The Great Hall of the Terra Imperial Academy smelled like a cathedral and a starship engine had a baby. It was a thick and cloying mix of frankincense and ozone that stuck to the back of the throat. Riven Holt stood dead center in the nave and tried very hard to look like a holy warrior. He felt more like a kid from the frontier in a suit that chafed in places he didn’t know he had.

  He stared at the obsidian altar five hundred meters away. The ceiling above him was high enough to have its own weather patterns thanks to centuries of sponsorship money from the High Houses. Stone gargoyles shaped like dragons glared down from the rafters with judgmental eyes. Riven glared back. They looked expensive. Everything here looked expensive. The people around him made damn sure he knew it.

  Riven shifted his weight and was careful not to scuff the polished floor. He held his hand strictly to his side while his fingers drummed a nervous rhythm on his thigh. Technically he was the valedictorian of the 409th flight class. He possessed the highest marks in orbital mechanics and the fastest reaction times in zero-G. His psychic resistance score had confused the instructors enough that they made him take the test three times.

  He was the deadliest person in the room on paper. In practice he was a statistical error that had made its way through a system designed to stop people like him from existing.

  He glanced to his left.

  Dorian Vane stood there. It was the Dorian Vane of the Great House of Vane. He looked as if someone had dipped him in liquid money. The aristocrat wore ceremonial armor that probably cost more than Riven’s entire home colony. The breastplate was inlaid with gold filigree and the pauldrons were shaped like roaring dragon heads. It was ridiculous. The suit wasn't vacuum-sealed and it wouldn't stop a kinetic round. If Dorian tried to sit in a fighter cockpit he would probably puncture the life support.

  Dorian wouldn’t care though. He would probably order a custom cockpit to accommodate his ego. Or he would just go home and police the surrounding area for the morale of the people while the real soldiers died in the dark.

  Dorian caught Riven looking and offered a sneer in response.

  It was pleasant to see that some things never changed. Dorian had spent four years sabotaging Riven’s equipment and paying off the instructors to lower Riven’s grades. He made fun of Riven’s background at every mess hall dinner. But none of that changed the fact that Riven was top of the class and Dorian was second best.

  Riven looked forward again and suppressed the urge to sigh. His own flight suit was standard-issue grey. He had cleaned and pressed it last night for the ceremony but it remained synthetic and thin. It screamed "government property" to anyone who looked. He didn’t have a family crest to emboss on his chest like the rest of the people in the hall. He was dust born. He came from the dirt of a mining world and was treated as such his entire life.

  The ground beneath them shuddered. A deep thrumming sound vibrated through the floor plates and up into Riven’s boots. It rattled his teeth. It was the only part of the ceremony that actually impressed him. The rest so far had been soliloquies from priests and instructors celebrating their advancement into the true world.

  The massive blast doors at the far end of the hall began to grind open. They could have opened silently but the academy had a taste for that self-important ambiance that rich people seemed to love. Sunlight flooded the gloom. It was blinding and harsh against the candlelight.

  "Here we go," Riven muttered under his breath. "Try not to look tasty."

  The dragons had arrived.

  They seemed to glide over the floor as they moved in. In reality they drifted slightly over the ground. Their movements ignored gravity in a way that made Riven’s stomach do a slow roll. It had been twelve years since he was this close to a dragon in person. A Lancer had saved his hometown from the Ravagers back then. Most of what he had seen around Terra was noble beasts engraved into stone and decorated on stained-glass windows.

  Nothing could truly capture the glory of seeing a dragon in person.

  They were the apex predators of the void. These were organisms who had evolved for the crush of black holes and the silence of deep space. Even on a planet and under the effect of gravity they moved with an ephemeral grace.

  The first to enter was a massive Crimson Scale. Its body was covered in thick and jagged armor that refracted the spotlights into confusing rainbows. A Drakeon candidate near the front stepped forward. He was a guy with scales on his neck and a pedigree longer than his arm. The Crimson dragon lowered its head and a psychic hum filled the air like a choir holding a single and perfect note.

  The Drakeon bowed. The dragon touched its snout to the boy’s forehead. The crowd floating in the stadium seats in the air gasped in reverence.

  Riven just watched.

  Must be nice, he thought. Being chosen because your great-grandfather married a lizard.

  He adjusted his stance and checked his posture. He was good. He knew he was good. But looking around at the peacocks standing in order around him brought a sinking feeling to his gut. Being "good" was about the least interesting thing you could be in the Resonant Concordance.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The selection proceeded despite Riven’s building stress. It moved with the efficiency of a factory line draped in silk and gold. Riven watched as the candidates dwindled. The massive Golden Scale walked through the gate. It was a beast that looked like it had been carved out of a supernova. It walked straight towards Riven and then right past him towards Dorian.

  Dorian didn’t bow like they had instructed. Instead he fell to his knees with a practiced fluidity. It suggested he had been rehearsing this moment in front of a mirror since he was six. A humming wave of warmth washed over Riven ten meters away as the dragon flared its psychic aura. The crowd above cheered at Dorian’s passion.

  Riven knew he would be kicked out for daring to disrespect such an ancient tradition. It was incredible what money could do for one in this world.

  Of course, Riven thought. He fought the urge to roll his eyes. Gold for the golden boy. I bet they will look great on the recruitment posters.

