The Grand Calculator is the greatest triumph of the Coalition, and the true reason for its dominance, by some accounts. A sprawling machine of gears and counterweights the size of a small city, this behemoth of logic acts as an automated calculator on a massive scale. The mathematical power of this machine allows the Coalition to compute new viable routes and coordinates through Etherspace in a fraction of the time it takes astronavigators to do so by hand.

  – Alun Varderis, Senior Astronavigator

  The vivid colors of Etherspace swirled past, washing the cafeteria – what the crew kept insisting was called the ‘mess’ – in faint ribbons of light, lending the space a subtle otherworldly appearance.

  Pan finished wiping down the last table and sighed. His joints ached again, but even after only a few days here, the ache wasn’t as bad as before. Maybe it was the better diet. Maybe it was the elation of being in space. He wasn’t sure.

  He was pretty certain the better health had nothing to do with the wild pitching about that the ship had done a few times recently, nor the crushing pressure a while back. He’d heard that some ships could override the inertial compensators, but gossip in the bar did not translate to preparation. Pan was not an educated man, and understood very little about the mechanics of this, but he knew it meant the ship had been moving and turning fast. Like soup in a pot swirling around when the pot is shaken, the crew were thrown about as well.

  Pan had been strapped into a chair in his room the entire time, so didn’t really know what it was like. He’d only heard the stories afterwards, as he served the food from the galley. The rest of the crew were diverse in their opinion of what happened, with some confused while others were excited. He’d pieced together a crude picture of what had happened from the gossip, and he had to admit it sounded much different than the space battles he’d heard of before.

  Even the crew had been getting in on the idea. Ascending from the moon and grappling prey, claws tearing into hull. Ripping apart the enemy with bare claws, tossing the remnants aside. They made a space battle sound like a vicious fight between monsters, albeit a one-sided fight. Pan almost – almost – wished he could have seen it, but he knew he was too much of a coward to watch something that intense.

  The gobling slumped into the nearest chair, turning it to watch the rainbow flowing outside. He was pretty sure he saw a lot more colors than most of the crew, but knew better than to point that out. The Big Folk didn’t like it when he pointed out anything a goblin could do better. He still had a scarred notch on one ear to remind him of that.

  “Bleh…” Pan sighed aloud, rolling his head back as far as he could while still watching the vibrant scene out the window. “Well mom, I got to space after all. It’s a miracle isn’t it? I’m pretty sure the ship is actually a dragon, too. With all the strange things that have happened, that makes more sense than anything else. How many goblings or even elves these days get to say they met a famous dragon, huh?”

  “Eight, I believe.”

  Pan jerked upright when he heard the low, throaty voice. Instinctively, the young gobling looked around, before his mind caught up with the voice and he realized it was the ship talking to him again. His cheeks and ears burned hot at the realization that someone had heard him talking to himself.

  “Apex?” The youth’s voice was hesitant, quiet. “I um, didn’t know you were listening.”

  “I can always hear you.” The gravely voice chuckled. “You are in my body. You simply never have anything to say.”

  The half-goblin eased back into his chair, fidgeting with his blunt-clawed fingers. His blush lingered, but now he had no idea how to react to this knowledge. It seemed… rude to have caught the dragon’s attention for nothing. In a panic, he searched for a topic – any topic – that the dragon might be more interested in hearing about than himself.

  “Were you… made this way or were you a real dragon before?”

  Immediately after he said it, Pan cursed himself. Saying ‘real dragon’ made it sound like Apex was a fake dragon now, and he flinched at how badly this sounded. Even he could tell it was an insult.

  Silence. A long moment of silence. Then, a low rumbling noise, scratchy and digitized. “Not the sort of question anyone else asks. I was a flesh and blood dragon. Have you never heard the name of Apexillos before?”

  Pan breathed out a sigh of relief that the voice did not sound angry, just perplexed. “Of course, but didn’t Apexillos die?” His eyes widened. “Did your soul escape and inhabit something else and now you’re back?”

  “You are much more curious about this than the others.” Apex mused. “Necromancy pulled my mind and soul from the moment of my death forward, where it was bound within this vessel.”

  Eyes wide, Pan slid out of the chair and walked toward the window. It wasn’t a tiny square like in his cabin, but a large and full-length panel, with shutters that closed during battle. Right now the shutters were open, allowing the grand view the gobling had been admiring. He peered outward while he thought over what to say more carefully now.

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  “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “That sounds painful. Are you okay with it? Do you like being the ship?” His ears lowered as he considered the whole situation. “It must be awful, having pathetic creatures like me inside you all the time.” This was a legendary creature, and he was living inside it, and even had the gall to consider it a better home than the one his mother raised him in!

  Granted that home was a two-room, barely-functional annex welded onto a more complete habitat, but as tiny as that was, it had been his home. Even if he had done little more than sleep there for the last year. He hadn’t even had a chance to retrieve his few belongings before leaving.

