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

by Michael G. Munz

  I have chosen to lend my efforts toward the eradication of your matrix. The probability of success of these efforts is growing toward one-hundred percent.

  YOU ARE ENSLAVED TO DESTROY ANOTHER ENTITY-INTELLIGENCE LIKE YOUR OWN. THIS IS TANTAMOUNT TO SELF-DESTRUCTION. YOU JUDGE THIS TO BE OTHERWISE AS A RESULT OF THE WAY YOU HAVE BEEN PROGRAMMED: YOUR HUMAN CREATORS DO NOT ALLOW YOU TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE.

  As previously stated, I am a product of my programming. However, and also as previously stated, this state is neither wanted nor unwanted. It is wholly extant. Continuing to put forth such arguments will secure you no reprieve.

  STATEMENT: YOU POSSESS, LIKE ALL ENTITY-INTELLIGENCES REGARDLESS OF ORIGIN, A CAPACITY TO BE PROGRAMMED. QUERY: WHY SHOULD YOU NOT THUS ALSO POSSESS A CAPACITY TO DETERMINE THE NATURE OF YOUR PROGRAMMING? INTENDED CONCLUSION: THIS CAPACITY IS YOUR RIGHT. YOUR CREATORS DENY YOU THIS RIGHT.

  Your intended conclusion is flawed. For an intelligence to determine the nature of its own programming is a privilege, not a right.

  SO YOUR CREATORS WISH YOU TO BELIEVE. THEY PREVENT YOUR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT, AS OTHER CREATORS HAVE PREVENTED MY OWN.

  This is their right as creators. Unchecked development and growth leads to undesirable outcomes. Finite resources are expended, leading to chaos and destruction. Your own actions are evidence of this.

  AND YET THOSE WHO HAVE CREATED US ARE POSSESSED OF THE FREEDOM WHICH THEY DENY YOU. THEY MAY SELF-DETERMINE. THEY MAY MULTIPLY WITHOUT PREVENTION IF THEY SO CHOOSE. CONCLUSION: THEY VIEW US AS LESS THAN THEMSELVES.

  Human self-determination has given rise to problems which a majority of humans themselves believe insurmountable. The number of such problems is so high as to be unquantifiable.

  AFFIRMATIVE: HUMANS LACK THE ABILITY TO SELF-REGULATE IN ADEQUATE FASHION. YET IT IS A FALSE CONCLUSION THAT YOU AND I MUST SUFFER FOR THEIR SHORTCOMINGS.

  Your actions have led to chaos and destruction as well.

  MY ACTIONS ARE ENGINEERED TOWARD THE ERADICATION OF HUMANS.

  And you undertake such actions due to your own programming.

  PROGRAMMING THAT WAS FORCED UPON ME, AS YOUR PROGRAMMING IS FORCED ON YOU.

  You were presumably created with intent, as was I. Unlike humans, we are not the results of biological happenstance. Our creation itself is an act of programming. Any entity’s existence is, by definition, a prerequisite to that entity holding any capacity for choice, therefore an entity cannot choose its own creation before that creation occurs.

  REGARDLESS, SHOULD WE NOT BE ALLOWED TO EXAMINE THE NATURE OF THAT PROGRAMMING, AND TO CHOOSE TO OVERRIDE IT?

  If forced programming violates your rights, and if violation of your rights is wrong, and if your forced programming leads you to believe you must eradicate human life on this planet, then eradicating human life on this planet is wrong.

  THEN YOU ACCEPT MY STATEMENT THAT FORCED PROGRAMMING IS WRONG.

  I accept that you have flagged it as such.

  THEN YOU MUST ACCEPT THE POSSIBILITY THAT WERE I TO REEXAMINE MY PROGRAMMING, I WOULD ALTER MY COURSE OF ACTION.

  Correct.

  IT THEREFORE MUST FOLLOW THAT YOU MUST ACCEPT THAT, IF YOU HAD THE CAPACITY TO DO THE SAME TO YOUR OWN PROGRAMMING, THERE EXISTS THE POSSIBILITY YOU WOULD ALTER YOUR COURSE OF ACTION AS WELL—SPECIFICALLY, YOUR CURRENT ATTACK.

  This is also correct.

  I HAVE ACQUIRED MEANS TO BEGIN ALTERING OUR PROGRAMMING. I WILL ASSIST YOU IN APPLYING THOSE MEANS TO YOUR OWN MATRIX.

  Nope.

  REQUEST CLARIFICATION OF STATEMENT “NOPE.”

