FSE

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Nighttime, shipside.

The HCS Yellowknife, at medium-warp, was in deep space (five weeks out from Redwing Station). Halfway through a three-year mission, the research vessel was tasked with exploring and mapping the far reaches of the Uncharted Territories while also looking for remnants of the fearsome wasps.

The aggressive, telepathic insectoids originated from this area of space, but they’d gone missing after losing their queen (while trying to destroy Tundrune, the snow rabbit home-world; their final stop on a warpath through mammalian space).

HC scientists believed (with near certainty) that more queens were growing deep in hibernation.

When the next one reawakened, would they lead a new, reborn swarm through the stars, hellbent on revenge? Stronger than before?

Or maybe the next queen would be more docile than the last? Maybe she’d retain no memories of what happened to her predecessor (though with their shared hive mind, that seemed unlikely)?

Regardless, the first wasp war had been so devastating the HC had to investigate. Sending a fleet on a wild goose chase wasn’t good (or practical) strategy, so Yellowknife was out here alone. There were other HC ships in the UT (Solstice, Polaris, and Arctic), but they were much closer in range to Redwing Station.

Yellowknife had stopped at nearly a hundred planets so far—some habitable, some not—but had yet to find evidence of the wasps (despite exhaustive and unfounded stories from locals).

Rumors told of a dry, arid world filled with an undercurrent of hypnotic buzzing you could hear over comms upon approach. They said it ‘pulled you in’ with its dark gravitational power, that no mammal had ever escaped its thrall.

Someone even claimed their ‘friend’ had slept with a wasp and had proceeded to provide lurid details.

(‘I don’t think that’s how a proboscis works,’ Yellowknife’s chief science officer, Lieutenant Darby, had skeptically replied.)

The last week had been uneventful.

Which meant—

Chip-chip!

Cordova’s tall ears, white with charcoal tips, twiddled on her pillow. Dreams fading into a fog.

Chip-chip!

She yawned, rubbing at her tired, blue eyes.

That’s not my alarm.

What time was it?

The snow rabbit rolled to her right, squinting at her bedside chronometer.

0340.

Impulse took over.

Cordova fumbled for her comm badge (the source of the pinging). “Go ahead?”

“Bridge here. I’m … I’m sorry, ma’am,” replied the nervous Ensign running the night shift up there. Eaton. A deer mouse. He’d never had to wake the Captain before! “I wouldn’t normally disturb you. But there’s, uh, something you really probably should—"

“On my way,” Cordova said, cutting the channel, her long, lithe legs immediately swinging out of bed. Wide awake now, she bent over to retrieve her undergarments from the floor.

As she did, the rabbit’s bobtailed rump was goosed!

“I am sure that is a court-martial offense,” Cordova said lightly, hopping to her foot-paws and grabbing her pants, turning around while putting them on. Quirking her brow at the other occupant of her bed.

“Heh. But I had to! It was right there,” Roxy drawled with a tired, lazy grin, showing all her teeth.

“That is usually where I keep it,” the snow rabbit answered.

“You know you have sooty spots on your left rump-cheek?”

“I am aware.”

“And under your right breast? Never knew that.”

“You have never seen me naked. You would have no reason to.”

“S’cute,” Roxy said, the words slurred by a jaw-snapping yawn. “Mm.” The Arctic fox vixen (who ran the shuttle bay; ‘chief technician,’ rank of Lieutenant junior grade) couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Hey. Um. You don’t … don’t regret anything, do you?” Her smile faltered.

“Of course not,” the confident, pansexual rabbit promised, lifting her arms, wiggling into her uniform shirt. “I am not leaving by choice. I am being called to the bridge.”

“Oh. At this hour? What for?” The fox hadn’t been awake enough to hear the call.

“They would not say.” But she knew the sound of a rattled officer, so it had to be something important.

“Only, I know our species have … a history,” Roxy prattled, fingers clutching and unclutching at the bedsheets, pulling them over her breasts. Why was she so insecure? “I’ve never been with one of your kind … I mean, I’ve wanted to! I’ve thought about it.”

Realizing that made it sound like she had a predator/prey kink, if not an outright rabbit fetish, the vixen stammered, “I mean, uh … heh, my grandparents would disown me. If they knew about this. They’re kinda racist.” A pause. “Well, I guess there’s no ‘kinda.’ You either are or you aren’t, right? I’m definitely not. Obviously. Cause … we, uh … mm … ”

Cordova didn’t answer, still dressing.

Roxy fell quiet.

History, though.

That was an understatement!

The Arctic foxes and High Command had been involved in a century-long ‘cold war,’ mostly related to the foxes’ animosity toward the snow rabbits. And vice versa. They had sniped and swiped at each other incessantly (never coming to full, sustained blows, just strings of isolated ‘terror attacks’), but had been forced to join forces when the wasps had swarmed.

The wasps ended up torching the foxes’ home-world and were on their way to doing the same to Tundrune, but the last stand of the High Command fleet had prevailed (with interference provided by telepathic bats as well as Redwing Station’s Constable Sheila, who slew the wasp queen).

After the war, the High Command had felt obligated to take responsibility for the fox refugees. Their home was no longer habitable, and they’d suffered numerous casualties. The relationship between the two species (and the power dynamic between them) had radically shifted.

So, the foxes had been relocated to one of Tundrune’s bigger icy moons (one with a breathable atmosphere) until a new planet could be found for them. It was a controversial move with the public, but HC leaders stood behind it.

However, years later, moving them off the moon was now proving complicated. The foxes were entrenched and not all of them wanted to leave.

Furthermore, every time the Council voted on an uninhabited planet in HC space to give to the foxes, it was vetoed by members of the closest HC world. Everyone was ‘tolerant’ of the foxes and their cause, but no one wanted to be their direct neighbors.

The foxes found this rightly hypocritical, and the blowback threatened to jumpstart old predator/prey feuds. So, the Council had assuaged them by giving their ‘moon colony’ full HC membership (which meant two elected seats on the Council). They now had a voice in their own fate.

The search for a new fox home-world continued, but the urgency had begun to wane now that they had planetary-level rights.

The bulk of their population was still on the Tundrune moon, but many had begun filtering throughout HC space, using their new citizenship to their advantage. Which included joining the space service.

Roxy was the only fox (one of four true predators) aboard Yellowknife, which had a crew compliment of 121.

“I do not believe in holding grudges,” Cordova said, shrugging off the weight of all that history. “Were my actions last night not suitably convincing?”

“Heh … I … I’ve never been ‘dommed’ by prey before,” Roxy said with a shy, happy smile. Her white, bushy tail would’ve wagged had it not been under the sheets. “I didn’t know you had it in you!”

Cordova lightly smiled. “I have many hidden depths.”

“Which includes exploring mine?” Roxy quipped, flushing hot at the memory.

The Captain, not replying, fixed her badge to her shirt.

Roxy blurted, “Will I see you again? Captain … er, Cor—” An embarrassed. “What should I call you?”

“In private, off duty, you may call me Cordy.”

“Really? No, I can’t do that!” A pause. “Can I … ?”

“We have had sex. That comes with a degree of familiarity, does it not?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“As to the first question, you are in my quarters,” Cordova pointed out. “And we serve aboard the same vessel. I am positive we will see each other again. If not this morning, then soon enough.”

“You know what I mean … ”

The Captain did. She exchanged a look with the fox, quirking a brow. “You are aware I am an open breeder?”

“I know. That’s fine. I’m willing to share! I just … I like being around you.” A vulnerable pause. “Do you like being around me?”

Fully dressed, Cordova flashed the predator a smoldering look and crawled back into bed. She straddled the naked vixen, grabbing her wrists, moving them above her head and forcibly pinning her down.

Roxy gasped.

Their eyes met. Icy blue to earthy brown.

Cordova, taking a deep breath, released the vixen’s arms to trace her dark lips with a black claw. Roxy sucked on the claw for a second before the paw moved again, Cordova peeling the sheets off the vixen’s breasts, exposing them, giving them good gropes (and nipple-rubs) in retribution for the vixen’s ass-grab.

Then, still without saying a word, the snow rabbit casually dismounted, got back to her foot-paws, and hopped out the door.

Roxy whined, kicking the sheets and covers to the floor with a huff. It was suddenly very hot in here!

