Rukkar raised his hands again. “Your staff did very well. It was brilliant. Almost anyone else would’ve stepped inside and sealed the doors instead of shooting at the yellow’s pilot.”
“The same staff you believe uniformly lied to your investigators about not sending the message supposedly asking for that mission.” The iciness in Olderhan’s tone began to frustrate Rukkar.
“I’m not the enemy here, Thankhar!” He shook his head. “I admit the coincidence of mul Belthus and the pilot both dying like that looks odd. Maybe even suspicious. But I did my investigation, and I had the medical examiner run detailed forensic exams on both bodies. There’s absolutely no evidence the Hundred died of anything but natural causes, and the pilot’s death was clearly the result of the crowd control spells your people hit him with-entirely justifiably, under the circumstances! It was a mess, and I’ll say so. But there’s no evidence of any conspiracy. Some of the MAE pilots thought a new breed of yellow had been flown in-one with a very mild breath weapon the shakira claim to have used on, yes, garthan slaves with no long-term injuries-and that that wingling was one of those. The pilot trainees who weren’t picked for the flight thought it was, too.”
“And was it?” Olderhan’s voice was flat.
“No. But that doesn’t change the fact that everyone who was on-site thought it was. And before you say another word, everyone in the Air Force understands how near this horror came to happening. I have a debrief with the Undersecretary for Dragon Affairs himself. We’ll ensure controls are put in place so that nothing like this can ever happen again.”
“You didn’t have controls already?” The tone was deceptively mild.
“We damned well had controls! But the wing deputy, Hundred mul Belftus made an exception and no one questioned it because they thought the Governor of New Arcana was being assaulted in his home by a mob!” He winced. “And I know you weren’t actually there, but they scrambled that mission thinking they were helping you and your family. I understand how pissed off you are, and under the circumstances, I don’t blame you for questioning the likelihood of that many fuck-ups piling on top of each other. But you spent enough time in the field yourself to know crap like this does happen. And”-the five thousand looked his old friend straight in the eye-“there’s absolutely no evidence-none, Thankhar-that this was anything but just that: an effort to get help to your townhouse as rapidly as possible that almost blew up in everyone’s faces!”
The duke looked back for a long, silent second, then nodded minutely.
“Shartahk spare us all such ‘help,’” he said, and Rukkar made an averting sign against the devil. Olderhan matched the sign, and rose to walk him out.
“Thank you for taking the time to give me the report in person,” he said. “I know it wasn’t a pleasant chore.”
It was obvious to Rukkar that the duke wasn’t about to accept his conclusions, but Olderhan’s tone acknowledged that there was no evidence to support any other determination. And, if he was honest with himself, Rukkar didn’t blame his old friend one bit. In fact, he was prepared to admit there was a distinct whiff of something rotten about the entire affair, but he’d taken too much testimony under lie-detection spellware. Every witness-every surviving witness, at any rate-said the same thing, and that was that.
“Of course I brought it in person,” the five thousand said, and grinned crookedly. “Knew I had to bring it in person, because you’d damned well’ve taken the head right off anyone else I’d sent, now wouldn’t you?”
The duke’s lips twitched in a small, unwilling smile, and Rukkar snorted. Then, on a wall in the outer office, he spotted an old picture of himself and Olderhan as squires. Rukkar’s first black lifted a wing in the background to frame the two men for the image spell capture, and the five thousand smiled more naturally and tapped the picture to draw the other man’s attention to it.
“Remember my first dragon? She was a beauty, wasn’t she?”
“I’ve never been very fond of dragons.”
Rukkar shook his head. Olderhan’s perspective had never been comprehensible for him.
“I love ’em,” the five thousand said simply, then racked his brain for something neutral to part with. Nothing came for a moment, but then he nodded.
“Say, I received an interesting bit of correspondence from a colleague on New Mythal the other day,” he said. “A man from the vos Sidus family. He served a few years as an Air Force officer a decade ago, but his family’s been breeding dragons for ages. They’re old money, though. No transport dragons or regular combat types for them; they do sea dragons. They call ’em drakes or hydras. Strong swimmers. A few of them fly, but mostly they’re sea creatures-great for securing coasts and rivers, he says. Monsters, really, since the Mythlans breed ’em for those nasty spectator fights, but he wanted to press a proposal for the creatures to be used for military purposes. He’s going to pitch ’em to the Navy. Doesn’t that sound interesting?”
“I think it sounds horrible,” Olderhan said. But after a pause he admitted, “Still, they might be useful, I suppose. Are they docile enough for transport?”
“I’m not so sure about that. These are fighter lines. They’re worse than combat dragons. They’re bred to fight each other, not just selected enemies.”
“How barbarically Mythlan.” Olderhan grimaced. “Do they have any officers for them?”
Rukkar shrugged. “After a fashion, but I can’t say I trust any of ’em. And none of them are actual operators. The Mythlans use garthans with the drakes, not shakira-the operators often die in the gladiator shows, and no shakira’s signing up for that! — and no shakira would ever consider making a garthan an officer, either. So if we want officers with hands-on experience, we’ll have to commission garthans, and you know how well that’s likely to go over with Mythal. And, truth to tell, they aren’t the most genteel folk to invite into an Air Force officer club.”
Olderhan’s lips tightened, and Rukkar shook his head.
“Don’t get me wrong, Thankhar. I’m just saying that these aren’t emancipated garthans; they’re still literal slaves and the Mythlans seem to treat them like just another animal to go with the drakes. And less valuable than the drakes, come to that, because the drakes are at least carefully bred and trained. Not surprising the poor bastards won’t come equipped with the attitudes and…call ’em social skills we expect in our officers. But Torkash knows we can’t allow the shakiras’ attitudes to spread to the Air Force, so I’m recommending to the Undersecretary that if we make these into some kind of Air Force Naval Auxiliary, we have to insist on commissions for the drake riders, anyway.”
Olderhan actually laughed at that. “You hate the very idea, but you’re going to push them forward anyway just in case they’re useful in the war effort. You’re Andaran to the core, Rukkar! Sometimes I wonder about the sorts of people who want to spend so much time with dragons, but then I think of you, my friend, and I know we’ll be okay. Andara’s in good hands as long as five thousands like you run the Air Force.”
Rukkar brushed the compliment off, but he was deeply relieved to feel back on easy footing with Olderhan again.
“That’s just ground pounder jealousy because some of us get to freeze solid during the long travels and then spend our days digging latrines and building up the frontier fort while you marching lot take your sweet weeks-long promenade across perfectly flat looking ground to get to the place we have all set up for you by the time you get there,” he said.