Chapter Five: Roll that Initiative!

        There was an unfortunate (or maybe that was a fortunate) truth about nuclear weapons and their use in space warfare. Without an atmosphere to transmit the concussive force, or the intense heat, nukes had to depend entirely on radiation and the light burst of their detonation to cause actual damage.

        The two dozen fifty megaton warheads that slammed into the Talon-9 and detonated didn’t actually strike the hull of the ship. Drawing that close would have activated various defenses that would have slagged the intricate weapons before they managed to go fusion. Instead, they flew about five kilometers away from the sleek dart of a ship and went fusion with a vengeance. They bathed the ship, from draconic snout to fluted, almost whale-like fins, with enough hard radiation to fry a roc’s eggs. As the adamantine hull blazed with a blue-white heat and the armor plating shifted like tectonic plates, the Ouster pirates fired their railguns.

        Ten railguns, from ten different ships, all firing at a steady shot-per-second pace, each one launching a dart of crude iron through magnetic accelerators that ran from stem to stern of the little, arrowhead ships. Magic had been used to wring extra acceleration out of the railguns - and extra length, considering how many of the guns had been ‘doubled’ by placing flickering teleport-portals at the midway point.

        The slugs struck the adaminte hull and tore holes the size of cars through deck after deck after deck. Greedy vacuum ripped crew and passengers into the depths of space. A naked Merton struggled and flailed as he was blown outwards and saw the glorious, horrifying sight of the Talon-9 ripping to pieces as its magical reactor core went critical and ripped open a hole straight to the Plane of Positive Energy. The wave of healing energy struck him – overloading his biological functions and burning his every cell with a terrible radiance.

        He was drowning. Drowning in pure life .

        And then, like a soap bubble popping, he was standing on the bridge of the Talon-9. Next to him stood Relix, looking quite irritated.

        “Oh what now?” she asked.

        “Pirates, ma’am,” Gunner said, looking up from his console. “They’ve burned through three of our ablative wish layers.”

        “I...what!?” Merton yelped.

        “Uuuuugh!” Relix threw up her hands. “Those spells are so freaking expensive !”

        “Whaaaaaaaaat is happening?” Merton asked.

        “Hi! I’m Brash!” The small dragon hatchling that had interrupted Merton’s lovemaking leaped onto his head, sticking his nose into Merton’s face.

        The Talon-9  accelerated hard enough that it kicked Merton in the chest and sent him falling backwards into a couch that slipped smoothly out of the floor of the bridge. Merton blinked a few dozen times as he tried to grasp what had happened. He had felt the killing radiance. He had felt his eyeballs freezing. He reached out and touched Relix – feeling the strong curve of her shoulder, the softness of her scales. Brash, meanwhile, had curled up on the top of his head like the world’s second most adorable hat and gone promptly to sleep. His snores were a bit like a purr. And, like a purring cat, it set Merton at ease. Slowed his heart rate down to something close to normal.

        Relix put her hand on Merton’s hand and explained: “Well, obviously, considering how dangerous ambushes are, we have some perfect defenses.”

        “Perfect defenses?” Merton asked. “Like... perfect perfect defenses?”

        “Wish spells!” Relix said, cheerfully. “We have three layers of them weaved into the skin of the ship. It’s expensive , though. And a pain in the tail. Fifty thousand credits worth of hard diamonds, not to mention the century and a half of training for each wizard-technician to cast the bloody things.”

        Merton blinked at her. “Why. Don’t. I...wishes!?” He shook his head. “Why don’t you use them for more than a fancy Omega-13!?”

        “Uh, because it’s against the law ?” Relix asked, her brow furrowing.

        “That hasn’t stopped anyone in the history of ever ,” Merton said, putting his hands on his head as he squeezed his hair. Brash nosed at his fingers curiously. Merton didn’t have the heart to remove him.

        “Merton. There are laws. And then there are laws . There are only three laws that have ever seen an entire household eradicated to the last cell .” Relix put her finger on his chest, teasing one of Merton’s short chest hairs. It was then  that Merton realized that he was completely naked. His hand reached out and he found one of the cushions on the curved couch, then placed it above his crotch, his cheeks flushing dark red. “The law against genetic engineering dragons. The law against contacting the Night City. And, finally, the law against the use of wish spells in anything but stabilization and approved terraforming.”

