Space Dragon Allepexxis

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Space Dragon Allepexxis Page 7

by C. K. Pershing


  As always, one of the screens flashed on with Casten’s image. “Hello again!” he said with a sing-song voice. He did this every single time, knowing it annoyed Paress.

  This time it didn’t bother him as much as usual. “Hey.”

  “Didja get your bands and boards?”

  “Yeah, they’re in my pocket.”

  “Mine too. I can’t wait to sew these babies on.”

  “Hey can you do mine too? You’re better at this than me. I mean the Bands. I can do the shoulder boards.”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Thanks.” After making some last checks and making sure his seatbelt straps were tight, Paress said. “Alright, I’m ready.”

  “Me too. Looks like everybody’s moved away to a safe distance.”

  “Okay, here we go then.”

  Paress eased Allepexxis’ anti-gravity repulsors on and the giant black dragon gently rose up into the air, a thousand foot long shadow noiselessly going into the sky in what must have been a very disconcerting sight to anyone not used to it. Something so big should have made plenty of noise no matter what it was doing, but for now, the only sound was of the wind blowing through the trees.

  As the Hyper Battle Machine rose above the treeline, Paress could see the castle’s courtyard and promenade. It was filled with people all waving and calling out well-wishes.

  “That’s pretty nice,” Casten said.

  “Yeah, we’ve never had a send off like that before.”

  “Check it out,” Casten said and he highlighted a section of the screen and zoomed in. In the highest tower, Queen Artzia stood there alone. Her cheeks shone with tears as she looked up at the ascending dragon and her wave was half-hearted.

  “Now I really am going to cry,” Casten said. “She looks so distraught.”

  The queen was wearing a very light filmy gown, simple and unassuming. She suddenly looked so young and helpless.

  “She’s been so strong for herself and her people. Maybe she figures she can break down a little by herself– and with us, since we’re the only ones who can see her,” Paress said.

  “She’s so beautiful. Somehow, her tears makes her even more amazing.”

  “You sure it’s not how that gauzy little thing she’s wearing is draping off her obviously pert nipples?” Paress teased. But then, “Ah, I’m an ass for ruining the moment. And here I’ve been talking about getting tearful about things. Sorry.”

  “Nah, don’t worry about it, because I’d be lying if I said I didn’t check out that body. It’s a work of art to be sure. But that coupled with her vulnerability…I think I love her.” Casten’s expression was one of extreme sadness.

  “I can understand that,” Paress said. “Well, maybe if all works out with these Golden Bands and everything else, we might be able to do something about that.”

  Casten snorted. “Get outta here. She’ll be long-married with kids and everything by the time we’ll be in any kind of noble position. And even then, she’s got much bigger prospects than I’ll ever be. Besides that, Companions can’t have kids, remember?”

  “So you can be her concubine. Is that the right word? What is it when it’s a guy?”

  “A gigolo? I don’t know,” Casten’s expression brightened slightly. “Ugh, talk about spoiling the moment.”

  “I know,” Paress said with a sigh. “I really am an ass. Sorry.”

  They grew quiet again, Casten obviously keeping his camera zoomed in on the young queen of his dreams, Paress looking around at the landscape and crowd. Just then, something caught Paress’ eye and he zoomed his camera accordingly. The Emperor was standing on the top external observation deck of the Brynwal, arms folded and looking up in he sky at Allepexxis. It seemed like the Emperor knew Paress could see him because he nodded, gave a short wave, and walked back inside the yacht.

  Paress sat for a long moment, looking at the empty spot where the Emperor had been before Casten broke him from his thoughts. “We’re at 300 feet if you want to blast off.”

  “Okay, yeah,” Paress said, angling Allepexxis skyward. When the dragon’s head was facing the heavens, Paress throttled up the main engines and the quiet was shattered by the deafening explosion of blue flame from Allepexxis’ main rockets. The acceleration dampers kicked in to keep Paress from being squashed back into his seat as the Hyper Battle Machine crashed through the sound barrier multiple times over on its way to escape velocity.

