This short story was originally written for the scifi magazine Boundary Shock Quarterly, Issue #21
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Maj And The Outlaws #2
The Trinordia Dragon
Maj Frost lay in a makeshift hammock they’d strung together from a sheet and some twine and lashed to the front porch of a man they’d killed a week ago. The body was gone, which left the house unoccupied and Maj was nothing if not an opportunist. They flicked their fingers in the air, manipulating a series of screens only Maj could see, displayed in their field of view from one of many mods in their eyes and brain.
Maj was looking for buried treasure.
A week ago Maj and two handfuls of other condemned had been launched from a GSA ship in space down to this uncomfortable planet. Too hot in the summer. Too cold in the winter. Windy during the day and at night, just to be annoying. The GSA had been generous enough to fire down a bundle of supplies, but they didn’t offer too much help. Everyone involved was a criminal.
Their exile on Ivis Three was meant to be a last chance. No one was good to the GSA if they were dead, but people also liked to have something to do with their lives. So fire criminals down to Ivis Three, give them a week’s worth of food and some hammers, point them at a pit mine of trinordia and promise more supplies in exchange.
Without any way off the planet, a small colony and it’s pit mine grew into a place some people could call home.
Even if the sky was green.
Maj had no intention of making Ivis home. They’d run amock until the GSA was forced to drop them here all in the name of chasing down one guy: Hudson Grey. Hudson had gotten himself exiled pursuing Maj’s sister, Oyana. And then got stuck. There were no shuttles or infrastructure here enough to get a person off planet once they were dropped. The trinordia only escaped thanks to a rail gun and some truly massive g’s—enough to liquefy most people.
But Oyana and Maj were not most people and with any luck, Hudson had developed a plan in the year he ruled over the colony. Maj just had to find it in the mess of data he left behind in his implants.
Maj flicked their fingers to scroll through more text.
Somewhere in all of this had to be at least an idea of what to do. Hudson had an extensive diary of his thoughts stretching back to at least his college days.
An interesting research tangent revealed Hudson was a member of an organization called Orchid. He’d done two jobs for them and earned membership, but clearly had ambitions to rise in their ranks. Orchid seemed to act wherever the GSA’s long hand couldn’t reach. Both on the edge of colonized space and in the forgotten corners of her heart.
Since Oyana and Maj would still be criminals when they got off this planet, Maj intended to make contact with Orchid. Work outside of the GSA was hard to come by and they’d need to start over.
Maj also found what appeared to be half a database of information on Oyana and her father. Dear old dad had put the bounty on Oyana to begin with, but Maj took care of him first. It turned out, killing a CEO in his secret research facility was easier than stealing his money. So Dad was dead, but Maj was still broke.
But with Hudson gone, this week was probably the most peaceful week Maj and Oyana—
Screaming.
Desperate, uncontrolled screaming.
Oyana.
Maj’s heart clenched. They lurched out of the hammock and galloped on all fours across the deck. They shouldered the front door in and found Oyana curled up on the floor, her hair fanned out on the carpet, tears streaming from her wide open eyes, her fingers clenched on her head like she wanted to tear something out of her own brain.
Beside her, Harlow—gentle, softspoken Harlow—knelt at Oyana’s head, torn between touching her and afraid it would make things worse. Harlow embodied gothic style. Her pale skin was almost translucent, her black hair straight down to her waist. She’d been fired down to the planet with Maj and hadn’t been adjusting well. A life in a low-grav laboratory didn’t prepare one for pitmining volitile trinordia to survive.
She looked up at Maj, tears in her eyes, then down at Oyana who stopped screaming but was now hyperventilating on the floor, her hands still clenched on her head.
Maj turned away. They raced on all fours to the front of the deck where they had a view of the entire colony tucked against the mountain. Hudson had picked the top of the hill to build his elaborate two story house when everyone else had little better than shacks. Which meant Maj’s modded eyes could pick out Rune over a mile away from the top of the hill. Thankfully, the medic wasn’t that far.
Maj bellowed, modding their voice for good measure. “RUNE!”
And just to make the emergency clear, they pinged Rune’s personal line repeatedly and with gusto.
So it wasn’t a surprise when a big black man burst out of a doorway and sprinted up the hill like a freight train on a deadline. Rune was perhaps the largest person Maj had ever met. He stood head and shoulders over a normal person, which put Maj up to his knee on good day, with hands the size of dinner plates and thighs like an entire forest of trees. Maj had met him only a week ago when they’d been stuffed into a pod being shot down to Ivis Three. Rune had already been strapped inside. He still wore the GSA-assigned polyfabric uniform they gave all their prisoners, not the least because it was the only outfit he had that fit. He wasn’t visibly modded, but the GSA didn’t send a medic out into the field without some impressive hardware under the hood, so when he darted up the hill without even winding himself, Maj wasn’t surprised.
Maj met him at the door to hold it open and he skidded through, down on his knees and scanning Oyana with fingers and mods without a word.
“What do you know?” he barked at Maj.
“Not much. This is the third time this week. Harlow what were you two doing?”
