Enslaved by the Alien Dragon Page 18

  “Yvette,” I said slowly, adjusting the location on the navigation system that was set at the front of the pod. “Listen to me. Fly this pod over the mountain range and keep travelling north until you hit Mount Heilbronn. The cities of Thirren will be evacuating. Get on a ship there and get off the planet.”

  “Are you coming with me?” Yvette asked, turning back to me.

  I frowned. “Of course not,” I said, without hesitation.

  “You said we were losing,” Yvette countered. “You said the battle was lost, so why—"

  “Drakon do not run,” I snarled. “What do you take me for?”

  “I took you for a smart man!” Yvette screamed back at me. Her eyes were bright with fury, but I knew the fury she was projecting on me was a defense mechanism she needed to hide her fear. “I thought you had sense! If you stay here, you will die!”

  “I am not leaving my home.”

  “This is not your home,” Yvette reminded me. “This was the land you were born in. Space is your home. You are a pirate.”

  “I am a pirate second,” I countered. “First and foremost, I am a Drakon of Thirren.”

  “You will be a dead Drakon of Thirren if you don’t come with me.”

  I heard the sharp drum of engines and I realized that the escape pods were taking flight. I turned in time to see at least seven zoom straight up in the air before clearing the mountain range.

  Time was running out and my frustration increased tenfold. I grabbed Yvette by the arm and pulled her violently towards me. She knocked into my chest and I saw her wince. I didn’t hesitate, however. I wound my hand around her neck, searching for the button at the base of her collar.

  “What are you doing?” Yvette gasped, struggling to extricate my hand from around her neck.

  “Ranel!” I heard Tarion scream at me. “What are you doing? Hurry up and get the girl on that fucking pod.”

  Two Nortian slaves rushed forward and jumped into the escape pod that I had been trying to convince Yvette to board.

  “Let go of me!” Yvette said, panting heavily.

  I found the clasp and hooked a claw into it. If I pushed hard enough, I could break the mechanism that held it in place and remove it from around Yvette’s neck.

  “What are you doing?” Yvette gasped.

  “I’m trying to give you your freedom,” I said.

  “No!” she screamed, putting both her hands on my chest as she pushed me back.

  I frowned, eternally perplexed by this strange human who couldn’t wait to cast off her shackles one micron and in the next was ready to risk her life to stay behind on a falling planet.

  “You don’t want to be free?”

  “If you remove my collar, I won’t be wearing a translation chip,” Yvette said. “I won’t be able to understand you… or anyone for that matter.”

  She was right, I realized. She would need to be fitted with a less cumbersome translator before her collar was removed. But there was no time for any of that now.

  “Fine, I will record a message that will give you your freedom—"

  The glass door to the escape pod closed and I realized that the two Nortian slaves were not about to sit around and wait for me to convince Yvette. Their pod shimmied away from the mountain’s edge, forcing Yvette and I to move back,

  I glanced around the mountain, grabbed Yvette’s hand and pulled her down the range. “There should be more pods—"

  “No!” Yvette screamed as she ripped her hand from my grasp.

  My claws scraped against her soft flesh and I saw thin streaks of blood ripple to the surface across her wrist. Yvette didn’t even seem to notice. Furious, I roared full in her face but she stood her ground and didn’t so much as blink.

  “I’m not scared of you!” she yelled back at me. “Not anymore.”

  That was my doing and I knew it. I had removed that necessary barrier between us, the one that needed to stay intact in order to exert any amount of control over another creature. I had torn it down the moment I decided to take her into my bed.

  “You are a fool,” I hissed, vaguely aware of several explosions happening a distance away.

  “And you are a—"

  Her last word was lost in the earth-shattering eruption that wrenched through the air and filled my nostrils with the sharp, acrid scent of lava. Yvette was pushed back and I managed to grab a hold of her just in time. Even I found it hard to stay on my feet as a barrage of wind and dirt hurled itself at us with merciless abandon.

