Chapter One: Roll that Bluff Check
Princess Relix Castrovel of the Third Talon of the Spinward Front of the Chromatic Arm of the Galaxy reclined in her chair and considered destroying a planet out of pique. Not an inhabited one, of course. One of those dreadful balls of silicate and dust no one cared about. Her tail twitched and slapped against the divan that she sprawled across while her seneschal – a savant-slave that her father had purchased from the world of Torel – sucked down the vial of pure mana, smacked his lips, and recited the missive from memory.
Relix yawned, her hand covering her muzzle, as he went through the litany, and tried to not fall asleep.
“Your father, Emperor Dogan of the Five Talon Empire, wishes that you, his daughter by his fifth wife of the Third Talon, take a proper and noble mate from the sub-classes within the next galactic standard cycle. I hasten to remind you, Princess,” Seneschal Thuwit said, his head inclining in a slight bow. Relix thought it made him look rather silly, as his head was entirely bald and his long, pointed ears wobbled with the motion like a pair of radio antennas. She covered her mouth with a scaled, ring bedecked hand to stop the giggles from escaping.
“I hasten to remind you,” Thuwit said, again, as if he had sensed she wasn’t really paying attention. “The FTE is not the most stable of political constructs. A feudal dominion enforced by unity between chromatic and prismatic dragons, with the houses of Qesemat balanced against-”
“Yes, yes, Thuwit, I know.” Relix sighed. She laid her head back and let all seven of her limbs sprawl as they would. Her tail lay across the floor, dripping off the side of the divan, while her wings unfolded and hung limp. She cast her arms over her head as if she was a fainting maiden, and wondered if Thuwit was so addled by the mana extract and his savant training that he couldn’t recognize the beauty of her scales, her jewelry. Her breasts. Her body. She doubted it. Because she doubted it, she let her irritation show as she snarled. “Father wants a controllable male to keep tabs on me and get some eggs for his precious spinward sectors” She shook her head. “I won’t be his brood mare...”
Thuwit coughed. “There is also the matter of tradition. Legality. The fact that in a centicycle, you will be of age to be courted, and chromatic dragons do not tend to take no for an answer… “
“What? Is some red in his battlefleet going to come by and just steal me like we were back on Home in the age of magic?” Relix scoffed.
Thuwit frowned. “Shall we ask Gunner the current disposition of the Red Baron’s fleets?”
Relix paused.
Thuwit had done something that irritated her immensely.
He had raised an eminently good point.
Relix stood, folding her wings primly behind her back. As she walked, she called up the holo-com with a click of her foreclaws. The small bundle of technology and magic hovered over on ducted fans that hissed nearly silently in the air, and then projected a perfect recreation of her body. Relix paused to check herself over. Her horns were growing out, curling along the edges of her rainbow hued frills, while her eye-shadow had started to run. She tapped at her wrist computer and the eye-shadow reset, the smart paint flowing back into circles that accented the gold of her eyes. She tapped through some colors before settling on a subdued black, which offset her silver scales. Her belly and breasts were mostly exposed by her filmy gown, which was more similar to a collection of ropes than a contiguous dress, the cloth reaching around and under her arms and her wings and her thighs to conceal everything that propriety demanded, while leaving everything else out to be admired.
Relix considered it.
She could scandalize old Gunner. Or she could actually get useful information from the crusty soldier. She sighed, then wiggled her fingers. Her robes plumped up, until she was surrounded in layer after layer of fabric and cloth and gold, glittering and gleaming. She looked like a great big cake, with hardened ridges of ornamentation surrounding her shoulders, cresting her head. Relix muttered under her breath in the vilest draconic she could think of, then tapped the holo-com on.
Gunner was a mountain of a man. She had forgotten which world he came from – some backwoods place the Empire hadn’t even contacted or thralled yet. He said that he had fought in some big war against some people called the Nasties or something and the FTE had grabbed him from a hospital and run experimentation on him to see if his species was worth anything – that had been during a spree of inventive medical research being carried out on sub-thrall races. The experimentation had worked, as he had legs again. They just happened to be the legs of some kind of insect. Carapace had grown over his shoulders and his eyes glowed coal red. If Gunner didn’t like what had happened, he had learned to keep quiet about it.
It wasn’t like he could go home again.
“Ma’am,” he said, inclining his head.
“Thuwit says that I need to be concerned about military action aimed at me,” Relix said, sighing quietly. “Specifically, some kind of kidnapping? From a certain crimson cretin?” She trilled, pleased with her alliteration.
