Dragon City

by James Axler

  Steadying the binoculars with both hands, Lakesh scanned the area past the gate until he spotted a figure poised by the long-hanging foliage. The figure was dressed in a dark robe, the hood cinched up to hide its face, a small leather pouch tied to its waist. Loose-fitting and shapeless, the robe left Lakesh uncertain as to whether the figure was male or female. Even so, he knew what the person was and—by association—what he or she wanted.

  “Firewalker.” Lakesh cursed, recalling the term Brigid had applied to the devoted warriors of Ullikummis before her recent disappearance.

  “He’s been there twenty minutes, perhaps more,” Shizuka informed Lakesh. “He doesn’t seem to be moving, just waiting.”

  “He senses we’re here,” Lakesh conceded. He pulled the binoculars from his eyes then, and she saw the weariness cloud his face for a moment.

  “Lakesh?”

  “We still understand so little about our foe, this Ullikummis,” Lakesh said. “How he communicates with his people, how he spreads his message. It’s part religion but there’s more to it. This…monster seems able to see things beyond what’s there. It’s like facing a grand chess master, knowing you are utterly outclassed yet unable to see the killing move until he strikes.”

  Handing the binoculars back to Shizuka, Lakesh turned away from the balcony. “There is a pawn on the fifth rank,” he said. “Tell your men to watch him, but do nothing to attract any further attention. For now, all we can do is wait.”

  “As the vultures circle,” Shizuka added as Lakesh departed.

  * * *

  IT HAD TAKEN EIGHTEEN minutes to reach the operations room, a journey that normally would have taken perhaps three or four. Balam arrived first, standing at the open doors beneath the Mercator map. The map was vandalized, rocky spines stretching across it and turning it into something nightmarish—like an alien, stony hand crushing the globe.

  Balam watched the corridor beyond, its arching roof a spiny plethora of stalactites. It was silent, showing no signs of movement. Balam waited, watching the heavy fire door he had exited not thirty seconds earlier, waiting for Kane to appear. Their bond was breaking apart, he realized, and Kane’s vision would be in flux until he came close enough to reestablish it.

  Suddenly the fire door crashed open and Kane came hurtling through, batting at something with the plastic tray he held. He looked to where Balam stood in the open doorway. “Keep moving,” he ordered through gritted teeth.

  Balam turned, hurrying farther into the ops room.

  Alone now in the corridor, Kane stumbled forward, feeling the ache in his muscles where he’d been batting the flying rocks aside. Once again, his vision was sailing in and out of reality, the rocky corridor walls swimming in front of his eyes. “Come on, Kane,” he told himself. “Keep it together.”

  In the ops room, Balam waddled past the twin rows of rock to the chamber that contained the mat-trans. Like Kane, he had traveled here by interphaser, and he had hidden the device in a rocky nook close to the chamber. The device itself was priceless, and it would not do for it to fall into the wrong hands.

  As Balam set up the interphaser within the mat-trans chamber, he wondered whether his wounded body would be able to cope with the journey through quantum space. Such travel could be hard on an injury, he understood, but for now they seemed to have run out of other options.

  Balam looked up as the twin doors to the operations room shoved open and Kane came staggering in, the tray still clutched in his hands. He looked tired, his unshaved face streaked with dirt and sweat. Even as Balam called to him, something began to form on the rock surface of the wall that housed the Mercator map. Small, circular rocks budded there, taking shape in front of Balam’s weary eyes. A second later, as Kane strode toward him across the vast room, one of those rocks fired from the wall as if shot from a cannon, throwing itself at the Cerberus warrior. Kane reacted before Balam could even shout a warning, spinning on his heel and hoisting the tray high, deflecting the hurtling rock.

  Then another rock—and another and another—popped from the wall, blasting across the room at Kane as he stood in place like a batter on the mound.

  “Get the interphaser fired up,” Kane called to Balam, sidestepping one of the rocks even as he shielded himself from the impact of the next.

