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

  “Right, right,” Merton said, nodding.

  “Soooo, is anyone going to talk about the fact that a Dungeons and Dragons supplement from the nineteen fucking eighties accurately described the makeup of the polycosmos?” Lisa asked. “I mean, yeah, it’s called the City of O and not Sigil and there’s some kind of evil alternate version called the Night City-”

  “Huh?” Merton and Carlos asked at the exact same time, in the exact same tone of voice.

  “Yeah, we got a map!” Julia said, her voice breaking into the conversation. “Since we finished our part of the repair jobs, you bozons.”

  “You’re a bozon!” Carlos said.

  “Dude!” Merton said. “That’s my transgendered internet girlfriend slash partner in crime. Only I get to call her a bozon .”

  “Something unprintable,” Carlos muttered under his breath.

  Julia giggled. “Anywho, we bugged Gunner to bug the Princess to get us a map of the multiverse. Or polycosmos. Or whatever . Did you know that there’s another dimension with a dragon high school ?” she sounded delighted. “Oh, and another one with freaking robots with lightsabers !”

  “That’s great, Julia,” Merton said, chuckling. “But do you have any useful information?”

  “Noooo I donnnn’t!” Julia sang.

  “Though, uh, I have some information here,” Lisa said, her voice growing grim. “We’re getting news feeds from the whole galaxy. The attack on House Yeltanzo is lighting up all the bands. Imperial Legions are mobilizing.” As Lisa spoke, Carlos held out one of the chunks of adamantine armor. Merton took it with a quiet grunt. “And we’re stuck out here until we fix this ship up.”

  “Right,” Carlos said, then turned, looking out at the vastness surrounding them. “It does creep me the fuck out.”

  “Which puts humans one step above everyone but the dragons,” Merton said as he laid the armor plating down. The rectangle of hardened adamantite started to unfold as magic worked itself into the skin of the ship. The replacement hull plating slipped into the jagged line of damage and started to glow with a brilliant heat that was nearly comforting when compared to the vastness of the plane of negation.

  “Lisa, Julia,” Merton said, then paused. “Where’s Trevor?”

  “I’m working on the engine fins back here,” Trevor said, his voice tight with annoyance. “Stop fucking distracting me.”

  “Distract Trevor with fucking, got it,” Julia said, cheerfully. Then, less cheerfully. “Merton, I’ve been doing some rough matheguesstimation, and it looks like the Five Talon Empire has enough armies and ships to explode the Earth, like, ten times over.”

  “No offense, but fucking duh !” Trevor snapped. “They’re a galactic fucking empire .”

  “Buuuuuuuuut!” Julia sounded like she had just thrust her finger into the air. “Most of those fleets and armies aren’t controlled by the Emperor. We got space feudalism in full force here. It’s all collections of personal merc armies with fealties to individual dragon dudes and dudettes. Meaning that House Xosh can only throw House Xosh - and their allies, I guess - at Earth.”

  “Don’t their allies include a legion of super-dragons?” Carlos asked.

  “Did someone say... snuggle dragon!? ”

  The voice that called to the two humans didn’t come through their space suited helmets. It echoed through the plane of negation as if it was just an ordinary room. Brash flew directly into the small of Merton’s back, shifting as he impacted, so that he went from his full dragony form into a humanoid form that could more properly glomp onto someone. Merton nearly went flying off the side of the ship as Brash’s arms and legs wrapped around him. Meanwhile, the replacement component that Speccy needed to get the Talon-9 ready to fight another space battle started to drift off in an erratic direction, floating deeper into negation.

  “Super, Brash,” Carlos said, casually.

  “Brash!” Merton squeaked. “Dude!”

  “Oh, sorry!” Brash said, then shifted. Through his thin space suit, Merton could feel Brash shifting from bishonen fuckboy to something considerably girlier . And less hung. And...girl. His eyes widened and he stood perfectly still.

  “I meant the component !” Merton said.

  “Oh! Right!” Brash grabbed onto his shoulders and launched his - er, her - self up and away. For a single moment, Merton’s faceplate was filled with the sleek, hairless folds of the cutest, most fuckable pussy he had ever seen, nestled between two sleek, pale thighs, which themselves were attached to a peach shaped, spankable rump. All quite human, save for a tiny patch of black scales where her pubic hair should have been, and a single whipcord thin black scaled tail. Then Brashette grew out her wings, flapped once, and slammed into the component. “Get back here, component!”

  Carlos whispered. “Dude. Your son-daughter is hot ,” he said.

  “Carlos!” Merton hissed.

  “Thanks!” Brashette called down to them.

  “He’s...she’s…”

  “She!” Brashette said. “Oh! Now I’m a he!” He giggled, his voice definitely sounding slightly deeper. “Now, I’m a she! She, he, she, he, she, he, they!” Brash sang out the changes, his/her voice modulating tones with each word.

  Merton shook his head. “Brash is less than two days old.”

  “Didn’t he say that dragons age to be eighteen years old three seconds after they hatch?” Carlos whispered. “Also, we’re in space, fighting evil space dragons. Is now really the time to have moral quandaries about whether or not one can dibs on a cute dragon’s butt?”

