Up close the dragon’s presence was truly overwhelming.

Waves of pressure seemed to emanate from the creature’s very skin, battering at the mind of everyone within five meters of its body, a constant heavy weight that dug between the temples of anyone within range. The edge of that influence was readily apparent, as the scientists and technicians would all stop for a moment just outside the area of effect, visibly steeling themselves before plunging in to adjust instruments, take readings, or whatever else the eggheads were doing.

One of the scientists was closely monitoring a large blocky machine that was attached with cables to the dragon’s massive head. Eric had been told it was a Somnus Cage, an esoteric piece of tech that had been developed to mechanically mimic an espers' ability to calm minds and put them to sleep. From what he had gathered, it was the only thing keeping the beast sedated.

According to senior scientist Cid Arth-Veda, one of the few people who had volunteered to stay behind and help out Eric’s team, the dragon had managed to shake off the Cage’s influence a couple of times before the psi-techs decided to just crank up the contraptions output to its maximum setting.

The resulting mayhem, Cid had reported, had been spectacularly bloody.

Which explained why less than a dozen scientists and techs remained with Eric’s kill team.

As for Eric, he had taken on the simple task of “finding a way to kill the creature.”

“Now that is a sight to see.”

Serra Jakobin whistled as walked up to Eric, her head thrown back as she looked up at the dragon. She tossed Eric a small red detonator switch as she came alongside him.

“Everything green?” Eric asked as he carefully placed the switch into a breast pocket.

Serra nodded, her short, dark hair standing up in sweat-stiffened spikes now that she had removed her regulation helmet to better study the task at hand. Pale horizontal scars marked her brown-skinned cheeks. She claimed they were tribal honor marks given to celebrate her first battle.

“We’ve got all the individual detonators primed to explode simultaneously once you press that switch.” Serra’s voice was low and somewhat raspy, but her speech patterns were quick and stilted, still carrying a hint of her native accent despite years away from her home planet. “Half a second later that Underwend Generator will automatically activate and its mission accomplished, sir.”

“Good job.” Eric said as he watched one of the huge cranes begin lifting the makeshift saddle made of ropes and crash webbing that Rome and Serra had filled with blocks of solid plasticized explosive. Similar devices were already wrapped around the dragons back and lower torso, the tell-tale lights of active detonators winking like small, malevolent eyes.

< Dovan signal jamming has resumed, sir. >

“Roger that, Pig.” Eric said as he rubbed his chin with worry.

It was clear the Dovan’s weren’t giving up their attack. It was also increasingly unlikely that they would be rescued: The last update he had received from Doc was that he and his team of techs were still unable to contact topside or anyone else outside of the research base. He and his team were running out of time; Eric could feel it in his bones.

“We need more time.” He muttered.

“Kinda looks like how the stories describe them though, right sir?”

“Huh?” Eric asked, jerked away from his musings by Serra’s question.

“The dragon, sir.” Serra continued, nodding her head towards the beast that slept in front of them. “The descriptions on those books you made me read do get the shape of it right… Though I never figured a dragon would be that big.”

“It is impressive, isn’t it?” Eric said, admiring the big black beast he was about to help kill. A few months back he had given all the members of his crew a data-packet containing classic science-fiction and fantasy books from the pre-Terran Diaspora after some of them had complained about boredom during the long stretches being ferried from op to op. Most of them had installed the software into their AI’s and then promptly forgot about them. Serra to Eric’s surprise, had apparently read them.

“It’s a shame we have to kill it, sir.”

Eric only nodded, though he sympathized completely.

The Deputy Director had been right about one thing; the dragon truly was a miraculous discovery, one that would have galvanized the scientific community and kicked up a storm of speculation, investigation, and a renewed call for exploration. Unfortunately, that same scrutiny could ignite full-scale war between interplanetary powers that were already at odds with each other.

And who just happens to find himself smack dab in the middle of such a powder keg?

