Chapter Nine: Roll that Craft Check

Lisa turned away from the scanning display and glared at Gunner, Quetzalcoatl and, honestly, the rest of the crew and the whole universe. “Well, fuck,” she said, her voice tight and barely controlled. Quetzalcoatl’s feathered ruff flicked back and he hissed quietly, clearly a bit upset about her tone. Before he could say anything, Gunner cracked his knuckles.

        “Track that aircraft,” he barked, and the bridge crew hurried to their stations. Pyros was the first one to get on the scrying console and started to tap away with greenish fingers.

        “What are we going to do?” Carlos asked. “They napped Relix and Brash and Merton! Putas .”

        “We could panic,” Trevor said, his voice ever so slightly snide. Carlos glared at him – but before he could respond, Lisa held up her hand.

        “You!” she pointed at Gunner. “Once we track the airplane, I want this ship up and after them. You!” She pointed at Speccy. “Take the overgrown feather duster to Atlantis.”

        Speccy crossed all four of her arms over her chest and belly, her eyes narrowing as she hissed in displeasure. Quetzalcoatl looked even more mortified. Both of them opened their mouths, but before they could get in a word edgewise, Lisa snapped her fingers. She had a skill with finger snapping. It sounded a bit like a gunshot. She followed up with a voice that was as even as it was filled with a smoldering anger. A lifetime of arguing with people from pushy HOA members to racists on twitter had given Lisa a backbone – the same backbone she had shown in the Fortress of Regrets.

        “Right now, a huge-ass dragon warfleet is coming to Earth. We need every fucking tool that we have. Quetzalcoatl is the only surviving dragon from that time period, and Spectral, you’re the best and most intelligent engineer we have.”

        Speccy inclined her head. Quetzalcoatl flared his ruff, but didn’t do much more than that.

        “Find every gun, every spell, every bit of armor, everything,” Lisa said.

        “I’ve got them tracked!” Pyros exclaimed. “No, bugger, they’re gone.”

        “What do you mean gone ?” Gunner snarled, his mandibles clacking. “Earth doesn’t have magic, we’re tracking them with level 5 spells!”

        “I’m saying what I’m saying, and what I’m saying is they dropped off the charts, even with sympathetic magic,” Pyros said, slumping.

        Lisa rubbed her chin.

        “We could go to the White House,” Merton’s Dad said – his voice remarkably calm. “I know people in the Defense Department. And if anyone knows who those people were, they’d be them.” He smiled. “Hell, maybe it was D-Com.”

        “D-Com?” Merton’s Mom asked, her laugh having a hysterical edge to it – she looked as if she was reaching the upper limit of the amount of weird shit she was able to put up with. Doubly so when it came to threats on her son’s life. “That urban legend?” She shook her head. “No way they ever got it off the ground.”

        Lisa scowled. “What. Is. D-Com?”

        Merton’s Dad sighed. “So, listen,” he said, his arms crossing over his chest. “I’m not in the loop on everything. I’m just a physicist. But there were rumors since the 1990s about some kind of extra-governmental anti-dragon task force. A Dragon Combat Force. Or…” He rolled his hand, as if gesturing to something on the horizon. “D-Com.”

        “That’s the stupidest fucking name I’ve ever heard,” Trevor said.

***

        The armored soldier knelt down above Merton and yanked the gag away from his mouth smiled slightly. “Hey,” he said. Merton tongued at his gums, tasting the horrible aftershocks of having rubber jammed into his mouth. He looked around at the restraints that kept him and Brash restrained, despite Brash’s incredible strength.

        “Sup,” Merton asked, his voice rough.

        “Oh, just another glorious day in D-Com,” the soldier said, shrugging.

        The two – well, the three of them – were in the belly of the VTOL that had kidnapped Merton and Relix. The faint sound of air screaming past the belly of the craft was audible enough to made Merton’s teeth itch. Small bumps and jostles of turbulence set him swaying and made a quiet groan escape from Brash’s brain.

         You okay, little buddy? Merton thought.

         The restraints are junking up my ability to compensate for inner ear woobliebooblies… Brash mumbled.

        Merton winced, his mind already imagining just how unpleasant that had to feel.

        The soldier stood up and paced away, his rifle clacking slightly as he slung it over his shoulder. His armor was unfamiliar to Merton – but it still looked to be roughly on par with human technology. So, this was just some fancy, high tech secret combat force. If Merton had to guess, D-Com stood for Dragon Combat or Dragon Control or something. He wasn’t sure if they were saying Com or Con , with an N. The two sounds blurred together, at least, they did when someone was speaking over a howling set of VTOL engines and the ‘screaming of the damned’ sound of air rushing by the armored hull.

        “Hey,” Merton said. “Where’s Relix?”

        The soldier looked back at him. He shook his head slightly. “You think you can get her free, dragon-boy?”

        “Uh, one, I’m not a dragon,” Merton said. “My name is Merton Miles. I was born in California.”

        “Yeah. And I work for the post office,” the D-Com soldier said, rolling his eyes.

        Merton frowned. Then he felt a faint quiver in Brash’s body. It pressed against his skin and made me gulp down his own sense of nausea. He shook his head – then grinned. He could feel what was about to happen, and knew exactly how he’d use it. He just needed to prep the situation. He lifted his head, pitching his voice louder: “Hey, fuckface. If I was a dragon, how would I know that DC movies kick Marvel movie’s ass hands down?”

        The soldier swung around, his eyes wide with shock. He took a step forward. “What did you-”

         I’m gonna be sick, Brash gurgled.

        And he threw up.

        Which meant Merton went flying out of Brash’s mouth, buck naked and slick with juice that he’d really rather not identify. He focused as he flew, lifting his arm as if he was a D&D fighter in the middle of a bull rush. His psi-shield crackled to life as his mage awakened talent roused, now that he was no longer restrained by the strange webbing that Brash had been wrapped in. The shield met the guard’s face and the two hit the ground with a groan. Merton skidded along a deck so cold that he felt as if his dong might freeze and snap off. But he had no time to think. He grabbed onto the rifle as the soldier clutched at a broken nose. He yanked the strap off from around the man’s neck.

        He fired a single shot at the restraints that still wrapped around the undifferentiated mass that was Brash’s groaning body. A spark flew from the net and the blue glow they emitted faded. Brash sprang free a moment later, landing on Merton’s shoulder with a cheerful cry of: “Yay!”

        Merton swung his rifle around and fired off a spray of bullets at the stairs leading into the cargo hold – causing the soldiers who had started to come down to investigate the noise to jerk backwards with cries of alarm. Merton stood, his knees shaking, his feet skidding thanks to the Brash-slime that slicked against his soles.

        “Everyone up there!” he shouted. “I’m willing to fucking talk! But if you say no, I have a tiny dragon with tac-nukes and I’m not afraid to use him!”