  Balam turned back to the interphaser, his spindly fingers playing across its command pad, setting the coordinates in a swift flurry. The silver-sided pyramid waited patiently, accepting Balam’s instructions in silence. Then the unit began to hum, a low note that seemed to vibrate through Balam’s body. He stepped back as it appeared to open up, a stream of swirling light emanating from top and bottom as the gateway began to form.

  “It’s opening,” Balam stated, his eyes fixed on the magical rush of colors that formed a cone over the little metal pyramid. A mirror image of that cone appeared beneath, penetrating impossibly into the floor.

  Balam turned, watching for a moment as the powerfully built ex-Mag pulled the tray across his shoulder, using both hands to hold it at one end. Then, as the next rock launched across the operations room, Kane swung the battered tray in a swift arc, knocking the stone aside with a clatter of cracking plastic.

  More stones were attacking Kane, dropping from the ceiling and budding in the twin aisles where the Cerberus desks had once stood, launching themselves at the intruder in their midst. Kane leaped over one that fired low, gasped as it clipped his foot, knocking him to one side. Then another rock was falling from the high ceiling, rushing at his face with a whistle of wind. Rolling onto his back, Kane held the tray out once again, letting its plastic surface take the brunt of the blow. The tray snapped as the rock was pushed aside, and Kane tossed the two pieces away as he leaped to his feet.

  Up ahead of him, Kane could see the flickering lights of the interphaser window through the open door to the mat-trans chamber, Balam’s bulbous-headed silhouette waiting amid the crackling cone of swirling lightning. Kane kicked off the floor, running across the room and dodging as more of the spherical rocks formed and dropped at him in a barrage, like some nightmarish parody of a snowball fight. Two of the hard rocks struck him, slamming into his chest and abdomen, the force of the blows unmistakable even through the protective weave of the shadow suit. Kane grunted with the pain, never slowing, hurrying on to the open door.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, he and Balam were gone, the swirl of colored light imploding into nothingness.

  Chapter 23

  The water creature swung both hands at Grant in a double fist as he listened to Domi’s frantic message playing through his Commtact receiver. “Grant, listen—” Domi began, static interrupting her urgent words. “Enlil’s—nunaki pantheon. Two hundr—gods, and they’re abou—brought to life.”

  Grant shoved his Sin Eater into the water creature’s jaw and blasted off another burst of lethal fire. “Domi’s in trouble,” he shouted as the thing splashed over him like a cloudburst. “We need to figure a way to her right now.”

  A few feet away, Rosalia’s mangy-looking mutt was up to its belly in the rushing water as it barked at the vicious beings that attacked them. Rosalia’s wet hair whipped heavily around her as she peered left and right down the curving corridor. “Doors,” she shouted to Grant. “Find some doors.”

  “What good’s that going to do us?” Grant snapped as he sidestepped another lightning-swift attack from his liquid-bodied opponent.

  Rosalia kicked up the water as she ran past him. “Better than nothing,” she told him.

  Grant could hardly argue with that logic. If nothing else, at least they would be moving in the right direction to meet with Domi. He engaged his Commtact once again, blurted a message to Domi hoping that she would hear. “Domi, we’re coming. Just try to keep Enlil busy until we get there.” Of course, he couldn’t possibly know if she would hear the message
or not.

  At the rear of the group, Kudo dropped down from his perch on the low ceiling, splashing into the water wielding the katana. His own foe was behind him now, and Kudo dropped, swinging an upward kick at the thing’s eerily half-formed face. The creature’s head burst into a cascade of water, splattering the walls, and for a moment it swayed there, headless.

  Kudo ran, arms pumping at his sides as, behind him, the creature re-formed, its head reappearing atop its stub of neck. There were two more of the water creatures still standing in the tunnel-like corridor, but Kudo didn’t slow his pace. Instead he merely ran close to the left wall, using one of the riblike struts to kick off and dart around the first creature before ducking the attack of the second. In a moment he was in the clear, but all three water creatures were charging after him with the relentlessness of a tsunami.

