THE FINAL CHAPTER
The android quickly got Brianne’s hands behind her back and her wrists into a pair of the same energized manacles with which the rest of Brianne’s party were bound. It stood at attention while Kalum addressed his final captive.
“I’ll have you know,” said Kalum, “that this is one of my last remaining automatons. I had to have it come from my encampment where I left it. Part of the proceeds from this hunt will have to go to recouping my losses from what your friends the Knights did to my others.”
“I’m so sorry we inconvenienced you,” Brianne frowned, not bothering to conceal her anger. She felt like a captured animal. But the one standing before her now, she thought, embodied all the worst meanings of the word “beast.”
“Very good,” Kalum laughed. “You have great spirit. Meeting you now, I’m not surprised that you survived your little ordeal in the stream. When my automaton did a sensor sweep of the area to find where the cralowog had gone, it picked up your reading along with the animal’s. I was surprised at first, but now…no. Of course, you’d have to have such spirit, being such a great huntress. Not my kind of huntress of course, but still a huntress in your own way. Yes, I can see why my cousins have taken such a fancy to you.”
Warily, anxiously, Brianne said, “Donar? Conran? Where are they? What did you do to them? Are they hurt?”
“Of course they aren’t hurt,” replied Kalum. “Only in restraints, like you, so none of you can interfere with me any more than you have. You should have seen their expressions when I left them. They were deeply grieved at the thought that you were gone. They didn’t want to show me, but my cousins’ hearts were truly breaking.
That says a great deal for their feelings for you. I’ve never known them to be so deeply affected by anyone. They certainly have no such feelings for me, or my brother or my father. I think what they feel for you is something they may have never felt before. You should be proud.” Kalum smiled a sadistic smile at her.
Refusing to take his bait, Brianne demanded, “How do you know what kind of ‘fancy’ they took to me? You’ve never met me before, never seen me with your cousins. They’re my patrons, my benefactors. How do you know what they feel?”
Kalum laughed again. “Woman, please! You are a very comely human female. My cousins are male Lacertans attracted to females and given to, how shall we say, collaborating when they copulate. Your relationship with them is a foregone conclusion.”
“You know your relatives very well, don’t you?” Brianne responded, too angry to show him anything remotely like fear.
“Oh, the stories I could tell about their shared exploits with females,” said Kalum. “If you weren’t the last one to share their bed, you might almost find them entertaining. Under the circumstances I can only guess they’d make you jealous. Their bed has seen more traffic than the Alpha Chandrae Hub Spaceport at festival season.” And he chuckled again, watching Brianne fume at him.
“So, what now?” Brianne glared at him.
“Now,” replied Kalum, “you’re going to have the honor of accompanying me on my hunt and watching as I claim my trophy. As the woman who brought the cralowog to Lacerta, you deserve the privilege. I owe this to you. So, I’ll have my prize—and you may watch me bring it in before I quit this planet with it.”
Restrained as she was, Brianne could not rein in her feelings now. The horror was too stabbing, too deep, too awful. “No! NO!” she shouted.
“Don’t protest,” said Kalum. “Just accept it. The cralowog is mine.”
“Why?” Brianne demanded.
“Because,” said Kalum flatly, “it is my nature. Because I am a man, a hunter, and a dragon, and it’s what I do.”
“The world is full of men and dragons and hunters,” said Brianne, “and they don’t go slaughtering innocent animals just because they’re out there alive and free. They don’t think they own the world. They don’t think everything in the world is theirs to do with as they please. Don’t do this.”
“I repeat your question,” said Kalum. “Why?”
“Because it’s wrong!”
“Again—why?”
“Because nature doesn’t belong to you. Or to anyone. Nature just is. Everything alive belongs to nature, not the other way around. All life is a part of us. Don’t you know that? Can’t you understand that?”
“Of course: the naturalist argument. I’ve heard it before. Naturalists, conservationists, lovers of wildlife, it’s always the same with you. Conserve nature. Protect and love the animals. Tread gently on the natural world.”
Brianne felt her breath turn hot and her anger creasing her features. “You say that as if it’s something wrong. Tell me what in the hell is so wrong, so offensive, about caring for nature and not abusing it?”
