Dragons in the Stars.

Jeffrey A. Carver.

In the annals of starship rigging, it is said that the story began in a realm far from the paths of human thought....

Prologue.

The Words.

Skytouch?There was no answer to the dragon's whisper. The crystalline dracona lay broken at his feet, but a tingle in the dragon's mind told him she was not gone, not yet.

"Skytouch," he hissed again, venting smoke from his ma.s.sive nostrils. Those who had knocked her from the sky lay torn in pieces, just beyond the ridge. He had answered her cry in time to avenge her, but not in time to save her.

"Highwing," whispered a voice to his left. "Stay your grief! You must listen!"

He swung his ma.s.sive head in anger. "Iffling! Are you here to view the dead? Leave us in peace!"

"Highwing," answered the shimmering being, "your quarrel is not with me. Will you not accept my help?"

Highwing blew fire over the iffling's head. The creature floated out of the way, unperturbed. "If you want to help, then show me who encouraged those ...ungarkkondoh ... to do this."

"They were followers of one whom we do not name," whispered the iffling. "They meant to instill fear.

You must not let them succeed. You must listen."

Highwing ignored the meddlesome being. What did its words matter? His mate lay dying, victim of a senseless, savage attack. She had come from the Dream Mountain to sing the memories of the realm; but some, it seemed, no longer approved of such stories, though the telling of them was an almost sacred function of the draconae. Those un-garkkondoh had deserved far worse than the death he had given them in punishment. But it was he who would suffer now.Skytouch, why did I not stay with you?

"Listen to her!" urged the iffling. "Listen while you can!"

Highwing did not answer. As he gazed down at her broken crystal wings, beautiful even in the fading twilight, his eyes filled with memories of Skytouch under a noonday sun: wings of gossamer crystal riding the wind, eyes ablaze, her flight-song gladdening the air. Now her eyes were nearly extinguished. Listen to her? He reached out in thought.Skytouch?

Her left eye glimmered faintly. He tilted his head, narrowed his gaze to peer into the interior or her eye.

Deep within its facets a fire still burned, though faintly.Skytouch, he whispered with his mind.Can you hear me?

There was a golden flash in the center of his vision, and an image danced in his eye: the two of them on wing, riding midday thermals. He sensed laughter, through the pain. But he could not return her laughter, not now.I wish I could take you back there, he thought.Or to the Dream Mountain. To the draconae, to the other females.

L-i-s-t-e-n ...

He was astonished to hear her voice in his mind. Skytouch - L-i-s-t-e-n ... t-o ... t-h-e ... W-o-r-d-s.

His gaze penetrated deeper into the dying coals of her eyes, into the pain, sharing it. Listen to the Words?

Now?

Her mind-voice strained to be heard. Y-o-u ... Y-O-U ...m-u-s-t ... r-e-m-e-m-b-e-r ... And before he could do more than quiver in surprise, another memory grew bright in his thoughts.

* * *It was a bowl-shaped dell. The fledglings crouched, listening to the elder dracona sing of events past, and of events yet to unfold. The fledglings stirred impatiently as the elder's shining eyes turned to a tiny, jeweled gla.s.s dracona named Skytouch. "Daughter, speak the Words of the future."

The young female rose, tinkling. Gazing into the sky, she sang in a crystalline voice: From beyond life will come one From beyond hope will come one Without friend will come one And the realm shall tremble.

Innocent of our ways will come one Challenging darkness will come one Speaking her name will come one And the realm shall tremble.

From that one comes a beginning From that one comes an ending From that one all paths diverge And surely the realm shall tremble.

The vision darkened, Skytouch's strength ebbing.

Highwing rumbled in wonder. He remembered the time. It was his first sight, as a youngling, of Skytouch.

There had been more words than that, words of warning, of admonition. Prophecies of demons entering the realm, of innocence challenging darkness. Of deeds that might come to pa.s.s. Of the need for wisdom, the need to discern what is or is not garkkondoh. Words of little meaning to him then, or now.

He blinked slowly, so as not to break the weakening bond with his mate. There was little light left in hernow. Why had Skytouch wanted him to see that memory? He was no dracona.

