Something different this time and yes, I did finish it on time, just been too burnt out with work to post things. Yes, this was for October.

Story based off a D&D one-shot that my group did. Part II will be coming too, but it might be a bit delayed.

In this story, I am in the wrong reality, I have a nice dinner and someone gets stabbed.

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Snr Captain Tano’rath
Cmdr, DES Defiant

“I understand your misgivings with this, but the drive has to be tested, Captain,” Admiral Hector remarked, sighing, “And as you well know, your command style makes you the most suitable for this.”

I had to bite back a growl as I found myself dragging my claws across the tabletop, “This is a fair bit more in the risk department than I’d care to take, sir.”

“Yes, it’s more risk than I’d like to subject anyone to, but what needs to be done has to be done,” Hector replied, rubbing his forehead and snout, “Look, I won’t think any less of you if you refuse, but it’s really not a good look.”

“What, a Daranakaan refusing to walk into the unknown? I’d happily do it, Admiral, but I rather not drag the rest of the crew with me.” I replied flatly, “But I’m going to guess that there is no real choice here.”

Hector gave the slightest of nods before sighing again, “You’re not wrong, but this has been tested again and again. Besides, we all know how it was used to steal from us – it works.”

“For smaller things, not for a full ship, sir. I’ll believe it when I see it,” I retorted, “Skeleton crew, no more.”

“Denied, we need to see how it affects a full crew, Captain,” Hector replied, shaking his head, “But I can have the initial trials allow a reduced complement.”

“That’s all I’m getting, isn’t it?” I replied sourly, not bothering to hide it. I know this is on record, but if anything goes wrong, I want it on there, “Better than nothing, sir. We’ll put in at the Capital to have the drive installed. Is this replacing our existing propulsion, or nah?”

“Oh, fuck no!” Hector exclaimed, “Trans-Light works all the time, it’ll stay. Your forward storage will be converted into another engine room and your staff will be trained to run the lot.”

Not a surprise there. I nodded along, “Got it, I’ll brief the crew.”

“This is classified, Captain.” Hector replied as he wagged a finger, “Need to know basis only.”

“Admiral, with all due respect, this is my command. If I risk their lives, I’m telling them why.” I snapped, thumping my tail on the floor to emphasize my point, “It is unethical to do anything less.”

Hector glared at me for a while before he relented and nodded. “Fine, but they have to all sign the Secrets Act.”

“They have multiple times and haven’t let me down,” I replied flatly, “Duty first to crew.”

“I will leave it to your discretion, then,” Hector replied with another sigh – he clearly knew that this was how I would react. “I’ll look forward to reading your shakedown reports.”

“If we succeed, it’ll be a short one.” I replied with a shrug, “Expect my first set when the short jump tests are complete. Tano’rath out.”

“Do me a favour and come out in one piece. Your Clan likes you and I’ll never hear the end of it if you don’t die in glorious battle, Tano.” Hector replied with a half-chuckle, “May probability favour our success, Captain.”

“You mean my success, you’re not gonna be here!” I added with a half-smile as the channel closed.


The new wormhole drive was installed far faster than I expected, especially with how many power and coolant lines had to be run. I had the technicians train my technical staff and made sure that the bridge crew sat in on all the sessions. While I had hoped that the training phase would last a bit longer, it didn’t. Within a few weeks, my ship was back in space and doing short jumps.

The short distance trials went relatively smoothly, with us jumping between planets and the like – nothing special. The drive seemed to work fine mostly, with a few issues with the navigational array struggling to compensate for the uncertainty inherent with where the artificial wormhole exit would be, but a software update seemed to have fixed it.

With the short range trials complete, we pushed the distances out more and more, mostly without incident, save for a close call or two where we would drop out of the wormhole closer to a planet than we’d like. This was remedied with yet more software updates and yet more technicians messing with the wiring in the ship.

Eventually, the time came for us to do the first long-range trial, with the destination being an uninhabited system that was characterised by an anomalous energy field around one of the planets. While several attempts had been made to find out what was creating the field, but it seemed to defy examination.

As a result, though, everyone avoids the area – making it perfect as a test-bed.

