Scales like Stars Pt. 09

The woman frowned.

"We have two weeks," Merton said. "To figure out some way of stopping this fleet. Now, please, let's work together. That's the only way we're going to fucking survive."

The woman held up her finger, then wordlessly turned and stalked out of the room. Once she was gone, all that was left was the faint hum of the lights. Merton leaned back in his seat. Brash bumped his head against Merton's thigh. "You did good!" Brash said, cheerfully.

"I just hope that everyone else is doing all right," Merton said, shaking his head. "But, hey. We left Lisa behind. Lisa is pretty calm and rational." He nodded again.

Relix was silent for a few moments. Then, quietly. "Merton. What do we do if there is nothing that we can do? There is a single loyalist legion near Earth. But that's one Legion against three Warspheres and who knows how many of the B-suits." She craned her head back. "We need an alternative plan."

Merton bit his lip. "Shit!" He leaned his head back. "I should have asked Dart before we left..."

"Asked her what?" Relix asked.

"Asked her to find an alternate Earth, somewhere, in the multiverse. Somewhere that we could evacuate people too." Merton shook his head. "There are, uh, nine billion people on this planet. But if we use the portal emitters that Speccy has, we could set up...how many portals?"

"If we used every part of the Talon-9?" Relix asked. "I don't know. Between...ten to thirty."

Merton bit his lip. "Ten to thirty, operating round the clock for, uh, almost two weeks. That's..." Not everyone. "That's a lot of people." He tried to sound cheery. "It'll be something to ask Dart once we come back."

***

Speccy and Quetzalcoatl were trundling through downtown Atlantis. Well, Speccy was walking. Quetzalcoatl was thumping along on six legs, grown out from a dump-truck style growth of bone that thrust along his broad, flattened back. It was highly undignified for a dragon, but he gritted his teeth and bore it as Speccy continued to fill him up.

Dart waited until they were a good distance away before she tip toed out from the small, shadowed alcove she had ducked into as the Talon-9 roared away. She slung the pack full of stolen supplies over her back and grinned to herself as she started to walk towards the still semi-active dimensional portal.

It was a bit of a hike.

And she had a long way to go before she was outta here.

***

Lisa sat, flanked by Julia, Gunner, Merton's Mom and Merton's Dad. Carlos and Trevor were back on the Talon-9, ready to turn the teleporter on and yank them out of the room if the need came. Sitting across from them was the Secretary of Defense, the President, the Vice President, a bunch of aides, and the most important person in the room, the President's cell phone. His thumbs tapped away as he looked at Lisa over the edge of the old blackberry.

"So," Lisa said. "That's the situation. A battlefleet-"

"We can take them," the President declared.

"You..." Lisa blinked, then rubbed her temple. "They're an alien battlefleet with three planetkillers. We have a Soyus with a machine gun duct taped to the front. And that's not even ours, it's Russian!"

"Listen," the President said, wheezing slightly. "We have, uh, the best. The best navy. The best air force. The best, uh, armed forces. We're the best, we have the best. And that's all there is too it. You won't hear about that in the media." He shook his head, his hair coming slightly off center. Lisa continued to rub her temple. Julia glanced at her, raising a single eyebrow. The Vice President remained placid faced - though his eyes betrayed the utter loathing he felt at Julia's very presence. It was either the wizard's hat or the lack of other clothing. The President, by the way, was still going. "We have the biggest ships, the best ships, they're really good, these ships-"

The door opened and a stern faced man in a suit, flanked by two men in FBI field uniforms, walked in. The President craned his head back. "What the flying fuck is this?" he asked - then yelped as one of the FBI men dragged his arms behind his back. Handcuffs clicked and the former President was dragged to his feet.

"This is bulls-" his voice was cut off by the door.

"Well," the new President said, adjusting his tie. "I think that, hey, what are you doing!?" He yelped as the second FBI man dragged his arm behind his back and forced him to his feet. "I didn't know anything about any treason, what!?"

The second President in as many minutes went out the door shouting for his lawyer.

The stern faced man adjusted his tie and nodded to Lisa.

"...so, uh, the Speaker of the House?" Lisa asked.

"He was arrested in at the Capital building," the man said. "President Mattis." He nodded to the Secretary of Defense, who coughed and adjusted his tie. He stood, shifted to the chair the President had sat in, then looked back at Lisa.

