A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3)

by Michael G. Munz

  Knapp cleared her throat. “Do we take this to mean that you may be waking this elder now?”

  Alyshur seemed to smile. “Uxil is supervising the process now.”

  XXXIX

  “THERE ARE STILL HOURS to go,” Alyshur continued, “and I will remain as spokesperson for the Thuur even after the elder wakes. Her role is one of guidance rather than leadership.”

  Knapp clasped her hands in front of her on the conference table. “I confess to finding this somewhat unsettling. Might she choose to negate the progress we have made with you as part of any ‘guidance’ she gives you?”

  “The limited time we have does not allow a detailed explanation of Thuur culture in these matters. Regretfully. It will suffice to say that you need not be concerned that such a negation will happen.”

  “So how do we find the syr?” Michael asked. “You go to Earth, and then what?”

  “I will scan for its presence. If it remains in some form, I will be able to detect it, at which point we can locate and retrieve it.”

  “Show us how to scan for it,” Knapp said. “The AoA still has resources in place that—”

  “No. You lack the senses required. It must be one of the Thuur.”

  Dr. Sheridan looked askance to Councilor Knapp. “That’s going to pose a problem, isn’t it? We can’t fight our way back through RavenTech and the drones. All we’ve got are the corporate shuttles, and an alien going through customs is going to attract attention.”

  “We’ve smuggled things through Knapp aerospace before,” Marette offered.

  “Nothing living,” Knapp said. “A Thuur on Earth is truly vital for this?”

  Alyshur blinked one eyelid at a time again. “There may be a way, but I must consult with the elder once she revives.”

  Did his eyes linger on Marette, or was that her imagination? The Thuur’s lack of pupils made judging such things difficult. In a sense, it was akin to dealing with Marc’s data visor. She wondered at Marc’s condition, if he would wake soon, or ever.

  Michael waved a hand to gather attention. A frown lurked in the corner of his mouth. “Then in the meantime, can I address the elephant in the room here? Why does Suuthrien like me? Do you have any idea?” He’d asked it of Alyshur but cast glances about the table, inviting answers from anyone. The rest gave none, instead waiting for Alyshur’s response.

  The Thuur appeared deep in thought for a few moments. “I cannot speculate without knowing more of the suuthrien’s actions on your planet. I can think of no immediate cause.”

  Michael’s frown deepened. “I think it did something to Felix, forced him to help somehow. But Felix seemed to know he was being controlled, he just couldn’t resist it. I don’t feel anything wrong with me. And I don’t have any implants like Felix did. I can’t say for sure, but my gut tells me that’s how it got him somehow.”

  “You were in a coma for three months,” Knapp pointed out, “with the freelancer watching over you for part of that. Let’s have our own doctors make sure you haven’t been altered without your knowledge.”

  Michael shuddered at the word altered. “Probably a good idea.”

  “Perhaps we can make its affinity for you into an advantage,” Marette said. “We would need to be careful we did not play into the A.I.’s hands, but it is likely worth the risk.”

  “After a medical scan,” added Knapp.

  Michael nodded. “The thought had occurred to me.”

  “Be wary in this matter.” It was Alyshur again. “The suuthrien’s logic may be so corrupted that it may not hold to what you consider rational. Nor do we know the criteria with which it judges Michael Flynn to be an asset. Until we understand how it intends to accomplish the death on your planet to which it alluded, the accuracy of any predictions we might make at its behavior will be—” Here again Alyshur did his one-eye-after-another blink. “—limited.”

  “Then I think we need to go back to Earth,” said Michael. “Whatever it’s doing, it’s doing it there. Somehow it’s got connections in New Eden Biotech. Well, so does the AoA, right? If Suuthrien likes me, maybe I can go to New Eden’s labs and . . . well, I don’t know. But I’ll have to figure out something when I get there.”

  “You can’t go alone,” Dr. Sheridan said.

  Michael paused to take a breath, seeming to steel his resolve. “I planned to take Caitlin. She’s tenacious, and particularly motivated. Jade, too. I don’t think she’s anything but Suuthrien’s attempt to keep me safe, and I believe she’s always been ignorant of its plans beyond that. If her job’s to protect me, then Suuthrien must give her some level of trust.”

