Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology (5 page)

“I couldn't even get it to shut off the alarms,” said Ekwensi. “I can feel it, but it's like it's hiding. It shouldn't be reacting like this. I've never heard of a Dragon responding so badly to the death of its pilot.”

“Maybe it was just too sudden,” offered Marisol.
 

“Maybe,” said Ekwensi. “Dragons have lost pilots before, though—accidents, illness, heart failure—and usually they just call the next person they choose to make the bond.”

“If the Dragon had called its next bondmate, they would be here by now,” said Shepard. “Let's get the other bond-trained people. It'll have to choose one of them.”

“Right, right. Okay, people, let's pack up and move Ilona up to med-bay.” Dr. Ekwensi wheeled away, while the rest of the medical staff somberly carried off the covered body on a stretcher.

* * *

Over the next thirty-six hours, each trained bondmate made their way to the Heart to lay hands on the dimly pulsing sphere of consciousness. Some left after only a few minutes, unable to even feel the Dragon's mind. Some stayed for hours, intensely focused, before finally admitting defeat. Ultimately, the Dragon rejected every bond-trained member of the community. Concern rose steadily among the crew, as in addition to shutting down the quantum drives and dropping out of flight, the Dragon had stopped collecting solar power through its wings. Despite battery backups, lights continued to flicker and dim intermittently. After the last trained candidate was rejected, various other community members began volunteering to try to make the bond. Shepard and Ekwensi stayed near the Heart almost constantly, coaching the volunteers in hopes the Dragon would take one of them. Alan had spent most of his time there as well, scanning the neurotech connections and the telepathic field levels, leaving only briefly to disappear into his lab. Marisol walked up and found him sitting near the Heart, back against a tree, analyzing the latest data. She sat next to him, patting his arm. “How're you doing?”

Alan glanced over at her, then went back to his screens. “I'm fine, thank you. Except we've been working on getting control of this ship for over a day and a half now, and we're still sitting here in the middle of space.”

Marisol frowned. “If the Dragon hasn't found the right bondmate yet, we just have to keep trying. There are over a thousand people on the ship, after all.”

Alan tapped his fingers on the ground thoughtfully. “So many people have been here. They come, they wait for the ship to do something, and then they leave. And they let it sit here, doing nothing. If someone just focused hard enough, they should be able to take charge and get control of it.”

“Alan, I'm worried about the Dragon too. Everyone is. But we can't force it—the telepathic bond is something both sides have to choose equally. It can't just be a strong will overcoming a weaker one.” She gave him a faint smile. “I'm sure everything will turn out all right.”

“I suppose.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then Marisol spoke up again. “Have you tried bonding with the ship? I'm sure Dr. Shepard or Dr. Ekwensi would be glad to help coach you.”

Alan shook his head. “It didn't choose me, and I don't think there's anything they can do. I've been doing some research, but—no.” He looked up at her. “Have you tried?”

“No.” Marisol shuddered. “That one time feeling its mind was enough for me.”

* * *

Marisol was in the forest again. She was searching for something, but this time she knew if she didn't find it soon it would be gone forever. Running, stumbling, almost sobbing with frustration and fear, it felt as though she had been going in circles for hours. Finally, she broke through the trees into the clearing from her memory. She looked up to the night sky, but there were no stars, no planets, nothing at all. Just a yawning black void, reaching through the trees to suck all the light out of the world. She wrenched her eyes from the terrible sight, hunched over on the ground, trembling.
 

As she huddled there, a presence tugged at her clothes, her hands, pushing her from behind—first gently, then more insistently. It wanted her to get up and leave. Wrong … danger … hurry … not safe, it said in her mind. Marisol heard alarms sounding, longer than normal and warped to sound like keening wails. The presence frantically pushed and pulled her back toward the forest, eventually giving her a powerful shove that sent her falling into the trees.

With a gasp, Marisol sat up in bed, flailing. She groped for the bedside light, but nothing happened when she swiped the control. She breathed deeply to calm her racing heart, and raised the shades on the bioluminescent wall panels to get a little light in the room. Her hands trembled, and she clenched them in her hair to still them. She sat for a moment, unconsciously mimicking the hunched posture of her dream, then got up, wrapped herself in a robe, and left her room to take a walk.

