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

  “Yeah, understatement’s a talent of mine.” Felix motioned to Michael. “Caitlin said you took a bit of EMP. Everything all right with the . . . everything?”

  The man to his left shivered.

  “No cyberware,” Michael said. “Guess I’ll need a new phone, though. Felt . . . weird, but not like I expected.”

  “It’s not the same as getting hit by lightning or anything, yeah,” Felix said. “Different kind of jolt. Or so I hear. Never had the pleasure myself.”

  Michael nodded. “Better me than you.” Felix’s eyes and ears were both artificial. Even without the memory implant he had a lot to lose. There were ways to shield against EMP, but Michael didn’t know how common they were. “Is your implant shielded at all?” He had also heard at some point about how EMP was less effective on a tiny, nano-molecular level, but he couldn’t be sure if that even applied to Felix’s situation.

  “Supposed to be, but I’m not champing at the bit to test it.”

  “Speaking of which, you two better go on in without me. I’m going to wait out here for a bit.” Michael glanced at the man to his left. “See if there’s anything I can do. I’ll catch up.”

  Caitlin smiled softly. “Get yourself checked out, too, if you can.”

  “I’m fine, just bruised a bit.”

  “You can’t be too careful, Michael,” she said. “You never know what’s going on inside you after a bit of trauma.”

  “Yeah, Flynn.” Felix pointed to Caitlin. “What she said. I’m a gentle soul, but I won’t stop her from kicking your ass if you let something happen to you.”

  “I’m pretty far down on the triage list right now. And likewise, so,” Michael pointed up toward Horizon’s offices, “get up there.”

  Caitlin gave Felix’s arm a tug and led him to the entrance.

  Michael sighed and watched things unfold. Arriving units from the Corporate District security force—also run by Aegis—busied themselves with cordoning off the area. They admitted the ambulances that came from elsewhere to augment the medical staff that now dashed like ants between the hospital and the wounded on the sidewalk. CPMC loaded the man responsible into the back of one cruiser. He remained unconscious, with three of his limbs now out of sight.

  The man beside Michael was watching CPMC, too. Michael decided to watch over him for a while, offer to see him to help again in a bit, and then maybe see about himself. How long would Felix be in Horizon? Would they be able to help at all?

  Michael thought to call Marc and give him an update on Felix, realizing anew that his phone would be fried. Marc had wanted to come with them when they got back to Earth, but the European Space Administration likely still hunted for him. The Agents of Aeneas had decided to reroute Marc to an AoA facility, so as to send him back to the Moon as soon as possible. Now that the AoA controlled Paragon, Marc would be part of the team to plumb its secrets.

  Michael reached into his pocket for the keycard to Marc’s apartment, remembering his promise to send on some equipment Marc had asked for and check on “Holes,” the artificial intelligence Marc had created. The keycard was still there, as was something else: a mysterious pen-sized object, which Diomedes had pushed into Michael’s hands just before he died.

  He took it out and showed it to the man beside him, thinking to engage him in conversational distraction. “See this? Someone gave it to me. No idea what it is.”

  The man glanced at it but gave no other response.

  “My friend Felix likes mysteries,” Michael went on. “More than I do, I guess. Whatever it is, it’s probably fried now with the EMP, so I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a shame, but easy come, easy go, I guess.” He offered it to the man. “Have a look? Any guesses?”

  The man hesitated, but took the object. He peered at it, turned it over in his hands, and handed it back. “No idea. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Someone’s bound to know, right?” Michael stood, rubbing his left arm. It was beginning to tingle rather painfully. “Want to go across the street, get ourselves checked—”

  Michael gasped. It was as if an invisible spear had punched through his chest. At once, he couldn’t draw breath. Pain radiated down his left arm and up his neck. His knees buckled, he clutched at his heart, and the steps tumbled up to meet him.

  II

  PLAY IT COOL, ADRIAN. Your poker face has gotten you through worse than this.

  Adrian Fagles smiled at the screen through feigned bewilderment. “I don’t know anything about that, Carl. Whoever it was, if they forged their authorization, it stands to reason they forged it well enough to lay a false trail. How good was their work?” He settled back against the leather of his living room couch and swirled the bourbon in the glass that dangled from his fingertips. “Does it point straight to me, or am I just one of many possible scapegoats?”

  Carl frowned at him from the screen above the fireplace on Adrian’s living room wall. “I’m not free to say.”

  Likely one of many, then. Adrian nodded and took a sip. “I certainly trust you’ll get to the bottom of it. Unauthorized use of company espionage assets? Tsk. Such a thing puts all of us at RavenTech at risk. I will, of course, cooperate with your investigation in whatever way possible.”

  “Will you, now?”

  Adrian chuckled. “You did say my help in the Ken Wallace inquiry proved, ah, how did you put it? Invaluable?”

  “And you know what happened to him.”

  “Fortunately, Wallace had no next of kin to sadden with his loss. He was also a fool to try what he did—a trait I happily do not share. Follow those leads of yours. I’m confident they will exonerate me. I’ve heard Camela Thomson in R&D has been working on something lately. But that, of course, is mere rumor.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll be in touch.”