“My men have been hearing rumors that several chromatic dragons have their eyes on your hand, ma’am,” Gunner said, shrugging. “Including Baron Bex, yes. Our men-at-arms are trained to stop kidnapping, but nothing’s perfect...especially not when set up against the man who cleared out four solar systems of Atomic Orcs.”
Relix scowled. “Are those those mutant orcs?”
“No, ma’am. Those are Radioactive Orcs. Atomic Orcs are just orcs with nuclear weaponry,” Gunner said, without missing a tick.
Relix hissed. “Ugh. How unsightly.”
“Let me guess, ma’am, you are thinking about what husband you want?” Gunner asked, his segmented limbs creaking as he crossed them over his chest.
“I need a noble to shut my father up...someone from the sub-races, to continue to wed the empire together...and they need to be had before this cycle is up so no one tries to kidnap me...” Relix tapped her finger against her snout. “But someone I could control. Someone weak. And facile. And without magic.” She paused. “Say, Gunner, you said your people were mage blind, right?”
“Uh-” Gunner blinked at her. Well. He did his best, considering the changes to his eyes.
“Right!” Relix brightened. “And you only live a few decades without augmentations!” She clapped her hands. “Ship-soul, attend! Set course for...” She paused. What had been the name of that place?
“Earth?” Gunner said, slowly.
“That was it!” Relix beamed. “Set course for Earth .”
***
The slavering wererat was approaching the window at a dead run. Its claws scraped into the stone of the abandoned church of Trypatus while Rene realized that his plan might have been ill founded. It had been simple: Distract the wererat from Mephilef and Tarak and Roslyn, and they would hopefully smash the wererat to pieces with their weapons before it could clear their melee range. Once it was dead, they could then deal with his minor ‘sucking chest wound’ problem. The only problem was Meph had no melee weapons, Roslyn was still trying to hold in her intestines, and Tarak...
Well.
Tarak just honestly didn’t like Rene that much. So, she didn’t try particularly hard to swing as the wererat scampered past her and towards the taunting bard.
The wererat leaped through the window and-
“Nat twenty!” Merton said. “...fuck.”
He looked up from the dice to the horrified players sitting at the rest of the table. In his effort to maintain his diet, Carlos was chowing down on his fiftieth strawberry in the past half hour, while Trevor had his hands over his face, peeking through the fingers, as if willing might change the die result. Lisa was tapping away at her phone – likely yelling at white supremacists on twitter. It was what she did when it wasn’t her turn. Merton sighed, drew in a deep breath, then rolled the damage die. It’d be okay, he just didn’t need to roll max damage-
“And that’s a hit,” Merton said, grasping at straws. “But you still have another death save!”
“The wererat has two attacks, doesn’t he?” Carlos asked. Trevor slowly turned his head to look at his friend while Merton gritted his teeth, then rolled again.
“And that’s another hit,” Merton said.
“Which puts me at three failed death saves. I’m dead as shit.” Trevor groaned, slumping his head to the side of the table, almost putting his long blond hair into a plate of grease – all that was left from the pizza.
“To be fair,” Lisa said. “It was a great plan, save for...” she pointed at the three twenty sided dice that had been each character’s attempt to slash the rushing wererat as it ran past them. “One. Five. Four. Sorry, Trev.”
“At least we don’t need to keep listening to that French accent you were trying,” Carlos said, licking his lips clean of strawberry juice. Trevor glared at his friend, who held up his hands, as if to apologize. Merton, meanwhile, started to try and re-balance the rest of the dungeon with the idea of losing a fourth of the party. And he had already given them a non-player character to assist them, and she was currently bleeding to death. He rubbed his hands on his face...but he had already gotten the plan in mind.
Unfortunately, the dice were having none of it. A cascading series of 1s left poor Meph slowly sinking in a pit of acid quicksand, which forced Rosylin and Tarak to decide to retire to the countryside – the whole table having decided that maybe they needed to try new characters. As they shuffled their character sheets away, Carlos grinned: “Well, we could play Exalted-”
“No,” the rest of the table said at the same time.
“Aww!” Carlos pouted. “Exalted’s cool.”
“I don’t wanna spend half the combat encounter fucking around with a rules set so complicated I need a six hundred page book telling me what to do!” Trevor snapped, clearly still testy about his bard’s unfortunate fate as wererat droppings.
“Ah, yes, because 4 th Edition D&D is soooo rules light!” Carlos shot back, throwing the half a dozen cards that he had been using to track his character’s powers before her unfortunate trip down the acid-shaft. The debate between systems consumed their conversation while Merton packed up his books, his maps, his notes. The group split shortly later – Merton collected the pizza money, pocketed it, and waved as Lisa ushered them all out of her apartment. The three boys ambled to the elevator, and as it buzzed down, Trevor slapped Merton’s chest. “So, Merton, you up for the new Keanu movie?”
