by Leslie Chase
"Look there, darling," Josie told her daughter, pointing at the distant Earth. "That's where your mommy comes from. Someday you'll get to visit there, too, and you'll see your grandparents. Once the stupid governments sort out all the details, anyway."
"I'm not sure that our little princess can grasp the politics of it just yet, my Empress," Verikan said, striding up behind Josie and slipping his arm around her waist. She chuckled and leaned into him, shaking her head. Empress. I wonder if I'll ever get used to being called that? It still sounded ridiculous, but there was no escaping it.
"Maybe not, but I need someone to complain to, don't I?"
"You can't blame Earth, love," he told her. "We did nearly attack them and it's going to take more than a few months to get over that. Then there are the renegades — as long as I don't have complete control over the dragons, your people have every right to be wary of us."
"I know, I know," Josie said, shaking her head. Without a unifying cause, the dragons had scattered across Mars, and it was a constant headache to try and get them to cooperate with their government. It didn't help that the government right now consisted mostly of Verikan and Josie, but they were working on it. Fortunately, with a population measured in the hundreds what was left of the Dragon Empire didn't need much governing.
Even so, there were holdouts. Warriors who didn't acknowledge the authority of the Empire at all, or who claimed that Verikan was a traitor to it, had turned their backs on the palace. There were other dragon settlements in the deserts of Mars now, not all of which would obey their Emperor. Trouble was brewing out there, even if for the moment they were quiet.
At least Earth had acknowledged the Dragon Empire's prior claim to Mars, and the thirst human corporations had for dragon technology put little Akade's hunger to shame. That provided wealth enough to build something here, and the promise of more to come as the two species learned to cooperate. But the negotiations dragged on and on, and Josie was getting a little sick of it. Akade should be able to visit her grandparents, if nothing else — but apparently that would be a 'state visit' now, which meant there was a lot of red tape to work through.
"There's a lot of work to do before you can go home, my love," Verikan said hugging her again. Josie laughed, looking up and smiling as she met his eyes.
"You're being silly again," she said firmly. "I've told you, this is my home now. Wherever you are, and our darling daughter. The rest of the galaxy can wait."
Turning her back on the balcony and the bright blue dot that was Earth, Josie took Verikan by the hand and together they stepped into their future.
Dragon Pirate’s Prize
1
Laura
Laura Martigan looked up at the dark sky and sighed as the skyship Lucky Star drifted to a stop. They were still miles from home and the night promised to be a cold one even by the standards of Mars.
"God dammit, Adele, haven't we been out here long enough?"
Her boss grinned at her and wagged a finger. "You know better than that, Laura," Adele St. George said, snapping her suit's helmet on. "We've got another reading to check out, and the sooner we track something down the better. It could be the crystals we've been looking for."
Behind them, the rest of the team suited up. None of them looked happy about leaving the pressurized interior of the Lucky Star, but they weren't the type to complain. Not right in front of the boss, anyway — Laura knew that there'd be plenty of bitching once they got back to the bar at Olympus Colony. She'd even join in, given the chance.
Though if they did find some buried alien technology, there wouldn't be anyone complaining. The bounty for bringing back a hold full of dragon crystals would see to that.
"I don't like it," she said once her own helmet was fastened in place. Her suit had a quantum communicator linked to Adele's, one of the perks Adele got from her family position high up the LakeTech corporate ladder. Laura herself was another perk, hired by Adele's family to keep her safe. She just wished that Adele would listen to her advice, once in a while. "We're pushing our luck as it is, and this isn't exactly legal. I'm being paid to keep you safe; please stop making that difficult."
"It's not exactly illegal either, which is why we've got to hurry," Adele said, cheerfully encouraging. "Soon enough this isn't going to be possible, so the more we get done now the better. If we can get alien technology off Mars then LakeTech gets a huge step up in research. That's worth a tiny risk, isn't it?"
Adele's breezy confidence was exactly the response Laura had expected, and it took her a deep breath to keep from swearing. When she'd taken the job to bodyguard a corporate heiress on Mars she hadn't expected it to be so exasperating. Maybe I was kidding myself, she thought. I knew no one else was keen to take this work. It hardly mattered. Any excuse would have done to get off Earth and the mess she'd made of her life there.
The skyship's doors opened with a puff of escaping air and the team lowered themselves onto the red rocky surface outside. Laura had to admit that the scenery was spectacular — inside the ship they'd all been cramped together and it was hard to appreciate the sights. Outside, feeling the alien world under her boots, it inspired a touch of wonder in her that she was determined never, ever, to admit to Adele.
The rocky terrain looked different from Earth in a way that she couldn't describe. Maybe a poet could make something out of the difference, maybe an artist could capture it in paint. Laura didn't let it distract her, carefully scanning the red horizon for any sign of a threat to her client.
The skies were quiet, though that didn't mean much. Mars was a lot smaller than Earth, and that meant that the horizon was closer. Something coming at them quickly could reach the team faster than Laura liked to think about, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. She sighed, feeling nostalgic for the days when all she'd had to worry about were corporate kidnapping attempts. Mars should have been relatively safe from those...
