by Clay Kronke
"What are they doing?" Gareth asked.
"They could be scouts," Mira suggested. "We've only ever seen dragons as solitary creatures, and usually in defensive maneuvering. We've never seen more than two at a time, this could be normal behavior as a part of a larger group."
"Yeah, but what would they be scouting for?" Gareth asked.
Mira turned to him, shaking her head, a blank look on her face. "I don't know," she said. "We know next to nothing about dragon societal structures. The journals would help with that, but there's a lot to sort through—"
A loud alarm cut through her sentence and all discussion was immediately forgotten as everyone spun back to their respective stations.
"Object proximity," Mira said, reading her screen and silencing the alert.
"Two marks incoming," Gareth said, "port, starboard." Red blips appeared on the overlay, and the side monitors showed two new dragons approaching swiftly from both sides of the ship. "Not scouts," he corrected, smiling at the parallel despite the situation. "Lures."
"Perfect," Aris said, watching the angles of their trajectories. He opened the left vent full, sending Vermithrax rolling left and down just as the first two dragons closed the distance. The first missed completely, flying over the top of the ship, but the roll wasn't fast enough, and the second one collided with the left wing as it tried to compensate for the sudden shift in the ship's path. Vermithrax shook briefly, but continued on its trajectory, the two attacking creatures circling around for another pass while the two in front pulled up to get out of the way. Aris grumbled, opening the right vents to bring them out of the roll and watching the vectors of dragons now approaching from the rear. They were gaining, but it would take them another minute to catch up.
"We're almost inside the debris field," Gareth said, watching his monitor. "But we're attracting more attention." Three more red blips had separated from the asteroids they had been behind but seemed to be keeping their distance for the moment.
"Great," Aris said, readying the vents for another burst. "Let me know when we're inside the field. We might need to make a run for it."
Object proximity sounded again, and Aris looked up as the two dragons that had been in front of them were now diving toward them. Aris slapped at his controls and the forward vents released, pushing the nose downward and sending Vermithrax into a forward roll. The dragons couldn't compensate quickly enough and ended up colliding with the top of the ship, glancing off as it rolled away from them. Aris released the lower vents, slowing their roll to face the four dragons that had been on their tail.
"Now we're flying backwards," Gareth said.
"Are we inside the debris field?" Aris asked.
"Nearly," Gareth said.
"We can't wait. We're out of spent coolant to vent." Aris took the engines off standby, a shudder coursing through the body of the ship as the thrusters started warming up. "Hang on," he said, as a dozen new red blips appeared on the overlay, moving their direction. "I might have one more trick left. You have weapons?" He asked Mira.
She nodded, pulling up fire control on her monitor.
"Prepare countermeasures," he said.
"How many?" she asked.
"All of them." His engine control finally flashed green and he fired maneuvering thrusters, rotating them back around to face front before punching the main engines. The entire ship shuddered, the stabilizers working to compensate for the sudden change in momentum as Vermithrax shot forward.
And almost in unison, the collection of red blips on the overlay contracted as each dragon started toward them in earnest, the entire mass angling inward as if being pulled along in the ship's wake. Aris adjusted course so they were skimming along the edge of the planet's atmosphere, more red blips coming to life and heading their way.
"This seems counterproductive," Gareth offered.
"They're attracted to heat, right?" Aris said. "Let's give them something to chew on. Countermeasures?" He turned to Mira.
"Ready," she said.
Aris watched the overlay, more dragons converging on their position, counting the seconds.
"Fire," he said.
Mira touched her screen and a tremor thrummed through the ship as four banks of twenty short-range ballistics launched from either side of the ship. Leftover from Vermithrax's former life as a troop carrier, the projectiles were designed to fly erratically, producing flare and smoke to obfuscate incoming missile targeting systems. Gareth's staff weapon used a smaller scale version as a lure on the ground, and Aris hoped these ballistics would serve the same purpose here.
He watched his monitor as the countermeasures traveled outward from the ship. After a few seconds, each one veered sharply in a different direction and started spitting out reflective flare, creating an expanding cloud of distraction. When they were far enough away, he dropped the ship into a steep dive and kicked the thrusters up to full, heading once again for the planet's surface. Turning back to his monitor, he waited to see if the creatures would take the bait.
The red blips that had been closing in slowed as they intersected with the smaller green blips representing the countermeasures. Many of the green blips disappeared into the red, and while several crossed each other, only a handful of red still followed them, and Aris started breathing easier, hoping they were far enough back that they wouldn't be able to catch up. "Looks like we might be in the clear—"
He was cut off as another alert sounded. Three dragons had swum up from seemingly nowhere and were quickly approaching a point directly ahead, closing the distance rapidly. He veered up out of their oncoming path only to be faced with a group of four more creatures that were practically on top of them.
"Ah hell," Aris said, jamming the yoke forward and dropping Vermithrax back into a steep dive to punching through the center of the first three. They collided with two of them, and the squealing sounds of claws on metal scraped across the outer hull as Aris twisted the ship around in an attempt to shake them loose. Vermithrax shuddered as the creatures scrabbled to keep their grip on the hull, but one final roll and the screeching vibrations abruptly cut out as they broke free, continuing toward the surface.
