by Jadyn Chase
Diamond Embers
The Beginning of Dragons
Jadyn Chase
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Copyright © 2018 by Jadyn Chase
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Sapphire Embers Preview
Obsidian Embers Preview
Reign of Ash Preview
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Chapter 1
At a secret base in Antarctica
May 2030
"Obsidian dragons are flying. Five minutes to Diamond release."
At the announcement over the loudspeaker, Dr. Rose Morgan climbed up to the viewing ledge up over the Diamond control room and put on her very dark sun visor. She turned and looked out through the heavy windows, down onto the blindingly white landscape below.
It wasn't all that different from her home in Anchorage, Alaska, where she had grown up. But Alaska did not have dragons.
Ice, snow, and a half-frozen sea was all that was out there under a cold, blue sky and a colder sun. Rose had been told that she looked like something of the same landscape, with her fair skin, pale hair, and ice blue eyes – but she just shrugged and said it was her Scandinavian ancestors, especially on her mother's side, who had given her that coloration; it had nothing to do with the landscape.
Suddenly, a group of gleaming, black silhouettes caught her eye out there against the sky. They looked like large aircraft, but they were not. These were real live dragons that had been created to serve as weapons just like those planes, but these were weapons that did not have to be built – simply cloned from the DNA of dragons, falcons, and humans.
Thirty-three shining dragons, all molded after The Obsidian with his glassy black scales, flew and dove and darted in every direction. They traveled far out over the sea and then came back again to cruise above the ice and snow just outside the buildings.
She glanced down behind her at the Diamond Control Room and its thirty-two men and women, who all waited at their work stations for the Diamonds to be released. The Obsidians were being flown from one of two other identical rooms on either side of this one. Each of those rooms had its own viewing platform, just like the one Rose stood on now.
When they were very young, each dragon had been implanted with a control chip that allowed its every move to be determined by the person with the keyboard and the joystick. The Obsidian dragons – nicknamed Glassies – flew at the command of their controllers now.
Rose turned to the window again and watched the black dragons as they moved and soared in perfect obedience. Every once in a while, they tried to fly down to the water and open their mouths as if to drink, but then they would suddenly raise their heads and jerk upwards again. The controllers could not allow them to drink the magnesium-laden seawater, for magnesium was what allowed a dragon to breathe fire.
Only if the most serious threat came from somewhere in the world would they be allowed to drink from the sea and become flying flamethrowers.
"One minute to Diamond release. Be ready with safeguard override if necessary."
Rose took a deep breath. Today was the first time that two different types of dragons would be flown together. The three original clones – The Sapphire, The Obsidian, and The Diamond – showed no affinity for each other and indeed would always posture and threaten if they were ever in a position to see another dragon that was not one of their own.
But it had been argued for some time that the three different types of Fleet Dragons, the clones being flown today, would have to learn to work together. Though the dragons were actually less expensive to clone and keep than it was to build individual billion-dollar aircraft, Project: Reborn Fire wasn't cheap. They still had to justify its existence, and today's mixed flight was intended to do just that.
Rose was worried, though, and couldn’t help but remember back to an awful day one year ago, while the fine points of the control chips were still being worked out. One of the thirty-three beautiful young Diamond clones – a Shiny, as the controllers liked to call them – became confused while chasing a small target drone and would not return, no matter what its controller tried to do.
The dragon kept calling out and trying to fly away from the base, and it dove and dove down to the sea trying to drink the water. The controller was able to stop it from drinking but soon ended up with the dragon flying in large circles and diving down and back up, down and back up.
An emergency was declared. The rest of the Diamond Fleet was turned back towards their cavern, and to everyone's relief, they all went in. The roof doors were closed fast.
For the remaining Shiny, all of the highest-ranking techs and controllers were immediately called in. All of the overrides were tried. New code was written and uploaded on the spot. Nothing made any difference.
Finally, as all of them watched helplessly from their screens and from the viewing window, the creature became so exhausted that it fell out of the sky and hit the rocks on a small island out at sea. The diamond-armored body was never recovered.
It was never really known what had happened – whether it was controller error or faulty software or something else. But a few of the techs suspected, though they hardly spoke of it aloud, that perhaps the instincts of a powerful animal could not ever be entirely overridden or entirely controlled.
Especially when that animal was part human.
But since that incident, upgrades had been done and software patches implemented, and there had been no further problems with controlling any of the dragons as they flew. Now, at last, the time had come for the first test of a combined flight between the Obsidian Fleet and the Diamond Fleet.