  As Allepexxis reached the speed to break free from planet Cymarus’ gravity, Paress thought of something. “Hey, that shirtless kid we fought…”

  “The intense teenage heartthrob?” Casten confirmed. “What about him?”

  “Was he actually organic or was the bloody nose and all that crap some kind of Glamour to make a Mechanism seem organic?”

  Casten’s eyes shifted a moment as he confirmed Allepexxis’ sensor records, “He was organic. But he was attached to the machine through some kind of spinal harness.”

  “What?”

  “He had one of those contraptions implanted into his system where the machine gets direct neural synaptic feedback from the pilot’s body through his spinal column. It’s a thing that turns up now and then with different civilizations… Why?”

  “I was just wondering. He was pretty good for a normal person and I started to wonder if he had some kind of Blessing of his own. Which would be kinda scary if he did.”

  “Nah, nothing like that. Just some mad-scientist rig combined with some weird magic and an annoying kid,” Casten said. “I think that’s why his nose was bleeding and blood was coming from his mouth. His body was going through stuff a normal human isn’t meant to and the feedback from the harness was probably also adding to it.”

  “Thank God we don’t use anything so ridiculous,” Paress said. The nano-technology in his body was in constant communication with Allepexxis’ main computer to fine-tune the various mechanisms that helped Paress not only do his job, but to keep him alive and comfortable. And regarding comfort… “Hey, the whole thing about him not wearing a shirt… What was that all about? Did his machine not have air conditioning?”

  Casten laughed, “Maybe not. If that’s the case, maybe Anloo Ange is an even bigger bastard than we thought. But you never can tell with those angst-ridden little men. Maybe it was some kind of fashion statement.”

  Paress snorted a laugh. But the more he thought about it, the more annoyed he got. First with the stupid kid throwing his life away. And then with the fact that such horrible weapons existed and there was always the possibility that someone else might try something similar. If enough of them could be fielded at once, and had the element of surprise, perhaps even a Space Knight could be defeated…

  Allepexxis left Cymarus’ atmosphere and gravity, soaring into space. What had previously been a sleepy planet was now surrounded by a fleet of starships with various orbital defense stations being brought in. Cymarus had never been thought of as a strategically viable location, but now that the Aldonis had shown their interest, the Francescans couldn’t take any chances.

  As Paress watched the passing heavy cruisers and attendant fighters, he said, “You know, we’ve been at peace— and I use that term loosely— with the Aldonis for a while now. And yet, these little flare-ups are getting hotter and more numerous. How long until it all goes south again and we’re at full scale war?”

  “Who knows?” Casten said. “They seem to be dealing with enough internal problems that I’d say it’ll take a few more decades before they’re ready to go again. The last war really took a lot out of them. The only reason why we didn’t conquer them completely is because we were also running out of steam.”

  “You can tell the Emperor is still angry he couldn’t finish it all when he had the chance,” Casten continued. “But people were starting to go hungry and pirates were beginning to move in on some of the less-defended territories. But at least, the government never fell and the people stayed relatively safe. Unlike the Aldonis, who have gone through
three different governments since then and are constantly in flux from whatever warlord or junta is in charge.”

  He shook his head. “But once they can get their act together and have a solid government that lasts for at least 20 years, they’ll be ready for another go. It seems to be part of their psyche to always be ‘conquerers’.”

  “Its also safe to say that this new war will happen sometime after the Emperor dies,” Paress said soberly.

  “Pretty much,” Casten agreed. “They’re so damn proud. Prouder than us, even. On one hand, you know they’d love to avenge themselves and defeat the Emperor. But on the other, the slightest chance they could lose to him again…the whole civilization would likely commit suicide if that happened.”

  “So as long as the Emperor is alive, peace will reign,” Paress said.

  “Pretty much,” Casten repeated.

  A few moments went by in silence as Allepexxis drew farther away from Cymarus and the starships buzzing around it. “Alright, we’re at jump distance. Jump drive is spooled up,” Casten said.

