“Hi, Bordraab,” Calvin said, steeling himself, but knowing he needed to take her focus from Master Chief. “How have you been?”
The dragon composed herself and looked down on Calvin from 20 feet up. “I am fine, thank you. The people on this planet in my universe are very happy to feed me for promising not to eat their livestock or go stomping through their fields. I suspect when it is time to go, I will leave behind a number of new legends and tales. They didn’t have dragons in their mythologies…but I am sure they will now. Is it time to go?”
“It’s time for us to go,” Calvin said. He looked at the dragon and then at the shuttle. “I didn’t realize you were coming, though. I don’t have any idea how we’re going to get you up to orbit—you’re not going to fit in that shuttle!”
“Not unless I can make myself smaller, anyway.”
“What? Can you take the shape of a human?”
Bordraab made a sound like steam escaping a boiler. “Not hardly. The amount of mass I would have to shed would be…well, let’s just say it would be really awkward. That said, though, I can make myself somewhat smaller. Excuse me a moment.”
The dragon walked off into the jungle, knocking down smaller trees and ripping off bark from the ones she passed if there wasn’t enough room.
“Where is she going?” asked one of the Thor’s guards.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Calvin said.
A roar shook the valley from the direction of where Bordraab had last been seen, scattering the local avians and small ground animals. A few moments later, a much smaller silver dragon—about half her original size—could be seen making its way toward them.
“That’s incredible,” Calvin said. “How were you able to do it?”
“You can’t live as long as I have without picking up a few skills,” Bordraab replied. “It is not unlike the Eco Warriors of the Aesir. I am able to manipulate my cell structure somewhat. I also shed a little water weight, which is the reason I needed to be alone to do it.”
“Sounded like it hurt,” Master Chief noted.
“More than I could ever tell you,” Bordraab replied. “Still, I believe it was worth it. I think I will now fit in your shuttle, although I will need a significant amount of fluids when we reach orbit to restore myself.”
She began walking toward the shuttle then stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Well? Are you coming? We are under a time crunch, after all.”
* * *
Bridge, TSS Vella Gulf, Kakatcha System
“The equipment is stabilizing,” Steropes said as the ship completed the jump. “Launching probes.” A variety of probes were launched from the ship in all directions, expanding the ship’s sensor net and giving them a better chance of detecting any ships or civilizations in the system. They looked for a number of signs of life, from power usage, to anomalous gravity spikes, to electromagnetic radiation.
“Nothing, sir,” the sensor operator said after scanning the planet below. “I don’t see any signs of habitation at all. There are, however, abnormally high radiation levels in the atmosphere, which may have something to do with it.”
“That’s weird,” the CO said.
“Why’s that?” Bordraab asked from the shuttle bay. Although she’d made herself “smaller,” she was nowhere close to being small enough to transit the ship’s passageways, so the crew had set up a number of cameras and viewscreens so she could participate in conferences on the bridge and the CO’s conference room.
“Most of the planets we’ve found to be inhabited in one universe have been inhabited in the other universe as well. This is the same planet your people live on in your universe, but there’s no one here in our universe, nor is there any indication there was ever a civilization here. As the planet is reasonably close to both Golirion and Jotunheimr, I’d have thought it would be inhabited, for sure, even with the greater than normal radiation. I’d have thought the Aesir at least would’ve figured out a way to either live here in spite of it, or would have worked to lessen the radiation levels.”
“I can tell you why no one lives here,” Bordraab said.
“Really?” the CO asked. “Why’s that?”
“Because early on we figured out how to cross universes and came over and ate everyone.”
There was a long, awkward pause as everyone avoided looking at Bordraab’s monitor, but when the CO finally looked at her, he could see her shaking. “I am kidding with you!” she finally exclaimed with a roar. “That isn’t what happened at all.”
Most of the bridge crew joined the CO in a round of nervous laughter. “Okay,” the CO said, “if you didn’t eat them, why’s the planet really uninhabited?”
“This is one of the boundary systems between the Aesir and the Jotunn,” Bordraab replied. “They mentioned it when they brought me from my world. This planet was alternately colonized by the Jotunn and the Aesir, but each time, one of them would use nuclear weapons on the other’s colony to wipe them out. Both of them finally decided the planet wasn’t defensible and stopped trying. It was also highly irradiated by then, too. From what I understood, it is almost livable again, and the Jotunn are going to try to establish a colony here.”
“I wonder if the Aesir know that?” Calvin asked.
“Probably not,” the CO said. “We may have to mention it to them when we go back through their system.” He looked at the planet on the viewscreen again. “Well, what do you think, Bordraab? Do we cross over to your universe now and give your people warning that we’re coming, or do we land on the planet and cross over to your universe there?”
“It really doesn’t matter,” Bordraab replied.
“I have to imagine there’s some benefit in not surprising a group of dragons,” Calvin said. “You never know; their first response might be to…I don’t know…want to eat us or something.”