  “Oh my God…” I heard Yvette whisper against my chest. “What’s happening?”

  “It’s over,” I replied. “Mount Krato is erupting.”

  21

  Yvette

  A part of me had always known I would die in a war zone. I had resigned myself to that knowledge the moment I had chosen a life in the armed forces. I had been nineteen years old and the decision had tunneled its way to the surface like a long-repressed memory.

  Once my desire had worked its way into my conscious mind, it seemed like the most natural, most logical decision in the world. Of course I would serve my country. My father and grandfather had both served and I had always listened to their war stories with an entitled pride. But it was more than just service. I wanted to live an extraordinary life.

  “The volcano will take out everything!” Tarion said as he rushed towards us. “We have to get off Thirren.”

  “We can’t just leave,” Lehar said, glancing around at the wreckage of his home world. “This is our home.”

  “If you stay, you will all die,” I said fiercely. “What good will you be to your people then? Thirren can’t afford to lose three commanders. You need to evacuate with the rest of your people.”

  “She’s right,” Tarion nodded. “We have to go.”

  I glanced up and saw Ranel’s ashen face. His eyes were hooded with loss and I realized he was already saying goodbye to Thirren. I wanted to reach out to him, but now was not the time.

  The three large Drakon stood around in a loose semi-circle. I stood slightly apart from them— not quite in the inner circle, but not outside it either.

  “This can’t be happening,” Lehar said. His features were distorted with denial. “We are Drakons of the Hielsrane. We cannot flee our own planet.”

  I watched as Ranel looked between his two fellow commanders. I saw the conflict in his eyes. It was not in his nature to run away; I recognized that immediately. But he was also logical, sensible and mature enough to see that there was no other way.

  I reached out and grabbed his hand. His eyes flickered down to our connected limbs. “Please Ranel,” I said. “I know this isn’t easy. Nothing about war is easy. Whether you win or you lose, there are always casualties and there are always hard choices to be made. You think it was easy for me to see the dead faces of all the men and women in my unit? They died because of me.”

  “I have to live with that choice every single day. I couldn’t save my people. But you have a chance to save yours. Your planet may be lost, but your people are not. Don’t you think the Pax will hunt them down, pod by pod? How will they survive without you to protect them?”

  I could see my words start to make an impact. Lehar’s features clouded momentarily and he sighed with resignation. Tarion looked at me as though he were seeing me for the first time.

  “We have to go,” Tarion said at last.

  “Yes,” Ranel agreed, and I breathed an internal sigh of relief.

  “Lehar and I will take this pod,” Tarion said, pointing to the pod directly in front of us. “The two of you take the pod to the right. We need to get up in the air before the eruption reaches us.”

  I looked back and saw spitting orange lava, molten and ruthless, erupt from the mountain’s fissures. It bubbled to the top and gushed over the mountain’s gaping mouth in thick, fluid waves. Having successfully accomplished their goal, the Pax destroyers seemed to fly higher up into the sky, but I realized it was because of the volcano’s violent spitting. Th
ick chucks of molten rock were being flung from the volcano’s opening with deadly purpose. The lava was moving fast and I realized that it wouldn’t take that long to reach us if we stayed on the ground.

  Ranel grabbed my arm again and pushed me into an empty pod. It was only then that I realized that Lehar and Tarion were in their pod and it was already pushing off the ground, creating a wealth of steam that was catapulting them into the air. Ranel followed me inside the pod and pushed a button to seal off the door. The moment the glass shut in on us, the pod started to vibrate slowly until it became an incessant gyration that had my teeth chattering rapidly.

  Thankfully, once we had lifted off, the vibration slowed to an easy tempo and the craft seemed to relax immediately. I could feel the power of our take off as we climbed higher and higher in the air. Ranel steered the ship, whose controls were straightforward and user friendly. I had the mechanisms figured out within minutes, but my main focus was on the surrounding land.

