The following is the result of translating the ‘Draquus Records’. This document is now believed to have been a diary kept by a direct survivor of the Cataclysm. Some parts were too damaged to be read. Others were a simple record of day-to-day life. It seems that the level of technology before the Cataclysm was as great as we have only just begun to dream about. While this is an exciting discovery in itself, we have found more than we ever expected. A possible record of the origins of the Draquine species. Translations are not complete yet, we expect to finish them sometime next year, but the information we have discovered is extraordinary. Dr. Jack Fleer believes, and I agree with him, that these documents prove beyond doubt the link between draquines and humans.

All of our recording systems have been (or will be) cannibalized for spare parts and power supplies. Therefore I am making this record with pen and paper. Perhaps that is as it should be.

We have been back on earth six months. Thirty-four of us have survived, including myself. We started out with one hundred. Seventy-five prisoners, twenty-five guards. I will not say what crimes I and the others committed, only that they are far less than the crimes of those who destroyed my world. Our world.

We were prisoners on a space station, orbiting the moon . Years ago, it seems. In fact it has been almost exactly one year since contact with earth was broken.

At first we thought it was just a systems malfunction. We got no transmissions from earth for several days. None of ours were answered. After a month, when no supplies or transmissions had come, we knew something was wrong.

We had no idea how wrong. We got little news from earth, only the guards and overseers knew what was going on back at home. None of us knew about the war until after it was over.

I don’t know what started the war on earth. Like all wars, I’m sure had they looked back, they could have found a better way. If there was anyone left. The price of war is always too high.

But nothing can be done about the war now.

We had received no word from earth for two months. Supplies were running low. Whatever happened on earth, if we stayed on the station we would starve, prisoner and guard and overseer. This was when the prisoners first learned of the war. We might not have much to go back to, in our country. We feared it had lost, and that is why there were no supplies. I may have been a criminal, but I didn’t think our country could be ruled better by invaders.

I will not say what country we came from. We do not speak the names of the dead.

We decided to abandon the station. Ten transports. Ten people in each. I don’t know why, but most of the guards went in one pod, leaving only one or two in each transport with prisoners. Our pod had only one guard.

It took two days to return to earth. We didn’t say much, didn’t do much. Just waited. We didn’t know what we would come home to.

We had no idea it would be nothing.

I do not know what weapon destroyed the world. What flooded the land and dried up the seas until you could not tell where any continent had been. What felled the orbiting stations and satellites. All I know is that nothing was moving on the earth or above it. No city or light could be seen.

How long we drifted in shocked silence I do no know. I think it was little more than an hour, but I am not certain. When I could think clearly again, I tried to rouse the others. Most were in shock, but the guard, our pilot, was more stable than most.

He swallowed hard, then turned on his radio to talk to the other pods.

“Preparing to land, transport 7 on unknown land mass, 3.5.0. Other transports please converge at 3.5.0.” He swallowed again “Jim, do you see anything down there?”

The radio buzzed for a few seconds.

“Negative,” came the slow reply “Maybe we’ll have a better visual when we land.”

I don’t know if anyone else believed him. I didn’t.

We started our decent. I knew it would be the longest ride any of us had ever taken.

The crackling radio was suddenly silent. All the lights in the transport went out. Someone screamed. We were falling, falling fast. I don’t know if it was an after-effect of the destruction on earth, or some other evil. The transport plummeted to earth.

I don’t remember the crash. I think I was knocked unconscious. When I awoke, everything was in chaos. The world seemed to have tilted on it’s side, there was fire and screaming. I felt blood dripping down into my hair. I was hanging upside-down by my seatbelt.

I released it and dropped to the floor. How I managed not to break anything is beyond my understanding. I crawled to an exit and out of the pod.

Once I was safely away I realized I was not alone. Many others had crawled out of the wreckage, not just of my transport. Five other pods had crashed as well. What happened to the other four, I doubt I will ever know. The guard transport was among them.

Of the six crashed pods, two were completely destroyed, three were beyond repair, and one was only slightly damaged. Only forty-five survived the crashes, and three more died of their injuries in the following days. Only one guard lived. My transport had been one of the worst-damaged, and I was it’s only passenger to survive. I suffered little more than a cut on the forehead and some bumps and bruises.

Those of us who lived built a temporary shelter from kits in the less-damaged crafts. We have now been living in it for six months.

More have died since the crash. There were almost no rations left, plant life was scarce and animal (We are not sure of the translation of this word, but we think it refers to non-sentient life forms. If it does, this proves our theories that they existed on earth up until the Cataclysm) life is nil. Eight more died of starvation or of injuries they might otherwise have recovered from, including the guard.

