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18 Days, 3 Months, 41 Years from Temeraire’s hatching.
Year 26th of our Great and Glorious Daoguang Emperor, 18th Day of the Thirteenth Moon.
1082:02:19 Galactic Standard.
Laurence did not stumble when reached the main gate, but it was a close thing. He had never been one to suffer from space sickness—he had been a sailor for far too long for that to affect him—but there was always that one moment, that one second before touching the exit hatch, when his body revolted at the idea of a different gravity standard.
“Is everything alright, Laurence?” Temeraire asked from the walls. They both had know the risks of traveling this late in Laurence’s life. They had both turned a blind eye to them; Temeraire needed to come, and Laurence was not ready to ask him to leave him behind.
They had not been completely reckless. Laurence had asked his Medical Specialist if spending more than three scores traveling by dragon was a good idea. The Specialist had looked at Laurence, down at his file, and then back at Laurence with a tight smile. They did not say no, which was a surprise all of its own, but they had asked him to ask his Geriatric Medical Specialist instead. Laurence had not. Temeraire had not asked if he had done so, and they both had sailed away content with living in denial.
Now, sixty five cycles later (the five cycles over those questioned three scores due to extra stops for fresh food), Laurence knew for a fact he could make the trip. Whether he could survive the trip back was a different question, but that was not an immediate concern. Temeraire business in C-Hina would take at least a ten-score, so Laurence had time for find a new Medical Specialist whose advice he would also ignore.
“I am fine, dear,” Laurence answered, as he could feel Temeraire start to fret. It was hard to notice, especially this far from the dragon’s core, but Laurence had spent half of his life in or close to Temeraire. He had long learned how to distinguish the background noise of ventilation and electrical buzzing, and how to understand Temeraire’s feelings from it.
“Is it the gravity, Laurence? I made sure to slowly shift my artificial gravity well to C-Hina’s, but I know it is not the same.”
He had also, Laurence thought, slowly adapted the day-night cycle to match the one of C-Hina. Back at home, their days were a tad bit longer than a standard cycle, but C-Hina’s were even longer than that. Much more longer than that, and he would have had to keep a two sleep-cycles per day routine. In his youth, Laurence could switch from a planet’s day length to a standard cycle with two nights of sleep and some sleeping pills. Now, he was extremely thankful of Temeraire’s attempts at making the trip as easy on Laurence as possible.
“My dear, I am completely alright. You have done an excellent role as a host. But you know how planets are, there is just something in them that artificial gravity can never replicate.”
Temeraire hummed and Laurence smiled. He placed his hand on the wall and felt the soft vibration. He could hear his heartbeat slow down and his smile widen. The first time he had been on a dragon, back during his navy days, he had felt a similar hum. At the time, he had thought it was unpleasant and unnerving. The dragon’s captain had seen his young, confused face, and laughed at him. “Praeceler is just happy to see a new face, even if it is just so you can deliver a message, boy. She gets bored when all she has to do is sit on a hangar waiting to arrive to our destination.”
Decades later, once he was the captain camped out on a long-hauler’s hanger, he had had the same conversation with many a young sailor who needed to deliver food or news. Back during the war, they had even managed to recruit a few out of the navy and right into the dragon corps. Temeraire had made sure to keep track of every single one of them and bragged about it to every dragon who would listen.
Laurence left one hand on the wall as he reached for the exit hatch with the other one. He felt his stomach lurch a little bit, his body knowing that the gravity shift was incoming, but it was fine. It would be fine. He twisted the hatch and he felt the mechanical lock disengage.
The wall hummed and Laurence smiled. All these years, and Temeraire still used safety doors with mechanical overrides, over purely electronic locks. Old habits die hard, after all.
- 6 Cycles from Temeraire’s hatching.
Day 9, Month 4, Year 657, United Empire of Britania.
1023:03:11 Galactic Standard.
“Captain!” a young sailor shouted at Laurence. She was running down the corridor, blood dripping down her temple and missing a hand Laurence was pretty she had embarked on the RELIANT with. “Captain! Come see this!”
