Schree's Rest (A Cat Among Dragons) Read online

  Schree’s Rest:

  A Cat Among Dragons Story

  Alma T.C. Boykin

  © 2014, All Rights Reserved

  Cover Art: © Ischre/Dreamstime.com

  Well, Rada thought, fighting off a yawn as endless, flat terrain swept past under her wings, they didn’t fly into a mountain like the last one did, that’s for sure.

  Commander Rada Lord Ni Drako rolled Night’s Claw inverted so she could look at the winter-wrapped landscape passing beneath the fighter. It looked no different upside down than right-side up, and she rolled upright again. White snow and dark green forest spread in all directions, “even unto the ends of the world” as one of the holy books phrased it, with grey-white clouds overhead. She suspected that that lack of variation had played a role in the half-hover crash she’d been called north to investigate. So many year-turns had passed since the last fatal half-hover accident that having the Lord-Defender present seemed like a good idea. That one of Great Lord Zhi-king’s sons had died in the crash also played a role in the Minister of War’s decision to send Rada north.

  Rada shook her head, inadvertently activating her targeting software. Projections appeared on her visor, advising her of weapons load, combat-power fuel status (low), and range to target (none selected). She sighed and began reaching for the switch to turn the system from standby to off. Wait. What’s that? Rada twitched the muscles around her left eye and blinked twice, causing part of the display to shift and enlarge. Huh. Strange. A blue line rolled along the bottom of the screen, warning of a signal broadcast on the same frequency as one of the Defenders’ jamming packages.

  “Wings Two, Wings One,” Rada called.

  “Wings One, go ahead,” her wingman replied.

  “Check your jamming gear, Wings Two.”

  Rada looked over and watched the second aircraft slide back and to the side, clear of her. “Wings One, negative jamming from Wings Two. Am receiving jamming broadcast.”

  “Roger. That’s what I needed to know. Wings One clear.”

  “Wings Two clear,” and he slid back into formation, close in on Rada’s left side. Rada ordered the computer to make note of the jammer, then toggled off the targeting system and returned to looking for Schree’s Rest. Sat-nav failed, beacons failed, but the Mark Three eyeball never failed. A bit of black smoke caught her eye and Rada eased back on the control stick, climbing enough to pass well above the settlement.

  Not settlement, city, Rada had to remind herself. The Imperial mapmakers had deferred to politics rather than geography when they labeled Schree’s Rest a “hamlet.” Once again Rada shook her head at Azdhagi customs and protocols. In her mind, the most northerly permanent settlement, with its Defender base and almost 75,000-soul population, far exceeded a hamlet. Rada peered ahead and found the landing area beside the Defender base, as well as the civilian strip. She banked to the right (weak-side) and reduced power to the main engines, slowing Night’s Claw and beginning the approach checklist. “Schree’s Rest Base, Wings One inbound.”

  A disembodied voice replied, “Rover Wings One. Winds are zero one zero at two, visibility twelve, temperature minus twenty, frostpoint minus twenty two. Braking action fair, ground visibility null, fine snow. No other reported traffic, over.”

  It took Rada a moment to process the information. “Zero one zero at two, braking action fair, null vis, understood. Wings One.” Two chirps on the radio frequency told her that her wingman also had the information. As planned, he slowed more, widening the spacing between the two aircraft so he wouldn’t land in Rada’s snow cloud. Rada ran through the checklists again, lowering the landing gear, tightening her safety harness, arming the ejection mechanism, and turning on the ground proximity alert system. Three red lights flashed, then reverted to yellow. Rada snapped the Claw onto its side in a very tight descending turn, confirming once more that her landing area remained clear. She slowed, pitching the nose up and changing her grip on the throttle. That allowed her to toggle the thrust vectoring system on, turning the Night’s Claw into a V/STOL aircraft. As warned, the instant the first exhaust reached the ground, a billow of white surrounded the aircraft and Rada locked her eyes on the altimeter and heading indicator. “Fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, nine, eight,” she counted to herself. “Five,” and the proximity alarm began blatting. “Three, two, one, oof,” and the ship thumped onto the landing pad.