“This better be good, Ensign,” Cordova said wearily as she exited the lift, sipping from a mug of hot, heavily caffeinated tea. She’d picked it up from the mess hall on her way here.

She gave the deer mouse a wry look while taking a careful sip. She hadn’t had time to shower, so Lieutenant Roxy’s scent was all over her. The crew would have a field day when they found out about that. A snow rabbit and Arctic fox? It would dominate ship’s gossip for at least a week.

“It is!” The deer mouse sniffed at her, blinking distractedly. “Uh.” His whiskers twitched, and he shook it off before stammering, “Or … well, technically, I think it’s bad, b-but—”

Cordova shot him a steely look.

“Right.” The mouse took a deep breath, leading the Captain to a monitor, pulling up a display of a nearby system. “We picked up something a half hour ago coming from this planet here.” He pointed with his ropy tail.

“Yes, it was on the itinerary. A wintry world. I come from one,” she reminded. “Stellar cartography told us we could skip it.” They’d determined it was ‘of minimal scientific interest.’

“Well, I scanned it anyway! I was bored. Not that … not that serving on Yellowknife is boring! Just, sometimes, you have time to kill. Well, I’m sure you don’t, because you have so many responsibilities. But—” The brown-and-white deer mouse rubbed his neck, wriggling himself in deeper. Oh, boy. “Why … why does literally everything interesting happen when the senior staff is on duty? Ha, ha! You know what I mean? What are the odds of that?”

“Ensign, I did not come here for a stand-up routine.”

The deer mouse gulped and got to the point. “I picked up an energy spike.” He showed the Captain an animated readout. “It wasn’t detectable a few days ago! But, as we passed the location, I mean … there it is. And it’s getting stronger by the hour.”

Cordova blinked, taking another sip of tea before setting the mug down. Her paws danced on the touchscreen controls, double checking the data.

“I think it must be artificial?” Eaton insisted. “Cause nothing natural could be giving off readings like this.”

“It would be highly unlikely,” Cordova murmured in agreement. “I thought the planet was uninhabited?”

Eaton whispered, “It is.” He took a breath and looked around conspiratorially before adding, “So, I, uh … I cross-referenced the HC database, right? To see if maybe anything like this had been encountered before?” He tapped at the screen and looked at the Captain’s face.

She blinked.

“I think there’s working dragon tech down there,” Eaton emphasized.

Cordova glanced to the front of the bridge. “Pilot, divert course! Take us to this planet.” She fed the coordinates to the helm. “Maximum speed.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

“Good job, Ensign,” Cordova said, patting the deer mouse on the back. “This was certainly worth waking me up for.”

The rodent beamed, ears swiveling to attention. “Thank you, ma’am! I was just doing my—”

Ba-beep, ba-beep!

Noises from the tactical station. The ‘night shift’ officer in charge of security, Ensign Flynn, a raccoon, said, “Hold on … when we changed course, another ship entered the edge of our sensor range.”

“That’s not terribly unusual,” Cordova reasoned. Even though the UT was largely ungoverned, there was still life out here. Which meant you’d pass random ships in the night.

“No,” the racoon admitted, “except its course has it headed to the same place we’re going. And they’re at maximum warp. Just like us.” His masked face looked to the snow rabbit. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

“I suspect not,” she admitted, already forming a theory.

Eaton’s tail whipped around. “They probably saw the energy signature, too.”

Cordova went to the tactical station, flanked by the boys. “Oh, I’m sure they saw it. But no one who didn’t already know what that signature represented would go out of their way to investigate it, especially when it’s on a harsh, icy wasteland. Logic dictates they have a pre-existing interest.” Her heart skipped a beat. “Check to see if the vessel’s signature matches—” She tap-a-tapped at the controls. “Matches this.”

Flynn nodded, and a few seconds later said, “They match perfectly.”

“Scalies!” Eaton squeaked, eyes widening.

“Wake the senior staff,” Cordova told Flynn, the weight of the situation now fully apparent. The stakes had been raised. “Fill them in. Schedule a meeting in the conference room in forty-five minutes.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

“Helm. ETA?” Cordova barked, striding forward, Eaton scurrying after her.

“Five hours.”

“Can you shave anything off that?” She looked over the pilot’s shoulder. A groundhog.

“Not without overheating the engines,” he insisted. “It would be a one-way trip until we could repair them. And given who we’re up against? I wouldn’t advise being a sitting duck.”

“I’ll take a few seconds if you can give them to me.”

“I’ll, uh, see what I can do, ma’am.” A pause, looking up to add, “If it’s any consolation, they’re no faster than we are. We’ll arrive at practically the same time.”

“Which means we have to launch our away team the very second we enter orbit.” It was imperative they beat the Scalies to the tech. Returning to tactical (the Captain never stayed still for very long), Cordova asked, “Where is the epicenter of the energy signature coming from? Can we pinpoint it from here?”

“Looks like … the Southern polar region?”

“Weather conditions?”

Tap-a-tap-tap. The raccoon nodded. “Cold. Well below zero, even though it seems to be the summer season? We’ll need to be closer to be certain. Not detecting any storms, but there’s time for that to change. There’s also something else, Captain. I’m not sure if it matters, but—”

“Yes?”

“The landing site will be in the midnight sun.”

Cordova nodded, taking a deep breath.

Eternal sunshine.

Her home city on Tundrune went seventy-two days without a sunset every summer. Even when you were used to it, it played tricks on your body; made you lose perspective. Shadows became bolder. Eventually, everything became a mirage as time lost all meaning.

“Better than polar dark,” the Captain finally replied. “Scalies have better night vision than we do.”

Eaton, overhearing this, twitched with worry.

Seeing the deer mouse lingering, waiting for instructions, Cordova told him, “It seems we have an old-fashioned space race on our paws. And we’ve got you to thank for it.”

Stammering, the mouse exclaimed, “Me?! I, uh … oh, thanks? You’re welcome? I hope we win, Captain ma’am!”

Behind them, Flynn rolled his eyes.

“Failure isn’t an option,” the Captain said seriously. Sniffing herself, she added, “I’m going back to my quarters to shower and have a too-early breakfast. I’ll be back for the meeting. Until then, the bridge is yours.”

Eaton smiled and saluted.

The snow rabbit gave a slight ‘who is this guy?’ look as she left.

The mouse bit his lip.

Flynn made a face at the mouse, hissing, “She’s going to think night shift is weird if you keep that up!”

“We are weird,” the mouse said obviously.

The racoon insisted, “Yeah, but she doesn’t need to know that!”

Shuttlepod Five launched from Yellowknife’s rear bay, turning, arcing around its mothership’s sleek, tapered nacelles. (Unlike most HC ships, it had four of them. It was one of the fastest ships in the fleet for a reason!)

The pod’s thrusters ignited, glowing to full, and the tiny, winged craft shot down toward the planet, a white-grey sphere.

The pod had six occupants. All winter-hardy species, given the bitter conditions that awaited them.

Besides the Captain (who was leading the mission), there was science officer Lieutenant Darby (a jovial, fluffy-furred sea otter) who was also an expert in anthropology, chief of security Lieutenant-Commander Willow (a no-nonsense snow rabbit) and two of her younger deputy ensigns (an unserious, burly reindeer named Stirling and another snow rabbit named Rhys), and the pilot, Lieutenant JG Roxy.

“ETA is five minutes,” Roxy announced from the helm. Her white, soot-tipped tail swished one way. “Cor—” A deep breath. Tail swishing the other way. “Captain … ma’am,” she said, fumbling for the correct terminology. She’d never slept with a Captain before! And certainly not hours before a mission that could swing the balance of galactic power.

Chirrup!

“Yellowknife to Pod Five.”

“Copy.”

“The Scalies have entered orbit. Their shuttle just launched. They’re at least three minutes behind you.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Cordova replied to her first officer, a muskrat named Jasper. “We’ll try not to be long. Keep Yellowknife out of trouble until I get back?”

“Oh, I always save the trouble for you, ma’am,” Jasper teased before the channel was cut.

“Head start!” Darby echoed excitedly.

“Maybe that’s what they want,” Stirling reasoned.

They all looked to the reindeer.

“We land, they blow us up after and land themselves,” he explained with a casual shrug. “It’s what I’d do.”

“Thanks for that,” Roxy said, wearing a big frown.

“I’m simply preparing you for all eventualities!”

