Contact – Die Young


A/N: This one's a bit of a kicker. Many thanks to pt35, for giving me ideas, too many ideas. If you've ever read his work you probably know what's coming; if not, you're about to find out.

If you have a thought or an idea you'd like to express in a review, please do so. I am always happy to communicate by PM or by public review response if you happen to be a guest. I've dawdled enough, so on to the story.

I'll start this one off with a quote.

There are two kinds of men – those who have realized they will die, and those who have not.


July 8th, 5,015: Caelon (JMSF)

Marshweed got up the next morning as if nothing had happened, as if it were all a dream. He wished. As he trotted through the halls at the beginning of day shift he nodded to his fellow Mudwings, as he always did, and brushed limbs with the ubiquitous Seawings; always smaller than him, always seeking to prove themselves with their minds instead of muscle.

That thought brought him back to the basement, and what they were making in there, until he wrested his mind away from the vision of the gleaming machinery and what it represented in the world – a monumental change. Otter kept stealing glances at him during morning mess, seeing if he was okay – but it was the Seawing logistics officer who should've been worrying about himself, and not wasting his time on an ordinary Mudwing. Otter's scales were askew, his eyelids droopy, his body language screaming exhaustion. He'd stayed up late last night.

The most dangerous dragon is he who has nothing left to live for.

It was a downward spiral.

Marshweed finished eating his meal, moved out of the small, cramped mess to let other soldiers get in and take the edge off their hunger. His face smelled like fish. The Seawings ate nothing but fish and turtles and other slimy things that swam in the water. Every so often a shipment of real food would come in from the mainland – beef and venison and lamb – and the Mudwings would feast.

Those supply trips wouldn't be happening any time soon, and so his tribes-dragons on this island were all SOL.

"Exercise, exercise," said Marshweed. His voice pervaded the halls, cutting through the terse chatter. An officer could only guess what the rumor-mill was putting out, but Marshweed's conjecture was a good one.

Garrison and grease-monkeys stuffed themselves into a small, out-of-the-way storage room, with not much room for any one dragon to move. The air was sour with the odor of sloughed scale.

"Runs-in-place," said Marshweed. "One wing at a time – take shifts."

Two legs forward, two legs back – only they were jumping when they moved their limbs, so they occupied the same floor space instead of running headlong into the wall. One mistake and a soldier could end up looking like a pig on ice. Ten minutes of this and then such-and-such group was out the door and a new one occupied its place. Marshweed shook the talon of each sergeant on their way out, though not the soldiers. The day-to-day discipline of the enlisted was not his business.

And as he did so he felt the eyes on him, the gossipers storing up information for release during careless talk. Indoor exercises. They only did them inside when something important was happening outside that dragons weren't supposed to see. If a dragon had missed that something was up last night, or during mess, he knew now. Anyone who hadn't sensed the tension lacked antennae.

He needed to break through, work, occupy his mind, or life would become unbearable. But was that a way to live; avoiding thinking? That was what set him apart from the soft-shelled turtle on the camouflage net; his rational mind. But all this time here following orders and giving orders to solve problems determined for him by the higher-ups had made him afraid to think. Given a choice, he was helpless.

Such was the dilemma of the army man.

No time to learn how on this base. Too much effort was spent in worry, too many thoughts went in circles. All because of that damn wheel-lock, the one he was bolting to the floor in the main corridor. It looked innocent, because he wasn't experienced enough in mechanics to glance at it and know instantly what it was or what it did. First he'd had to get it from the conference room – he'd ducked into two wrong corridors on the way there, traveling with his brain and body disconnected somehow – and then bore out holes in the stone, and then fasten it here with wrenches, a third of a turn at a time. The body of the thing was obstructing the turn of the wrench, that was why.

For a moment he had a vision of a device which would simplify things for him – a wrench that had an ending in a circle, but that twisted, somehow, like a socket – and then the head slipped and he banged his claw.

And then he was done. He stared at the tool embedded in the rock, then moved on, body numb, mind number, frozen; a berg of ice flowing in a swiftly coursing river. But where to go to? He wandered aimlessly about the fort, pausing occasionally, then leaned against the wall near the back door, running his talon up the seam between frame and jamb. It was so fine his claw would not go into it, would only scrape a narrow groove in the hard rock.