Harlow stared wide-eyed at Rune and didn’t seem to hear Maj’s question.
Maj grabbed her shoulders. Harlow started hard and shook her head. “What? Sorry, what?”
“You and Oyana were talking, right?”
“Yes, we were just on the couch.” Harlow pointed weakly at the furniture and trailed off, her dark eyes distant.
“What happened, Harlow?”
“What? Oh. We were talking. Oyana said she had a headache and was going to get a glass of water. She stood up and just… she started screaming….”
Rune grunted as he counted Oyana’s heartbeat with two fingers against her neck. “Same as last time, then, headache and then the attack.”
“What’s causing this?”
Rune pressed his thumb to Oyana’s forhead and the way his eyes flickered, he was reading something Maj couldn’t see. “What do you know about her mods?”
“Her skeleton is hardened but I don’t know anything else. We were raised separately.”
Oyana whimpered softly.
Then Rune did something with the thumb he had on her forehead and Oyana collapsed all at once into unconsciousness. Her hands relaxed from their claws and her face lost it’s tension. Her eyes closed.
Harlow sighed heavily.
Maj’s heart did not settle down.
Rune lifted her gently onto the couch, brushing Oyana’s hair away from her face with one finger, and looked at Maj. “I can run a few scans—“
“Do it,” Maj said immediately. “Every scan you’ve got.”
Rune offered a soft smirk. “Normally there’s paperwork.”
Maj shrugged. “I’ll sign something if you want but you’re not GSA anymore.”
Something hard flickered across Rune’s face, but he buried it quickly and turned back to Oyana without a word. Had that been too blunt? Maj had only known him for a week. They weren’t exactly best friends.
Rune stood at the edge of the couch and extended his hands over Oyana, fingers splayed like he was about to play a piano. His eyes flickered again, sorting through menus, then he passed his hands from Oyana’s head to her toes and back.
Harlow touched Maj’s shoulder carefully. Gently. And whispered, “I’m going back home. I’ll bring dinner up later.”
Maj nodded at her.
A moment later, Rune pushed his data to Maj so they could see it together, hovering over Qyana’s body like a three dimensional x-ray projection. Bar graphs and charts populated to one side in units of measure Maj didn’t understand. Rune flipped through layers of scan results: skin, muscle, organs, veins, bone, mods.
He stopped there in visible surprise. Maj stood up on two feet next to him to get a better view.
“That can’t be right,” he muttered.
Maj shook their head. This looked exactly right. Precisely the kind of thing a crazy CEO in charge of a secret research lab might do to his second child when his first one proved unruly and uncontrollable.
Oyana was overloaded with mods. Congested from head to toe, threaded into every fold of her brain, tapped into her eyes, nose and ears, laced between every muscle, tendon, and nerve ending. Oyana was possibly more mod than organic and their sheer number tangled up in her body like a loose skien of yarn after the cat got to it.
“It’s too bad I already killed our father,” Maj muttered.
Rune nodded. “Answers would be helpful.”
“Oh no, I’m sure we can find answers at his lab. I’d just like to kill him again.”
Rune’s face made a movement that he aborted before Maj could read it. He probably didn’t like how casually Maj spoke about murder. But he was a medic. Life over death was his thing.
Vidar would understand.
Like Maj and Rune, Vidar had been fired down to the planet’s surface a week ago. Unlike Rune, Vidar had expertise in killing people, not saving them.
Maj took a deep breath. “Ok. I don’t think we’re getting an easy answer, but thanks for the scans. How long will she be out?”
“I would say a couple hours, but I don’t know what this is doing,” Rune gestured to the mods. “So she might be up sooner.”
Maj wiped their face with both hands. What the fuck were they supposed to do about this? None of their resources were here on Ivis Three and getting off planet was no closer than it had been yesterday.
“I need a drink,” Maj grumbled.
“I’ll pass,” Rune said. “Call me if anything changes, though.”
“I will.”
Rune saw himself to the door in time to allow someone else in as he lift. Maj stared down at Oyana for another moment, just watching her breathe peacefully, until the woman who had come to see her started bouncing with anxiety.
Maj waved Penelope into the kitchen and poured them both a drink of some unlabeled liquor Hudson had stashed. Maj needed a shot to focus their thoughts. Penelope probably needed one to stop stressing.
Unlike Maj, Rune, and Harlow, Penelope had been exiled to Ivis years ago. Before Hudson had come in and taken over the colony, Penelope and four others had formed a council in order to organize and make decisions. That had worked well until Hudson had killed most of the council, named himself their leader, and beat everyone else into submission. Including Penelope.
Maj had dragged her out of Hudson’s bed that night a week ago, a privileged position Maj got the feeling Penelope had never wanted. They hadn’t talked about it since.
They had talked about this, though. About Penelope coming to Maj whenever something slightly out of place happened in the colony.
So when Maj threw their drink back and put the glass down, they didn’t even ask what the problem was. “You know I’m not in charge here, right? You don’t answer to me.”
Penelope tuned her glass around in her hands without drinking it.
“And you know you have a new council that you can go to with problems. That’s what the group is for. Hudson is gone. For good.”
