The other guards were already waiting for us when we arrived at the spaceport the next day. As was Minna's father. Minna waved and walked up to them. "Good morning."

The four of them all greeted Minna, then looked towards her father expectantly.

Instead of introducing him, Minna simply joined them in looking at her father.

He closed his eyes and shook his head slightly in an exasperated motion, then opened them back up and extended his hand towards them. "Hello. I am Minna's father; I will be coming along today."

Morton and the two young guards shook his hand. Kilpin just held his hand up in a wave and nodded. Morton eyed Minna for a second, then turned back to her father. "Hello. I'm not sure what you were told, but this can be hazardous work. Minna is not involved in any of the actual fighting, but the rest of us face the possibility of engaging with a sicora. It can be dangerous. Have you had much experience fighting?"

I caught the briefest of grins break out on Kilpin's face.

Minna's father nodded to Morton. "Yes. I have nearly four hundred years experience. I have been in several ship-based engagements, and have served on numerous teams that have cleared out sicora infestations on derelicts."

I tried not to perk my ear tufts. I hadn't known that. That at least explained his reluctance over Minna fighting sicora. I doubted too many people who fought those things were very happy about the idea of a family member ever encountering one.

Morton seemed to notice the tension between Minna and her father, and he nodded at the words. "You will appreciate what we do here, then. The fire lizard is able to discover any sicora that are hiding on a ship, and can lead us to them before they become a threat." He paused and took a closer look at the armor the other Kymari was wearing. "Your armor looks to be of good quality. Is it rated for flame protection?"

Minna's father shook his head. "No. It is designed for ship combat; it has ratings against energy weapons and is designed to protect during high-speed maneuvers, and is equipped with internal power supplies for oxygen shielding."

"Vacuum rated?"

"Up to two hours."

Morton made a thoughtful sound and nodded. He seemed impressed.

So Minna's father did a lot of fighting on ships in outer space. I wasn't sure how useful that would be since the ships I was inspecting had always landed on the ground first – something Ivy managed to tease me about every so often, since she and the other dragonets apparently inspected the cargo ships while they were still up in orbit - but I did have to admit that his experience fighting sicora would probably be useful. Even if I still preferred that he didn't come along.

Evidently Morton seemed to think he would be useful, too, or at least not so much of a problem that he could justify leaving him out. "We will be glad to have you along, then."

The other guards nodded agreement. Minna didn't seem too happy, but she didn't say anything about it. She just looked back to Kilpin. "What's our schedule look like today?"

"Two ships have already landed and are waiting on us before departing. We have three more passenger ships scheduled to be arriving in the afternoon, and we have the cargo ship that should be here in an hour."

Minna frowned. "A cargo ship? Coming here? Landing?"

Morton frowned and nodded. "Yes. No one told you?"

"No. Tell me what?"

Morton looked at the device on his wrist and tapped it while he spoke. "Apparently something has happened to the other bonded fire lizards. They cancelled all the schedules for today about half an hour ago."

I tried not to react to that, but I felt a sudden worry. All the schedules? If something had happened to one dragonet then another should have been able to fill in. What could have happened that required cancelling even one of their patrols, much less all of them? "Ivy?"

My mental speech went through without any of the strange echo I got when Ivy was asleep or blocking me, like she sometimes did during her patrols to keep out distractions... but a few seconds passed without any answer.

Morton looked over the display at his wrist. "The ship captains aren't happy; most are working around the delay, but there's one that needs to be cleared today. Um..." He tapped the device again, then nodded. "It's a medical supply transport. Medicines and a few perishables, but mostly things that are being depleted in some of our hospitals. All I heard was that it got emergency approval to land for us to inspect so it can continue on to its destination as quickly as possible." He looked over the display on his wrist for a moment, then looked back at Minna with a shrug. "I haven't been told anything else. I had assumed they would have told you if anything serious had happened; all their schedules are still in place for tomorrow."

"I haven't heard anything. Let's get started on the first ship. If it looks clear, I'll give Trenil a call and find out what happened. We should be finishing up when the cargo ship gets here, then we can get the last ship on its way after that." Minna began unwinding the leash from around her wrist and started walking alongside the other guards. "Any preference on which we do first?"

"Neither has really been waiting any longer than the other. Larger one first, then we won't have as much ahead of us before we break for lunch?" Morton walked alongside her and pointed towards one of the ships in the distance.

