THRAX

by Bonnie Burrows

  In the middle of the part of the forest canopy that it had torn down when it fell, a large shape lay on the ground. It was like a huge, monstrous crab, torn open with its insides exposed. In the darkened interior were flickering, dimming lights and hints of unknown shapes that had once moved inside the craft. It lay in a silent calm and stillness, its fall and crash having stirred the forest into a frenzy and then left a hush all around.

  Thrax and his companions descended through the break in the trees and circled around in the air, taking a first look, training their sensors on the alien wreck for any sign of life, working technology, or activity, and assessing the possible danger. They flew with power blades active, the glow of the weapons in the smoke making the place look that much more eerie. Once they had assured themselves of the relative safety, they landed at the edge of the fallen tree limbs, in a spot facing the large hole blasted in the hull of the vessel.

  “All right, then,” said Thrax to the two male weredragons accompanying him, “I’ll take point. Sensors show no signs of life, but we don’t know for certain what technology is still operating in there or what devices we may trigger by going inside. Be on guard.”

  With that, he led the other two into the shambles of leaves and broken boughs between them and the wreck. They met any debris in their path with a slash of blade or tail, vaporizing the obstruction or sending it spinning away, until they came to the place torn open in the battle in space. “Our forces did a fine job on it,” said one of the Knights.

  “Let’s hope we can find something in here to do ‘a fine job’ on the rest of them. And their makers,” said Thrax. And, holding his glowing blade in front of him as a light source and a defense at once, he stepped through the jagged hole in the ship’s hull. His comrades stepped behind him, tails twitching, ready for anything.

  The three Knights pressed the edges of their badges, and the badges glowed to match their blades, becoming torches to illuminate their way. What they found inside the alien ship was not unlike what they would have expected to find in one of their own. The lights on the controls and instruments pulsed and flickered with fading power, and the indicators were marked in an unfamiliar language. But the language was the least familiar part of it. They saw what were clearly viewports, monitors, and tactical stations where targets were tracked and offensive and defensive weapons were operated.

  And, slumped and sprawled in the seats and across the instrument panels, were those who had operated them.

  Thrax went to one figure lying against the panel in front of its position and pulled it back against the back of its chair. It was man-shaped, but metallic. Thrax guessed at first that this was a being in armor—until he looked into what he expected to be a visor or the open part of a helmet and saw broken, sparking circuitry staring back at him.

  He took off his shining badge and held it in front of him, playing both the light and his sensors across the unmoving figure. Holographic icons of a contrasting color danced in the light. Thrax read them while the other two Knights looked on. He called out what they saw: “Carbon and silicon compounds, partly organic, cybernetic, and synthetic. This isn’t a living being. It’s an android. Check the others.”

  His companions moved off, each of them training his badge on one of the other pilots of the vessel and doing the same procedure as Thrax had done on the first. Each of them returned the same finding. One Knight said, “This is some kind of drone ship. Are they all like this?”

  Thrax guessed, “All of the smaller attack ships are of the same design and were deployed for the same function. They’re probably all drones. It looks as if the aliens sent their automatons out to do at least the first fighting for them. Our real enemies must be occupying the larger vessels.”

  He pivoted his head about the interior of the craft. “Scan everything in here,” he said. “Get every bit of data you can about their technology, and try to get into their computers, which may tell us more about them. But try not to tap into something that might send a signal back to the other ships.”

  The three Knights went about their task quickly, probing the whole interior of the enemy craft and its contents with the sensors and computers in their badges, recording everything they found in every device, locating memory cores, and analyzing and storing their contents.

  Once they were done, Thrax and his team bounded out of the fallen craft, spread their wings, slashed their tails, and leaped back for the treetops and the open air. They left the stricken place as quiet and still as they had found it.

  _______________

  When the recon party returned to Glaurung, it was to a flurry of activity as most of the Knights and Corps members present gathered around Thrax to watch him display the collated data from the fallen vessel, two of them continuing to stand watch on top of the vans and another two remaining on the cliff face. Agena stood outside the group of weredragons, watching them study what Thrax and his team had found, suddenly envying their closeness as comrades and their shared understandings, much as someone with no interest in sports might feel listening to her talk with her fellow Sphereball players. Still, she listened and caught a few interesting snatches of the things they were saying.

  “Thankfully, our technologies are just similar enough that we could extract data from their memory cores…”

  “Our translation systems were able to process parts of their language…”

  “The androids and their devices have a visual display/input system…a lot of their language is based on symbols, not words…”

  “Look at this! Do you know what this means? Do you know how we could use this?”