“We have a destination lock on the system, Captain, all uncertainties within acceptable bunds.” Talorath remarked as he worked the navigation console, “We should be good to go.”

“Engine parameters read normal, reactors stable. Power levels nominal for jump threshold.” Edge added over comms, “We’re good to jump.”

“All departments report tie-downs okay, all nonessential staff prepped. Good to go,” Came the reply from ops, “Power delivery normal, thrusters and sub-lights at idle, good to go.”

“Comms clean, scanners show no hostiles. Tactical is a go.” Came the last confirmation. “Is the mission a go?”

“Go.” I replied, gripping my arm rests.

The wormhole drive doesn’t roar and scream at high speeds like the Trans-Light drive. It snarls and growls. The engine built up to engagement point and the view-screen showed a lance of energy fire from the emitter, creating a wormhole that we flew into.

The light distortion and such always throws you off. Swirling lights replace stars and you see maybe a speck of light at the end of it when you get close, but most of the time you see nothing, just a circle of blackness.

I had barely settled in for the ride when Talorath hollered over, “Captain! The time and plane uncertainties are spiking! We’re losing destination location and time!”

“Abort!” I snarled, gripping my armrests. Always the last stretch.

“Controls not responding!” was what basically everybody said. Nothing would work – the drive was in runaway.

“Edge! Get down there and cut power!” I roared, tapping away at my screen to have error after error thrown at me, “Cut the damn cables if you have to! Switch everything else to aux power.”

Edge gave me a nod before he ran off, scuttling down one of the access hatches and such. He’s faster than the lift anyway, so I didn’t question it.

The lights dimmed after a while as we swapped to backup power. I barely had time to utter a sigh of relief before there was a sharp jerk and the black circle that was the end of the wormhole came rushing towards us. I barely had time to shout at everyone over the PA to brace before it hit, tossing the ship like a toy out the artificial wormhole and sending us careening and spinning out. Talorath had to fight the controls to right us and I shouted at navigation to figure out where and when we were. Edge promised me a damage report soon.

We ended up putting into orbit around the closest planet with viable metal deposits – it shared the same coordinates as where we were headed, but while the place was supposed to be barren, the planet was blooming with plant and animal life, not to mention the slowly industrialising civilisation it hosted. My gut told me that this isn’t where we belong and the readings I was given only served to confirm it.

Engineering didn’t have much better news either. The drive was damaged. It would still open a small wormhole through which we could send messages, but nothing more. Iron we could get easily, but the platinum we needed would be a problem. However, further scans of the planet below identified several sculptures containing large amount of platinum and there were rich metal deposits too – a bonus.

We ended up sending a few stealth shuttles to video life down below while a few teams were trained to retrieve the materials that we needed to get the drive working at full capacity again. Plans were made, only to be thrown out as the energy field around the planet was flagged as far stronger than it should be. Video footage showed people waving their hands around, sometimes chanting to achieve impossible things, sometimes making entire pallets worth of goods float around and others where a fireball would appear out of nowhere and scorch the presumed antagonists.

Strange, if anything. Comms were eventually re-established and I was ordered to gather more data while the drive was being fixed. I was even cleared to go down to the planet. I got my set of civilian clothes and went down below, not being able to resist taking at least a look.

I helped to get materials, of course. A bit of steel here and there, some copper maybe, all paid for through honest work. In fact, I managed to land a job as a factory supervisor and helped to improve their safety standards. What I saw, however, I will never forget. People were casually conjuring fireballs to throw into iron furnaces, metal ingots were being floated between work stations rather than being placed on a conveyor and they had light at night from floating orbs! There was no real way to explain it and when I tried to wrap my head around it, I got a headache. The decision to not have headaches every few minutes was quite an easy one and instead, I focused on collecting as much sensor data as I could while taking notes.

The people, however, seemed pretty amicable, with the usual troublemakers turning up here and there. I generally kept out of trouble, but the people at work would recognise me after a while. Apparently, pretending to a dragonborn is easy, but winged Dragonborn are rare and therefore interesting. I’d get second glances all the time, but nobody was unkind and the like.

