What was Alex truly expecting when he first wandered into one of the many infirmaries of the Galaxies Mons, only five of them placed an equal measure apart from the other along the city-sized starship. In keeping with the rest of the internal infrastructure of the Galaxies, the infirmary was cavernous, almost two decks tall with far-reaching support beams stretched across the surface giving the room of healing and health a pleasant ambiance of opera houses designed to reflect sounds and amplify them to create a better sound of music.
But there were no choristers in the room, no singers or gatherings of musicians playing for an audience to the lead of a composer waving his wand in the air. Only the murmurs of Healers and nurse staff whispering in hushed quietened tones with soft beeps of machines pulsating in equal lengths of time could be heard. The wall facing him was lined with cubical rooms all separated by a wall between them. Each room inside housed a bed large enough to rest a fully grown dragon with a plethora of machines and hooks lining half the wall behind the bed. Three of the rooms had been sealed shut with small windows that resembled heavy-duty blast doors than did regular doors that were more common in hospitals.
The doors slid themselves shut behind him and sealed with a clunk that seemed to have echoed louder than it should have been only for the silence to take over and embrace Alex in the quiet environment. His head hung low, distracted by the red triangle at his feet, while partially faded and written in white Clawscript letters the white plus sign at the top was unmistakable as the symbol of healing. He looked up to see several of the dragons glare at him with narrowed eyes as though his presence had disturbed some unknown peace that had coexisted before his arrival only for them to look away and resume their duties a moment later, only one dragon approached him, standing nearly three feet taller than he did and covered in white scales with dark brown dirt lining the gaps between his scales approached him.
“Yes…?” It hissed.
Alex gulped nervously looking at the oddly intimidating dragon, his presence commanded a threatening aura that demanded nothing but respect and obedience, on top of his head his left horn was missing, and the sharp jagged edges that lined the outer circumference looked as though it had been snapped off by another dragon, one that possessed enough strength to do such a thing would be trouble in combat. A force to be reckoned with. Its gait moved with such force that belied its titanic weight that it almost seemed to be charging at him before stopping a few feet from him. Up close, Alex noticed the scarring that marked the dragon’s body all over. It noticed his staring and let out a lowly threatening hiss that came off more as a warning to him than it did signify its intent to attack. Upon a closer inspection, Alex found himself silently horrified to notice that what lines the dragon’s otherwise snow-white scales was dried blood that had set in between the gaps.
Then he quickly returned his gaze to meet the agitated Draconic in its bright yellow eyes as it slowly flicked its tongue out for one second before pulling it back inside its elongated snout.
“I’m here to check on my crew,” Alex spoke.
Then its facial expression shifted from threatening anger to annoyance.
“Which one?” It hissed.
“Christopher, the ‘zhol’yat’ as I understand you would call him.”
The dragon's chest rumbled softly. “We have a file compiled on him with the results of our tests, would you care to view it?”
Alex nodded.
“Send it to my wristpad. But I would still like to see him for myself.”
Its face eased up again and jerked its head sideways, turning around and nearly hitting Alex with its tail. Not that it had seemed to notice or care. The dragon’s pace picked up as it walked towards a large circular desk that was situated between two long rows of rooms. Two dragons sat at the table compiling data on one of the computer terminals while another carried a tray of tools to a room behind them. The white dragon spoke softly to a silver dragon that was using the computer who in turn nodded affirmatively and started tapping away at its keyboard. A small chime alert came from Alex’s wristpad a short time later. From the door, he just came through, There were at least twenty rooms on both sides of the central desk. Two aisles with ten individually separated rooms opposing each other, many were open and vacant, waiting for some creature to injure themselves and be useful to host them until they recover.
Ten paces forward down the corridor and Alex saw only five of the rooms were closed. One immediately to his right, followed by the one adjacent to its right-hand side, to his left and three rooms ahead of him was another closed room and the two opposing each at the far end of the corridor. The dragon stopped at the one on his left and brought its left wrist up to a screen on the wall, it pulsed green, and the doors slid open.
