John Ringo - Emerald Sea

There were paddocks behind the huts where the newly made Changed stumbled into the world. They were thin and scrawny and often had to be kept from killing each other, but he knew that with a diet heavy in protein — and he often wondered where some of that protein came from — they would flesh out into tough, if undisciplined, fighters. Two of the new Changed charged each other as he watched and more mature ones that had been posted as guards closed on them, clubbing them with fists and tearing at them with their talons until the two half-dead fighters were separated.

Back behind the area was a section designated for women and children who had not been subject to the Change. Children were simply too fragile, with insufficient internal reserve of energy, to be Changed and at least some women had to be left to manage them.

He saw more guards wandering in the area, some of them going in and out of the huts and as he passed behind one he heard a whimpering shriek from the interior. The “refugee” camps were managed by Celine and if he had his way he’d change that. But since it was beyond his power to correct, he tried not to think about it. This extended walk was making that hard. He closed his ears to the sound of cries, some of them from children, as Celine led him to a much larger hut.

“As you know, we’ve been unable to find a home for most of the female refugees,” Celine said. “They are of limited utility in this world. And the children are nothing but a resource drain. But I think I’ve finally found a solution.”

Inside the hut there was a ring of guards around a small group of people. One male, a female who might or might not have been his wife, and three children ranging in age from a skinny, feverish-looking toddler to a girl just under puberty. One of Celine’s acolytes was in the room as well and as soon as the two avatars appeared he began to mouth nonsense syllables.

A globe formed around the group and the air around them filled with light, presumably from nannite interaction. Suddenly the air was split by screams of pain which dwindled and changed into pure rage. When the globe cleared, standing in the center was a thing. As large as Chansa and if anything broader. The beast was heavy bellied with a piglike face and long, curved tusks. His arms dangled nearly to its bowed knees and his fingers and toes were tipped by razor sharp talons. He was definitely, even disgustingly, male, with an enormous penis and a large scrotal sack. He looked around the room and lunged at the doorway but was stopped by an energy field. The beast struck at the invisible shield repeatedly with fist and shoulder, bellowing in fury, until the acolyte spoke again and the monster settled into a quiescent state that, nonetheless, radiated rage.

“Where…” Chansa said and then cleared his throat. He didn’t want to ask the question, knowing in his heart the answer, but he found himself unable to stop. “What happened to the people?”

“The male was used as the nucleus for my newest creation,” Celine said with a beatific smile, stepping forward to stroke her hands over the monster; her avatar passed through the field since it had been keyed for flesh and blood alone. “His internal energy was also used. As was that of the other resources. And their material was added to his. Perfect. Flawless,” she said, stroking the creature on its arm. “The penis is fully functional, and he can reproduce with human females, assuming they survive the experience. The offspring… well, my models have several potential outcomes. I’m looking forward to empirical data.”

“Celine, even for you…” Chansa said, then pulled himself up. “This is madness .”

“Paul said that he wanted horror,” Celine replied, turning to look at him as she stroked the creature’s arm. Her eyes were bright and mad. “I can do horror.”

“Yes,” Chansa replied. “That you can.” He tried to consider the situation objectively but could not. And, strangely enough, it was not the image of the family disappearing that kept coming back to him, but the woman being dragged away by her hair.

He wished that he could delude himself, as Paul did, that what they were doing was good, was just, was right. But he could not. He had long ago concluded that it was an evil beyond redemption, a force of ill more powerful than the world had ever known. He knew that he had dug himself into a hellish pit that it might never be possible to dig out of. And he knew what had brought him here: delight in power.

Each taste of it had been like a drug to him so he had clawed his way up until, with Paul’s help, he was a council member. But with each step on the ladder, as an inspector, as a special inspector, as an associate council member, a web of responsibility, checking that power, had woven around him, taking some of the heady drug away. When Paul presented him with the ability to throw off those webs, as if they were truly gossamer, he had taken it, knowing full well with whom he had allied.

And it had led to this.

If they won the war, if Paul managed to survive, if they could… weed certain members of the Council, Celine with her monsters, Reyes with his girls and his whips and his knives and, most especially, the Demon, if they could choose the right people to take the Keys of the Freedom Coalition, maybe they could dig out.

Which meant winning. And that meant using, yes, every weapon at their disposal. Even Celine. Even this… monstrosity.

“It’s magnificent.”

“They’re magnificent,” Rachel sighed.

Herzer shook his head as the dragons winged in to a landing on Raven’s Hill.

“You’re joking, right?” he asked. “I see what you meant about the surprise.”

There were six of them, four with riders and two riderless. Five of them were wyverns, which, unlike the classic “dragon,” had two powerful hind legs and a vast span of wings to support their flight. Wyverns were nonsentient and trainable, barely. They had something of the intelligence, and personality, of horses. If, of course, horses ate flesh instead of grass and needed to consume close to their own body weight in food every day. Their bodies were also the size of a large horse but their wings, even folded, took up more cubic meters than their bodies. When opened, the batlike wings spread some thirty meters to either side.

The one on the end, though, was a true dragon. Four legs, long neck, massive wings, large enough to overshadow the five wyverns. Dragons had been developed slightly before the elves and were sentient beings, with all the rights, and responsibilities, of humans. But further creation was halted shortly after the AI wars in reaction to the various horrors of that war. Afterwards there had been a brief population increase but over the succeeding two thousand years the race had dwindled away to almost nothing.

And here was one landing in Raven’s Mill. Apparently with the purpose of flying them down to the sea. And then accompanying the expedition to the Isles.

“You have got to be joking,” Daneh repeated for him. She was still puffing from the trip up the hill and now looked at their “rides” with total befuddlement. “Tell me we’re not riding those down to Newfell.”

“Okay, I won’t,” Edmund said, chuckling. “But you might want to start climbing on.”

“Cool,” Rachel said, then looked more closely at the True dragon. “Excuse me, Miss Dragon?”

“The name is Joanna,” the dragon said, lowering her head down to Rachel’s level. Despite a mouth full of very long teeth she had flexible lips and a mobile tongue that permitted quite clear speech. “Joanna Gramlich. Most humans have a hard time telling dragon sexes. How did you know?”

“We saw you at Marguerite’s birthday party,” Herzer interjected. “So you’re now part of the Freedom Coalition? That is wonderful to hear.”