Enslaved by the Alien Dragon

by Stella Cassy

  “It’s just a warning,” Ranel told me, noticing my preoccupation. “The main frame is heavily armored and the energy soul powering the ship is inside it.”

  We got into the elevator and glided down to the basement. A part of me wanted to ask why he was taking the time to escort me to the basement personally. Surely, my safety was not his first concern at the moment. And yet I found myself struggling to find an alternate reason.

  He led me directly to my cell. “Stay in here,” he ordered. “Once we have the situation under control, an announcement will be made on the internal coms system.”

  He opened the door and shoved me gently inside.

  “Wait,” I said before he could leave.

  He stopped short. His eyes were wild, and I could see that it took all his self-control not to ignore me and leave. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry. This was my fault. How many times had this kind of thing happened around me? Wherever I was, catastrophe always followed.

  “Just… be careful,” I said weakly, losing my courage at the last moment.

  He nodded once and then the door closed on me. I took a deep breath, hoping that would calm me down. But I was alone now and that meant there was no place to hide.

  “Corporal?”

  Her voice was so clear that she might have been standing next to me in my tiny holding cell. I saw her shadowed blue eyes and her matted hair… Kelly Tucker. She was thirty-seven years old, an only child and a closeted poetry lover. She was looking at me, waiting for me to give her an order.

  “Corporal?” she screamed, trying to get me to engage. “The aliens have landed… they’ve breached through the first line of defenses. What do we do?”

  She was looking at me like I had all the answers, but I was just as lost as she was. The aliens were stronger than us, more ruthless than us and used to conquering planets. We were no match for them but telling her as much felt like a betrayal.

  “Prepare the missiles,” I said.

  It was meant to be a last resort, but I had heard what had happened in China. They had waited to use their heavy artillery and they had lost because of it.

  “Now?” Kelly asked.

  “Now,” I practically screamed. “Before they breach the second line of defenses!”

  I closed my eyes and tried to shake the images that were flashing through my head. I didn’t want to go back there. I didn’t want to see their dead bodies littered across the rubble like forgotten dolls. I used to have sweating dreams. I used to wake up screaming and shaking.

  Then one night I had woken up to find Magdasa-Urie standing over me. She was looking down at me with her six arms folded together and a smile playing across her unrelenting face.

  “I’ve been getting complaints about you,” she said pleasantly. “You’re not the only wretched creature here, human. No one else can sleep.”

  Her tone was even and kindly and that was how I knew she had something terrible planned for me. She plucked me off my hard mattress and pulled me out into Servos’ cold, characterless hallways. She dragged me to the tallest tower in the fortress and made me stand on the battlements between the decomposing bodies of two human slaves that had attempted to escape together four days ago.

  “Are you ready to die, runt?” she asked.

  The icy wind clawed at my body like hot pincers and I shivered silently. The wind’s intense bite was still preferable to the pungent smell wafting off the two bodies that flanked me, however. I just stood there praying that she would kill me fast.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Y—yes,” I stammered.

  She laughed manically. “Death will not come easy,” she said. “I will make you suffer first. I will peel the skin from your hands. The pain will be so excruciating that you will beg me to cut them off. Now, I will ask again, are you ready to die?”

  I glanced at her, wondering if my lips were blue. “N— no.”

  Magdasa-Urie smiled triumphantly. “That’s right,” she nodded. “Come down from there.”

  I did as she bid me. I slipped as I lowered myself from the battlement and scratched my leg against the grey stone. I felt the sharp pang of blood rip free from my skin. Magdasa-Urie had moved closer to me. She bent low so that I could see her terrifying feline eyes. Her breath smelt like fresh blood.

  “No more screaming,” she whispered.

  I nodded vigorously.

  “You promise?”

  “P-pro- promise,” I stammered.

  “Good,” Magdasa-Urie nodded charmingly.

  Then two of her massive green arms worked in perfect unison as they slammed across my face in a punch so powerful that I wore a green tinted bruise for more than a month. But after that night, the sweating dreams had stopped.

  I heard someone scream and the scream pulled me back to my cell on Ranel’s ship. I turned on the spot and stared at the ceiling, wondering if it would cave in on me. The ground beneath my feet felt unsteady for the first time since I’d come on board. I had lived the last seven years of my life on shaky ground. I should have been used to it by now.

  “Stop it,” I told myself in the darkness of my room. “Stop thinking, turn your brain off.”

  I took three long strides and I was at the other end of my room. I slammed my fist into the wall and felt pain punch into my arm. I had to admit, it felt good. The physical pain was distracting me from everything else. I kept hearing the whirling sirens of the spacecraft’s emergency warning system and the sound grated at my ears.

  In the end, I couldn’t stay in the room. The walls felt like they were closing in on me and I desperately wanted to breathe. I could smell the thin froth of smoke through the corridors as I made my way to the kitchens. I wondered if Gormit would be there, but when I walked in, I realized he was not. No one was; it was a kitchen full of displaced pots and pans. The crash had displaced many things and shattered glass and crockery littered the floors.

