Incursion (The Dakotaraptor Riders Book 1) by Stant Litore

Author:Stant Litore [Litore, Stant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Westmarch Publishing
Published: 2021-01-31T23:00:00+00:00

12

Again the tyrannosaur strains against the creaking ropes. Katya’s ropes hold, and under the soil, the Catha roots intertwine in a net too strong for any deathreaper to tear loose. No tree will be ripped out of the ground tonight, no matter how the creature struggles. At last, the muzzled tyrannosaur settles and just watches us, its eyes like flakes of night.

Katya, the Ticktock, and I are seated before the koschei’s tree in a semicircle, as though we are a Three summoned to hear a crop dispute or consider judgment over a thief or an abuser in the domiks of our people. Behind us, there is fresh bacon sizzling at the fire. It will be ready quick; the scent of it makes my belly growl like a medved, and I am not going to get so distracted that it burns. But for the moment, I do have my gaze fixed on this koschei. I face him without any kopye in my hand, without the strength of the nightwatch braided to me. Yet I do not face this horror alone; Katya and the whistler are both here. The koschei’s irises rotate and gleam, reminding me that he is alien, though his body is flesh and bone and blood.

“Your eyes see?” the koschei taunts me. “Good eyes? See bullet?”

“I did.” The memory of it screams in my mind and I shove it back.

He smirks, like a boy at a barter about to steal a kiss.

“You were growing tyrannosaurs in there,” I say. “Maybe you grew that one in there.” I jerk my thumb toward the watchful deathreaper. “But faster than a raptor grows.”

He lifts his chin. “Fast. Slow. Mother chooses.”

His chin fascinates me. There is no night growth of stubble on it. This young man doesn’t even have eyelashes. He is hairless as the doll on that ship. Wombgrown, he called us. As if he himself is a thing that is made, like that tiny woman of metal and sign.

“Did they grow you like that?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer. Dmitri’s eyes glint in the ringlight, and I suppress a shiver, grateful for the fire on the koschei’s lander. If the Ticktocks ever captured such oldtech—ever learned to grow slaves, both human and tyrannosaur—

Everything in me goes cold at the thought.

And the koschei … what if this strange warrior from the stars isn’t fifteen, as he appears? What if he is five, or four? What if he was grown inside that bullet, in that tank of dark fluids and tubes? What if this—his incursion on Peace—is the first time his feet have touched soil? Millions in blood, he said. What if there is oldtech coursing through every vein in his body, growing sinew and marrow, even now, even tonight? Is that where his defiance comes from, too? He is alone, wounded, and tied to this tree; he should be trembling, but he isn’t. There should be droplets of sweat beading his bald scalp; there aren’t. People held captive smell like fear, but there is no scent of it on him, faint and unpleasant beneath the cook-scent of bacon sizzling behind us.

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