The riding straps and the saddle awaited her, concealed within the walls of her quarters. The knowledge of their location rose inside Cord’s mind like muscle memory. She laid the gear out in the bathing chamber before opening the outer aperture to await Vaeler’s arrival.

     Cord dressed in her heaviest pair of buckskin breeches and a high-collared coat. As a last resort, she threaded a pouch full of grenades onto her belt. Her fully charged laser pistol rested in the holster on her right thigh.

     The scrabble of dragon claws against stone sounded from the direction of the bathing chamber. Cord grabbed a brown leather respirator and a pair of thick gloves before rushing toward her dragon.

     Her heart soared with emotion when she saw Vaeler waiting for her. Only a day had passed while they were apart, but that brief time felt like an eternity. Vaeler lowered her head at Cord’s approach. Cord reciprocated by resting her cheek atop the soft muzzle. Her hands stroked the sides of her dragon’s face. Only for a moment.

     There wasn’t time to marvel at the strength of the rider/dragon bond. The young colonists were out there. Through the link, Cord felt the Blight rising. She still wasn’t sure what that was exactly, but just thinking about the entity sent a cold shudder trembling through her.

     Her hands fastened buckles by rote, cinching a girth as she locked the saddle in place. Having once owned a trotter ranch, the actions were almost instinctive. Cord felt as though she’d trained for this all her life.

     With Vaeler saddled, Cord took a quick inventory of her gear. Firearms and grenades she carried near at hand. A pack full of survival gear waited for her on the shuttle Haven in the event that this rescue went on longer than planned. Anything more than flying to Qirandel and retrieving some passengers out for a day hike fit the bill of something more that threatened all of them.

     Last of all, and hopefully completely unnecessary, Cord strapped a magnetic scabbard to the front of Vaeler’s saddle. She grabbed the Vortex-7 saddle gun from where she’d propped it up on the lip of the bathing pool, checked the battery pack, and attached the weapon to the scabbard.

     The Vortex rifle fired a kinetic slug rather than a projectile or laser beam. The slug was an incredibly dense nanometer-sized sphere. Upon striking a target, the projectile would collapse into an intense burst of extreme kinetic energy. That energy would instantly compress mass and velocity into a shockwave that disrupted the target’s molecular bonds. That implosion instantly atomized tissue at the point of impact.

     She had never used one of these, but Nomad carried far more deadly weapons than this. Flying through space and landing on all sorts of backwater planets meant staying up with the latest innovations. The thought of using the rifle made her a little sick but there wasn’t time for squeamishness right now.

     Cord swung into the saddle behind Vaeler’s second neck ridge. The dragon straightened to turn toward the opening. Her horn tips were inches from the ceiling. As Vaeler ambled to the shelf, Cord remembered the breather. She wasn’t certain how high they’d fly, but the respirator brought peace of mind. Self-adjusting nearly invisible straps erupted as Cord covered the lower half of her face. The straps held the breather in place.

     The breather wasn’t Eldrin-made. This was human tech. Leather, brass, and grit. A relic of Nomad’s crash kit, retrofitted for altitude. Cord liked that. The device reminded her that she hadn’t been born to dragons. She’d earned this maiden flight the hard way.

     A spill of mountain air tore through the aerie, sending a chill down Cord’s spine. She tugged the gloves on before locking herself into the saddle. Simple leather straps snapped into the kinetic couplers on each side of the riding belt. The couplers were a mechanical/energy hybrid design that absorbed motion to keep the rider stable.

     Finally ready, Cord grabbed the safety strap in front of her tightly.

     From her position atop the golden dragon, she looked out over the mountainous rocky crags. Her breath caught in her throat. With preparations complete, fear returned. Cord swallowed hard against a suddenly dry mouth.

     “I can’t believe I’m about to do this!”

     Vaeler edged closer to the drop. The claws of her forefoot dislodged a few loose pebbles. Cord clenched her eyes shut when the pebbles fell. She opened them again just as quickly, terrified of what came next.

     “Hold fast, Cordelia. Trust me to carry you.”

