“With my hands. I squeezed my windpipe until…” A shiver danced down Howard’s back when he saw a machine shut its eyes in fear.
“That’s enough, 46-C. You don’t have to live it again. What were the creatures you saw and heard?” the guide prompted one last time.
“Dragons,” she said instantly. Howard could only shake his head as his guide dismissed her. 46-C wandered to the nearest wall of her padded cell and leaned her synthetic head against it. Whatever went through her forged consciousness, Howard couldn’t imagine. He jumped at the sound of a voice behind him, though hardly at the order he knew was coming.
“I’ll leave you to it, then, Doctor Carver. You have interviews to conduct, celestial beings to track down, after all. Holler if you need me.”
When Howard rode the elevator back to the Arcadia hours later, he was a deeper shade of blue than the planet below.
Chapter Nine: Dark Wings
Dawn had her fill of Neptune within a few hours. Miller’s story of the dredgers had infected her sleep with nightmares. Once the Arcadia had actually docked on the ice giant, she had no intention of wandering the tiny colony of Solstice. Curiosity kept her close to the windows of the acclimation station, and views of the cerulean world far below was enough for her. Heading down to the surface for drinks had been Wagner’s ill-conceived idea. Unfortunately, enough of the Arcadia’s crew had seconded the notion to make Dawn feel antisocial for declining. She zipped up her heaviest jacket, which wasn’t nearly enough even inside Solstice’s terradome, and headed down the lift.
The drinks were expensive and cold. Dawn joined her crewmates for a hearty glass of Nereid’s Slushpit’s signature drink: Chrysum slush steeped in vodka. Each sip shot a tiny lightning bolt down the back of her throat. The crowds that packed in around them had a wicked case of stink-eye, too. Dawn’s hand was never far from the fuse-gun she was glad she brought from home. There were rifles in the armory of the Arcadia, but they weren’t to be removed without special permission. The crew drank until the tension unraveled from their cabin-cramped shoulders. Dawn was the only one who refrained.
“Alice doesn’t count as a designated driver,” she laughed at Wagner’s insistence she have another, “I’ve got to be ready, in case of an emergency.”
“Yeah, sure,” Wagner laughed along with the rest of the crew, convinced she hated fun. Fun was the last thing on Dawn’s mind, even before she caught a glimpse of Howard. That at least gave her something to wonder about, while she waited for her crewmates to drown themselves in the Slushpit Special. What is Howard doing in the kitchen? Dawn pondered, when she caught a glimpse of him scurrying to the back door. What was more, why does he look so mortified? She came no closer to an answer before the crew was ready to pack it in. Dawn held in the sigh of relief until the acclimator lift doors slid shut around them.
“How smashed are you, right now?” she chuckled when she joined Wagner for deck duties afterward. If his jagged mop thrusts were any indication, he felt every drop of the Slushpit Special.
“Vase in an earthquake,” he chuckled, and dragged Dawn right along with him. They guffawed between bouts of cleanup. They at least had something to watch.
The walls of the acclimation station were speckled with massive viewing windows overlooking Neptune. The roof was almost exclusively glass. It let in the perfect light and darkness of distant stars in the abyss. At certain angles, Dawn even caught glimpses of the unfinished SkyLine extension. Like a shard of celestial crystal, it stabbed out from the station into the big, black empty. As Dawn understood in conversations struck up by boredom, it pointed towards the dim galaxy of Antila 2. Some researchers were convinced unmatched Chrysum deposits waited in that direction. Even more than there were on Neptune - it could be the next step in cosmic expansion. Dawn passed the time watching energy waves leap from the tip of it and dissipate.
“You think she feels this?” Wagner said after a while.
“Not this again,” Dawn groaned at him.
“Seriously. Alice has all sorts of sensors for damage and stuff. Kind of like, I don’t know - nerves?” Wagner challenged. Whether it was genuine curiosity or just to prod at Dawn, she wasn’t sure. “Who’s to say that you’re not brushing her teeth right now?”
“Seriously, Wagner, I should have left you in the Slushpit,” Dawn shook her head, though her eyes remained stuck on the SkyLine through the overhead window. She hardly noticed the blue glow climb her body from inside the ship.
“As much as I wish I could, I can’t feel it,” Alice settled once and for all.
“What have I told you about listening in on private conversations?” Dawn countered. She scraped the bristles hard across the Arcadia’s deck without thinking.
“Apologies, Admiral Dawn, but I think talking about someone like they aren’t present might be ruder,” Alice countered.
“Damn, she’s got you!” Wagner couldn’t help himself. Dawn lifted a foot to stomp. Whether Alice would feel it or not, she would, and that was enough. What stopped her was the yellow shine through the Arcadia’s floorboards when Alice’s said:
“Wha-wha-what is that?”
“I thought you didn’t feel this?” said Dawn, foot frozen in the air.
“I don’t. But I feel… something,” Alice shuddered. Dawn had just enough time to look up. A dark blur ripped through the unfinished SkyLine, straight down into the acclimation station.
“Alice, shields up!” Dawn screamed over the shatter of glass.
In that moment, hatred was lost under the resurgence of academy training. Suddenly, she and Alice transformed from uneasy rivals to pilot and ship. A bubble of translucent gold swirled around the Arcadia while crystal shards of the overhead window were sucked into the vacuum outside. Dawn caught a glimpse of another nearby ship’s crew grasping their throats, until someone inside had the good sense to pull up their own shields. A dark shape plunged to the deck of the Arcadia. The impact dimpled the boards which its talons were digging into. Its wings snapped out at its pitch black, scaly sides. Dawn slid back just far enough to avoid them. Wagner toppled with a thin red line across his nose.
“Ho-ho-holy shi-
“Wagner! Get inside and get Miller!” Dawn dug into him before he could lose himself. With a hardly open snout, the black-armored beast let out a steady mist. Its eyes, even brighter yellow than the glow from Alice, pierced Dawn’s very soul. She dared not think too far ahead, for fear the creature would hear it. “Wagner!”
“Ri-right!” he snapped back to reality. Wagner scrambled backward to the stairs. His steps thundered down into its unseen belly. The rambles of “He’s real…” and, “A Dragon…” followed close behind.
“Drogan,” Dawn forced herself to say. Her trembling legs hardly kept her upright. It took everything she had just to stand straight in the shadow of the dark, reptilian figure twice her stature. Its every scratching step quaked the boards around her feet.