“John Wick?” Merton asked. “Nah. I can’t watch a movie where someone’s dog dies. Too depressing.”
“Does it help to know that he shoots everyone? Literally everyone ?” Trevor asked.
“What about the guys he stabs?” Carlos asked, grinning at the two of them.
“Hmm, still not really interested,” Merton said. “What I want to do is go home and go to sleep. I have work tomorrow.”
“You’re barely out of college, that’s when you start living, Merton!” Trevor said, walking with him as Carlos ambled after the duo. “That’s when you cut loose and see the world!”
“When I’m saddled with crippling student debt?” Merton asked, laughing. “No. No. Trevor, I’m going home. I’m going to sleep. And tomorrow, I’m going to be literally flipping burgers.”
“At least you work at In and Out!” Carlos said, grinning. “They pay pretty good.”
Trevor shrugged. “Well, fine. Carlos and I are going to see John Wick. Right, Carlos?”
“Si,” Carlos said, faux-seriously. The two of them walked left as the trio came out of the front of the apartment building. They rounded the corner almost immediately, vanishing into the parking lot that sprawled next to the complex. Merton sighed and rubbed his hand along his head. He closed his eyes and leaned against one of the pillars and pulled out his phone. He grinned and started to text his girlfriend.
Heading home! See you online soon! <3 <3 <3
Something was wrong, though. There was a strange light shining from around his phone. Merton’s brow furrowed as he looked past his phone, lifting his arms, like he was checking his armpits. The ground underneath him was starting to shimmer and glow with a pale purple light.
He stepped away from it, his mouth opening, then closing. “What the fuck?” he whispered, then looked up. Was someone using a drone or something? No. The light didn’t seem to come from anywhere. What was worse, the purple circle shifted to settle back underneath his feet, as smoothly as butter. His skin started to prickle, as if he had been rolling around on a shag carpet. Static electricity crawled and he felt a growing sense of dread. Electricity sparked along his phone and crackled along his glasses. Merton’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to scream-
And that was when the lightning bolt smashed into the ground. When it was gone, there was nothing but a scorch mark and a single smoldering iPhone case.
***
The smoke cleared and Merton waved his hand before his face, coughing. He was standing on a raised plinth of brass and wood, inset with six crystal plates. The crystal was a pale purple, and smoke rose from around the seam that joined it to the wood. The plinth had a series of steps leading down to a smooth black floor – it looked like obsidian, polished smooth enough to reflect anyone who stood on it. There was a control platform – or something that looked like it. Standing behind it was a…
Woman?
She had purple skin. Antennas. Large, dark black eyes. Hair the color of bleached teal. And she wore something that could have been called a ‘robe’ in the same way a BDSM gimp outfit could be called a ‘business suit.’ A thin strip of red cloth over her breasts, two plunging lines of leather between her thighs, barely covering her sex – she had to be hairless down there cause...uh...wow, hair would show. Her hands were each three fingered and covered with large work gloves. She tapped a few switches while a loud clicking came from the winding corridor that led out of the room.
Then around the corner came…
A…
A dragon .
Well, a dragon, if the dragon was also an unbelievably gorgeous woman. Her head came to a narrow, tapered muzzle. Her head had a shimmering array of feather-like ‘hair’ that came in a rainbow of cascading colors, starting with golds and reds and moving down the spectrum to blues and purples near her heart shaped rump. Her wings were elegant and hooked around her shoulders like a cape, while her breasts were roughly melon sized and as perky as if they had never known gravity or age in their life. The sheerness of her crisscrossing robe (only slightly less revealing than the purple skinned girl at the control console) made it abundantly clear that, yes, she had nipples.
Her tail twitched from side to side as she stood before Merton. Beside her stood...well...a bald elf. And bald was not a look that worked for elves. His lips were stained silver-blue and he had this slightly fidgety, twitchy look to him. Like he was about to collapse into spasms at any moment.
“Greetings, my honored noble guest,” the dragon said, her voice elegant and cultured. She was speaking English. Somehow. “And welcome to my ship, the Talon 9. I am Princess Relix Castrovel of the Third Talon of the Spinward Front of the Chromatic Arm of the Galaxy and I wish to offer you a chance few if any of your kind will ever see: The chance to win my hand...in marriage.” She bowed her head low.
Merton blinked slowly.
Princess Castrovel looked up at him.
“Did...did you say...Chromatic Arm?” Merton asked.
“Well, yes,” she said. “The Five Talon Empire controls the Chromatic, Prismatic and Gemstone arms, as well as the Core and the Clouds of Tiamat!”
