After bonding with the eggs, the countries with successful candidates were Cuba, Poland, Egypt, Madagascar, Russia, India, Mongolia, North Korea, and Australia.
After hatching, Cal took the people back to their home countries with a promise to continue to look into them.
Unfortunately for him, the tenth egg did not hatch for him.
It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was a disappointment among others.
North Korea broke their promise by killing their bonded dragon through experimentation. The human had died a slow death soon after.
In a fit of rage, Cal had gone to the asteroid belt, lined up the vectors, then sent the hurtling rock into the main government complex through several carefully placed portals.
And there were other failures.
One of the chosen humans died after insisting they go to space. The baby didn't know that humans couldn't withstand the cosmic pressures without aid. And in the few seconds it took for the poor thing to realize something was wrong, it was too late.
She had accidentally killed him.
The young dragon brought him back to Cal for fixing.
Cal had stared at the broken body in shock.
He gently told her that nothing could bring back the dead.
And she had gone berserk.
She broke the link with Cal, took the body, and disappeared.
When Cal had teleported into space to go after the faint pulse of her life, he saw her disappear into the sun.
It had been a cold realization.
As the leader, he should have made sure the fledglings had basic knowledge about these kinds of things. Yet, he hadn't thought it needed. Nor did he know everything about everything yet.
Like, how could anyone break the link he formed?
Would he lose someone else like that?
How had dragon kind gone into its infatile exile?
He shook it off and teleported to Earth.
Preventing further casualties started now.
…
As the dragons grew, more scientists became interested. Mark got another masters degree in particle physics to try and understand how it all worked, and if it could be duplicated artificially. But the ability to control quarks at the scale of ships was proving an impossible scaling. Small projects proved effective, however, and instant communication was created by opening a continual distortion that allowed normal electrical waves to pass through unimpeded.
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As a result, high speed communication became available solarwide.
Even as technology increased, so did the dragons. They grew to be the size of a human, and their ability to shift space expanded exponentially. Though they still didn't have a firm way to quantify their cosmic weight. But with the two dragons working in tandem, they could shift even larger loads. The limit to two person shuttles was broken. Now, small cruise liners, research vessels, and military fighter ships could be transported without issue.
Two scientists in particular where exited for this, since they had two dragons between them. They were finally ready to leave for distant stars, now that they were able to bring all the supplies necessary to survive arrival.
“Are you excited, Mark?”
“Yes. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.” He gripped her hand.
“Oh, I knew that. I was talking about something else.” Her eyes twinkled mysteriously.
His brows raised. “And what's that?”
“About you being a dad.”
He stilled, then stood up. “We can’t go now! The radiation and temperature… Consistent gravity is important to the birthing process and cannot be done without. We need to take more rations, and an increased amount of folic acid, vitamin D, Vitamin…”
She smiled at his rambling and kissed his suddenly still lips. “Cal can take me back any time.”
“But we don’t know what sort of long term effects it will have on the fetus! We can’t risk our child with an entirely novel environmental stressor. We need to do tests before I send you.”
Beth sighed, but conceded.
If she wanted to, she could have bulled through his protective nature and gotten her own way. A small part of her wanted to. But she would lose a part of him that was precious to her, and break her vows to him utterly. It would be a decision she made alone, and against his firmest wishes. That protectiveness had a reason to exist, and he was already forming a plan of action to accomplish that safety.
If his anxious muttering meant anything.
She stood up and kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry. I’m still in the early stages. You have months to prepare.”
…
In the end, they delayed their departure, but he went on ahead. Together, he and the dragons set up petting zoos in triplicate. One on Mars, one on Earth, and one on a planet in a nearby solar system that had the capacity for life. Each place had a set of control animals that never left, a set that was teleported to space and back in a cage, and a set that teleported between planets occasionally.
Nothing untoward happened, but by then the child was born, they had all ten fingers and toes, a shrill scream, a head of onyx fluff, and sunkissed skin.
They went go see Beth’s mom, who had been fully recovered from her bout with cancer for many years. She was excited to see a grandkid, and had never thought to see the day since her daughter had been so anti-social.
The couple spent their days going to work on other planets and coming back to Earth to their growing number of kids, which were left with their doting grandparents.
The dragons had also reached maturity and are starting to have kids, too. Though, they never succeeded in hatching them without human assistance.
And this too became routine.
For Cal and Wyn had found many eggs in neighboring solar systems and had brought them back to hatching ceremonies much like the first one. Then, as the dragons paired up and had eggs, they continued with the ceremonies. Although they often hand picked the people who were going to be there.
Beth and Mark watched over the third such hatching with excitement.
“It never gets old, does it?”
Beth leaned into him. “How could it? The young come together, binding Earth more closely beyond human ties.”
“It will be interesting where humanity ends up in the next hundred years.”
“I’ll be sad to miss how things change. But glad I get to see it start with you.”
…
As the years progressed, humanity conquered the Milky Way with its dragon pilots. Reaching far into space, these once dormant space farers had once again found a symbiote to pair with. Their innate ability to terraform planets helped revive solar systems void of life.
And for most children of humanity, whenever they are asked what to be when they grow up, most of them will say the same thing.
“I’m gonna be a Dragonfleet pilot.”