        “Yeah!” Brash said, then whispered. “We’re not actually going to use tactical nuclear weapons right? We’re over an ocean!”

        And, quite suddenly, the floor became the wall. Then, just as quickly, gravity vanished entirely, sending Merton and the goon floating up into the air. The VTOL was arcing downwards – in a howling, screaming arc through the air. Brash giggled cheerfully, flipping around as Merton tried to keep a hold on the rifle as he bounced up towards the ceiling. Through the narrow windows on the wall, he could see the ocean rushing up to meet them.

         Well, he thought. Balls .

***

        It took five minutes after the Talon-9  shot off into the distance before Quetzalcoatl finally opened his mouth to say: “Well, that wasn’t how I expected that to go. At all.”

        Spectral Time – or, as people kept referring to her as, Speccy – did not sigh. She had a long lifetime of learning to not sigh. Her people were known as technicians and sorcerers both, and she was considered quite skilled among her people. As a skilled tech-priest from a planetary population of tech-priests, she had been a valuable commodity. And at times like this, Speccy remembered all her previous masters and her previous exposure to other dragons and took heart from knowing that no matter how bad it was…

        She could still be working for House Bryaugh.

        And so, she turned to see that Quetzalcoatl was sitting with his large, feathered head resting on his chin, glaring at a pile of frost dusted debris. The lost city of Atlantis – or at least the part of Atlantis that they had discovered – stretched out before Speccy, visible under the magical spectra that her eyes had been enchanted to perceive. In natural light, only a tiny circle of the city was struck by the natural sunlight shining through the hole the Talon-9 had punched through stone and ice. As a scientist, the indications of techno-sorcery that she had seen thus far was...breathtakingly mundane.

        She knelt down and picked up a piece of a street mage-light that had fallen down thousands of years before and frozen solid. She used her upper right hand and opened it up, pursing her lips ever so slightly as she shifted her vision through the arcanic spectrum – working her way through divinatory lenses. Once she was done, she shook her head and made a quiet tchss  sound under her breath.

        “I spent thousands of years watching the slaves, seeing them...a...a race that could really claim the title of what the ancient magi stood for. They did so much without magic, without gods, without knowledge of anything but what you can see. They built machines that let them see deeper and darker than any dragon ever has, even with magic. But all that amazing progress was built on sand . They’d never be able to reach their true heights with dragons sprawled across the stars like some fat beast.” Quetzalcoatl muttered. “And I finally find a dragon that could see that dragonkind is rotten to the core, and...”

        “Are you quite done?” Speccy asked, turning to face Quetzalcoatl, her lower hands on her hips, her upper arms crossed over her breasts. She frowned down at Quetzalcoatl, who looked up at her, his head drawing back, his ruff settling down against his scales.

        “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice venomous. “I-”

        “Shut up,” Speccy said, frowning. “Life is filled with failed incidents. You could have spent thousands of years acting rather than watching. Instead, you waited for the right moment and it failed. If you had a thousand other failures under your belt preparing you for this, maybe you would have a contingency plan. As it is, transform yourself into a carrying device or leave, because you’re currently being as much use as a wet fart in a space suit.”

        Quetzalcoatl spluttered, his head rearing back even further. “A...a...a carrying device!?”

        Speccy picked up the mage light and held it up. “What is this?”

        “A mage light,” Quetzalcoatl said, his voice smug. “It uses the light spell, augmented by electrostatic generator to prevent mana-burn.”

        The mage-light bounced off his nose.

        “Inefficient!” Speccy said, an anger she hadn’t realized she could feel actually beginning to grow and build inside of her. “Do you think modern mage lights are kindled by first year apprentices recasting the same cantrip again and again?” She scoffed. “We have mage lights linked to a central power system, usually powered via arcano-gravitic fusion or by straight line connections to the plane of positive energy.”

        Quetzalcoatl blinked.

        “You do?” he asked.

        Speccy frowned. She thrust her upper left hand at a building that looked as if it had once contained a maunfactory center, from the draconic runes she recognized underneath a few millennia of decay and frost. “Knock that wall over.”

        Quetzalcoatl frowned, then reached out with his foreclaw. He smashed into the brick and metal wall, sending up a cloud of dust and spray of debris. Before it had even cleared up, Speccy stepped over the wreckage, picking her way along carefully. Not for the first time, she thanked the gods of fashion that her garb was tight and form fitting. Not for any prurient reason – she had yet to meet a male that she’d lay with for any reason beyond abject pity or a direct order from Princess Relix.

         What about Merton? A teeny, tiny part of her brain whispered.

        She waved her hand, and instead, focused on the interior of the former factory. And, like dumping a bunch of petrochemicals onto a burning fire, she felt her anger intensify. “Look at this  nonsense! You have old orchialicum pools right in the open, without any bleed-off vanes or magic captors above the pools! And...artificial sunlight focusing lamps?” She gestured at an ancient, shattered hunk of glass and plastic. “ Tchss!  This isn’t fit to work on a backwoods pirate den!”

        “It’s top of the line!” Quetzalcoatl exclaimed.

        “It was top of the line ten thousand years ago!” Speccy said, turning to face him. “Now. Become a wheelbarrow.” She looked over at the ruins, her eyes narrowing. “I have a way to salvage something from this terrible idea.”

        Her tone added the subtext so plainly that it might as well have been uttered aloud: As per usual.

***

         The Talon-9 kicked on its retro-engines after blazing past several layers of top of the line human air defenses. Several SAM sites, each one scrambled to activity by frantic screaming from radar detection grids and satellite surveillance systems, fired their missiles into the air the Talon-9 had been in mere seconds before. The missiles veered desperately, trying to slam into the draconic demiship. Instead of hitting, they were intercepted by polar-rays fired en mass from the PRC grid along the Talon-9 ’s spine. The sudden, killing cold of the PRCs did not actually take the missiles down instantly. However, metal couldn’t be snap frozen without some damage creeping through. And as beams focused, dropping temperature lower and lower, missile after missile hit the point where their machinery and their electronics failed and they spun wildly out of the air, exploded in the air, or simply dropped .

        Then the Talon-9 dropped down and landed on the broad lawn of the White House’s front porch, the howling gale of wind kicked up by the landing thrusters knocking over a vast, bright orange inflatable chicken that had been set up on the outskirts of the lawn. As the chicken tumbled away, it bowled over a few dozen news cameras and sent a team from CNN scrambling for cover. The secret service were scrambling as well – weapons were being readied, phone calls were being made, and the President was being forced away from his cell phone by two retainers.

        The front of the Talon-9 opened and Lisa came walking out, flanked by Gunner in his best power armor and Julia dressed in a wizard hat, a thong, a bra and nothing else. Since, after all, armor restrained arcane magic. That was the only reason she had picked this outfit.