“The Zhol’yat will be resting. Do not spend too much time there and do not make it exert too much energy.” The dragon then gestured towards the room and Alex walked in.
As he stood at the threshold, the room was dimly lit with soft tones of yellow staining the walls. The bed that occupied most of the floor space showed Christopher beneath the sheets and his flattened head and wide neck hood propped up on two layers of soft pillows. Above him, Alex saw the screen monitoring his vitals such as his heart rate and blood oxygen levels in different colours. To the side of them was a diagram showing his entire X-ray displaying his new skeleton. He couldn’t help but stare at the skeleton of his crewman, his newly formed skull had been completely flattened in comparison to his previously round human skull while the bones in his neck stretched out with sharp talons on both sides, pushing the skin along with it as scales had formed on it creating the beautiful hood Christopher was now adorned with. The doors closed shut and it startled Christopher awake, his eyes shot up as his head gently lifted off the pillows and looked at Alex.
“Sssir…?” Christopher spoke with a hoarse voice.
Then he tried to sit himself up in an effort to be at attention in the presence of his commanding officer, Alex had instead pressed his hands gently against Christopher’s broad scaly chest, silently telling him to rest.
“How are you feeling today?” He asked softly.
“I feel… weird… It’s so strange to see you glowing red and radiating heat… Everywhere I look all I see is heat and some colours are gone. The doctors tell me Naga’s cannot see reds and greens. All I see are blues and golden colours and some greys. And then there’s the issue of me controlling my fangs. Last night the doctors tried to milk me. Milk me! It sounds so… demeaning.”
Alex brought his hands to his front and clasped them together.
“Did they say why they wanted to milk you?” Alex asked calmly.
“Yeah… to find out my venom’s lethality.”
Alex brought up his wristpad and tapped on the screen, the notification saying he had received a file download was still present and he tapped it away to access the file. It displayed all text in Clawscript and a second later his device had automatically translated it to English. His fingers flew across the screen graphs displaying statistics he couldn’t understand and flew from one side to the other in a blur until he had found what he was looking for.
“Well if you want I can tell you what their tests say.” He said with a smirk.
Christopher’s spirits perked up and slowly he raised his upper body against the wall to support him. Alex then took a moment to look over the comments that were written to describe the outcomes of the tests performed and his crewmate’s physical state. His eyes darted side to side reading each line then proceeding to the next and then put his arm down and looked at his Transmutated colleague.
“Well,” Alex said, exhaling heavily. “you might be happy to know your venom is showing to have an LD50 count of twenty milligrams per kilogram of presynaptic neurotoxic venom with a high count of anticoagulants and necrotoxins, which according to these notes means the next time you bite and inject venom into someone they have thirty minutes before keeling over. Remind me not to get you worked up, don’t really desire to have you spit that stuff at me.”
Christopher shook his head, his eyes watery and his lips trembled greatly. Alex, instead pressed on and continued to read the next paragraph in the report.
“And according to the Licholtz test, your Magia seems to be around eight point nine out of fifteen. That’s pretty good considering what it was last time… One point two I think it was.”
“I’m a monster… I shouldn’t… I can kill a human…Sometimes I can feel the glands in my mouth… full of venom. And some small part of me is begging, daring me to use it.” He sobbed.
“When we get to an Alliance medical facility, we can take a look at some options for you like having your venom glands removed or maybe we can sign you up to donate all your collected venom to produce surgical proteins to help surgeons put people under the knife.” Alex said calmly. “But you aren’t a monster. Naga’s are a very friendly species with a vibrant culture, you heard Silas; by their standards, you are one handsome beast.” Alex looked at Christopher with a smirk, hoping his subordinate would smile as well.
But it did not work, Christopher shook his head disbelievingly as he looked away from Alex. “No, it’s… I’m not…” He mumbled. “That’s just it, I am a beast! When I look in the mirror it’s like I can see my old self, my human self” Said Christopher quickly correcting himself. He brought one of his scaled, clawed hands up to his face and stared at his new elongated digits, his face deep in thought as his hand rotated from side to side. Then he resumed speaking.
