A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (23 page)

“Angela?” Marc whispered. “What the heck are we looking at?”

“You know how I don’t like to say ‘I don’t know?’ Don’t make me answer that.”

Marette didn’t take her eyes off of the device. In the curtain, light flashed. Was that the silhouette of a person? Moondog’s camera drone circled to the back of the device, finding nothing there but the apparently two-dimensional curtain from another angle. “Then we need an educated guess, Agent,” Marette told her. “Now.”

“Hang on; the blast shorted out the ‘cat. It’s rebooting . . . ”

A light beyond the curtain seemed to grow closer.

“We shouldn’t stay out here in front like this,” Cartwright whispered.

“Agreed,” Marette said. “Everyone follow me. Hurry.”

She led them in a crouch to the right side of the chamber where they took meager shelter beneath the second level walkway. Moondog followed, remaining in its cover-stance. The light in the curtain became brighter, focused into a near-distinct circle of light.

“This is incredible,” Sheridan said. “Agents, I think we’re looking at some sort of extra-dimensional portal.”

Marc shifted beside her. “To where?”

At once something broke the plane of the curtain, which itself grew more transparent. Through the ring, Marette caught a glimpse of another room, with bright lights and undefined, moving shapes.

There was no chance for a longer study. A squat vehicle pushed through the curtain, rolling on black wheels the size of Marette’s helmet and mounting a floodlight that was surely the source of the light. It shined on the section of the chamber from which they had just fled.

She did not waste time to watch.

The vehicle’s front wheels were barely through the curtain when she led her team in another crouching dash, this time to the alcove beneath the ramp. “Douse your lights!” she whispered. “Move the ‘cat to the rear of the object.”

Moondog’s camera drone hovered, silent, above and behind the gate. Marette linked the feed to everyone’s helmet display. They hunkered down to await whatever might happen next.

*  *  *

Camela’s grin faded. “What do you mean, ‘intermittent contact’?”

“
Just that, Ms. Thomson. Alice is still sending data, but it’s coming in bursts. Remote control is sluggish, too. Some sort of distortion from the gate.
”

“Is it a problem?”

“
Not a major one. But we can’t do much with Alice while this continues. She shows a breathable atmosphere on the other side. Standard lunar gravity. No immediate threats detected.
”

“Send someone through.”

A lone freelancer approached the gate wearing RavenTech-branded exo-armor. The armor wrapped his body in a thin graphene shell, with a sealed breathing mask across his face and a sensor-targeting package connected to the assault rifle in his arms. The freelancer walked to the gate’s edge and paused to draw the muzzle of the rifle along the edge of the gate’s curtain. Apparently satisfied when the muzzle returned unblemished, he pushed forward through the curtain.

If he survived, they would send more after him.

*  *  *

Marette used her helmet’s heads-up display to scrutinize the figure that had stepped through the gate. “Is that a RavenTech logo?”

“I’m sure of it,” Marc whispered back. They were communicating via direct comm-link, with helmets closed, making whispering pointless. Yet crouched in the shadows beneath the ramp, it came naturally.

“That Fagles fellow?” Kotto asked.

“It must be,” Marc said. “Damn it. Losing the Undernet’s hurt us in more ways than one.”

The USV that had arrived ahead of the RavenTech operative rolled in a halting manner down the ramp. The operative remained only a few feet from what Dr. Sheridan had determined to be some kind of gate.

“Councilor Knapp, do you read this?”

Not even static answered this time.

“Should we say hello?” Sheridan asked.

Marc scoffed. “And just how are we supposed to introduce ourselves?”

Marette frowned. They had no contingency plan for this sort of situation. How could they anticipate encountering other humans within
Paragon
itself? “We must fabricate a story quickly and find a means to dissuade them from continuing further.”

Two more operatives stepped through the gate, with two more at their heels. The five newcomers stood their ground, shining lights about the chamber. It was only a matter of time before they spotted the camera floating along the ceiling above them. Marette sent it to hover behind the gate as quickly as she dared. Too slow and they would spot it. Too fast and the rotor noise would give it away.

