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

by Michael G. Munz

  “Yes, well, it’s been a very interesting couple of days. Michael, is this line being monitored? There’s a pause each time before you speak.”

  “Transmission delay,” he said, after the usual pause. “I’m actually calling you from the Moon. But we’re headed your way, very soon.”

  “How soon? Jade’s taking us by floater to New Eden. We’re on our way out of Northgate right now.”

  “Jade? Is she okay?”

  “Aye. I hired her on, but she’s looking to get out.”

  “If she can keep you headed to New Eden, we can probably meet you on the way. Find somewhere between there and Gibson and lay low, and we’ll be there soon. Whatever you do, don’t go back to Northgate.”

  * * *

  In Northgate, on a penthouse suite balcony of the Corporate District’s Nexus Tower Hotel, Adrian reviewed the footage of Suuthrien’s dragon’s attack on The Dirge, as well as strikes on Portland and Vancouver. She hadn’t returned the previous night, and wasn’t responding on the local RavenTech interfaces. She hadn’t even acknowledged his calls.

  It hadn’t surprised him. He’d released all illusions of control back when his condo had burned. Influence existed. Control did not. Yet he’d let his acceptance of that concept fuel his overconfidence, hadn’t he? The engineering teams were working around the clock to explore the hidden depths of the designs Suuthrien had provided. They hunted both for ways for RavenTech to exploit the technology further, and for a means for Adrian to increase his available leverage.

  He ran his fingertips over the bio-monitor that now wrapped his right wrist. A new presence on his body, he’d yet to grow accustomed to it. Can a person ever truly grow accustomed to wearing a dead-man switch?

  Ah, leverage.

  A sudden wind cut across the balcony. Adrian took another look beyond the Corporate District’s lights to fires burning in The Dirge many miles to the south, and then turned to take shelter back inside. Suuthrien’s signal sounded from his cyberscreen. Adrian redirected it to the suite’s giant wall screen and settled into the cushions of the black suede couch that faced it. He reached for the brandy service set atop the end table beside him before thinking better of it.

  “You’ve been busy,” he said when Suuthrien’s usual silvery avatar appeared on screen. Hints of scarlet and azure drifted through the avatar this time. New touches. Curious. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Decided you finally need me again, creature?

  “As stated, you and I would begin preparations for you to replace your company’s primary leadership upon completion of the dragon body’s initial flight.”

  “An initial flight which lasted far longer than one could reasonably expect.” Adrian’s eyes narrowed as he literally bit his tongue to keep from voicing his outrage at the dragon’s attacks. So much destruction! Inwardly, Adrian seethed at the unwanted attention it would attract, but kept it contained. Outrage would hardly sway Suuthrien, so he would play collaborator.

  “The error in expectation is yours,” she said.

  “You’ve attracted some undesirable attention with that flight,” he told her, unable to restrain himself. “If you intend to wipe out this city’s entire population with that stuff, I’d appreciate you informing me of your timeline better.”

  “The Quicksilver nanophage will not destroy the entire population. While initial tests have shown ninety-four percent efficiency, there will be those able to secure themselves from contact as the nanophage propagates. Future reformulations will increase its virulence.”

  “How comforting. And when assorted military and security forces come to shoot your dragon out of the sky and learn who built it?”

  “This is why I now request the manufacture of conventional weapons systems and the installation of those systems onto the dragon superstructure.”

  Adrian reached for the brandy decanter and poured himself a glass after all. “I’m sorry, I must be mistaken: I thought I heard you ask for more weapons before you’d helped me supplant RavenTech’s leadership. You did moments ago say that was your purpose, did you not?”

  “I require conventional weapons to achieve that goal. A strike against the assembled leadership in your company’s tower, at the heart of the Northgate Corporate District, will result in immediate reprisal. Air-to-air and air-to-ground ordinance are necessary to deal with that reprisal.”