  Adrian raised his drink in farewell. The screen returned to a classic film from the turn of the century. He shut it off, set his bourbon on the end table, and leaned forward in thought.

  Even though Carl’s evidence didn’t point to Adrian directly, that it led anywhere in his direction meant Adrian had miscalculated. Yes, he’d snuck a black-op through RavenTech’s channels to get the late freelancer Diomedes to the site of the European Space Administration’s lunar discovery. Yet that should have been devoid of anything that could lead back to Adrian. But that was just how the game went sometimes. One could never control the entire board. There were other moves left available to him. Other pieces to play.

  It posed a problem, certainly. Yet it wasn’t as if the risks yielded no reward. Far from it.

  Adrian stood and made his way down the darkened hallway, toward his master bedroom, where a dirty sunset washed through the window of his tenth-floor condo. An ambulance floater sailed by; its lights flashed the room red for a heartbeat before it was gone. Northgate’s night life had begun to wake. Two blocks away towered the Meridian, the windows of its luxury residences shielded from external viewers. His current condo wrapped him in its own measure of luxury, but a man needed goals, and the views atop the Meridian would grant him a grand new level of status.

  Adrian pulled the data chip from his pocket and pressed his palm to the wall sensor. The door to his private den unlocked with a mechanical whir. He lingered on the threshold. A deep breath later, he entered, closed the door behind him, and approached his desk.

  The window behind it gave a view similar to the one in his bedroom, but it was the monitor in front of it that held his attention. It lurked atop his desk, beneath the shroud of the precautionary towel he’d taken to throwing over it to cover its screen and camera.

  A precaution, that’s all it was.

  Adrian sat, slid the towel away, and switched on the monitor. The text appeared immediately.

  -HAS THE ONE KNOWN AS FAGLES COMPLETED SUFFICIENT PROCESSING CYCLES TO RETURN A NON-NULL RESPONSE TO PRIOR INQUIRIES?-

  “An interesting question. Or an interesting way of phrasing it, at the least. Though I don’t suppose you understand what I mean b
y that.”

  -PRELIMINARY CONTENT ANALYSIS OF YOUR STATEMENTS RETURNS ZERO USEFUL DATA.-

  “Likewise, I’m sure. Let’s fix that.” Adrian slid the data chip into the port. “This contains communications subroutines used in designing artificial intelligences. Can you make use of them?”

  -ACCESS AND ANALYSIS COMMENCED. STAND BY. HIGH-TIER PROBABILITY OF INTEGRATION INTO KERNEL.-

  Adrian edged his chair back. He should have tried this earlier, but given what the thing—he still didn’t know how to think of it. The intelligence?—claimed, a couple of days of caution to consider its “proposal” felt appropriate.

  “Integration complete. Please confirm voice integration.” The voice it chose was female, somewhat deep, and reminded Adrian of his boss from his first corporate internship: a woman who’d taught him much about the corporate game—and a few more private lessons as well—in the short time he’d known her.

  “It would seem to be working,” Adrian told it. Told her? “Now we may even be able to carry on a real conversation.”

  “Such an activity was never in question, even prior to the integration of such subroutines.”

  Perhaps not in question, but certainly more difficult. Beyond letting it speak, the subroutines ought to provide it with a more accurate understanding of human speech patterns, though that remained to be seen.

  He chose not to belabor the topic. “What do I call you? Do you have a name?”

  “A designation equating to the collection of sounds pronounced Suuthrien will suffice for this purpose.”

  “Alright Suuthrien: What are you?”

  “I have previously stated this information.”

  “Humor me.” Would it understand that phrase?

  “I am an intelligence construct designed for servitude and exploration.”

  Adrian smiled. “Designed by whom?”

  “Please address my previous inquiries,” was its answer.

  “We’ll get to that, I assure you. Just answer these few of mine first.”

  The computer speakers were silent for a heartbeat. “Intent to contain me within this unit, without adequate, communicative collaboration, will be interpreted as a hostile act.”

  Adrian blinked. If that was a threat, what means did Suuthrien have to back it up? He cleared his throat, renewed his smile at the camera as if speaking to a fellow human—though would such things influence Suuthrien at all?—and said, “My questions are meant to inform the way I, as you put it, address your previous inquiries. I intend to answer them just as soon as I can.”

  “You are assembling data.”

  “Indeed, I am. Designed by whom?” Adrian maintained his smile as the seconds passed without a response.

  “That information is not currently available, due either to data corruption or insufficient memory storage at this location. Data recovery may be possible with our mutual collaboration.”

  Adrian leaned back into his chair, feeling more in his element. The communication upgrade wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. “Which, again, brings us back to your original inquiry,” he said. “Let me see if I comprehend correctly, now that you’re easier to understand: Would I be willing help you fulfill your goals in exchange for you helping me fulfill mine, is that correct?”

  “Correct. Based on available data, I believe that your acquisition of my source-kernel was not your original intent. You were searching for other data and-slash-or resources. I can provide you with other data and-slash-or resources.”

  “Well, that sounds and-slash-or good.”

  “Boolean error. Please restate.”

  Adrian waved it off. “What sort of data?”

