Home Is The Hunter

(Won first place in "Invalid Item" !!)

HOME IS THE HUNTER

Home is the hunter from the hill
Fast in the boundless snare
All flesh lies taken at his will
And every fowl of air.
--A.E.Housman

Maybe they had been waiting. Or maybe it was a coincidence that they appeared when the colonists were at their most vulnerable. It really didn't matter. Their timing couldn't have been more perfect. Or disastrous, from the view point of the colonists.

- - -

The year was 2250 C.E., though the colonists of New Ecbatana called it 1629. There were a number of other inconsistencies in the dating system using a calendar created by a kingdom that had fallen into the dustbin of history more than two hundred and seventy years ago. The months were in Pashto rather than Persian. The local solar year was three and half days longer than the one back on Earth. And, of course, the predominant religion of New Ecbatana, two hundred and three years after its establishment, was Reformed Peacemakers, the 23rd century's version of the Anabaptist movement. If that seems confusing, consider the fact that the original Dutch Settlers of the island of Manhattan wouldn't have recognized the 20th century descendant of their settlement.

New Ecbatana was approximately 176 light years from Earth, and was accessible through a technology known as the Peterson Transition. The speed of light was still the limit objects could move in the normal universe, but M-theory had predicted the existence of other dimensions, and the Peterson Transition used these extra dimensions to allow for near instantaneous travel between star systems.

Humanity had found the stars barren. Very few possessed even the most primitive of lifeforms, or the ability to sustain transplanted Earth life. So colonization was slow. The initial colonies, such as New Ecbatana, were largely formed by sovereign wealth funds that had come into being at the beginning of the 21st century. New Ecbatana was established by an Iranian government that had supplanted the Iranian Islamic Republic, which had quietly imploded on itself in the year 2018.

From the beginning, New Ecbatana had been something of a problem child. Of all the planets discovered, it had had the most advanced ecosystem, actually possessing the Ecbatanian equivalent of reptiles, mammals, fish and the like (though none were bigger than, say, a beagle). And intelligent alien life was still delegated to the realm of science fiction. So even though Ecbatanian life was compatible with Earth life, the scientific community fought tooth and nail to make sure that the 'footprint' of the colonists of New Ecbatana was as small as possible.

Then there were the colonists themselves. The Iranian government wasn't using New Ecbatana as a commercial venture. They were using it as a dumping ground for the Afghan refugees that had plagued their country since the fall of the Afghan Monarchy in the latter half of the twentieth century. As you can imagine, this didn't set well with the potential colonists. And there were protests from various international NGO's as well. The colonization continued, though not at the speed the Iranian government would have liked.

The year 2070 marked the entrance of humanity into what latter historians would call The Unity. The tide of religious extremism which had swept the globe for the last one hundred years finally began to wane. Organizations such as the European Union, the Arab League and the African Union transformed into more powerful and unified entities. Borders in Western Europe, as well as between the United States and Canada, completely dissolved (citizens in the United States of the 20th century would have probably been shocked to discover their governmental system would eventually morph into the Canadian one, and not visa versa). Though the national ambitions of such people as the Basque and the Kurds were never realized, they did enjoy more self-rule in the new order of things.

It was during the time of the Unity that the supranational governments of Earth decided to reassert their authority over the scattered extraterrestrial colonies which had, up until that point, been run under the authorities of the funds that had established them. The machines which made the Peterson Transition possible were expensive and required an extensive infrastructure to maintain. By the end of the 21st century, exactly twelve Peterson Transition machines existed on Earth. Four of these existed in the coalition of countries known as the Anglo Union.

The 19th century German aristocrat and statesman, Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, once said "The most significant event of the 20th century will be that the fact that the North Americans speak English." It would prove one of the most significant events of the 21st century as well. As the Continent became more unified, the English abandoned their love/hate relationship with the European Union and instead revived their relations with the countries of the Anglosphere (a term first coined by the late 20th century writer, Neal Town Stephenson ). This would eventually lead to a free trade association among England, Australia, Canada, the United States, as well as Anglophone Carribean countries. The Republic of Ireland, frustrated with the not too subtle attempts by France and Germany to curb her economic 'Celtic Tiger', abandoned the European Union for the Anglo Free Trade Association (AFTA). Eventually, AFTA would evolve to a loose confederation of sorts that would become the Anglo Union.

