The captain looked like he had more questions, but the comm chirped, signaling an incoming transmission.
The man at that station answered, speaking quietly, before he swiveled around in his seat. “It’s Captain McNuggen, sir. She’d like to talk to you.”
“Put her through. I’ll talk to her here.”
“Aye, sir.”
The screen switched from the tactical map to a view of Barbara McNuggen’s face. Her eyes were wide and dazed, as if she’d recently taken a blow to the head. Her hard edges seemed softer.
“Oskar. You’re all right?” she asked. “Any idea what that was?”
“I’m fine, but I’m not sure what happened,” Tataryn said.
“It was us,” Dante cut in.
She recoiled when she saw him but, to her credit, she recovered quickly. McNuggen had been startled, but then she appeared to have the same dose of goodwill that Tataryn had. Now that she’d seen the Mystics’ new faces, she adjusted and moved on like a professional.
“I’ve never felt this kind of clarity before.” She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “God, I’ve been terrible to all of you, haven’t I? But you’re as human as I am. Not that ‘human’ is the best thing to be, sometimes.”
“I appreciate that, but you don’t have to apologize,” Julia said. “We understand.”
“Do you? I wish you’d explain it to me. I don’t know how my mind became so narrow.” McNuggen sighed. “We have orders.”
“I know we do,” Tataryn said. “We’re to destroy the nest and colonize the planet. If anything gets in our way, we are to kill it. Cost doesn’t matter. I’m certain they count human and dragon lives in that reckoning.”
“Suddenly, Oskar, the thought makes me sick,” McNuggen said. “I can’t follow these orders. I won’t.”
“Neither will we. We need to convince Morris and the admiral,” Dante said.
“Admiral Gehr has already contacted me from Morris. He’s…processing. He says he can’t trust himself to make a call right now, so he wants me to do it,” McNuggen said. “He’s following my lead. My instincts say to get out of here before reinforcements arrive. What say you?”
“You’re very decisive,” Julia said good-naturedly. “I like that in a leader.”
McNuggen shared a sad smile. It was odd, seeing the infamous Mystic-hater acting so familiar with Julia, and Julia smiling back. Normally she’d be throwing barbed insults at them, or ordering them to stay out of the way. Coraolis wondered how long their introspection would last.
Was forever too long to hope for?
“It’s clear we’ll have to vacate the system,” Dante said. “We need a place to hide for a while. Somewhere that the E.F. doesn’t have its teeth into.”
“We’ll start looking,” McNuggen said. “But what about the nest?”
“I think it’ll be okay,” Julia said. “I get the sense their little ones will be ready to fly soon, then they can move on, if they so choose.”
“Little ones?” McNuggen repeated. Her eyebrows climbed up until their tips disappeared into her hairline. “I don’t think I was in the loop on a single decision here. I really was dancing on their strings.”
“It happens to the best of us,” Dante said.
McNuggen signed off with a promise she’d find a place for them to go, and Tataryn set about putting his ship to rights, making sure everyone received the medical treatment they needed.
***
An hour later, Dante and Julia waited in the Astral Plane. They stayed far from the nest and the planet itself, instead choosing a neutral point between all their ships. Julia projected calm, but she’d been busy from the moment they arrived. She created stools for them to ‘sit’ on, even though they had no need to sit. Then the stools had changed into comfortable chairs with a throw rug between.
Dante had never thought to manipulate the ether this way, but Julia did it as naturally as breathing. It didn’t take any effort for her to maintain, either. He was sure that was due to Julia’s dragon. Every dragon was unique, with their own collections of knowledge and abilities. Dante had learned how to affect the physical world from the Astral from his first bond. He wondered what this new dragon bond would show him.
Julia got comfortable, sitting in a chair with her feet tucked under her. Dante took the one to her right and stifled his surprise. It felt as solid and comfortable as an object in the physical plane.
