Space is vast, even with the ability to travel so far with Etherspace. Outside of that strange realm, we are limited to much slower speeds, and acceleration that must be kept low lest we crush the crews. For all that the Coalition and other realms claim to control territory, in reality only the smallest space around each world, station, or resource can truly be claimed. This is why many systems have different planets claimed by different Principalities. It is simply impractical to try to monitor all the emptiness in interplanetary space.

  – Ryan Pentarch, Lecturer at Rinvaldi Academy

  “Our luck couldn’t hold out forever,” Sallus sighed heavily as she watched the numbers scroll by.

  Naven made a face as he felt the acceleration press him back into the seat. He could already tell what Sallus was talking about, just by looking at the viewscreen that shared Apex’s vision. The dragon had looked all over the system upon exiting Etherspace, and Naven was certain things would already be going badly if Apex had not refined his strange cloaking system.

  Multiple ships were in the space around the target planet, which already complicated everything. Two large freighters were rapidly identified, along with four corvettes and several smaller patrol ships. Sallus had attempted to time their entrance to a period of lower traffic, but this made it very clear that either she had made a mistake, or the known routes were already altered thanks to the harassment campaign Apex was doing. It would be a light duty day for some inner systems worlds, but here at the periphery – where ships were more scarce – this was a veritable traffic jam.

  The zoom in on the world itself was still blurry, but Apex had jumped in facing the night side. The spiderweb of lights crossing the continents of the globe made a clear statement that the system’s entry that had been marked ‘moderately developed’ had been very outdated. It happened, sometimes, even when trying to get maps and updates from nearby systems.

  “Can you pinpoint refineries with all that noise?” Naven looked over the screen, his hopes sinking. Despite the stealth Apex enjoyed, he could see in real time two of the corvettes had detected something unusual and were breaking orbit to investigate. He hoped the stealth would keep them from being pinpointed before Apex could act.

  He could still feel the pressure from the acceleration, which might help throw off any attempted interception. He wasn’t sure how Sallus had done it, but he knew she’d upgraded the inertial compensators. Apex could handle ten to fifteen gravities of steady acceleration, more in short bursts, which was well into military-grade levels.

  Sallus rested her head back in the acceleration chair while she watched the scene unfold. “No, I can’t find them unless we have a lot more time. I doubt they have a full-on refinery down there anyway. On a populated world like that, they’d be a lot of smaller workshops. This is likely more a distribution hub than manufacturing.”

  Naven grunted. “Did you hear that, Apex? We may want to abort this. There’s an awful lot of heat in this place, and we agreed you would minimize casualties. You can’t just drop ships over heavily-populated areas!”

  In truth, Naven had been horrified at what Apex had done to the refinery. There were people living nearby, and the entire city had likely suffered serious damage. The dragon had written it off as ‘acceptable collateral’ since the bulk of the damage had been the refinery, and Naven had not argued only because he’d realized Apex would think little of wiping out the city to get what he wanted.

  “I did not plan on using the crow flies tactic this time.” Apex sounded very calm for all the movement going on, and that worried Naven much more. “We do not need to destroy the refineries if we will eventually destroy the source, do we? A major disruption of supply will suffice.”

  There it was again. The so-called ‘crow flies’ tactic. Naven still didn’t get that. “You do know that the expression ‘as the crow flies’ just means a direct flight line, right?”

  “Does it? But crows do not fly in straight lines.” Apex harrumphed. “Crows drop rocks on anything entering their territory! What a stupid expression to say straight line. I wonder if that’s what it meant in my time as well?”

  “It has been several thousand years,” Sallus pointed out. “You’re lucky the Coalition long standardized language. Try not to get distracted.”

  Apex answered with a digital grunt, but didn’t bother to speak. Naven sighed, then flinched as he heard the rapid-fire beeps indicating a missile lock. He forced himself to calm down… the lock was not from the corvette in front of them. The other one must have come about enough to see the threat, but at that distance Naven knew no missile could catch up to how fast Apex was going. Over a half hour of a high-G burn had given the dragon a ridiculous velocity.

  “Apex…” Naven muttered. “You’re coming in too fast. If you hit anything at that speed…”

  “The same applies to them.” Apex growled an explanation that Naven didn’t understand… at first.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  The corvette looming in the screen was struggling to bring its cannons to bear. By the time Apex had shed his stealth, he was coming in so fast that the corvette simply couldn’t turn in time. It didn’t even get a shot off before the dragon ship shot past overhead-

  KRRRRUUUNK!

  The shudder through the ship was minute, which made no sense to Naven. If they’d hit something at this speed, it should be catastrophic. His confusion lasted for less than a second before the viewscreen flicked backward. They were already far past the point of impact, so he caught only the barest glimpse of the expanding debris field that had been the corvette.

  “I think I lost the tip of my tail,” Apex grumbled mildly.

  Naven shuddered. Had Sallus known that the dragon would resort to melee tactics so much? Is that why the ridiculously powerful inertial compensators were installed?

  He blinked. When did I start to believe Apex is really the legendary dragon?