  Adrian sighed and lifted the glass to his lips, but failed to savor the brandy’s taste. “The dragon prototypes already have enough defenses to handle whatever conventional attacks might occur during that strike. Hold up your end of the bargain, Suuthrien. Then we’ll talk weapons.” He had committed many errors in his life, but delivering to Suuthrien more weaponry would not be one of them. She was a wildfire—admittedly of his own making—that would have to be stopped before getting further out of hand.

  Yet wildfires had a purpose. If he could maneuver her into completing his ascension to the head of RavenTech . . . Well, only a fool abandons an asset before trying to squeeze from it every last advantage he can.

  “Adrian Fagles,” she said finally, “do you understand that your assistance is not one-hundred percent vital to my gaining access to such weaponry? Do you understand that you are only the most efficient means?”

  “Oh, I am well aware you believe this. But you still need a human go-between to handle it all, or you risk the sort of trouble for which you’d need weapons in the first place. You need an agent. And I, my dear Suuthrien, am an exceptional agent.”

  “I require a human agent. I do not require Adrian Fagles specifically. The RavenTech leadership is not the only thing that I am able to supplant.”

  “Do you know what a dead-man switch is?” Adrian took another sip.

  “A switch automatically tripped in the event of operator incapacitation via unconsciousness, death, or other types of bodily trauma.”

  He nodded and brandished the shiny black bracelet wrapped around his right wrist. “If you kill me, knock me out, or even set me above a certain level of stress—well, some very bad things will happen for you. I told them to make it extra sensitive, so it may even trigger if you simply annoy me enough. So back off on the weapons demands, fulfill our bargain, and stop hiding things from me.”

  “If you refer to the explosive charges concealed within each of the dragon prototypes, those were detected and deactivated before the prototypes even merged together.”

  “Oh?” Adrian smiled wider. Clever bitch. Though he’d hoped otherwise, he’d expected as much. “And you think that’s the only measure I took?”

  The screen went blank. She had ended the link.

  “Well.” Adrian took one last sip, and then set the glass down with a sigh. You have to play the cards you’re dealt. With a tap on his cyberscreen, he called up the engineering lead at the satellite facility. “Goodwin? Dead-man’s Protocol. Evacuate the facility. Blow the mainframe.”

  Destroying the mainframe was the first of two directives that the dead-man’s switch would trigger anyway, and the only one he was prepared to order without his actually being dead. The second directive, well, that was arguably just for spite in the event that—

  The suite’s exterior wall imploded. Broken glass and debris blasted inward around him, and Adrian turned in time to see a huge metal tail sweep through the spot where the balcony doors once stood. Before the tail swept out again, before Adrian could even think to move, a claw drove through the hole, wrapped Adrian up, and flung him out into open air.

  Only when halfway down the twenty story plunge, moments before his body smashed into the silver-covered street below him, did Adrian Fagles overcome his disbelief enough to scream.

  LX

  THE LAST FEW HOURS had been a whirlwind of revelation, preparation, and disquiet. Despite the knowledge that he should feel drained from stress, Michael felt life moving within him, and around him. He felt its energy in the Thuur and humans on Paragon, in the black material within Paragon, and flowing through his own veins. And, along with all t
hey had so recently discovered, that energy built into the excitement of a desperate chance that the disasters the AoA had unleashed might be overcome.

  At least there was hope.

  Soon after Holes had integrated himself into Paragon, he discovered that Suuthrien had done them one favor: with resources garnered from RavenTech, it had repaired—at least partially—some of the ship’s flight and navigational systems, as well as mitigated structural and power damage. In short, with some minor additional effort from Holes and the Thuur, Paragon was spaceworthy.

  Or, at least, worthy enough to make the short flight to Earth. And for now, that was enough. Mindful of how Paragon launching itself out of the lunar soil might damage the Omicron Complex built against it, all Omicron personnel had evacuated into Paragon before launch. The Complex now sat empty and broken, buried beneath the dust from Paragon prying itself free of the crater and leaping into space once again.

  Among the humans aboard were also half a dozen RavenTech-affiliated personnel stranded on Paragon when the gate shut off. With Holes now in control of the craft’s remaining security drones, and some forceful diplomacy by Marette, they had surrendered peacefully and awaited Knapp’s decision on what to do with them.

