by Dante King
As we approached, a man dressed in all-black furs turned to regard us. His beard was longer than the others and was pure white. He walked toward us with a limp. We stopped when we were three feet apart.
Timo-ran didn’t speak, so neither did I. The old man looked between us for a moment, then stepped closer to me, reached out with a wrinkled hand, and began to inspect my clothing.
“Who is this?” the old man asked after he was done looking at the MSM symbol on my shirt’s right breast.
“He is called Jacob,” Timo-ran replied.
“And why is he here?”
I heard the smile in Timo-ran’s voice again when he answered, “Because he has brought Enra back to us. She is alive and well. He rescued her from the refinery.”
The old man dropped his hands to his sides and looked me in the eyes. “Is what Timo-ran said true?”
“Yes,” I said before the old man reached his arms up over my shoulders. He squeezed me in a tight hug, like I was an old, dear friend he hadn’t seen in a long time.
“You are welcome here, Jacob,” he whispered.
He held me for several more seconds while I wondered whether he intended on letting me go. When I was about to perform the customary “three pats on the back” so that he would release me, he suddenly dropped his arms and stepped back.
“Thank you,” I said, but his eyes weren’t on me anymore. Nor was he smiling. I looked to Timo-ran, and he was also staring in the same direction. At the village, no more than a hundred yards away.
I looked but didn’t see anything I recognized as a threat. Then I heard it.
A low, mournful howl struggled to our ears above the crashing of the waves.
The men who were taking the alligator-fish-thing apart stopped their work. All heads were turned toward the village.
In unison, the men began to sprint headlong toward their home. I had no trouble catching up to Timo-ran, who was running fast enough to blow his mustache back. His mouth was a savage sneer.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“We’re under attack,” he said between breaths.
My stomach twisted into a painful knot as I wondered if what was happening was in retaliation for killing Enra’s captor and saving her. Or was it a result of killing all those vrak soldiers. Either way, I was almost sure someone had come for revenge, and the attack was my fault.
I poured on the speed. I would not allow others to suffer for my actions.
I hadn’t realized I could run so fast, but I passed the person blowing the horn so quickly, all I saw was a blur. I couldn’t even tell if the person was male or female.
I came to a skidding stop at the edge of the village a hundred yards ahead of the others and searched for the threat. I didn’t have to scan the area for long. All I had to do was watch the trees being knocked over by something huge in the distance. The sound of their trunks splitting and the thuds they made when they hit the forest floor was almost deafening.
Whatever was heading toward us wasn’t as simple as a carnivore or a focused unit of vrak soldiers. I hadn’t seen any large vehicles that could compare to tanks, or even land-fortresses like those the Federation had used in the last few wars. I’d seen no real indication of advanced tech, but that didn’t mean someone on the planet didn’t own anything like it.
Ishn-Nul women joined me, dressed in plates of armor over their furs. Each carried a weapon, mostly axes, and held a shield of scrap metal in front of them. Some had bows slung over their shoulders and quivers attached to their backs.
Shieldmaidens, ready to fight side-by-side with the men.
I regretted not having a weapon of my own, but it hadn’t stopped me before. I’d be ready for whatever came through the treeline. The threat to the village still caught me by surprise.
“What is it?” I asked the women, but none of them replied. They simply watched it approach with their weapons ready. I almost wondered whether I should ask them for a weapon, but then the giant monstrosity cleared the treeline.
It took almost a full second before I could make sense of what I was seeing.
It was a dragon.
Chapter Thirteen
The most outrageous Martian holovids starred, co-starred, or otherwise made dragons the center of the plot. There were variations based on culture and ancestry, but they all had a few things in common. Most important was the huge, lizard-like appearance.
I didn’t see any scales on the creature emerging from the woods, but the way it moved on all fours looked exactly like a lizard. The other details—the long snout, huge teeth, and horns—were all present as well.
The monster might have had more horns than teeth, but even that wasn’t enough to mark it as unique. It was like someone had turned on a giant magnet in the middle of a junkyard. The features I thought were scales was actually a mismatched collection of debris. Some were welded together; others were hinged, but each of them overlapped something.
The one feature this particular dragon had that not all others did, was wings. Sweeping wings the color of rough steel. It flexed them a couple of times, blowing leaves into a low cloud around it.
All that was missing was the fire-breathing part, which I hoped it couldn’t do.
My hands ached for my rifle. If the thing took to the air, I wasn’t sure how I’d kill it. It could strafe us all day until every single one of us was dead.
From nowhere, the men of the village rushed past me, charging the beast with battle cries and bloodlust. I followed them, searching for anything I could use as a weapon. If I had to, I’d rip a big tree out of the ground and beat the monster with it until it was dead or I broke the tree.
And there were lots of trees and only one dragon.
Speed was my shiny, new toy, so I decided to play with it. I sprinted ahead, easily outpacing the others, but I still had no idea what I’d do when I got to the beast. Now that I was closer, I could understand how big the dragon was. I didn’t bother coming up with a number, but its abdomen was a little bigger than the alligator-fish the men had caught. With legs, it was much taller. Each wing, if it spread them out, would easily be twice as long as its body.
