Chapter 3
*** MARINA ***
The truce lasted exactly fourteen hours before something tried to kill them.
Marina was inside the Vulcana reviewing Rowan's repair estimates when the ground shook.
Not an earthquake; she'd felt those on Earth.
This was different. A rhythmic pounding that vibrated through the ship's hull and made the emergency lights swing on their mounts.
She grabbed the edge of her console and looked at the external cameras.
Something was coming across the red plain toward the ship. Something big.
"Athena!" she shouted into the comm. "Movement, northwest, four hundred yards and closing fast."
"I see it," Athena replied. Her voice had that clipped calm that meant she was already moving. "It's one of the armored things Toren warned us about. A Drog. and it's not alone; I'm counting three, maybe four behind it."
Marina switched to the exterior cameras and felt her stomach drop.
The lead Drog was enormous. It was easily ten feet tall and covered in plates of dark chitin that overlapped like medieval armor.
It moved on six legs with a speed that something that large shouldn't have been capable of.
Its head was a nightmare of mandibles and compound eyes and what looked like acid-dripping tubes along its jaw.
Behind it, three more followed in a loose formation.
They were heading straight for the ship.
"All crew, this is Marina. Stay inside. Seal all airlocks. Security team to defensive positions." She tried to keep her voice steady. She mostly succeeded. "Athena, where are the Weredragons?"
"No idea. They were camped about half a mile south last I checked. They might not even know …"
A roar split the air.
Marina watched through the camera as a shape dropped from the sky like a meteor.
Rose-gold scales caught the twin suns' light as Toren slammed into the lead Drog at full speed.
The impact was staggering. The Drog went sideways, its legs scrambling for a place to perch on the red rock.
Toren was already airborne again, banking hard to come around for a second pass.
A second shape that was gray and slightly smaller, hit the second Drog from the flank.
Auren. He didn't have Toren's precision, but he made up for it with enthusiasm.
He latched onto the Drog's back and breathed fire directly into the gap between its head plates.
The creature screamed. It was a sound Marina hoped she'd never hear again, and it thrashed wildly.
The third Drog veered toward the ship. It was fifty yards out and closing.
"Athena, third one's coming in…"
"On it."
Through the camera, Marina watched her sister step out of the airlock with her sidearm in one hand and a welding torch from Rowan's repair kit in the other. Peter was right behind her with two more security officers.
"Aim for the joints!" Athena yelled, repeating Toren's advice from the day before. "Between the plates!"
The security team opened fire. The bullets bounced off the chitin with sparks and metallic pings. The Drog didn't even slow down. It was thirty yards away, twenty, its mandibles opening wide enough to bite a person in half.
A wall of fire hit it from the left.
Khrelan. The navy-blue dragon came in low and fast, breathing a sustained stream of flame that engulfed the Drog's entire left side.
The creature staggered. The chitin plates along its flank glowed red, then cracked.
The heat found the joints, the gaps, the vulnerable places underneath.
The Drog collapsed ten yards from the airlock, its legs folding beneath it, smoke pouring from every seam in its armor.
Athena stood her ground the entire time. She hadn't moved. Marina wasn't sure if that was bravery or stubbornness, but either way, it was very Athena.
* * *
The fight was over in under three minutes. Four Drogs, all dead or dying. Toren landed near the ship and shifted back to his near-human form, breathing hard. There was a shallow gash across his left shoulder where a Drog mandible had caught him.
Marina was outside before she'd made the conscious decision to leave the ship. She crossed the rocky ground to where Toren stood and stopped about a yard away.
"You're hurt," she said.
He glanced at the wound like he'd forgotten it was there. "It's nothing. It’s just a scratch."
"That's not a scratch. That's a laceration. Let me get Dr. Vasquez."
"It will heal in a few hours. Weredragon physiology is different from yours." He smiled, and the smile did something inconvenient to her chest. "But thank you for the concern."
"I'm not concerned," she lied. "I'm protecting my alliance. If you die, I'm back to fighting those things with a welding torch."
"Your sister seemed willing to try."
"My sister would fight a volcano with a butter knife if you gave her a reason.