“I’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong with it, Dr. Heatherton,” said Kalum in a voice without sympathy, without empathy, without any feeling, whether human or humane. “What’s wrong with it is that nature itself is not gentle. It may at times be calm, but it is not gentle. Nature is strong, nature is violent, nature is deadly, and nature wants its way. It wants its way with every living thing. And part of being alive is being strong. And part of being strong is measuring yourself against strength. When we hunt, and when we claim a prize, we show ourselves and everyone how strong we are.
When you say we are a part of nature, that is what we are a part of. Strength. Power. That is nature. I do nothing unnatural and I do nothing wrong, no matter how you and my cousins may make me out to be evil. This is my right as a living being—as a man, as a dragon, as a predator. Nature is filled with two kinds of creatures: predators and prey.
And dragons, Dr. Heatherton—dragons are most definitely predators. The dragons that once lived on this planet, whose DNA combined with ours through the mutagenic properties of the Draconite mineral, were predators. When I hunt, Dr. Heatherton, I’m only expressing my nature. You love nature so much, you must know nature is not evil.”
Unwavering, Brianne argued back, “Nature also has a way of selecting things out. The dragons on this planet may have been the top predators once. But nature selected them out. That’s what happened to them. And it can happen to any form of life at any time. Even the highest, top predator can be selected out.” She burned her eyes into him to make that last point.
“Nature may put its finger on me, as you say, Doctor,” said Kalum. “But I very much doubt today is my time. Now, I have a hunt to complete.” To his android, he said, “Take Dr. Heatherton in hand and let’s be off.”
The android grabbed Brianne by one arm and hustled her away behind Kalum.
_______________
The topless hoverjeep glided to a floating stop in a place near the top of a steep hill topped with more trees and more tall grass. At the bottom of the hill lay the sparkling pond into which the stream emptied, from which Damara the cralowog had climbed.
The android sat at the controls of the jeep. Kalum Quist, riding shotgun, climbed out. In the back sat Brianne, hands still manacled behind her back. Seething inside, she watched Kalum strip off the top of his skin suit and toss it onto the seat of jeep where he’d sat. He took a moment to stretch his arms and bend and twist his waist, flexing and preparing himself.
Wishing she could burn a hole through him with her eyes, Brianne said, “I’m telling you again, Kalum, don’t do this. It’s wrong.”
“To you, I’m sure it is, Doctor,” said Kalum, straightening up. “Regrettably, you do not get a vote in the matter.”
“She’s a defenseless animal!” Brianne cried.
“I’ve seen holos of them on the hunt, before their planet was stricken,” Kalum said. “They are not defenseless.”
“She doesn’t deserve this,” Brianne protested.
“In all your years as a naturalist, Doctor,” Kalum argued, “have you never noticed that nature is not about what any creature ‘deserves’? This is what it is.”
Brianne shook her head, her face reddened, her teeth clenched. “Damn you. You damn vicious, filthy butcher. Damn you.”
“Damn me as you like,” Kalum sighed. “Nature cares nothing for damnation, either.” He said to the android, “Let’s move.”
Kalum reached into a compartment on his side of the jeep and withdrew what Brianne recognized as a particle-beam rifle. Brianne wept inside with impotent fury as he gave the weapon a brief looking over, inspecting its readiness to do its deadly business. The android took out a long holster containing another weapon and strapped the holster to its back.
It produced from a sheath on its wrist a device that Brianne also recognized, a sonic wand of the same sort that Burton and Sondra had used to drive Damara into the lake in the habitat when they first released her from the decontamination blister. Without another glance at Brianne, Kalum and his servant marched toward the taller grasses and the trees at the hilltop.
Brianne let one angry tear roll down her cheek. Damara, she called out from her heart, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. Poor thing, I’m so sorry…
Walking with the android, Kalum transformed, shifting his body to bipedal dragon form. His wings and tail emerged, his skin turned to scales, his neck lengthened, his head morphed. The two of them went a short way until Kalum finished his change and came to a stop, motioning for his servant to do likewise.
Then the android took the wand with its glowing tip and began to move it back and forth, emitting its barely audible sound and blanketing the tall grass with it. Brianne held her breath. She hoped that somehow Damara might yet elude the fate that had come for her but knew that she couldn’t.
She could not bear to sit here and simply watch an atrocity unfold before her eyes. Her hands were bound, but her feet were not. With a righteous anger rising inside her, Brianne clambered from the jeep out onto the turf and began to march towards her captors.