  Rada disarmed the ejection capsule, turned off the engines, and waited until Wings Two settled into his parking space before starting to unstrap and power-down everything. Most Azdhagi fighters, including the one flown by Wings Two, used anti-gravity systems to land. Rada’s antique, mammal-proof, temperamental, ugly personal fighter depended on vectored thrust for reasons that Rada and the engineers kept to themselves.

  Her assistant climbed out of his fighter, took a deep breath, and began coughing. “Whee!” Lt. Bisteel whistled as he got a muzzle full of bitterly cold air. “That’s refreshing.”

  Rada hid a smile as she climbed down the fighter’s fuselage. She pulled her heaviest coat and hat out of the miserable excuse for a cargo bay, along with an overnight bag, walking stick with ice-claw, and spare pair of boots. She turned around to find three animated bundles of winter-camouflage fabric and leather standing a safe distance away from the two aircraft. “Lt. Teelkan?”

  The bundle in the middle advanced several steps, paused, and saluted. “Welcome to Schree’s Rest, Lord Defender.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” Lt. Bisteel trotted up to take his place at Rada’s right side. “I trust it will not upset any plans if we delay any outside activities you might have planned for today?”

  “No, my lord, not at all. It will be full dark in two hours, my lord, and I prefer not to run the lights more than necessary.” Teelkan pointed with his tail and Rada turned that way. The other Defenders fell in around her.

  “Are you having power supply problems, Lieutenant?”

  A large cloud of steam puffed out of his well-shrouded muzzle. “Not yet, my lord, but we’re on geothermal power with generator back-up at the moment. It’s routine preventative maintenance, my lord, not a reactor problem.”

  “Ah.” Rada ducked under a very low doorframe, started to straighten up and almost hit her head. Behind the quintet, the door shut with a firm “thump.” Another door opened ahead of the soldiers and Rada heard, “’Ten-shun!” as they emerged from the short passage in to a bright, warm room filled to the edges with Azdhagi Defenders. The tight display impressed Rada. She handed her baggage to Teelkan’s aid and threaded her way between the rows of motionless reptiles, making note of equipment and markings. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she told the men. “Very good. At ease.” A rustling sigh followed her words as the troopers relaxed. Rada wove a path back to Lt. Teelkan. “I’m pleased to see your men looking so well, especially given the conditions and recent events. Given the late hour, please dismiss them. I’ll continue the inspection later.”

  “Yes, Lord Ni Drako.” He turned to the room and bellowed, “Dismissed!” The ranks broke in an orderly fashion and as Rada watched, fascinated, the Defenders pivoted from the center and filed out of the room’s two interior exits in a rapid, neat flow. The room cleared in under a minute.

  “I’m impressed, Teelkan. I trust that’s not for my benefit?”

  A gravely voiced sergeant made a gesture of negation. “No, my lord, begging your pardon. If we need to double out, it’s much easier to do it in formation, especially this time of year when more of the exits are weather sealed.”

  “Good thinking. Do you have to double out that often?”

  Teelkan swirled his weak-side forefoot. “No, my lord, but it is like deploying a fire blan
ket. When you have to use one, you really, really need to get it correct.”

  Rada grunted her agreement. After supper, she, Teelkan, Bisteel, and Sgt. Teelow claimed the officers’ ready room. “Tell me about the accident, Teelkan. Just your observations, not the official report; I have that already.”

  The light-brown-blotched reptile shifted back and forth on his bench. “Lord mammal, the accident made no sense.” His tail swung back and forth just a little and Rada noticed his neck spines twitching as Teelkan hid his agitation and confusion. “Blackwing Four had been out on a resupply flight to one of the remote posts at the edge of the big snow. They came back at the right time, sounded fine on the radio, and then,” he swung his forefeet in and then up, mimicking a cloud billowing from the ground. “Boom; there’s a tangle of half-hover and five dead Defenders.”

  Rada drank from her container of hot tea. “Can you show me their route?”

  Sergeant Teelow walked over to the wall and tapped part of the paneling. A map appeared, and he gestured, activating a pointer. Schree’s Rest appeared in a red circle. “From here they went up here, to Watch Point Six, my lord.” A green line appeared, leading to a dot on the edge of the permafrost east and north of the city. “Then they flew back via Snowcrest One,” and the green line turned east before swinging southwest to follow a low-altitude training route. “The crash was here.” The green line terminated at a black square three qliqs south of the approach point for Schree’s Rest.

