here is another chapter of my adventures with Tim. I want to thank rouge for his fine proofreading work. I hope to get some more chapters out this week but we shall see what class has to say about that.
without further ado, Chapter 2
We had finished dinner. I placed the tray into the auto washer to be cleaned and reused. I smiled a bit as I noticed the dra…, Tim staring intently at the light.
“Not-a-drake, why is it that you are the only other living thing I have seen? In my mother’s memories, most of the lesser races like to live in large herds.” Tim asked as he jumped back onto my shoulder.
“There are almost seven million souls on this vessel, but most are in biostasis,” I replied as we left the mess area.
“That’s impossible,” Tim objected.
“So the dragon, which was not even born yesterday, thinks he knows so much,” I laughed.
“There is no way. There would be a lot more free mana in the air if there were that many people around,” he stated.
“I would typically say to most people that there is no such thing as magic, though I can’t do that anymore as I now I have to look over a fire breathing dragon whose mother can teleport. I don’t see the relationship between people and free mana, though there are a lot of people on this colony ship,” I replied and as I watched the pouting dragon who decided to clear all doubts.
“People radiate mana and just wait until I grow up a bit,” Tim declared, from my shoulder, “then I can show you real magic.”
“Sure…” I replied as I pulled up a map on my tablet. I quickly scanned the area’s layout and started to make my way towards one of the stasis chambers. Time to show the boy a bit of truth.
“This isn’t the way back to your lair,” Tim stated.
“I am going to show you something you might find interesting,” I mysteriously replied as I took a left and walked down another corridor.
—
“Is this where we are going?” Tim asked for the hundredth time as we passed another door.
“You will know when we get there, stop asking, or I will rip out the dragon equivalent of our larynx.” I snapped, causing Tim to jump.
“What is a larynx?” Tim asked as he cocked his angular head to the side.
“In humans, at least, it a chunk of cartilage that enables speech,” I replied suppressing thoughts of ending the oversized newt.
“Why did you name something inside you? That seems kind of silly as the only time you would ever see it is when you are dead and being consumed by rats.” Tim replied, repositioning himself on my shoulder. I should ask him if he knew what a heart is and re-think his remark.
We turned a final corner and arrived at a large door. Biostasis chamber 428 emblazoned on it in gold letters. I moved to the panel placed on the door and placed my palm on the access pad.
“Dr. Drake Voidsbane. Clearance Granted for secondary access to biostasis 428,” Gaia droned as two loud ‘thunks’ reverberated through the quiet corridors. A loud hiss followed soon after as the biostasis chambers.
“Are you sure you aren’t a drake? Voidsbane is a large, greater drake house,” Tim commented as the door opened.
“No,” I sighed as I parroted for the nth time what my parents told me “my great, great, great, great grandparents were something called LARPers. I have no idea what LARPers are but the story goes that they changed it for some event or something like that”
“Are you sure your ancestors didn’t go drake wrangling?” Tim asked.
“What in the deep void are you implying?” I yelled at the lizard.
“Your ancestor mated with a drake and the half-wyrm took the clan name,” Tim bluntly replied.
“I know that, you dimwit. Why would you even suggest that!” I shouted as the chamber doors finished opening.
“Wow, what is all that?” Tim exclaimed, diverting the discussion.
“That is a biostasis pod rack,” I sighed as I walked into the large compartment, flanked on both sides by large arrays of pipes and wires connected to large steel pods. I walked to one of the stasis control panels and placed my hand on the screen activating it.
“What are you doing?” Tim asked, watching me like a hawk from my shoulder.
“This is what I want to show you,” I replied as I transferred lift controls to my tablet. I walked over to the lift and stepped onto the large rectangular platform. I called a familiar name onto the list, and the lift took off. I could feel Tim’s claws tighten as we started to rise. Images of newly pierced holes in my shoulders made me quickly think of a way get Tim to chill.
“Calm down, you can fly remember,” I said as I took us higher. Well, I did not see him fly yet, but there is no point in worrying him now.
