“It’s not about winning points. It’s about the truth. That’s what no one’s given you, but it’s what you deserve. Come back with me. Hear the truth, about everything that’s happened in your absence,” Howard offered.
“What do you mean?”
“The Arcadia’s AI, Alice… I did to her with Sheba what I did to myself with Tim. The problem I discovered later, with DBS, is that you need an empty host body to successfully implant a consciousness. Alice… she may not be Sheba, but she knows everything Sheba knew, everything she felt. Come and speak with her. You owe it to yourself,” Howard entreated. Drogan’s gemstone eyes wandered down, to the spinning atmosphere of Jupiter.
“I owe it to her,” he grumbled, “But then what? I go back to Mukurus and await o
rders to kill you there?”
“You could finally have the choice to do what you want. What you think is right. Whether that means returning to Mukurus with us, or against us. There were only three Dragons on Saturn. I’m thinking they’re low on numbers. Together, maybe we can end your long charade at last. You… don’t have to lie anymore,” said Howard.
“With you?” Drogan scoffed at the idea, “Risk everything I’ve held together by the loosest strings…”
“Dawn is Sheba’s great-niece.” Those five words hit Drogan harder than a Chrysum cannon blast.
“Dawn? She’s…” he grumbled.
“Come and see yourself,” Howard hooked him before he could withdraw behind sixty years of bitter obedience. “fulfill your debt to Sheba. Then you can decide.”
Chapter Nineteen: An Extra Set of Wings
“Absolutely not, Howard!” Dawn barked into her transmitter. She’d been ecstatic to hear his voice until seconds ago, when he mentioned the company come to parlay. Despite her command, Dawn watched his pod’s signature near the Arcadia on her radar. “Did you hear me?” A thunk rocked the bridge. “Are you kidding? Howard!”
“That wasn’t me,” Howard told her. Dawn stiffened. Yellow eyes flashed through her mind. For a second she felt the simultaneous thrill of a hand between her legs and on her neck again. Then she grabbed her fuse gun and raced for the deck.
Dawn burst into the bright light of the Martian launch station. A dark figure stood against the reflective red glow of the planet below. Drogan. His wings curled around him, tighter than Dawn had seen before. They wrapped him like a funeral cloth, tight enough to condense his frame. Dawn snapped her gun up. She held her trembling sights on Drogan as his frame narrowed and shrunk. Her eyes widened to keep the water of fear inside. Drogan’s frame lost all definition. He shifted before Dawn’s eyes again, but not into the shape of Captain Kennedy. When his muscles and face defined themselves again, he was someone Dawn had never met. A man. He had long curls of auburn hair on his head, and across his chin. His chest swelled through his tight collared black shirt. His hands, while still sizeable, had fingers in place of talons. His yellow eyes and the dark slits above and below them were the only sign of the Dragon he’d been a second ago. Drogan’s dark gauntlet swirled away from him, into the form of a tall, featureless human body. Drogan’s lips shuddered apart, to let out the absolute last thing Dawn expected. A whimper.
“My God… You are…” He retained every intention of fulfilling his debt, but Drogan didn’t need to anymore, to make his decision. It was decided the second he realized where he knew Dawn from. The second he saw clearly the resemblance to his fiancée.
“What are you mumbling about?” Dawn barked. She stilled the shaking nose of her fuse gun on his skull.
“I knew I recognized you...” Drogan grumbled. A tear from each eye surged past restriction. They drew clear lines straight down his cheeks.
“You better start… making some sense!” Dawn flipped the activation switch on the side of her gun. Howard’s pod descended to the deck behind the amber-haired man.
“Before I was Drogan. Before I sacrificed my humanity so things would never come to this… people called me Christopher Droan,” his voice trembled with each unbelieving step towards the girl he’d almost killed. Twice. The flesh and blood of the love of his life.
“Christopher… no…” Dawn had heard the name before, in ghost stories at family parties. Her cousins never got a word of him out without a scolding.
“I am. And you’re…” Drogan swept his fingers back through his own hair. He gripped handfuls. He debated tearing them out for a hint of relief. Anything to escape the decision that tore him apart. “I’m going to help you take on Machaeus.”
“Who? A-a-and why would I believe you? That you’re here to help, or that you’re actually Chris-”
“Don’t say that name again, please,” Drogan sputtered. The hurt in his glowing eyes seemed anything but a fabrication. “Machaeus is my master. The Dragon AI that keeps the majority of their population alive and asleep. I… I violated your trust earlier. I was what Machaeus asked me to be. I… don’t want to, not anymore. Not ever again. I’ve done nothing to deserve your trust, but you should know that by telling you this I have eliminated any chance to return to Mukurus.”
“Machaeus and the Dragons can hear one another’s thoughts, even across galaxies,” Howard explained as his pod door shut behind him.
“Chances are, they already know about this betrayal. You don’t have to trust me… but you won’t make it through this without me,” said Drogan.
“This is… ridiculous,” Dawn couldn’t begin to sort it out there, on the deck of the Arcadia.
“Why don’t we discuss this below deck… as a crew?” it was Miller’s voice that came up from the stairs behind Dawn. He peeked out on the yellow-eyed man in horror.
There wasn’t a face in the bridge free of that terror. Even the bravest amongst them could neither keep their eyes on him or away from him for more than five seconds. Drogan stood at the center of the room, and the crew of the Arcadia, beside Howard, Miller, and Captain Dawn Redding. After failing to digest a lifetime’s worth of shock in minutes themselves, their initial pitch was met with resounding silence.
“I… don’t understand how helping…” Wagner cleared his throat to spit out, “Drogan fight this Machaeus is any less suicidal than our original mission.” Little as she believed it, Dawn looked to Drogan to explain. At the rise of his voice, winces spread across the room.
“The Dragons call Machaeus the Watcher. He keeps most of their population alive in hibernation, while I scout for the few of them that are still awake. If you strike Mukurus without addressing Machaeus, he’ll wake them all,” said Drogan.