“How did you do this?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I just knew how. I thought, if we’re going to be talking to his people, we should try to make it as friendly as possible. I tried to make a homey atmosphere, and this is what I got.”
“It’s incredible, Julia. You’ll have to show me how you did it,” he said.
She smiled. “I think we all have new tricks to share.”
“We should sit and talk when we have time.”
“Yes. When we have time,” she agreed.
It was too bad they didn’t have time then. The Astral Plane was the perfect place for a private conversation. It would be even more private if they were the only two Mystics in the system, yet they weren’t. Dante wasn’t worried about Jack and Coraolis.
A pair of enhanced humans arrived silently, as pale and hollow-eyed as ghosts. They wore plain gray robes with piping and fine details that suggested a Mystic’s uniform; it was just different enough to make them unique. They both had close-cropped hair and appeared fit beneath their loose-fitting robes. They also carried over red eyes and splotchy skin from the physical world.
That was to be expected. The augmented humans’ emotions had been hollowed out by their procedures. They had become creatures of pure logic and thought. The enhancements tore their humanity away, leaving them mere shells of their former selves. What remained was dead in many ways, yet alive in the one way that mattered to the Fleet.
Even so, the dragons had filled the holes in enhanced humans’ emotional psyches with feelings they never thought to have. Just because their emotions had returned, however, it didn’t mean they would abandon their duty. So, this was where Dante and Julia would find out if they would turn against E.F. or not.
“I am M1C Ephraim. This is M1C Nada. We already know who you are.” Ephraim, a middle-aged man with gray streaks in his hair, spoke first. “We are here to talk, as you asked.”
“Would you like to sit?” Julia asked.
“We’d like to get to the point,” Ephraim said, yet he took the offered chair.
His female companion sat in the final seat. Her face registered wonder as she ran her hands over the upholstery. “I’m sorry,” Nada said. “We’re so used to being direct, I think we forgot how to have manners.”
“No, it’s fine. Point away,” Dante said.
The augmented humans looked lost while surveying the world around them. While they hadn’t lost their free will, their decision-making had relied only on firm data backed by logic. They’d lost their empathy. That made them the perfect tools for Earth Fleet. Logic could only go so far if all your information was strictly controlled.
He could imagine what they were feeling. He hadn’t lost any of his faculties when he had been enslaved, an unwilling witness to his own crimes. The dragon had used Dante’s body. He understood what the dragon had been up to, now, but he wished the beast would have been more open. He might have cooperated, and that would have prevented a lot of deaths.
Nada made a go ahead gesture. Ephraim nodded, and they both turned to Dante and Julia.
“We’re not sure what you did, but we know it cured us. I never thought I’d feel like this again. Gratitude doesn’t begin to cover it,” Ephraim said. “I don’t know how we can repay you.”
“That isn’t necessary,” Julia said. “We’re just glad you’ve become yourselves again.”
“I think I’m even better than I used to be, if I’m being honest,” Nada said. “I won’t speak for my colleague.”
“I agree, we are better. We’d like to know what comes n
ext.” Ephraim shifted in his seat.
“We don’t want to be tools anymore,” Nada said. “We had been subsumed as weapons for the Fleet. The guilt…” She hesitated, wincing at how deep the alterations had changed her.
Dante looked determined. “We won’t allow Mystics to be used as weapons for the Fleet any longer. I promise you that.” He pounded a fist into his hand for emphasis. “We’re looking for a place to start over, out of E.F.’s reach. We want a place where we can be whatever we want.”
Nada broke into a brilliant smile. It lit up her whole face. “Then we’re with you. Is this the end of the Mystics?”
Dante didn’t have an answer.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Coraolis and Julia stood on Doomslayer’s observation deck watching the planet rotate below. A large landmass covered most of the surface surrounded by the blue of a single ocean. The shades of azure and emerald belonged in a jeweler’s case. Something squeezed his heart when he looked at their new home.
“They call it Geneva,” Julia said. “I like it.”