It was still the middle of the night rotation, so the hallways were dark and empty, lit only by the strips of biolum paneling on the ceiling. The luminescent algae tanks cast an eerie, blue-green glow over the interior of the ship which, coupled with the remnants of the dream and the lack of other people around, gave Marisol the disconcerting feeling of traveling through her imagined landscape. After a while, she found her wandering feet had brought her to the Heart. She regarded the softly glowing sphere of consciousness, then moved inside and stopped in front of the pedestal. Slowly, almost against her will, she raised her hands and placed them against the sides of the sphere. She waited, feeling nothing, then stiffened as a tendril of the Dragon's mind brushed gently against her awareness. She braced herself, then thought at the Dragon as loudly as she could:
Do you want me? Is that what you want?

The tendril curled against her mind, reaching, wanting, then sparked with fear and became a wordless blast of emotion.
No! Danger! Not safe!
she felt, followed by a mental push so strong she stumbled and her back slammed against the glass door. She fumbled for the door handles, managed to wrench one open, and fled back to her room.

* * *

 
“Do you think that means anything?” Marisol asked Dr. Shepard the next morning, sitting outside the Heart in a small grove of trees.

“I don't know,” Dr. Shepard said. “There's something wrong with the ship? It's in danger? It thinks we're in danger? There's just no way to know what it's trying to say, until it can actually bond with someone.” She sagged back and raked her fingers through short, blond hair, already sticking up in clumps from the repeated motion. “We're certainly in danger, regardless of what the Dragon thinks.”
 

“I know the power is almost gone, we're down to biolum in all but med-bay and the Heart.” Marisol said quietly. “I'm working with the engineering labs on manual work-arounds for the solar collectors. It'll take a week or two without the computers, but—”
 

Shepard cut her off with a raised hand. “We aren't going to have that long. The life support systems run by the Dragon are shutting down as well. Our respiration, ship's heat, water circulation, those all run as part of its body. And as of this morning, it started turning parts of them off.”

Marisol's eyes widened. “It shouldn't be able to do that! Life support functions are designed to be automatic, it—no.” She stopped herself. “Have we sent out a distress call? Are we going to have to abandon the Dragon?”

“I sent out a distress call as soon as the last bond-trained person was rejected,” said Shepard. “There aren't any other Dragons close to us, and the techships can't travel through hyperspace. The closest ship is about ten days out, and we only have about three days of life support at this rate.” She sighed, rubbing her temples. “Unless something changes, we'll have to wait for their assistance in the escape pods.”

As they pondered this possibility, Dr. Ekwensi arrived, his face grave. “Val, we have a problem.”

“I assume by that you mean we have another problem we didn't know about already,” said Shepard, without opening her eyes.

“This is serious. The Dragon just sealed all of the escape pod ports.”

“
What?
” Shepard sat up straight, face slack with horror.

“We were working on getting our supplies loaded, when the exit locks engaged and the blast doors sealed. We tried the manual overrides, even tried the external hull charges to blast open the ports, but nothing. The Dragon's disconnected everything.”

A chill went down Marisol's spine. This was not just a matter of energy running low or systems failing. This was a deliberate, conscious action.
 

Shepard let out a frustrated yell and kicked the base of a tree. “Why is it doing this? Is it trying to kill us?”

“It's starting to look that way,” said Ekwensi quietly. “We need to get everyone moved down to the outdoor level. We can make the remaining life support last longer if we're all in a smaller area, and the trees will help with the air supply.”

Shepard nodded once, tightly, then left to start making the arrangements.

* * *

That night, the ship's population camped in blankets on the grassy fields. Marisol sat alone on the edge of the group, unable to sleep, afraid to dream. After a while, Yumiko came around the path toward her. She spoke quietly so she didn't disturb the people dozing a few meters away. “Couldn't sleep either, eh?”

