*All characters copyright Eric Huston. Marcia is copyright Billk3.

Draken paced in his quarters. He had plenty of things that he just couldn't get off his mind. First was the fact that his superior, Lt. Harken, had been witnessed by him making advances to the objects of his own interest, a rather attractive female dragon on the medical staff, Marcia Geth. She had turned him down, but Draken did not like the look on Harken's face as he watched from around the corner. He finally stopped pacing and picked up the weapon on his bed. It was a footman's lance, but had a large blade on either end. It always looked blueish, no matter the lighting, and it was carved with mysterious runes. Runes that blazed with a strange power and frost blue flames when it was wielded.

Whoever questioned the sanity of using a melee weapon against someone with a gun usually found themselves frozen or ripped apart by subartic winds. The governor had put him in his position for a reason. Lord-Governor Selden had taken an extreme interest in Draken ever since he had been found abandoned in the wilderness by the governor's personal retinue scouting the planet. He had raised him like his own son, bringing him up to a higher standard than was held for everyone else. "You have the seeds of greatness in you, Draken." He had often told him. That perceived greatness was why the governor had pushed his adoptive child, not even of his own species, to be something much more honorable than any other being he had known.

And Harken's actions were offending his personal ethics.

The alarm sounded, breaking him out of his brooding. Harken's face appeared on the screen in his quarters. "Sublieutenant! Get ready to lead the assaut. The Elven bastards don't know when to give up, so we need to teach them a lesson. You have three minutes to report to the assault torp deck."

Elves again! They didn't know when to give up. The Exarchy had the planet secured, and had done nothing to provoke their empire this time. But they kept on attacking, as if they had something of immense religious value on the planet. They could easily best the human ships in both speed and range, and dragon-made ships were too rare at the moment to be used as an effective defense. The mainly native Planetary Defence Force had some, but it was only the officers, and only the draconic officers, who had acess to them.

So the only other choice was to take the fight directly onto their strange, wooden ships. The living fleet of the elves were all trees, genetically manipulated by the elves to function as a starship, and given sentience by imprinting intelligence in a massive crystal much like the main computer core of the human fleet, and also much like the crystal stacks that functioned as computers for draconic machines.

He stopped for only a few second from gliding the low-gravity hallways of the assault ship Vengeance to talk to Marcia briefly in the halls.

"Well, I'm off to repel the elves again. I hope you won't have to put any of us together this time."

She smiled. "Jut be careful."

"Just the hope of seeing you again is more than enough motivation to return." He dashed off again. That was as close ashe had ever come to admitting his true feelings for her. They were two of the few draconics on the ship, the only others being a Black wyvern tech specialist and a few drakes that worked the primary guns.

He reached the torp bay thirty second before deadline, the humans already in their dragon-inspired Assault class mecha-armor. The helmets were designed to resemble a draconic's head, and they even had boosters in the style of wings. No tails though. They were equipped with particle sabers and autoguns, designed to rip through anything trying to stop them and corridor-cleansing, a flamer system, and basic pulse rifles. draken put on his own suit, but not of mecha-armor.

It was a draconically designed suit of powered armor, made to his specifications and would enhance his strength and agility and enable him to survive and manuver in vacuum, in addition to protecting him from basic weapons. But, the humans had still not found an effective defence against the elves' psychic abilities and magic.

They loaded themselves into the torpedo, strapping themselves in. Some of the humans said prayers, a habit that Draken himself had copied, even though he himself was not very religious. Finally, the assault wing was ordered to engage. The ships Vengeance, Retribution, and Fury all moved to engage, guns blazing. Draken was thankful he could not see the total hell that was just outside the ship.

They were given a thrity-second warning until launch. when they launched, they felt like they were going to be rattled to death. when they impacted the elven ship, they felt a sudden stop, and they were immediately unsecured as the hatch opened. The assault suits opened fire, ripping through some poor, luckless elven trropers pulled up to defend against the boarding action. Draken ran ahead of the humans, knowing that the thorough cleansing they would enact upon the elf ship would take much too long to effectively disable it. 

Draken ran straight toward the bridge, the secondary course he had taken in Elven allowing him to use the directional signs at the corridor junctions. He met an ocassional elf trooper, but struck him down with the lance's power, a blue ray bursting from anend of the weapon, striking the hapless elf and blowing him apart with an explosion of cold and ice.

After fighting his way to the bridge, he actually ran into trouble. Mages.

They cast rays of eldritch magic at him. He was  thankful for his suit's augumentation, or any number of things could have happened to him. Some of them started to cause mniature explosions of energy or fire, trying to destry Draken with their magicks.

He blasted one with the polar ray, shattering him, but the others shrouded themselves in magical protection. Experience and a brush with death had taught Draken that his polar ray would have no further effect. He instead used a focused blast of air that ripped through them like a particle cannon had been used on them. He then ended the lives of the bridge crew, and contacted his ship. "Lieutenant?"

"What is it, sublieutenant?"

"The elven ship you planted my unit on is effectively disabled. I'm going to help out the men now. Pick us up whenever you get the fighters and missiles off the Vengeance's ass."

Harken didn't like the Talon Dragon's guts, but he did his job well, and he was the foster son of the Lord Governor himself. "I'm on my way. Make sure those men don't get themselves killed."