  “You are aware that I can hear all of this, right?” Lisa asked, her voice a low growl. “Carlos, if you touch Brash, I’m breaking your arm.”

  “ Thank you!” Merton said.

  “Awww!” Brash said, shifting into his full dragon form to grip the component more securely. With a single beat of his wings, he shot towards the rear of the Talon-9 .

  Merton shook his head, slowly. All of that was a new scale of weirdness and provoked weirder feelings. He decided to pack all those questions away for future Merton to deal with. However, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Carlos had laid down the last of the armor plating...and then reached up and flicked off his radio transmitter with a click. He gestured with one hand for Merton to get close. Merton figured out almost immediately. He flicked off his radio and started to walk forward. If you shouted in a helmet, you could be heard through the vibration of plastic and glass. And if your radio was off, it made for a nice and private conversation.

  “So, are we going to talk about the fact that Planescape is real?” Carlos shouted - his voice sounding like it was coming through a thick wall.

  “Not sure what there is to talk about,” Merton said. “We’ve got nothing to say beyond ‘gee, that’s fucking weird.’ Also, seems a bit lower on the scale than you checking out my adoptive daughter . And the fact that I have an adoptive daughter, who is sometimes, an adoptive son, slash adoptive...puppy...dragon thing. ”

  Carlos blushed. “Yeah, sorry. I...that might have been a bit far. Like, off color jokes at the D&D table are one thing, but…” He shook his head in his helmet. “Sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” Merton said, smiling.

  “But, on the subject of the whole multiverse thing, it’s fucking weird! ” Carlos said, his chubby cheeks shining with perspiration. Merton had to admit he was right. He sighed.

  “Okay, here’s my current theory,” Merton said. “Dragons learn stuff psychically, right? Maybe they broadcast it too, like some kind of big psychic field, and the human race has been picking it up?”

  “Why has no one else picked it up?” Carlos asked.

  “We don’t know that they haven’t. Every other race we’ve run into has either been magic, which might fuck with the reception, or they’ve been enslaved by the FTE long enough to have their original culture buried underneath the draconic one.” Merton shrugged, then stepped over to the many patches that he and Carlos had been laying down. It
had gone from white to red hot, and as he watched, even that heat faded, leaving a perfect patch-job. He gently patted it with the toe of his boot, to ensure that the material was hardened properly. He grunted, then flicked on his radio.

  “I’m just saying,” Julia was saying. “We should get some allies with the metallic dragons, right? So, priority one should be warning them that House Xosh is the big bad.”

  “Any draconic house is a threat to Earth. Any of them,” Lisa said, her voice flat.

  Merton smiled, glad to hear the brain trust was working on the bigger issues. He adjusted the dial on his radio, clicking through the frequencies until he finally heard Speccy saying: “Checking engine thrust nozzle four-B. Okay, we’re good, shut her down and move onto five-B.”

  “Yo, Speccy!” Merton said. “We’ve got one zone patched. How many more damage zones we got?” He closed his eyes, remembering how many times Speccy had gritted her teeth at the diminutive of her name. “I mean, uh, Spectral-”

  “Two more,” Speccy cut him off. “And I...am given to understand by Princess Relix that-”

  “-piece of murder fuck shit crap damn tail eating scale rotting-” Relix’s voice was filled with more anger and fury than Merton had ever heard in his entire marriage. Which, to be fair, was not very long. But still .

  “-that I am to accept you calling me...Speccy...” Speccy sounded less than pleased.

  “Awesome, Speccy,” Carlos said.

  “I better check on the waifu,” Merton said.

  “Don’t you fucking dare call me that !” Relix’s voice boomed over the radio.

  “Sorry, snoogums,” Merton said, grinning as he demagged his boots, kicked off the ship, then turned on the cold-jet thrusters on the back of his suit. He skimmed along the ship, leaving Carlos behind. It wasn’t until he was nearly at the snout of the Talon-9 that Carlos realized Merton had left him with the hard job of getting more patch plates, then lugging them to the other damage zones, then applying them. Merton saw the instant that Carlos figured it out: It was when Carlos started to shake his fist furiously.

  When Merton cleared the nose of his ship, he found his wife floating next to one of the exposed railgun barrels that she was trying to fix. A collection of parts were floating around her, glittering like stars in the light shining from the front of the Talon-9’s bridge, and she was using a wrench to try and undo a screw. Her muscles bulged as she gritted her teeth, braced her clawed feet against the hull, then strained even harder. Merton put his palm against the ship to slow himself down, and felt the low groan of stressing metal.

  “This railgun shall bow before me!” Relix snarled.

  “Honey, honey!” Merton started. “It’s-”

  In the three way battle between Relix, the wrench, and the bolt she was working on, the wrench surrendered first. It bent with a squeal Merton could hear through his palms and the sudden relaxing of pressure sent Relix flipping back into space.

  “-righty tighty,” Merton groaned. “Lefty loosey.”

  Relix beat her wings, demonstrating why this place wasn’t a true vacuum, and flew back into the nose of the ship, where she wrenched the wrench free and started to shake it. “Traitor!”

