Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology Read online

  “Elkin, I'm sorry, but don't think that's going to be possible.”

  “Do I have to remind you that I bought out your debt from the training school?” she shouted into his ear. He winced and adjusted the volume on his audio earring. “You owe me at least five years of your life, DeSanto. You can't just quit. Be here tomorrow, or I'm calling the authorities and having you arrested.”

  She ended the call, and Prince slumped against the hovercar, dazed. What was he supposed to do now? If he stayed here, he'd be cheating someone to whom he owed a debt—a deportable offense. Halcyon officials would probably hand him right over when the Imperial authorities came looking to arrest him. And if he went back, the Greenjackets would just kidnap him again—or worse, set up a nice convenient “accident” to get him out of the way.

  Fairy reached out to him, her colors rippling in distress. Why, she asked, had he suddenly gotten so upset? Everything was as it should be. He was here on Halcyon. He was with her.

  “It's not that simple, Fairy,” he snapped. His outburst startled a pair of male Devotes into dropping the large piece of starship they were carrying.

  But worse than that, it upset Fairy.

  Most dragons would vanish instantly when a human offended them. Fairy stayed, but her displeasure was clearly visible. Her colors became brighter, her movements sharper and faster, like a fish darting away from a child playing in the brook. He could feel her confusion inside his head.

  Fairy, I can't stay here on Halcyon. I have to go back. It's the right thing to do.

  She insisted that he was supposed to stay here. That this was where he belonged.

  If I don't do my job, I won't deserve to stay here. I'm sorry. I promise I'll come back if I survive.

  She queried what exactly he meant by that, since she would obviously be coming with him.

  No, Fairy, trust me, you really won't like Esperanza. It's the opposite of Halcyon. No one there is ever happy.

  Apparently she did not care. She had done things she disliked for him before, she reminded him. She'd saved him when he was injured and unstable. She'd portaled him without waiting for consent. She'd caused a crash that could have been fatal.

  She had broken every rule for him. She would do so again. She'd follow him into a void if that was where he wanted to go.

  “Fairy,” Prince protested weakly, but he couldn't bring himself to push her away. Against his better judgment, he was starting to like having her around.

  Fairy was fading back to neutral now, her movements less whirlwind and more zephyr. Her coloring calmed to pastel. She told Prince that he should go say farewell to the Devotes. She would accompany him to the spaceport as soon as he was ready.

  * * *

  When Prince showed up for work the next morning, Elkin smirked at him. “Still waiting to hear that great excuse, DeSanto,” she muttered snidely. Then she assigned him a ship number and told him to get moving.

  The starship Elkin's company let him borrow was a piece of junk. The controls were jerky and the passenger bay smelled like orange-scented cleaner mixed with vomit.

  Fairy was delighted with it.

  She told Prince she had missed flying with a humanoid pilot. She didn't really have a concept of time, but the images she shared with him showed Halcyon populated with dwellings of mud and stone, and a pilot dressed in the uniform of an Old Earth space explorer. It had been a long time since she was a starship dragon.

  You know we can't choose which passengers we take, right? he warned her. Even if they're, I don't know, a serial murderer or something, we still have to fly them wherever they want. If they pay us.

  She said, rather loftily, that humanoids were far too reliant on this concept of “money” and being recompensed for every little service. Prince took that to mean she disliked the necessity, but understood.

  They headed to Gila Spaceport and settled down to await their first passenger. It was a busy day; they waited for only about ten minutes before Prince's screen lit up with an accepted payment. He hurried out to help the passenger with his luggage, which turned out to be a live snake in a large glass terrarium, plus three crates of salted dried fish. (He didn't ask.)

  The trip was a short one. Fairy pointedly didn't mention the man's constant complaining, even though she obviously disliked his aura of negativity. They unloaded the crates and the snake, the guy went on his grumpy way, and Prince returned to the ship.

  Just think, he said dryly, we only have to do that about 9,999 more times before my contract's up.