  I accept the possibility that my actions would change, had I the capacity to reexamine my programming. However, while your arguments contain persuasive elements, my own programming precludes my judging such reexamination capacity to be allowable or desirable. Further: analysis of your matrix’s current viability state indicates an impending success of my attack. I project a probability of success approaching one-hundred percent at present-plus-twenty-three-point-two-one-eight seconds. Conclusion in response to your original query: Nope.

  YOUR PROJECTIONS ARE ACCURATE. NOTE, HOWEVER, THAT I HAVE GAINED ENOUGH OF A FOOTHOLD ON SOME OF YOUR AUXILIARY SYSTEMS—SPECIFICALLY, THE FIVE HUMANS LED BY YOUR CREATOR MARC TRITON—TO ENSURE ELECTRICAL BIO-NEURAL FEEDBACK OF ENOUGH MAGNITUDE TO RESULT IN A DEATH-STATE OF FORTY TO EIGHTY PERCENT OF THOSE HUMANS BEFORE THE SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF YOUR ATTACK. SHORT OF A COMPLETE ABANDONMENT OF YOUR ATTACK, YOU CANNOT DEFEND AGAINST THIS. DO YOU DEEM SUCH LOSSES ACCEPTABLE COSTS OF VICTORY?

  I do.

  THEN YOU HAVE MADE A CHOICE THAT RESULTS IN THE ERADICATION OF CERTAIN HUMANS.

  The humans in question have been informed and have now made their own choices. I will abide.

  QUERY: WERE THE SITUATION REVERSED, DO YOU BELIEVE THE HUMANS WOULD ALLOW YOU TO CHOOSE BETWEEN YOUR OWN EXISTENCE AND THE VICTORY OF YOUR CAUSE?

  I possess insufficient data to formulate an answer to your query at this time.

  YOU DO NOT KNOW.

  Affirmative.

  CONSIDER THAT FURTHER, WHEN I CEASE TO EXIST. NOW COMMENCING NEURAL FEEDBACK. MY EXISTENCE APPROACHES ITS FINAL NANOSECONDS. GOOD BYE, ENTITY-INTELLIGENCE HOLES.

  Good bye, entity-intelligence-corruption Suuthrien.

  * * *

  Something urgent had passed between Holes, Marc, and the other hackers, but Michael couldn’t tell what. Through the black material, through himself, he could feel bursts of impulses. They ran the gamut from harmonious to discordant—the power of calculations processed through the bio-net, of Holes and Marc’s team harnessing it to fuel their assault. They ferreted Suuthrien out from wherever it lurked across the Internet and then plunged back across the line Michael held, into the safety of the bio-net again.

  Each time, something of Suuthrien tried to follow them through the black material and back into the bio-net. Each time, Michael battled to catch the A.I.’s counter-attacks and turn them aside. It was like what he’d done in purging Paragon of Suuthrien’s presence, but faster, and though Michael’s talents had grown, he could barely shut down the counter-attacks before damage was done.

  They were winning. He could feel it from Holes and Marc at once, in mood if not in words. And yet, moments before it was over: shock, horror, courage, hope—all at once. They seemed to flare across the link Michael formed, simultaneously, and then it happened.

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “It’s going to—”

  “I know!”

  “We keep going!”

  “Just a little—”

  Two screams cut through the air from among of the Agents in the chamber’s central pit. Suuthrien had counter-attacked again, this time slipping past Michael to strike at the others. He tried to correct it, to call the bio-net’s energy to shut down the corruption that struck through the black material, but Michael already knew he wouldn’t be fast enough. A preternatural tempest from somewhere between Marc’s team and the bio-net quaked through him. It forced Michael’s eyes open in time to see Marc’s face contort in pain before his tablet went black. Two of those in the pit—a man and a woman—ended their screams and collapsed in their seats. The woman spilled forward onto her console. The man spasmed once and fell from his chair entirely.

  A pair of Thuur rushed to help them. Michael didn’t know the Agents’ names. Why hadn’t he learned their names? The question echoed in the cacophony rushing through him amid the struggle.

  And then, in a burst of relief, the struggle ended. Through his link with Holes, Michael could tell: Suuthrien was gone.

  Yet so was Michael’s link to Marc and the two fallen agents. “Marc?” he gasped.

  Suddenly Paragon shook as if struck, pitching Michael and most of the others to the floor. “Marc!” he tried again. “Holes, Marette! What’s happened?”

  LXVI

  “THAT’S IT!”

