FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

[b][u][center]The Galactic Enlightenment

Chapter 1: Falling from the Stars

For Txeptirea

By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

Zephyr grunted as his squadmates bounced off of him, their armor clacking and rattling with every impact. He took it, like he took everything else from the more experienced mercenaries, as their drop-pod continued cutting through the atmosphere. The atmosphere didn’t seem to take kindly to it, though. It kicked the pod again and again as they passed through its outer layers, as if taking revenge.

“You ladies alright back there?”

He rolled his eyes at the lieutenant’s question. Of course not. It was his second planet-drop, and he wasn’t even used to the feeling of falling for miles on end yet.

The rest of the squad had no such problems, sounding off one by one.

“Just looking forward to killing a sack of scales, sir.”

“Fine here, sir.”

“I’m great, but Zephyr’s pissing himself.”

“No I’m not!”

Everyone was already laughing, drowning him out on the helmet intercom as he blushed. The reader of the squad, Penderton, turned to look at him. The visor on the helmet blocked any expression, but the damn reader projected the image in his mind. Probably had used those same powers to read his own discomfort, too.

The star-marked helmet turned away, and the image disappeared from his head, as well. Zephyr grumbled, but quietly, making sure it didn’t spread through the squad chat. The last thing he needed was for them to start complaining about him to the Commander again. The last time that happened, he’d been assigned to kitchen and latrine duty for three weeks, and there was no way that he was doing that again.

The pod rocked again, the onboard computer relaying something about passing through some layer of the atmosphere or other. He didn’t know them by heart, and he sure as hell didn’t know the variations from planet to planet.

Must have been significant, though, as Lt. Reed turned his yellow-armored self around in the only bit of free space in the drop-pod. He held onto one of the ceiling supports with one hand, propping himself up with another.

“Alright, boys. Who remembers the briefing?”

“Just gotta kill another scale, right?”

“Half-right, Gary. Kill and capture.”

Zephyr perked up. Capture?

“That’s right, boys. According to our good patron, Enlightener Sumas, our mission just got harder. We’re dropping on a nest of scales. Two or three of ‘em, hopefully with a couple of eggs. No stomping this time. We take down all but one of the adults, capture the last one, and take the eggs for study.”

“Damn...they make a good squish.”

The rest of the pod laughed at that. Zephyr, on the other hand, started shivering in his boots.

Scales, what the company called the new dragons, were a threat to the entire Starlit Agglomeration. No one knew where they came from, no one knew what they wanted, but when three worlds had gone dark in less than a month, the Enlighteners took this new race seriously.

His group was one of dozens, hundreds of mercenaries that were hired by the various Enlighteners across the galaxy to fight these things, and every Enlightener family had donated at least one reader to the fight. For good reason, too; the dragons weren’t just four times as strong as a human, but they had the same mental gifts as Enlighteners themselves.

Why the star-given gift of the Mindgrip had fallen to the beasts, he didn’t know, but it terrified him. He’d seen the holos of different soldiers getting ripped apart by dragon minds. He’d seen readers getting their minds torn apart in a failed battle.

He looked down at his gun, shivering a bit as he remembered other parts of the briefing. While dragons could be taken down with bullets, it required a hell of a lot more than any other species in the Starlit Agglomeration. Some soldiers said it took a dozen clips to bring one down, and that was if you got lucky enough to actually hit them. If a dragon knew that it was under attack, the Mindgrip could stop the bullets in place, keep them from coming anywhere close. And then…

Well, then you were fucked.

“Lieutenant, got a diaper? I think Zephyr’s losing it again. Hahahaha!”

“Heh, he’ll have to deal with it, reader. Planetfall in thirty seconds. Everyone, get your weapons ready. Reader, get me a scan. I want us out of this thing and in the nest immediately.”

Zephyr was grateful for the silence as the pod started rattling worse than ever. The humiliation was over, at least. Now he just had to survive the operation.