  He saw Fairy's ruff droop, but she reassured him that she was content.

  Prince took the starship up and out of the spaceport. When they were high enough, he hovered and waited for Fairy to portal them back to Esperanza. But she didn't.

  Fairy?

  Something was wrong, Fairy told him. Back in Gila Spaceport, something was happening.

  She disappeared briefly, but returned after about five seconds, her colors a bright kaleidoscope of distress. Everyone was scared, and loud, and in pain, she said. It hurt. She didn't want to take him there.

  What's happening? Fairy, please!

  She forced herself back into neutral, though he knew she must be seconds from freaking out again. They transitioned into the aetherworld.

  For a moment, Prince felt what Fairy had described. Thousands of people panicking at once. Some of them dying horribly. Some in excruciating pain.

  They returned to the physical world within Esperanza's atmosphere. The tragedy was gone from his mind, but he still felt the nauseous after-effects. What was going on?

  In the distance, he saw a cloud of black smoke rising from the center of town. From the approximate direction of Gila Spaceport.

  “Oh no, they didn't,” he muttered.

  Fairy! Take me closer!

  She refused, telling him it was too dangerous.

  Oh, now you get worried about putting me in danger? Rolling his eyes, he swerved for the center of the disaster, almost hitting a spire on top of one of the buildings.

  Fairy protested, but didn't stop him. She was nervous, hovering over his shoulder blinking in and out of visibility. You can disappear if you want to, he told her. She refused.

  When Gila Spaceport came into view, Prince swore loudly. It was a crater. The bomb must have gone off just after he left. He lowered the ship to the ground and parked it on a pile of smoldering, blackened … something. He didn't want to think about what it might have been before. A taco kitch? Somebody's travel cases? Somebody?

  He swallowed hard and forced himself to think about something else. Like grabbing the standard-issue anti-hijacker laser gun from its holster under the pilot's seat. Fairy deeply disapproved, but he was pretty sure he was going to need it.

  He disembarked from the ship and into an ash cloud. He choked and pulled his jacket up over his face, looking for survivors.

  There were a lot of people screaming and running around. It was hard to tell who was just here to gawk and who was a victim. Except …

  Oh no.

  The Greenjackets were here, firing on the crowd. Or, more specifically, firing at the Imperial Guards who'd just shown up to control the scene. In five seconds, this was going to be a war zone.

  Prince aimed the pistol into the cluster of Greenjacket soldiers. He could take out maybe ten or so before they noticed where the blasts were coming from … and then they'd turn around and kill him, and he'd have helped nobody.

  He switched the gun off and stuck it in his jacket pocket. Fairy rippled with a bright flash of something like pride.

  Prince grabbed the nearest civilian, a young woman cradling her broken wrist, tears tracking lines down her sooty face. “Quick,” he said. “I need you to get into that starship right there. Go now.”

  He began grabbing anyone he could find, injured or uninjured. People saw what he was doing and followed suit. Laser blasts had begun flying everywhere, and any shelter looked good. Prince soon exceeded his twenty-passenger limit. He told the twent
y-first passenger to strap into the copilot's seat, got behind the controls, and took them out of there.

  After depositing everyone on the roof of a nearby hospital, he told Fairy to take him back.

  She inquired whether he wanted his physical form to be destroyed, since he seemed to enjoy danger so much, but did as he asked.

  He got two more shiploads of injured civilians out of there, some of them injured worse by gunfire than the bomb, before a Greenjacket soldier caught him trying to dig a half-buried child out of the rubble.

  “Hey, look,” he shouted. “The target survived.”

  He pointed a gun at Prince's forehead.

  Prince closed his eyes. He thought he could feel his spirit leaving his body, becoming free of physical constraints. Dying hadn't hurt at all …

  Wait.

  Fairy?

  She was so agitated, she could barely fly straight. They phased in and out of the aetherworld, one moment bodiless, the next fully present in the physical world and suspended high over a city street with nothing but an insubstantial dragon body between Prince and a fall to his death.