“I see how I was and I see this glitch and then I look like this… My friends… my family. How are they going to cope with this, my girlfriend back home we- oh god!” He gasped so suddenly it made Alex bolt to his side, ready to call in the nurses. But Christopher had his hand grasping at his chest and tears streamed down his snout once again. Alex had opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but what came next had hit him harder than what he could have prepared for.
“My son!”
Oh no…
Christopher started to wheeze, his breathing becoming more erratic and laboured as his clawed hands scrunched up the bed sheet in his grip.
“My son’s gonna grow up with a freak of a father! He’s going to be scared about TM his whole life wondering if he’s next! He’s only six!”
Alex leaned over and tried to rest Christopher back down on the bed, he struggled against his commanding officer, shouting and screaming how his whole family would disown him and see him as nothing more than a freak, the door slid open and two lithe dragons entered quickly, taking both sides of the bed and tended to Christopher with the on the right shoving Alex out of the way and restraining Christopher who’s long body started to thrash about in the room. The nurse next to Alex reached for a mask from the wall behind the bed, then tapped furiously on the screen to select a digital dial and adjusted its setting before pressing the mask on Christopher, who’s hyperventilating fit had him wheezing. After a quick moment his breathing slowed, his breathing quietened and his eyes drooped, soon he had calmed down and the nurses eased their grip on him and observed. The one on the other side of the bed shot a quick glare at Alex with disapproving eyes.
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“Perhaps you should leave… he needs to rest.” She spat venomously. Alex knew in his mind that they accused him of creating this situation so he instead shot back a menacing glare at the Dragon who didn’t seem fazed by it in the slightest. And he hastily stepped back out of the recovery room.
Back at the central desk, he calmly approached a silver dragon that sat on its rear legs typing away on the computer terminal. Such a lithe, delicate frame with kind caring emerald green eyes suggested to Alex that this Dragon might have been female.
“Pardon me,” He asked politely. “Are any of my other crewmen in this infirmary and would I be allowed to see them?”
“One moment.” She spoke in a voice unusually soft for a dragon.
She had typed away at her terminal and with a final, satisfying tap on the screen she looked back at Alex and informed him that the others were located all throughout the five infirmaries situated throughout the Galaxius.
After what had felt like hours commuting through the internal mag-lev tram network that ran throughout the Galaxius Mons and checking up on the injured survivors throughout the ship, Alex was about to call it a day. He felt glad to see some of the less injured members remain in high spirits with a few fractures and nightmares and yet he felt equally disheartened to see the seriously injured ones retain a comatose expression as they whiled the days away until their limbs could be regrown. He was exhausted by the time the last crewman was visited and he had waited in the midship terminal platform waiting for the tram to arrive. Alex looked at the floor as his eyelids drooped, then he pulled up his wristpad and searched through its archive until he came across the pictures stored on it. He flicked through the screen without stopping to consider each page of images until he stopped at the seventh page and carefully studied each row and pulled up a picture that filled his entire screen.
Him, Milo, and his sister; Samantha. All three wore loose-fitting clothes and wore big loud expressions with Alex and Milo holding a bottle of alcohol while Samantha flashed a huge toothy grin. Behind the trio, colourful displays of explosives were in play in the pitch-black night.
New Year’s Eve, Twenty-four fifteen. Hardly remember how we partied that night. I remember Samantha somehow lost a few teeth. Heh, how long did we panic that she bit some stranger in the street? Must’ve been all morning.
Then he sighed and his arm went limp. A gentle breeze brushed past his face.
I miss you, old friend.
He looked up to see that the mag-lev tram had arrived, slowly he stepped onboard with the doors sealing themselves shut just behind him. Two other passengers were inside, a Naga and a Dragon, both wore bright orange engineering suits with fluorescent stripes on their legs and arms. Flashes of light passed by the windows when the tram took off. The light reflecting off their fluorescent stripes glared blindingly so for a moment followed by the two technicians returning to their dull orange, oil-covered suits that reeked of something rancid mixed with an intense body odour that seemed unusual for a Reptilian species to possess. The dragon had black scales with horns that seemed to have curved to the back of his head, his body was covered with a dullness that seemed to absorb light whereas the Naga possessed a tiger-striped pattern of sand-brown colours, both looked at Alex with an unfriendly glare before returning their attention to each other and conversing indistinctly.
