Coalition 02.5 - The Kingbird Read online

  “I do love them,” he said, turning in the chair to slip an arm around her. “But I adore you. You are my heart, my very breath.”

  She hugged him back, and for a moment they simply stayed, absorbing each other’s warmth and love through that bond that she hadn’t realized was much more than a simple declaration of devotion.

  She thought of luring him back to their bed, but didn’t want to take him away from this connection to his father. She scanned the diagram again. Most of the numbers and abbreviations were universal and she understood them, but there were a couple of symbols she had never seen before.

  “What is this?”

  He glanced where she was pointing. “The formula for heat and pressure. Freylan came up with a system of symbols some decades ago, a shorthand that made things such as this less cluttered and easier to read.”

  Paraclon was working from Freylan’s notational system? The clever inventor and Freylan, the rather rigid teacher, were frequently at odds. Freylan’s insults usually came in high-blown, multisyllabic words while Paraclon’s were much more earthy; declaring his adversary a mud-bound Daxelian slug who taught nothing worth learning.

  Her last thought echoed in her mind for a moment as she looked at the drawing again. “Dare?”

  “Mmm?”

  She pointed at the symbols he’d explained. “Would Paraclon know this?”

  “What?”

  “You know how he is, and how he and Freylan clash. Would he have bothered to learn this, or would he have thought the old way had always served him well enough, and not found anything Freylan devised worth learning?”

  Dare’s head turned, and his vivid green Triotian eyes fastened on her. She could almost feel his agile mind racing. And then he stood up, pulling her into a fierce embrace.

  “That’s exactly what the stubborn old fool would do!” He released her, turned. “I must go to him.”

  “It’s very late, even if you are his king.”

  “Yes. But this will not keep. And knowing him he’s probably awake still.”

  She gave in. Clearly nothing would stop him now. “All right.”

  “Come.”

  She blinked.

  “It is your discovery, my love. Besides, he adores you. He might take this better from you—that he must give in to something he has so long resisted.”

  “And if this is not the answer—”

  “It is. I can feel it.”

  They ran through the night, holding hands as if they were youths in the first grip of love and excitement. Shaylah vowed that whatever it took, they would never lose the gift of that feeling.

  * * *

  DAX LOOKED WARILY around the lab.

  “Not certain you want to be here?” Califa teased.

  “Certain I don’t wish to go airborne without a ship,” he said, eying Paraclon’s latest effort.

  “It will work this time,” Shaina insisted, tugging at her father’s hand. “Lyon’s mother found the problem, I told you.”

  Dax smiled at her terminology, because he knew Shaylah would like it. She was not their queen, not to the children. Not from any of the six of them would she accept the obeisance offered by all others of Trios. To them she was Dare’s mate and Lyon’s mother, his and Califa’s closest friend and godmother to their daughter.

  “I believe you,” he said. “She has a quick mind and understands people.”

  They joined the rest of their combined family just inside the door to the lab.

  “It is safe this time,” Paraclon assured them.

  “Be right, my old friend,” Dare said. “It would not do for you to accomplish what the Coalition could not.”

  “Quiet, boy,” Paraclon said—one of the few who would dare address the King of Trios in such a manner. “It won’t kill you.”

  The spry old man turned and touched a command screen on the device behind him. It looked exactly like the drawings Lyon had found, only smaller than Dax had expected. Perhaps this was a prototype version.

  “It works, you’ll see,” Lyon said, not happy that they were holding him a distance away.

  “It would be fitting,” Shaylah said softly.

  Dare looked at her. “How so?”

  “Because it would be a bridge.”

  Dare’s brow furrowed.

  “Your father discovered it,” she explained. “And now thanks to his son, and grandson, it will come to life.”

  Dax saw Dare lower his gaze, and suspected he had once more been moved to damp eyes by the simple yet potent words of his mate. Shaylah had a way with such things, sometimes even more than Dare himself. She knew so well what would move him, just as Califa knew how to reach he himself in ways no one else did.

  A low hum filled the room. A moment later Paraclon made an adjustment on the screen. Then he walked to the wall above his cluttered workbench and pulled a lever downward. The lights in the lab, and several monitoring instruments flickered for an instant, then steadied.

  The old inventor turned back to face them, a wide grin on his weathered face.

  “Well?” he asked when no one spoke.

  “I saw the lights flash,” Lyon said helpfully.

  “What you saw,” Paraclon said proudly, “was the transfer.”

  Dax drew back slightly as Dare went very still. “Transfer?”

  “It is now running the entire lab. And as you can see and hear, with no strain at all.”

  Dare said something under his breath that Dax couldn’t hear.

  “I told you it would work!” Shaina broke free and darted over to Paraclon. Lyon followed, inspecting the humming device with obvious delight.

  “Estimates,” Dare said, gruffly, as if he were afraid to believe what was happening in front of him.

  “This one alone could power the entire palace with plenty to spare. The size your father designed, roughly three times this, could power all of Triotia.”

  Dax knew exactly how Dare felt. It seemed too good to be true, to have all those problems solved ...

