Dark Dragons (8 page)

A rush of emotions popped from his mind as if a swelling
balloon had released them——joy, rage, depression, sexual arousal,
jealousy.  Alien images swept across his conscious like frames from a
reeling film strip, each vision different from the last: hand-held weapons,
dark fighter interceptors, black combat suits, hideous creatures from hell, a
violet sky full of giant triangles——a gray, crater-scarred moon with its
equator missing, replaced by a colossal ship at its core. . . .

The green glow from the eye faded, and Darren dropped face
first into the hard soil.

*

The computer digested its new information, storing body
dimensions, brain wave speeds, and skeletal strengths into its memory, every
physiological response recorded.

With the appropriate data now stored, engineering automatons
within the ship’s holds began to modify the cargo.

*

Darren was having a strange dream. He stood on a hill
overlooking a burning alien city while a large, white sun blazed overhead and a
much, smaller orange star hung over the western horizon, both bathing the sky
in beautiful fires of pinks and yellows.  Behind him, a prairie crowded
with curious animals resembling reptilian kangaroos fed on tall purple
grasses.  He knew he was dreaming and sleeping somewhere else, but why had
his mind brought him here?  He had never seen this place before.

He sat down and spotted a lone figure approaching from the
blazing city, maybe one or two miles away, strolling among the herd of grazing
animals.  The figure did not seem to be in a hurry.

Darren heard a loud hum above his head.   A pulse
of light pierced the sky and touched the ground beyond the horizon.  A
cloud of heat and bedrock rose at the impact.  Darren did not recoil in
shock from this.  Even when the shockwave blew his hair back seconds
later, he remained still.

When he looked back at the approaching figure, he saw it had
come much closer.  It couldn’t have covered that distance from the time
Darren had last spotted it.  But it had.  The person was short, maybe
five feet, and wore a brilliant cerulean tunic waving in the hot winds.

Darren closed his eyes, waited a few seconds, and opened
them again.

Only forty feet now separated Darren and the figure. 
The rolly-polly creature had a long toothy snout and brown, pebble skin, two
thick legs and fat, clawed toes.  Bony projections across its forehead
nearly concealed three reptillian eyes which Darren could tell were endowed
with reason and wisdom.

“Hello, stranger,” it said in its alien tongue.

“Hello,” Darren replied with the same language.

“I am Kalaar, and you are En’rev’k Y’rid Zet, ‘He Who Greets
With Fire.’”

“No, my name is Darren,” he corrected, although he dug his
new alien name.  He Who Greets With Fire . . .
I’m a member of the
tribe!

“D-Dar-ron.  Fine, fine.”  The creature sat down
with a slow huff like an old man settling into his rocking chair.  The
being withdrew a gnawed, yellow stick from his tunic and nibbled on the end of
it.  He looked up at the sky and the events unfolding there.  Darren
could feel the creature’s distress and uncertainty.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Xrelmara.  But I believe you call it. . . .” 
Kalaar rubbed his snout and stared at the grass  “. . . Eta
Cassiopeia?  I am not quite certain.  I am an old man, you see, and
my brain is crumbling.”  Kalaar removed a metal ball from his
pockets.  Its sides opened into the shape of a silvery flower, and it rose
from the creature’s hand to drift above their heads.  It began to sing a
melody of strange chimes and mewls.  An insect darted after it and
fluttered away.

“What’s happening here?  Why is that city on fire?”

Kalaar took a breath and slowly exhaled.  “War. 
They have come and destroyed my people.  I don’t really know why. 
Only the Prophets understand, I guess.”

“Are you the one who sent your ship to Earth?”

“Earth?”  Kalaar scratched his snout.  “Oh . . .
yes, the Eye of the Gods, our polestar——I am the one.”  The creature
chewed harder on his root and found the juicy center where the spices
were.  “Too bad it crashed.  You were not my first choice.  Much
too young for war.”

“Why did you send it to Earth in the first place then? 
Out of kindness or something like that?”

