CHAPTER 5

“You say it was right here?” Yolanda, one of the lead propellerheads, pointed a long metal pole at the ground. She wore enough gear for a two-week excursion and was monitoring at least three different devices. The sphere at the end of her pole chirped as Yolanda hovered it over glowing embers that clung to the ash like wet paint. We were back at the scene of my crime, where the smaug had burned away. It was too dark to see and too early to care.

The embers on the ground looked like a neon stain in the outline of the smaug, like how cops used to draw a white line around dead bodies. The embers were yellow, glowing more eerily than natural. This wasn’t the usual type of fire – the embers would have faded already – and that included anything burned by dragon fire.

“Yeah, the smaug was right here,” I said. “Can’t you see the radioactive dragon outline?”

A flashlight drone flew down to hover behind us, whirling blades keeping it in the air. Yolanda had sent it fifty feet above to get an aerial view of the scene. It shined its light wherever Yolanda’s gaze went, wirelessly connected to her goggles, and now it blinded me as the propellerhead tilted her head in my direction. I held up a hand to block the light.

“Come on, now,” Yolanda said. “I’m a scientist. I don’t assume anything, even when it seems obvious.”

I’d gone straight to Yolanda after I’d left the locker room. Not only was she one of the few other black women at headquarters but she was also, in my opinion, the smartest of the propellerheads. She’d basically invented ieiunium curate from dragon blood, and reverse-engineered the nonlethal laser cannon we’d gotten from Canada to create more for every apparatus in our fleet. But I didn’t hold that against her. A lot of people would say she singlehandedly brought on the current period of peace.

When I’d gone to talk to her about the smaug, Yolanda was busy in the watch room, helping other propellerheads monitor seismic activity deep below Ohio. Some goober had named it OSAS, for Ohio Seismic Alert System. It was how we were able to detect possible dragon emergences. Yolanda had expanded the technology by shooting monitor needles deep into the ground at different points all over the state. It had cut smokie response time in half.

She’d listened to what I had to say about the smaug, but said she would have to get back to me about it later. So I went to check in on my former engineer Zhao. He lay in a lab room in nothing but his boxers. Blue, sticky ieiunium curate had been slabbed all over his reddened body.

I apologized my ass off, but he only laughed and said, “That was the most action I’ve gotten since rookie school. Plus, this blue stuff will have me back to normal tomorrow. No hard feelings. Pinkie swear.”

His words had taken the edge off my guilt, but I still felt like shit. I’d gotten him burned and tossed around inside a ton of metal. He might have already let it go, but I wasn’t going to.

I’ve always been hard on myself.

Exhausted, I’d gone to my room and fallen asleep without bothering to take my uniform off. I was going to be wearing it in a few hours anyway as a captain. At five o’clock in the morning a loud rapping hit my door. My shift roommate, Jessica, only grumbled in her sleep as I got up to see who the hell was inviting a punch in the face.

Yolanda stood there in full yellow-coated propellerhead attire, a pair of goggles strapped around her forehead. “You ready to show me where this dragon burned up?”

I’d seriously considered slamming the door in her face and grabbing another hour and a half of sleep. But I was feeling penitent about what I’d done to Zhao, and the smaug had been turning to ash in my dreams all night anyway.

A few minutes later, I’d stepped into my armored power suit, had it seal itself around my body with a click, and was looking over what remained of the smaug.

“You know you didn’t have to bring your power suit,” Yolanda said. “We’re just gathering data.”

Said the woman wearing enough gear to send someone to Mars.

“I don’t feel right out here in the ashes without it. Plus,” I tapped the side of my helmet, “I like to stay in radio contact if any good dragon calls come in.”

Yolanda nodded and the hovering drone bobbed its light in sync, wobbling in the air. “I guess that kind of dedication is what will make you a good captain. Congratulations, by the way,” she said, as if I’d just told her I’d had a great cup of coffee that morning.

