Dragon's Code Read online

  Dragon’s Code is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Georgeanne Kennedy

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN is a trademark of Anne McCaffrey Literary Trust.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: McCaffrey, Gigi, author.

  Title: Dragon’s code: Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern / Gigi McCaffrey.

  Description: New York: Del Rey, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018018896 | ISBN 9781101964743 (hardback) | ISBN 9781101964750 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | GSAFD: Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6113.C356 D73 2018 | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2018018896

  Ebook ISBN 9781101964750

  Map by Bob Porter

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Susan Turner, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: David G. Stevenson

  Cover illustration: © Chris Koehler

  v5.3.2

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  After the devastating horrors of the Nathi War, humankind spread farther out into the stars, seeking solace and a new beginning. Among the worlds colonized by such refugees was the third planet of the star Rukbat, in the Sagittarian sector. Pern, as this world was named, was beautiful, habitable, and far enough from the standard trade routes that the colonists felt secure in turning their backs on the past to build a new future. They took little notice of the planetoid they called the Red Star…until the path of its wildly erratic elliptical orbit brought it close to Pern.

  Suddenly, strange spores that looked like silver threads began to rain down on Pern, devouring any organic material in their path and, once on the ground, proliferating with terrifying speed. Only metal or stone could stop them; only fire and water could destroy them. The initial losses the colonists suffered were staggering, and during the subsequent struggle to combat the Thread—as they called the aerial menace—Pern’s tenuous contact with the mother planet was broken.

  The survivors, having cannibalized their transport ships and everything within to create weapons that might destroy the Thread, turned to genetic engineering as a longer-term solution. Fire-lizards—indigenous winged life-forms that displayed some telepathic abilities and could emit a flaming gas after chewing a phosphine-bearing rock—were bred into enormous creatures that the humans called dragons, after the mythical Terran beasts they resembled. Bonded from birth with their empathic human riders, these dragons could travel from one place to another instantaneously and, soaring on their huge wings, could flame Thread in midair, before it could reach the ground and ravage the land. Additionally, in the more temperate lands of the Southern Continent where the colonists had settled, grubs were altered to burrow after and consume any Thread that did make it to the planet’s surface.

  But the Southern Continent proved unstable. After a series of catastrophic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the entire colony was forced to flee to the Northern Continent, where the land was more stable and mountain caves provided refuge from the Fall of Thread. When the first new settlement, named Fort Hold, proved too small to hold the growing population, other Holds were carved from the western cliffs and the mountains to the east. At the same time, the fire-breathing dragons had evolved to a size too large for a comfortable life in the cliffside Holds. And so the dragons and their riders moved into the ancient cones of extinct volcanoes high in the mountains, where huge caves and calderas provided space for the settlements that came to be known as Weyrs.

  The dragons and their riders in their high Weyrs, and the people in their cave Holds, went about their separate tasks, and each developed habits that became custom, which solidified into traditions as incontrovertible as law.

  Then came an interval of two hundred Turns of the planet Pern around Rukbat, during which time the Red Star was at the far end of its erratic orbit and no Thread fell on Pern. Freed from constant fear, the inhabitants grew crops, planted orchards from precious seed brought by the original colonists, and began to think of reforesting the slopes that had been denuded by Thread. They even managed to forget that they had once been in grave danger of extinction…

  …until the wandering planet returned to perihelion, bringing fifty Turns of attack from the skies, and the Pernese once again knew deep gratitude for the dragons who, under the direction of their fearless riders, seared the Thread to char, midair, with their fiery breath.

  Thus began the understanding of real life on Pern: cycles of decades-long, quiet Intervals punctuated by fifty-Turn Passes when the Red Star was near, bringing with it constant Threadfall and dread.

  By the Third Pass of the Red Star, a complicated socio-political-economic structure had developed to deal with this recurrent evil. Six Weyrs of fighting dragons were pledged to guard Pern, each Weyr having a section of the Northern Continent literally under its wing. The rest of the population was divided into holders and craftspeople. Each Hold—under the leadership of a Lord Holder and with the support of the Crafthalls—tithed to support the Weyrs, where the volcanic landscape could not support agriculture and the dragonriders had to devote all their time to nurturing and training with their dragons, lest a Pass arrive and find the planet’s primary fighting force unprepared.

  On occasion, the conjunction of Rukbat’s five natural planets would prevent the Red Star from passing close enough to Pern to drop its fearful spores. During one such Long Interval, the grateful people prospered and multiplied, spreading out across the land and becoming so busy with their daily pursuits that most began to believe the Red Star had finally passed beyond any danger to them.

