Dragons' Wrath by Justin Richards

Author:Justin Richards [Richards, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, High Tech, Science fiction; Young adult
ISBN: 9780426205081
Publisher: Virgin Publishing

‘I think the order survived and that they’re still around. I think they’re deliberately covering their tracks.’

The door squealed open again.

Nicholas was staring at the table and shaking his head. ‘No, no you’re wrong, Benny.’

‘Am I?’ The guard was gesturing for her to leave. ‘Think about it.’

‘No,’ he said again. ‘Don’t waste time on that, Benny. Believe me, you have to be wrong.’

If Nicholas said anything else, the closing door cut it off. There was something in his voice that had not been there earlier. He had been worried, anxious, as they spoke. But what Benny could hear in his voice as the door closed she took for incredulity. It was on the shuttle, returning to the expedition ship, that it occurred to Benny that it might be fear.

The first problem, perhaps predictably, was that they would not let Benny have the Dragon. At least, she could examine it – in fact as the expedition’s archaeological expert she was expected and encouraged to do so. But she knew there was no way that the commander or Kamadrich would let the Dragon out of the strongroom. If the commander had his way, it would have been on the cruiser under heavy guard. As it was, Kamadrich had managed to have the Dragon kept in the strongroom on the expedition ship, with a single trooper on the door and Kamadrich and the commander in possession of the only keys.

So, Benny set up her equipment in the strongroom. It was rather cramped, and the guard insisted on standing inside the room to watch.

‘I’m not going to escape out of a window with it, you know,’ Benny told him. He didn’t smile, and he didn’t move. So she gave him a bundle of cables to hold and worked round him.

Once Benny thought it through, it really was not much of an inconvenience. All she needed was a three-dimensional model of the Dragon, like the model she had already made of the other two Dragons, and then she could compare the models. With three sets of data, she could begin to decide how best to present her case. The trick was to start off as if she was endorsing Nusek’s claims, and get so far before anyone realized otherwise that they could not stop her.

An hour later, armed with an optical disc, Benny returned to her cabin. ‘Just tidy up when you’re done,’ she told the guard without a trace of a smile as she left. As she locked her cabin door she could imagine him still standing, cables in hand, wondering where best to start to sort through the Heath Robinson arrangement of baffles, lasers and power amplifiers.

Feeding the disc into her console, Benny was in buoyant mood. She had the evidence. All she needed to do now was to present it. And she reckoned if anyone could talk their way out of Nusek’s machinations then Bernice Summerfield was that someone. She whistled a popular tune from the late twentieth century as she set up the projection fields and watched three Gamalian Dragons shimmer into existence round her room.

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