Merton opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Holy shit you control the Magellanic Clouds? How many planets do you have? Like, do you have a cool million, or are you more densely settled than the Imperium of Man?” He put his hand on his forehead. “Holy shit, what’s your FTL like? Is it point to point teleportation, alternate universe, or do you just have a warp drive, where you bend space? Are you actual dragons, like, dragon dragons? Or...wait, do you have magic? Or is it just super advanced technology? Wait, wait, how are you a Princess of just one part of the Empire? Or is this like...wait, you have more than one Princess, so it is dispersed, isn’t it?” He looked around the ship, trying to drink in every detail, his brain buzzing like he was spinning around at a million miles an hour.
Then what she said sank in.
“Wait, your hand in what ?”
Princess Castrovel looked at her bald elf buddy. “I thought. You said. You grabbed. An idiot !” She snarled. “I want a husband, not a new harem .”
“I did!” The bald elf said, looking just as surprised as Merton felt.
“Hey!” Merton shouted.
“The psy-scan said that he had been doing simple arithmetic while thinking of counterfactuals in a barely coherent manner!” The bald elf continued as Castrovel growled at him. “It fit the exact patterns of young children, and yet, his age was consistent with one who should be fully grown!”
“It’s fucking Dungeons and...Dra... and...it’s a game!” Merton said. Here he was. In fucking space , talking to fucking space people , and they were still looking down at him for being a nerd! This was reaching a level of ‘fuck’ well past ‘absolute fuck’ and into the realm of ‘ubiquitous fuck.’ He tried to keep a clear head, but his brain just kept going around and around that point in an endless circle: He was being mocked for being a nerd by a space dragon . Through sheer force of will, he managed to speak again.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly the most pertinent thing to point out.
“Fuck you it was barely coherent, it’s not my fault our bard decided to play ratbait and I had to ditch fifteen pages of pre-written adventures!” Merton pointed at his chest. “I was running on improvisation and two cans of Coke zero and zero sleep!”
Castrovel snarled. “Put him back and get me someone more tractable!”
“Well, he is mage blind-”
“I don’t care!” Castrovel said, grabbing the bald elf’s shirt, shaking him. “Have you not seen a single holoplay ? Take in the seemingly simple savage, and before you know it, he’s bedded half the female members of the household and is toppling the Empire! It happens every time . What do you suggest we do next, give our men-at-arms face concealing helmets and standardized uniforms so that enemy agents can infiltrate us more easily?” She shook him again. “Send him back!”
Merton opened his mouth, then closed it. He lifted his finger, pointing at the princess. “Wait...what?” Did she just...was she just... his brain spluttered. He was reminded, suddenly, of the first time he had met his girlfriend and how his brain had gone from ‘oh, a girl’ to ‘oh a nerd ’ in about five seconds.
The bald mage shook his head. “We can’t.”
“You can’t ?” Castrovel snarled.
But it was the purple skinned woman who broke in – and good thing, too. From Merton’s perspective, the bald elf looked ready to collapse into a heap. “Princess Castrovel, the law is clear. No mage blind sub-race can be returned with knowledge of the Empire to their homeworld, not unless they are being officially inducted as a Thrall World.”
“Fine!” Castrovel said, flinging up her hand. “We’ll thrall the planet! Your people seem to be reasonably useful. We can do it with this ship alone.” She turned to the purple woman. “Tell Gunner to prep the vortex torpedoes and begin targeting unmanned orbital defenses…”
“Isn’t that unwise, ma’am?” The bald elf asked. “The codex draconis states that thralling should begin with preliminary bombardment of major cities.”
“That sounds like it’ll take way too much work, though,” Castrovel muttered.
Merton’s eyes widened. Shit had gone from surreal to nightmarish pretty fucking fast. He had no idea what a vortex torpedo was in this context, but he was almost positive that there was no way that those two words could possibly be combined in a good way . “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, trying to use his best GM poker face.
Suddenly, a lifetime of asking people to roll perception checks without making them get suspicious was coming in handy.
Castrovel slowly turned her head to look at him. She looked furious - like all the irritation she had been feeling had a new target. Him . Tiny sparkles of lightning crackled from around her muzzle as she said, her voice as sweet as a summer day. “And why, human , is that?” she asked, and Merton’s throat felt dry and he thought: What would my girlfriend do?
He GMed games for his friends. But he also GMed smaller, more intimate games with his girlfriend - using text messages and way more simulated fucking than his in face games. And one thing about Julia was that she had never played a character without maxing out two things: Charisma and Bluff. And...shapeshifting, if the system allowed for it. So, Merton thought of what Julia’s various characters might do.
And he grinned.