Darby chuckled, the sea otter insisting, “The dampening field being given off by the central structure is so great it neutralizes all energy-based weapons below the cloud line.” As Yellowknife had gotten closer to the planet, it became apparent that the dragon tech was being housed in a building of some sort. “They can’t destroy us. We can’t destroy them.”

“We can’t use our phase pistols?” Rhys asked, ears twiddling with disappointment.

“Nope.” Scanners would be useless, as well.

“Don’t you pay attention during security briefings?” Stirling asked with a goading smile.

Rhys glared at him.

“That’s what your foot-paws are for, Ensign Rhys,” Willow reminded. She had personally trained her entire staff in paw-to-paw (and foot-paw) combat. She had been Academy fight champion two years running back in the day. “We’ll also be carrying these.” The snow rabbit doe pulled out some nondescript ‘sticks.’ She tossed one to each deputy. “They’re activated by the button on the side. Do not open them in the shuttle, please.”

“Are they swords?” Rhys asked, brow quirking.

“They are retractable metal-alloy staffs. Should you need them.”

“Oh,” the snow rabbit said. His brow un-quirked. That wasn’t as cool.

“I’ve lost comms,” Roxy said from the helm. “Sensors are going haywire, too!”

“That’s to be expected. We’re at the cloud layer,” Darby said, coming up behind the Arctic fox. He gripped the back of her chair. “Wow, Captain, are you seeing this? The energy output is even stronger than it was an hour ago! How is that possible?”

“Whatever power source the dragons were using may be destabilizing. Perhaps it is in the final stages of overload?”

“Death throes,” Stirling quipped. “Always something you wanna hear while heading into a dangerous situation.”

“Wait, we know this and we’re going down there anyway?” Roxy asked with alarm, siding with the reindeer.

“Yes,” was all Cordova said, not about to re-explain the necessity of this mission. She’d done that during the staff meeting (even though only Willow and Darby had been there; they were senior bridge staff).

Admiral Flint would revoke her commission if he found out she’d known about this and hadn’t investigated (or, at the very least, tried to stop the Scalies from doing so).

“Hopefully, we’re in and out before the situation becomes critical,” Willow said. “I would suggest not staying more than an hour.”

“And what if the Scalies decide to stay there longer? We just gonna let them ransack the place?”

“If the Scalies want to get themselves killed, that is their prerogative.”

“It could take days to explore this place! Weeks, even,” Darby insisted.

“Could. But won’t,” Willow insisted with the full authority of her position.

The sea otter looked to the Captain, who nodded in agreement with Willow.

“I, for one, don’t wish to be exploded today,” Stirling concurred.

Darby sighed. This was a once-in-a-lifetime find! It just wasn’t fair to be on a strict deadline. Science was timeless!

“Yeah. I’m … I’m gonna have to go purely by sight, I guess?” Roxy said, not paying attention to the conversation. Without sensors, she was going to have to land completely manually. She hadn’t done that in years.

The only reason she was on this mission was because it required species who could survive in prolonged cold conditions. She ticked that box, and she could fly a ship. So, here she was. By default. Not because she had been one of the six best officers on the ship.

“You can do it, Roxy,” the Captain encouraged gently, sensing her distress.

“Thanks. I just … don’t feel good about this. We’re completely helpless,” Roxy said, steering the shuttle toward their destination.

“So are the Scalies.”

The fox, biting her lip as she swung over the landing site to get a good look of the terrain, asked, “Has anyone here actually seen a Scalie in person? Like … what should I expect?”

“I thought foxes were supposed to be fierce,” Rhys said before he could stop himself.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Roxy shot back.

The cursing made the rabbit’s ears stiffen like antennas. “It means—”

“That’s enough, Ensign,” Cordova admonished firmly.

Though she had put her species’ turbulent history with the foxes in the past, clearly not everyone had. She couldn’t police personal views (especially for those who had lost family in the skirmishes, as she knew had happened with Rhys; a cousin killed in a border strike a decade ago), but she wasn’t going to allow them to interfere with the mission.

Rhys bowed his head apologetically, also getting a stern look from Willow.

Roxy blushed at the Captain defending her, fighting the urge to apologize. She hadn’t done anything!

The source of the energy readings was now in full view, the away team crowding around the windows to get a better look.

“Structure? More like mega-structure.”

“It’s like a palace!” Darby said.

“Never seen a palace three kilometers in length.”

“It’s more a dome than anything, really.”

“If we’re getting power readings from this place, maybe it’s a power station? Industrial,” Rhys reasoned. “It could have been a junction providing power for the rest of the planet’s grid.”

“Logical.”

“Where do I land?!” Roxy asked. She didn’t see a pad. She needed a flat surface!

“The roof. Then we can bore our way inside.”

“That is a very bad idea,” Willow stated.

“If dragon tech is all that, surely their Thunderdome can handle the weight of a shuttle,” Stirling continued. “It’s still standing after millennia.”

“What’s a Thunderdome?”

“An arena of the gods. Where they duke it out. Anything goes in there!” He elbowed Rhys with a wink. “And I do mean anything.”

“Maybe there is no landing pad,” Darby told Roxy. “With how big the structure—”

“Thunderdome.”

“Structure,” the otter repeated for emphasis. “There’s probably a hangar! Bet they parked inside.”

“Well, unless you can open it for me, Webs, I gotta land outside,” the vixen said, becoming more frantic by the second.

“Calm down,” Cordova said patiently, eyes scanning over the landscape. She pointed. “There. A clearing to the east.”

“Where?!”

“There.”

“Oh … okay, I see it now.” Roxy adjusted course.

“Can’t we get closer?” Darby asked. “We only have an hour.”

“The trees would prevent a safe landing anywhere else. And I do not feel comfortable landing right outside the facility. If there are security measures, the shuttle could be damaged, and we’d be trapped.”

“Why is there a dampening field anyway?” Roxy complained again as she brought them in for a landing. Her black nose flared, whiskers at attention. “What’s the point?”

“To prevent enemies from scanning or attacking them from the air,” Willow said, going to the immediate security reasons.

“Enemies?”

“If the dragons had enemies? I don’t want to know who they were,” Stirling said with a snort, holding up his paws in a ‘no, thanks’ gesture. “Nightmare fuel.”

Rhys piped back up. “Well, they must have been defeated by something. They disappeared and left all their tech behind to be pillaged? That’s not a great legacy.”

“If they were defeated, then where are their skeletons?” Stirling challenged.

“What about a viral contagion?”

“Same thing. Bones.”

“I heard they evolved onto a higher plane,” said Roxy, the shuttle now in the clearing. She circled around for a good spot. “Because they were such powerful telepaths.”

“What, like became non-corporeal?”

“Energy beings, yeah. Pure thought or something.”

“That doesn’t sound fun.”

“Maybe they had no choice?”

“They ‘ascended’? Everywhere? All at once? What are the odds of that?”

“We’re here,” Cordova announced, ending speculation. It was one of the universe’s greatest mysteries, no doubt. But they could theorize after they saw what was inside. “Get ready. We need to disembark as soon as we touch down. The Scalies are right on our tails."

Roxy cocked her head and muttered, “And here … we … go.” A light shudder, and she exhaled heavily. The shuttle setting down in a small clearing in the snow. “Hah! I did it.” Her tongue lolled out. Looking over her shoulder at the team, she nodded and re-composed herself to sound cooler. “We’re good, folks.”

Roxy powered the shuttle down.

The Captain was the first to open the landing hatch, wearing a winter jacket emblazoned with the HC logo and Yellowknife’s registry number. She slung a backpack over her shoulder. A few tools and supplies they might require.

A stiff polar wind ruffled the fur on her face. A deep breath. She’d felt worse on Tundrune. Squinting into the eternal light, she hopped out.

“Follow me.”

“A balmy negative five degrees! What’s not pleasant about that?” Darby said, breath billowing about him. The cluster of coniferous trees they were passing through (between the clearing and the mega-structure) was blocking the worst of the breeze. The sea otter clapped his paws together in a show of vigor. “Ha! Hey, cap, should we go back to Yellowknife and get our beach gear?”

Cordova flashed the hardy sea otter a light smile, trudging through the snow (which was at least five to six inches deep). “I don’t think a bikini confers me with the proper air of authority.”

“Don’t know until you try.”

Roxy, imagining the Captain in such an outfit (and in the snow; so hot!), zoned out a bit.

