Starbound: Eleven Tales of Interstellar Adventure Read online

  “I can hardly imagine,” Haliene said with the faintest hint of a smile.

  That smile made Aja shoot an acid glare at her mother—the person who had added this entirely unnecessary complication to her life.

  Haliene was hardly oblivious to her daughter’s mood. She shrunk into herself, shoulders lifting to her ears and chest sucking in.

  “I’ve work to do,” Aja said again.

  “Don’t forget about us having dinner together,” Emalkay said.

  The moron.

  There would be no dinner together. Aja just needed to think of a firm enough way to reject him that brooked no room for argument.

  With the clunky boots on her feet, she tromped out to the barn. She felt as though Haliene and Emalkay had their eyes on her back as she mounted the Gelding, watching with heavy judgment as she initiated the engine. Aja dismissed those thoughts as irrational and throttled forward.

  She swooped toward the westernmost fence, following it into the outer reaches of the property.

  It was insane that Emalkay thought he could descend upon the Skytoucher farm and make himself at home in such a way. Aja barely knew the man. They’d gone through weeks of training as a team, and months of deployment, but they hadn’t been friendly enough to visit one another’s childhood homes.

  Lords. Aja didn’t even know what kind of home Emalkay had come from before.

  She reached the outermost reaches of the Skytoucher farm and dismounted the Gelding.

  “Dragonet?” Aja called. It took her a moment to recall her last conversation with the alien. “Chromearrow?”

  There was no response. She didn’t see the cairn of stones marking the little dragonet’s home, either. She thought she’d returned to its new den—but perhaps her sense of direction wasn’t as good as she expected. The Skytoucher farm was large. It extended far into the mountains. It was entirely possible that she’d gotten lost.

  Slinging her leg over the Gelding, she dropped to the dusty soil. No crops grew that far out.

  “Chromearrow?”

  No response.

  Aja chewed the inside of her mouth, anxiety clawing at the inside of her throat.

  What if she was in the right place, but Chromearrow had left to do some good old-fashioned murdering and pillaging?

  If the dragonet hurt anyone, it would be Aja’s fault.

  What had she been thinking, unleashing the spawn of a genocidal race upon her planet? Yes, it had been only one little dragonet—one survivor of a destroyed nest—but dragons had managed to kill many humans before, even without support.

  Aja shut her eyes and imagined what would happen if Chromearrow flew to North Fargo. That small village had little defense against disasters, especially ones like Fog.

  Would she be able to live with herself if Chromearrow attacked?

  A chirping made her gaze snap toward the trees.

  There it was. The stone cairn that Chromearrow had built just within the fence.

  Aja jogged over.

  “Chromearrow,” she called, and the dragonet slithered out of its pile of rocks, wide eyes eager to see her. It straightened on all four legs, tail flicking with unspoken delight at the sight of Aja.

  Lords. Aja had been gone for barely twelve hours, and the little thing looked as though she’d nearly abandoned it.

  “Little” was hardly an appropriate descriptor for the creature, though. It had grown again, in much the same way that it had grown after eating those first mice. No longer was it as small as a calf among the herd of the Skytoucher farm. Now it was bigger than a horse. Taller at its shoulder than Aja. She had to tip her head backwards to meet its almond-shaped eyes.

  She’d have been lying if she claimed not to feel some modicum of relief at the sight of Chromearrow’s sapphire scales, though.

  “How was your first night alone?” she asked.

  The dragonet nudged Aja’s hip. Aja stepped backward, attempting to evade the contact. Chromearrow nudged her again, urging her toward the cairn.

  There was only a single shard remaining from the screwdriver inside. The dragonet had eaten the rest.

  “Was it good?” Aja asked.

  Chromearrow trilled with delight.

  Aja understood. Yes, eating the metal had been good.

  Another trill followed the first, more questioning than the last.

  “Emalkay’s here—that’s the guy I was deployed with in the military. We drove a Carriage together. I’ll do what I can to keep him away. I attempted to reject him, and he doesn’t seem to get it.”

  The dragonet’s next cluck could only be interpreted as a giggle.