  The volcanic eruption had sent hot lava flowing down to the base of the mountain. Now it was creeping through the land and swallowing everything in its path. Just when I thought it was done, more lava spewed from its mouth and fiery orange tongues seemed to whip out everywhere. I couldn’t feel the heat from inside the pod, but I could sense it somehow, and it made my skin tingle with discomfort. I wondered if Ranel felt heat in the same way I did.

  The mountains seemed to rejoice in the eruption. They stood proud and tall, mammoth pillars that had been standing since the dawn of time and would go on standing even after the rest of us had crumbled to dust. The same could not be said for the rest of Thirren, however. I watched with gut wrenching sadness as lava ate up everything in its path, including two ships that had been damaged in the Pax attack.

  I was supposed to be in my seat, but I abandoned it in order to stand by Ranel’s side. My vantage point gave me a unique perspective of the warzone.

  Thirren’s beauty was in its wild mountains, rough terrain and primitive nature, but all that was gone now, extinguished by the Pax’s brutal attack. The sky was filled with red smoke that seemed to weave and bend as we flew through the clouds. I wondered how Ranel could navigate and I realized his eyesight was probably a lot better than mine.

  Ranel was steering our pod away from the volcano and the small army of Pax destroyers. I felt his muscles tense under the rough leather of the worn tunic he wore. His wings were folded neatly against his back, but they flinched every time a sound echoed in the distance. His tail swung from side to side in an ever-increasing tempo that reminded me of manic pacing.

  Tentatively, I put my hand on Ranel’s shoulder. I prayed he wouldn’t push me away because I needed this as much as he did.

  He stiffened under my touch but he didn’t push me away. Smoke rose into the sky in large tendrils and I closed my eyes, trying to keep the suffocating memories at bay.

  “Look upon your city, human,” Zellin said with childish glee. “This is what you chose.”

  I stood there, staring at broken buildings, bodies and the unseeing eyes of the dead. The fresh scar on my face was bleeding heavily but I was actually grateful for the searing pain.

  “I didn’t want this—”

  Zellin’s hand swung forward and smacked me across the face. It was lighter than I expected, a slap meant to insult rather than hurt. Zellin was reminding me of my new status among his minions.

  “If you had accepted my gift,” Zellin continued pleasantly, as though we were simply finishing a spirited conversation, “Then we would not be in this situation.”

  The collar around my neck made it possible for me to understand his words perfectly, but its weight was too much to bear.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked as the Pax guard pushing me forward walked me right up to a massive spacecraft, the likes of which I’d never seen before.

  “Wherever I please,” Zellin replied. “You are a slave now. You no longer have the right to make decisions. You are nothing more than an object now. Your only purpose is to do the bidding of the beast that owns you. Do you understand?”

  I gritted my teeth together, hoping that would keep the fear from my face. “I will never be anyone’s slave,” I said with certainty. “I will escape. I will get away from here and then I will find my way back to Earth. I’ll warn them about—"

  “You will never see your home again,” Zellin said in an almost gentle tone. “Say goodbye to Earth. It is lost to you now.”

  I watched Thirren burn from the safety of our escape pod, but I was really seeing Earth as I had left it – a violated planet that would never be the same again. I wondered if Earth had recovered. The Pax had infiltrated many cities and taken many slaves, but there were still places that were oblivious to what had really happened. It was denial at its finest, but I took comfort in the fact that I knew Earth continued to exist.

  But Thirren…

  I squeezed Ranel’s shoulder. “I watched my city burn,” I told him softly. “I saw my friends die. At least you were spared the latter.”

  Ranel’s voice came out in a soft yet urgent growl. “They will pay for this,” he swore. “I swear it by all the stars in the galaxy. The Pax Alliance will rue the day they ever decided to launch an attack on the home of the Hielsrane.”

  I wanted to caution him, but the injustices in my own life made me cry out in support of his words. The Pax were a scourge and they needed to be taken down. And if anyone could do it, it was the Hielsrane.

