The Etherspace Drive is a finicky device. It can’t be kicked in near a large gravity well, but for some reason magically-generated gravity don’t count. You don’t need to clear it by much to enter Etherspace, but tryin’ to get out… that takes more care. That’s why you usually don’t gotta worry about pirates on the way out, only on the way in, ‘cause the Drive wants you to jump in pretty far from your destination. Which means escorts gotta jump at the same time, but then the patrols might see the fight, so interstellar pirates don’t happen much. It’s the inter-system you gotta watch out for.

  – David Greyman, System Patrol (Retired)

  Once, Naven had asked Apex why he tolerated the subterfuge and stealth tactics, and if it offended his ego to stoop to such things.

  Apex had answered honestly, if not in the way Naven had expected.

  “You are referring to some measure of honor or chivalry. I am not a human, nor elf, nor whatever other species holds those ideals. I confront directly because I have no need for deception, but if I expect betrayal I have no reason to approach more cautiously. Your entire culture is based around a group of people that attacked me with no justification and murdered me using ancient magics. I see no need to presume a reasonable opponent.”

  The human hadn’t brought up the subject since, and Apex was pretty certain he was observing his tactics. So long as the drug cartel was the one being targeted, the former Navy man wouldn’t be a problem. Afterwards… he would deal with it then.

  For now, Naven had proven very useful in a number of matters relating to space combat. After the repairs and minor refit at Thistlerock, he’d suggested – and Sallus had agreed – that it might be best to lay low in space for a week, until the increased patrols became more routine and were less on edge than before. A bored escort would be much easier to overpower, especially if a new tactic was used.

  It had actually been nine days, not just one week. Apex had refined his spells, invented new ones, and practiced coordination and tactics. Naven, at first reluctant, had apparently suffered a change of heart and now drilled in different scenarios for Apex to consider and plan for, not to mention putting some effort into training the crew of mixed-enthusiasm cultists into something resembling an actual starship crew.

  Only so much could be done in nine days, but it was a notable improvement over the chaos that Apex had observed in the days leading up to the training. Naven claimed that he wasn’t qualified to do crew training, but having even one person who knew the ins and outs of shipboard life made a remarkable difference. In the process, he’d also become something of a popular figure amongst the crew. Apex wasn’t sure how the man was taking it, being so well-regarded amongst people that were technically his enemies.

  Not Apex’s problem now. The confusion of the Lesser Folk living inside him was interesting as a way to pass the time while watching, but ultimately it was a distraction from his goal. The dragon was much more satisfied clamping his claws on the freighter, watching the crew spilling out from the bridge. His attack upon entry had been swift and decisive, disabling the three escorts almost immediately, just before the freighter had jumped out of Etherspace moments after the escorts had arrived.

  Sallus had acquired a plasma drill used for mining and attached it to his tail. This wasn’t a modification that would normally work well – the wiring to control it and the sensors to understand its position would have been impossible for someone handling the weapon on the ship to control, not without major rewiring and reconstruction.

  All Sallus had done was run a mana conduit through, and that had been enough. With the draconic ship so resembling his own body, Apex had learned how to activate the drill in short spurts, and it was now part of his repertoire of attacks. It was not designed as a weapon, but Naven had mentioned they’d been used in emergencies by something he called ‘tacticals’ in the past.

  “Reactor is still running. Give her a little push, Apex. I’ll make sure the lights stay on.” Sallus gave her report with her usual efficiency.

  The elf had moved to the captured ship after the attack, using a pressure suit now that Apex had forcefully depressurized the hull. The dragon didn’t respond, locking his claws in place and turning on his thrusters instead. The greater mass was harder to move, but he didn’t need a 10 G burn. He just needed enough thrust to look like an incoming freighter.

  “Take a look around, Apex. Doesn’t this seem a little too easy?”

  Naven broke into the channel with some worry, and Apex almost told him to shut up. The thing that made him pause was how correct the man was. The interception and claiming the freighter had gone smoothly, despite being their first live operation. That in itself wasn’t a warning sign, but as he accelerated toward the target – a space station in orbit around one of the moons of a nearby gas giant – the dragon couldn’t help but notice the problem.

  “Where are all the patrols and security?” Apex wondered aloud. Well, into the radio band at least.

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  He’d been preoccupied getting the right grip on the freighter and hadn’t noticed. Sallus didn’t seem to realize that just grabbing the hull of these ships wouldn’t necessarily work, but this was where Apex had thought ahead, and one reason he and Naven had thought up this strategy together. His study of the ships at the foundry had been enlightening, even for the brief hour he’d gotten to look at how the starships of this time were designed. He now knew where the stress points and supports for most designs lay, at least in the abstract sense. Military vessels were likely much different, but he’d deal with that another way.

