At the end of my shift, I returned to my quarters and struck a bath. I soaked for a long time with a feeling of deep sorrow. I was an idiot. I joined this ship to get away from Bedford without really thinking through what dragoning was. Now faced with the reality of it, I didn’t know if I could continue. My absence would not save the lives of any dragons, but my presence filled me with a deep sense of guilt. I had no appetite and went to bed without going to the mess. I lay in my rack, imagining those dying eyes for hours before I slept.
When I awoke, I was incredibly hungry and went to the mess. Cookie was serving traditional breakfast food all day today and gave me my first ever omelet made of real pod laid eggs, tube grown bacon, and pancakes made from wheat topped with dairy butter and something called maple syrup she said came from a tree. After tasting it, I really wanted to find a planet to live on that had trees.
There were a handful of other crew eating, but mostly I didn’t recognize them. Then Lunkfleece signaled to me. I walked over to his table smiling until I noticed he was sitting with Pippin. I faked the smile back on and sat with them, taking the seat next to Lunkfleece.
“Beauty and the beast,” Pippin said.
“Good morning,” I replied. It seemed best to just ignore these comments like his crewmates did.
“You missed party,” Lunkfleece said.
“I didn’t know there was a party.”
“It good omen.”
“The first dragon kill went smooth as whiskey. We had to celebrate,” Pippin added.
“I never really thought through what it would be like to kill a space dragon. It didn’t make me want to celebrate.”
“Don’t let that soft Dough influence you, Greenie. Those beasts are just winged oil wells full of money. You don’t like it you can always go back to your rock.” He turned to Lunkfleece. “That sour Dough is terrified of this Big Jack dragon the captain put a bounty on. Hopes we never find it.”
“She faced it. Maybe knows better.”
“Not you too.”
“We had our own run in with a dragon that got the better of us.” We hadn’t noticed Dawningsun arrive. She sat down next to Pippin.
“That was a fluke.” Pippin looked at me and pointed at the orc and fairy with his fork. “They know the interceptor three gunner screwed up and detonated the dragon. Koko never would have made that mistake. Human incompetence and bad luck doesn’t make dragons smart.”
“You could always spell out Simmons and join us in hooking the next dragon,” Dawningsun said. “You have the qualifications to be on an interceptor.”
“No. Give me a few kilometers of ship around me; I’m not looking to be dragon bait.” Pippin got up from the table. “I have things to do before my shift. Make sure you’re on time to engineering, Greenie. Lunkfleece, try to do something about that face.” He took his tray to the disposal and left.
“Why does he feel safer on the ship than the interceptor? Wasn’t he the only main ship survivor on your last voyage?”
“Don’t let Pippin hear you say that. He’s almost coming around on you.” Dawningsun said.
“Really? I thought he hated me.” I noticed her plate was just full of berries and fruit. Eating the bacon made it difficult to fathom how anyone could not be filling their stomachs with it. I didn’t think she had meat the last time I ate with her either. I realized I didn’t really know anything about the other Terran races other than orcs.
“He’s a tough one to win over, but you’ve just kept your head down and done what you’re told. He expected you to balk at leaving the ship. Most planet huggers are terrified of vacuum and zero g. Sometimes engineers have to leave the ship and I’m sure he’s happy to have you to send in his stead if needed.”
“I’m hardly from a planet. It’s more like a space station since it doesn’t have an atmosphere. I was a little afraid of drifting off into space, but I got a hang of the thrusters and then it wasn’t much of a worry." I turned my attention to my food. I had focused so much on finishing the bacon, the rest was sitting there getting cold. I put a forkful of pancake in my mouth and thought that if a dragon ate me tomorrow, I’d die a happy woman.
“You really enjoy your food.”
“I spent twenty-two years without ever actually eating food, just mixtures of algae and fiber, which derived from algae. Koko thinks they also put appetite suppressants in the food on Bedford. They’re wearing off.”
“That not food. Nearly died there. Then met orcs. Orcs different food.”
“The orcs weren’t eating the same food we did?”
He laughed. “Of course not. Humans so stupid.” I tried to remember if I had ever seen an orc eating the five foods. I hadn’t, but I didn’t get out much. Too late to worry about it.
“So, how did Pippen survive while the rest of you were in the interceptor?” I asked.
“Well, we and the other interceptor had secured the dragon’s wings, but the third was having trouble with the tail. The main ship—it was called the Rosebud—was coming in prematurely and off-center. The third gunner, Yor, took another shot at the tail, missed, and plunged the spear right into the dragon’s chest pump, just as it was bending its neck down to breathe out plasma fire behind it towards the third interceptor.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Dragon go boom.”
“Dragon oil gushed out of the chest and was ignited by the dragon fire, which ignited the whole dragon. It was close enough to set off the oil tanks on one side of the ring. Between the dragon itself and the tanks, the tail and other wing interceptors were taken out and the entire superstructure was destroyed.”
“We got lucky.”
“Yes, we did. Had the main ship been better centered, we would have been engulfed by the explosion too. As it was, the blast sent us far from the wreckage and it took Simmons two days to get the interceptor up and running again”
“That difficult time.”
“In the main ship, all internal censors and automated repair systems were offline. Engineering is a hardened compartment below the tower, so it was still intact. The other two engineers donned spacesuits and went to try and assess the status of the ship. I doubt they even asked Pip to go. His fear of spacewalks is pretty common knowledge.”
“That I’ve heard,” I said.
“There were still pieces of dragon oozing burning plasma. When the engineers approached the engines, leaking ship fuel was ignited by one of these those pieces and there was a secondary explosion that killed them both instantly. Everyone else on the ship had already died when the tower was lost.”
“It’s amazing a frozen head was able to repair the interceptor,” I commented.
