Three Winter Tails: A Cat Among Dragons Story Set Read online

  Three Winter Tails:

  A Cat Among Dragons Story Set

  Alma T. C. Boykin

  © 2016 Alma T. C. Boykin All Rights Reserved

  Cover Art:© SpinningAngel | Dreamstime.com - Lone Star Over Alien Winter World Photo

  Table of Contents

  The One Who Waited

  Winter’s Wonders, Major’s Woes

  A New Star Rises

  The One Who Waited

  “Cap’n, why us?” Lieutenant Ki’kwali’s dead serious question deserved a dead serious answer, and for once Yori dar Ohrkan gave it.

  The broad-shouldered HalfDragon took a deep breath. “Because one, a few of us have had limited diplomatic experience, more on average than in the other companies and platoons. Two, we’re used to going into new places and finding the traps and trouble, and three, because the Colonel expects trouble of some kind.” He looked over at Major Soliman Szilliar.

  Green-scaled Maj. Szilliar made a gesture of agreement. “Correct. Keep in mind, neither side of this mess has agreed to more than a cease fire, although the cease fire has been in effect for over ten of Holpan’s years.” The reptile glanced down at his forefoot and wiggled the fingers as he calculated. “That’s fifteen of our standard years, or just a touch under. And there have been raids and so-called lone attacker incidents periodically since then, so plan on being ready to fight.” He raised a cautionary digit and what might have been a smile tightened the corners of his mouth. “Diplomatically, of course.”

  Captains dar Ohrkan and Ni Drako said, “Of course, sir,” at the same moment, in the same weary and wary tone. After a surprised pause, the Scouts burst into guffaws, chattering, whistling snorts, and what ever other sound served as their species’ version of laughter. Szilliar chuckled as well, even as he rested one forefoot on top of his blunt, rounded muzzle. Yori’s blue eyes narrowed in confusion, but Rada grinned a little, acknowledging the humor. Her black-furred tail swished back and forth a few centimeters, and her ears twitched.

  Three days later Rada finished inspecting her males’ and females’ gear and uniforms, turned, and found Yori looming over her. “Problem?” Was he wearing some kind of cosmetic? He looked older than usual. No, Rada decided, it was the lighting and their rarely-used formal uniforms, with the high, stiff collars and grey, black, and crimson color pattern. He gave her a hand signal for “Come see.”

  They stopped in the corridor of the transport craft and he handed her a flop-screen loaded with the local “news.” Rada thought of it as propaganda on a page, and started to skim, then backed up and read it carefully. “Is this a literal translation?”

  Yori folded his arms, then unfolded them as he heard the sound of fabric starting to tear. “Yes. You’re the one with the medical and mental health training. Is it possible?”

  Rada returned the flop screen and thought, pursing her lips and wrinkling her nose. “Yeeeeees, yes, it is possible. Given the overall situation between the Holpanki and the Rubyors, I’d say it is very, very, very improbable. But possible, yes.”

  Whatever Yori wanted to say, he kept to himself, in part because two sergeants and a ship’s crew member eased past on their way to do something. “Thank you. I will keep that in mind.” Col. Adamski had tasked Yori with handling the diplomatic side of their escort duty. Rada outranked Yori, but his skill and training in diplomacy exceeded hers, and she tended to be a hair faster at catching threats building. “Any problems so far?”

  “Not yet, but I want to read the full report on the tests on the new bandoliers when we get back to base. The material is,” She caught herself and looked around for interested observers. “Ahem. It is not up to the same quality as our previous source provided.” She pivoted. “Yes?”

  Lt. Ki’kwali waved her second set of grasping limbs, the ones mid-thorax. “We are not doing an atmospheric drop, ma’am.”

  “No, we are not.” Rada waited.

  The limbs made a complicated wringing, fluttering gesture close to the junior officer’s midline. “The midshipman in charge of disembarkation wants to be briefed on our drop-capsule procedures.”

  “If you will excuse me?”