It had to be urgent, or important enough, for her to break regulation and call him by rank. Navy rules dictated that during combat when enemy forces could hear, ranks and titles had to be dropped to avoid enemies knowing which targets were the best ones to attack. And enemies could hear, Laurence thought, as he extracted his blade from the corpse of a sailor that had refused to surrender. When plasma shields became so good they could stop almost any projectile, one-on-one warfare had reverted back to the old days of hand-to-hand, fist-to-face, and blade-to-guts.
“Coming,” he shouted back. He ran after her, not knowing what could be so important to merit the panic. Had he known, he would have ran faster.
The other ship’s captain fought well, like a man who had something more important than his own life on the line, but he did stand down. “You must not destroy it,” the captain gasped in Galactic Common. He repeated himself in French, which Laurence understood, and in a third language he didn’t. Strange and musical in the way the oriental language family usually was.
Laurence allowed the other captain to send a general stand down signal to the rest of the AMITIE. The less people they had to bury, the better.
Once the situation had settled, prisoners had been processed and both ships had been stabilized, Laurence had dared to open the door to the room the other captain had been protecting. He knew what it was—the sailor who had guided him there crazed eyes alone were enough to suspect, but the other captain’s ferocity was a large clue too—but he still needed to confirm for himself.
“A dragon,” he said, looking into the complex mechanical core surrounded by pulsating biological components. “Unhatched.”
It had to be unhatched, or there was no way the RELIANT could have won. Even the simplest of dragons could hop a ship. The RELIANT was a blockade ship. She was made for long-hauls, dead space detection and skirmishes; she was fast, but she still had to move through time and space like a normal transport. If the AMITIE had spaced hopped, she would have gotten away.
Laurence walked into the room, carefully navigated around the scaled roots around the core—its biological brain, Laurence thought—and took a look at the core.
It was breath taking.
“You were the most spectacular thing I had ever seen,” he would later tell Temeraire. “So utterly complex and fascinatingly alien. There was nothing in the universe that could compare.”
There was a screen next to the core, small, sleek and with text brightly displayed on it. Laurence learned French as a boy. The war had kept his oral skills with the language sharp, but as his eyes landed on the screen, he realized that the same could not be said of his reading skills. It took him a few tries, but he was able to decipher it in the end. “Approximate hatch day: Year 32nd of our Great and Glorious Jiaqing Emperor, 10th Day of the Thirteenth Moon.”
“What?” he asked confused. He felt no shame in talking to himself. Only the unhatched dragon could hear him, which he did not care much about. Temeraire would save that recording and play it again and again. “It was the first question you ever asked me!” He would say with a chirp. “I was still not fully processing yet, so I spent a full cycle trying to understand what you meant with that.”
Laurence took out his pad and typed the name of the Jianqing Emperor. He was the current emperor of the Central Kingdom, wherever that was, with his capital—the Northern Capital Imperial City—being in Hina. Laurence typed Central Kingdom, Hina, Calendar Conversion into his personal communication device. The connection to the RELIANT was poor, but still there, enabling him to pull up the right database. He then carefully wrote down the date on the screen next to the core.
C-Hina: 32 Jiaqing, 10.13
Galactic Standard: 1023:03:17
Six cycles. They had six cycles. And without an exact time conversion, just a date, the difference between a cycle and a day could create a large offset that would render the estimate useless.
They maybe had six cycles until the dragon hatched.
“We have to move it, captain,” the RELIANT’s systems specialist said. They were carefully poking around scaled parts of the dragon, ignoring the core—the part their training would actually help with. “The bio-processors are almost done cooking; the dragon needs extra inputs and soon. I can scurry up some microphones and cameras, maybe even an infrared if I can bribe the right people, but it will need things happening in those microphones and cameras.”
“So you would recommend moving the creature.”
“The mess would be perfect, but a bit too much at first. You might want to start with the bridge; it is always occupied but it is not the complete chaos of the mess.”