Glassies and Shinies together, as the controllers would say. Rose stole a quick glance over her shoulder and saw the thirty-two controllers sitting ready at their screens, with their hands on their keyboards and the joysticks nearby.
"Roof doors opening. Diamond Fleet release in five . . . four . . . three . . . "
Down below the viewing window, what looked like a wide snowy cliff proved to be the roof of the cavern where the Shinies were kept. The huge doors, larger than those of any airplane hangar, began to separate and slide back.
Rose turned back to the window and waited for the Shinies to appear.
As she watched, the Glassies all began to gather far to the left of her vantage point and fly in a loose formation. The sky was dark with them; the creatures were enormous to begin with, and with their wings spread, they took up as much room as any mid-size jetliner.
But then, as the doors fully opened and were locked into place, the first of the Diamond Fleet dragons rose up into the cold, blue sky from the caverns
. He was quickly followed by another, and another, crowding together and, at first, flying like a flock of great, jeweled birds.
Rose had seen them fly a few times, and she still thought she would never see anything so beautiful. They really did have traces of actual diamond in their scales, just as the Sapphires had that jewel as their armor and the Obsidians' scales were made in part of the tough volcanic glass.
All of the Shinies were clones of the original Diamond, who remained safely in his own cave. As a geneticist, Rose had helped to create him, and she had remained entirely devoted to him ever since. He was like a great, winged jewel to her, a work of art, simply a magnificent creature . . . a creature that was, in part, quite human, even if he was outwardly a dragon.
He would never be merely a dragon to her.
Right now, though, the fleet of Shinies gleamed and glittered in the bright winter day, at once blending in with the ice and snow and then standing out like the most brilliant of jewels. Soon they were all in a loose formation, too, like the Glassies, flying in wide circles over the white-capped sea.
"Ready for side-by-side flight on my mark. Five . . . four . . . "
Rose could only hold her breath as the controllers began flying their dragons in the direction of the other group, keeping close watch on their safeguard overrides . . . and silently hoping that no overrides would be needed.
Chapter 2
Though they were in separate rooms, the controllers for the Glassies and the Shinies worked together, following a detailed plan so that no one made an unexpected move. Once the two groups of dragons were circling obediently, the controllers began allowing the two circles to drift towards each other.
There was still plenty of space between the two groups when the Glassies caught sight of the Shinies who had suddenly appeared beside them. The black dragons began stopping and hovering in mid-air, turning to screech at the sparkling intruders.
The controls seemed to be working. The Glassies were agitated, but after a moment, they responded to the commands being fed into their nervous systems and resumed their circling once more.
But now that the Shinies were oriented to the glare of the daylight, they, too, halted at the sight of the gleaming, flying shadows circling beside them. They screeched viciously and then hovered side by side, forming staggered rows so that some were higher than others. Then, glaring pure hatred at the Glassies, they raised their beating wings and opened their mouths as if to roar.
Fear shot through Rose. "They're trying to breathe fire!" She knew very well that if they'd been allowed to drink seawater, that's exactly what they would have done.
The controllers could not hear her, down on the floor at their stations, but it did not matter. They knew what was happening and they used every command they had at their disposal to stop it.
For a moment, it looked as though the controllers would succeed. The Glassies continued their obedient circling while the Shinies slowly, reluctantly backed down and resumed their own ragged formation.
But the momentary peace did not last. The Glassies, though forced to circle, also glared and screeched and hardly looked where they were going. The Shinies began breaking away and flying in small circles on their own, sometimes halting to open their mouths and again attempt to breathe fire at their enemies.
"Send them back! Send the Diamonds back! Do it now while the doors are still open!" cried Rose.
But the controllers were ahead of her. The roof doors remained open on the Diamond Fleet cavern just below her window, and she could just see the door to the Obsidian Fleet cavern beginning to reopen off to one side.
But the huge and impossibly heavy doors were very slow to move. The controllers managed to turn the angry Shinies and force them back towards their own cavern. Rose almost felt that she could breathe again when she saw the first few of them fly to the door and actually go inside, one at a time. If one went in, there was a good chance the rest would follow.
But instead of waiting, and keeping the somewhat more obedient Glassies well away from the Shinies, the Glassy controllers ordered their dragons to also go back to their own cavern.
