Scales like Stars Pt. 05

'What's the water cannon for?" Carlos asked.

"Vampires," the four armed purple skinned chick said, without blinking.

"And he's able to transform into an augmentation suit," Merton said. "Brash. Uh, what did it feel like to be my armor?"

"Like the bestest thing in the whole world!" Brash said, his voice muffled as he pushed his face against the side of the scanning sphere. "Like laying on gold! Or eating cookies! T-That is, until, um...well, there was that one bad part, but the rest was fun."

Merton rubbed his hand along his face. "What's stronger than a dragon...but a dragon inside another dragon? Every bit of a dragon's magic can be spent on external spells - no magic required to buff your strength or speed or toughness. And you have all the upsides of a cyber-warrior, without draconic regeneration rejecting the implants. You become a walking doomsday device."

Julia piped up. "And, uh, from my reading-"

"What reading?" Relix asked.

"I asked the ship to give me history books," Julia said, grinning.

"Oh..." Relix looked like she wasn't entirely sure what to do about someone who actually went out and learned things on their own.

"According to the history books," Julia said. "Half those dragons that he's got genetically booped into him are extinct."

"They broke one law or another and oh my scaly butt!" Relix hissed, sitting up, her eyes wide as saucers. "Each one was eradicated by House Thresh! They've been the finest warrior household for the past ten thousand years!" She put her claws against her face, her eyes wide as saucers. "House Thresh has been planning this for millennia!"

"Wait, it doesn't track," Lisa said.

They all turned to look at her.

Lisa frowned. "You don't win wars with Death Stars. You win them with the Imperial Army and with the Stormtroopers and with TIE fighters and with the Senate. One super-strong dragon suit, no matter how super strong, isn't going to conquer the whole fucking galaxy. Just by sheer attrition alone, the Imperial House and its allies will win."

"Thuwit!" Relix bellowed.

The door opened and Thuwit came in. He had weathered the boarding action fairly well - having been one of people in charge of making sure civilians got to the most secure parts of the ship. His bald pate gleamed with sweat as he puffed and panted and he bowed, low. "Yes, m'lady?"

"House Thresh's allies. Name them," Relix said, her eyes narrowing. Merton leaned against the wall as Brash started to crawl out of the scanning sphere. Once he was out, he flew over to land on Merton's shoulder and started to nose against his cheek.

"House Forin, House Xosh, and House Byraugh. They're greens, blues and blacks, in that order," he said. "House Forin are aggressive terraforming specialists - they'll essentially use terraforming wish spells and macro-fungal bombs to turn worlds into worlds that suit them, usually to destabilize or disadvantage an enemy house. Xosh are hoarders and run several large banks. And Bryaugh...well..." He sighed. "They're breeders."

"As in they breed...people?" Lisa asked.

"No, dragons," Thuwit said, nodding. "They make up for their lack of technical specifications by breeding large numbers of dragons, to overwhelm enemies by sheer numbers."

Merton scowled, slowly. "Or, in other words: The brains, the purse, the brawn and the leadership, counting Thresh." He looked at Relix. A cold wind seemed to blow through the bridge. Merton shivered and he opened his mouth to say something. To try and say something. But it all felt too big. Too vast.

A sudden alarm wailed out. Gunner's voice spoke over the PA.

"All hands to battle stations. Princess Relix, get to the bridge. Now."

Merton and she were sprinting off, followed by the rest of the group. They ran as fast and as hard as they could - and within a few moments, they reached the bridge. Merton stepped slowly forward, his eyes wide.

Red light, like the fires of hell, filled the bridge's forward view screen, reflecting off every pane, every panel, every facet of the bridge's metal construction. Gunner stood there, his face set, his hands clenched. Even the gobliness, Pyria, was sitting there quietly. The drow pilot had her head in her hands, and was whispering quietly in her own language. Brash shivered against Merton's neck and he reached up to bundle the tiny dragon into his hands.

The star system they had just dropped into was burning.

An accretion disk of ship-hulks, many of them still burning with out of control flames that poured from vast rents in molten armor, spread across a vast world that had, in the pictures Relix had shown him, been verdent and green. Now, a firestorm swept from pole to pole, painting the world in ruby and smeared black and caustic orange. A huge polyhedron that had once been the orbital defense fortress was shattered. Great flaming chunks of station were adding their own bolide bright streaks to the holocaust on the planet's surface.

"How many?" Merton whispered.

"Three billion," Gunner said, quietly.

"I-I'm detecting a single active ship," the drow pilot whispered. "It's...it's House Xosh merchant freighter."

"Calibrate your scanners for Brash's biological signature," Merton said.

The pilot blinked, looking baffled.

"Do it!" Relix snapped.

She tapped a few buttons. The ship sudden glowed brilliant red. It was crammed full of Brash's. Thousands of them. The ship was slowly turning away from the burning planet and starting to accelerate towards the Talon-9.

"We could have saved them..." Relix whispered. "Just telling them what to scan for. All it would have taken was one torpedo to stop the whole sneak attack. We-"

"Plot a course out of here!" Merton shouted.

The merchant ship's engines kicked on, shooting out a drive plume that was lost against the vastness - the horror - of the planet it flew above. As it drew closer and closer, the sides of the ship opened and Merton could see the teeming masses of dragon-armored creatures within. The black dragons of House Bryaugh, ready to attack.

"Our subspace engine needs twenty four hours to recharge," the pilot said.

"Then open a defensive portal into the elemental plane of negation and fly us in!" Merton said.

"Are you insane!?" The pilot asked.

Merton had stopped worrying about the overlap between Earth's fiction and this reality. He had no time for it. He glared at the pilot and, as the head of House Castrovel, husband-prince to Relix Castrovel, he snarled: "Do it."

The pilot grabbed onto the controls, while the defense station started to chirrup - Pyria stabbing at buttons with her fingers. The portal snapped open, revealing a vastness of infinite blackness. It was something worse and deeper than the stars. Something that said, in every language of the body and soul and heart, to never enter. To flee. But behind it, rushing towards them through real space, was an army that had reduced a world to ash and longed to spill their blood. And so, the pilot slammed down on the accelerator and the Talon-9 plunged.

Into blackness.

Into negation.