The Dragon's Pet Read online

  “None of the lizards tried to engage you?”

  “I didn’t see any of them,” Aria said grimly, omitting the shadows and shades she’d seen in the storm cloud. “I saw what they’ve been doing though. I’d give anything to put a missile right through the middle of one of those things.”

  “You’ll have your chance to do that soon enough. Go get cleaned up,” Rory said, slapping her on the back. “And get some rest. You’ve earned it.”

  Aria didn’t know if she’d earned it, but she sure needed it. She was bone tired from the run. The adrenaline from heading to the portal had woken her up some, but that was fading fast now that she was on solid ground. Breathing a smoky sigh of relief at the prospect of some kind of rest, she made her way to the barracks and slumped down in the common room.

  There she pulled the net holding her long, thick, dirty blonde hair in place. The long missions made her think about cutting it short, but it was the last thing she had that reminded her of the time before she joined the military. Things had been more simple then. She’d been more simple.

  Flying had always been Aria’s passion. She had begun lessons with her father when she was just five years old. Her father had passed when she was fifteen, and she had never known her mother. For several years following his passing, Aria had been denied the opportunity to fly. She’d been sent to live with her aunt, a woman who had decided that Aria had been raised all wrong and spend the next miserable three years trying to change everything about her and despairing at Aria’s inevitable rebellion.

  At seventeen, Aria had stolen a plane out of sheer desperation to see the sky. Fortunately for her, it was from a small Kansas airfield and the owner had been surprisingly understanding. Instead of pressing charges, or reporting her to the aviation authority, he’d encouraged her to go into military training. The rest was history—a checkered history that involved more notes, comments, and marks on her record than seemed possible. She’d seen her file once; it looked like a copy of War and Peace. There was absolutely no doubt in Aria’s mind that she wouldn’t have gotten to fly for the air force if it wasn’t for the invasion. That call sign ‘Trouble’ said it all. Whether she was getting into trouble, or if it was simply happening in the vicinity, mischief tended to follow Aria wherever she went.

  She flicked the television onto the news channel and watched the only thing that was on TV these days: the war.

  They were doing another one of their retrospectives, showing footage of crowds cheering and clapping in the Mojave, clustered around that now wrecked building in their bright colored buses and tribal clothing with their bands and acts. Like Burning Man, but for a power plant. Power Man, they’d called it. The reason for the excitement was obvious and had touched everyone. The hyper-fusion plant promised a source of never-ending entirely clean power. There would be no more need for oil, or gas, or windmills. Even nuclear was unnecessary. They’d found a way to turn the space between atoms into pure energy, so they explained on every news channel in the world.

  Some people had protested, but some people always protested and nobody paid any attention to them. The news footage showed a few of their dark signs with coffins and verses from various books inscribed upon them, but they had not stopped the party, which raged for three days before the activation.

  The entire world had held its breath as the switch was thrown on the new reactor. And then it had let that breath out in a scream.

  The station had powered up as intended, but instead of sending energy coursing through the thick cable connected to the California grid, it burst forth to the sky above and tore a hole in the very fabric of space and time. Scientists would later explain that it was a rift to a sister dimension, but it didn’t matter by then, because the dragons had arrived. Pouring through the tear on great leathery wings, bringing fire and destruction to the revelers below. The festival erupted in flame and fear as news cameras caught sight of creatures that looked like they belonged in a movie. They were the demons of humanity’s super-consciousness and they were every bit as fearsome as the legends had made them out to be—more so for being real.

  Aria had been in jet pilot training at the time. She was a skilled—some even said natural—pilot, but her tendency to get on the wrong side of superiors was holding her back. If the dragons hadn’t come, she would probably have been discharged as surplus to requirements. Instead they had slapped a pair of wings on her uniform, made ‘Trouble’ her call sign, and put her in the air. The only effective way to combat the dragons was in the air, and every pilot was essential. Even civilian pilots had been taken into the service as commercial flights were grounded. It was far too dangerous to be in the skies unless your plane was loaded with missiles.

  “This is a shit show,” she muttered to herself, flipping between stations to watch talking heads in bunkers argue over the situation. Some were saying diplomacy hadn’t been given a chance to work and that the government should be making greater efforts to contact them in search of peace. Others were saying that the only way to stop the dragons was to build a giant plug. Others were insisting that the dragons would never have been able to come through at all if it weren’t for people using their microwaves so much. People were panicking and the world was on the verge of economic collapse thanks to the domino effect of the stock markets.

  Even if they got the dragons under control tomorrow, this mess was going to take years, if not decades to clean up. And if they didn’t get the dragons under control… well, none of it was going to matter.

  Pounding footsteps outside the door heralded the arrival of her very flustered-looking commanding officer.

  “Aria, I need you back in the air! We’ve got a rogue lizard crossing the Los Angeles threshold and the main defense wing scrambled to the south an hour ago. Get out there and get that lizard away from the city!”

  Suddenly, Aria wasn’t tired anymore. The very concept of fatigue was forgotten as Aria ran to her plane and jumped in. It had been refueled, flight checked and was ready to go. She was in the air before she even gave a clear thought to what she was going to do about the dragon. The air-to-air missiles were on board. They’d proven to be effective on some of the lizards in the past, though Aria had never used them herself.