  The corridor continued its shallow curve inward, leading the three Cerberus warriors deeper into the guts of the grounded spacecraft. Water continued to splash around their feet, and Rosalia’s dog took to swimming through the deluge, its paws just barely reaching the floor otherwise. Thigh deep in water, Rosalia was leading the way, the katana flashing in her hand beneath the subtle illumination of the organic-feeling corridor. Immediately behind her, Grant peered over his shoulder, assessing how far away the water figures were. To his surprise they were gone; it was just Kudo now who was splashing through the water a half-dozen paces behind him.

  “Where the fuck did they go?” Grant muttered, a scowl furrowing his dark brow.

  Then the water seemed to swell behind Kudo, and a humanoid figure came lunging for him, cut off at the waist and far larger than a man. Kudo increased his pace, desperately trying to outrun those grasping hands.

  Automatically, Grant slowed his pace and rattled off a stuttered burst of bullets, aiming them far to Kudo’s right where they pinged off the riblike walls in a shower of sparks. The water giant reacted to the sparks, swaying aside as it grabbed for Kudo again.

  Up ahead, Rosalia spotted a doorway that led off to the left. She turned back, saw that Grant had slowed as he tried to provide covering fire for their Tigers of Heaven ally.

  “Get your head back in the game, Magistrate,” Rosalia bellowed.

  Grant turned back, saw the swish of her long hair as the woman ducked through the doorway and disappeared. Her dog leaped over the lip of the doorway after her, its fur heavy with water.

  Grant trudged through the hip-deep water to the doorway, stepping half in and waiting there with his Sin Eater targeted back down the corridor.

  “Come on, Magistrate,” Rosalia teased. “Get in.”

  “No one gets left behind on my watch, sister,” Grant told her, rattling off another burst of fire as Kudo struggled to keep ahead of his watery pursuer.

  Kudo leaped through the doorway, and Grant pulled it shut behind him.

  Rosalia looked at Grant sourly. “Your nobility will get us killed one of these days, Magistrate.”

  Grant ignored her, looking down at the pooling water beneath their feet. It was shallower here, just a half-inch layer like a carpet over the floor of the room, running perhaps six feet into the room itself. The room appeared to be another corridor, wider this time with a more traditional, almost square shape to its design. As Grant looked around, a series of brighter lights stuttered automatically to life farther down the length of the walkway.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Grant asked.

  Rosalia smiled. “This is it,” she said, and she began marching off down the corridor. Dutifully, the dog trotted along at her side, shaking water from its fur and looking up at her for encouragement.

  Behind Grant, Kudo was shaking his head as he checked the door. “This won’t hold them,” he decided.

  “Kudo’s right,” Grant agreed. “This thing doesn’t even have a lock.”

  Rosalia turned back, giving both men a withering look. “You ever hear of the naiads?” she asked. “They were water spirits in Greek mythology who acted as guardians and deities for the rivers and tributaries across Greece and its islands. When their source dried up, it was said that the naiads died.”

  “What, so you think we’re fighting these naiads?” Grant asked.

  “The water was crucial for transport between the islands in ancient times,” Rosalia reminded him. “It acted the same way a road system would. It seems that Domi and Kishiro were transported here via some secret network of water, not the same but close enough.”

  “Secret rivers,” Grant muttered, nodding slowly as he began to comprehend.

  “The world is full of secret things,” Rosalia quipped. “Sometimes it’s down to the way you look at something before you really get to see it for what it is.”

  “Which doesn’t address our problem,” Grant urged. “How do we keep them from coming through the door?” As he spoke, the sloshing sounds of the water behind him swelled in volume, crashing against the door.

  “Find the source and cut it off,” Rosalia said with a superior smile. “Even money says that’s in this ship somewhere.”