A hand touched her shoulder and she had to restrain her reflex to defend herself. It was only Adele, smiling face visible through the suit's faceplate.
"I know you're trying to look out for me," Adele said. "But we're fine. There's nothing to worry about. The dragons and their empire are half a world away."
Adele was right, of course. But it was half a very small world, and not as comforting as it sounded. The Dragon Empire might be small, and it might be as far away as it was possible to be on Mars, but they still claimed the whole planet. And they were the remnants of a force that had planned to conquer Earth — a civilization of warriors with technology and abilities that humans only partly understood. Underestimating the threat they posed was, in Laura's professional opinion, stupid.
And then there were the rogue aliens, the ones who had refused to acknowledge the Emperor. Those could turn up anywhere, and they didn't like humans one bit. There were reports of some dragons becoming pirates, attacking and looting human settlements and skyships. None this far out, not yet, but the reports got closer all the time. Laura kept pointing out that the danger was only getting worse as time passed.
But that was an argument they'd had dozens of times in the months since the re-emergence of the alien empire, and she knew she wasn't going to win it this time either. The counter was reasonable, too: the more of the alien technology humans found before the aliens could secure it, the better defended Earth would be if relations went bad. No one on Earth wanted to see an interplanetary war, but if one happened they had to know what they were up against.
The skyships were already a part of that bounty of technology. No one knew how or why, but an electric current passed through the alien crystals made them float. Some said that was how the aliens could fly in the thin, almost nonexistent, Martian atmosphere. Whether that was true or not, it had made traveling on Mars a lot easier for humans.
Around the ship, the team was spreading out looking for whatever the sensors had picked up. One of the few things that they knew about the alien technology was that it messed with radio signa
ls — that interference was what they had detected, but it was hard to pin down precisely. Laura grimaced silently, hauling herself up onto the roof of the Lucky Star to get a better view of the scene. If there was going to be trouble, she wanted to be the first to see it.
Out of long, carefully ingrained habit, she checked her rifle again. Nothing had changed since the last time she'd looked. It was still fully charged, clear of dust, ready to fire. It wouldn't have been her first choice of weapon, she was a bodyguard not a soldier. Unfortunately, the heavy gun was the only thing in the Olympus armory that might damage a dragon in flight. The only portable weapon, anyway — a battery of missiles would defend the colony itself, but she could hardly take those out with her. As it was, it had been a fight to get Captain Yates, the head of colony security, to let her take the rifle.
Below, she watched Adele join the search. That was one thing she would say for her client — she wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty and join in with the work. Everyone here had assumed Adele was going to be too delicate an heiress to do anything herself, that she was on Mars as an adventure, but she had proved herself willing and able to join in and get stuff done.
It was Daniel who made the find. Waving and shouting into the radio, he brought everyone running.
"What is that?" Adele asked, and Laura almost smiled at the sound of wonder in her voice. Maybe this had been worth the risk after all.
It took an effort of will to keep her eyes scanning the horizon rather than joining everyone at the find. Finding an alien artifact was still a huge deal, especially if it was more than just another trove of the crystals. The general band was full of interference, but that wasn't enough to mask the amazed chatter of everyone.
"Is that a dragon?" someone asked, their identity hidden by the static.
"Holy shit, it's massive," someone else said.
Laura couldn't help herself. Clicking over to a visual channel, she watched Adele's helmet camera to see what the others had found. Static blurred the image, but there was enough to see the desiccated corpse of the giant flying lizard. The centuries hadn't been kind to it, and dust storms had buried most of the alien. Much of what was left had been flayed by the sand, exposing heavy bones which seemed too big for something that could fly.
"Let's get it uncovered," Adele said, and even through the static her awe came through loud and clear. Her voice broke the workers' paralysis and they set to work, brushing the sand off the gigantic body.
It wasn't easy to resist the temptation to go and get a closer look herself, but Laura stayed where she was. Keeping one eye on the broadcast and one on the horizon, she tried to watch both carefully.
That's the enemy, she told herself as more of the skeleton was uncovered. That's what I'll have to fight if something goes wrong.
It wasn't a comfortable thought. What was left of the dragon's hide was thick and covered in heavy scales, and the creature was huge. She'd seen pictures and read reports, intellectually she knew that they were giants, but it was different to see one so close up.
She couldn't help noticing that the mouth was easily big enough to bite a human in half and that the teeth were big as daggers. They still looked sharp, too, despite centuries of exposure to the dust and sand. With a shiver, she switched off the visuals.
Adele was in her element, taking readings and measurements. Laura tuned her out, focusing on her own job, until she realized what the other woman was planning.
"We are not taking that with us," she said sternly over the quantum communicator. That, at least, wasn't bothered by static — whatever it was about the alien technology that interfered with radio signals, it left their private comms alone.
"Of course we are," Adele said. Her voice was cheerful with a touch of steel under the surface. "This is a major find, Laura. We know the dragons have implanted technology, plus there's a lot that we can learn about their physiology from a body."
"It's grave robbing." Laura crossed her arms, despite the fact that Adele couldn't see her.