Penelope’s head dropped further, but she stayed put on the stool at the counter.
Maj felt like they’d just kicked a puppy and took Penelope’s drink from her with a sigh. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a dragon at the front gate.”
Maj paused with the shot half way to their lips. Blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
Then Penelope sent a video feed to Maj’s mod inbox and Maj put the drink down to watch it full hyperdigital glory. A recording from one of the guards at the wall down at the bottom of the hill.
A creature the size of a small space shuttle, four legs, two wings, glittering in shifting shades of green and blue that made it hard to pick out against the green sky and blue grass that was Ivis Three. Long neck and tail. Claws. A dragon if Maj had ever seen one.
It was fucking huge and it passed in the distance, it’s arrow-shaped head pointed at the gate like it was considering who lay behind it.
It didn’t seem to be approaching, though, and after watching the video several times, Maj threw back Penelope’s shot and said, “Take this to the council. It doesn’t look like it’s threatening us, it’s probably just wandering by. But ask any of the older folks if they’ve seen it before.” Older in this case didn’t mean physically older, as the GSA dumped people regularly on the planet’s surface at any age. But there were some people who had been around since the founding of the colony. At least twelve years ago.
Penelope nodded her head quickly, her short hair bobbing, and scrambled back out of the house. If anyone had seen this creature before, Maj could reassure Penelope and the council.
Maj sighed.
How had they come to be in charge of anything? They were much more effective when pointed at something that needed slaughtering, not… people management. That required things like friendship. Maj shuddered.
They opened Hudson’s diary and resumed combing for clues on his escape plan.
***
Treasure hunting, Maj discovered, was very boring for a very long time punctuated by sudden excitement. They spent hours combing through Hudson’s notes, his diary, the paperwork he collected the way an old lady collects spoons. There was a lot of nothing. A few details about the contract Hudson had taken on Maj’s sister reassured her that killing him had been the right move. They found a few other references to the Orchid group, but Maj couldn’t contact them until they got off planet.
Then, tucked away in a file, Maj found the list. Offplanet it wouldn’t have been anything significant, but here on Ivis Three, it was the treasure they’d been looking for: a list of parts and material necessary to build, or perhaps repair, a surface-to-space shuttle.
Based on the data Maj had been digging in for days, Hudson didn’t have the expertise to build a shuttle from scratch. It was far more likely a shuttle had been found, and Hudson had been working to repair it. Unfortunately, both of Hudson’s lackeys were also dead, and Maj hadn’t thought to download their data before their bodies had been cremated. Maj had only been here a week, though, it was entirely possible Hudson had additional sympathizers both in the colony or hiding in the jungle beyond the walls. He certainly hadn’t hid any shuttle here where anyone could stumble on it.
Maj was also not an expert. They knew enough to be dangerous, which for Maj largely meant enough to destroy thoroughly anything that got in their way. Based on the parts list, Hudson seemed to be retrofitting the shuttle to run on different fuel. There was no fuel here because there was nowhere for anyone to go. But there was a fuckton of trinordia.
Trinordia, when refined, was a powerful energy source. It was stable in solid form, which was how the colony carved it out of the mountainside. There was no way to refine it here. Instead, tons of it was launched into space for the GSA to collect via a railgun system. Maj was pretty sure they could stuff themselves into the box and survive the launching forces involved, but they were probably the only one. Oyana needed to come with them and Vidar didn’t want to stay stuck here either. So the question was: had Hudson found a way to refine the trinordia here on Ivis Three into solid fuel blocks, or was that problem the reason why he’d been stuck here for over a year?
Trinordia wasn’t typically used as starship fuel. But when trying to escape the prison planet, anything that burned could work in a pinch.
It was too bad Nancy and Owen were already dead. They might have known where Hudson was stashing his ship and supplies. And if any other colony member preferred Hudson’s leadership, they were smart enough to keep their mouth shut the past week.
From the couch, Oyana muttered in her sleep, then sluggishly sat up. She blinked, looking around the room as if she’d never seen it before. When her attention landed on Maj, her focus cleared and she gave Maj a watery smile.
Maj pushed the list to Oyana’s inbox, but cleared all of her research and approached the couch. “How you feeling?”
Oyana sighed, “The headache is gone. I’m sure it will be back.”
“These started before I came down, right?”
“About two months before. They were weaker at first.”
“Okay,” said Maj, “that means it’s not a trinordia allergy or something. You were here for a year and a half before they started.”
Oyana shook her head in agreement
Maj sat on the couch on the corner. “I had Rune run a bunch of scans and we found some weird shit none of us understand.”
Oyana laughed, a little huff of air. “So you’ve seen the mess inside my head.”
Maj gave her a wry smile. “Do you know much about it?”
Oyana sighed and held her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “I can tell you how many surgeries it took. Or all the testing they did. I’m faster and stronger, of course.” She opened her hand as if to reference the steel wrapped around her bones. “But I never saw Dad’s paperwork. And he never talked to me about it of course. I have some perception mods, enhanced pressure and temperature sensing, some weird settings in my eyes that allow for heat detection. They tested me with ion trail recognition, like that matching memory game you do as a kid. So if I’ve seen a ship’s signature, I can reliably identify it again.” She shrugged little. “It’s entirely possible this is a mod that’s gone bad. I wouldn’t know. I’m sure none of it is legal or well-vetted.”
