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

by Michael G. Munz

“You guys are getting the word out about that anti-goo signal, right?” he shouted over the comm to Paragon. “I’m a bit busy here!”

  “We are,” came Knapp’s voice. “Stay focused on your own task.”

  “Knapp,” said Felix, “with all due respect—”

  “They’ve sent it through to all local and national authorities,” Caitlin broke in. “And Holes is broadcasting it across social media.”

  “We have no interest in seeing the nanophage spread, Mister Hiatt,” Knapp added.

  “I—I think we lost Michael!” Was that Jade? “He’s down! I can’t see him!”

  “Confirmed, Paragon,” said another voice Felix didn’t recognize. “I don’t think we can hold this thing off out here much longer!”

  * * *

  Michael crashed through barren alder boughs, his arms waving in a blind struggle to somehow slow his descent. Though his hands seized upon only air, something around him somehow blunted his fall such that the ground’s impact through his armor suit only knocked the wind out of him.

  It didn’t take him long to realize what that something was. The power still surged within him. Engulfed in the forest now, he could feel it everywhere. The link he had already forged with it remained strong. It surged through his blood, righting his body and banishing the pain of his fall.

  Clambering to his feet, Michael could feel the heat across his skin, everywhere. Shit, had the Quicksilver had somehow gotten inside the suit? He ripped off a glove to examine one burning hand. There was no Quicksilver. In the faint moonlight, his skin was actually glowing in gold and green. The power his syr-awakened connection gave him continued to pour into his body, and for a long moment he feared he might not be able to stop it.

  But for now, that didn’t matter. He shoved the fear aside and opened the floodgates, letting the power from the surrounding bio-net surge through him until it lifted him off of his feet and propelled him into the sky.

  The dragon was near—he could sense it now, as if every living thing around him loaned Michael its senses. Exhilarated, Michael fought back the euphoria that threatened to overwhelm his control and steered himself through the sky, straight for the dragon. It was like riding a geyser.

  Michael couldn’t see Jade’s floater, but Paragon loomed above the New Eden building, and the dragon sped straight for it. Michael willed himself to go faster, hoping the power it took to do so wouldn’t tear him apart from the inside. Somehow he kept control. After another moment hurtling through the sky, he slammed against the dragon’s spine once again.

  But this time, he held on. Ineffable senses guided him to an access panel that felt near to the black material inside the dragon, perhaps even where the material was first loaded. The power raging through him made short work of the panel’s lock. Michael was about to attack the material directly when the dragon rolled again.

  This time, he was ready. Pressed to the dragon’s back in a combination of physical strength and whatever force had carried him through the sky, Michael held on. He plunged his gloveless hand into the panel and poured the power into the dragon’s innards, willing it against the black material inside, against anything inside. The power flared through him with a climactic shudder. It caught its target inside the dragon and burned it out from the inside, turning the Suuthrien-filled black material controlling the dragon to raw sludge.

  There was a shriek from the dragon’s maw and a violent, piercing whine from its engines before the entire construct pitched downward. Euphoria seized Michael anew—he’d done it!—only to turn to shock as he realized the dragon’s now lifeless chassis was, by coincidence or a final act of the doomed A.I. within it, plunging directly toward the New Eden facility and the Paragon scout craft hovering above it.

  * * *

  “Oh my god.”

  Jade watched from the floater beside the pilot’s chair as the dragon hurtled toward the U-shaped Paragon craft. It was holding station above the New Eden auditorium, evacuating people from below through some auditorium skylights. There were still people on the ropes when the dragon smashed into the rear of the craft. Something in either the dragon or the craft exploded in a burst of light. Her arm flung up on instinct to shield her eyes. Another maelstrom of tearing metal and exploding energy assailed her senses before she could lower her arm and take in the sight below.

  “Paragon,” Daisuke was saying beside her, “come in!”

