The Dragon Chronicles

by Ellen Campbell

  The Simeons, two boys and a girl, along with their parents, were loaded in a pod next to Jude’s family. Next to them were the Levis, who had protested and strongly believed this was a premature mistake, but who did not want to risk their family’s safety in the backlash against this action that would likely follow. Those pods were near the back of the ship. Their child was also loaded with them, too young to know what was going on, getting bored and a little sleepy now that the loading process was done.

  Judge Issachar, Judge Zebulun and Judge Benjamin were all unmarried, but they were teachers also, so they had herded a number of the documented groups of people who had applied to the Interstellar program on board, helped them load into the communal class seating near the center of the back section. The Judges Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher were also on board, and because of their advanced state of training, had already loaded the cryo-sleep programs and were in the light dozing state that was suggested before take-off.

  None of the families had ever launched from the planet’s surface before. This was a new experience for everyone, in spite of the months (and for some, years) of training. The Dragons, of course, had been through this all before. They sent calming vibrations through their human pilots, who in turn were able to send those calming thoughts to the other humans.

  Pilots were chosen for their ability to interface with the alien mind of the Dragons and the minds of their fellow humans, and Jude had been told he was the best. Jude and Yalta-ba-oath knew the other ships nearby were also finishing up the final stages of pre-flight, but their ship, the Genesis, would be first to go. Yalta-ba-oath had flight seniority.

  Jude was proud he had been chosen as Yalta-ba-oath’s navigational partner. Even though he was much newer to the program than many of the other ships’ navigators, he would be the first to touch the atmosphere. First to reach out a hand to the stars and the nearby planet.

  The final items of the pre-flight takeoff checklist were lit on Jude’s navigational board, just in front of his seat and to the side. Stewards reported the doors and windows locked. Jude checked, once more, the fuel mixture. It was full rich but would be adjusted once they were above 3,000 feet. The ship’s interstellar lights were set and navigational cameras loaded.

  The Dragons had agreed to leave the ship’s transponders in the “off” position for now, until it was certain whether any of the members of the Faction were receiving transmissions. Nobody wanted to tip off the enemy, who was threatening to unleash their weapon any moment now, that the plans for emigration to the Third Planet some were beginning to call Terra, others Earth, were activated. Jude checked all the engine instruments and signaled to Yalta-ba-oath that the checklist was covered.

  It was time to go!

  * * *

  Genesis

  In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth.

  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

  And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

  –Genesis 1

  The ships, ten of them, pierced the atmosphere just above a land mass shaped vaguely like a bare foot without toes. There was a twisting river that the geographers had decided would be the best possible place to land, and the glaciers which touched most of the planet’s upper quadrant were far enough away that there should be warm weather and fertile soil.

  It had been a bumpy trip. Just as the ships, piloted by the Dragons (and their capable human navigators), had been guided out of the atmosphere of their home and leveled off into space’s quiet vacuum, a great explosion had pierced the planet’s sky.

  Clouds of yellow-gold, almost beautiful, definitely terrifying, had billowed upward. Those who were still awake watched the aft cameras, some weeping openly as their planet’s atmosphere was forever changed. The initial plume of golden cloud grew exponentially, quietly for them but probably eardrum piercing on the planet’s surface. The cities could not be seen from this distance, but the flames that could be seen beneath the yellow clouds were undoubtedly destroying everything. The flames reached as high as the clouds for a moment. Near the planet’s southern regions, where the oceans reigned, the watchers could see water plumes vaporizing, the intense heat burning off into steam. As they travelled in space and the cameras began to lose the magnification necessary to see anything other than a vague shape, they could see the vapor adding itself to the clouds, and lightning-like flashes of white-hot energy blasting the entire southern region near the volcano plains.

  There was no hope that anyone who had been left on the planet had survived. The ten ships with seventy passengers and crew each had barely cleared the danger zone when the Factions had exploded their device. Its inventor, John Tycho, was still on the planet, having tried to negotiate with the Faction’s faceless, nameless leaders.

  The families on the ships would never know who it was that set off the planet-killing bomb.

  Those who had opted to take the interplanetary journey without the aid of the cryo-sleep chambers eventually rose and gathered in the crew areas, seeking comfort, hugging, crying. It seemed impossible that their home was gone, and they were on the way to an alien planet.

  If it hadn’t been for the Dragons, some whispered quietly, perhaps this would not have happened. But if it hadn’t been for the Dragons, they would not have been saved, either. The whisperers looked at their sleeping children, faces slack with the dreamless sleep of the cryo-chambers, and sighed.

  The new planet was impossibly blue, broken here and there by brown land masses. In the quadrant oriented upwards from the ships, there were large white bodies that the Dragons called glaciers. They were similar to the peaks of the highest volcanoes on their home planet, but so much larger. The Dragons said that this was a temporary cycle of the planet’s position furthest from the Sola, and that it happened at such an infrequent cycle that it wasn’t to be worried about forever.