The screen next to the door displayed a layout of the Galaxius with a travel path and several stops being the only thing highlighted. A text box written in Clawscript moved along the path as the tram moved and Alex looked at the destination where the tail section of the ship met with the mid compartment. He tapped on it and then called for Fёderov on his wristpad, asking him to meet him in the Oxygen factory.
Just as he had earlier that day, Alex stood in awe at the size of the cavernous structure that filled his vision. Leaning against the glass railing and staring out the lush tree canopy. Then he snapped himself out of his stupor and descended to the ground floor, never stopping near any of the dense patches of tropical trees and large succulents to smell or admire them. Alex emerged from the shortcut through the bushes and stood in the artificially generated light in front of the crescent concrete pavilion. Resting against one of the stone pillars with arms crossed over his broad chest in dark grey powered armour, Fёderov had been staring at one particular patch of grass until he heard the rustling of the bushes from Alex’s emergence draw his attention and looked up with his neutral, yet still angry looking face focused on him with an intensity more powerful and whetted than the Phoenix’s lasers.
“Captain Rowan!” He shouted; his posture unshifting.
Fёderov pushed himself off the stone pillar and walked towards Alex, giving him a sharp salute. Alex returned it and then eased his posture.
“Major Fёderov. Thank you for meeting with me promptly.” Alex said warmly, he then started walking towards the shaded pavilion, gently gesturing for the Major to walk in the same direction. In the calmness of the garden around them, the power armour the Major wore created a chorus of noises as small motors and hydraulics hissed and whirred with each movement of the limbs. Each foot thumped on the grass; each swing of the arm emitted a small whirring sound underneath the plates of armour that lined his exo-frame.
The two sat down on the concrete bench, cooled by the shade and looked at each other with a stern glance.
“In the absence of Milo- Commander Hammer, the Phoenix and a lot of our crew…I am in need of an executive officer to assist me, the job offer is yours if you want.”
Fёderov didn’t react, at least obviously. His eyes shifted slightly to the left before refocusing on Alex once more.
“Position of XO can only be filled by naval personnel, I am a marine. Not navy. Why ask me?”
“Strictly speaking the role of an executive officer can be filled by a member of any STARCOM branch; Navy, Marine, Psi-ops, even MIRS operatives can be chosen to fill in for the position of Executive Officer on a ship. It's more the norm that Naval personnel are chosen. Alliance marines are still operating under the branch of STARCOM, it’s a tough sell to command but not impossible for you to take the job.”
Then the Major looked thoughtful for a moment. Behind his cold calculated eyes, the gears of his mindset started turning as he began to think about it.
“I will give it some thought, sir.” He eventually said.
Alex chuckled to himself.
“I’ll take it. In the meantime, you are still second in command and I need you to reassure everyone that we will be rescued. Captain Armadra has informed STARCOM and have dispatched a vessel to pick us up.”
“Any idea which ship?” Fёderov asked.
“None probably whatever was nearest to us when the call was put in. I know for a fact that we are going to be expected to give a lot of reports to Command, explaining what happened in many different ways.”
Fёderov huffed, his shoulders shrugged along his rolling eyes. “Bureaucratic pencil pushers. Marine branch has less paperwork. Less regulations: point, shoot, good job, go shoot next thing.”
“How about that video of that one officer saying DI’s shouldn’t be yelling at recruits.”
“That is bullshit and yelling is the only outlet we have when we have to deal with the sheer incompetence of recruits. It's bad enough that they took away the open-handed slapping. Nothing separated the weak from the strong better than the slap.”
Alex let out a lone “Hah” before catching himself, the humorous response escaped his self-control. “Back in my first year at the Mars academy, we had this one Naga instructor who had his glands removed, but we never knew it. So each time one of us didn’t do something right he would bite us and tell us the only cure for the venom was a five-kilometre run. By the end of the first year a lot of us could run a marathon in high gravity without breaking a sweat.” Alex went on to explain.