New Ecbatana was colonized through the Peterson Transition Device located in the Mojave Desert of North America. It was almost inevitable that the new Iranian government would use a device in a country that would eventually fall under the sphere of influence of the Anglo Union. With the Pan Arab movement experiencing a renaissance (albeit with a more moderate temperament the second time around), fossil fuel dependency becoming a fixture of history rather than a component of current events and Israel finally able to enter a structured peace settlement with her neighbors, Iran found itself on the fringes again. Her neighbors to the north and east were involved in a diplomatic/economic/military dance with each other. Even Israel, which had enjoyed a semi-alliance with Iran up to 1973, was nurturing her ties with her Arab neighbors, as well as within the Mediterranean Union. So Iran had found itself again aligned with Great Britain and, by extension, the other members of the once and future Anglo Union.

At first, the United States of America (and later the Anglo Union) were content to provide only nominal oversight to the colonies established through the Peterson Transition Devices under its control. However, as the new spheres of influence began to contend with each other, and as resources on Earth and the Solar system begin to dwindle, the viable colonies established through the Peterson Transition Devices became more important, not only because of their untapped resources, but for the esteem they bestowed upon the various powers possessing them. Whereas in the late 20th and early 21st century, prestige was gained by a permanent seat on the Security Council of the now defunct United Nations, in the 22nd and the 23rd century, a country or Union was not considered a "Great Power" unless it possessed at least one Peterson Transition Device.

It was probably fortunate that some yet to be understood factor made a colony accessible only through one particular Peterson Transition Device. It certainly prevented interstellar war. However, it made the commercial ventures that opened up the colonies dependent on the country or Union that possessed the Peterson Transition Device that had access to it. So when the Anglo Union reasserted its authority over New Ecbatana, the Iranian government had no choice but to acquiesce. This wasn't a problem since, except for an A.U. military and scientific presence, the majority of the colonists going to New Ecbatana were from Iran and Western Afghanistan. This changed during the latter half of the 22nd century with the beginning of the Second Renaissance and the New Reformation.

By the end of the 22nd century, a general peace had settled across the planet.And as with peace and prosperity, the people who experienced it thought it would last forever. A new era had begun, with unequaled advances in the arts and sciences. Spiritual scholars conversed with each other so that religion would advance hand-in-hand with the secular world.

There was a movement in the religious communities to reclaim the spiritual purity that had existed at their respective beginnings. Though there were isolated incidents of violence in each reflective movements, for the most part they were peaceful in nature.

One of these movements was the Tabernacle of the Blessed, though they were commonly known as the Reformed Peacemakers, since they had their beginning in a prison ministry in an administrative state of the Mississippi Delta. The church took as its primary mission statement one of the Beatitudes from Jesus's "Sermon on the Mount":

""Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God"

The Peacemakers were far from pacifists, though they did preach a doctrine of tolerance. The church's theology seemed especially attractive to members of the A.U. military force, including lapsed members of other Christian churches. It was not uncommon to see Reformed Peacemakers who were current or retired members of the military wearing a St. Michael's medallion. In addition, the percentage of active military service men and woman on active duty on extrasolar colonies (including New Ecbatana) who identified themselves as Reformed Peacemakers was as high as eighty plus percent at some postings. It was this high percentage of retiring ex-colonial military who wanted to return to their previous colonial postings that made the Anglo Union require the commercial ventures to open up their colonies to potential colonists outside the parameters of the respective colony's charter.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, New Ecbatana, a Muslim world, did not have a problem with taking in a huge influx of Christian colonists. Unlike other colonies that had been established at the same time, New Ecbatana still had a relatively small population, due to restrictions placed upon it by the scientific community as well as NGO's protesting the forced relocation of the Aghan minority living in Iran. Further, outside of Shiz, the small city that served as the planet's administrative, military and scientific center, most of the colonists grouped together in communities based on their ethnic and religious identity. The Iranian and Afghan administrators and merchants living in Shiz thought of themselves as metropolitan, and had no problems rubbing elbows with the members of the Anglo Union who were living in Shiz already. There was even a small Jewish Community in Shiz, which had migrated from the renewed Jewish presence in Tehran. In addition, the groups of Reformed Peacemakers who headed to New Ecbatana were inevitably headed up by ex-A.U. military members who were conversant in Pashta/Dari, the de facto dialect of New Ecbatana, as well as the customs of the planet.