        Merton gulped, slowly. “Okay...so...wishes can be used for defenses. And terraforming?”

        “Yes,” she said. “I mean, we dragons live forever, but we’re not that patient . ”

        “And whole houses have been eradicated over this?” he asked.

        “Why do you think there aren’t any Radium, Tungsten, Teal or Zebra dragons anymore?” Relix asked, with the air of someone who couldn’t believe someone could be so dense. Merton nodded, slowly, then looked out at the rest of the bridge. He had kind of expected more to have happened . But as he took in what was happening on the bridge, he realized that space battle seemed to be that kind of battle that went very very slowly, until it went very very quickly. He had time enough to take in the bridge. It was roughly triangular in shape, with consoles along two of the edges and doors along the back. The center of the bridge was dominated by the incredibly comfy command couch. Or at least, the ‘lounge around and watch Gunner do the actual work’ couch.

        Speaking of Gunner, he was standing beside several of the consoles – which were worked by a motley collection: A dark skinned, one eared elf who was currently tapping on controls that translated to faint shudders and pulses of acceleration. There was a dwarf without a beard, who was currently listing off targeting solutions with a stutter so intense that it made every sentence take twice as long as it should have. Finally, there was a gobliness, who was dressed in a spacesuit as designed by a fetish catalog, who kept breaking into the firing solutions with the same question.

        “T-Th...The Ou...Ousters are c-coming in at v-v-v-v-vhu- vector -”

        “Can I use the flamers!?”

        “For the last time,” Gunner said, his voice calm and casual. “No. You cannot use the flamers, Pyria.”

        “But they’re flame throwers!” Pyria groaned.

        The door to the bridge opened and in came the four armed purple skinned chick. She looked pissed .

        “Why was I not informed of incoming ordinance?” she asked. “I could have activated the PRCs!”

        “Because we didn’t know they were coming, Specy.” Gunner said and, at last, at long last, Merton had a name to hang on the four armed purple skinned chick. She crossed two of said arms over her chest, frowning.

        “Well, the PRCs are up now,” she said. “We’ve got some planar whipple shields up.”

        “We’ve noticed,” Gunner said, frowning. “How’s the power leads?”

        “Four of the five portals are up. If you play up our energy requirements anymore, we’ll be tapped out-” Specy said, frowning as she cocked her head.

        “We’re just dodging ,” Gunner said, shaking his head. His mandibles clacked together audibly. “We have to keep this up until they run out of-” A series of bright flashes filled the forward view-screen, making Merton wince. Beside him, Relix had dozed off. What was with dragons and taking naps during space battles?

        “Uh, question,” Merton said. “What the hell is going on?”

        Gunner and Specy looked at him. Gunner looked faintly amused. Specy looked like she was trying to evaluate how well he had put his newly enhanced dong to use. Merton felt a flush crawl up his cheeks as he coughed and said: “I think, as Relix’s husband, I should know how to fight a space battle. Just in case.”

        Gunner pursed his mandibles, then nodded. “Fine. The Talon-9  is a top of the line draconic demiship. It’s about twenty meters long, but the interior is expanded via the use of demiplanes. Her reactor is a direct portal-feed to the Plane of Positive Energy – essentially limitless, save that we can only pop five portals at once to run energy out. For passive defenses, we have a layer of adamantine with a sublayer of bio-engineered dragon scales for flexible kinetic dispersal, followed up by three level 9 spell slots preloaded with class two wish spells, which are triggered on catastrophic drive failure to return the ship to normal, to return the crew to normal, and to put us a standard DU away from the enemy.”

        “A dragon unit?” Merton asked.

        “Yeah. It’s the distance that a dragon needs between another dragon before it feels comfortable leaving its hoard unguarded,” Gunner said. “It’s roughly ten thousand kilometers of hard vacuum.”

        Merton slowly looked at his wife, who had started to wake up. She blinked, yawned, then said: “What? He said un guarded. With proper guards, I can leave my hoard much earlier than that.” She rubbed at her muzzle. “Have the enemies been destroyed yet, Gunner? I was in the middle of sex.”

        “No, m’lady,” Gunner said – shooting a look at Merton. Merton felt his magically enhanced dong shrivel under that glower.