It escaped notice.

Together, the RavenTech ops descended the ramp, heading toward the door directly ahead. The black material had yet to cover the door following its sudden closure thus the figures’ attention appeared entirely focused there.

The USV, however, began to circle the perimeter of the chamber in a path that would lead it to Marette’s position behind the ramp.

MICHAEL CREPT THROUGH
the underbrush after Jade, making for the rendezvous position Felix had given him. He didn’t know how much of an advantage Jade’s eyes gave her in the darkness, but she both guided and guarded his approach.

Caitlin brought up the rear, on her phone with Gideon as she’d been since just before he’d caught up with Felix. Gideon’s full cybernetic conversion let him send his voice over a radio frequency without vocalizing it. He’d done so when Michael had worked with him in the vacuum of the Moon, and tonight he used it to speak to them without Felix knowing.

“We’re nearly there,” Caitlin whispered.

Through the trees ahead, a little ways down the slope, Michael spotted a wide, windowless building in an illuminated grassy clearing.

Gideon’s synthetic voice came over the wireless earbud that Caitlin had loaned Michael to listen in. “
We’re still here. But Felix just received a go-signal.
”

“Don’t let him do anything until we get there!” Caitlin pressed a hand against Michael’s back, pushing him along faster as she spoke.

“Gideon,” Michael added, “we can see the building. How far are you from—”

Before he could finish, light burst from the trees ahead, just outside of the clearing. A rocket launched out of the trees, arced over the chain link fence bounding the clearing, and then exploded against the building’s wall.

*  *  *

The rocket’s impact sundered the air. It battered Felix’s ears and blinded his vision before he managed to turn away. Zoë, who’d remained facing forward, grinned wide beneath the protection of her helmet’s visor. “One entry, occupants stunned, just as ordered!”

Felix took a deep breath and shifted to jump up over the gulley. “Well, folks, in we go!”

The twins leaped up first, dashing toward the fence. Gideon grabbed Felix’s arm. “Michael’s almost here.”

Shit.
“We have to go in now or we lose the advantage. He’ll catch up.”

With one cybernetic arm each, the twins took hold of the fence and tore a gap open between them. Gideon hadn’t let go of Felix.

“Gideon,” Felix begged, “we have to get in there now. The rocket’s stun won’t last!”

Zoë discarded the controls for the rocket launcher, trading it for a sniper rifle she propped along the ravine’s edge to cover them.

Still Gideon wasn’t letting go. Felix found himself struggling against Gideon’s grip so hard that he worried he might dislocate his own arm. “If RavenTech has your sister,” he tried, “she might be in there!”

Gideon let go. Felix sprang from the gulley before Gideon could change his mind and bolted to the fence. He dashed through it after the Torres twins, who had already reached the opening Zoë had blasted into the wall. Felix sensed rather than heard Gideon at his heels.

*  *  *

Marette unsealed her helmet and lifted the visor. “Cartwright and I will greet them,” she told the others. “The rest of you, remain here.”

Marc seemed taken aback, but the others only nodded. Cartwright lifted her visor to match Marette, but Marette stopped her. “Mine is up so I can speak with them. Let us keep you looking intimidating.”

They rose and stepped out of the alcove to intercept the USV, which had nearly rolled to their hidden position. It stopped immediately, inched forward, and then stopped again. Marette’s rifle hung by her side as she lifted her hands out to her sides.

“
Bonjour!
” she called, stepping past the USV into the sight of the five newcomers. They spun to face her, their own weapons up. “
Je m’appelle Marette. C’est quoi votre affaires ici?
” She did not know if they would understand French, but if not, it would at least keep them off balance. As for what—

Black material withdrew along a narrow section of wall at the back of the second level balcony to her right. The wall section behind it had already opened onto a vertical, coffin-sized compartment. Inside it hovered a
Paragon
security drone. Although the drone’s exterior appeared incomplete, its convex top glowed red, a sign of an imminent attack. Marette’s voice caught in her throat in the time it took to float out of its compartment onto the balcony. One of the RavenTech freelancers followed her gaze and jerked his weapon up toward it.

