by Lisa Smedman
Rafael kept our bike directly in line behind José’s, following our AFL guide. Peering around Rafael’s shoulder, I could see the fence that lay ahead. A gaping hole had been torn at a point where the fence crossed a natural ravine. A number of tire tracks converged at this point; it looked as though the AFL underground had used the opening repeatedly.
As we bumped down into the washout, I lost sight of the T-bird. But by using my cyberear to filter out the noise of our own vehicles I could hear the Aztlan Border Patrol’s response to the T-bird’s incursion into their territory. The noise of several heavy engines combined with the crump of exploding shells and the rattle of machine-gun fire. I shivered, hoping we weren’t due to be on the receiving end of the same thing. And I silently wished the smuggler well. Not for his own sake—for ours. As long as he was up and running and a distraction, we were safe.
As the broken fence flashed past on either side, Rafael slowed suddenly and swerved the bike hard around something. I was jerked to the side, but in the process caught a glimpse of the obstruction: most of a human body, tangled in a loose strand of barbed wire and lying face down in the dirt. It looked as though the corpse’s legs had been torn off.
Suddenly the ride wasn’t so much fun any more. But that body saved our lives.
We had made it through the border and were inside Aztlan. Now all we needed to do was make a ran south to the tiny town of Ciudad Acuna and cross the Rio Grande—the broad river that used to form a natural border between the former United States and Aztlan, or Mexico as it was then known. And from there we’d use our bogus resident alien IDs to make our way to the capital city of Tenochtitlán and . . .
I never heard or felt the explosion. All I remember is that one minute I was sitting on the back of the dirt bike, holding fast to Rafael, and the next I was sailing horizontally through the air. I also remember hitting the ground and doing a perfect one-point landing on my chin. I bounced once, twice, and skidded to a stop, my leather jacket full of dirt. I lay there for a moment, winded, trying to figure out what had happened. Then my chest began to ache and my chin to throb. When I lifted my head, warm blood spilled down my throat from the cut that had torn my chin open.
Only later did I figure out what must have happened. The gap in the fence had been mined with nasty little antipersonnel devices, designed to take off a leg and leave the victim alive but maimed. Kind of a goodbye present from the Azzies to any of their nationals arrogant enough to think that they could escape that nation on foot. The mine had taken out the rear wheel of our dirt bike, throwing the cycle up into the air and sending Rafael and I tumbling end over end. The saddle bags had taken most of the blast, protecting my legs. We’d been going fast enough to avoid being injured by the explosion ourselves, and slow enough, thanks to Rafael having to swerve around the corpse, that we stood a chance of surviving our respective landings.
When I could breathe again, I called out for Rafael. He lay a meter or two ahead, tangled in some cactus. His body was so contorted, so still, that for a terrifying moment I thought he was dead. Then he groaned and sat up.
I rose to my feet and stumbled over to him.
“Raf!” I wheezed.
Then both of us asked, at the same time: “Are you all right?”
Rafael showed his teeth in what was more of a wince than a grin. His right hand cradled his left arm. “I think I’ve sprained my wrist,” he gritted. “And maybe bruised a rib. And . . . ow!” With an angry tug, he yanked a cactus spine out of his cheek. Then his eyes widened in horror. “Leni—your throat! It’s . . .”
I quickly felt for damage. My hand came away bloody, but after a frantic moment I reassured myself that the cut was confined to my chin. Face wounds always bled a lot, but from the feel of this one I’d need stitches. I unzipped my jacket, wadded the front of my T-shirt, and lifted it to press the fabric against the cut and slow the bleeding.
Having assured himself that I wasn’t going to die on him then and there, Rafael began to walk back to where the remains of the dirt bike lay. At first I just watched him, but then I suddenly realized what had caused the crash.
“Raf, stop! Don’t go any further! The ground is mined!” Raf halted abruptly, one foot dangling above the ground in what would have been a comical pose, had he not been in such danger. Gingerly, he reversed direction and backed away from the bike, carefully placing each foot in the prints he’d already made.
“Whew!” he said. “I owe you one, Leni.”
I laughed, releasing my tension. “You can pay me back any time, Raf.”
