“I’m fine,” Dawn told her, “We have to draw them outside the rings and take them down from the Arcadia. I’ll bring them.”
“No! I can help, but not outside the rings. Draw them close to the dock instead,” Alice countered. Dawn bit her lip to steady her hands. Whether or not Alice was a physical body she could see or touch, she’d proven more than once she could be trusted. Dawn only had to choose to see it.
“Here they come,” said Dawn. Her pod careened through the trio of gathering Dragons. She spun her controls with the dexterity it took the average miner a year to master. In a few choice movements, she struck one of them across the fanged snout and scattered the remaining Chrysum to the ring behind them. Dawn banked a turn hard, just outside the swinging grasp of long, bladed hands. It gave her the spine-tingling chance to check if any of them had a gauntlet like Drogan. None of them did. A mark of rank, maybe? She guessed.
Dawn’s pod pointed for the dock. At the jam of a button under each thumb, a Chrysum jet pulse blasted it from the Dragons’ swinging grasp. Their screeches filled the blackness of space while their wings beat double time in pursuit. Dawn’s pod hardly cleared the entrance hatch before the beasts clamored in behind her. A storm of wings and talons too big for so narrow a corridor, the Dragons stumbled over one another. They did more harm to each other and the dock than they did to Dawn, but all it took was one claw. One solid strike. An amethyst blow connected with her pod, and the next Dawn knew, she was scraping across the floor. Her pod crunched against the wall. Her feeble human body was flung out into the hatch, still open to the vacuum of space.
“A… lice…” she wheezed. Her fingernails scratched against steel. The abyss fought to suck her back, right into the flickering talons of Dragons.
“Close the hatch!” she heard in her fading mind. Alice sounded to Dawn for the first time like a woman, a soul more than a machine. She rerouted core power supplies to enhance her terradome shield. The globe of safety bulged out three hundred feet further than it was designed, just past Dawn. Alice couldn’t hold it for long. “Dawn!” she cried, “Get up!” A beam of Chrysum plasma from the Arcadia melted a hole directly across the hallway she lay in.
Dawn crawled until she could stand, then stumbled for the dripping, smoldered portal. She was sure every second was the one the Dragons caught up and plucked her legs off, until finally, she chanced a look back over her shoulder. All three of them rolled on their backs, mouths open as if screaming pure silence.
“What the hell…” Dawn muttered as she limped through the hole in the wall. On the other side was the giant, enclosed slip where the Arcadia was docked.
“I am emitting a frequency that causes them horrible anguish,” Alice told her. With every word, the crimson light of fury swelled in the Arcadia’s distant hull. “Two of them have fled,” Alice told her. At her command, the outer ring manager had closed the hatch behind them.
“Two?” echoed Dawn. On this cue, the crimson Dragon burst through the hole in the wall. Dawn forced a broken trot for her only hope, her ship. The Dragon impaled claws in the carpeted floor to drag itself behind.
“I can yell louder! Is that what you want?” Alice’s bloody red voice boomed through the dock. The Dragon roared in retort.
“Dawn!” Howard shouted over the deck railing, fuse rifle in hand. He tossed it overboard. Dawn’s weakened arms barely got up in time. She fought to level the trembling barrel on the crimson Dragon’s long skull. Alice returned her shield to standard size to amplify the Dragon-scrambling frequency another hundred unheard decibels. It was all the beast could do to hold its chest off the ground with both razor talons. Dawn tugged back her trigger.
It took ten Chrysum rounds directly to the head to pierce its red armor. When it finally gave way, Dawn’s rifle incinerated a hole right through. She and the Dragon dropped at the same time.
“Dawn!”
“Dawn?”
“A… Alice?” Dawn called into the black. She blinked until her dim room focused around her. She was in her cabin in the belly of the Arcadia. “What… happened?”
“You became this galaxy’s first Dragon slayer,” Alice’s gentle blue glow filled the room.
“Thanks to you. It’s… dead?”
“Cooked also,” said Alice. A hazy memory of the smoking hole in its head lingered in Dawn’s head.
“Where are we now?” her thoughts jumped with the uneven return of her consciousness. She slid over to the porthole window.
“Somewhere outside of Jupiter. In the SkyLine,” Alice told her before she had a chance to touch it.
“Earthbound?”
“Yes,” Alice confirmed, “We conducted our investigation. We learned a great deal. It’s time we reported back to Marcus.”
“Alice… how did you know about that frequency? The one that immobilized the Dragons?” Dawn bounced to instead. It had all happened so fast, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to sort it all out.
“I didn’t. Well, I couldn’t be sure, anyway. I have files stored from the research of many theorists. That frequency vibrates Chrysum at an atomic level. Some research postulates that Chrysum is part of Dragons’ biological makeup. That’s why humans begin showing symptoms of 3D after prolonged exposure to Chrysum,” Alice explained.
“That’s Sheba’s research, isn’t it?” Dawn realized.
“It is,” answered Alice, “And it appears to have been correct.”
“So… you’ve got a bunch of research from my great aunt floating around in your memory banks?”
“I do,” said Alice.
“So… weird… Dawn yawned, “Never thought… her crazy ramblings would save me one day.”