Endangered Ch. 10

Michelle paused, Lisa was patiently holding the back door of the vehicle open for her, but she needed a moment to prepare for what came next. Where the fuck was Chris? He could back her up with that wolf-puppy charisma at a time like this.

"Because, Sir?"

"Yes?"

"Radek is a demon."

***

"I don't want you to jump like that anymore." Hailey's worry was clear in her tone, half a note higher now after his latest teleportation. "We have to start slowing down soon!"

"Well, I could just tell the orb to stop moving and..."

"NO!" she cried, beating her fists against the tiny scales of his forewing. Without gravity to ground her, the effort almost sent her tumbling off around the orb. Only a snatched grip on the wing she'd been pummeling saved her the indignity. "Do you want us to go splat? Don't you remember what I told you about momentum?"

He chuckled, of course he remembered. The Moon loomed in front of them now, beginning to reveal detail even a powerful telescope would miss from Earth.

"Asshole," she muttered, floating down to the relative safety of his coiled body by gripping the tiny gaps and edges between his larger scales. "I should have known better than to fly off into space on a crazy adventure with a half-cocked dragon."

"Half-cocked?" he rumbled mischievously, taking his eyes off the grey and black surface ahead. He couldn't help himself when presented with an opportunity like that. But in consolation, he leant his head down to nuzzle against her.

"You're the fucking worst. Worse than Dad by far," she guffawed, pushing at his snout as he wormed his great big head against her tummy.

"And you're a little worry wart," he replied. "I'd never have thought you of all people would be so antsy. Look up at the stars, Hailey. Isn't this amazing?"

"Of course it is," she exhaled, looking back over his purple haunches at the Earth because the stars were becoming harder to see in the reflected light from the Moon.

Their home planet seemed not much more than a colourful basketball held at arm's length now. Dimmed through the filtering effect he'd put on their absurd spacecraft, she could still make out green and brown continents amongst the swirls of blue and white, but not much more. It was sobering to think that all it took to make everything she'd known in her life seem entirely insignificant was a little distance. Perhaps that's what had her so wound up.

"What's wrong?" he asked, his voice so deep she felt it through her entire body.

"I don't know, Chris. We're so much smaller than I'd ever imagined. I mean, I knew that already but that didn't prepare me at all for the reality. And orbital mechanics are no joke by the way! NASA spends years and years working stuff out and quintuple checking every calculation, but you're literally flying by the seat of your pants!"

She had a point. Discouraged by the refusal of the Moon to grow any larger in his view, he'd tried to phase jump them closer. After all, he could jump to places he could see or remember well, couldn't he? Well, he could see every one of the hundreds of thousands of miles between them and their destination. There shouldn't even be anything in the way to crash into, and the orb might protect them in that event regardless.

It was rash, but it had indeed worked. Another leap of capability to tick off for the day. He didn't know what it was, but as soon as he reasoned out these crazy ideas, he was confident his magic was up to the task. That wasn't to say he didn't have limitations or respect Hailey's caution, it was like he'd woken up that morning and already known that today was the day he had his first crack at fusion.

"We're not actually going that fast," he reassured her. "Remember when we accelerated after our little break in orbit? The g-force wasn't that uncomfortable, maybe 2g? And it was probably half an hour before I got fed up with that and did the first of five jumps. So, we're going roughly twenty meters by sixty seconds by thirty minutes... that's um... thirty-six thousand... meters per second. Damn, that's pretty quick."

Their mood sobered instantly, and Hailey did some of her own mental arithmetic, to unsettling result.

"You big idiot, sustained acceleration is very powerful. That's thirty-six kilometres per second. It wouldn't even take three hours to get from the surface of Earth to the Moon at that speed, and you jumped us most of the way there!"

As one, they turned back toward the looming Moon. It seemed much bigger than it had barely minutes before. It no longer gave the impression of a flat, splotchy circle surrounded by inky blackness. Enticingly, she was showing them her curves, as well as every impact, valley, and mountain on her scared surface. Coming in that fast, they were about to make a mark of their own.

"Shit! Shit, shit, shit," the dragon cursed. "Hold on, Hailey."