  Aja rolled her eyes.

  “You’re the most frustrating of all the boys I’ve ever met,” Aja said. “More frustrating than even Emalkay in some ways.”

  Chromearrow huffed, offended.

  “What? It’s true.”

  The dragonet turned and lifted its tail at her.

  Aja’s eyes widened.

  When she’d performed her medical inspection of the dragonet, she’d searched for a heart, taken its temperature, and attempted to search for wounds. She hadn’t thought to check genitalia.

  That was definitely female genitalia.

  “Oh my,” Aja said. “I’m sorry. Lords. I gave you a boy’s name. We’ll need to pick something new.”

  Chromearrow lifted her head and turned it away, as if dismissing the idea. She liked her name. She just didn’t want to be called a frustrating boy.

  “Very well, then you can be the most frustrating girl and Emalkay can remain the unchallenged king of frustrating boyness.” Aja flopped to the ground beside Chromearrow. “What am I going to do? I can’t make him go away. I can’t go to dinner with him. I can’t let him stay at the farmhouse.”

  The dragonet preened Aja’s hair. Aja was acutely aware of that razor sharp beak so close to her skull, but it felt like being combed very gently, and she enjoyed the touch.

  “I have to do something,” Aja said. “We can’t go on like this for long.”

  Chromearrow sang out. The volume and pitch made the branches shiver, the clouds drift away, and dust lift from the earth.

  Yet still, it made no sense to Aja. For all she knew, the dragonet could have been declaring war on all of New Dakota in the cutest fashion possible.

  Chromearrow dropped onto her forelegs, bowing her head. She extended her left foreleg. She didn’t move from that position.

  “What?” Aja asked.

  The dragonet inched forward, shooting adoring eyes to Aja.

  “What?” Aja repeated.

  Chromearrow nudged her ankles, pushing her leg between Aja’s ankles.

  She gripped Chromearrow’s horns in either hand, and that seemed to please the dragonet.

  If Aja wasn’t mistaken, she would have thought that Chromearrow was inviting Aja to climb onto her back.

  “Why?” Aja asked.

  Chromearrow didn’t speak. She only smiled in her dragony way, mouth curving underneath those big eyes of hers. The same big eyes that had gazed adoringly at Aja when she’d been attempting to feed broth to the dragonet through a bottle.

  Aja didn’t want to climb atop the dragonet. The thing had been small enough to tuck within her jacket only days earlier. True, she was now larger than an adult cow, after eating several mice. But she was still a baby. And worse…a baby resulting from a nest of pure evil.

  “No, thank you.” Aja tried to step back, but the dragonet only nudged her harder. Again, she said, “No.”

  And the dragonet kept nudging, playfully refusing to concede.

  No. No matter how cute she was, Aja wouldn’t succumb.

  Chromearrow’s head snapped up, focusing over Aja’s shoulder.

  “What’s wrong?” Aja asked. She turned.

  She saw nothing behind her except a distant shape moving on the horizon.

  Perhaps it was paranoia. Or perhaps her eyesight was simply sharper than she gave herself credit for.

  That pers
on moving from the direction of the farmhouse looked like Emalkay, though.

  Would he really ignore her signals and seek her out when she obviously wanted to be left alone?

  “Yes,” Aja said to herself. “Yes, he would.”

  Chromearrow’s eyes had gone sharp. She was staring at the movement, too. But she didn’t look curious, nor did she look fascinated.

  Aja’s stomach lurched. “Little dragonet?” Chromearrow didn’t respond except to tense, muscles rippling underneath her soft scales. They were beginning to glisten more than they used to. They were sharpening before Aja’s eyes.

  For the first time, the baby dragon looked…mean.

  Chromearrow launched from the dry grass, flying into the sky with a few solid pumps of her broad wings. The wind gusted Aja’s hair away from her face. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move—all she could do was stare in horror as the dragonet flew toward Emalkay.

  Because that was certainly Emalkay. Aja could see him now, with his slouchy figure and miserable expression.

  He was following Aja into the fields.

  It would have been irritating on the best of days, but this was not the best. Far from it.