She seemed, even in the growing darkness of her thoughts, to be aware of his question.Y-o-u ...

Skytouch?

... m-u-s-t ... r-e-m-e-m-b-e-r ...

He breathed smoke.Yes. For you. But why?

Her fires were failing rapidly. But a spark flickered in her eye and one more image appeared in his thoughts. He recognized himself, flying high in a night sky. There was danger in the image: someone there, someone not of the realm. He imagined that he felt the mountains trembling. Speak not of this, but hold it close to your heart, he seemed to hear her say.

What is it?he whispered. But the image was fading.Skytouch? Wait!

Be wise, son of Strongwing. Be wise ...

He seemed to hear her last words chiming on the air. The connection was cold. Her eyes were dark now, the last spark gone. She had fled to the Final Dream Mountain. The gla.s.s shards of the vessel that had held her in life were now empty.Skytouch, he whispered,call to me and I shall hear you wherever I may be, though all of the mountains lie between us.

There was no answer.

He raised his head. Even the iffling was gone.

Highwing tipped back his head and roared into the night sky. He lit the sky with a thundering flame. What had she been trying to convey? What duty? He would not learn it here, not now.

Wings unfurled, he leaped into the air in fury and grief. Her death would be repaid - not now, perhaps, but one day. He would keep her thoughts in his heart, though he didn't understand them. He would ponder them and learn. One day he would understand.

For now, bewildered and alone, he could only beat his way into the cold stinging wind, high into the deepening night sky.

Part One

Rigger

... In those early days, long before the founding of the RiggerGuild, starship riggers lived with constant insecurity. Often enough, they found themselves controlled by shrewd masters - sometimes subtly, sometimes not - but controlled nonetheless; and in those days, riggers were rarely successful in supporting one another against abusive masters. But if they suffered oppression in the normal world, they found freedom in the net, in the dreams by which they steered their ships, which their masters, however powerful, could never share. The lucky rigger found a way to carry that freedom out of the net, to the other side of life....

Jona' Jon'

-Gazing into Yesteryear:A Brief History of Starflight

One.

Gaston's Landing.

Jael paused at the edge of the s.p.a.ceport lobby, heart pounding. She was late for the afternoon s.p.a.cing call, and she could see from where she stood that today her name would go to the bottom of a very long list. The s.p.a.ceport was crowded, noisy, clotted with people competing for s.p.a.ce, for time, for service - shippers, stewards, unrated crew, normal-s.p.a.ce pilots, riggers. Loud voices echoed across the room, voices of the stewards calling riggers for possible a.s.signment. The calls seemed to float over the lounge area where the riggers congregated - riggers for hire, too many of them - all hoping that the stewards would come to them, match them with ship masters, ask them to fly.

Jael drew a breath, and almost turned away, but forced herself to remain. She was ready - more than ready - for an a.s.signment. She had the schooling and the s.p.a.ce-trial credentials, and she looked presentable: a slender, dark-haired young woman, not beautiful maybe, but neatly groomed, in a tunic suit, grey edged with scarlet. Did she have the stomach for the disappointment that was almost sure to come? She surveyed the lobby, considering. Her eyes widened as she glimpsed a young rigger of her acquaintance, Toni Gilen, threading her way across the lobby toward a steward. Jael shook her head and strode in. Toni was one of the shyest riggers Jael knew; if Toni could be a.s.sertive, surely Jael could be.

She felt no particular hope; she felt only the need that drew her here. It was the same feeling that drove all riggers: the almost irresistible need to shape, to explore, to live the fantastic realities of a realm that nonriggers could never touch or master, but could only dream of. And she sensed the ubiquitous conflicting emotion, almost palpable in the air. It was fear: fear of failure, fear of the shippers whom the riggers hoped to serve. She felt the need and fear combine like a thrill in her gut, her groin, her spine; but beneath it all, somewhere, remained the hope that today might be the day she would contract to fly.

She walked past the waiting area, toward the registry window, her feet moving quickly on the tile floor.

