The area around the rock was more… agitated… this time. There were numerous scattered bits of ruined equipment, but only steel, iron, and carbon; the dragon had clearly grabbed all the copper, gold, anything else out of the equipment and taken it inside.

  There were also quite a few fragments of the black substance that made up the dragon’s scales, floating through the void, which had been blown off during the fight.

  They were in a bit of an unfortunate situation. They needed to hit the dragon in one spot with as much ordinance as possible; but there was a strong chance that if it was clustered together, it might all miss… or it might all be destroyed by a single wash of plasma.

  Considering it was a case of either killing it… or luring it away to try to steal an egg? They took a gamble.

  When the Sapper arrived, the surviving combat drones started dragging all of the mines, and missiles, off to the same side… except for one. The nuke.

  That would be kept right next to the cavern entrance, and launched in, hopefully going off before the dragon escaped, and weakening it… with all the rest of the ordinance set to make a single coordinated volley as soon as it emerged.

  After that? All of the drones would take their turn. Then, and only then, Jenny would get its attention and start to run; they knew she could outrun it, now.

  The tension was thick. Clarice was controlling the guns, while Kyle was running the various drones and mines… and the captain was steering once more, ready to get the hell out, despite the rock being, hopefully, enough to avoid notice. If they had to jump out, it would make retrieving the eggs take that much longer.

  They all watched the display closely. In one corner, the countdown timer to when the Empire fleet was supposed to show up was slowly ticking down. 17 hours left.

  Then… it was time.

  The first combat drone flew towards the cavern, already firing its gatling guns blindly into the cave as it jetted in at top speed… and seconds later, they saw it again. That vast wash of superheated plasma, blue-white and deadly, obliterating it and sending scattered bits of molten rock in every direction…

  Then… the nuke fired. Its engines hurtling it forward, the unassuming grey cylinder trying to make it into the cavern entrance… and actually directly striking the side of the emerging dragon as it detonated.

  For just a moment, all sensors were blind. The nearby drones flickered… then it all went off at once.

  Missiles firing, dozens of them launching; some slamming into the seemingly stunned dragon, others missing and embedding in the rock, a veritable storm of explosions, death, and firepower….

  That left the dragon’s thick black scales ruptured, cracked, and broken. Glowing red-yellow flesh was revealed in dozens of patches, and blood was leaking out from multiple wounds….

  But it still survived. Turning, seeking a target… and sweeping its plasma across everything it found. One by one, the drones and mines that had been either spent, or were peppering it with a constant string of gatling fire were melted out of the sky…

  And as it started searching for new targets… the Poisseux pulled out from around a rock, fired all six forward-facing missiles… and then turned, sprinting away, engines flaring even before the missiles struck.

  The ploy worked; two of the sabots buried themselves deep in the dragon’s flesh, the creature shaking with rage as it turned to focus on the fighter… leaving constant streams of glowing blood everywhere as it followed.

  Space was filled with debris; broken scales, broken drones, a thousand different colliding bits of nonsense… and the dragon was gone. Chasing her…. Leaving its lair alone.

  ***

  At first, Jenny wasn’t too worried. She turned the turret to face backwards, and fired bursts of needles back at the dragon chasing her… amused, knowing that with her speed advantage, she could keep out of range and get clear, just like last time.

  Only…

  It was moving faster.

  The distance on the scans was ticking downward, moment by moment.

  She cursed, staring at the consoles, at the missiles….

  It was going to catch up. They’d broken off so many scales it was lighter, faster. The damn thing was going to kill her…. If she didn’t manage to do something. To somehow hurt it… badly.

  She searched the nearby space for something, anything, to use as cover, and found it quickly enough; the broken remains of a larger rock which some mining operation had sorted through. A single rock bigger than the dragon, surrounded by hundreds of much smaller ones. If the thing insisted on following straight after her, it could hurt itself. And if it didn’t? She could get herself out of sight, and stay that way.

  It wasn’t close enough to hit her… yet… but it started to try. Jets of plasma that couldn’t quite catch up to her, and made the dragon shift its course to avoid hurting itself. It had lost so many scales it was worried about heat now. Good to know.

