Taken by the Alien Dragon

by Stella Cassy

  “Send a message to Tarion. See if he can’t draw some of them away from us on a third flank, approach the planet from the bottom.”

  It was calling him in a bit early, but during battle, tactics often changed. I just hoped the grand commander wasn’t too stubborn to take a tip from a lowly old space-pirate like me.

  “Brace!” Wrigo called.

  On the screen everything became a mess. The visual images disappeared as countless missiles began exploding and the flak reflected everything this way and that, blinding everyone. I winced as I saw the list of ships on the side of the screen begin to flicker, and then they started disappearing, half a dozen at a time.

  “How long until we get to the planet?” I shouted across the bridge.

  “ETA, two microns.”

  The bridge shook and groaned, then the very ship itself seemed to scream.

  “Report!”

  “Shields… twenty percent. Comms damaged.”

  I stared at Oyna, as she sat back in her chair, and put her hands behind her head, a slow chittering escaping her lips.

  “Oyna!”

  “Comms down. I can do nothing.”

  I stared at the screen ahead of me and then nearly fainted. Every single ship’s name went gray.

  “My fleet…”

  “Entering atmosphere!” Wrigo yelled. “Slowing descent… power systems damaged…”

  The ship began to whine and scream, and the bridge juddered more. I stared across the bridge at Moddoc. I mouthed Sorry to him. He balled his fist, smacked it against his heart, then pointed at me.

  I gave him a wan smile.

  There was a massive thump, and then I flew up into the air, crashing back down and landing in my commander’s chair.

  “Report?” I asked hopefully.

  “We just bounced, sir,” Wrigo replied.

  “Bounced?”

  “Yes, sir. The shields came back online just in-time and took the brunt of it. We are now airborne. Approximately one thousand flyers incoming.”

  We’d made it! I stared at the screen, seeing if I could make sense of anything. On the right-hand side, slowly the names of ships starting re-lighting, flickering back to bright green.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, pointing.

  Oyna hopped to her feet, a happy clicking preceding her answer. “Comms are back up!”

  Of course. I hadn’t lost all those ships. We’d just lost our ability to track them and the computers had assumed the worst. Stupid things.

  “Those flyers? Are they going to be a problem?” I asked Wrigo.

  “Maybe…”

  “Maybe?”

  Wrigo was staring down at his screen, a confused look on his face. He pressed something and then, on the screen in front of us, six small video feeds appeared, showing what was going on outside the ship.

  There were hundreds of the flyers heading our way, but before our eyes they disintegrating and exploding, dozens of them at a time.

  Moddoc began to laugh.

  “Whoever’s flying those things is even crazier than you. They’re tearing through them like hot-rock smashing fruit. Looks just as tasty too.”

  It sure did look crazy.

  “Who’ve we got flying those things anyway?”

  “They’re two princes. Twins. Bofrek and Botyn. They came to join the fleet when you sent out the call because they thought it would be fun. They had the best aptitude tests for those kinds of craft. I didn’t think they’d be quite so… enthusiastic though,” Wrigo said, shaking his head as we continued to watch the flyers disintegrating into confetti around us.

  “Message from Tarion,” Oyna reported. “One more Pax Prime destroyed. Assistance requested.”

  “Can we help?” I asked Wrigo.

  “Shields back up to eighty percent. We’ve still got a few missiles left. Let’s do it.”

  “Get the rest of the fleet around us, and let’s blast them from below.”

  In moments, Wrigo and his team had us zooming half-way around the planet, before launching us up through the clouds into the high atmosphere. Once we were a few hundred miles above the surface we got a view of the battle raging above.

  Tarion and his armada of war vessels were fighting the two remaining Pax Prime ships, as well as countless cruisers and smaller war vessels. It looked like most of them had exhausted their missiles and were now blasting each other with heavy lasers and railguns, a hundred wars of attrition in a hundred different ship-battles. It was a confusing mess that looked like the world’s best fireworks display from our position.