Honest.

        Several secret service agents were already in cover.

        “Sleep!” Julia shouted, then thrust her finger at the lot of them. A ball of glowing energy flicked from her fingertip, struck the air above the knot of men in hastily donned flack jackets. To the last, each of them slumped to the ground. Julia breathed a sigh of relief as Gunner started forward. “Okay, good. Secret servicemen are 1 HD creatures. I was worried.”

        Lisa looked like she was having the time of her life.

        Gunner reached the closed and barricaded front door shoulder first. The door splintered inwards and the trio headed inside. From the bridge of the Talon-9 , Merton’s Mom bit the back of her knuckles. “Do...do you think this was the right tactic to be taking? I mean, this may, ah, sour opinions, right?”

        Dad shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m having fun.”

        The interior of the White House was a lot smaller than Lisa expected. She looked around as bullets pinged and sparked off Gunner’s body. Julia, crouching behind the huge armored bug-man, shouted out the magical word again. Once again, people went sprawling as they were knocked out cold. Gunner’s head was scanning around. Then he nodded. “There!” he pointed to a wall, then rushed forward. His shoulder struck wood, which splintered, then rebounded off thick steel. With the bunker revealed, he lifted his right arm. A small prong emerged from his wrist with a whirr -click!  A searing beam of laser light struck the steel as Julia kept her eyes open for any more Secret Servicemen.

        Gunner kicked the circle he had cut into and the metal fell inwards with a clang , revealing a bunker that had been designed to keep the President safe in the advent of thermonuclear war. Several aides, officials, and the Vice President, were all crowded inside, with the President himself nowhere to be seen. A secret serviceman stepped up, firing his 9mm pistol into Gunner’s chest. The bullets pinged and sparked and Julia yelped, lifting up her palms to create a magical force field that hummed to life, catching the ricochets before they could harm anyone.

        The gun clicked repeatedly for a few seconds before the flack jacketed, sunglass equipped, brave as balls man realized he was empty. He blinked – and then Gunner yanked the pistol from his grip. He chuckled. “Nice grouping,” he said, in English, as Lisa ducked past him. She reached under the table and dragged a whimpering President out.

        “Hey,” she said, cheerfully. “We’re here to talk about an alliance.”

***

        The impact of VTOL to ocean sent Merton slamming back into the deck. His jaw hit metal and his teeth clacked together and his head started to ring  as he sprawled there. For a few eternities, he didn’t think about anything. Instead, he simply sprawled there and wondered what else would go wrong today. When his head cleared and the pain subsided, he saw that Brash was once more restrained by a tube of metal, and that Merton’s hands had been zip tied behind his back. He was dragged to his feet and the soldier yanking him up growled in his ear.

        “That was a dumbshit move you pulled, kid.”

        “Fuck you,” Merton whispered.

        The next few minutes were a confused stumbling up stairs, down a narrow corridor of chairs, then out into something dark and narrow and metal. The flickering lights overhead made Merton think ‘underwater base.’ But the room he was finally escorted to made him think ‘evil underwater base’, because it contained nothing but a pair of chairs, a few bright lights, restraints, his wife, and an unsmiling Asian woman in body armor. Merton was jammed into the chair and his restraints were upgraded from zip-ties to fuckoff huge zip-ties. Brash was set down on his lap. Brash, with only his head and tail free, craned his head around, snapping at the men who had roughed them into the room.

        “Relix?” Merton hissed. “You okay?”

        “I mean…” Relix groaned. “I’ve been electrocuted, de-powered, restrained, questioned, and bumped around. So, yes, I’m just peachy , husband.”

        Merton glared at the Asian woman. “You fucking assholes! We came here to help!”

        “You’re dragons,” the woman said. “Or at least, two thirds of you are. And we here at the Dragon Combat Unit are dedicated to one thing: Keeping dragons from conquering the Earth. The Dragon Empire has better tech and more planets. But we have the advantage of being off the beaten path and very...very... very good at learning what we need to learn.” She walked forward, her hands resting on her thighs as she leaned forward and looked at Merton. “But you are a mystery.”

        Merton snorted. “Merton Miles. Interplanetary man of mystery, that’s me.”

        “How did the dragons brainwash you?” She asked, frowning.

        Merton, still feeling a bit loopy from the knock to the head, said the first thing that popped into his head: “Have you seen Relix’s titties?”

        “Merton!” Relix hissed. “Don’t forget my rump.”

        “Right, ass that won’t quit,” Merton said, grinning at the Asian woman. She looked less than amused. Her arms crossed over her armored chest piece.

        “Uh-huh. So, a bit of T&A was all it took for you to forget your loyalty to your species?” She asked.

        Merton closed his eyes. “Okay. Here’s what I would have said if you people had started off by talking , rather than fucking shooting . We came here to warn  you. The Five...the Dragon Empire has just gone into a civil war. Do you know the difference between a chromatic and a metallic dragon?”

        “Chromatic dragons are honest when they fuck you over?” The woman asked, arching an eyebrow.

        Relix bristled behind Merton – he could feel her tension from the contact points between their bodies on the chair. Merton sighed and wished he could squeeze her hands. To comfort her. Instead, he just said: “A Chromatic House has genetically engineered superweapons on their hands and have already attacked Draconis Prime. Princess Relix here is the only surviving Castrovel left. That means that they will want her dead. She’s a threat to their power.” He shook his head. “And humans are a threat all by themselves.”

        The woman frowned.

        “We have two weeks,” Merton said. “To figure out some way of stopping this fleet. Now, please, let’s work together . That’s the only way we’re going to fucking survive.”

        The woman held up her finger, then wordlessly turned and stalked out of the room. Once she was gone, all that was left was the faint hum of the lights. Merton leaned back in his seat. Brash bumped his head against Merton’s thigh. “You did good!” Brash said, cheerfully.

        “I just hope that everyone else is doing all right,” Merton said, shaking his head. “But, hey. We left Lisa behind. Lisa is pretty calm and rational.” He nodded again.

        Relix was silent for a few moments. Then, quietly. “Merton. What do we do if there is nothing that we can do? There is a single loyalist legion near Earth. But that’s one Legion against three Warspheres and who knows how many of the B-suits.” She craned her head back. “We need an alternative plan.”

        Merton bit his lip. “Shit!” He leaned his head back. “I should have asked Dart before we left...”

        “Asked her what?” Relix asked.

        “Asked her to find an alternate Earth, somewhere, in the multiverse. Somewhere that we could evacuate people too.” Merton shook his head. “There are, uh, seven billion people on this planet. But if we use the portal emitters that Speccy has, we could set up...how many portals?”

        “If we used every part of the Talon-9 ?” Relix asked. “I don’t know. Between...ten to thirty.”