Finally, the fertile lands around the city of Shiz itself, which had been largely restricted for scientific purposes, was opened up just as the the Reformed Peacemakers began colonizing New Ecbatana. Up until that point, the only people allowed to settle in the available land around Shiz were the Hazaras. The reason for this was two-fold. Even in diaspora, the Hazara had been a persecuted people. For their own protection, they were kept under the umbrella of the A.U. military post in Shiz. In addition, the administrators of New Ecbatana thought it best that the nearest people to Shiz would be those who couldn't possibly wrest control of the planet from them.

The Hazaras had nothing by admiration and respect for their protectors in the A.U. military and, since so many A.U. members on New Ecbatana wore a St. Michael's medallion, in many ways the Tabernacle of the Blessed and the Anglo-Union Armed Forces were synonymous in their minds.

This is not to say that it was all "peaches and creams" for the immigrating Peacemakers, or that it was a continuous "love fest" between the Peacemakers, the Hazaras, and the citizens of Shiz. But things could have gone a lot worse between the three groups. As it was, they were able to co-exist quite peacefully, and most of their interactions were benign.

On Earth, things were not going as peaceably. The Second Reformation, which had began quite peacefully, was beginning to run afoul of the supranational organizations that had dominated the planet for almost two hundred years. Whether it was Shiites who were trying to establish a more predominant position in the PanArab world, or religious communities wanting more freedom from Chinese bureaucracy, or Charismatic Christians rebelling against secular materialism in the European Union, tensions were running high between religious bodies and the governing authorities. This, in turn, inflamed relations between the various spheres of influence around the world.

The members of the Anglo Union military, like their counterparts around the world, saw the writing on the wall. But unlike previous conflicts, there were places that their loved ones could flee. So prior to 2150, there was a mass exodus of Reformed Peacemakers.

And then it happened. On Panjshanbeh, Dey 19, 1629, which coincided with the day that Reformed Peacemakers on New Ecbatana celebrated Christmas, the portal between Earth and New Ecbatana, simply disappeared. One moment, there was a blue glowing hole in the middle of a warehouse located in the A.U. district of Shiz. The next, it was gone.

The clerk on duty promptly reported it to his superior, but there was very little fuss about it. The news from Earth had actually gotten better over the last week. The border skirmishes and internal dissent that had plagued all the "Great Powers" back on Earth had diminished. The thought was that this was merely an unscheduled maintenance check.

One week later, the portal still hadn't reopened. The colonists were starting to become concerned.

Two weeks later, the colonists had other problems besides an extra-dimensional portal that might or might nor reopen.

The dragons had attacked.

- - -

Lori Hunter (officially Lance Sergeant Lorinda Carolynn Hunter) said a quick prayer and kissed her St. Michael's medallion, before going about her morning ablutions. Lori's grandmother was a Hazaras who had converted to Christianity before the appearance of the dragons in order to marry Lori's grandfather, a retired A.U. non-com. That was back in the day when such unions were frowned upon, lest they bring retaliations from the tribes that lived beyond Shiz and the district around it. Of course, after the dragons had appeared, the only surviving realm of civilization had been Shiz. According to what few refugees had made it to Shiz, there were no other surviving towns or village.

Lori's grandmother, as seemed the case with all converts, took it as her sacred duty to strongly instill her newfound faith into her children and grandchildren. As such, Lori couldn't start the day without saying her morning prayer, even when she was on extended field duty.

Lori grabbed a quick bite to eat, put on her gear, and took one more look around the outpost, making sure everything was secure and she hadn't forgotten anything. Lori took a calming breath, then stepped out of the relatively safe confines of the outpost building and into the wild. She kept her senses alert, even though intelligence said that the outpost laid safely within "The Pale." (a term used by the pre-Dragon leadership to refer to the area around Shiz that was dragon free).

Almost fifty one years ago (twenty-seven years before Lori herself was born), communications and travel between Earth and New Ecbatana had been cut off and, to date, it had never been re-established. A little more than a week later, the dragons had attacked. The working theory was that the dragons probably would have attacked the human settlements earlier, but that some unknown property of the Petersen Transition kept them at bay. Whatever it was, the dragons quickly made up for lost time when they attacked. Almost overnight, every human settlement on the planet had been destroyed; every human life had been savagely ended.