I skidded to a halt maybe 20 yards out from the monster and caught hold of a boulder. The stone had to be almost my height, but my newfound strength served me perfectly as I dug my fingers into it. My body strained with the effort of lifting it before I took aim. Then I sent the massive rock tumbling toward the attacking creature.
The boulder soared 50 yards on a direct course for the dragon’s head before it smashed harmlessly into a thousand pieces when the dragon blocked it with a wing. If boulders didn’t kill it, then I would have to up my game.
There would be no negotiation. There was no way to drive it off. It would have to be disassembled one piece at a time until I found something important and ripped it from its frame.
The dragon casually tossed an Ish-Nul man through the air, and I sprinted to catch him before he hit the ground. I snatched him mid-descent, but the damage was already done. He’d been opened up from forehead to navel. He was already dead.
I picked up his massive battleaxe, turned to the dragon, and roared to capture its attention. It ignored the peppering of arrows the women were delivering and the ineffectual blows from the men as it turned to face me.
Well, I had its attention now.
It flexed a few times, centered its body and head on me, and opened its huge maw so wide, I could have stood between its four-inch teeth. A swirling whirlpool of red, orange, and white ignited where I’d expected to see a tongue and darkness. It was a hypnotic painting, a masterpiece of destruction.
I knew exactly what type of technology was producing the beginnings of fire.
I’d seen a demonstration of it years ago. It was a particle cannon. There was a reason particle cannons were not used on the ground in an atmosphere. The cannons worked in space because the energy from the charged material would impact the enemy vessel, transfer its charge, an
d hopefully overcome its molecular bonds. Depending on the material hit, it would either disintegrate, explode, or catch fire.
In atmosphere, the particles would immediately transfer their charge to the air, turning it to plasma. The range was too short to be effective against targets more than a hundred meters away, but I was only about half that distance.
Shit.
An Ish-Nul warrior with a massive battleaxe appeared beside me. “I’ve got this, brother.”
But he didn’t have it. I knew he was a half-second away from becoming little more than a charred mess.
“Split right!” I ordered, shoving the brave soul away before he could swing his axe.
I sprinted to the left as the dragon unleashed its fire. The sound of the weapon discharging raised goosebumps on my arms. It rent the air and liquefied the dirt behind me in a hellish hiss of plasma.
Ahead, several men looked from the dragon to me, trying to decide if they should run or hide behind their shields. I could feel the heat of the plasma fire on my back, and it seemed the dragon was intent on roasting me rather than the Ish-Nul. If I kept running toward the men, they’d be turned to ash, so I made a hard right and headed straight for the mechanical beast.
This is just like killing a Xeno Queen, I told myself. There’s always a weak spot. I just have to find it.
As I ran under the dragon, it stopped breathing plasma and instead tried to stomp me. I saw its metal paw coming and easily dodged it. I dragged my new battleaxe across its belly, and the sound of tearing metal was at least a hundred times worse than nails on a chalkboard. The dragon reared its head and launched a torrent of plasma at me, and I sprinted sideways to avoid it. The heat almost vaporized a nearby shack and set a tree aflame.
I had to deal with this creature fast. Before the village and all its occupants became victims of this monster.
If the engineers who’d created the dragon were going for authenticity, they would have installed the main control unit in the creature’s head. I’d chop it off and see if that solved the problem. If not, at least the particle cannon would be out of the game.
Although I ran full tilt, the dragon was fast, too. As I charged, my weapon already coming down, the monster opened its mouth, preparing to roast me alive. I hit it on the nose as hard as I could. The ax shattered, and I caught the dragon’s jaws with my hands and feet as it rotated its head and slammed me hard into the ground.
I hit my head on the compact dirt, and the blow knocked me stupid for a split second, but I never let go of its jaws. The dragon was strong, and it took all I had to keep it from ripping my guts out with its teeth. I flinched when it produced new ear-splitting sound.
I looked down and saw Enra smiling triumphantly as she worked hard to dislodge her ax from one of its legs. She pulled it free a second later. The blade was dripping in red.
“So,” I said as I released the dragon, “you can bleed.”
Maybe this monster wasn’t entirely made of scrap metal and microchips. That was good.
“Here,” Enra said as she tossed me an ax.
I caught the weapon. It was small, much smaller than the one I’d shattered on the dragon’s hide. I aimed the ax at the glowing red orbs that served for the dragon’s eyes before I threw it. The weapon spun end over end, but before it could connect, the monster snapped it up and swallowed it.
The dragon turned to Enra, who was already making a hasty retreat. I charged the same moment the dragon did. But I was faster.
The dragon snapped at Enra, but I grabbed one of the dragon’s legs in both my arms. Its jaws missed Enra by only a few inches. I lifted the beast into the air with all my strength. It spread its wings, but it was too late. I slammed the beast into the ground. Gears stripped, motors came loose, and bones broke as it howled. There was even a little blood, although not enough to suggest I’d done anything except make it angry.