  She headed for Los Angeles on the necessary vector, hoping to intersect the dragon. During the initial invasion, the dragons had swarmed the sky so thick that they cast their shade for miles, but some had returned to the portal, and it was said that others were setting up bases or burrows in remote areas. There was no real intelligence as to where they were or what they were doing. Drones sent after them usually ended up melted and crispy.

  The only spark of hope was in the dragons’ flight range. It seemed to max out around a thousand miles, which meant that they hadn’t made it to the main continent of Europe thanks to the oceans. The Alaskan route was out, due to their apparent inability to withstand the freezing temperatures of that region. Right now they were contained by the winter weather to Central America, which was good news for the rest of the world, but very bad news for the United States in particular, where most of the activity was centered.

  Checking over her weapons system, Aria made sure everything was in order and ready to go. Maybe she should have been afraid, but she was almost excited to do battle with a dragon up close and personal.

  “Imma run you right out of town,” she promised under her breath, her eyes scanning the sky for signs of trouble.

  If her commander hadn’t sent her out, she would have volunteered for this mission anyway. Aria was itching to engage one of the dragons in an air battle. It was dangerous, but nothing could resist an air-to-air missile. Of course, that was only half of the equation. The dragons had fearsome offensive capabilities, flaming hot discharges that would melt the electronics and make the plane spiral out of the sky in a plume of smoke.

  The military scientists were working on heat-shielding technology, but that wasn’t going to do a thing for Aria. She was going to have to throw her pla
ne around hard to avoid the discharges while still getting close enough to get a decent lock on the dragon. It was dogfighting on steroids, and she was ready for it.

  A confirmed kill would earn her a dragon slayer patch—there weren’t many of those, and they meant something. Aria was desperate to prove herself as more than trouble. She was desperate to do something that would show everyone that in spite of the fact she wasn’t always easy to command, she was worth her wings.

  More than that though, these dragons had to be dealt with. Every kill counted. Summer was coming and vast swathes of the country currently protected from the lizards by snow and freezing temperatures would soon lose that advantage. There was even the possibility that the dragons would start walking among humans without being detected. They had human forms; that much was for sure. There was footage of a dragon dying, turning almost human as it went. It wasn’t pleasant to look at, but it proved an important point: there had never been an invasion like this. They were dealing with creatures capable of breathing fire and taking a fighter jet down with their teeth and claws—and who could also shift to walk among the human population. On close inspection they did look different. Their eyes weren’t quite right for starters, and their skin had scales in some places, but all of that could be potentially hidden.

  “That’s got to be bullshit,” she swore to herself. She’d seen the footage herself, but it still didn’t seem real to her. Dragons were huge. Bigger than buses, most of them. Closer to blue whales. Blue whales with huge wings and fire breath. How could they possibly take human shape? And why would they? And what other forms could they take, if human shape wasn’t the only option they had?

  There were so many questions, and Aria couldn’t answer any of them. Maybe that was why she felt so drawn by the portal. Even she had to admit that it was weird to hate dragons and simultaneously be tempted to fly into the very heart of a world that must be filled with them.

  As she drew closer to Los Angeles, Aria turned off her inner dialog and focused on the matter at hand. Sure enough, just as her commander had said, there was a dragon messing around on the outskirts of the city. It didn’t seem to be taking hostile action—yet, anyway.

  Aria was flying near the Tornado’s top speed, covering twenty miles every minute. Her speed made the dragon seem to loom out of the sky, as it flew in sinuous motions, twisting about like a winged snake. Unlike the dragons in the portal clouds, she could see this one clearly, and the sight caused a deep existential horror that made her stomach feel like lead. That thing couldn’t be real. It moved through the air as if the air were water, its powerful body streamlined back from a ferocious head containing teeth that could pierce a tank.

  At a distance it had been a dark figure silhouetted against the burning skyline, but she could see now that it was a burnished red hue marked with streaks of black along its eyes and down the length of its spine. The closer she got, the closer it got. It had seen her and was moving toward her, wings spread wide, mouth open. She had to be damn careful now with the range. Too far and she might miss it with her weapons. Too close and she’d be toast.

  Aria flipped open the catch over the button for the air-to-air missile and held her finger over it for a second. A prayer appeared in her head almost spontaneously, some part of her responding to the enormity of the act she was about to undertake.

  Click.

  The missile sped from the belly of her plane. It was a dead lock, straight for the beast’s heart. Aria counted the seconds until the dragon would explode into charred meat, but it twisted gracefully at the last moment with one of those easy smooth motions that made her almost envious, and the missile headed off into the wide blue.

  They were so close now, and Aria was on a near collision course with the monster. She threw her plane to the side as the dragon flew past. For a brief moment, Aria and the dragon looked at one another, her stunned face hidden by the mask as she stared into the eyes of the powerful beast that was matching her mile for mile. A tremor went through her, a recognition of something. A deep instinctual knowing, the same kind a mouse has when it meets its first cat.

  She peeled off, the plane curving sideways through the sky to slip down and under and then rise up behind the dragon. Another missile lock. Another launch. Another miss.