  Aja bolted toward Emalkay. She met him halfway across the field. His eyes brightened with recognition.

  “Aja!” he greeted.

  “Go back!” She shoved him, trying to urge him back toward the farmhouse.

  Emalkay dug his heels in. “No, Aja. We need to talk!”

  “No we don’t!”

  “But we do.” He turned on her, gripping her shoulders. “We’ve needed to talk since you retired from the Alliance. I think you have some kind of trauma from the last conflict.”

  She blinked in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  “Your mother says you’ve been weird since you got back. She wanted me to come here and talk with you—take you out for some fun.”

  Understanding dawned slowly over Aja. “You think that I’m struggling with the ramifications of war?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  The question stopped her in her tracks.

  He clearly wasn’t asking if she was okay right at that moment. It was a more general question, about more abstract concepts. Like, for instance, Aja’s life in general.

  She stopped pushing. “Why?”

  “I’d hoped we could talk about this over drinks, but—well, you’re not making that easy,” Emalkay said. “Look, you abandoned a promising career to go back to farming, which your mom says you never wanted to do. Seems like the stress of the war didn’t do you any favors, is all. Your mama hoped you’d talk to me about it since you wouldn’t talk to her.”

  Aja gaped at him. Haliene had risked bringing Emalkay to the farmhouse because she thought that Aja needed therapy? Therapy in the form of her former co-driver?

  It was better than Emalkay showing up to take her on a date, as she’d feared.

  Not much better, though.

  Chromearrow had appeared behind Emalkay, high in the clouds. She was swooping down.

  “Get out of here, for the love of Thal!” Aja shoved Emalkay onto the Gelding. He gripped the reins, confusion etching every line of his face.

  “But Aja—”

  “Back to Fargo! Now!”

  She kicked the spurs, putting the Gelding into gear. It leaped underneath Emalkay.

  As it roared away, sending dust kicking in his wake, Chromearrow dived toward Aja.

  She faced Chromearrow, heart pounding.

  Having the dragonet rocket toward her wasn’t all that different from the moment that the dragon had attacked her above Drakor III. She was diving, bejeweled claws reaching for her, hands outstretched.

  This time, Aja didn’t have a plasma rifle ready. She was just standing there, waiting to face a dragon.

  A dragon who she had attempted to nurse.

  Cuddled in her closet.

  Rescued from her egg.

  That baby was about to kill her.

  Aja shut her eyes and braced herself for the impact.

  Claws struck, but they didn’t dig in.

  Aja’s feet left the ground as she was yanked into the sky. When her eyes opened, the trees were falling away, Gelding so far below that it was the size of one of the mice that Chromearrow had eaten. She opened her mouth to cry out, but couldn’t breathe well enough to scream.

  The dragonet had dragged her into the upper atmosphere.

  She was terrified—but she forgot that she couldn’t breathe.

  The world was bending underneath them.

  For the first time since returning to New Dakota, Aja was leaving atmo.

  She couldn’t breathe. But she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to breathe even if they had been within an area with oxygen. New Dakota was beautiful when it was stretched underneath her. She could see so much more than her farm alone. She could see the Volkmann farm, and the others bordering theirs, and even North Fargo with its Bus station.

  Aja could also see Emalkay on the Gelding as he turned back toward the farmhouse.

  The dragonet flipped Aja into the air. For a heart-stopping instant, she was utterly weightless. And then her hand hooked onto Chromearrow’s ridged neck, and the dragonet was diving, dipping.

  When the dragonet surged upward again, Aja was riding her, thighs pressed to either side of Chromearrow’s muscular neck.

  She wouldn’t have thought that Chromearrow—the fragile, premature dragonet born of a shattered egg barely weeks earlier—would have been capable of supporting a human’s weight. But she could, and they were only climbing higher, higher.

  Aja was shocked to be able to breathe as the air thinned around them. There was some kind of protective energy around Chromearrow, as mysterious as the Fog, which cradled Aja in comfort as they ascended.

