘They are gone.’”
“Don’t speak in the third person”, she said to X. “Just translate.” She looked back up, feeling a little excited that at least she was getting some answers, even if they were coming from a monster. “Who were they?”
X was silent for a moment, and Mirana looked over at him to get an idea of whether he was listening or waiting. “He’s avoiding you,” X said finally. “He says there’s a bright red beetle up on that cliff with little bumps on its antennae.”
Mirana took a step closer to Valkron and looked up again. “Koral Ralok was here once
before he established this colony.” That got the dragon’s attention; Valkron stepped back a bit so he could lower his face down until it was right in front of Mirana.
X started translating again. “What do you know of Koral?”
“I’m a friend of Nedward Simmons. I’m trying to help him defeat the woman who killed Koral and the man she serves. They are waging a war that threatens this planet. I’m hoping to find something to help me defeat them.”
“Koral sought this too.”
“He never gave up,” Mirana pointed out. “I assume he would have if you had told him there was nothing to find. That makes me think there is something.”
Valkron raised his head again, apparently looking for that beetle.
“It’s like I said,” X apologized. “He’s just not interested in history.”
Or he doesn’t trust us with it, Mirana thought, although she supposed it didn’t make much difference which version was true. “Well,” she said in resignation, “I guess that’s that. We might as well get up there and take a look, though.”
X began speaking to the creature as Mirana walked back over to Nightsong and climbed aboard. She brought the fighter up slowly, watching as the locations X had searched showed up on her map screen. “Let’s start with those caves to the north,” she called over the com link.
“All right. Follow me.” Valkron’s green form sped off, faster than Mirana had anticipated, but it was easy enough to follow. She did not envy X, strapped into a relatively small harness on the dragon’s back and exposed to the wind.
They were passing over inhabited land, and Mirana chuckled as she realized that around here, a black starfighter might actually draw more attention than a dragon in the sky. “I want to minimize the attention I draw,” Mirana called to X. “I’m going to engage a Shadow field.”
“Okay. I’ll tell Valkron.”
Mirana brought forth the Shadow Plasma and pushed it outward to envelop her ship, straining just a little to get it far enough out and into the right shape.
Suddenly Valkron gave a loud roar, then wheeled on her and sent green fire out in a wide arc. The fire vanished quickly where it struck the Shadow field, giving away her position as a hole in the blast. But before Mirana could even think to bring up the shields or dodge, Valkron slammed into her, locking his claws around Nightsong’s wings.
“What’s going on?” Mirana yelled to X as she fought for control of her ship, which was now rocking violently as the dragon’s huge body twisted around.
“I have no idea! Valkron, stop!”
The dragon’s claws were invisible where they gripped the wings, but it did not seem to disturb him, because he kept rocking back and forth and blasting Mirana with green fire, which in spite of the Shadow field was dealing some damage. She knew she could fire her weapons or extend the Shadow Plasma, but something told her that an attack would not really fix the situation. And she did not dare drop the Shadow field for fear of what might happen if that fire struck the ship without protection.
Mirana was still struggling to maintain altitude when Valkron’s mouth clamped down on the canopy, entirely blocking her view with his huge teeth and mouth tissue. Then green fire exploded everywhere, and a canopy warning sounded.
“I’m raising shields,” Mirana warned X. “Get him off.” She threw the ship into maximum acceleration and then brought up the shields. The extending energy field pushed Valkron’s claws away, and Mirana twisted abruptly, pulling the fighter clear of her huge attacker. As Valkron fell behind, Mirana did a systems check, half expecting to be missing a wing, but Nightsong had held together.
“Are you okay?” X sounded genuinely concerned.
“Yes, I’m fine. I bet this is the only starfighter in the galaxy with dragon claw marks on it though.”
“I have no idea what he was thinking. He practically yelled ‘The Enemy’ just before he struck, and then he seemed to be completely ignoring me; I thought he was going to throw me off.”
“I don’t suppose he still wants to show me around; maybe I’ll make the trip on my own while you try to figure out what happened. Is there a safe place I can dock my ship when I’m done?”
“You can use our fighter hangar. I’ll set it up while you’re gone. Good luck searching.”
“Thanks.”
Mirana took a moment to catch her breath and then continued on toward the caves. She rolled her fighter like she had taught Ned to do, so that she could see the ground she was scanning above her. It was a beautiful, practically untouched stretch of mountain, but there was nothing to suggest that anything important might be hidden nearby. She reached the caves and found that they were empty, so she continued onward. Since there was nothing else to do, she spent the whole day exploring the planet from the air, even landing a couple of times to explore the caves in person. They were definitely artificial, and sometimes the caves were marked with little alcoves that might have held machinery of some kind, but they all ended in barren wall with no indication of any open space behind them. A few times she caught sight of other dragons as she flew and thought about letting them see her, just to find out if Valkron’s response was unique. But there was something unexpectedly terrifying about being attacked by such a huge, living thing, and even with her shields up she was not eager to repeat the experience.
She turned back to Tibrus City when the sun approached the horizon. X had pointed her at the hangar where his own starfighter was docked. The landing bay was yet another cave set into a mountain face, this one much larger than any she had yet seen. The bay crew motioned her into an empty alcove at the back of the bay. There were a few other starfighters docked in similar alcoves nearby, but most were empty. Mirana climbed out and was greeted by a deck agent, who was already taking down notes on her fighter. She talked to him briefly to make sure that she would be able to launch again or call the ship remotely whenever she needed to. Having to leave Nightsong so far away from the city was an unfortunate development, but it seemed better than risking an attack on the fighter by some dragon who wanted another shot at her; after all, the fact that they could not see her in the cockpit would hardly convince them that she was not there, or that the ship was not somehow part of whatever threat Valkron had perceived in her.
