Scales Like Stars (Dragons...in...SPACE! Book 1) Read online

He had wanted to save Brash from Bex and the psychopathic assholes filling the Thresh household. He couldn’t believe that every red dragon was just born evil. It took evil parents, evil tutors, evil examples. In that moment of rage, Merton knew he had made the right decision. A s quickly as the dizzying fury came, it passed, leaving Merton feeling a mixture of exhaustion and relief. He slowly slid his palm along Brash’s soft back. “You did good.”

  “I-I did?” Brash whispered.

  Relix – shifted out of her combat form – stepped over. She looked haughty and imperious. But at Merton’s look, that expression shifted to confused softness. She nodded, then reached out to pet Brash gently too.

  “Very, uh, brave,” she said, as if she wasn’t sure if they were the right words.

  “Yay!” Brash leaped up and landed on Merton’s shoulder. “Brash is the bravest dragon in the whole galaxy!” And he started to dance – while the men at arms came forward to start clapping the surviving Ousters in chains.

  Even their leader, the dread pirate Kursk, was wheeled to the brig.

  After all. He was only frozen.

  ***

  “Errr. Mah. Gahhhhhhwwwwwdhhhhhhh!” Julia had said the phrase ‘oh my god’ so many times and in such rapidity that her capacity to enunciate, let alone speak English, was rapidly falling to pieces. But Brash had, just as the old XKCD comic graphed out, a cat-like ability to reduce human intelligence and coherence with mere proximity. Julia was holding Brash in her hands, and letting him floop from one palm to the other – something Brash was more than happy to do. He giggled and cheered as he flowed from palm to palm in that curiously boneless way that young kittens could do. “He’s like a tiny scaled sausage of utter adorableness!”

  “And apparently into soft vore,” Trevor said, dryly.

  “Dude!” Julia, Carlos, Lisa and Merton all said at once.

  Merton’s Mom, who had been watching Brash being petted and fawned over, blushed. “What is, uh, soft vore?”

  The nerds all exchanged a glance.

  “You don’t want to know,” Lisa said, nodding.

  Dad harrumphed. “So, this is the famous son of Baron Bex Thresh, the dragon that he was willing to try and assassinate the entire ship for...” He rubbed his chin. “Have any idea what makes him special?”

  “Oh!” Brash waved his clawed paw into the air, excitedly, starting to jump up and down in Julia’s arms. “Oh! I know! I know! Pick me! I know!” He waved his paw more. “I know!”

  Dad chuckled. “I’m not that kind of professor, Brash. You can just say so without me needing to call on you.”

  Brash started to bounce even more excitedly. “What kind of professor are you? A love professor?” He wiggled his tiny eyebrow ridges excitedly. “Oh! Can I become a love professor?” He craned his head around to look at Merton.

  “Uh...” Merton said. “Aren’t you a bit young for that?”

  “Dragons age at an extremely accelerated rate, then an extremely slow rate after that!” Brash said, cheerfully. “I’m eighteen human years old as of ten seconds after I hatched. Then I age at the rate of one human year every two hundred and thirty two million years as per the orbital speed of the draconic homeworld!”

  They all exchanged looks.

  “How can you compare human ages and dragon ages?” Lisa asked.

  “I’m psychic !” Brash said, cheerfully. “I learned while snoozing in the egg. Then it got boring and I left! Hi!” He waved at them.

  “Okay. Why such a big number for, uh, dragon years?” Merton asked.

  Mom chuckled. “Well, it sounds like the draconic homeworld has a similar orbit to SOL, then. Earth takes between two hundred and twenty five to two hundred and fifty million years to orbit the galaxy. Which is also known as a galactic year.” She nodded slightly.

  “Dragons be old , man,” Julia said. “That’s hip street language.”

  “No it’s not,” Lisa said, frowning.

  “True, I worked in data entry, I have no idea what street is,” Julia said, giggling, then leaned forward to mash her face against Brash’s side. “He’s. So. Freaking. Cute!”

  Brash started to vibrate excitedly. “I’m cute!”

  “Yesssssssss!” Julia started to pet him all over again.

  Merton was about to ask more questions when the door to the room opened. Relix entered, dressed in her finest robes. She walked forward, opened her mouth – about to say something to Merton. Then she stopped as she saw Brash looking up at her with huge puppy dog eyes. Relix blushed along her muzzle, then knelt down and patted his head. Brash cheered excitedly. “Yay!”

  Relix looked at Merton – and since she was kneeling and he was sitting on the ground, this actually meant their heads were on even keel. Her voice was soft: “The Ousters have been interrogated, but House Thresh did a good job of putting intermediaries between them and their assassins. Even truth spells haven’t wrung anything out. And Ouster ships destroyed their own computer cores. We have no evidence. Nothing.” She sighed. “Fortunately, we’ll be reaching Hamin Yeltanzo’s territory in a few hours. There, we should be able to examine this little bundle of...cuteness.”

  Brash rolled around happily. Then he gasped. “Right! I forgotted!”

  “What did you forget?” Relix asked, her brow furrowing.

