A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3)
Page 1
A DRAGON
AT THE GATE
BOOK THREE OF THE
NEW AENEID CYCLE
MICHAEL G. MUNZ
Red Muse Press
Seattle, WA 2016
COPYRIGHT 2016 MICHAEL G. MUNZ
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
Inquiries about additional permissions
should be directed to: mike@michaelgmunz.com
Cover Design by Amalia Chitulescu
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.
Print ISBN: 978-0-9977622-0-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016947280
OTHER FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS
BY MICHAEL G. MUNZ:
The New Aeneid Cycle
A Shadow in the Flames
A Memory in the Black
A Dragon at the Gate
Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure
Mythed Connections: A Short Story Collection of Classical Myth in the Modern World
CONTENTS
Other books by Michael G. Munz
Acknowledgements
Dedication
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII
XLIX
L
LI
LII
LIII
LIV
LV
LVI
LVII
LVIII
LIX
LX
LXI
LXII
LXIII
LXIV
LXV
LXVI
LXVII
LXVIII
Epilogue
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To mention everyone who played some part in A Dragon at the Gate's lengthy gestation process would take far too long. That said, I must recognize the following: my beta-readers Brian, Cain, Gareth, Joe, Sher, and Tom; my Twitter followers near and wide, who are always there to provide excellent moral support (or at least terrible jokes); the whole gang at the Super Awesome Geek Show, especially the always-enthusiastic Christina and John; David Taylor once again, who let me steal his name this time; all of my fellow former-Booktropians, thank you for your knowledge, camaraderie, support, and cider-bacon.
As always, thank you to the fans who've been waiting so patiently to find out how it all ends.
Lastly, this being the third book, I must mention my great, great, great(?) uncle Michael Flynn who, as I understand, had the claim to fame of being onboard the U.S.S. Maine when it exploded in 1898. He had a great name, which I obviously could not resist borrowing.
For my supportive and awesome sister Julie.
I
“THOSE ARE SIRENS.”
“Aye,” Caitlin said. “Ambulance, I’d wager. Horizon is right across from a hospital, ducks.”
Felix shook his head. “Wrong kind of sirens. And my memory’s not so bad that I don’t know where Horizon is. I also remember that it’s on the fifth through tenth floors of the Aria Building and that I once dropped my cheeseburger riding the elevator.”
Michael searched the taxi’s passenger side mirror for the source of the sirens. “Why were you eating a cheeseburger in an elevator?”
“Why wasn’t there bacon on it? That’s a better question.”
Michael grinned despite their problems. His memory troubles aside, Felix was, at least, still Felix. Only a few days had passed since the experience on the Moon that linked Felix’s memory implant to Gideon’s memory. Though the procedure appeared to have saved Gideon, after a period of unconsciousness Felix had woken completely unable to remember the previous two hours, and with holes in his recollection of the time before that.
The sirens, whatever their source, were growing nearer.
“How often do you get that implant checked?” Michael asked.
“Every few months,” Felix said, “unless there’s a problem like this.”
“He had his last one perhaps a week and a half ago,” Caitlin added.
“No I didn’t, I—” Felix stopped. “Oh.”
In the back seat, beside Felix, Caitlin sighed. “Bollocks, I wish we’d been able to find Ondrea.”
Michael nodded. They’d hoped to find Gideon’s sister on Sunrise Station upon their return to Earth orbit, but Ondrea had vanished. “She probably bugged out with the rest of the Marquand group.”
“Horizon’s better anyway,” said Felix. “They did the work originally. Ondrea just used the data.”
“To bring Gideon back from the dead,” Caitlin added.
“You don’t have to keep checking what I remember, Caitlin.”
“Aye, Felix, I do.”
Michael nodded. “And if she didn’t, I would.”
It wasn’t like Michael could do anything else. He wasn’t a scientist. The sum of Gideon’s memories made Gideon the man he was. If Felix’s implant failed and somehow took Felix’s own memories with it, what would happen to the friend that Michael knew?
“We’re nearly there,” Felix said. “They’ll fix this, don’t worry.”
No one spoke. Michael wondered if Caitlin sensed the same lack of conviction in her boyfriend’s voice that he did.
Moments later, the taxi pulled up to the curb in front of the Aria Building. Thirty stories of blue steel and glass towered above a dais of concrete, landscaped with shrubs and sapling maples whose wilt spoke of better days. Sure enough, Northgate’s Corporate Mercy Hospital sat across the street in the Aria’s shadow.
They were out of the taxi in moments. “Go,” Michael told Caitlin and Felix as he stopped to pay the driver. “I’ll catch up.”
