DSC - Recce

I strolled across scorching concrete pavement of Seletar Air base, dragging along my luggage in tow. Usually, I’d be lounging about on the roof of my house on a warm afternoon like this, but apparently the government had... other plans. I nodded at the sleepy-looking guard in front of me, flashing the little ID card strapped to my forepaw to indicated that I was in fact, allowed into the base.

Skipping the usual formalities, I walked straight into hanger 4-A, where the brass tops were already waiting for me, along with one other dragon.

“You’re late.” The black dragon said, folding his arms. I snorted in reply, shaking my head. I wasn’t quite in the mood for making jokes, especially during my usual basking time. If anyone had some sort of reason to summon, considering what little use I even had to the military, I assumed that it was for something pretty important.

The man in front of me, of whom I recognised as a general, stepped in front of the two of us, triggering an automatic salute from the black dragon while I simply bowed, my quadruped stance disallowing me from following suit. I eyed the general, his multicam uniform creaseless as expected, though a little baggier than I’d expect of someone of that rank. He sported short, spiked hair and looked to be about in his forties,  with bags under his eyes as a clear indication of a lack of sleep.

“Gentlemen... dragons...” he said, correcting himself, “I assume you know why we’ve called you here today?”

“No.” The black one replied, almost haphazardly nonchalant.

“Well,” he said, holding up a letter, “We just intercepted this.”

“Explain and elaborate.” the black one replied again, folding his arms. I on the other hand cringed, spotting the small seal on the envelope. It was one of the DSC, they had sent us mail and it had just been intercepted by the government.

..again.

“Come now, don’t play stupid,” the general said, his voice taking on an ever-so subtle hint of danger, “We’re more than aware of the DSC, who’s in it, and what they’ve been sending to you since you joined it. I’ll admit: You guys are pretty hard to track, but we still can.”

The black dragon’s eyes widened ever-so slightly. His face was still that of an unreadable, stoic facade, but his eyes momentarily gave away that little spark of emotion.

“We’re not afraid to try you guys for treason as well, involving yourselves in secret societies like this... Especially after everything that’s happened, I’m pretty sure the rest of the country would be more than happy to see your heads roll if they knew where your affiliations.”

“Fine,” the black dragon snorted, “What do you want?”

“Ah, a smart one.” The general said with an artificial smile, folding his arms, “We’ve got this letter here, which has standing orders for all DSC members to meet up at their base in South Wales.”

“...and that is a concern to you how...?” the black dragon said again, frowning.

“Everything dragon-related is,” he replied, “Granted, clan meetings are normal and since it’s in the UK, this is the ang moh’s problem, but it’s unusual that they’d call on their foreign counterparts as well.”

“I see.” The black dragon replied curtly.

“So that’s where we’re concerned as well,” the general continued, “Whatever they’re planning, malevolent or not, we assume it’s big. It could potentially be an issue for us as well, be it an influx of new dragon refugees or some sort of uprising.”

“So you want us to go in and recce?” The black dragon said, stifling a yawn.

“Exactly. The other ASEAN countries couldn’t get a hold of their dragons since almost all of them left early, but with you slowpokes, we’ve managed to ‘recruit’ our inside agents just in the nick of time.” The general said.

“I see,” the black dragon said again, this time sounding a lot more bored, “I assume we’re leaving now, since you already made both of us pack.”

“My, my,” the general said sarcastically, “Aren’t you a sharp stick. There’s a plane waiting for you at fourteen-hundred hours, it’ll take you to the RSAF air base in Cazaux, France. From there, you’ll board a ‘practice’ flight over South Wales, where we’ll drop you in as close as we can to what we assume to be their base. The rest will be up to you.”

“‘Kay. Can.” The black dragon replied, rolling his eyes.

The general walked off, leaving Keane (or Tano’rath) and I inside the hangar with our baggage in tow. “Move.” Tano’rath said, giving me the look, “Breakfast and equipment indented already.”

-o.=.o-

0300 HOURS, SOMEWHERE OVER SOUTH WALES

The plane rumbled for the umpteenth time. I was getting fairly restless now, having been cooped up inside a cabin for a couple of hours now, but Tano’rath seemed to be fairly at ease, as if enjoying the lull in general activity. He didn’t sleep but instead spent most of his time tinkering with the magazine of his SAR21 rifle, taking his time to repeatedly load and unload the entire thing. I sighed, or at least, gave the draconic  equivalent of a sigh, shifting about in the harness I’d been wearing. Clothes had long since been a formality that I’d forced myself to go without for a few years now, and wearing just about anything made me somewhat uncomfortable.

The door to the cockpit creaked open, interrupting both Tano’rath and I from our thoughts as one of the pilots stepped through. “We’re coming over the LZ,” he said, “We can’t afford to go lower, so you guys are gonna have to make a high-altitude drop.”