  There was no answer. The craft had crashed into the New Eden facility, obliterating one of the auditorium’s exterior walls and smashing another four-story structure beside it, which was now on fire and in mid-collapse. The craft itself lay broken in at least two pieces. Jade could make out bodies amid the rubble, some moving, some not.

  The collision had strewn pieces of the dragon everywhere. Flashes of silver caught her eye until she realized that the Quicksilver stuff still within the dragon now leaked from each piece. It streamed outward, aimless for the moment, yet surely not for long. Would the deactivation signal stop it in time? The Quicksilver joined the spreading fire from the crash to threaten everyone in the field of rubble between the ruptured auditorium and the broken spacecraft. If whoever was left alive down there—Was Caitlin okay? Was Felix?—didn’t get out fast, they’d be caught in a perfect kill zone between goo and fire.

  “We’re going down there, right?” Jade asked, unsure even as she said it what she wished the answer was. The floater could only carry a few. Michael might still be okay in the forest somewhere, needing their help.

  Daisuke swept the floater down toward the wreckage without answering.

  * * *

  Though the auditorium roof remained mostly intact, the crash shook it enough to spill Felix to his back and send him sliding across the roof toward the collapsing side of the auditorium. It was all he could do to grab Uxil beside him and do his best to shield her as they both tumbled from the roof into the rubble below.

  He landed on his back, taking the worst of the impact. On top of him, Uxil squirmed with a groan as she struggled to get up.

  “Caitlin!” he yelled over the comms.

  * * *

  Caitlin’s head swam, pounded, throbbed from the impact. She fought to keep her eyes open.

  “Fermion-catalyzed reactor damaged,” Holes was reporting. “Flight systems inoperable. Hull integrity—”

  “The ship’s bloody crashed, Holes!” Caitlin shouted, unable to stop herself. The pain in her head from the effort made her vow not to do so again.

  “Correct,” came the answer.

  “Are we still broadcasting the deactivation signal?” It was Knapp’s voice, somewhere to Caitlin’s left. Caitlin forced her eyes open again and looked for her. Moonlight and something more streamed through a rupture in one of the walls. A pair of Thuur, lay beside her, bloodied and unmoving. Three more were up and trying to help, including the silver one called Sephora. Knapp was just clambering to her feet, cradling one arm in the other.

  “There is sufficient system damage to prevent me from determining the status of the transmitters. Urgent-primary: power reactor levels are fluctuating to unstable levels. Immediate evacuation of at least one quarter mile is required for minimal safety.”

  “It’s going to explode?” Caitlin gasped, gaining her feet.

  “How much time do we have?” asked the Thuur called Violeth.

  “Unknown on both counts,” said Holes. “Power fluctuations—” A burst of light came from somewhere outside, and the ship’s readouts went blank. Holes’s voice ceased. Caitlin and Knapp shared a worried glance in the second before everything returned. “—intermittent failures and surge-bursts.”

  Caitlin smelled smoke.

  * * *

  The floater swept toward the auditorium and the wreckage. Jade had just started for the back of the floater when she spotted Michael laying on his back on some wreckage just beyond the broken auditorium wall. “Wait!” she told Daisuke, pointing. The last she’d seen him, he’d been falling into the woods at least a thousand ya
rds away. “How did he get there? Go!”

  A burst of light from the Paragon wreckage aborted Daisuke’s response. At once, the floater’s engines cut out.

  “What was that?” Jade shouted.

  “I don’t know!”

  The floater dropped like a brick.

  * * *

  “Is everyone alright in here?” Felix burst through the rupture in the bridge wall, with Uxil just behind him. His left arm hung limp at his side. He caught sight of Caitlin and rushed toward her.

  “We have been better!” Knapp answered. “Is the way outside clear?”

  “There’s fire, all around,” Felix answered. “But so far we’ve got a nice shell of safety that might last for at least a whole three minutes!”

  “There is Quicksilver,” Uxil added, “but under control. Those left on the scout craft are gathering with the New Eden survivors in the remains of the auditorium.”