  “Which one’s Tarion’s ship?” I asked, frowning as I tried to get a visual.

  “It’s behind that Pax Prime. Looks like it’s being crushed between a dozen cruisers and the beast.” Wrigo frowned. “Shields falling rapidly. He’s going to be toast.”

  “What do you think?” I said to Moddoc. “Shall we go help him out?”

  He smashed his hands together. “Go!”

  “You heard the man,” I said to Wrigo. “See if some of our ships can’t distract those cruisers, and let’s try and give the Prime’s shields something else to worry about from our side.”

  In short order, twenty of my ships were attacking the cruisers, while the rest of us launched our remaining missiles and began firing our guns at the Pax Prime’s ‘quiet’ side. It wasn’t quiet for long. In moments it began firing hundreds of railguns in our direction.

  “What’s Tarion’s position look like?” I asked.

  “Shields at six percent… five… three…”

  “Fuck!”

  I glanced around the bridge and saw Moddoc hurrying off it. I had no time to worry about where he was going though.

  “Tarion’s ship… it’s… repositioning.” Wrigo was frowning down at his screen, brow furrowed, sweat dripping.

  “What’s happening?”

  “They’re going to ram the Pax Prime. They’re pointing right at it. All shields are forward. Remaining power at the engines. And…”

  I stared at the screen in front of me. Wrigo had Tarion’s ship placed right in the middle, and as we watched, it jolted forward like it had been stung by a hornet.

  I squeezed my nails into my palms so hard I would have bled if I hadn’t already bitten my fingernails to the quick.

  “And… it’s done. Shields, zero percent. Power, engines, gone.”

  The ship crashed right into the side of the Pax Prime, pounding through what little shields the giant beast had remaining. The two of them would be destroyed together.

  Wincing, I stared to see what would happen. Tarion’s ship’s front at first seemed to glide straight inside, and I half-hoped it might just sail right through and emerge, disabled but largely in one piece on the other side. But it didn’t.

  After its nose was buried, the rest of the ship seemed to pile up behind it, crashing into a wider and wider portion of the side of the ruined Pax Prime vessel.

  “Pax Prime vessel disabled!” Wrigo said excitedly. “Looks like it’s powerplant has been compromised… brace…”

  I felt it before I could see it, a juddering that poured through our own ship. Wrigo had already sent us hurtling backward as fast as he could, but it was too late to avoid all of the explosion. A dozen warning signals went off as the ship shook and groaned at yet another massive shock. How much more could it take?

  When the image on the screen returned to normal, there was nothing but a trillion pieces of floating debris. The Pax Prime ship and Tarion’s command ship, both utterly, utterly destroyed.

  “This is some fuckin’ battle,” I murmured under my breath.

  “You’ve done well,” said a voice directly behind me.

  I spun around, mouth agape.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” said Tarion, who was stood there, arm around his mate, Carissa, “but I’m going to need to take charge of the battle from this ship now.”

  “I…”

  Well, fuck.

  28

  Moddoc
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br />   Once I could see what was inevitable, I knew one of two things would happen. Either Tarion would be dead, or he would be here.

  So I went to the transporter room, not quite sure which one I was really wishing for. I stood there for two minutes before I got my answer. The ship shook and whined, while I waited.

  When we were aboard the bridge, I hadn’t noticed all the impacts we were suffering. It wasn’t that the bridge was any more shielded, it was just that there was so much going on that you didn’t notice every pesky little missile that had the audacity to explode into the ship.

  But when you were stood in the quiet, unmanned transporter room, with nothing else to draw your attention, you heard every last little crash and bang.

  “Commander!” I shouted when the shimmering image of Tarion and Carissa finally appeared before me. “You’re alive!”

  “I have to be. The battle is not yet won,” he answered with a growl. Almost before he had finished arriving, he was already marching out of the room.

  “Show me to the bridge.”

  “That’s why I’m here. Follow me.”