I noticed when Minna's father began walking behind us, but he stayed a few steps back. It seemed like everybody had just accepted that he was there and wasn't taking any more notice of him. He wasn't something they were unhappy with or something they were treating with any special consideration; he was just one more member of Minna's guards. I eyed him for a moment while we walked, then turned back towards the ships we were walking to.

Ivy still hadn't answered, so I tried again. "Ivy? Are you okay?"

I thought I heard an incredibly faint 'we got him...' in Ivy's mental 'voice', but I couldn't be sure if I had just imagined it. "Ivy?" I tried again, but I didn't hear anything else from her.

I tried reaching out to Tom and some of the other dragonets I had met over the past few months, but none of them answered either. None of them were actively blocking me, but none of them answered me either.

That was very strange.

The only other option I could think of was to try and reach out to one of the dragonets that lived out in the wild, but... there was really only one dragonet I could remember well enough that I thought I'd be able to reach with the mindspeech, and I was almost certain she wouldn't appreciate my reaching out to her. I vaguely remembered a scarlet dragonet that Ivy had been friends with, and maybe if I concentrated I would be able to remember enough to get ahold of her... but I wasn't too sure how she would react to me either.

I was still able to send to them, so whatever it was couldn't be that serious. Could it?

I tugged at the leash and fidgeted with it while I tried to relax. There was no use in worrying - even if something was wrong, there wasn't really anything that I could do. It would take days to get to them on my own; even a trip with Minna would take a few hours.

The best thing I could do was focus on finding any sicora that might be hiding, until either Minna called Trenil or until somebody answered me back.

Especially since I had an audience. Minna's father was there, and he kept looking at me with a cold stare whenever I fidgeted.

Minna brought us through the airlock of the first ship. I sniffed the air and instantly knew it was clean - there were none of the faint scents I had come to associate with either a crawler or a sicora. Still, it never hurt to check.

I waited patiently while she clipped the shorter 'patrol' leash on my harness and unclipped the longer leash. "Okay Nate. Go seek."

I spread my wings and hopped into the air, putting aside all the distractions and focusing on sniffing out any sicora that might be on the ship.

I wasn't too sure what the difference between cargo ships and passenger vessels were - though I suspected I would be finding out soon - but Ivy had told me that they were mostly large rooms devoid of any furniture except for shelves and containers. Sometimes there were machines for keeping the temperature constant, and there were the bridge and crew quarters, but for the most part it was supposed to just be empty space and neatly arranged cargo containers.

Passenger liners were a different story entirely.

The first room we inspected was a long narrow room packed with chairs, presumably for when the ship was taking off and landing. It reminded me of the commercial airplanes I had taken trips on as a human, though it didn't run the entire length of the ship the way those had. This room was either full of Kymari waiting patiently if the ship was waiting to leave, or full of hectic Kymari trying to get past us to the airlock if the ship had just landed.

Since this ship was preparing for take-off, the room was full of Kymari. Most of them were seated in chairs, but a few in uniforms walked through the rows of chairs to offer drinks or snacks. I smelled a few dried fruits among the snacks but I resisted the urge to sniff them out. I had eaten before we left, and even if I had been hungry, I had become disciplined enough over the last few months that I could ignore most food while I was searching for sicora. Shia fruit was still a distraction, but the scent of dried fruits was easily ignored.

I flew close to Minna as she led me up and down the walkways between sections of chairs. The guards had all stopped at the entrance to this room - there simply wasn't room for them among all the other Kymari, and if there was any threat actually in the room I would have noticed it well before now. Minna was just having me double check for any older scents I might be able to track down, in case a crawler had lurked here for a bit before moving on to another part of the ship.

Most of the Kymari seemed fascinated by me and watched as Minna led me up and down the aisles. A few waved and gave quiet greetings as we passed, but I ignored them. When I had first started searching ships I had returned their attention with chirps and happy whistles, but I had quickly noticed that Minna would get embarrassed if I did that. So now I focused on finding any sicora first - if we finished quickly enough Minna would sometimes bring me back through and give any children a chance to offer me treats and get a closer look at me if they wanted, but clearing the ship of sicora always came first.

Minna and I cleared the room in about fifteen minutes. That room was always the worst part of an inspection - I may have been more comfortable around Kymari than the other dragonets were, but I still couldn't help but get nervous at being trapped in the same room as so many Kymari strangers - and I relaxed a little after we left that area.