“Oh yeah…” I heard him mumble as his grip lessened, much to my poor shoulder’s relief. as we ascended I could feel his head snap back and forth as he looked at each of the pod.
“I thought humans popped out of your females,” Tim said after a few minutes.
“That’s your first thought?” I laughed as we finally reached the top of the pod rack, “While it is an option to have a child grown in a maturation tank, most children are born from women. These people, however, are in stasis.”
“What is status?” Tim asked as he took a closer look at the tank jutting just a foot away from us.
“Stasis, not status,” I started to explain, “is an extreme slow down of all metabolic processes to the point of simulated death. The patient is immersed in a stasis fluid to prevent necrosis from occurring in this state. This allows us to keep people alive for a very long time and allows us to travel to other stars and build colonies without having to make this a generational ship,” I explained as I had a certain pod extend out of its alcove.
“What is special about this human?” Tim asked as the pod slid onto the platform.
“Well this pod contains my cousin,” I replied as I wiped the condensation off the pod’s window, revealing the pale face of a young woman.
“Ah, another member of your clan, I could see why they would be important,” Tim answered as he studied my cousin.
I stared at her face for a few more minutes wishing that she was also awake, she always had something interesting to say, and her smile would brighten everyone’s day. But I knew she would be needed when we would get closer to our destination, where her skills would be best utilized. I patted her pod twice before I begrudgingly returned it back to its alcove. I looked and noticed the dragon who seem enrapture with the biostasis pods. I smiled a bit as I poked the little reptile, “So, still certain that there are only a few humans on this ship?”
“I am a dragon,” he stated as he readjusted himself to a more regal pose on my shoulder. “And dragons are never wrong.”
“I see,” I muttered as I lowered the lift. We slowly walked back to the medical bay passing through the nearly deserted ship passages. Not a word passed between the two of us and before we knew it we had arrived.
“So, where is your hoard?” Tim asked, looking around the room.
“Hoard?”
“Yes, your hoard,” Tim asked while giving me a weird look. “You don’t just sleep on the floor do you?”
“I sleep on a bed, in my quarters.” I hesitantly replied, “I don’t know what a pile of crap has to do with sleeping though…”
“Well then, take me to your bed,” Tim demanded imperially.
“Not just yet,” I managed to squeak out, just barely holding back my laughter at his poor choice of words. “I need to get a bioscan of you so I can fabricate a neural implant”
“What is that?” he asked.
“It is a small… artifact… that allows you to interact with the ship’s AI, Gaia.” I replied, grabbing him before he could escape.
“Put me down! you son of a goblin!” Tim screeched as I placed him into a neonatal scanner, quickly shutting the hood before he had a chance to escape.
“It won’t hurt a bit, just calm down,” I said as I activated the machine. “Most of the examinations are painless nowadays, nothing to fear young Tim.”
A loud hum quickly drowned out the little dragon profanities as the scanner cycled through the scan. It only took a minute before the humming died down and my ears were once again assaulted with poorly constructed insults.
I tapped on the display and started swearing as the scanner’s only managed to get a partial picture around Tim’s mouth. That space addled lizard, why can’t it just cooperate for a little bit.
“Listen up. If you want to eat, you need to stand still, shut up, and open your mouth!” I yelled at the angry little dragon.
Tim finally calmed down, glaring daggers as the machine activated once again. I waited for the machine to cycle once again as it created a 3-dimensional image.
“See, it wasn’t that bad,” I said as I opened the scanner, barely dodging scaled ball of outrage that jumped out.
“Do you want me to shove you in a small tube and have some metal thing make your scales itch all over?” Tim snapped as he glared at me from the floor.
“Your scales itched?” I asked wondering what could cause such a reaction. That would explain why he was so restless. And his crankiness.
“It felt like I was thrown into a hoard beetles nest,” he replied.
“What are hoard beetles?” I hesitantly asked.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
as always we are mostly human let us know if we missed anything.
Tales of The Forgottenslayer 