The two nodded and then trotted up the sidewalk that stretched along the landscaped section, toward the stairs that led up to the building’s entrance. It was the same direction from which the sirens were approaching.
They did sound different from ambulance sirens.
Michael finished paying the driver, turned to follow his friends, and then realized the reason for the difference. A silver convertible tore around the street corner ahead. Tires screeched and
metal slammed into metal as two other cars swerved out of its way, only to collide with each other instead. Gunfire exploded from an assault rifle braced on the convertible’s driver’s side door. Bullets shattered windows and pedestrians alike. In the convertible’s wake followed the flashing blue and violet lights of two red and black CPMC response cruisers.
With CPMC involved, the convertible’s driver had likely gone full-bore CP: an explosion of irrational, psychopathic violence, borne of cybernetic overload that would not stop until he burned himself out or CPMC put him down.
Cybernetic Psychoses Monitoring and Control: that was their job. Michael had witnessed a CPMC response team’s ruthless efficiency once before. They would stop the driver, yes, but would it be fast enough? Michael yelled a warning to Caitlin and Felix and dashed toward them into danger.
Caitlin dragged Felix into the cover of the landscaped section just off the sidewalk. The two hunkered down with a few others against the concrete wall between them and the steps of the Aria Building. Michael’s shoes pounded the pavement as he closed the distance. A handful of the corporate freelancers guarding the building—contracted Aegis Security, by their uniforms—had already dashed out of its front doors to take up positions atop the stairs.
The convertible plunged down the street, only moments away. The driver fired another burst from the rifle into an oncoming car and then swerved left to avoid another. Tires squealed and people scattered as the convertible launched up the Aria Building’s front steps. It got halfway to the doors before screeching to a metal-mangling stop against the steel railing that ran up the center. An airbag burst into the driver’s face, and augmented arms ripped it to shreds a moment later. The driver’s eyes blazed. Curses erupted from his lungs.
Michael reached his friends and hunkered down beside them.
“I remember what those sirens are for now!” Felix shouted.
“Just stay down!”
“No kidding!”
Michael risked a look over the edge of the wall. The CPMC cruisers rushed to a stop on the curb below the stairs. Two officers in black and red armor scrambled out and dropped into defensive positions behind each cruiser. The convertible driver screamed again and fired toward them in a spasm of bullets that either punched into the cruisers or went wide. Screams of passersby rained through it all.
Michael felt a hand on his shoulder—Caitlin or Felix, he couldn’t be sure and didn’t spare time to look. His eyes were drawn to a man lying on the steps about ten feet from the convertible, directly between the car and Michael’s position. The man had thrown his arms around his head. His entire body quaked. Michael waved at him in an effort to coax him to cover without attracting the driver’s attention, but the man’s eyes remained clenched.
The driver bellowed again and kicked the car door open. Already damaged in the crash, it flung outward, now more than half torn off of its hinges. The driver hunkered down further and sprayed another burst from his rifle over the dashboard. Michael couldn’t tell if he hit anyone.
Behind their cruisers, the CPMC fired back. Bullets impacted the convertible’s engine block; it was suppressive fire only, buying time for two of the officers to ready the specialized weapons that CPMC squads carried to end such confrontations.
The man on the steps began to shriek. Arms still over his head, eyes still clenched, he tried to scramble away from the convertible, hindered by his own panic. Michael drew the FN Panther 9mm auto-pistol he carried aimed at the raging cyborg driver. The Panther wasn’t likely powerful enough to do more than piss him off, but they’d arrived straight from the airport; it was the only weapon Michael had. The Aegis freelancers merely waited atop the stairs—guarding the building’s entrance only—and Michael had to do something.
He fired.
The man on the steps hollered and stopped his feeble scramble, quaking further and trying to see through clenched eyelids from where the gunfire had come.
Michael’s shots had no other effect. He might have hit the cyborg’s arm, or maybe the body armor that wrapped his torso. He couldn’t tell. Using just the Panther, only a headshot might stop the cyborg, and Michael didn’t have a clear shot. Blood pounded in his ears. He forced himself to stay down.
“It’s okay!” he yelled to the man. “It’ll be okay!”
One CPMC officer hefted on his shoulder what Michael could only describe as a cannon and took aim at the convertible. Beside Michael, Felix risked a look.
“EMP!” Felix whispered. “Geez, I hope that guy can aim!”
“Felix, get down!” Caitlin grabbed him and pulled him back.
Two things happened at once: the officer fired and the driver sprang out of the car, rifle in hand, firing back. The cannon’s projectile hit the driver’s seat and flared in a tiny burst of electricity: an EMP blast to knock out the man’s cyberware.