  22

  Ranel

  The pod zoomed through the air, effortlessly weaving past the plumes of murky fog that seemed to be following us everywhere. The escape pods had been designed to be command sensitive, so they were both easy to fly and fast to react.

  The smell of fire hung heavy in the air; I could sense it even through the pod’s protective encasing. Yvette stood by my side, her hand pressed against my shoulder. She applied pressure every time we heard another bubbling explosion off in the distance. For the first time since we had met, I was able to relate to her. She may not have seen her whole planet turned to dust and ash, but she had been wrenched from her home t after a terrible defeat. There was something incredibly lonely in that knowledge.

  As we passed over the range of Mount Royal, I saw the peaks and battlements of the old stone castle that had been erected over a thousand years ago. The red flag had been hoisted up on the tallest battlement and it sat there and waved at me sadly. The royal guard was gone. The castle and the surrounding city had been evacuated the moment the Pax destroyers had cleared Thirren’s atmosphere.

  “How many Drakon lived in that city?” Yvette asked.

  “Two thousand,” I replied. “Give or take a hundred.”

  “And what about the city we’re travelling to now?” Yvette asked.

  “Heilbronn is smaller,” I replied. “It had a population of eight hundred and forty at last count.”

  “Will we make it in time?” Yvette asked.

  I knew that most of the larger spaceships would have taken off by now, carrying away the bulk of Thirren’s population. The truth of the matter was that I wasn’t sure. For all I knew, the remaining commanders had assumed we were dead and left us behind.

  “We’re almost there,” I replied evasively.

  “Can the pod function in space?” Yvette asked.

  “Not for long,” I replied darkly. “It doesn’t have enough energy or resources to carry us far into the galaxy. And even if it did, there aren’t enough food supplies on board to last us more than a week or two, depending on how sparingly we ration.”

  Yvette nodded. “Then let’s hope there’s a spaceship available when we get to Heilbronn.”

  The further we got from Mount Royal, the more the air cleared. We could actually see the raw beauty of Thirren.

  “Oh my God,” Yvette breathed, her breath ghosting over my shoulder.

  “What is it?” I asked, looking back at her in panic.

  “Is that waterfall purple?”


  I glanced down and saw the flat rocky summit of the Thorc mountain range. Boulders and rocks had created lose peaks at its apex, but they would reform again during heavy rains. Purple water skirted over the top in small floods, rejoining at the center of the mountain before dropping down almost a hundred feet into Lake Thorc.

  “It’s because of the belldor,” I replied.

  “The what?” Yvette asked.

  “They’re a type of fish that’s native to Thirren,” I said distractedly. “They secrete a chemical that turns the water purple.”

  I felt a small thrill sharing that information with her. But on its heels came the sharp slap of reality. I was sharing with her the wonders of a world that would soon be destroyed. Yes, Thirren was beautiful but that would cease to matter once we had cleared its atmosphere. We would never see it again.

  “I can see Heilbronn Mountain coming up,” I said, noticing its sharp, pinpoint peaks in the distance.

  Within the next twenty microns we had come upon the spindly mountains of Heilbronn. The moment we passed over it, I took in the city that lay in the cradle of its body. I had expected to find an abandoned city, but instead I found chaos. I could see two spaceships on the ground, both of which were royal crafts that were larger than the Wyvern. Next to them sat Gyygnar.

  There were a number of escape pods that littered the ground in front of the spaceships and a crowd of creatures hemming in different directions across the uneven surface. As our escape pod made its descent, I noticed a small group of guards aim their weapons at us. The moment they caught sight of me however, they lowered their weapons and they began to clear the area for landing.

  We had just touched down when I saw Dashel walking up to our pod. Lehar and Tarion flanked him, and they both looked out of breath.

  “Why aren’t you in the air yet?” I demanded.

  “Are you complaining?” Dashel asked.