Chapter 15
Rose sat up and rubbed her head. “I guess Kratak women don’t do this sort of thing.”
“They do it all the time.”
She looked down at him stretched out on her bed. “I thought men were dominant here.”
“You seem to have a mistaken idea of dominant. If a woman wants to get on top, she can. No one would try to stop her. I certainly wouldn’t try to stop you.”
She pulled her shirt down. “I can see that.”
He sat up next to her and kissed her. “You can get on top of me any time you want.”
“Yeah, well, I better get down to the hall and burn these pages before someone sees them.”
He got dressed, and they left the room together. She waited in the big hall while he went to the kitchen to get a dish of burning coals. She clutched the crumpled-up pages in her fist and shifted from one foot to the other. The sooner she got this business over with, the better.
He appeared in the door with a bowl in his hand at the exact moment Reyna entered from the opposite direction. She strolled over to Rose. “What’s going on?”
Rohn put the bowl on the table in front of Rose. Rose dropped one page after another onto the glowing coals and watched them curl up into ask. “I’m burning some papers.”
Reyna arched an eyebrow. “What are they?”
“They’re pages from my personal diary that I don’t want anymore. This is the only way to get rid of them.”
Reyna smelled a rat right away, the way Rose knew she would. “They must be something secret if you want to burn them. Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“If I wanted you to know, I wouldn’t be going to all the effort of burning the pages, would I?”
Reyna grabbed Rose’s arm and turned her around. “Something’s going on here. You two have had your heads together since you came back from the forest. Tell me what it is, Rose. Is it something to do with Moira? Is she dead?”
Rose’s head shot up. “No, it’s nothing to do with Moira. Actually, yes, it is, but I can’t tell you.”
Reyna crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll find out for myself sooner or later. You could never keep a secret from me, Rose. Damen will help me find out what it is. He knows as much about what’s going on around here as Rohn does.”
Rose’s hand hung suspended over the bowl with another page ready to drop. “Damen?”
“That’s right. Damen doesn’t keep secrets from me.”
Rose stared at her sister. So that’s what Reyna was trying to tell her. She already knew the secret. Damen told her, the same way Asya told Ben.
“You know, don’t you, Reyna? You know the Krataks are dragons.”
Reyna blinked at her. “Dragons?”
Rose turned bright red. “Didn’t you know?”
Reyna stared at her. “The Krataks are dragons.”
Rose threw the rest of her pages onto the coals. “I never should have said anything.”
Reyna came toward her. “Don’t worry, Rose. I did know, but not in any explicit way. I saw something.... Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Is that the big secret? Is that why you’ve been acting so strangely these last few days?”
“It does matter. It matters very much. The Krataks’ survival depends on all of us keeping this secret from the Allies.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, Rose. I’ll never tell anybody, and I’m not going back to the Allies. I’m staying here with Damen.”
“You are?”
“I never understood it, but there’s something wrong about men who let women control everything they do and their entire world. These men are closer to what men ought to be. They take charge of their own lives, and they don’t expect women to do everything for them.”
“If you stay here, you’ll be treated as an enemy by the Allies. What will you do when they come to take over this planet?”
“That won’t happen. You said yourself the Allies don’t do that sort of thing.”
“You know as well as I do the Allies will never leave this planet alone. They sent us here to scout it out. We’re the first wave. We’re the point of the wedge. After us comes the serious invasion.”
“You are the Allies, Rose. You’re in charge here. You’re as much the Allies representative as Moira ever was. We’re a scientific mission.”
“That’s exactly what makes us so dangerous. We’re here to evaluate the planet for conquest.”
Reyna laughed. “Will you listen to yourself, Rose? This is your own people you’re talking about.”
“I know.”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“How can I trust you to keep this secret when you keep saying it doesn’t matter?”
“How can I trust you when you’re talking about betraying your own people?”
“I regret telling you the secret now. Everything depends on you keeping this to yourself.”
Reyna laid a hand on her arm. “Don’t worry. I already knew. I never let myself admit it to myself, but I’ve seen enough to realize the truth.”
A rumble interrupted their conversation. Rohn went to the nearest shaft opening in the mountainside and looked out. He frowned. “What is that thing?”
Rose came to his side to take a look. She gasped and leapt away. “Come quick, Reyna! We have to get out there fast. Where’s Rahni? If they see him, we’re in trouble.”
Reyna rushed across the room. “What’s going on? What is it, Rose?”
Rose grabbed Rohn by the shoulders. “Find your father. Get your whole family up here on the double. If there’s any way you can get to Rahni without being seen, do it. Tell him to stay hidden until they’re gone.”
“What is it? What is it he has to stay hidden from?”
Rose spun away and raced for the entrance. “That’s a rocket shuttle. It’s the Allies. They’re coming for us.”
She burst out into the sunshine with Reyna at her side as the shuttle touched down in the same place it dropped the team off just a few days before. A moment later, Rohn reappeared with his parents and Callan. “What do they want?”
“I don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out. You stay here. Reyna and I will go down and talk to them.”
Reyna spoke up at her side. “Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe they just came to tell us something and then they’ll leave.”
Rose shook her head. “They wouldn’t interfere in our mission if it wasn’t something important.”
“At least we won’t have to get in touch with Rex now. We can tell them about Moira disappearing.”
“Moira didn’t disappear.”
“She didn’t?”
“Rahni has her.”
“Well, we can’t exactly tell the Allies that, can we?”
“No, we can’t.”
As they spoke, the shuttle door opened and a tall woman in a dress uniform got out. Reyna groaned. “Oh, no!”
