by Stella Cassy
Satisfied that I had extracted something of a promise from Dashel, I turned towards his second commanders.
“Ready the escape pods,” I told them. “And make sure that everyone who cannot fight is on them.”
“What about slaves, commander?”
I paused. Natalie’s eyes found mine. “You cannot ask the slaves to fight for you,” she said.
I swallowed hard. “Evacuate the slaves as well,” I nodded.
If Dashel disagreed with my decision he didn’t say so.
“Dashel, you need to fly the Gyygnar to Heilbronn,” I said. “Make sure everyone in the city gets on a ship. The moment the city has been evacuated, leave.”
“What about you?” Dashel asked.
“I have to stay here and fight,” I replied. “Don’t wait for me.”
“But—"
“Draconia has been evacuated. Heilbronn needs to be as well. They need commanders and you are the best of us,” I said. “Now go, we all have our parts to play.”
I didn’t give Dashel a chance to respond. I gave both Natalie and he a parting nod and then headed straight back to the Wyvern. Now that my orders had been given, I had only one thing on my mind – Yvette. It felt strange to admit it to myself but the seriousness of the imminent battle was leaving me no room for denial. I wanted her safe… no matter what.
As I turned the corner of the Wyvern, I caught a glimpse of her. She was only a puny human among a sea of greater species and yet she was standing there with fire in her eyes, looking up at the sky like she had the power to rain hell down upon the army of destroyers that had come to conquer us.
Her dark hair matted around her head and obscured part of her features from view, but she had never looked more beautiful to me.
19
Yvette
I could feel the panic in the air; the atmosphere was rife with the smell of sweat and fear. I got caught up in the throng of slaves as they were ushered from the ship like cattle down one of the descending runway ramps that the Drakons referred to as chutes.
Halfway down I got caught up in the crowd and my legs actually lifted off the ground for a moment as I got stuck between a particularly tall Vence and a grey eyed Nortian. Towards the bottom of the ramp however, the slaves dispersed somewhat and I fell to the ground with an undignified thump. I was about to dust myself off and pick myself up when I felt a hand on my back, pulling me to my feet.
I turned around, expecting to see Ranel but instead I came face to face with Meratte.
“Are you ok?” she asked, her honey tinted mane was bright in places and spotted in others, as though the cloudy sky was draining out her brightness.
“I— yes… thank you,” I said, deeply touched by her concern.
She nodded and looked towards the skies. “I think this is the day,” she said in a soft whisper.
I frowned. “What day is that?” I asked.
“The day we die,” she said without taking her eyes off the sky.
I turned around and followed her gaze. My skin seemed to erupt when I took in the sight that awaited us. I had thought that rain clouds had darkened the skies, but what it actually was, was the force and might of the Pax Alliance’s destroyer fleet.
I blinked and suddenly I wasn’t in Thirren anymore. I was back on Earth. The skyscrapers of New York City stood around me like a concrete wall, allowing me only glimpses of the dapple-grey skies behind the hordes of spaceships that hovered over the buildings’ pinnacles. The spaceships had elongated bodies and slim whip-like wings on either side that made them look like sinister fish perched in the sky. Their bodies were a deep crimson red and their wings were black tipped with gold. I felt that the very coloring on those ships was a message. They were here to rain blood down upon us.
“Corporal Long!”
I turned to see Timothee Mehmet rushing towards me. He was thirty-five years old. He had the ash-blue eyes of his American mother and the heavy features and dark coloring of his Iranian father. He had a wife, Hilary, whose picture he carried around in his uniform, along with a picture of their two-year-old daughter, Verda.
“They’ve sent an envoy. They want to meet with the commanding officer in charge,” Timothee said.
I stopped short. “They’ve sent an envoy?”
Timothee nodded, his eyes wide with terror. “He told me that there needn’t be any bloodshed today if you only agree to his terms.”
