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

by Michael G. Munz

  What touched her mind then was formed not of words but impressions and impulses operating on the level of raw amorphous thought. It was as though music whispered through her mind, evoking feeling without the precision of lyrics. It came to her; gentle, or just tentative? Cautious? Or was it simply floating at the periphery of her mind in places she was unused to focusing on?

  Regardless, it was an indistinct sensation. Marette concentrated on it, trying to turn the alien impressions into coherence. Her head began to ache.

  Asking. Requiring. Knowledge within.

  Marette imagined her own arms within her mind—was it her mind?—reaching out, trying to grasp . . .

  A need. It wanted communication. The means she held within her? A language. Her language. To learn. To take?

  It wanted to enter her mind. To speak with mouths. To learn her language. It needed her consent. Yet once she allowed it in, how much of the things she knew—about the AoA, about Earth, about everything—could it read?

  Her question, she realized, must have somehow made its way to the being, as the impression she felt next seemed to be an answer: Only what is allowed.

  Will you? it seemed to be saying.

  Marette focused on the idea of spoken words and language, trying to emit her permission.

  Inquisitiveness poured through her in a rush, and she staggered. She could feel the being deeper within her now, spreading through her thoughts, overflowing every synapse that held linguistic understanding. It was as if she were falling from the heights, plunging down on a jet of torrid air that slowed her descent so long as she had the strength to hold herself within it. It was terror and exhilaration together at once.

  Marette could feel the being gathering what it needed. With that feeling came the certainty that she would be able to tell if it tried to take more than what she offered. Yet could she trust that certainty? Or did she truly have any choice? Whatever this being was, they must learn to communicate with it. Without trust, there could be no progress.

  And then, almost as abruptly as it had begun, the sensation withdrew. Again, she found herself floating amid the green, until, moments later, that too faded, and she stood in the room within Paragon, face to face with the being before her.

  How long had she remained in that state? She could not tell.

  “Marette?” It was Dr. Sheridan, somewhere behind her, her voice laced with worry.

  Before Marette could answer, the being spoke. She heard its words, she grasped its meaning: Can you understand me? She couldn’t help but smile, because . . .

  “Vous parlais la francaise,” she answered. [You are speaking French.]

  “Oui, comme vous, maintenant je le comprends.” [Yes, as you know it, now I know it.]

  “The others here only speak English. Did you learn English?”

  It blinked, and then spoke in English, “Is this to your preference?”

  She nodded. “We have a great deal to ask you.”

  It held up one hand, as if telling her to wait. “I mean you no harm, unless you bring harm with you. Who are you? What do you want?”

  Then it didn’t take knowledge of her identity or purpose during their connection. Probably. “We could ask the same of you.”

  “You are aboard our vessel.”

  Dr. Sheridan stepped closer from behind. “And many of us have died here,” she said. Marette motioned for her to back up, but did not look to see if she obeyed.

  The being frowned.

  “My name is Marette,” she tried. “We are from Earth, which is the planet this moon orbits. We found your vessel and are exploring to learn more about you, and communicate. Until now we have only met with hostility. The drones; the—” She pantomimed one with both hands. “Did you send them to attack us?”

  The being’s frown deepened. Its slim shoulders sunk. “The sentinel drones are no longer under our control, it does seem. You have my regrets.”

  “It does seem?”

  “I have only been awake from the long-sleep for,” it paused, perhaps to search for a word, “close to one hour, if I comprehend your time units adequately. Much has passed in the time of my sleep.” It turned both of its palms upward, pressed them together, and then raised them, as if lifting an invisible platter. “I am Alyshur, Second Lailenthi of the Sillisinuriri, which is the name of this vessel.”

  “Lailenthi?” It was Michael’s flame-haired companion.

  “It does not translate well. ‘Caretaker’ would be the closest word in your language.”

  “If you’re not controlling these drones,” asked Michael, “then who is?”

  “An intruding corruption. A suuthrien, in my language.”