“The human race doesn’t take well to being enslaved when other humans are doing it. People will leap to their deaths to escape slave ships, and murder their masters at the first easy chance they got...” He shrugged. “And so, humanity has created a defense against enslavement that will defeat any attempt that your Empire can throw at it.”
Castrovel snorted. “As if...”
“It’s called...the Corbomite Defense Grid,” Merton said. “Run a scan of the planet for caches of, uh, tritium. Uranium. Plutonium.”
Castrovel rolled her eyes. “Ship-soul, attend! Scan the planet for the elements he mentioned.”
Less than a second later, a cool, male voice spoke: “Fourteen thousand nine hundred and sixty eight, spread primarily the northern latitudes of the two major landmasses. They appear to be affixed in long range guided missiles – primitive, but capable of launching into orbit. I believe they are weapons of mass destruction – comparable to primitive fission weapons used by stellar pirates and Atomorcs.”
“That won’t stop a FTE fleet!” Castrovel sniffed. “Hell, that won’t even stop this ship!”
“Exactly,” Merton said, his hands behind his back so she couldn’t see them shaking. “It’s not for you. It’s for us . That’s how seriously we take slavery. If any other country invades, they will be eradicated. And if anyone like you invades, we immolate the whole planet.”
Castrovel narrowed her eyes, looking right at him. Merton crossed his arms over his chest and gave her his best, biggest shit eating grin. “So. Go ahead. Try us. Then go and explain to Daddy about how you got an entire life bearing planet full of viable thralls set on fire .”
Castrovel’s hands clenched. Lightning crackled along her body, smoke rising in its wake. Then, with a snarl, she tossed her head. “Fine! Thuwit, toss him in the brig!”
“Wait!” Merton said, hope blooming in his breast. So far. So good. He just needed to push it just a little bit farther. He held up his hands, placatingly. “I promise, I won’t talk if you send me home. I mean, I have family! Friends! Girlfriend!” He grinned, shakily. “I have every reason to keep the secret too, I don’t want the Earth to be thralled. Or destroyed.”
“Oh, right. I wouldn’t want to separate my husband from his family,” Castrovel snarled, her voice still furious. “Grab them too and throw them in the brig and set course for the sector capital!”
Merton opened his mouth to speak – but then the purple skinned girl was flipping switches.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Merton’s hands were now waving above his head, desperately.
A series of crackling lightning bolts slammed into the platform behind him. When Merton spun around, he saw Trevor, Carlos, Lisa, his mom, his dad, a middle aged black man that he had never met in his life, and a bright orange house cat, all of them looking rather shocked. Trevor and Carlos both held huge buckets of popcorn. Mom was in her nightgown and was holding a small cup of bourbon. Dad was holding a Wii remote and was in workout clothes. The middle aged black man was dressed in a white T-shirt and nothing else. He protected his modesty by holding a laptop over his junk.
The deck of the ship shuddered under Merton’s feet…
And he realized they were underway.
Rocketing away from Earth and their lives.
And it was all his fault.
***
The Talon 9 emerged from subspace with a cascade of magical radiation that blew out behind the spindly engines like the bow-wave of an olden age sailing ship. The Talon 9 herself was a beauty: A twenty meter needle of hardened adamantite and bio-engineered dragonscale mixed with deep-space life forms. Void whale blubber, to soak up radiation and emit electronic shielding. The crystal foci of the great brane-brains of Thalax to provide the apertures for the magical weaponry. Fanes of spinward protomolecule wiring to soak up solar radiation for some extra power.
Mixed with the bio-engineering, though, was good old fashioned artifice. Four railguns were mounted along the entire spine in a series of canted tunnels that looked like the snout of a dragon, while nearly a hundred plasma torpedoes were tucked under each atmospheric wing, with backup magazines holding the planet-scouring vortex weaponry that made the ship a true terror.
The ship, thanks to a linked demiplane, was a considerably larger inside than out. Relix took advantage of that size to stomp a great distance before arriving at the bridge. She threw herself into the command throne as several of the men-at-arms that had been hand picked by Gunner looked at her curiously. They were a motley collection of people that Gunner had snapped up from slave markets and arena halls and pain-palaces. Scarred, tough, and bizarrely loyal, they normally struck Relix as being painfully boring.
But now?
Now, she was just glad to see sub-races that did what she expected: Bow their heads and go back to their consoles. Oh, come on, a part of her muttered. You’re just mad he made things complicated. It’s not like you’d actually have thralled the planet, and we both know it.
“Forward view!” she snarled.
“I take it the proposal went well?” Gunner asked as he ambled up behind her. His hands were clasped behind his back, his insectoid legs thumping on the deck heavily.