“Acknowledged.” Tano’rath replied, nodding. The ramp at the back of the plane opened up, revealing the pitch black sky behind us, an occasional light or two from some building below interrupting the cloak of the night.

“Wait...” I croaked, feeling my throat strain, “High dr-op?”

“Thats why they made me to follow you.” Tano’rath said, “If not for your tiny wings, I could be sleeping in bunk right now.” Without any warning, Tano’rath pushed me out of the plane with both hands and jumped after me, his dark colouring allowing him to fade into the darkness.
I roared, kicking and thrashing about as I fell, knowing fully well that my wings would not support me in flight as much as regular dragons. Having been engineered in a lab, flight was one thing that my captors did not think of, and hence I could only do small glides without the support of any specialised equipment. As such, I was only able to handle low altitude jumps where I could glide to relative safety, which was clearly not happening right now.

Regardless, I flared my wings and hoped that I’d slow down enough to make it, unsure of how far I was from the ground, whether I was slowing down or whether I was even facing the right direction. In that moment, something else latched on to my back as well, prompting me to squirm about as the presence constricted the movements of my wings, preventing me from attempting to slow down.

My squirming earned me a hard knock to the back of my head, followed by shouting from Tano, who was yelling at me to keep still. Complying, Tano took the opportunity to spread his relatively larger wings, slowing us down considerably as I felt the jarring change in fall speeds. With the wind no longer screaming in my ears, I could hear Tano now, who was telling me something about letting me go closer to the ground.

“Get ready!” he said, “I’m going to let go, and the ground is very close. The land below should be clear. Don’t break anything.”

I roared in confirmation, readying myself for the freefall again.

“Go!” he shouted, releasing his grip on me, “I’ll join you later!”

In that instant, I was falling again, this time at a more controllable speed. Flaring my wings, I allowed them to catch some air as I felt the wind tug against my membranes, pulling them taut  as I made my descent. I didn’t know how long I was gliding for, but did not dare to turn as well, fearing that I might veer off course and land in some trees. I stuck out my paws blindly and braced myself for the landing, whenever it might come, again hoping that I wouldn’t smack into something.

The ground kissed my forepaws first as I hit it, causing me to roar in panic as my body flipped itself over, landing me hard on my back and rolling me several meters before I came to a stop. I groaned, rolling myself right side up as I spat grass out of my mouth, looking around for Keane. In the mean time, I slid my harness off and opened up my backpack, pawing around for my tactical light. I strapped the small light source to one of my horns and turned it on, swivelling my head around for any sign of Tano. The light did little to help see in the large field we were in, and deciding against moving off, I sat in the grass and waited for Keane.

A couple of minutes later, Keane eventually did show up, jogging over to me with his own flashlight in hand. “There’s a treeline over there,” he said, pointing behind him, “We’ll camp here. Tomorrow, We’ll try to reach the HQ.”

I nodded in return , hefting my pack as I got up, feeling a little sore from the landing. Still, I supposed that it was far better than being cooped up in a cage somewhere, so I kept my mouth shut and followed behind Keane, who was already started on a brisk pacing towards our campsite for the night.

Upon reaching the treeline, Keane and I tossed our bags against a tree and began systematically gathering twigs and leaves that we could find in the dark, arranging them into a pile before Keane lit everything up with a burst of fire. In turn, I help throw in a couple of larger bits of wood, hoping that they weren’t wet. In a few minutes, we had a steady fire going, which was a welcome sight in the cold night air. I huddled close to the fire as Keane went about heating a ration pack over the fire, before tearing the foil cover off and sticking his muzzle into some food.

A breeze blew by and I shivered, scooting even closer to the fire. It was times like these where I missed the tropical heat back in Singapore, and hoped that wherever the council was setting up, that it would be a lot warmer than out here.

“Some shit we’ve gotten ourselves into, hm?” Keane sighed, stuff a chunk of beef into his maw with a fork. “And if I get shot, I’m going to slap you to London.”

I nodded, looking him over with what I tried to pass off as a nonchalant expression. Keane however, took it otherwise, saying, “Right, you had no choice.” Before muttering a quick apology. I shook my head in turn, sighing again and laying my head on the dirt as I closed my eyes. I felt tired, cold and sore right now, and sleep was a welcome distraction from it all.

-o.=.o-

I awoke to Keane kicking me repeatedly in the side. I moaned, growled and stirred, shaking dew off my hide as Keane helped to strap my pack onto my harness.

“Get up. Zuo kang lo.” Keane said pointedly, almost dragging me along. Being somewhat half asleep still, I growled and tugged myself free of his grasp, shaking my head and giving my forepaws a few vanity licks before stumbling after Keane, who was already quite some distance ahead.