        “Ah well,” Relix said, leaning back as she started to close her eyes again.

        Merton shook his head, trying to get the conversation back on track. “What are the active defenses?”

        Gunner pointed to one of the consoles – where Pyria was sitting, with her green feet up on the console, a small hand-held flamer in her hands. She was firing it into the air, looking transfixed by the flickering orange streamer. “That console controls the planar whipple shields. If the ship detects incoming kinetic or directed energy ordinance, it’ll pop a portal to the Elemental Plane of Water. Anything that gets past that gets hit by the PRCs – the Polar Ray Casters. They’re a series of two hundred wands enchanted with frost beam cantrips, with meta-magic augmentation worked into the focusing apertures to maximize damage. Via focusing, the rays can knock most missiles out of the air, as well as small fighters, assuming their planar shields are down.”

        Merton was starting to come to grips with just how vast the difference between humanity’s technology and draconic magitechnology was and it was making him feel very...very small.

        “Now, for weapons!” Gunner said, his voice casual. Like he’d belted this out before. A lot. “Four railguns along the spine, and five LRPTs under each wings, capable of ripple firing ten plasma torpedoes each. We’ve got five magazines, each one holding a hundred torpedoes. Then we have a backup cache of vortex weapons, in case we really need to get serious.”

        “How much ammo for the railguns do we have?” Merton asked, rubbing his palms against his face.

        Gunner looked at him oddly. “They...they’re fed directly by portals to the Elemental Plane of Earth. Technically, their firing starts about ten clicks back in the EPE, with only the last twenty meters of the gun coming out on this ship. Ammo’s not a concern.”

        “ Jesus ,” Merton whispered.

        “Now,” Gunner said. “Our enemy are ten different Ouster pirate ships – their clan markings are obscured, but they’re running on black market antimatter reactors. Hot, efficient, dangerous. Their railguns are all shorter lengths than ours, but they have more of them, and their nukes are a serious pain in the ass .” He waved Merton over. Merton, feeling distinctly underdressed, stood and kept his crotch covering pillow against his junk. Brash, who had remained on the top of his head, snored even louder.

        The screen that Gunner showed Merton was instantly recognizable to Merton, because he was the kind of nerd who knew how to recognize orbital and space combat maneuvers. The ten Ouster ships were basically on the Talon-9’s tail, firing a constant stream of railgun fire, which was portaled away into the plane of water. Nukes swept outwards in jinking patterns, zig zagging towards the ship before being struck down by the PRCs. Some of the nukes did get through and detonated close enough to the ship to leave the hull glowing a cherry red. But Merton was pretty sure there weren’t enough of them to really cause them problems. However, Merton could see that the only reason the Ouster ships couldn’t get closer was because the Talon-9 was burning as hard as she could go.

        “We can’t go faster without shutting down some of the portal defenses,” Gunner said.

        “And if they get closer, they can saturate our defenses with close range fire. I bet they have knife fight weapons. Lasers or something.” Merton rubbed his chin, thinking.

        “Telescope them,” Gunner said. “Check.”

        “Aye, sir!” The one eared dark skinned elf said. A moment later, she said. “Yup, they have a few dozen industrial lasers each. They’re made for mining ore, but they’re dwarven make. They’ll cut adamantine, given enough time.”

        “How long?” Merton asked. Gunner looked amused.

        “Thirty six seconds,” the dark elf said.

        “Well,” Specy said, stepping up slightly. “Less, if we’re still red hot. More, if we can cool down before we get to them.”

        “Can we make our defensive portals bigger?” Merton asked.

        “Yes, if we want to suck up all our energy...” Specy said, frowning.

        “Okay,” Merton said. “Okay.” He thought. He thought of every sneaky, stupid, bullshit trick that his players had thrown at him. He played through the possibilities in his head, trying to get a feeling for what was plausible. It was just like gamemastering. Just higher stakes. Slowly, the ideas sifted in his head. Just as slowly, Merton began to smile. “Okay. Gunner, I’m going to tell you my plan. And you are going to tell me, on a scale from one to ten, how good it is.”

        They listened.

        Slowly, Gunner started to grin.

        “That’ll be a ten, sir.”

        And Merton heard real loyalty in that voice.