  “What I was going to say. Oh! Right!” Brash nodded. “I was designed to take over the galaxy! That was why I was special.” He shrugged. “But it’s not like galaxies are important, unlike cookies.” He nodded sagely.

  Everyone in the group exchanged a look. Again.

  ***

  “So, Specy-”

  The four armed purple skinned chick slowly turned her gaze on Merton and Merton’s casual smile faded.

  “My name,” she said, clearly. “Is Spectral Timeweaver Compounding the Infinite. Gunner calls me Specy because he has no understanding of the insult inherent in such a shortening.”

  Merton gulped. “R-Right. Sorry, uh, Spectral Timeweaver Compounding the, uh, Infinite.” He coughed. “What, uh, what do your scans say?”

  Brash, meanwhile, had completed his third complete rotation within the scanning sphere. He was pushing himself in circles with tiny wingbeats, giggling incessantly as he enjoyed the scanner beams sweeping over his body. Apparently, they tickled. On the screen next to the scanning sphere, Merton could see a load of scrawling runes, as well as an internal view of Brash’s body. It looked like a Where’s Waldo picture of organs, with so many things smooshed into a single space that it was hard to tell where one organ started and another organ began.

  The four armed purple skinned chick sighed. “This dragon has been genetically engineered.”

  Relix hissed, quietly.

  “How?” Lisa asked. “Like...augmented abilities?”

  “Augmented is putting it mildly ,” the four armed purple skinned chick said. She took hold of the side of the glowing screen, detaching a chunk of it. She unrolled that chunk like a scroll, the crystal becoming flexible as she unfurled it. The edge of the crystal clattered against the floor – that was how long it was. “This is the genoscroll of a normal dragon, like Relix. This is her shapeshifting, this is her cryonic breath, and so on.” The four armed purple skinned chick twisted her wrist, and the scroll wound back up again, hiding away the glowing purple runes that had been scrawled across it. She tapped on the edge, then unrolled it again.

  This time, the scroll unfurled to the floor, then continued unrolling until it went out the door. The faint rattling and clicking of it unrolling continued for a few seconds.

  “That’s-” Merton started.

  “It’s not done,” the four armed purple skinned chick said.

  Merton shut up – and heard the continuing click and clatter of the scroll unrolling.

  “Holy-” Merton started again.

  “Still not done.”

  The clattering continued a bit more.

  Merton looked at the four armed purple skinned chick. She waited a moment...then nodded.
“Now it’s done.”

  “Holy balls ,” Carlos, who had been sitting in the corner of the room, said.

  “You can say that again,” Lisa said, looking at the scroll.

  “Holy balls ,” Carlos said again.

  “Does everyone have to keep using such foul language?” Merton’s Mom asked.

  “Yeah, stop fucking swearing!” Merton’s Dad growled, then laughed, then subsided as Mom glared at him.

  The four armed purple skinned chick looked right at Relix. “He is a cross between blacks, reds, greens, golds, silvers, coppers, tungsten, zebra, teal, yellow, astral, radium, and time dragons. There’s altered DNA from the drow, dwarven, goblinoid, humanoid and elemental species. But more, there are genetic sequences that actually force his shapeshifting into certain configurations. No matter what form this hatchling takes-” she pointed at the spinning dragon in the sphere. “-he’ll have contact points for a wide range of magitech augmentations. There’s pre-built slots for targeting arrays, plasma beamcasters, anti-matter bowdarts, spinfusors, bolt guns, vol-tech ray launchers, goblin spheres, death wands, hellwhips, shrike catapults, long ranged anti-personnel plasma missiles, tactical nuclear mine layers, and a water cannon.”

  ‘What’s the water cannon for?” Carlos asked.

  “Vampires,” the four armed purple skinned chick said, without blinking.

  “And he’s able to transform into an augmentation suit,” Merton said. “Brash. Uh, what did it feel like to be my armor?”

  “Like the bestest thing in the whole world!” Brash said, his voice muffled as he pushed his face against the side of the scanning sphere. “Like laying on gold! Or eating cookies! T-That is, until, um...well, there was that one bad part, but the rest was fun.”

  Merton rubbed his hand along his face. “What’s stronger than a dragon...but a dragon inside another dragon? Every bit of a dragon’s magic can be spent on external spells - no magic required to buff your strength or speed or toughness. And you have all the upsides of a cyber-warrior, without draconic regeneration rejecting the implants. You become a walking doomsday device.”

  Julia piped up. “And, uh, from my reading-”

  “What reading?” Relix asked.

  “I asked the ship to give me history books,” Julia said, grinning.

  “Oh...” Relix looked like she wasn’t entirely sure what to do about someone who actually went out and learned things on their own.

  “According to the history books,” Julia said. “Half those dragons that he’s got genetically booped into him are extinct.”

  “They broke one law or another and oh my scaly butt!” Relix hissed, sitting up, her eyes wide as saucers. “Each one was eradicated by House Thresh! They’ve been the finest warrior household for the past ten thousand years!” She put her claws against her face, her eyes wide as saucers. “House Thresh has been planning this for millennia!”

  “Wait, it doesn’t track,” Lisa said.

  They all turned to look at her.