  I was walking through the shambles when the whole spaceship jerked again. It wasn’t quite a crash, but it succeeded in pushing me off my feet. Luckily the sink was only a few feet away and I fell against it, only mildly bruising my wrist. My knuckles were red and raw from when I had punched the wall in my room so I opened the tap and ran it under some cold water. It soothed my irritated skin but only temporarily elevated the pain.

  I wondered what Ranel was doing now. I wondered what I would do in his position. People used to say that I had a natural talent for leadership. Now all those men and women were dead, buried under the debris of a falling city.

  “You are the reason they’re all dead,” Zellin’s rat-like memory whispered in my ear. “You could so easily have saved them all. Was it worth it?”

  I wanted to run and hide from the voices in my head. Would I never be able to escape them? My dirty fingers scraped at the tattoo on my cheek. There were days when it actually felt heavy, as though it were another limb protruding from my face.

  I scraped hard at my cheek, wondering if I could cut it off. I spotted a large carving knife on the floor only a few feet away from me. I could do it now. Slice off my cheek with one quick slash and be done with it. I could remove the ill omen for good. Perhaps that would remove its power. Perhaps…

  I buried my face in my hands, trying to hold fast to sanity. I could not give myself over to dark memories. I had to be stronger… I had to be like a Drakon. I thought about Ranel and the fire in his eyes. I needed to be more like him.

  I thought I heard another siren wail, but I wasn’t sure if that was just in my imagination. Phantom sounds could reach you from anywhere when your mind was clouded with unresolved memories. I concentrated hard and realized that the chaos from an hour ago had dissolved somewhat. Had Ranel got the situation under control? How many casualties did he have? How could he rebuild from up here? Depending on the extent of the damage, he would have to find a peaceable planet to dock on so that he could make the necessary repairs. The Wyvern was one of the older ships in the fleet, and I knew it had just undergone a m
assive series of repairs.

  Questions circled around and around in my head and I realized I was coming at the situation from a commander’s perspective. I was not a commander anymore. The sad and depressing thought struck me that I had never really been a good one anyway.

  Perhaps if I had been, my squadron would have lived and I would not be here hiding under a sink with a collar around my neck.

  12

  Ranel

  Once I made sure the girl was safe in her cell, I felt more equipped to deal with the fallout from the asteroid hit. I knew my duty as commander should have trumped everything else, especially the safety of a human slave, but I had not been able to quell the protective instinct that stirred in my gut like a wild beast.

  Once the girl was confined to the basement, I raced back up towards the top decks of the ship. The emergency lights were still glowing sharply along the ceilings, letting me know we were not out of danger just yet. I raced through the ribbed vaults and circular passageways of the Wyvern before coming to a stop outside the control center.

  Only on-duty commanders could access the control room, so I hastily verified my identity on the authorization keypad before the doors slid open. Deveron, Gormson and Bletchgor were all present, and I could see the tense rigidity of their backs coupled with the thin veil of panic that dominated the atmosphere.

  “Well?” I asked pointedly, alerting them to my presence. “How bad is it?”

  “The asteroid came out of nowhere,” Bletchgor said, his tone steeped in regret. “It came from right above us— a straight, perfect angle. Our sensors didn’t pick up the heat because of how fast the asteroid came.”

  “We’ve been thrown off course,” Gormson said, affording me only a quick glance. “A few hundred leagues off course… which means it’ll take us about two days to get back on track and re-route.”

  “The supply unit has been breached,” Deveron said. He was eyeing me as though he wasn’t sure I could handle all this information. “The asteroid broke through the defensive wall and we lost most of our food. We managed to close the second emergency door just before we lost our remaining supplies.”

  “So we haven’t lost everything then?” I asked.

  “We have enough food on board to feed the whole crew through the next five days… perhaps seven if we ration carefully.”

  “Start rationing right now,” I ordered. “What about the other ships? Have you had any communication with them? Dashel’s ship was travelling alongside this one.”

  “The communications system is down,” Deveron replied. “We haven’t been able to make contact with any of the fleet thus far.”

  I growled under my breath. If any of our ships had been directly in the asteroid’s path they would be completely eviscerated. “Try and locate Dashel’s ship. If we know where it is, maybe we can figure out a path to get to it.”

  “Yes Commander,” Gormson nodded.

  “What about the other commanders’ ships, any sign of them?” I pressed, despite the fact that they’d already given me an answer. “The Starlight, the Firebender, the Raiker?”

  “Not as yet, Commander,” Gormson replied, staring at his monitors. “But I’m still searching. I’m getting some signals, but we need to get closer to make sure we have one of our own instead of an enemy ship.”

  I nodded. “We’ll need to alter our original plan. We may not have the resources to stay the course for Grissa. We might have to make a stop sooner rather than later in order to survey the damage to the ship and repair the supply deck.”

  None of them replied to me however, because at that moment, a light flickered faintly along the control panel. There was a lot of static, but it was better than nothing.

  “Yes!” Bletchgor said, raising his voice in excitement. “I think I’ve got something… I think it’s Dashel’s ship.”