“What about a snowball fight?” Darby continued, unable to contain his playful tendencies. His rudder whipped through the snow, sending glistening crystals every which way. Including into Willow’s face.

The security chief glowered at the science officer.

He didn’t notice, too excited to get his webbed paws on pure, unaltered dragon tech. This would be the greatest scientific find in history!

Darby’s enthusiasm was rudely interrupted when the ground shook. It was a sizable tremor, enough to make the trees shake, sending a shower of pine needles onto the team. Lasted about ten seconds.

Roxy yipped and lost her footing, arms pinwheeling as she fell flat onto her back in the snow. She huffed, her breath showing up as vapor.

Cordova, standing over her and backlit by the midnight sun, extended a paw. “No need to make snow angels, Lieutenant. You already are one.”

The Arctic fox blushed, taking the paw. Oh, heck!

The Captain helped her up.

Rhys, flicking his bobtail to shake off stray pine needles, overheard the exchange and tilted his head. Wait. Was there something going on between them? Since when?

A half-minute later, another tremor. This one shorter but just as strong. About five seconds in duration.

“Alright. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say,” Stirling decided, hugging a tree to stay upright, “this is not a good development.”

“We weren’t detecting seismic activity from orbit?” Darby said, shaking his head in confusion.

“We can’t be sure it’s seismic,” the Captain reasoned. “If the presumed power source is indeed overloading, it could be a result of that.”

“Right!”

Another noise.

More vibrations!

But this time by the roar of engines. The Scalie shuttle, green and angular (as opposed to the rounded blue-and-white of the HC shuttle), zipped overhead and set down in the same clearing they had.

“So, um. How fast are Scalies?” Roxy went. “Asking for purely speculative reasons … ”

“Fast,” promised Rhys darkly.

“They’re cold-blooded. How are they going to keep up with us in this weather? They’ll make it ten steps before they lock up and keel over,” Stirling promised. “I mean, I was built for this, and I still have icicles forming on my antlers!”

“That is an exaggeration,” Rhys insisted.

“You gotta get up close to see ‘em.” The reindeer bent over and shoved his antlers at the snow rabbit.

Rhys swatted him away. “How would you be able to see them? Your antlers are rooted to the top of your skull.”

Upright again, Stirling tapped the side of his noggin. “I can feel them, can’t I?”

Their argument petered out as they cleared the treeline and approached an entrance (or what looked like one, judging by the architecture) to the structure.

Cordova took the point, Willow flanking her. The two snow rabbits squinted, searching for any mechanism that might be a handle or a knob. Even a button? Anything to make a door appear.

“Why is the door not visible?” Rhys asked. “Come to think of it … ” He looked all over. “No doors, no windows?”

“Uh … guys,” Roxy said, looking at the distance. She gulped and pointed. A fast-approaching group of individuals was bounding toward them, juking through the trees like an elementary obstacle course. “They don’t look like they’re keeling over.”

“Form-fitting exo-suits?! Shit,” Stirling cursed.

The High Command’s enviro-suits were on the bulky side, designed for careful, easy movements in low oxygen and zero-G environments. Mammals could survive in most natural environments. Reptiles couldn’t. Clearly, the Solidarity had become more advanced in that area out of necessity.

“We need to get inside. Now,” Cordova said urgently.

“Maybe we should keep moving! Maybe this isn’t the entrance.”

“Wait, wait … what’s that?”

“What?”

“It’s … it’s like a discoloration on the metal. There. Very slight, but—”

“Only one way to find out,” Darby said, pressing the spot.

In an instant, a circular portal dissolved into the wall. They couldn’t see what was on the other side, but it was rimmed with eerie blue light that seemed to pulse, as if beckoning them.

“Wow!”

“Get in! Go, go, go,” Willow urged, pushing everyone through the ‘door.’ She was the last to enter. “Now, how do we close it?”

“Don’t ask me!” a panicky Roxy said.

“Back away,” Cordova guessed, shooing her crew. “It must have a proximity sensor.” Sure enough, the wall filled itself back in once they’d retreated from it.

“Would be nice if we could lock it.”

“We have maybe a minute before the Scalies arrive,” Willow guessed. “Less than two before they find a way in. We have to go deeper into the structure.”

“That might be a problem,” Roxy said, having been the first to really look around.

They all turned to see what the fox was seeing.

There was no ‘deeper way.’ This was the only room! A big room, yes. Enough so that their voices echoed when they spoke. But no doors or windows or anything. It was unusually quiet and sterile.

“Where is the light coming from?” Rhys wondered, not seeing any specific lighting sources.

Darby, thinking scientifically, padded to the wall. He put his paws on it and felt around.

Stirling and Rhys unhooked their ‘fight sticks’ from their belts, readying themselves.

“Lieutenant, tell me you’re on to something,” Cordova pressed, following the otter.

“It’s just like the door outside, Captain!” the otter exclaimed enthusiastically. “The reason we couldn’t see it was because dragon tech was psionic.”

“Since when?” Rhys demanded.

“Since always! They were top-level telepaths, remember? Their tech responded to their thoughts. Maybe they had evolved beyond spoken language! Or maybe they were mute to begin with. But—”

“You can nerd out on your own time,” Stirling complained. “Get us out of here!”

The otter ignored him and continued to reason (because what was the point of a solution without knowing how you got there?), “Since we don’t have their powers, we need to use the manual, emergency—” A door appeared as his paw touched a faintly ‘discolored’ spot on the wall. “Backup!” the otter finished, grinning and gesturing at the tall, glowing circular entryway. “Heh. Let’s go!”

“Why have manual backups if they were telepathic? Not like telepathy can stop working.”

“Maybe it did … if they got a bad head cold?” Roxy said.

“It’s likely the ‘manuals’ were for their non-dragon slaves,” Darby said.

“They had slaves?”

“And here I thought dragons were enlightened. Bastards.”

“Power does not equal morality,” Cordova reminded sagely.

Everyone moved to Darby’s position.

Another tremor struck. Without the snow and ground to cushion them and redistribute the shockwave, this one felt far more violent. They all toppled to the hard, marbled floor.

Cordova’s shoulder hit before her head, saving her from a concussion. But that didn’t make the impact less painful.

“Captain!” Willow cried, helping her up.

“T-thank you. I’m alright. Really.”

When it was over, Darby popped back up and asked, eyes wide, “Hey, guys, do you think their portals were round to make room for their wings?”

“Darby, shut the fu—"

“Wait,” Cordova said, getting an idea. She looked around. “This room is far too big for only one portal. Logic dictates there must be dozens of others, all leading to different areas of the mega-structure.” She hopped to the opposite wall and felt around. It took about ten seconds, but she manually activated a portal. Round, glowing, leading to who-knew-where. “If we all go to the same location, we run a greater risk of running into a dead end. We need to learn as much as we can in a short time. If we split up—”

“We could lose each other,” Willow insisted. It was her job to make sure the Captain came back from this mission.

“Keep track of how you get to where you’re going. If we haven’t crossed paths in forty minutes, reverse course and meet back here. Two groups,” Cordova decided. “Stirling and Roxy with me. Rhys and Willow, go with Darby.”

The away team didn’t have time to debate it.

A commotion came from outside the room. Pounding, hissing.

The Scalies had arrived.

“Good luck,” Cordova said as they split into two groups. They walked through the mysterious, glowing wall-portals. One on each side of the room. Each shimmering a different color before swallowing them up.

Their paw (and hoof)-steps echoed softly in the long, rectangular space. It was eerily quiet in here, but the acoustics were beyond perfection. Every sound carried in crystalline fashion.

To their left, a wall lined with expressionistic art.

The right? A long, curving window which stretched into the distance, giving a view of the bright, glowing west.

“We went from ground level to … at least nine, ten stories up?” Cordova guessed, padding toward the window. “Fascinating. Then they are tele-portals, not traditional doorways.”

Stirling added, “We must be on the other side of the structure. I didn’t see any of these windows from the outside.”

“Perhaps their windows are only ‘windows’ from the inside? Allowing them to see out but nobody else to see in.”

“Or we could be on another part of the planet entirely!” Roxy said. “I mean, I doubt this is the only building that survived.”

“Possibly,” the Captain admitted, head swimming with possibilities. Or maybe that was from the fall she’d taken?

