“Teach me to fly.”

Roja looked up from his microscope to see Luka leaning on his exam table. The young prince looked a little unsure of himself, but all too eager.

“If I get near the helm, Tusca will shoot me,” Roja replied frankly, and carefully took the slide and set it into his small preservation chamber. “I would rather not get shot, thank you.”

“But I’ve never seen anyone fly like you,” Luka persisted, and leaned forward. “Teach me to fly.”

“No one flies like I fly,” Roja told him frankly, and pulled another sample out. “Even if I wanted to teach you, and I don’t, you aren’t a precog.”

Luka looked down at the table. Something about the way he did it caught Roja’s eye, and he focused on the young prince. “Luka?”

“I… might not have been honest when I said I wasn’t an Other,” Luka said reluctantly. He was a fidgeted, and Roja handed him a broken scanner to fiddle with while he got his head in order. “I have some tricks I kept quiet.”

“Like what?” Roja finally took his attention off his project, genuinely angry, although probably not for the reason Luka expected.

“Luka, if you have non-human genetics, I need to know about it. Hell, I could have poisoned you by accident and never known why you were reacting badly! Dammit boy, I knew you were a royal as soon as I ran your blood. You could have told me!”

Luka wilted under the scolding. Poor kid, he really was young, and Roja didn’t have a very high opinion of whoever had raised him, royal or no. He needed a lot more hugs than he got as a kid.

“I’m one-sixteenth dragon. It doesn’t show in bloodwork.”

Roja dropped the slide in his hands and stared at Luka.

Luka winced and turned the broken scanner over in his hands nervously.

“How did no one know about this?” Roja finally got his mouth to work, although he was still waiting on his brain. “The Emperor is human.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Mostly,” Luka said shyly, and seemed to be trying to hide behind his own shoulders. It wasn’t working. “There was a big scandal five generations back. The Emperor married a commoner and made her Empress Royal.”

“Is that why they called him the Dragon King?”

“Ah, no. that was because he was the first emperor to reach out to the dragons as their own independent government,” Luka shrugged, apparently more comfortable with his family’s history than he was about fessing up his own issues. “…although he did it by reaching out through the Empress Royal.”

That was more complicated than Roja was really willing to touch. He had the important part.

“Alright,” he sighed. At least it was hard to poison a dragon. As far as Others, dragons were among the hardest to kill. “So, part dragon. What does that have to do with my teaching you to fly? Are you a precog?”

Precognition or something similar was requisite for a truly incredible pilot. There had to be something to push them from the edge of ‘impressive’ to ‘amazing’

And Roja wasn’t about to waste his time with any less than amazing.

“I’m not,” Luka admitted, and held up the broken scanner in his hands. “but Assha Resatsat passed a few gifts down to her children.”

Electricity crackled over his fingers and into the scanner. It lit up as if it had never been broken.

“You’re a technopath,” Roja said quietly, and examined the scanner when Luka handed it over. He would be lying if he said that didn’t change things. A technopath, if they were powerful enough, didn’t need a crew. They could do everything from engines to communications all from a single console. It might be enough to counter the precog he didn’t have. “How powerful are you?”

“There’s a reason I went into engineering,” Luka smiled faintly. “I can fix almost anything that uses electricity to function.”

“How are you with electrical currents?”

If he could sense when electricity wasn’t moving at the right speed, he could track time dilation.

“Not bad, but I’ve never really tried to mess with them. Normally my problem is that electricity isn’t going where it’s needed.”

Roja leaned back in his chair and gave the idea serious thought for the first time.

“Alright,” he said at last, and held up a hand to hold back Luka’s exuberance. “Convince Tusca. If you can get permission, and I will be talking with him about this, I’ll consider it.”

“Yes!” Luka launched himself almost over the workstation and threw his arms around Roja’s shoulders with all the excitement Royal training somehow hadn’t killed off. “Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Roja cautioned, although he did hug the young prince. “You still have to talk to Tusca.”

“I will,” Luka promised cheerfully. “I’ll talk to him. Thank you so much!”

One more enthusiastic hug, and he was gone, darting out the door towards the bridge.

Roja watched him go and shook his head, although he couldn’t contain his smile.

Stronger souls than Luka had tried to talk Tusca into smarter things and failed. If he could talk the captain into flying lessons, he was a better diplomat than Roja thought.

Who knew? Maybe the prince would be the first Royal Red Baron.