Laurence thought about the suggestion. A brand new dragon. Unhatched, so they could count on it helping with the war effort without fears of treason. It sounded too good to be true, and it was. With only six cycles until it hatched, there was no way they could make it to any of the Imperial colonies in time. And the less he thought about how long it would be until they could get it back to Mother Britania, the better.
Someone would have to sacrifice themselves and become the dragon’s captain. Their lives would be tied to whatever their mystery black box would turn into, and with the AMITIE’s crew silent, they had no idea what they had. Even a small dragon, barely complex enough to skip a small messenger ship, would be a great boon. But no one had joined the Navy to become a messenger. Those who had no issue with the duties, probably thought of their time in the navy as temporary: complete one tour, two at most, and retire with honors into civilian life. And those who had no issue with spending the rest of their life on ship were probably looking forward to the life of sailor, rather than that of the secret ridden and unorthodox dragon corps.
And they had no way to alert anyone in the Imperial Core. Any messages they sent could be intercepted by the French forces. Even an encoded message was a danger, as you never knew who was winning in the race between encoders and decoders.
“Move it,” he told the system specialist at last. “To the bridge, as you suggested. Make sure to get the infrared sensors, if you truly believe they will help. We will pay back whoever has them and turn a blind eye to where they come from, if that is the issue at hand. Are there any other sensors that would help?”
“One of the cameras can be pointed towards some of the telemetry screens, but I would recommend against a direct hook-up.”
“Would it be too much information?”
The specialist looked slightly confused at the question. “Maybe? I was saying more because dragons are unlikely, unable in most cases, to let an input go. It would start cannibalizing the RELIANT, and without knowing how smart it can be, we could get stranded in the middle of space with a dragon-steered ship with a dragon too young and small to steer it. It would be a nasty way to go, captain.”
- 2 Cycles from Temeraire’s hatching.
Day 13, Month 4 Year 657, United Empire of Britania.
1023:04:15 Galactic Standard.
Drawing lots seemed like the best and worst choice simultaneously. He immediately removed from consideration those who had been drafted or only signed up for a single tour. He also removed the non-navy personnel who were aboard, although he gave them a chance to volunteer for the duty. No one took him up on the offer. He thought about excusing those with direct family planet-side, but most of them could relocated their families aboard. Those who couldn’t, two because their family needed readily access to medical facilities and one because her family of twelve was too large in case it turned out to be a small messenger dragon, were also removed from the lottery.
The drawing of the lots was done in the mess. It was the only place on the RELIANT that could hold everyone at the same time, even if they space was a lot more cramped since they had moved the dragon to the room.
The microphones had been absorbed almost instantly into the tentacle mass of the dragon. Laurence could not help but feel fascination at how the black scales twitched when a microphone was placed on it, and then switched to be permeable and absorb it into itself. The cameras had taken longer to be absorbed, with the first one sitting on the scales for almost a full cycle before the dragon started to absorb it. The few official documents they had on dragon husbandry aboard suggested that sensor absorption rate depended on the familiarity a dragon had with a particular sensor.
After the infrared sensors, Laurence wondered about the accuracy of the literature. It had taken an hour for the dragon to start to react to their presence, but once it had taken a taste, the sensor had quickly joined the microphones. And after that, every infrared sensor had been digested with equal, if not somehow more, haste.
Laurence did not know where the systems specialist was getting those sensors from, and by the guilty look on their face, he did not want to know what their prior purpose had been.
“Officer Carver,” Laurence said. He did not allow himself to add emotion to his voice. But he knew that regret and shame would have made the cut. Carver was young, idealistic, and had a whole, interesting life in front of him.
He also had the right genes to survive the long migration. A captain who could survive being put in and out of a coma was great for sailors, and completely useless for a dragon captain.
Carver nodded. “Understood, captain,” he said. They were all polite enough to ignore the waiver in his voice.
0 Cycles from Temeraire’s hatching.
Day 15, Month 3, Year 657, United Empire of Britania.