#

Five minutes. Five minutes, and they’d reached the nest. It was two minutes too late.

Two men - one flamer, one gunner - went down as soon as they walked in. One of the scales had leaped from the walls, ripping the throat of the gunner out and pouncing on top of the flamer. Blind luck had ripped the weapon’s fuel open, and the explosion had caught them both in it. The rest of the squad kept pushing forward, but the damage was done. The nest knew they were there.

As soon as they entered the egg chamber, Zephyr found a crevice in the wall and jammed himself in. No point in fighting; the dragons knew they were there, and the only chance they had was to hide and wait until they stopped looking.

[i]Come on, Lieutenant, hide![/i]

Unfortunately, the reader didn’t choose to pass that information along. The other four soldiers passed by, fanning out in the egg chamber and taking up defensive positions. The reader and the lieutenant picked a little ridge that was surrounded in eggs. Zephyr guessed that they were trying to use them as a hostage wall, hoping that the scales wouldn’t try and take them down in fear of damaging the eggs. The other two…

Zephyr gagged as he saw one get dragged away, silent as the wind in the night. The other soldier hadn’t even noticed. He turned his head to the side, ever so slightly.

“Lieutenant, they’re in the walls.”

“[i]Yeah, we know. Where else would they be, coward?[/i]”

“No, you’re not listening! They got -”

“[i]Stow it, Zephyr. You just wait until we got one, and get it cuffed. I ain’t -[/i]”

He tried to interrupt, but it was too late. The other soldier patrolling the chamber suddenly lifted off the floor, screaming at the top of his lungs. As the lieutenant and the reader turned their weapons, the soldier was whipped around in front of them, taking every wild bullet that came close. The soldier died quickly, but his armor continued to act as a shield for the explosive shells.

“There!”

The reader shouted, pointing to a crevice indistinguishable from the rest. Lieutenant Reed brought the gun around, and Zephyr saw a hint of scales sliding out of the wall. Bullets fired -

Then froze.

The shells floated above the ground, not even moving. All their forward momentum was gone, robbed by the Mindgrip of the dragon. They twitched, turning towards the bloody, fragmented body of the dead soldier, and slammed into it. The resulting explosion caused a crater bigger than the body itself, and even Zephyr had to turn his head to avoid getting blinded.

The reader, however, kept shouting, pointing his arms this way and that.

“There! No, there! No, no, it’s...how can it be so fast?!”

“Where is it?! I can’t see!”

“I...I don’t…”

Zephyr, however, could. He could see the shapes of a half dozen scales crawling along the ceiling, quicker than spiders on the run from pesticides. But…

One flickered as it was hit by the lieutenant’s wild spray of bullets, and Zephyr’s eyes went wide.

“They’re illusions! They’re -”

“[i]Illusions! It’s hiding itself…[/i]”

The reader finished his thought for him. Zephyr pulled further back in the crevice, dropping his weapon and pulling at the pack that has the restraints. If he was lucky, the scale hadn’t detected him yet. Or scales. He prayed it was just one; if there were more, no matter what luck he had, he was dead.

He watched the lieutenant and the reader stand back to back in the circle of eggs, hearing their panting breath in his headset. The lieutenant turned his gun this way and that as he talked.

“[i]Zephyr, get your ass out here…[/i]”

“If I move, he’ll know I’m here.”

“[i]I don’t even know where you are anymore. Get out here. We need all guns.[/i]”

“Sir, I can’t...I can’t…”

“[i]Fucking coward. Reader? Where is he?[/i]”

“[i]...[/i]”

“[i]Read-[/i]”

Something was wrong. No reader was that silent for that long. They couldn’t stay quiet. The constant influx of thoughts around them, their inability to stop using the Mindgrip in their own way, kept them talking about what they saw and heard and felt. No way that he could be that quiet.

