Dark Dragons (2 page)

Experimental technologies
had been stored within the
holds as offerings, his deliverance from guilt and shame.  He did not view
this alm as a form of divine appeasement——he was far beyond amnesty——but only
as a means of forgiving himself.  Certainly, there would be others out in
the deep reaches of space now in danger from Vorvon aggressions.  Kalaar’s
gifts might offer a lesser race a fighting chance . . . unlike now, when their
overdue deployment in battle would be just a futile, rebellious strike from a
dying combatant.  Perhaps the gods would absolve him for such an
empathetic act . . . or perhaps not.  Kalaar’s eyes became saturated with
amber tears from pain brought about by unattainable answers.

In that moment, in a state of weakness, he suddenly raged
against the gods.  Curses rolled off his tongues like worms dripping from
a rotting corpse.  On the boost grid before his cargo drone, he fell to
his knees and cried out.  His clawed hands tried to tear into the metal
boost grid, and the thunder of distant war faded under his screams of
blasphemy.  He was nothing more than a foolish old man who believed in
nonexistent immortals created in the minds of superstitious ancestors. 
The pain and realization tore out of him in waves. 
No gods! 
No——no, surely not——no gods!
  Now he was mumbling things that made no
sense, his mind gone.
  No more——Ryli’se, gone, not real! 
Xllric——Hevrin.
  Saliva dripped from his snout.  Slowly, he
wobbled to his feet and staggered toward the launch console at the edge of the
boost grid.

No gods, no forgiveness, but Kalaar would save himself, save
others.
  Only way out.
When he reached the launch control panel,
his shaking fingers slowly found the coordination to push several buttons in
coded sequence.  He gripped the edge of the computer console with a free
hand to steady himself, warm tears dripping off his flesh to cool on the metal
control board.

With a fist he struck the
LAUNCH
button in a surge of defiance, and the mighty cargo drone erupted with a
winding roar.  The thunder of fusion drives displaced the low din of
approaching war as the vessel began to ascend.  The top of Kalaar’s
crystal-steel palace opened into a mountainous glass flower, revealing a rich
ocean of twinkling stars above.

Gravity overpowered Kalaar’s trembling legs, and he fell to
his knees while the ship continued to rise from the womb of his palace. 
Lights throughout the complex dimmed when power surged into the boost grid
projectors in the floor to give the ship a final push.  The freighter rose
faster, fusion exhaust fading to a pinpoint until Kalaar could no longer see
its fiery light.  The sounds of battle returned.

He sprawled across the cold floor, whimpering, mumbling.
 
No more gods——yes, they are quite gone.

It was awhile before he heard the mad clomping of
footsteps.  He sat up, not sure from which direction the sounds
came.  He spun his head around as he tried to locate the source, but only
the walls carried the baffling echoes.  Was he dreaming?   The
footsteps sounded closer now, and then a squad of his palace guards appeared
from the outer corridors, tired eyes full of ceaseless battle.  Kalaar
stood.

Teerlik appeared from their ranks.
  Minister Kalaar,
the Vorvons are here!  We must evacuate!  Please, there is no time!

Kalaar could only stand in a daze.  Yes, he must be
dreaming this.  He would soon awake near his light-harp, lulled to sleep
by its soft melodies.  It would all be over then.  Just an overactive
imagination brought on by too much
gheva
juice.

Suddenly, a deafening explosion disintegrated the far
wall.  An eruption of swirling crystal and metal came at him, and Kalaar
stumbled to the floor, dust gagging him, shrapnel knifing into his flesh, madness
filling his heart.  Then he beheld a ghastly image.  Swarms of
spindly bipedal beings were pouring in through the breach, all of them war
screaming, slashing at the air with sharpened bone-blades which curved out of
their forearms, tentacles tipped with stingers darting to and fro.  Two of
his palace guards opened fire with their heavy pulse cannons and swept the
forward area with wide fields of fire, methodically reducing the first few
lines of alien attackers down to ragged chunks of flying body parts. 
Still, the invaders continued to press their assault deeper.  Four more
palace guards appeared from a side entrance and threw themselves into the
struggle.

