She halted Moondog at the base of the ramp and told the robot to guard. “Kotto, meet me in that alcove.”
“Looks empty back there,” he said. “Gives me a bad feeling.”
“You would prefer it held a security drone for each of us?”
“Who’s to say it doesn’t have them hidden away somewhere behind the black stuff?”
She scowled. “I am well aware of the possibility, Agent.”
Together they crept forward, flanking the alcove from either side. Marette watched the black material on the wall for indications of an ambush. The surface remained glassy and unbroken. She met up with Kotto in the alcove without incident, yet neither dared to relax.
Kotto pointed to the bare metal of the solid structure supporting the ramp. “Might be something in there.” He rapped on it with the muzzle of his rifle.
“It may be just the housing for further components of the object above,” she offered. “I don’t see any openings.”
Together they made a sweep around the ramp and returned to where Moondog stood sentry. Marette eyed the upper walkways, noting that they could only be accessed by passing close to the pulsing, oval object—too close for her liking. But for now, all they needed was a visual check. “Moondog: launch camera. Maximum vertical station.”
A hatch in the robot’s back folded open; out of it rose a tiny rotor-propelled camera drone. The drone’s visual feeds sprang to life on the heads-up display in Marette’s helmet, giving her an aerial view of the chamber. The upper walkways were empty. She minimized the views and waved in Marc, Dr. Sheridan, and Cartwright from where they waited outside the chamber door. “All clear. For the moment.”
“Councilor Knapp,” Marette called. “Are you still monitoring? We will take initial readings on the oval object, and then confer for further instructions.”
Knapp’s response came through so fragmented that Marette couldn’t make it out. A side-effect of their proximity to the object, or—
Cartwright’s voice broke Marette’s concentration. “The door’s closing!” she shouted.
“Block it!”
“It’s too late!”
Cartwright and Marc had both rushed back to the chamber door, but it had been halfway down when they started. Before they could reach it, the door collided with the floor. Marette felt a rumble through her suit boots that stopped with a thunk, as if a tumbler had locked into place.
Marc and Dr. Sheridan brought up the alien interface on the black material beside the door to try getting it open again. The latter scowled at Marette and shook her head: the usual sequences weren’t working.
“See?” Kotto said. “Trap.”
Marette turned back toward the object. There appeared to be no change. The camera feeds showed the upper walkways remained clear. “If it’s a trap, then why has nothing more occurred?”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not going to.”
She sighed. “Marc, continue working on the door. Doctor, what can you determine about that object? Is it safe to approach?”
“I can’t tell you that without getting closer readings myself,” Sheridan said. “Sense-cat?”
Marette nodded. “Sense-cat.”
It was, perhaps, a silly name, yet Marette enjoyed its whimsy. She was unsure if the name came from the size of the robot—equal to that of a sleeping feline—or from the twin caterpillar treads that it used to deliver its sophisticated sensor suite to wherever it was needed.
As the doctor began to unpack the ‘cat from her equipment pack, Marette shifted to watch the room with Kotto. Moondog’s weapons swept back and forth, seeking targets to track.
Moments later, a whirring sound heralded the ‘cat’s path behind Marette’s ankles as it sped around them into the chamber. It paused after a short distance, swiveled to the right, then to the left, and—with an imagined air of satisfaction—sped on toward the object. It reached the ramp and began its climb, rolling slower to take readings and send them back to Sheridan.
“I’m reading a highly-localized gravitational field,” Sheridan reported. “Somehow it’s confined to less than a one square-meter area at the center of that triangular window. Energy levels are steady.”
The ‘cat crested the top of the ramp, paused, and then crept its way closer to the object. The emerald lattice in the object’s exterior began to pulse faster almost immediately.
“Doctor?”
“I see it. Backing off.” The ‘cat reversed to the ramp’s edge again, yet the pulsing only quickened. “Energy levels spiking. Getting a lot of weird readings. I don’t think it’s reacting to the ‘cat.”
“Coincidence?” Marc asked. He’d stopped his efforts at the door and now watched with the rest of them.
“Well I did back it off.”
The ‘cat withdrew down the ramp, yet the object remained in its excited state. “Moondog,” Marette ordered, “provide cover.” The robot obeyed, turning sideways and expanding its chassis from head to tail. It then crouched to the floor to provide an obstruction behind which four of the five of them could hide. Marette motioned the others to take cover, but Kotto remained standing. Choosing to not delay the situation with an argument, Marette crouched down at the end beside Marc.
“Okay, Doctor,” Marette said, peering over Moondog’s armored spine, “move it back up. If we are not causing this I want to get as much data as possible.”
“Roger that. But analysis is going to take time.”
Marette hoped they would have it. Ahead of them, the ‘cat crested the ramp again. The crystalline projections on its interior had begun to glow.
“The gravitational field is intensifying . . . ”
“Are we in danger?”
“It’s still extremely localized to the object, though I don’t understand how that’s— Wow!”
A pinpoint star at the triangle’s center caught Marette’s attention and then burst outward in a glowing sphere of swirling violet. The team gasped, and Marette had to shut her eyes to center herself against the wave of disorientation that followed—as if the light itself resonated inside her skull.