***

        Pirate-Lord Kursk tapped three of his five fingers on his thigh as he leaned back in the acceleration creche of the Ouster ship Fuck You I Got Mine. The steady wham wham wham of the railgun going off had gone from a comforting pattern to an aching hammering against his already aching exterior ear-sacks. Kursk was a trullup, one of the sentient arboreal squirrels that had evolved on the elven garden world of Gladefellow.

        He had hated it.

        He had hated every last second of the saccharine sweetness. He had hated the midnight dancing parties around the fairy circles. He had hated the twee elven princesses, so innocent in their sheer robes, giving roses and flowers to everyone who came to visit. He had despised the cities, where elven councils had genteelly given over every last scrap of dignity and magical resources to the Five Talon Empire.

        Now, here he was, about to nukefuck a princess of that empire into radioactive slag. He could feel the closeness of his victory, like the closeness of a woman in heat.

        “Cap,” his gunner – a short, squat dwarf who, like all Ousters, had been made smaller and smaller by the years of magical transformations that people who joined their clans had to undergo. Ousters built small ships, and built them to survive in space. If you joined, you had to get small too. Kursk had himself lost two feet of height, and hadn’t regretted it a bit. “We’re running a bit low on the nukes.”

        “Get the gobblers to build more. We have enough spare parts...”

        “The wrangler says the gobblers are getting antsy. They wanna invent something.” His gunner looked back over her shoulder, her own sideburns a fierce, bristling pair that had been dyed and spiked into a sawblade pattern. It made her look like she had eaten an industrial workshop.

        “Put them on the screen,” Kursk growled.

        The main screen flickered from the view of the space battle to the gobbler wrangler. The incredibly tired looking blue skinned torriie who had been put in charge of managing their pack of goblins was smoking what seemed to be her tenth cigarette. Behind her, several goblins were running about. One was swinging on a lamp. Another one had set himself on fire and was rolling around on the floor while the others chanted: “Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink!”

        “Yeah, cap?” the torriie asked.

        Kursk put on his best smile, despite the throbbing headache that was starting to burn through his brain. The hammering of the railgun, plus the nearly three Gs they were burning...it was hard to take, even with contra-gravitic enchantment reducing the actual practical gravities to almost draconic norms. “I hear your gobblers want to invent shit.”

        The goblins all shut up and, in an instant, were standing before the camera. “Yes sir sir, sir yes!” one of them said, saluting so hard he almost knocked his goggled helmet off his head.

        “Which one of you has an idea ?” Kursk asked.

        The goblins shuffled. Then one of them raised his hand. “I had this idea for a torpedo that like, fires other torp-”

        “Space him,” Kursk said. The goblin had time to say ‘wha’ before the gobbler wrangler had grabbed him by his scrawny throat, jammed him into the goblin airlock (which doubled as a trash dispenser) and slammed down the leaver. The sound of the goblin’s scream was irritatingly silent. Kursk would have enjoyed hearing it. The other goblins had gone very still. “Anyone else want to not build nuclear weapons?”

        The goblins shook their heads in unison.

        “Then start building some fucking nukes,” Kursk growled.

        “SIR!”

        The shout of his gunner jerked Kursk’s attention away from the gobblers – the screen winked back to a view of the space battle. The view was everything he had wished for. He grinned, fiercely, as he watched the dragon’s demiship start to slew to the side. Their engines were sputtering incoherently, and while their portal shields did flick up occasionally, they didn’t stop every single shot that was hitting. He looked at his gunner.

        “Hit the scryer,” he said.

        “Aye...” She paused. “They’ve had a total magic cascade failure! I think it’s their armor .”

        “The bane of arcane magic,” Kursk chuckled. Everyone knew that wizards and sorcerers and arcanists and bloodchanters and ciphers couldn’t so much as light a candle if they were in heavy armor. The same was true of ships – dragons could make the arcane spell mishap chance close to zero. But they couldn’t make it zero . And that meant...he rubbed his chin and then said: “All ships. Hold off on the fire. Lets board this bitch and see if we can sell some dragon steaks!”

        A lusty cheer came in from every com band as the Ousters accelerated forward. Several looped left. Several looped right. Kursk put himself on a zenith arc. But the bulk of the Ousters headed straight in.

        Straight in.

        Straight.

        In.