“Fantastic. My husband’s family is moving into their quarters...” Relix snarled as the front of the curved bridge shimmered, flowed, and became a visualization of space ahead of them. The sector capital was built atop an immense red star called the Redshaka, suspended on a hover platform protected by immense shields to keep the fierce corona from burning the palace to ash, using energy harvested from the sun itself. Despite being old and cranky, Redshaka had more than enough solar energy to power the anti-gravity engines and the shields and everything in the palace itself. That just pissed Relix off even more. It was all so showy . It infuriated Relix. Then her brow furrowed. “What are those?”
“They appear to be cutter-craft, flying House Thresh banners,” the man-at-arms in the sensors seat said, turning her head to look at her. “Ma’am, they’re opening lascoms.”
Relix leaned her chin against her knuckles, cocking her head to look at the approaching cutter-craft. Each one was basically on par with her ship, though they had less luxuries. Sub-races didn’t need demiplanes and servants to man their deadly little ships. That, unfortunately, meant that if those cutters took down the Talon 9 , they’d kill hundreds of her servants.
While sub-races were supposed to be expendable, Relix had been taught to not do so unless one had too. And besides…
She had just gotten all her stuff settled properly. That was the only reason why she was concerned. She didn’t care about any of her servants, and anyone who claimed such in the gossip circles was decidedly mistaken. Relix lashed her tail, grinding her teeth together at the thought that her secret, er, that someone might make that up. That entirely untrue fact up. Ugh. Draconinc politics. This was why she cruised around in this backwards part of the FTE. She realized that her moodiness did not, in fact, translate itself into orders and that her servants were looking at her. She leaned back in her chair, then waved her hand.
“Put them on,” she said, sighing. “It won’t come to violence. Probably.” Then, quieter, she muttered. “I wouldn’t have even thralled the stupid planet…”
“Thresh are reds,” Gunner muttered. “And I’ve never met a red that doesn’t make it about violence eventually.” Then, quieter still, he murmured. “Shall I tell that to your husband?”
Relix’s face heated.
The forward screen rippled again. The image that filled it doused Relix with cold ice - fear washing away her embarrassment. Which meant it was not all bad.
Sitting in one of those cutter-crafts, wearing obsidian power armor crafted by dwarves and covered with the trophies of his two thousand and two hundred and twenty two kills, was Bex Thresh, the Red Baron of the Singularity Principality. He was everything a red dragon was supposed to be: Broad shouldered and as muscled as an exceptionally deadly barn, his snout bristled with horns and smoldered with smoke. But the worst thing?
He was smiling.
Like he was happy to see her.
“Princess!” he boomed.
“Baron,” she said.
“I hear that your hand remains unclaimed,” Baron Bex Thresh said, leaning slowly forward, resting his muzzle on his knuckles, his elbows cocked against the skull-covered armrests of his command chair. The orcs that he used as a bridge crew stood at attention behind him. “I have come to take it.”
“My hand?”
“With a sword. If I must.” He grinned.
Did he think that was flirting ? Wait, no. Dismemberment was how reds flirted. He wasn’t joking. Shit. She beamed at him, putting a falsely sympathetic note in her voice. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. Didn’t you hear? I’ve been swept off my feet.”
Baron Bex narrowed his red eyes. “Were you?”
“By a noble from a sub-race,” she said. “Yes, he’s mage-blind, but he’s so intelligent. So charming. So...amazingly, incredibly hung . Like...an uberhorse . ” She grinned, cocking her head slightly. “Why, he and his family are moving in – the marriage is going to be held in just a week or two, once things are finalized.”
Baron Bex’s eyes narrowed further. “Is it now?”
“Yes!” Relix nodded.
“And where is this fiance?” Bex snarled.
“He’s settling in!” Relix said, quickly.
“Then...I invite him. And you. To dine. With me. At our estates in the palace-city on Redshaka.” Bex’s eyes gleamed and he seemed to think that he had set out the perfect trap. Either Relix’s husband wasn’t real and she was easily claimed, or he was, and Bex could brain him.
Relix frowned, slightly.
And then beamed.
“We’ll be there tonight!”
***
“Well, it could be worse.”
“How?”
Lisa looked at Merton as he stood in the center of the palatial estates that the servants of Princess Castrovel had led him and his family and his friends too. Lisa was about five foot nothing of redheaded fury – her eyes crackled, her hands were clenched, and her jaw was taut enough to slice through glass. Merton couldn’t blame her. Lisa was married. And after the last time he had mentioned a significant other had gotten his entire family and group of friends kidnapped, he didn’t want to get Lisa’s wife yanked into this ship too.
Lisa, seeing his lack of response, hung her head forward and started to rub her hands through her hair.