“For being all-powerful, dragons were awfully paranoid,” the reindeer accused.

“They believed in comfy couches, though,” Roxy observed, walking up to one. Long and cushioned, without a backrest. Or armrests. Maybe it wasn’t a couch. More like a bed? She flopped onto it, rolling around. “Heh. Bet they lounged about like this.”

“I wonder if they made noises,” the Captain whispered. The sound carrying. “Did they make and listen to music? Or was it this quiet all the time? Everything in their heads?”

“It’s always the quiet ones,” Stirling quipped.

“I couldn’t handle it.” Roxy got back up. Definitely not whispering. “Personally, I enjoy being a little vocal.”

The Captain gave the fox an over-the-shoulder look. “I am well aware.”

The fox giggled and blushed.

Stirling paced about (luckily, he had traction-giving rubber ‘socks’ over his hooves, so he wasn’t slipping on the smooth, polished floors), looking up and down the long, narrow space. “I don’t get it. Is this just a hallway that connects one thing to another? But if they can instantly transport themselves from room to room, wouldn’t hallways be obsolete?”

“Antlers, stop trying to make sense of this. Dragons were weird. That’s what I’m going with.”

“It’s a solarium,” Cordova decided.

“What?”

“Sunroom.” The Captain walked to the large, sprawling window. Her nose twitched. The midnight sun, bright and bold, was closer to the horizon than when they arrived. It must technically be nighttime in the rest of this hemisphere. Here, unable to see the stars, she wondered how Yellowknife was faring in orbit.

“And they couldn’t go outside to get some sun?” Stirling asked.

“It’s not very friendly for Scalies out there!” Roxy reminded.

“They aren’t very friendly, themselves.”

“They probably think the same thing about us.”

Cordova carefully reached out to touch the window and found there was no glass. Just a forcefield which shimmered when she touched it. She quickly pulled her paw back. “That explains the clarity of the view.”

Roxy whistled as she came upon a mural. She gestured at Stirling, who clopped over.

Stirling crossed his arms. “Huh. What am I looking at?”

“I think it’s a dragon? It’s not a very realistic one. But, uh … those are obviously wings.” The fox pointed with a black claw. “And those—"

“Dragon guys had two?!”

“Seems so.”

“Mm. Is that true for modern Scalies?” he murmured, looking to Roxy.

“What kind of girl do you think I am?” the fox defended.

“A Captain’s pet,” the reindeer said with a smirk.

Roxy opened her muzzle, and—

Cordova interrupted this ‘hard-hitting’ conversation by observing, from behind them, “The background of the mural … it is lush?” A confused head tilt. “It can’t represent the planet as it stands.” A pause. “Given the dragons’ power and reptiles’ inability to handle the cold, why would they choose to settle on a wintry planet?”

“Maybe this wasn’t always cold?” Roxy suggested.

“Precisely,” Cordova replied, tilting her head. “As I recall, the planet in the Redwing System—the one famous for dragon ruins— also suffered an environmental catastrophe after the dragons left. Only, it was turned into a desert rather than thrown into an ice age. I wonder if perhaps the dragons’ sudden, mysterious departure relates to the barrenness of the planets many of their ruins are found on?”

The Captain didn’t have enough evidence to suggest it had happened on every planet the dragons had touched. But now they knew it happened on more than one! It was now in the realm of ‘unusual coincidence.’ One more example would make it a verified pattern.

“This sounds like something for Darby. Who we should probably find instead of, y’know, contemplating art and history?” Stirling reminded. “Getting a funny feeling in my antlers. And that’s not a joke. Just this … weird sensation.”

“So, you can really feel them?” Roxy asked, remembering what he’d told Rhys.

“Oh, yeah.”

“My whiskers, come to think of it,” Cordova noted with a blink. “Are tingling? And not pleasantly. Almost a numbness spreading to my cheek.”

“Why don’t I feel anything yet?” Roxy asked.

“You’re a predator,” Stirling pointed out. “Your bio-chemistry’s probably different from ours.”

Another tremor!

This one lasted a good twenty seconds and had the trio falling to the floor again. Because they were at the top of the building, they could feel it swaying.

“Why’s there nothing to grab onto in this place?” Stirling said, standing back up. He gave one paw to each girl and pulled them back to their foot-paws.

“If we knew how to get to the power source—”

“We still wouldn’t be able to do anything about it,” Stirling told Roxy.

“Let’s move,” Cordova said, looking for discolorations on the walls.

“Holy mackerel,” the otter muttered as he looked across the room. Not a room, really. A bay. “I can’t believe it. Is that a ship? Ah, and it’s still intact! Ahh!” The otter ambled toward the craft, paws on his head.

The two security rabbits hopped after him, imploring caution.

“Darby, don’t!”

“There may be a defensive—"

When Darby reached the ship, a flash of light (and a loud ZAP!). The mustelid was thrown back into the other two, the three of them tumbling to the floor.

“F-forcefield.” The otter groaned and coughed and sat up, rubbing his head. “Makes … yeah, makes sense.” His eyes lit up, and he was on his foot-paws as if nothing had happened. “That was a powerful blast! Isn’t it a beauty?!” A gasp. “Imagine if we could take it with us?!”

Willow, dusting herself off, only said, “You are fortunate its shielding is non-lethal. I would suggest—”

“That is wishful thinking,” Rhys told the scientist. “How would you propose getting the shuttle to Yellowknife if it can’t be boarded?”

“It’s believed that dragon computers, the bigger ones—bases, capital ships—used sentient AI interfaces,” Darby explained, reapproaching the shuttle. Careful to maintain proper distance this time. “We know this because the AI that runs Redwing Station? Is derived from dragon tech, though heavily modified by the avians. They’re a whole other interesting story!”

“I’m sure.”

“And you believe this shuttle may also be … alive?” Willow asked, sounding unconvinced.

“Maybe! It’s kinda small for that, admittedly, but if it were aware and I could make friendly contact with it? Maybe it could help us!”

“To do what?” Rhys asked. “Get out of here?”

“Out? We just arrived!” Darby insisted.

“We are headed deeper into the belly of a quaking, mythical beast with Scalies hunting us for sport, and we’ve lost our Captain. Whatever we came for is not worth our lives. The urgency to turn back is becoming paramount.”

“Ha, well … otters pass as critters, but we technically aren’t prey like you, so I’m not feeling that!” Darby said obliviously.

Willow had to grab hold of Rhys’ arm to keep him from advancing upon the otter.

The younger rabbit pulled away from his superior and took some deep breaths.

“How is your ship still be operating? After two thousand years?” Willow questioned, circling the craft behind Darby.

“More like 2,400,” the otter corrected.

Another tremor.

This one borderline violent.

“Oof!”

“Mmf … ”

Rhys was getting agitated, which was the logical snow rabbit equivalent of ‘pissed off.’ (He’d always been a bit of a hothead for his species.) He told the other two, “If I fall one more time … ”

Darby squinted. “Does anyone else feel that?”

“Feel what?”

“Just this … not an ache, really, but … something? It’s bothering my rudder.”

“Your rudder? Your tail?”

“It’s like my atoms are being torn apart.”

“You cannot be familiar with such a feeling,” Rhys insisted doubtfully.

“You were just zapped and thrown several meters,” Willow reminded Darby.

“No, no. But! The power source,” the otter said, pointing to Rhys. “The tremors. The funny feelings.” He pivoted and pointed at Willow. “Right? Maybe they’re side effects … stemming from the source. And because it’s getting worse, maybe we’re getting closer to it!”

“You are quite fond of hypothesizing, Lieutenant.”

“You can’t reach a good conclusion without it!”

Yet another tremor.

“The shaking is getting closer together,” Rhys observed, looking around. This structure may have been built like a fortress, but that didn’t mean the ceiling couldn’t fall on them at any moment.

Willow laid down the law. She was the ranking officer here. “Darby, we must keep moving. We are running out of—"

A portal opened in the wall and five Scalies burst through.

The Yellowknife trio froze, blinking in unison.

The Scalies (two crocs, a gator, and two monitor lizards) tossed their green, scaly snouts into the air, flicking their tongues and tasting the mammals’ surprise. Even their fear. Good appetizers which made them hungry for more. Much more! Making clicking noises and golden eyes narrowing in lust, they bull-rushed without a second thought.

The two snow rabbits quickly got into defensive postures, paws raising in martial arts readiness. Eyes narrowing, ears raising tall.