        Something buzzed along Kursk’s brain. A tiny suspicion that, he thought, was the root of why he never liked Gladefellow.

        He could sniff when things were just too good. The demiship wasn’t even firing its cold jets, or its non-magical ordinance. He snarled and tapped at his coms, bringing them on again: “Decelerate! Decelerate now ! ”

        And that was when every defensive portal on the draconic ship snapped open on the same flank and dumped sixteen billion tons of liquid water from the Elemental Plane of Water into space between them and the primary Ouster boarding thrust. The liquid water flash froze and flash boiled all at the same moment, expanding outwards like a kinetic shotgun, and six Ouster ships smashed in so fast that they barely had time to kick on deceleration burns. The searing flashes of their anti-matter self immolations was enough to make Kursk cry out in fury and rage both, even as the wave of hard radiation bathed his ship and caused every single system to spark and crackle and flicker.

        The demiship’s engines roared back to life, swinging it around to bring railguns to bear on the left flank of the Ouster attack. The two ships that were approaching there turned into stars, their internal oxygen burning up in a single flash.

        “Nooooooooo!” Kursk screamed. “Fucking ramming speed! Now! ”

        Every last droplet of anti-matter felt as if it was being set off behind Kursk. Several giants were tea-bagging him, their massive balls smashing him into the chair. That was how it felt, at least. The needle of his ship plunged towards the demiship, which was still trying to bring its railguns to bear. But Kursk’s ship and the other remaining Ouster ship both crashed into the adamantine hull with a rending tear . Every single pre-bought spell slot that the Ouster ship had left port with went off in the same motion. Ant-Carry was cast on each crew-member, to let them carry the sudden weight pressing on them as gravity ripped at their forms. Mage Shield and Mage Armor both flared to life, turning aside the impact and making the prow into something close to a magical knife.

        And, of course, magic missiles kicked on too.

        Kursk saw it on the screen as the nose of his ship thrust into a large corridor. Several men at arms who had been rushing to their positions were cut down by a sudden streamer of perfectly aimed darts of pure force. The one who managed to dive into cover before the spray was finished was screaming for reinforcements. But then the front of the bridge opened – as if the view screen had turned to reality. Kursk undid his crash webbing, drew his chain-saber and pulled his DK-Bolter from his holster, then leaped onto the demiship.

        “Kill everyone !” he bellowed. “Every last fucking one!”

***

        Relix was on her feet before the ship had even stopped shuddering from the boarding impact. “Evacuate the decks!” she said. “Get the civilians to the storm cellar! And get me my sword.”

        “Yay!” Brash clapped, then leaped off of Merton’s head. He transformed as he flew, landing on the deck before the two of them. He had shifted into a sleekly muscled, humanoid form – toned and strong, with human skin and raven black hair. The only clue he was a dragon was his golden, slitted eyes, the fine patina of scaling on his chest in the place of chest hair, and his eighteen inches of dick. Because dragons had a theme , it seemed. He pulled a tricorn hat from literally nowhere and set it on his head. “Avast, maties!”

        “Where did you get that hat?” Merton asked, slowly, still clutching a pillow to his junk.

        “Oh! I shapeshifted my palm so that it was holding a hat! The hat’s actually my cells, but it just looks like a hat!” Brash picked up his hat, showing a very tiny filament wire of black hair connecting the hat to his scalp. “See?”

        “...then why didn’t you shapeshift to have clothes ?” Merton asked.

        Brash looked utterly confused. “I...those words were all in Galactic Common, but...none of them made any sense in that order.”

        Gunner, meanwhile, had grabbed onto Relix, frowning. “You are going to the storm cellar right now. We have less than twenty men at arms left. Each Ouster ship carried its own goblinoid swarm and the Ousters. They have DKs and chain-blades and power armor.”

        Relix snarled. “This. Is. My. Ship. And you’re my people . And I will be damned if I let some space pirate do anything but die aboard her.” She snapped her fingers, holding out her palm. A flash of magic surrounded her hand and a glowing blade of pure, purple light formed in her palm. She swung it around, then rolled her shoulders...and transformed . Her scales thickened and expanded, from the smooth snakeskin of her normal form, until she was covered in armor plating. Her wings actually folded back until they were gone, while her tail became short and stubby. Her muzzle lengthened and a pair of horns grew from her forehead, then fanned outwards, creating an almost samurai-helmet style look around her head. She rolled her shoulders again and Merton could hear the creak and groan of her armor-plates shifting.