It was now that he should be on watch. Routine urged him forward, told him to go outside because this was the time he'd always gone outside, every day for the last four years.

Today was not a good day for Marshweed.

It wasn't about to get any better, either. He lived it waiting for the clarion call of an attack, an assault, a call to arms, but it was slow to come. Word came down from Arrow that the garrison was to enter a higher state of readiness – spears, flight jackets, aid packs, the works – and evening drew nearer and yet nothing happened, in the quiet corridors where the atmosphere bore down on them and became still and oppressive like molasses.

You know what 'high state of readiness' means, he thought to himself. It means move your tail so you can hurry up and wait, and if you don't you'll be time-traveling into next week in the brig, that's what, so stop complaining, Marshweed, and get your head on straight.

Though the complaining was going on in his head, it took one slip of the tongue for scarcely formed thoughts to spill out into the world like milk flowing out of a tipped pail, and the thing about that milk was that it couldn't be put back in.

"Here comes Otter out of the corridor, bub," said one of the Mudwings. They were all champing at the bit one way or another, most of them close to the door, but a few guarding the thinnest walls adjacent to the world outside. "Strange, innit?"

"Quiet," said Marshweed. "I'm not in the mood."

"Yes sir, sir."

Otter paused when he came to the intersection, looking first at the Mudwing who'd spoken, then Marshweed. It took a moment before the soft light of recognition fell over his face.

What the world needs is some kind of… of machine that fixes stuff like sight problems.

That was not what he said.

"Doing alright, Otter?"

"I'm done with most of the work, and the boys are taking care of the rest. Just running bottom-side to get info, that's all. You?"

"Fine."

"Ah-huh," said Otter. He looked at the guards. "Take care."

And he left.

Then the other Mudwings cast sideways looks at their warrant officer, their dragon; the highest representative of their tribe in this fort, and still a one to carry his spear before the door like anyone else.

Why not them? I'm an officer – why not an enlisted? Why not someone less valuable?

And then he realized he was shunting death from himself to another, unnamed soldier, of a lower rank, of a lower station. With the power vested in him by the little badge on his shoulder came responsibility, and he should never have let himself forget that for an instant. He was wondering this because it was his choice. He'd chosen this, and he bowed his head and closed his eyes when he remembered that.

And now he'd have to endure another couple hours of hurry up and wait. He'd forgotten to ask Otter something – forgotten to ask if the courier had left, or if he was still here. He'd probably left. Arrow had probably thought up a dozen things to do and commanded the guy to do all of them.

"Some guys went on a recon mission this morning, right?" asked Marshweed. His eyes snapped open and he raised his head. "Who?"

"Uhh, Able and Charlie wings," said a Seawing. "The marines."

"Baker was already out," said another, "doing who knows what."

It was an open invitation for Marshweed to tell them. He didn't know what Arrow wanted, so he kept his mouth closed and his ears open.

"A third of the company's out, beating the bushes, getting fresh air."

"I had the weirdest dream last night while I was sleepin'," said the first Mudwing, the one Otter had mistaken for Marshweed momentarily. He knew the guy's name, but face and title weren't lining up in his head. He was so tired. And stressed.

"Yeah, what?"

"There were, I dunno, two guys out in the corridor. And they were arguing."

The muscles in his body went rigid.

"Pie-in-the-sky?"

"Naww. And the one guy's saying he's gonna off himself and the other dude's goin', nooo, don't do it."

The last clause was spoken in a high, parodying voice.

Laughter.

"What happened next?"

"Ka-boom, explosion, fire and death everywhere, a strapping dude wading through the hellscape (me) -"

More laughter. Marshweed hazarded a weak chuckle.

"Croc, you sick bastard. You!? You!?" said one of the Seawings. "Never."

"Yeah, me. Then a bunch of them Hivewings showed up. They were burning to a crisp; scales falling off. Then they were skeletons, and they came and they dragged off bub."

Marshweed's ear twitched.

"I meant, sir, the warrant officer, Marshweed…"

"Go on," said Marshweed. "Was I alive, or toasted?"

