There was a secret door.

  “I knew it!” I said, as the prophetess had led us to the back of the cave. She waved her hand, and a chunk of the wall glided inwards, revealing a brightly lit room. Commanding the area was an enormous banquet table filled with all manner of delicacies.

  “Some refreshments, before you go to challenge your destiny.”

  I was far too eager to get to the feasting part of this outing to worry about the smoke and mirrors of the handwaving. Probably just a proximity sensor, or she stepped on a hidden button, or a couple of granits were hiding behind the walls waiting to pull the doorway open as she approached. I also did not think about where the various meats would come from on this desolate rock. Never question a free meal.

  As I was chomping into a greasy miscellaneous-meat sandwich, we talked about the state of the universe. The prophetess was very interested in hearing news from outside of her remote system. She relished even the most mundane of tidbits we could give her. Strange really, you’d have thought she would have known everything already. Being a prophetess and all.

  Faithon did most of the talking, as she grilled him on ‘which fates had come to pass’. Baltrax silently picked at a vegetable dish, and Felix ate a bowl that looked suspiciously like deep-fried insects. I left Faithon to it as I worked my way up and down the table, but my appetite was nothing compared to Niva's. Being frozen in space for the Light knows how long can do wonders for an appetite, and she tried everything.

  Turns out dragons are the perfect omnivores. I swear she must have eaten more than her body weight by the time we were done, declaring each and every dish her new favourite. Despite all the food, she didn’t look any different when we left than when we had arrived.

  We didn’t see any more of the prophetess’s subterranean home. We were allowed to finish our meal, but it wasn’t long before the prophetess declared that more visitors were expected, and it was time for us to leave.

  And then we found ourselves back on the Dragon Nova heading out into space.

  Despite being quiet since her vision, Baltrax was again fully in command. She had retaken my seat and had brought her homeworld, Tauros, up on the holographic display, zooming in on the second planet of an unremarkable small orange star. The graphic showed a world that was half ocean and half a dark, sterile landmass, all that remained from a global firestorm, which the stories said was inflicted by a flight of interstellar dragons.

  “Sorry, girl,” I said, sitting at a console at the back of the bridge. It was some sort of communications station, I think. “Time for more boring maths talk with Felix.” I rubbed below her ears in consolidation.

  Numbers, Niva trilled in my mind. I like numbers!

  “That’s the spirit!” I said, then turned to Felix. “Don’t try to bore her too much.”

  Felix must have been feeling guilty, as he did not react to me at all.

  Niva put on a brave face as she trotted over. If I didn’t know better, I would have said she was looking forward to it. Then Felix started spewing strings of coordinates at her, and I tuned it all out to focus on something else.

  “So, how long since you’ve been back to Tauros?” I asked the captain, pulling my gaze from Felix and Niva.

  Faithon gave me another one of his looks.

  What? She might want to talk about it.

  For several seconds, there was no response, and I opened my mouth to ask a follow-up. “Why–”

  “6,000 years,” Baltrax said quietly.

  The bridge went quiet at her words, and even Felix stopped talking maths to listen.

  “I haven't been back for 6,000 years by standard Explendian reckoning.” Baltrax sighed, but at least she was talking. “There was nothing to go back to. The dragons scorched every living thing on the surface of the planet.”

  “Wow, how many dragons did it take to do that?”

  Baltrax ignored me and continued. “Billions died that day. We were barely even a spacefaring race when they came. No warning. No reason. And no quarter. Just death from the sky.” She was breathing hard, fists clenched, staring at the map of the Tauron system. “They killed everyone without mercy.” She gave a sidelong look at Niva.

  I stood, ready to rush my dragon's aid, but there was no fury in Baltrax's gaze, just a cold emptiness.

  “They were like gods to us, although they never accepted that title. They brought us into the universe. Gave us the technological advances to escape our solar system. They were our friends, our saviours.” Baltrax collapsed in her seat. “And then their plasma destroyed us.”

  She went quiet, and no one spoke.

  The silence on the bridge was too much, and I couldn’t let it go unasked.

  “How did you survive?”

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  For long moments, Baltrax was silent. Then she looked over at me, a sad smile touching her lips. “It was our first off-planet meeting with Explendia. I was a junior ambassador. It was the first time I’d left the planet. I was so excited to be part of the delegation to another world. A whole universe was out there, and I wanted to see it all. Hundreds of alien species, thousands of worlds. I was having the time of my life, until they told us about the dragons and that we could never go back.”

  “So you’ve never been back?” I asked.

  “We went back,” she replied. “We didn’t believe them. I refused to believe it until I saw it with my own eyes. We forced the Explendians to take us back home. I didn’t die the day the dragons destroyed my home, but when I saw the devastation caused by the plasma, we knew they had told the truth, and it was then that my life came to an end. I have just been a ghost ever since.”

  “What happened to the others from your party?” I wasn’t sure whether I should be asking her questions like this, but she seemed to want to talk, and that was healthy, right? I also desperately wanted to know what had happened.

  “We lost contact over the years.” She had not quite relaxed as she talked, but was no longer clenching her console with the same ferocity. But, as she said those words, she visibly slumped in her chair. “It was just too… I couldn’t.” She shook her head and took a deep breath. “I went my own way and never looked back. They would have died thousands of years ago. It’s too late now.”

