“Where is Miller?” Drogan rumbled like distant cannonfire.
“You… you’ve got me to deal with now,” Dawn dared. She took her first step around him while the crews of adjacent ships scrambled for cover. She alone remained in the open with Drogan. Her fingers twitched the closer they wandered to her fuse-gun.
“I think you’ve got a few things backward,” Drogan chuckled, deep in his armored throat. It was the most haunting sound Dawn ever heard. He flexed his talons inside the dark, sleek gauntlet on one of his hands. Dawn thought she saw a violet light pulse through it. “Bring me Miller.”
“A-are you two acquainted?” Dawn stalled. Come on, Wagner… How hard is it to find the Captain?
“More than I am with you. We fly similar skies. I know he’s come to escort me somewhere. I’d like to sort that out in person,” rumbled Drogan. Dawn wondered how a beast of his stature could possibly have gathered that information without alerting the crew. But then, she didn’t know how loosely Drogan’s physical form was held together. She didn’t know he could have been any member of a crew docked around them. His every pace forced Dawn back, closer to the stairs.
“I-I think you’re the one that’s got a few things backward,” Dawn gulped. You’ve lived for this moment, Dawn, she reminded herself, you gave everything to run missions like this. She forced the muscles in her fingers to relax. She counted on muscle memory. They’d go where they had to, when they had to.
“That so?” Drogan humored. Dawn lingered on the rumbling words a few seconds longer, to see if Miller would burst up to help. She remained alone on the deck with the black dragon.
“The WCC just needed Miller’s ship to come g
et you. I’m your escort.” The sound of her own voice shocked her, so much more confident than she actually was. Her hand snapped back to her belt. It snapped forward with a fuse-gun between squeezing fingers. A thin beam of atomized Chrysum jumped through the air - a stunning charge. It scorched the station wall hundreds of feet away; Drogan was gone. Dawn’s eyes didn’t have time to find him before his armored wing bashed her off her feet.
“Dawn!” Alice’s voice roared up through crimson deck lights. Turrets on long arms snapped up at the Arcadia’s sides. Where they had been concealed in the hull, Dawn had couldn’t guess. She was busy peeling her face away from the deck. Drogan turned to focus on the spinning turret barrels. Dawn launched three Chrysum bolts into the dark armor between his wings. They popped, silver fireworks against him, without so much as a twitch. Drogan didn’t bother with her. He hoisted his armored claw to the Arcadia’s weapons. Dawn’s eyes swam with fear as his gauntlet shifted form to a cannon barrel. It fired a solid white laser, which Drogan used to slice through the long steel arms under the turrets. They tumbled to the ground, unleashing massive sprays of Chrysum bolts at the ceiling. The dismembered arms’ edges smoldered hot orange.
“He-hey, quit it!” Dawn heard her own voice call out. Yellow glared through the deck around her again. As if watching from outside her body, she saw her other hand grip her fuse-gun. Before she could pull the trigger again, Miller cried out:
“Hey, Admiral!” He stormed up the stairs with a fusion rifle in both hands. He tossed it Dawn’s way. She hardly had time to pocket her pistol for the upgrade in firepower. Dawn caught the rifle and cocked it while Miller pulled a secondary one from the strap on his back. Their barrels lit silver at once. “Drogan! What are you doing to my ship?”
“Playing dumb, Miller?” Drogan snarled while Howard, Wagner, and the rest of the Arcadia’s crew poured from the stairway. “Much as it suits you, I’d rather skip to the arrangement where I don’t have to scrape you off my shoe.” In the time it took him to get it all out, Drogan was surrounded by bodies and prodding fusion rifles.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Miller shrugged, one eye trained on the beast on the other side of his rifle sights.
“I know you’re here to put a leash on me. To drag me to the WCC,” said Drogan, “I don’t particularly want to kill every one of you. I’m sure most of you aren’t interested in the kind of fight they expect you to put up, either. But this has to be convincing.” A silver torch flickered inside Drogan’s gauntlet. He angled it down and fired. Pure Chrysum seared a hole straight through cabins, generators, and turbines, straight through to sace. Fire twisted after it.
“Launch capabilities down!” Alice cried.