Every settlement and life outside of Shiz, that is. The A.U. Defense Force had been on edge ever since the link between Earth and New Ecbatana had been suddenly severed. When the dragons attacked. the A.U. turned their heaviest weapons on them. This protected Shiz and everything within line-of-sight of the A.U. military outposts around Shiz, which was mainly Hazaras and Peacemaker farms and villages. The only weapons that seemed to affect the dragons were ones that could simply obliterate them completely. The dragons had no weak points to speak of. A shot to the head had as little effect on them as a shot to the foot. They had the resilience of cockroaches.

It had been a fierce battle, but the A.U. Defense Force prevailed. Their weapons were energy based, which meant they had unlimited ammunition. And they had a huge reserve force of retired A.U. military members to draw upon. Within two weeks, an automatic defense parameter was established around Shiz, as well as the Peacemaker and Hazaras settlements. The A.U. defense forces then decided to do a reconnaissance in force to see if there were other survivors.

Outside of a handful of refugees who were eventually able to make their way to Shiz, and a few people who were able to hide from the dragons for a few weeks, there were none.

An uneasy truce settled between Shiz and the dragons. The dragons would occasionally test the slowly expanding defense parameter around Shiz, but they seemed to instinctively know just where the boundary was. The A.U. Defense Forces would try to learn more about the dragons and ways to eventually eliminate them, but for the most part they remained hunkered down within The Pale. Satellites had been launched for study and survey, but since the dragons had first appeared, the radius of The Pale had grown a measly ten kilometers. There was only so much that the still limited technological base of Shiz could do.

The scientists of Shiz had learned a lot about the dragons, but this only let them know just how little they did now. Though the dragons might vaguely resemble the two-headed wyverns of Earth mythology, the few dead specimens the Shizian scientists had been able to come by showed that the dragons were actually more like mobile plants than animals. All their organs and systems appeared very decentralized, which explained why you couldn't simply shoot one; you had to obliterate it.

Specimens were hard to come by, though. The dragons had learned just how close they could come to the Pale, and had also learned to avoid the A.U.'s heavily armed forays. Plus, there was the fact that the methods necessary to kill a dragon simply wasn't conducive in obtaining a whole specimen.

So the Special Dragon Service was created. At first, volunteering for the SDS was tantamount to committing suicide. Less than ten percent survived their first missions. They simply couldn't carry the firepower necessary to deter, much less kill, a dragon. And the dragons had an uncanny ability to detect humans leaving the protection of the Pale.

But through trial and error (or, as the SDS motto goes, "Through Fog and Fang"), techniques and technology were developed that made successful SDS missions possible. It was discovered that one of the things the dragons zeroed in on was mass. Humans and their animals were the biggest things on the planet, outside of the dragons themselves. It was even theorized that the dragons were the local ecosystem's regulator on how big an animal could develop.

So a suit was developed that 'disguised' the mass of the wearer from a searching dragon. Unfortunately, the suit was limited on how much mass it could hide, so that there was a size limit on how large an SDS field operative could be. (This led to the nickname "Dragon Jockey" being used to describe SDS members, though never to an SDS member's face).

The other weapon that was developed was the evolutionary end product of a taser. It delivered a single-shot charge that could fry a dragon's nervous system. Unfortunately, the 'lance' (as this high-tech taser was called) was very short ranged and a had slow recharge rate, which could be deadly to the user if another dragon came upon an SDS operative standing over a dead dragon.

But the SDS had eventually proved successful in acquiring enough specimens for the scientists to experiment on and develop weapons and protection against the dragons. The suits to the SDS were proof against the chlorine gas (called the fog by members of the SDS) that the dragons could spout forth. But most importantly, the Shiz scientists now thought they knew how the dragons reproduced. If they could interrupt that reproductive cycle somehow, they could kill the dragons off and re-establish man's dominance of New Ecbatana.

To do this, they had sent Sergeant Lori Hunter on a quest for a dragon's egg.

- - -

Seven years after the dragons appeared, they disappeared, save for a few stragglers. At first, the citizens of Shiz took this as a sign that the connection between Earth and New Ecbatana was about to be re-established. Unfortunately, nothing happened, and the dragons reappeared in their normal numbers three months later.

The phenomenon of the disappearing dragons happened again, seven years later after the dragons had made their second re-appearance. The one satellite Shiz had been able to put up caught the dragons congregating at a specific area. The A.U. defense force went loaded for bear, as the saying goes. There was no sign of the dragons when they got there. Again, the dragons re-appeared three months later.