The rest of the group was also trying to adapt. Mom and Dad were sitting with the black man, who had gotten a blanket to wrap around his hips from one of the beds. Trevor and Carlos – both of them bachelors with shitty jobs and worse families meant that they were taking this better than the others. But, as Merton thought about it, he remembered that Carlos did have a favorite cousin, and Trevor loved his grandma to pieces. But neither were thinking about that now. They were just admiring the room they were in.
To be fair.
It was a really fucking nice room. It looked like a palace garden, with wide walls and a curved ceiling covered with a gleaming mural of the galaxy. Ferns in purple and green and blue grew from pots of earth, while a fountain sat plonk in the middle of the chamber, burbling and giggling happily as water splashed into the fountain. Large cushions were strewn about for place to sit, and there were several doors that led to other chambers. Investigating those had revealed palatial bedrooms and vast bathing chambers and more.
“We could be on fire!” Merton said, at last.
The orange cat rubbed against his ankles. Merton leaned down and petted it. The cat seemed to take this well.
The black man stood, sighing. “I gotta get this out of the way,” he said, his voice soft and slightly high pitched. Mom and Dad watched him, looking concerned, as he walked towards Merton. Merton blinked.
“Uh, yeah, I have no idea why you’re here-” Merton started.
“I-I’m Julia,” he said. “Er. Jules. I mean.”
Merton blinked.
And as his brain tried to process that – with a roaring, snarling, screaming sound in his ears, with his heart hammering a thousand miles an hour – the door to the estates opened and the bald elf walked into the room, flanked by two servants heaped with cloth and leather and strips of metal. The bald elf clapped his hands.
“Sir Merton! Your fiancee wishes your presence and has sent me to ensure you are presentable.”
Merton put aside the roaring in his ears and swung around to face the elf. He scowled, walking forward. “For what ?” he asked.
The elf gulped. “A-A-A dinner party!”
He looked nervous. Merton felt too...too...everything. It was too much. The guilt. The anger. The confusion. The shock. All of it made him snap . And so he growled. “Unless you want me to tell everyone at the dinner party that I’m some random yahoo and that this Princess is just using me to distract people from the fact her scaled butt is up for grabs, you’ll do me some favors. Got it!?” He glared at the elf, who looked stunned and deeply nervous.
The elf gulped. “Y-You do know that admitting that will kill you-”
“Oh yeah, but it’ll ruin her too,” Merton said, letting what he was feeling flash across his face. “So, you going to do what I ask, or are you going to have to find a new fiance?”
The bald elf’s face was breaking out in a fierce sweat. He reached up, daubing at his forehead with a handkerchief. His blue stained lips opened, then closed, and finally, he stammered. “F-Fine! What is it?”
“You have magic?” Merton asked.
“Yes,” the bald elf looked confused.
“Can you change people’s bodies?” Merton asked. “Augmentations, shapeshifting, healing?”
“...yes?” the bald elf looked even more confused.
“Then make that man,” Merton said, swinging his finger back to the terrified and near-to-tears black man - the man who, in truth, was his girlfriend Julia - standing in the center of the room. “Into a beautiful woman!”
“What?” the black man asked.
“What?” the bald elf asked.
“Kinky!” Carlos called out from the sidelines.
“I-I-I-” the bald elf stammered. Merton locked his eyes on his. The bald elf gulped, then asked: “W-What kind of woman?”
“Um, tiny?” The black man – no, Merton thought, Julia, the woman you love – said. “Asian? Petite? Oh! Blue hair! And, um, can I be hairless? Like, down there?” He gestured vaguely at the floor.
“Kiiiiiinky!” Carlos called out from the sidelines.
“Dude!” Merton spun to face Carlos.
“What?” Carlos asked. “Don’t kinkshame yourself!”
Merton made a face that Carlos often provoked in him: A mixture between confused, baffled, weirded out, shocked and slightly impressed. He shook his head slowly and turned to the bald elf. “Can you handle that?”
“It’ll be ex-” the bald elf gulped at Merton’s expression. “Yes! Easily! Come along, uh, my soon to be lady!” He gestured to Julia. Julia walked with him, looking like he – well, she – could hardly believe what was happening.
Lisa, who had been watching all of this, looked at Merton. She smiled. “I’m proud of you, McFly.”
“Thanks,” Merton said. His name, shortened, did not in fact sound like Marty. That didn’t stop the nickname. Lisa punched his shoulder and walked off to explore her part of the chambers. As she left, Merton took the time to walk over to his Mom and Dad. Both of them were ducking their heads together and murmuring to one another. Merton slowed and perked his ears.
