Kyle could feel the chamber shaking around him, and smiled.

  The room was sound-proofed. He could hear absolutely nothing from outside it, but ships generally didn’t shake like that when everything was going smoothly.

  There was one logical conclusion. They were under attack. And since the dragon was dead… that meant it was most likely his folks.

  He closed his eyes, focusing for a moment. His implants still worked. If the sound started, it shouldn’t be too bad.

  The ship shook again.

  If it weren’t for the sound-proofing, he’d be regretting life at the moment, but then… he blinked.

  The door slid open. Short was back… with a bundle of skinsuit fabric and a breath-mask… wearing a transparent mask and hood over his suit, the same pure white as the rest of his uniform. He shut the door behind himself.

  “I’m going to free your limbs. You will dress in the provided suit. I know your arm is broken, do the best you can. We are having a…. Security incident and have experienced a hull breach and several deck breaches, as well as major radiation leaks. I will leave you in here, but just…. Stay tucked into the corner, and wear the mask. If a gap opens in the door or wall, do not move.”

  Kyle smirked as the bolts restraining him started to undo themselves. He hadn’t even noticed they’d stripped him to his boxers, since he couldn’t even see his own legs at the time. “Rescue team incoming, I take it?”

  The soldier looked back at him, confused for a moment… and then sighed. “Not everything is about you, mercenary. Though…” He glanced at the door behind himself. “....one of the eggs hatched. We’ve returned to normal space because one of the reactors was… eaten. We’re preparing to kill it as it tries to reach the other, but it might lash out as it dies.”

  Kyle blinked, staring at the man. “.....It just hatched? Shouldn’t it be…. Tiny?”

  “They grow very fast as they eat. They can go dormant for centuries between star systems, but their parents don’t quicken them until they have enough metal to get them to a good size. This one… apparently spent over a day eating the choice parts of its own mother. It will likely go back to doing so after eating everything heavy-metal dense on our own ship, if we fail to kill it. The only saving grace is that they don’t find humans appetizing. If it eats the other reactor before it dies, one of our sister ships will be offloading us all. Just stay here. Keep your mask on. One way or another, we’ll be fine. The only question is how much of a delay this is. You’ll only have a problem if it comes through here on its way back to its mother..”

  Kyle gave a slow nod… though he noticed the man didn’t unlock his legs before he left, and those bolts didn’t retract until the door was sealed behind him. Zero chances being taken. The mask likely even had something in it to put him to sleep if it came down to it.

  As he struggled to put a dull grey skinsuit on while avoiding hurting his arm as much as possible, he could feel the ship shaking again.

  Was it a lie? He hadn’t heard gunfire when the door opened, just the tearing of metal. How hard could it be to kill a baby dragon?

  ***

  The dragon kept finding unusually hard walls between it and the other tasty part. It had to stop and focus and just melt its way through, it couldn’t just chew… and it kept slipping and missing its spots because of both the tiny pinpricks of pain from the blobby white creatures, and the way its own body had been growing as it ate.

  Even worse, there were little bits that caused pain just scattered everywhere! Little tiny ones in the corners of the strange shapes that would just point at the dragon and then flash bright and hot, even hotter than it was.

  As it finally drew close to the other part it wanted to eat, the dragon suddenly noticed something… delicious-seeming. One of the white things was carrying something that was just absolutely tasty… and as the dragon lunged forward to bite down, it made more of those strange noises.

  ***

  The security team looked to each other… and all nodded.

  The hallways had become a nightmare of screams, flickering lights, drifting blood. Circuits had been overwhelmed, bodies shorn apart, and the less-armored internal walls of the ship had dozens of gaps burned through them by the rampaging monster; only those sections designed to be hard to get into or out of were still mostly intact, which thankfully meant that the armory was still just fine..

  One of the men lifted the device. “I have it set. It will explode either when I release the trigger, or when it gets too hot. The beast will want to eat it. If, by some miracle, my implant survives, I will see you on the other side, gentlemen.”