He tightened the coil of his tail around her, bracing his wings, head, and hind legs against the sides of the orb. Feeling for it in the Ether, carefully pushed the order to resist their momentum.

In the first fraction of a second, he knew he'd royally fucked up. It felt like Lillian had sucker punched him in the kidney, only across every inch of his body and multiplied by ten. Barely, he resisted collapsing into the forward surface of the orb. It would have crushed Hailey under his draconian bulk. His entire body fought that overwhelming weight squishing him from behind, and he could barely even lift a claw.

Unfortunately, his head was pointed toward their deceleration. Blood pounded in his ears, reddening his vision dangerously as it drained from the rest of his tissues. His head felt like it might split in two and birth a Sci-Fi monstrosity, he'd heard about this effect somewhere, perhaps a video game. Although he didn't know if dragons could suffer hemorrhagic stroke, now wasn't the time to find out.

"Tt...omuurrrrch," Hailey groaned with the last of the breath forced from her lungs. She'd been thrown against the thick curve of his tail and pinned, body bent helplessly into a C shape. Outstretched and impossible to move under their weight, her hands swelled red with pooling blood in her trapped, fading vision. She couldn't breathe, and her arms felt like they were about to snap off and float away. Her bulging eyes wanted to elope with them, straining to get out of her sockets. That would have almost been welcome given the amount of pain she was in. Something in the back of her mind screamed silently that she had only moments left to live. Then she felt nothing, and it was bliss.

Chris fought to gather enough focus to reach for his sense of the orb. When he did, his mistake was evident and amateur. He'd thought himself smart, even conservative, to envision such a low coefficient for their deceleration. The plan had been to start gently and ramp up until they couldn't tolerate the g-force. After all, they had an urgent need to not become just another crater on the surface below. But he'd stupidly been thinking of a percentage, not a solid measurement. Even shaving zero point two five percent of their astronomical speed had almost killed them. With what little mental fortitude he could summon, he eased the push to a comparatively mild thirty meters per second.

They both collapsed, slumping limply into the forward curve of the uncaring orb.

"You okay?" he panted uncomfortably, still mightily heavy under his three times increased relative weight. Through one eye, he could again see the pocked surface rushing upward indomitably. But Hailey didn't reply.

It was the funniest thing to his addled mind, his whole life he'd assumed the Moon was dull and flat, but that wasn't true at all. They were about to be swallowed into an enormous crater, the sides of which must have been almost five miles high.

With the return of more normalised blood flow to his brain came his sense of urgency, and a rising panic. They were going to go splat in very short order if he didn't do something. He tried to right his massive body, straining against leaden limbs. It reminded him of being fascinated by the astounding weight of gold compared to other metals. He was made of gold now for sure, not even able to roll onto his belly.

"St... Stay on your back," his salvation spoke with a laboured gasp from somewhere underneath his pinned left wing. "You have to...ungnnn my eyes! Chris, slow us down faster!"

"Hailey!?" he roared, trying to move his sinuous neck to find her.

"Do it now," she croaked under the strain of working her lungs.

He did as he was told, and more weight crashed down on them.

The powerful body his dragon had almost considered invincible got uncaringly squished by the unrelenting laws of physics. He couldn't move at all now, pinned a-splay like a dying frog under a director's microscope. This orientation of his body was far more bearable however, and they were shedding speed nicely.

"Hicck... Hicck... Mooaar... Hicck." She struggled to even move her tongue, to tense her diaphragm and keep air in her lungs for more than a second. She tensed every muscle group she could in an attempt to maintain enough blood pressure to stay conscious.

Chris knew it wasn't going to be enough. With eyes spaced on either side of his head, a dragon's field of view was near complete. Out of the tinted event horizon of the orb, the bright, grey surface charged at him. Innumerable tiny craters showed themselves now, along with individual rocks and the streaking trails created by flying debris in the dusty regolith.

With his last seconds, he searched for a way out.

The orb was the problem. It was their lifeline and their deathtrap. Without it, he could slip them into the Ether, but they would soon suffocate in the cold vacuum. With it, and the protective properties he'd set, they would come to a jarring end, pulverising their bodies to bloody mist. They were going much slower now, but it wasn't nearly enough.