  She turned, sweeping right alongside one of the larger rocks, and banking hard to the left, reversing as much as possible; watching. Hoping.

  The beast came charging through; slamming directly into the rock she’d chosen to hide behind, shattering it apart into hundreds, thousands, of pieces… dozens of which ended up crashing into the Poisseux.

  She tried to avoid them, as best she could. But within moments… her turret was gone. Half of the Sabot missiles she’d had loaded crushed. At least three atmosphere leaks in the hull…. And one of her engines crushed as well.

  For the moment, she simply leaned back in her chair, adrift, stunned.

  Then…. She saw movement.

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  The dragon…. Was hurt. Barely moving. Blood was just gushing out of its body. But…. it was still alive. Still looking for her. Merely hundreds of meters away. Point-blank range.

  She swiveled the fighter, just barely. The firing thrusters attracting the notice of the beast… and fired her three remaining missiles, all of them… right down the monster’s throat.

  There was a wash of white… and then darkness.

  ***

  “Fuck! We hurt the damn thing, but…. We broke off so many scales, it lost weight… and caught up to her.”

  Kyle glanced back at Zeke. “Is there… anything you want us to do, Captain?”

  “Hurry. Get the drone inside the damn cavern and grab some eggs. Its not that far away. If she doesn’t manage to keep it distracted for long, it’ll get back before we get anything… and we’re all fucked.”

  Zeke rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes. “..Fuck. I told her being a merc was safer than pirate work. Don’t make me a liar, Jen.”

  The screen showed the interceptor drone; with a pair of the FTL-capable comm buoys dragging behind it.. Floating forward… dropping one off at the entrance to the rock to relay the signal on into the cave.

  As it floated forward, details became visible… of an enormous lump of slag, with a trio of glowing orbs resting on it…. And dozens more orbs all adhered to the rock with some sort of webbing.

  The cavern was enormous. The rock was mostly hollow, and smooth; clearly the beast had melted out a massive space for itself by melting away rock, leaving a hardened outer shell with an entrance not that much bigger around than its own torso.

  “Grab a few eggs. One of the glowing ones, a few of the others. And get it the hell out of there. The Empire probably knows something’s wrong by now… and might show up early.”

  Kyle nodded… deftly controlling the interceptor, moving it around, shifting and pushing the orbs, tearing the webbing, sending a handful of them drifting into the void of the cavern, before it started pushing some of them outwards.

  Whatever the webbing was, it was sticky, making the job easier… he actually had more like six or seven come loose all at once and stick firmly to the drone.

  Glancing back at Zeke, Kyle decided, in a moment of paranoia, to attach one of the dormant black orbs to the comm drone he’d left out at the entrance… and drag the rest on towards the ship, sending that one drifting off into the void.

  Just in case, he could come back here someday and track that single egg down, for a bit more proof of his story; if yet another one of the crew betrayed him, or one of these BSE people.

  He carefully moved the interceptor over to the Sapper. “All clear, captain. Open her up and we’ll load the eggs on board.”

  As he was working, Zeke was staring at the display… and blinked. “Holy fuck. She did it… I dunno if she survived… but she did it. The thing’s dead! Yesss! Alright. No need to evacuate anymore. Fuuuck yes.”

  He smacked the console. “Okay. We’ll load the eggs and hop over. Just a second.”

  He cleared his throat. “This is the independent starship Sapper, calling executive Bron. Good news. The beast is dead. We’re going to strap it off and haul it out… both as proof and for sale. When the Empire shows up, you can tell them that we’re dropping the damn thing on the dub’s doorstep. So unless they’re just a bunch of psychopaths, they won’t be cleaning any witnesses.”

  Thanks to the comm buoy flickering in and out of the void, they received a heavily garbled response. ~I….. Eva….sti…. Pl….~

  Zeke blinked. Stared at device for a moment, then glanced at Kyle… who carefully started the Sapper shutting. “...The hell is that? How are we getting such a bad signal from someone in the same star system?”