“Kindness?  Perhaps.  I am too much of a miscreant
for an act such as that.  I guess my actions were uncalculated at the
time.  Maybe I was merely thinking out of proper judgement.  Like I
said, I am a senile old man.”  Kalaar turned to him.  “You are full
of doubt, Dar-ron.  That I see.  When Dy’uvic, the Seventh Prophet,
rode his dragonstar across the clouds to crush the murderous Three Clans, he
too was just a boy.  Outnumbered.  Full of questions and
uncertainty.”  Kalaar leaned in closer, his eyes reflecting the fires from
the city below them.  “But he prevailed,” he whispered with steely finality.

Darren couldn’t be sure what this kooky old man, a kind of
alien Buddha, was trying to say.  Somewhere in him, though, he did. 
Darren looked out at the fields of grazing animals while Kalaar talked. 
The creature’s voice, full of age and grit, became softer, feminine.  He
turned to the alien and saw that it had changed form into a beautiful, blond
woman.  This dream was playing out with typical surrealism.

“Your Dragonstar is a cold parasite,” she said.  “It
will feed off you.  A price to pay for such a primeval brain, but you will
overcome this.”

“Dragonstar?”

“The dragonstars helped Saroot the Fourth Prophet defeat the
Third Prophet, Vorvon, the false oracle.  We call the invaders who have
destroyed my people Vorvons.  We do not know their true names nor would we
speak them anyhow.”

She seemed to be describing events in an alien version of
the Old Testament, their own religious scriptures, Darren figured.  A good
campfire tale, maybe, but he couldn’t understand the relevance of it.

“The Vorvons are simple destroyers.  What you create
and celebrate over the eons——monuments and philosophies, art and song——they
come and obliterate in just days.  The soul of your planet will cry out in
grief with the loss of its children.”

This woman looked so damn familiar, and her name was right
on the tip of his tongue.  She wore a sexy white skirt with thin shoulder
straps, showed a good deal of cleavage, had short curly hair and a mole.

Marilyn Monroe?  Darren sat upright when it finally hit
him.  He was talking to Marilyn herself.  What was the dream
interpretation with this one?  With the wind rustling her hair, Marilyn
looked off toward the city.  He didn’t think he ever saw a more beautiful
woman in his life.  Vanessa maybe.

Darren knew he was dreaming, anyway, so he had no
reservations about placing his hand on Marilyn’s thigh.  She looked at him
and smiled.

“Wanna get naked and wild?” he asked.

“I’ve had enough mindless sex in my life, thanks,” she
replied, removing his hand.

Darren looked away and watched the herd of grazing animals
in the distance.  “Can’t even get play in my own dream.”

“You don’t want me, and you know it,” she said. 
“There’s someone else you want.”

Darren pulled up a few blades of purple grass.  “Yeah,
right.”

“I think Vanessa likes you, Darren,” she said with a
breathless purr.  “You should stop looking at yourself as an ugly turd and
stretch out and take a chance.”

“Likes me?  I don’t think so.”

“How do you know?  I think she swoons every time she
sees you in the halls.”

Darren shook his head.  Marilyn didn’t know shit. 
She was just a projection of himself talking to himself in his sleep anyway.

“I’m not just a dream,” Marilyn purred.  “Believe
me——Vanessa likes you.  She sees you in the hallways and looks away before
your eyes meet.  During lunch, she always sits where she can get a good
view of you.”

Darren stood up.  “Bullshit.”

“No it’s not.  You should see her when you pass her in
the halls.  You leave her breathless.  Your dangerous with power like
that.”

“For crying out loud.”

“Why are you being so despondent?  I’ve never met a
person living in so much denial.  You’re unreal.”

Darren turned to her.  “Look, you’ve——”  Marilyn
Monroe had vanished.  Darren could only stand there and tremble.  He
felt his stomach churn.

“Did you hear me?” Vanessa Vasquez said.  “I said
‘You’re unreal.’”

No reply.

Vanessa smiled, and he thought he was going to reach
orbit.  “I’ve watched you for a long time, Darren.”  She slowly
approached. “You are . . . without a doubt . . . the most captivating and . . .
and seductive guy I have ever seen.”

All Darren could spew out was a dumb-ass, “Thanks.”

Suddenly a fist came from nowhere and smashed him in the
mouth.  His head jerked back, and he fell on his ass.  He saw blue
lights, felt loose teeth rolling around on his tongue.  She hit him! 
The lights cleared from his world.  No, she hadn’t.

Todd Lutze had, who now stood between them.  “I don’t
think so,” he said.