"Normally, there'd be more of a ceremony," President Mattis said. "But I believe time is short."

Lisa breathed in, then out. "All right. First things first, we need to get Princess Relix out of internment. She was captured by some forces...uh, Gunner?" Gunner slid a holo of the scan of the VTOL craft that they had detected capturing Relix and Merton. President Mattis rubbed his face, then nodded.

"Of course. We'll need to send a signal to this loyalist legion you mentioned," he said, slowly. "But will it be enough?"

Lisa shrugged. "It better."

***

Merton was bouncing his thighs to keep Brash entertained - and doing quite a good job at it, considering how excited the tiny dragon was at bouncing up and down - when the lights came to full and several D-Com sodliers walked in, including the Asian woman who had been questioning them before. Before Merton could ask more than a garbled 'what the-' a knife had cut off his zip-ties, and the keycode to open Brash's restraints was being typed in. Relix stood with an aggrieved harrumph as she rubbed at her wrists.

"The name is Lieutenant Kisogawa," she said. "Sorry for the roughness - but...uh..." She sighed. "We just got the order from the Security Council. D-Com's going public and we've all got a fuck of a lot of work to do."

"Finally," Relix said, sticking her nose into the air. "I accept your apology."

"Thanks," Kisogawa said, her voice flat. She folded the knife back into its hilt and pocketed it. "We need to get you two on a flight to Geneva. That's where the organization is going to be held. We're calling in the armed service of NATO, former Warsaw Pact...everyone." She smiled, slightly. "Thanks, Princess...you may have just gotten us world peace."

She shrugged. "For a day."

Relix, Brash and Merton followed her to the VTOL. Now that Merton wasn't half dazed with an impact to the chin, he could actually get a fairly good look at the surroundings of the D-Com base. It looked a bit like an old oil platform that someone had sunk under the waves, with lots of narrow corridors and heavy machines that whirred and groaned quietly. Noticing his looks - and his expression at seeing the faint drips of water falling from several points in the ceiling, Kisogawa explained: "It's an experimental Soviet submersible aircraft carrier. The idea was to emerge off the coast and launch more than just short ranged multistage warheads. Tactical nukes on jets, city busters on planes, that kind of thing. It never took off, doubly so once ICBMs were invented. The half-built prototype sat around for decades...but it fits D-Com's needs."

Merton blinked, then said. "Let me see. Uh, mobile. Carries aircraft for rapid deployment..." He paused. "And you can put an ocean between you and orbital lances?"

"Bingo," Kisogawa said, grinning. "You picked a good boyfriend."

"Husband," Relix snarled. "And I know." She smiled at Merton in a way that still made Merton's heart hammer.

"Husband?" Kisogawa shook her head as they walked up to the VTOL. "Okay."

"Hey!" Merton said.

"Listen, I've spent my whole life training on how to kill dragons. The idea of someone marrying one is just..." Kisogawa shrugged. "Gross. Now, get one. We've got a straight flight to Geneva."

The VTOL rose from the ocean with a spray of cascading water and steam, then shot off towards the horizon. Merton leaned back in his seat, feeling a heavy bone deep ache of tiredness. He closed his hand around Relix's hand, smiling at her. She smiled back. And while she smiled, he felt like they might actually have a chance.

***

"We don't have a chance."

Merton felt like Speccy had literally pulled a fish out from between her amazing tits and smacked him in the face with it.

"But...but...Atlantis!" He stammered, gesturing to the dead city.

"Useless," Speccy said, crossing her arms under her breasts. This had the effect of drawing Merton's eye, despite the dire situation and day and a half without a single wink of sleep. Geneva had been, just as he had expected, a clusterfuck. They had arrived to find that the United States was undergoing the largest mass trial for treason in its history, the NATO alliance on such shaky grounds that there had been some debates as to whether or not Canada would even show up. The Russians had initially refused to even believe anything until Relix had transformed to her draconic form and froze their diplomat solid on the floor of the United Nations. And even once everyone had started to (grudgingly) work together, Merton had left the administrative complex without knowing who was going to lead the united human defenses or what those defenses were going to be.

He had come to Antarctica expecting relief.

Instead...

"What do you mean useless?" Merton asked.

"The magitech here is ten thousand years old. There's been ten thousand years of innovation. Even at the glacial rate of change in the Five Talon Empire, that's enough time for us to come up with a few new ideas."

Merton sagged. "So...we're doomed."