I gritted my teeth together and looked back at Mitch and Lorna. Mitch was forty-one. He had gone gray by the age of thirty-five, which was around the same time he had lost his wife to cancer, leaving him to raise their two daughters, Nicole and Holly, on his own. Lorna was twenty-nine. She was a pale-faced beauty who had married her partner, Celeste, months before the first alien attack had turned our reality on its head.
“I have to meet him,” I said.
“Not alone,” Mitch said, coming to stand by my side. “The whole unit goes with you.”
I took a deep breath. “They might interpret that as a threat,” I said. “If the aliens have sent an envoy, it means they’re interested in negotiating.”
“You can’t see him alone,” Mitch said immediately.
“Mitch, Timothee, the two of you will accompany me,” I said. “Lorna, make sure the rest of the unit is ready.”
“For what?” Lorna asked. Her pouting lips were turned down with stress.
“For anything,” I replied.
“Yvette!”
I gasped as his massive hand landed on my shoulder. I turned and just like that I was back on Thirren and Ranel was by my side.
“Come with me,” he said, grabbing my arm and pulling me past the Wyvern. “It’s not safe here.”
“No place is safe from the Pax,” I heard myself say.
But my eyes travelled to the almost invisible barrier that seemed to be keeping the spaceships at bay. The battalion of destroyers was hovering just behind the pellucid surface and every time a craft ventured too close, there was a ripple of white energy that seemed to push it back by a few inches. It didn’t seem to cause any serious damage to the craft, which meant the shield wall was merely a defensive barrier and had no offensive potential.
Then I saw a little burst of fire from the corner of my eye and I turned to see a small missile being launched at the shield wall from one of the crafts. The spaceships were built for speed; they were small and shaped like little black comets. The only oddity was the fat red missiles that were attached to both sides of each craft. I thought at first that those were the missiles the Pax were launching at the shield wall, but it didn’t appear to be so.
After the first little missile was released, the rest of the destroyer fleet followed suit and soon the whole shield wall was being inundated with fiery little explosions that turned the skies red, orange and gold.
“Come!” Ranel said, pulling me even harder in the opposite direction.
“Where are we going?” I screamed over the panicked chaos that filled the air.
Ranel’s hand was so tight around my arm that it was actually starting to hurt. His eyes were darting everywhere and I knew he wasn’t aware of how tightly he was holding on to me.
“Ranel!” I yelled.
He stopped short and looked at me with shock. “What?”
“You’re hurting me,” I said, looking down at our entwined hands.
He dropped his hand immediately, but his expression remained calculating and remote. His eyes darted up behind me to the legion of enemy ships waiting to blast through the protective barrier.
“You can stop them… can’t you?” I asked.
“The shield is not going to hold for much longer,” Ranel replied. “They’ll keep up the attack long after the wall is down
“Surely you have artillery of your own?” I asked desperately. “Machine guns, weapons, cannons… something.”
“We are dragons,” Ranel replied, the cold note of pride etching through his tone.
Suddenly, the firestorm stopped an
d the Pax destroyers seemed to move back slightly. Ranel and I turned to face the skies together. Then, without warning, a loud amplified voice echoed across the air.
“Drakons of Thirren!” the voice boomed. “I am Korvin-Cull and I have a gift to offer you.”
I saw stars dance across my eyes. No, I thought. I knew what Korvin-Cull’s gift was. I had been offered it once before by a different Pax commander with the same intentions.
His envoy had stood before me with one unseeing milky eye whose eyeball danced around the socket of its own volition. Despite his monstrous appearance, he was not the one that held my attention. It was the young human girl standing beside him. Her straight black hair had been pulled back to reveal the rounded beauty of her face. She had large slanted eyes, fanned by thick lashes. She wore a threadbare robe that exposed her shoulders, legs and one of her breasts. Around her neck she wore a thick black collar that looked as though it were choking the life out of her.