"Whoever this was, they weren't buried," Adele responded. "And once we've learned what we can from them, we can send the body back to get a proper funeral. Leaving them out here and pretending we never found them won't make that happen any quicker."
Adele didn't sound entirely happy about that, but she did sound determined. This was, Laura realized, another argument she was going to lose. That was the problem with trying to fight the woman who signed the checks. Sighing, she opened the skyship's cargo area, hoping that it wouldn't be big enough for the dragon. Getting it inside was, in any case, going to be a big job for the dozen people they had available.
As the men started to tie cables around the body, Laura saw movement. At first she paid it no attention, too focused on the dragon's corpse, and then she remembered where she was. There were no birds here, no wildlife. Nothing should be moving in the sky.
Standing, she snapped the rifle from her back with practiced ease, looking through the sights at the approaching dot in the sky. Her heart thumped in her chest as she confirmed her fears.
"Dragon! Drop that damned thing and get back aboard," she said into the radio. Distantly, she felt pleased with the calm controlled way she said it. Almost as though she wasn't afraid. Checking the horizon, she saw another dragon, and then a third.
The chatter on the radio turned to panicked cries as the workers dropped the cables they were weaving around the dead dragon and ran towards the Lucky Star. Laura tuned them out, dropping to one knee and aiming carefully at the lead dragon.
There was no way this was a chance encounter. There were simply too few humans and dragons on Mars for them to have blundered into each other like this. No, the aliens had to be here looking for them, and that meant that they were in trouble.
The dragon in her sights was huge, majestic, and impossible. Heavy red scales covered his body, and she could see the last on the sun's light gleaming off teeth and talons that could tear metal. He soared through the thin atmosphere with a speed Laura could hardly believe, wings spread wide and eyes gleaming as it turned towards them. The other two dragons followed.
Her hope that they'd avoided being seen vanished and she tightened her finger on the trigger, taking up the slack and lining up her shot.
It can't fly, a distant part of her mind told her. The air was far too thin. But with the same technology that kept the skyship aloft, the dragon flew gracefully closer. Raising her sights slightly, she snapped off a warning shot over the lead dragon's head. Hopefully he would turn away and wouldn't want a fight.
The dragons answered by diving low and streaking towards them over the rocks. An attack run, Laura thought, lowering her aim and hoping that she was right about this rifle's stopping power.
The ship's thrusters roared back to life underneath her as she squeezed the trigger.
2
Rorax
The thin winds of Mars whipped sand across Rorax's wings as he skimmed the ground, baring his teeth at the human scavengers. His gamble had paid off, and he'd found the prize he was looking for.
It hadn't been easy to find, out on these barren plains. The risk was great — he'd been out on the surface for hours, and while his warform could hold a breath for most of a day he was pushing the limits of his endurance. He wasn't sure that he could get back to his lair on the air he had remaining, but he hadn't been willing to give up this chance.
Now, finally, he'd found his prey. Human looters, tearing the history of his people from under the rocks of Mars. The floating ship — floating using stolen dragon technology — was carefully bare of identifying marks, as were the pressure suits the humans were wearing, but these had to be the people he was hunting. What were the odds of a separate group of scavengers being here?
He signaled his wingmates and turned towards their prey, speeding towards the human ship.
One of the humans was alert enough to spot their approach and respond. Shots from the human on top of the transport snapped over Rorax's head, bolts of energy
leaving a tingling sensation on his skin. He snarled again, diving low and banking left and right to throw off the shooter's aim, but the next bolt flew true. It struck his shoulder hard, staggering him and sending pain shooting through his body. Rorax nearly tumbled into the ground before he recovered.
Whoever that is, they're a good shot, he grudgingly admitted. If that weapon had a little more power, it would have taken him out of the air. As it was, he hoped not to have to take another hit. Beating his powerful wings, Rorax pulled up, and the next bolt scorched his belly as he rose over it.
Then he was close enough. Opening his jaws wide, he breathed flame.
The white-hot blast tore into the rock beside the humans' transport and washed over the side of the vehicle itself. The shooter leaped off the far side as the vehicle rocked, snapping off a wild shot and vanishing from view. One of the thrusters twisted under the heat of his flames, and the ship dropped into the sands, shuddering to a halt.
Grorg breathed another blast of fire along its surface, sending molten metal flying. Rorax swallowed his anger at that — they weren't here to kill the humans, not if they didn't have to. But Grorg wasn't the type to care about that. At least Tamak, their youngest companion, was doing his job. He pulled up and circled high over the fight, watching for surprises and ready to help if he was needed.
Rorax flew past and banked around for another pass, only for a bolt of energy to tear through his wing as he turned. His sharp turn became a tumble into the rocks below, and it was only long practice that let him curl and roll on impact. Otherwise, he'd have smashed headlong into the ground.
Lucky shot, or good aim? He didn't spare the question much thought as he gathered himself and charged, injured wing dragging behind him. He would still be able to fly, but not well — certainly not well enough to avoid more shots from that marksman. We'll just have to settle this on foot, he thought as he charged back toward the transport and the waiting humans.
