Thrax

Hearing Agena speak to no one in particular, and seeing the growing concern on her face, Meline disengaged from the two males and stepped away from them to approach her.  “Amlax seems to think he can do exactly that,” she said.

“He’s insane,” said Agena.  “Being out here in space for who knows how long with his android soldiers has made him positively insane.”

“Very possibly,” said Meline.

Somehow, Agena managed to frown even more deeply.  “And we can’t help Thrax,” she said.  “Stuck in here, in these damn cells, we’ll have to watch along with everyone else while this monster tries to beat him down and make him submit.”

“We have only one thing on our side now,” Meline observed.

Agena looked at her questioningly.  “What?  What is it?”

“Madmen, human or not, make mistakes.  Amlax has made one.”

“Tell me!”

“He took all of our weapons, but he left us our badges.  And our badges still contain information.  Every Knight and Corps member who was at the cave is carrying every bit of data that Thrax and his recon team took from that fallen craft.  We all have the internal schematics and blueprints for this ship.  And we all have the self-destruct code that can destroy this entire armada.  All that one of us needs to do is find one of the optical ports that the androids use to feed and process data and commands, and we can input the code and trigger the self-destruct command.”

Agena shrugged.  “But what good will that do?  Can’t Amlax just shut down the self-destruct process?”

“He could if he or one of his Scodax crew entered it,” Meline answered.  “But this code is the one that would be used if a Scodax ship were captured by an enemy.  To keep their vessels and technology out of alien hands, this code is irreversible.  If we could use it, we could wipe out their ships completely.  Then the Knights and the Corps could wipe up any surviving Scodax.”

“That’s still a longshot, Meline,” Agena argued.  “They’ve got us in these cells with no weapons.  Even if we did escape, we’d be defenseless.  We’d be shot down before we ever got to one of those optical ports.”

Meline considered this and thoughtfully said, “Perhaps.  And perhaps not.”

“What are you talking about?” Agena asked.

“We’re dragons, Agena.  We fight with everything we have.  With power blades if we have them, or fang and claw and tail if we don’t.  We go on to the last drop of our blood.”

“And sacrifice yourselves if you have to.”

“Knowing you may be laying down your own life is part of being a warrior; you know that.  When you accept this way of life, you accept that you may sacrifice yourself at any time, and you do it willingly.  You do it if it’s the only way.”

Agena sighed from so many things: anger, fear, and frustration.  “I’m no dragon, Meline.  I’m only a human.”

Meline said, point-blank, “You’re a woman who loves a dragon.”

Agena’s mouth dropped open, but no words came.  Her frown broke into a totally stunned expression. 

“Did you think I couldn’t see it?” Meline asked.  “Even when you’d only just met, when you met me and learned Thrax knew me, what did you think?  How did you feel?”

Agena sighed again, this time at how obvious it all was.  “I know I was wrong to feel that way.  Thrax told me.”  She paused at this acknowledgement of Meline’s inability to feel anything but camaraderie for Thrax—nothing physical, nothing like what Agena felt.  “What if we do end up destroying the Scodax fleet?  We’ll all die, Meline.  Those of us who haven’t already been cut down trying to input the code, we’re all dead for sure.”

Without a blink, Meline said, “Again, perhaps not.”

“What are you talking about now?”

“These ships may have robot crews now, but they were originally built for living crews.  And I think there’s something suspicious about that on the face of it, something that Amlax isn’t saying, just as he isn’t saying what this secret power is that’s meant to turn the odds in the Scodax’s favor.  We’ve seen other living Scodax, the ones that follow Amlax when he goes through the ship, and there must be others in the ship’s command center.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning…escape pods.  The schematics we have on this ship also show where all the escape pods are.”

Agena understood now.  “So, then…we fight our way to one of the optical ports, then whoever survives fights to the escape pods.”

“Like dragons,” said Meline.  She put a gauntleted hand on Agena’s shoulder.  Agena welcomed the feeling, though she was not quite sure why she did.  “There may be more dragon in you than you think,” Meline told her.  “I want to give you something.”

“What?”

“Hold up your data collector,” Meline said.  “They didn’t take that either.”

Agena did as Meline said, showing her the band of artificial scales that was meant to tell her when she and Thrax at last conceived their child.  Meline touched her badge and softly commanded, “Transmit Scodax data to data collector.”

The badge flashed, then emitted a thin pulse of light that struck Agena’s band of scales.  At once, it was done.

“There,” said Meline.  “Now I’m going to give you some instructions.  If you love Thrax–and you do–you’ll stand with us when the opportunity comes.  And I think it is coming.”

Meline continued to speak softly, leaning in to the human woman.  Agena listened, and she understood.