Exiles of the Belt (Void Dragon Hunters Book 4) Read online

  EXILES OF THE BELT

  VOID DRAGON HUNTERS

  BOOK 4

  ––––––––

  FELIX R. SAVAGE

  ––––––––

  Copyright © 2018 by Felix R. Savage

  The right to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by Felix R. Savage. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author.

  First published in the United States of America in 2018 by Knights Hill Publishing.

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  1

  The asteroid 409663 Mingetty is a pebble drifting on the edge of the Jovian Belt. It has one surface feature of note: a crater, smooth-rimmed, weathered by the solar wind from a star—Sol—that no longer exists. I stand on the rim of the crater, EVA-suited, apparently alone in the universe.

  Down on the crater floor, dust hangs sparkling in the light of Jupiter. It’s sinking at a snail’s pace in Mingetty’s next-to-nil gravity, but it is sinking.

  Meaning it was stirred up recently.

  They came this way.

  Well, of course they freaking did. I already knew that. The asteroid is so tiny there’s nowhere else for them to have gone.

  I bound down the sloping side wall of the crater. Tancred flaps down from the blackness overhead, momentarily blocking out Jupiter with his wings. He joins me on the crater floor.

  We move towards the shadow of the opposite wall, which is shrinking as the asteroid rapidly rotates. Drawing back like a black curtain, the shadow exposes two rovers with tools clamped down in their beds.

  I squeeze between the rovers.

  Tancred just hops over them.

  Together, we shuffle into the darkness of the tunnel we dug ourselves, which will in future hide and protect a collection of inflatable habs.

  Francie actually did most of the digging. Well, not herself, but she volunteered to take charge of the operation. She designed the tunnel, did all the paperwork to validate her proposal, and drew up a work rota for the crew of the Ottokar, our cruiser and temporary home. Boy, were they pissed. They thought this was going to be a cushy posting. That was before they met Francie.

  To be fair, Francie has been down here every day too, slave-driving—sorry—helping and encouraging the work crews. She likes to keep busy.

  So does Patrick.

  It’s Patrick’s fault Tancred and I are edging down a tunnel in the pitch dark, instead of sitting comfortably in my office on board the Ottokar while I work on my own stuff.

  “You’re the commander,” Patrick said the other day. “You gotta participate at least some of the time.”

  Meaning, that is what Patrick would do if he were commander. And as Patrick actually has leadership experience, which I do not, and more leadership ability in his little finger than I do in the whole of my lanky, awkward body, I feel like I have to listen to what he says.

  Heigh ho.

  Tancred skids on the floor of the downward-sloping tunnel, scrabbling for purchase with his claws, knocking stone chips from the drilling operation down ahead of us. Of course, there’s no sound down here, because there’s no air, but those bits of gravel are gonna bounce all the way down to the bottom. Try and be a bit more stealthy, I say to him, gently. The tunnel is not a good place for him. He is now the size of a large carthorse. The ceiling is too low for him to sit up on his haunches. And he can’t use his wings.

  He’s peeved, and not just because I made him come down here.

  Why must Tancred be baddie? Why, every time?

  I sigh. It’s just because you’re the biggest. It doesn’t mean anything—

  My attempt to cheer him up is interrupted by a shout of “Fire at will!”

  Oh.

  I thought they’d ambush us at the bottom of the tunnel, in the big cavern where the drilling machinery is.

  Instead, they’ve lain in wait for us halfway down the tunnel, in the wide place where the work crew used to park their machines when they needed to get one vehicle out past another one. It’s a layby with an uneven ceiling that slopes all the way down to the floor on one side.

  Rude Boy and Wiktor flap behind me, closing the box, while Smaug, Jade, and Beelzebub fly straight at me from my ten, twelve, and two o’clock.

  I see all this—the flapping of metallically glinting wings, the outstretched necks, the spread claws—in the light of the fire puffing from the babies’ mouths.

  At Tancred.

  Simultaneously, EVA-suited figures rise up from the shadows beneath the overhang of the layby’s lower side. Their faceplates reflect the stabbing dragon-fire. Their fists clutch energy weapons.

