“Follow me” The dragon said as he turned and exited the room. As the dragon turned, Paul noticed the numerous scars that covered the overlapping, sapphire colored scales. The long tail swung around and followed it’s owner down the hallway. The four bipedal creatures followed the elegant dragon down twists and turns of the ship’s corridors, his ivory claws clicking on the metal floor.

Seth turned to Paul as they walked and whispered “There is something wrong with this situation.”

Paul gave him a quizzical look

“The chances of us randomly stumbling upon that wreckage in this infinite universe is incredibly small, almost nonexistent. We either found it by extreme luck or it was planned” Seth said

They were silent for the rest of the walk.

Eventually they entered a room with a large viewing port and several chairs and even more empty space. The dragon situated himself to face the small clusters of chairs and sat like a large cat with his tail wrapped around himself.

“Make yourself comfortable, this will take some time” he said as Paul, Lev, and Seth sat. The wolf walked up to the dragon who bent his neck so he could hear what the wolf whispered. The dragon nodded and the captain left the room.

“He must attend to something” the dragon told the three seated humans “Now, I am sure you are curious, but I ask that you hold your questions until I am done. To begin, you may call me proelium dominus. We don‘t have names in the same sense that humans do, we have titles.”

“Latin?” Lev asked with a shocked expression

“Correct, that is the one common language that dragons share, dragons will take the language of wherever they settle but we all share a love for Latin partially because it is based off of our long forgotten language. But let me start from the beginning.

Our species’ memory begins with the humans, we have no recollection of anything before you existed. We have yet to find out why. At first, we were the gods of whatever land we settled in, we did what we wished and humans were nothing more than a species struggling to survive. It remained this way for a long time. Eventually, one of my species gave you fire which accelerated your development, with it you shaped metals and built better tools and weapons.

Eventually, you built fortresses of stone and built bigger weapons. The amount of division amongst yourselves was stunning, but we used that to our advantage. We would make alliances with the local leaders in return for whatever we may need. But it was not to last, leaders died and were replaced by another who may not like the idea of us taking their resources. At this time, we were nothing more than rumors so the leaders could not send entire armies after us so they would send a few of their best fighters to slay us. Obviously they failed. This is also where your stories probably originate from” He paused to get a response from the humans

Lev had started taking notes on a small handheld device. He looked up and nodded. “myths of dragons swooping in during the night and stealing some livestock is pretty common nowadays, but they were always seen as children’s tales. The stories also said you had a habit of kidnapping princesses.”

“Ah, well… both are true to an extent. As living creatures, we got hungry and would occasionally take a snack or two from the nearest source. As for the kidnapping of princesses, they had a tendency to be the ones who spread word of our existence. We did have to take princes, kings, and queens on the occasion, but that was less common. Of course, the kings and queens did not like us kidnapping their child, so they would send more men to kill us. It was an endless cycle. Then, we realized your weapons large, wooden weapons could harm us.

We lived secluded lives until us dragons were nothing more than a myth and none knew of our existence. However, as you expanded and took more and more land, we were forced to move. Most of the dragons chose to fly for days over the ocean and settle in a new land that had relatively few humans. Everyday, more and more dragons arrived after being forced to leave their homes until it was our last sanctuary. Then you arrived on wooden ships and started to expand again until we were forced to live in the most desolate and unreachable places. But as our population continued to grow, it became obvious that humans and dragons could not occupy the same planet, so we took to the stars.”

“You can’t just glide over that topic like it was nothing.” Lev said

“What topic?” the dragon responded

“You say you took to the stars like it was nothing, how did you develop that kind of technology? Did you find it?”

“You think we just lived our lives without developing as you did? We were capable of space travel before you made your first decent cannon.” He said

“Wasn’t it hard to do anything precise with the way your bodies are?” Lev asked with a cautious tone

The dragon emitted a deep, throaty rumbling which Paul recognized as laughter “I forgot to mention that. One of the princesses we kidnapped grew quite… fond of a younger male dragon. The dragon -who was very young at that time- eventually grew fond of her as well and… well… you can guess what happened. The end result was a dragon that had many human features such as hands, they are the ones who helped with the precision work.”

Questions flooded Paul’s mind as he realized what the dragon was implying. He could see similar faces on Lev and Seth.

“We were equally as shocked when we discovered that it was even possible. They are an entire species now, a meld of human and dragon and because humans would never accept them, we brought them with us when we left Earth.”

“That… that… is… um…” Lev coughed “You glazed over the question again, how did you develop that kind of technology without us noticing?”

“You have not found our homes?”

“We assumed you lived in caves, hoarding gold” Paul tested the dragon’s sense of humor

The dragon let out a slight chuckle “Caves were a temporary solution for shelter, as for the gold, it is important for most of our technology.”

Paul was surprised at how much truth the stories had to them.

