How we think the fight will go

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It was so good to fly Ramoth again. Lessa’s dragon, the largest on Pern, flew easily into the blue, sun glinting off its golden scales.She left the bickering Master Crafters and Hold Lords below. Left behind negotiations for the dissemination of world changing knowledge from Avias’s databanks. Knowledge made bittersweet with Robinton’s passing. A short flight to the Yokohama, in orbit above Pern, to double check the readings. Making sure the Red Star was truly diverted and no longer a threat. But it made her feel young again. Fixing the ship in her mind’s eye, she lets Ramoth know where to go, and they jump through the nothingness in between. It sets a freezing weight on her chest, but almost instantly they appear among the stars. Near the ancient survey ship. Her enormous wings useless in space, Ramoth waits for Lessa to fix a point on the ship for her to jump to. Before she can, a strange blur of light catches Lessa’s eye. Like a bright white circle, pitch black as the center. Suddenly it is upon them and, before either can react, it sweeps over. Pulling them into its grasp and a blinding, twisting light. — Everything Mustang thought true, everything she trusted about Darrow, was a lie. Not Gold, but Red. Not fighting for her family, but for some romantic notion of freedom. Twisted by carvers to assume a role in some greater plot. Every inch of her hates him, yet she cannot shake his words: “What do you live for?” Her life had been war, intrigue and a desperate grasping for enough power to keep her family and friends safe. Was that all there was? Power? Was it enough to be powerful if the power was wrought on the backs of billions who suffer? Alone, she pilots the small shuttle. With no Blue’s digital sync, she flies manually. Barely thinking of her trajectory or destination. Lost in dark thoughts, a shrill alarm yanks her back. There is a massive gravitational anomaly nearby. So massive, the ship’s sensors believe she’s about to impact a moon-sized object. Perplexed, she sees nothing amiss in the space around her. Then, with a slow drip like melting glass, the light from a patch of stars just to starboard distorts. Gaining pace, the patch enlarges, like a blister of stars about to burst. Points of starlight stream from the center to the edge. A bubble of super-dense gravity warping the light of stars behind it. Recognition knifes her; it’s a wormhole. Before Mustang can throw the ship’s engines into evasive maneuvers, it winks from existence, leaving something behind. A shape she knows. From a dream. Dragon. And as in her dream, this one also bears a rider. Octavia’s master carvers must have created the beast, made it able to warp through space. They can create horrors like the glass insect Oracles, so who knows what they’re capable of. — Ramoth does not know where they are and Lessa can feel her unease. The stars here are utterly strange. Worse, neither can see the Red Star anywhere. The only object they recognize is some kind of small spaceship, very different in design from the almost-derelict ships orbiting Pern. Initially moving past and away, Lessa feels a shiver of dread when it turns toward them. She quickly tamps it down, prepared to face this threat head on. As always. — Regardless of the creature’s origin, Mustang looks on it with scorn. Rail guns chew through leechCraft and torchShips like paper, so this beast will be laughably easy prey. Even with the single gun her small shuttle possesses. With quick precision, she feeds in target acquisition data. — Though she has no experience of guns, Lessa still feels the threat in her bones. Despite her stubborn urge to fight, she urges Ramoth to go between and return home. Too late. The front of the ship spits fire and with a contorting twist Ramoth tries to dodge but sudden pain rips into her dragon’s side. The wound is small compared to Ramoth’s immense size, but through their psychic link Lessa can feel the pain as well as the horrible sensation of blood freezing on Ramoth’s scales, sealing the wound. Lessa does not know who means them harm, or for what reason, but she’ll be damned if they’ll harm her dragon any further. “Ramoth, rake its engines. We can’t maneuver in space, so let’s make sure they can’t either.” She feels Ramoth’s pleasure at the command and, fixing the rear of the craft in her mind, they jump. Through the freezing nothingness and out the other side, appearing instantly at the rear of the craft. Lessa’s dragon reaches with its massive claws, each half the size of the ship itself, and angrily tears at this thing that dared threaten her master. — A horrible screeching of metal tearing from the back of her shuttle tells Mustang exactly were the woman and her dragon are. She’d been coming around to bring her rail gun to bear when they seemed to disappear. The shuttle begins to tumble lazily, unresponsive to her controls. Only backup life support power remaining. She cannot aim her rail gun. Her ship is useless, its lone fang pulled. No matter. If she cannot fight with her ship, she will become one herself. — Meaning to end the fight in one fell swoop, Lessa fixes a new location in her mind and commands Ramoth to go