Eric closed his eyes and took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

“You seem a little stressed, sir… care for a little pick-me-up?” Serra offered, tapping an injection ampoule of ultradrenalin against his arm. The woman always carried a metal case full of the ampoules during ops, saying they were part of her medical kit as the squad’s unofficial emergency medic. Eric glanced at the offered stimulant, hesitated for a moment, before reaching out to take the small metal tube from Serra’s hand. Ultradrenalin itself was not prohibited, in fact it was used widely as a milder alternative to the combat drugs issued to commandos before ops, but many officers frowned at their use.

“I know what you’re thinking, sir.” Serra said with a wry smile as Eric stuck the pointy end of the ampoule into the inside of his forearm.

“What?” Eric asked absentmindedly as he felt his heart rate increase as the drug coursed through his bloodstream, appreciating the lightning-stroke jolt of vigor and alertness it gave him. There had been some noise about getting the substance banned completely, but it was so useful and ubiquitous among combat units that ultimately the H-X admins had just passed on the responsibility of preventing abuse to each unit’s commanding officer. For his part Eric figured that as long as the drug didn’t impair a soldier’s combat capabilities, they could have their little entertainments. After all, he was in no position to pass judgement on the addictions of his subordinates.

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“You’re wishing we brought down our fuckin’ armored suits.”

“Maybe I am Jakobin,” Eric replied drily. “They would be one hell of a firepower boost on this ass-wipe of an op.”

Before being assigned into the depths of the research facility, Eric’s personal squad had been in the middle of training in the use of the expensive armored suits designed for zero-g combat and voidship defensive actions. However, someone up the chain of command had deemed those suits ‘superfluous to the needs of the mission’ and omitted them from the initial equipment drop.

Eric sighed.

Of the entire squad he, Serra and Rome had volunteered to stay to take care of the dragon job while the rest of his men escorted the more important administrators, researchers, and other personnel through an escape tunnel that Director Lee had reluctantly revealed. Every possible bio-sample and byte of research data that the lab techs had been able to collect from the dragon so far was fleeing with that group, their escape all the more important since the plan was to destroy every other piece of material evidence of the dragon’s existence.

The plan Eric and his people had come up with to do that was in itself fundamentally simple, if somewhat complicated in execution:

They had decided to rig the sleeping dragon with enough explosives to blow it into smaller pieces, then a modified Underwend generator would be fired off to drag the resulting debris into the metaphysical realm. Afterwards, a clean-up crew equipped with some nasty experimental acids and industrial grade detergents would make sure all traces of the dragon’s existence would be removed from the facility.

It was a good, workable plan, ticking everything on their action list and then some. Yet every time Eric caught a glimpse of the bright orange housing of the Underwend generator, he felt a shiver of cold apprehension run down his spine.

“That thing is dangerous.”

“I agree, sir,” Serra commented softly. Apparently, Eric had spoken his thoughts out loud. “Like lighting a burner in a methane cave, eh?”

“You’re a real joker aren’t you, Jakobin.” Eric said sourly, catching the wide grin on his subordinate’s face.

The statement was a Corps in-joke and a reference to the one and only time an H-X corporate suit had accompanied them on a weapons-free drop: They’d been tasked with locating a survey team that had gone radio silent in the winding tunnels of some nameless planetoid. The extraction team had been briefed on the hazards of the op of course, and had been issued appropriate gear for the task. Unfortunately, either no one had done the same for the suit or he just hadn’t been listening, because once down in the bowels of this potential mine the idiot suddenly had a craving to light an expensive cigar with his exo-suit’s burner.

The resulting mayhem, as Cid would say, had been spectacularly bloody.

“That’s going to be the last one.”

As if conjured up by Eric’s thoughts Cid appeared beside them, mopping his sweaty face with a large red bandanna as he stepped to the edge of the dragon’s field of influence. In reply to Eric’s questioning look the big scientist pointed up to the large bundle of explosives that was being lowered towards the sleeping monster’s neck.

Understanding, Eric gave the man a nod and a smile. “Good job! Now let’s –”

BOOM!!!

The wall behind them exploded, showering everyone with dust and debris. The deadly rattle of automatic fire followed close behind.

“Breach!” Rome yelled from his position monitoring the entrance to the level as a veritable wave of Dovan’s started to pour through a large hole they had blown in the wall.