  “You—” It was Michael again. “You said Suuthrien?”

  Alyshur pumped its head forward and back in a motion that Marette took to be a nod. “One that the first lailenthi could not fully purge from our systems. Now I fear it has you trapped here with us.”

  XXXIV

  “HOW TRAPPED?” The question came from the brunette who had arrived with Michael. Given her accent, Marette wondered if this was somehow the woman who had arrived with Michael and Marc on their first visit to the Omicron Complex three months ago. Marette could not recall her last name, but her first was Caitlin.

  “We have someone wounded here,” Caitlin continued. “We need to get him to someone who can help, fast.”

  Alyshur’s frown returned. “If I remove the barrier, the drones will attack you and endanger you all. I will be unable to stop them.”

  “But he’s dying.” Caitlin’s voice remained somehow level despite the glare she burned into Alyshur. “Do you understand ‘dying’?”

  “Caitlin,” the redhead whispered. “He’s gone already.”

  “I understand dying.” It turned to speak a trill of its own language over its shoulder. Another being stepped from concealment beyond the edges of the opening to the larger chamber beyond. This one’s height was shorter than Alyshur’s by a few centimeters, its head slightly wider at the top, and its build subtly stockier. It moved beside Alyshur, returning a few lyrical words of its own, its voice higher. Alyshur gave the newcomer one of its pumping “nods” before the newcomer touched a hand to Alyshur’s forehead. For a few seconds the two stood unmoving. Then they broke contact, and the newcomer turned toward Felix’s body.

  “This is Uxil,” Alyshur explained. “She will do what we can for your companion, but our skills are limited.”

  She? Did these beings have actual masculine/feminine genders, or did Alyshur simply feel that was the closest appropriate English word? Marette watched with the others as Uxil knelt beside Felix’s bloodied body. Gender was a topic that could wait.

  Uxil brushed her fingertips aside Felix’s temples. “This one is much worse than the other. There may be little I can do.” Had she learned English from that brief contact with Alyshur, as Alyshur—he?—had learned from Marette?

  Wait. “What ‘other’?” Marette asked.

  Motioning for her to follow, Alyshur tuned and went around the edge of the opening and into the larger room. Marette accepted his invitation and signaled for Dr. Sheridan to join her. Out of sight of the smaller antechamber in which they had been speaking lay Marc. Lightning burns marred his suit and scarred half of his face.

  Marette was kneeling beside him before she knew it. His chest barely moved, yet at least he was breathing. She felt for a pulse and found only a distant tremor against her fingertips.

  Alyshur stood above her. “This one was injured by a sentinel drone before we brought him here to safety. Uxil has done what she can and believes him to be stable, but we know little of your kind. She could not wake him.”

  The drone’s lightning had burned away much of Marc’s hair. His visor remained on. Marette felt the heat from his burns radiating across her fingers as she gingerly removed the visor and set it aside. His eyes were closed. For the moment, unconsciousness might be the most comfortable thing for him.

  Marette saw no evidence tha
t his suit had been removed or that any medical treatment had been applied. “What did she do for him?” she asked.

  Alyshur hesitated. “A transfer of strength, to soothe the body and fortify the mental hold on the physical.”

  “I do not understand,” Marette said. The medical indicators on Marc’s suit were dark and useless, surely shorted out by the drone’s attack. “Will he be alright?”

  “We do not know.”

  A sob, quickly stifled, came from the antechamber. Caitlin. Moments after, Michael stepped around the corner, one hand white-knuckled against it. The anguish in his eyes said enough: Felix was beyond help. That anguish intensified when he spotted Marc’s body.

  “Marc is alive,” Marette assured him. “Stable, they say.”

  “For the present,” Alyshur added.

  Michael nodded silently and glanced back into the antechamber where his dead friend lay, and then again toward Marc and Alyshur. His feet remained rooted in place, his grip fixed on the corner of the black-coated wall. He seemed to search for words that would not come.