        Merton bit his lip. “Ten to thirty, operating round the clock for, uh, almost two weeks. That’s...” Not everyone. “That’s a lot of people.” He tried to sound cheery. “It’ll be something to ask Dart once we get back to the Talon , eh?”

        Relix nodded. “Yeah.” She smiled. “Good thing Lisa will keep her safe.” Her eyes were filled with worry.

        “Definitely,” Merton said, cheerfully. The idea of Lisa doing something impulsive and dangerous was pretty ridiclous, after all.

***

        Speccy and Quetzalcoatl were trundling through downtown Atlantis. Well, Speccy was walking. Quetzalcoatl was thumping along on six legs, grown out from a dump-truck style growth of bone that thrust along his broad, flattened back. It was highly undignified for a dragon, but he gritted his teeth and bore it as Speccy continued to fill him up.

        Dart waited until they were a good distance away before she tiptoed out from the small, shadowed alcove she had ducked into as the Talon-9 roared away. She slung the pack full of stolen supplies over her back and grinned to herself as she started to walk towards the still semi-active dimensional portal.

        It was a bit of a hike.

        And she had a long way to go before she was outta here.         

***

        Lisa sat, flanked by Julia, Gunner, Merton’s Mom and Merton’s Dad. Carlos and Trevor were back on the Talon-9 , ready to turn the teleporter on and yank them out of the room if the need came. Sitting across from them was the Secretary of Defense, the President, the Vice President, a bunch of aides, and the most important person in the room, the President’s cell phone. His thumbs tapped away as he looked at Lisa over the edge of the old blackberry.

        “So,” Lisa said. “That’s the situation. A battlefleet-”

        “We can take them,” the President declared.

        “You...” Lisa blinked, then rubbed her temple. “They’re an alien battlefleet with three planetkillers. We have a Soyuz with a machine gun duct taped to the front. And that’s not even ours, it’s Russian!”

        “Listen,” the President said, wheezing slightly. “We have, uh, the best. The best navy. The best air force. The best, uh, armed forces. We’re the best, we have the best. And that’s all there is too it. You won’t hear about that in the media.” He shook his head, his hair coming slightly off center. Lisa continued to rub her temple. Julia glanced at her, raising a single eyebrow. The Vice President remained placid faced – though his eyes betrayed the utter loathing he felt at Julia’s very presence. It was either the wizard’s hat or the lack of other clothing. The President, by the way, was still going. “We have the biggest ships, the best ships, they’re really good, these ships-”

        The door opened and a stern faced man in a suit, flanked by two men in FBI field uniforms, walked in. The President craned his head back. “What the flying fuck is this?” he asked – then yelped as one of the FBI men dragged his arms behind his back. Handcuffs clicked and the former President was dragged to his feet.

        “This is bulls-” his voice was cut off by the door.

        “Well,” the new President said, adjusting his tie. “I think that, hey, what are you doing!?” He yelped as the second FBI man dragged his arm behind his back and forced him to his feet. “I didn’t know anything about any treason, what!?”

        The second President in as many minutes went out the door shouting for his lawyer.

        The stern faced man adjusted his tie and nodded to Lisa.

        “...so, uh, the Speaker of the House?” Lisa asked.

        “He was arrested in at the Capitol building,” the man said. “President Mattis.” He nodded to the Secretary of Defense, who coughed and adjusted his tie. He stood, shifted to the chair the President had sat in, then looked back at Lisa.

        “Normally, there’d be more of a ceremony,” President Mattis said. “But I believe time is short.”

        Lisa breathed in, then out. “All right. First things first, we need to get Princess Relix out of internment. She was captured by some forces...uh, Gunner?” Gunner slid a holo of the scan of the VTOL craft that they had detected capturing Relix and Merton. President Mattis rubbed his face, then nodded.

        “Of course. We’ll need to send a signal to this loyalist legion you mentioned,” he said, slowly. “But will it be enough?”

        Lisa shrugged. “It better.”

***

        Merton was bouncing his thighs to keep Brash entertained – and doing quite a good job at it, considering how excited the tiny dragon was at bouncing up and down – when the lights came to full and several D-Com soldiers walked in, including the Asian woman who had been questioning them before. Before Merton could ask more than a garbled ‘what the-’ a knife had cut off his zip-ties, and the keycode to open Brash’s restraints was being typed in. Relix stood with an aggrieved harrumph  as she rubbed at her wrists.

        “The name is Lieutenant Kisogawa,” she said. “Sorry for the roughness – but...uh...” She sighed. “We just got the order from the Security Council. D-Com’s going public and we’ve all got a fuck of a lot of work to do.”

        “Finally,” Relix said, sticking her nose into the air. “I accept your apology.”

        “Thanks,” Kisogawa said, her voice flat. She folded the knife back into its hilt and pocketed it. “We need to get you two on a flight to Geneva. That’s where the organization is going to be held. We’re calling in the armed service of NATO, former Warsaw Pact...everyone.” She smiled, slightly. “Thanks, Princess . Y ou may have just gotten us world peace.” She shrugged. “For a day, at least.”

        Relix, Brash and Merton followed her to the VTOL. Now that Merton wasn’t half dazed with an impact to the chin, he could actually get a fairly good look at the surroundings of the D-Com base. It looked a bit like an old oil platform that someone had sunk under the waves, with lots of narrow corridors and heavy machines that whirred and groaned quietly. Noticing his looks – and his expression at seeing the faint drips of water falling from several points in the ceiling, Kisogawa explained: “It’s an experimental Soviet submersible aircraft carrier. The idea was to emerge off the coast and launch more than just short ranged multistage warheads. Tactical nukes on jets, city busters on planes, that kind of thing. It never took off, doubly so once ICBMs were invented. The half-built prototype sat around for decades...but it fits D-Com’s needs.”

        Merton blinked, then said. “Let me see. Uh, it’s mobile, carries aircraft for rapid deployment...” He paused. “And you can put an ocean between you and orbital laser bombardment?”

        “Bingo,” Kisogawa said, grinning. “You picked a good boyfriend.”

        “Husband,” Relix snarled. “And I know.” She smiled at Merton in a way that still made Merton’s heart hammer.

        “Husband?” Kisogawa shook her head as they walked up to the VTOL. “Okay.”

        “Hey!” Merton said.

        “Listen, I’ve spent my whole life training on how to kill dragons. The idea of someone marrying one is just...” Kisogawa shrugged. “Gross. Now, get one. We’ve got a straight flight to Geneva.”

        The VTOL rose from the ocean with a spray of cascading water and steam, then shot off towards the horizon. Merton leaned back in his seat, feeling a heavy bone deep ache of tiredness. He closed his hand around Relix’s hand, smiling at her. She smiled back. And while she smiled, he felt like they might actually have a chance.

***

        “We don’t have a chance.”