Speccy shrugged. "We have enough salvaged magitechnological material here to, with the magician-engineers of the 42^nd Legion, to construct three new warships."

"Oh," Merton said, looking over at Quetzalcoatl, who was heaped with glittering material - gemstones and bits of wire and chunks of metal that he had assumed was just generic treasure. "That's not enough, though! Also, where the fuck is Dart!?"

"Ran," Quetzalcoatl said. "She fled through the dimensional portal before we could stop her. Before we even knew she wasn't on the Talon-9, for that matter." His deep, rumbling voice was filled with disgust.

Merton put his hands over his face. He started to pace back and forth, thinking. "What can we make other than ships?" He asked.

Speccy shrugged. "We can build a lot of power armor. And I do mean a lot of power armor. We can build a pretty serious orbital defense gun, but it won't be mobile. There's also a portal network in these supplies. We could make a few hundred portals, given half a week and breakneck labor." She shook her head. "By my calculations, though, without a safe planet to run too, you'll be dooming not one but two civilizations by dumping three billion refugees on their heads-"

Merton winced. Even with the best they could do, Speccy knew they couldn't save everyone. She continued, her voice brutally honest. "Better to spread humanity to many different worlds. Though, if you were going to do that, I'd suggest building cheap ships."

"Cheap ships..." Merton said, slowly.

Speccy nodded. "Just a thin layer of aluminum with a subspace drive, enough to get them away and to the fringes of the former Empire."

Merton's eyes widened, slowly.

"What?" Speccy asked.

Merton held up one finger. Then he laughed. Then he cackled. "Dart just gave us a fighting chance."

Speccy's brow furrowed. "How?"

Merton told her. Speccy's mouth opened, then closed. Then opened again. "But..." She stopped. "Well, that..." She blinked a third time. Then she shook her head. "That's genius." She grinned, slowly. Merton laughed, then kissed her cheek.

"And if you hadn't strip-mined Atlantis, it'd have been impossible. Come on! Lets get to the Talon-9 and back to Geneva!" Merton said, cheerfully - unaware that Speccy was standing there, gaping after him. Her upper right hand went to her cheek. And for the first time in several centuries, Spectral Timeweaver Compounding the Infinite actually blushed.

***

The 42^nd Legion arrived from its posting near the Kupiter Belt of the SOL system. It was, as befitted its name and out of the way posting as secretive defender of dragon-kind's true homeworld, not exactly filled to bursting with top of the line ships. There were twelve battleships, twenty one cruisers, and a spread of torpedo boats. Each ship carried compliments of fighter-craft, and all of them had been quietly waiting for the day they might actually be needed. Their arrival in the skies of Earth was an utterly gorgeous display. First, the retro-burns of the battleships winked on, adding a dozen new glittering stars. Then, over a series of hours, more and more gleams appeared, each one drawing a ruler straight line of pure, dazzling light through the heavens.

They took up a high guard orbit above the planet. The Admiral - a grizzled Copper Dragon named Rushok - even came down and was photographed with the supreme leader of humanity's combined defenses: An unassuming American named Admiral Bernard Xu. His calm, reserved, and dignified mien smoothed over ruffled feathers from America's rivals, and the organization of humanity's defenses went apace.

Merton felt rather out of the loop.

Oh, he had been helping. He and Brash worked together to move very heavy things very quickly. He had studied magic with the help of Julia - who had been cramming some basic thaumaturgy into his brain using the wonderfully direct route of whacking him in the temple with a ruler when he fucked up and sucking his cock when he did a thing right. But all the big decisions had moved out of his reach. As trophy husband to Relix Castrovel and former D&D GM, Merton had to sit back and...remember...

All those titles he had puffed off to Baron Thresh?

They were fake.

Made up.

Merton sighed and stepped away from the window of the rather nice hotel that he and Relix had been given. Relix was still out, assisting with the organization of the defenses. Brash was curled up on his pillow, snoring loudly and happily. Merton tried to think of something to do. Something more than what he had done. And...nothing was coming to mind. He felt jitters rushing through his body. They had less than a week before a warfleet - with three planetkilling starships, each a quarter of the size of Earth's fucking moon - arrived.

It didn't feel real.

But Merton wasn't sure what felt less real: The hotel room he was in or the time he had spent aboard the Talon-9. If it hadn't been for the Brash on his pillow, he could have blinked and thought that his whole adventure had been a dream.

