When Dragons Lead

A boring flight is interrupted by a most unusual creature.

Chapter 1 -- Transporting

Looking down, all she could see was an entirely unbroken carpet of green.
A dark green with a few patches of vivid yellow, for miles around her.
She pressed her face against the oval porthole again, out of sheer boredom, and stared at one of the yellow patches receding as the transport droned south.
As she did so, she saw herself reflected in the armor-glass, face and chest.
Her eyes dipped to the name tag just above the right pocket. Despite the reversed image, she read it easily. Sgt Amelia Rodgiez.

"Amelia, get up here now!"
An annunciator somewhere overhead sputtered to life as the pilot called her by name.
"Get up here stat!"
The speaker squealed as the caller clicked off.

Amelia pulled back from the portal and, bracing against the piles of equipment tied down in the cargo bay, headed up to the cockpit.

Hurrying up the short stairs just past the tracked armor parked right up against the forward bulkhead, she arrived at the cockpit door.
She pulled it open and leaned in to address the pilot.
"Reporting sir."

The pilot, oversized body squeezed into the captain's seat, turned his head to stare at Amelia.
The shock of white hair atop his head floated briefly before settling as he turned.
He'd set his striped red and blue helmet on the console before him, in the space just before the glass of the forward screens.
The back of it had his name stenciled in economical black.
"Lieutenant Colonel Jeral Fors".

"I'm getting something on the scope. It's big and moving parallel, fast. Mach numbers are crazy."
"Blip it and find out what it's doing out here."
Jeral nodded his head at the bank of analog equipment behind him.

Amelia nodded and began to squat down to look into the scope, hands already reaching for the control dials.

It was just at that moment that the whole ship abruptly made an impossible tearing sound as something massive and fast tore right through the airframe. Splitting it in two.

As the halves of the transport slowly began to separate, the thin caustic atmosphere of Sinclaire Six stormed into the disintegrating cockpit, choking Amelia.

Jeral, for his part, had slumped against the controls, his body leaking fluids. His spine was clearly visible.
Just ahead a massive feral shape hove into view. Burning eyes staring straight at Amelia, boring into her head.
Wings moved slowly to either side of the thing, enormous, scaled and tipped with hooked utterly inhuman hands.

"By Toutatis... A Kraken!"
Amelia's mind tumbled out the words into her mouth, forcing speech over the howl of toxic air.

A Kraken attacking at this altitude was unheard of. A Kraken that had that kind of malignant look of intelligence? Impossible.

All that went through Amelia's mind, as she threw herself backwards to land on the assault vehicle.
Her hands latched onto the grab handles atop the flat planes of its roof, and she dragged herself forward to its open hatch.

She dropped in, and the thing's AI recognizing her presence, spooled up and began system boot up.
Its boot sequence included warming the seats and control surfaces.
The smell of heating plastic, ceramics and metal filled her nose.

"Welcome Sergeant. Booting in four seconds. Systems nominal. What is our mission?"

"To get me the frag out of here!"
Amelia began combat gesturing, and the AI picked up.

"Switching to emergency combat mode. Level 0."
The lights turned red and the hatch she had dropped through closed smoothly. Dogging shut with a thunk.

"Engage traction, full acceleration."
Amelia's only chance was to ram through the loading bay doors and let the tank drop to the jungle floor.

"Go go go!!"
She screamed at the AI as her fingers fumbled the combat harness latches.
Despite the situation, she took the extra moment and slammed the helmet down onto her head.

By that time, the tank had powered to full, and the unit was already in motion. Fast, massive, it hit the bay doors and simply tore through them exactly like they were mere paper.
Which, against a moving three-hundred-ton assault rig, they were.

The tank smashed through the transport's hull and hung in space for a microsecond, then tipped forward and began to fall.
The AI swung the turret around as the tank fell and targeted the Kraken, which had noticed the tank's escape and was stooping towards it.

The almighty crack of the main gun firing reminded Amelia to plug the helmet in and engage audio dampeners.
Even through the massive hull, that Vulcan cannon was easily able to deafen anything within a twenty-meter radius.