“I am Scarvo,” the girl spoke, translating the alien’s words so that my men and I could understand. Her English was heavily accented but clear and understandable. “And I am here on behalf of Commander Zellin, to offer you a gift.”
I knew that thousands of Chinese had been taken by the aliens once the city had fallen, but to see the young girl standing in front of me –with her submissive stance and her head bowed low-- it was enough to make me want to kill the envoy right then and there without even hearing his terms.
“What gift is that?” I spat, unable to keep my tone neutral.
The girl spoke to the alien, her mouth moved in unfamiliar clicks and rolls that I couldn’t fathom. How was it possible that she could act as translator for an alien who had only captured her months before?
The girl turned back to me. Her eyes refused to meet mine as she spoke with the alien’s voice. “The gift of life,” the girl spoke. “If you stand down now, surrender your city to our forces and submit to our rule, you will be allowed to live. This is your decision to make as the commander of this city. If you choose to turn down this generous offer, we will kill every last man and woman in your crew and take you as a slave.”
My blood boiled as she spoke, but I turned my eyes to the vicious creature standing just behind her. He was smirking at me with calculating rigor and it was all I could do not to open fire at that very moment.
“Tell the giant rodent behind you that it doesn’t work like that,” I said, forcing myself to remain calm. “I am responsible for protecting the city, but we have governments who make those kinds of decisions. I am not in charge here.”
The collared girl turned back to her master and related to him what I had just said. He looked amused as he started talking. I saw her cheeks flush just before she turned back to me.
“They said the same in China,” the girl said, her body shaking slightly. “We do not care for governments. We respect only commanders. You are in command of this city and therefore you have the choice. Choose wisely, or you and your crew will suffer the same fate as those in this slave’s wretched city.”
My hand fell to the gun on my right hip, but Mitch’s hand shot out fast and steadied my hand. My eyes fell to the line of aliens that stood about twenty feet from us. Each was equipped with a massive contraption that revealed the shiny steel of unfamiliar bullets.
“We will give you time to think over your decision,” the girl said with finality.
Scarvo licked his lips before he turned from me to join his army. I stood there, in my crumbling city, still clinging to the faint illusion of hope. We had already lost, but I hadn’t yet known it.
Ranel growled furiously under his breath and my memory shattered.
“Surrender to us now. Give us ownership of your lost planet. Give us dominion over your bodies. Serve us as loyal slaves and we will let you live! Refuse and you will all die screaming for collars.”
Thirren seemed to go soft with silence for a split second. Then the air burst with roars, bellows and howls of rage. For a species as proud and ancient as the Drakons of Thirren, I knew it was the ultimate insult. I realized now how much the Pax wanted to enslave the Drakons. If they succeeded, not only would they have supreme military and firepower, they would also have dragons who were theirs to command. They would become invincible.
“Make your decision Drakons of Thirren!” the amplified voice screamed through the skies. “You have only till your Dragon Shield falls.”
A second after he had stopped speaking, the onslaught of smaller missiles pelted the shield from every direction. Once again, the sky was alight with the colors of a bleeding sunrise.
“Commander Ranel!” someone screamed.
I turned to see Gormson standing a few feet away from us. “The shield—”
He didn’t have to point it out to us. I could see the fissures start to form in the shield’s translucent façade. Thirren was in chaos. Ships were everywhere, some with the hatches still down. Slaves were running amuck and the able bodied Drakons were moving towards the forefront, their bodies undergoing a change I didn’t quite understand.
“Take cover!” Ranel said, pushing me back behind a massive burnt grey boulder that smelled of Earth. “Stay down and don’t engage with anyone or anything. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, even though I barely heard a word he had just said.
“When you see a clear path, run as far away from the battle ground as possible.”
“But—"
“DO NOT ARGUE WITH ME!” Ranel yelled, guttural and animalistic. It felt as though his voice had been amplified a dozen times over.
I cringed back and took cover behind the massive boulder. I stuck my head out, looking for a clear pathway out of the line of fire, but my eyes caught Ranel and my breath caught.