  Within five generations, only one Weyr—Benden Weyr—was left inhabited. These last descendants of the heroic dragonriders fell into disfavor, as the tales of their brave exploits faded into legend; without Thread to fight, the dragons and their riders seemed to have no more part to play in the world—and no reason to be supported by the people of Pern. So when the Red Star at long last returned to perihelion and Thread attacked again, it fell to Benden Weyrleaders F’lar and Lessa to rally their almost defenseless planet against total annihilation.

  But now, even as dragonriders and their dragons fight the valiant war against Thread, dissatisfaction and dissent have begun to simmer in parts of the world…

  Clouds of warm, dust-laden air billowed down around Piemur and whipped off his floppy hat as hundreds of dragons and their riders lifted off from the ground, ste
adily filling the sky overhead. Hastily he pulled his tunic over his head to protect his face from flying grit, clamping his mouth shut tight in the process. All the trees and vegetation around the Weyr bucked and buffeted under the huge downdraft generated by the wings of the bronze, brown, blue, and green dragons. Through the protective fabric, Piemur heard the comments the dragonriders called to one another as they took flight; heard, too, the muffled sound of dragons coughing as they rose higher off the ground. Listening, he wondered—not for the first time—what pernicious ailment still afflicted so many of the dragons of Southern Weyr, and why the Weyr Healer couldn’t find a remedy to shift it from their lungs. Only when the sounds receded to almost nothing and he could feel the air settling did he risk uncovering his eyes to look skyward.

  Piemur watched as the sun shimmered off their soft hides and made their jewel-like, faceted eyes sparkle. There was nothing like the sight of a sky full of dragons, he fancied—even dragons who were not in the full of their health. The fine membrane that made up the sails of the dragons’ wings looked nearly transparent, and he wondered how wings that appeared so delicate could bear the weight of such massive creatures.

  Today the Oldtimer dragonriders were traveling to harvest a fresh crop of numbweed, which they would later pound and boil into the noxious unction that, once set, would be used as a hallowed salve. Only twoscore riders and their dragons remained behind in the Weyr with the queens, the most senior of whom had just returned from a lone sojourn. A brown dragon was curled up in a wallow, coughing desultorily as if to dislodge a tiny irritant nestled deep inside his vast lungs. His rider rested with him, in the curve of his forelegs.

  A few other dragons basked in their wallows or relaxed under the ministrations of their riders, while the rest simply slept, their old bones soaking up the plentiful sunshine. Numerous weyrfolk—men and women who lived at the Weyr but were not dragonriders—went about the compound, washing or tending to clothing, preparing food, or assisting the older dragonriders with the task of bathing and oiling their dragons’ soft hides. Nothing was more important than caring for the dragons. With their abilities to fly, teleport, and breathe fire, the dragons were the best and most effective weapon the world had against its mindless enemy, Thread—an insatiable organism that, when the orbit of its host planet was close enough to Pern, would shower down in a fifty-Turn cycle, devouring anything organic in its path. And if the dragons couldn’t char every last Thread from the skies before they touched ground, the deadly strands would burrow underground to continue their terrible course of destruction. The dragons were truly the most precious things on the planet, and supporting them and their riders was the job—either directly or indirectly—of every person in or outside of the Weyrs.

  But Southern Weyr no longer had that kind of support. The Oldtimer dragonriders had cut ties with Benden, the premier Weyr in the northern hemisphere, effectively alienating themselves from their peers and, ultimately, everyone else. Never in living memory had any group broken free, seeking to go it alone in the hostile environment of Pern without the support of the other elements of their social structure.

  Piemur was here at the behest of his mentor, Masterharper Robinton. He hadn’t started out as a spy. Three Turns earlier, Piemur had been virtually wrenched from his comfortable position in the Harper Hall and sent to the Southern Hold to teach the resident harper the new drum measures, vital for maintaining communications with neighboring smallholdings. But it hadn’t taken long for Saneter to memorize the new measures…and for the Masterharper to task Piemur with a seemingly endless stream of structureless chores, almost all of which were completely outside his training as a singer. If not for his deep-rooted sense of loyalty to his craft and his mentor, Piemur would have gladly forgone the exhausting and never-ending job of mapping Southern, a vast continent far larger than anyone had ever imagined and, in many areas, actually impassable.

  He didn’t mind standing in to teach the local children when Saneter was away or indisposed. In fact, he quite enjoyed passing on the information contained in the teaching ballads, imperative for every child to know in order to survive. And the mapping, while often monotonous, hot, and uncomfortable, sometimes had its moments of discovery and adventure. Piemur’s most unsatisfying task by far, and the one he found so disturbing to perform, was as a spy: observing and assessing the demeanor and welfare of the dragonriders of Southern Weyr. He gleaned no joy in snooping around the noble dragons and their riders, pretending to be someone he was not, visiting the Weyr on one pretense or another while trying to catch every snippet of conversation or grievance he could. It felt grossly wrong to Piemur to behave so duplicitously toward a group of dragons and riders who had spent a lifetime defending the planet. But the Masterharper, in his role as Pern’s custodian of culture and heritage, and the discreet harmonizer of her interconnected social relationships, was anxious to know how the outcasts were faring. He regularly stressed how important it was for Piemur to take note of any little details in the Weyr’s daily life that might be the slightest bit out of the ordinary, and report these. The most trivial snippet could be what helped to reunite Southern Weyr with the rest of dragonkind—and as a harper, Piemur was trained to observe details.