        Merton felt like Speccy had literally pulled a fish out from between her amazing tits and smacked him in the face with it.

        “But...but...Atlantis!” He stammered, gesturing to the dead city.

        “Useless,” Speccy said, crossing her arms under her breasts. This had the effect of drawing Merton’s eye, despite the dire situation and day and a half without a single wink of sleep. Geneva had been, just as he had expected, a clusterfuck. They had arrived to find that the United States was undergoing the largest mass trial for treason in its history, the NATO alliance on such shaky grounds that there had been some debates as to whether or not Canada would even show up . The Russians had initially refused to even believe anything until Relix had transformed to her draconic form and froze their diplomat solid on the floor of the United Nations. And even once everyone had started to (grudgingly) work together, Merton had left the administrative complex without knowing who was going to lead the united human defenses or what those defenses were going to be.

        He had come to Antarctica expecting relief.

        Instead…

        “What do you mean useless ?” Merton asked.

        “The magitech here is ten thousand years old. There’s been ten thousand years of innovation. Even at the glacial rate of change in the Five Talon Empire, that’s enough time for us to come up with a few new ideas.”

        Merton sagged. “So...we’re doomed.”

        Speccy shrugged. “We have enough salvaged magitechnological material here to, with the magician-engineers of the 42 nd  Legion, to construct three new warships.”

        “Oh,” Merton said, looking over at Quetzalcoatl, who was heaped with glittering material – gemstones and bits of wire and chunks of metal that he had assumed was just generic treasure. “That’s not enough, though! Also, where the fuck is Dart?!”

        “She ran,” Quetzalcoatl said. “She fled through the dimensional portal before we could stop her. Before we even knew she wasn’t on the Talon-9 , for that matter.” His deep, rumbling voice was filled with disgust.

        Merton put his hands over his face. He started to pace back and forth, thinking. “What can we make other than ships?” He asked.

        Speccy shrugged. “We can build a lot of power armor. And I do mean a lot of power armor. We can build a pretty serious orbital defense gun, but it won’t be mobile. There’s also a portal network in these supplies. We could make a few hundred portals, given half a week and breakneck labor.” She shook her head. “By my calculations, though, without a safe planet to run too, you’ll be dooming not one but two civilizations by dumping three billion refugees on their heads-”

        Merton winced. Even with the best they could do, Speccy knew they couldn’t save everyone. She continued, her voice brutally honest. “Better to spread humanity to many different worlds. Though, if you were going to do that, I’d suggest building cheap ships.”

        “Cheap ships...” Merton said, slowly.

        Speccy nodded. “Just a thin layer of aluminum with a subspace drive, enough to get them away and to the fringes of the former Empire.”

        Merton’s eyes widened, slowly.

        “What?” Speccy asked.

        Merton held up one finger. Then he laughed. Then he cackled . “Dart just gave us a fighting chance.”

        Speccy’s brow furrowed. “How?”

        Merton told her his idea. It didn’t take long. Like most very good ideas, it was incredibly simple. In concept, at least. Execution would take a lot more work. But that was always the way of these things, wasn’t it?

Speccy’s mouth opened, then closed. Then opened again. “But...” She stopped. “Well, that...” She blinked a third time. Then she shook her head. “That’s genius .” She grinned, slowly. Merton laughed, then kissed her cheek.

        “And if you hadn’t strip-mined Atlantis, it’d have been impossible. Come on! Let’s get to the Talon-9  and back to Geneva!” Merton said, cheerfully – unaware that Speccy was standing there, gaping after him. Her upper right hand went to her cheek. And for the first time in several centuries, Spectral Timeweaver Compounding the Infinite actually blushed .

***

        The 42 nd  Legion arrived from its posting near the Kuiper Belt of the SOL system. It was, as befitted its name and out of the way posting as secretive defender of dragon-kind’s true homeworld, not exactly filled to bursting with top of the line ships. There were twelve battleships, twenty one cruisers, and a spread of torpedo boats. Each ship carried compliments of fighter-craft, and all of them had been quietly waiting for the day they might actually be needed. Their arrival in the skies of Earth was an utterly gorgeous display. First, the retro-burns of the battleships winked on, adding a dozen new glittering stars. Then, over a series of hours, more and more gleams appeared, each one drawing a ruler straight line of pure, dazzling light through the heavens.

        They took up a high guard orbit above the planet. The Admiral – a grizzled Copper Dragon named Rushok – even came down and was photographed with the supreme leader of humanity’s combined defenses: An unassuming American named Admiral Bernard Xu. His calm, reserved, and dignified mien smoothed over ruffled feathers from America’s rivals, and the organization of humanity’s defenses went apace.

        Merton felt rather out of the loop.

        Oh, he had been helping. He and Brash worked together to move very heavy things very quickly. He had studied magic with the help of Julia – who had been cramming some basic thaumaturgy into his brain using the wonderfully direct route of whacking him in the temple with a ruler when he fucked up and sucking his cock when he did a thing right. But all the big decisions had moved out of his reach. As trophy husband to Relix Castrovel and former D&D GM, Merton had to sit back and...remember…

        All those titles he had puffed off to Baron Thresh?

        They were fake.

        Made up.

        Merton sighed and stepped away from the window of the rather nice hotel that he and Relix had been given. Relix was still out, assisting with the organization of the defenses. Brash was curled up on his pillow, snoring loudly and happily. Merton tried to think of something to do . Something more than what he had done. And...nothing was coming to mind. He felt jitters rushing through his body. They had less than a week before a warfleet – with three planetkilling starships, each a quarter of the size of Earth’s fucking moon – arrived.

        It didn’t feel real.

        But Merton wasn’t sure what felt less real: The hotel room he was in or the time he had spent aboard the Talon-9 . If it hadn’t been for the Brash on his pillow, he could have blinked and thought that his whole adventure had been a dream.

        A double knock came to his door.

        Merton blinked and walked over. He opened it a crack and blinked again – this time in pure surprise. He stepped back, swinging the door open. “Speccy?” he asked.

        Speccy stood in the corridor in her uniform. Which, Merton had to remember, amounted to a bunch of BDSM style leather straps that wrapped around her purple breasts, coiled around her muscular arms, slipped between her elegant thighs, and generally left most of her faintly tiger-striped body entirely revealed. She was holding a plastic binder in her hands and said: “I wanted to speak to you about the specifications of some, ah, Earth technology.”

        Merton grinned. “Uh, sure.” He stepped back some more, gesturing. Speccy walked in. Her hips rolled – the natural gait that she used drew his eyes to her rump. And to the faint jiggles that slipped along her butt. It was reminding Merton of the fact he hadn’t gotten more than a few blowjobs in the past week, and he hadn’t touched his wife at all. His mouth suddenly felt quite dry as he adjusted the collar of his shirt with one finger.