  Knapp nearly burst. “Absolutely not! You could be wrong about the freelancer’s connection to the A.I., to say nothing of involving her and Ms. Danae even further in AoA matters! They must not leave this base.”

  “Councilor,” Michael argued, “Jade’s been as in the dark as I have about Suuthrien this whole time, if not more so. She’s not pulling a con here.”

  “And you’ve got evidence of that?” Dr. Sheridan asked.

  Michael hesitated, then frowned. “Just gut feeling.”

  “Then—”

  “But I trust my gut!” Michael seemed, to Marette, surprised to have said it.

  “I won’t allow it,” Knapp said.

  Michael put both hands on the tabletop and sat up straighter, on the edge of standing up. “I’m sorry, Councilor, but isn’t the AoA a collective? You can’t make decisions like that on your own.”

  “Agent Flynn, I’m the last surviving member of the AoA Council and—”

  Michael got to his feet, leaning over the table. “If you’re the last surviving member, then there’s no longer a Council,” he said. “Everyone on the base is listening in. This is big enough that we should all get a say.”

  Marette caught Alyshur edging back in his chair. It was as if she could herself feel the Thuur’s discomfort. Marette put her hand on Michael’s. “Ease down,” she whispered. He settled back into his chair.

  “Of course we all get a say,” Knapp answered finally. “Yet we must consider this: Were it not for us allowing Adrian Fagles’s involvement with his data leech, Suuthrien would not be on Earth. Such things occur when we involve outsiders. The AoA must stand on its own.”

  Marette withdrew her hand from Michael’s. “And yet, Councilor, the AoA would not be where it is now without working through outsiders.”

  “Exactly,” Michael said. “Don’t we still have room for nuance?”

  XL

  NONE OF IT SEEMED REAL. Felix was gone. She’d been too late to save him. Four bullets tore through Felix’s chest. The blood. His gurgled scream. The way the man she loved dropped to the floor, as if an invisible weight had slammed him into it. It all had played on repeat in her mind’s eye until Caitlin could almost imagine it was just a movie.

  She sat on the thin bunk, the wall beside it supporting her back where she slumped against it like a ragdoll. Though her spine ached from the position, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  “You haven’t moved since they tossed us in here.”

  It was Jade, not quite whispering. Her hips leaned against one of the tiny desks in the two-person quarters where the AoA had dumped them. She kept her arms folded, one booted ankle crossed over the other. Violet eyes waited just until Caitlin’s met them, and then turned away. “Not that there’s room to jog or anything.”

  It was something Felix might have said. A smile dawned on Caitlin’s face, drowned in an instant: I’ll never hear him joke again. She clenched her eyes shut and acknowledged Jade’s comment with only a nod, uncertain she’d be able to speak without her voice breaking.

  The door signal chimed. Why ring the bloody bell when they’d locked them in? It unsealed, and Michael stepped through. The door resealed behind him. He began to say something, stopped, and tried again. Caitlin caught his gaze and held it. Grief and guilt lurked in his face that might have mirrored hers.

  “What word from the outsid
e, ace?”

  Michael chuckled half-heartedly and sat on the edge of the lower bunk, beside Caitlin.

  “The good news is they’re letting you go back to Earth,” he said.

  Caitlin wet her lips with derision. “Letting us?”

  Jade folded her arms again. “And the bad news?”

  “They won’t let you be involved in this anymore.”

  Jade huffed.

  “Which ‘this’ is that?” Caitlin asked.

  “Everything.” Michael sighed. “The Thuur, Suuthrien, RavenTech . . . Fagles, and what he and Suuthrien might’ve done to Felix.”

  Caitlin shoved her palms into the mattress and pushed herself up to sitting straight. “Oh fuck that, Michael.”

  “That’s what they decided.”

  “I don’t care what they decided! And who the bloody hell is ‘they,’ anyhow? Aren’t you a part of them? You said you wouldn’t let this happen!”