  Lisa frowned. “You don’t win wars with Death Stars. You win them with the Imperial Army and with the Stormtroopers and with TIE fighters and with the Senate. One super-strong dragon suit, no matter how super strong, isn’t going to conquer the whole fucking galaxy. Just by sheer attrition alone , the Imperial House and its allies will win.”

  “Thuwit!” Relix bellowed.

  The door opened and Thuwit came in. He had weathered the boarding action fairly well – having been one of people in charge of making sure civilians got to the most secure parts of the ship. His bald pate gleamed with sweat as he puffed and panted and he bowed, low. “Yes, m’lady?”

  “House Thresh’s allies. Name them,” Relix said, her eyes narrowing. Merton leaned against the wall as Brash started to crawl out of the scanning sphere. Once he was out, he flew over to land on Merton’s shoulder and started to nose against his cheek.

  “House Forin, House Xosh, and House Byraugh. They’re greens, blues and blacks, in that order,” he said. “House Forin are aggressive terraforming specialists – they’ll essentially use terraforming wish spells and macro-fungal bombs to turn planets into worlds that suit them, usually to destabilize or disadvantage an enemy house. Xosh are hoarders and run several large banks. And Bryaugh...well...” He sighed. “They’re breeders.”

  “As in they breed...people?” Lisa asked.

  “No, dragons,” Thuwit said, nodding. “They make up for their lack of technical specifications by breeding large numbers of dragons, to overwhelm enemies by sheer numbers.”

  Merton scowled, slowly. “Or, in other words: The brains, the purse, the brawn and the leadership, counting Thresh.” He looked at Relix. A cold wind seemed to blow through the bridge. Merton shivered and he opened his mouth to say something. To try and say something. But it all felt too big. Too vast.

  A sudden alarm wailed out. Gunner’s voice spoke over the PA.

  “All hands to battle stations. Princess Relix, get to the bridge. Now.”

  Merton and she were sprinting off, followed by the rest of the group. They ran as fast and as hard as they could – and within a few moments, they reached the bridge. Merton stepped slowly forward, his eyes wide.

  Red light, like the fires of hell, filled the bridge’s forward view screen, reflecting off every pane, every panel, every facet of the bridge’s metal construction. Gunner stood there, his face set, his hands clenched. Even the gobliness, Pyria, was sitting there quietly. The drow pilot had her head in her hands, and was whispering quietly in her own language. Brash shivered against Merton’s neck and he reached up to bundle the tiny dragon into his hands.

  The star system they had just dropped into was burning.

  An accretion disk of ship-hulks, many of them still burning with out of control flames that poured from vast rents in molten armor, spread across a vast world that had, in the pictures Relix had shown him, been verdant and green. Now, a firestorm swept from pole to pole, painting the world in ruby and smeared black and caustic orange. A huge polyhedron that had once been the orbital defense fortress was shattered. Great flaming chunks of station were adding their own bolide bright streaks to the holocaust on the planet’s surface.

  “How many?” Merton whispered.

  “Three billion,” Gunner said, quietly.

  “I-I’m detecting a single active ship,” the drow pilot whispered. “It’s...it’s House Xosh merchant freighter.”

  “Calibrate your scanners for Brash’s biological signature,” Merton said.

  The pilot blinked, looking baffled.

  “Do it!” Relix snapped.

  The pilot jerked her head back around to the console and tapped a few buttons. The ship sudden glowed brilliant red. It was crammed full of Brash’s. Thousands of them. The ship was slowly turning away from the burning planet and starting to accelerate towards the Talon-9 .

  “We could have saved them...” Relix whispered. “Just telling them what to scan for. All it would have taken was one torpedo to stop the whole sneak attack. We-”

  “Plot a course out of here!” Merton shouted.

  The merchant ship’s engines kicked on, shooting out a drive plume that was lost against the vastness – the horror – of the planet it flew above. As it drew closer and closer, the sides of the ship opened and Merton could see the teeming masses of dragon-armored creatures within. The black dragons of House Bryaugh, ready to attack.

  “Our subspace engine needs twenty four hours to recharge,” the pilot said.

  Once more. The question came down: What to do? How to save the day? Merton’s brain seized up, seeing red dots spreading outwards around the freighter. An idea sprang into his mind. It depended on his knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons being actually useful in this scenario. But since there were already Elemental Planes of Water and Earth, he might as well roll the dice and see, no? He tightened his jaw and nodded.

  “Open a defensive portal into the Elemental Plane of Negation and fly us in!” Merton said.

  “Are
you insane !?” The pilot asked.

  The front elements of the on-rushing fleet began to open fire. Merton wasn’t sure what it was they were shooting, but searing white disks of plasma, rocketing streams of micro-missiles, searing ruby red beams of laser light, and the invisible zipping lines of gauss shells seemed to make up the most of it. Portal shields rippled along the rear of the Talon-9 , whisking away incoming threats to extraplanar destinations. The shield generators did remarkably well. At first. But then portals started snapping open just a fraction too late, or were only able to open for one projectile while another shot through. The Talon-9 rocked, and one of the consoles on the bridge exploded in a spray of sparks, causing the man at arms manning it to throw up their arms in alarm.