  So he noticed when T’reb landed his green dragon and, instead of flying out again to harvest numbweed with the other members of the Weyr, headed for B’naj’s dwelling. To Piemur’s sharp eye, the subtle signs of agitation in the green rider’s posture were unmistakable. Straightening his tunic over the top of his loose leggings, then scooping up his hat and setting it firmly back on his head, Piemur moved from the shade of the trees to cross the compound in the direction T’reb had taken.

  Trying to look nonchalant, Piemur circled around B’naj’s wooden cabin so he could eavesdrop from the quiet side of the building where leafy trees offered him a hiding place from which to remain unobserved. Once behind the building he dropped down onto his hands and knees, crawling quickly toward a pair of open windows. He sat on the ground, his back pressed hard to the wall of the cabin, head cocked to one side as he tried to make out what was going on inside. He could clearly hear the sound of feet pacing.

  T’reb was talking hurriedly, his voice several octaves higher than was comfortable for Piemur’s trained ear. No doubt: T’reb was very upset.

  “My mind is made up now, B’naj. No more dithering over what’s right or wrong. I’ve arranged to meet him and set everything in motion.”

  “Calm down, T’reb.” That was B’naj’s voice, speaking in a placating tone.

  “But don’t you see, B’naj? We have to do something.”

  “Maybe you’re overreacting,” B’naj said.

  “But you didn’t see her, B’naj. It was unbearable!”

  “What exactly did you see, my friend?”

  “Mardra! Trying to coax Loranth from the Hatching Grounds. She was moaning.”

  “Mardra or Loranth?” B’naj asked.

  “Loranth, you dolt!”

  There was silence for a few moments, and Piemur could only surmise that B’naj was glaring at T’reb in response to the ill-mannered remark.

  “It was like no other dragon sound I’ve heard before,” T’reb continued finally. “It put my nerves on edge.”

  Not a hard thing to do, Piemur mused, knowing how volatile T’reb could be—even at the best of times.

  “It wasn’t the usual keening, nor the sound dragons make while feeding; no, it was a slow, heart-wrenching rumbling that came from deep inside. And the sound kept increasing, B’naj, to a cry so pitiful I thought she was in mortal agony.”

  Piemur heard B’naj murmur something indistinguishable, and then T’reb continued.

  “Mardra was pleading with Loranth: ‘Come away, my love,’ she said, ‘we cannot keep revisiting this loss.’ ”

  Loss? What loss? Piemur wondered. What was T’reb talking about? And why was Mardra at the Hatching
Grounds when the Weyr didn’t even have a new clutch of eggs to harden? Perhaps the old queen and her rider were simply visiting the Grounds, a hallowed place for all dragonkind, to ensure that they were still, as was the custom, in perfect order?

  “Such a note of despair was in her voice, B’naj. I saw her weeping, and I thought I might weep with her, too. I can’t get the image out of my head!”

  No wonder T’reb appeared so edgy, Piemur mused. What could possibly be causing the Weyr’s senior queen dragon so much distress?

  “But what were they doing there?” B’naj asked.

  “Loranth dug up those old egg shards and was poking around at them,” T’reb replied.

  Egg shards? Piemur felt a moment of confusion. Why had the queen dug up old eggshells? Hatching Grounds were revered among dragonmen and -women! Everyone knew that the Grounds were where the future riders first met the young dragons they would partner; the place where, for the very first time in their lives, the specially chosen men and women would form their unique mental bonds with the giant, fearless, and noble creatures. To make that bond, to Impress a dragon, was to make a telepathic connection so strong that it could never be broken. Piemur had often wondered what it must be like to be a dragonrider, to have the unconditional friendship, love, and support of one of those magnificent beasts, a bond so strong that it lasted for life. From what he understood, the wondrous relationship he shared with his own Farli, his little golden fire-lizard, was only a tiny fraction of the deep connection between dragon and rider.

  Piemur gave himself a mental shake; he couldn’t let his thoughts distract him, or he might miss a crucial exchange between T’reb and B’naj.

  “The Hatching Grounds should’ve been thoroughly cleared ages ago. It’s not proper for the queen to do that, nor to leave the place in such a state.”