  What concerned him right now was the lack of presence in the system. The station was on sensors, and one small cutter hugging the orbit of the moon hosting the station, but nothing else. Even if there were one or two ships on patrol on the other side of the planet, or otherwise hidden in system, that seemed a light amount to be protecting this place. The concern of a trap edged into his mind.

  “Do you think this might be a trap?” Naven’s voice echoed the dragon’s thoughts.

  “Mmm… possibly.” Apex growled that thought, but without too much worry. His cloaking abilities were, if anything, even better than before. He highly doubted that this cartel could have figured out a way around his stealth with barely more than a week, and they hadn’t picked up any new crew members to leak their plans. “Do you believe they waited for us?”

  The Navy man made a small and thoughtful hmm over the transmission. “Unlikely. It’s been so long, that would be incredibly wasteful to hide enough firepower to threaten you here. They know you can take most of their ships in a fight, and they have no idea of your weaknesses.”

  “Cartels also operate on money.” Sallus added her thoughts in now. “They have to justify the tremendous cost of putting ships that could be hauling product out here. They have more combat-ready ships, but I can’t imagine they have enough to just hide them in a random system.”

  It wasn’t entirely random, Apex realized. But it was still one of a dozen or more options, so what Sallus had said made sense. This was unlikely to be an ambush, they didn’t have the resources.

  But that did not mean it wasn’t a trap.

  “Secondary plan then,” Apex suggested. “Since there are no defenders, I will build up speed on the freighter and just let it collide with the station. We will leave well before it nears the target.”

  “They’ll probably have some cannons meant to shoot down meteors, but I doubt they’d have anything large enough to completely avoid incoming damage. If you get enough speed, you’ll do some severe destruction to the station anyway.” Naven opined mildly. He was the one who chose this target, as it would have the least chance of innocent casualties. Apex was fine with that, but worried that it would make them predictable if their pattern of avoiding too many casualties was known. That would limit where they could attack, and when.

  “If we’re doing that, keep accelerating for now. I will see if I can’t siphon some of the fuel from the freighter to our tanks and top you off.” Sallus suggested. “Get Gertrude in a suit and down here with two more, she can sort through the cargo for anything small enough to load by hand. Might as well get something useful out of this.”

  Apex fell silent as he let the crew do their work. The greatest dragon of the land, reduced to robbing criminals and harassing spaceports. It was not a pleasant idea to think about, but he quieted his annoyance. Very soon he would be moving toward his first target, and he was confident that Sallus was right.

  One of the thirteen heroes was involved in this somehow.

  It hadn’t been hard to figure out after some thought. Apex could sense the fragment of his essence nearby – for a certain definition of nearby – and he could sense the refined product that was used to make kaleidoscope and its derivatives. Once processed, the traces were too minute to detect, but it was obvious after he’d mentally compared what he had felt.

  It was Pan who had provided the link he needed. The signs of his disease, and the feeling that Apex got from the resources smugglers would bring in… they had similar tells. Dragon magic, somehow distilled in a way that the Lesser Folk could use. That is why the drugs were so potent, so enticing. They allowed the user to touch a part of something that was denied by their very nature. A hint of his own power, stripped down and diluted but present.

  The reminder of it made his insides burn with emotional rage. He quietly tucked that part away, knowing it would be of little use now. He needed a clear mind. Using that, he could almost sense the missing fragment of himself. The stolen power was still light years away, but his sense of connection with his own Essence transcended the normal speed limit of the universe, just as Etherspace did. When they had traveled to the shattered system to train, he had felt it more clearly.

  Closer, then. Closer than before, and soon he would be close enough to have a clear direction, instead of the vague sensation of ‘that way’ he now had.

  “Apex, I think this is fast enough. We’re coming aboard. I’ll set another objective and we’ll hit another system before we move to the next stage.”

  Sallus brought the dragon out of his thoughts. Apex sent an affirmative note, then waited for the pressure-suited crew to return to his body. He checked and rechecked the stealth spell he’d been using to make himself blend in with the freighter’s signature, then considered how best to detach. He had to be careful, lest he accidentally nudge the improvised missile off course.

  With a light release, the dragon ship cut his thrust and eased his grip off of the freighter. If he was going to do things like this, he really should get magnetic or gravity clamps. The improvised attempt seemed to work fine, and with a slow and steady pulse of his maneuvering jets, Apex parted ways with the freighter heading toward the doomed station.

  “Let’s see if the others are as suspicious,” Apex growled as Sallus set in some coordinates.

  As the dragon turned about and vanished into Etherspace, another ship powered up from its near-hibernation. Although stealth of the type Apex used was impossible with modern technology, there were methods to remain undetected. The power profile of this tiny starship was almost invisible, easily fading into the background noise of the system’s normal traffic.

  Without bothering to warn the station of the incoming threat, the sleek, arrow-shaped starship lifted off from the outermost moon of the gas giant, and vanished into another hole in space, bolting through the Ether to a much different destination.