  When we arrived, Tarion announced that he was taking control of the battle, and the ship. Essie did her best not to look too annoyed, but I couldn’t say she did a perfect job. I was briefly worried that she might tell Tarion to fuck off her ship but thank the stars she did no such thing.

  “What shall I do?” she asked Tarion who was already in the process of familiarizing himself with the bridge crew.

  “We will begin a ground assault shortly. Assist Moddoc.”

  I had to give a wry smile at that. Essie was not a ground-assault person. What Tarion was really saying was that no bridge could have more than one commander. He wanted her off of there and that was just about the nicest way he could say it.

  I beckoned for Essie to follow me. She walked across the bridge to the door where I was waiting, then stopped, turning to take in one final view.

  “I feel like I’m abandoning everyone, leaving before the battle is over,” she said with a frowning sigh.

  “They will understand that you have not been given a choice. Come with me to the hangar. Soon the real battle will commence.”

  She rolled her eyes at that and I can’t say I blamed her. To her, space would always be where the real battles would be. And to be fair, taking down a Pax Prime ship was much grander than anything that could happen planetside. Land vessels never even approached a similar size.

  We stopped on the way to the hangar so that she could grab some more body armor.

  “How do I look?” she asked with a grin when she finished putting it on.

  “Like… like a warrior princess,” I declared.

  And she did.

  She was coated in incredibly expensive maroon-red body armor that made her look part dragon herself. That, along with the incredible synthetic wings she had. From head to toe she was covered in the near-impregnable intelligent flexi-shield that was light enough that even a human female could carry it with relative ease.

  “Now, do you want to see my true form?”

  She cocked her head at me. “What do you mean?”

  “My dragon form.”

  To be truthful, I wasn’t even sure I could do it. Not since Alm had died had I even tried. For a long while I thought my dragon was dead, but recently, I’d felt it stirring again. Like a volcano, it seemed my dragon had been dormant. Now, inside, like a snake in a bag, I could feel it writhing to escape again.

  “What do you mean? I thought this was it?”

  I laughed. “Oh, no. Besides, haven’t you always wanted to ride a dragon into battle?”

  She slowly nodded her head and stared at me.

  I closed my eyes, squeezed my talons into my palms, and let my dragon slowly make itself known. It had been so long… could I still do it right? Would I mess up and rend myself in twain?

  With a shake of my head and a toss of my shoulders, I let the dragon inside of me show itself for the first time in years. My head dropped back, I let out a roar, and then…

  I grew.

  “What the actual fuck?”

  When I opened my eyes again, I was the size of four of her Dirty Duet spaceships. Imagine what would have happened if I’d shifted in one of those?

  I turned my head away from Essie, and tentatively blew out a column of smoke.

  “Is that fucking smoke?”

  I snarled a yes at her, and she visibly quivered. With fear? With surprise? With attraction? I knew not.

  “Wait till the doors open and I show you the fire.”

  I lowered my head and neck to the floor, placed my left wing down, and made a ramp for her to climb aboard.

  “Ready to ride?”

  “Holy fuck yes!”

  She ran up my wing and bounced into the air with a somersault before planting herself firmly at the base of my neck. Strapped to her back she had a large rifle, though I didn’t think she would need it once we were on the ground.

  My fire would take care of any threats.

  “As soon as Tarion has us back in the atmosphere, the surface war begins,” I announced with an anticipatory chuckle of smoke-billowing laughter. “This is my side of things.”

  Once enough of the orbiting ships had been destroyed, the transport ships brought down thousands upon thousands of Drakon warriors. Essie and I were the first to emerge back onto our homeworld, but within minutes we were swiftly joined by many more, all immediately shifting into their dragon forms.

  “Woo!” Essie shouted from my neck as I flapped my wings, soaring us into the familiar air of Thirren. It tasted of smoke and brimstone, sulfur and lava — home. I deftly dived down toward the updraft of a hot-vent, and as soon as we caught it, we flew up in a twirling gyre, up, up, up just like I had as a youth, before I’d learned about pain and suffering and death. I felt like a kid again. A kid with a beautiful queen on his back.