The disorientation retreated swiftly. Marette forced her eyes open again to find the entire chamber reflecting the sphere’s alien, amethyst glow. The swirling sphere had engulfed not only the object, but the sense-cat beside it.
* * *
Camela Thomson’s grin stretched the corners of her cheeks until her jaw ached. The gate they’d constructed was functional and stable (insomuch that it hadn’t yet exploded), and it glowed in the engineering bay below the observation room window where she stood. She’d tinted the window glass to hide what she figured was the less-than-professional expression on her face.
“It’s still reading stable,” reported one of the engineers below over the intercom. “We’re sending in Alice.”
She touched the intercom key. “Hold up. Confirm the MEDARs are out of the A.I.’s control.”
A technician waved from the wall with the junction panel that housed the circuit breaker they used to disconnect the A.I.’s terminal from access to RavenTech’s MEDAR engineering robots. Cutting the circuit to the MEDAR controls was possibly unnecessary, but it didn’t hurt to be safe. She trusted that thing far less than she trusted Adrian, and, even with their prior relationship, that was saying a lot.
“Disconnect confirmed.”
“Then let’s see what’s on the other side, shall we?”
At that, the remote-controlled, four-wheeled USV nicknamed “Alice” rolled its way forward. Looking like little more than a miniature all-terrain vehicle bristling with cameras, the unmanned sensor vehicle would enter the translucent violet curtain of energy that had formed like a captured soap bubble within the gate’s triangular aperture. If Suuthrien and Fagles were to be believed, it would transit a short-cut in space-time and emerge nearly 240,000 miles away beneath the surface of the Moon.
On the other side of the curtain, they could just make out a darkened chamber of some kind. Alice trundled forwa
rd to the curtain and slipped through the looking glass.
* * *
It was Kotto who spoke first. “Definite trap.”
The sphere withdrew almost as quickly as it had come, vanishing save for a violet curtain that clung to the inside of the triangle. Marette could barely make out moving shapes beyond, yet the curtain was so insubstantial and turbulent that she could not be sure if what met her eyes was real or an optical illusion.
In front of the object, knocked to one side by the original blast but intact, was the sense-cat.
“Angela?” Marc whispered. “What the heck are we looking at?”
“You know how I don’t like to say ‘I don’t know?’ Don’t make me answer that.”
Marette didn’t take her eyes off of the device. In the curtain, light flashed. Was that the silhouette of a person? Moondog’s camera drone circled to the back of the device, finding nothing there but the apparently two-dimensional curtain from another angle. “Then we need an educated guess, Agent,” Marette told her. “Now.”
“Hang on; the blast shorted out the ‘cat. It’s rebooting . . . ”
A light beyond the curtain seemed to grow closer.
“We shouldn’t stay out here in front like this,” Cartwright whispered.
“Agreed,” Marette said. “Everyone follow me. Hurry.”
She led them in a crouch to the right side of the chamber where they took meager shelter beneath the second level walkway. Moondog followed, remaining in its cover-stance. The light in the curtain became brighter, focused into a near-distinct circle of light.
“This is incredible,” Sheridan said. “Agents, I think we’re looking at some sort of extra-dimensional portal.”
Marc shifted beside her. “To where?”
At once something broke the plane of the curtain, which itself grew more transparent. Through the ring, Marette caught a glimpse of another room, with bright lights and undefined, moving shapes.
There was no chance for a longer study. A squat vehicle pushed through the curtain, rolling on black wheels the size of Marette’s helmet and mounting a floodlight that was surely the source of the light. It shined on the section of the chamber from which they had just fled.
She did not waste time to watch.
The vehicle’s front wheels were barely through the curtain when she led her team in another crouching dash, this time to the alcove beneath the ramp. “Douse your lights!” she whispered. “Move the ‘cat to the rear of the object.”
Moondog’s camera drone hovered, silent, above and behind the gate. Marette linked the feed to everyone’s helmet display. They hunkered down to await whatever might happen next.
* * *
Camela’s grin faded. “What do you mean, ‘intermittent contact’?”
“Just that, Ms. Thomson. Alice is still sending data, but it’s coming in bursts. Remote control is sluggish, too. Some sort of distortion from the gate.”
“Is it a problem?”
“Not a major one. But we can’t do much with Alice while this continues. She shows a breathable atmosphere on the other side. Standard lunar gravity. No immediate threats detected.”
“Send someone through.”
A lone freelancer approached the gate wearing RavenTech-branded exo-armor. The armor wrapped his body in a thin graphene shell, with a sealed breathing mask across his face and a sensor-targeting package connected to the assault rifle in his arms. The freelancer walked to the gate’s edge and paused to draw the muzzle of the rifle along the edge of the gate’s curtain. Apparently satisfied when the muzzle returned unblemished, he pushed forward through the curtain.
If he survived, they would send more after him.
* * *
Marette used her helmet’s heads-up display to scrutinize the figure that had stepped through the gate. “Is that a RavenTech logo?”
“I’m sure of it,” Marc whispered back. They were communicating via direct comm-link, with helmets closed, making whispering pointless. Yet crouched in the shadows beneath the ramp, it came naturally.