There was a rustling in the tall grass, as if a stiff wind were passing through it. Then, the mighty, bear-sized body of the cralowog rose up from the vegetation and loomed into view. She glared at the two who had come to disturb her rest and, she could sense, threaten her life. Damara made a loud, beastly bellow at them, raising her claws as a warning.
Smiling with a predatory pleasure, Kalum took aim with his rifle. He did not want this to happen too quickly. He did not want to kill the beast all at once. It would be all the more pleasing to shoot first only to wound, perhaps just to graze. An injured creature would fight harder and give him better sport.
Perhaps just a shot to the shoulder at first. One laser through the shoulder, to rile up the animal. Then they’d have at it. Damara bellowed another warning at the interlopers. Kalum put his finger on the firing surface of the weapon and prepared to shoot…
…and all at once, a rude, hard impact against his folded wings rocked his body and sent him spilling and tumbling forward. His shot went wide, searing its way past Damara’s head, making the cralowog bellow and howl angrily.
Kalum rolled roughly on the ground and quickly pulled himself up to a crouch. Angrily he twisted his dragon head around and saw Brianne lying in the spot where he’d been, struggling to bring herself upright again, glowering at him with an animal rage of her own.
The dragon male spread his wings an instinctive gesture of wrath. Raising the butt of his rifle, he stomped towards the defiant Brianne, hissing loudly, “Stupid woman! Damned fool woman! Witless, interfering bitch!” He held the rifle butt high, and Brianne braced herself to have it rammed right into her skull, bashing her senseless or worse.
But at the last second, Kalum lowered the weapon and, with another hiss of pure contempt, turned halfway round and slashed forth with his dragon tail. It caught Brianne on the side with a cracking blow like that of a dozen thick whips braided together, a savage and punishing impact that made her yelp in pain and fly back, crashing down and rolling on the turf. She lay there, dazed, aching, softly moaning from the blow.
“Let that be the end of your meddling, human, or I’ll have two trophies today,” Kalum hissed at her. Then he spun back around to respond to something else that he heard.
While Kalum was distracted by Brianne, Damara had turned tail and galloped off through the tall grass. The dragon man just had a chance to see her leap from the ground onto the trunk of the nearest tree and quickly claw her way up into the boughs.
“Good,” Kalum growled. “Good.”
The hunter went past his android, which stood alternately watching its master and their quarry. He motioned for the android to follow, and the two of them strode into the tall grass, making their way to the tree. Brianne, still dazed, struggled painfully up to a sitting position. Her tears poured freely now. “No,” she sobbed. “No, no, no… Damara, get away. Please, get away…”
_______________
Back upstream, Conran and Donar still sat with Burton and Sondra and the Knights, all still in manacles, with the three automatons standing guard. Nothing had changed since Kalum left them there.
Sondra asked Meline, “Isn’t there any way to break these manacles at all?”
“They’re made to resist a weredragon’s strength in full dragon form,” replied Meline. “Even if we morphed, we couldn’t do it. It’s not that they’re unbreakable. There are only certain ways for us to get out of them.”
“Like what?” asked Burton.
At that moment, the three androids moved as one, turning their attention upward and raising their weapons. Not a second later, a searing beam of energy stabbed down from above and sliced clean through the head of one android. The automaton’s entire body went into a spasm, its sundered head belching sparks, and it crumpled to the ground.
Conran, Donar, and the other captives looked upward to find the air blurring with swooping, circling, winged shapes and arcing trails of light. The shapes descended like winged, scaly missiles. Almost as quickly as it took to tell the tale, they swung and slashed with blazing spikes of light.
Of the two remaining automatons, one was sliced open at the chest. It staggered, sprawled backward, and fell twitching. The winged figure that cut it open descended upon it again and plunged its spike of light into the open gash across its chest like a man impaling a vampire. The android shuddered and went still. The other android was set upon by yet another winged attacker. Another spike of light severed the arm that held the android’s weapon, then slashed again to sever its head. The automaton crumpled harmlessly.
The two dragon Knights who had finished off the automatons folded their wings and brandished the glowing lengths of their powerblades. They joined two more who had landed with them, and the four of them moved quickly among the captives, using their blades with precise strokes to cut open the manacles that bound them. In less than a minute, Conran, Donar, Meline, and the rest of their party rose to their feet, free of their shackles.