     Then the floor was gone. The weyr fell away in a rush of stone and wind. The mountain dropped beneath her like the world had collapsed. Cord’s stomach lurched as the breath caught in her lungs in preparation of a scream. For a heartbeat, she thought she’d fall to her doom. Crushed to death on the stones far below.

     Vaeler’s wings unfurled. Cord heard the snap as air caught Vaeler’s sails, sending them upward before they quickly leveled out to ride the current. Wind tore at her hair, stinging her cheeks as the locks slapped her skin. The respirator shielded the lower half of her face, covering nose, cheeks, and chin. Unfortunately, the device didn’t prevent the cold air aloft from causing other problems. Tears generated by the rushing air flooded her eyes. The sky pressed against her, vast and merciless.

     Next time she’d wear goggles.

     Cord forced herself to breathe. The urge to shriek in terror faded, replaced by the rhythm of powerful wingbeats. She felt the strength and heat of dragon flesh between her thighs. Fear loosened its grip, filling Cord instead with a fierce and trembling sense of awe.

     With only a few strokes, they closed in on Nomad. Ahead, the least damaged shuttle glinted in the golden late afternoon sunshine. Her crew already waited aboard, ready to fly into action.

     Pride swelled in Cord’s chest. Quen, Mery, Arla, and even Brann. They hadn’t hesitated to join this rescue. Working quickly, they had freed Haven, the portside shuttle, from the wreckage. And Eve, a sixty-year-old woman awakened from cryo only days ago, insisted on joining them. Her resolve was unshakeable. Cord had seen the fire in her eyes. Eve was not only a colonist but a true leader.

     Cord turned her gaze downward. At first she didn’t see anything. Then her gaze expanded, telescoping and enhancing every detail until she spotted Faryn standing near the base of the mountains. The elf’s dark cloak made her appear as a shadow against the stone. She hadn’t boarded the shuttle, but Cord hadn’t expected her to. Magic and science didn’t mesh well. Yet she had answered the call. Cord trusted Faryn would find a way to keep pace.

     “How is it I can see this way?” Cord shouted over the rushing wind.

     “What I see is what you see. A product of our link.”

     Cord grinned at the silent response. She couldn’t wait to see what other perks this bond offered. She tightened her grip on the safety strap with her left hand and raised her right fist. She gazed at the shuttle’s cockpit in an effort to see Mery’s face at the controls. Sunlight gleamed off the flerovium glass, blocking her dragon-born sight. Cord trusted Mery wouldn’t miss her cue. She dropped her fist in a sharp chopping motion, the signal to advance.

     Haven lifted smoothly from Draythmire’s reedy grass, already oriented in the direction of Qirandel.

     A simple press of Cord’s knee sent Vaeler into a tight turn. The golden dragon seemed to spin in place on her wingtip. Cord felt the straps about her waist tighten. Mammoth wings pumped downward. The mighty power behind the motion caused her head to snap backward as they shot forward. She compensated by leaning forward into the flight.

     Behind them, the shuttle’s engines roared.

     At first, Cord couldn’t think about the colonists. She was too busy fearing that a strap would break and that she’d fall to her doom. Her hands had clenched in a death grip around the forward safety strap. Her arms trembled from the rigidity in her body. Vaeler kept up a silent monologue, reminding Cord that she would never allow any harm to befall her.

     As the minutes passed, a wonderful thing began to happen.

     Cord finally relaxed. She felt the air cool her cheeks. Her trust in Vaeler grew as she looked at the strange and wondrous green planet below them. The sky seemed populated by mountain peaks and volcanos. A few smoked in the distance, a testament to the world’s geological vitality. Mist concealed much of the forest below, obscuring all but the highest treetops. Strange avian forms filled the air. Some resembled Terran birds, but the bright iridescent colors looked more at home on a painter’s palette than winging by in the air.

     Another winged creature resembled a stick-like insect but was the size of Vaeler’s head. The creature’s torso appeared made of semi-transparent angular plates shaped like living quartz. These facets shifted and flexed as the creature hovered in mid-air, the wings refracting light into rainbow shards.