Maj grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “We’ll figure it out. But in the meantime I have some good news and some strange news. Check your inbox.”
Oyana’s eyes went a little unfocused as her attention shifted inward. Maj watched her watch the video of the dragon, and the surprise on Oyana’s face told Maj this thing had probably not come near the colony before.
“What in the spiral ring is that?”
“Penelope just brought it to me today. The recording is from front gate. It doesn’t seem to be a threat, so I asked her to bring the video to the council. They’ll know what to do about it.”
“I’m surprised native fauna that large exists here in the GSA didn’t do anything about it before starting the colony.”
“They probably didn’t want to draw too much attention to Ivis since it’s supposed to be uninhabitable.”
“There’s a zenobiologist somewhere missing out,” Oyana laughed.
“More importantly,” Maj clapped their hands once. “I have found a treasure map!”
Oyana gave them a skeptical look with one eyebrow up.
Maj hedged, “Okay, it’s a packing slip, but it’s a good one. Hudson left behind a list of supplies that I believe he was collecting in order to build, or repair, a shuttle to get himself off planet. I don’t know where he hid the thing, but I think he was trying to use trinordia to fuel it. And we’ve got a way to scan for trinordia.”
“You’re right.” Oyana sat up, her eyes sparkling. “We use it up in the pit mine to give us direction. But it’s just a little hand held machine.”
“I thought so. Do you know how good it is? Does there need to be six tons of trinordia for it to work?”
“No it’s more sensitive. GSA wants us digging up deposits as small as a quarter ton. Depending on how much Hudson stashed, we might even be able to detect it from here in the colony.”
Maj accessed their contacts and dashed a note off to Vidar requesting that he bring back the sensor when his shift was done tonight. They refocused on Oyana. “Okay, our project tomorrow is to find that stash. I don’t plan on staying here for another week. I’m sure you’re more than over it.”
“I don’t know, you get used to nature’s soundtrack. Instead of recirculating fans.” Oyana chuckled. “But we won’t figure out these headaches without better medical access.”
“Or Dad’s notes.”
Maj might have eliminated their father, but his company still ran its business and Maj had no doubt the scientists involved had simply replaced Oyana and continued their work. Once they got back into civilized space, their records were Maj’s first stop.
***
Maj sat in the back of an electric-powered truck with an open top and an open bed. A steel frame boxed in the occupants. The tires were oversize, and made of a flexible, solid material that didn’t require air to keep their shape. Sufficient for rock climbing in considerable terrain.
They weren’t doing a whole lot of rock climbing around here, but the large tires and heavy tread were great for plowing through the jungle surrounding the colony. In the driver’s seat, Vidar tried his best to keep them on a smooth path, sweeping mostly parallel to the front gates in ever wider arcs. As a front passenger, Oyana had the trinorida scanner in both hands, squinting to read it in the dim dawn while the truck bounced and wiggled around.
Vidar had come down to Ivis with Maj, Rune, and the others, but he kept his personal details close to the chest. Maj knew he was dangerous and skilled with the knife, but not much else. That didn’t bother Maj. He wasn’t visibly modified, but like Rune, Maj suspected he had a lot of work done under the surface.
The colony sat in a valley, wedged like an arrowhead against a mountain range that stretched into the horizon. Maj hadn’t seen a map yet, nor were they particularly interested in finding one, but from the floor of the jungle the mountains seemed to stretch forever. Vidar bounced the electric truck from side-to-side in the valley—like radar—extending slowly outward toward that distant point where Maj, Penelope, and the front gate had seen the dragon creature native to Ivis.
So far the scanner insisted on pinging the pit mine halfway up the mountain side behind them, but they were looking for a stash much smaller. One that wouldn’t accidentally be stumbled upon. Maj understood why Hudson had taken over security, and not just the council itself. It was easier to hide things in the jungle if everyone wandering in the jungle reported to you.
The truck skidded out of forest and onto shale and meadow, sliding a bit to the left as Vidar did his best to keep it going. Green sunlight broke through the treetops and their passing startled local birds in great flocks.
Vidar slowed the truck as they came to the foothills of the mountain range and prepared to turn around again, when Oyana put her hand on his shoulder. He rolled the truck to a stop.
Oyana squinted at the scanner, making an unsatisfied face. “I’ve picked up something. Could just be a small deposit in the hillside, but it’s the sort of thing you’re looking for, Maj.”
Vidar idled the truck gently forward, following Oyana’s direction. Maj was about to scramble up the hillside themselves, when abruptly they found the entrance to a cave. The angle tucked it out of sight, and probably out of wind, but it was at least as large is the front gates of the colony.
Vidar flicked the headlights on and trundled inside.
Maj stood up in the back seat. They didn’t need the headlights to see that this cave stretched deep into the mountainside and split quickly into confusing paths and caverns. Oyana directed them to the left on a fork but shortly thereafter Vidar had to park the truck. An old landslide obscured a portion of the tunnel.