The leader of the newly arrived quartet of Knights addressed Meline. “Sir Galen Vaughan reporting, Dame Meline. We’re responding to a distress signal from Dr. Brianne Heatherton.”
At the sound of Brianne’s name, Conran and Donar lit up with surprise and a sudden, new worry. “Brianne?” cried Conran. “She’s alive?”
“Where is she?” Donar frantically asked.
“We’ve got her coordinates. It seems she was picked up further downstream. We’ve tracked her to the pond that the stream empties into. We have two more Knights on the way there now. The four of us got out of the transport when we picked up your coordinates and sent the others on ahead.”
In tandem, the Quist brothers morphed to half dragon and unfurled their wings with a mighty rustle. “Give us Brianne's coordinates!” Conran demanded. “We’re going there now!”
_______________
The love of his sport completely took Kalum over.
Under the tree, he looked up into its canopy at the figure of Damara, who climbed from limb to limb and glared down at him from the boughs and limbs, snarling and bellowing, thrashing her tail. He took aim with his rifle and fired up. His laser sliced into the thick branch supporting Damara, which creaked and cracked loudly. Losing her support, Damara leaped to another branch while the one on which she had perched came tumbling down in a shower of twigs and leaves. Damara snarled down again at her attacker.
Laughing, Kalum fired another shot. It tore through the branch to which the animal had fled. The branch protested with another sharp, loud cracking, and spilled down with whirling leaves to the ground. Damara leaped clear, crashing through other branches, snapping them as she passed, sending them into the tall grass, and plunged down out of the tree, down the face of the hillside, down, down—and the next thing Kalum heard was a loud splash, down below and out of sight.
“Oh, ho!” Kalum laughed again, relishing the thrill. “Back into the water, are we? Very well, then.” He marched back to his android and handed it the rifle. The automaton took the weapon and Kalum held out his hand again. His servant reached into the holster on his back, pulled out the other weapon, and gave it to the dragon man.
Kalum examined his new weapon, a shining spear gun, and found it in perfect working order. He paused just a moment to look back at Brianne, crouching where he knocked her down. He flared his dragon nostrils at her in a contemptuous expression of triumph. Then, with wings folded tightly and tail twisting excitedly, he dashed off through the tall grass towards the edge of the hill, beneath which lay the pond. In another moment came the sound of another splash.
Brianne’s heart sank, fearing the worst.
Kalum’s dragon body, propelled by his strong dragon tail, sliced through the waters. His dragon eyes, with sight as sharp as that of a hawk and capable of penetrating the murky patches before him, scanned the places where the fronds of the lake weeds danced in the currents and eddies made by the stream flowing in at one end of the pond. He undulated his way in the depths, confident in his ability to stay down here every bit as long as his quarry could. He was a dragon.
A dragon could make himself as much at home in the water as in the air. He could afford to be patient. If the beast came out of hiding to have at him, he would strike. If the beast made a break for the surface, he would strike. It did not matter. He would have his kill. He would claim his prize.
He sensed a darker place in the water, a shadow shifting behind him. Kalum turned just in time to see Damara surging forth from a clump of lake vegetation, mouth agape, showing fangs as formidable as those of any dragon. He raised his spear gun—just a second too late. Damara took advantage of the opening that the dragon man inadvertently gave her and lunged powerfully at the arm holding the weapon. She brought her mighty cralowog jaws to bear and clamped down hard with her cralowog fangs, sinking them deep into the scaly flesh of Kalum’s forearm.
Kalum lurched and thrashed, slashing his tail and rearing back his dragon neck. From his wide-open dragon jaws, a sound of pain rolled out into the waters. His hand went into a spasm of shock, releasing the spear gun. The weapon fell into the murk. Damara held on tight with her jaws in Kalum’s arm.
The enraged dragon hunter slashed at the fur of the cralowog’s back with the claws of his free hand. He flailed furiously at the animal with his tail, beating at Damara and struggling in her grip. The water turned red with the clouds of his blood pouring out from the hard and relentless bite.
Kalum’s screeches rippled through the pond and he continued to beat away at Damara, until she finally released him. He pulled away, clutching his wounded arm and partly shrouded in his blood, and with a baleful and vengeful look he floated there, watching Damara swim back for the surface.