  “Suuthrien,” Michael managed finally. “It’s on Earth.”

  Alien body language or not, Alyshur appeared just as shaken as Marette. “How do you know this?”

  Marette held up a hand to cut off any response before Michael could make it. In her other hand she continued to cradle Marc’s visor. “Many of us have died here on your vessel. We welcome your aid now, but before we share more, you should tell us more about this Suuthrien, if you claim it to be our common enemy.”

  Alyshur hesitated. “I will tell you. Yet if you turn this knowledge against us, there will be retaliation.”

  That Alyshur had made the threat without anything she recognized as malice somehow set more of a tingle along Marette’s back. “We do not respond well to threats, Alyshur.”

  He blinked at her. “I did not threaten. Honest dealings require honest statements of position and forewarning of consequences, do they not?”

  Marette exchanged a glance with Michael as Uxil appeared from the smaller section to stand beside him. “That sounds fair,” Marette answered.

  Alyshur momentarily bent his knees and spread his arms, as if to indicate the deep, darkened chamber behind him, or perhaps the entirety of Paragon. “We began our voyage millennia ago, crossing the void to establish a new outpost—one of many—in hope of survival from a doomed planet. The technology of the Thuur—my people—is rooted in organics, technology born of living cells. The haldra—” Here Alyshur motioned to the black material along the nearest wall. “—this membrane that fills the Sillisinuriri—is one such technology. The impulses within the membrane—software may be your term—controls many of the vessel’s systems and, by virtue of the membrane’s biology, regenerates our breathable atmosphere and fulfills other such functions.”

  “We’ve seen it seal against atmosphere,” said Marette, nodding.

  Alyshur motioned to her in what seemed like agreement. “Yes. And yet naked organics cannot function alone amid the cosmic radiation between the stars. We were forced to turn to baser, inorganic means in the alloys and constructs you have seen within.”

  Marette wanted to tell him that their “baser means” outpaced Earth technology by leaps and bounds, but this time she remained silent, and Alyshur continued.

  “To conserve resources, most of us passed the journey in the long-sleep. While some of the Sillisinuriri’s inorganic systems are autonomous, most are monitored by the haldra throughout the ship, guiding our journey and safeguarding us in our vulnerable state.

  “At some point during the journey, the Sillisinuriri encountered an autonomous self-replicating entity. The Thuur have suffered such entities before—devices created by an unknown civilization to proliferate across interstellar distances to inhabited regions, appropriate resources to create more of themselves until the region is pacified, and then launch new duplicate entities to continue the cycle.”

  “A Von Neumann probe,” Marette whispered in recognition. The concept had not passed to Alyshur via their mental connection, if the quizzical look he gave her was genuine. “Named after a human physicist who theorized a similar idea. Please, go on.”

  Alyshur obliged. “Precise detail of the events during our vessel’s encounter with this entity are lost. It is apparent that the Sillisinuriri recognized the entity and attempted to neutralize it via external defense systems. Yet some part of the entity survived that attempt, and then gained access to our vessel to attack the haldra directly. The haldra’s original state fought to purge the entity remnant from its systems, while the entity sought to usurp it for its own purposes. Neither truly succeeded.

  “When the first lailenthi, my predecessor, awoke to investigate the disturbance, the corruption—the suuthrien—had spread into much of the haldra. The lailenthi waged a struggle to reverse the damage and prevent further spread, but the suuthrien bloomed throughout and merged with the haldra. The merging forced the suuthrien to absorb and adopt some of our own goals: to protect the sleeping Thuur, to deliver them to our intended destination, and then to assist in planned colonization efforts.”

  “It sounds like you made it an ally.” It was the redheaded woman, now standing behind Michael.

  “Only an insane one,” Uxil answered. “With unknown agendas buried beneath ours.”

  “And its own lethal extremes of behavior to accomplish them,” Alyshur added. “The first lailenthi saw no recourse but to trap it within the Sillisinuriri and set the vessel onto a collision course with this moon.”