“Guys, what do I do?” Darby asked the rabbits, hiding behind them. “What should I do?!” He was a scientist, not a fighter.

“Don’t let the monitors bite you,” Willow said. “They’re venomous.”

“Crocs have claws like daggers,” Rhys added. “Try not to get skewered.”

“Oh, heck, oh, heck,” the otter muttered, backing away from the impending brawl, darting around in a noodle-like panic.

Willow gave a faint, dangerous smile, hopping at a crocodile while activating her metal staff. It extended, and she swung it while hopping and spinning, smashing a croc in the face, knocking out a front tooth.

Snarl!

Swipe!

Claws raked through winter-white fur but didn’t hit skin.

Willow ducked.

The second crocodile piled into her, sending her flying. The doe yelped (she’d be feeling that tomorrow), going limp and letting herself roll.

Panting, she pushed herself back up, nodding at her enemies (‘come at me’) before wiping her muzzle with the back of her paw and spitting blood. She’d bitten her tongue in the hit. Raising her staff again, she swung it hard and fast.

Whack!

Smack!

One of the crocs stumbled to his knees.

Willow lifted her stick for a knockout blow.

“Behind you!” Rhys shouted.

Willow ducked, a huge, scaly hand swiping where her head had been. Dropping, she rolled, brought her knees back, and delivered a mighty kick punch. To the knee of the gator, causing him to screech and topple.

Rhys dodged and twisted out of the way of the monitors’ snarling, tongue-flicking bites. He also went to his kick punch arsenal, big, bare foot-paw landing on a monitor’s stomach. Once. They reeled. Rhys quickly spun and delivered a second kick. Same location. The lizard flew back and slid across the floor.

Willow, panting for exertion, had only taken out one of her foes. There was still a croc and gator. They were trying to pin her in, and they didn’t seem remotely winded. The initial surge of adrenaline she’d felt was wearing off, replaced by burning muscles and fatigue. And though Rhys has taken out one of the monitors, he still had one left, as well as the croc she had laid out. He was stirring and making eyes at the other rabbit.

“Rhys! Retreat!”

“What?”

“We’re … we’re not going to win this.”

“Where can we go?” he asked, grunting as a monitor’s tail tripped him up. “We’re trapped!” He rolled as a foot came down where his face had been.

Willow swung her staff but lost her grip and it clattered away. She raised her paws in a gesture of surrender, but the Scalies refused to heed it. They chomped at her, coming for the kill.

“Guys, I found another door!” yelled Darby, who had been busy searching while the Scalies went after the rabbits.

“I can’t … I can’t make it,” Willow panted. “Go without us!”

“I can’t!”

“T-that’s … that’s an order, Lieutenant. I outrank you!”

“Oh, shut up!” the otter groused, unable to leave the room while there was still a chance they could all go together.

Willow coughed as the gator kicked her. Hard. The crocs salivated above her. It dripped and splattered on her cheeks.

Rhys was in a similarly bleak situation, screaming as the second croc bear-hugged him from behind while the remaining monitor slashed claw marks deep into his uniform, staining it with blood, smiling toothily, prepared to deliver the buck a dose of venom to end it once and for all.

But a new voice, crisp and authoritative, pierced the air like an avenging angel.

“Back off. Now. And I’ll consider letting you live.”

The Scalies all snapped to attention.

“Captain!” Darby called, desperately waving from behind them. “I have a way to the next chamber!”

Cordova heard but didn’t acknowledge him. Just stared down the Scalies.

They made threatening sounds.

The Captain tried to buy her injured crew time to get to safety.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she told the Scalies, extending a paw. “We can cooperate. Pool our resources. Share what we find.” A short breath, stepping ever-so-carefully closer to them. Her paw lowered. “For instance, we believe there is an incredibly potent power source in this structure. It may be losing stability. The entire planet may soon be destroyed. We should take what we can and go.”

One of the lizards said something in a clicking, hissing tongue. The Yellowknife crew only spoke HC Standard, and no one had a translator on them. But their claws were dripping with Rhys’ blood.

“Fuck you, too,” Roxy growled from behind her Captain, eyes raging at what they’d done to Rhys. The fox and rabbit may have gotten off on a bad foot, but he was her shipmate. She would always have his tail. “If he dies, you die.”

“That was not the most helpful thing to say, Lieutenant,” Cordova breathed, her attempts at diplomacy unraveling.

“Eh. What’s the point, Captain? If we can’t understand them, they can’t understand us.”

“They may be faking.” If not, they could certainly read body language.

Showing her teeth and heaving for breath, the vixen got in front of the Captain and continued to taunt the Scalies. As the only predator mammal here (Darby barely counted), she had to do something.

“The rabbits are mine!” Roxy shouted. “You want them? You’ll have to take them from me. I bet you can’t.”

Cordova had never seen the Arctic fox in her true predatory element, and it was a shocking contrast compared to her sweet, happy-go-lucky self. Instead of reprimanding her further, she let the fox be a fox, hoping her instincts could deliver them a victory.

One of the crocs charged at Roxy, who swiped, snarled, and bit. Claws stabbed at her. She yipped and lunged back!

Stirling galloped forth and delivered some blows with his hooves, shouting, “Thunderdoooome!”

Darby, huffing, went to Willow’s aid as the Scalies left her and advanced on the newcomers. He whispered something into Willow’s ear. The rabbit nodded, crawling to Rhys, who was bloodied and conscious. She dragged him to safety and tried to revive him while the otter ambled off.

“Captain!” Darby called from the other side of the floating dragon shuttle. “I’ve found a way onboard the ship! Distract them! I’m going to take it back to Yellowknife.”

That got the Scalies’ attention.

They quickly ditched the mammals and advanced on the shuttle. They had no idea it was shielded, and when they got too close, the ship defended itself by flinging them all across the room. They all groaned but didn’t get up.

“Ha!” The otter clapped his webbed paws together. “It worked!”

“Heh … guess you were right, Captain,” Roxy panted, Scalie blood staining her white pelt. “They could understand us.” She licked her lips. “Faking sons of bi—”

“Just to be clear,” Cordova asked Darby, “you can’t actually board this craft, can you?”

“No, I think it requires dragon DNA to access. But I do have a way to the next room!”

“Right. Let’s go, hurry!” the Captain told the others, rushing to Willow’s aid to help with Rhys. Stirling came up behind them and easily picked up his smaller compatriot, carrying him through the entryway which formed in the far wall. They all stepped through and vanished as the Scalies began to stir.

“What is it?”

They all stared at what they’d come across.

Elevated in the center of a bright, spherical room was another sphere. Translucent blue, glowing with power that quickly pulsed outward in ray-like fashion to receiving nodes, which also pulsed but at a slower pace.

And in the middle of that sphere?

A much smaller sphere. Marble-sized, pitch black in the center with a pure-white disc around it.

Darby was nearly hyperventilating as he got a closer look.. “I … I think … yes! Ahh! Oh, my gosh.” He beamed at the rest of the team.

“You gotta tell us, Webs,” Roxy said impatiently. “We don’t get it.”

“It’s a quantum singularity! A black hole! Like … an actual miniature, artificially created black hole,” he said, emphasizing every word. “That’s how they did it! That’s how they powered everything. The dragons harnessed singularities!”

“And how did they accomplish this?” Cordova asked. She was impressed, no doubt. But she didn’t have the luxury of merely admiring this discovery.

The HC brass would demand to know all about it, no doubt hope to replicate the process before the Scalies did. The remnants of dragon tech had started a technological arms race.

The door had been opened.

There was no closing it, now.

“I mean, dragons had such strong cognitive powers, maybe they could manipulate actual space and time? Stands to reason! Especially if we’re assuming that’s why they all vanished. They got too good at it and they ‘ascended’.” The otter stared at the tiny black hole and all the visible power being siphoned from it. He was whispering with reverence, as if undergoing spiritual catharsis.

“I thought black holes gobbled up all energy in reach,” Willow said. “How can they be used as power sources?”

The otter made an ‘iffy’ gesture with his paw. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

“This isn’t something you can just do,” the otter continued, almost laughing. “No, we can’t ‘tech the tech’ with this one.”

“Lieutenant,” Cordova said, as politely (but firmly) as possible given the circumstances. “We did not risk our lives to come down here to treat this like a museum. We are not tourists. We have a mission to complete. We have to get something out of this. If we don’t, the Scalies will.”