  Then the Golden Scale moved on. Dorian trailed behind it like an obedient pet. He cast one last triumphant smirk in Riven’s direction as he passed.

  "I heard dust born thrive on Logistic Class Cruisers," Dorian muttered just loud enough for Riven to hear. "Straight to the waste department where they belong."

  Riven ignored him much to Dorian’s annoyance. Riven had long grown tired of these games over the past four years. He was much more focused on the math.

  There were forty candidates left. There were maybe six dragons remaining in the staging area. The probability curves were collapsing rapidly. They pointed towards Dorian’s suggested career in waste management.

  He stiffened his spine. Don’t slouch. Don’t look desperate. Dragons smell desperation. Or maybe that was dogs. Riven wasn’t sure but he held his breath anyway.

  Five more dragons passed out of the gateway. Five more times they drifted past Riven. He clenched his hands until his knuckles turned white. The four years in the academy of blood and sweat and tears had to amount to something. The effort that he had put in to even get to the Academy from his planet could not be for nothing. The discrimination and the hardship could not end here.

  He needed to be chosen. He had worked too damn hard to be forgotten.

  Was it truly because he was a dust born that the dragons were passing him by? Did the Resonance truly care about bank accounts and bloodlines?

  Then the light in the massive doorway dimmed.

  Something absorbed the light. A shadow detached itself from the glare and floated into the hall. It was smaller than the others. It was perhaps only the size of an Old Terran elephant but its presence was magnetic. Its scales were a matte and inky black that swallowed the stadium lights. There was no shimmer. There was no ornamentation. There was no vanity involved in the creature that walked through the gate.

  Instead of drifting like the others, it walked on the ground with a predatory efficiency that made the other dragons look like parade floats. Its wings were folded tight against a sleek and engineered torso.

  The crowd murmured above Riven.

  "Low Blood," someone whispered loud enough to ripple through the air like a curse.

  Just as all humans were not made equal it appeared dragons were in the same boat. Some were psychic masters able to delicately paint with their mind and connect vast networks that allowed the rest of the Concordance to live peacefully.

  And others like the one before him were built for combat. Low Blood dragons were said to have less concentrated blood and therefore were less psychically powerful. That didn’t seem to matter as the lizard moved silently. It moved in a straight line and cut through the incense smoke like a kinetic round. It bypassed the remaining Drakeons and humans without a glance.

  It stopped directly in front of Riven.

  The temperature in Riven’s immediate vicinity seemed to drop ten degrees. The silence around the creature was absolute. Riven looked up and up until he was staring into eyes that were like pools of liquid silver. There were no pupils. It was just an endless and shifting metallic ocean.

  In that moment Riven didn’t bow. He was too paralyzed by the strange geometry of the creature in front of him to remember the protocol. He just stood there. He prayed to the church that he hadn’t prayed to since he was twelve that the living connection to the Resonance in front of him would choose him.

  And then the world tilted.

  A pressure cold and sudden expanded inside his skull. It was like a migraine with an attitude but without the pain. The background noise of the hall vanished. The murmurs and the stage lights and his own heartbeat faded into nothing.

  You are quiet, the feminine voice said.

  It wasn’t spoken in words per se. It felt more like a printing press activating all at once inside his brain. It was like a sentence he had memorized years ago but had forgotten until just now.

  Riven blinked. He tried to prevent his mental shields from flaring up.

  "I... I am disciplined," he managed to say aloud. His voice sounded thin and pathetic in the cavernous hall.

  The dragon lowered its head until its snout was inches from his face. Riven could smell the scent of ozone and cold iron coming off its skin.

  The others here are loud, the voice pushed again through the mental barricades. They are screaming that they want. They want. They want. They scream with pride and pedigree. It is... exhausting.

  Riven stared into the silver eyes. For a moment he forgot about the crowd. He forgot about Dorian. He felt a strange sensation. It was not the warm and fuzzy embrace the priests talked about. It was something sharper. It was like a plug finding a socket. It was clinical and invasive but terrifyingly clear. It felt like someone had turned his thinking from low resolution to high definition in the span of a second.

  I do not need a worshipper or beggar, the dragon said. The thought carried a weight of tiredness with it. I need a partner and a pilot. I need someone who can see the target and ensure we both survive.

  Riven could swear the silver blank eyes were scanning him. Riven felt a probe rifling through his mind. It dug deeper and deeper. It was checking his school memories. It checked his practical exam results. It checked his spatial awareness like a mechanic checking an engine.

  You will do.

  The dragon extended its neck. It didn’t touch his forehead in a blessing as was customary. Instead it turned slightly and exposed the heavy plating of its shoulder and waited.

  I am Astrix, she said. We are leaving. The incense is giving me a headache.

  Riven stood frozen for a nanosecond. He had expected glory for graduating top of his class. He expected to get a dragon and a cushy job as a Terran Lancer patrolling peacefully and sleeping deeply.

  Instead he was barely chosen by a Low Blood dragon. But even a Low Blood dragon was better off than any noble here in his opinion. He was a Lancer. He was something other than dust.

  A grin cracked his face. It was sharp and genuine. It was the first one in a very long time.

  "I’m Riven," he whispered. He stepped forward to place his hand on the warm scales. "And yeah... it smells terrible in here.”