  She scolded him about how he had almost died and that he needed to be more careful. That he never should have left Halcyon in the first place. That he needed to go back right now.

  I'm sorry, Fairy. I didn't mean to …

  She told him, still irate, that she didn't like apologies. Shame was a negative emotion. She would only accept determination to improve.

  And then she dumped him not two blocks away from where he'd started. He looked up and discovered he was lying at the feet of a man in a dark-blue uniform, carrying a stunner and an extendable sword, both of which he was about to use on Prince.

  “No, wait!” Prince cried.

  “Who are you? What's wrong with that dragon?” The man collapsed his sword, clipped it to his belt, and reached out a hand to help Prince to his feet. “Did it just save you from the explosion?”

  “No,” said Prince. “Really good timing saved me. I was trying to save other people. Before she got all freaked out.”

  Fairy informed the man that Prince had had a gun to his head, thank you very much, and that he ought to be a little more grateful.

  “Helping with the rescue, were you?” the man said. “We could use a dragon that won't poof on us. Are you any good as a pilot?”

  Prince grinned. “I'm a taxi driver. I'd better be.”

  “Well,” said the man, “why don't you go help Wes over there? He's our reserve pilot on this rescue mission. We're just about finished loading the passengers.”

  “Rescue mission?” Prince stared at the man. “Who are you? You're not Greenjackets, and the Imperials don't bother rescuing anyone.”

  “We're Knights,” said the man. “Knights of Halcyon. I'm Chief Knight Finch.”

  Well, that explained some things.

  Halcyon's version of an army was mainly defensive. They spent most of their time doing background checks on immigrants, but they were trained to stop any invasive forces before they got near Halcyon. Increasingly, in recent years, there'd been rumors of the Knights stepping in to help with disaster relief on other planets.

  What a coincidence he'd happened to run into them. Prince side-eyed Fairy, who innocently asked if he was going to go help, or just stand there.

  He went.

  The pilot, Wes, was way more stressed out than was safe. No wonder his dragons kept disappearing on him. He put Prince to work shepherding shocked bombing victims onto the Knights' starship.

  The gunfire and screams were only a few blocks away. It kept Prince glancing nervously over his shoulder, even as he fastened a safety belt around a woman who was shaking so badly she couldn't hold onto her child's hand.

  When all of the passenger seats were full, Finch twisted his audio earring and called the other Knights on board. Six more returned and strapped in. Two seats stayed empty: one among the crew, and the one next to Wes. The pilot's seat.

  “Wes,” said Finch sharply, “can you get us back?”

  “I … I don't know if I can, sir,” Wes admitted. “Rangshi … I s-saw it happen …”

  “Pilot Rangshi is a great loss,” Finch said. “But right now, we need to get out of here before the Greenjackets kill any more of us. Taxi driver! You're our pilot.”

  Prince had been wondering if they had forgotten about him.

  “Wes, give the taxi driver our coordinates,” Finch ordered. “Taxi driver … do you have a name?”

  Prince introduced himself and, hesitantly, sat down in the pilot's seat. Were they going back to Halcyon? It seemed to be Fairy's mission in life to get him to stay there.

  Wes had already got the ship running. It was a nice model, faster than the junk pile he'd borrowed from Elkin, despite seating twice as many passengers. Prince took them up through the smoke haze. He reached out to Fairy, translating the coordinates to her.

  She was still agitated, and not just because of the dozens of terrified passengers. The aetherworld was in turmoil, and she felt it more strongly because she was afraid. She feared it would disrupt her portal abilities … or worse, the poisoned, chaotic aether might paralyze her.

  That won't happen, Prince reassured her, pushing his own fear aside. I'll be your anchor. Hold on to me.

  She did, wrapping her physical self around him as they transitioned into the aetherworld. Their bodies disappeared around them, but he felt her still pressing close, twining her spirit-self with his consciousness. He forced himself not to dwell on the pain and confusion of a thousand sudden deaths. He filled his mind with memories of the Avalys Refuge: voices singing, hands in dirt, the way peace seemed to pervade the very air until it was almost tangible, breathable.