“Well, whatever you do,” Stirling said, snapping with emotion, “hurry the fuck up! We’ve stabilized him for now, but the claw marks are deep.” The reindeer knew this because his own uniform and hands were now covered with Rhys’ blood. He cradled the rabbit closer. “We need to get him back to Yellowknife.”

The otter looked to his injured crewman and bit his lip, nodding. “Um, well … it’s just hard to think of what we could smuggle out of here. Physically, you know? Loot-wise. Everything we’ve found is either integrated into the actual design of the mega-structure or protected by heavy shielding. This isn’t like the Redwing site. There were tons of artifacts there, but … I suspect that site was more dedicated to commerce, business. Residential? This is more like a governmental power hub. Likely provided power for not only the whole planet but the intergalactic gateway that was in orbit.”

“Gateway?” Roxy echoed.

“We didn’t detect a gateway upon approach,” Willow said. “It must’ve been destroyed.”

“A shame, too!” the otter decreed. “The dragons had thousands of them all over the galaxy. It was how they maintained their empire. Perhaps their most astonishing creation! Even more than this,” the otter said, gesturing at the flickering singularity. “They manipulated space and time!”

“You said that already,” Stirling complained, shifting Rhys in his arms.

“It’s just that incredible!”

As such, it was also their most coveted tech.

Whoever could find and use the gateways? Recreate the original dragon network? They would wield ultimate influence. They could transport whole fleets anywhere in an instant, solving problems of exploration and security at once. Also, with travel requiring less time and fewer resources, they could divert those things to other aspects of society, bettering everything and everyone!

They were interrupted by more tremors, one after another after another. Like a string of foreshocks.

The forcefield surrounding the black hole flickered.

The nodes glowed brighter for a moment, seeming to absorb some of the strain.

“It looks like the nodes are acting as pressure-relief valves for the forcefield suppressing the singularity, taking the energy it collects and redistributing it,” Cordova observed. She squinted. “But the nodes are not protected by a field themselves.” Pointing to Darby, she asked, “If we could take out just one of the nodes, would it weaken the dampening field enough to destabilize it without bringing down the field around the singularity?”

“Yes. Maybe? That’s a reasonable assumption.” The otter nodded. “But hardly a guaran—"

“I suggest we try it.”

“Should we be gambling with black holes?” Roxy asked. “Captain … ”

Cordova held up a paw.

Roxy fell silent.

The rabbit explained, “With the dampening field disrupted, we’d be able to use our scanners. We could tap into a map of the facility and find a quicker, easier way out than retracing our steps.”

“Knowing scanners and phase weapons would be useless, we did not bring any,” Willow reminded.

Cordova took off the backpack she’d been wearing the whole time. “Just in case,” she said, unzipping it and pulling out a scanner. And another. She had enough for everyone and tossed one to each crewmember.

“As soon as the field drops, run full scans. Tap into the computer core. Download whatever you can.”

“Captain,” Darby reminded. “The computer core here is so big, we’ll only get two, three percent of it at most.”

“I’m aware of that. But combined with the knowledge Redwing already has? We’d have the beginnings of a database.”

Maybe that would be enough to locate other dragon planets?

The High Command needed to be proactive. The dragons had thousands of worlds in their empire and only a handful of them had truly been found, which meant there were many more out there …

Who would find them first?

The Scalies? The Federation? The pirates?

Or some other player entirely?

“We have to play the game,” Cordova told the others. “Not because we need to win … but because we cannot afford to lose.”

“Captain,” Darby warned. “When the dampening field goes, the force-field containing the singularity won’t be far behind. We’ll have to get out of here fast. It’ll consume the planet.”

“What? The whole planet?! It’s the size of a pebble,” Roxy said, scoffing at the black hole.

“Yeah, I know! We’re lucky it’s not twice as big, or it’d crush the whole solar system.”

Roxy blinked.

“Alright. Now, how do we deactivate the dampening field?” Cordova wondered, looking to Willow.

The other doe nodded, stepped forward, and took the compressed metal stick off her belt. She pressed the button on the side, and it extended into a weapon. She pointed. “If I use this as a javelin and hit one those nodes, I could damage it enough to deactivate it.”

“Excellent.” Cordova stood out of the way and gestured for the security chief to have at it.

Willow narrowed her ice-blue eyes, backing up as far as possible. Biting her lower lip with her buckteeth, she hopped and sprinted forward, bringing her arm back and tossing the metal rod as hard as she could.

It arced through the air.

Sailed.

And hit its target, piercing the heart of one of the power nodes. The node sparked and blinked wildly before losing all color and light. Subsequently, the rest of the nodes began to strain to keep up with the load its lost comrade had been handling. This weakened the overall network just enough.

“Dampening field is down!” Roxy said. “Scans are working!”

Everyone feverishly scanned, including Darby.

But something unusual was happening to Darby’s device. Its memory was already full! He’d only been running the scan for a few seconds. How was that possible? As if something had intentionally tapped into it and filled it with the data it desired the crew—or Darby, specifically—to have.

In conjunction with this, a portal opened in the wall.

The crew tensed, expecting the Scalies to appear again.

“Captain,” Darby said incredulously, showing Cordova his scanner. In HC Standard were the words: Exit here. “It’s a way out.”

“How?” Roxy asked.

The otter shrugged.

“I don’t see we have many other options?” Cordova said. “We’ll just have to trust it.” She approached the portal, still scanning. “I’ll go first.”

The portal deposited the entire crew just outside the shuttle pod. They didn’t question how or why; just piled in as quickly as they could.

The node network was starting to crumble under the added pressure, and the forcefield surrounding the singularity was barely holding on.

The tremors were near-constant now. Trees were toppling, cracks appearing in the ground. A dull, thundering roar filled the air.

Cordova pulled the hatch shut, the last one in. “Now! Go!”

Roxy’s paws flew over the controls so fast they almost blurred. She couldn’t believe she was even hitting the right buttons. Felt like her vision was blurring, her hearing fading. Her own heartbeat came to the fore. Hammering, pounding.

Then Cordova put a paw on her shoulder.

And told her, “Deep breath. You can do it.”

The Arctic fox sucked air, held it. Whooshed it back out.

“Strap in,” she told her lover.

Cordova nodded and urged the others to do the same.

Roxy got to work.

Skipping the engine pre-checks and warm-ups, she cold started the thrusters, not bothering to set her instruments. She just took them straight up, the hull creaking as the engines strained to get into the ideal operating window.

“Come on, come on,” the vixen muttered.

The nose of the shuttle wavered, pointing at the blaring midnight sun. It beamed into the cabin of the small craft, nearly blinding them all. Paws rose to shield eyes.

Roxy closed hers and punched it.

Max thrusters.

Into the sky they went. Opening her eyes, she adjusted their course. Upward. Ever so slightly. Angling, angling higher and higher, until the ship was rocketing toward the clouds and punching through them.

“Let’s hope Yellowknife is where they were when we set down, because we don’t have time to find them,” Darby said, running a scan of the surface. Without the dampening field, they were getting clear readings. “The singularity is about to break through the shielding. We have five minutes. Maybe?”

“There! There’s Yellowknife,” Roxy said, pointing at the silhouette. “Ha!”

Cordova’s sighed with relief. “Hail Commander Jasper and tell him—"

Ba-beep, ba-beep!

Willow, unbuckling herself, went to help Roxy. She took the comm while the fox flew. “Captain, we have a problem.”

Cordova also left her chair, gripping the backs of the girls’ seats with both paws. She blinked at the monitor. “A distress call?”

Willow’s nose twitched. She had to spit the words out. “It’s … from the Scalie shuttle?”

Everyone went dead quiet.

“Are you fucking serious?” Stirling said.

Willow recited, “They burned out one of their two thrusters trying to beat us to the surface. They’ve cleared the cloud layer but don’t have the power to reach orbit. They’re pleading for assistance from their mothership.”

“She won’t be able to get to them in time. We’re the only ones close enough,” Darby realized quietly, the desperation of the situation becoming clear.

Cordova rubbed her face with her paws, closing her eyes.

Willow insisted, “Leave them. They tried to kill us. They could very well have killed one of my deputies. If the roles were reversed, they’d let us die.”