     This was a glasswing drifter, Cord recalled from somewhere deep inside.

    The Eldrin memories aligned with the living world around her. Tectonic scars, migratory patterns, the pulse of ecosystems. Riding Vaeler was no longer flight alone. The very act was an immersion into the living planet, a symbiosis of knowledge and experience.

     With every beat of Vaeler’s wings, Cord’s knowledge no longer felt like borrowed fragments but her reality. Every ridge, every creature, every hidden current of wind belonged to her as if she had always known them. Cord was no longer a stranger to Draythmire. She was a dragon rider. Vaeler’s heartbeats thundered beneath her, and in that rhythm she felt the planet itself. Vast, perilous, and magnificent.

     Cord lost track of time as they flew obliquely toward the setting suns, immersed in the overwhelming emotional surge. Their purpose for this headlong flight slipped her mind until Vaeler’s voice drew her back to the present.

     “We near Qirandel’s city gates. The central courtyard will be visible over the next ridge.”

     “Okay, people,” Cord said into her headset. “Keep your eyes open. I’m not sure what we’ll find but… Wait a minute. What is that?”

     Cord strained to focus on a black skyborne formation just beyond their combined visual range. The shadowy mass rotated in a tight aerial loop, like the truncated head of a tornado torn free and spinning across the upper atmosphere.

     “Some kind of black birds,” Mery responded in her ear from Haven’s cockpit. “Sensors are kicking back some weird readings.”

     Cord didn’t have a good feeling about that. “Something tells me they aren’t a coincidence. If these things come after us, I’ll need your firepower.”

     “I’m on it. Just stay frosty, Cord,” Mery said. “You’re the one out there with nothing but air between you and them.”

     And Vaeler, Cord added silently. Nothing would get past her dragon.

     They cleared the final ridge as the sky’s golden light gave way to the violet and orange of twilight. The smaller blue sun had already dipped below the horizon. Cord leaned forward over Vaeler’s shoulder, her breath catching at the sight below. White pillars rose like solemn sentinels around a marbled courtyard, the formal threshold into Qirandel.

     Qirandel’s gates loomed but the architecture couldn’t hold her gaze. The white courtyard stones were barely visible, obscured by splintering cracks and obscene forms writhing across the surface. The movement from the mass made the courtyard seem alive. If corruption could be called life.

     Fleshy vines coiled and threshed, as big around as tree trunks. They crept toward the colonists in an attempt to ensnare and consume. The texture of the vines was all wrong. Black oily lumps of animated perversion that were part plant, part lumpy, pulsating muscle, and part molten slag. Veins were visible in the appendages, highlighting an orange fire within.

     The missing colonists clustered tightly around the columns, backs pressed to the city gates as though seeking refuge. Most stood close together in a protective circle. Three others flanked them, turned outward, bodies taut and watchful, bracing against a threat they had no idea how to battle. These few, probably from the hunting part, were armed with standard laser rifles, firing at the Blight’s manifestations as the tendrils whipped toward them.

     “Cord, overhead!” Quen warned through the communications link.

     What Mery had reported as birds overhead were nothing of the sort. The black cloud had separated into individual entities, black silhouettes that mimicked carrion birds. The flyers wheeled above Cord in ragged formation. Twisted black silhouettes with tattered wings and bone-piercing beaks. Shrill cries as sharp as shattered glass split the air as they dove toward her in a coordinated assault.

     “Attack!” Cord shouted, both to Mery and to Vaeler. She yanked her sidearm free, firing into the airborne menace.

     At the same time, Vaeler loosed a gout of dragon fire that lit up the darkening sky around them. The flame enveloped two of the creatures, incinerating them into ash. Heat caressed Cord’s cheeks as they flew forward into the fray.

     Cord instinctively held on with her legs and one hand, continuing to fire as Vaeler dipped and darted to flame the carrion birds.

     “Move!” Mery shouted into Cord’s ear through the headset. “We’ve got this. Cover the passengers.”