“It’s pretty,” he said. He felt something different when he looked at her, too.
“Did you hear what they’re calling us?” she asked.
“Us? Who?” he asked, startled.
“You, me, Dante, and Jack. They can see we’re different, so they’re calling us Evolved.”
He frowned. “I’m not sure if I like that.”
“Same here. I mean, yes, we’ve bonded with dragons, but we’re all equals,” she said. “We aren’t better than anyone.”
“We are different, though, and we did change when we merged with the dragons. Dante called it being evolved, so maybe it started there.”
“Maybe.” She made a face, then sighed. “Dante and his big mouth.”
Coraolis chuckled and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, but she didn’t look away from Geneva. She didn’t need to. Their connection had solidified when they merged with the dragons, and every moment together bound them more. All he had to do was enter the room to know her mood. When they were this close, he sensed her thoughts as well. That was true of all the Evolved, but his connection with Julia was strongest.
“I always thought I’d become a colonist when I retired, but not quite like this,” she said.
“I always planned to marry rich and retire on a tropical island,” he said. “Close enough, I guess.”
“Well, look. It is all one big island,” she laughed. “Too bad this isn’t retirement.”
“Yeah…” he said musingly. “We have to do something about Earth Fleet. We didn’t really stop them. They’ll find another world to exploit. They’ll find this one someday.”
They were silent for a long time while they dwelled on the implications. They’d ‘won’ at Ian’s World, but followed up by turning their backs on the rest of mankind. Greed would keep Earth Fleet grasping for new planets not to explore, but to exploit. ‘Resource rich’ is what they called them.
The traditional power structure kept the same people in charge.
“Maybe once we prove we can live in harmony with the dragons and this planet, we can show others what’s possible,” he suggested.
“Nice thought, but we’re traitors now,” she said. “No one will listen to us. We could show them a stellar example of how to coexist, and the best they’d do is congratulate us before they go off to frack Cavey.”
He shuddered. “We have to make them change their minds. We can hit the leaders with the same emotional overload.”
“I don’t think we have that kind of power with just our dragons,” she replied. “Not to mention we have no idea what they did to our minds, or how to repeat it with our powers.”
“No, but we have two ships we’re stripping down to help build our base on the surface. We’ve got three crews’ worth of engineers who would love a puzzle like this, and who are just as motivated as we are to fix things,” he said. “Maybe they can come up with a device, or an amplifier…some way to replicate what we did before.”
“That may work. We already have the technological key to Mystic power in me and the augmented humans. It’s possible. We just need someone smart enough to build such a device.”
He smiled. “I know a guy...” He grabbed her hand. “Let’s find ourselves an engineer.” Together, they jogged away.
***
Even though Chief Frank Byrd coordinated everyone as they dismantled two of the ships, he spent his spare time drawing schematics and consulting with the scientists and other engineers. Soon, everyone with a related talent was contributing to solving the problem. It was a group exercise, and even people without a scientific background were encouraged to brainstorm.
After the last ‘wrecking crew’ returned from taking apart Forty-Two, Doomslayer’s galley was devoted to these gatherings every evening. Coraolis arrived late and squeezed into a corner next to Jack. The other Evolved Mystic held a datapad and took notes.
Byrd stood on a chair up front so everyone could see him. “Right, then we have the square root of forty-two. Summers, remember that number. Now we have to apply Reichert’s algorithm…”
“What’s going on?” Coraolis whispered.
“They lost me when they broke into calculus,” Jack answered. “They’ve figured out that we need to build the device in orbit. Now they’re figuring out how much fuel they need to keep a satellite in orbit, but they need to first figure out how much it will weigh.”
“Ah,” Coraolis said. “I could have missed this particular meeting.”
“It might get more accessible later. Meantime, I’m keeping track of how many times they refer to themselves as human, and Nada’s people as something else. This is just in the last half hour.”
He held up the datapad.
Coraolis frowned at that number. “Is that a joke?”