  I draw my own weapon, too late.

  Their beams lock onto my chest. I hear a discordant ding-dong in my helmet, and an automated voice says: “You are dead.”

  That didn’t take long.

  Feeling a little ruffled that I got hit so quickly, but also relieved not to have to fight, I go and sit down under the overhang and watch Tancred play the bad guy.

  The little Void Dragons flap around his head, panting fire. Not one of them is bigger than a house cat. They could breathe fire all day and still not hurt him. But it does sting awfully, he’s told me, and I admire his patience and forbearance as he darts his head from side to side, carefully grabbing one baby after another in his teeth, and setting them down on the floor. He really doesn’t make a very convincing baddie. He’s scared of hurting them. The babies, on the other hand, are not scared of hurting him. They’re giving it all they’ve got, and having tremendous fun. Their joyous cheeping fills my head.

  “You’re supposed to lie down where you got hit,” Francie says to me, on a private channel.

  I glance to all sides until I see her sitting under the overhang, quite near me. She’s holding Pinkie Pie, her own Void Dragon, in both arms. “Sitting this one out?”

  She sighs. “Pinkie would just eat the Bulldogs.”

  These are the non-lethal energy weapons we use for these training exercises. Even with the beam strength dialed way down, they’re Pinkie Pie’s favorite food. The little dragon is wriggling in Francie’s arms. Hungry! HUNGRY! She’s getting frantic.

  “Guess I’ve got to feed her,” Francie says. She draws her own Bulldog and settles Pinkie Pie in the crook of her left arm. “Open wide.” Aiming carefully, she fires into the baby dragon’s mouth. It is a rather horrifying sight, even though I know Pinkie loves it. “I just don’t want her to get too big, you know?” Francie says.

  I know. Do I ever know. I ruefully watch my half-grown Void Dragon kicking the butts of five humans and five other Void Dragons without even trying. He kicks Patrick in the stomach, gently, while totally ignoring the fact that Paul is shooting a Bulldog at him. Tancred doesn’t eat lousy rotten Earth-manufactured energy weapons. He eats Offense spaceships, and he is participating in this exercise for no other reason than that I want him to.

  The irony is that I don’t want to be here, either. We’ve been on Mingetty for eight months, waiting for something to happen. In that time we have run through every training exercise with dragons that Patrick can devise, most of them over and over. We’re all bored out of our skulls.

  But I do, actually, have something better to do.

  Saying nothing to Francie, I open a private connection to the Ottokar’s computer. A window pops up on my faceplat
e. With no keyboard, I can’t actually work, but I can review what Bolt and I did this morning.

  Bolt Galloway was my roommate when I was in the 11th Technical Support Regiment. I recruited him to be the 1st Dragon Corps’s IT specialist. Admittedly, I chose him because of his unparalleled ability to procure booze and goodies, even on a remote asteroid. But he’s actually a pretty decent coder. So I brought him into my secret project.

  Hmm … looks like he’s still working. He’s tested our new code module against a dummy encrypted email …

  … and it didn’t make a dent in it.

  Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

  A wave of frustration rises up in me, so intense it borders on panic.

  How can this be so difficult?

  I refuse to admit it may not be possible.

  Bleakly, I raise my eyes from Bolt’s code execution analysis and check on the progress of the fight. Tancred has Rude Boy, Beelzebub, Wiktor, and Jade trapped under one hindclaw in a mewling pile. Orangey-yellow Smaug is still in the fight. He’s the fastest of the babies, and … I don’t want to say meanest, because he’s Patrick’s dragon. But in a fight, even a pretend fight, he’s maximally aggressive, just like Patrick.

  Now he’s clinging to Tancred’s hindquarters, out of reach of Tancred’s claws, clawing and panting fire onto Tancred’s back. That hurts, and Tancred is running out of patience.

  “Heads up,” says a voice in my ear.

  This voice instinctively brings a smile to my face, even amidst my worries. It is Sara, my XO. “What’s up?” I say.