“We can bring the truck in, but I don’t know if we will be able to turn it around later or have to back out.”
Oyana hissed suddenly, and pressed her hand against the middle of her forehead. She squeezed her eyes shut. Another headache.
Maj scrambled on all fours across the front seat and over the hood of the truck. “I’ll scout it out.” They tapped their temple. “And let you know what I find.”
Maj did not wait for approval. They rushed into the darkness, activating the skin mod that made them all but impossible to see, especially in the dark. Anyone with a heat sense would still be able to find them, but Maj intended to upgrade as soon as they got off planet.
Their off-planet to-do list was getting a little long.
The rock slide was minimal and could be cleared if necessary. Maj passed the final boulders and crept into a larger room that had once been a natural cavern and since been dug out with some of the colony’s mining tools. Maj saw marks on the edges of the walls that had smoothed the natural cave into a wider hole in the earth.
And there really was a shuttle in here. Small enough to drag through the tunnel, large enough to hold at least three, maybe five people. It appeared to be standard issue GSA—or it used to be—it had clearly been modified and patched with the tools at hand. Hopefully that made it space worthy.
A panel in the body of the shuttle lay on the floor of the cave like a ramp, and the darkness inside was too deep for Maj to see from the tunnel. But the mess of stone, metal pieces, and—were those rough gems?—spilled out of the shuttle and across the floor not unlike a treasure hoard.
Maj crept deeper into the cavern along the edge, circling the shuttle in order to find another doorway, a window, any other way in that wasn’t so obviously an animal’s den. The shuttle’s small wings had been folded in along its body, and in the back along the engines Maj saw additional panel damage that would need fixing. But it was in surprisingly good shape considering neither Hudson nor his cronies were engineering experts.
In the back of the cavern, Maj found the trinordia. It wasn’t solid as expected, but in discrete ten gallon drums. Liquid.
Explosive.
How Hudson had processed raw, inert trinordia into its liquid form, Maj couldn’t begin to guess. If the shuttle was rigged to run on liquid trinordia, then getting off planet wasn’t going to be the problem. It was surviving the launch that would test them.
This escape plan wasn’t much safer then stuffing a person into the rail gun that delivered raw trinordia to the GSA in orbit.
At least they would all live or die together.
Maj approached the nose of the shuttle, peering into the polyglass of the cabin. A large shadow moved behind the front seats, then slid like a snake out of the fallen side-panel doorway. Arrow-shaped head, long neck, thick legs with blunt black nails. Maj didn’t stick around to see more. They skittered away from the shuttle back to the edge of the tunnel on all fours, sending video evidence in batches to Vidar just in case.
Their skin mod didn’t seem to make a difference. The creature tracked their movement with small, gleaming eyes. As it exited the shuttle, its wings ruffled, like the flapping of a thick leather.
Maj turned and ran. They weren’t a hero, and they had confirmed the location of the shuttle. Everything else was a problem for tomorrow.
By the time Maj returned to the truck, Vidar had turned it around and was idling with the headlights on, pointed toward the exit. Maj sent him a text. Start running. Maj vaulted into the back of the truck as it started down the tunnel. Vidar never even looked back.
Maj steadied themselves with a hand on Oyana’s chair, peering back into the darkness of the cave to see if they would be followed.
The dragon lives back there. Maj sent to both Vidar and Oyana silently. The shuttle is intact, but the creature has made it a den. We will have to steal the shuttle or clear out the dragon.
Oyana sat in the front seat, the scanner in her lap as she clenched her hands on her head and tried her best to breathe quietly. Vidar navigated the truck through the fork, and Maj thought they might be in the clear when Oyana whimpered softly.
And the dragon came charging up the tunnel.
Maj leapt from the truck immediately with instructions to Vidar to keep driving. They picked up a few stray rocks and launched them at the dragon’s head, harassing the creature so it would follow them down the fork instead of chasing the truck. The effect was laughable. A tiny human on all fours the size of a large dog throwing pebbles at a creature so big it could swallow Maj whole by accident.
The dragon did not follow Maj, but it did skid to a stop at the fork, swinging its head down the tunnel in their direction with small squinted eyes. Better than nothing.
The two of them squared off in the tunnel, Maj ready to sprint further in at the slightest sign the dragon would come for them, the dragon peering into the tunnel with wings flicking in anticipation.
Then the dragon turned away and lunged toward the truck instead. Maj raced after it, throwing rocks and trying to come up with another option. They were better at taking down person-sized people than they were dragon-sized ones.
Maj heard the truck rev and Oyana’s alarmed voice echo in the tunnel. Then, all at once, they were outside again, tucked among the rocks of the mountainside and with much less room to maneuver. The truck’s tires skidded on loose gravel. The dragon’s tail swung back and forth with every step.
With no better options, Maj took a running leap at the dragon and pinned themselves on the top of its tail. They sank small fingers into lizard hide, and clamped down with serrated teeth to be sure.