     Right.

     “Head to the deck!” Cord told Valer.

     She gulped as Vaeler dove immediately toward the ground. Cord’s fear of heights collided with the urgency of saving lives until Vaeler eased off on her angle of descent. Their first flight had morphed from novelty into a dramatic dive with danger.

     The shuttled above them opened fire. Octanitrochino bombs and plasma missiles exploded in a brilliant display of pyrotechnics. Black forms melted and dropped from the sky to plop wetly upon the once pristine stone. Cord caught sight of the birds regrouping and heading directly for the shuttle as another wing of the vile creatures targeted the group of frightened colonists.

     Cord leaned forward in the saddle, willing Vaeler to reach the ground before the secondary attack could menace their target. They landed heavily in a blaze of heat and ozone as Vaeler flamed the nearest vines into ash. The impact threw Cord into the front of the saddle. The pistol flew from her hand, lost somewhere in the chaos.

     She didn’t hesitate. Cord unsnapped the safety lines. She yanked the saddle gun from the scabbard and threw her leg over Vaeler’s neck. Cord dropped into a crouch on the splintered stone, scanning everywhere for the closest threat. From her new vantage point, she saw that the tendrils oozed hissing acid in the wake of their passage.

     They were everywhere. Vines of every size from the tree trunk thickness she’d spotted from above to tendrils no bigger than her wrist. The whole area seemed to surge and thresh all about.

     One of the largest vines shot toward her at an unimaginable speed the second Cord’s boots hit the ground.

     She braced the butt of the Vortex against her shoulder. The weapon gave a high-pitched wrrrm as the field briefly charged. Cord squeezed the trigger, leaning forward to absorb the kick. There was no visible bolt. No laser fire or muzzle flash reminiscent of a projectile weapon. Only a clean, ear-splitting phwack of displaced air as the kinetic slug traveled downrange.

     The sphere struck the creature, creating a sudden and violent explosion of pulverized matter. Immediately following the implosion came the catastrophic structural collapse of the monster’s core. The creature’s entire framework melted into a sickeningly rancid yet harmless goo.

     Cord heaved at the sight before clenching her teeth tightly closed. There wasn’t time to vomit.

     This Blight was a horror that would give her nightmares for years to come. If they survived that long. Fighting these manifestations did make her wonder about the Eldrin. Was this their fate? Overwhelmed and consumed? The possibility certainly explained their extinction.

     Suddenly, sparkles lit the scene around her. Quen and Danom’s forms solidified as they transited onto the courtyard. Both men were armed with Vortex rifles.

     A high-pitched whistle made Cord look up just as Mery loosed strafing fire from the Haven’s heavy repeater cannons. A second later, the ordnance exploded. Only a few flying forms remained in the air, but pandemonium reigned on the ground.

     The sheer volume of twisting and crawling vines quickly overwhelmed the scene. As Cord watched, two people were ensnared and completely encompassed by the obscene creatures. She wanted to beg Mery for backup, but the shuttle couldn’t fire into the crowd.

     Looming twilight deepened the menace. Shadows stretched across the gates. The sky had darkened in the east, a bruise shading from purple to black. Vines had hemmed the colonists in now, forcing them to retreat back against the city wall. Cord had managed to cross over to the same side of the courtyard as the colonists with a mass of tendrils between them. A few carrion shapes had survived to dive toward the crowd, attempting to impale them with their heavy beaks.

     Someone was crying. Cord heard moans from the injured. The ground began to shake. She stumbled as she fought to stay standing.

     Then, the earth split. Fire and ash belched upward as a malformed creature clawed free. The size of an old-Earth elephant, the beast had four crooked legs like a spider. A scorpion tail was tipped with a glowing stinger dripping molten lava. Stone hissed with each droplet, sending steam into the air and further obscuring Cord’s vision. Forward pincers sparked as they clicked together. Thick and keratinoid, the pincers looked strong enough to shear stone. Four bulging eyes swiveled independently to track prey. Sickly green light glowed from each eye.

     “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Cord muttered.