  Larger than theirs, and the Dragons reported that its planetary rotation was backwards! That the solar cycle lasted a mere 24 hours, splitting the period between darkness and light into a tiny fraction of time. There was evening, and there was morning. There were nameless animals creeping over the surface of the planet. Plants that would yield unfamiliar fruits. Flowers with unknown scents waited.

  The people on the ship, still reeling from the experience of leaving their home and seeing it destroyed, found hope in their hearts.

  The people, who would take to calling themselves the Tribes in Exile, watched as the ships landed in the driest area, similar to the plains on their home planet. The Sola was just rising in the Eastern skyline and there were a few small groups of the proto-humanoids that lived on this planet gathering to watch the Ships land. The Dragons would go first.

  They were always first.

  It was the end of everything.

  It was a beginning.

  –Safkhet, Star Date 21·520·205500

  * * *

  World News Time-Gazette

  January 15, 20--

  Ancient Rosetta-Stone-Like Text Uncovered! Scientists Stunned!

  The International Scientific community is reeling with the publication of a new translation of an ancient text. Readers may remember the story of a strange sphere being discovered years ago. Many thought it was a hoax, but this new discovery has changed that speculation.

  This week, news that the ancient story of an extra-terrestrial race of beings had come to the Earth was uncovered by a graduate student. When her computer was taken over by a virus, Sonya Lake found the initial installment of an amazing story. Publishers are fighting over the rights to releas
e the rest of what might prove to be a historic text that will change the way we view our own evolution, as well as this planet’s history, and that of the entire solar system. Computer scientists say that what has been done to her computer is impossible. Top history and archeological scientists have given no comment at this time, but an anonymous insider says the story is huge.

  The first of several stories have appeared, and are supposedly written by an ancient scribe named Safkhet. Stay tuned here to the World News Time-Gazette for more information as the story unfolds!

  For wide release

  For more information, contact

  K. Zimmer @ Time-Gazette.com.

  A Word from Kim Wells

  When I was in college, I learned that Venus rotates the opposite of Earth. So, if Shakespeare had been writing Romeo & Juliet on Venus, Romeo would have quipped “It is the West, and Juliet is the sun, arise fair sun…” That was quite a revelation for a young English major. I was fascinated with Venus… the greenhouse clouds that enclose it make it impossible to sustain life. But what if that weren’t always the case? Could Venus have fit within the “Goldilocks” zone of planets in our solar system? And that what if stayed with me.

  The Dragons in this story are inspired by the very first sci-fi I ever read. It was a novel by Robert Heinlein called The Star Beast, and it featured an empathic alien named Lummox. My star dragons will have a much bigger story, of their journey from their home planet in a star system far, far away, in the future, I hope.

  The other spur for the story was another college course—Linguistics. Also as an English major. Studying communication, the way languages work and don’t work, was fascinating. I had always enjoyed writing, and studying grammar, and the way it works to create a language, was something new. I even learned then that bees can communicate through dance, and that they can lie. But more importantly, we talked about the Ur language, the mythological pre-tower of Babel way that everyone on the planet could communicate with each other.

  And one night, on a long drive home from college, this story was born. The way most of my stories come to me is the first line—and the rest, the structure of the Christian Bible backwards from Revelations to Genesis, followed. The idea of a culture before our culture, that would help shape human history, a pre-Atlantis, perhaps, is something I’d like to develop more. And I want to write a longer novel with this story as its introduction. With any luck, that will be forthcoming sometime this year.

  I thank Samuel Peralta for including me in this collection, and Ellen Campbell for her able editing and awesome support. Sistah from another Mistah. Thanks to Lesley Smith for her beta read, where she suggested a little more framing information. And my hubs, as usual, for some of the science-wiencey bits. If I got any of that wrong, it’s definitely my fault.

  For more information on my other books, including my novel Mariposa and its companion series Children of Mariposa, starting with Lady in Blue, please check out my website at http://www.kimwells.net. I’m also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/kimwellswrites, on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dandeliondreams and email at kimwellswrites@gmail.com …Come say hi!

  Grey

  by Chris Pourteau

  “I SEE YOU CAME TODAY after all. I didn’t know if you would.”

  The girl caught up to her shadow as she entered the cave. As always, the dragon’s voice greeted her before she could see him. He’d heard her coming, her sandaled feet scraping on the rocks as she ascended the cliffs. He no doubt smelled her scent on the wind, more acute now that she’d flowered into early womanhood.

  “When last you visited, you said you weren’t sure you’d return,” he said.

  In all the girl’s years of coming here, in all her visits, the dragon’s deep, rumbling growl still startled her when she first heard it. His stare always had a way of raising the hair on the back of her neck, the visceral reaction of a human in the presence of an old enemy.

  “I know what I said last time, but I had to come.” Her tone was cryptic as she placed a hand on the cool rock of the cave mouth to steady herself. “And I always come at this time on this day of the week, Grey.”