  “Being a ship allows me to do what I must do. Beyond that, so long as you are useful or at least not hindering my goals, I do not care.” The rumbling voice ended on a snort. “Pathetic? Were you not just boasting to the air about how much you have achieved? You Lesser Folk are very strange in this era.”

  “Didn’t you say my kind were executed at birth?” Pan looked over his shoulder… and of course saw nothing there. The ship wasn’t physically here as a person, and he felt dumb the moment he looked for Apex. “How would you know what we were like?”

  “This is true.” Apex ceded the point immediately, surprising Pan. He’d always heard dragons were stubborn and had massive superiority complexes. “I do not find you pathetic. I simply do not care enough. I find it curious that you achieved your dream before death, and yet you still find yourself lacking confidence.”

  The gobling tilted his head, some of his earlier panic and surprise at speaking to this powerful being fading now. “You really have no idea how we work, do you? I thought you were the Dragon Emperor…”

  “I never ruled over the Lesser Folk.” Once again, Apex corrected this misunderstanding. “I know some of what went on in my original time, but not much of their nature. Much of what you do makes no sense to me, and never mattered before.”

  Pan hopped up to sit on the table – he’d have to wipe it down again after this – and swung his legs, the pain in his joints a distant throbbing right now. “I don’t think any of us understand you, either. But if you want to complain, I’m a good listener. The sailors in the bar liked to complain a lot, and I think your problems are a lot bigger than theirs. It might help to talk about them.”

  A low rumble rose from the speakers. “It does not bother me. Why would you want to do that? I was the enemy of those who founded your way of life.”

  That pulled a laugh from the tiny gobling, and Pan made a rude gesture out the window. “My way of life? Living in a tiny smelly room, taking care of my dying mother until she passed away, because my bastard of a father got her hooked on that poison? Being beaten once a week because I’m blamed for things my boss forgot while he was wasted? Maybe everyone else has it easy, but for me I’m lucky I even taught myself how to read.”

  The youth pointed at where he guessed the speaker was. “You just told me I was going to die because of something that happened before I was born. I’ve been treated like trash all my life and it’s not even a long one, but now I’m in space, talking to one of the most famous creatures to ever live. This is more than I’d ever hoped for…” He paused.

  “And I guess I thought you might be lonely since we’re both rejects now.”

  The room went silent for several seconds, and Pan had the sinking feeling that he’d screwed up. Maybe calling the ancient dragon a reject had been a poor choice of words.

  At last, a low and dismissive grunt filled the room. “I do not need a friend or confidant, and certainly not one whose short life cannot hope to understand my own expansive experience.”

  Pan flinched. “Ah… sorry…” He felt a sinking feeling deep down, realizing he’d offended the powerful being that had given him even a hint of hope. “I just… it’s not like I will be around much longer.”

  “I am not angry, and you should not apologize.” The dragon’s voice growled. “You are one of only three dozen or less in this galaxy who has spoken to a Great Dragon… and almost half of those I would prefer to see dead. You met your lifelong goal to see space before you died. You are ephemeral and short-lived, yet you did what you thought impossible.”

  Apex’s low rumbling rose to a higher note. “You did not offend me. You extended the offer in sincerity, so I will give you some of my own advice. But we are not friends. You are not useful to me, beyond being a curiosity I have never seen before. Do not presume it is more than that.”

  These words made Pan bite his lip in confusion. Was that praise? Yet he was also being told he was worthless? That statement caused a stab in his heart that he wasn’t prepared for, the echoes of others yelling that at him playing through his mind.

  Of course he couldn’t help this ancient being. He was just the ship’s cook. He let out a sigh and lowered his eyes, then blinked rapidly to clear the moisture in them. No, he wouldn’t do that.

  “You’re right,” Pan murmured. “I was stupid to think of that. I’m just a gobling, I’ll… just feed the rest. At least they seem happier with me here.” Not that many of them gave him more than a few words.

  “You are a fool, Pan.” The growl was short and abrupt, there. Pan’s head shot up, hearing the Great Dragon say his name. “Most Lesser Folk are worthless to me, but I am a force, an entity compared to you. Your life is as short to them as the elves are to me, yet you have already achieved your dream.”

  The dragon’s voice lowered, as if he had been slightly angered and now gained control again. “You have little time left, but the shorter the lamp, the brighter it must burn. It is up to you to decide if you are finished, and what your limits are. Not the crew, not Filo, not Sallus. Not even me.”

  Pan wisely chose not to correct the strange comparison Apex made, and just nodded. “Um… I don’t really see, but I’ll think about what you just said.”

  “Good. Do not try to speak to me again, I will be busy.”

  The voice faded, and Pan was left alone in the mess, legs swinging idly, and staring into the glittering color stream outside.

  “What my limits are…”

  A Message