“No. As I said, it won’t matter,” Bordraab said. “You won’t surprise them, I promise. You are aware I am clairalient, correct?”
“Yes,” Captain Shepard replied. “Although I don’t really know how that works.”
“My sense of smell is very different from the way you understand it; I have clairvoyant powers associated with smell and can sometimes get additional information through different scents. Just as I have a clairvoyant power based on smell, though, others of my race have similar powers. Just like there are five senses, there are also five psychic senses.”
“Okay,” Captain Shepard said. “I don’t understand how that’s pertinent.”
“It is quite simple; it doesn’t matter which way you approach my planet; they already know you’re coming.”
“Wait,” Calvin said. “If your people have all those abilities, how did the Jotunn sneak up and capture you?”
Bordraab made a sniffing noise that came through the mind link she was able to establish with people. “You are assuming they snuck up on us. They did not. We knew they were coming.”
“Why didn’t you prepare for them then?”
“Once again, you are assuming. We did prepare for them, and what we did is not relevant to this conversation. We also knew the easiest choice, in the long term, was for 10 of us to go with them back to their planet. We knew it was the right thing to do.”
“The right thing?” Captain Shepard asked.
“It was the choice with the most positive outcomes to our claircognizants. At the time, I thought that was because it was better to sacrifice 10 of our number to go with the Jotunn than to lose everyone in a failed attempt to fight them. Now, however, I see I was wrong. The choice to go with the Jotunn had additional long-term outcomes beyond the ones we thought were the most important.”
“What do you mean?”
The dragon looked at Calvin. “The outcome we chose was obviously the best outcome because I ended up meeting you.”
“How is that better?” Calvin asked.
“If, as you say, there is a master race coming who will wipe us out, and the only way to stop them is to use informati
on from my people to go back in time and stop them…how would you have known to ask my people how far you need to go back if you had never met me? I was in the Jotunn jail at the right time to meet K-Mart, so I could meet you and lead you to my people.”
“Or that’s a lot of coincidences all stacked together,” Master Chief said. “Couldn’t you also have just called that ‘luck?’”
The humans got the sense of Bordraab sniffing again. “Where you see luck, I see precognizance. You, however, may call it what you like if it makes your tiny little minds feel better.”
“So, the bottom line is they know we’re coming,” Calvin said, trying to head off Master Chief’s retort. “It doesn’t matter which way we do it, because they’ll be ready, regardless.”
“That is correct.” Bordraab paused and then added, “I still smell disbelief from many of you. Perhaps a demonstration of this is necessary to make you believers. Captain Shepard?”
“Yes?”
“Please stay in this universe. When we reach the planet, we will go down to it and cross over there. Then you will understand.”
* * *
Plateau, Unknown Planet, Kakatcha System
“You’re sure this is the right spot?” asked the operations officer, Commander Dan Dacy, looking around the plateau. He’d co-piloted the shuttle with Calvin that brought Bordraab, the CO, Night, and Master Chief down to the planet. They were still in their own universe, but the planet looked like it was from a science fiction novel. Although the planet was in the “life zone” around its star and had a favorable climate and plenty of water, there was no life to be found.
The group had been somber on the way to the planet, and Calvin had to force himself to fly an economical profile; his subconscious wanted him to hurry at everything he did, as if everything was a race to beat the timeline they were under.
Bordraab looked up at Commander Dacy from the stream where she was drinking. With each giant mouthful of water, she seemed to expand, like someone blowing up a balloon. “As I have already told you, it is up to you,” she said, motioning to the plateau with one of her wings. “Are you happy to meet with my people in these surroundings? If not, you may choose somewhere else. It won’t matter to my people—they would want you to be comfortable and at ease.”
“Am I going to be comfortable dealing with a large number of dragons?” the CO asked. “Even just one is somewhat…intimidating.”
“That is up to you, of course, as are our surroundings.”
When everyone indicated the plateau was fine, she finished drinking and turned to Master Chief, as Commander Dacy returned to the shuttle. “Make a motion like you are going to sit down.”
“What?” Master Chief asked.
“You have doubted me all along, and it is time for you to become a believer.” Bordraab winked at Calvin. “I want you to take a position like you are about to sit down.” She nodded to Calvin, who had brought the box that enabled a group to jump to the other universe. “When I say now, press the button.” She turned back to Master Chief and reached forward to put the pad of one of her claws on his forehead. He did his best not to flinch away, but even he had a hard time staying steady when the enormous claw reached for him.
“Now!” Bordraab said, as she gave Master Chief a gentle—for her—push. Calvin pressed the button, and Master Chief fell backward…to land, seated, on a log in the other universe. His eyes opened wide, and his mouth fell open, but for once nothing came out. The group was in the center of a number of the dragons surrounding a fire, above which roasted several animals that looked like sheep on a spit.
A number of floral scents assailed their nostrils, almost like being in a well-tended garden. Although different, they didn’t seem to clash, but complemented each other, so the overall smell was something greater than the sum of its parts.