  Rada and blotchy green Bisteel looked at eachother, then back at the map. Rada tightened her grip on the warm tea vessel as she pushed, “You are certain that’s the path that Blackwing Four flew?”

  “It is the path they filed, my lord,” Teelow replied, his gravelly voice quiet. “We lost our radar track when they dropped onto Snowcrest One, and the satellite repeater failed just after Watch Point Six reported the departure.”

  “What happened to the repeater?” Bisteel’s talon scratched over the top of his data pad.

  “Damn mammal rush got it.” Teelow and Teelkan both ducked when they remembered just what the Lord Defender was. “Ah, let me show you, my lord, no offense meant,” Teelkan ventured.

  The sergeant adjusted the projection as Lt. Teelkan called up a picture that showed a swarm of white-coated mammals. “They weigh two, sometimes three kilos each, and this time of year they swarm for mating. Someone failed to turn on the electricity to the fence around the satellite repeater receiver after maintenance and the swarm got into it. Between them gnawing the wires and the weight of three hundred of the little beggars, well my lord, it took several hours for us to get it all put back together.”

  Rada thought back to the meal she’d just eaten. “And they are fat and have lots of dark meat this time of year.”

  “Yes, my lord, they do. We should be done with the last ones, oh, next sixt,” Teelkan guessed. Bisteel made a quiet gagging sound as he realized what he’d eaten, and would be eating.

  “Lieutenant Bisteel, no one in the Defenders is allowed to have hairballs but me. And I know better.” Rada sat back and studied the map of Blackwing Four’s supposed flight path. “Very well, gentlemen. Is there anything else I need to know?”

  Lt. Teelkan rustled a little. “My lord, try not to take offense if you go into Schree’s Rest and no one uses your title or pays proper homage. The locals are,” he looked to his senior NCO and gestured a question with his tail.

  Teelow grated, “The most independent pack of reptiles you will encounter on this side of the Gates of Hell, Lord Mammal. Not bad, just independent.”

  Rada made a gesture of understanding and smiled to herself, thinking, You’ve never been to Burnt Mountain, have you, Sergeant?

  After retiring for the night, Rada considered the problem of Blackwing Four. She’d seen the satellite track that the half-hover actually flew, and it bore almost no resemblance to the filed route that Teelkan showed. Rada closed her eyes and called the map up out of her mental files. Blackwing Four had made the supply run to Watch Point Six, true enough. Except that the half-hover had then turned south and west, not east, bypassing Schree’s Rest to the west before turning back to the east. Blackwing Four had turned north to intercept the approach to Schree’s Rest Base when it crashed. It should have been turning southwest. “What were you doing,” Rada asked the dead flight crew. “Why so far off your filed route? And why did you deactivate your flight recorder?”

  The next day Rada, Bisteel, and Sgt. Teelow visited the actual crash site. It had snowed since the crash but char remained on the twisted metal and shards of composite scattered around the site. Not that there was much scatter, Rada had noted when she’d first seen the pictures. Now she paced around the perimeter of the debris field. “I take it this clearing existed prior to the crash?”

  “Yes, Lord Mammal. It’s kept open for use as a timber staging area during logging season,” Teelow confirmed. He pointed with his tail back along the track their vehicle had come. “Snowcrest One intercepts the logging route here.”

  “Hmm.” Rada used a monocular to inspect the tops of the trees around the clearing. She pointed south with her stick. “They came in from there?”

  “Ah, no my lord. Snowcrest One is that way,” and Teelow pointed to the east. Bisteel, taking notes for the Lord Defender, made a confused noise.

  “Then why are the tops of the trees clipped to the south?” Rada waded into deeper snow, pushed through brush at the edge of the clearing, and found broken limbs and bits of evergreen all over the ground.

  “I don’t know, Lord Mammal.”