The dragon nearly sat down in surprise. Its wings flared wide. Maj used the opening to run straight up the creature’s back. The dragon reared up, a huge, snarling roar issuing from its chest and vibrating up through Maj’s feet. The distraction worked.
Vidar got the truck under control and squirreled it out of the rocks and back toward the jungle.
Maj leapt off the back of the dragon toward the closest mountainside. Hot, wet breath washed over them as they fell, and a massive click of sharp teeth whiffed above them. Maj landed hard, rolled, and scrambled on all fours straight down the mountainside. Their titanium bones took the impact and let Maj keep running despite the questionable footing.
Maj saw Oyana standing in her seat in the truck, waving them down. But halfway across the rocks, Oyanna’s face blanched, and her hand reached for her own head.
The dragon roared behind Maj, too close for comfort. Maj dodged left when the dragon tried to stomp, then right to avoid teeth. They dove into the back of the truck as Vidar got it going again.
They weren’t going to outrun it though, and Maj was out of ideas.
“Stop yelling,” Oyana said, clutching her head. “Stop yelling, stop yelling.” She suddenly pointed at the dragon and screamed across all of Maj’s senses, not just her hearing. “Stop yelling!”
Pressure crushed outward in a cone from Oyana’s pointed finger, out the back of the truck, and enveloped the dragon. Maj collapsed in the back of the truck, their ears ringing, and every mod in their head vibrating with static. For several seconds Maj couldn’t even access their contact list.
What the hell had that been?
Behind them, the dragon flared its wings and stuttered to a stop, snapping at the air like something had physically attacked it.
And Vidar dove the truck into the jungle.
Maj blinked up at the trees from the back of the truck thinking Oyana had done more to rescue them than either Maj or Vidar, and that her mods were meant to do more then give her headaches.
***
It was just falling dark and Maj sat on the couch, scrolling through information Hudson had left behind, when Oyana staggered into the room looking like she’d been wrung out and twisted. It was not an improvement from their morning jaunt into the dragon’s cave.
“Are you ready to talk about that psychic yell you did earlier?” Maj asked without looking away from the data. Shortly after saving them all, Oyana had passed out in the truck before they ever made it home. But the dragon had not pursued, so whatever power she’d harnessed had been enough to make it think twice.
Maj made sure Oyana got into bed and she had slept the rest of the day away. Whatever she had done took a lot of time to recover from. Hopefully she hadn’t drained anything vital.
Vidar agreed that no one should know about the shuttle yet, so Maj had parked the truck up on the hill. They both had expected a quite evening.
Oyana leaned on the back of the couch and whispered hoarsely, “I think it’s coming.”
That made Maj sit up straight and close their screens. “Say that again?”
Oyanna was pale and sweating. Her eyes were too wide, all the whites showing around them. “It’s coming to the colony right now. It’s coming for me.”
Maj stood up, grabbed Oyana’s shoulders. “The dragon? Right now?”
Oyana tried to nod and she stumbled into Maj, only remaining on her feet thanks to her sibling.
Then Maj received a ping from Vidar. They answered it and opened a voice channel. “Let me guess: the dragon is coming”
“I recommend we take the truck and run for the shuttle now.” Vidar’s voice didn’t sound stressed, but by the cadence, Maj knew he was on his way up the hill.
Maj slung Oyana’s arm over their shoulder and rushed out the door. They dumped her in the passenger seat and Vidar met them just in time for Maj to receive pings from both Penelope and Singe. Than a ping from Ruin.
Then the screaming started.
From the top of the hill where the truck had been parked, Maj look down on the colony valley and could see the dragon coming beyond the colony wall.
It looked the same as before—arrow shaped head, long neck and tail, wings—but this time it didn’t stay at a distance. This time it headed straight for the gates.
Maj climbed into the bed of the truck, and Vidar speed down the hill.
“Who are we taking?” Maj scrolled through her contact list. “Do you know how to fly a shuttle?”
“I can probably make it explode.”
Vidar would not be in charge of flying, then. “I’m calling Singe. We probably don’t have room for many more.”
“She’ll want to grab Rune.”
“I won’t say no to the medic,” agreed Maj.
Like Maj, Singe had come down to Ivis in the latest round of criminal abandonments. She was former GSA, though, like Rune, and the two tended to stick together since they shared history. Singe sat on the council and had been de-facto leader of their small crash-landed group in the moments before Hudson found them. Now Maj was about to fuck up her day.
The dragon didn’t attack the colony wall so much as simply climb over it. No one on-site stuck around to try and stop it. Ivis Three had no guns, no significant weaponry of any kind. A few knives. Someone had strung up a bow and arrow from native trees and birds. Nothing that could stand up to a dragon.
Like it was following a scent, the dragon trundled inexorably up the hill. It paused at occasional buildings long enough to swipe claws through their roofs, throwing debris into the street, and peer inside, clearly looking for Oyana. Whatever psychic sense it was following, Maj was thankful it wasn’t precise.
Colonists ran screaming from their homes up the hill, but the wedge of the valley between two mountains would only funnel them toward the truck. There was nowhere to hide. Regardless, the dragon paid them little attention.