  I raced over to the monitor to examine the little blinking blue dot that marked one of our own. It was definitely Dashel’s ship; I recognized the identifier on the monitor.

  “Can you tell if there’s any damage from here?” I asked.

  “Not from here—"

  “Hold on,” Deveron said. “I think someone’s trying to communicate from the ship. A message is coming through.”

  We crowded around the communications monitor and waited with bated breath. There was the faint sound of static and then I heard the slur of words.

  “The signal isn’t strong…” Deveron pointed out unnecessarily.

  “Dashel?” I called, speaking into the microphone.

  The blocky static got worse for a moment, sizzling up my ears with its unpleasant snarl. But a few seconds later, it cleared and snippets of sentences reached us.

  “Hit from the right side… lost two crew… three slaves… Commander… down,” a voice rumbled through the static. The voice was strangely familiar, youthful but full of promise.

  On the heels of the sentence, the coms system packed up and the small blinking light died down without ceremony. I roared loudly and started pacing.

  “Commander down?” I repeated. “What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t think he’s dead, Commander,” Bletchgor said. “He would have been included in the body count if that were the case. I think he’s just injured.”

  “We need to fix the communications system immediately. Get to work.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Let me know the moment you get it fixed… understand?”

  “Of course.”

  I left the control station feeling shaky and helpless. I was relieved that my ship and my crew had faced minimal damage, but my mind was now preoccupied with worry over Dashel and his crew. No mention had been made of Natalie or their hatchlings.

  I went straight to the supplies dock to survey the damage for myself. Five of my crewmembers were at the site. The supplies and grain stores that were usually confined to storage had been pulled in and the emergency door was engaged, sealing off the loading bay. I looked through the glass and saw that the storage dock’s loading and unloading doors had been completely blown apart. It was amazing we’d managed to salvage any of our supplies. I could see the midnight blue of space clouds pass by, along with a few floating rocks that hit the sides of the ship with careless ease.

  Malick was there, bossing the rest of the crew around with an overbearing presence. As I stepped up to him, the words died on his tongue and he glanced at me sheepishly.

  “Commander,” he said. “I was just making sure nothing else would breach the emergency door.”

  “Has the door been properly sealed?” I asked.

  “I made sure of it,” Malick nodded.

  “Very well,” I replied. “Move our remaining supplies to one of the empty chambers down the hall. Limit the rations you allow the cook each day. We need to be conscientious about our consumption now.”

  I saw the looks on several of my crewmembers faces. They were not happy about the idea of rationing. Drakon had massive appetites and if you gave any of them a choice, they would have picked war over hunger any day.

  “Make hourly reports to me,” I told him.

  “Yes Commander,” Malick nodded, although I knew he had no intention of making those reports himself. He’d probably palm the job off on some lesser Drakon whom he could manipulate. On another day I might have called him out on it, but I had enough on my mind.

  I left Malick and the rest of them to their work and headed back down the passageway that had led me to the supplies dock. I intended to go back to the control room to ask if the communications system was running properly again but I found myself taking a different route. I should have been with my crew, but a selfish part of me wanted me to be somewhere else.

  I didn’t dwell on that though; I simply let my legs carry me to the room I had left her in. I didn’t bother knocking; I just pushed the door open and looked inside. I didn’t have to look around to know that the space was empty. She had left her room against my express orders. I had expected to fe
el annoyed, but all I could summon up was worry. Disaster did seem to follow her everywhere. What if she had been hurt? What if something terrible had happened to her?

  I sniffed the air and caught a plume of her heady scent. It was becoming more and more familiar to me now. I followed the scent right to the kitchens and walked in expecting to see her cooking, cleaning, or doing something equally ridiculous. Instead, I found myself standing in a seemingly empty kitchen, staring at the wreckage the asteroid had made of the basement.

  I sniffed the air and concentrated hard. She was definitely here. Her scent was all over the kitchen, but I couldn’t spot her. Then I heard the sound of moving limbs from underneath the sink and I walked around and bent down. She was sitting there with her arms wrapped around her legs. Her face was pale and her eyes were closed. For a moment, I thought she was praying.

  I started to say her name… the name I had neglected to say thus far. My throat itched but I pushed the word out of my mouth, letting the intimacy of it coat my tongue.

  “Yvette.”

  Her eyes darted open and she stared at me with large, honey flecked eyes. She looked like she didn’t recognize me. Her expression was impassive before breaking into an uncertain fear.

  “Yvette,” I said again.

  “Is everything alright?” she asked. “Is the ship ok?”

  “We’ll be fine,” I nodded. “What are you doing under there?”

  She looked around as though she had just realized she was sitting under a sink. “I wanted to get away from the explosions.”

  I frowned. “What explosions?”

  “The ones in my head,” she said, her voice breaking over the last few words.

  I reached out and presented her with my hand. “Come on… come out from under there.”

  She hesitated as she stared at my clawed hand and the gnarly scales that coated my skin, then she slipped her hand into mine and I pulled her out. She got shakily to her feet and looked around.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she admitted. “I think the crash just… it brought back bad memories… maybe even a little PTSD I didn’t know I had.”