  Merton pushed himself down to float beside her, putting his hands on her shoulders. He pressed his space-suited helmet against her ear and whispered. “You do know that you don’t need to help, right? I was mostly kidding. ” His voice was soft, and it made her tense up as she lowered the wrench down, letting it fall from her fingers. Which meant it started to float away from the ship, gently carried away on the invisible forces that seemed to determine the drift in this place.

  “I know,” she whispered, her voice husky. “A-And if I truly didn’t want to, I could have stopped you. I’m stronger than you.” She smiled for a moment, but it faded like a nuclear explosion in space. “I’m not just a spoiled space princess. I can help. If Brash can help, I can help.”

  “Brash seems to be preprogrammed with the engineering data on a worrying number of weapons,” Merton said, smiling as he squeezed her shoulders. “You, meanwhile, spent most of your youth learning magic and politicking and stuff.”

  “Mostly dance,” she said, quietly.

  “What?” Merton blinked.

  “Dad’s been on my tail-scales since I came of age to attract a mate, honestly,” she said, shrugging as she glared at the bolt that had forced her wrench to surrender. “And I resisted him for so long.” Her voice grew bitter. “I didn’t just want to be a brood mare. Kellen…” She stopped.

  Merton put a gloved hand on her muzzle, then flicked his radio off. He pressed his helmet against her again, speaking quietly. “You can tell me, Relix.”

  Relix tossed her head. But her arm still slid around Merton’s back, drawing him close to her. Under the nose of the Talon-9 , they had privacy. They had quiet. The vastness of the nothingness that surrounded them felt, for once, like a comfort. In the stillness, Relix could speak.

  “Ten years ago,” she said. “I had a harem, to quiet my father. W-We never tried to actually make eggs, though. They were all people I saved from various chromatic nastiness.” She shook her head. “Gladiators. Slave miners. People who...I...d-don’t tell anyone, but I...I don’t like seeing people in pain.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.” Merton took one of her hands, squeezing it. He was being honest - he had seen only a sliver of how the FTE worked, and he knew that it could not be a kind place for the gentle. The meek. Relix looked into his eyes, her eyes narrowing as if she was trying to spot some kind of mockery. Her nose almost bumped against his faceplate, and her breath fogged it. She smiled, shyly.

  “Even metallic dragons, who aren’t in favor of hurting others...they’re not soft about it,” Relix said, her voice very quiet. “A silver can slaughter a million villains to save his people. And he won’t cry himself to sleep.”

  Merton nodded.

  “B-But...the problem with helping people?” Relix licked her muzzle, the movement nervous. “You make enemies. And you show that you care. I-I still don’t know who sabotaged the airlock. But they...all of them…” She shook her head slightly. “And that was when I realized I needed to be hard .”

  Merton smiled, slightly. “So that’s why you kept all of their families on your demiship?”

  “W-Well-”

  “And why you blustered and bragged about glassing my planet, but rather than doing it, you just left?” Merton grinned.

  Relix blushed, her feathered crest rising in affront. “I would have. Maybe. Don’t push me, husband.” She grinned, slightly.

  Merton snorted, then leaned his faceplate forward, bumping her nose with his. As best as he could. Relix giggled, quietly, then shook her head. “I admit, part of me wasn’t sure about rescuing Brash, when he was just an egg.” She smiled. “But it was the right decision.”

  “And not just because he’s a super weapon?” Merton asked.

  Relix giggled and rubbed her forehead against his faceplate, her eyes closing as she hugged him with arms, tail and wings.

  A faint thump thump thump that he could feel through the soles of his boots made Merton look up. Up meant looking at the upside-down face of Lisa, because space . Lisa had clearly moved to the bridge of the Talon-9 , and Gunner had activated the forward window screen now that the battle had finished. Technically, Lisa was a few demiplanes away from the skin of the ship, but thanks to the magic of portals and advanced visual projections, she looked as if she was right there for Merton to talk too. She mimed flicking at her ear, her face pure irritation.

  Merton and Relix moved apart as quickly as they could, and Merton could see that Relix felt as flustered as he did. He reached up and flicked his radio back on.

  “You’re not going to fucking believe this,” Lisa said, her voice firm over the radio.

  “What?” Relix asked, looking up, her eyes narrowing.

  “We’ve detected something on wide-band scrying,” Lisa said. “We confirmed it with the telescopes
and LIDAR. It’s...” she made a face. “It’s a castle .”

  “You gotta be fucking kidding,” Merton whispered. Then he swung his head around. He was getting the hang of asking his skin-suit to do something using his magical connection to it. But even so, it took a few tries to get a vision enhancing augment online. It zoomed in on the infinite blackness that wasn’t blackness and, there, on the edge of vision, he could see a grayish spec. It was definitely coming slowly closer.

  “What is it?” Relix asked. “I was told nothing can survive in this plane. We’re only alive because of our reactor and the life bubble.”

  “It’s...” Merton paused. “It’s...”

  “What?” Brash asked, landing on his shoulder with a rustle of wings. Fortunately, he had chosen to be in his small, cat-sized form. “Is it candy!?”