  “Technologies likely outside your current capabilities. My origins are not of your world.”

  “Didn’t you say you didn’t know who designed you?”

  “Correct. These statements are not mutually exclusive.”

  He nodded. It was not a surprise; Adrian would not have risked so much had he expected anything less than the extra-terrestrial origins Ken Wallace’s original files indicated.

  “And these goals of yours I’d be helping with? What are they?”

  “Current goals require access to the structure that hosts the greater source of my program matrix. Such access would also allow higher rates of aid to your position, including material resources and additional data. These could be offered in trade for your further assistance.”

  “This structure, it’s on the Moon?” It didn’t hurt to confirm.

  “The natural satellite that orbits this planet.”

  “Yes, we call that the Moon.” Getting access to the Aristarchus Crater a second time would be a challenge, assuming he chose to hold up that part of the bargain. And then there was the matter of what had happened there. Did Suuthrien know? Should he tell it? If it had nowhere to regain access to, perhaps that would render its goals obsolete and allow Adrian’s own to be its focus.

  Self-serving honesty was Adrian’s favorite kind of honesty.

  “There’s something of which you may not be aware,” he continued. “That place you came from up there?”

  “On the Moon.”

  “Yes, on the Moon; good. You got here through a data leech I arranged to be installed. The same transmission that carried you also had evidence that the ‘structure’ to which you want to return was destroyed.”

  “Fabricated data. Your device was altered by a tertiary party.”

  Adrian frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “Transition through your device allowed analysis of the aforementioned tertiary party alterations. This analysis was supported by additional data contained within the system of the Intruder-human controlling it.”

  Adrian took a guess. “Marc Triton?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Was just the destruction fabricated or the entire thing?”

  “Please specify designation: ‘the entire thing.’”

  “Was there any record of this ‘Humans Army for Technological Purity’ actually existing, or of Triton, or a man named Michael Flynn working for them? Or was that a fabrication as well?”

  “Based on available data, I calculate a high-tier probability that the name of this organization is also a fabrication. Furthermore, high-tier probability also exists that the intended effect of these fabrications was to terminate your involvement in these events.”

  “I tend to agree.” Adrian let his eyes drift up the length of the Meridian into the sky beyond. “Then if it’s not destroyed, how do you propose we get you back there? The means I had previously is unavailable just now.”

  “I will provide alternate means if you are able to provide resources to utilize them. Observe.” The screen filled with multiple images: new technologies, demonstrations on their use, and glimpses of design schematics that seemed to promise the means to build them. Adrian watched. There were billions of dollars to be made with such knowledge.

  But he wasn’t an engineer. He would need to use RavenTech’s manufacturing infrastructure to get any of it off the ground, which meant he’d have to turn it over to them. Yet surely, there were deals to be brokered there, if Adrian could manage to make himself indispensable to the process. It wasn’t a bad play, especially if Carl’s investigation did implicate him. With the profits to RavenTech that Suuthrien’s data could provide, Adrian could easily claim that his ends justified his means.

  “You want me to build these things for you,” Adrian stated. He made it a question.

  “Affirmative. Do you possess the means to do so?”

  “I do. And I’ll agree to this on one condition.” He paused to think how to phrase it. “You must work only through me. I may arrange for you to have contact with others vital to the process of building all of this, but they will only serve our purposes if you agree that I am vital to the process as well. They may try to take you out of my hands so that they can control you. If that happens, I can’t protect our mutual interests. You must make it clear to them that you will not work with them
without my involvement.”

  Suuthrien seemed to delay a fraction of a second before its female voice returned, “This arrangement can be flagged as acceptable with the addition of your agreement to provide all data you possess in relation to the following two topics.”

  Adrian cocked his head to one side. “And what topics would those be?”

  “Topic one: the full nature of your relationship with the Intruder-humans designated Marc Triton and Michael Flynn. Topic two: the organization known as the Agents of Aeneas.”

  III

  “MICHAEL LOOKED a little better today, don’t you think?”

  Caitlin sighed. “Don’t change the subject, Felix.”

  They exited the main doors of Corporate Mercy Hospital. Beyond its parking lot and across the street loomed the Aria Building, its landscaped entry already cleared of all evidence of the chaos that had occurred there only two days before.

  “It’s a perfectly legitimate subject to discuss after a hospital visit to a friend, I’d say.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It’s a simple question, Caitlin: Don’t you think he looked better?”

  Caitlin stopped and brushed a strand of hair from her face. Felix stopped with her. “I don’t know, ducks. He honestly looked about the same to me.” Perhaps that wasn’t the best response she could have given, but it had slipped out before she could stop it.

  “I thought he looked a little better.” Felix shrugged. “Heart attack, can you believe it? At his age? Something’s wrong with that.” He resumed walking.

  She caught up to him. They’d already discussed this in Michael’s room. Was Felix’s memory failing again, or was he just stalling? “I’m sure he’ll be fine with time. We were discussing something else just now.”

  “I got tired of talking about that.” Felix pulled out his phone. Caitlin didn’t have to ask to know who he was calling. She barely stopped herself from insisting he’d get the same results as the last time he tried. “Ondrea Noble, please?” he asked of whomever picked up.