        Then, without a word, she started stomping towards the exit.

        Merton looked at Gunner and Brash. Brash looked a bit chagrined. “I could do that, if I wanted too! The psi-sword, I mean. I just...haven’t. Yet.” He blushed, then gasped. “Oh! I know!” He leaped onto Merton’s head.

        Before Merton could say anything or do anything, Brash spread. It felt a bit like having warm, moist latex slurping over your whole head. Merton didn’t even have time to scream. The tight, moist membrane slurped along every inch of Merton’s skin, until he found himself entirely enclosed in darkness. After an agonizing second of blindness, a pair of pinpricks thrust into his ears and there was a loud clunk and he could see out of his eyes again. He looked down at himself and yelped . He was covered in gleaming scale and hardened armor. Claws thrust from his fingertips, and he felt a thrumming, pulsating strength. He felt the wind breezing along his back and his shoulders.

         Hi! I’m ARMOR NOW! Brash’s excited voice boomed in his head.

         Firstly, Merton thought. Volume. Secondly...WHAT THE FLYING FUCK!?

        Gunner, meanwhile, was gaping at the pair of them. The rest of the bridge crew was gaping. Every one of them looked utterly and completely shocked, as flummoxed as Merton felt. Which was faintly comforting, now that he thought about it.  But before he could ask any questions, the loud roar of something between a chainsaw and a lighting storm and the end of the world echoed down the corridor, and he could hear the faint cry of Relix’s voice. His heart squeezed and Merton moved without thinking. He leaped forward.

        And smashed his head into the ceiling. He rebounded, hit the ground on his scaled belly, then skidded five feet.

         Wheeee! Brash giggled in his head. At least he wasn’t booming anymore.

        “Ow...” Merton growled, then put his palms under his feet. He forced himself up – and that motion sent him flying backwards, shooting into the bridge. He yelped as he realized he was about to hit the front of the bridge – and reflexively beat his wings. Wait. Wings? The sudden pressure at his back stopped him cold in the air, and a wind billowed around his body. Merton spread his hands wide, trying to balance himself. His feet clicked onto the ground. But then the roar of gunfire came again. This time, he ran forward but modulated his movement. This meant he cleared the bridge in two bounds and was in the corridor a moment later.

        The view swirled with a sudden sandstorm of information. Outlines flickered on around each of the Ousters that were swarming forward in the corridor. Health bars snapped up over each one and a haze of targeting reticles and sword-swing indicators. Merton saw Relix staggering backwards as a swarm of goblins – each one armed with a shimmering, midnight black knife – leaped onto her armored form. She spread her arms wide, growing extra arms underneath each goblin to fling them aside. This filled the air with goblins, and made Merton realize what he needed to do.

         Brash! Target lock ! Merton thought – looking at a specific goblin. The rest of the targeting data faded away and Merton saw exactly where he’d need to kick. His bare foot kicked out and he saw that his leg and foot were both black scaled and draconic. The impact of his foot into the goblin’s belly folded the cackling creature in half, sending it arcing over to smash into the helmeted face plate of one of the Ouster boarders.

         Look out! Brash thought, his voice more excited than afraid. Warning indicators jerked Merton’s head down as one of the Ousters leveled a gun that looked like it was a cross between a crossbow and a lawnmower and a plasma gun. It fired a searing buzzsaw of plasma that shot past where Merton’s head had been, the blade exploded against the wall behind him. Merton took a single step forward and punched the Ouster in the head, as hard as he could.

        He had expected a lot of things.

        None of them had been the Ouster’s head vanishing like a soap bubble of blood, and their headless corpse flipping through the air, trailing crimson.

        Merton felt his gorge rise. But it got worse.

        He felt Brash’s disgust and horror as well.

        And both Merton and Brash got sick at the exact same time.