" Marina looked past him to where Auren was poking at one of the dead Drogs with undisguised fascination, and where Khrelan was standing apart from everyone with his arms crossed and his expression suggesting he'd rather be anywhere else. "All three of you came."
"We heard the Drogs. They aren't subtle."
"Khrelan came," she clarified. "I didn't think he would."
Toren followed her gaze to the navy-scaled Weredragon. "Khrelan doesn't like humans. He doesn't trust this arrangement. But he won't stand by while people die. He's not cruel, Marina. He's cautious. There's a difference, though it's hard to see from the outside."
It was the first time he'd used her first name without the formality of an introduction, and Marina noticed. She filed it alongside the growing list of things she was noticing about Toren that had nothing to do with interspecies diplomacy.
"The trial period is over," she said. "The truce is permanent. As long as you want it."
"We want it."
"Good." She looked at the dead Drogs, at the scorch marks on the rock, at the welding-torch burns on the third Drog's carcass where Athena had apparently decided to fight it hand-to-hand while waiting for dragon backup. "Because I think we're going to need each other."
* * *
That evening, they shared a meal outside the ship. It was Marina's idea. The crew needed to see the Weredragons as allies, not as another threat on a planet that already had too many.
Rowan set up portable tables near the cargo bay.
The cooks; two crew members who'd been pulling double duty since the crash, put together what they could from the ship's stores.
Protein bars, rehydrated vegetables, some kind of grain porridge that tasted better than it looked.
Marina made sure there was enough for everyone, including the three Weredragons.
Toren studied the food with the same careful attention he gave everything. He picked up a protein bar, turned it over in his hands, and sniffed it.
"This is food?" he asked.
"We call them protein bars. They're nutritionally complete, if not exactly gourmet."
He took a bite and chewed. His expression went through several phases; confusion, assessment, mild dismay, and finally a resigned acceptance that reminded Marina of her first year of college cafeteria food.
"It is... functional," he offered diplomatically.
"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about those bars," Peter laughed from across the table. He'd relaxed considerably since the Drog attack. Watching three dragons save your life had a way of adjusting your perspective on interspecies relations.
Auren had no such restraint. He took one bite of the protein bar, made a face that could've been photographed for a dictionary entry under "disgust," and set it down with exaggerated care.
"On Dobromia," he announced to no one in particular, "we eat fire-roasted cave moss and crystallized mineral paste. Both of those tastes better than this. I want that on the record."
"Noted," Athena replied from the end of the table. She hadn't sat next to Auren, but Marina noticed she hadn't sat as far away as she could have, either. "For the record, nobody asked for your culinary review."
"Everyone was thinking it. I'm simply brave enough to say it."
"Brave isn't the word I'd use."
Khrelan sat apart from the group, as he always did.
He'd accepted a portion of food; Marina had made sure to offer it personally, as a gesture of respect; but he ate in silence, watching the interaction between the two species with an expression that Marina couldn't quite read.
Not hostile, or friendly, but evaluating.
Toren leaned toward Marina and spoke quietly. "He's watching how your people treat us. He's looking for signs of deception or ulterior motives. When he doesn't find them, he'll adjust."
"And if he does find them?"
"Then you'll have a very angry Weredragon on your hands." Toren's eyes were warm in the fading light of the twin suns. "But he won't. Your people are genuine. I can see that. Khrelan will see it too. He just needs more evidence than I do."
"Why do you need less evidence?"
The question came out before she could stop it, and it hung between them with a weight that surprised her. Toren looked at her for a long moment. The twin suns were sinking toward the horizon, and the light turned his rose-gold scales to copper.
"Because I've been studying your species for years," he said.
"Movies, books, photographs. I've watched your stories.
And in every story, when your people are afraid and far from home, they do the same thing.
They share food and sit together. They make jokes about bad meals.
" He nodded toward the table, where Peter was trying to explain the concept of barbecue to a skeptical Auren while Athena pretended not to be amused.
"You're doing it right now. Your ship is broken and you're stranded on a planet that's trying to kill you, and your first instinct is to set up a table and feed everyone. Including the aliens."