Lunkfleece laughed. “Very good engineer.”
Dawningsun smiled, making her face even more enchanting. “It was quite a sight to see.” She continued: “Once Simmons got the interceptor running again, we returned to the ship, looking for survivors and found Pip, but he still refused to leave engineering. We thought about forcing our way into the wreckage and removing him by force, but then Koko and I suggested spearing the intact part of the ship and dragging it to Bedford, which was the closest port where we could sell dragon oil and repair the interceptor.”
“Worst planet ever.”
“Thanks for telling me all that. I’ve been wondering what happened to the five of you, but Koko never volunteered much and I didn’t want to ask her about something that killed so many of your crewmates.” I turned my focus back to eating another of the most delicious meals of my life. Lunkfleece was gulping a huge cup of black liquid that had a pleasant aromatic odor and eating from a huge mound of bacon. I guess his appetite was back. He seemed a good sort and he was probably handsome from my understanding of orc standards, certainly no beast.
“Can I ask you a question about Pippin?”
“You may.”
“Why is he so obsessed with appearance? And why does he say the others are ugly, when they clearly aren’t. There are way uglier people on Bedford, not that I really care. I have noticed that the crew of this ship is really way above average in appearance.”
“Dragoners can afford aestheticians. If you see an ugly man or woman on a dragoning ship, it’s by choice or their first journey and they’re still poor.”
“Oh, that makes sense. We don’t have a single aesthetics clinic on Bedford. Sometimes a ship with a mobile facility will dock and all those who can afford it will flock there. You can pick out a bunch of dramatic transformations by the time it leaves.”
“A ways back, during a refit on a planet called Good Hope, Pip decided to get some work done. He was an ugly little gnome. We loved him, but it was obvious and he was sensitive about it, not that anyone said anything.”
“He’s handsome enough, but I wouldn’t have thought he had major work done.”
“That’s the thing. We didn’t want him to come back unrecognizable, so we contacted the facility and took certain steps to limit the extent of the procedures.”
“You not want,” Lunkfleece corrected her.
“True, I was the main impetus.”
“Okay,” I said.
“They agreed to just do minimal work on the stuff that we knew bothered him the most, but short of creating that uncanny Dorian look.”
“I understand. I’ve seen people go too far and so many actors in videos look the same.”
“They straightened his crooked nose, fixed his underbite, cleaned up some moles and scars, and that’s it. He was a better version of the Pip we knew and loved as a friend. He still looks like himself, but an optimized version.”
“Sounds like that makes sense.”
“Not to Pip. He was furious. He accused me of performing a fairy prank, which is something fairies never do.”
“Right.”
“Month on toilet,” Lunkfleece said laughing.
“I’m sure that was just a side-effect of the procedure.”
She tapped her thumb and middle finger together and the orc yowled as he accidentally put a tooth through his lip.
“As you said before, Pippin is a relatively handsome gnome, but his expectation was to be a perfect male specimen, so he is still definitely aware and sensitive about his appearance even though there is nothing wrong with it.”
I thought that maybe they should have just let him do what he wanted to do with his own body. She was a stunningly beautiful fairy and didn’t understand Pippin’s perspective and was really being selfish stopping him for her own benefit. She could have gotten used to his new look. However, I wasn’t sure what the consequences of saying that to Dawningsun might be so I kept my mouth shut.
“I don’t know that what you’ve told me excuses Pippin for all of his insults.”
“When Pip mocks Lunkfleece for being ugly, he’s actually still mad at me for my intervention with his aesthetician.”
“But you weren’t here yet when he called Lunkfleece something earlier.”
“I think it’s more habit than anything else at this point and he knows an orc doesn’t care at all about opinions on appearance from a gnome.”
“Very handsome orc.”
“He even tries to find ways to say I’m ugly like implying you are more attractive when you so clearly are not.”
“I have no opinions on my own appearance.”
“I’m not a fan of false modesty.” Her tone and expression made me fear an upcoming mishap.
“People have told me I’m attractive, but not fairy princess attractive like you, just for a human from a mining colony.” This seemed to assuage the affront to her vanity well enough based on the return of her smile.
“I wonder what Captain Baha looked like originally?” I said to change the subject away from me.
“Had two legs,” Lunkfleece said. His orc healing had already stopped the flow of black blood and he was back to attacking the mound of bacon and guzzling his drink.
“Yes, but I think Jayden’s talking about the obvious aesthetic procedures. I agree, she went too far. I’m often amazed by the vanity of humans.”
“I’m glad I studied xenozoology instead of psychology. I think understand people may just be impossible.” My appetite had left me again even though the most delicious food in the galaxy still occupied a large portion of my plate. I did have the feeling I ate much more than previously though. “I haven’t heard Pippin insult Koko.”
“Would you? And you’re much larger than Pip. Koko has her own kind of beauty. She does just fine looking the way she does and didn’t leave the party last night alone either.”
“That makes sense. I hardly know her, but I already get the sense that she does what she wants and won’t change for anybody.”
“That’s her. Did you know she is a prince?”
“What?”
“She comes from a planet called Rokovoko, which is an epipaleolithic colony. They reject all technology and don’t even speak Lingua Galactica.”
Just then my internal alarm alerted me that I had to head to Engineering.
“I really enjoyed talking with you, Dawningsun and Lunkfleece, but I have to get to work.”
“I enjoyed speaking with you too, Jayden. And call me Lee.”
“I one name. Call me Lunkfleece.” Growing up on an orc-run colony I already knew that and also that any attempts to shorten an orc’s name would be very unwelcome.
“Thank you, Lee, Lunkfleece. I’ll see you later.”
I discarded the uneaten portion of my meal under the disapproving glare of Cookie and then made my way down to my workstation.