1023:03:17 Galactic Standard.
The dragon core’s lights turned on. From how everyone acted, one could think that all the emergency alarms had gone off all at one. The time it took to get everyone to congregate in the mess was shorter than their last total evacuation drill. Laurence was not what one would call happy with the result, but he knew better than to try to rectify the situation when the one thing his crew could think about was the dragon.
The lights kept turning on one by one, until the whole core was lit and ready. Then static came out of one of the microphones.
Then nothing.
Carver stepped up towards the core, but there was no reaction.
Laurence always knew there was a possibility that it would be a dud. Dragons sometimes were. Unlike super computers, dragons had a biological component processing information as well. It was why there were so few of them, and why they were instrumental to space hopping. Humanity had tried for more than a century to create a computer capable of the non-linear processing needed to hop. The closest it got, with all the greatest brains of a generation and more money than had ever been sunk into anything, was the creation of the first dragons.
Those first dragons could not hop, but they had created other dragons from themselves—reproduced, for a certain interpretation of the word—and done so again and again until the modern dragon was invented (created, hatched, born).
But dragon reproduction was not an exact science. Multiple dragons had to be involved, as two dragons that were too similar had a tendency to absorb each other. But too different, and you ran the risk of the dragon not hatching properly. Of the biological components not being aligned enough with the mechanical core. Of the chemical connection between the two of them not working properly. Of the background inputs having been too overwhelming, or not enough, for neurons to properly form and connect.
“Well, mariners, it is with a heavy heart that we must bid—”
“How can a heart be heavy?”
The voice came from the speakers to seal Laurence’s fate.
“Hello, dear,” Laurence greeting him. He then went on to answer his question, and the questions that came out from that answer, and by the time it sank in that he would spend the rest of his life answering questions for Temeraire, he liked the dragonnet enough not to mind.
16 Cycles, 7 Months, 5 Years from Temeraire’s hatching.
Day 7, Month 3, Year 662, United Empire of Britania.
Forty Third Murble of Swooping Season, 124 A.B.Y, Terra AUS-Tral Central Standard Time
1031:02:27 Galactic Standard
They were on their way to the penal colony of Terra AUS-Tral. They had been on their way to Terra AUS-Tral for more than a full score, twenty two cycles and counting, and they still another three scores to go.
“Do you regret it?” Temeraire asked.
“Helping those dragons?” Laurence thought about it. “No. You were right, it was the most ethical course of action. I wish to be the kind of man who is able to make those choices, regardless of how hard they are.” And it had been hard. And it was still hard.
William Laurence, a traitor.
It would haunt him to his grave. But at least it would not be: William Laurence, complicit participant in genocide.
“I am glad to hear that. But no. I meant meeting me and becoming my captain.”
That was a much easier question. “No, dear, I could never regret that.”
3 Cycles, 1 Month from Temeraire’s hatching.
Day 13, Month 5, Year 657, United Empire of Britania.
1023:04:18 Galactic Standard
“Are you sure I cannot get access to the RELIANT’s systems? I promise I will not subsume it.”
“Her,” Laurence corrected with a light smile. “And no, Temeraire, it would be too risky. But you are getting too big for your processors again.”
Laurence’s personal devices were the first ones to be sacrificed to Temeraire’s growth. After that, the RELIANT’s spares’ spares were sacrificed. Then, the crew had been asked to give up anything with a sensor, actuator or processor that they could spare. Non-critical spares had been the next ones to go.
And now Temeraire was too big again. Laurence was glad that the dragon was growing up smart and healthy, but a messenger hopper would not have eaten them out of the ship. Not just in the figurative, processor sense, but also in the biological material sense. Temeraire was growing all around, and while they had enough food to reach a safe haven, the quartermaster had given them more than one dirty look.
Laurence pulled up the RELIANT’s manifesto again in his one single remaining communicator and started looking through everything non-essential that could be used to feed Temeraire. The AMITIE had been stripped as much as possible, but it was always a danger to give Temeraire too much French technology.