An enormous Vorvon automaton suddenly entered the chamber
through the gaping hole on a cushion of antigravity and let loose swarms of
flying insect-machines into the room.  One of them attached itself to the
head of one of the troopers and pumped a surge of angry electricity into his
brain, killing him instantly.  Another fighter, distracted by the flying
little robots, received a bone blade through the abdomen and out his back, the
alien attacker gasping in satisfaction with a hideous wheeze and toothy smile.

A deep, bass tone emanated from the tank-like machine, and
the steel floor vibrated.  Kalaar turned to flee, heard more flying
spiders buzzing and soldiers screaming. 
We are being slaughtered for
some unknown godless insanity,
he thought.

The sounds of soldiers and useless gunfire, so deafening
moments before, fell silent.  Kalaar stole a glance over his shoulder to
see that every guard had been butchered, his dear friend Teerlik
included——decapitated.  The machine had now turned its attention on him,
quickly rumbling across the vibrating floor, flying spiders circling above it.

He tripped over the boost grid converter cables and fell to
his face.  Lights flashed in his eyes, and he howled in pain.  The
monstrous thing was almost on him, and he could smell its hot circuitry, hear
the drone of machinery inside.  As he got to his knees, Kalaar remembered
the tiny pulse gun concealed in his tunic.  Drawing his weapon, he faced
the monstrosity looming near him and noticed that new apparitions had appeared
among the horde of rabid tentacle creatures——dark-skinned, leathery giants with
armor plating across their body, their yellow eyes reflecting the dim chamber
lights.  He heard their alien mindspeak, murmurs of slithery death, a
dialect he could not understand.

Why are you——?
  But the question died in
Kalaar’s mind when a more lucid idea came to him.  He put the tiny gun to
his temple and pulled the trigger.

*

During its long and silent voyage, the ship had encountered
several star systems, occasionally tuning into faded, static-filled
transmissions from civilizations wondering about their place in the universe,
but the ship ignored them.  Its goal was the Eye.

After carefully navigating through the cloud of icy bodies
surrounding the star system, the ship swept its sensors across the Eye’s
ecliptic, probing for any planets that might be there.  Altogether, it
cataloged a family of nine: four inner rocky worlds, four gas giants with
satellites, and a lonely planetoid drifting on the fringes.

The ship slid into a low orbit around the third world and
scanned the surface.  It detected a multitude of
indigenous
heterotrophic life forms——no foreign DNA present——but one species in particular
it monitored closely.  The creatures were bipedal beings with large
craniums, opposable digits and broad teeth.  They lived in humble,
mud-brick dwellings and  farmed simple grains with domesticated livestock,
while others resided in mighty constructions of stone and lived off the
offerings brought to them by the lower castes.  Their level of
metallurgical knowledge had yet to comprehend the complexities of iron or steel
production . . . instead they used bronze as the metal of choice for weapons
and tools.  They were extremely aggressive, a predestined indication that
more advanced descendants would mobilize and conduct warfare on a grander, more
technological scale.

Several hundred years of massive acceleration had finally
brought the ship to the Gods.

The beings were intelligent, but only within the known realm
of their tiny universe.  Their levels of a broader sentience did not
satisfy the computer . . . they were incapable of utilizing the advanced
payloads to protect themselves if the Vorvon horde charged into their star
system.

 Time would have to solve that.  The ship landed
in a crater on the planet’s single moon to wait——and to listen for danger
roaming outside the solar system.

Friday, May 14

Present Day

Darren Seymour looked up to see Ms. Weatherbee’s chalk make
huge streaks on the blackboard——the kind of chalk which screeched and made
thick lines because the old lady had a tendency to press too hard.  She
was trying to draw an oxygen atom, but the apathetic, twelfth-grade class
sitting behind her saw only crazy circles that made no sense.