Singe finally responded to Maj’s frantic pings and directed Vidar down to her house where she stood with Ruin on the porch, watching the dragon. Vidar skidded the truck to a stop in front of them and Maj yanked Ruin into the back since he didn’t seem to realize rescue was at hand. Singe stood on the wheel well and held on to the open frame as Vidar spun the wheels and sent the truck skidding against fleeing traffic down the hill.
To Maj’s surprise, their little truck whipped right by the dragon without it noticing. But then, if it was tracking some psychic signal, Oyana was putting out a big one.
Vidar crashed the truck right through the front gate and they zipped out into the forest, but Maj knew they had only bought themselves a little bit of time. So they opened a data channel to Ruin and Singe with everything they knew about the shuttle hidden in the mountainside.
It was time to get off this rock.
***
With the truck’s winch and a little bit of luck, clearing the tunnel enough to drag the shuttle out of its cave proved to be the easier of their problems. Figuring out how the machine ran on liquid trinordia without exploding was appreciably beyond everyone.
They had hauled the shuttle into a field large enough for take off, but Singe worked in the engine room cussing loudly and with vigor as she discovered more and more layers of modification. Singe was ex-GSA and while not a pilot herself, was the closest thing they had. If she couldn’t figure it out soon, they were all very doomed.
Maj parked Oyana in one of the shuttle’s seats and strapped her in just in case the headache made her pass out. Then they teamed up with Ruin and Vidar to clear out as much of the dragon’s hoard as possible while Singe figured out how to get the machine running.
They didn’t have enough time to tear it apart and rebuild it, nor the expertise for that anyway, but with every minute ticking down, Maj became more and more certain they would just have to push the launch button and cross all their fingers.
The dragon had collected every spare piece of metal , shiny rock, and apparently anything blue it could find. Maj ejected armfuls of material out the door just to reduce the weight of the shuttle. From front to back it measured just over ten meters plus engines and there were a surprising number of nooks and crannies inside. Every compartment, cabinet, and room had been stuffed full. Most of the items where man-made—Maj recognized pieces of the crafts that had brought criminals down planet-side and the bullet they used to send supplies. The creature had probably been collecting them for years. Maj didn’t know anything about rocks, but some of the things they hauled out into the clearing glittered in the rising moonlight. They were probably worthless, but they were quite shiny.
At the doorway—newly bolted in place—Maj saw the colony wall in the distance and the green-blue shape of the dragon climbing back over it, arrow head pointed in their direction.
“Time to go!” Maj yelled abruptly. They scrambled into the back to find Singe and yanked her into the hallway.
“When did you find this? How was it built?”
“No time for questions,” Maj said, pushing Singe despite the woman being twice Maj’s size. “Pretty sure you’re the best pilot we’ve got. Make it happen.”
“I don’t know anything about this craft!.”
“Neither do I, but the psychic dragon is hunting my psychic sister and we are leaving!”
Singe moved from the engines to the front of the shuttle and with what appeared to be random button presses, began a startup sequence. Lights turned on, several doorways both internal and external attempted to close. Some of them were successful. Maj had to dig a scrap piece of metal out of the shuttle’s external door frame before it screeched and complained to a shut. Hopefully an airtight one. Maj wasn’t betting on it.
Rune found a seat and buckled in next to Oyana so he could check her heart rate and shine a light in her eyes. Maj didn’t know what testing he was doing, but they were glad to have him aboard. Vidar took the copilot seat next to Singe and, without touching anything, began scanning the buttons and dials intently.
Singe grunted and made a vague gesture at the console. “I don’t understand how this ship has been Frankensteined together and we are all probably going to explode.”
“No pressure,” said Rune.
Oyana leaned back against the bulkhead and muttered, “Might as well find out. The dragon is coming this way.” Her pale face looked waxy and drawn.
Maj risked a glance out of the front of the shuttle’s polyglass window and cursed quietly at the sight of the forest shaking, trees and ferns waving wildly as something massive moved through them. They found a seat.
Singe muttered to herself but strapped in, and shook her head as she pressed a new series of buttons. She paused over one that lit up amber and said, “If you believe in anything, now is the time to send a prayer.”
She closed her eyes, and pressed the button.
Nothing happened immediately. Nothing happened for long enough that Singe opened her eyes and peered curiously back down the shuttle’s body to the engines like she might be able to see what was happening internally.
Than with an abrupt explosion, the shuttle jerked forward, lunged like a running animal, and Singe did everything she could to keep it going in a straight line. The sound was incredible. The entire shuttle jerked and shook as if it would fall apart into components.
The folded wings stretched out, grinding and complaining, and with another jolt, the shuttle was airborne. This did not improve the volume at all. Wind whistled through the cabin like the polyglass was made of a net, throwing Oyana’s hair into disarray.
According to the screaming alarms and blinking lights either the craft was about to explode, disintegrate, or the dragon was hot on their tail. Maj would put money on all three.
Singe attempted to steer the craft with some success. They gained altitude, banked over the forest, then suddenly the dragon was there, flying like an enemy aircraft across their bow.