"Where did they come from?" Gareth asked, equally startled.
"Probably rode our wake," Aris said, gunning directly for the planet, watching in his monitor as the seven new blips gave chase.
They drove hard for the surface, but the pursuing dragons weren't fast enough to keep up, and after a minute they had abandoned the chase altogether. Aris exhaled, and another scan revealed they had cleared the field and were now edging down into the planet's atmosphere, leaving all the orbiting dragons behind. He kept his eyes on the monitor for another few minutes, then eased up on the throttle. He brought up their angle of descent and started recalculating their course, finally relaxing a bit.
Directly ahead, a craggy mountainous ridge could be seen jutting up above the the near uniform brown rockiness of the planet's surface. It was flat and vertical, like a wave crashing into a seawall being forced into the sky, and it ran for a great length of the landscape, undulating like the spiny backbone of some ancient beast. At the base of this ridge a fissure became visible, a crevice that ran the length of the ridge for several miles. As they approached it became apparent that the ridge, and its accompanying crevice were both far wider and larger than they initially seemed, the lack of any identifying point of reference making it difficult to judge the scale.
Aris cleared the thermal imaging from the overlay, replacing it with topography, his eyes widening at the sheer enormity of the bladelike mountains as they continued to grow, filling the viewport, but didn't appear to be getting any closer. "Look at that," Mira pointed. At the edge of the crevice opposite the tallest spires of the mountain ridge, a smudge like a thumbprint in the surface had become visible, now outlined in the topography overlay. It was roughly oval in shape, and as they got closer, they c
ould begin to see details emerge, lines and regularities that could not have been part of the natural formation of the landscape.
"It's a city," she breathed. "I didn't see anything in the journals about another civilization."
"It's ancient," Gareth said, looking over his own sensor data. The topography of the city was becoming more clearly defined, and concentric rings were now visible, with lanes radiating from the eastern center, cutting across and forming city subdivisions. Many were dotted with rows of what looked like buildings, but most were simply lines etched into the surface, not even ruins left over to mark whatever used to be there.
"Are we still getting that distress signal?" Aris asked.
"No, it stopped a few minutes ago," Mira said. "Either they're in the clear, or they lost power."
"Do you have a location?"
"Almost directly under us," she said. "Sensor sweep shows a small craft, just south of the city. I don't have a visual yet. And life signs are inconclusive. There's a lot of thermal activity in this area."
"All right, we'll swing by on the way in," Aris said, adjusting their descent. "We're almost there."
The city, what little was left of it, was a wasteland. Dry and barren, all that seemed to remain were vestiges of stone walls of various heights, some suggesting large expansive buildings, others forming demarcation between city sections, all contained within a sweeping outer wall that was mostly still intact.
And at the center of the eastern edge closest to the massive canyon that ran parallel to the mountain ridge, a single tower rose high into the air above the rest of the city. It was an imposing structure, monolithic and angular, with dozens of levels and a set of battlements at the top. Tapering slightly, the base widened out and became part of the stone bluff of the canyon itself, the two city walls intersecting on either side of the structure. Aris couldn't tell if it was meant to be a temple or a fortress, but it seemed equally suited to either.
He brought the ship low outside the city walls on the southern side, where they could now see the remains of a downed ship. It was dark and utilitarian, a small transport craft or freight carrier, almost blending into the craggy brown of the surrounding landscape. Aris turned on his image scanners and started circling around the craft.
It had made a rough landing, hugging the ground and sitting nearly on its side. There was a long, scorched rut in the rock trailing off behind it, and the landscape was littered with hull panels that had been ground off the sides after it hit. "Guess we know what brought it down," Aris said as they came around the other side. From nose to stern were multiple gashes cut into the hull, running the length of the ship and crisscrossing the top. Sections of the side and along the port wing were blackened and disfigured, with heat blistering all across the hull.
Mira was targeting a focused sensor sweep on the ship itself. "Engine reactor is stable," she said. "No life signs, though. Whether that means there aren't any survivors, or they've fled the craft, I'm not sure."
"Not many places they could have gone," Aris said, looking toward the closest wall of the city.
"Wait," Mira said. "Hold steady for a minute." They had finished their circle and were now at the front of the ship. Mira had noticed something and was bringing up a targeted image scan on her monitor.
"What is it?" Aris asked.
Mira was focusing on a patch of ground directly in front of a gaping hole in the side of the command section. Aris wasn't sure what he was looking at, but as she increased the contrast on the image, it became clear.
"Footprints," she said.
ruin
"Ow," Bran said, flinching. He sat back against a wall, his leg extended flat in front of him. His pant leg was rolled up to his knee, and he watched as Petra examined his lower leg. They were sitting in a wide stone archway, a passage through a high stone wall, the outside perimeter of what looked like the ruins of an ancient city, the only thing standing within sight of their crashed ship.