  “That pirate base fleet is gonna be long gone from that system,” Paress said. “But I guess we’ve gotta start somewhere.”

  “For what it’s worth, the Feuerlilie should be finishing its repairs and meeting up with us in the next couple days.”

  “Thank God,” Paress said. “It’ll be good to have a mother ship to return to at the end of the day instead of us just floating alone in deep space with the occasional stop on Latmus. That little apartment we have in here behind the cockpit is kinda cramped for the two of us, and Latmus is so damn hot and dusty— I don’t know which is worse.”

  “Agreed. Maybe if you were a hot girl, that cramped little apartment wouldn’t be so bad,” Casten said.

  “A hot girl like the queen?” Paress asked.

  “Exactly. Or an elven Marine.”

  “Heh, fair enough.” Paress took one last look at Cymarus and said, “Okay, I’m ready. You?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, then.” Paress flipped open the panel on his console that housed the jump controls and placed his hand on the lever. “Jump in five...four...three...two...one...jump.” He pushed the lever forward and Allepexxis’ jump drive activated. Space distorted around the Hyper Battle Machine and moments later it disappeared into the jump space that would take it to the target system.

  Part II

  Chapter One

  Francescan Star Calendar Year 507.10

  Location: Planet Wystra, Francescan Imperial Capital City Galarisa

  It was three months after Paress Handrel had turned twelve that he received the Blessing. Prior to that, there was nothing overly extraordinary about him. The son of an architect father and stay-at-home mother, with two younger sisters, his life was easygoing and mostly carefree. The family lived in a suburb ten miles east of the center of Galarisa, the capital city of the Francescan Star Empire, and Paress enjoyed a cultured, generally happy upbringing.

  Never one of the popular crowd, he nonetheless was fairly quick with a joke or odd observation that kept him from any long-lasting social drama at school and the neighborhood. Occasionally he slipped up and would become the butt of teasing and light bullying, but it never lasted long. Luckily, the local bullies were themselves outcasts, so Paress’ quirky social graces kept him just popular enough with the in-crowd to keep him from being the target of physical offense.

  His family had always had a history of light telekinesis, with Paress’ maternal grandfather using his gifts to operate a fairly successful stage show where he would act with small puppets that he moved with his mind to seem to come to life. Paress himself could move small toy cars around and, if he concentrated really hard, could make a small toy airplane float a couple inches off he ground. It was good for amusing family members and the kids at school, but not much else.

  That is, until the day that the school bullies decided enough time had passed since the last bout of ribbing, and started in on Paress for a fresh round. It was Dwarven language class and as Paress was trying to enter the class room, three boys barred the way. The usual verbal jousting commenced, followed by one boy, Silkse, pushing Paress’ shoulder. And then, much to everyone’s surprise— Paress included— Silkse was suddenly flung across the room to crash noisily into some empty desks.

  People with strong telekinetic powers were rare, but not unheard of. There were plenty of magical races in the Empire that had similar powers derived from supernatural sources rather than psychic. So while Paress knew his life would change, he still believed it wouldn’t be to a drastic extent. But as puberty truly set in, his body not only experienced the usual changes into adulthood, he found that he was growing much stronger than any other human child in school. Indeed, his strength began to rival some of the larger, more powerful races even though his physical appearance hadn’t changed all that much.

  Along with his physical strength came a higher level of physical durability so that when Silkse decided that it was time for payback for his unceremonious collision with the desks, he and his friends found that their punches had little effect on Paress, who in turn proceeded to seriously injure the boys in retaliation through physical and telekinetic action.

  Since Emperor Gustav II had unlocked the nanotechnology lying dormant in all human Francescans since the time of the Ancients, most people enjoyed higher levels of strength, health, and long life compared to the humans of old. But Paress’ changes were much more extreme and far-reaching and it soon became obvious that he was Blessed.