The repairs took a good long while and I ended up falling into a routine. Any additional parts that were needed were sent back up to the ship via shuttle and otherwise, I would work my shift as a factory supervisor and get on with life. My sidearm stayed on the ship, but I had a few location and period correct weapons made up…I know that the ground forces do use projectile weapons still, but these ones just felt…unrefined, crude even. Thankfully, though, I didn’t actually have to use them, not so far anyway.

I ended up with a habit of going down to one of the slightly nicer places once or twice a week to have a decent dinner – The Alabaster Hotel.

It was quite like any other night, I had just walked in to have my dinner, but all of the tables were occupied. I ended up gravitating towards another Dragonborn, but well, he actually was a Dragonborn, not a Drakonian pretending to be one, unlike me. Having been here for a while, I recognised most of the regulars, but he wasn’t one of them. Probably another newcomer.

He was mostly black-scaled, like me, but heavier built as the species ought to be. His gaze was rather soft for someone who carried the airs of a commander and the light in his eyes betrayed his inexperience. That being said, though, this is no battlefield…not that it stops me from judging people.

I gave him a nod in greeting as I approached, “Evening, sir. Mind if I join you?”

“Oh, by all means!” He replied in heavily accented common, thankfully. I’ve found out that they have their own native language that’s not in the translator database, though some of the cues I’ve overheard sound remarkably similar to our language.

I ordered my food and as I waited, I ended up being drawn into conversation with him. Of course, I knew that the topic of my wings would be brought up – it always is, so I brought it up. Just a bit of talk around how it’s uncommon and how the question is always asked was enough to get it out of the way as we moved on to more banal topics such as the weather and work related things.

He’s going to be a policeman, apparently, and had just arrived. I was also told that he was from a warrior family, not unlike the warrior clan that I’m from. A pity, really, that I couldn’t exchange stories with him, for that would constitute a breach of the Standing Orders regarding interacting with less advanced civilisations. Either way, he gave me his name, Keldas, and I gave him mine, leaving my clan-name out to avoid further questions.

Eventually, though, he was drawn away by a…furry version of his species because their ancestors had supposedly worked together and were historical figures. I had heard of them, though the name of the group was extremely non-specific – “The guys who did the thing”. Who even names a heroic group that?

That being said, I was told that they had helped clear out a whole bunch of cults, one of them invented guns, supposedly the ancestor of my new friend, and did a few more good things. Everything you’d expect in a story about heroes. I don’t doubt what they did, but I’m sure a fair bit more shooting was involved, given how one of them invented the gun. In fact, it’s surprising that they don’t mention him blowing someone’s brains out at some point because all things considered, it’s bound to happen.

While my counterpart struck up conversation with his new large-chested friend, the cat-person, their species was called Tabaxi, but I kept remembering it as Taxi, who had been floating between tables and chatting with everyone came over. Not wanting to be rude at the expense of future irritation, I let them join me.

Dealing with people like these is like pressing the button to dispense a large drink when you only have a small cup. You’re done and at your limit, but it just keeps going. He prattled on about the cities that he had visited, which was actually mildly interesting. In fact, I actually took some notes, but once he started talking about how he had won a night in the hotel or something along the lines, it got stale. In fact, I’ve heard him mention it about three times prior to this. He also apparently doesn’t climb mountains.

Eventually, I managed to point him in the direction of another patron to pester but not before selling him the idea of working in my factory, because why not? I’ll put him on the night shift and watch him melt the brains of the Supervisor – that’ll be an appropriate response to him hiding my notebooks and draft reports.

I like doing this, it’s liberating, almost. No endless parade of reports, no infinite lists of complaints. It’s almost a holiday!

Either way, the two of them started having a rather in-depth conversation about birds, wooden birds specifically, before they gravitated to the pair of dragonborn and joined their conversation.

Seeing that it was getting late, I had my last drink before heading up to my room to sleep – I had an arrangement with management here to keep a room for myself while I was here. Either way, despite the next two days being rest days, I had had a long day at work and was looking forward to a quiet and easy night.