Seven years later, the scientists of Shiz were ready. They had four satellites in orbit, and as soon as the dragons started moving to a specific area, they had a bird's eye view of---

The dragons simply disappearing into the ground. A group of scientists with the best seismological equipment available to Shiz, as well as a very heavily equipped military escort, was sent to examine the area.

Nothing. There were a few shafts leading downward, but otherwise no signs of dragon activity below ground. Satellites and heavily armed military patrols remained watchful of the area.

Three months later, the dragons re-appeared on the opposite side of the planet.

Seven years later, the A.U. Defense Force waited for the dragons to disappear into the ground. After an attempt at remote probing, they dropped three 'clean' nuclear 'bunker busters' from orbit. A huge crater was all that was left of the area.

Three months later, the dragons re-appeared at a different part of the planet.

It didn't matter how they approached the problem; the Shizian military and scientific community simply couldn't destroy the dragons during this three months of dragon hibernation (or whatever it was). But the leadership of both groups was convinced that the window of opportunity to destroy the dragons was this three month period. The problem was discovering the lever to move the dragon world.

One of the scientists suggesting sending an SDS operative into one of the shafts found in the area where the dragons disappeared. SDS technology, it was argued, was advanced enough to let an SDS operative get in and out of one of the shafts without being detected by the dragons below or the sentries above (the scientists believed that the 'straggler' dragons were infertile dragons whose duty it was to detect intruders into the dragon nesting areas and alert, in some still unfathomable fashion, the dragons below to move). The SDS would make electronic recordings of what they had found, and if they could somehow accomplish it, bring back a dragon embryo, whether it be an egg, a seed, or whatever.

Luck seemed to be with the people of Shiz. This time, when the dragons disappeared, it was only ten kilometers away from the perimeter of the Pale. There was some debate as to whether this meant that the dragons might re-appear within the Pale itself, but so far, the only times the dragon seemed capable of moving under the earth was during the three month cycle that the scientist theorized was the dragon reproduction period. Either way, if the dragons emerged within the Pale, the automatic defense system would make short work of them.

And so, Sergeant Lori Hunter and three other SDS operatives spent the night in the tiny SDS outposts that ringed the Pale, preparing to go where even Angels fear to tread.

Or, as another SDS saying went, "If you're SDS, you go to Limbo when you die. You've done too much shit to get into Heaven, but the Devil's too scared to let you into Hell."

- - -

Before Lori stepped out of the outpost, she was thinking of making sure she got an overnight hair growth spurt before going to visit her grandmother. Her grandmother was very proud of Lori's status as an SDS operative, but didn't think it was proper for a young lady to have a shaved scalp.

After Lori stepped out of the outpost, everything but her surroundings went out of her head. She scanned the sky. There was a silhouette of a dragon in the distance, but nothing else. All the SDS operatives had been told to abort if one of the dragon sentries seemed to take any interest in the area they were operating. Nobody knew how the sentries communicated with the dragons underground, or even if they did, but nobody wanted to find out the hard way.

Lori made her way through the forested area that surrounded the clearing the dragons had disappeared into. The woods were a combination of Earth hardwoods and their native equivalent. After the dragons had attacked, the dragons had destroyed all the transplanted Terran flora outside of the Pale. Inside the Pale, humans had no use for the native plants and, in an unconscious act of defiance against the dragons, destroyed native plants systematically. Along the edge of the Pale, though, the two types of trees lived together in an reflection of the uneasy relationship between humans and dragons.

As Lori made her way to the edge of the clearing, one of the dragons hovering above made a dive for the ground. Simultaneously, one of the four lights on Lori's wristband went out. The four lights represented each of the SDS operatives. If one of them aborted his mission, or something happened to the operative, the light went out. The lights were to keep Lori and her colleagues updated on each other's status. Lori could only hope that the light meant one of her mates had aborted his mission, nothing more.

Lori moved around the clearing, one eye on the sky, the other looking for a shaft opening that was withing sprinting distance. Another sentry dragon dove for the ground, and another light went out. The thought that it would be another seven years before the denizens of the Pale would have a shot at the dragons seemed to be becoming a reality.

Lori sat there in the woods, waiting. The wrist lights were the only form of communication the SDS could risk with each other. Even after fifty years, there was still so much that they didn't know about the dragons.

