Page 19 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

"It was the only one I had," Toren said.

The silence lasted five seconds. Then Boradrith did something that surprised everyone in the room, including himself. He laughed. It was a short, rough sound. It was the laugh of a man who hadn't done it in a while and whose equipment was rusty. But it was real.

"Sit down," Boradrith told Marina. "All of you. Sit." He waved at the chairs along the table. "My son has clearly made decisions that I'll need time to process. The least you can do is explain them to me properly."

Marina sat. Athena sat beside her, weapon still holstered but hand resting near it. Peter and Patel took seats further down the table. Toren sat at his father's right hand; the position of the heir, the position he'd been avoiding for years, the position that suddenly felt like exactly where he was supposed to be.

Marina opened her data tablet and began to talk. She talked about Earth's agricultural capacity, about food production technology, about atmospheric science and medical research and the possibility of supply shipments between the two worlds. She talked with the precise, passionate clarity of a scientist who believed in her data and who understood that data, presented well, could change the world.

Boradrith listened. He asked questions; sharp ones, probing ones, the questions of a king who was evaluating not just the information but the person delivering it. Marina answered every one.

Toren watched them talk, and he felt something settle in his chest that he hadn't felt in years. Hope. Not the fragile, private hope he'd carried since he was twelve years old, watching a whale jump over a wall. A bigger hope. A shared one. The kind that could actually do something.

The meeting lasted three hours. By the end of it, Boradrith hadn't agreed to an alliance. But he hadn't refused one, either. He'd asked Marina to stay for two more days. He'd assigned quarters for the human team in the Colony's guest wing. He'd instructed his staff to provide food and access to the research caverns.

And he'd looked at Toren, just once, with an expression that said: You may have been right. I'm not ready to say it yet. But you may have been right.

It was enough. For now, it was more than enough.

CHAPTER 7

*** MARINA ***

Marina couldn't sleep.

The guest quarters were comfortable by Dobromian standards, which meant a stone sleeping platform heated from beneath and bioluminescent light that pulsed in a rhythm slightly too slow for her circadian system. The air smelled of minerals and warm rock. Through the walls, she could hear the distant rush of the waterfalls that powered the Colony's systems. It was a constant, low roar that was almost soothing once you stopped thinking about the fact that you were sleeping inside a volcano.

She gave up at what her wrist link told her was three in the morning. Earth time was meaningless here, but her body didn't know that yet.

She dressed and stepped into the corridor. The bioluminescent panels were dimmed to their night cycle. The color was a soft blue-violet that turned the stone walls amethyst. The corridor was empty. Either Boradrith trusted them, or the Colony's surveillance was good enough that guards weren't necessary. Marina suspected both.

She walked without a destination. She had the restless energy of a woman who'd spent three hours presenting data to a king and didn't know if any of it had landed. The presentation had gone well, or so she thought. Boradrith had listened, asked sharp questions, and hadn't thrown them out. But "hadn't thrown them out" was a low bar for a negotiation that might determine whether twenty thousand Weredragons starved or survived.

The research caverns were open. She found them by following the sounds of voices, equipment and the hum of technology in use by people who also hadn't gone to sleep. The main cavern was enormous, carved from dark stone veined with luminous mineral deposits that glowed green and gold. Weredragon researchers worked at stations built from volcanic glass, their scales catching the multicolored light. The equipment was unlike anything Marina had encountered. There were crystalline arrays mounted on stone pedestals, instruments that hummed at frequencies she could feel in her teeth and display screens made from polished mineral surfaces that somehow projected data in three dimensions.

They stared at her when she entered. She stared back.

"I'm Marina Livingstone," she said to the nearest researcher, a tall female with deep green scales and sharp amber eyes. "The D'Karr gave us access to the research caverns. I'm sorry to come at this hour. I couldn't sleep."

The researcher studied her for a long moment. The look wasn't hostile, it was the look of a scientist evaluating an unknown variable. Marina recognized it because she'd given that look to thousands of data points in her career.

"I'm Melessra. Chief atmospheric scientist. The data is on that console." She pointed to a workstation in the corner. "Your species' analysis was interesting. Incomplete, but interesting."

"I'd say the same about yours."

Melessra's amber eyes narrowed. She was not offended, but intrigued. "Sit down."

Marina sat. She pulled up the atmospheric data, and within twenty minutes she was so absorbed that she forgot she was on an alien planet inside a volcano, surrounded by Weredragons who hadn't decided if they liked her yet. That was the thing about data. It didn't care where you were or who you were. It just wanted to be understood.

The Weredragon atmospheric models were extraordinary. They'd been tracking the twin suns' destabilization for decades using instruments that worked on principles Marina didn't fully understand. Crystallographic arrays that measured stellar output through the planet's geological substrate rather than through atmospheric observation. The approach was completely different from Earth's, and the results were both familiar and alien. The same sun, seen from the inside.

Melessra came back an hour later. She didn't say anything at first, she just stood behind Marina's chair and watched the screen. Marina could feel the scientist's attention like a physical presence, sharp and evaluating.

"You're looking at the wrong variable," Melessra said finally.

"I'm looking at the luminosity decay curve."

"Which is what everyone looks at first because it's the most obvious. The interesting data is in the subsurface thermal oscillations. Third column. The pattern that looks like noise."