We have planted seeds from the emergency equipment on the ship. I wonder why they were included? Perhaps this Cataclysm was not as unforeseen as we had thought. Many of them are growing, and it seems unlikely that we would starve.

The air is fresher, the water cleaner than I ever remember it being. While we still seem to have an abundance of bugs (probably insects), I have seen no other living creatures since we crashed, man or beast (another word for animal). The earth seems to have reverted to a time before living things.

There are several pages of information about the next two years. Most is simply day-to-day living. The narrator marries a woman named Kate, and she becomes pregnant. Their colony seems to be doing well. Nothing vital happens until Kate is nine months pregnant.

I am beginning to worry about Kate. She is awfully big, even considering she’s nine months pregnant. It might be twins. That would be wonderful, but there are so many possible complications. We have very few medical supplies. As I’ve said before, Kate is very petite, and I just can’t help but worry what twins would do to her.

Kate has gone into labor. It’s been several hours, and I’m starting to worry...One of the survivors was a doctor, but that was on the old earth, with tools and medical supplies. I pray Kate will be all right. All I can do is pray.

It has been a week since I put pen to paper. Kate is dead.

She died in childbirth. One child, but she lives. If I can call her a child.

She does not look human. She has an equine (we are unsure what this means, but given later descriptions it seems to mean something like draquine) face. Her hands have only three fingers and a thumb. There are strange ridges on her back, and she is covered with pale gray fur. Her feet are hoofed, her hands are clawed.

But she is a child. There was artificial milk on the ship, and I have been giving it to her. I do not know how she came to be, but I have suspicions.

When we were on the prison station (how long ago it seems now) many of us, myself included, participated in laboratory tests. We were told they were harmless, and that we would get reduced sentences for participating.

They injected something into us, then took blood samples. They did tests. We never knew what for. It was classified.

Whether the strange child is the desired outcome, or an unknown side-effect, I can’t say. In any event, she is not responsible, for her appearance or her mother’s death. Those who were are long dead.

The child is strange, but not ugly. I can see her beauty, though it is not human. She is my daughter.

I have decided to name her Kate.

As far as we can tell, Kate was the first draquus. All other children born later in the group were draquines. No human children were reported. Most of the mothers survived. It is presumed Kate (the human) died of some other complications, and that it had nothing to do with the child being a draquus.

Kate (the draquus) developed normally. She learned to fly on her own, with encouragement from her father. She married another draquus when she was 21 years old.

The narrator never gave his name. We will never know who the father of the first draquus was. His daughter, Kate, made this note at the end of the record, 48 years after the Cataclysm.

My father died last night. I never knew what he had written in this journal. I never knew my mother died at my birth.

He was a great man, though he says he was a criminal before the Cataclysm. Don’t believe him. Without him, I doubt many in this colony would still be alive. I know I wouldn’t.

He was a human, while I am something else. I don’t know what I am. Some of the humans never accepted me or the others like me. Sometimes I wondered if my father knew the difference between one of my kind and one of his. Maybe there wasn’t a difference.

If we are all that’s left, the humans may be extinct within a few years. I hope not. If my father was any example, humans were a great species.

Obviously there were other survivors of the Cataclysm. Humans outnumber draquines today. However, there are no records of draquines, other than this document, until their rediscovery approximately 2000 years ago on the continent of Treyath. They had no written language at this time, but their ancient legends about the Cataclysm mention people who came from the sky, and strange creatures that looked like humans. No humans had been to Treyath since the Cataclysm. Except, it seems, those first survivors.

These documents prove our theories about draquines and humans being related, and also may help prove that draquines were genetically engineered as a store for animal DNA. If we could find a way to access it, there is the possibility we could reconstruct animals, like the ones the narrator describes in sections omitted for length. The full text will be available when our translations are complete.

Signed,

Elizabeth Fleer

Dear Dr. Fleer,

Your findings are interesting. I caution you not to make them public just yet. Especially your theories about animal DNA. I’ve been doing work in the same area, though I haven’t come as far as you and your husband. And I’ve received threats on my life and family.

There are some very troubled people out there. Both humans and draquines, I’m sorry to say. There’s no sense getting them after you unless you have solid proof. And a bodyguard.

I’m excited that you’ve found proof of the human-draquus link. I always believed in it myself, but then you knew that already.

Please be careful, though. I hope someday we can tell people our theories without receiving disbelief or hostility, but the time has not yet come.

Please keep me posted on your research.

Your Friend,

Jacob Bator