Zephyr looked closer, and saw that the visor was cracked. The star on the reader’s helmet was spreading, as if something was pulling it apart...or as if something was swelling on the -

[i]SPLAT![/i]

Bloody fragments of helmet broke apart as the reader’s head exploded, ripped apart by...something. Zephyr stared as a piece of it hit the ground just outside of his hiding place, his breath coming hard and fast as he realized just how horrible his fate could be. The scale hadn’t even been in sight...yet it had killed the only thing that had a chance against its mental powers without even lifting a finger…

“[i]Bastard! Get out here! Let me kill you![/i]”

“[i]Better plan. I’ll kill you.[/i]”

The new voice slipped into his head as calmly and quietly as a river rounded a bend, soft and slithering in its nature. Zephyr clenched his jaw to keep from screaming, but it was a close thing.

But he was the only one. The lieutenant leaped out of the circle of eggs -

And right into the dragon’s arms.

A big, black creature suddenly leaped from the cavern floor, standing over seven feet tall. Zephyr stared at it, watched as its great wings spread wide, as its thick arms grabbed the lieutenant in a hug that a bear would have been frightened of. It was unclothed, clad only in scales, and it...was...huge.

Even in armor, granting over a half foot of height to its wearer and an extra three hundred pounds of automated protection, the lieutenant had no chance. Zephyr stared in utter shock as the dragon squeezed, hearing the plates of metal crack more and more with each passing second. The lieutenant’s screams of pain filled his helmet, but he didn’t dare move to turn it off. Not if the dragon would notice him.

Crack, crack, crack, until the chestpiece of the armor finally caved in, crushing the lieutenant’s lungs. The body went still, and the gun he held fell to the ground.

Chance, perhaps, left the gun armed and dangerous. As it hit the stone floor, it went off, and one of the explosive rounds hit the dragon directly in the ankle.

Zephyr thought that the whole place was about to go up, as the mental scream of the creature filled his head. It rippled through his mind, almost breaking his brain apart in the process as the dragon fell down, dropping the body of his lieutenant in the process. The screaming continued for a few more seconds before fading...and going silent.

[i]That...that...that’s impossible...I’m...I’m still alive?[/i]

It seemed so...Two dragons, one squad, and he was still alive after everyone else - even the reader - had been wiped out. Yet, he didn’t dare move. There might be other dragons in the place. Scales congregated in numbers of at least two, but often more. And if the eggs started hatching…

He gave it five minutes, but nothing else appeared. No eggs hatched, no hidden dragons came out…

Slowly, he emerged from his hiding place, and did a quick check of the bodies. There was no hope for them, but procedure dictated it.

[i]Reader, dead. Lieutenant, dead. All soldiers, dead,[/i] he noted down in the suit’s log. It was all he could do, at this point.

Well, not quite all. He slowly walked over to the dragon, avoiding the puddle of blood that was on the ground. It wasn’t much, but it was still a substance that they didn’t know much about. It could be corrosive, for all he knew, but…

He reached down, flicking over a few functions of his suit to scan the dragon. He held his palm over the dragon’s head, and found that there were still some active brainwaves. Unconscious, nowhere near dead…

And he had a duty.

Zephyr reached into his pack, pulling out the different pieces of restraining gear. The Enlighteners seldom shared secrets about the power of the Mindgrip, but they’d come up with this as a means of disrupting the body’s network and taking away the general powers of someone with access to it. They’d not be harmed...as far as the Enlighteners said.