        Yes, it had only been few blowjobs.

        He wasn’t a very good wizard, you see.

        “I’m not exactly the best at, uh, advanced military hardware,” Merton said.

        Speccy rubbed her upper right elbow with her lower left hand. She looked around the room, her eyes narrowing. Her slightly elongated ears twitched slightly. She looked faintly nervous. Merton’s brow furrowed and he walked over. “Uh, did you actually come about military hardware, Speccy?” he asked. She tossed her head, then turned to face him.

        “I...is my deception that obvious?” she asked.

        “Well, it’s not super obvious,” Merton said. HE sighed. “Are you nervous about the battle?”

        Speccy blinked at him.

        “It’s okay. I’m fucking terrified,” Merton said, shaking his head as he walked over to look out the window. The night sky over Geneva was bright enough to wash away the stars – but he could see the massive streaks of thrust plumes from the 42 nd  Legion has it maintained its orbit. It only needed to burn occasionally, but when it did burn, it produced something not too dissimilar from the Aurora Borealis. Albeit the Aurora Borealis as done by a ruler fetishist. He sighed. “We’re all working our asses off, and...we have more of a shot than I thought, but-”

        A faint rustle and thump made him turn.

        Speccy had stripped off her clothes with the casual efficiency of a technician. The lack of sensual grace hadn’t detracted from her beauty. Far from it. Her breasts were as perky and as firm as Relix’s and at least a cup size larger. Her nipples were the same brilliant teal as her hair, and her antennas had gone to full erection – as hard and as quivery as Merton’s own dick, which strained his jeans. Her lower hands caressed along her thighs, and he saw that her sex was just as succulent and just as utterly hairless as he had first imagined. Her upper arms crossed over her breasts a moment later and she flushed.

        “I have been working very hard on spellwork and require some...relaxation,” she said. “Constant memorization of spells and casting them on this twelve hour work shift is, um, tiring. A-And, uh, I never did do what Relix ordered me to do, after you were augmented.”

        Merton gulped. “W-What was that, Speccy?”

        “She asked me to...train you...” Her voice was husky.

        “W-Why did that never happen?” Merton asked, his voice almost squeaking.

        “We both got distracted. Didn’t we?” Speccy smiled, shyly. But he could see that she was quite...scared. It was an odd expression to see on the normally taciturn woman. Her antennas twitched slightly and she looked aside. “It’s a bit foolish, I mean, Relix has no complaints about your-”

        Merton took her lower left hand in his. He felt her three fingers – calloused by hard work and faintly stained by grease and material components alike. He brought her purple palm to his mouth and kissed her palm gently. His heart hammered as he whispered. “Speccy...” he grinned at her. “We’d have all died several times over without you. How the flying fuck could I refuse you? Doubly so when so much depends on your...” He kissed her wrist. “Relaxation?”

        Speccy bit her lower lip so hard that it had gone pale, bloodless white. Then she moaned as Merton kissed his way down her lower arm, up to where her four arms joined together. The complex interplay of muscle and skin was fascinating  to explore with his tongue and his mouth. Her skin was silky smooth, once he got away from her callouses, and his tongue traced the very faint tiger stripes that differentiated dark purple from lighter purple. Then his mouth bumped against the cupping hand of her upper right arm – covering her breast. Her lower right hand grabbed onto his up and her upper left stroked through his hair as she let her other upper arm lift, exposing her breasts to his mouth. He started to kiss and suckle on her nipple.

        Then Speccy squeaked as a pale hand cupped her other breast. Peeking over her shoulder – barely, since she was actually about the same height as both of them – was Brash in his human form. His cat-green eye glittered as he grinned at Merton.

        “I didn’t know it was bang the chief engineer day!” he said.

        “That’s not a holiday!” Speccy said, her voice severe, even as she bit her lip to keep from moaning.

        “Sure it is!” Brash said. His finger found and tweaked her nipple, while his other hand dipped down between her thighs. But Merton’s hand moved faster and he cupped and stroked Speccy’s dripping, eager sex before Brash could get his fingers in. Brash pouted, then put both his hands on her breasts, squeezing and fondling them with just enough roughness to finally wring a moan from her – soft and dampened by her reserve as it was. Her eyes closed and her antennas twitched with orgasmic pleasure as Merton felt her sex. She was molten hot, as hot as one of the furnaces that she worked on, and Merton found that she had a pair of clits above her sex. His thumb rubbed from one to the other as he crooked his middle and pointer finger inside of her.

        Brash, meanwhile, was kissing his way down her spine, nuzzling her incredible shoulder muscles. A woman with four arms had muscles that made the most intense muscle-girl seem like a weakling. Merton, meanwhile, was noticing that the same was true on her front. He had never noticed just how fucking ripped Speccy was until he knelt down to start kissing along her belly. His tongue traced her girl-abs as he reflected that four arms, and all of them working on engineering tasks every day, produced a physique you could melt butter with. He finally reached where his hand was plundering her – and his tongue lapped up the small puddle of arousal that Speccy had dripped onto his palm.

        Through this all, the only noises that he and Brash’s combined efforts had wrung from Speccy were very quiet gasps, faint moans, muffled whimpers. She seemed to be genetically unable to simply let herself go.

        Merton was trying to decide if that was really hot or really fucking hot by the time his tongue slid into her eager, wet sex, and Brash’s tongue pushed into her pert, rosy ass. That was enough to break the damn dam. Speccy’s head rolled back, her upper arms grabbed onto the wall for balance, and her lower hands grabbed onto both their heads and pushed them against her as she wailed in pleasure, cursing in a language that Merton had never heard before and which wasn’t translated. Her juices flowed along his tongue – sweeter than any human pussy he had gone down on.

        Which, to be fair, was...technically zero, since...Julia had also modified her pussy to taste better.

        So, for all Merton knew, Speccy tasted exactly like human pussy.

        But he could barely think about that, so focused was he on the thick streams of girlcum that he was drinking down. Brash’s mouth moved and bumped against his chin as the other man tried to get his own shot at the ambrosial liquid. Brash dove in when Merton, polite as could be, drew back to give him a chance. Speccy kept whimpering and gasping as Brash’s tongue lapped at her, like a puppy with a water bowl.

        “ Gods ,” she hissed.

        “We’re not done yet.” Merton grinned. His hands went to his clothes and he skimmed himself out of them as fast as winking. His cock sprang free and Brash stood – his own cock matching Merton’s for size. Merton took a hold of Speccy’s lower hands, tugging her to the bed. He fell on his back and let her fall atop him. Once more, four arms proved their advantage as she caught herself without smashing into him. He felt nicely surrounded by her arms, her legs. Her dripping sex hung right above his cock. She looked into his face, her eyes softer than he had ever seen them.