  “A spaceship will have water tanks,” Grant said slowly, nodding once more in agreement. “If we can shut them down or seal them somehow, then in theory, our watery friends will lose their impetus.”

  Rosalia nodded. “You catch on quick for a Magistrate.”

  Grant jogged along the corridor after Rosalia, and a moment later Kudo was following them, checking over his shoulder that the door was still sealed. Water was pooling there, seeping through the bottom of the door.

  “We still have to find Domi and Kishiro,” Grant told them. “That’s priority number one. The water things, we’ll deal with when we can.”

  * * *

  DOMI SQUIRMED AGAINST the invisible wall that seemed to bind her, feeling the floor and walls of the cylinder vibrate as a low thrum echoed through the room. Over to her left, Hassood was still slumped in his own container, creating the bizarre illusion that he was leaning forward against nothing, like some sinister mime act. Domi saw his body shudder as the vibration struck him.

  Enlil was busy now with the organlike control board, his back turned to Domi and her companion. The board was arrayed in a fan, with large, wedge-shaped keys running across it like slices of a pie, reminding Domi of a musical organ more than a computer. To her, the unit’s operation seemed almost mystical, and she concluded it involved not only the dimly glowing keys of the board, but also a small unit that Enlil held in his palm. Enlil would take long blinks between certain manipulations of the keyboard, suggesting to Domi that there was also some kind of mind link involved in its operation. It was unfathomable.

  Now, while Enlil was diverted by operating his device, Domi still stood a chance of escape. But that window of opportunity was rapidly narrowing to nothing.

  If only she had her knife she might just have a chance to free herself, Domi realized. But the knife was back there, lying discarded on the chamber floor between two channels of water. Still, there had to be a way out of here, didn’t there? She had found the weak point in the ice cell; how much more difficult could this trap be?

  Domi stopped squirming, felt the pit of her stomach drop as that wicked resonance coursed through her fragile form. Surreptitiously, she ran her hands over the back wall of the cylinder, the solid section that appeared to be carved of blackened bone. There were nicks and gouges there, but she could not feel any seams to suggest a rear door. The front then, or the top.

  * * *

  THE RISING WATER SWIRLED around their feet as Grant, Rosalia and Kudo hurried along the flat-walled corridor. It was still just an inch deep, but the pool was expanding, reaching out from the closed door behind them in a dark stain that swirled across the floor as it grew.

  They continued running, desperately trying to outpace it. Ahead of them, the corridor split
in two, and there was a ladder cut into the wall. The rungs of the ladder looked like the bones of the spine, curving as they disappeared in a narrow hole in the floor. The hole itself was circular with a raised edge, the lip lit in a semicircular, soft crimson glow. Grant knew he needed to take charge, be the leader that Kane would have been in the same situation.

  “We need to split up,” he decided. “Someone has to drain the water tanks or these naiads or whatever they are, are going to keep hindering us.”

  “I’ll go,” Kudo volunteered. “But you’ll need to point me in the right direction.”

  “Water’s heavy,” Grant reasoned as he handed Kudo something from one of his belt pouches, “so aircraft tend to carry it low down, close to the undercarriage. I don’t know enough about alien spaceships to know if that rule holds, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  With a single nod, Kudo grasped the rungs of the ladder and began clambering down to a lower level of Tiamat. “Good luck, friends.”

  “And to you,” Grant said.

  “What about me?” Rosalia asked, the dog scampering on ahead of her down the forked corridor.

  Grant pulled a sour face. “I’ve met Enlil before and I sure as shootin’ don’t want to tackle him on my own if I can help it. Domi’s last message didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but whatever’s going on I’d appreciate the backup.”

  Rosalia nodded solemnly. “Then I guess we keep going.”

  The dark stain of water expanded across the floor behind them as they ran, reaching the hole in the decking where Kudo has disappeared and swirling around the gap like a living thing.