“Hey! If you want to come to some kind of arrangement, then let’s! Without destroying my ship!” Miller barked.
“Sorry, Miller, but I can’t chance that you won’t take my offer,” Drogan warned. He turned his cannon on the opposite diagonal and sent another Chrysum surge through the Arcadia.
“All flight systems…” Alice tried to report, but terror had infected her too deeply. “Please stop!” she screamed. Drogan’s cannon froze mid-charge. Dawn thought she saw, deep in those gemstone eyes, a distant hint of hesitation. The light in his cannon barrel dimmed.
“Screw this, let’s cook him!” screamed one of the crew, still soaked in the Slushpit Special. Her trigger snap started a tempest of searing fusion bolts. Silver rays converged on Drogan from every angle. They rippled against his motionless scales and fizzled to starry mist. It was three long seconds of all-round rapid fire before it started to affect him. His scales lightened under the constant, intense heat. Drogan closed his yellow eyes. His wings folded around him.
“Enough!” he bellowed. He spun and snapped his wings at once. At full extension, they barreled through everybody around him. The entire crew was flung back, over railings, downstairs, and across the deck. Dawn was one of the first back up. What she saw stayed her trigger. Drogan’s gauntlet dissolved from his arm into a cloud of shadow. It condensed beside him in the shape of a man. The violet shimmer across its featureless face marked it as a model Dawn recognized. A Squire.
“DA-Vos. Get the files,” Drogan muttered.
“DA-Vos?” Howard echoed. Neither he nor Dawn had time to fully process it before the dark form lunged for Howard. The Squire DA-Vos would easily have snatched Howard, if not for Captain Miller strafing between them.
“Carver, get below deck. Whatever you’ve got that he’s after: keep it safe!” the Captain bellowed. His rifle snapped up. He pumped Chrysum straight through DA-Vos’ metallic black body. The Squire’s body swirled around the fire into waves of nanomachines. They crashed against the top of the stairs, a step behind Howard, and followed him inside.
“Now…” Drogan smoldered through steam from his snout. His head jerked forward with the impact of a Chrysum bolt on the back of his head. His face snapped sideways to track it. Dawn glowered in the yellow pits of his eyes, barrel still smoking. He hardly turned for her before a second onslaught of Chrysum erupted from every side of him. His scales glowed with the endless pummel of fusion fire. It was too bright for him to see Miller coming, a Chrysum bayonet tip shimmering under the barrel of his gun. He jammed it in Drogan’s back. The beast wheeled. Talons flashed. “I said ENOUGH!” Five finger-blades sliced out from the captain’s back.
“Miller!” Dawn screamed. Drogan’s wings flicked out hard enough to fling two crew members across the deck. Every finger froze on the trigger. An eerie quiet fell on the deck of the Arcadia. What few sounds there were rang out distinct, no matter how quiet. Miller’s fumble to the ground. The drip of crimson from the break in Drogan’s scales on wood. The rummage of DA-Vos and Howard below deck.
“One of you makes a move… you will end,” Drogan warned. The creeping quiet lingered. Dawn’s fingers slid over the switch on her fusion rifle for the bayonet tip. She rolled her shoes, soundless, across the yellow glow of the deck. One jewel of sweat trickled down her cheek. She had to make her move before it dripped. A Chrysum ray seared into the side of Drogan’s armored head before Dawn had the chance. Drogan’s wings hurled him at the shooter. A flash of silver jumped across the man’s throat. His knees found the Arcadia’s deck, in a rolling puddle of scarlet.
“No…” Dawn muttered. A similar sentiment whispered its way across the crew. Each of them watched their colleague splash face down. He sputtered his last into a pool of his warm essence.
“Take this as my promise and warning. Do not follow me, or every one of you will follow him. You gave your all to bring me back. You couldn’t. Let it go,” Drogan growled. He gave the crew of the Arcadia one last turning glare. He went silent, intentionally, for everyone to hear his example’s fingers slide through blood in a final claw for life. The man went limp. “DA-Vos!”
“Here,” a voice came from the black mass that surged up the stairs. It swirled around Drogan’s arm and reformed as a gauntlet. Between its armored fingers were clenched holographic folders and memory drives. “I did not harm him.”