  Yori waved his empty hand, dismissing her. Rada let her ears go half flat as she followed the lieutenant, wondering what in the name of four different hells she’d missed this time. Surely the plan had not been changed that much. Because drop-caps were one way, one passenger, making it impossible to bring anyone back from Holpan with them. And the client’s insisting on an extra-atmospheric drop would double the price the Division charged. Something Rada did not care to be the one to inform the narrow-faced stick of a mission coordinator the Rubyors had foisted on the Scouts. He complained enough about the cost of their transport as it was, even though the Rubyors had been the ones to insist on neutral shipping with a full medical staff and equipment. “In here, Ma’am,” the insect twittered.

  Rada tapped the proper button on her auto-translator as she eased into the compartment. A metallic-skinned individual with the shoulder tabs of a senior midshipman was explaining “ . . . be ready for a hard landing. Our braking units are not designed for masses greater than seventy kilos.” The listening Scouts caught sight of Rada and started rustling to their feet or hind limbs before she gestured for them to stay as they were.

  “Your pardon, senior midshipman,” she enunciated clearly and slowly in Trader, giving the translator time to convert her words. “Has there been a change in arrival procedure announced?”

  The midshipman pivoted and raised a visual converter until it could “see” her face. “No, Captain. We are utilizing a standard drop, with the transfer vessel following. Does not your unit drop into all active combat zones?”

  Oh for the love of hairballs, Rada groaned to herself. So much for a diplomatic mission. “Not always, midshipman. It depends on the type and proximity of the active combat. Will it be necessary to secure the spaceport as well, prior to the transfer vessel’s arrival?” She turned her head a little and glared at the Scouts, warning them not to groan aloud, at least not yet.

  The crewmember lowered the visual converter and stopped all motion as it used a communications implant to obtain more data. The first time Rada had seen it, she’d been impressed enough to lower her shields a little and try to listen in. Now she thickened her mental defenses and thanked any listening deity that her training had never required that level of mental and physical modification. Because the being no longer had standard visual detectors. Instead, bio-interface screens gave it access to the ship’s data systems, and electronic communications implants sped the process. Rada suspected the individuals so modified could not leave their ships without major sedation and medical supervision.

  It “returned” and “looked” at her again. “Your pardon, Captain Ni Drako. A mis-translation occurred. We will follow standard procedures for neutral-territory approach and landing, with level three security procedures and perimeter defense.”

  “Thank you. I am grateful for the clarification, senior midshipman.” Once the stiff-limbed creature walked out and the door shut, Rada grinned. “You can groan now.”

  Hisses, groans, mutters, a deep “whunf” and the exchange of credit chips followed. Rada knew better than to expect perfect discipline in private, and the Scouts needed to blow off a little frustration. She waited for the noise and movement to fade before leaning on the podium-like structure at the front of the compartment. “Right. According to an internal news release from Holpan, there is some question as to exactly how many of the Rubyors they will be releasing. Plan on several hundred, but we’ll see when we arrive.”

  An appendage rose from t
he back of the group and Rada pointed. “Captain, how long have Holpan and Ruby’yatt been on mutual war footing?”

  Rada did a quick mental conversion. “Several decades of our years. Think of this as being bit like the Kirmanto War, without the nuclear and biological challenges.”

  “Yet,” came a voice from among the troopers.

  Rada’s tail rumpled in a shrug. “They can do whatever they like to each other so long as we’re not in the middle. Not our contract, not our problem.” But as she spoke, a strange feeling settled on the Wanderer-hybrid, as if something moved just outside of her sensor range.

  * * *

  Rada’s sense of “not right” grew as she watched the vehicles hovering just beyond the edge of the security field, trembling a little from the refraction of the shield and from their aircushion suspensions and exhaust heat in the chilly air. She stood with her back to Yori and the representatives of the Holpanki government. All the tentacle waving and color shifting made her twitch, in part because she’d skipped the most recent meal in favor of trying to review any and all medical information she could find about the Rubyors. The motion made her think of an especially tasty kind of sea creature she’d encountered when she was on bodyguard duty for Himself. Although, from what she now understood about the Holpanki, their taste in all things was quite bad. She probably wouldn’t find the rich, complex flavor of the sea creature if she tried to nibble a Holpanki tentacle.