[i]Containment boots, blocking off vibrations from the ground,[/i] he thought, going through the list as he slid the thick, metal things over the dragon’s large feet. [i]A pair of bracelets, disrupting the neural flow from the hands to the head. A collar to deny access from head to transmitters...and…[/i]

The biology of the scales was a strange thing. Unlike humans, or indeed, anything else in the Starlit Agglomeration, they had a second brain, which was suspected to be the source of so much of their power. It was located, not in their skulls - which had a larger than normal brain anyway - but down...down…

It took some work, brushing the armor plates away that had broken off of his lieutenant, but Zephyr found the dragon’s genitals. They were bloated, ostensibly from having a bestial brain down there that thought of little else. He wouldn’t have believed it, but he’d seen the autopsies. The scales had a smaller, secondary brain connected directly to their sexual network, somewhere between testes and...and penis. He blushed as he reached down, taking the final piece - a circuit-laced cock ring - and pulled the dragon’s balls through it. They were big and heavy, and the metallic ring almost wasn’t sufficient to contain them, but it worked.

The shaft, however…

[i]I never thought I’d be handling dragon dick when I signed on,[/i] he thought as he grunted and pulled at the shaft starting to rise. He knew that there was only so long before the dragon woke up, now that his access to the Mindgrip was gone, and he had to hurry. If all the equipment wasn’t pulled together…

With a final pull, he managed to get the erecting shaft through the ring. The pieces of equipment all beeped as they turned on, and Zephyr heaved a sigh of relief.

[i]Alright...one part of the mission achieved...Now I just -[/i]

A beeping filled the back of his helmet, and his eyes went wide. Only one beep had that sort of urgent tone. The announcement of imminent pod departure.

“Oh, no, no, no, no!”

He leaped to his feet, but it was already too late. The HUD of his helmet was already filled with the image of the pod sealing itself up and taking off, to be collected by one of the ships that belonged to the mercenary company. They would assume that everyone had died, and would mark it down as an equipment retrieval mission for when the war was over.

He stared up at the cavern ceiling, feeling the horrible realization wash over him…

He was stranded...alone...with only a scale and eggs for company.

Overwhelmed, he fainted.

#

Thankfully, his suit woke him up before too much time has passed. He rolled, seeing that the dragon was still knocked out, and he hurriedly started looking through his gear, trying to think of something, anything, that might keep him out.

He heaved a sigh of relief when he found some tranquilizers that were slapped in with the ammunition packs at his waist, and quickly took one of the darts out and jabbed it into the dragon’s arm. There was a brief grunt of pain before the creature slumped back down to a deep sleep, sprawled out and limp.

Well...all parts but one were limp. He shook his head at the still-stiff rod that pointed towards the ceiling. It was like a little antenna that was begging to do something, to be noticed, but he wasn’t about to give it what it wanted.

Instead, he sat down by the creature, looking up towards the ceiling and mentally calculating what sort of things might happen before he was found. Would he have sufficient food resources to make it? After all, soldiers weren’t sent out on missions with actual rations for more than a day. The others might still have some put together, but not enough to actually last for longer than a week, and it wasn’t like hunting was an option, not with exploding bullets that would rend most things to paste with a few shots.

Then again...the dragons survived here…

He looked at the creature again, then shook his head. No, the Enlighteners called them savages, brutes, a danger to the entire Agglomeration, and after seeing what just one dragon could do, he was inclined to believe that. No way he could rely on one…

Desperate for a distraction, he flicked some of his suit scanners on again. If nothing else, he could collect some information from a live dragon for the Agglomeration to see, and the Enlighteners to study. They’d never had a live specimen before, and if they found his armor, they’d at least have the memory banks of information to work with.

He brought his hands over the dragon’s body, finally letting himself get a good look at it. It was...surprisingly humanoid, for something that could fly through space on its own power. It had two arms, two legs, and he’d seen it walk around like a human would. Admittedly, the long, flexible tail was something that was rather weird, as were the horns on the head and the wings - there was no way that he could call those human - but it was still closer than he expected for a race that was supposed to be the death of his people.

The scanner told him that the dragon’s scales were surprisingly soft, compared to the legends that old people told in stories. Perhaps they hardened after death; if there was anything left of the one that killed the flamer, he could make a comparison, but this one was smooth and soft. He poked a scale, and saw it depress, similar to what happened with flesh.