  “Watch out, incoming!” Essie yelled.

  A smile tried to appear on my lips, but it had been so long since I was in dragon form that I couldn’t make it work. Not that smiles ever worked well on the elongated dragon-face anyway.

  After scanning the sky, I spotted what Essie meant. A pair of Pax fliers were heading toward us. My eyes were good, far more effective than in my humanoid form, and so as soon as they launched their missiles, I spotted them.

  Let’s see if I’ve still got it…

  “They’ve fired missiles!” Her call came well after I’d spotted them.

  I prepared my flame breath, feeling it nice and hot within me, steel-melting in its intensity.

  My timing was perfect. It was like I’d never been away. I launched a cone of flame, timed so that the very hottest part of it struck the missiles. Immediately their sensors were destroyed, making them directionless, but then the real effect of my heat hit them, burning off their nosecones and then igniting the charges behind them.

  “Woo-hoo!” Essie cackled from my back.

  There was the sound of zinging rifle shots as she took a couple of potshots at the fliers as they came into range. Of course she missed. Even the best shot in the galaxy would struggle to hit a moving, flying target from the back of a dragon turning mid-flap in mid-flight.

  But I didn’t need to be so precise. With powerful strokes of my shoulder muscles, I flew us up toward the flyers. With another pair of hot cones of flame, I turned the flyers into fallers, and then they turned themselves into pieces as they crashed into the ground below us.

  The air was surprisingly light on further aircraft. I peered around into the horizon, and the reason why became obvious. My fellow Drakon were scourging the skies. In the distance were dozens and dozens of them, while rising from the ground below were plumes of dark smoke — not like the steam from the vents, or the grey smoke from volcanoes, but the dark smoke of crashed Pax fliers.

  I took us lower and began to search the ground for targets. We saw a group of four Pax, pointing small arms up in our direction.

 
“Look down there,” I yelled.

  When I was sure she’d had time to spot them, I blew a cone of fire at them, setting the white fur on each of them aflame and filling the air with the aroma of sizzling meat.

  “Nice!” she shouted. “Cook the little rat-bastards!”

  And cook them we did. Flame-grilled, spit-roasted, medium-rare to overdone. We flew low and fast, flaming and shooting at them as we went. I let Essie get a few, hovering as still as I could so that she could aim her rifle at the bastard enemy, cheering along with her when their heads popped wide or their bodies disintegrated in half with her shots.

  But the flight was also a sad one. We flew over ruined homes, destroyed towns, and torn down monuments. The Pax bastards had not been kind to Thirren during their brief stewardship of our home planet. And it made me even more vengeful with each living one we spotted.

  For hours we flew, around and around, crisping-up and blowing apart the enemy. I was nearing exhaustion, and Essie’s shouted whoops and hollers were getting raspy as she lost her voice. No doubt it was from overuse, but the unending smoke was surely rough on her vocal cords too.

  The last place we attacked was a small military installation that looked half-finished that the Pax were working on. It seemed to be a missile-emplacement for planetary defense, but as yet there were no missiles in the staging area. But there was a barracks, some command structures, and a pair of guard towers.

  “One last one!” I yelled up at her.

  She responded by thumping my neck with the butt of her gun. I didn’t know if that was a simple agreement, or meant that she wanted more, more, more.

  I intended to return to our initial landing spot after though, to reconvene with Tarion and see what reports I could gather on the ground assault. From what I had seen, it had been an overwhelming victory landside, much more so than the space-battle, but to get some actual numbers and figures rather than just my own impressions would be an immense help.

  I flew in low, blasting the barracks building with flame. I was mildly disappointed when not a single solitary Pax ran out screaming. They must already have left. Next I took out the command buildings, and this time we were rewarded with one ‘runner’, a column of orange flame that made it half a dozen yards out of the building before collapsing into a smoldering heap.