Date: September 19th

  Days since departure: 204

  Interactions: A kind family of farmers.

  Expenditures: None. Worked in return for lodgings.

  I don’t think planet Karrus gets many visitors. Ever since I left the city, it’s just been fields and fields with very few footpaths. The only roads are just big highways, and I only ever see lorries and no personal cars. It’s harvest season, and that’s meant I’ve run into a lot of people. Helpful for directions! But most of them are driving big farming equipment and try to chase me off the farms. Sun’s super hot as well. There’s barely any shade.

  I intended to stop in Colony 21, but I was shocked when I arrived in the village to discover there wasn’t an inn. Luckily, I asked around, and found some farmers who were willing to employ me for a while. Just doing chores around the farm. It doesn’t pay much, but I’m low on cash and need the lodgings. The farmers are nice! Hope to get to know them more over the next few days.

  I don’t want to stay here too long. A week at most. I’m close to the Clocktower. I want to push onward.

  Arthur examined the piece of paper, slumped against the chair in the cold, empty farmhouse. The light of the oil lantern shone through the paper, illuminating the handwriting he was very familiar with by now. He then opened up his pack, found her binder and locked the piece of paper into it with all the other diary entries he’d found spread across every planet he’d walked across. Then, he shoved it to the deepest reaches of his pack and went to investigate the pantry.

  He was lucky. Most of the food had rotted, but there were plenty of tins. A few meats had been preserved in the cold and seemed somewhat edible. He could cook the meats and save the packet food he still had until he was off world. The tins were annoying, he didn’t have much room for them and they would weigh a ton, but food was food.

  There was unfortunately no clean water, something he was beginning to lack. The pipes were frozen, and he already knew the reservoir it drew from was empty: he’d taken the last litre from it. It was ironic that the most likely thing to kill him on a frozen planet was dehydration.

  He searched the other rooms in the homestead, and found little of value. There was a plasma capacitor for a rifle, but he already had three and had barely needed to fire a shot across his whole journey. Clothes drawers had already been raided, batteries were gone, the few electronics left were dead, wood was too wet to use, and there wasn’t even a butter knife left, let alone a hunting one.

  That just left the bit he hated: personal things. Photographs and toys. The last memories of these people, clinging to existence. He found one of the whole family, all of them smiling and eating a big family meal. It looked nice, so he put it in his pack too, alongside the other photos he’d found on his journey. He was running out of space for them. A good place to bury them would have to show up soon.

  As he packed up, ready to leave, he found another photo on the windowsill next to the front door. Presumably, it was the last they’d taken before the dragons attacked. It was a photo of their eldest daughter driving one of the tractors, potentially for the first time. The focus of the photo didn’t matter much to him. There was someone in the background; a girl about his age with dark hair tied up in a ponytail, seemingly collecting up a few scattered pieces of grain (he really had no idea about farmwork). He’d seen the face alongside the diary entries many times. This was who he was chasing across the galaxy.

  He just had no idea why.

  Seeing he didn’t need to sleep, and the few remaining maps he had told him the next decent place to sleep would be a day’s trek at most, he walked out of the farmhouse. The building sat alone in the field of white that surrounded him. Any sort of crops had long since been destroyed by the metal sky. He looked up at the bronze that covered the sun. Occasionally he’d seen the cogs turn in such a way that sunlight had broken through, the world below temporarily being given relief from the cold and keeping it on life support. That hadn’t happened for days.

  He turned to the north, checking his compass, and preparing to advance towards Colony 21.

  Then he heard it.

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  He turned south to see what had made the guttural growl, praying that it wasn’t what he thought it was. Luck was not on his side. A dragon flew from the south. He’d only seen them a few times, but extremely rarely, and not since he began travelling alone. It was why he was alive.

  Swearing, he dived back into the homestead and unbuckled the rifle from his pack. He rummaged through his bag, finding a capacitor and locking it into the magazine, the weapon giving a beep of approval. Then, he slid against the corner of the living room, covered enough by chairs and couches that he’d be hard to see, but close enough to the window that he could take a shot if needed. Then, once he was ready, he extinguished his lantern, leaving him in total darkness outside of the faint light of the rifle’s plasma shifting through it.