"I couldn't tell," said Croc. "Kinda melted, like glass in the furnace. Then the dream ended, that one, anyway. I don't remember what happened next."

"Or you don't want to tell us," said a Seawing.

Grins on the snouts of the dragons in the corridor.

"I can neither confirm nor deny," said Croc smoothly. "Then I woke up, and had breakfast, and one thing led to another and I'm here."

"You were still dreaming. Breakfast doesn't serve, like, food, they only give you fish prepared three different ways; fillet, diagonal fillet, and oh moons there's a bone stuck in my teeth."

A grease monkey stuck his head out from behind the corner of another hall.

"Cut the chatter boys, we're busy."

"Shuddup," was the reply, but from then on the guards at the door were quieter. It was one thing to be whined at by a grease monkey. It was another to be castigated by general Arrow, if he happened to be in the mood.

The frustration, the anxiety, the terse pressure that bore against their scales, all of it happened at once. Perhaps the others were fine; perhaps it was only him who felt that way, he thought, and then saw again the others who knew the game was drawing to its end, its twilight. And then what – after this year ended, after his term here came to a close, where would he go? When one era concluded another began; that was the nature of time, from the beginning of time itself.

Without hindsight it was impossible to know where one epoch yielded to another. It occurred to him that there might not be a sharp border; that the phases of the world could shift like new moons to full, and that it was impossible to isolate the turning point; the place where the old order was turned on its head.

And what about that dream?

Then feet clattered on the floor of the hall, two at a time, the second a close echo of the first; an alternating pace as dragons were prone to use, a doubling of the gait scavengers made, the two-leggers. A junior warrant officer (Seawing) poked his head in.

"Your shift's over; evening rations are in the mess." He looked over his shoulder. "Sergeant! We're needing two flights by the back door."

Muffled words came up the corridor.

"Eh? Thank you."

Mudwing and Seawing military traditions – they went well together, and those of Marshweed's tribe did not normally object to being in marine flights. A voice whispered darkly to his ear, that that was because they'd thrown so many soldiers away in the war, there wasn't a tradition left, not for him when he came here. For those on the mainland – then he stopped himself.

"Thank the moons," said Croc. "My legs were going to fall off." His voice was quiet, yet his speech hit the right note, and a faint echo percolated through the floor, from the cavity in the earth beneath them where the machinery lay.

Hellfire.

"Your legs and what else?"

"Shuddup."

Chuckles. Marshweed ambled along with them, but he was too tense; he would leap ahead in a stride, then wait for them to catch up, and would have repeated this ad infinitum, had the path to the mess been infinite. Croc first, Seawings first, everyone else first – then he pushed his muscle through the narrow passage.

The place where they ate was structured for defense. He'd known that always, but how many times had he thought about it and understood it, in a more comprehensive way than simple book knowledge?

Hellfire.

His talon shuddered when he brought the fish to his mouth to eat; he had gone through the motions before and memorized them so thoroughly that he had not realized the food was even there.

"I hate being inside," Croc was saying. "They need to open a crack, like, gimme a sun roof so when the product goes up we all have someplace to blow up out of. What do you think of this ol' dragon-cave bub?"

"Uhhh," said Marshweed. "The latrines could be cleaner."

He went to take another bite of fish, then found his was gone. Had he expressed his frustrations? No. Had he said the dumbest thing possible? Yes. But why?

There was no easy answer to that question.

He didn't keep track of how long things went on like this; if he'd tried it would've driven him crazy. Instead he counted talons; dragon-watched, measured the size of the canteen with a tray. The bottom said 38/76, which he guessed was its width and length in inches, and he went from there. He had only two steps to go before orders came down from Arrow to post a Seawing in the water, and Marshweed watched the guy go, slip out the back door into the twilight. That was jarring, because he'd thought it was day.

At least he'd discovered the canteen was seventy feet long.

Then Otter came, his steps slow and unsure. "We're cleaning the shelves up here, and you'll be more useful working than sitting around."

Pretty soon he had about twelve Mudwings running around through the corridors fetching satchels. Marshweed found out what it was for.