  She sat down against the cool wall, opposite his sleepy stare. Despite the age and weariness his heavy eyelids carried, the sheer bulk of him—his long talons and massive teeth, though both were chipped and brittle; his powerful legs and tail, though slack with loose scales and dust colored—made her keep her distance without thinking about it. Whenever she heard his booming grumble or felt lured into the languid slyness of his green gaze, her human instinct threatened to overwhelm her, make her run screaming from the cave.

  The dragon regarded her with his large, lizard eyes. “Why do you insist on calling me that? It vexes me. Being unique among creatures, I need no name.”

  The girl shifted her weight on the thin dirt of the rocky floor. She’d been in such a hurry to get here today, she’d forgotten the blanket she usually brought to sit on. The sharp stone bit at her bony frame.

  “Because your scales are grey,” she said for the thousandth time. The old exercise of sparring over his name salved her human fear, as it always did. With a quip in her voice, she added, “They’re your most distinguishing feature.”

  A long, low exhale. A rumble of airy bellows pockmarked with holes. Stronger once, more powerful. Old now, but still deep and yawning, like the caverns around them reaching far into the earth.

  “You are nothing if not a practical girl. If I were blue, I suppose you’d call me Blue?”

  The dragon lifted his head and peered sharply at her. The eyes were old, yes, but they could still pierce her with their burning curiosity. His front legs were crossed, relaxed, and his tail wrapped unmoving around his massive body to keep him warm against the winter cold.

  The girl smiled as they settled into their familiar greeting game. “Of course! Thank goodness you’re not fuchsia.” Each time she visited, they teased one another in this way, and each time she reminded Grey just how much worse her nickname for him could be.

  The dragon’s mouth broadened into a massive smile. Though once full of shining, sharp teeth, only lonely sentries, yellowed and worn down in their twos and threes, now stood guard over their domain.

  “Perhaps I should call you Red instead of Amanda.” One scaly eyebrow rose slowly as he said, “Your hair is your most distinguishing feature.”

  She closed one eye and replied with a barbed tongue, “But it’s not my name.”

  Low laughter from Grey. “Fuchsia—that was a good one this time,” he said. “I’m glad you were able to come. I needed a smile.” The dragon’s expression grew serious as he said, “Few are left to defend the border, you said. And your village is picking up stakes.”

  “The Bane are still gathering along the frontier,” she answered, nodding her head toward the cave mouth. “Scores of them, maybe hundreds. My father refuses to move until they cross it. We still have time, he says.”

  A thrumming whisper, the sound of air wheezing. The dragon’s way of sighing, she knew. “Your father will be surprised by Death itself when it comes, I think.”

  “Well, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say. Death could come across the frontier tomorrow. For us all.”

  Air releasing again, a bored sound. Like the dragon had played this scene many times before and was growing tired of the repeat performance.

  “No, I suppose it wasn’t. And what of the king?”

  Now, it was the girl’s turn to blow out a breath. “He sits on his throne. He’ll sit safely in his mountain keep and let The Bane burn all his lands, rape all his women, and enslave all his men. Only when they threaten him directly will he come down and fight.”

  Grey blinked slowly and lowered his head back to the floor, relaxing again into his usual repose. But he never took his eyes from the girl. “Some things never change. There are always more cowardly kings than courageous ones.”

  The girl shifted her weight. The rock was digging into her rump again, no matter how she
moved. And Grey’s declaration, rendered with malice, irritated her. Especially now, when her people could use a brave leader. “Perhaps there would be more courageous kings if you dragons hadn’t killed them all.”

  His eyes narrowed at her. Less sleepy now, more fiery.

  “Well, Amanda, given that only I remain while many of your kings yet populate the land, I would say we dragons fared the worst.”

  Now more than her butt was uncomfortable. She often had a way of speaking before thinking, especially when anger fueled her words. But in truth, she hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. Despite their sometimes gruff exchanges, she’d considered Grey a friend since she’d stumbled into his cave as a little girl looking for a refuge from the cold.

  “Shall I light the fire for you?” she asked.

  The airy bellows again. The throaty sigh. “I suppose if I’m to be warm tonight, you’ll have to. Thank you.”

  It was difficult, almost impossible, for Grey to produce fire now, a surrender to his advanced age. So whenever she came, Amanda always offered to light one for him to warm his home. She moved past him, not quite on tiptoe, to the open crevice that formed a natural chimney. That nagging horror of prey for hunter tickled her neck as she turned her back on Grey to gather the wood. The self-same dread that had inspired humans to exterminate the dragons. All save one.

  But she pushed it aside in her mind—replacing it with the trust she’d formed for the old dragon over years of talking until sunrise, snuggled against the cold—and that soothed her heart. “I wish we were stronger,” Amanda said, arranging the kindling in the circle of blackened, thick stones in the wall. “I wish we could fight The Bane. I wish we didn’t have to move.”