  “Aye, but that means we’re trapped for the moment?”

  “For the moment,” Felix said.

  “The reactor is going to blow,” said Knapp. “Possibly.”

  “Of course it is!” Felix groaned. “Possibly?”

  “Possibly very soon,” added Holes.

  “Sephora has suggested the gate.” It was Violeth. Sephora held one arm around her, helping her to stand. “Does it still function?”

  “Affirmative,” said Holes.

  There was a crash from somewhere outside. It turned Caitlin’s attention to one side where Marette lay face-down on the floor beneath a console. Yet she moved. Caitlin gave Felix’s arm a squeeze and rushed to investigate.

  “Activate it,” Violeth ordered. “Search for a connection.”

  “But the RavenTech gate is destroyed!” Knapp said.

  “The gate was intended to link this planet with other Thuur colonies,” Violeth said. “Across vast distance. We cannot escape on foot. We must try.”

  “Escape to another planet?” Knapp asked.

  “Is that not your group’s original intent?”

  Caitlin reached Marette, who groaned and tried to turn over. “Easy,” Caitlin whispered.

  “Looks like you’ll have to take everyone this time, Councilor!” Felix said. “If it works.”

  “Holes?” Knapp started, “Try it. Everyone else: gather any survivors outside and get them to the gate. Help the wounded. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” answered Violeth.

  Marette groaned again as Caitlin got her up.

  * * *

  Jade pulled Daisuke from the crashed floater. The fall had been short, and their armor protected them, but the floater was a wreck. Lucian would kill her, if he weren’t already dead. Had he escaped Northgate before the Quicksilver got out of control? Had any of those she knew?

  “Are you alright?” she asked Daisuke. He managed a nod. “Good!” She patted him on the back and then left to clamber through the burning rubble toward where she thought she’d spotted Michael.

  * * *

  “Activating gate,” came Holes’s voice. “Electro-gravimetric distortions from the failing reactor may be causing interference. Attempting compensation. Stand by.”

  Caitlin stood atop part of the wreckage, supporting a barely-conscious Marette beside her and watching the alien gate’s edges burst with energy. The crash had torn the roof off of the chamber in which it sat, and the gate now stood at a 45-degree angle to one side, but that apparently wasn’t stopping it from working. The triangular space framed at the gate’s center flared, flashed, pulsed.

  “Possible connection found,” said Holes. “Unknown destination. Stand by.”

  Felix was outside, trying to help as many people as possible. The alien reactor was causing problems in some of his body’s functions. He’d tried to pass it off as nothing, but Caitlin wasn’t so sure. She’d kissed him and told him she’d kick his ass if he gave up.

  The gate flared again. A point of light condensed at the triangle’s center and then burst outward in a swirling sphere of violet light. Caitlin staggered at the wave of disorientation it sent through her. The sphere then dissipated until only a shimmering curtain remained across the triangle, just as she’d seen at RavenTech.

  “Gate established,” spoke Holes. “Connection viable, but unstable. Fermion-catalyst reactor interference causing unquantifiable readings in . . . ”

  Caitlin tuned him out, turning to look back at those who had gathered, seeking Felix. How could they know what was on the other side? How much longer did they have? How much had they already lost? Marc was dead, she’d learned. Michael might still be out there, but she might never find out. There hadn’t yet been time to tell Felix either bit of news. Maybe he already knew.

  Behind her, Knapp shouted instructions to the evacuees, warning them of their choice between a possible one-way trip to the unknown and near-certain death if they remained. Still looking for Felix, Caitlin’s gaze stumbled upon Jade coming toward her. She hauled Michael’s body in a fireman’s carry over her shoulder.

  A hand touched Caitlin’s own shoulder. “Are we really doing this?” Felix asked.

  “Do we have a choice?” At the gate, people and Thuur had already begun to pass through it. Caitlin could just make out what looked like daylight and what might be trees of some kind.