  He didn’t know how dragons hunted. No one did. Some said they tracked on sound, so if you were silent, they wouldn’t find you. Some said it was on sight, so you had to be still. Some said it was based on your heartbeat and blood flow, so you had to be calm. Those people had all died trying to prove those theories. To Arthur, there was no other way of surviving a dragon than luck.

  There was a loud bang outside, the dragon letting out some metallic squeals, the sound of gears spinning and clanking, accompanied by the distinctive sound of its tail swiping back and forth rapidly. It was…odd. Arthur had never heard a dragon make these sounds before. It sounded like it was in pain. He almost wanted to get up and look, but with the eternal darkness, there’d be no point. It could even be a trap. Who was there left that could wound a dragon anyway?

  He waited for what felt like days, hoping it would go away. Nothing happened. The sounds of the monster outside didn’t stop. Growls, screechs and ticking reminded him it was there. For a moment, he heard them dissipate. Then, he heard a series of loud noises; metal clanking, the dragon’s feet moving, and some kind of generator whirring to life. He immediately knew what he was hearing.

  “Shit!” He shouted, leaping over the table, grabbing his pack and sprinting upstairs. The laser beam blasted through the side of the house, eviscerating the living room. Anything flammable that wasn’t in the direct path of the beam was set alight just by the heat. The photograph Arthur was just holding was one of the first things to go.

  Arthur ran up to the landing, dropped his pack again, and went to one of the bedrooms, trying his best not to trip over furniture. Through the window, he could see the dragon. Even in the total darkness of this planet, he could see its internal mechanisms lit up, and its bright glowing eyes. Then he realised he could see its internal mechanisms. He hadn’t misheard earlier: someone had wounded a dragon, and severely too. Its energy core began to dim as its jaw plates locked back into place from the breath weapon, but it was far slower than it should be. It was weak. Maybe, just maybe, he could fight his way out of this.

  Screw it, he thought to himself. It’s not like I can run, right?

  He opened the window as quietly as he could, leaned the rifle against the sill, aimed for the eye as quickly as he could, and fired.

  A thin stream of red energy flew out of the rifle, followed by an intense heat. The dragon looked up a split second before the bolt would have found its purchase, the plasma splattering against the metal shell. The metal sizzled and it melted through, but it was a small wound in the massive creature. As soon as it saw him, Arthur saw the dragon’s toothy maw turn into a monstrous grin.

  The dragon beat its massive wings, floating into the air, moving slightly away from the house. Arthur continued to fire plasma bolts, hoping to hit it where it was weak, but plasma did nothing against the bronze hide. He prepared to move, expecting another laser beam, but he couldn’t hear one being readied: the only leeway a dragon would give you. What was it planning?

  He didn’t have to wait long. The dragon swooped low and straight through the ground floor of the building.

  Arthur fell to the floor as the supports collapsed beneath him. The whole second floor began to fall forward, and he rolled to the side to narrowly avoid being crushed by a falling bed and many school sports accolades. He gripped tightly onto the rifle, leaped out of the open window and ran as fast as he could to avoid the whole building collapsing onto him. He almost ran fast enough. The top of the roof hit his ankle, a tile slashing through his foot. Arthur screamed in pain as he collapsed.

  The dragon turned around slowly, a dark shadow moving through fire. One by one, the heavy footsteps clanged towards him, tail thrashing about behind it like a happy dog. A monstrous grin showed itself through the fire.

  “Don’t come near me!” Arthur screamed. He swung the rifle around and fired, but his grip was unsteady, his whole body shaking in fear. Some shots found the metal hide of the dragon, but most just flew into the air, inevitably hitting the metal that floated in the stars. A low growl resonated from within the dragon, that soon turned into something like a laugh. It approached slowly, enjoying his total helplessness. Soon, it stood over him, oil and blood dripping from its mouth like saliva.

  “Die already! Just…” Arthur's shouts soon gave way to fear. He began to cry and beg. “I don’t want to die! I’m so close! Please…”

  The dragon didn’t relent. It looked at Arthur with hungry eyes. Some part of him accepted his fate. Determination and fear gave way to weariness and joy. He was done. He’d finally be free from this loathsome journey he’d given himself. He wouldn’t be alone anymore.

  Arthur closed his eyes as the dragon prepared to devour him whole.