The duo chuckled. Perhaps the first time Alex had heard Zakhar genuinely laughed for the first time in the few years he had known the rough career military man. Then the Major faced forward and let out a relaxed breath while he stared at the peaceful garden that surrounded the pavilion.
“I uhhh must admit… it is peaceful here.” Fёderov hesitantly said. “I would still prefer being where the action is. Nothing more clearer than being in a combat zone and knowing who your enemy is and who your ally is. Shoot the enemy, don’t shoot the ally. Clean and simple.”
Alex faced forward a moment later and looked out the garden. The artificial sunlight reflecting off the succulent leaves and creating bright flashes of light reflecting off them. A loud deep gong sound went off and the lights dimmed to a faded orange tone. Night shift.
Up on the balcony it was a much better view under the dimmed light. The small lamp posts scattered throughout the garden illuminated their paths like city lights seen from orbit. He took in a deep breath of the fresh, crisp air that hung in the large space before walking back into the adjoining waiting lounge. His trek back to his own room went as uneventful as he hoped, the large corridors vacant of draconic members and contractors alike. The skeleton crew that were assigned to the night shift were the only crew that could be sparsely found. Alex opened his room and got out of the confined space suit he wore and let it fall to the ground with a hollow-sounding thump. The small life support module that connected to the back bore much of the weight with its small air canister, small water purifier, and various miniature pumps that supplied his suit with cool water and breathable air. And he let himself fall onto the bed defeatedly allowing the artificial gravity to pull on him only to be repelled by the bed springs shooting him nearly mid-air above the bed.
He groaned in frustration while rubbing his palms over his eyes to ease the tension that had been building in his forehead. Alex was surprised to see a glimmer of light growing brighter behind his eyelids, it came as no surprise to him when he heard the familiar voice speak out from the silence.
“I take it you are relaxed, Captain Rowan.”
Armadra’s ghostly presence lit the room up with his sanguine smile.
“Then you will be pleased with the news I bear.” Armadra continued. “My Bridge officers inform me that the Alliance has sent a ship to rendezvous to pick you up.”
“Did they say the name of the ship?” Alex asked. His attention and focus felt so distant as he stared at the cold metal floor. His thoughts drifted from thinking about and processing Armadra’s words to thinking about the structure around him. The cold floor, the base structure that supported his feet and the gravity plates beneath him, whose gentle humming pulses drew his mass towards it and the vast array of wires and heat exchangers that ran underneath him and throughout the ship like arteries in his body.
Armadra’s aethereal, angelical form took two steps towards the foot of the bed where Alex sat.
“They did not.” Armadra said, cooing. “Imperial Command and STARCOM coordinated together to provide a location for us to meet with this Alliance ship. Was there a particular vessel you wished to be dispatched?”
Then Alex thought for a moment. “No. Just that, someone I know has recently been made captain.”
“As I would expect for a captain to know other captains.” The dragon said with a smug nod.
“No, it's not that. One of the casualties of my ship was an old friend, my executive officer and childhood friend. His sister just got her first ship and I still don’t know how to explain to her why her brother is dead.”
Armadra’s outline glittered softly. His saccharine smile dipped subtlety, however, his otherwise calm expression remained unperturbed. Then his head cocked up and looked towards one corner of the room, Alex, caught off-guard by the sudden whip of the Dragon’s head. His eyebrows raised in confusion, then turned to face the cornice that had seemingly attracted the Dragon’s attention. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about it. An angled piece of metal that had been joined to the walls and ceiling on all four surfaces. There were no cameras, projectors, light fittings or sensory equipment, at least none that could be seen. After a moment of looking between the cornice and Armadra, Alex finally chose to say something.
“What is it?”
And just like that, Armadra snapped out of his gaze and faced Alex.
“Pardon, my first officer has informed me we are about to Jump to the coordinates… You may want to hold on to something in a moment.”