Marisol shook her head. “No. I just keep thinking, this can't be right. Nothing I know about Dragons says they would ever try to hurt their inhabitants. They can't live without their people. And if it actually wanted to kill us for some reason, it would be easier to fly us into a star or vent our air into space. There's got to be something else going on.”

“Maybe, but—” Yumiko was cut off as the ceiling lights flared to full brightness, almost painful after so much dimness. The drives hummed to life and alarms screeched into the silence. People shrieked and thrashed, shaken out of sleep into noise and confusion. “Gods, what now?”

Marisol scrambled to her feet. The warning screamed inside her head as well as in her ears, a silent howl of terror and pain.
DANGER FEAR WRONGWRONGWRONG!
 

“The Heart!” She took off running, Yumiko close behind her.

As they came up on the glass enclosure, Marisol saw Alan standing at the pedestal, one hand on the brightly glowing sphere and the other adjusting a neurotech interface headset. Marisol ran up and pounded on the door, but it had been jammed from the inside. “Alan, what are you doing?”

Alan glanced at her, then back to the Heart. “I'm taking control of this ship.”

“What? No! Alan, you can't. This is wrong.”

“Wrong? This is the only right thing to do. ExoCorp and its allies are going to return to power, and if we don't become their ally too, they will crush us.” He adjusted his headset and concentrated for a moment, and the alarms cut out. Marisol could still hear them screaming in her mind. “This neurotech will allow anyone to interface with a Dragonship and control it, without having to create a bond. ExoCorp has made it clear they will pay any price for this. If I take them this tech, along with the information they need to build and maintain their own Dragons, they'll give us all the resources we need to build a fleet of Dragons with real weapons systems and expand our influence a thousandfold.” Alan spoke calmly, watching the Heart as its glow increased, its pulsing sped up.

“Alan, ExoCorp is a dying relic! You would be causing their return to power, not preventing it!” Marisol hammered on the doors, trying to break through.
 

“Their people are smart and highly motivated, Marisol. They'll figure this out themselves eventually. But if I sell it to them ready made, they'll give us what we need to hold our own. It was a shame the woman had to die, I am sorry about that, but sacrifices have to be made.” The hum of the ship's drives wavered and roared higher.

“
Sacrifices?
” Marisol gasped. “If you killed Ilona for your own twisted plans, it wasn't sacrifice. It was cold-blooded murder!”

“The strong will always rise to overcome the weak, sooner or later. I'm sorry you can't see that, but I'm going to make sure I'm not one of the weak.” Alan frowned and adjusted his headset as the lights brightened to almost blinding levels. “If someone is really stronger and smarter, they deserve their power. If you can't hold on to what you have, then you deserve to lose it.”

As Alan finished speaking, the Dragon's alarms roared out at deafening levels. Alan grimaced and grasped the Heart with both hands, then convulsed as all of the electrical systems in the Heart violently shorted out, erupting in a fiery column that engulfed his writhing form. Sparks flew wildly, white-hot shrapnel searing blackened holes through flesh and bone. For an instant Alan's shuddering form seemed to be outlined in an eerie purple glow, then the electricity cut out and he collapsed. The lights dimmed again, and the drives faded.
 

* * *

It took most of the morning to unblock the doors to the Heart and move Alan's body to med-bay. The lights remained low, and the drives were still down, but all the life support systems had restarted and there was no longer any danger to the ship's inhabitants. Engineering crews worked to repair the damage to the electrical systems, while others slowly dealt with the disarray on the rest of the ship, trying to bring back some semblance of order. Marisol worked near the Heart, trying to analyze the damage and figure out what repairs they could make to the telepathic interface. The organic matrix was heavily burned and scarred, but still glowed softly deep within. As she turned away to retrieve a different scanner, she felt a tugging in the back of her mind. She turned back in surprise. “Hello?” she said.

Nothing.
 

Marisol paused, then shrugged and went to grab her scanner. The tugging came again, like a tiny creature dancing just out of sight. She stopped, then walked back to the Heart. She placed her hands on the damaged surface. “Hello?” she tried again.

Waiting. Watching. Unsure.

“It's safe now. You can come back,” she said.