His hand hovered over one of the emergency evacuation shuttles. With some of crew in AMITIE, they could spare the whole crew into evacuation shuttles and have three spare ones. The law determined you always needed two spares, in case they had to be launched below capacity.
That still left a full ship. Sensors, engines, multiple screens and plenty of processors. Temeraire was big enough that the inputs would not overwhelm him. And learning to fly would keep him entertained.
6 Cycles, 8 Months, 9 Years from Temeraire’s hatching.
Day 03, Week 25, Year 10, French Empire.
1036:00:15 Galactic Standard
“I could not hatch haphazardly,” Ning explained with a steady voice. “The French Emperor wishes me to become a companion for his son. Without thoroughly analyzing my options, I could not give a yes or no answer. So I stayed dormant until I could avoid making a decision with subpar information.”
“And you don’t want to hatch without a good support system,” Iskierka said with mirth. “Or you will end up like Temeraire with an emergency shuttle as your first building block.”
“Hey!” Temeraire complained. “You are one to talk!”
11 Cycles, 1 Month from Temeraire’s hatching.
Day 20, Month 5, Year 657, United Empire of Britania.
1023:04:26 Galactic Standard
It was Temeraire’s first flight outside of the hangar, and nothing was going well. Three sailors were doing repairs to the RELIANT’s hull when a solar flare blew her communication’s array. While that would not have been an issue usually, almost all systems relied on that array working. That included the oxygen supply to any and all space walkers.
Before anyone could start shouting about how large the flare had had to be for it to hit them, Laurence was already strapping to the pilot’s seat of the safety shuttle that was now Temeraire.
“As we practiced, dear,” Laurence said, his hands skipping over most of the controls he knew Temeraire could manage.
It was only when they were next to the sailor floating away into dead space that they both realized Temeraire had focused on learning to fly, not on how to operate the complex system of gates that would let the sailors come in, without instantly killing Laurence.
“I will not let you die, Laurence,” Temeraire promised, forging an unbreakable oath that the war would thoroughly test. “I cannot.”
“Fret not, Temeraire. While most dragons would have had a hopper vessel as their first building block, you have a ship with safety and emergencies on mind. The gates can be operated from the outside, by the sailors, without internal intervention at all. If their training does not betray them, they will be able to come in without blowing the internal atmosphere.”
“I have mechanical overrides?”
Laurence looked confused at one of the cameras. “Have I not given you a schematic? My apologies. I will make sure that one is made available to you as soon as we get back on the RELIANT and her systems are back online.”
18 Days, 3 Months, 41 Years from Temeraire’s hatching.
Year 26th of our Great and Glorious Daoguang Emperor, 18th Day of the Thirteenth Moon.
1082:02:19 Galactic Standard.
Laurence and Mianning walked around the rose garden in companionable silence. After the long days of formal ceremonies, unnecessary introductions and long noisy banquets, it was nice to be able to walk around a beautiful place without the need to talk, smile and keep hundreds of cross-cultural rules in mind.
The Daoguang Emperor could not carve out too much time out of his busy schedule. Not even an honored guest like Temeraire could get more than an hour of alone time. But Laurence was family, regardless of how unorthodox that had come to be, so they could be afforded those in-between times. A quarter of an hour here or there to talk, or in this case, walk.
They were both getting old. While Mianning was younger, despite legally being Laurence’s older brother, he had spent most of his life tied to sedentary duties. Laurence, however, did not have the benefit of spending most of his life planet-side. While his skin looked younger than it should, due to the years of avoiding sunlight, his muscles had not benefited from a strong gravity.
The Daoguang Emperor’s bodyguards were well trained enough to keep their distance, but one of Ning’s drones hovered a few feet away. It was always a bit strange to be planet-side and still observed by a dragon. Back when Lung Tien Qian was still the one who oversaw everything, it felt like being spied every hour of the day. With Ning it was different. She was, in her own way, family too.