The cannon's round slammed into the diving Kraken and blasted a hole right through it.
Tumbling the creature, forcing it into a broken spastic flight.

Ignoring the catastrophic injury, the thing still managed a defiant scream. An impossibly loud calliope cry that slammed into and through the tank like an aural attack.
At that point, Amelia had managed to plug her helmet in.
She did not hear the scream, but she did see the thing somehow still angling towards the tank.

"The frag with this!"
She gestured for the cannon's controls and brought her hand up snapping the reticle onto the falling Kraken's head.
"Fire!"

The Vulcan erupted once more, a dragon's breath of flame. The round impacted the creature's head, obliterating it.

Chapter 2 -- Dropping

The external vid system showed the headless carcass falling to the canopy below, twisting and twirling as the thin air tossed the winged body about.

The tank meanwhile had tipped entirely forward, with the bow facing directly down, the massive glacis leading the way.

"Descent rate 15 meters per second Sergeant."
The AI did not sound especially urgent.
"Distance to ground 900 meters. Parachute deployment in 66 seconds."
The AI popped up an image of the probable landing site - it was entirely carpeted in green.

"Combat configuration recommended. Would you like full vehicle status Sergeant?"
The AI pumped a breeze of fresh cool air directly at Amelia's face, attempting to get her attention.

Amelia for her part was entirely focused on the reticle, tracking the still falling kraken, now fluttering about a dozen meters above.
The cold spurt of air brought her out of her momentary fugue.
"Frag, Jeral's dead? I can't believe that, can I? He's never died before!"
She had a moment of muddled thinking and sucked in the air, with a desperate gasp.

"Say again?" Amelia's voice came out suddenly dried, a croaking disused hacking.

"Distance to ground now 850 meters. Parachute deployment in 60 seconds."
The AI repeated.

"Gods, Booster did you see that thing? A Kraken up here? What the hell was it doing? Get command on the direct!"
Amelia's words came out, staccato, gathered together in an economical and tight stream.

"I saw the Kraken, it is recorded in my memory banks, Sergeant Amelia. No reason available for its presence here. Command not available at this time."
The AI responded simply.

"What? Why?" Amelia's eyes narrowed.

"I assume you are referring to Command. Communication satellite is over the horizon and atmospheric interference is impeding non laser comms."
"Recommend that we focus on successful terrestrial insertion, my scope is indicating presence of multiple hostile forms."

"Oh god, oh you fragging Toutatis!"
Amelia cursed softly as she tightened her straps and flipped switches, activating secondary weapons and the active defense matrix.
The coaxial gatling laser came on-line with a whine, audible even over her heart hammering in her ears.
A picture of the tank sprang up in her vision, outlined in green, showing the defense rings going live.

"What's our fuel situation?"
Amelia's fingers running through the combat readiness routine brought her mind to the routine question.

"Fuel is at 95 percent."
The AI responded instantly and coolly.

Snap!

The whole tank suddenly lifted up, grinding the seat straps into her shoulders.
Her stomach attempted to invade her chest, as her spine compressed.
The chute had blossomed open above the tank arresting its precipitous fall with a jerk.

"Give me a ground view, Booster."
The AI immediately flipped up a panoramic view of the ground.

A carpet of swarming, saurian, serpents.
None of them winged, all of them a dozen meters in length and many of them scrambling over each other with massive mouths snapping up at the descending prey.

***

"Booster, release the chute at 10 meters and go to max power on the treads as soon as we hit!"
Amelia's mind was formulating a plan.
"We should squash down into them and maybe we can scoot to that incline."
Amelia gestured at a portion of the screen where the coiling mass was less frantic.
"There's a downslope there and it probably leads off to the marshes. We can't float too good, but we can push through a couple meters of water."

"Affirmative Sergeant, chute release in 12 seconds. Traction engaged."
The AI once again responded in cool tones, accompanying its statement with a floating countdown.