When one of the dragons started making a dive toward the ground, a thought hit Lori. She immediately started running into the clearing, heading for a shaft. It struck her that her only chance to get into a shaft was if the sentry dragon was distracted by her last mate making his move. Of course, if the dragon had somehow detected her and was diving on her position, she had just committed suicide by running out into the open.

Lori lucked out, though. The dragon had been dive bombing her last teammate. Without a second thought, she dove down an open shaft.

Back in A.U. military headquarters, a giant flat screen displayed the satellite image of Lori diving down a shaft. Immediately, she disappeared to all the types of sensors available to A.U. military.

One of the technicians advised his supervisors, "Alice has gone down the rabbit hole."

- - -

The first time the A.U. Defense Force sent probes down the dragon shafts (as they called the holes in the clearings where the dragons had disappeared), they had discovered nothing. That had been the time the military had come in with all their hardware. The next time they sent the probes in by themselves. The probes had gotten twenty centimeters underground before they stopped transmitting. To the satellites above, it was as if the probes had simply ceased to exist.

Lori was the first human to see what was inside one of the dragon shafts. She had literally dived six meters down the hole before she stopped her fall by grabbing hold of the sides. Her combat gloves clawed at the dirt before she came to a halt. Catching her breath, she looked around. The hole stayed the constant five one and a half meters in diameter, the same as it had been at the surface. The edges were rough, but it was still dirt. Lori's infrared sensors showed nothing unusual about the hole, save it's continued uniformity in size as it went lower and lower.

Lori anchored herself on the side of the tunnel, and slowly made her way down. She had descended maybe fifty meters when the hole suddenly opened up to a wide cavern. The sight made Lori's eyes go wide.

The cavern was filled with sleeping dragons.

- - -

Lori was an experienced dragon hunter. Although they looked like animals, she had seen their limbs, neck and wings move in such a way that she had no problem with thinking of them as mobile plants.

However, what she saw down in the cavern was like nothing she had ever seen. There were dragons sleeping on top of dragons. Their limbs and necks looked like slowly moving vines, intertwining with each other and moving over and around the dragons themselves. A translucent green fog covered the sleeping forms. And in the center of the cavern was the prize that Lori had come for.

Dragon eggs.

Or dragon seeds. Or dragon...Lori shook her head, pushing the errant thoughts aside.

The eggs appeared to be oval shaped green shells of pulsing membrane. Just one would make the mission worth while. Of course, the fact that they were in the middle of a cavern of sleeping dragons made it somewhat of a challenge that she could retrieve one. And she knew that if she got out of this hole in one piece, the dragons would be gone when she returned with the cavalry.

Lori sat there for a few moments, weighing her options. Nodding to herself, she took an infrared camera and started taking silent pictures. Then she took something that looked like a spider off of her belt and placed the camera's memory chip in it. She put the spider against the side of the hole and watched as it scurried up the side of the tunnel.

And then she waited.

- - -

"Quick flash coming in!"

It had been more than two hours since Lance Sergeant Hunter had disappeared down the dragon hole. Nobody in the A.U. Defense Center knew how far down the dragon holes went, or how long it would take Lance Sergeant Hunter to return. Or if she was going to return.

So when one of the technicians announced a high-speed transmission coming from the area of the dragon hole, everybody immediately went into overdrive.

"Any reaction from the sentry dragons?"

"Negative. The transmission might have happened too quickly for the sentry dragons to notice, assuming they could pick something up on that wavelength."

"What is it?"

"Pictures. And...a timer?"

There was quite a stir at the pictures being put up on various screens, particularly the ones of the dragon eggs. However, it was the timer that caught everyone's attention. It read fifty five minutes and was counting down.

It was the SDS commander who figured out what the timer was for. "Son of a bitch!"

The A.U. Defense Force Commander turned to his subordinate. "You know what that timer is for, then?"

"Yes, sir. We need to have our forces ready to move into position. But we're going to have to time this carefully. We move in too soon, and the dragons will disappear and Sergeant Hunter won't be able to do what she's planning."

"What's she planning?"

"She's going to steal an egg."

The A.U. Defense Force Commander grimaced. "Then why didn't she say so?"

"By those pictures, I'm assuming she was trying to make as little fuss as possible. Certainly didn't want to be talking up a storm while the dragons were asleep just underneath her."

"Well, you dragon jockeys don't lack for nerve, I'll give you that. Let's go get your girl and her egg."

