The Draco Eye (Space: 1889 & Beyond, Season Three Book 2) by Sharon Bidwell

Author:Sharon Bidwell [Bidwell, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Steampunk
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

1.

NATHANIEL HUNG ON INSIDE the dragon. There was no use his calling it anything else. He didn’t care to argue over whether a beast that had swallowed him whole should exist.

He had his eyes so tightly closed he couldn’t see what he clung to, but it was hard and long and he had a feeling that somehow he’d managed to slip between a gap in the creature’s teeth, one large enough for him to wrap his arms around without being bitten. He was soaked in something sticky and wet, and…arrghhh…something long and soft that could only be the creature’s tongue slid over him.

He tried to work out where the damn animal was going, and only noticed when it changed trajectory because the motion threw him in short side to side bursts that did strange things to his stomach.

He struggled against being sick, for that would mean his having to remove the mask. If he took it off, he’d likely die from the noxious fumes of Jupiter, or what accounted for the creature’s breath. Halitosis did not begin to describe the smell which somehow seemed to penetrate even his breathing apparatus. He likened it to a mix of sulphur and rotting meat.

Maybe he should let go, fall into the creature’s stomach and be done with it. If the beast headed into the upper levels and, once there, opened its mouth, he was dead anyway. Fortunately, it would happen so fast he’d likely know little of his death—this time!

Laughter bubbled up. He had the choices of a terrible but swift death in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, a horrible one inside the stomach of a dragon, or he could remove his face mask and…he didn’t know what. Suffocating would be kind. He had no sure way to know what the creature’s breath or the internal atmosphere of Jupiter would do to him, but neither would be pleasant.

How many times could one man cheat death? Erasmus seemed to think he was on this journey for a reason—one he wasn’t even sure truly existed, but he was happy to be patient and see. Nathaniel had chosen this. Didn’t matter who had given him orders, or what series of circumstances led him to here. He’d chosen more often than not. Would he have struggled with so much had he known it would come to this?

Inside the beast, Nathaniel considered death; decided he wasn’t ready for it. The thought of his possible demise didn’t even weigh as heavily as it might have because he couldn’t get past the miracle of his still being alive, now, in the mouth of something quite extraordinary and amazing.

He wanted to laugh. He wanted to dance and whoop.

All he could do in reality was hang on for the duration of the ride and see whether fate intervened.

2.

THE DOOR WAS SMALL, set into a wall between a row of pipes, essentially invisible to view. It had not a handle, but a small place to put a key. Jack Fenn had no key but he had put together the right tools.

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