Damara reached the shore of the pond and made a dash for the hillside again. With her animal intelligence she decided to seek the shelter of the denser forest beyond the tree in which she had tried to elude her attacker. She had left the creature wounded. Perhaps the creature would not pursue her…
The next moment proved her wrong. Kalum broke the surface of the pond, roaring with a sound more like a beast than the one he was hunting. He made himself a missile moving through the water and reached the shore as Damara was halfway up the hill. A beat of his wings and he shot through the air, right onto her back.
The dragon man seized the cralowog in his scaly arms and wrestled her back down the hill. They tumbled and rolled down to level ground and rolled apart. Instantly, they righted themselves, Kalum getting back to two feet, Damara coming first to four feet, then two. “Wretched beast!” Kalum roared. “I’ll kill you like a real dragon now! I’ll put my fangs in your throat!”
Kalum lunged. Now he was just as much an animal as his prey. He seized Damara’s forelimbs in his dragon hands and the two of them strained against each other like ancient wrestlers, pushing and pulling for dominance. Kalum snapped his jaws at Damara’s neck. The cralowog lurched against him, fighting with all her strength.
And then, there was a flash of light, and a harsh sound of popping on the ground less than a meter away. Shocked, Kalum looked up and saw two winged bodies above him, flying in circles, the sunlight glinting on skins of armor.
“No!” Kalum roared. “NO!”
Before he could roar another protest, another flash of light tore at the air. Kalum felt an awful, piercing heat through one wing from the power bolt that ripped a hole through the leathery membrane of his wing. The blast of pain made him release Damara and stagger back. He fell, too dizzy from being shot to see clearly as the animal scrambled up the steep hill. He stopped the world from spinning in his eyes just in time to see the two Knights land on the shore of the pond and stride towards him with powerblades gleaming. Kalum convulsed with anger and despair. “No!” he cried again. “No…”
Back at the top of the hill, the last of Kalum Quist’s androids lay in the grass with a gaping hole through its abdomen. Brianne, liberated from her manacles, stood in a three-way embrace with Conran and Donar, the two brothers holding her up as she shook in their arms, letting the terror and anger of her ordeal flow out of her. Meline and Voran in dragon forms, having left the other two Knights of the rescue party with Burton and Sondra, were nearby, Meline reporting back to the headquarters in Greenscale and to the Spires on the status of the mission.
“He struck you?” said Conran. “Our bastard cousin actually dared to raise his tail to you? Just wait…”
“Wait ’til they get him up here,” said Donar.
“I was more afraid of what he and those androids of his might have done to you,” Brianne said, suppressing a sob.
“And Damara, he actually meant to make me watch him kill her. He’s a sadist. You have to be a sadist to be that cruel and enjoy it.”
“He won’t be enjoying much of anything from now on,” Donar promised. And the brothers held her even tighter.
A fluttering from beyond the tall grass caught their attention, and they saw Sir Galen and his partner rising up from where the pond was, each one grasping Kalum by one of the arms that were now manacled behind his now-human form. They flew him over to where Brianne and the others stood and set him down.
“He’s been advised of his rights,” Galen told Meline as they let go of their prisoner. “We can get him back to holding at the headquarters.”
“That’s only temporary,” said Meline. “The Spires will be arranging other accommodations for him.”
Brianne broke her embrace with Conran and Donar and stepped forward. “Before you process him any further,” she said, “I’d like one last word with Cousin Kalum.”
She took another step to put herself in front of the defeated hunter. Kalum glared at her without remorse. Brianne looked him up and down and noticed the reddened place on his arm where, she guessed, Damara had gotten back a little bit of her own. She was pleased to know it.
“What do you want, human?” Kalum growled.
Brianne replied, “Remember what we were discussing earlier about natural selection?”
“What of it?”
“THIS!”
And Brianne, with a sudden, savage speed and fury more like that of a dragon than a human, brought her fist from out of nowhere and delivered it hard across Kalum Quist’s jaw with a crack that made Donar and Conran flinch. Their cousin sailed back and landed with a hard thud on the grass.
Brianne, nursing her aching hand, went back to the brothers, who looked first at her pained but satisfied expression, then at their dazed and stunned cousin lying on the turf, then at Dame Meline and her fellows, who seemed wholly uninterested in pressing any charges against the human scientist for her act of retaliation.
“Today, I think,” Conran said, “Brianne has just become an honorary dragon.”
The brothers put their arms around her again while Kalum tried to stand up, only to collapse back down onto the grass, thoroughly routed.