  Being from the capital planet of the Empire, and thus one of the most populated and diverse, Blessed people weren’t the extreme rarities they were on other far-flung planets. But they were still rare enough to cause a large degree of excitement in Paress’ community. Members of the Imperial Health Department and Space Knight Academy arrived and whisked Paress off to take a barrage of tests to ascertain the extent of his abilities and what that would mean for his life going forward.

  When the tests were over, Paress and his family were informed that he did indeed possess a level of telekinetic acuity rarely seen and that while his brute force psychic abilities were extremely powerful, he had the potential to focus those abilities into something much more devastating.

  “Think of it like the difference between a shotgun and a high-powered rifle,” the Space Knight Academy representative said when he came to deliver the test results the following week. “A shotgun causes a high level of wide destruction at short range. But a high-powered rifle focuses all of its destructive force in a much smaller point at greater range. Right now, Paress is a shotgun, which means there’s a very good chance that he could harm himself and others. But with the right training, he can tame that power and use it to only harm very specific targets.”

  Paress stared at the person from the Academy sitting in his living room— Dr. Jeddeg Behlen, a man who seemed like he should be living in a shack by the beach instead of working at the apex military installation of the Empire. He was of a slightly stocky build, with calloused hands and sun-bleached blonde hair in messy dreadlocks that fell over his lightly tanned skin. Despite his appearance, he spoke in a precise manner that belied a careful, detail-oriented mind.

  “Mr. Behlen,” Paress’ mother began.

  “Doctor,” Behlen gently corrected.

  “I’m sorry. Doctor,” she said. “You’re just younger than most of the doctors I’ve known.”

  “It’s no problem. A common mistake and quite understandable. Next month will be a year since I received my second doctorate at the age of 30. My first came when I was 26. I was lucky to have a great mentor and accelerated learning from an early age.” Paress could tell Behlen was proud of his accomplishments and well, who wouldn’t be?

  “Yes, well,” Paress’ mother continued, obviously wanting to say something about how besides his youth, the man looked like anything other than a doctor, “You make this sound like my son’s abilities can only be used in a destructive capacity. Can’
t they also be used in a more benign way? Pulling people from the site of an accident without any physical pressure? Saving someone from a burning building? Pulling a drowning person from water?”

  “Without a doubt,” Behlen said. “But such things would frankly be a waste of his talents. The things you describe can be done by lower level psychics or magic users. Paress can potentially focus the power of a hundred people into a surgically precise strike. A scalpel with the force of a sword, so to speak.”

  “There, that’s something,” she said. “He could be a doctor and use his powers to perform risky procedures on patients where normal medical methods might not work.”

  Behlen smiled, “Your wish to get Paress into a career with a low level of danger is admirable. But it’s my belief, and the tests back me up, that his abilities would best suit the needs of the Empire when used against its enemies. A Space Knight with the kind of power we believe Paress could develop would be a real asset and a beacon of hope and strength to the downtrodden.”

  “I’ll thank you not to insult our intelligence with all the idealistic nonsense,” Paress’ father said. “The plain truth is that Paress is a great potential weapon and that’s all that counts to the Space Knight Academy.”

  Dr. Behlen smiled. “I won’t lie. You’re quite right in that my colleagues and I believe Paress would be a perfect addition to the arsenal of the Empire’s champions. But I also wasn’t lying when I said that he could be a beacon to the less fortunate. Why can’t it be both?

  “We have colonies on far outposts,” he reasoned. “Planets that have found themselves in the crosshairs of pirate raiders, Aldonis opportunists, would-be dictators, hostile aliens, and God knows what. The Empire is still rebuilding and consolidating after that last big war. We can’t send entire fleets in to save these people. But a single Space Knight can make a big difference. I know that for a fact.

  “Before I say anything else, I’d like to show you this video from the Academy,” Behlen said. After a nod from Paress’ father, Behlen inserted a card into the family entertainment system. The living room lights automatically dimmed and moments later, a 2.5D movie started up on the large screen on one side of the room.

 

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