  Their quadrilateral symmetry also disturbed her optic nerves, and Rada preferred watching the horizon, the light brown pavement, the vehicles, the reddish-brown hills beyond the spaceport, in short anything but the Holpanki military and diplomatic personnel. The containment shield wavered and a large section disappeared, warning Rada of approaching vehicles. “Incoming,” she sent to the other Scouts.

  Five boxy hovercraft floated across the landing field, kicking up dust and snow, and inspiring a flurry of motion as the mercenaries swung dust masks and eye shields into place. “Idiots,” Rada heard the rampmaster snarl. She wasn’t inclined to disagree with his observation. At least they weren’t racing toward the waiting ships, then slamming to a stop to show off. That rarely ended well. Two of the personnel from the transport ship moved to stand beside Rada. They’d take over loading once Rada confirmed that these were the right people.

  A Holpan soldier dismounted from the vehicle and roll-walked up to Rada. “You here for the scum?”

  Rada gave herself a moment, as if listening to a translator box, before answering in Feltari. “We are the escort for the prisoner return.” Her box hesitated, then converted it to Trader. No point in letting the jerks know I can understand them.

  The Holpanki moved closer, waving two of her brown-wrapped tentacles almost in Rada’s face. The tinted eye-shield on her helmet helped keep Rada from twitching, but her grip on her rifle tightened. “Cool one, are you?” The tentacle withdrew and the large creature moved away before the urge to skewer the ngeedak overcame Rada’s self control. “Take them. They’re too stupid to understand the truth.” The female did not exactly walk, but sort of rolled to the transport as her locomotion limbs moved her across the ground. All five vehicles settled to the pavement and doors opened in the sides. People got out of two of the machines, and Rada began counting.

  Only twenty? That can’t be right. Nineteen almost bird-like beings and one humanoid limped or staggered toward the Scouts. Rada keyed her communicator to Yori’s discrete frequency. “Blue Two to Blue One, over.” She spoke in Trader.

  “Blue Two, go ahead.”

  “Blue One, how many are we escorting, over?”

  After a pause, Yori’s voice came back. “Two hundred, over.”

  Rada’s fur stood on end as the first of the crates emerged from the other three vehicles. “Do we know what condition the individuals are in?”

  “Negative. Standby.”

  Sergeant Gulibi stomped up to where Rada stood, handed her a bill of lading, and glowered past her shoulder. The augmented Berpart’s fur was as fluffed as Rada’s own, making him look twice as large. “Bastards,” he growled, but very quietly. “Ma’am.”

  Rada glanced at the form, looked up at the crates, and back at the document. Bastards was the mildest of the epithets she aimed, silently, at the Holpanki. “Get our people moving, Brown Three. We’ll take them from here.” Because I do not want them opening the boxes and dumping the remains on the ground for us to collect and sort. And I think these ngeedaks are just the kind to do something like that. The Scouts didn’t ask questions but moved forward, taking custody of the crates full of remains and loading them onto the atmospheric transfer vessels as the crew directed. Rada kept a very close eye on the soldiers as they worked, in case one of the Holpanki said or did something and a Scout responded the way Rada dearly wanted to. Ripping the perfidious sadists apart one tentacle at a time sounded like a good start, and Rada fought to keep herself under control so the other Scouts wouldn’t pick up on her fury.

  The Rubyors had either been drugged, or were so damaged in mind that they could not respond to the Scouts’ questions. The humanoid kept his head down and limped badly. He also helped one of the Rubyors, a dark brown individual with one leg at least three centimeters shorter than the other, who moved with a painfully slow gait. “You’re going to be busy,” Capt. Dar Ohrkan said from behind Rada.

  “Negative. Avian medicine is outside my certification.”

  “Not what I meant, Ni Drako. Minds, not bodies. I’ll explain later.”

