Dragonsapien by Jon Jacks

codes; we’ve let them know you’re wanting to meet
her.’
    ‘What if she
doesn’t want to meet me? It was over a year ago. Just a teenage
fling.’ Jake managed to hide his bitterness.
    ‘They just tried
to snatch you back there, didn’t they? She must still hold a candle
for you, kid.’
    ‘Really? It
seemed to me they were more likely out to try and turn me into a candle!’
    Rodgers shook
his head, took another slow, thoughtful drink of his whisky before
saying, ‘If they wanted to kill you, there wouldn’t have been much
we could have done to stop it.’
    He said it with
a sense of admiration for his enemies’ capabilities.
    ‘I reckon,’ he
continued, ‘they thought they were doing you a favour. I reckon
your girlfriend was worried we were going to use you as a hostage,
a bargaining chip.’
    ‘A hostage? Why
would Celly think that? Why would she care?’
    ‘Because she
knows we’re losing, knows we’re desperate. She knew we were coming
after you, but at the time she didn’t know why. Now she does.
She’ll–’
    One of the
fighter pilots screamed a garbled, static-mangled warning across
the intercom connection.
    ‘Incoming
bogeys, directly…gorilla…sandwiched–’
    The message
broke off as abruptly as it had interrupted them.
    Jake peered out
of the window, scanned the sky.
    One of the
fighter planes was angling and dropping away, flame licking across
its wings, enveloping or emanating from one of its engines. With a
lightning-like crack and sunburst of yellow light, it vanished,
becoming nothing more than falling, glinting slivers of metal
caught in the lights of the fighter that had been rushing to its
rescue.
    The executive
jet rocked and jolted as the force of the explosion hit it side
on.
    ‘How can they
bring down a jet?’ Jake yelled fearfully at Rodgers. ‘How can they
keep up with it?’
    ‘They’ve
captured weapons off our own troops. They’ve even got a couple of
submarines out at sea; armed with nukes too.’
    The directions
from the pilots coming over on the intercom rapidly went from
urgent to panicked.
    ‘Bogey
dope…closing…I can’t see them… down, down, I’m down!…no joy…
faded…no joy!’
    Rodgers listened
intensely, apprehensively.
    ‘They can’t lock
onto their targets. It’s just Drags out there,’ he said. ‘Bet you
those missile aren’t hitting anything,’ he added, drawing Jake’s
attention to the odd crump of a far off explosion.
    ‘Tumbleweed…threat…split…Christmas tree!’
    With a
thunderous ‘whoommphh!’ another fighter was transformed into a
whirling ball of flame, vanishing into the darkness as it fell
away. There was a sudden burst of light off to the other side of
their jet as one of the fighters turned on a number of
lights.
    In the light,
Jake caught the flash, the sparkle, of precious gems, passing at
what appeared to be unimaginable speed above and below the fighter.
The plane’s engines instantaneously erupted into flame. A few
seconds later, it exploded, a rolling fire that ever so briefly
swirled in the night sky.
    The intercom
went dead.
    ‘Damn! The other
fighter boy must be down too!’ Rodgers snarled worriedly, his face
creased with fear.
    A ridiculously
swift blur of glistening gemstones swept past the windows on either
side. It was instantly followed by hard, metallic clunks and
scraping on the hull and wings as the lozenges of steel netting
clashed against the windows.
    There was a loud
whirring, a clanking, a screaming from one of the engines as it
sucked in the netting, churning it around in its own innards until
everything was ripped apart. It exploded into flame with a jolting,
ear-bursting bang that drowned out the pained screeching of the
other wing’s engine as it, too, greedily devoured the
netting.
    When the second
engine burst into flame, it lit the passenger compartment up with a
flowing, scarlet glow.
    Rodgers turned
towards Jake, a surprisingly apologetic look on his
face.
    ‘Sorry kid,’