  “They might not be,” I said. “You’re still here.”

  The only response to that question was a grunt.

  I waited a few moments, then started to say, “I…”

  Faithon put a hand on my shoulder and silenced me with a quick shake of his head. It seemed that was all we were getting out of Baltrax for now.

  My attention went back to Niva and Felix, who had resumed their low murmurs. Faithon joined them and, with nothing else to do, I approached too.

  Before I could say anything, their discussions were over, and Felix’s high-pitched voice rang out. “Captain! We have the coordinates. With your permission, we will engage Niva’s hyperspace travel.”

  Baltrax didn’t respond immediately.

  I shook my head at Felix. Some people just don’t have any awareness about them.

  Then suddenly, Baltrax stood. She straightened her back and looked over towards us, then focused on the dragon. “Niva,” she said. “Please, would you take me home?”

  “Are you sure we are in the right place?”

  The planet that hung in the viewscreen was most definitely not the desolate, scorched hunk of rock that we had seen on the viewscreen. Blue seas and green continents covered the surface, and whirling white clouds scattered around the globe. This was a planet full of life, not the dead place we had been led to believe it was.

  “Coordinates confirmed,” Felix said, his chirpy tone the same as always. “This is Tauros.”

  Faithon was on his feet. He had pulled up the star map for this system and zoomed in on the planet. The difference was stark. “When were the star maps for this sector last updated?”

  “As per protocol,” Felix said, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice. Maybe. “I refreshed the system database during our last stop at Explendia. The metadata shows this system has been surveyed within the last 4 cycles.”

  “That’s impossible!” Faithon cried. There was no way this growth had occurred in the last 4 years. “What is Explendia hiding?”

  The one thing, actually one of many things, that Explendia always prided itself on was accurate star maps. Information is key, their adverts would say. Rely on certainty! Never fly into the unknown with Explendia in your pocket. It was the whole reason why our deep space missions existed. They were constantly surveying everything in this sector of the galaxy and beyond to ensure their precious maps were accurate. It was what the station was famous for.

  The chances of them missing the evolution of a planet for thousands of years were… well, not very likely.

  “If your maps are up to date, Felix,” I couldn’t help myself, “then explain that!”

  Felix pondered this for all of 2 seconds. “Any anomalies detected in the star maps should be reported to the Cartography Guild on Explendia station. Protocol dictates we return there with new information as soon as we can. We should get a sizable reward.”

  I gawped at him. I’m not one for gawping usually, but this was a special occasion. “Are you totally insane?” I mean, he’s not one for the subtler side of what is happening around him, but even he had to have realised what had been going on. “They were trying to shoot us down last time we saw them. Do you have a death wish?”

  “They caught us in a tractor beam,” Felix responded with his usual annoying technical correctness. “They were not trying to ‘shoot us down’. I’m sure whatever misunderstanding we have can be sorted out.” He let himself glance at Niva as he said it. There was no way even he believed that could be true.

  But before I could press further, Faithon stopped me. “Stop your bickering, you two. What do the scans say?”

  Felix looked down at his console and started working furiously.

  Baltrax had been silent the whole time, staring at the viewscreen. After a few moments, when a response was not forthcoming from Felix, she barked, “Ensign, report! I want to know exactly what is on that planet, and I want to know now!”

  Felix started reading off a list. “Atmosphere is close to Terran standard. CO2 concentration is higher than pre-calamity but within tolerable limits. Marine life is abundant. Avian life is widespread. Terrestrial life is limited to insects, amphibians, small mammals and reptiles. This planet is inhabitable.”

  “No…” Baltrax breathed. “I saw it with my own eyes. Plasma scorched. Nothing could have survived, not even bacteria. Nothing could have survived…”

  “Readings suggest a firestorm catastrophe occurred several millennia ago, engulfing the entire planet.” Felix was in full professional mode, totally unaware of the impact his words were having on Baltrax. I would have stopped him, but a certain realisation was creeping in, and I wanted to hear him say it. “No isotopic evidence of any plasma signature in the atmosphere. The fire which devastated this planet was conventional in origin.”

  Not plasma meant no dragons. But what could have burnt an entire planet? Asteroid strikes were the only obvious answer I could think of, but the Tauron were technologically advanced enough to detect them decades away? Which left an answer that had to be less natural?

  And why had Explendia lied about it?

  “Settlement detected.”

  Felix’s last statement shocked us all. People were living down there? After her vision, Baltrax had said her people were alive, so we probably shouldn’t have been so surprised, but everything was mounting up so quickly.

  And it didn’t stop there.

  “Vessel detected,” was Felix’s next bombshell. “Explendian battleship signature. Coming directly towards us. We have 2 minutes until they are in range. Orders?”

  Baltrax did not pause. Her eyes hardened, and a cold fury that I recognised had always been bubbling beneath the surface throughout the last couple of years was released. “Evasive manoeuvres. Take us down to the planet. I want to talk to whoever is down there.”

  “Aye, aye, captain,” Felix said as we started to descend.