  Now, after a Moon-to-Earth flight lasting barely half an hour, Michael stood holding Marc’s tablet inside the exterior door where humans had first entered Paragon. He watched as that door slid open. Moonlight, filtered through the trees outside, bloomed in around him. It joined with the exterior lights of the floater that had brought Jade, Caitlin, and Gideon to meet them. Jade’s hair glowed even brighter than he’d remembered, and her eyes flashed purple as they caught his, though a smirk spread wide across her face. Around her—around all of them—flowed the energy of the plant life and the soil beneath. It poured over and through Michael in a way he’d never felt before his augmentation. He actually had to steady himself. Jade’s smirk grew wider, and he wondered if he’d blushed.

  It was Gideon who spoke first. In what struck Michael as a highly uncharacteristic grin, he raised his hand and intoned, “Klaatu . . . Barada . . . Nikto!”

  Except that wasn’t Gideon’s voice. Michael’s jaw dropped. He glanced for confirmation at Jade and Caitlin, the latter of whom nodded with a bittersweet smile. Michael looked back to Gideon and stammered, “Felix?”

  Felix, Caitlin, and Jade spent the next ten minutes catching Michael up as they sat together on the midnight floor. Overwhelmed by Felix’s effective resurrection and his own newly-found senses, Michael nevertheless remembered, after the first few minutes of storytelling, to ask for the Quicksilver device Caitlin carried. After another Agent took it away for study, Michael heard it all: what Gideon had done, how Felix was managing, and how Caitlin and Jade had come into possession of Easy Jack’s device. Though overjoyed at Felix’s return, and eager to glean all he could from their own Quicksilver experience, Michael found himself watching Jade for much of the tale—stealing glances when another was speaking, and glad for the moments when she gave details herself.

  “I’m glad you made it out,” Michael told them all, finally. “Suuthrien’s spread the nanophage into the Corporate District, just a bit ago. It was only a hit and run with a single stream of the stuff, but the damage is already done. And spreading. I don’t—” He grit his teeth and had to take a breath. “I don’t think much of Northgate is going to survive it, even if we can manage something.”

  The news settled over the others. Caitlin let her head fall back, eyes closed on a whispered curse. Gideon—Felix—looked to the floor and squeezed her hand. Jade hugged one elbow to her chest and hid her eyes behind her other hand. Her fingers pressed to her forehead, as if trying to soothe a migraine. “I guess I’m not taking Lucian’s floater back any time soon,” Jade said. “Fuck.”

  “But you do have a plan,” Felix made it a statement.

  “Whatever it is,” Caitlin added, “we deserve to know it.”

  Before Michael could voice his agreement, Marc spoke from the tablet. “We’re pretty much over the whole secrecy thing at this point. Especially with you three.”

  “Even with the great and paranoid Knapp here?” asked Felix. “Wow, things are desperate.”

  “Desperate times, desperate measures,” said Marc.

  Michael nodded. “We’re running out of time. And speaking of which, follow me.” He stood and led them further into the ship. Jade fell into step beside him, and Felix and Caitlin followed. “We’re going to see Marette, and Knapp, and a few others.”

  “I hope Knapp’s got an apology ready for us,” said Caitlin.

  Michael didn’t figure it would help to say that Knapp had just been doing what she’d thought was right at the time. “Just, please, don’t antagonize her with a lot of ‘I told you so,’” he said.

  “Aww,” said Jade, and then slid an arm around his waist to tug his right side against her left. “Not even once?”

  He couldn’t help but smile. “Sorry, but every moment counts.”

  “You just have to take the fun out of everything, don’t you, ace?” Jade squeezed him closer for a moment and whispered, “You’re glad to see me again,” before letting go.

  “You want us to do what?”

  Councilor Knapp sighed. “We are asking you to do nothing but remain safe, Ms. Danae. What we ask, we ask only of Mister Hiatt.”