"Hi there, Jaelie!" she heard, and despite herself, she turned. A hawk-nosed young man was laughing from within the railing that set off the rigger lounge. "Gonna show us how to cheat the odds today?" Jael opened her mouth to reply, but the young man was already strutting away, grinning.

Burning with anger, Jael stalked on. Riggers, she thought bitterly. They were such misfits, most of them.

Self-centered, insecure, social incompetents. Walking raw nerves, in a world none of them was suited for. Was she like them? She hoped not. And yet, these were the people who navigated s.p.a.ceships through the slippery mists of the Flux; it was their unique gifts of vision that made travel among the stars possible. Jael was proud to be a rigger. But she was not always proud of the company she had to keep.

She approached the registration window nervously. She was always aware of her youth and her relative inexperience, but among the s.p.a.ceport officials and shipowners, she felt even tinier and more vulnerable than she really was. A raggedly bearded unrated crewman brushed by her and winked, grinning lewdly.

She ignored the gesture, or tried to. She hated this place and those who worked here, always ready to prey on the weak and the uncertain. But if she wanted to return to s.p.a.ce, she had to do it from here. And more than anything in the world, she wanted to return to s.p.a.ce. To the net. To the vision. To the freedom.

A young man was ahead of her at the registration window, talking in a croak, a rasping whisper. Jael waited, fidgeting, until he left and it was her turn at the window. A middle-aged woman with bluish hairspoke without looking up. "ID?"

Jael touched her bracelet to the dull-surfaced eye of the reader. "Jael LeBrae."

"Didn't ask your name, honey. It's right here in front of me." The woman turned, touched something on her console. "Jael LeBrae," she said, reading the output. "Available for single Cla.s.s Three or multiple Cla.s.s Five. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

The woman looked up, pursing her lips. "You the daughter of Willie LeBrae?" Her eyes bored into Jael's.

"Yes." The familiar tightness took hold in her throat. Was the woman going to ask about her father? She didn't want to talk about it, about him.

"I see. Well, nothing right now. Do you want to wait?"

Jael hesitated, struggling not to resent the indifference in the woman's voice. "Are you expecting anything?" she asked finally.

The woman looked at her in surprise. "Why, how would I know, honey? We hear about them when they come in. If you want to wait, you can wait. Is that what you want to do?"

Jael stared at her without answering. Could she stand it? It was the one way, the only way. "Yes," she whispered.

"Fine. Now, make way for others, won't you?"

Jael walked away from the window and joined the other riggers in the lounge. As she glanced back, she saw that there was no one in line behind her.

There were no empty seats in the quiet area, so she stood near the wall watching some of the riggers playing board and tank games, until a bench s.p.a.ce opened up. As she slid into the empty seat, the young man to her right moved a few inches farther away. Jael tried not to let her resentment show. She was tired of being blamed for her father, for people and events over which she had no control.

But there were ways of dealing with emotional discomfort, and Jael used one of them now. She sat perfectly still, her back and neck erect, balanced. Closing her eyes halfway, she slowly erased the visual input from her consciousness. She let her inner mind see, without her eyes.

She was aware, with her inner eye, of the expressions borne on the faces of the riggers waiting in this place. Boredom. Nervous tension. Desire. Inward-turned senses. Outward eagerness that belied the darker feelings roiling within. She smelled the aura of hot fear and desire that marked a roomful of riggers, the way musky body scents marked the dens of animals. These riggers came from dens all over the continent to this s.p.a.ceport: to wait in this lounge, to hope, to need and dread the chance to take a starship into s.p.a.ce.

But Jael didn't want to think about them now, didn't want to think about the compet.i.tion. She had better things to dwell upon: memories that gave her a shiver as her thoughts fled from the here and now. As they fled into the past, to the time of her first flight, not so very long ago - a training flight, the first of four ...