Alex had opened his mouth, but what question he was going to ask suddenly dissipated from the forefront of his mind when the room shifted to an orange colour and an alarm sounded off. It surprised Alex just how similar it was to the Phoenix and many alliance vessels, the alarm continued to sound off along with a voice that spoke in Draconic, then again in English.
“Preparing to Jump, preparing to jump. Fasten yourself immediately.”
It then repeated itself once more. Armadra looked at Alex as he gripped the edges of his mattress firmly.
“Aren’t you going to secure yourself?” He asked.
“I already have.” After hearing the alarm blare for a couple of seconds longer, Armadra counted down from five. As soon as he said zero a sudden jolt had thrusted Alex to his right and almost sent him off the mattress. Everything else in the room shook with the initial burst of Faster-Than-Light propulsion for a second and the G-forces that pulled on him subsided. Alex got up, brushed his clothes off and looked at the Dragon’s projection again.
“Wasn’t as bad as I hoped.” Alex chuckled. “How long until we are out of your hair-… scales.”
“The location to meet is not too far from here, we should arrive by morning.” Then he stopped, stared at Alex for a moment, inhaled and said “You should rest. I will inform you before you are to disembark.”
The light faded from the room without another word spoken. The cold metallic room was illuminated by the wall mounted terrarium casting its ghastly cool blue light. Alex’s eyes remained fixated on the spot where Armadra had been just a moment before as though he hoped his host would return momentarily. Another moment of silence elapsed and nothing had happened, Alex hadn’t expected a return of the Ship Master, yet a small part of him yearned to converse more with him.
Alex threw his legs on top of the mattress, his thoughts ricocheting off one another thinking about the trials he would face, the loss of life forms. He would lose his ability to captain another ship, the paperwork to requisition another ship for him to command will be daunting and recent events of scuttling his ship would have his position called into question. Was Alex fit to captain to begin with? His doubts started to pile on, and his fears of losing his position and being reduced to a desk job, stuck in a repetitive pattern of mundanity.
Similarly, his self doubting thoughts began to blur shortly after his eyes were shut. His ability to process ideas and concepts diminished as much as his sense of sight currently was.
Suddenly, he found himself burning and in his mind, an alarm rang out for him to get ready. The intense burning fires lighting the insides of his eyelids, the searing heat making him perspire all throughout his suit. When his eyes opened, Alex saw the dark dirty room lit by the orange glare of fires nearby. An alarm rang out, partially drowning out the noise of the massive machines dutifully carrying out their purpose while ignoring the raging inferno around them. He rose to his feet without a moment’s delay, all around him the fires continued to burn. The two rows of pylons filled with fusion energy were without their bright blue glow of plasma energy as the blast shields were lowered.
No… It can’t be… why am I here?
The Phoenix’s engine room pulsed intermittently with red tones as the alarms rang. He was alone.
A loud crash behind him and a wall of fire blazed with the intensity of the sun. A bright light lit up every crevice of the otherwise grimy and greasy engine room with a warm and cosy glow giving the place a calming ambiance. Clang! And Alex spun around to look for the source of the sound, metal hitting the grated catwalks that circumnavigated the room, he scanned the room, narrowing his gaze and scrutinising every inch to find the source. The hairs on his neck stood on end, something was here. An insect? Something else, approaching with its intentions so abundantly clear that the air was rancid with its malicious intent. Alex heard the footsteps clanking against the metal-grated catwalk behind him and he spun around to face it. The wall of flames obscured the other person behind them, and he narrowed his gaze, trying to capture some glimpse of his opponent; there was nothing around him that could be used as a weapon. No rivet gun, bolt gun, wrench, or any tool that could be of use. No weapon was holstered on his body. He looked back to the flames, the figure emerged out of the flames unscathed, unflinching, undisturbed by the inferno around them. Tall and dark it slowly placed one foot in front of the other, approaching Alex with an indifference to its surroundings as though it did not exist. The intense heat blurred his vision and just as Alex had turned away to run, a blackness surrounded him just as he started regaining consciousness.