Singe dove under it, pulled back to gain altitude again, and circled wide over the valley. If they crashed and burned now, the entire colony would know they had a shuttle.
If they crashed and burned, the colony knowing about the shuttle would probably be the smallest problem.
Okay, I figured it out. Vidar announced through the mod chat. The level of screaming wind and violent rattling wasn’t conductive to conversation. He reached for the console and flicked a series of levers. Preflight check is electric and initial atmospheric launch is hybrid. If we want to get off planet, we need to activate the trinordia engines.
Are we not running on engines? What was that explosion? Singe banked the shuttle again, trying to draw the dragon away from the colony at the very least. She stayed low over the trees.
We are not. They needed to be primed. He flipped a switch. That’s done. Vidar covered his hand over a large lever on the dashboard. Point us up and I’ll get us into space.
Ruin interjected, Are we sure this thing is spaceworthy?
Nope! Offered Maj unhelpfully.
We can’t outrun the dragon in atmosphere, said Singe. We can come back down if we need to… I think.
Singe angled the shuttle above the trees and pinged Vidar to go. Vidar pushed the lever up slowly and the shuttle jerked forward again, pinning everyone into their seats. This time the engines screamed, their power flooding the shuttle with heat and throwing it up out of the atmosphere of Ivis Three like a stone skipped on water.
The second they punched out of the atmosphere, the shuttle began leaking. Emergency foam seals popped on every wall and doorway. Most of them expanded appropriately. Others dribbled down the wall, their chemical makeup too degraded. The sound of the engines and air cut off into abrupt silence.
It kept them alive.
Singe pointed the ship away from Ivis, shoulders dropped in relief.
Maj, too small for a proper seat harness, floated up against their straps.
Oyana’s face flushed with new color and her eyes cleared a little as they put significant distance between them and the psychic dragon on Ivis. “I feel like a mountain has been sitting on my head.”
Ruin unstrapped from his seat. “I think there was a medkit back here. It might have a painkiller.” He pulled himself down the hall and Maj heard him open several containers.
Out of the atmosphere, the vibration settled and they were left with the engines pushing them out of Ivis’ gravity well. Some of the shuttles alarms still blinked, but Singe had managed to turn off their noise. Vidar figured out scanners, but there was nothing in the local space they needed to avoid. The GSA didn’t hang out when there was no trinordia to pick up.
“What’s the plan then?” Singe glanced over her shoulder at Maj. “You seem to be the mastermind here.”
Maj snorted. All they had done was crash land on Ivis and immediately kill the guy in charge. But Hudson’s mod data did have an answer. Maj pushed a set of coordinates to Vidar and Singe, a small independent mining rig close enough that their little shuttle could make the run. At least in one direction.
“If we can get some place with a repair bay, the rest is easy.” Maj said.
“Out into space we go,” said Singe. She set the coordinates and started muttering as the computer returned errors.
Rune returned from the back holding what appeared to be a duffel bag. Oyana sat up, looking curiously in his direction. “Whatever you found is helping my headache. What is that?”
“We have a stowaway.” Rune put the duffel bag in Oyana’s lap.
She peered inside, and started laughing. The laughing turned to tears, and Oyana tried to wipe them away while hiccuping.
Maj cocked their head and pinged Oyana a questionmark.
Oyana reached inside the bag and pulled out a baby dragon. It fit in the palm of both hands, its wings akimbo in the way all baby animals were too much leg and not enough coordination. Its soft skin glittered in greens and blues and it chirped like a bird.
Oyana dried her tears enough to report that her headache was entirely gone. “And it’s talking to me. It says its name is Lissie, Eater of All, and do I have lunch?”
Rune chuckled.
“Are we sure dragon-mom can’t fly into space?” asked Vidar.
Singe checked the scanners. “I don’t see anything chasing us.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” said Maj.
They were more than criminals now. If the GSA ever figured out they got off the surface of Ivis Three, they would live long enough to regret ever being caught.
“Singe, does the shuttle have a name?”
Singe worked through a series of menus and reported, “Just an alphanumeric. This shuttle probably had a mothership to return to.”
“Well, if we’re going to be outlaws, we need a good name.”
Vidar smirked. “We should just name it Maj.”
Maj blinked. “What?”
“Because anyone who knows you will steer clear, and anyone who doesn’t will learn.”
Singe and Rune chuckled. Maj crossed their arms and bared serrated teeth in protest.
“What about The Trinordia Dragon?” suggested Oyana, holding the baby in one arm as she tickled its nose. “Boop!”
Rune frowned at her. “What are you doing? That—that is a predator.”
“It’s not a predator, we’re boopin!” Oyana tapped the baby’s nose and laughed. “Boop! Boop!”
The dragon mimicked her voice in a much higher squeak. “Boop!”
Vidar shrugged. “All in favor of The Trinordia Dragon?”
Everyone pinged affirmative.
“I guess we’re pirates, then,” said Singe as she entered the name into the console. “Cast your votes now for Most Likely To Piss Off The GSA First.”
Four votes were cast immediately for Maj.
Maj sighed. “That’s fair.”
The crew laughed as they rocketed into space.
[/swpm_protected]
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