Dekarna stumbled. She let her momentum carry her to the ground and rolled away. She sprang to her feet.
Ashtiga pounced on her. Teeth sank into Dekarna’s shoulder. Dekarna swung her tail into her attacker’s rib cage. A blast of air escaped Ashtiga’s lungs, but she held fast.
Caldic sprang in for the kill. Her foreclaws raked Dekarna’s sides. Caldic gripped the younger dragon from behind. In another second, she could deliver a killing bite to Dekarna’s spine.
Dekarna’s tail whipped around Ashtiga’s leg. She kicked Ashtiga’s knee as hard as she could. Cracking bone echoed in the arena. Ashtiga slumped, pulling Dekarna down and forward.
It was just enough to turn Caldic’s deadly strike into a near-miss. Dekarna kicked the knee again.
Ashtiga’s scream released her jaws from Dekarna’s shoulder. Dekarna drove a foreclaw into her eye socket, bursting the soft organ nestled there. Blood spurted over her arm. She clenched her fingers, firmly gripping the older dragon’s skull. She reared her own skull back, smashing it into Caldic’s snout again and again.
Cragg observed their ferocity with grim satisfaction. This battle required more savagery than strategy, which suited him well.
Dekarna could not have known that Cragg had given each of her opponents the same talk he had given her before the combat. He had taken them individually to the chamber of tanks below his private quarters. He had told each one what a worthy queen she would make, and he held out the promise of extended life the bodies in his tanks would give her and her offspring. Deceit meant nothing to Cragg. He enjoyed knowing it would make them fight even harder, even more brutally. Even more viciously.
Unable to dislodge Caldic from her back, Dekarna pressed her advantage over Ashtiga. With all her might, she yanked Ashtiga by the skull toward the side of the obliterated knee. The older dragon lost her balance and fell. Dekarna dropped on her back on Ashtiga, pinning Caldic between them.
Dekarna sank her jaws into Ashtiga’s shattered knee. She pulled to the side as hard as she could.
The lower half of the leg came loose in Dekarna’s mouth. Ashtiga roared, flailing in agony. Her thrashings battered Caldic, who lost her grip on Dekarna. Dekarna scrambled to her feet to face her foes.
Caldic sank her jaws into the fallen dragon’s exposed belly. She tore it open, revealing the thick abdominal muscles below the hide. Here, she made her fatal mistake. She snapped her teeth shut on the exposed muscles and ripped them open. Blood poured from Ashtiga’s guts. Though she would not die immediately, she was no longer a threat.
But the second bite cost Caldic precious time, just enough for Dekarna’s mighty hind legs to propel her into the air and come crashing down. Her feet shoved Caldic’s muzzle deep into the gushing abdomen. With a heavy stomp, Dekarna shattered the collarbone.
Caldic thrashed wildly, dislodging her. The older dragon clambered to her feet, one arm hanging uselessly at her side. Roaring with pain and hate, she charged.
Dekarna steadied herself and met the charge. At the last second, she sidestepped to grab hold of Caldic’s useless arm. As their bodies collided, Dekarna pulled the arm as hard as she could.
Caldic screamed.
Dekarna’s teeth sank into the wounded shoulder joint. She clamped down and twisted her head. Tendons and muscle ripped away from bone. She twisted her head again. The bone pulled loose from its socket. She shook her head savagely, tearing the arm completely free from the body. Blood spewed into her face.
But she had focused too long on destroying the limb. Caldic’s jaws clamped down on the back of her neck. Her teeth scraped Dekarna’s vertebrae. Any deeper would have severed the spine. Caldic’s lost arm dropped to the ground.
Caldic opened her jaws to strike again. It gave Dekarna the opportunity she needed. As the jaws of death came down, Dekarna went for the throat. She did not get her teeth into it, but the blow knocked Caldic off-balance.
Dekarna struck again. This time, her teeth closed on Caldic’s throat. A larynx collapsed in her jaws. Blood filled her mouth. She tore out a chunk of meat and skin and throat. Caldic seemed to scream, but no noise came from her mouth—only a fountain of blood where her windpipe used to be.
Dekarna delivered the killing blow Caldic had attempted on her. Dekarna’s teeth clamped on the older dragon’s spine. With one savage twist of her head, she ripped out meat, vertebrae, and spinal cord.
Caldic fell to the ground before her.
Dekarna let the meal fall from her mouth. Her vision blurred around the edges. The wound on her neck felt like a white-hot knife in her spine. She staggered.
With a roar, she slumped to her knees in the dirt. Her dead foes sprawled on the ground, but she felt too weak to celebrate. She pitched forward.
Cragg discarded his battle armor and slithered down to the arena. He sniffed the air and the ground. His shadow fell over her face.
She moaned in her pool of blood. Cragg’s scent filled her nostrils. He was ready. So was she, if she could only move.
“Well done, Major.” He chuffed. The air blew across Dekarna’s neck. It spread tiny rivulets of blood from the fresh wound along her spinal column.
He lowered his body onto her. Sweeping one of her legs aside with his own, he mounted her.