As the crater's edge seemed to come level with them, revealing a deeply shadowed slope kilometres tall, the solution seemed suddenly obvious.

Hailey cried out in wordless alarm as he eased them off to a gentle, single Earth gravity deceleration. No longer pinned, his serpentine head rose to look back up into the encompassing darkness above. With a desperate growl, jumped them a little way back into space. He lay still, focusing on the sound of his heaving flanks pumping air into his lungs to keep out the vision of the bottom of that colossal basin dashing up at him.

"I've changed my mind," he almost wept his relief. "I hate space."

Nudges alerted him to her predicament, and he carefully rolled onto his side so she could crawl out from under his wing on shaky arms. Her unsteady movement alarmed him, she reached tentatively with her hands before placing them down on the slick inner surface of the orb.

"Chris?" Her voice sounded frightened and tiny, turning her head this way and that searchingly. "What happened? I can't see."

"Oh, my god! Hailey, stay still."

She looked up, drawn by the sound of his voice. Her eyes were almost entirely red, her blood vessels put under too much strain. A sweep of his frantic magical scenes told him that the superficial bleeding in her sclera, while dramatic, was not the problem. Vesicles deeper in her eyes were ruptured, leaking blood into her vitreous, waylaying light as it travelled from the lens to the retina.

"Did we make it?" she asked bravely, blinking around as if to help clear her vision.

"Oh, Hailey," he rumbled soft and deep, taking her small body gently into his large forelimbs. "I was so stupid, I'm sorry. Please, let me fix this."

"Tell me we aren't going to crash into the Moon first," she murmured, resting her forehead against the creamy scales of his chest.

"We're not. I'm such a fool. I accidentally slowed us by a percentage of our speed. Only once we were moments away from hitting the surface, I realised that if I'd jumped us forward, I could do the same in reverse. We still inherited all our momentum, but I can keep hopping back as long as it takes to slow down safely. I'm so sorry, Hailey."

"It's okay, Chris," she sniffled, her wrought nerves releasing as the adrenaline began to fade in her bloodstream. "I'm just glad we made it, I was so frightened... I think we both lost our heads when we realised how fast we were going. It's a fucking wake up call. We're kids with big heads in a magic bubble, not invincible. Next time we'll remember that."

"Will there be a next time?" he wondered allowed.

"Of course," she sat up almost indignantly and gave him a bloody, sightless stare. "Fix my eyes with your saliva and get us down there. I didn't go through all that for nothing."

It might have been comical if his heart wasn't breaking for his brave little space cadet.

***

Petra shifted restlessly in her seat for what must have been the tenth time in as many minutes. Yet another frisson of worry ran up her spine.

She was supposed to be allocating next week's refilled gemstones and crystals between the thirty-seven purchase requests she'd received in the last two days. It was a good thing Chris came like a stallion and had the stamina to bed Claire, Susan, and herself almost daily. It allowed her a pleasant, leisurely transition back into motherhood, while still turning a healthy profit.

"Try calling him, Mom," her daughter suggested without even looking up from the thick medical textbook in front of her on the oaken dining room table.

"I don't want to be 'that' sort of partner," the mature blonde admitted. Petra put her tablet aside and rose to do some pacing. She wasn't getting any work done anyway, sometimes it helped. With a faithful black scrunchie she'd had for years now, she collected her long silvery tresses into a ponytail that fell far down her back. "Besides, last time I called, it said not in service."

That got Claire's attention.

"What do you mean?" she frowned, sitting back in her chair. "It's Maginet, that's impossible."

"Try it yourself," Petra paced, her hand unconsciously caressing the little swell of her pregnant belly through her loose green blouse. Her precious son, whose father was experiencing some sort of distress, according to her uncanny intuition.

Claire did just that, snatching up her ruby-encrusted phone to dial him. She waited with growing dread for the familiar ringing to begin. All she got was a long pause followed by two beeps she'd never heard before, and finally, an insincere female voice apologising that the device wasn't in service.

The phone landed roughly on her textbook. At this very second, her mother was no doubt racing to the worst possible explanation. Best that she think logically about this.

The problem was, she'd never heard of a Maginet phone being out of service. If Chris simply had it turned off while on his adventure with Hailey, it should go to voicemail at least. That lead her to try the young werebison's number for the same troubling result.

