I am Jessie Jones, I am a Captain of the Galactic Navy, and my mother was a dragon.

I am, in the terminology of my homeworld, a drake. My mother was an Iron Dragon, that is a dragon with an elemental affinity for iron. My father was a human geologist and an agent of Imperial Terra. They met in the mountains.

He was exploring them to find ores that could be traded with other worlds for needed items such as trees and other living things to rebuild Terra's biosphere. She was guarding her territory.

Following what he called a "cultural misunderstanding", but what normal people would probably call "almost being eaten by a dragon", they fell in love. Theirs was a romance marked by speed. As my father was supposed to be reassigned to another world to look for ore there in three weeks, and it took two weeks for my mother to warm up to him enough to contemplate intercourse, they only had sex once. Luckily for my existence, that happened during one of the three days a year dragons were fertile.

One year later, I was born. I was given to the Council of Ten, the representative body of Imperial Terra on my homeworld, to be taken back to Earth and brought up there.

I don't remember my first ten years, in fact I only remember my beginnings because I ran into my father two years ago and he told me about it, and because I found a single scrap of paper deep in the offices of the Council of Ten, a record of events for January 15, 136 (Local Years), that talked of my arrival.

My first memory is of me in school. I am standing in a classroom, studying maths. The other students are bored. They look at the walls, at the apps they're blocked from using for the duration of the test, at the doodles drawn on their tablets. I hardly notice. I am working with a furious passion that might make a man think that what I am doing is something other than Grade Nine mathematics.

My second memory is of me playing Jugger. It was an obscure sport, based off an obscure movie, until it was realised that a sport which forms the core of a post-apocalypic movie is a really good sport to play following the apocalypse. Someone else is running with the dogskull (not actually a dogskull, but a foam replica). I am hitting him in the leg with a long length of foam wrapped around a plastic pipe.

From there, it continues in the same vein. I graduate with a C in every subject except Maths and Science, in which I recieve As. I am also Captain of the Jugger team. I go on to do an engineering degree in university, specialising in Starcraft. Then I do another engineering degree, this one a masters. Then I do a physics degree. Some people accuse me of wasting my time in academia, but I point out that I can expect to live to five hundred, at least, having draconic blood and access to the medical technology of Imperial Terra.

And then I get a phone call. From the Imperial Terra Exploration Council, no less. As it transpires, one of their agents in a universe of interest had died, torn to pieces by hostile aliens. As the Council didn't want to lose their prescence in the section of universe he had overseen, and with no one else having quite my areas of knowledge, they asked me to become their agent for that section.

Reluctantly, I agreed. I would have preferred to remain as a spaceship engineer on Imperial Terra, but the pay was good and it's possible that the constant badgering about "ivory towers" might have gotten to me. Besides, I would also get to pilot one of the spaceships I had spent years looking at the plans for.

After several months of training in starship command and firearms (which, as my supervisors constanly reminded me, meant several months with no Imperial presence in the area), I was sent through a gate to the universe...

I wake up in the captain's cabin of the GNS (Galactic Navy Starship) Bronzewing (a Gabriel Class Interceptor), and begin my morning routine of massaging my wings, or at least the parts I can reach. I have to sleep on my back, I can't fall asleep if I'm lying face down, but at the same time lying on my back ensures that I wake up with cramps in my wings.

As I run my hands over my wings, I look at myself in the mirror.

I have no hair. In its place, I have slate-grey scales, and a line of short horn-like nubs that run from just above my nostrils to the nape of my neck. My nostrils are further forward than on a human, as I have a snout, above which glow (and I do mean glow, they produce their own inner light, like Earth jellyfish) a pair of orange eyes. My fingers and toes end in wicked claws, though thankfully they are retractable wicked claws. Behind me, there is a long scaly tail.

My wings are formed of a series of 'panels' of skin, with lightweight bones between them. The bones all run up to a central point, at the end of which is a hook of bone.

I am wearing a Galactic Navy captain's uniform, tailored for my form. It is, as regulation demands, a plain navy blue, with a single star on the left breast and on each of the shoulders. The insignia of the Galactic Navy adorns the other breast. I have a laser pistol holstered on my right hip, which I barely know how to use without creating an explosion, and while I should have no weapons on my left hip, I have a boarding axe there. While I am not experienced with the axe itself, I have a lot of experience with its type.

My hands drop down to my sides. I have massaged all the spots I can reach, and while parts of my wings still ache, I will have to leave them for now. According to the computer built into the wall, I have one message marked as Urgent and three others.

I go over and tap to open the messages menu...