Into the Valley

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

In fact, the Valley hadn’t always been the Valley.

It had once been the southern cape of Viol Four, a world overwhelmed with lush, verdant landscapes, snow-capped mesas, and a purple-blue sea that wrapped two-thirds of the planet. Then a colony had found Opalex in the caves off the cape, and Respublica had shown up with their mining fleet, stripping Viol Four of the precious mineral, shredding the tip of the forested cape down fifty miles below the surface, leaving the Valley. Her jagged schorl cliffs ran fifteen miles long, terminating to the north and south in magnificent waterfalls, from which the oceans fell and fell to the sizzling black stones of the planet’s mantle on the Valley floor. At eight miles wide, the Valley was hot, humid, and bleak, inhospitable for all but the hardiest creatures.

After Respublica had taken all they could, the Consortium followed with the dragons. The dragons had been saved from their home world in the last days before a supernova wiped out the entire quadrant, and after decades aboard the CMS Isaacs, they were brought here, to what remained of the cape, to the Valley, along with a contingent of laborers plucked from various work program lotteries across the galaxy. Among those eager workers was Paget.

After seven years on world, seven years of keeping her bunk clean and her head down, seven years of rule-following and tongue-minding, she’d been promoted to the coveted position of Nestwatch.

On her perch high above the Valley, Paget walked to the edge of the steel platform, latching her tilt rope to her harness and stepping into the boot locks at the edge of the suspension dais. The clamp on the right had been giving her issues for a fortnight, and despite three formal requests and one unhappy confrontation in the mess, Friedan had yet to get the damn thing fixed. It took several tries before Paget heard the telltale “click” of her heel locking in, but the second she started applying pressure to the front of the dais, it tilted smoothly. So at least the fool had gotten that done.

She exhaled as the dais moved, her tilt rope extending spasmodically as she pushed the rope control button on her chest, until she was in position, parallel to the ground, staring out over the vast, black Valley below her.

Pulling her binocs down over her face, she settled them against the familiar ridged skin of her black glass scar. All the Watchers wore them with pride, the mottling across their cheeks where the gap between binocs and balaclava left the Watchers vulnerable to steam and wind and schorl dust.

They were an elite bunch, Watchers. And not just because their numbers were few – which they were, they’d lost three already this monsoon season – but it took a certain kind of idiot to want to dangle above the Valley waiting for the black, skeletal creatures to rise up out of the swirling, dark steam clouds below. But hey, the pay was amazing.

“Cut from a special cloth,” the Inspector had said at Lorna’s funeral last week.

“Idiots,” Paget said.

“What was that, Delta Five?”

The tinny voice piped into Paget’s binocs gave her a start. It was easy to forget one wasn’t alone out here.

“Disregard, Delta Base,” Paget spoke into her mic.

“Disregarded and forgotten. What’s cracking up there, Paget?”

She zoomed in to the nest she’d been watching for the last six nights. “Hey Davies. Not fifty-seven. Not yet, anyway.”

“Damn,” Davies said. “Any sign of the male?”

Paget scanned the cliffs below the nest, looking for the blue-tipped wings of the small male dragon that had been attending the eggs. “Negative.”

“Going to be a long night, Delta Five.” Davies sighed into the mic. “Sunrise estimated in twelve ought eight Respublic hours.”

Paget looked out across the horizon as the last trails of sunlight slipped through the hazy atmosphere. She smelled rain on her way up the platform, and now she could just make out the downfall gathering in the west. “What’s our ETA on the rain?”

“Your daily dose of monsoon will descend upon the Valley in approximately ought sixteen.”

Paget didn’t reply. It was going to be another long, wet night over the Valley. She pulled her balaclava down a few inches, allowing her to breathe in the air. Unfiltered, she could practically taste the metallic tang of wet steel and that spot of rust she’d noticed last month along the dais bolts, not to mention the smell of rotting fish from a female’s hunt days before, the bones picked clean, glittering offal left on the sharp rocks below. And beneath it, the acrid smoke of the Valley floor, from where the males brought up mouthfuls of hot ash to spread on their clutches, urging them to hatch.

A whip of wind broke her reverie, and her head snapped to the north, just in time to see the whorl of steam accompanying the male’s flight from the floor.

“Got him,” Paget spoke into her mic as she adjusted her balaclava back into place. “Two clicks north, ascending.”

“Is he coaled up?”

Paget zoomed in to the male’s face, looking for the telltale steam around the mouth. “Looks like it.”