Vanessa shook her head.  “Sorry.  Todd is kind of
jealous.  Gets it from Marcus.”  She looked at her boyfriend and put
her hand on his chin.  “You need to curb your anger, baby.”

Darren got to his feet and walked away in the direction of
the burning city, now a smoldering wasteland of ashes and crumbling
girders.  He looked over his shoulder.  Vanessa and Todd were making
love in the tall, purple grass.  He turned away, wanting out of this
fucked-up dream.  A laser pierced the sky and touched a mountain in the
distance, and the rocky formation disappeared in a flash and clap of
thunder.  The animals reacted and stampeded for the trees to his left.

*

Kalaar’s cargo drone tore the quiet, nocturnal order of the
forest asunder with the ignition of its drives.  It was severely damaged,
only a fraction of its original power remaining, but possessed just enough fuel
to complete its final task.

Slowly, with much effort, the ship rose from the forest
floor, wailing as it fought gravity.  Dust and dirt filled the air while
the tired engines struggled to gain altitude.  It hovered momentarily when
the drives sputtered but then regained speed.  Higher it climbed, clawing
for elevation, away from the city.  A loud sonic boom issued behind it.

One mile per second, two, three . . . .

With its objectives completed, Kalaar’s beloved ship——the
remedy for his shame and guilt so many eons ago——shut down the coolant pumps to
its engines.  A millisecond later, the ship detonated into a blinding,
pulsating flower of fire strong enough to blow out windows in the skyscrapers
fifteen miles below.

*

Darren heard chattering squirrels and birds calling to
mates, and wondered how the animal kingdom had found its way into his
bedroom.  He opened his eyes to see he was outside, and judging by the
sun’s position, it was early morning.  Tony, Nate and Jorge lay asleep on
the ground next to him.  Ground.  Not floor.

He sat up.  Something huge, black and menacing, sat on
the ground twenty feet in front of him.  An evil dragon had landing a
while ago to watch him sleep, and Darren nearly shrieked.  It took him a
second or two to realize the thing was a machine and not a fire-breathing
beast.  He looked to his left and right.  There were three more, all
arranged in a semi-circle around the boys.

Darren’s stomach knotted up when a wave of emotions and
memories burst from the modified regions of his brain.  The alien fighters
triggered a response, something like the Russian dog Darren learned about in
psych class that salivated every time its master rung a dinner bell.  The
answers came to him one after another, until no questions remained.

An invasion.  Not by Red Chinese or terrorists or
vengeful right-wing militiamen from the sticks, but extraterrestrials. 
H.G. Wells and
The Twilight Zone
.  Not a comic book or a
movie.  Right here in the real world.

A brief moment of cold panic gripped Darren tight as if the
doctor had just shown him an ugly x-ray or an oncoming car had just slid into
his lane.  He faced up to it quickly, an image so clear like a desert
landscape in every direction.  They had become the blocking force, the
unwilling but eventual warriors representing the only line of defense against
alien invasion.

“Oh my god,” he whispered.

If one of these beasts had been hovering in the air in front
of him on a moonless night any other time, he would have shit his pants and
passed out in the mess.  The overall design and shape of the fighter gave
it the appearance of an
alien
dragon as opposed to an earthly medieval
one.  The wings bent downward slightly one-third away from the fuselage
and widened to the ends as if they were about to wrap a prey in a locking
embrace.  The dorsal and stabilizer wings at the rear even angled back
sharply away from the fuselage just like a tail.  A short, thick neck
curved upward slightly from the body to a large, reptilian head; canard wings
on either side of the cockpit’s head provided the horns.  Even the two
landing skids looked like talons which carefully balanced the fifty-six foot
long, 28,000 lbs. fighter.

The designers did not seem to have logical practicality in
mind when they nightmared these beasts into reality but instead had poured a
sleek, sexy terror into the mold.  These aerial war toys were built to
either scare a smart enemy from coming out to fight or kill the foolishly bold
who did.

Somehow Darren knew every control and function, every
maneuver and trick, something known since birth.  An instinct.  What
took an Air Force or Navy pilot five or eight years to learn, had taken no more
than ten terrifying seconds of “advanced memory alteration” to teach him the
awesome capabilities of these alien machines.