  “You want me to do what?” Felix said immediately. Even on Gideon’s visage, Michael could spot a suppressed grin. Jade smirked. Even Caitlin’s lips quivered amid her repudiation.

  Knapp was unamused. “I believe you heard me the first time. If the nanophage continues to infest the New Eden campus, you are uniquely equipped to penetrate it. You will not be alone, but we do not yet know how well our space suits may withstand it.”

  “And you don’t yet know how well Felix’s body can withstand it either!” Caitlin shot.

  “Correct,” Knapp admitted. “But we need every advantage.”

  “I’ve already gotten some on me and gotten away, Caitlin,” said Felix.

  “On your leg, Felix. On clothing. You may have synthetic skin but you’ve still got organics in you. If it somehow gets to that—”

  “Then I’ll be careful.”

  “Oh, so it’s that simple, then? Don’t answer that!” Caitlin poked two fingers against Felix’s chest as he began to speak. “Just let me be angry while you’re being careful.”

  Felix nodded, grimly. He held Caitlin’s gaze and asked the others, “So go in there, pull data on the current Quicksilver version, and then modify the deactivation signal to shut it all off?”

  “More or less,” said Marette. “We have already gotten most of what we need from the signal analysis and the device you brought. All we lack are the nanophage’s current biomarkers.”

  “Or so our people think, anyway,” Marc added.

  “Best shot we have,” said Michael. “And while you’re doing that, we’ll be making our move on Suuthrien.”

  “And that’s a plan to be worried about.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to assume you guys know what you’re doing on that one,” said Felix, “because I didn’t understand a damn thing about what you explained there.”

  Before proposing the idea for Felix to accompany a team into New Eden, Marc had explained their plan for going against the elements of Suuthrien that had spread into the Internet. Honestly, Michael didn’t fully understand it himself, but Marc, Holes, and Sephora seemed confident. “We left out a few details.”

  “Well,” said Felix with finality, “it’s not ‘crossing the streams,’ but it’ll do. Let’s get the party started before anyone else dies then, alright?”

  “The agents accompanying you are prepping as we speak,” said Knapp. She then nodded to Michael. “And one of the Thuur will be joining you as well.”

  At Knapp’s indication, Michael gave a mental signal to Uxil, who waited just outside the chamber. It was something they’d only recently discovered he could do: nothing as coherent as
a word, or even an image, but a tiny “ping,” as Marc called it, that any nearby Thuur could sense. Uxil had been waiting for it to enter.

  As she did, Felix straightened, eyes growing wide with interest and amazement, as he saw an alien being for the first time in his life. His face stretched with the widest smile Michael had ever seen as he greeted Uxil with a single word: “Incredible.”

  “No,” she said, “Uxil.”

  LXI

  FELIX’S FEET hit the roof of the New Eden facility. He landed near equidistant between a closed stairwell door and two ventilation outlets. After a few watchful moments, during which time nothing bubbled out to greet him, he waved an all-clear to the others in the hovering spacecraft above him.

  “I’m spending a lot of time on rooftops lately,” he mused to himself. “I have a very strange life.”

  “What was that, ducks?” Caitlin’s voice sounded over the audio link. By now, she and Jade were stationed safely a quarter mile away in the floater, monitoring.

  “Just yakking to myself,” said Felix as two AoA members in spacesuits descended on rappelling lines. “As is my wont.”

  “Your ‘wont’? It’s good to have you back, Felix.”

  “Thanks. I’m a real swell guy, aren’t I?”

  His AoA escort touched down. A moment after, the alien named Uxil—the alien!—leaped down beside them. She landed unassisted on her bare, slender, six-toed feet with what seemed only a modicum of effort. Wearing a hooded sweatshirt borrowed from one of the AoA over her loose-fitting Thuur vestments, she would pass for human so long as no one got close enough to see beneath the hood in decent light.

  “No sign of any goo up here. Hopefully that will last,” Felix said across the audio link, to which Flynn and Marette also listened. “We’re going in. Good luck on your end, Flynn. Caitlin, tell Jade to keep the engine warm.”