  When they jolted into the physical world, he half expected to find himself back at the Refuge. But Wes's coordinates hadn't led them to Halcyon. Instead, they landed on a little moonbase orbiting an uninhabited planet in the same system as Esperanza.

  A pair of healers met them as soon as they landed, rushing the more seriously wounded refugees into the med center. The others were given calmative tea and ushered into temporary sleeping quarters to rest.

  “Finch, do you think we can risk another trip?” one of the Knights asked.

  Finch watched the last of the refugees limp out of the room. “I don't think so,” he said quietly. “This one was bad. The Greenjacket attacks are getting bloodier. We lost two good Knights rescuing one shipload of people. That can't happen again.”

  He glanced over and noticed Prince standing next to the ship, Fairy coiled loosely around him as if to protect him. “DeSanto, was it? Come with me,” he said, and walked off without bothering to check if Prince followed.

  * * *

  Though he was the Chief Knight in charge of the base, Finch's office was spartan. Prince had been in bigger, better-furnished closets. The focal point of the room was a giant wallscreen, which was currently displaying a larger-than-life pic of Prince's face. He had forgotten Knights had the authority to run extremely detailed background checks.

  The Knight sat in the swiveling chair in the center of the room, surveying Prince's file. Prince stood in the doorway, palms sweaty. What did it say about him? Memories of every stupid thing he'd ever done flashed through his mind. Fairy observed them with interest.

  Without warning, Finch swung around to face him. Folding his hands together, he asked bluntly, “Are you interested in working for us?”

  Prince raised his eyebrows. “Are you offering?”

  “If you're interested, I'm offering.” Finch leaned forward. “Listen, DeSanto, that dragon's bonded to you, isn't it? Bonds like that are a rare gift. And useful. The dragon won't leave you when you get scared or hurt. You'll be more use in rescue work than people like Wes Galway, who, bless him, is too sensitive to stay neutral, and scares our dragons off at very inconvenient times.” He sighed. “Devi Rangshi was our best. Level-headed, efficient, and a blazing good pilot. Until those … those Greenjacket scumbags …” Shakin
g his head, he let the sentence go unfinished. “From what I've seen, DeSanto, you've got the skill—and the guts—to equal her. Not a lot of taxi pilots stick around to help bombing victims.”

  Prince shifted guiltily. “Well, I mean, I felt bad … it was … sort of my fault the Greenjackets targeted that spaceport. They're … kind of trying to kill me. I probably put more people in danger than I rescued.”

  “Don't give yourself too much credit. They'll have been looking for any excuse to light it up.” Finch made a disgusted noise. “So how about it? Will you help us? It wouldn't be all bombings and blood, you know. You might end up hauling supplies to pioneer planets, or piloting the getaway ship while we extract someone from prison. You might end up training to be a Knight and joining us for real.”

  Prince liked the sound of it. A lot. And unlike the Greenjackets, they were actually giving him a choice.

  “I'd love to,” he said honestly, “but I have a debt to pay. Elkin Taxi Service owns me for another five years.”

  “Then work for us, and send them your wages,” Finch suggested. “You'd probably make more per flight with us than you would in one of those slave contracts. You could make a deal with one of the Refuges to keep a space open for you in the dormitory. You'd be safe from the Greenjackets there.”

  Would Elkin go for the deal? She'd be flared, but she just might, if he could convince her she'd profit. Already he was deciding how much higher he'd let her raise the interest.

  Fairy edged into his mind, anxiously awaiting his “yes.” She wanted to go home, and she wanted him to come with her. Besides, she added, if he liked risking physical damage to help people, he should at least minimize the danger by working in a team.

  He wavered on the precipice of the decision. It seemed almost too good to be true.

  But that was Halcyon. Too good to be true. And yet still there, defying the rest of the rotten universe.