  It wasn’t that the dragons didn’t need to breathe, Aja realized. They didn’t hold their breaths for a long time. Nor did they have an equivalent of gills that allowed them to extract oxygen from low-oxygen environments. It was that they had some biological mechanism that allowed them to continue breathing, holding air in a bubble around them.

  How? Why? Aja could only guess. She was a superb coachman, not a scientist.

  There was so much to learn about dragons. So much that nobody knew, because nobody had gotten to know them before.

  Though now that Chromearrow was plummeting toward Emalkay, Aja thought she might have already known everything that she needed to.

  Chromearrow was ready to wreak revenge upon Emalkay.

  “You can’t,” Aja said, wrapping her hands around the firm ridge on Chromearrow’s spines. “He’ll see you. And the Alliance will notice if he doesn’t come back!”

  She wasn’t certain if the sentiment got through to Chromearrow at first. She wasn’t sure if sentiments mattered at all.

  Aja pulled on Chromearrow’s neck—harder, harder, just as she had pulled on the reins of the Carriage in an attempt to avoid crashing into Drakor III.

  The shadow of the dragon passed over Emalkay, zooming toward the Skytoucher farmhouse.

  His head lifted. He was looking up.

  “Please, Chromearrow!” Aja shouted into the wind.

  The dragonet’s wing tipped underneath her, tilting to the right. They banked. Dropped toward the trees.

  When Emalkay looked up, he saw nothing.

  Aja and Chromearrow plunged into the mountains. They struck the ground. The dragonet’s impact was light—but Aja’s was not. She was flung from between the dragonet’s wings, rolling across the soil.

  Aja came up on all fours, staring at the dragonet.

  Chromearrow trilled at her curiously.

  “How could you risk everything like that?” Aja asked, eyes burning. “He could have seen us. You were trying to kill him!”

  The dragonet only trilled its serpentine tongue, making a sweet, high-pitched sound.

  “Don’t even try,” Aja said. Fury made her shake.

  There w
as still a chance that everything was shattered. Ruined.

  She needed to get back to the farmhouse.

  * * *

  Haliene was waiting for Aja at the back door of the farmhouse. Her shadow was stretched long by the dimming sunlight.

  The look that Haliene gave Aja…

  “What?” Aja asked, hanging back, afraid to move forward.

  How much did she know? Was it all over? Had she seen the dragonet?

  “Can we talk?” Haliene asked.

  Aja’s breath gusted from her lungs. If she sounded so calm, she couldn’t have noticed the dragonet’s flight over the farmhouse in broad daylight.

  “Fine,” Aja said, too weak with relief to argue. “What is it?”

  “Emalkay is gone. He came for two reasons, you know. One, because—”

  “You invited him,” Aja said savagely.

  Haliene flinched. Took a deep breath. Kept talking. “He was also excited to tell you the news. The war’s over, Aja. The Alliance wiped out the last of the dragons and is building a colony on Drakor III. You’re invited to move there, since you were in the raid that won the planet.”

  Her knees wobbled.

  Aja sat hard on the farmhouse’s stoop.

  “They’re all gone? All the dragons?”

  Haliene nodded. “You helped the Alliance win, Aja. Emalkay only wanted to come here to tell you, but you drove him away. His Bus will be leaving already.” She said that as though it were something Aja should have cared about. She didn’t.

  She felt sick inside.

  Chromearrow was more than just an orphan now. She was the last survivor of the dragons.

  “Aja…” Haliene began.

  “What were you thinking?” Aja asked, rounding on her mom. Her fingertips dug into Haliene’s shoulders. She was aware that it must have been painful, but she couldn’t make herself exercise a gentler grip. “Inviting Emalkay? Springing this information on me? What is wrong with you?”

  Tears gleamed in Haliene’s eyes. Aja wasn’t sure that she had ever seen such pathos from her mother before. “You won’t speak to me.” Haliene’s voice came out harsh, ragged, as though she’d been sobbing for days. “You won’t tell me what you’re thinking. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, so I thought I’d bring in someone who could. All I know’s that you’ve come back from Drakor III, a hero of the war, and—and you’re not even the woman you used to be. It’s like having a distant stranger in my daughter’s room.”