"The whole idea is," Otter said, pulling last year's fortress log from a rock storage unit, "that we don't want any documents falling into the wrong talons, but we don't want to destroy them either, because they'd be lost and we wouldn't have an idea of what we were doing in the future, if something bad doesn't happen."

"Why not make copies?" asked Marshweed.

"Take too long," said Otter, his words rushed. The thick, heavy scroll-book fell from the lip of the shelf and hit the ground with a thump, crushing the seawing's talon beneath it. He pulled it from where it was caught and wrung it out, getting the blood to flow into the pale teal appendage.

Marshweed picked up the offending documents and dumped them into a brown leather bag with one arm. "I wonder how the general thinks we're going to move these things."

"We're not."

"Ohhhhh, yeah. Gotcha."

The work wasn't of much note after that, and he let his limbs operate themselves, his mind in a different place. It wasn't done till the boss said it was done – and that word didn't come down until after midnight. The garrison and the grease-monkeys were all filled in on the news, now that Arrow had decided they needed to know. They were all trained for fast exfil – as of six months ago, anyway. How they would fare if they needed to get up and go was another matter.

It reminded Marshweed of the day Queen Moorhen called up her troops for a wartime evacuation of the palace, effective immediately, and waited, and waited, and left the stronghold twelve hours later instead of three.

That had been fifteen years ago. Now, after four years of peace – he didn't like the odds of what would happen if the Hivewings attacked the palace with the element of surprise. It would be a slaughter – but his tribe was smarter than that.

So he told himself on the way to bed.

He paused when he reached the bunk, his claw on the lip of the stone, three talons poised perfectly on the smooth rock, rear spike hanging in the still air. Then he sighed.

It was going to be a long night.

Morning arrived about as well as he expected it to; dark and stuffy with tension so thick it was palpable. Dragons with grim faces passed him in the halls, exuding fear-scent from the gaps in their scales.

He went downstairs for a couple hours, helping secure equipment, and while he was there he heard a bump on the above floor, and extra talons moving around, and the rasp of stuff being pulled around in the halls. Marshweed finished up what he was doing a half hour later, and went up to the top floor to see what was the fuss.

In the conference room the atmosphere was business as usual; Marshweed dropped by to see what was going on sometime in the afternoon, and found Otter and Arrow discussing over a pile of papers, with a small satchel bulging on the table. Gleaming silver buttons on both sides and blue trim set this one apart, combined with an adjustable strap for ease of use. It was an RM courier pouch, and technically Marshweed wasn't even supposed to be looking at what was inside.

"Afternoon, sir," said Marshweed.

Arrow's grunt of acknowledgment was quick and functional.

"Get the wings harnessed and ready to go," he said. "We're moving product."

"Where to?"

"The rainforest. A patrol said it was clear."

So that was what the noise had been. Marshweed nodded.

"Do you think they tracked the patrol back, sir?"

Arrow gave him a glare.

"That's why we're moving," he said. "The Seawings have been given orders to provide bottom cover for your Mudwings on the way out. We won't be abandoning you here if we can help it. Otter has the travel plans."

Marshweed's ear twitched, and Arrow waved away the faux pas with his talon.

"Your soldiers," he said. "Dismissed."

Marshweed bowed. "Yes, sir."

He slipped outside and trotted down the corridor, to the barracks where they kept the soldiers' gear. There should be a couple dozen in there now. He poked his head in.

"Suit up, downstairs. Three-day trip."

Then he went to the next one, his footsteps echoing through the stone maze. The dragons here were already looking at him, paused with their talons in the air as though they'd been gesturing.

"Suit up, downstairs. Three-day trip."

They nodded, their jaws grim. So it went, for every door in that corridor of doors. Otter and his boys slipped past Marshweed as he went, ring-books of maps fixed to their wingtips. They were getting ready to leave, but he would not have to say goodbye. While the dragons congregated downstairs he trotted back to his bunk – now in an empty room – and put on his harness; an assembly of brown, plain straps that went over his chest and tightened on his legs, with clips on the sides for carrying things. It was a fundamentally Sandwing design, but of inferior make, with the Seawing attachment points which he forgot the title of, but which was probably something pretentious.