        Then she looked aside, blushing. “I-I can’t believe you made me...” she paused. “S-So loud.”

        Merton snickered. “B-Bakka!” he teased.

        Speccy glared at him. Then she gasped as Brash slipped up ontop of her. He grew in size as he did it, going from sleek lithe bishi to muscular hunk. This let him loom over both of them and grind his thick, eager dragon-dick against Speccy’s ass-cheeks. She whimpered and reached down with her lower right arm, taking hold of Merton’s cock. Her thumb rasped over each of his ridges – even as she glided the thick tip of his cock against her swollen, desperately eager pussy.

        Merton squirmed, drawing his hips away from her, squishing into the bed.

        “Say please...” he whispered.

        “Idiot...” Speccy growled.

        “I am your Captain. Technically.” Merton’s eyes sparkled.

        Speccy’s face twisted in pleasure and irritation both. She looked aside, then mumbled something so soft that you’d need a directional laser microphone and an elf to hear it. Merton grinned, reaching up to cup her swaying breasts, squeezing them gently. Brash reared back, his cock slapping down against her ass, rough enough to make Speccy hiss. Brash put on his best, most intimidating growl, and said: “Louder.”

        “...fuck me...” Speccy whispered. And to prove she liked it, her sex dripped another patter of girl-juice onto Merton’s waiting dick. Brash pushed her down with one hand, his free hand grabbing his dick and aligning himself. Merton closed his eyes and groaned through clenched teeth as he felt her tightness enveloping him like an oiled, velvet glove. She was just as hot, just as tight as he might have imagined. Then he felt her grow another few fractions tighter as Brash slid into her ass with an eager, quiet groan. His balls gently slapped against Merton’s and Merton shuddered in pure bliss.

        “Ah-hhaaa!” Speccy gasped, then buried her face into a pillow, trying to keep it down. Brash sawed back. Merton slammed up. Speccy’s face buried deeper into the pillow and she shuddered, her lower hands gripping the sheets. Her uppers grabbed onto Merton’s palms, pinning them above his head. It was shockingly intimate – and Merton moaned as Brash slammed in and he drew out. The two of them started to work the pattern, falling into the pattern as if they had done this dozens of times. Speccy’s attempts to stay control wore away, inch by inch, chip by chip, thrust by thrust.

        Finally, she hissed out a desperate: “Oh fuck yes! Yes! Yes!”

        Her head rolled back. Brash grabbed onto her hair tugging her head back further, then leaned forward. Merton watched through slitted eyes as he tried to keep himself from climaxing. Despite augmentations and spells and training and practice...there was only so much a mortal man could do. He watched as Speccy kissed Brash back with a wanton moan, their lips sliding back just enough to show the frantic wrestling their tongues were doing. Her antennas had gone as slack as her eyes as Brash plundered her mouth.

        Her fluttering cunt tightening another notch in orgasm was just enough to push Merton over the edge.

        His balls clenched as if they had been grabbed in a fist and he moaned in wanton pleasure, thrusting up and deep into her. Brash slammed down as well, the two of them pinning the engineer between their sweat soaked, glistening bodies. Speccy broke the kiss, spittle gleaming in the air like diamonds, and screamed in pure bliss. Her body shuddered and her muscular belly mashed flat against Merton’s. Her arms tightened convulsively and she hugged him so tight that he felt his bones creak. But he didn’t care. He was kissing her now – her mouth locking to his. The orgasm seemed to ride on forever, and he felt the decadent pleasure that was another man’s cum soaking his balls as Brash’s seed overflowed from her stuffed ass and dripped down her flanks.

        Once the pleasure had passed, Merton felt like someone had cut his break lines. His whole body had turned to an undifferentiated mass of muscle and he was sprawled there, gasping. Panting.

        Speccy sprawled atop him.

        Brash sprawled atop her.

        And Merton started to realize just what happened to a grape in a wine press.

        “Gitoff...” he squeaked out.

        Speccy, rather than listening to her sound understanding of engineering, G-forces, and her understanding of human bodies, instead buried her face against Merton’s neck and sighed contentedly.

         Merton Miles, dies the way he lived… Merton thought, his eyes narrowing to slits. Buried under girl abs.

***

        The Xosh Warsphere dropped from subspace after two weeks and change of transit time – crawling from one galactic arm to another – and Gimtesh Thresh still had not had the decency to die. The half-elven, half-dragon woman was still impaled on the large spike that the engineers had cut from the prow of the metallic flagship that had tried to ram the Warsphere during the battle of Draconis Prime. The spike now sat in the back corner of the bridge, ignored by all but the most sadistic or squeamish of the kobolds. And Emperor Xosh. He still stopped by every few days to nudge at the whimpering woman with his toe and say: “Hmm...I guess I owe Feng Bryaugh a slave or two. He bet you’d last to Earth.”

        Gimtesh whimpered. But the simple truth was…

        She hadn’t actually hurt for a day and a half.

        She was half-dragon. That meant her shapeshifting skills were weaker than that of a purebred dragon. But they were not nearly as weak as many pure dragons assumed – something she had taken advantage of in her lifetime as a member of a vicious, cut throat chromatic household. So, she had subtly and carefully rerouted the parts of her biology she needed to live around the six inch wide metal spike rammed through her guts. Turning off the nerves had taken delicate hours of meditative focus.

        But the end result was that she was still alive and only in mild discomfort!

        All in all things were looking up for Gimtesh Thresh. So long as no one checked too closely and she found a chance to get the fuck away from Emperor Xosh and this whole sorry business.

        The front of the bridge was dominated by a curving view pane, and that pane was dominated by a long-range scan of the planet Earth. The world looked like many worlds that dracons had terraformed and made their own: White and fluffy clouds, broad expanses of green and brown and ocher and blue. But all of that was a secondary concern to Emperor Xosh and his admirals. The ships of the 42 nd  Legion had been highlighted and outlined, with their potential attack vectors charted out by attentive war-scribes and astronomers.

        Xosh stood with General Bryaugh and Admiral Thresh – Admiral Thresh was Gimtesh’s third cousin twice removed and the fucking cunt hadn’t even glanced her way.

        “What are their chances?” Xosh asked.

        Admiral Thresh shrugged, her scaled hands spreading wide. “Poor. We outnumber them, we have war-spheres, we have the B-Suits.” She grinned, her teeth flashing. “I think we could even try for occupation.”

        Xosh tossed his head. “No. I want the end of the Castrovel line to be marked and underlined . We destroy the planet.”

        “There’s one problem with that,” General Bryaugh snarled. Omadon Bryaugh had become a general of a household of brutes in the simplest, most direct way. By being smart. Cunning. Clever. He wasn’t the largest black dragon in the Dominion, but Xosh had an unnerving feeling that he could think circles around him. Which was part of why Xosh planned to have Omadon die heroically in this battle. After he had served his use.