  Another half hour of prowling around the crash site revealed nothing new. Not that Rada expected to find anything surprising; satellite coverage of this region was some of the most thorough on Drakon IV. Azdhag logic dictated that where there were fewer inhabitants, there should be more remote detection resources, unless the area was on the southern landmass. Rada rubbed an itch under her blind eye. The cold made her scars pull more than usual. Her leg also ached and she turned back to the ground vehicles. “Teelow, Bisteel, I’ve seen what I needed. Now I’d like to go to Schree’s Rest and make some inquiries.”

  Teelow gestured his understanding. “Yes, Lord Mammal.”

  Once they’d joined the main vehicle track and the sergeant engaged the vehicle’s auto-nav system, Rada pulled out her personal datapad. “Teelow, other than their dislike of nobility in general, is there anything I need to know about Schree’s Rest?”

  “It is very old, Lord Mammal. Dates back to a little before the Great Relocation, and the locals are very determined to remain independent of outside control. They’re loyal to the King-Emperor,” he assured the officers as Rada raised an eyebrow and Bisteel frowned. “Several families have members in the Imperials and Defenders, but the settlers do not like having to go through Lord Norli and Nightlast to have their voice heard on the Planetary Council.”

  Bisteel added, “Lineage Daesarae is the closest estate, and they’ve been at odds with Schree’s Rest since the Great Relocation.”

  “Mmm.” Rada could see that. Why challenge another noble when you can pick on the commoners with near impunity, she half growled, half sighed. Even after the reforms over the centuries, it seemed as if someone in each generation just had to aggravate the old wounds.

  An alert chimed and Teelow resumed manual control of the vehicle as they entered the city limits. Enormous walls of ice-glazed snow already surrounded the town and four moons of winter still remained. Rada shook her head. I’ll quit whining about winters at Singing Pines, promise. The snow walls helped break the wind and kept drifting down within the city, Rada recalled. She’d used similar techniques at some of the Adamantine Division and Komet’s temporary camps.

  The vehicle trundled to a stop in a large parking area. Rada opened the door and tested the footing with her cane before getting out. She did not care to break either her tailbones or her dignity.

  “My lord, do you have a destination in mind?” Bisteel asked.


  “Yes. I want to speak with someone from Lineage Tarlek. I understand that they have a major timber-harvesting business here,” Rada told him. Then she wrapped a scarf over her lower face, leaving only her eye visible. “Their offices are at 12 South, 25 East.”

  The few Azdhagi out on the streets gave Rada curious looks but left the three Defenders alone. Bitter cold discouraged gawking: no one with functional mental wiring lingered outdoors any longer than absolutely necessary. Azdhagi suffered terribly in extreme cold, despite wearing heated cover suits, boots, and protective goggles and muzzle-masks. Even Rada felt the chill through her multiple layers and she thanked the closest passing deity that the wind remained calm. Soon Rada and her escorts found Tarlek Timber. Long, open-ended metal sheds surrounded the main building, all of them full of wood in various stages of cutting and curing. “This is the most activity I’ve seen today,” Rada noted, watching the loaders, anti-grav lifters, and other equipment moving around the giant wood lot.

  “Once the lake and river freeze, we cut a hundred qliqs off the transport,” a deep voice informed them as a good-sized male wheezed up to meet them. “You got business or just staring?”

  “I need to speak with someone from Tarlek Lineage about their clan member, Flight Sergeant Leeshi.”

  “You are?”

  “Commander Rada Lord Defender Ni Drako.”

  The supervisor grunted, “This way and don’t touch anything.” As he pivoted, Rada discovered that the wheezing came from bellows and joints on his artificial hind legs.

  “Log slip?” Rada inquired.

  “Yup. Idiot didn’t set the bottom log on a secure ground and the pile shifted while I was locking the straps. Hurt like hell.” He looked back at Rada. “You know timber?”

  “Some. I’m from Singing Pines.”

  “Bloodwood area. Good stuff when you can find it. How was fire season?”

  “Not bad this year, probably nasty next year. Lots of duff.” Teelow and Bisteel gave up trying to follow the cryptic remarks and concentrated on dodging log ends and wood movers. Teelow trotted ahead once they reached the main office building, an attractive stone and wood structure with a bright orange metal roof. He made sure the door stayed open as Rada ducked and entered after the supervisor.