"5..4..3..2..1..mark!"

With another lurch, the tank dropped falling directly into the writhing bowl of teeth.
And smashed right into two of the saurians, instantly flattening them with its 300 tons.
The tracks, already spinning, tore skin in flying welters of organic matter and then crashing into the ground the tank surged forward.

The saurians forward of the tank were simply no match for the moving mass.
They too were squashed, bowled over and pushed aside by the weight of the tank as it increased speed.

In seconds it had arrived at the beginning of the downslope and was already sliding down the incline.
"Rotate the gun and put a thermal into them now Booster!"

Amelia had to dissuade the things from following her downslope.
She leaned forward in anticipation.

"Warning, fracture detected in gun tube. 82% chance of barrel rupture if fired. Amelia, I think we've been sabotaged!"
The AI managed to sound indignant.

"What!! What the frag is this?!"
Amelia began to curse.
"Engage them with the coax now!"

The gatling laser immediately began firing, cycling at a furious rate.
The horrors leaping after the tank were cut down by the score.
The laser pumping megajoules of energy into each target, some of which exploded from the heat effect of multiple hits.

As the gatling whittled down the pursuing creatures, the tank accelerated downhill distancing itself from the horrors at the landing site.

"Good hits Booster! Good hits! What's time to the marsh floor?"
Amelia began to lean back, watching the scene behind her tank through her helmet sights.
"Just keep us moving Booster and - "

Abruptly, the gatling ceased firing, and a gush of fluid jetted into the tank from the hatch above Amelia's helmeted head.

"Oh Toutatis! What the hell!? Booster, gimme a sitrep!"

There was no response, and more alarmingly the tank began to slow down.
With a wild groaning cry, the hatch was ripped away and something sleek and black oiled in with the flood.

Amelia screamed and began mashing her harnesses quick release.
"Oh god, I'm gonna drown and those things! Oh Toutatis, they're going to lay eggs in me!"
This was all of her nightmare materialized.

Her scream and quick movement were entirely in vain, because as her fist reached the button, a sharp, bony claw sliced through her.
Crown to crotch.

Her body flopped apart and moments later the tank completely flooded and ground to a halt, subsiding slowly into the mud.

"Amelia, we were not sabotaged. The gun barrel was supposed to be replaced two days ago at motor pool! Amelia!?"
The AI's voice was louder than before, with an edge of fear in it.

"Amelia! Respond!"
There was no response from Amelia who was settled on the floor in a slurry of viscera and bones.
The clawed hand that had sliced her in two, now cupped the halves of the helmet and crushed the plastics and ceramics in a single spastic movement.
As it crushed the helmet and tossed the pieces atop Amelia's remains, the creature turned with sinuous grace to stare at the tank's internal camera.
And laughed. A rumble of rocks impacting metal.
Accompanying the sound was a stomach churning image of the head splitting open vertically like some toothed and carnivorous flower.
It revealed s squirming, humping mass of flesh that sloughed out and dropped onto Amelia's body.
And began to feed. Crunching and cracking ligaments and bones.
The AI captured stills of the thing along with the sound and recorded it in its black box secured under the armored shell locker to the rear of the vehicle.

***

"Yeah, Jones, that's what we're up against here."
The lights came up in the briefing room and the instructor stepped back up to the podium looking at his now shocked audience.

Chapter 3 -- Recovery

"And you've got to take your team in and get that damned core."
The instructor was leaning on the podium and staring straight at the two men seated in front of him.
"What in hades that transport pod was doing out there with a dead-lined tank, tank Zero Alpha for Toutatis' sake - I do not know."
He sounded exasperated, and the set of his jaw and the grinding of his teeth as spoke emphasized his irritation.

"And now command suddenly figured out that the thing has THE core in it?"
His fists curled over the edges of the lectern, so tightly that his ebony skin lightened at the knuckles under the pressure of his grip.
"I.."
He rubbed his hands over his shorn scalp in a gesture of continued frustration.

"Ok, Jones, what's the plan?"