A sharp ringing alarm echoed down the corridor. A small group of men and women, armed only with handguns and a few primitive explosives ran with haste down the metallic floor of the laboratory, as three armed float-engine ships approached, mere leens away. The volume of the sirens increased, as did the fear that drove them with great speed towards the exit point that would ensure their survival. As the group rounded the last bend, a cold and sharp voice uttered: “Move no further, rebels.”

The noise of the approaching airships slowed to a low hum. The men froze, before slowly turning around to face their approaching doom.

“Put the drone down. It is not complete.”

A man stood near the back of the group, defiantly holding a wrapped baby closely to his chest. “I will not let you destroy this drone. I was part of the team who created it. I poured my heart and soul into making it the best of its kind. This drone is not merely my creation …it is my child.” His will was firm and unbreakable; the child would not suffer the fate that so many other failures had.

“You must disregard your personal feelings,” the voice called. The man who spoke stepped into view, a tall figure with scraggy long dark hair partially covering his bony face. He spoke in a matter of fact voice now. “The good of our civilisation is the only thing that is important. I cannot allow this drone to develop of its own identity. A unit of this type with a sense of self is dangerous to its masters. Now, surrender the drone to me unless you wish to surrender your lives.”

The rebels looked from side to side, glancing from one to the other with looks of uncertainty and despair. But the man who held the drone in his arms had the same fixed expression of determination.

“You will not take this drone. Not now, or even once all of your soulless creations have been destroyed.”

The man with the scraggy hair let out a long cold laugh. “Soulless”, he sniggered. “It is the very fact of having no soul that allows us to control… him.”

“Him?”

But the rebels’ puzzled expressions did not need to be answered with words, for they were answered with the bewilderment of what their eyes fell upon next. A man near the front of the group screamed from a mixture of surprise and pain as a laser beam ripped through his arm and the beast appeared.

This was no mere creature that could be tamed by the common man, nor a common biomonster created to carry out the functions of its master. Its huge orange and black wings spanned across the width of the passageway, its grey tail dragging across the floor as it swooped in for the kill. A drone rider could been seen upon the beast, bearing a laser gun and clad in a tight suit of almost stone like armour. The beast was undoubtedly a dragon.

“This is a what a truly completed combat organism should be like.”

The rebels had very little time to react. The man holding the rejected drone sped to the door, his arms wrapped tightly around the figure as a mother would hold a newborn infant. The dragon reared its head, ejecting an array of laser blasts that resulted in a blinding explosion in the form of a sphere of fire. The man covered his eyes, holding the child close to his chest so as for it to somehow avoid the intense heat waves of the blast. When he dared to raise his vision to the scene, his confidence was weakened for a moment as he saw almost half of his comrades lying strewn across the floor, their burning corpses smoking. However he suddenly regained his focus, and despite the despair that was now in his heart he was aided by a new unfounded energy, a thrust of movement that allowed him to reach the safety of the exit before the dark dragon transformed the remainder of the passage into flame.

The child was safe for the present.