Tears streamed from her eyes. She felt shame that she lacked the strength to move, to respond to her mate with the ferocity befitting a warrior. But Dekarna did not cry tears of sadness. “Cragg,” she whispered.
He moved inside her. Their scales rubbed back and forth against each other like living leather. In a moment of tenderness Cragg would not repeat in all his life, he rumbled, “Dekarna. My queen.”
She had proven her worth, her indomitable power. Cragg’s seed filled her reptilian womb. Here in the combat arena she had worked all her life to enter, she became filled with new life.
This life inside her would live on. It would rule the paradise on Earth, their green planet. Her green planet. Her homeland.
Cragg’s tongue ran up the side of her neck, tasting salt and blood. “You are the future of our species,” he growled. Then he dismounted, and the nurses came to treat her wounds.
She would live to fight again.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
Vesta 4.
“Welcome home!” Celina greeted her friend with a hug.
Patches bumped against her leg on the way to rub noses with Tesla.
“Ahoy, dear. Anything catch on fire while we were gone?”
“Just the usual chaos. Donny wanted you to know he scanned that book you found. He sent it off to Tarzi a few hours ago.”
“Good. Let’s see if my nephew the genius can make sense out of it. Patches and I are off to take a nap. Then I’ll tell you all about the sodding space monkeys.”
“The what now?”
“Night, Mister DJ.” Mags flashed him a smile and strolled off with Patches.
“Night, Maggie.” Plutonian knelt down to pet his cat.
Celina watched him closely. She saw his eyes follow Mags out of the room. A shot glass appeared in her hand, and she smacked it on the table. “Here, sailor. Have a drink.” She filled it with rum.
Like a man waking from a dream, he rubbed his eyes. “Thank you, C.” Picking up the shot glass, he clinked it against her bottle. They each took a swig.
“You know, Dr. P., you may think you’re a badass like the rest of our sorry crew, but your face is an open book.”
“Celina,” he began.
She stopped him. “You don’t have to tell me.” She refilled his shot glass and took another slug. “Confusing as all hell, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“I mean Mags. She can really do a number on your head. Now, there are only two kinds of people who might call her ‘Maggie’. One of them is family, which you clearly ain’t. Do you mind if I tell you something?”
He pulled out a chair and sat down. Tesla jumped into his lap and got comfortable. He nuzzled Plutonian’s hand, purring at the petting
he received. “Something besides I’m obviously a mess?”
“Aye, mate. Something else.” She sat beside him. “Mags is a little different, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“I’ve known her longer than anyone alive. And you know I love her to death. But she isn’t like us.”
“Who’s that? Us here in the club?”
Celina’s laugh sparkled like stars. “No. I mean us humans. She isn’t, quite. You know?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“I’m sure. Listen, Dr. P. I’ve known her since she was a teenager. And you know what a clusterfuck that age can be for people.”
He held out his shot glass.
“It’s bloody hormone central. Only, Mags has hormones that aren’t like yours and mine. They sort of follow their own rules. Back when she and I were at my uncle’s club, she was—kind of a mess. Here we were dancing and emptying the pockets of the marks as fast as we could. One night, she got herself worked into a frenzy. But none of the people we danced for really did it for her. In fact, people never seemed to do it for her at all! I didn’t understand it all back then, you see. I could always blow off some steam with a customer, if I felt like it. But Mags?”
Celina pounded another slug of rum. “Anyway, we were sharing a room, and so we spent a lot of time together. And one night, she asked me if I would do something for her. Seeing as how she was my best friend in the whole world, I said, ‘Sure,’ without even knowing what it was. Do you know what she wanted?”
Plutonian shook his head. But he knew.
“I can’t even believe I’m telling you this.” She took another drink. “So, I went over to her bed. And I wrapped her in my arms. And she—I think you know what comes next, don’t you?”
“I do.” He stared into his empty glass and waved away the bottle when it was offered. “Did you—were you lovers?”
Celina laughed and laughed. She filled his glass anyway. “Maybe not like what you would consider lovers. But she was my best friend, and I was there for her. That’s all she needed. Someone to just be there for her. Be with her.”
Plutonian sighed.
“I’ve seen how your eyes follow her. I know the effect she can have on people. If anyone knows, it’s me. Can I give you some advice?”
“Sure, Celina. Go ahead.”
“Love her with all your heart. But don’t let it fuck up your head. Know what I mean?” From the look in his eyes, she knew that he did. “But I will say this. She knows what love is. She might even know better than you and me? Like—I don’t know.”
“Like an animal,” he offered. “A wild animal.”
“Exactly. Like one of the big cats. It’s on a whole other level for her.” She leaned in closer to him. “It’s a kind of purity of emotion, not sullied by all this shite we humans put on top of it. It’s just out there. Raw. Alive. You know?”
“I never felt anything like it before.”
Celina laughed. “No, I don’t suppose you have.” She set the bottle down.
“Thank you, Celina.”
“You’re welcome, for what it’s worth.”
He shoved his shot glass away. “I appreciate it, C. I really do. But I should get some sleep. Come on, Tesla.” He scooped up his cat and carried him off to their room.