  “Sir.”

  Yori waited until they got outside the atmosphere and had the twenty former prisoners installed in their quarters, attended by medical personnel, before he explained. He and Rada were sitting in the Scouts’ temporary wardroom, both with their hands wrapped around containers of hot something-or-another. The ship was cold, as usual for interstellar transport craft. “OK, Awful Clawful, what gives.”

  He really did look older. “If we ever have a contract against the Holpanki I’m in no questions asked. The boxes are packed with remains, unsorted, of eighty or so individuals, probably more like a hundred and twenty. They are the ones who refused the Holpanki conversion and died while in captivity or during the attempted conversion. The rest survived both prison and failed conversion attempts.” He refused to meet Rada’s eyes, instead staring at the table’s surface as he drank.

  Rada put the pieces together, tail lashing back and forth across the bench. “And the missing hundred or so were converted to being Holpanki, at least philosophically, and renounced their citizenship or whatever it is and stayed.”

  “You got it. The Old Bird’s going to be pissed.”

  “No shit. And we get to tell the families of the missing and the dead.”

  All color faded from Yori’s face and his eyes shifted from blue to gold, then started to turn red. “Oh,” he lapsed into Old Drakonic and said a few choice phrases. Rada understood one of them, at least the basic idea, and agreed with the sentiment although she doubted that the laws of physics as currently understood allowed one to do that. He switched back to Trader. “I’ve—, what do we do?”

  Rada exhaled a long breath and drank, got a second cup of whatever it was, and sat down again. “We tell the families what we know. We let their government take it from there. And we do it shields up, and we keep about half the troopers here.” She pointed down to the table and the deck beneath. “Anyone with empathic abilities stays here, unless they are also medical personnel.”

  “So you’re leaving me to face this on my own?” But he winked.

  “Nope, but I don’t care to have to impose shields on people if I can avoid it. The Rubyors are, um, not empaths in the sense that I am, but they communicate emotion through coloration changes and they can, when badly stressed, project at a very low level. A subconscious level, I think, although I don’t trust the translation on the report I was reading.”

  Yori groaned and slumped, then straightened up. “Oh joy. This is turning into a clusterfuck.”
>
  “No sheet.” At least they didn’t put bombs in the crates. Although Adamski wouldn’t leave much of their capital standing if they pulled that stunt. Not that it would help the deceased Scouts any. “Could be worse. Could be on our credit account.”

  “Point.” The captains sighed and made their plans.

  The next day by the ship’s clock, Rada called on the human. He studied her, not accepting her invitation to sit until he’d satisfied himself about something. “You a Feltari?”

  “Part. It’s complicated,” she half-lied.

  He snorted, raking a straggle of grey-brown hair out of his eyes and revealing half-healed scars on his hands as well as his face. He needed to put on at least ten kilos Rada guessed, and he’d suffered nerve damage that affected one leg. Muscle spasms made one arm twitch at random intervals. He ignored it, and Rada suspected it was an old injury. “So what gives?”

  Rada shrugged as he sat. “We’re, that is the other troopers and Capt. Dar Ohrkan and I, are the Scouts for Col. Ingwe Adamski’s Adamantine Division, sir. The government on Ruby’yatt hired us to escort you and your fellow soldiers home. That’s pretty much what I know. We’re a neutral party, and both planetary governments have posted a peace bond with Adamski at least until we finish the mission.”

  “Any treaties yet?”

  “No, sir, just the cease fire.”

  The man slumped a little, leaning forward and resting his arms on the table. “Damn. The name’s, well, call me Davoud. I’m from Delphi II.”

  Rada blinked. “Sir, do you know a Kory Delmonico or Trey, ah, how did he pronounce it again?” Rada tried to recall. “Cristofori deghli Karmoudi I think it was.”

  “Kory Delmonico the idiot with a gambling problem, ran off to avoid her debts, got killed by the big lizards on Sidara?” Davoud stared at Rada.

  “Survived, actually, but ended up with Krather’s Komets. Held her drink as well as she held her pay?”