I scrambled past its flailing legs and wings before I climbed onto its belly. I picked a random scale and punched it hard until it bent. The dragon tried to right itself, so I hit the scale again. The monster tried to snap at me, so I punched it in the nose, sending its head slamming into the ground at the end of a long-necked arc.
My fingers didn’t fit under the edge of the dented scale, so I punched it a few more times and was satisfied to see blood forming at the seams. When I checked it again, there was just enough room to get my fingers under it. I pulled hard, ripping the beast open and exposing its living components. The dragon bellowed as blood streamed from the wound.
The next scale was easier to get my fingers beneath, even though the blood was making it slick. I’d just started to pull when the dragon’s roar changed pitch. I turned my head and spotted one of its front feet heading right for me. Yard-long claws extended from the foot, but I dodged the swipe before I grabbed what served for its ankle or wrist. I twisted it with my whole body and tore the paw off, leaving behind a bleeding stump.
The dragon’s grinding scream reached a whole new level.
Several of the men were running forward and jumping back whenever the dragon spewed plasma. They were trying to get close enough to help, but they were failing hard. Charred corpses lay in a circle around the dragon, and every second the dragon’s particle cannon discharged, more dead were added to the pile.
“Get back!” I ordered.
They did, but not before one of them was cut in half by a flailing wing.
I had to end the battle before more people died. I began ripping scales, searching for something important. At the last scale, I found it. A device, no larger than my head, was shaped like a large egg and resembled a power hub.
Good enough.
If it wasn’t the central hub, it would at least shut down a good portion of the dragon. I reached in, wrapped my fingers around the device, and got the shock of my life.
I collapsed to my knees as electricity raced through me, but I managed to grab a handful of dragon-flesh and hold on. I gritted my teeth as the pain wore off.
“Jacob!” a voice called.
My vision quickly cleared, just in time for me to see a battleaxe spinning end over end headed toward me. I caught it, saw Enra retreat from a flailing leg, and made a quick mental note to thank her later—in whichever way she preferred.
“Now, this is an ax.” I held the double-bladed weapon above my head and swung into the soft flesh.
The first strike cut the meat inside the dragon, but it didn’t slow it down at all. I swung harder and recoiled as sparks and blood spouted up toward my eyes. The third time, I swung with all my might. The dragon shivered as the ax came apart at the sheer power of the impact. Metal scales crunched against each other as the monster’s strength fled from its limbs and collapsed onto the ground in a ground-trembling crash of blood, sparks, and viscera.
“Jacob has slain the dragon!” Enra yelled.
The Ish-Nul showed their appreciation by barking a war cry. They were about to swarm me, but I lifted a hand for them to stay back.
“We’re not done yet!” I yelled. “We need to make sure this thing is really dead.”
I got on my hands and knees to inspect the power hub. I’d shattered the axehead on the creature, but it had been enough to break the hub in two. I turned toward the dead monster’s head to get a closer look at the particle cannon. It was definitely offline. Whatever had powered the weapon had ceased to function after I’d slain the dragon.
The monster’s scales had been welded into shape from various other pieces and were painted to match. I scuffed one with my shoe, and beneath the gray paint, I saw orange. Under the gray of another, I found markings that looked like they might be digits.
The Ish-Nul watched in awed silence as I circled around the creature and found something even weirder. I held my breath as I approached. It was a rod, no more than two inches in diameter and about five times as long. It ended in an intricate shape resembling a claw holding a sphere. The end that touched the rest of the debris had two protrusions, hooked like the dr
agon’s teeth. It resembled a sword’s hilt.
I didn’t think it was a sword, but I wrapped the fingers of my right hand around it all the same. The diameter felt right. I pulled, and it gave a little, revealing metal so black, it was as if I was looking into the starless void. It was the right width to be a sword, and I felt my heart begin to race.
I pulled harder, and more blade was revealed. Another tug told me that it was stuck, and I ended up hauling the dragon’s entire head toward me.
I let go and gave the problem some thought. Martian Storm Marines never fought without their vibro-blades by their sides. I needed a sword. I was pretty sure I’d just found a sword. But if I broke it, I wouldn't have a sword. Then again, I needed a sword that wouldn’t break, so if it broke easily, it wouldn’t be that useful.
With the matter decided, I grasped the hilt again, wrenched it from side to side until I heard something snap, and pulled the blade free.
It was an undamaged blade as dark as hyperspace itself.
Chapter Fourteen
The Ish-Nul were primitive. They understood basic mechanics, and even some of the advanced stuff, but their tactics and technology were a thousand years or more behind my own. The one thing they did have going for them was that they’d discovered how to make beer. And they made a lot of it.
I sipped my mug and watched the beautiful women dance around the fire. It was a practiced dance, swaying hips and jiggles in all the right places.
It had been a good day. I’d killed an honest-to-god dragon. I had become a hero to people who had no idea what my secret was.
The sword I’d found was at the back of the Great Hall, the largest building in the village, while a pair of old women fashioned a scabbard and belt for it from animal leathers and a design I’d scratched out for them.