Of course, with how these things go, that wasn’t the case – I was woken a short while later by a commotion downstairs. Now, the logical thing to do was to stay in my room and let it die down while going back to sleep…however, one can never shake the draw created by curiosity, so I went back downstairs to see what had happened.

Naturally, I was greeted by chaos. There was a spectacularly dishevelled human hurling insults at the police officer, calling him a ‘pig in training’ of all things, because he’s not a full officer yet. I get that it’s an insult, but till now, I still don’t understand why calling them a ‘cow’ or whatever isn’t the same.

I saw the aspiring policeman taking names down as I entered the room, which, of course, allowed me to figure out everyones’ names, but that wasn’t important in the moment. What was important was the fact that the Bird-Person, the Taxi was dead. The murder weapon was right there too, the poor male’s own dagger. If only I could just have the DNA run, but well, this isn’t my show to run and realistically, it’s not my problem.

The bits and pieces I heard basically told me that the hotel had been locked down as a result, but for some reason or other, nobody went to the actual police. Probably because of the massive cloud of distrust floating around the room, not uncommon in situations like this.

I really should have stayed in my bloody room. To leave now will only cast suspicion on me. Curiosity is truly a barbed hook.

Once the names and statements were taken, people mostly fell silent, having probably noticed the enormity of the situation. While I’m no stranger to death, I followed suit, not wanting to draw further attention, especially since the smelly and probably homeless human was eyeing me… It was tempting to dunk a bucket of water on him to give him a rinse, bit I doubted that this was an appropriate time for that. Damn mammals.

The policeman’s voluptuous new friend volunteered to watch the door and the rest of us were shooed back to the dining room.

I ended up sitting back down while the human male that had been previously quietly sitting in a corner pretending to drink from an empty glass before it was filled decided to walk around and smell everyone. What the fuck is wrong with this species?

As if hearing my thoughts, the same male went over to the bar’s musical instrument table thing and began playing it so amazingly badly that I wanted to throw my chair at him. Thankfully, Natty, who turned out to be an aristocrat, a class long dead in my society, went and asked him politely to stop.

Meanwhile, the young couple that had also been in the bar earlier sat quietly, whispering between each other as they presumably discussed what had transpired. They stunk of fear, but that’s easy enough to fake and more than a little cliché if it was.

The hotel staff were standing off to one side, quiet, occasionally handing people water and such. They kept mostly mum, as was professional, but it didn’t take much to see that there were words that needed to be said. While it would have been worth asking, I opted to keep quiet – this is enough trouble as it is.

As I looked around, I found another individual, Valendar, quietly nursing a cup of water and staring into it, lost in some muse of some sort. I’d say that was suspicious in itself, but everyone is a suspect at this point, including myself. For all I know, they’re composing an eulogy.

Naturally, the aristocrat looked uncomfortable, clearly wanting to leave. Typical. The elite despise discomfort and suspicion. She should be shot for stealing value from the masses.

There was also the merchant sitting off to one side, looking around the room and scanning it, almost like a turret. I deliberately locked eyes with them for a moment and they simply moved their gaze on. Questionable? Maybe. Who knows, but this is another classic cover. I’m no police officer, I just shoot at other starships.

Hilara, the anthropologist, was the busiest of the lot, though, she was going from table to table, person to person asking questions, taking things down. I didn’t think too much about it initially, but after watching them for a while, I realised that they were sizing people up, watching their cues and reactions, expressions and twitches, everything. They had been going around and being loud the entire time and if anything, it seemed strange that they were so quick on the uptake. Then again, though, it is their job to study behaviour and our own experts in the field would probably do similar. That being said, it’s also the perfect cover…

I had a quick chat to her about where I had been and such and I could feel her gaze on me as I told her the truth. To her credit, she was pretty civil about it all, but I knew this would all be seen as evidence later. Eventually, though, she went to the human that had been playing the instrument monumentally badly and from what I overheard, the male couldn’t even read a clock, so he was pretty useless statement-wise.

Eventually things settled for a moment. I wanted to comms the ship to advise that I might need extraction, but it’s too late for that. Besides, my comms unit is in my room, hidden in my bag. Either way, if anything, this place has a ways to go and this is going to be a long night…