“Lung Tien Ning,” Laurence said, “be a dear and please take a picture of this flower for me. Temeraire will love it.”
The drone approached them and took the picture. Even after all these years, Laurence was not the best at recognizing technology, but he was pretty sure it was one of her permanent ones. Unlike Temeraire, who could subdivide his consciousness to multitask better, the skill that made Celestials' an essential companion to the emperor. And unlike Iskierka, who could make small versions of herself and throw them at enemy ships to take over their systems before self-destructing, an art she had been hatched to do and had mastered better than anyone else according to her. Ning could divide small parts of herself, small enough that they could fit into commercially available hardware, and reabsorb it without much issue.
Laurence knew she had sent the picture, as he felt his personal communicator vibrate to the pattern he had keyed for Temeraire. By the time he came back aboard, there would probably be a cutting or two waiting for him.
The Daoguang Emperor had offered him a room in the palace, but Mianning had reassured him that they were all expecting him to reject the offer and stay with Temeraire. After the war, Temeraire had been gone for long stretches of time as his political career picked up in Mother Britania. But as time went on, Temeraire had found he could do more and more of his work from Tharkay’s Estate. And Laurence found more and more excuses to accompany Temeraire to Mother when his presence was really required.
After the funeral, they had had a terrible fight. Temeraire refused to leave him alone, which Laurence understood. The first night he sat next to the just hatched dragon, he understood his fate was sealed. It was a duty he had taken with great care and love over the years, despite its sudden nature. What Laurence did not understand, was that Temeraire insisted on staying in Alba instead of returning to Mother.
“But Laurence, low-gravity environments can have terrible effects on aging bones!”
“I understand, dear, but I cannot shackle you here. You were meant for the stars and government, not to rot away just to see an old man die. I will die in either case; let me see the stars and galaxy again.”
Temeraire had relented at the end, but he had forced Laurence to visit a milliard of medical specialists and follow their advice. Until the trip to Central Hina, but by then Temeraire had become too used to have Laurence around all the time again.
Laurence turned to Mianning and considered telling him the parliament had voted ‘yes’ on creating a large space station. On how peace on their quadrant had made them feasible again. He considered letting him know that the colonies had been grumbling that it was hard to get support during critical times, and having a space station that could relocate to orbit different colonies depending on their needs seemed like a good solution. That Temeraire had been so happy to have so many people aboard during this trip, and how the space station would have a permanent population for him to manage.
Mother Britania would make it its own colony. The parliament already had a bill to make Temeraire its Governor.
Laurence would never be able to step on a planet again. It would take years for Temeraire to be properly settled, and by then Laurence’s bones could never take to gravity again. He would bid goodbye to the gravity that made him feel like he was back home, just a young boy with fun and adventure in front of him. To the variety of smells that were impossible to have aboard, due to ventilation regulations. The wind on his face and the sun on his back. Oceans that sprawled to the horizon and fields of farmland that seemed infinite.
Laurence did not tell him, for that was a conversation for the politicians. Instead, he smiled and said “Temeraire will finally get to grow properly again.”
Mianning nodded. “You will be moving permanently.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, I am finally moving home for good.”
“Good. We share your joy,” said not The Emperor, not Mianning Laurence’s friend, not his brother of circumstances, but a fellow dragon captain.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Laurence said as he went back up to Temeraire at the end of the day. The door, mechanical overrides in place despite his current outer hull not being a tiny emergency shuttle, opened for him. He placed a hand to the wall and it vibrated back to him.
“Could you come read to me tonight?” a speaker sounded from the walls.
“Of course, Temeraire.” Laurence started the comfortable path to the dragon’s core, where he would lie among some of the oldest and most precious of sensors, processors and biological tentacles. Temeraire made sure his voice always came from next to him as he talked about his discussions with the Central Court, his disagreements with Ning and the flowers he had taken to the small garden aboard himself.
Laurence settled down with an ancient paper book, making sure he was in sight of all the old infrared sensors, and got comfortable for a long night and an even longer rest of his life.