  She’s back on the Ottokar, acting as commander in my absence. And even before she speaks, my smile fades, because Sara is a former Marine. She does things by the book. She would not interrupt a training exercise unless it was very important.

  “We’ve picked up infrared drive signatures,” she says. “Four ships, heading this way.”

  *

  I switch to the public channel. “Hey guys, gotta call a halt.” Whoops. I am a lieutenant colonel. I’d better try to sound like one. “I’m terminating this exercise at the present time.”

  My friends stop playacting. Smaug does not. He leaps up onto Tancred’s head and breathes fire right into his face.

  OW! Tancred howls, and scrapes him off.

  Smaug eludes Tancred’s claws, rights himself in the air, dodges past Tancred, and zooms out of the cavern.

  Tancred goes after him, galumphing up the tunnel, sending a shower of small stones and dust back into the layby.

  “What’s going on?” Patrick says to me.

  I tell them what Sara said, while we hurry up the tunnel after Tancred and Smaug. At that moment Sara gets back to me. “For your information, we have no data on any Earth ships headed this way at present. Nothing’s scheduled to pass through our sector.”

  While she’s speaking, I key Patrick, Francie, Paul, Badrick, Huifang, and Milosz into the conversation. I do this because I am hoping they’ll give me some cues as to what to do.

  Eight months we’ve been here. Eight months, and no ships have ever entered our sector before, except for the occasional Earth patrol passing through, and our own supply ships. This is the first test of my abilities as commander of the 1st Dragon Corps.

  “Try hailing them,” Patrick says.

  “Yeah, try hailing them,” I say to Sara.

  “Will do,” Sara says. “Do you want us to also analyze the drive signatures and radar returns to see if we can identify them that way?”

  “Good idea,” Patrick says.

  “Do it,” I say.

  “OK, and in the meantime you might want to know that Smaug is headed our way, but I can’t see any of the other dragons.”

  “Oh Gawd,” Patrick says. “Coming.”

  Tancred! I call out. Where are you?

  I get a pulse of resentment back. No LIKE being baddie.

  He’s floating in orbit around Mingetty, nursing his sore back and his hurt feelings.

  I know how you feel, little scaly-butt. I’m not just saying that, either. Our weird mind-meld lets me feel what he feels, and see what he sees: the boring dark gray lump that is Mingetty, stars beyond. He’s on the opposite side of the asteroid from our base, sulking.

  Is not FAIR, Daddy.

  I know. It really isn’t fair. Listen, we won’t play that game anymore. We’ll change the rules. Or something. Promise.

  I make a mental note to talk to Patrick about it. But I also hope that these unknown ships turn out to be a big, juicy Offense patrol that is flying right into Tancred’s claws. That would cheer him up. He was promised lots to eat, and he hasn’t had a bite since we left Callisto. He’s really being very good about it.

  How screwed-up is it that I hope these are Offense ships? I ought to be pissing myself with fear. But at this point, even I am so sick of the monotony, I’d welcome the change.

  We burst out of the tunnel and jump into the rovers. Their cramponed wheels carry us easily out of the crater. Throwing up rooster tails of dust, we drive back across the barren, lumpy surface to our base, less than a klick away but hidden from the crater by the abrupt curve of Mingetty’s horizon.

  Our “base.”

  Two ships—the Melisende, a picket, and the much bigger Ottokar, where we all live pending the completion of the underground hab—plus a bunch of fuel and water tanks in V-frames.

  The base is presently in darkness, but a white flame flickers at the top of the Ottokar’s gigantic cluster of engine bells.

  “Patrick!” I yell, pointing at the candle of dragon-fire.

  Patrick is at the wheel of my rover. He lets loose a string of swears that would make a Marine’s ears burn, and throws open the door. Without even bothering to hit the brakes, he hurls himself out, rolls and bounces in the micro-gravity, and engages his spacesuit’s mobility thrusters. Launching into a powered sprint, half-running and half-flying, he outdistances the rover. He’s heading for the Ottokar.

  And Smaug.