Just like they all seemed to smell differently, the dragons were a kaleidoscope of colors. The silver of Bordraab, as well as gold and red dragons, seemed to preponderate, but there were dragons from nearly everywhere along the spectrum. Despite the variety of colors, all had intelligent, focused, golden eyes that looked down on the group from a height of 15–20 feet. All had their wings tucked behind them so they could gather closer.
“Greetings,” said an enormous golden dragon—almost half again as big as Bordraab. Although the dragon also spoke out loud, Calvin could hear its voice simultaneously in his mind.
“Thank you,” Captain Shepard said with a smile, indicating the assembled dragons. “Obviously you knew we were coming.”
“As I’m sure Bordraab has told you, we have certain…abilities.”
“Yes,” the CO said. “Bordraab explained all of you have some sort of clairvoyance, but it can take many different forms.”
“That is correct,” the golden dragon said. “Just like you have five senses, there are five clairvoyant senses. My personal ability is claircognizance—I have the innate ability to know things. Some might call it intuition, but it is more than that. I knew, for example, that you would want to meet us here, so here we are.”
“Did you know we’d have Bordraab with us?”
“Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that for us; it is hard for us to use our senses on each other. While I could see you coming, I couldn’t see Bordraab with you. She is, however, very welcome; we were starting to wonder if she’d been killed by the Jotunn.”
“No,” Bordraab said, “I was saved by one of these people—these humans—but then I had to wait for them to need us so I could show them the way to the planet.”
“Which one of them saved you?” the golden dragon asked. “He or she must be rewarded.”
“It was one named Dan Knaus. Unfortunately he has passed on to the next world.”
“Still, if one of the humans helped you, we owe them a debt. Is that why they are here? To collect this debt?”
“They are here for information, although I am sure they would cheerfully accept that information in payment for the debt.”
The golden dragon cocked its head. “We owe them a debt, but they would settle it with information we would have freely given them anyway? This is a strange race.”
“It is indeed,” Bordraab replied, nodding. “Although they do not always do so, and they are sometimes led astray, in general, these humans want to do good deeds. They are now on a quest, although it is to save their own lives as much as everyone else’s in their universe.”
She stopped suddenly and sniffed, then smiled.
“Did you just have a clairalient vision?” Calvin asked.
“No,” Bordraab said. “The roast muggon smells done, and I haven’t had any of that in years. It’s time to eat.”
* * *
“So what information is it that you are after?” asked the golden dragon, who had finally introduced himself as Thorion, once everyone was seated and portions of the roast had been distributed. “We do not get off planet very often, so I am not sure how much help we will be to you.”
The CO nodded to Calvin. “It’s your show. Go ahead.”
“Yes, sir.” Calvin looked up into the dragon’s golden eyes. “As Bordraab said, we’re on a quest. There’s an ancient Enemy in our universe who consumes most of a planet’s life force before moving on. Like a herd of locusts, they’ve depopulated our galaxy at least once, if not many times. Unfortunately the Enemy has returned, and we don’t have the means to fight them off. We’re hoping to go back in time, to a period of higher learning, to either fight them there or bring back the technology needed to fight them in our here and now.
“We have the technology—we think—to go back in time. We also have—once again, we think—the ability to power the device that will send us back in time. The problem is—”
“You don’t know how far back to go,” Thorion finished.
“That’s correct,” Calvin said. “We’re hoping you can use your powers to give us an estimate of how far back in time we need to go to get the technology we need. If you can also giv
e us a system to start our search in, that would be helpful.”
Thorion made a rumbling noise in his throat; Calvin knew he was laughing. “You don’t ask for much, do you?” Thorion asked. “We aren’t even part of your universe!”
Calvin shrugged. “I don’t want to say you’re our only hope…but we really don’t have a better idea of how to gauge it.”
Thorion laughed again. “I was kidding,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that we haven’t been to your universe; we don’t need to—we have you. That is not to say that any of us will be able to give you the information you need, of course, but we do not need to have the history of your universe; we just need the people it is important to.”
“So you’ll help us?” the CO asked.
“We will try. That does not mean the information we give you will be exactly what you need, but we will do our best.”
* * *
Meeting Center, Dragon Home World, Anti-Kakatcha System
The dragons had arranged accommodations for the Terrans at a nearby meeting center. As large as they were, they didn’t normally congregate in constructs like “cities;” most had ranch-like holdings where they raised their food animals. There were, however, times when a large number of them would need to meet to discuss something, and they’d built a conference facility on each of the continents where they could get together. The facility itself was huge—at over a mile on a side and 100 feet high, it was a marvel of engineering. It had to be; the individual meeting rooms were bigger than football fields back home.
Bordraab came and got them early in the morning so they could begin working with the dragons. They’d been in one guest room—due to the size difference, there was plenty of space for all of them in it. Master Chief had noted that the room’s furniture had probably been assembled by a dragon who liked working with miniatures, like some sort of war modeler back home.
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