She pondered the matter on the shuttle back to Tibrus City, where she was scheduled to meet up with X again. She did not bother becoming invisible, partly because her cover on this planet was already blown, but also in part because she wanted to see how people reacted to her. Most ignored her completely, but there were a few who either stared or made it a point to avoid looking at her. No one spoke to her, though, so she could only guess at what those who did recognize her were thinking.
X had sent Mirana updated information on her living arrangements; rather than risk another confrontation with Valkron near X’s cave, she would be staying in a nearby hotel, which turned out to be relatively close to the palace but hidden behind an arm of the mountain. X had arranged to meet Mirana for dinner at the restaurant on the top floor of the hotel, which suited Mirana just fine since it would save her the risk of going outdoors again. The shuttle docked at a landing just outside the restaurant’s transparent exterior, and Mirana walked inside, where she stopped to admire the view. The sun had already dipped behind the mountains, but its light still painted the sky in an exotic variety of pinks and oranges, and a moon was just coming up on the opposite horizon. A waiter soon appeared and directed her to X’s table.
“Any luck?”
Mirana shook her head with a weary smile as she took her seat across from him. She picked up the menu and looked it over.
“The food’s pretty good,” X said. “I eat here once in a while, when Jenara insists on ‘dining’ instead of home cooked food. I can’t stand eating at the palace.”
“Do you see her a lot?”
“Fairly regularly. We grew up together, but the whole ‘Queen’ thing takes up a lot of time.”
“I imagine so.”
Another
waiter appeared, and Mirana ordered a dish that claimed to be dangerously spicy. When the waiter was gone, Mirana fixed X with a serious look. “Now, please tell me you have figured out why a monster tried to kill me this morning.”
X took a deep breath and bit his lip. “All I can tell is that the Shadow Plasma made him angry. He must have seen you disappear, and instantly he labeled you as an Enemy. I explained that you’re on our side, and that you’re helping Ned, but none of that mattered.”
“So it’s the Shadow Plasma that triggered it. I figured as much. Would you be surprised to learn that this isn’t the first time my power has triggered an attack?”
“Not much surprises me at this point.”
“Of course, this pretty much proves that the dragons know something about what went on here before Koral arrived. But I guess it probably also means they don’t know anything about my father – either that, or they attacked him too but he was able to escape.”
X nodded, looking a bit lost in thought. “So,” he said finally, “how about you? Did you find anything?”
Mirana shook her head. “Same as you. Everything is empty. Of course I’ve only covered a small part of the planet, but if you have already been over it, then it does seem like kind of a desperate search.”
The food arrived, and there was silence for a while as they started eating. Mirana had not eaten in a long time, and the meal was delicious. Finally X broke the silence.
“So, I have to ask. How is he?”
“Who?”
“Ned. He’s kind of a local hero here, and if I don’t go back with something to tell, people will get mad.”
Mirana smiled awkwardly – she did not really know how to answer that. “Well he’s been uprooted from his home planet and lost the power that brought him here in the first place. I wouldn’t say he’s doing particularly well. But if he’s smart, he’ll stay away from any battles, and he’ll be fine.” Mirana had actually not thought of Ned much in the past few days, but she suddenly wished that he were there. “I wonder what he’d do now,” she said, half to herself.
X smiled. “I don’t know, but I’m not sure it would help things. Jenara is nervous about you as it is.”
“I thought they were friends… or something.”
“They were ‘something’ at one point, when Jenara was fascinated with the Plasma and the galaxy beyond the nebula. But I think she got kind of disillusioned when she realized how abstract and, you know, alien, the Plasma is. I think that’s part of why she’s apprehensive about having you here. Even apart from who might try to follow you, there’s no telling what might happen with a Plasma Master around.”
“Fair enough. And what about you? What do you think of all this?”
“Honestly? Valkron’s reaction has me worried. I mean, I have no reason to distrust you, but Valkron is a fairly level-headed guy. Maybe he’s not telling me everything, but if he saw your power as a threat, then there must be a reason – maybe even one you’re not aware of.”
“Well there’s certainly something going on that I’m not aware of,” Mirana conceded.
The sun had gone down completely now, leaving the moon alone amid the featureless black field, and Mirana looked up at the sky when she had finished her meal. Something about the view made her tilt her head in contemplation.
X followed her gaze. “This restaurant’s ceiling is nice during the day, but it’s kind of pointless at night. I think the plain black sky was the hardest thing to get used to here.”
“The moon does look a little weird without starts.”
X gave her a very strange look. “Mirana, Palandora doesn’t have a moon.”
Mirana looked at him with a raised eyebrow, wondering if X were joking, but then she looked up again and had to catch her breath. The sky was completely black.
A slow smile spread across Mirana’s face. “Goodness, X, you’re right.”
X looked at her with obvious confusion, but Mirana decided she had said enough for now. Instead of explaining, she stood up and pushed in her chair. “I’ve got the bill; thanks for all your help. I need to go check something.”
And with that, she left him at the table, frozen in place with a look of surprise and concern.