  “Knapp didn’t want to let either of you go at all. I stood her down, got the entire group here to decide on the issue. I wanted to keep you connected; I wanted your help! This is the best I could get. I’m sorry.”

  Caitlin clenched the bedspread. “You’re sorry! Well then that makes it all bloody fine, doesn’t it? Mother of God, Michael, Felix is dead!”

  “I know!” His shout made both her and Jade jump. When he spoke again, his voice had lowered. “He’s my best friend, Caitlin. They did something to him, and he’s gone, and I can’t— It just . . . ”

  Caitlin reached out a hand and took one of his. “Do you know what Felix would say if it were him here instead of one of us?”

  “Something funny. And sneaky.”

  A moment passed between them, and Caitlin nodded. Felix might have been loyal to keeping the AoA’s secrets, but that wouldn’t stop him from searching for answers. That Michael seemed to understand that, and that she could do no less, made it easier. That Michael didn’t say it out loud made her realize how torn he was between his own loyalties.

  Or was it just that others outside the room were listening?

  “You’ll be taken back to Earth,” he said finally. “Back to Northgate, even. I’ll probably be going with you, to check some things out.”

  “Probably?” Caitlin asked.

  He swallowed. “Given how Felix was—how they got him—we want to make sure there’s nothing inside me that shouldn’t be there. No implants from when I was out.” Michael’s glance at Jade was telling. “I just came from the scan. So far, so good, but they’re double-checking everything now.”

  Jade scoffed. “If anything’s in there, I didn’t put it there.”

  Michael regarded Jade in silence for a moment. A trace of a smile crossed his face. “That’s what I told them. But even if the tests are all negative, I can’t let you come with me either. You’re no longer my bodyguard.”

  Jade’s laugh was bitter. “As if you could stop me if I wanted to be. Don’t worry, ace. You can tell her nibs I’m off the case. Guess I’d better not try to use alien-psycho-bot as a professional reference, huh?” She let out a long, sullen exhale.

  A thought occurred to Caitlin. “They’re not going to let us take Felix’s body back, are they?”

  “Not yet. They’ll treat him with respect, but getting his body back to Earth with any sort of discretion isn’t really possible. Not yet.”

  Caitlin swallowed. “Don’t lose track of him, Michael.”

  He squeezed her hand. “I won’t.”

  She remembered when Felix first came to the Moon. Though they’d come on a ticking clock to help Gideon, it hadn’t tempered his excitement about walking on another world. “He liked it here so much his first time,” Caitlin whispered, her voice breaking on the joke. She bit the inside of her cheek and covered her eyes with her free hand, failing to hold back a sob. If she hadn’t dragged him here that first time, his memory would have been fine. They’d never have needed to go to Ondrea to fix it. None of this would have happened.

  Michael squeezed her hand tighter. Neither he nor Jade said a word. Though they were likely only being respectful, the silence just made her feel scrutinized. Caitlin gulped a few breaths, wiped her hand from her eyes, and won the battle to compose herself. “I’m okay,” she said.

  Jade tucked a few glowing strands of hair behind her ear. “If you go back, are you going back alone?”

  “No,” Michael said. “I’m not.”

  * * *

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “No,” Marette said. “I am not. But it is our best alternative, given the circumstances, and I can ask no one else to take the risk.” And it felt right. They needed to get Alyshur to Earth, and they could hardly smuggle a live alien being through the entire journey undetected. So they would not try. They would take only his mind.

  And Marette’s body would be the vessel.

  Dr. Sheridan turned her gaze to the door of the otherwise unoccupied Omicron medical bay in which she and Marette waited. “You’re braver than I am.”

  “Non. I am not sure of this prospect, but I am . . . at peace with it. I cannot explain why.” Marette scratched at the skin around one of the diagnostic electrodes attached just above her heart, resisting the urge to tug it off. The exam table on which she sat felt cold and hard on the backs of her thighs where her patient’s gown failed to cover. “I propose that renders me less brave, more foolish.”