        “What’s that?” Admiral Thresh snarled, her tail lashing.

        “Simple,” Omadon said, rolling one shoulder as if he was stretching out for a workout. His scales gleamed as he grinned. “This solar system’s ley-lines are locked down tight . It’ll take multiple multi-megaton warheads in the right places, at the right time, to bust them open. Now, that won’t matter for the humans...” He sneered. “They’re mage blind whelps, according to your intelligence.” He nodded to Emperor Xosh. “But it means our warspheres can’t fire their main weapons unless-”

        ***

        “-they’re in the right orbit,” Admiral Rushok said, his voice grim. “That means that they have an enforced bottleneck and a timeline.” He gestured down to the holographic display table some technicians had yanked from his flagship, the Winking Rogue, and set up at the United Nations Space Defense headquarters. It showed the orbital elements of the 42 nd  Legion and where the warspheres would have to reach.

        Admiral Xu pursed his lips. His thick Texan drawl was utterly at odds with his stoic, Asiatic features. But he asked the pertinent question: “How long will take for one of these warspheres to do the hokey pokey and get into position?”

        “Three hours,” Relix said, her hands clasped behind her back. She was dressed in human political styles – something needed, if you wanted to make a good impression to a bunch of mage-blind monkeys. A phrase she had only used once, in private, which had led to an incredibly pleasant hour long spanking session from her husband. “They need to maintain distance, or else their hellcannons will cause interference with one another.”

        Admiral Xu glanced at Admiral Rushok and Merton. Merton was reflexively petting Brash, his fingers moving gently along the small dragon’s spine. Brash nipped at his finger with every pet.

        “Well then...” Admiral Xu said. “The plans have been transmitted.” He looked over at the last member of the meeting – Speccy was looking down at the holographic table with a frown. “You’re absolutely sure this will work? I don’t want another Battle of Jutland out there.”

        “It’ll work,” she said, her voice firm. “We’re talking about six thousand year old technology. All the bugs have been ironed out. Trust me.” She smiled, ever so slightly.

        As Admiral Xu took his leave and Admiral Rushok vanished in a crackle of teleportation energy. Brash crawled atop Merton’s head, getting ready to sweep him up into his B-suit form. But before he did, Relix stepped over to him. Her hand went to his cheek.

        “Battle of Jutland?” she whispered.

        “A...uh, old naval battle. On the ocean,” Merton said. “It was the first big naval battle after nearly a century of technological development. It was a total disaster for both sides – shit broke, things didn’t work as expected. Fuck, the British admiral was using signal flags to communicate in an era with radio, where every gun had a range of miles .”

        Relix hissed. “Well, I hope you all do better than that .”

        Brash swallowed Merton whole. A moment later, Merton shook himself as he connected to Brash’s systems. During the weeks of prep, someone had fed Brash a half ton of metal and a few chunks of weapons grade plutonium, refilling his weapon stocks. Merton felt a cold, icy ball in the pit of his stomach.

        “Beam us up,” he said – and the teleporter flashed . He, Relix and Speccy arrived on the bridge.

        “Open hailing frequencies,” Relix said.

***

        Gimtesh Thresh let out a theatrics whimper of pain as the forward screen flickered on. There was Relix Castrovel. She looked terrifyingly official, dressed in a charcoal black suit that was as severe as it was unadorned. The sheer lack of adornments and gold and jewelry should have made her look impoverished and poor. But she wore it with such grim determination that poverty transmuted into total and absolute determination. Beside her stood her husband. Merton Miles. He was dressed in a B-suit, which made him look like an utterly lethal black dragon.

        “You have one hour to surrender unconditionally,” Relix Castrovel said. “And face a trial for crimes against sentients by the United Nations.”

        Emperor Xosh made as if he looked behind himself, then forward again, like he was checking something. He spread his arms wide, laughing boisterously. “Oh, Mrs. Merton...” He said, his voice as jeering as a crow’s. “I believe you have mistaken the position that you are in. You believe you are the new ruler of the Five Talon Empire and that I am a rebel household. But you are speaking to Emperor Xosh of the first dynasty of the Chromatic Dominion with three fully armed and operational Warspheres and a battle fleet . Even discounting the spheres, we outnumber you four to one . ”

        He stepped forward, tail lashing.

        “Surrender now...and I’ll merely crucify you and not glass that pathetic marble you’ve decided to hide on.”

        Relix chuckled.

        Her eyes flashed.

        “I hoped you’d say that.”

        She snapped her fingers.

        A sudden blare of alarms and klaxons came from the sensor consoles and scrying pool.

        A kobold sensor officer jerked so hard that his shako hat fell off and clattered to the deck. He tapped at controls then screamed out in his piping voice: “Detecting launches from the surface of the planet! T-Thousands of them!” He looked back over his shoulder.

        “Humans are mage-blind monkeys!” Admiral Thresh snarled. “What could they be launching?”

        Xosh stomped forward.

        And then he laughed. And laughed loud .

        “ Mage-ships !?” he laughed. “You...you are launching mage-ships ?” He thrust his clawed finger at the screen, grinning broadly. “Launch a million wooden hulled, paper sailed, cannon strapped galleons into space, and I’d slaughter them with a single needleship. You think I will tremble at whatever patheti...c...navy…”

        Relix was grinning.

        And in the background of her bridge – which had been modified to have large window displays – Emperor Xosh could see the ships rising out of the clouds. They shed waters in vast, sheeting curtains, and blazed in the sunlight shooting through the pale blue atmosphere of their world. Each one, suspended in a bubble of magically generated atmosphere, pushed forward not with sails...but with vast, mile devouring propellers, each one large enough to grind a needleship up and not even notice. Twenty of them were easily the same size as his largest battleship – broad, flat topped ships, covered with tiny fighter craft. Dozens more were peppered with cannon that matched any railgun on his fleet. Still others were deadly looking tubes that set off every radiological alarm on the deck.

        The fleets of humanity - so long constrained by Earth’s blue oceans and blue skies - rose into space, dripping with water and dragging along tufts of clouds. They sailed away from the world of their birth, born aloft by magic as old as the Five Talon Empire and dragonkind itself. What had once carried galleons and sailing ships between the stars...now carried modern, 21st century navy ships into space .

        As the fleet approached, Xosh slowly leaned back in his throne, hearing the wailing radiological alarms in his ears.

        “How many nukes do they have?” Admiral Thresh whispered.

        “F-Fifteen...thousand,” the kobold sensor officer breathed.

        Princess Relix smirked.

        Emperor Xosh, sitting on his throne, snarled. His fingers flexed, then clenched. He slammed his fists into the armrests of his throne, springing to his feet. He thrust a single dramatic finger at the screen.

“Damn the nukes. Full speed ahead.”