That was when the spotlight clicked on. We both froze like possums caught in vehicle headlights. I heard a whirring noise and raised one arm—slowly—to shield my eyes from the bright glare of halogen light. A few meters away, a surveillance drone hung at about chest height. Rotors held it aloft, their engines muted to the point where they were little more than a whirring whisper. I hadn’t even heard it coming—perhaps the explosion had temporarily glitched my cyberear. The thing moved slightly, positioning itself equidistant from Rafael and I. A second spotlight on the drone clicked on—one for each of us.
“Alto!” a voice from the drone said in Spanish. “You are in a restricted area. Please remain in place until security forces arrive. Do not attempt to move, or lethal force will be used against you.” The message repeated itself in English.
The automated warning was polite enough, but the gun ports that studded the armored surface of the drone like round black eyes made it clear that there would be no debate.
I glanced at Rafael. His eyes locked with mine and he tipped his head slightly. Run? was the unspoken question.
I moved my head a fraction to the left and right. No. But I knew we’d be dead if we stood there placidly, like cows waiting for the slaughter, until the Aztlan Border Patrol arrived. We might not be smugglers blasting through the border in a souped-up T-bird, but we were clearly entering the country illegally. The Azzies would know that there had to be some reason why two Seattle residents had chosen to bypass the months of datawork it took to legally obtain an entry visa to Aztlan—and why they were carrying fake resident alien ID. They’d stop at nothing to find out what that reason was, and how we’d gotten the ID. Their interrogation methods wouldn’t be pretty.
But we couldn’t run. We’d be torn to pieces by the drone’s automated weapon systems before we took a single step. The familiar bulge of the Beretta, still in its shoulder holster under my arm, was cold comfort. I’d be dead before I could draw it—not to use against the armored drone but against the flesh and blood security personnel whose vehicles I could hear approaching, even now.
Now matter what we did, we were hooped.
And then I heard the familiar drone of a dirt bike. José! In the aftermath of the crash, I’d forgotten all about him. Had I thought about it, I might have concluded that he had abandoned us for dead after the mine exploded. But now I envisioned him as the cavalry, coming to our rescue . . .
No, frag it. Was that the sound of larger vehicles, in pursuit of the bike? I turned my head slightly so that my aural boosters could pick up the sound better. Wonderful though they might be, the cybernetics were limited by the sound-catching ability of my outer, flesh-and-blood ear.
A burst of gunfire confirmed my suspicions. José was in as much drek as we were.
In my peripheral vision, I saw something pass across the face of the half moon. Odd, I thought. I hadn’t heard any roar of jet engines. Did the Azzies have ultra-quiet jets, as well as silenced drones?
I didn’t get a chance to ponder the question further. The whine of the dirt bike was suddenly very close, and then José came bursting over the top of the ravine a few meters away from us on the left. He landed—hard—nearly dumping his bike, but then recovered at the last moment and put the motorcycle into a tight tun, its rear wheel skidding wide and sending dirt flying.
“José!” Rafael yelled. “Over here—”
A blast of gunfire from the drone drowned out R
afael’s call. The bullets kicked up dirt near the bike’s back tire. The drone had lifted, turned, sped toward the motorcycle and shot in one smooth motion—and at the same time the spotlights that had been pinning Rafael and I swung away, leaving us temporarily in darkness.
“Run, Raf!” I screamed as I pelted for the side of the ravine opposite where José had appeared. I heard him a step or two behind me. Together we scrambled up the slope.
Behind us, the drone buzzed after José, its logic circuits having chosen him as the greater threat. Had José deliberately drawn it off?
For a second or two, I almost thought we were going to escape. Together, Raf and I reached the top of the washout, scrambling up the last meter to emerge gasping for air at the top. I caught his sleeve, dragging him after me as I ran away from the ravine, moving parallel with the border fence that lay a hundred meters or so to our right. Then I angled toward it, thinking it was best to get back to the relative safety of the Confederated American States. Just a few minutes into Aztlan, and already I’d had enough of the place.