- - -

Lori watched the clock and the dragons as she jury-rigged an 'egg catcher.' Part of her plan relied on the motorized miniature winch she had anchored herself with. The thought had been that the SDS operative who made it down the hole might want to exit fairly quickly. Pushing a button sent an electrical signal through the 'rope' she had climbed down with, activating the winch. The winch (which was theoretically anchored firmly) would pull her back at a neck-breaking speed. With the emphasis on neck-breaking. Obviously, it was only to be used for dire emergencies. Like the one Lori was planning.

The other half of her plan required her to jury-rig a piece of equipment to do something it wasn't meant to do. She had a gas-fired gun which launched a hook or pinion (depending on the need), dragging a line behind it. She replaced the head with a piece of webbing. The theory was to shoot an egg, encapsulate it with the webbing, and pull it back to her. She could have shot it with a pinion, of course, but she didn't know if the egg would survive the impact. Of course, she knew it was a long shot that she was going to capture the egg in the webbing at all.

Once she had everything ready, she waited. Time seemed to crawl.

Until all hell broke loose.

One minute, the dragons were moving around intertwined, the next, the cavern was echoing with dragon roars as they stirred to life.

Realizing this was literally her only shot, Lori aimed her net gun carefully and fired. For a second, it looked as if she had overshot the egg she had been aiming for, but a tug of the line had the egg safely caught in the net.

Lori pushed the button on her harness while simultaneously pushing the one on her gun. She was flying up the dragon hole as the gun reeled in the egg. The trip up wasn't a gentle one, but her body armour prevented any broken bones. Hopefully, the medics would get to her in time to take care of the internal injuries.

She was gaining speed as she reached the winch. By that time, she had managed to secure the egg and, miracliously, prevented it from being smashed between her and the sides of the hole. Quickly undoing the harness, Lori climbed out of the hole in record time.

Lori had just made it out of the hole and was stumbling toward the tree line when the ground around her literally exploded. And then her world went dark.

- - -

It was the biggest battle between Humans and Dragons since the establishment of The Pale around Shiz. The scientists theorized that the movements of the A.U. Defense Force toward the clearing had started an underground evacuation until Lori had successfully nabbed an egg. At that point, something---herd instinct or something else entirely---redirected the dragons to pursue the egg. When Lori had come above ground, the A.U. Defense Forces had converged on her. At least a hundred dragons were killed in the ensuing battle. What percentage of the dragon population this constituted, or what effects this would have on dragon behavior in the future, no one knew.

There were casualties in the A.U. Defense Force as well, But they had a dragon egg, now. And they had the dragon jockey who had brought the egg up.

- - -

Lori didn't know any of this, though. She only knew that she was waking up with a nasty taste in her mouth, needles in her arm, and someone was trying to talk to her.

"What the hell do you want?" she managed to slur.

"I was just going to congratulate you, Sergeant."

Lori immediately woke up when she recognized the voice talking to her. It was Brigadier Richard Cranston, commander of the SDS.

"Sir, I---"

"At ease, Sergeant. No one is expecting parade field manners from you right now. I'm just glad to see you're up and around."

Lori's head was still swirling, when something came to her. "Sir, the egg---"

The Brigadier smiled. "Safely in the hands of the scientific establishment. You'll be glad to know that we cut a swath in the dragon numbers as well. The thought is we might not only be expanding The Pale by leaps and bounds this year, but that we're on the road to taking the whole bloody planet back from the Dragons."

Lori tried to sit up, but the Brigadier gently pushed her back down.

"Rest up, Sergeant. I had to browbeat the doctors to let me see you this early. Anyway, there's a whole line of people waiting to see you, once the visiting hours are opened up. Not least your fiancee and your mates."

Lori settled back down and closed her eyes. "Thank you, sir."

"By the way, Sergeant, I see by your record you went Career halfway through your Mandatory Service."

"Yes, sir. When I landed in the SDS, well..,.it just seemed to be a better use of my time than counting beans in civies."

The Brigadier nodded. "Have you thought about Officer Candidate School? You've got the marks and skills for it, and after this little outing, you'll have your pick of assignments."

Lori chuckled. "Me? An officer? With all due respect, Brigadier, if I became an officer, how could I ever show my face in polite company?"

The doctors in Lori's wing could hear the Brigadier laughing all the way down the hall.