He was transforming. He was shifting into his dragon form and for some reason, the bedlam of the fight seemed to fade into the background as I concentrated on his change.
His body seemed to be morphing. I saw his legs bulge with muscle and his arms followed suit. His clothes ripped apart, but the body beneath them was no longer that of a man. Ranel’s body burst from something that resembled a human male into a fully-fledged beast with powerful legs that would have cast me in shadow and massive wings that could have wrapped around the circumference of the Wyvern.
The humanness of his face transformed into the reptilian terror of a large snout that was spiked with sinister looking spurs. He let out a roar and I saw hot smoke rise out of his mouth from between his protruding teeth. His burgundy scales glistened with subtle power and I could see a series of tiny spikes that covered each scale. I had to crane my neck upwards as Ranel leaned back on his powerful hind legs and let out an earth-shattering roar that seemed to make the skies shiver.
. Civilians and slaves scattered like pebbles in the wind, until only the dragons remained.
They filled the landscape with their immensity with scales of copper and jade, bronze and magenta, rust-red and pearl grey, obsidian and teal-green. They were terrifying creatures, but I could not think of any other species that commanded that kind of raw and untamed beauty.
Slaves ran past me, kicking the deep red-brown earth of Thirren into my eyes. I heard someone shout to me to move but I couldn’t seem to make my legs cooperate. My eyes were transfixed on the scene before me and it was only then that I realized I was on a new planet whose beauty I had not yet had a chance to admire.
Thirren was as wildly beautiful and as tempestuously raw as its inhabitants. I saw rugged mountain ranges off in the distance with more peaks than I could count and steep ledges that were different colors of gold and red. Some mountains were bare while others had patches of deep purples and pale blues as though they had been laid with mossy carpets.
The land we were currently standing on seemed to stretch on for miles with no discernable forest of jungle that I could see. It was just flat, bare land that tapered off into little hills that seemed to climb into the mountains that I could see from every angle. I thought
I spotted the clear blue of a river or stream, but my attention was split between Thirren’s natural beauty and the small army of dragons that were amassing before me.
The Pax’s small missiles were still hitting the dragon’s shield wall with full force. The fissures that whipped through the shield had now turned into noticeable cracks that pinged with electricity. And then I heard it; a whiplash tear that felt like an earthquake. It screamed across the dragon shield and just like that the translucent barrier that had been keeping the Pax army at bay dissolved into nothing.
There was a second of shock as everyone realized that the dragon shield had been disabled. All at once, the air was filled with the war cries of dragons. My eyes were trained on Ranel and I saw him flap his great wings and kick off the ground with his powerful back legs. He kicked up such a flurry of dust that I felt as though a sandstorm was headed my way. I ducked for cover behind my rock, but I was still showered with a spell of golden dust. I shook the dirt and grime from my eyes and peeked from around the boulder.
Ranel was flying up through the air, straight for a line of Pax destroyers. I could pick out his roar amongst all the others and I uttered a silent prayer that he would be all right. A breath of heat engulfed me, and I realized that a few dragons were unleashing their toxic breath upon the fleet. Torrents of fire zoomed through the air like a crimson-orange avalanche and I felt sweat pepper my brow.
The dragons attacked the Pax fleet in a storm of gnashing teeth and bursts of fire. The fleet scattered immediately and I watched as ships zigzagged up, down and sideways in an attempt to avoid the dragons’ merciless attack. I saw several ships go up in flames and soon after their bodies zoomed to the ground in undignified clumps of fire ravaged metal.
As I squinted at the wreckage in the sky, a glint caught my eye, followed by the sharp muzzle of a ship. Was it possible that some of the Hielsrane fleet had received Ranel’s messages and made it to Thirren in time to join the battle? I watched with bated breath as two spaceships broke through Thirren’s atmosphere and hurtled towards the battle.