  “This . . . lailenthi sacrificed all of you to stop this thing?” Michael asked.

  “Not before taking steps to safeguard part of the colonization plan. But, yes. No Thuur may allow these entities to spread. They endanger the galaxy with their very existence. In the struggle, the lailenthi and the handful of other conscious Thuur aboard prevented the suuthrien from accessing control of the vessel’s interstellar drive engines. They crippled its original directives to self-duplicate. Details of what occurred in those final moments before the Sillisinuriri’s impact with this moon are no longer known, save for the fact that any Thuur not in the long-sleep in this chamber perished in the impact.”

  “And then it waited,” Marette surmised. “For us to find it.”

  “For some means of accomplishing its goals,” Alyshur corrected. “Which you gave to it upon your breach of this vessel.”

  Marette straightened. “Our ‘breach’ of this vessel seems to be one of the reasons you do not remain trapped in this long-sleep.”

  “This is also correct.”

  Michael motioned to the stacked cylinders that extended into darkness. “And each one of those holds a Thuur? How many of you are there?”

  “Not as many as there once were,” Uxil answered. Reluctance to give a straight answer, Marette wondered, or simply a statement of regret?

  “And now you must tell us: How is the suuthrien on Earth?”

  XXXV

  MICHAEL GLANCED at Jade beside him, and then to Marette. How should he answer? The being—Alyshur—awaited his response. The sensation of an honest-to-God alien being listening to him should have intimidated Michael more, yet the experience felt hollow. Felix was dead, and standing on the edge of the aliens’ vessel’s vast, darkened chamber seemed to reflect perfectly the void inside him.

  In the antechamber behind them, Caitlin mourned Felix alone. He gave them—gave her—privacy.

  “I don’t entirely know how it got there,” Michael began, directing the statement at Marette as much as Alyshur. He wished for time to confer with her alone first, to catch himself up somehow, but it was a pointless wish. Did it really matter anymore? More immediate stakes than keeping secrets were before them now. “I’ve been in the hospital for the past three months.”

  “He’s not lying about that,” Jade added.

  “Earlier today I spoke to something that called itself Suuthrien. It said it was a seed of what’s here in your vessel—that it
was a shepherd and an explorer. Which I suppose figures, given what you said.”

  “This was on Earth?” Marette asked.

  Michael nodded. “On a computer in the home of a businessman in Northgate: a man named Fagles.” Recognition seemed to dawn in Marette’s eyes, and Michael addressed her more directly. “It said it was his ally, and it knew about the Undernet, the Exodus Project, and our attempts to hide this place. It’s got access to the Undernet, and it . . . ”

  Marette came to the conclusion before he could find the strength to voice it. “It killed them,” she whispered. “How?”

  “It created a virus that Fagles injected into the Undernet,” he told her. “Or at least that’s what it said. The virus worked its way into position to attack. It’s true, then? All those people?”

  “Your people?” Alyshur asked.

  Marette nodded. “We did not know what caused it. So many of us dead, and our network crippled.”

  “It doesn’t like the AoA. It said we pose a threat to its goals.” Caught up in the moment, Michael had said the name before he could think better of it.

  “What goals did it claim?” Alyshur asked.

  “It didn’t say. But it mentioned the ‘Planners,’ whose goals were . . . inviolate, I think was the word it used.” Michael hesitated on the edge of a question. “Are you the Planners?”

  Alyshur and Uxil seemed to share a glance, though their solid, pupil-less eyes made it difficult for Michael to tell. “Such a term would be congruent with how it now regards the Thuur.”

  “And what are your ‘goals’?” Marette asked.

  “I believe the suuthrien would consider them to be the safe arrival of the Thuur on Earth, and the means to establish a colony, as was our original intent.”

  “And what’s your intent now?” Jade asked. “Earth’s a bit crowded. Come to think of it, what was your plan for us a thousand years ago?”