“Lazy joker.” Keane remarked, earning a sort of half-bark from me as I gave him my equivalent of ‘shut up’.

We trekked through the largely quiet forest for hours, encountering close to nothing but the occasional rabbit or two, or occasionally a deer. Here and there, Keane stopped to fly over the treeline and look around for the council base, allowing me a moment’s respite from the trek before we resumed it at Keane’s breakneck pace. A staunch pragmatist as always, Keane more or less did everything on the move, from eating to drinking to taking a break from walking by flying ahead and scouting the area. He really hadn’t changed since we first met each other as humans.

For me on the other hand, with my lack of hands and inability to fly on my own meant that either I had to stop to drink or snack, but the former was alleviated when Keane decided that it’d be good to hook up the hose from my water pack and stick in my maw, insisting that I kept that in my mouth to suck on when I was thirsty.

Otherwise, the trek was again relatively quiet and stayed that way, up to the point where we reached a small chain link fence. “Map.” Keane said. I kneeled down and allowed him to rummage through my already-messy pack, pulling out a plastic map of our surrounding area.

Keane surveyed the map with a careful eye, brushing a clawed hand through his mane as he studied it. The crickets chirped extra loud as I waited for Keane to arrive at his conclusion of our whereabouts, and when he finally looked up, he pointed left to a sign nearby on the fence that said ‘Brecon Beacon National Park, DO NOT ENTER’.

“Reached it already,” He said, tucking the map into his pocket, “Move.”

Keane was about to resume his breakneck pace once more but I stopped him instead, grabbing a leg with my tail.

“Wait.” I croaked, straining my throat again. Reaching up to his shoulder, I nipped the velcro Singapore flag attached to the sleeves of his upper arm off, before spitting it back out at him.

“Point taken.” Keane said, catching on.  He tore off the Singapore flag on the other side of his shirt and then helped me take mine off, storing them away in one of his magazine pouches before slinging his rifle over his back. With all sense of casualness, Keane drew his head back and loosed a torrent of flames along the metal fence. Following up with a kick, the smoldering metal gave way, creating a convenient hole for him to step through and resume his idea of a ‘slow trek’ to wherever we were headed.

I ran after him, again, hoping that he’d slow down. We powered on ahead through Brecon Beacons, weaving ourselves through the immensely thick, hilly forest, following the path to the council’s base. In fact, ‘path’ would have been a creative overstatement right now; the route that we were taking winded around so many trees and through so many bushes both uphill and downhill that the untrained eye might not catch the subtle signs left by other council members, be it a bush with a couple of upset leaves or a tree with claw marks on its trunk.

Eventually, we did near the council base’s supposed entrance, a little hidden cave entrance that lay under impossible amounts of vines and foliage. Catching the scent of other dragons in the cave, I was about to step out from the bushes and head right in when Keane grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and pulled me back in, wagging a finger at me.
“Might be another clan,” Keane muttered, taking a prone position amongst the bush and levelling his SAR21 rifle, watching the entrance, “Let’s wait a bit and make sure.”

I rolled my eyes and nodded. I understood Keane’s sudden hesitance at waltzing in; this was our first (and probably only) time we’d ever been to any of the other council bases, and we were generally unfamiliar with the area.

Our patience was rewarded shortly after by the appearance of a purple dragon, clothed in a bloodied lab coat with a sniper rifle slung over his back. He looked familiar, but my line of sight to him vanished with Keane nudging me aside to get a better glimpse of the purple dragon. Annoyed, I pushed back into Keane, head butting his head out of the way. The purple dragon stood at the entrance of the cave, rubbing his temples and sighing deeply. Keane pressed my muzzle aside with a hand and lean in closer to my side of the bush, leading to me pushing back again, trying to make out the purple dragon’s features.

The brief jostling lead into a full out struggle between the two of us, heads butting against one another as we waltzed against each other from the bush. “Move... ass...” I hissed, my muzzle already pressed flat against Keane’s. Keane growled in return, pushing back, using his one free hand to try and direct me away by grabbing one of my horns and pushing it. Eventually, we settled for a sort of compromise that involved both of us peeking through the foliage, our muzzle pressed awkwardly against one another as we gazed out from our hiding spot. The purple dragon was now gone, and I mentally sighed in irritation, having missed the chance to identify him.

Suddenly, something blunt bumped the back of my head. I froze while Keane spun around, flipping himself onto his back and levelling his rifle, pointing it at the figure looming above us.

“Fine day for a little make out session in the bush, no?” the figure said, smirking.

Keane swore in a couple of local dialects., directing the bulk of the insults to me.

“You guys must be the Singapore dragons, right?” the figure said, stretching out a hand, “Torkos, Torkos Arcflame. Welcome to the council.”