Further scans revealed a number of surprises, including a swirl of chemicals in the chest cavity and a third branch that led up to the throat. It was probably the source of their fire breath, living flamers that would burn through unarmored infantry in seconds. But why...oh. If the scales hardened after death, perhaps other changes happened, sealing off parts of the biology for safety…

The strangest discovery, however, was when he was down between the dragon’s legs again, scanning for that second brain. His suit picked up readings similar to when a reader was scanned doing his task. That was, there was a direct connection to the Mindgrip down there...right in the dragon’s sac.

“How…”

He blinked. Could it be? Could there be a...a biological agent at work here?

Zephyr pressed his scanning palm directly to the dragon’s balls, trying to ignore the fact that he was fondling an alien, but the information couldn’t be denied. It was like...like every single sperm cell in the dragon’s sac had some connection to it, was made up of the same stuff. And...if that was the case…

“I can’t believe I’m doing this…”

Zephyr slowly unhooked his helmet, and then his gloves from his armor. They clicked as they landed on the stone floor, and he took a deep breath. Slowly, he reached down, wrapping his hands around the dragon’s shaft. It was just squishy enough to remind him of his own, but with strange ridges and bumps along the whole thing.

[i]Just think of it like a science experiment, Zephyr. Just...a little stimulation, to get some of the juices flowing, and you can test it.[/i]

That was easier said than done. Here he was, on a foreign planet, with an unconscious alien, jerking it off. He blushed as he dragged both hands up and down the shaft, stunned by the sheer size of the damn thing. It filled his hands and spread his fingers wide, keeping him from being able to touch the whole thing. Even with both hands going up and down, he was incredibly conscious of how much he was moving them, how much effort it took to get it covered and teased.

Five minutes of masturbation later, and not so much as a droplet of pre. Zephyr looked at it, feeling like it was getting pretty excited, but…

Maybe it needed more. He pulled one hand back, spitting on it before starting to stroke again, dragging his hands up and down more fully. Every time he had another mouthful of spit, he spat it on the shaft directly, soaking it and making it slicker, letting his hands rub it more directly.

As he rolled his palm over the head, he suddenly felt something. Something warm and wet, and...very tingly. The dragon was finally getting into it.

[i]Alright, that’s it...just a bit more...I don’t...need the full thing. Just a small sample.[/i]

This was a breakthrough. No one else had ever studied a dragon alive, never had found something like this. The creatures must mutate drastically after death...perhaps the second brain that they’d found in autopsies was the collection of cells that hardened after death, creating what looked like a second brain into the Mindgrip, but was really -

Another splatter of pre, this time running over his fingers. Zephyr took his hand away, letting the dragon’s shaft bob up and down a little more, as if begging for his attention, but he had something else in mind.

If the link was a biological thing, something that the dragons had due to all their cells being connected...then perhaps…

He licked his finger. The usual taste of musk and salt that came with all males filled his mouth before he swallowed -

[i]AGH![/i]

Zephyr fell to his knees, both of his hands pressing to the sides of his head as the world seemed to compress around him. So many heartbeats, so many presences. He panted as his heart started to race, feeling his mind open, feeling like his skull was disappearing and all barriers between him and the universe were fading. He slumped forward, his head against the cavern floor.

It didn’t help. If anything, the vibrations through the ground only intensified the feeling of connection. Dozens of heartbeats from within the eggs. The slowing heartbeat of the dragon beside him. The excitement. The -

[i]- soaring through the stars, flying to new nests. Power and strength, the right of all. Prove the power. Prove the right to rule.[/i]

The dragon’s thoughts. Had to be. Zephyr was...he was reading the dragon’s sleeping mind. He had…

He’d touched the Mindgrip. He’d taken the power from the dragon…

But it was already fading. It had barely been a drop, and it had given him so much, almost enough to break his mind. Zephyr whimpered, holding himself as he rolled onto his side, riding out the pressure that came from everywhere.

