A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (52 page)

Though he’d guessed—mostly—that she was kidding about the invoice, he said anyway, “If this works, it won’t be able to attack us. If it doesn’t work, then it won’t care to because it’ll know we can’t do a thing to it.”

“You hope, right?” The grin she shot him then melted into concern. “You’re betting a lot on this. What if it doesn’t work and it decides to swat you out of the sky for good measure?”

He had been trying not to think about that. “Then I hope Daisuke is a really excellent pilot. And don’t you mean ‘swat
us
out of the sky?’”

“Yeah, well, I’ve decided that I’m invincible for the duration of the insanity. I’ll be ignoring any statements to the contrary, so don’t bother.”

“Detonation at RavenTech!” Daisuke shouted back to them. “Better get ready!”

Michael took a deep breath and found himself frozen in the wake of what he was about to try to do, and staring Jade in the face.

Jade took the recoilless rifle in one hand and stared back at him with a flash in her eyes. “Going to pull one of those ‘kiss for luck’ lines on me, ace?”

“Uh—”

She slid her free hand up along the back of his head and pulled him in for a sudden, electric kiss. Her lips broke away from his with a smirk. “Because I hate that kind of crap.”

Soon Michael stood in his safety harness beside Jade, both of them now in RavenTech suits in the floater’s open rear door. The floater hovered near New Eden—far enough away to stand a chance of intercepting the dragon before it got there, near enough to catch up if it decided to ignore the floater entirely.

“Suuthrien!” Michael called over the suit mic, hooked up to transmit a broad signal via the floater, “I’m still here! I want to talk to you!”

Daisuke raised them higher, perhaps now a hundred yards above the ground. Behind them, what remained of
Paragon
worked at evacuating those at New Eden. Somewhere in the darkness to starboard lay a stand of trees on the edge of the nearby greenbelt where Sephora had shown Michael the bio-net. He could still sense the life there as easily as his own heartbeat, which itself pounded furiously in his chest.

“I can see it,” whispered Jade. The rifle in her hands beeped twice as she took the safety off.

His voice piped in over the floater’s sound system, Holes announced, “The dragon-construct is not changing course.”

Daisuke launched the floater onto a course across what would be the dragon’s direct path to
Paragon
. Michael’s breath caught a moment before he relaxed into the safety harness’s grip and let it steady him. “Suuthrien!” he tried again.

Not waiting for a response, squeezing the Geiger cannon in his grip, Michael strained to reach across the distance toward the black material within the dragon. He knew it was out there, but he couldn’t feel it! The auras of the trees and the earth below him loomed far stronger. Though his first impulse was to push them away as a distraction, another instinct took over, and he tried to draw upon their power to bolster his senses.

“In range!” Jade yelled. Her rifle erupted in a storm of bullets. Michael matched her aim with the Geiger cannon and fired as the dragon soared below them. He couldn’t tell if it had done any good.

The floater plunged without warning. Michael’s stomach reeled, and they swerved onto a new course. “I think it noticed you!” Daisuke shouted. “Hold on!”

“Get me a shot!” Jade yelled.

Within moments, they swerved again and leveled out. Michael had only a second to adjust before the dragon swept down a mere ten yards from the open door. He and Jade fired as the dragon’s maw opened and spewed a mass of Quicksilver straight in their direction. Daisuke yawed them to one side, but not enough. The goo splashed across part of the floater’s interior and covered Michael’s suit visor. He shouted, near panicking, and in that moment, felt a massive surge from within and without—adrenaline combined with the power of the nearby vegetation. Seizing on it, he wiped the visor clean with one hand and reached out with the other. Yet by the time he did, the dragon was gone from view.

“Are you alright back there?” Daisuke called.

Moving Quicksilver half-covered Michael’s suit and worked to paint itself further across the floater’s interior. Jade had avoided most of it, but even now tendrils wormed their way up her leg. “Michael, are you okay?” Still riding the adrenaline, he could only nod in response. “These suit seals better fucking hold!” she shot.

“Hang on!” Daisuke shouted. The floater banked, swerved, and then pitched upward, accelerating. It sent most of the Quicksilver tumbling out of the floater as the harnesses strained to keep Michael and Jade inside. Then Daisuke leveled them out, and Jade erupted in curses.

Michael had lost all sense of their position in relation to the dragon, but another plan was forming. “Can you get us in its way like that again?” he asked Daisuke. “But then climb fast like you did just now?”

“Hooh-boy, I can try!”

Jade turned to him. Her eyes glowed a steady violet, her face a mask of thrilled alarm. “What’s the plan, ace?”

Michael began to unfasten his harness. “Once I’m out, you two head down to
Paragon
and help them! Try to get as many people out as you can!”

“Are you insane?”

“I’ll be alright!”

“That wasn’t what I asked!”

“Get ready!” Daisuke yelled.

“I’ll be okay!” Michael assured her as he dropped the Geiger cannon. “Just give me some cover fire!”

Jade spared only a fraction of a second to glare at him, and then turned back to the open doorway. Instantly the dragon was there again, and the floater pitched sharply upward. Jade yelled a battle cry and fired down into its back.

Michael let go, allowing gravity and instinct to take over. Screaming from fear and adrenaline, he dove from the floater, trying to harness what he could of the power that surged through him anew. He hit the dragon’s spine and grabbed at whatever he could to try to arrest his fall. He would gain purchase on the dragon’s surface, regain his wits, and then use the power inside him to reach the dragon’s black material and—

The dragon rolled in mid-air with a roar. Spun and surprised, Michael lost his grip and tumbled away through open air down to the greenbelt below.

“HURRY!”
Felix shouted it down to the New Eden employees climbing their way up the lines below. “Pay no attention to the strange alien figure in the sweatshirt!” He and Uxil were crouched atop the New Eden auditorium roof, at the edge of an opened skylight. Above them hovered what remained of the Thuur ship. Rope lines dangled from it, which the New Eden evacuees climbed as the AoA and Thuur pulled them up to safety. Sheridan and Seung worked below, helping the evacuees match up with their lines.

Felix spared a moment to locate the dragon over the greenbelt in the distance. How much longer would it stay there?

“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. “A
nd 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.