They had managed to pull themselves out of the wreckage, but Bran quickly found that he couldn't walk on his right leg and leaned on Petra until they got under some kind of cover. The air was dry and the sky was clear, with a tiny sun directly overhead. But the light was dim, like early twilight, and the atmosphere was thin with a steady wind, leaving the light feeling harsh and cold.
"Hold still," Petra said. "I've got to clean it first." She was doing her best to wipe dirt and blood away from a gash near his calf.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"I've watched a friend of mine do this several times," Petra said.
"Really."
"…on livestock," she finished.
"This doesn't fill me with confidence," he said, looking down at his leg. With the blood and debris cleared away, he could more clearly see the unnatural angle of his broken shin. He took a few breaths and braced himself as best he could. He clenched his teeth, then nodded. Petra set her jaw, took his ankle in one hand, placed her other hand gingerly around the break, took a breath—
Then shoved the bone back into place.
Bran cried out, then clenched his teeth again. Petra waited a minute, letting his breathing even out, before removing her hands. "That looks better," she said, nodding. "Can't splint it yet, though this should help the cut." She had a length of linen she had taken from the lower hem of her shirt, and proceeded to wrap it around his leg, covering the gash. "You're lucky it missed the artery, you could've lost a lot of blood."
"I still can't walk," Bran grumbled. "Not exactly a win."
"Do you always whine this much?" she asked. "We escaped a crash landing, I'm fairly certain you could be worse off."
"We are worse off," he said, gesturing outside the archway, where their crashed ship sat out in the middle of an expanse of stone that seemed to go on forever. "There's nothing but barren rock as far as we can see," he then pointed to the ruined city visible inside the archway, "and whoever used to live here clearly doesn't anymore. Our benevolent Brotherhood stranded us in the middle of nowhere."
Petra looked out across the lonely, desolate landscape, shaking her head. She hated to admit it, but she had to agree. This had all started out so simply. She had just wanted to find someone, but it seemed like each time she had a choice to make, it was under some amount of desperation, each choice leading to increasingly inexplicable things that forced her to make more desperate choices, all in the quest to find two people who may or may not have even been connected, one of whom was likely long dead. She hadn't fully accepted the fact that her quest might very well be a futile exercise, instead jumping at every new thread she found. But now that she was in a situation that she couldn't see any logical way out of, she began to realize that she might not have any other choice but to face that futility.
She didn't know how long she had been sitting there staring out at the horizon before she was brought back to the present by a hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at Bran, whose face had softened a bit. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not trying to make things worse. We'll figure a way out of this, okay? Now help me up." He straightened up and started pushing up against the wall he was leaning against.
"Stop that," Petra said, kneeling back down beside him. "Your leg needs to be braced before you try to move, or you'll make it worse."
"We need to get back to the ship, see if the comm system is still intact." He tried to get his good leg up under him, but Petra put her hands on his shoulders.
"No. Sit down," she said, pushing him back to a sitting position. "Look, I know I got you into this mess, but I don't need you rebreaking your leg just to make me feel better."
There was a crunch of gravel behind them and they turned to see Jor step up into the archway. "Maybe something of this will help," he said, kneeling down beside them and setting down an armload of assorted metal bits, along with a small shipping container and a five-foot length of pole. He had gone
back to take inventory of anything useful on the ship, as well as to try to find something with which to brace Bran's broken leg. "There are a few days' worth of food stores on board," he said. "Rations mostly, but with only the three of us, they'll last a bit longer."
"Just the three of us?" Petra repeated.
Jor's face fell. "The pilot and Brother Stavis didn't survive the crash," he said. "And none of the communication equipment seems to be working."
"Wonderful," Bran said, rolling his eyes. "Let me see that." He leaned over and pulled the pile of metal closer to him. There were a couple of odd engine tools, a few different sizes of spanners, and—
"Oh, this'll do nicely," Bran said suddenly, grabbing two metal spacers, long rectangular pieces normally used to partition small storage lockers. "Here," he said, handing them to Petra. "Brace away."
She took them in one hand while she picked through the rest of the pile with the other. "What's in that?" she asked, pointing to the container.
"I found that in the engine compartment," Jor said. "I think it's a pipe repair kit." Petra opened it and started rifling through the contents.
Bran scoffed. "Did you bring pipe with you to fix?"
"No stupid, for your leg," Petra said, pulling a circular clamp out of the case and throwing it at him. There were three different sizes and two of them looked big enough to fit around his calf and ankle along with the metal spacers. "There's also adhesive and some shock wrap." She allowed herself a smug smile. "It's your lucky day."
"Cute," Bran said, grabbing a spanner and ratcheting the clamp open. "Help me with this, would you?" He set the clamp down and picked up the spacers, holding one on either side of his lower leg, wincing at the new pain that came with the contact. Petra peeled back the shock wrap and started unrolling it around the top of the spacers. Six inches wide and tacky, it was strong but flexible, sticking to itself as it wrapped around Bran's leg.