She had been working with other riggers, but it had been different then - not the bitter compet.i.tion she faced now. Riggers depended upon one another in guiding their ships through the currents, through thereefs and shoals of flight. It was by navigating the Flux - an other-dimensional realm of mystery and imagination - that starships physically pa.s.sed among the stars. And in steering their ships, riggers had to work together, not just cooperatively as would the crew of any ship, but as artists meshed in psychic union. Joined by shared intuition and inner vision, melded in working unity, they steered their vessels. In the schools it was difficult and challenging, flying simulations from the libraries, navigating any of a thousand actual and imagined courses. In s.p.a.ce it was doubly challenging, because it was real, and life was at stake - and in the conquest of the challenge, it was infinitely more rewarding than any simulation.

On that first flight and those that followed, Jael had left it all behind: the fears and needs, the problems of life back on the world, the family, the business, the reputation. All that disappeared when she entered the rigger's net and wove together the threads of real s.p.a.ce, of the Flux, of her imagination ... and crafted of it a world so cunningly real that the s.p.a.ceship slipped through it as surely as it pa.s.sed through the vacuum and weightlessness of normal-s.p.a.ce. On that first flight, she and her crewmates had carried the ship through a magical undersea realm of tropical waters, warm and crystalline blue. And where were those crewmates, her fellow students, now? All gone, off among the stars ...

"Listen up, people, I have some new openings here!"

For an instant, she wasn't sure whether the voice had come from her memory or from the outside. She widened her eyes, brought them into focus. A shop steward was standing in the center of the lobby, job slate in hand. He was calling out positions to be filled.

Jael shook herself to alertness and listened.

" ... a two-rigger crew to make a fast run up through Aeregia Minor, with calls at Parvis III and Chaening's Outpost. We need a four-rigger crew for a.s.signment with a pa.s.senger-carrying line; you'll have to go through the complete screening and testing on that one. And we have two seats for single-rigger jobs, one freight and one courier." The steward paused and looked around at the attentive, brooding faces. "Don't crowd, and don't apply if you're not qualified," he concluded, then turned and disappeared into the office.

Jael rose, along with at least half the riggers in the room. There was some crowding and jockeying for position at the half dozen ID readers, then she was in line. The woman ahead of her glanced back skeptically, but shrugged and said nothing. Frowning, Jael remained intentionally oblivious to any other glances, until her turn came to slide her ID bracelet into the reader niche. She drummed her fingers, waiting.

The screen blinked and displayed: We're sorry. We cannot consider your application for any presently available position.

Jael stared at the words. For three months now, since her last flight, she had received nothing but rejections. It would have been one thing to lose out on positions if she'd been unqualified, but she was consistently being denied even the chance to prove herself.

"Hey, are you going to stand there all day?" complained a voice behind her. Turning, Jael focused her frown upon the voice's owner. "What'd you expect, anyway?" the complaining woman muttered sarcastically. "Why don't you try the other side? That's where you belong, isn't it?"

I don't know - whatdid I expect? Jael thought, turning away. Fair treatment? I don't know why. She returned to her seat with as much dignity as she could muster. A young man she recognized from rigger school kept looking in her direction; she did not return the gaze. But the anger kept bubbling back up.

Why don't you try the other side? The thought made her tremble. The other side of the s.p.a.ceportlobby was where the unregulated shippers hired riggers - riggers so untamable or unfit for society, or so desperate, that they would fly with virtually no legal protection, not even the minimal restrictions imposed on the registered shippers. It was there that her father had hired his crews. It was there that the family name had been turned from a name of pride to a name of derision.Never , she vowed.

But other words echoed in her mind, words she had heard someone mutter behind her back more than once:"Who the h.e.l.l wants to hire a daughter of Willie LeBrae?" She hadn't responded to the comment; she never did. But that didn't stop it from hurting.

And that was the worst of it, really. Her fellow riggers, if anyone, ought to understand, ought to sympathize. Most of them knew the pain of rejection well enough. But it was as though they only knew how to cut deeper, how to make a wound hurt even more. There were those, of course, who just sat there, lost in their own worlds, neither harming nor helping. They barely stirred even to answer the calls; they were hardly going to rise to anyone's defense. And then there were her schoolmates - those whose trust she had gained anyway - but they were scattered like dust now, among the stars.