  The cabin lurched as the compensators fought against a sudden change in acceleration. The viewscreen showed a spinning void, planet flashing into view below, as Apex flipped over and started another burn. This time, the pressure on Naven’s body was more intense, a crushing blanket of force that had him wheezing and struggling for breath. What sort of engines had they put on this beast?

  Naven wasn’t sure how long this pressure lasted, but he heard the alarms beeping inside the bridge. His fingers gripped the arms of the chair tightly, fighting to keep from snapping back under the stress. He only relaxed when the pressure let up to a ‘gentle’ push, telling him that the dragon was still burning at high-G, just no longer straining the compensators.

  “Apex… Apex what are you doing?” Sallus gasped, also struggling for breath. “You’re going way too fast for me to pinpoint any likely targets on the planet.”

  “No need to. You said you wanted to make them take us seriously. I have my own ideas on how to do this.” The dragon sounded more distracted than anything else, which worried Naven a lot. Distraction when several cutters and corvettes were chasing them seemed to him like the worst possible time.

  That was when Naven saw the rim of the planet rapidly rising on the viewscreen, followed by a shuddering through the entire hull. Alarms once again started to blare their shrill siren into his ears, and the Lieutenant scanned the ancient control panel for something familiar, something to tell him what was going on. He didn’t know this model, it was too ancient for him… or just about anyone.

  Sallus yelled out, “APEX! YOU CAN’T HIT THE ATMOSPHERE AT THIS SPEED!”

  The bottom dropped out of Naven’s stomach. It would only be a few seconds before the armor vaporized.

  The lights flickered and a loud *POP!* crackled from nearby, as one of the access panels in the wall blew open. A rainbow of warning indicators lit up on the console, and Naven braced for the wave of heat he knew would come.

  Only the warning lights winked off just as rapidly as they’d come on, when the shuddering eased.

  The insane dragon had skimmed the atmosphere, not gone right in. Naven breathed a sigh of relief, sweat breaking out on his brow and tremors shuddering through his body. During the moment, he’d been more focused on the immediate threat, but now the brush with death sank into him and he struggled to maintain clarity.

  “Sallus, put in coordinates for our next destination. Preferably some place we can find fuel. We’ll need it.” Apex said that with the same tone of someone reminding their spouse to pick up milk at the store.

  “On it,” the elf said, apparently unaffected by the terror Naven had just felt. She played fingers over the console even as the compensators strained again, the acceleration pressing her back – just as it did Naven – but without enough force to prevent her motion. It was a visible struggle for her to thrust her hands out to the controls, but she didn’t complain as the dragon ship resumed the attempt to slow down.

  Finally, Naven managed to wheeze something out. “Apex. If you have plans like that you have to share them! You could have been nothing but debris!”

  “I did not have time to brief you, I was busy calculating the angle so that I would not burn up.” The voice now sounded growling and annoyed. “When I require your counsel, I will ask.”

  Another lurching sensation of movement made Naven almost throw up. He was a Navy man, and trained for wild changes in vectors and the way it made the body react, but the near-destruction and the intense maneuvers were putting even his stomach to the test. The thought that the rest of the crew must be miserable was little comfort to the man as he gasped for breath once more.

  “This is far worse than the last battle,” he muttered quietly.

  Naven didn’t have time to feel worried about how Apex fought. The dragon had flipped again, and one of the two bulk freighters was within sight. The other had been ignored for some reason, but the dragon ship must have been targeting this one from the beginning, Naven realized. The corvette had been a detour, something to destroy so it would not pursue the ship.

  The other defenders were still on approach vectors, but they wouldn’t get to the freighter for several minutes. That wasn’t long, but for something capable of accelerating like Apex, it was an eternity.

  Naven stared at the screen as the freighter came in close… closer than he’d normally steer to one. He felt the slight shudder when Apex clamped on, just like when the dragon had grabbed the cutter before. He saw the view on the screen sweep across the massive hull, as if searching for a particular spot.

  Then the entire room vanished into white.

  Blinking away tears, Naven clapped his hands over his eyes, waiting for the shudder of an explosion.

  He wasn’t dead.

  Spots were still in his vision as another alarm chimed, this one much calmer and more familiar.

  Fuel at 25%.

  It took a few moments for him to realize what had happened. A weapon that the Draconis ships were famous for mounting, that he’d assumed this retrofit model didn’t have. Where would Sallus have pulled that relic from anyway?

  But it made sense. Dragon’s breath made sense. So of course there was a working plasma lance.

  By the time Naven’s mind and vision cleared, the freighter was out of sight and he felt the leisurely, gentle pressure of a less intense burn away from the gravity well, arcing along the curve of the planet’s pull. He quickly flicked a secondary monitor to the rear view, and saw the freighter, tumbling without power, slowly approached the planet in a terminal orbit.

  It was then, moments before the brilliant colors of Etherspace surrounded the ship, that he realized that all that chaos and confusion wasn’t from Apex just picking a target and going for it. This hadn’t been the violent, messy destruction of before. He’d known exactly where to strike on the ship, a model even Naven was unfamiliar with.

  It had been surgical.

  Escalation