“As for the original question, I am surprised that our facilities are still undiscovered. We had numerous facilities in various places, usually near geothermic vents for energy. They were large, and completely self sustaining. That is where we built our first ship. Named Draconis, it held our entire race along with the new human/dragon hybrid that helped with building it. It launched from an underwater trench which is quite far from land which would explain why you never saw it.” He paused

“have you colonized another planet?” Lev asked as he finished the notes he was taking

“No, we still live on the Draconis and several smaller ships that we have… obtained throughout our journey. But we have yet to find a planet that is to our liking.” He replied with a hint of sadness in his deep voice “That is our story, now tell me yours.”

Lev told the story of what had occurred on the creation and launch of the Endeavor. He told them about their adventures, the encounter on the moon, the space station, and the tests that the wolf liaison had put them through. Paul and Seth filled in the occasional piece that Lev missed.

In return, the dragon solved some mysteries for them. The missing items were stolen by the survey crew to sell on the black market, apparently, trinkets from a new space faring species would fetch a hefty price to collectors. He also explained how the translator worked and how the pack wolves had known English without scanning them first. He told them of a race that solely existed to gather information, they developed the scanners that would communicate between themselves and distribute the language data amongst all species that had a scanner. The race was still a mystery to them but they were the source of much technology.

“Can I ask something?” Paul asked

“Always, I will do my best to answer” The dragon nodded his head

“When you destroyed our wolf escorts, you tore through them like they were tissue paper, they had shields and cloak and you destroyed them incredibly easily. How?”

“I assume you are the proelium dominus of your crew?”

“The what? I never learned Latin”

“It means battle master” Lev informed Paul

“Ah… Um… No, I am head of security, not exactly a tactical genius.” Paul replied

“To answer your question, it is my duty to think of new ways of battling. The first step of any intelligently fought battle is to locate an invisible enemy, that was achieved with the canister, each ball was tracked, they can determine if a target is still or in movement. The second task is to determine what type of shield they have, that was easy because their shields flared green which are unique to ballistic shields, the fighters only produce enough energy to power one shield which is why our weapons eliminated them with ease. In a fight where numerous fighters are facing larger vessels, their only possible tactic is to overwhelm the shield with as many weapons as possible.

Those are the common tactics. The last part was to finish up. That was my idea. As the ships cloaked and re-cloaked, their power source -which is also unique to each class of ship and race- generated a negligible amount of heat which bled through the ship and released itself through the lower weapon hatch when they prepared to fire which is how we found them while they were cloaked and dispatched them.”

Paul absorbed the information and realized that if the Endeavor ever got into a skirmish, it would be a completely different type of battle.

He hoped that it would never come to that.

“It is a new field out here human, battles are always different. Of course I cannot just abandon your young race so you have a choice.” He said

“And that is?”

“You must pick a side, you cannot traverse space without having safe havens, if you choose to go alone, neither side will give you asylum. Of course, choosing a side won’t require that you enter military service, but it will dictate who you can trade with and where you can travel.”

Lev, Seth, and Paul exchanged glances. “We will have to discuss with the rest of the crew. Our task is to explore and discover, not to engage in a galactic civil war.” Seth finally spoke

“Of course, of course, this is a topic that should be discussed. The dragons won’t be a threat to you if you choose to side with the pack because of the… strange bond we share. I cannot speak for the rest of our faction however.”

“Why do you support the rebel forces? It doesn’t seem like you have a large investment in their cause.” Lev asked

“Their cause is just” He grunted “It would also be difficult to colonize a world with the regulations the pack has in place”

The four of them discussed various matters for what seemed like hours. Eventually, the three humans decided that it would be best to inform the rest of the crew and make a very important decision. The dragon led them to an airlock where a wolf fighter was waiting.

“The most important advice I can give you. Never reveal where Earth is, if humans have expanded to other planets, never reveal their locations either, worlds are the most important secrets that a species have.” With that, he left the humans to be ferried back to the Endeavor

The three of them met with the section heads and it was decided to gather the entire crew to brief them of recent occurrences and to make a decision.

________________________________________________________________________

After the rather long crew meeting, it was decided that the best course of action was to return to Earth to restock and unload the little data they had.

After the meeting, Paul got some much needed rest. After he awoke and washed up he caught up on his duties, most of which were reports… reporting that nothing had happened aboard the ship that was of interest while he was gone.

Paul walked down the hallway towards the security station on the bridge. As he entered, he noticed that a large portion of the bridge crew was surrounding a console.

“What’s the problem?” He asked a passing crew member

“Our navigation is having problems finding out where we are.”

“Well… Shit” Paul had no other words for the situation

“That’s the general consensus so far” he said as he returned to his station

Paul approached the group and listened in on the conversations. From what he gathered, the known star patterns didn’t match with anything they could see and the ship didn’t know it’s own location. The surrounding crew were throwing around various ideas. Paul left them to their business. He sat himself in the security booth and reviewed more boring reports.