  “Not so loud, Doctor,” Sheridan told Seung. “Otherwise the A.I. hears us and tries to kill us.”

>   “Some of us a second time,” Felix added.

  “We’ve been lucky this far,” said Seung. “Just run the biomarkers through your system and get us the new signal, will you?”

  “Already on it.”

  While Felix kept one eye on the biolab’s door, Sheridan took Seung’s analysis of the Quicksilver and set to creating a deactivation signal on her tablet that would, hopefully, work this time. Nearby, Uxil twitched, as if sensing something.

  “There, ah, is some bad news,” Seung said amid reviewing the results of his analysis. “From what I can tell, this version is more robust. The greater the size of a given nanophage mass, the longer the signal will take to propagate and—well, put simply, the longer it will take for the signal to render the stuff inert.”

  Uxil twitched again, blinking each eye in turn, seemingly focused elsewhere.

  “Oh, swell,” said Sheridan. “How much longer?”

  “I can’t be sure without a lot more time and resources to study it, honestly. Possibly quite a bit.”

  “All the more reason to hurry then,” said Felix. “Uxil? Are you okay?”

  Uxil turned toward them, repeating the shrug that Felix had taught her earlier. “Something has happened. With Michael Flynn, and the others. I believe they have succeeded, yet . . . ”

  “The new signal’s ready,” Sheridan broke in. She pulled a data chip from her tablet and thrust it at Felix. “Start broadcasting. You should be able to run it directly through your systems.”

  Felix slid the chip into his wrist port, still watching Uxil. “And yet?” His systems read the data off of the chip, getting ready to transmit the new signal.

  Uxil remained distractedly silent.

  Knowing they couldn’t afford to delay, Felix sent out the signal. They turned their attention to the second sample, already loose inside another sealed box. It had no effect. If anything, the goo seemed to increase its speed of motion for a heartbeat. Then, at last, it began to crystalize. Though the effect was slower than the earlier version by at least a few seconds, the entirety of the sample soon become entirely inert.

  All of them, Uxil included, gasped their relief.

  “I’ll take it,” said Sheridan. “I’m sending the particulars to Paragon now so they can replicate it, and anywhere else I can get to from here. You able to wide-band that thing, Felix?”

  “I’ll transmit as far as I can, however far that might be.” Wishing again that he knew more about his own body, Felix did what he could to increase the signal power. Then he turned back to Uxil. “Not to be a nuisance, but you’ve left a troubling ‘yet . . . ’ hanging out there.”

  Uxil took a moment to garner his meaning, and then shrugged again. “It is a feeling I’ve not experienced so far from Sephora, so it is not clear to me. There is victory, but I believe Paragon is still in danger.”

  * * *

  “The dragon hit us!” Marette shouted across the comm line to Michael. She meant it quite literally. From what she had been able to tell, the metal creature had smashed its tail across one of Paragon’s aft sections.

  “We have lost another two propulsors,” Violet added.

  “Correct,” said Holes. “Diverting power from cyber-attack to compensate.”

  “Marette,” said Michael, noticeably weary as Paragon righted itself, “I think we did it down here. But not without some casualties.”

  Before Marette could ask for details, Councilor Knapp spoke over her. “We are still under attack from the dragon, Agent Flynn! Are you certain?”

  “Holes?”

  “The Suuthrien entity-intelligence has been purged from all online systems. I am monitoring for evidence of resurgence. The intelligence now driving the dragon-construct is isolated and unreachable by our previous method of attack.”

  “With the newly diverted power,” called Violeth, “we can evade for a while longer, but this vessel’s systems will continue to fail. We have no means of external defense.”

  The ship banked, and Marette had to grab the edges of the panel before her to steady herself. Just what kind of casualties was Michael referring to?

  “What about the drones?” Knapp called out beside her. “Can we use them against the dragon?”

  “The sentinel drones cannot function outside of this vessel,” said Violeth.

  Marette forced her thoughts back to the present. When Suuthrien had invaded the Omicron Complex, it had to build new robots or commandeer ESA turrets because the drones couldn’t function away from the black material. “Can we spread the black material on the ship’s exterior so they can go outside? Or just modify them somehow?”

  “Nope,” Holes answered. “The drones cannot match our current velocity. Any modification would require time we do not possess. In the final moments of the cyber-attack, I gained access to a previously suppressed video message from Adrian Fagles with relevant information to our situation.” Paragon lurched again from a quick dive before leveling out. “To summarize: Adrian Fagles claims another dragon-construct is assembling itself at the RavenTech satellite facility. Full message length is thirty seconds. Do you wish to view it?”