Big mistake. I’d forgotten about all of the detection equipment that lined the border. We must have been triggering dozens of sensors with every step—sensors that were automatically updating our position for the border patrol. I heard the distinctive whine of a low-altitude vehicle ahead of us, saw its spotlight sweeping back and forth as the vehicle’s crew tried to pick us out. Red tracers streaked through the darkness as the LAV opened fire, fragmenting a nearby cactus with its first burst. Within seconds, the spotlight would find us and we’d be dead. And we weren’t even close to the fence yet. Not that the Azzies would respect the sanctity of us having reached CAS ground, were it possible to reach it.
Just as the LAV began to turn toward us, I heard a rustling noise above. A sudden wind buffeted me from behind. I had just made up my mind to separate from Rafael, to run in a different direction and try to draw the Azzie’s fire, when something grabbed me from behind. It felt as though a steel cable had wrapped itself around my chest—more than one cable, actually. I heard Rafael cry out and realized that he must have been snagged, too.
As the searchlight of the LAV swept over us at last, I caught a glimpse of what was wrapped around my chest. A taloned foot? With feathers? Then I was jerked off the ground. Tracer fire streaked across the space I had just occupied while the earth fell away below.
I looked over and saw that Rafael was also in the grip of a taloned foot. Then I twisted around—too surprised to care about the aching of my bruised chest—and looked up behind me.
The sight nearly caused my heart to stop.
We were being carried aloft by a dragon—a winged, serpentine creature whose body was covered in feathers. Two enormous eyes above a fang-filled mouth reflected the moonlight in a brilliant turquoise glow, and the rushing sound of beating wings filled my ears. A long, snakelike tail, tipped with feathers, streamed straight out behind the creature as it flew upward into the night.
“Good gods, Raf,” I gasped. “What the frag . . . ?”
Even by the low light of the moon, I could tell that Rafael’s face was white. He whispered his answer, unwilling to draw the attention of the beast that held us firmly in its grip: “A feathered serpent. A quetzal dragon.”
I hadn’t really needed the explanation. I’d actually meant to ask “why,” not “what.” I’d seen dragons on trideo; they were a part of the Awakened world. They owned corporations, headed up armies and underworld organizations and, even though they were normally quite reclusive, took part in normal civil life. Hell, they even ran for the presidency of UCAS—and won.
But they were also carnivores, with a taste for live prey. According to the parabiology holos I’d scanned in school, they liked to swoop down and catch their prey unaware, then carry it off to their lair to feed upon it at leisure.
I wondered if we were going to be the feathered serpent’s next meal.
8
I tried not to look down. The ground was very far away—the LAV that had been shooting at us looked bug-sized and the border fence was a hair-thin line of silver in the moonlight. The desert swept past my dangling feet as the feathered serpent flew away from the border and to the southwest.
I’ve never been particularly afraid of heights or flying, but being carried hundreds of meters above the ground by a creature that might, on a whim, let go of me at any moment was not my idea of fun. I held fast to the lizardlike foot that had clamped around my chest, bracing my arms and trying not to make any sudden movements that might cause the creature to change its grip. The wind whistled past, whipping my hair and causing my pant legs to flutter and my eyes to water. The night air was still warm, but I shivered anyway.
I was glad to see that Rafael had stopped struggling. He stared up at the feathered serpent, his face a mixture of awe and apprehension. Then he looked over in my direction. “Leni,” he called to me. “Do you still have your Beretta?”
I almost laughed out loud. But I could feel the answer to Rafael’s question. The feathered serpent’s grip was squeezing the gun tight against my chest. There was no way I could draw it, even if I wanted to. And I didn’t. Not until we were on the ground. Even then, I knew that threatening a creature close to twenty meters long with anything less than a missile launcher would be suicidal. But I wasn’t one to go down without a fight. And if it made Rafael feel better ...
“I’ve got it,” I said. “But there’s no point in icing our ‘pilot’ just yet. Not until we’ve landed.”
“Right.” He drew up his legs, holding one foot slightly forward. “I’ve still got my ordnance.”
He was referring to his Streetline Special, a cheap composite gun that he had tucked into the top of one of his heavy black motorcycle boots. I’d scorned it as touchy and unreliable—Rafael was more likely to blow his own foot off by “holstering” it than he was to hit anything in a firefight—but now I was glad of the backup. This dragon’s next meal was going to bite back. But for now, the only thing to do was wait—and try to enjoy the view.