  I don’t see much of it, as I’m busy sliding into the driver’s seat, getting control of the rover before it crashes—not that there’s anything on Mingetty to crash into, apart from the other rover.

  The others are all holding onto their Void Dragons for dear life, trying to stop them from flying to join Smaug.

  Who is so worked up from the pretend fight that he has forgotten Patrick’s strict orders. He is about to eat the reactor of the Ottokar.

  Our ship.

  That is the problem with the baby dragons.

  In fact, I suspect that’s the real reason the 1st Dragon Corps was created, and packed off here, to the edge of the Jovian Belt, where nary an Earth ship calls in a blue moon unless it’s to bring us food and water.

  All the baby dragons—except Francie’s Pinkie Pie and Sara’s Faith—eat Earth ships.

  Patrick reaches the Ottokar. He flies up to the top of the engine cluster and makes a grab for Smaug.

  Smaug flies inside the top engine bell.

  Tancred! I yell mentally. Come back! Please! You’ve got to stop Smaug!

  Smaug hurted me.

  I know, I know, but he’s about to hurt everyone. Come ON, Tancred, please—

  I brake the rover at the foot of the Ottokar’s landing stands. It’s a deep-space cruiser, which means it’s totally unaerodynamic. it looks like a metal city block on legs, with the engines at one end and the guns at the other.

  Tancred flies over my head.

  He can go pretty damn fast when he needs to.

  He flies straight into the engine bell where Smaug disappeared, nearly taking Patrick’s head off with his wings as he snaps them shut. The engine bell is so big he can fit all the way in.

  The Ottokar wobbles from an interior impact. The landing stands on this side rise off the ground a millimeter and thud back down.

  “Jay, wanna tell me what’s happening?” Sara says calmly.

  But I don’t know what is happening. Patrick lands beside me, cursing. We should be running away, in case Sm
aug has burnt his way into the reactor, which would cause an uncontrolled explosion. Instead, we all stand staring up—

  —until Mingetty rotates us back into Jupiter-light, and Tancred shuffles out of the engine bell, butt first, clutching Smaug in his jaws.

  He thumps down to the ground, drops Smaug, and hops over to me. I hug his neck.

  Smaug uncrumples himself and flies into Patrick’s arms. We all hear his wordless sobbing in our minds.

  I breathe a sigh of profound relief. For a minute there I thought Tancred had killed him. The only thing that can hurt a Void Dragon is another Void Dragon. And Tancred and I both know, though we’ve never talked about it, that someday Tancred may have to kill one or more of the babies. If they pull this shit again. If they keep on pulling this shit.

  “He’s just so hungry,” Patrick says.

  The others all nod their heads. Their Void Dragons are hungry, too.

  *

  Same goes for Jinks, the baby dragon belonging to the Melisende’s pilot, Luigi Peverelli, Francie’s grandfather. Same goes for Fleur and Buster, the dragons belonging to Marguerite and Tim Delacroix. The older couple were the parents of our lost comrade Jeremy. They are technically part of the Dragon Unit, but decline to participate in Patrick’s training exercises.

  They meet us inside the Ottokar’s airlock. Shared looks say it all: what are we going to do?

  I don’t know. I’m the commander, so this is my problem to solve. But I just don’t know what to do, except keep Tancred close to me.

  I peel off my EVA suit right there in the antechamber of the airlock, step into BDUs and a t-shirt, and head straight for the bridge. Tancred follows at my heels. He can just squeeze through the Ottokar’s interior corridors and pressure doors.

  The bridge is a ten-person space, designed as the command center of a unit considerably bigger than ours. It takes up most of one side of the ship. At present it is occupied only by Zach Croft—the captain of the Ottokar—and Sara.

  She rises from the XO’s seat. Unlike me, she’s wearing immaculate uniform. The Dragon Corps patch on her shoulder is partially obscured by Faith, her sapphire-blue baby dragon, draped around her neck like a scarf. Faith is always a bit … floppy. And clingy. She doesn’t eat ships. She eats Offense energy weapons. Another problem I cannot solve.