  “Weapons?” he asked. “Ships?”

  “Weapons eventually, I think,” Paraclon said. “But this runs more to steady power than bursts, such as for liftoff and hyperspeed. It will help with long, stable flights, though. I will have to work on a system to switch between this and normal fuel. And of course it will free all other fuel for the fleet.”

  “You’re still grinning, my old friend,” Dare said. “There is more?”

  “What it will do is power the long range sensors and the shields. Simultaneously. At full strength.”

  Dare let out an audible breath.

  “But how much of the stone does it take?” Dax asked, looking for the hole, the problem with the dream come to reality.

  Paraclon’s grin widened. “That’s the best part,” he said. He pushed the lever back up, then went back to the device. He shut it down, and after a moment opened a small door and took something out. It appeared to be a black lump about the size of his thumb.

  “It takes some time to extract this out of the stone and condense it, but once you do, a piece this size can supply this device for months. If what you say about the volume of the stone available on the mountain is true, once these converters are built, our power problems are over for ... perhaps permanently. But at least until something else comes along.”

  Dare looked stunned. Dax knew what this had to mean to him—to be able to provide for his people in the way he wanted. Knew as well how much of a burden this would lift from his shoulders. It all showed in his face in that moment; his reaction was not for himself, but for being able to make their lives better. It was no wonder to Dax that Triotians would lay down their lives for him, for they knew he would do so for them without hesitation.

  Shaylah was beaming. The children were chattering excitedly over their part in this wonder.

  “You realize what this means?” Dare said, sounding as stunned as he looked.

  “Do you?” Dax asked, looking at the man who had been his chosen brothe
r long before he was his king. Dare turned to him.

  “I ... what?”

  “It means,” Dax said quietly, “that your father will win, in the end. That he will turn their own path of destruction against them. He’s taken what they inadvertently revealed and provided the means by which Trios can ever hold the Coalition at bay.”

  Dare went very still as those words sank in. Dax saw his jaw tighten; saw a sheen of moisture in his king’s eyes.

  “Which is why,” Paraclon said, “I propose that we call these new units of power Galens. With your permission, of course, your majesty.”

  This last was directed at Dare, who was suddenly smiling. “Congratulations, father,” he whispered. “You will have victory after all.”

  * * *

  “I HELPED, DID I not, father?”

  “Indeed you did.”

  Dax watched as Dare looked at his son. He knew him well enough to guess at what he was feeling, knowing that one of Trios’s most pressing difficulties had been solved in large part by the boy who would one day be king. He remembered their brief conversation on the flight back from the lake.

  Your son is getting an early start on solving big problems.

  He has it within him. He may well surpass us all.

  It hadn’t been simply paternal pride and hope speaking. Dax knew, for he saw it as well—the potential in the quiet, intelligent, resourceful boy.

  “As did Shaina,” Shaylah added, looking at them both. “Had you not found those diagrams and the rocks, and she not remembered where she had seen them, we would not be celebrating this night.”

  “A toast,” Califa said, “to the next generation, who will see to the safety of Trios into the future.”

  They held up their glasses, the children’s filled with lingberry juice rather than the adult wine.

  “And to King Galen, who sees to his people even now,” Dax said. King Galen’s son gave him a smile that was both appreciation and salute.

  “A bridge,” Dare said softly, echoing his mate’s words.

  They had barely taken a sip when the communications link on the wall behind them blared an alarm at the same instant Dax’s communicator buzzed loudly. Dax got to his first.

  “I’m with the king,” he said into it. “Go.”

  “Three incoming, sir.”

  “Identification?”

  “Signature shows 3rd Tactical Offense Wing.”

  Dax glanced at Shaylah.

  “Well,” she said with a look at Califa, “that makes that decision easier.”

  “It does.”

  He knew the 3rd was Shaylah’s old flight wing, although she’d been on the defense side. But the Coalition being what it was—they seemed incapable of admitting their own arrogance was responsible for the change in results they’d endured since the rebellion had caught fire across the system—it was doubtful their tactics had changed much, and Shaylah knew them inside out. And so the usual drawing of straws to see which of them would stay home with the children would be foregone this time.

  “Sorry,” Shaylah said to Califa. Dax knew the queen understood that his mate would be chafing at being left behind, and before Shaina’s birth would have refused to allow it.

  “It is as you have always said, my friend,” Califa said. “The king must lead, and the flashbow warrior must fight, but the children must be protected over all.”

  And so our king and our queen go into battle, Dax thought as they hastily changed into flight gear. They would have it no other way, just as I would have it no other way than to fight beside them.

  Only now, he would fight just as hard to survive and come home. There had been a time when he hadn’t cared about his own survival, but it was long past. The process that had begun with Rina was now complete with Califa and Shaina. He would live, and he would see that Lyon’s parents came home to him as well.

  He thought of the kingbird, diving to salute the king, then soaring into the deep blue. That regal creature—so long thought gone forever—still flew.

  And Trios was still here.

  He and Dare would see that Trios stood, and would ever stand. And after them, their children would do the same.

  END