“I don’t think they mean anything by it. Everyone gets along, we all have a piece of that universal love. But it feels strange to me. I still feel human, just with a little extra oomph,” Jack said.
Coraolis’s frown deepened. He wouldn’t have expected any kind of bigotry, even unintentional, because of the positive emotional wave, but maybe that had been a little naïve.
“I’ve noticed that trend before. Even Mystics regard themselves as a separate entity from humans. Not all,” he said, as Jack began to protest. “But many. Then we add cybernetic enhancements, or our situation, and there’s an even greater opportunity for us versus them.”
“That’s all an illusion,” Jack said. “At heart, we’re the same. Our abilities don’t make us less or more human. A ballet dancer is just as human as a construction worker. A Mystic is no better or worse than an Earth Fleet Captain.”
“Is that what your dragon tells you?” Coraolis asked.
“No, but she agrees with me. She’s no less a dragon just because we’re merged.”
Coraolis nodded and took his leave. He squeezed through the crowd on his way down the corridor. He had no destination in mind; he just wanted room to think.
Doomslayer’s halls were crowded with people working on the dismantling project. Others had gone down to the surface to build shelters and start farming. Shuttles were in demand nearly twenty-four hours a day as personnel and supplies were ferried back and forth.
Everyone cooperated brilliantly. Everywhere he looked, people pitched in. No one complained. They worked together, nobody standing back or trying to get over. They had become a society of equals.
All signs of greed, selfishness, and grudges were erased. He felt it within, he saw it in his friends. There hadn’t been a single fight. If people disagreed, they either walked away or talked it out.
It was wonderful. It was a sign that the ‘Evolved’ weren’t the only ones who were less human than they used to be. They had the same biology, but their spirits had become greater. If this was a sign of what humanity was capable of, he would celebrate the future with every fiber of his being.
***
A m
onth later, a wall surrounded their base. After a second month, enough shelters for everyone had become sturdy structures constructed partially from repurposed ship parts and native wood. As a result, every house was unique, and the builders had exercised their creativity to emphasize the differences.
Coraolis and Julia had taken a house near the center of town. It had a peaked roof that looked like a cross between a seashell and an immense drill bit. The ceiling was high enough for a sleeping loft. The first floor was a cylinder with no walls to break up the arc. That would change when indoor plumbing came to the village; for now, they had a nice open space to enjoy.
It felt natural to move in together, and even their dragons seemed to approve when they joined their lives.
The native fauna were shy, and the settlers left them alone. They got all the nutrients they needed from farming. No one openly declared themselves a vegetarian, yet no one complained about the lack of meat.
A team of explorers ventured out every day, expanding their knowledge of the surrounding area. Others farmed, worked construction, or cleared the forest from the village walls. Botanists, unable to help with the ‘Love Bomb,’ as it was affectionately called, were at work identifying beneficial and toxic plants in the area.
Problems were solved as they arose. When a strange predator harassed the farmers, McNuggen formed a team to hunt it down. Dante explored and created maps of the surrounding areas. Coraolis helped fell trees, both for defense and to get materials for building and furniture. Everyone did their part, and everyone was given what they needed.
Coraolis eagerly dusted off carpentry skills from his youth to make comfortable furniture. Others shared gifts of food or crafted items. It wasn’t trade, no one actually bartered. Things were given freely. If a person was in need, what they lacked was provided.
It was a system only an optimistic fool expected to work, yet it effortlessly fell into place. Everyone had what they needed. Everyone cared about the welfare of their neighbors and lent a hand without being asked.
Coraolis should have known it wouldn’t last.
***
Julia stood with him on Doomslayer’s bridge, watching the view through a technician’s EVA camera. The tech floated in the void, running diagnostics on their new satellite. Byrd was there to supervise the tech and answer the Mystics’ questions. Coraolis didn’t pay much attention to that part; he was too fascinated by the device itself.
Dragon Invasion Page 15