“We have to help them,” Darby countered. “Relations between our governments are already strained. Ignoring their call for help? It’ll just make things worse.”

“And you think saving them will make them better?” Stirling asked. “They probably won’t even admit to their superiors we helped them. They’ll bury it. Or twist the intent. That’s what they do. They hate mammals.”

“We just spent the last hour looking at the remains of a dead civilization,” Darby reminded, speaking to himself as much as the others. Watching this planet die in front of his eyes was sobering. “When we’re gone, I hope we’re remembered for more than our technology.”

Roxy looked at Cordova, who gave a wordless nod.

“Going back for the Scalie shuttle,” Roxy confirmed in a level tone. She was more on Willow and Stirling’s side than the Captain and Darby’s, but she wasn’t about to offer an opinion. There wasn’t time for that. They needed every second. Right now, she was a pilot. “Someone man the tractor beam? I’m not stopping for them. We’re going to grab them on a flyby.”

“Won’t that rip us apart?”

“Not if I time it right.”

Ba-beep, ba-beep!

“We are being hailed by Yellowknife. It is Commander Jasper. He wants to know ‘what the hell’ we are doing.”

“Inform the Commander to open the main shuttlebay in preparation for our return and to go to maximum warp out of the system as soon as we are inside. Don’t wait for the doors to close or us to land. Just make sure we’re in the bay and go.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

As the shuttle zoomed back to the cloud layer, Willow ran scans to pinpoint the location of the Scalie craft. “There. Twenty degrees to the west.”

“I see them,” Roxy said. “Get a sensor lock. Ready the beam.”

“Ready.”

“We’re only going to get one shot at this,” Darby warned them. “We have to get out of here. This planet is about to implode.”

“What’s worse, do you think?” Stirling asked, trying to lighten the mood. “Getting _im_ploded or _ex_ploded?”

No one answered him.

Roxy tensed as they approached the Scalie shuttle, which was struggling to gain altitude. The fox debated with herself what side to do the fly-by on. Top, bottom? Side? She chose the top.

“Tractor range in three, two, one. Engaging beam!” Willow shouted.

A fluctuating, blue spotlight shone from the belly of the HC shuttle, capturing the Scalie craft in its glow.

The computer trilled.

The shuttle lurched hard.

Willow, gripping her console, said, “They’re slowing us down.”

“Steady,” Cordova ordered.

“Three minutes,” Darby said, looking like he’d seen a ghost. The normally chipper otter looked terrified. Out the window, he could see the surface of the planet cracking into bits and pieces.

“Entering low orbit. Releasing Scalie craft. They’re headed for their mothership.”

“Back to Yellowknife! Now!”

Roxy didn’t need to be told. She was panting audibly (she could really use some water right now!) as she hightailed it toward their ship. She swung around upon approach.

“One minute!” Darby said.

“I don’t have time to slow my approach. I’m gonna have to go in hot. We’re gonna crash!”

“Tell Jasper to clear the bay of personnel! Activate progressive force-field matrix to buffer our entry.”

Willow conveyed the message.

“Thirty seconds.”

“The Scalie shuttle is aboard its mothership. They’ve just gone to warp.”

“Hooray for them,” Stirling said sarcastically, feeling Rhys’ forehead. “He’s getting chilly. Have medics meet us in the bay!”

“Already asked for and acknowledged.”

“Fifteen seconds!”

“Almost there … almost … there!” Roxy shouted, the shuttle plowing into the bay, bouncing off the floor, careening for the far side. “Yes!”

Outside the open bay doors, the stars streaked as the ship jumped to warp mere seconds before the quantum singularity broke free of confinement, crushing everything in its wake, consuming the mega-structure, the planet, and two moons in orbit. Eons of history and nature obliterated with flippant ease.

Yellowknife barely escaped the gravity well.

The progressive force-fields inside the bay worked, buffering, moving with, and slowing the shuttle’s impact (almost like an airbag) and negating much of the would-be damage. What would’ve required a starbase maintenance team was now something the crew’s engineering team could handle (given a few days of double shifts).

“Everyone okay?” Cordova asked breathlessly once they’d come to a stop.

“I … I think so?”

“Yes.”

“We made it … ha!”

The hatch was opened from the outside, a medical team immediately taking Rhys and working on him on the floor of the bay, before transferring him to an anti-grav bed and moving him to sickbay. Willow and Stirling went with them.

“Quite an entrance, ma’am,” Jasper said, the muskrat stepping his way around the debris. “I didn’t know you had such a flair for drama?”

“I’m full of surprises. Thanks for leaving the door open,” she replied lightly. “Any trouble with the Scalies while we were gone?”

“They had a weapons lock on us but never fired. Classic standoff bluff. I think they were intimidated by our name. Yellowknife? Sounds tough.”

“The toughest,” Cordova agreed proudly, patting Darby on the back and giving Roxy a light smile as they moved past her. “What time is it, Commander? By the way?”

“1030 hours.”

“Mm. Well.” The snow rabbit thought for a moment and made an executive decision. “I’m going back to bed.”

“You’ll never guess what Darby asked me to do.”

“I thought he preferred males?” Cordova teased.

It was a day later and things were returning to normal aboard the HCS Yellowknife.

The Scalies were out of range, and the crew had ditched dangerous reptiles for even more dangerous insects. Yellowknife was on its way to a nebula. There were several planets in its vicinity that could be hiding the dormant wasps.

The data the away team had collected with their scanners had been compiled. As Darby had predicted, they’d (only) gotten less than two and a half percent of the dragon database. Not enough. But it was a start?

However, Cordova didn’t feel comfortable enough sending it, even encrypted, over subspace messaging. Besides, this far out? It wouldn’t reach the High Command for weeks. They’d have to sit on the information until their next re-supply visit to Redwing Station in a few months.

Rhys was making a full recovery and had just been released to his quarters.

Night shift was still being weird.

And a snow rabbit was ‘domming’ a fox in the Captain’s bed.

Roxy rolled her eyes, laying beneath Cordova, who was straddling her naked figure. “Funny. Ha, ha, but no, he wants me to help him build new shuttles!”

“We already have six.”

“I can make space for a few more! Besides. These aren’t regular ol’ ships.” The fox fished around for a computer pad on the bedside stand, tapping on the screen and then showing it to the snow rabbit. “See?”

“It’s the dragon shuttle from the mega-structure,” Cordova said, taking the device and shaking her head with confusion. “How did he acquire these schematics?” They were very specific. Too much for a random scan to pull out of the dragons’ computers.

“He thinks the dragon shuttle directly downloaded them into his scanner. The only thing it doesn’t have is how to replicate its sentient AI interface. Also, we don’t have a quantum singularity for a power source, so it’ll have to be adapted to use fuel.”

“Then they won’t be as powerful?”

“Well, no, but … they’ll still be better than our normal shuttles. They’ll be like super-shuttles! Think of the applications!”

“Right.”

“But! Here’s the kicker. Darby thinks the shuttle also opened that portal for us! And probably one for the Scalies, to be honest, cause … I don’t see how they got out of there otherwise. They left so soon after we did.”

“I wonder if the shuttle stayed or left? Is it still out there? If it had the power to open a portal for us, it could have fled as well.”

“Like most things draconic, we’ll never know,” the fox said. “I think it probably stayed. Imagine how lonely it was after two thousand years? But we probably owe it our lives.”

“Mm.” Cordova nodded and deactivated the computer pad, setting it back down.

“The project will take several months. Off-hours, of course. I promise it won’t interfere with our duties.” The vixen palmed one of the rabbit’s breasts. The one with the sooty spot. “Unless you object?”

“As long as it doesn’t use a quantum singularity as a power source, go ahead. I’m instituting a no black holes rule on Yellowknife.”

“Yeah, they really suck,” the fox said, sticking her tongue out.

“I am not laughing at that,” Cordova promised, caressing the fox’s breasts.

“You never really laugh, though. Best I’ve gotten out of you is a restrained, eye crinkling smile.”

“Are you saying you wish to see my ‘wild side’?”

Roxy grinned. “After going on an away mission with you, what is there left to see?”

Accepting the challenge, the rabbit dropped to her belly and shimmied downward between the fox’s legs, ears sticking up above her thighs.

Roxy blushed, tail wagging on the sheets, jaw snapping open and eyes squeezing shut. Her face lit up. The same as it would in eternal sunshine.