“Alice, ready the guns!” Dawn cried out as she made for the bridge, fully clothed.
“Dawn, that might be unwise. Drogan is already under fire from another aircraft!” Alice’s voice came back.
“What? Who?”
“It looks like… one of our auxiliary pods,” Alice told her. Dawn’s heels skidded for a course change towards the deck. She crashed up the stairs to a sight that surprised her in a moment she thought nothing could. She saw Drogan diving beneath Chrysum bolts from a pod housing Howard Carver. He was a decent shot, but no match for draconic nimbility. Drogan swirled to safety and flung gauntlet blasts back. Howard skidded to survival by inches.
“Connect me to him,” Dawn demanded, “Howard, what the he-”
“Dawn. I need you to trust me. Do not fire on Drogan. Do not follow me,” said Howard.
“Follow you where?” Dawn called back. Her engineer answered by swirling his pod to the edge of the terradome. He launched for the stars. Drogan tore after him. “Howard!”
Chapter Eighteen: Power of Choice
Howard jerked the joysticks of his pod sideways. A beam of Chrysum seared past its side. He blinked to readjust his eyes to the black in the center of the flowing SkyLine. A second beam tripped Howard’s energy radar. He threw his brakes and pulled up away from it. Drogan zipped past him. He about-faced, arm-cannon glowing ready. Howard wasn’t there to fire on. His auxiliary pod dove through the nanomachine tunnel, into the abyss outside.
“As much as I love a good game of cat and mouse,” Drogan growled through his speakers. His scaly body burst through the edge of the SkyLine. He and Howard were just outside the reach of Jupiter’s gravity. They drifted as silhouettes against the ever-raging gaseous storms of the planet. “I’d like to know why you’re drawing me away. If you are who I think you are… you’re too smart to believe one auxiliary pod is going to take me down.”
“I brought you here to talk. Away from unwelcome ears,” said Howard told him. While Drogan kept his cannon trained on the pod, the spiraling light inside it dimmed.
“Planning a mutiny?”
“I meant on your end,” Howard told him, hands loose on the joysticks just in case, “There’s no Chrysum on Jupiter. No one’s listening in on you here.”
“Then you are the man I thought,” Drogan grumbled. His cannon tilted down, just a little more.
“Howard Carver,” he introduced himself properly, “The question is, are you the man I thought?”
“I’m hardly a man anymore,” grumbled the dark-armored beast. His yellow eyes glared like two more stars in the abyss.
“Christopher Droan,” Howard of all people respected the quickly depleting systems that kept his pod working; it was direct or death at this point. “That thing on your arm is the Squire, DA-Vos. Lost after the incident at Precinct 117 sixty years ago. You gave yourself away when you spoke his name in front of me on Neptune.” Howard had lost more than a night’s sleep wondering if it’d been an intentional slip. He opened the door just a crack, to entreat his foe to the table. Drogan’s cannon lowered. It reformed as a gauntlet with the briefest consideration of a deal.
“You’re as well-versed in your grandfather’s work as your own,” said Drogan. His wing gave the occasional flap to combat Jupiter’s distant pull.
“It’s… more than that. You read the files DA-Vos took from me?” Howard prompted. Drogan’s razor-toothed snout bobbed.
“It’s true, then… you perfected DBS on yourself. You’re…” Drogan fought with the words as they left his scaly lips, “You are Tim Carver? Not biologically - I knew your grandfather, and I can see you’re not some kind of clone. But your mind… You’re Tim.” Gloss rose over Drogan’s eyes, something almost like guilt.
“I didn’t perfect DBS on myself… I started it. With the research and memory drives I inherited from Tim, uploading his mind to mine was one of the first things I tried. After my dad died, things got… let’s say for time’s sake I didn’t have a good time at school. I thought giving my grandfather a new lease on life was the best use of mine. He was good. He helped people. But… it didn’t work. Not the way I thought it would.”
“How… so?” rumbled Drogan.
“I have his thoughts, his ideals, his morals. I have his memories. But they just sort of… float around in my head. I’m still me, but I know… that Tim would have been very sad to see you this way. He would have thought it was unfair that, by surviving, it all fell on you.” Howard did his best to explain for the first time. “I wish I had known what went wrong before I attempted it again… with Sheba.”
“Excuse me?” Drogan’s jaw propped for bright Chrysum steam to unfurl around his head.
“My father and Tim didn’t just leave me one memory drive. He managed to get Sheba’s mind on some hardware, too, before the experiments went wrong,” Howard told him.
“Don’t tell me that… Howard, don’t tell me Sheba lived out the life I saved by leaving… being prodded in a lab,” Drogan smoldered. The smoke around him glowed like a luminous galaxy in his rage.
“I’m so sorry, Chris-”
“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” Drogan’s scream came with a blinding blast of Chrysum from within him. Silver flame jumped across the cosmos. Howard jerked his pod around it.
“I’m sorry, Drogan,” Howard drew deep heaves to keep his craft steady, “But it’s the truth. The story of her life isn’t mine to tell. I know it, but there’s another who knows it better.”
“Why would you draw me out here to tell me this? This isn’t winning you any points… did you want so badly to die above Jupiter? At the hands of your grandfather’s old friend?” Drogan roared.