A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (53 page)

“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 yards 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.

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.

Things had not gone smoothly, but the Thuur’s abilities to inspire calm rationality when needed had helped the entire group’s struggle to come together, at least in some ways. So far, they were managing.

The bushes rustled behind Michael. He didn’t need to turn to know it was Jade. Though no longer able to draw as much power as he’d managed fighting Suuthrien—Sephora had suggested that some part of the process had damaged his abilities—the syr augmentations within him still remained. Living so close to the natural world around them, he had even found he could manage small feats of—well, Felix liked to call it “magic,” but that never quite felt right to Michael. Then again, Michael had yet to put another name to it.

“What are you doing up here?” Jade asked, not without amusement. He turned to find her leaning against a nearby tree, arms crossed in her now faded green leather jacket. Her hair was down. The white strands no longer glowed as bright as they once did, yet they were brighter than they should have been, from what she told him. The tech was only supposed to last five years at most without replacement.

He shrugged and walked the few steps to close the distance. When her arms unfolded, he took one of her hands and kissed her. “Just felt like a walk.”

“Restless, you mean.”

“That, too. Something called to me, I guess.”

“Is that some sort of Thuur mysticism again, or are you just being weird?” She winked.

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

“Hmm.” Together they turned to stare down the hill at the lights of the village established below. Alyshur Vale, they’d called it. It seemed fitting. “I’m thinking we should go exploring, then,” Jade said.

It might not be a bad idea. Things in the village had been settled for a while, and he’d noticed her dealing with a fair bit of restlessness herself lately. “I’m sorry I got you into all this, Jade.”

“What, you mean flung into the future? We’ve been over this. It’s hardly your fault. And while I’ll never be able to upgrade my optics or get that glowing phoenix tattoo on my back I’d been saving for, I can live with it. The company’s not so bad, after all.”

The Moon, a waning crescent, was beginning to set. They said nothing, until Michael’s feet began to twitch.

“Where would we explore?” he asked finally.

“Doesn’t matter. I want some adventure, while I’m still young-ish.” She turned to make a show of looking him over. “Though I’m starting to think that you don’t age. It’s getting a little weird. Though I guess it’ll keep me from trying to trade up.”

Michael smirked, and gave her waist a tug with his arm. “Plus, I can fly.”

“Yeah, just the one time, ace. So you
claim
. I keep telling you that no one saw it. Starting to think you’re making it all up.”

“You can’t fool me. You believe it.”

She gave the side of his hip a teasing bump with hers. “Shut it.”

He grinned. “So, exploring then. Tomorrow.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“We’d better get some rest.”

They turned, then, and made their way down through the forest along the path back to Alyshur Vale.

The End