  “Fuck!” Aria shouted in frustration. Two failures did not bode well for this mission. In war, you didn’t usually get a third chance. And now the dragon was on the attack.

  It came for her hard, spearing through the sky. Aria yanked the control column and the plane spun out of the dragon’s way, earth and sky switching places several times before she righted herself again. Los Angeles was coming into view, and she had an idea. While she had technically been told to get the dragon out of the city, maybe she could follow orders by disobeying them.

  She was glad she was in her Tornado. Some of the other pilots had given her hell for it, but unlike their newer birds, her plane could fly anywhere at almost any speed. Low flight was a specialty of the model. And that meant she had some chance of escaping the thing behind her if she used her brains rather than the throttle.

  Arcing around, Aria headed for Los Angeles. The city had been evicted when the dragon attacks began to spread. There were a few die-hards in the hills and perhaps holed up in bunkers, but her plan wouldn’t put them in harm’s way, though it would give them a hell of a show.

  She came screaming down the remains of Sunset Boulevard, the dragon in hot pursuit. Its wingspan and need to keep flapping at slow speeds made it impossible for the creature to catch her down a windy canyon of what had once been a glittering array of shops, offices, hopes and dreams.

  The city proper was big enough that she figured she had some chance of losing the dragon if she used the Tornado’s superior maneuverability by slotting in between the buildings, losing it in the maze of the city.

  She twisted the controls and the plane turned sideways, sitting on a blade of air as she came roaring between gleaming glass towers. Behind her, the dragon rolled with her and slid through just as easily.

  “Dammit! Get off my ass,” she growled, clenching her teeth.

  The dragon drew closer, its speed impressive as it managed to keep pace with her through the turns and twists. It occurred to Aria far too late that she had made the wrong decision in attempting to lose the beast at low speed. If anything, it was more agile than her. She should have gotten high and fast.

  Sweeping out from her last turn, Aria drew the control column back and sent the Tornado into a steep climb. She was pulling several Gs, but that was the cost of outrunning a dragon. She had to clench her muscles to stay awake and not black out as the force tried to drain the blood from her head. There was an unholy juddering as the plane stalled. And then the worst sound a pilot could ever hear: silence.

  There was a moment of weightlessness as her ascent stopped—and then she began to fall, dead engines doing nothing but weighing her toward Earth.

  “Fuck! No!” Aria went through all the checks and systems to reactivate dead engines. Nothing worked. Something was wrong. Something was stuck, or sheared, or… something. It didn’t really matter what in the moment because there was nothing she could do about it.

  The mechs who usually performed maintenance were stretched at the moment, so it was possible some fault had gone undetected. The Tornado was nineteen years old, only a couple of years younger than Aria. A lot could go wrong in nineteen years. The what and the why of the fault didn’t really matter as the plane began to nose down into a dive that could only end in one result.

  Cursing, Aria hauled back on the control column, desperate to get the nose up. Lack of power didn’t mean a crash, but diving and spinning did. She looked at the ejector button, but decided against using it. She was already too low to eject safely, and ejecting could easily cripple her if the canopy didn’t open, or the mechanism didn’t fire right.

  Over the next thirty seconds, Aria fought with her plane against the very real and very deadly forces of physics
that were threatening to end her life. She’d forgotten about the dragon entirely as she speared toward the earth.

  “Not like this,” she pleaded with the plane. “Come on, girl, just one more miracle.”

  Impact was seconds away and though the plane had leveled out some, she was still going too damn fast. The reverse thrusters were out of operation and the Tornado didn’t have any chutes. She was done. She closed her eyes, said her prayers, and waited for the end.

  Fwomp! Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  Huh. So that was how death sounded.

  It took Aria a moment to realize that she had not hit the ground. The plane shuddered and the nose tipped a little higher. Aria opened her eyes to see that the dragon had her in its talons. They had sunk through the skin of the craft and taken hold of the support struts. Above her, she could see the beast’s powerful wings beating hard, providing just enough lift to turn the crash into a survivable landing.

  The Tornado hit the desert hard enough to jolt every bone in her body, but left her otherwise intact.

  Aria couldn’t believe it. She had come to a halt on the ground and by an unholy miracle, she was alive. She was unharmed. She’d probably bruise, but what were a few bruises when by rights she should have been a smear on the Mojave.

  A heavy shuddering heralded the dragon landing in front of her, its body curled in curiosity as its impossibly large head cast a shadow over the cockpit.

  “Oh. Fuck. Me,” Aria cursed. Her celebratory joy dissipated into fear as the dragon’s head rose high and peered down at her. It moved toward her, slow and waddling on the ground, but no less fearsome for it.

  Thunk!

  One large dragon foot landed on the very nose of the plane, holding it steady as the dragon’s arms came toward her. There was a brief flash of time where Aria almost believed that maybe the canopy of the cockpit would still save her. But seconds later it was torn open by powerful claws and she found herself looking into the face… or rather, nose of the dragon, its fearsome head inches from hers, hot sulfur breath making her gag. So this was how it was going to end, a one-bite morsel for a demon lizard.