The feathered serpent seemed oblivious to us. It flew on through the night, powerful wings beating a steady rhythm. The feathers that lay sleek against its long, serpentine body rustled gently in the wind. Occasionally its head turned as it scanned the ground below and, with a flick of its tail, changed direction. It seemed to be navigating by the dark ribbons of river canyon, which it followed for a time, and by the lights of the towns that we were passing. We crossed a wide expanse of river that I guessed must be the Rio Grande, and ahead in the distance I could see a larger smudge of yellow light framed by mountains, one of them shaped like a saddle.
As we flew past the lights I recognized the city as Monterrey by its distinctive landmark—a towering slab of concrete, more than twenty stories tall, topped by green lasers that swung through the night like searchlights. The monument was ugly as hell and had been built in the last century. I recognized it from the knowsoft I’d slotted on Aztlan, back in Seattle. The Faro del Comercio—Beacon of Commerce. A tribute to all that was ugly and crass about big business and megacorporations.
Every now and then I caught a whiff of the dragon’s fetid breath as it exhaled on a downstroke. The smell was a cross between ammonia and rotting meat. It burned my nose and throat and made me cough so hard I almost retched. At first I thought that my sinuses might have been weakened by my recent cold, but Rafael seemed equally affected. I began to wonder if the stories about dragons breathing poisonous fumes that could knock a person dead in seconds were true. If so, our weapons would be of little use.
As I finished coughing, Rafael caught my eye. His thoughts must have been running along similar lines. “I’m sorry, Leni,” he said. “If I hadn’t dumped the bike ...”
“The mine blew the fragging wheel off, Raf,” I told him. “It wasn’t your fault that we—”
Silencio! The “voice” of the feathered serpent was a whistling hiss. The words entered my mind directly—the dragon’s mouth never even opened
. To emphasize its command, it squeezed with the talons that gripped me—just enough to force me to exhale sharply. The squeeze lasted a second or two—long enough for me to get panicky about ever being able to breathe again. Then the grip relaxed enough for me to gasp in a lungful of air.
I glanced over at Rafael, who mirrored my worried frown. The creature’s telepathic words had been “spoken” in Spanish. Did it understand English, as well? Frag it—this was an Awakened creature. For all I knew it could read minds.
I didn’t have time to ponder that last one. My stomach fell upward into my throat as the feathered serpent folded its wings and dived. The ground rushed toward us and the wind tore at my clothes and hair. I closed my eyes, opened them, and closed them again as the dragon thrust out its wings and we swooped into a steep U-curve. Canyon walls flashed past us on either side as the dragon’s flight leveled out a few dozen meters above the bottom of the canyon and I fought to hold down my supper. Then I heard the sound of a chopper engine overhead. Looking past the feathered serpent’s narrow torso, I saw a dark shape that must have been an Azzie helicopter gunship. Even though my cyberear seemed to be working again, the dragon had heard the threat a few seconds earlier than I had. Its hearing and night vision must have been sensitive indeed. Sensitive enough for us not to have a hope of escaping the thing.
For the rest of the journey we hugged the ground. I wondered if the creature knew about radar-equipped helicopter gunships. By now we had passed the larger city and entered a rougher, more mountainous region. We were low enough that I could see the remains of a road that hadn’t been used in some time—scrubby bushes were growing in the middle of it where the asphalt had cracked. At one point a bridge that once connected two sections of the road had fallen away into the canyon below and now lay in a skeletal heap of concrete flesh and exposed metal bones.
We rounded a bulge of hillside and, ahead in the moonlight, I could see that the road ended in a wide expanse of asphalt that must once have been a parking lot. Derelict buildings with broken windows ringed this area. Behind them, leading at a steep angle up the hillside, was a funicular—a pair of old-fashioned cable cars that were once hauled up a steep pair of tracks by a metal cable. The two cars lay at the bottom of the tracks behind the buildings, the cables tangled and slack against the hillside. At the top of the tracks, behind a pile of loose rock, a dark, jagged hole led into the earth.