Dawn soared through the shimmering edge of yet another ice ring. She pursued reflective steel fireflies, fellow mining crafts. Dawn strafed just past the tip of a rotating rock chunk. She glided between splintered icicle blades to pull up beside an ovular craft with two grasping arms. She watched its Chrysum-revealing spotlight sweep over a passing boulder. It’s long arms sorted through the riffraff for the good, glowing stuff and packed it in its top hatch. The man inside stared at the stone so intently, he hardly noticed Dawn pull up. “I’m looking for Carl. Bernie told me he might be over here.”
“He might be,” said the man in the pod. Whether or not he’d used his eyes, he’d seen Dawn coming. His lips moved as robotically as the arms of his mining pod.
“What’s a girl gotta do to find him?” said Dawn.
“Tell him what she wants, for one,” said the man. His pod hovered higher. Dawn managed to follow just before an icy meteorite ripped by beneath them.
“I just want to talk to the only person left here who saw Drogan,” Dawn told him. Carl shuddered at the name. His hands propped his joysticks back for a launch. “Please. So I can stop him from doing what he did here again.”
“Why don’t you talk to Jensen?” Carl murmured. He let go of his joysticks. His mining pod drifted idly backwards, into the vacant space between two rings. Dawn followed loosely.
“The outer ring manager told me he resigned yesterday. He’s already gone. Left to return to his homeworld, Mars. You’re all that’s left,” Dawn told him.
“No kidding?” Carl looked up at her, less than half awake. By the purple bags under his eyes, he might have slept a handful of hours since he saw the yellow-eyed outlaw. “Wish I could tell you why. Why he spared me, why he was even… kind to me, almost.”
“Kind?” Dawn led in. She started the recorder in her pod for investigative posterity.
“Jensen was busting my balls, like he always did… I guess Drogan heard him. Asked me… if he was bothering me. And I… why did I tell him yes? Giant, black, scaly monster asks me if my manager is bothering me, and I tell him yes. He hurled Jensen outside the rings, to die. Only survived because a supply ship caught him on their way to dock,” Carl explained.
“Why would he…” Dawn caught her thoughts spilling, and staunched, “He didn’t harm you, in any way?”
“He even threw me back inside a station before he torched everything,” Carl told her.”
“Were any other miners injured afterward?” Dawn followed.
“No. Just the security team,” said Carl.
“And… was there any exchange or warning before Drogan attacked them?”
“No. They aimed at him, and he burned them,” said Carl, eyes flickering under the weight of his fatigue. … Dawn could hardly believe the idea forming in her mind. But Drogan had warned the crew of the Arcadia more than once before a fatality. That made Rodrick no livelier than a corpse below deck.
“Thank you for all that, Carl. You need to report to the outer ring dock now,” said Dawn. Only then did his eyes open fully once more.
“What? No, I can’t…”
“WCC orders. You’re in violation of workplace safety regulations, operating a machine so fatigued. I’ll overlook it if you report back now, and you tell the outer ring manager I said so,” Dawn assured him. The most deflated attempt at a smile she had ever seen crossed Carl’s face. He turned his joysticks back for the outer ring. His pod stopped dead when a tiny plume of flame jumped from a mining station and the dock at once. Dawn’s eyes fixed on a green haze about the size of her mining pod, tearing across one of the enclosed walkways. Sparks and flame trailed behind it. “Carl, come with me! This won’t be like last time, I promise!” Dawn thrust her pod through the glittering rings, for the dock and the Arcadia.
“Is it Drogan?” Dawn barked into the speaker of her mining pod. She coasted by a few hundred feet from the viewing window of the outer ring dock.
“No, but they look like they probably know him,” Wagner transmitted back. Dawn confirmed it with her own eyes when two more pulsed by on either side of her. Scarlet scales on one and amethyst on the other, both equipped with the same talons as their black-armored brother, ping-ponged Dawn’s mining pod across the dock.
“Damnit! Marcus was right,” she got out while she spun back into a stable glide, “More Dragons.”
“Following Drogan’s initial raid, just like he said,” Wagner concurred.
“Stand down!” Dawn piped up over her projecting speaker, “This is Admiral Dawn Redding of the… humans’ World Crisis Committee, our governing body!” she fumbled.
“Dawn, they can’t understand you,” Alice’s voice came through her speaker.
“I figured I’d try. I mean, Drogan spoke to us in plain English,?
? Dawn answered.
“These Dragons are… different from him. Their biological analysis shows they are older… much older,” Alice explained. Dawn jerked her pod sideways to evade another set of ripping talons. The red-green Dragon flapped its way past her. Dawn watched it spiral with petrifying grace, straight into the side of Carl’s mining pod. He was a stone’s throw from the open hatch of safety.
“No!” Dawn thrust her joysticks forward. The Dragon’s drawn back talons folded when her pod-arm bashed it away. “ Go for a different station. I’ll draw them away from you! Get inside, Carl!” she belted. Dawn turned her pod out to face the rings. The three Dragons were busy scrounging up the Chrysum stones left behind by Carl’s jostled pod. He parted from Dawn here, never to see her again.
“Dawn! Are you alright?” Alice cried out. A cold beat panged from Dawn’s chest, followed by a warm one. The most concerned a voice had ever called her name, from the mind inside a machine.