“That will make the Inspector happy,” Davies said. “That group from Respublica is making planetfall tonight and I know she’s been –”

“What group from Respublica?” Paget interrupted, keeping her eyes on the male, who had made it to the sheer cliff face and was now crawling up the side, using his strong, hooked phalanxes at the top of his wings to make purchase on the schorl, tiny arms gripping the black crystalline rocks as he climbed.

“Some laced-ups from the Board, I think,” Davies prattled on. “The funding committee? Carlson has been pulling reports together for the last fifty hours. Put her in a bad way. Almost sent her to the doc this morning. Anxiety sky-high. I’ll tell you what, working in the Inspector’s office isn’t all sunshine.”

“As opposed to this?” Paget asked, feeling the first drops of rain hit her back as the storm rolled in.

“Fair enough,” Davies replied. “Poor Lorna.”

“Have you heard anything about the next batch of lotteries?”

“Funding issues,” Davies said shortly.

“Isn’t it always?” Paget sighed. “I suppose that’s why fifty-seven is so important.”

The male finished his climb, curling his body around the three steel blue eggs, wrapping his spiked tail in front. Carefully, he opened his mouth, dropping the hot ash and coals on the clutch. Steam rose from the eggs, and Paget saw what she thought was a wobble.

She zoomed in with her binocs and held her breath. Soon enough, the middle egg teetered again. “The male is brooding. Movement on number two. Setting binocs to live feed.”

Paget pressed the button on the side of her binocs that enabled Delta Base to see what she was seeing.

“Recording,” came Davies response, followed by a sharp intake of breath. “Oh, he’s beautiful.”

Paget agreed. The brooding male at nest fifty-seven was approximately twelve feet long. His hide was flat black, as were his wings, the membranes of which looked gray when spread, tipped with a midnight blue several shades darker than the eggs he now watched. He was short-snouted compared to the other males Paget had clocked over the years, but with the same blind, opaline eyes that were just as unsettling as the rest of them.

There were definitely moments in her Watch days, especially early on, when the terrifying beauty of the Valley and its inhabitants was crushing. But with all things in her life, good and bad, she got used to it.

“Was that an egg horn?” Davies asked with excitement.

Paget zoomed in again and saw the little white horn poke out from the inside of the shell of egg number two. “Affirmative.”

The male had taken up more interest in the egg now, pulling the others closer to his chest with his front arms, while stretching his wing out over the clutch. The rain had started washing the ash out of the rocky nest, leaving the eggs quite exposed.

Just as the pale snout of the hatchling poked up out of the shell, a sheet of rain blew across the Valley, and the male curled himself and his wing tighter around his clutch.

Paget’s first mistake was craning her neck to the north to have a better look, throwing her slightly off balance, which put extra stress on her right boot lock, the faulty clamp of which took this moment to fail. Her leg shot free. Her stomach bottomed out. Her heart jumped into her throat, and her head started spinning madly as she fought for control of the situation.

When her boot came loose, her second mistake was overcorrecting. She’d watched the safety vids and taken the training and read the manuals, and still, she miscalculated in her haste, hitting the soft steel of her stirrup at exactly the wrong angle to the hardened steel boot clamp.

A spark.

It only took one.

Davies saw it in the live feed before Paget sensed it: She had caught the attention of the brooding male. “Paget!” Davies yelled into the mic.

At Davies’ panicked tone, Paget went still. It took huge effort to hold her leg back, right toe hooked on the back of her left heel, trying to keep the flail to a minimum.

Paget raised her eyes to the nest. “Boot lock failed. I sparked.”

Davies drew in a shaky breath on the other end of the line.

The male was on his feet, body covering the clutch of eggs, wings spread wide, short snout pointed in Paget’s direction, sniffing out the spark across the Valley. Even though he could not see her, if he sensed danger, he would call the much larger, much more dangerous female from her black cave miles below. And then Paget would really have a problem on her hands.

“Paget, I’m calling alarm. Do not move a muscle!” Davies’ voice was shrill over the comm.

“Davies,” Paget responded firmly, “do not call alarm.”

She could hear Davies breathing heavily into her mic as she considered what Paget said. The male lowered his body over the eggs, resuming his brooding. Davies exhaled.

“Fine,” Davies relented. “But you pull yourself back up right now.”

Paget, still watching the male, whose eyes, though blind, were fixed in her direction, thought not. “He is still scenting me.”

“Delta Five,” came Davies voice, now imbued with all the authority of Delta Base, “you are putting too much strain on your remaining boot lock. You need to pull in before that fails, too.”