[i]The stars...the stars...fly and soar among...as we once did...Free...all free…[/i]

The dragon’s thoughts were a muddle, primitive and almost tribal, but with ideals that Zephyr had never seen before. They were like...like…

No. They weren’t like anything. They were freedom...and anarchy in the same way. Freedom from the rules of the Enlighteners, from their bureaucracy, from their stranglehold on the world. It was anarchy, though, anarchy where only the strong would rule…

Zephyr slowly recovered, panting hard as his mind closed again. Or...almost closed. He could feel something there, something that left him able to do it again, if he pushed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

He sat up, looking down at the dragon again. That stiffness was still there, waiting to be tended to. Could he...should he? It had almost broken him, the first time, but there was so much power there, so much that he could use. So much that he could understand, if he just took a little more. He’d seen things that he had never imagined, things that had changed his outlook forever on the dragons and the universe at large.

[i]I...I need more.[/i]

Feeling almost hungry for another dose, to know more, Zephyr leaned forward. Both hands grasped the base of the dragon’s cock as he wrapped his mouth around the tip. Slowly, he pulled the thick head into his mouth, tasting the pre from before.

Immediately, his mind opened again, but he was already moving. His head bobbed up and down, sucking the dragon’s shaft down his throat. Bit by bit, he swallowed the long rod, pulling inches into his mouth and taking in the offering of the creature’s pre-cum, its juices...his power over the Mindgrip.

It filled him, opening his mind to a point where he could no longer think, only act. He could feel everything, every thought, every memory in the room. He felt the dragon’s memories, of fighting on one planet, of looting it and moving on. Of settling here, with another male, and setting up a nest. Of flying through the stars…

It was beauty in its sheerest form, and even in the horror of the battles, he could see the need for it. Of pulling people free, of breaking down the barriers of society...of bringing this openness to the galaxy…

He bobbed down to the base, astonished that he could take the whole thing, but at the same time, not. He was changing, in a way. He wasn’t sure into what, but he was changing, and he accepted it.

The dragon groaned beneath him, and without thinking, Zephyr commanded the body. Arms and legs pulled back, following his command, leaving the dragon hogtied. Another command, and it lifted in the air…

[i]This...this is the power of the Mindgrip...how strong are they, to do this without the preparations of the Enlighteners?[/i]

He wanted it. He wanted this power as well, so he could understand. So he could…

So he could be free.

The dragon was no longer an it. It was a he. A most glorious, throbbing, oozing he. Zephyr smiled, kneeling before the floating dragon as he used his mind alone to stroke that shaft. It glowed as the air solidified around it, and he stroked it, pointing it down towards his face. He let his mouth hang open, catching the pre that fell, feeding his own growing powers.

Bit by bit, the dragon’s cock throbbed and thickened, and the flow did likewise over his face. He swallowed every bit that he could, feeling his powers grow, extend, and maintain themselves. He dragged the solidified air over the dragon’s cock again and again, stroking it like a man possessed, using the power to bounce the dragon’s balls, to tease it like any man would enjoy.

He heard the fantasies in the dragon’s mind, and indulged them. The need to be under a male, he satisfied with a touch under the dragon’s tail. The need to be filled, he satisfied with a mental squeeze of the dragon’s prostate. More and more, he heard and indulged, feeding the alien’s lust so that it would take him over the edge.

Soon enough, it did. Zephyr grinned, pointing the shaft directly at his mouth as he felt the orgasm come. Hot seed splattered over his tongue, flowing towards the back of his throat, and with it, the power.

The Mindgrip held him as much as he held it, and took him to the stars. His mind floated through the galaxy...and slowly, plans began to form.

The Enlighteners were wrong. The dragons were not enemies...but nor were they friends. They were...an enlightenment. The old ways had to go...and he, with enough dragons...could bring the new ways to the galaxy. He understood...almost. It needed more.

He needed...more…

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]