That was how a mob of angry Glassies ended up hovering over the slow doors that were not even half open yet, with the angry Shinies right beside them who were also gathered together to go back inside their own cavern. Rose realized with a shock that the doors of the two caverns were actually far too close together to expect two groups of dragons to go back inside at the same time.
"No! Make the Glassies wait. Their doors aren't open yet. Send them back, before it's too late! Send the Glassies back!"
Of course they could not hear her over in the Obsidian Fleet control room, but someone there must have seen the same thing and acted quickly. Some of the Glassies did break away from their cavern and begin to fly out over the water again, staying fairly close together in rough formation. Then a few more joined them, and a few more, until perhaps half of them had moved away from the doors.
But the Shinies only became more and more agitated at the sight of the Glassies coming and going and moving all around at random while they themselves were being forced to go back inside. Rose swore she could hear them screeching through the heavy glass of the window, though that was not supposed to be possible.
For a moment, Rose dared to hope that the controllers might succeed in separating the two groups. Most of the Shinies were back inside, and the door to the Glassy cavern was nearly open enough to let them in.
But one of the Shinies had finally had enough and went after one of the Glassies, striking out with its clawed hind feet and doing its best to tear the black dragon to pieces.
The Glassy immediately struck back, and in an instant, the two of them were locked in deadly combat, ripping and slashing with teeth and claws, frantically beating their wings to try to stay aloft.
The rest of the dragons, from both Fleets, instantly turned and tried to join the combat. The Glassies turned around and headed back in from the sea, and the Shinies began crowding back out of their cavern even as their doors slowly started to close again. To Rose's horror, one of the Shinies only got half out of the door before it closed on him and left him caught, screeching and beating his wings in rage and agony.
An emergency alarm began to sound in the Diamond Control Room. Rose knew it was sounding in the Obsidian Control Room, too. "Override! Override!" shouted the supervising techs, as they ran past the stations. "Override immediately!"
Rose was well aware of what that meant. The override was nothing more, and nothing less, than a powerful shock delivered through the dragon's implant. The shock was designed to interrupt and override anything the creature might be trying to do, allowing its controller to take it over again.
And it appeared to be working, at least on most of the dragons. Rose could see that they seemed to be momentarily stunned, hanging in mid-air before slowly flying aimlessly and drifting towards their caverns, as their controllers finally were able to guide them once more.
But the two combatants remained locked together in the air, slashing and biting even as their beating wings kept them up.
The instinct to battle an enemy – which had only been heightened through their selective engineering to become the perfect weapons – kept them in its ancient grip and refused to let them go, no matter what small measures the controllers might attempt.
Finally, though, whether from the shocks or from the terrible wounds each inflicted on the other – even through what was supposed to be near-impenetrable diamond and obsidian armor – the two dragons, dripping with dark blood, began a death spiral down towards the sea.
"No. No!" cried Rose, hammering on the window with her fist even as she turned to look at the controllers on the floor down below. "Get them back! We have to help them! They'll both die!"
There was only silence from the stations behind her. All of the controllers stood up at their places, watching their screens but no longer even trying to communicate with their dragons. Rose watched, helpless
and weeping, as both creatures finally fell away from each other and tumbled down onto the rocks at the edge of the freezing water, lost forever.
Chapter 3
That evening, after one of the worst days of sadness and loss she had ever known, Rose sat on the cold floor of the enormous, blasted-out cave known as The Cavern of the Three Jewels. It had that name because it held three very large caves along the sides, with very heavy floor-to-ceiling transparencies in front of each one.
Each cave held a single collared dragon – The Sapphire, The Obsidian, and The Diamond – and each cave had a young woman sitting outside it to observe the great dragon within. The three women did this so often that the rest of the crew, who worked at the many stations throughout the dimly lit center of the huge cavern, hardly paid attention to them any longer.
And Rose had long ago ceased to care what anyone else thought about her near round-the-clock observation of The Diamond, as had the other women. Dr. Cara Winborne, a flight surgeon, constantly stayed with The Sapphire, while Dr. Olivia Montgomery, a paleobiologist, was always at the window of The Obsidian.
They were both there now, watching their charges very closely. The Sapphire, who looked much like a fantasy creature with his spectacular blue color and traces of actual feathers, seemed almost as devoted to Winborne as she was to him. He often stayed near the window when she was there, as he was doing right now, crouching down as quietly as a dog. He would actually make eye contact with Winborne and seemed distressed whenever she left.