Minna took us to the bridge next. There were usually only three or four Kymari in this section, and aside from a quick nod when we walked in they tended to ignore us. I spent two or three minutes sniffing around the consoles and chairs, then we continued on our way.

After that was the common room filled with tables and various bins of food and drink. Most ships had something like this on them, and it was almost always deserted when I checked it. I assumed it was meant for use during flights, after the passengers had been on board for several hours and were hungry enough for a snack or a meal.

It took me about ten minutes to sniff through all the corners and hiding places. There was much more room for the guards by this point so they crowded closer around me, but I had long since gotten used to that. I ignored them the same way I always did and focused on the various scents around me.

Once I had cleared the cafeteria, Minna led me to one of the recreation rooms. Most ships had at least one or two rooms devoted to entertainment, though the makeup of the room tended to vary between ships. Sometimes they would be geared towards more physical activities and have balls similar to the one Lyzel played with; other times they had specially constructed tables with games built into them; still other times it would just be a series of comfortable couches angled towards various screens. There was almost always one or two Kymari in this room when I came to inspect it, though they wore the outfits I had identified as crew uniforms and tended to be busy cleaning the room and restocking bins of snacks and drinks. They would usually ignore us except for a slight nod, though sometimes they would watch me work from a polite distance.

This particular ship seemed to follow the 'movie theater' format. I didn't care too much for those - it wasn't necessarily difficult, but the other styles of rooms were easier to check. Whatever fabric the spaceship couches were made out of seemed to hold on to smells easily, far better than most other things on a ship, and it always took longer to make sure they were clear.

I was almost certain the ship was clean, but I ended up catching the faint, faded scent of a ktari near one of the couches. I landed on the floor and circled around it to try and find where the smell was coming from. Minna noticed my change in behavior and motioned to the guards, who all took up a position around the couch. Even Minna's father seemed to be suddenly interested, and he stared intently at the couch.

I sighed internally. I knew there was nothing to get worked up over, but they took it seriously any time I showed even the slightest interest in something.

A quick glance underneath the couch confirmed there wasn't enough room for anything to be hiding beneath it. I hopped up onto the couch and sniffed at the cushions. The scent was a little stronger, but still incredibly faint.

I stood up on my haunches and looked back towards Minna before huffing out a half-sneeze, half-growl. "Ktari."

The Kymari still couldn't understand the language of dragonets, but Ivy had said that the handlers had come to recognize a word or two. 'Ktari' was one such word, so I made sure to cough it out any time I smelled one of the things.

Which tended to be a lot. Passenger ships didn't do as well at keeping the pests under control as the cargo ships, at least from what I heard from the other dragonets.

Minna frowned and took a closer look at the couch. "That's the sound he makes with a ktari, but I don't see how one could be hiding in this. Can you help me with the cushions?" She beckoned to one of the younger guards and he moved to help her.

The rest of the guards readied their weapons and kept an eye on the couch in case anything scurried out as Minna and the other guard began pulling out the cushions. I hopped onto the back of the couch to watch. The smell had been seeming to come from the third cushion, and I kept a close eye on that one.

I heard a soft 'clink' sound when they moved that cushion. Minna stopped and looked down at the floor, then bent down to pick something up. "Looks like somebody dropped a coin under the cushions. It feels like something chewed on it." She held the coin up to me. "Is this what you were smelling?"

I took a deeper breath near the coin. The scent of ktari was still faint and old, but it was definitely lingering on the coin. I sneezed out the word "ktari", then took a step down the couch and started looking blankly around the room again.

Minna smiled and ran her fingers over the metal. "He must have been smelling whatever chewed on this. It could have been used dozens of times since then; he doesn't seem concerned or interested in it anymore. I don't think it will lead us to anything."

"So he just found a coin that had fallen into a couch?" Minna's father sounded less than impressed and looked at me with another cold expression. "That might make for a neat trick or for recovering lost change, but it hardly seems worth all this effort."

I flattened my ear tufts and stared back at Minna's father with a look that was equally as unimpressed.

"He found a coin just because a ktari had been around it days or even weeks ago. He spotted it even though it was hidden from us, and brought us to it." Minna placed the coin on a low shelf near a screen and began digging through the pocket in her armor. "And he can do the same with sicora. If one of them was around, he'll know, and he'll show us. And that is very useful."

Minna finished fishing out one of the treat canisters from her pocket. She flipped it open and tossed a small slice of a sunburst berry towards me.