  The other three nodded. Their needle rifles would hurt the creature; making tiny holes through its flesh that, if they shot it enough times, would actually kill it; they knew exactly where the creature’s brain was, and these weapons, unlike the lasers, could actually handle it. But they would also make holes through the ship with every missed shot, and dragons were insanely fast for their size.

  As the man carrying the device took a deep breath, checked his armored vest; the security team were all wearing ablative breastplates that would keep them alive for a valuable few moments as they dissipated away the intense heat…. He sprinted around the corner toward the dragon, arm held up, bomb outstretched, screaming at it to attract its attention… and then vanished as the creature washed him over with a gout of plasma, and then clamped down, devouring his whole upper half..

  His comrades watched through the security camera for the result, rifles ready. A hatchling being free on-board a ship had only happened twice before in all of the history of the Empire. A similar device had killed the second one, and while they believed it should work…. It had only done so once.

  This would be further proof of concept.

  ***

  The morsel was tasty indeed, unlike the white thing that had been carrying it. The dragon shook, sending most of the remains of it away; filled with all sorts of nastiness that just tasted awful. But that one morsel… it gulped down.

  And then it felt…. Strange. A sudden, sharp, intense, pain.

  Food wasn’t supposed to hurt! Sometimes if you didn’t melt it enough it could be a bit sharp, but why did this hurt?

  The dragon writhed around the corridor, not realizing that it had suddenly formed dozens of leaks both inside and out, as what qualified as organs were ruptured in numerous places, its yellow-hot blood starting to mix in where it shouldn’t.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  It barely reacted when a group of more of the white things stepped around the corner and raised their odd-looking limbs… and more pain filled its body, as the world faded away; the dragon making one last attempt to roll towards that last food source… before it finally died.

  ***

  Deep in the heart of the ship, inside an armored compartment built to hopefully survive most lower-powered railgun rounds by deflecting them away, the bridge was bustling with activity.

  The Captain studied his display as his people went about their duties; one of them suddenly stepping up, giving a short bow. “Captain. The dragon has been subdued, and its corpse is being contained.”

  He let out a relieved sigh. Even the babies were dangerous. Even worse, if one of the other eggs hatched… which it shouldn’t, unless exposed to extreme heat for a significant period of time… the corpse of its sibling would be the first thing it wanted to eat.

  “Engineering. What’s our status?”

  “Captain. Our secondary reactor is at full power. Capacitors charging. We can re-enter Darkspace in a few hours, after the lines have been repaired.”

  A quick nod. He turned to his comms officer. “Our sister ships?”

  The crewman gave his own short nod. “One has gone ahead to report events to command. Two of our escorts are remaining nearby just in case someone tracks us down. Even in our current state we have sufficient firepower to deal with any minor threats, but….”

  “Best not take chances with a dragon corpse. Has the system been fully swept?”

  “Two freshly hatched dragons have been slain inside the nest as they gorged themselves. The mother apparently stockpiled a fair amount of heavy metal to feed them. The rest of the eggs have been retrieved. The system has been thoroughly checked for other signs of dragons, or witnesses… all is clear, Captain. The mission, while it involved casualties, has been a success.”

  The captain looked at the ceiling… where the plasma sprayed out by the baby dragon had slightly warped the metal as it had burned through other decks. “Barely. Advise the commodore it would be best to have the specimen… and the prisoners.. Transferred to another ship for the return voyage. We will be… limping… for quite some time.”

  The signal went out. As he pondered the consequences of this mission; whether he would be praised, demoted, or exactly what would happen after such a failure, the sensors officer suddenly looked up… as did the comms officer.

  Both of them said the same word at the same time, in almost exactly the same tone. “Captain!”

  But… neither mattered.

  He stared at the display, as a monstrous form had appeared… a Cruiser-class warship; clearly of an older United Worlds design, but heavily modified; it was covered with… something. Encrusted with thousands of tiny white objects. He’d looked at the files, so he knew exactly what that thing was.

  For intimidation purposes, these lunatics liked to take the bones of their victims and attach it to their equipment. Sure, many of them were likely alien monsters, slain defending some colony world.

  But if it was the ship he believed it to be? She had thousands of dead humans, combatant and not, to use for the purpose in her bloody history.