  “Dying does suck,” Felix admitted. “I’d rather not do it again.”

  “Being the one left behind is no picnic either,” she answered.

  “So we’ll go together.”

  Shearing metal screeched above. The auditorium ceiling was on its way to collapse. People started running toward the gate, and Caitlin saw Jade quicken her pace to match. Caitlin waved her onward, and Jade seemed to spot her. Meanwhile, Felix moved to support Marette’s other side. Together, they made their way to the gate’s shimmering curtain and, with a deep, collective breath, passed through to she knew not where.

  EPILOGUE

  MICHAEL ADMIRED the authenticity of the two wood-carved statues, as he did each time he visited the hilltop memorial. One was human, the other Thuur. Each flanked a miniature wooden replica of the Thuur gate, itself crafted with painstaking detail to match the real one through which they had come ten years ago.

  He would not have guessed that Marla Knapp had such a talent for wood-carving.

  Michael knelt and ran his fingers over the names carved into the memorial’s pedestal. They were those who’d died in the New Eden disaster. They had given their lives in the effort to eradicate Suuthrien, and to bring them here. Michael always smiled whenever he saw Holes’s name. Felix and he had both insisted it be included. His smile faltered at the one that came after.

  Marc Triton.

  Michael still wondered if Marc had truly died in the cyber-attack. His body had failed, certainly. Yet Michael had never forgotten what Holes had told him right after the attack: a massive data stream from Marc’s neural-link had seemed to abscond—that was the word Holes had used, “abscond”—into the bio-net. Holes had theorized that exchanges between the black material and the bio-net were so rapid that some element of Marc’s memory, or even consciousness, might have escaped into the wild before the unchecked surge killed his body. Despite the seeming miracles Michael had experienced, he had eventually decided that hoping for such a thing was foolhardy. He had never shared the theory, even with Felix. It would only dilute Marc’s sacrifice. His friend was gone.

  To this day, Michael regretted having been unconscious when Jade had carried him through the gate. Maybe he still felt guilty about getting her caught up in everything and wished circumstance hadn’t forced her to come here for him. The battle with Suuthrien had near drained him to the core at the time, but he might have found the strength to lift her to safety without her needing to find that safety through the gate. Maybe he just wished he’d had the chance to step through the gate under his own power.

  He knew it was a pointless regret.

  When he had awoken, Jade had been there watching him. Caitlin and Felix had been nearby, all
of them sitting in a circle of trees within sight of the gate. It had ceased to work perhaps half an hour earlier, Jade had explained. The reactor on the other side had likely exploded soon after everyone had arrived.

  Since that moment, the gate had never worked again.

  There had been no power source on this side, and no structures beyond the gate itself. There had been questions. How could the gate on this end have picked up their signal without power? Why had no Thuur come there to greet them? Where was "there"? For the most part those questions remained only until night fell, when someone had noticed what rose along the horizon.

  The Moon. Earth’s moon. The gate, in burrowing through space-time to find another gate, had somehow found its future self.

  Dr. Sheridan and Uxil had guessed between them that it had something to do with the interference from Paragon’s failing reactor, but no one was sure of the specifics.

  And yet, despite the inescapable fact that they were still on Earth, they had encountered no one from this time, nor found any clues to tell them why. Scout groups explored and found nothing, hardly even the barest ruins. Marette, who regained the full use of her legs but never her eyesight, had determined from astronomical measurements that they’d traveled ahead roughly fourteen hundred years.

  The fate of the rest of human civilization remained a question of ongoing interest. Had humanity finally destroyed itself, as the Agents of Aeneas had always feared? Or had humans simply evacuated the immediate geographical area, or—for some reason—Earth entirely? Regardless of the cause, in the intervening ten years, the search for answers fell by the wayside in favor of the more immediate concerns of survival and, following that, forging their new civilization. It had not been quite the sort that the Exodus Project had intended, nor were more than half of the eighty-nine human survivors AoA members, but it was a fresh start.