I jumped off the back of the couch and caught the berry in my mouth, then did a happy loop as I swallowed the treat. Minna smiled at me, and I felt the same familiar warmth at knowing I had made her happy. "Good job, Nate. Go seek."

I chirped happily and continued searching the room.

It took a few more minutes to clear the rest of the room, but it turned out to be just as empty as I had expected it would be. When I was done I flew back to Minna's shoulder, and she led the way from there.

The next area we checked was a large storage area. One part of it was always filled with various bags, boxes, crates, and other various items that screamed 'luggage'. The rest of it was filled with containers that had been decorated in similar styles as the ship. I assumed they were supplies for the ship - food, spare parts, uniforms, cleaning supplies, and so on. I only got to look inside the containers if I sniffed out a ktari lurking in one, and to date that had only happened twice. In both instances the container had been filled with uniforms.

Today didn't seem like it would end up being my third chance, and I cleared that room without finding anything.

The engine room only took a few minutes to clear as well. There were a lot of very interesting, very expensive looking machines in that part of the ship... but I had no idea what any of them did. I could only assume that they generated a lot of power... but how, or how much, were beyond me. As much as I wanted to know.

There wasn't much room in the engine room, though, so it was quick to check. And, as I had been certain, there were no ktari or sicora lurking in it.

After that there was nothing left to check but the individual rooms. That was always the boring part. The rooms were almost always the same - they might vary a little between ships, which meant the first two or three might be interesting... but after that it was just monotonous. Check under the bed, sniff through the closet, get a whiff of the air coming out of the vent... then rinse and repeat.

Thirty or forty times.

Occasionally we would encounter someone from the crew cleaning a room, but they stayed out of my way. Aside from that small excitement, the process was just stunningly boring. Even sunning myself was more interesting, since it let me zone out and daydream. Checking the rooms was just... tedious. The slight-but-unlikely chance of finding something was all that kept me focused.

We had made it about halfway through the rooms when I heard a beep coming from one of Minna's pockets. She kept her eye on me but tapped something on the side of her helmet. "Minna speaking."

I continued searching the room but kept my attention on Minna. I couldn't hear anyone else, but I quickly made out that she had just gotten a call from Trenil.

"...no, it's no trouble at all. It will be good to give him something new to do. What happened? Are the fire lizards okay?" Minna paused and listened for a moment, then nodded. "All of them?... How long will they be out for?" She paused again, then winced. "I see. Thank you for letting me know. I'll let you know if there are any problems." Minna listened again, then nodded. "Goodbye."

She tapped the side of helmet again, then looked back at Morton. "That was Trenil. Apparently the other bond handlers decided to bring all the fire lizards together to do their morning dance in one of the parks. They brought food for breakfast with them, but somehow it got laced with the sedative we use when we have to keep them calm. So as of breakfast this morning, Nate is the only bonded fire lizard that can still fly in a straight line."

I felt a sudden relief at knowing that Ivy and the others were all okay. I hadn't realized just how much worry had been eating at me, even with the distraction of work.

Morton eyed me for a moment, and I tried not to act like I was eavesdropping. I also tried not to grin, since I had a good idea what must have happened. "Do they know what happened? Did somebody do it deliberately?"

Minna shook her head. "Trenil doesn't think so, but they're looking into it just to be certain. It came from Alec's supply, and right now they think either Tom or Serena got into it by accident. We usually put the medicine on treats to get them to take it, so they may have just associated it with the taste of treats and tried to share it with the others."

I couldn't help but grin that time. That was plausible as an excuse... but not to anyone who knew how smart we really were. That must have been Trenil and the other handlers covering for the mischief Ivy and Tom had gotten into.

Minna and Morton discussed a few measures they could take to make sure I didn't end up knocking myself out one day, but I tuned them out and thought back to Ivy again. "So I hear you got everybody with the sedative this morning?"

It was quiet for a moment and I was just about to continue on when Ivy responded. She sounded incredibly sluggish, like she had just woken up and was still half asleep. "Hey Nate..." She paused for a long moment before speaking again. "You sound... fuzzy..."

I grinned to myself as I continued searching the room. "Did you manage to get Keegan?

It took Ivy a minute to respond, and she sounded even more distant and groggy when she did. "Mm-hmm."

"Good job. You'll have to tell me more about it later."

She was quiet, and I started to assume she had drifted too far off to respond... but at last she replied with another sleepy, "'kay."

I smiled more and continued searching through the rooms.