“Does anyone know the atomic number and weight of this
element?” she asked.  “Any hands?”

None.

“May I suggest a pop quiz and a two chapter reading
assignment?”

Still no response.

Her gaze swept the classroom, one eyebrow raised so high it
threatened to overtake her hairline.  “Okay, if that’s how it’s going to
be,” she said with aplomb.  “Let’s have a quiz.  Go ahead.  Get
your notebooks open.”

Everyone obeyed, but it was slow, disheartening. 
Weatherbee just shook her head.

Darren returned to the words on his notebook. 
His
words.  He was too preoccupied with the short story flowing from his pen
to be paying any attention to Witch Weatherbee.  The world around him was
just a macrocosm of nuisances and confusion better left alone and ignored.

Darren didn’t belong to any of the numerous social groups in
school——just another boring face in the crowd that clogged the hallways like a
clotted artery.  He had moved here to La Crescenta from Michigan in the
fall of the previous year, and like any new student, was still having difficulty
adjusting.  Trying to conform to Southern California’s fast-paced
lifestyle was quite a culture shock for a Midwestern kid.

His story was entitled
Jonathan Chance and the Marauders
of Kathmandu
.  Jonathan Chance was a reckless CIA agent who lived in
Virginia next to headquarters and had beers with the old guys at the bar when
he wasn’t on assignment.  Darren pictured Jonathan Chance as his alter ego
. . . swashbuckling through exotic lands, enduring great perils, killing bad
guys and saving damsels in distress.  The usual plots and stereotypes were
purely intentional.

Darren was finally up to the ending with Jonathan standing
at the doors of Marcus Killjoy’s Himalayan fortress.  Marcus Killjoy was a
warlord heroin smuggler, a character of recent creation in fact. 
Somewhere inside the stronghold, Marcus had the U.S. president’s beautiful
daughter held captive:

Jonathan
leveled his M-16 and gunned down the locks, and took out the guard just behind
it.  He burst in and blasted away at a pair of
appraoching
approaching henchmen that drew machetes.  “Bringing a knife to a gun
fight?” Jonathan bellowed at the corpses.

Jonathan
moved down the torch-lit passageway toward Marcus’s throne room.  The
fat-ass slob was probably preparing for a rude violation of the girl! 
Move faster Chance!

He
leapt and kicked the door in, rolling across the throne room floor, spewing
volleys of lethal machine gun fire.  Henchmen fell.  Blood, red and
glistening, splattered the walls.  One
henchman
asshole came at
Chance with a machete.  Jonathan ducked and grabbed the weapon’s handle
just below the punk’s hand.  He wrestled it from the
hench
asshole
and brought it down and chopped the guys head in two.  Brains fell out.

He
picked up his M-16 and held the trigger down.  Henchmen fell.  No
mercy for the dead, he thought.  Suddenly the sound of gunfire was
replaced by Marcus’s echoing, mocking laughter.

Jonathan
was out of ammunition!

The
President’s daughter, Vanessa, was chained to the wall, her clothing in shreds.

“Jonathan
Chance . . . you die here!” Marcus growled when he pulled out a long sword with
spikes and razors in it.  “Do you really think that you’ll get her? 
Do you?  Well my friend, she’s mine!”  Marcus lunged at Jonathan and
swung his weapon down.  Jonathan recoiled and jumped just as the blade
made sparks where his feet were just a split second ago.  The fat bum
swung again and when he missed, Jonathan leaped up into the air and kicked him
backwards with both feet.  Marcus tripped trying to get his balance and
fell into his crocodile pit!

Jonathan
heard a high pitched cry like a little girl’s followed by a sickening
CRUNCH!!  He looked over the edge and saw the crocs were tearing Marcus’s
body up.  The water turned red.  Jonathan could even see that Marcus was
still alive!  His eyes were bulging like a guy who had his hand caught in
a blender.  One of the crocs bit through his neck and the suffering was
over!