  As Alyshur had explained it, she would be sharing her mind with the Thuur’s own consciousness: each of them distinct, yet within one body. It was a state that only the Thuur elder could create, and Alyshur would arrive soon with her.

  “It must be done,” Marette said. “If there is a weapon to be used against Suuthrien, we must do all that we can to find it. And this act will build trust between us and them.”

  “I remember,” said Sheridan. “And trust is good. I just don’t know anyone I trust enough to let into my head like that.”

  “We must begin somewhere.” The AoA had injected Marette with a tracer solution as a safeguard against Alyshur usurping her body for some nefarious purpose, and an AoA member would accompany Marette at all times. It was likely that Knapp ordered more safeguards Marette did not know about, in case Alyshur tried to use her knowledge against them.

  It was in keeping with part of the AoA mantra, Councilor Knapp’s own favorite: Plan for the worst to prepare for the best.

  Yet in her heart, something told her such things were unneeded. Was that instinct? Or did she just need to persuade herself into a danger that she believed necessary? Regardless of the source of the feeling, she had made her choice.

  Marc lay unconscious in the neighboring medical bay. She wondered if he would wake before she left Omicron, or at all.

  The door slid open and Councilor Knapp entered. Alyshur came after, followed by a taller Thuur, Uxil, and a fellow agent with whom Marette had yet to interact. With regret for forgetting the agent’s name, she turned her attention back to the taller Thuur between Alyshur and Uxil. Was this the elder? Her skin, rather than the subdued gold of the other Thuur, had edged toward a silver. Asymmetric patterns of thin dark streaks adorned her exposed skin. Marette could not tell if the streaks were painted, tattooed, or a natural feature, but they matched in color the black strands that jetted through her short, rust-colored hair.

  Alyshur motioned to the elder. “I bring to you in trust the last surviving elder aboard the Sillisinuriri. She bids you greetings.”

  The elder regarded Marette and Dr. Sheridan with solid eyes of aquamarine. She brought up her hands, fingers together, and then spread them like an opening flower.

  Councilor Knapp cleared her throat. “Alyshur tells us that elders give up the ability to speak vocally. She communicates through them instead.” Knapp fixed her gaze on Marette, in her eyes a mix of wonder and worry. “Telepathically.”

  Marette returned the elder’s greeting gesture. “Thank you for coming. Do you have a name we should call you?”

  “The elder r
equests you to call her Sephora,” said Uxil. “Her precise name would cause you difficulty.”

  Marette blinked. “That is also a French name.” Marette had known a Sephora growing up: a troubled mouse of a girl whom Marette had bullied. The regret of her own childhood cruelty still stung her to think about.

  “Knowledge of your language brought with it many of your culture’s names,” Alyshur explained. “The sound of ‘Sephora’ appeals to her.”

  Marette paused on the brink of voicing her wish that she’d chosen a name with less unpleasant associations. It was a petty thing, after all. Yet before she could say anything at all, the door slid open again, this time admitting Doctor Yejun Seung, Omicron’s medical chief. He hesitated a step at the sight of the Thuur, and then continued to a medical console behind the exam tables.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said with a glance at Knapp and Marette, “but everything is set on our end to monitor. I’ll be standing by if anything goes medically wrong.”

  Marette turned back to Sephora. “Then I am ready.”

  Sephora seemed to smile, and then turned to Alyshur with a motion to the empty exam table beside Marette’s. Alyshur took to the table, sitting on one edge to mirror Marette’s position. He met her gaze with solid green pools that almost seemed to reach across the distance between them.

  “If you have objections,” said Alyshur, “give voice to them now.”

  Marette took a deep breath of the clean but sterile air that filled the Omicron Complex. The air on Paragon was sweeter, a product of the recycling properties of the organic black material—like a forest, one of the first humans to enter had observed. Soon she would again breathe the air on Earth. It had been over a year.

  It was a strange thing to be thinking about, given the circumstances.

  “No objections. But if you abuse my trust, it will be not only a personal violation but an act of war.” She smiled to soften it. Though she understood the Thuur habit of full disclosure, it felt brusque coming off of her tongue.