Pandemonium broke out as the scientists and tech’s dived for cover, while Eric and Serra hurriedly hefted their weapons to return fire. Everything was chaos for a moment, until one of the Dovan’s appeared with a ridiculously outsized heavy launcher already shouldered and ready to fire.

Every reflex and hormone trigger in Eric’s modified body seemed to activate at the same time as Pig’s overlay zeroed in on the ultra-level threat aimed directly at him. Time seemed to stand still, all of Eric’s heightened senses hyper-focused on the grinning Dovan commando and the looming void of the launch barrel that symbolized certain death. Eric’s auto-rifle rose as his trigger-finger pressed down, every movement exaggeratedly slow in his mind’s eye, bullets streaming out of the weapon in flaring bursts of flame. A line of bullet holes stitched their agonizingly slow way towards the enemy, even as a flash of light grew deep inside the dark hole of the launcher barrel.

Sound and motion snapped back into real-time a moment later, disorientating Eric even as he turned his face away from the rocket that spelled his death.

By chance, one of the shots he had involuntarily fired struck the Dovan’s firing arm, spoiling the soldier’s aim and making him turn just a little bit to the right.

The rocket screamed past Eric’s twisting body, missing him by inches, before detonating against the side of the Somnus Cage, sending pieces of the device exploding in all directions.

The backwash of the explosion knocked Eric, Serra, and Cid off their feet.

“BLOW IT UP!!”

Eric’s eyes snapped open as he regained consciousness, glancing at the internal chronometer Pig kept up at the corner of his vision. His battle-recall kicked in, informing him that only a few seconds had passed after the explosion. The sounds around him were muffled and a dull ringing in his head signaled some sort of malfunction, but even as he pushed himself up to a crouch, he could feel the biological counter-measures of his nano-suite working to get him combat-operational.

Or as close to operational as possible, given the circumstances.

“CAPTAIN, YOU HAVE GOT TO BLOW IT UP!!”

Cid was tugging at his left arm and shouting, the man’s heavy-set face contorted in naked terror, as he gazed up at something behind them. Eric turned his head to the side, noting that Serra was awake but on her knees beside them, lines of blood across her face, her attention focused where Cid was pointing.

Eric looked up, and a fresh spike of terror struck his body.

The dragon was free and awake, it’s silvery eyes glowing with undisguised hatred. Its remaining wing flared threateningly above them while its vicious clawed hands traced blazing red and purple sigils in the air. Deep sonorous words in an unknown language flowed from the monster’s fanged mouth, dripping with malice. Even as Eric watched in disbelief, a blazing mandala of purple flames and esoteric arcane symbols came into being in the air above them.

Beside the monster the damaged Somnus Cage was rumbling ominously, sparks pouring from its frame in irregular flashes even as it generated strangely calming bursts of energy interspersed with horrifically painful mind-spikes.

“BLOW IT UP!!!”

Cid’s screams cut through the strange dragon-fear fugue that had enveloped Eric’s mind. With a glance, the veteran soldier noticed that the explosive satchels were still secured around the monster’s body, their telltales still glowing a ready green. He and his companions were too close to the creature to survive the blast, and Eric had no way of knowing if the Underwend generator was primed and ready, but he also knew that getting hit by whatever the dragon was creating was not going to be pleasant.

His hands went to the breast-pocket that held the detonator and froze.

The device wasn’t there.

Even as his stomach dropped, he saw Serra lifting up the missing detonator in one hand.

Teeth bared savagely the veteran soldier closed her eyes and depressed the trigger.

The explosion shattered the world.

Eric had been turned slightly away from the dragon, partly shielded by Cid’s bulk, when the shockwave struck. As he was torn from his crouch, he heard the distinctive hum of the Underwend generator activating, creating a roaring vortex above the dragon’s exploding body that sucked in everything within the immediate vicinity. Eric’s forward momentum reversed in an instant, the whiplash effect snapping his head back with incredible force.

His vision blacked out, and his rapidly fading consciousness registered Serra’s screaming, Cid bellowing curses, the sound of chattering gunfire, and the dragon’s voice triumphantly completing its chant before everything dissolved into roaring chaos. Incredibly strong G-forces pushed and pulled at Eric’s helpless body before he heard something snap, and then blessed nothingness enfolded him.