        Which meant Merton went flying out of the Brash-suit’s mouth, hit the ground, and skidded on a belly slick with lubrication that he didn’t even begin to want to identify. Merton skidded to a stop right before the tallest looking Ouster – which still meant he was pretty short. But that didn’t matter when one was naked and on their belly, and the other was in power armor, holding a roaring chainsaw cutlass and a pistol that looked like it fired entire swords out of its huge barrel. The Ouster’s helmet was off, revealing an incongruously adorable squirrel-like face, marred only by a pair of huge, puke-orange orbs for ears.

        The ouster grinned.

        “The husband,” he purred.

        He lifted his sword. The chainsaw edge roared.

        Merton lifted his arm, knowing it was useless.

        The chain-saber came down, sputtering with smoke and oily fumes.

        And smashed into a shield of crackling green energy. The impact jarred Merton’s arm and left it completely numb. But the Ouster rebounded with a shuddering jerk, his sword groaning as the teeth failed to bite into anything. Merton stood, his lubricated feet skidding along the ground. The green shield on his arm was formed exactly like Captain America’s shield. Complete with the star. He whispered, slowly: “When he throws his mighty shield...”

        “A mage!” The Ouster growled, righting his posture.

        “All who oppose his shield must yield !” Merton bellowed and threw in the same motion. The green shield flew outwards and smashed into the Ouster’s chest plate with a sound like a gong. The Ouster went flying backwards and the shield rebounded to slap against Merton’s arm.

        “Merton, look out!” Relix shouted.

        Merton turned and saw one of the goblins running at him, holding a hissing cartoon style bomb over her head, cackling like a maniac. Merton simply had to think  his shield into a weapon and it transformed into a ray-gun. A stream of green light struck the goblin’s bomb and the corridor between Merton and Relix got painted with a fine red mist. Then Relix was at his side and both turned to face the Ouster.

        The Ouster leveled his pistol and Relix froze.

        “Take another step forward,” the Ouster growled. “And I riddle your pathetic monkey with enough Lethe shards that even if you rez him, he’ll be a dribbling infant.”

        Relix’s hand tightened on her sword. Her eyes flashed.

        “Who are you?” Merton asked. “Who sent you?”

        “I am the Pirate Lord Kursk of the Ouster Clan Smoke Jaguar-”

        “Clanner scum!? Really?” Merton asked.

        The Ouster glared at him.

        Which is why he completely missed Relix opening her mouth and hitting him with her breath weapon. As her nose had steamed earlier, Merton would have bet money on either cold or lightning. It turned out that his first guess was the right one. The blast of raw ferocious cold almost turned his own skin blue, just by standing next to her. When the swirl of white and flash-frost had faded, the Ouster stood – statue still, his face still trapped in a quiet glower.

        Relix breathed slowly out.

        Merton smiled at her, then turned around. He knelt down and picked up a tiny, shivering Brash. The small dragon had turned into his quadrapedal form, save he was barely large enough to fill Merton’s cupped palms, and was hiding his head under his wings.

        “Hey, little buddy...” Merton whispered, caressing the dragon on his back with a single pinkie. He felt very soft right now. Brash peeked out from under his wing, his eyes filled with tears. He flinched slightly at Merton’s smile – and Merton felt a sudden almost blinding level of utter and complete rage. It started with the very idea of Baron Bex Thresh of the Singularity Principalities being anywhere near Brash, let alone being a father figure. It spiraled outwards to include the entire Five Talon Empire for being a place where Brash would need to learn to hide his tears.

It was the rage that was at the heart of his decision to ask for him in the first place. So much had happened, and other than a few questions, no one had actually asked Merton why  he had asked for the egg. And the reason he been so simple, so mushy, that he was kind of glad he hadn’t had to admit it. Not to that hard nosed wife of his, nor her many gruff advisors.

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.

        Merton had stopped worrying about the overlap between Earth’s fiction and this reality. He had no time for it. He glared at the pilot and, as the head of House Castrovel, husband-prince to Relix Castrovel, he snarled: “Do it.”

        The pilot grabbed onto the controls, while the defense station started to chirrup – Pyria stabbing at buttons with her fingers. The portal snapped open, revealing a place of infinite blackness. It was something worse and deeper than the stars. Something that said, in every language of the body and soul and heart, to never enter. To flee. But behind it, rushing towards them through real space, was an army that had reduced a world to ash and longed to spill their blood. And so, the pilot slammed down on the accelerator and the Talon-9 plunged.

        Into blackness.

        Into negation.