  “But we’d have to have access to…”

  “It could only be done from a point where…”

  “But look here! This schematic doesn’t match the ship we found! This one is for…”

  “This diagram shows where you’d have to go and what point you’d have to…”

  “Right! And then you’d just have to…”

  “That would work! But then someone would have to get into…”

  “If we mounted an all-out attack, we might be able to get through their defenses, then reach that point and…”

  At length, the group broke up and the other Knights and Corps returned to their former positions while Thrax and Meline stayed together. Agena watched them, feeling slightly awkward, not knowing whether she should approach them, until Thrax waved her over.

  She joined them and asked, “What did you find? Is it something you can tell me?”

  Thrax replied, “It’s something important—perhaps the most important thing in the world just now.”

  Agena’s interest was more than peaked now. “What?”

  “We think we’ve found the way to destroy them. Or make them destroy themselves.”

  Eyes widening, Agena almost gasped, “You have?”

  “Yes,” said Thrax. “They seem to rely heavily on androids and robotics, and their ships and android soldiers operate via a number of shared root commands. We believe we’ve found the root command to self-destruct in case of capture by an enemy.”

  “That’s amazing!” said Agena. “How can you use it against them?”

  “We’re not sure yet,” said Meline. “But the Mentors need to know. This information needs to be relayed to the entire Knighthood and Corps. Someone, somewhere, may find a means and an opportunity.”

  Taking his badge in hand once more, Thrax said, “We can’t delay. People must be dying every minute. I’m going to inform the Mentors…”

  His last word was going to be “now.” But then another voice cut him off.

  “Incoming!” came the shout from overhead. “Alien craft incoming!”

  Agena felt her heart catch fire and her blood turn to ice at once. Oh no… was all she could think.

  Circling in the air up above were the two dragons who had gone back up the cliff. Thrax called up to them, “How far off? Report?”

  Immediately, one of the pair in flight went into a dive and landed be
fore Thrax and Agena. “Just about two kilometers off,” he replied. “And headed this direction.”

  Thrax bellowed out a command: “Abandon the aerovans! Get everyone out of the vans and assemble them out here! We’re going into the cave!”

  Agena glanced nervously into the cave. She wondered how far into it they would have to go and how long they would have to stay. And, just as ominously, she wondered whether the aliens would send their soldier androids after them. She had a frightening image of Thrax leading his people in a battle underground in close quarters. Finally, she wondered who, if anyone, would come out alive.

  “Thrax,” she said, “let me help you get the people out of the vans. I’ll help people who are hurt, I’ll carry supplies, whatever.”

  His reptilian features took on a tightness that Agena could have sworn was a smile. “Good,” he said, “let’s hurry.”

  Together, they rushed to the nearest van along with Meline and the others. To ease the process of getting the people out of the vessels, the weredragons all morphed back to human. In spite of the oncoming danger, Agena found the sight of Thrax shifted from dragon back to man comforting, much as she knew he would change back to his reptilian self at an instant’s notice.

  Meline, too, returned to her red-haired human form, and for the first time, Agena noted how beautiful the dragon Dame was.

  Even if Meline had never wanted Thrax, she had surely never lacked for the companionship of other females. Agena took only a second to ponder this before pitching in with the task they’d set themselves. Everyone moved fast, dividing their efforts between removing sacks of provisions from cargo holders and removing passengers from seats. In a matter of moments, dozens of people were gathered out in the open between the two vessels and the opening of the cave.

  Thrax addressed his comrades: “We’re going to try to decoy the aliens. We’ll put the aerovans on autopilot and have them head away from here. The aliens may pursue them and give us time to get into the cave.”

  Meline said, “The nearest settlement to here is Clawbridge. We’ll have the vans head for there; it’s the most logical place for them to go.”

  “Good,” said Thrax. “Transmit those coordinates to the vans’ computers.” Then, more loudly, speaking to the crowd: “Everyone, this way!” He gestured to the mouth of Glaurung. “We’re going inside. Meline and I will go last. The other Knights and Corps will take the civilians and medical personnel in first. Move!”

  Under the guidance of the armor-skinned personnel, those who had been inside the evacuation vessels began to move quickly for the mouth of the cave—all but Agena.

  “Thrax,” she said, “I want to stay out here with you. We’ll go into the cave together.”

  “I can’t allow that,” he said. “You’re under our protection, remember?”

  “Then protect me out here,” she insisted.

  “Absolutely not,” Thrax said with a shake of his head. “I’ll join you inside.”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” Agena said.

  “You have to go; I can’t have you out here when they’re on their way. You must go.”

  “Thrax…!” she protested.

  “Agena!” he shouted. “I have my orders, and I’ve given you yours! You’re to go to the cave—now!”

  She glared at him, angry, hurt, and frightened. How dare he give her orders? How dare she refuse them? Didn’t he know how the thought of leaving him with danger on the way made her feel? She searched his eyes—and saw just a glimmer, a spark, to tell her that he did know.

