short-story

Interstellar Dragons, Part 2

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

“I wasn’t ready, but I am now.” The words of her friend still rang in Sarah’s head. The last words she had heard him say to her in private before they had gotten behind their throttles that last time. Matthew’s brown eyes were burned into the side of her skull, always just out of sight, but always watching.

The pilot thrust her throttle forward and screamed with rage, through the pain. A dragon exploded in a mist of green fire before she blew threw its remains at nearly full fight speed. She twisted her control stick and wrapped around herself in a dodge before laying into the dragon that had tried to vaporize her from the sky. Another one died. She saw Matthew’s ship careening to the surface, smoke and fire billowing from the engines. She screamed again. More dragons died. An alarm blared before her world suddenly went black.

The pod she had placed herself in hissed open. She pulled her head from the full immersion device to see who had disrupted her. Well, that is what she would tell you she did. In reality, she ripped out her head, screaming bloody murder at the poor sap who had dared disturb her. “Captain Peregrine.” Fred, Matthew’s second, stood looking back at her, emotionlessly dismissing her rage. “Captain, Peregrine.” He said again, having waited for her to take a breath before trying again.

“I have to keep flying, Frederick. You can’t pull me from the Dive-Deck like that.” Sarah Peregrine argued. Her hair was a ratty mess, her eyes wild, and her lips cracked.

“You have been running the same, unwinnable simulation for the past fourteen days.” Frederick, his hair buzz cut, his eyes deep with concern, and his lips balmed, poured empathy into his voice.

“I wasn’t ready that day, Frederick. I have to be ready the next time it happens.” Peregrine said.

“I am telling you, Peregrine, that if you do not extract yourself from this Dive-Deck and get some sleep, there will not be a next time for you. You’ll be stuck flying sims in a beachfront house somewhere in the California Islands.” Frederick was still compassionate, but also deadly serious. “You want to be ready for our rescue mission? Then you’d better get some real sleep. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Captain Peregrine slowly, and reluctantly, began extracting herself from the Dive-Deck and plopped her wobbly feet onto the hard plutosteel floor of the space station. Sarah felt Frederick’s tender hand on her shoulder as she steadied herself. In a strange display of emotion, the young man hugged her and rubbed her back. She cursed the tears that fell onto his consoling shoulders.

He whispered to her, like a father comforting his daughter, “I miss him too. We can’t get him back if we destroy ourselves.” Sarah hugged her friend back. She knew he was right, but she also knew, finally, just how exhausted fourteen days of no real sleep can make you.

Interstellar Dragons, Part 1

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

Matthew sat in his cockpit when the nails began scraping another chalkboard. Whilst he had been traveling faster than light, there was no problem, but now that he had slowed to a total stop orbiting the Dragons’ world with his flight, he was keeled over in the pain of ear-splitting screams. Before it was just a background, headache-inducing buzz, here he could make out actual screams of rage, and… they were getting closer? “They’re coming, prepare for combat, Joyriders, open wings, bombers, divert shield energy to cannons.” He called out the commands to his squad, proving that, even in the midst of the sheer agony, he could do this. Those commanders would be proud to have chosen him, not ashamed. Just as he predicted, the screams of anger roared to a new volume—no, volume was the wrong word, intensity? That was closer—at the same time, the squad started receiving proximity klaxons in their headsets. Sarah, Jonathan, and Fred all scrambled and began fighting for their lives. Fred called in the midst of it all, “How did they find us? Our cloaks are still up!” No one had an answer for him, except, perhaps, Matthew.

The young pilot pressed a button on his command module and hurled the remains of his breakfast into a blue plastic bag, before it was sealed shut and locked in the refuse container on his little flier. “Captain, look alive!” Matthew forced up his head, took the throttle in his hands, and steeled himself. He used every ounce of fortitude he could muster and threw the throttle forward in an attempt to join the fray. The engine roared with a mighty fire as it powered up to zoom forward.

“I’m-” Matthew began to say before he cut off alongside his engines. Something was very wrong. “Mayday!” He called, “Mayday, Fred! Circle-back Protocol! Take them and get out of here now!” Matthew was running through the ingrained ship-reboot protocols whilst he spoke.

He began to panic as he watched from his cockpit, his friends fold into the fray. Slithering beasts of immense proportions clashed with Y-shaped ships only half their size that they could not see. The pilots could not possibly win this, and it was his fault. Matthew’s connection to the dragons had been what warned them of his arrival. Their only chance was a plan that was compromised when they fell out of the hyperstream. One of his ship’s three engines flared to life, and he knew he had to do what he could. Flying through the invisible dogfight, he barrel-rolled and launched three dozen flares, at the same time deactivating his cloaking device. “Come and get some, you space-whales!” He cried.

“Welcome to the fight, sir!” Fred called triumphantly.

Matthew barely had time to respond amidst the hell of flame and acid he was flying through. “Circle-back Protocol! Fred, that was an order. Get out of here!” His distraction had worked, though. The sudden emergence of a visible target and the challenging flares had called most of the beasts and their riders from Matthew’s crew and onto him. More furious telepathic voices joined the song of rage, actively burning around the young man, and he shook his head. “Please! Live!”

The pilot pulled and twisted his stick, completing maneuvers he learned in basic. The maneuvers might have been basic, but the pilot behind them was anything but. The dragons converged and swarmed him like a host of bees defending their nest from a hornet; this hornet, however, had fangs, claws, and a stinger. Every psyonic voice he silenced was replaced by two more as he held his ship’s trigger. His viewport became black with reptilian blood as more and more died.

Matthew looked at his instruments. On the radar, he watched as the signals of his flight zipped into the hyperstream back in the direction they came. He was so engulfed by satisfaction that he almost did not react when the first claws pierced his hull. The claxons were background noise, the screams in his mind enveloped nearly every thought, and the air was sucked out of the cockpit. The last two thoughts he remembered having were that they got away and that they were safe.

The stars rose from the horde of dragons as he was vacuumed into space and above the mass that was ripping apart his ship. One voice in his mind rose above the rest. It spoke with words he could understand. “Rest now, warrior, prepare for what comes next.” As the words were finished, his entire world was engulfed by the void.