  Even worse… one of his sister ships was actively breaking apart, clearly having been hit, heavily, by railgun fire even as the ship emerged.

  They must have arrived some time ago… and then picked exactly the best spot to fire, weapons at the ready the moment they emerged into realspace.

  She had already started firing on the other ship; she may well have tried to kill both of them in that initial volley, but one had moved, drawing closer with the intention of moving the captured vessel, and the Dragon, from one to another.

  More importantly….

  There were three assault shuttles charging towards his own ship from mere kilometers away… and the damage displays showed that he’d taken numerous smaller railgun strikes as well. His point defenses were almost useless.

  He had to hope that his sister ship’s more advanced technology could make up for the size advantage of this newcomer… as he sincerely doubted his own ship’s defenses could hold off what was coming.

  Then he felt it. The shaking of the hull as the first of the shuttles impacted. And clutched his ears in pain as the screaming started.

  ***

  Their prison cell wasn’t too bad. Once they’d allowed the software to be uploaded, the Empire folks knew they were going to release them; so Zeke and his cousin had been treated fairly well; the brig was actually one of the toughest parts of the ship, and had managed to make it through the dragon incident without too much damage.

  The crew had become fairly friendly, and had even agreed to start up a sim and plug Jenny into it, and offer her a chance to get the same software upload in exchange for her freedom; all she’d have to do is agree to go along with the plan, pretend it was pirates who wiped out the miners.

  They’d been allowed to change into their regular clothes, Clarice given her headphones, Billy his hand-held comm; no weapons, of course. But it had gone from being imprisoned to just… being moved.

  Zeke was sitting at a table in the brig, eating lunch beside Billy, Clarice, and one of the guards, who looked over the three of them, curious.

  “...So, are all three of you related? Obviously not all of the folks with the augment that gives you the fur are related, but given two of you have the surname ‘Rush’...?”

  Zeke gave a soft chuckle. “Not so much. Clarice here was one of my cousin’s classmates.”

  She gave a small wave. She’d been bobbing her head along with the music, but her headphones were programmed to let their speech through clearly. “He seemed competent, so we were going to crew with his cousin. The initial plan was to get together and get a loan, buy a corvette and take her out. Then Billy noticed a job listing from his friend Kyle….”

  He shook his head. “Wish I didn’t take it, now. Rather have an NDA in my head than be dead, but its still a pain.”

  Clarice sighed. “Yeah. Kind of a…” She blinked…

  And stared as the guard, as well as Zeke and Billy, all just… pressed their hands to their heads, grimacing in obvious pain. The guard was slowly rising to his feet, setting a hand down at his waist.

  She lifted up one ear of her headphones.. And abruptly dropped them back on after hearing the painful shriek that was filling everything. And then….. Her headphones started playing it as well.

  Even louder, because they were right by her ears.

  She closed her eyes, dropped them, held her hands over her ears, trying to blot out the noise…

  Billy looked… terrified. When the door to the brig was suddenly jerked open, and an orb spun around the corner, slamming into the guard and bursting… covering the man with some sort of green-grey liquid that started to visibly bubble as the man collapsed, screaming… they all turned to watch the door.

  A figure stepped inside; tall, powerful, wearing a skinsuit the same pale white as the dead crewman, only covered with armor plates that were embossed with bits of bone from various sources, and holding what was clearly a smart-grenade launcher; aiming it at the three of them as he stepped aside… and another figure stepped in.

  This one was shorter, her helmet framed with the skull of some sort of alien creature, also bleached white… and looking at the doors of the interrogation rooms.

  Billy struggled to focus as he pointed at the third door; the one they’d dropped Kyle into, and just dumped a suit into when the crisis had started.

  The figure nodded… and simply walked by them, heading to the door.

  Suddenly, the noise cut off.

  Zeke muttered under his breath, watching them starting to pry the door open. “...Fucking screaming skulls. Pain in the ass way to do things…”

  He watched as the figure started prying open the door of the interrogation cell, with one of the other armored figures keeping him covered... and the other casually putting a single bullet through the head of the guard where he lay on the floor. Professional. Merciless.

  “Gotta admit it works, though…”