That’s how most propellerheads were; not really aloof, just “meh” about anything non-sciencey, especially the red tape of smoke eater administration.

“Thanks, Yo-yo,” I said. “So what are you thinking happened to the smaug?”

“I’m picking up a butt load of voltage in these embers,” she said, studying her holoreader. “First hypothesis that springs to mind is that the dragon’s EMP reacted with the haymo grenade you threw. Maybe the ignis gland, as well?”

“You don’t sound convinced by that.”

The sky began to lighten in the east. I’d have to be getting back to headquarters soon for my first day as a captain.

“Well, it just doesn’t make any sense,” said Yolanda. “And we don’t have a dead smaug to study. We just have these never-ending embers.” She dug into the pack hanging from her shoulder and tossed me a jar. “Mind scooping some of that up for me?”

Our power suits had been built to withstand all kinds of hell, but opening that jar with my metal-covered digits was damn near impossible. Without a word, I handed the jar back to Yolanda. She twisted off the top and handed it back, trying hard, but failing, not to laugh. As I bent over to gather the coals into the jar, the heat pelted my face as if it were a full-on inferno. That was something new. Being a smoke eater, I could resist heat a lot more than the average person.

“The heat coming off of these embers is ridiculous,” I said.

“Really?” Yolanda said. “That is interesting. I’ll have to study the embers when we get back to headquarters. Then I can find out why. You haven’t been feeling weaker lately have you? Has any smoke felt hard to breathe?”

She reached out to check my forehead. I slapped her hand away.

“I’m not losing my abilities. The fire that burned up the smaug was more intense than the flames coming out of its mouth.”

“Maybe certain dragons, like the smaug, have an anatomical booby trap if killed…”

“Yolanda, I have to get back to headquarters.”

“… like a surge of all their internal power bursting out at once. Maybe this has something to do with… but, no.”

“What?”

She tongued the back of her teeth. “OSAS has been picking up some strange activity recently. Seismic of course, but also a strong frequency coming from underground. We sent smoke eaters to each point of activity to check it out but, by the time they arrived, the occurrence had gone and also no dragon. Lot of residual heat, though. At first I just put it off as an anomaly in the monitoring system….”

She was back in her own world, head twirling above the clouds. I was about to yell her name when my holoreader rang. It was Brannigan.

“You ready for today, Captain Williams?” Chief ’s holographic head materialized above my holoreader.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just out here with Yolanda getting extra crispy dragon samples.”

I pointed Brannigan’s head toward Yolanda. She waved, grinning so wide it made her cheeks puff out.

“Hey, my favorite lady in yellow,” Brannigan said. “Williams, I appreciate you looking into this, but we need you back at headquarters. Slayer 7 was scheduled to give a presentation to some Cub Scouts, but they just caught a run for a slimy Shenron making its way from Louisville.”

“So you’re sending me to tackle some kids.”

“If it makes you feel better, you guys got the tougher job out of the two. You think dragons are mean? I sent the location to your holoreader. Basic stuff: what to do if you find a dragon egg, stop, drop and roll. You’ll do fine.”

“I’ll be making Afu do all the talking.”

“Perks of being a captain.” Brannigan smiled.

“So why are you calling me and not dispatch?” “Well–”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Brannigan.”

“I know we say ‘sink or swim’ but it’s your first day as an officer – and you’re going to do great – I just want to be here for you, since I’m the one who put you in this situation. Sometimes you need a lifeguard.”

Maybe I should have been glad I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves. Any captain would have told you they’d have loved having the chief act as a crutch for their first time being in charge. But I could walk just fine on my own, and I didn’t need a daddy looking over my shoulder. I already had one who stuck his nose into my business every chance he could. And a mama who did that, too.

“Just do me a favor,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t make this a regular thing.”

Brannigan’s digital head tilted to the side.

“Watching over you or sending you to kids programs?”

“Both,” I said.