And then he slept better than he had in years.
Asteroid Underground Guest Column:
Patches of Protest, 2027
music is treason
out here on the frontier
where the laws of men and gravity lie broken
music is treason
freedom, fluid beats and rhymes
your thoughts no longer slaves to culture
music is treason
super-conducted by wild memory
patches of protest bloom here and there like islands
in the saxophone bell
in the subsonic pulse and cymbals
they never left. they never do.
Asteroid Underground Guest Column:
Violence and the State, 2027
The state must maintain its monopoly on violence, else it fails to be a state and will shrivel and die. This monopoly on violence is not a thing to be considered apart from the state, for it is indistinguishable from the state and is the very essence of it. Any violence on the part of individual citizens or non-state groups is antithetical to the monopoly, and thereby constitutes treason in its simplest form.
This does not mean all traitors share a common goal or even common values. All violence is treason, but the treasonous are not unified, and often commit violence upon other traitors. They are only unified in the eyes of the state, which is less concerned with the sociological origins of violence, and even less so its merits and flaws. The state is only concerned with maintaining its monopoly, and it will use violence to keep it.
All unsanctioned outbursts of aggression threaten the state’s monopoly. The child who kicks over the rubbish bin commits treason, as the burglar commits treason, and the barroom brawler commits treason. All must be suppressed though conditioning, punishment, and the channeling of aggression into state-sanctioned outlets.
This constant threat to the monopoly creates a pressure which the state must sometimes crush and other times release through tightly controlled channels. All which is fully controlled exists fully within the state’s monopoly and is part and parcel of the state.
The state seeks integration of all uncontrolled non-state reality. Anything outside the state’s control, it will eventually seek to control. Such control is the opposite of liberty to anyone but the state itself, which has full liberty, which is a pure liberty to do absolutely anything in the pursuit of its own perpetuation.
Thus the traitor must stand for something, for she surely stands against the entire might of the state. History will be the final judge of her character, though the state may well prove to be her executioner.
Unify and organize now.
Meteor Mags
13
Blind Alley Blues
Every day of that voyage, I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. When we parted, she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.
—Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Adventure of the Abbey Grange, 1904.
PART ONE: THE VISITOR
November 2029. From the Diary of Meteor Mags.
Dear Diary,
When I dance it takes me
somewhere made only
of music.
Tear down the night. We don’t need it.
Not for shelter. Or cover for hunting.
All we need is volume—
and more of it.
What a week. I’ve got a million things to do before my birthday party. To top it off, I promised I’d hook up those Bolshevik baboons with tools and a generator. At least then I won’t stress about my little octos. The space monkeys might be weird, but they’ll get along swimmingly with my krakens and krakenettes.
Donny & Fuzz are seeing if they can repair the Queen Anne after my crash landing. Celina organized the girls into a couple of crews to take care of my poor bandshell. I woke up this morning to find them hauling out rubble and wreckage from the cyborg incident. I don’t know what I’d do without Celina. Besides totally lose my friggin’ mind.
So, I buggered off to have a coffee in peace for a change. I worked out a theorem to prove the minimum and maximum possible values of the one-thousandth Mersenne prime. The theorem isn’t that tough, but the numbers are huge. Of course, Patches was more interested in lying on my papers than hearing about Mersenne primes. I love her so much.
Celina says I should publish all my solutions for unsolved problems, but what’s the point? There’s no money in it, and some creep would just figure out how to make a bigger bomb with it. If anyone’s going to be building bigger bombs, it’s me. The eggheads
on Earth can sort this stuff on their own.
Then Plutes comes in and tells me about the new amendment to the MFA. I just about lost it. Who do these dicks think they are? Outlawing me from like—everything? If they think I’m going to let them stop my birthday party, they’re mental. They just picked the wrong post-human to fuck with, you know what I mean?
Anyway, I picked up my tablet to look at the headlines, and that’s when I saw the message from Tarzi. Can you believe this? He says these creepy lizards are involved in an archaeological dig his parents are going to in Mexico. What?! I guess Donny was right about the reptiles after all. But how the hell did they get into space?
Now Celina says we have a surprise visitor. So much for my peaceful morning of coffee and theorems. I gotta go, diary. Sorry I’m going to burn you on my birthday like I do every year. But you know how it is.
Maggie xoxox
★ ○•♥•○ ★
The Night Before, on Earth.
“I’ll be right down, Mum!”
“Tarzi!”
“It’s the last trig problem in my homework. Can I just get it out of the way before dinner? Please?”
Such a hardworking boy, thought Tarzi’s mother. “Alright, sweetie. I’ll keep it warm. Do you need any help?”
“Nope. Almost done. Thank you!” But instead of trigonometry, his tablet showed him something more complex. He covered his mouth with both hands, rubbed his eyes, and swept back his mohawk.
The message from Donny read simply enough. “Mags thought you could make sense of these scans. P.S. Hyo-Sonn says hi.”
But the attached file amazed him. Page after page held incomprehensible diagrams and symbols. He flipped through them until he came to a drawing of a dragon.
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 44