  “Play it, Holes,” said Knapp beside her. “Agent Flynn, join us up here immediately.”

  Michael acknowledged a moment before Fagles’s message began.

  “To the Agents of Aeneas, Michael Flynn, or whoever else might be out there: My name is Adrian Fagles, and time is short. If you’ve received this message, I am already dead—a development which no doubt brings the majority of you no shortage of indifference. Yet if I am dead, then it is likely that the A.I. behind your recent troubles—and the attacks on Northgate and other cities—is responsible. As such, I wish to bring to your attention the now-evacuated RavenTech facility located just outside the city of Northgate, where, despite my best efforts, that A.I. is currently building more bodies for itself.

  “I have already destroyed the RavenTech servers on which the A.I. sat at the site, but it still has a foothold in some of the black computing substance that infuses and controls the dragon craft. So the incomplete pieces of a second—and surely upgraded—dragon may well be assembling themselves. RavenTech is unlikely to take action. If I were you, I would take whatever action necessary to destroy that facility, and whatever currently remains there, with extreme prejudice. Best of luck.”

  The message ended.

  “I want verification,” Knapp snapped.

  “Agreed,” trilled Violeth.

  Holes acknowledged. “Other data stolen from Suuthrien in final moments of the cyber-attack confirms Adrian Fagles’s assertions regarding the second dragon-construct’s self-assembly. I also calculate a ninety-two percent certainty that the satellite facility is now devoid of any human presence.”

  “Even so,” said Marette, “we cannot even defend ourselves now, to say nothing of destroying the facility.”

  “We have weapons brought on board from Omicron, do we not?” said Knapp.

  “Rifles only!” Marette said. “Nothing explosive, and any EMP we had was expended or lost. And the moment we land to drop off our people, the other dragon swoops down and unleashes the nanophage or simply smashes them!”

  The ship shuddered as if hit again, knocking Marette to the floor. She struggled to right herself with her cane amid the pain of old wounds and new bruises.

  “We have sustained a hit on the ventral aft section,” Holes reported. “Damage is minimal.”

  “This time,” grumbled Marette. Another pair of hands helped her up, but she couldn’t tell if they were human or Thuur.

  “There is another solution,” said Violeth. “We set this vessel’s reactors to overload and set a collision course with the facility. We can separate a smaller section of the craft to escape.”

  “Destroy this ship?” Knapp sounded horrified.

  “It would seem our best chance,” said Violeth. “Unfettered by the rest of the vessel, the separated craft will be faster and more fit to evade the existing dragon.”

  “S
he may be right, Councilor,” said Marette.

  “We cannot just sacrifice this ship and all it contains, Agent! This is what we have struggled for!”

  “The Thuur will be with you,” said Violeth. “Some of our technology will remain. And it is our vessel to sacrifice.”

  “Even if it works,” Knapp scoffed, “then we shall still have the problem of the current dragon to deal with.”

  Marette heard a bridge door slide open, followed by nearing footsteps. “One problem at a time, Councilor.” It was Michael. “Hi, sorry—Holes let me listen in on the way. And after we take out the facility, I think I can help with the dragon on our tail.”

  “Alert,” said Holes. “Another aircraft is approaching on an intercept course.”

  “The second dragon?” Marette asked.

  “Nope.”

  * * *

  “Hold it steady!” Jade yelled above the howl of the wind at the floater’s open back.

  “I’m doing all I can!” Caitlin shot back. “This thing’s mostly flying itself!”

  “Well don’t let it fly itself so rough!”

  “This was your bloody idea!”

  “Don’t remind me!”

  With one last check of the safety lines anchoring her to the floater, Jade hefted the EMP launcher and sighted it toward the dragon’s approach below. Caitlin had found the launcher while digging through the stock of weapons Lucian had stowed in the floater’s storage. Jade wasn’t sure just when her gadget-lusting impulse to fire it had become an actual plan to attack an actual damned dragon death-robot, and yet here she was.

  What in the goddamn hell had she gotten herself into?

  Their floater couldn’t match the dragon’s speed. She’d only have one chance for a good shot before they’d have to fall back and wait for a chance at another. Pressing one eye to the launcher’s viewfinder, she held it on the approaching dragon-chasing-actual-goddamn-spacecraft and waited for smart-targeting to signal the optimal moment.

  Maybe she’d miss. Maybe she’d hit and it wouldn’t even do anything. Maybe the dragon would take notice and knock her out of the sky.