A double knock came to his door.

Merton blinked and walked over. He opened it a crack and blinked again - this time in pure surprise. He stepped back, swinging the door open. "Speccy?" he asked.

Speccy stood in the corridor in her uniform. Which, Merton had to remember, amounted to a bunch of BDSM style leather straps that wrapped around her purple breasts, coiled around her muscular arms, slipped between her elegant thighs, and generally left most of her faintly tiger-striped body entirely revealed. She was holding a plastic binder in her hands and said: "I wanted to speak to you about the specifications of some, ah, Earth technology."

Merton grinned. "Uh, sure." He stepped back some more, gesturing. Speccy walked in. Her hips rolled - the natural gait that she used drew his eyes to her rump. And to the faint jiggles that slipped along her butt. It was reminding Merton of the fact he hadn't gotten more than a few blowjobs in the past week, and he hadn't touched his wife at all. His mouth suddenly felt quite dry as he adjusted the collar of his shirt with one finger.

Yes, it had only been few blowjobs.

He wasn't a very good wizard, you see.

"I'm not exactly the best at, uh, advanced military hardware," Merton said.

Speccy rubbed her upper right elbow with her lower left hand. She looked around the room, her eyes narrowing. Her slightly elongated ears twitched slightly. She looked faintly nervous. Merton's brow furrowed and he walked over. "Uh, did you actually come about military hardware, Speccy?" he asked. She tossed her head, then turned to face him.

"I...is my deception that obvious?" she asked.

"Well, it's not super obvious," Merton said. HE sighed. "Are you nervous about the battle?"

Speccy blinked at him.

"It's okay. I'm fucking terrified," Merton said, shaking his head as he walked over to look out the window. The night sky over Geneva was bright enough to wash away the stars - but he could see the massive streaks of thrust plumes from the 42^nd Legion has it maintained its orbit. It only needed to burn occasionally, but when it did burn, it produced something not too dissimilar from the Aurora Borealis. Albeit the Aurora Borealis as done by a ruler fetishist. He sighed. "We're all working our asses off, and...we have more of a shot than I thought, but-"

A faint rustle and thump made him turn.

Speccy had stripped off her clothes with the casual efficiency of a technician. The lack of sensual grace hadn't detracted from her beauty. Far from it. Her breasts were as perky and as firm as Relix's and at least a cup size larger. Her nipples were the same brilliant teal as her hair, and her antennas had gone to full erection - as hard and as quivery as Merton's own dick, which strained his jeans. Her lower hands caressed along her thighs, and he saw that her sex was just as succulent and just as utterly hairless as he had first imagined. Her upper arms crossed over her breasts a moment later and she flushed.

"I have been working very hard on spellwork and require some...relaxation," she said. "Constant memorization of spells and casting them on this twelve hour work shift is, um, tiring. A-And, uh, I never did do what Relix ordered me to do, after you were augmented."

Merton gulped. "W-What was that, Speccy?"

"She asked me to...train you..." Her voice was husky.

"W-Why did that never happen?" Merton asked, his voice almost squeaking.

"We both got distracted. Didn't we?" Speccy smiled, shyly. But he could see that she was quite...scared. It was an odd expression to see on the normally taciturn woman. Her antennas twitched slightly and she looked aside. "It's a bit foolish, I mean, Relix has no complaints about your-"

Merton took her lower left hand in his. He felt her three fingers - calloused by hard work and faintly stained by grease and material components alike. He brought her purple palm to his mouth and kissed her palm gently. His heart hammered as he whispered. "Speccy..." he grinned at her. "We'd have all died several times over without you. How the flying fuck could I refuse you? Doubly so when so much depends on your..." He kissed her wrist. "Relaxation?"

Speccy bit her lower lip so hard that it had gone pale, bloodless white. Then she moaned as Merton kissed his way down her lower arm, up to where her four arms joined together. The complex interplay of muscle and skin was fascinating to explore with his tongue and his mouth. Her skin was silky smooth, once he got away from her callouses, and his tongue traced the very faint tiger stripes that differentiated dark purple from lighter purple. Then his mouth bumped against the cupping hand of her upper right arm - covering her breast. Her lower right hand grabbed onto his up and her upper left stroked through his hair as she let her other upper arm lift, exposing her breasts to his mouth. He started to kiss and suckle on her nipple.