Rose sighed. “Our only chance is to get down there and talk to her. We have to find out what she wants.”
They walked down the mountainside to the shuttle. The woman waited for them. When they got near her, she saluted. Rose returned the salute, but Reyna didn’t. “How are you both?”
“Good to see you again, General Duncan. To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”
General Duncan smiled. “You don’t have to say that, Rose. I’m sure my visit isn’t a pleasure for you, but I had to come. Your orders have been rescinded. You’re to withdraw from this planet.”
“Withdraw! What for?”
“The Allies have re-evaluated their approach to this planet. The Command has decided to escalate their timeline in relation to this planet and bring Kratak into the Alliance as soon as possible. Your mission is no longer needed. You’ll withdraw, and a purely diplomatic team will take your place.”
Rose and Reyna exchanged glances. “What precipitated this change in approach?”
The General waved her hand. “Our scans of the planet show massive mineral deposits in these mountains unlike any we’ve found in the rest of the galaxy. We want to make this planet one of our Allies as soon as possible so we can negotiate access.”
Rose turned to Reyna. “Now do you see what I mean?”
Reyna nodded. “I understand now. You were right. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it straight from her own mouth.”
The General frowned. “Right about what?”
Rose faced her. “The Krataks don’t want to join the Allies. They want to remain autonomous.”
“They will remain autonomous. All the Allies remain autonomous. They keep their native form of government and their own customs. You know that.”
“That’s just jargon to cover up your real intentions. If the Krataks refused to give you access to their mineral deposits, you would find a way to coerce them into doing it. You’ve done it hundreds of times before on dozens of worlds. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
General Duncan shook her head. “I’m sorry to cut your research here short. I can see you’ve made friends in the short time you’ve been here.”
“This has nothing to do with research.”
The General was already turning away. “Say your good-byes and get your gear together. I’m flying over to Assan Keep to notify the other team. Then the shuttle will come back to pick you up. You’ll be back home in time for tea.”
“I’m not leaving.”
The General whirled around to face Rose. “What?”
“I’m not leaving. I’m staying here.”
Reyna spoke up. “I’m staying, too.”
The General’s eyes popped out of her head. “What are you talking about?”
“I found something here I can’t get anywhere else, especially not among the Allies. I’ve decided to stay here, to make my home here.”
“What about your son, Ben? Will you let him grow up alone while you stay here?”
“He wants to stay, too. We’ll stay together. I only wish I had listened to him a long time ago.”
The General stiffened. “Staying here would be a very unwise thing to do. Things could go badly for you when the diplomatic team arrives.”
“If things go badly for me when the diplomatic team arrives, they won’t go any worse for me than they will for the Krataks. Whatever happens to them will happen to me. I’ll take my chances and use whatever power and influence I have to make things go as well for them as possible. It might not make any difference, but the least I can do is try.”
The General sighed. “I don’t understand this at all.”
“You wouldn’t. Just think of it as my way of making amends for helping you in the past. I helped you conquer those people. I didn’t know I was doing it, but I did, and I can’t change it now. I can only try to do better this time.” Rose turned away. “I’ll tell the rest of the team to be ready when you come back.”
She returned to the Keep and didn’t look back until the shuttle flew away.
“What’s going on?” Rohn asked.
“They’re withdrawing the team. They want to mine the mountains for mineral deposits. They’re escalating their timeline to take over the planet.”
“What are we going to do?”
“There’s nothing we can do at the moment. Reyna and Ben and I will remain behind, but Tanner and Whitney will leave within a few hours. The Allies will send what they call a diplomatic team, but it’s really just another advanced force to determine how much resistance they can expect you to give them.”
“Can’t we throw them out?”
“If you throw the diplomatic team out, they’ll come back with the military and you’ll never get rid of them. There’s better ways of dealing with them. The diplomatic team will first have to make a show of negotiating with you. Reyna and I will help you. We can find a way to turn them back without getting what they want.”
“How will we do that?”
“The best strategy to use is one of obfuscation. Your people have shown yourselves particularly talented at that. It should work well with the diplomatic team. You can make your own show of going along with them. You’ll agree that joining the Allies would be a great benefit to your society and all that, but you’ll never truly give them the permission they need to mine the planet. You just keep them spinning their wheels for years without getting anywhere. You can cost them a fortune in resources and labor without gaining anything in return. Then they wind up exactly where they started, while you smile in their faces and say, ‘Yes, I’m sure we can come to a satisfactory agreement very soon’.”
Rohn smiled. “That’s brilliant.”
“Don’t celebrate just yet. We haven’t won.”
Rowan frowned. “You make it sound as if no one will ever win. It’s a hopeless mire, no matter which way you look at it.”
“You’re right. You can never win. The best we can hope for is to keep your people and your planet safe from them. With any luck, they’ll never find out the truth about your people. In the end, they might just decide to leave you alone, and you’ll go back to the life you had before we ever came here.”
Just then, Damen came running up the slope from the forest. His face and hair dripped with sweat. Rowan called down to him. “Did you find him? Did you warn him in time?”
Damen stopped in front of the group and caught his breath. “I tried, Father. I searched everywhere. I ran all the way up to his nest and even down the other side of the mountain where I know he sometimes goes hunting, but I couldn’t find him. He’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Rose asked.
Rowan rounded on her. “Rahni. I sent Damen up there, like you said, to warn Rahni not to show himself while that shuttle was here, but now he’s gone.”
“His nest is gone, too. He hasn’t been up on that mountain for days.”
Rose gasped. “What about Moira? She was in Rahni’s nest.”
Damen shook his head. “I’m sorry. She’s gone, too.”