It was only after he had done this that he headed downstairs and through the open door with the lock on one side, down to where Otter's voice resonated eerily as he gave the briefing. A crowd had already gathered, and he was stuck in the back behind the tails of listening dragons, as he was too large to pass between them. Still, he lent an ear and committed the SaS's officer's words to memory: he had a feeling he would need them in the days to come.

"You will swing south," the Seawing was saying, "avoiding possible enemy presence on the continent, then, taking camp on these islands here, here, and here, turn 35 degrees north and enter the rainforest from the southeastern tip. You are authorized to destroy the product if the situation becomes dire, I.e, you are surrounded with no possibility of a breakout, or if you are being overtaken by a numerically superior force. There are no other options. Failure to carry out your instructions will result in a court-martial."

Ha, thought Marshweed. There's nothing a cowardly soldier would like so much as a warm, cozy courtroom and a relaxing tribunal.

"Once you reach the rainforest," said Otter – and Marshweed liked what he said, because he was implying that they would make it - "you will establish a forward operating base, taking great care not to offend the Rainwings or Nightwings. Depending on the situation, the rainforest may become your home for several weeks, to months, to even a year, and by the moons you will respect its inhabitants and everything else in it. You will not, however, inform them of the nature of your cargo. Understood?"

"Yes sir, sir."

"Now repeat that back to me."

So they did.

"Excellent. Your departure is in five hours."

A Seawing burst into the corridor and shoved Marshweed aside, his movements swift but not panicked. They were all professionals here. He spoke to Otter in a stage whisper; perhaps he had forgotten how loud he was, perhaps he just knew that everyone in the room would know the news inside of thirty seconds.

"Hivewings approaching, brigade-sized element. General says to get out and go."

That meant 300 to 500 dragons. In all of Fort Caelon the Seawing and Mudwing ranks might credibly total a hundred and ninety.

"You've informed Arrow?"

"Yes."

"Belay that order then," said Otter, speaking to the group crammed into the production room, the halls, the storage closets and the stairway. "You leave in five minutes."

Marshweed strode forwards against the current of soldiery; dozens and dozens of dragons grouping into flight-sized units, following their sergeants, the glue that held everything together.

"Is Arrow calling for a self-destruct?"

The messenger looked him in the eyes, and Marshweed's heart sank. "Yes."

Well…. Damn.

"- but from outside."

A new hope dawned in Marshweed's breast; a swelling in his lungs. He wanted to laugh.

"We couldn't afford to lose you," said Otter. "Now for fuck's sake, get out there and go. I'll help you pour."

They were coming. The news was a relief. The time for worrying was over, and now he must do.

Together they fetched two barrels of hellfire from the storeroom and opened the stopcocks, dousing the equipment liberally in gallons of the clear gel. When the stuff stopped coming out of the barrels quickly enough Marshweed tossed them into the pipes, which made a royal mess, then went back and fetched more; all that the garrison had not taken, dragged them up to the first floor and knocked them over, then made a trail to the door. Half the dragons were already outside, looking back into the fortress at the single-minded destruction with awe on their faces.

Marshweed paid them no heed, but Otter paused briefly in the wrecking to grunt at one of them, "Stick."

Croc supplied a decent-sized one from a mangrove on the other side of the island; as tall as a dragon was long and with decent width, though more like a vine than a true wood bough. Otter took it, then stepped aside for the next flight of Mudwings on the way out.

"I've got to pause here, Marsh," he said. "The plans."

He ducked back into the fortress up the corridor into the briefing room, and Marshweed followed, pouring oil everywhere, into every nook he could think of, and even in the briefing room itself, after Otter had stuffed everything relevant from where it had been sitting on the table into an RM satchel.

Marshweed moved a filing cabinet to get oil underneath it, and the thing creaked and groaned.

"Careful!" shouted Otter. "One spark and we're in for a premature trip to the Deeps."

"The pleasant lakes," said Marshweed.

"Oh heck. We've all got the same hell but we all have a different heaven."