Of course, Paget knew this. It was page sixty-two of the manual. She’d aced this part of her Nestwatch exam. She was running through the physics of this problem, working out how much longer the left clamp would hold, when a gust burst through the storm with a sheet of icy rain.

Paget’s toe slipped from the back of her heel, and she twisted in her position as her leg swung out wildly. Her body pivoted, the platform tilting and rolling easily with her. She grabbed out at her tilt rope with both hands to steady herself, and when she stilled again, she was facing up, not down, the rope wrapped tightly around her waist. If she pressed her recoil button now, she’d get jerked around so bad, they’d be cleaning brains out of her binocs for weeks.

“Davies,” Paget said, forcing her voice to remain calm, “I’m good and fucked out here.”

“I’m sounding alarm,” Davies replied with determination.

“No!” Paget all but yelled back down the mic. “There is a brooding male out here. We can’t risk it.”

“There will be more nests!”

It was just like Davies to miss the point entirely. “Davies, what’s going to happen to the crew when you sound alarm, huh? Every Watcher on base will be out here and that male will call his own alarm and then we’re all cooked.”

Davies let loose a flurry of curses. “Delta Five, please hold.”

The line clicked over to static, and Paget had a terrible feeling that Davies was doing the only thing worse than sounding alarm. She started counting slowly to hundred in her native tongue and breathed through her nose. She didn’t dare crane her neck around to get eyes back on the nest for fear that she would lose what little semblance of balance she currently had. But she hadn’t heard the dragon call to his mate, so it was possible that danger had passed. For now, at least.

When the comm line clicked back on a moment later, her fear was confirmed. The Inspector’s gruff voice cut through the silence on the line like lightning. “Delta Five, what’s your situation?”

“Holding, ma’am,” Paget replied. “Right boot lock failure. And I’m tangled up in my tilt rope.”

“That’s a tricky hold,” the Inspector replied. Then, her voice muffled as if covering the mic, she said, “Can Delta Four get eyes on her?”

A moment of silence. No doubt, someone at Delta Base was cluing the Inspector into the fact that they’d buried Delta Four last week.

“I see,” said the Inspector, voice clear again. “Delta Five, can you reach your tilt rope control?”

Paget felt along her chest for the button that retracted and extended her tilt rope. “Yes, I can.”

“I’m going to need you to let out some slack so that you can get untangled, all right?”

“Copy,” Paget responded dutifully, although she didn’t feel all right about it at all. The rope control on this rig was jerky at its best, and it had been a hell of a long time since she’d done slack exercises in training. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, hand poised over the tilt rope button.

“I need you to act fast, Delta Five. That boot lock isn’t going to hold forever.”

Hand fisted, Paget punched the button on her chest, sending her spinning as the rope went slack and gravity took over, uncoiling the tilt rope. Instinctually, she spread her arms wide when she came to an abrupt halt, at a forty-five-degree angle to the cliff face.

“Good job, Delta Five!” the Inspector said. She heard Davies clap in the background. “Now punch the tilt again and bring yourself up.”

Gladly, Paget hit the button. Once. Twice. Three times. Nothing happened.

“Delta Five, punch your tilt.”

Paget punched the button on her chest several more times. The blood was beginning to rush to her head. “Tilt unresponsive,” she gritted out between punches.

“Delta Fi—” the Inspector stopped suddenly, and Paget’s eyes snapped to the black clouds below her.

They were moving.

Something was coming.

Paget stilled and watched as the female rose from the swirling, inky billows. She gave her translucent wings a great heave, and the air around Paget was all but sucked away.

The prayer came to Paget’s lips just as easily as it had done years ago, when her grandmother had held her on her knee, or at her mother’s passing, or when the lotteries had been drawn in her outpost. The prayer, which meant, loosely, Winds watch over me, lift me from death and danger. Much more lyrical in the native tongue, of course, a language which had been dead for generations, as far as any scholars knew.

She forgot all about Delta Base. She forgot all about tilt ropes and Watchers and lotteries and Friedan’s surprised face when she’d upended her mess tray over her head. She forgot everything except, Winds watch over me, lift me from death and danger.

When the words left her, Paget felt her spirit loosen and calm. The female dragon looked at her with her coal-black eyes. She was so close now, Paget could see the rain sliding off her pale, iridescent scales.

In this moment, Paget accepted her fate. Her remaining boot lock gave way, finally, and Paget unsheathed the serrated knife at her hip, cutting herself free from the tilt rope.

She fell and fell and fell into the blackness, chanting, Winds watch over me, lift me from death and danger.