The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

protectively. “I have to heal those who suffer, but I can’t. . . .”
    “We need to consult the dragons,” Quinnault added decisively.
    “There’s more trouble, Your Grace.” Bessel gulped air a moment then squared his shoulders. “Rovers in the city are extorting protection money from the merchants. They say they’ve bribed your guards to help them. They set fire to a carpenter’s shop earlier today because he wouldn’t pay them protection money. The neighbors put out that fire. Then, on my way back here just now, a band of Rovers were beating up the baker in the next marketplace. I’ve chased them off for now, but they’ll be back.”
    “How did you chase off a gang of Rovers, young man?” Nimbulan asked, trying to raise himself on one elbow. “They don’t frighten easily. Especially in groups.”
    “I set an ember of witchfire in the seat of the leader’s pants. Last I saw of him, he was running for the river with flames shooting out of his bum. The others didn’t know what to do without him, so they followed him right into the river.”

    Afternoon, Kinnsell’s shuttle, city of Hanassa
     
    Yaala ran her fingertips over the touch pads on the control panel. Kinnsell’s memories guided her movements. With a few gestures, her muscles knew how to fly this machine as well as her brain did. She wished she had access to the cyber controls. Just thinking what she needed would be easier than using the panel.
    Holding her breath in anticipation of flight, she pressed the ignition sequence.
    The jets roared to life. The shuttle vibrated with controlled power, suppressed motion. A thrill ran through her. If the engineers of Hanassa had been allowed to experiment and expand the technology of the generators and ’tricity over the last seven hundred years rather than merely patch and repair, they might have developed mechanical flight. Might have . . . Surely the books in the Kaalipha’s library would help dreamers expand their knowledge and their technology. But few, if any, had been allowed to learn the arcane art of reading.
    She didn’t have time for idle speculation. She had the controls of this shuttle now, for however brief a time.
    Her stomach bolted toward her throat as the shuttle lifted free of the kardia. The desperate cries of hunger and anger outside shifted to fear.
    “Soon,” she promised them. “Soon you will be free.” She closed her ears to their pleas as she rotated the shuttle so that the jets faced the partial tunnel through the crater walls to the outside. Slowly, she backed up so that the engines discharged directly into the excavations Rollett had started.
    “You did good work, Rollett. The size of your tunnel is a perfect fit,” she told him. “And you were nearly through to the outside. Less than a quarter of the way is left.”
    “There is still time to fly away. We can send food and healers back from the capital,” he reminded her.
    “They wouldn’t come. Hanassa is a city of outlaws. No one cares about this place except you and me. I’ve got to do this.”
    “Yaala,” Kinnsell called to her weakly. “It won’t work. The shuttle has to be vertical when you fire the rockets. You have to be above the planet’s atmosphere.”
    “I know.” She closed her eyes and placed her palm on the clear panel she knew would switch power from jets to rockets.
    “Warning, the maneuver you are about to execute does not fall within accepted parameters,” a strident female voice proclaimed from the depths of the control panel.
    “Retract the wings, Yaala,” Rollett said. “If you don’t retract the wings, you’ll break them off.”
    “Right,” Yaala toggled the wing switch. A grinding noise ran the full length of the shuttle. She looked out the windows to make certain the shuttle remained intact.
    “Wings tucked up neatly,” Lyman called peering through one of the windows.
    Yaala closed her eyes. “Please let this work,” she prayed. Then she punched the engage button at the same time slamming the shuttle’s flight direction into reverse. The shuttle vaulted backward, slamming into the narrow confines of the tunnel. A great shuddering of the hull and screaming of tortured metal pierced her ears as the shuttle scraped the walls of the tunnel. The engine blast backlashed along the sides of the craft within the narrow confines of the excavation. The temperature gauge crept upward.
    “Warning, insufficient altitude for rocket engines. Do not proceed,” the