Marshweed exhausted the last of the oil in the barrel, and the two hustled to the entrance at a fast trot, seeing all the dragons of Caelon arrayed before them, and off to the side Swordtail, blinking like an owl suddenly exposed to the full force of the sun. Marshweed looked off to the north, and saw like an angry cloud a whole formation of Hivewings in wedges, cutting the air like a swarm of angry bees.

"Arrange force for takeoff!" shouted Arrow. "Clear the fort!"

A scroll was hanging out of Otter's satchel, but Otter couldn't see it, so much did his pack look like a brown-edged blur. The rest of the dragons were so hyped up on adrenaline they didn't notice anything either.

"On me!" shouted Arrow. "Take off!"

A hundred wings beat in step, and the combined blast at last set the scroll free. It fell from Otter's satchel and fluttered to the ground, gliding in swoops, coming near the sea, as if to alight on the waves and be swept away by the current, never to be seen again by dragon-eyes. Things would've turned out differently if it had – but alas, the sea breeze threw it back to the beach, where it skimmed the sands with a rasp, then caught on a piece of brush.

Marshweed did not know this, could not know this.

A minute later, the Seawings had cleared the beach and were moving east; the marine part of the garrison the rearguard, who would hold from sea level to let the Mudwings make good their escape while their endurance lasted. Hopefully the inside exercises had done them some good.

Back at the fortress Marshweed watched his friends leave, and the Hivewings draw closer and closer. He bit off the end of the mangrove rod, reducing it to a manageable size, then drew up the fire within him, the fire which had lain dormant for months, but now reacted to the call, rising to his throat like magma in a volcano, till it erupted in a burst and lit the end of the stick.

He tossed the torch and it fell end-over-end into the clear gel below; the fiery tip glowing and throwing off blue smoke in curlicues. It landed in the doorway, a perfect shot. The surface of the fort boiled, then disappeared in a flash of eye-watering intensity, as the flames ran up in sheets, swirled, and surged through the door. He beat his wings to get away; too late, the wind was sucking him in, rushing towards the combustion as it raged, as it turned the fortress into an eerily glowing pit, its appetite insatiable, as it drew him nearer and nearer to consume him, and thus only whet its hunger.

Oh shit.

A jet of hellfire reached out from the door and wrapped around him. His vision was white; he could not see, he could only hear, only he could not hear anymore.

His body felt oddly warm. Then that too, dropped away, as it boiled and he felt the pain dully, in that stunned state an animal enters the moment before it is killed. All around his talons was the grainy feel of sand.

This isn't where you belong, son.

A presence called him and he followed it, stepping out of his body at the last thump of his beaten heart. No one could see him. No one did see him. And no living dragon knows where he went.


The remainder of the garrison watched the spectacle from a mile away. The flames came first, erupting soundlessly into the air before a hissing noise came to their ears, then a boom and a roar; a roar forgotten in the annals of Pyrrhia, that blew the top off the fort as if it were the stop of a steam-kettle, and sent a brief fiery jet hundreds of feet into the air before the whole island was obscured by smoke.

"Moons," said Swordtail. Her voice was awed, and then sober. "So that's what you guys were making in there."

Epilogue…

July 9th, 5,015: Former JMSF Caelon.

The Hivewing lieutenant hovered above the sand, kicking up loose dirt which skittered away from his floating talons, driven by the downwash. On his left glowing heat burned his flanks as if he were standing too near a flamesilk furnace, or lain in a dune at midday in a desert. He turned his head and looked, and his brows knitted as flames licked at the cracked stone of the low, slim bunker, as the Hivewings dumped water on it and there was an explosion of steam. The cloud passed, and again the fire roared.

This was something truly interesting. He felt a presence in the back of his mind, that grew in him, then passed. It was searching for the brigade commander, not him. He relaxed, dropped to the ground from tired wings to give them a rest. As he did so he heard a crinkle of paper, looked down and saw a document pinned at the edge by his talon. It was not torn. He removed it – carefully now, so the draft would not bring it into the fire – and looked at it.

There were numbers on it, diagrams, written in a language close enough to his for the information to tickle his brain. Whether it was top-secret enemy correspondence or simply a soldier's letter, it was important.

"Commander!" he shouted. "You'd better have a look at this."


Written August 19th, 2020 – September 3rd, 2020.

Published September 4th.