  A few steps away, Meline watched the empty vans retract their ramps, shut their hatches, and lift up from the ground. In a moment, they were over the treetops.

  In another moment, there was a deafening blast, a shock of light, and a hammer-like sensation of force that smashed through the trees. Meline, Thrax, and Agena barely had time to react. Instinctively, Thrax hurled himself in front of Agena. He did it in the last possible instant before the shock wave battered them to the ground.

  Lying under the spread-eagled Thrax on the soil and grass, Agena heard the sounds of things crashing and the crackle of fire. She peered up and saw torn, twisted, and burning fragments raining all around them. She winced and wanted to scream at the sight of some of them hitting the ground near her and Thrax and others landing near the fallen Meline. She looked up into clouds of smoke that blotted out treetops and sky—and through them came the dreaded shape of one of the alien craft.

  Thrax stirred on top of her and shifted off of her. Meline likewise began to move again, pulling herself up from the ground as Thrax did. Thrax offered Agena his hand and pulled her and himself up to a crouch. The alien craft hovered over them.

  “We’re going to have to make a run for it,” Thrax called, “into the—!”

  Those were his last words before a wailing cacophony hammered at them, making them feel as if their brains were spinning inside their skulls, their ears were bursting, and their muscles turning to putty. They flinched, their bodies jerking into spasms of pain. They screamed but could not hear the sound of their own voices.

  They did not feel themselves hitting the ground again. They felt nothing but darkness closing in on them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  He awoke in a place he did not recognize.

  Actually, he knew what the place was. What he did not know was where it was.

  It was a plain, spare space. He was on a cushioned surface on a circular fixture that he took to be a bed of sorts. There was a water basin and a chair-like structure that he took to be a kind of latrine. The place had three walls. Directly in front of him, the wall opened out into another chamber, as unadorned as the one in which he found himself.

  Sitting up on the bed, Thrax felt for his weapon and found it missing. Of course, his captors had taken it. No one would throw him into a cell and let him keep his powerblade. Without question, he was in a cell. Though it looked as if he could step freely from the space where he now was into the adjoining chamber, if he tried to step through the space where the wall was missing, he would certainly encounter a barrier of some sort, a force field that would block him or hurl him back.

  Thrax quickly pulled together the few facts he had available. He had been in the forest outside of Silverwing with the other Knights and Corps members and their human aspirants from the Chateau, including Agena. He felt his skin turn cold and pale at the question of where Agena was. Where had his captors taken her? Where had they taken Meline and the others, yes—but what had they done with Agena?

  As a prisoner, it was Thrax’s duty to do everything in his power to try to escape. For that, he would have to face his captors personally, a prospect that he relished at this point. There was only one thing he wanted more than to look into the faces of whatever creatures had attacked his world and brought so much pain and death and destruction to his home. That one thing was to know that Agena was unharmed.

  If they had hurt her, whatever kind of creatures they were, they would know the full wrath and fury of a dragon of Lacerta. And though he was a Knight and had a code of honor and a creed of duty, in his heart, he was a man and would take pleasure in punishing any creature that had done any harm to Agena Morrow.

  As if on cue, a portal in the adjoining space slid open and three figures, one of them female, stepped into view. The gray-skinned humanoids, one walking a few paces ahead of the others, approached the space where Thrax guessed the force field was. The one in front wore a military-looking chest sash the color of dried blood—an appropriate enough hue, Thrax thought, for someone who had spilled the blood of his people. He looked forward to returning the favor.

  The being wearing the sash said in a croaking voice, “It is good we find you recovered. There are things we must discuss.”

  Thrax rose from the bed and stepped forward to address his foe. “What is this place?” he asked. “Where am I, and who are you?”

  “My ship is the mastercraft Rog’Kalach of the planet Scodax. I am Captain Amlax.�
�� He indicated the ones behind him: “This is Venar, my second-in-command, and Vendass, my third. And we have taken from the sense of hierarchy that you are the leader of the group of beings we acquired from the planet we are orbiting. Are we correct?”

  Thrax was slightly puzzled at this: “Hierarchy?”

  “Your garment,” said Venar. “Yours is the only garment in three colors of those we acquired with the sonic inducer weapon, suggesting that you are the leader. Is our judgement correct?”

  That explained a couple of things. The thing that had hit him, Agena, and Meline outside the cave after the alien ships had destroyed the aerovans was a “sonic inducer,” a way of subduing opponents with minimal injury. And this – Captain Amlax had guessed Thrax’s importance from his armor colors. “Yes,” said Thrax. “I was in command. I am Sir Thrax Helmer of the Knights of the planet Lacerta, and I demand to know where you have taken the others of my group. Where are they, and have they been harmed?”