between again. Now in front of the bridge, the dragon’s talons reach out to grasp and hold them to the ship. Ramoth’s great jaws open, ready to crush glass and steel along with whatever pilot this thing may have. — As Mustang boarded the shuttle, she spied a smaller than usual starShell. This variant of the usual assault spec allows it to be donned by a single person, though its armaments are weaker and its power plant lasts only a short while. The flexible shell allows Mustang to climb into it quickly, and jettison herself from the shuttle. Activating the built-in gravBoots, she carves a line around the side and straight at the dragon. — Instead of whoever wants them dead, all Lessa and Ramoth see is a dim cockpit with an empty pilot’s chair. Before they can react, a dark shape slams into Lessa, knocking her from Ramoth. Spinning, Lessa and Mustang careen into open space. — The suit’s small power plant has not yet charged the pulseCannon on her right arm, so Mustang simply sweeps the pilot from her dragon. Steel arms tight around the fabric spacesuit, Mustang comes face to face with Lessa. She’s surprised at how small the dragon rider is, almost childlike. But her eyes tell of a life filled with hard decisions and bitterly won respect. The visor of this starShell variant is transparent, so Mustang offers a nod. Acknowledgment for the woman’s honor, before beginning to wring the life from her. — Head ringing from the impact, Lessa feels a titanic force about her chest. It crushes the air from her lungs as she feels the dull crackle of ribs breaking. Sharpening her mind, ignoring the blackness clawing at her, she focuses every ounce of her power on the face inches from her own. She can see it’s a woman now: gold skin, gold hair, gold eyes. So young, yet so full of wrath and fear. Like she once was. Nonetheless, this woman would injure dear Ramoth and is about to suffocate her, so Lessa sets herself to forcing her way into Mustang’s mind. It is unbelievably strong, more rigidly controlled than any she’s encountered. But Lessa has had a lifetime to hone the power in her blood. A lifetime fighting for everything she has, wielding her mind with subtle cunning and brute power alike. Once inside, forcing the arms to relax is simple. Her release is sudden and Lessa draws an agonizing breath of air against the pain in her chest. Pushing off Mustang, they tumble in opposite directions before Lessa feels Ramoth’s claws around her. With shaking hands, Lessa clambers up her dragon’s forelimb and back into her saddle. Relying on Ramoth’s extraordinarily keen eyesight to pick out Mustang’s dark form, Lessa commands her dragon to go between. Close enough to attack. After an instant of snapping cold, they loom before Mustang. Enormous and gold and terrible. Ramoth’s massive claw snaps out to grasp Mustang. Titanic strength crushing. Expecting a rapid crumpling, both the dragon and Lessa are surprised when the dark armor gives not at all. — Looking at each other again, they cannot speak through the vacuum of space. But Mustang has ferocity enough to make it plain on her features. Teeth bared, eyes wild, she raises her arm to point her now charged pulseCannon right at Lessa’s face. Mustang sees puzzlement flit for an instant across through her opponent’s eyes, as if somehow she doesn’t recognize the maw of a pulseCannon. Then realization dawns, chased by terror. Too late. Her arm does not even twitch as the blast erupts. — Ramoth feels alarm bleed through from Lessa, just as a searing light begins to bloom. Quicker than thought, Ramoth goes between. The torn engines fill their view. Ramoth’s anger as she attacked them fixed this location in her mind and made it possible for her to jump without Lessa guiding her. — With purple splashes across her vision, the light fades. The grip around her disappeared the instant she fired, so Mustang is not surprised to find the dragon and Lessa no longer before her. Turning, she looks back at her ship and spies them again near the engines. Her face blanches as she takes in their ruined state and the strength required to rend them so badly. That dragon is a carved nightmare indeed, and the rider clever to have disabled her so quickly. Her shuttle is useless; regardless of her battle with the dragon she is stranded. Helplessness takes her. The weight of all their fighting, all the deaths. For nothing. In that moment, Mustang thinks she finally understands Darrow. Those deaths. All that loss. It drives him on. The more it piles about his shoulders, the greater his inertia. He cannot stop, doing so robs every death of meaning. She remembers him, sobbing in his bed after waking from the battle on Mars. His first reaction not exultation, or excitement at new glories, but crushing grief for friends lost, lives ruined. Even those he didn’t know. Even Greys and Obsidians. Even Pinks and Oranges. She is trapped. Caught between love, her monstrous father and thousands of years of indoctrination. Such chains of the soul are not easily broken. Rising from her gut, frustration and anger sink their own claws into her. In that moment she is grateful for the destroyed engines. Happy to be marooned in the void by the dragon and its rider. At least here she has a target for her