“It can’t be a starship that uses any propulsion we know,” Mom was saying, her voice hushed. “Do you feel any acceleration?”
“No...” Dad tugged at his mustache. “But that doesn’t mean much. A single G of acceleration would be indistinguishable from natural gravity. Or artificial gravity.” He looked around. “It can’t be centrifugal, we’d have noticed some kind of Coriolis effects.”
“Would we?” Mom asked.
“In the inner ear, if it was a small cylinder or arm.” Dad nodded. “In liquid, if we were in a larger one.”
“We haven’t tested that...” Mom rubbed her chin. “The most likely explanation is that it’s from acceleration. Which means either this vehicle is using non-standard methods of generating thrust, or the propellent tanks are huge . We’ve been accelerating ever since we woke up. How fast do you think that puts us?”
Dad tugged at his mustache again. “Eh. We can round that to ten kilometers per second squared.” He cocked his head. “How long have we been here?”
Mom put her fingers to her wrist, frowning. “Not sure...”
Merton shook his head slowly. This was what he got for having nerdy parents. It did explain him. The nerdy apple did not fall far from the nerdy tree. Though his parents were professional nerds. They had been nerds for their country. Dad, then, said something that made Merton almost collapse.
“I guess this means the Imperials have decided to stop keeping their hands off,” he said, sighing quietly. “I told them. I told them you can’t have a truce with dragons.
“The fuck!?” Merton exclaimed.
“Merton!” Mom said, looking at him. “Language!”
“Sorry, Mom,” Merton said, glaring at her father. “The fucking fuck!? You fucking knew about fucking space fucking dragons?”
Dad chuckled, even as Mom looked more and more sour at every single F-bomb. “Yeah, sorry kid. I told you that if I told you what I did for a day job, I’d have to kill you,” he said, his voice cheery. “Now, though, you should get ready for that dinner.”
“I thought you were kidding !” Merton put his hands over his face.
Dad stood up, his hands sliding into his pockets. “All right. A full explanation can come after we’re not all at risk of being killed. But the short story is Earth’s been visited by dragon scout ships twice. The first in the 40s led to the dragons nabbing heavily wounded veterans from hospitals across the world for surgical research. We’re mage blind – meaning we can’t cast magic – so that means we don’t get a bunch of… uh, rights in the Five Talon Empire.”
“Uh-huh,” Merton whispered. And he was going to get married to that ? He was starting to think being on fire was an improvement.
“But during the 50s, the Soviets were testing tactical thermonuclear weapons,” Dad said, like that was a thing that people just talked about every day as if it was utterly normal. “To fry NATO armies. And they tested their tactical nuke anti-air missile during the next dragon scout ship run and managed to tag the bugger.”
“The Russians shot down a dragon with a nuke ?”
“Yeah,” Dad said, laughing. “Sucks, doesn’t it? Almost started an interplanetary war.”
Merton put his hands over his face and tried to stop hyperventilating.
“Fortunately for all of us, the dragon ship took its time crashing, with its stealth systems online for most of the way and it landed in Roswell, New Mexico,” he said. “Cause I doubt Stalin would have been particularly nice to a dragon crew, half dead from radiation burns and out of mana, you can believe me.”
“And here I thought the Cuban missile crisis was the worst thing from the Cold War,” Merton whispered.
Dad pffft’d through his mustache. “Please! It was the Norwegian Rocket Incident.”
“Honey,” Mom broke in. “That was in the 90s, after the Cold War.”
Dad, as befitting his years in the defense department and military space programs, snorted loudly.
Merton dragged his hands along his face, tugging his cheeks back into a long, almost exaggerated expression. “Let me get this straight,” he whispered. “There are space dragons, who run a space dragon empire, and one of their scout ships were shot down by a soviet tactical nuclear weapon in 1947, and that scout ship crashed in Roswell, and we used that to basically tell the dragons to fuck off?”
“Basically,” Dad said. “But the problem is, that hostage exchange deal was struck with the Prismatic Emperor, Dogan Castrovel. And Dogan, like most Emperors, would hate to admit that he gave away anything to anyone. So, Earth got quietly yanked from their history files, but every fleet nearby was given orders to not bother us. And that, son...” He clapped his hand to Merton’s shoulder. “Is why you do not fuck with Harry Truman.”
The door opened.
The bald elf had returned.
“Sir,” he said, his voice severe. “Your, ah, prime concubine is in the transformation chambers and shall be transformed within the hour. Please. Come with me. We must get you dressed . ”
Merton sighed, nodded, and turned to go with the bald elf.
It was time to get ready for a dinner date. A banquet with a dragon.
He was halfway down the corridor before he did a perfect double take and said: “My prime what !?”