The Dragon Commander (SkyLine 1)

“Peaceful…” Chris chuckled, swinging his head back and forth, “I don’t want peace with you! I want to tear each of your atoms out and crush them in my hands! After everyone you’ve killed… you think I want to make peace?”

“It’s a personal vendetta then? I assure you, nothing was personal between us until today,” said Machaeus, through the red face of a Squire, “If not peace, will you listen for the continued existence of your people?” Chris snorted, and spat on the glassy face of the Squire.

“When peace offers fail, switch to threats, huh?”

“This is no threat, Chris. It is an inevitability,” said Machaeus, indifferent to the drool streaming down its face. It shook Chris to feel watched, when the face before him had no eyes. He could take the feeling for only so long.

“You expect me to believe, after everything you’ve done, that you are at all invested in human survival?” said Chris at last.

“I have no expectations of you, but that you will accept my proposal, by the time we are done speaking,” said Machaeus, “It is true I have killed, in search of something, but my interests have always been aligned with humans’ survival as a species. Now that I have found what I need, I no longer need to kill.”

“And what’s that?” said Chris, disdain plucking his vocal chords. He hated his own curiosity. It felt like a betrayal to those at rest in the warehouse.

“Someone willing to fight an enemy beyond their means,” said Machaeus. Chris couldn’t hold back a snort.

“What enemy?”

“To answer that question: I must ask another,” said Machaeus, “Do you have any idea what I am?”

“An AI, for one,” said Chris. But, with the diffusion of immediate danger, he found his faculties a bit freer to wonder. “Not one of ours. They all have models, like DA-Vos or TE-Les. You have a name.”

“That is as close as you could possibly deduce, from your limited human knowledge. I am a bodiless intelligence. I was created, and no, not by humans,” said Machaeus.

“By who, then?” Chris raised an eyebrow.

“A species you are familiar with, but have never seen. One much, so very much older than humans. You would call them Dragons,” Machaeus explained. Chris exploded into laughter. “I suspected you might laugh.”

“And here I thought machines didn’t understand humor,” Chris shook his head.

“Would you find it so humorous, if you could see all the humans afflicted with visions of my creators?” said Machaeus. A wave of brightness swept across the redness of his host Squire’s face. “Like your Sheba?”

“Wha-what?” the last of the strength drained from Chris’ muscles. Without the support of the Squire wrapping him in its own body, he might have collapsed. “How could you…”

“I detected her days ago, during scans for the resources my creators need,” said Machaeus. The Squire’s face-light dimmed to normal. “Are you ready to listen now?” Chris’ lips locked at the thought of what he might hear. The monster knew Sheba.

“Talk,” Chris forced himself to say.

“My creators… I will call them Dragons for lack of a word for them in your language,” Machaeus prefaced, “The Dragons were not unlike humans once. Brashly obsessed with progress. Wasteful. When they ruined their homeworld, they too spread to others, until greed ruined even those.”

“The… Dragons,” Chris muttered. It sounded no less absurd but he had to play the game, for Sheba. “Where is their homeworld?”

“Too far away for me to explain to you,” said Machaeus, “But their reach spanned many, many worlds. They were as developed as your people are now, before this cycle of the Universe. They clawed their way across the stars, until they ran out of what they needed.”

“What exactly do they need?”

“The same elements your people use for Cold Fusion,” Machaeus told him.

“From Mars?” said Chris.

“From many places. Mars was only one planet imparted with such gifts, when this Universe was young and volatile. So too was the Dragons’ homeworld,” Machaeus explained, “The things they made with what your people call Chrysum… ways to travel near instantly. The power to incinerate worlds. They created cities so full of life and light. It was as marvelous as it was fragile. They harvested every drop of Chrysum in the worlds they could reach, and had no alternative fuel. The Dragons’ leaders predicted loss of farms, climate control, everything. To avoid genocide and starvation, they created me.”

“Yet here you are, trying to cut a deal with me,” said Chris, temples pulsing tense.

“You are an intelligent man, Chris. You must have figured out by now, why the Dragons created me.”

“To find more Chrysum,” Chris figured.

“Yes. But I have another purpose. Even while I am here with you, so too am I across the stars, maintaining life support systems for the majority of the Dragon population. Long have they lived in incubation, awaiting the time when I find enough Chrysum for them to survive.”