rage. Other than those she loves. So she opens up with her pulseCannon and screams her throat bloody at an uncaring universe. Bolt after bolt fly, draining almost all the power from the small suits reactor. — Hate and anger and grief pour from the dark figure before Lessa. Coming in tsunamis that crash into her mind, leaving her reeling and almost too slow to avoid the fusillade sent against her. Sinking into her power, Lessa blends with Ramoth. Becoming a single entity. Huge, powerful; possessed of both immense animal strength and a preternatural mind. Together they flit between the clutching cold of the grey nothingness and back into black space. Dodging bolt after bolt. It has been only minutes since they were snatched away from Pern, but she can feel Ramoth’s breath beginning to fade. Her mighty lungs can provide only so much, especially with their rapid jumps. Needing to end it quickly, Lessa fixes Mustang in her mind. Tracking her purely by the seething aura of rage washing off her. This time, Ramoth’s claws do not grip and squeeze. They slash. Every ounce of her enormous power behind each blow. Jumping away, then back in to rend again and again before Mustang can bring her pulseCannon to bear. At first, the attacks merely scratch the armor, then one scores a deep furrow on on Mustang’s stomach. Focusing on that point, Lessa and Ramoth, in perfect unity, go between once more. And emerge, talons already ripping. — Mustang cannot keep the gorydamn dragon in her sights. It keeps teleporting away, just as she gets it lined up. With a rending clash, Mustang feels her stomach blossom into freezing agony. That last attack breached her suit. The pain she shrugs away, the blood loss is minor. But her air is bleeding out, faster than her scrubbers can replenish it. Already it grows thin. The beast is massive, and stronger than should be possible. It may be carved into a form designed to combat starShell suits, terrible enough to survive in space and with that impossible ability to teleport, but Mustang was bred for war. For killing. Her mind more brilliant than any graduate of the Midnight School, her body the product of thousands of years of selection and enhancement. She will not let some bitch and her animal lay a Gold of House Augustus low. After the last attack that breached her armor, Mustang kicks away. Giving herself enough velocity to open 20 or so meters between her and the dragon, and placing herself between them and the shuttle. Without pausing to aim, her single microShot missile shoots from a launcher under her left wrist. It breaks open 10 meters from Lessa and Ramoth like a flower, birthing fire and death. At that same moment, Mustang trips the eject on her suit and it peels apart like a fruit, laying her bare to vacuum. Her training has prepared her for this, her lungs are already empty as she kicks off towards her shuttle. Her razor, once stowed around her arm under her armor, now coils free. — Lessa’s eyes widen as the sheet of fire suddenly appears in front of her, coming fast to envelop them. Forced to act without thinking, they go between and appear at the nearest place most familiar to Ramoth. The ship’s engines. The biting cold of the between is instantly replaced with a hot agony. A woman floats naked in space, her skin shining gold like Ramoth’s scales. A long, whip-like weapon snakes from her hand and twists around Lessa’s neck, its terrible edge drawing blood that freezes a bright red smile around her neck. — They returned exactly where Mustang thought they would, forced into panic by her microMissile screen. *That whore Octavia should have done better than some carved freak show if she wanted my head,* Mustang thinks as her thumb tenses on the razor’s switch. — “Ramoth! Jump!” Lessa desperately cries as she feels Mustang’s deadly intent. Just as the weapon begins cutting deeper into her neck, they go between. Into nothing. Into cold. Too much. Too long without air for Ramoth. Too many jumps. Too far from home, from F’lar. From F’lessan. Too cold. The grey is peaceful. Calm. It would be so easy to drift away. They see shadowy forms, a dragon and a man. Beckoning them. Guiding them. *No,* Lessa thinks. *No*! She will not go to Paradise River and a quiet afterlife. Her people need her now more than ever, too much remains undone. Pern is on the cusp of a great new age, and Lessa wants desperately to be there to see it. A vision of Landing forms in her mind. So clear, she can almost touch it. — Even Mustang’s Gold body can only last so long in space, and it is claiming her now. Her mind shutting down. Movements slowing. She is freezing solid. Her hand scrabbles at the access panel for the airlock. Soundlessly, one of her fingers snaps off and tumbles away. Desperately, she stabs the last of the access code with her frozen stubs. Somehow she’s inside the airlock, the door closing. But slowly. Agonizingly slowly. Slow enough for her to think again of Darrow’s last words to her. She wants to live for more than death. More than taking by force. She wants to live to build new worlds. Oxygen rushes in to wake her burning limbs. Half a fist clenches. Bloody red on gold, but strong.

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Predicted Winner: Mustang