Michael winced. If the EMP hit Felix, what would happen to his memory implant? But it was a short-range burst, not even enough to affect the cyborg once he’d escaped the car.
The driver’s rifle clicked empty. He came to a stop directly between the panicked man on the steps and the CPMC officers who now held their fire. The entire scene seemed to freeze.
But only for a moment.
Two of the officers sprang from cover, wielding stun rods. The cyborg hurled his empty rifle at one of them. It smacked into the officer’s helmet and knocked him to the ground as the cyborg tore the car door from what remained of its hinges, yelling with pain from the effort. The second officer dashed up the steps, nearly within reach, but not fast enough. The cyborg flung the door into his chest, and the officer tumbled back down the steps in a heap.
Then the cyborg whirled with a scream, as if something were trying to crawl its way out of him. He beat himself in the head once, before noticing the man on the steps. The cyborg pointed at the man and bellowed, “You can’t stop them! You can’t ever stop them all!”
The man froze, his eyes wide. He reached one hand behind him, clawing at the step, as if it alone could drag the rest of him away to safety. He was thin, in his forties, and seemed half the cyborg’s size. He wore coveralls, perhaps a painter or a plumber on a break from a job in the building. He should have been safe in the Corporate District, instead of facing the raging terror that stared him down.
Atop the steps, the Aegis freelancers held position.
The cyborg was too close to the other man for Michael to get a clean shot. Michael’s legs tensed. At once the cyborg rushed the cowering man to haul him off the steps in a single, screaming motion.
With a shout to Felix and Caitlin of “Stay here!” Michael clambered over the wall and into the open. The cyborg shoved the man into the steps’ mangled railing. He was drawing him back for another blow when Michael grabbed the cyborg’s arms and yanked for all he was worth to stop him.
The cyborg slammed his forehead into Michael’s. His vision swam from the impact. For a split second Michael met the gaze of the cyborg’s other victim, as the man freed himself and scrambled back.
A split second was all Michael’s opponent gave him. Something huge slammed against Michael’s back before he realized he’d been shoved against the side of the convertible. The cyborg held him by the shoulders. Bloodshot eyes blazed. Screams soaked in alcohol flared into Michael’s face. He rammed Michael back against the car again and again.
Michael grappled with the cyborg’s arms, trying to get a grip, trying to pull himself free, and failing every time to beat the other’s strength. Lights danced in his vision each time his skull battered into the car. Stop! Stop!
Lights danced again, brighter. The cyborg stopped with a ragged gasp. Again the lights flared. Jolts tingled across Michael’s skin and muscles. The cyborg released him. They both dropped to the steps.
EMP!
They’d hit his attacker with another blast, on-target this time. Michael struggled to catch his breath as the other’s leg twitched and arms lay powerless. Three CPMC officers dashed in to ram stun rods against
the cyborg’s back to further subdue him. Michael crawled away as best he could, trying to get out of their way and still reeling from his bludgeoning against the car.
Sirens continued, now from the ambulances that issued from the hospital across the street. The man Michael had rescued half-sat, half-lay at the edge of the steps, breathing hard. Michael pulled himself to his feet and made his way over.
“You okay?” he asked.
The man’s jaw was clenched. Both arms were locked across his chest. He stretched one of them out to wave Michael off, but he nodded to the question nonetheless. Michael turned to call for some help, but people lay shot or otherwise injured all along the maniac’s path. First responders would have their hands full with more serious cases already. He turned back to the man. He could help him across the street to the hospital himself, but for the moment the man didn’t appear ready to go anywhere.
The CPMC officers had already detached the cyborg’s arms and were working at removing his leg. Even having seen the process once before, the speed at which they completed the task amazed Michael. The cyborg himself was unconscious. He hadn’t seen how they’d managed it. Three of the officers appeared okay. The fourth, hit by the car door, remained where he’d fallen but was moving a little.
At least he was alive.
Michael turned back to the man on the steps, unsure of what, if anything, to say. Instead, he said nothing and sat a few feet away. It didn’t feel right to just abandon the man before help arrived.
Caitlin and Felix were already on their way up the steps. Michael greeted them with a wave.
“Are you alright?” Caitlin asked.
“Bruised, a bit stunned,” he said with a glance at the man beside him. “I’ll make it.”
“Glad to hear it.” Felix sighed. “This is not what I’d call a fun day.”
“Understatement, ducks.” Caitlin swallowed and shook her head. She didn’t seem to want to look down the steps behind her. “All those people.”