As he was part way through a report about the status of certain supplies and their possible consequences on moral when Seth entered and plopped a folder on the desk.

“And this is?…” Paul asked as he reached for the folder

“Actually, it’s nothing. Just wanted to make a dramatic entrance.” Seth replied as he picked up the folder again and sat in the chair opposite Paul

“You succeeded. Anything new?” Paul asked, glad to have a normal conversation once in a while

“Aside from the fact that we may be stuck here? Not much, been doing some more readings on dragons. Still feel like I’m in a dream. Nothing has ever been found that would even suggest that they exist!”

“Yea, crazy to think that we just… forgot about them.” There was moment of silence “Do you think this is the right move?” Paul asked

“What, joining a side in a galactic war?”

“No, going back to Earth. How will everyone else take the news of aliens? Let alone the fact that giant fire-breathing lizards exist and that they used to live with us?”

“I’m sure it will be fine, humans tend to come together when we realize that we aren’t the top of the food chain” Seth wasn’t taking it very seriously

“We still kill for land and resources! We discriminate by the color of skin, there is no way they won’t discriminate! Do you think we should leave them out of public reports?” It felt good to get his opinion off his chest

“Not our call to make, we report to the U.S Government. They will make the decision to tell the public or not.” His voice had turned serious “and hopefully they made some better toys for us because we are terribly outmatched.”

“Speaking of returning, how long have we been out here? My computer’s calendar and clock stopped working after we first met the wolves.”

“I… have no clue. Hopefully they can fix that too.”

“I thought that was maintenance’s job? In fact, I thought that was your job? Or maybe innovation… Whatever, it should have been fixed.”

“The problem with the time is that the time system we use is based on our solar system, our sun, and our planet. It doesn’t work anywhere else unless by some incredible stroke of luck we find another planet that is almost identical to ours.”

“Then we need a new time system… Get on it nerd” Paul said jokingly

“I’ll get right on that… See you later” Seth gathered his folder, stood and left.

________________________________________________________________________

Time passed and the problem with the navigation persisted. After his shift, he grabbed a quick meal and wandered the ship organizing his thoughts. He still felt like he was dreaming. Occasionally he would stop at a station and observe the general moral of the crew. It was hard to tell, most seemed to be excited but there was an occasional crew member that seemed scared. He took some time to look out a window and just stared at the large crystal-like ship that they were floating near.

His walkie talkie crackled and a voice said “Paul, can you come to the armory?”

“Copy that, on my way” Paul wondered what had come up as he turned away from the window and headed towards the Endeavor’s armory.

As he entered, the first thing he saw was Dante who was sporting a very large grin with his arms behind his back

“What’s going on?” Paul asked

“You know those cool weapons the wolves had?” Dante said very excitedly

“Yea, what about them?”

“They left two of them by the airlock when the three of them left” Dante brought his arms around to display one of the wolf’s weapons “We didn’t know how powerful it is, so we thought it would be best not to fire it.”

“Smart thinking. Secure the trigger on both of them, I don’t want it to fire by accident. Send one to the science guys and see if they can figure out how it works and if it does, how effective it is. Lock the other one in a separate locker. Anything else?”

Another crew member walked in struggling with a box. “This was in the wolf’s room”

“What’s in it?” Paul asked as he stooped to examine it

“We don’t know what’s in it and we can’t force it open with just a crowbar.” He left the box in the corner and left

“Any idea what’s in it?” Dante asked as he stooped to examine it as well

“Probably not a wardrobe” Paul touched the small screen that was near the top of the box, it didn’t do anything

“Hopefully it has some more tech. Maybe it has a suit of their armor! I call dibs”

“It probably won’t fit you, made for wolves.” He rubbed his thumb on the thin line that ran across the top of the box

After messing with the box for a long time, they both decided that they had no means to open it so the hauled it to the science section of the ship and left it with the first poor sucker with a lab coat that they encountered.

Paul examined the wolf weapon. The stock, grip, and trigger were similar to that of assault rifles on Earth. The barrel was a rectangle with a slit on the end, it was about a two feet long and narrowed as it approached the trigger. There was no magazine that he could see or any place where casings would eject which would mean that it didn’t use any bullets. Along the top was smooth and didn’t have any sort of sight but it did have a handle to carry the weapon. It was a beautifully crafted weapon, there were very few visible seams and it was very light, maybe five pounds. Small, compact, and light. The weapon manufacturers on Earth would kill for something like this. The question was, how well did it kill?

Paul set the weapon in an empty locker and locked it before he became too tempted. For all he knew, it could punch a hole through the entire ship.

Paul returned to his room, washed up, and let the sweet embrace of sleep take him.