  “...Jamming. Either someone from the Empire is already here…. Or Yumi converted some of my missing comm buoys into jammers. Or even all of them.”

  “...Huh. Alright. That’s… worrying. How long will it take us to strap that dragon around so we can transport it?”

  Kyle frowned. “..At least an hour, to get it all balanced. I built the Sapper with this sort of thing in mind…. But most of the rigging work was supposed to be done by the drones we just lost, and the attachment points on the left side are all melted off now. I can improvise, but it’ll either be fast and extremely risky, or safe and take some time.”

  “...Would the folks who want to evacuate with the exec be able to help?”

  “....Almost definitely. Hell, they want to strap some in-system tug to the side of us to get out. They likely have the exact gear we’d need. The only question is if it’ll save time to go grab them first. The trip is seconds, but getting them hooked up….”

  “We tell them if they can be on in ten minutes we’ll take them with us. Bet that does the job. Aim us at those execs, get us to the closest safe distance. Hopefully they don’t have any way to jam direct comms.”

  ***

  When the Sapper arrived at the dragon’s corpse, it was in a truly ungainly fashion. A 100-meter long mining vessel was attached to her underside, her cargo bays emptied out and filled with passengers; local BSE personnel who were paying for a ride out-system, or were chosen by their exec, and didn’t have faith that the threat was over; be it from the dragon, or the Empire. Like most non-FTL craft that held crew long-term, she was a massive rotating cylinder to provide a cheap alternative to gravity; and bigger than the ship she was attached to.

  Fortunately, like most ships, the Sapper could carry things substantially bigger than itself, at the risk of going slower. And of course… they also brought along some miners… who, even as the ship came to a halt near the tiny constellation of rocks, glowing globules of dragon-blood, and bits of corpse, would jump into action… launching grapples, winding cables… getting ready to haul off a dragon as if it were just a lump of ore being taken in for processing.

  One of them, however, had a special mission; acquiring Jenny.

  Even as they discovered that the glowing dragon-blood was extremely hot, and would melt through any stray cables it ran across, they were moving the corpse into position… and the Poisseux was being hooked with a magnetic grapple, a tiny mining craft pulling it towards the sapper.

  At this range, the jamming effect was minimal, as the call came in.

  “Sapper, this is John Quartman. I’ve got your stray Valkyrie. She’s about sixty percent intact, with one deceased crew member on board. I haven’t pried her out yet, but… the pilot… is also only about half intact. Definitely not alive. Head is still intact, though, so if she’s implanted….”

  Zeke closed his eyes, slowly shaking his head. “....She is implanted, yes. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Bring her over. As soon as everything's strapped in, we’re going to make a quick hop to the outer edges of the system, then take some time to make sure its all truly secure and we don’t have any tracking devices on us… then we’re getting the hell back to civilization. There’s a United Worlds naval base less than a day out, with a BSE office, if that works for you. Maybe two or three days, with all this mass hooked on.”

  Kyle glanced over at him. “Captain…. I’ve checked for bugs, one of the drones actually has all of her belongings in an airlock, and we can just dump the lot of it to be sure…. but… if its something that only turns on when we’ve gone into darkspace, I’d have no idea. She’s been all over the ship, and could’ve hidden something anywhere. Even on the outside; she clearly used a drone to plant a bomb on the antennas.”

  He sighed. “That’s fine.”

  The captain tapped the open comms button again. “This is the Sapper. It looks like we’re just about hooked up. We may have hostiles coming in any moment, so we’re going to hop out-system shortly; somewhere dark but nearby; and take a few to make sure both the ship and the corpse are good and strapped on tight. If you’re not on-board in three minutes, you’re not coming with us. Hopefully the Empire won’t be doing anything stupid when we’ve got hundreds of witnesses and a corpse for evidence, but I’m not counting on anything til I’m inside a military perimeter.”

  He glanced at the clock. “Two minutes, fifty seconds.”

  “Kyle, pick something a few light-hours out. Far enough that nobody will spot us, tracking device or not, until we’re already gone.”

  “Aye, sir.”