“That Fagles fellow?” Kotto asked.
“It must be,” Marc said. “Damn it. Losing the Undernet’s hurt us in more ways than one.”
The USV that had arrived ahead of the RavenTech operative rolled in a halting manner down the ramp. The operative remained only a few feet from what Dr. Sheridan had determined to be some kind of gate.
“Councilor Knapp, do you read this?”
Not even static answered this time.
“Should we say hello?” Sheridan asked.
Marc scoffed. “And just how are we supposed to introduce ourselves?”
Marette frowned. They had no contingency plan for this sort of situation. How could they anticipate encountering other humans within Paragon itself? “We must fabricate a story quickly and find a means to dissuade them from continuing further.”
Two more operatives stepped through the gate, with two more at their heels. The five newcomers stood their ground, shining lights about the chamber. It was only a matter of time before they spotted the camera floating along the ceiling above them. Marette sent it to hover behind the gate as quickly as she dared. Too slow and they would spot it. Too fast and the rotor noise would give it away.
It escaped notice.
Together, the RavenTech ops descended the ramp, heading toward the door directly ahead. The black material had yet to cover the door following its sudden closure thus the figures’ attention appeared entirely focused there.
The USV, however, began to circle the perimeter of the chamber in a path that would lead it to Marette’s position behind the ramp.
XXIX
MICHAEL CREPT THROUGH the underbrush after Jade, making for the rendezvous position Felix had given him. He didn’t know how much of an advantage Jade’s eyes gave her in the darkness, but she both guided and guarded his approach.
Caitlin brought up the rear, on her phone with Gideon as she’d been since just before he’d caught up with Felix. Gideon’s full cybernetic conversion let him send his voice over a radio frequency without vocalizing it. He’d done so when Michael had worked with him in the vacuum of the Moon, and tonight he used it to speak to them without Felix knowing.
“We’re nearly there,” Caitlin whispered.
Through the trees ahead, a little ways down the slope, Michael spotted a wide, windowless building in an illuminated grassy clearing.
Gideon’s synthetic voice came over the wireless earbud that Caitlin had loaned Michael to listen in. “We’re still here. But Felix just received a go-signal.”
“Don’t let him do anything until we get there!” Caitlin pressed a hand against Michael’s back, pushing him along faster as she spoke.
“Gideon,” Michael added, “we can see the building. How far are you from—”
Before he could finish, light burst from the trees ahead, just outside of the clearing. A rocket launched out of the trees, arced over the chain link fence bounding the clearing, and then exploded against the building’s wall.
* * *
The rocket’s impact sundered the air. It battered Felix’s ears and blinded his vision before he managed to turn away. Zoë, who’d remained facing forward, grinned wide beneath the protection of her helmet’s visor. “One entry, occupants stunned, just as ordered!”
Felix took a deep breath and shifted to jump up over the gulley. “Well, folks, in we go!”
The twins leaped up first, dashing toward the fence. Gideon grabbed Felix’s arm. “Michael’s almost here.”
Shit. “We have to go in now or we lose the advantage. He’ll catch up.”
With one cybernetic arm each, the twins took hold of the fence and tore a gap open between them. Gideon hadn’t let go of Felix.
“Gideon,” Felix begged, “we have to get in there now. The rocket’s stun won’t last!”
Zoë discarded the controls for the rocket launcher, trading it for a sniper rifle she propped along the ravine’s edge to cover them.
Still Gideon wasn’t letting go. Felix found himself struggling against Gideon’s grip so hard that he worried he might dislocate his own arm. “If RavenTech has your sister,” he tried, “she might be in there!”
Gideon let go. Felix sprang from the gulley before Gideon could change his mind and bolted to the fence. He dashed through it after the Torres twins, who had already reached the opening Zoë had blasted into the wall. Felix sensed rather than heard Gideon at his heels.
* * *
Marette unsealed her helmet and lifted the visor. “Cartwright and I will greet them,” she told the others. “The rest of you, remain here.”
Marc seemed taken aback, but the others only nodded. Cartwright lifted her visor to match Marette, but Marette stopped her. “Mine is up so I can speak with them. Let us keep you looking intimidating.”
They rose and stepped out of the alcove to intercept the USV, which had nearly rolled to their hidden position. It stopped immediately, inched forward, and then stopped again. Marette’s rifle hung by her side as she lifted her hands out to her sides.
“Bonjour!” she called, stepping past the USV into the sight of the five newcomers. They spun to face her, their own weapons up. “Je m’appelle Marette. C’est quoi votre affaires ici?” She did not know if they would understand French, but if not, it would at least keep them off balance. As for what—
Black material withdrew along a narrow section of wall at the back of the second level balcony to her right. The wall section behind it had already opened onto a vertical, coffin-sized compartment. Inside it hovered a Paragon security drone. Although the drone’s exterior appeared incomplete, its convex top glowed red, a sign of an imminent attack. Marette’s voice caught in her throat in the time it took to float out of its compartment onto the balcony. One of the RavenTech freelancers followed her gaze and jerked his weapon up toward it.
A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) Page 17