Try as she might, she couldn't explain it and started when she found herself absently petting her own little bump. What they needed was a distraction she decided. Chris was probably just doing something crazy with his magic. Who knew what one of those damn orbs of his might do to a Maginet phone.

"Okay, no point stressing all afternoon. I'm not going to be able to concentrate with you wearing down the carpet like that anyway. Let's go talk to the Japanese guy who admins the system for Reyla. Maybe he can tell us what it means, I'm starting to get curious actually. What's his name?"

"Tosh, I think," Petra frowned, reluctant to get drawn into her daughter's distraction.

"Come on, Mom don't be like that," Claire coaxed. "You know he can take care of himself."

"I'm sure you're right, dear. It's just that after your father I don't know if I can..."

"Shhh!" Claire bustled around the table to embrace her mother. "Don't do that to yourself. Chris would fucking shred any hunter who tried to take him. He's just done something silly. I'd bet my sweet left tit he'll be back in time for dinner with that stupidly adorable look on his face, and then we'll both feel like clucky fools."

"Ahh, haha. I can just see it," the silver-haired dragoness breathed, pecking her daughter's refined cheekbone. "Thank you, Claire-bear."

"No problem, Mom. Let's go see Tosh, I could use a walk actually, and this is probably one of the nicest days we'll have before Spring. You're ah... you're not starting to get nesty, are you?"

"I certainly hope not, dear. Just your Mom being overemotional. Though, I guess it won't be too long now. Come on then, with this talk of nesting I'm starting to get a craving for some ice cream."

The dragonesses made a stunning pair in their warm, flannel lined jeans. Petra's blouse was loose in a way that teased her figure, while Claire's grey, fine-spun sweater hugged every curve deliciously. They carried windbreakers under their arms as they traversed the hotel and made their way down into the Compound.

It took some getting used to the minor celebrity that had sprung up around them in the local community. Their pregnancies, Chris' remarkable magic and heroic deeds, as well as the flood of magical crystals they pumped out to the Being craftsfolk all sort of simmered down to a reverent notoriety neither woman had experienced before.

Beings nodded respectfully and smiled at them as they passed. The boldest socialites even stopped to fuss saccharine about their remarkable joint pregnancy. Between themselves, Claire and Petra joked that most people must wonder if Chris had just lined them up side by side and given them both the business in one marathon session. He was undoubtedly growing the reputation for it after planting his seed in the local hardass vampiress, too. In reality, they were a couple of days apart, but most people just saw the exact same size of their growing tummies and started to whisper and smile knowingly. As far as the norm of dragon fertility went, he may as well have bred simultaneously. It was unheard of, and that fueled the gossip.

They had to inquire at main reception where to find the Maginet administrator, and that was when they first heard about the unusual departure of Reyla, along with Michelle, Lillian, and the Angels.

"Where did they go?" Petra asked the slightly frazzled receptionist, who had just been dealing with an irate bunch of visiting Chinese syndicate members. They'd had their appointment with the Lady unceremoniously dropped until further notice.

"I don't know," the middle-aged witch wrung her hands. "She hasn't left the territory in decades. Oh, what am I to do?"

Claire was just happy that the oriental Beings across the lobby were too upset to recognise them, the source of the crystals they were so tenaciously negotiating for bulk purchase.

Reyla had been kind enough to fly through that flak-storm on their behalf. Neither mother or daughter had any interest in supplying these middlemen, who no doubt planned to resell their magic at an extreme markup. So, the elf was generously slapping down exorbitant tariffs on their export and generally negotiating like a petulant child.

The local artisans were just beginning to flourish under their patronage after all. Prosperity was already trickling back into what had been considered an almost dreary, backwater Hub for many decades. There was even a rumour floating around that a representative of one of the major Dwarven clans had been scouting property in the area last week. The territory hadn't had a proper smithy since the gold rush over a century and a half ago.

Thankfully, Timothy Garril spotted them at that point and took them aside into an empty meeting room to explain the situation. He'd actually been meaning to get on his way to find them and pass on Samantha's last minute request. Her daughter needed to be picked up from school and cared for while they were down in Argentina.