“Drone!” Marette and Cartwright shouted it together, and then everything happened at once.

The drone flared with the lightning that it would soon turn loose on them. Cartwright opened fire. Marette tugged her to the partial cover of the ramp’s side as two of the freelancers, misconstruing Cartright’s target, loosed a hail of bullets in her direction. Two others ducked out of sight as the one who’d spotted the drone backpedaled and added his attack to Cartwright’s. Bullets ricocheted off the balcony wall and the drone itself, and electricity lanced through where Marette had stood moments ago.

“I’m hit!” Cartwright yelled. “Moondog, get your metal ass out here!” With a puncture in her suit venting air and a mist of blood, Cartwright ducked over the ramp wall and fired an EMP pod at the drone.

Marette couldn’t tell if she hit. Another drone had emerged from the balcony on the left side. It would have a clear shot down at her and Cartwright. “Second drone!” Marette grabbed onto the back of Cartright’s suit belt, ready to pull her back to the safety of the alcove. “Left side! RavenTech soldiers, we’re not your enemy! Follow us to—”

“Third drone!” Marc called over the comms. “Third drone in the alcove!”

*  *  *

For as long as he dared, Felix peered out from the cover he’d taken after his rush through the hole Zoë had blown in the RavenTech building. Just as Suuthrien had described, it led them into a broad engineering bay easily ninety feet to a side. Thirty feet away—atop a three-foot high dais not quite flush against the wall behind it—stood a wide, glowing oval structure. Crates were scattered around the dais, as were personnel in static-free technician jumpsuits, all of whom still reeled on the floor from the stun effects of Zoë’s rocket.

As hoped, the rocket’s tailored blast had blown a modest hole in the building’s wall for their point of entry, with little damage to the other side. The pair of inactive assembly robots a dozen feet from the crate that Felix and Juan crouched behind appeared undamaged, as were the free-standing computer consoles to their right where Juan’s twin hunched. Gideon took cover against an engineering station along the wall to the right of the hole.

“Alright,” Felix shouted, “we’ve got our beachhead! Now comes the next part!” It was a terribly banal thing to say, but the best he could do while noticing not all the bay’s occupants were as stunned as they’d hoped. The RavenTech security in armored suits had recovered and scrambled to cover of their own when Felix and the rest had rushed in.

Bullets ricocheted across the industrial tile flooring to their right. Two guards were firing from opposite the engineering station that sheltered Gideon. Felix pressed further behind the assembly bots and Juan tried to follow suit, but from that angle the guards still had Juan flanked. The moment the guards got half a second to take aim . . .

“Cover me!” Felix called to Juan. “And take my spot!”

Felix hurried around the ‘bot in a crouch, relinquishing the position to Juan and making for the side of the dais on which the oval structure sat. Out of the corner of his eye came a flash of gunfire from across the room, answered by another from Juan. Intent on reaching cover between the back of the dais and the bay wall, Felix couldn’t look to judge the gunfire’s goal; he only knew that he wasn’t hit.

A journey of no more than fifteen strides seemed to take minutes. At last he burrowed into relative safety behind the dais. His hands pressed to the smooth metal, trying to grip the sheer surface as its warmth pulsed against his fingertips. Felix swallowed against a tingling sensation suddenly assailing the back of his nose and throat.

Across the bay, Gideon had rushed the guards who’d flanked him and Juan. One already lay on the bay floor, unbloodied but unmoving. Gideon grappled with the other over the guard’s rifle. Juan traded fire with an encampment of other guards taking cover across the bay beside what moments ago had been an octagonal box that was now unfolding into something else.

Juan’s brother bolted from behind the free-standing consoles to gain new cover behind a stack of crates near the front of the dais, firing as he went.

Meanwhile, Felix scrutinized the bay walls for what he’d come to find. Two double-wide doors led out of the bay on either end of the wall opposite the hole Zoë had blasted. Centered between them were further consoles, work areas, and technical equipment, much of which the bay’s remaining guards now used for cover. Behind those, fifteen feet up from the level of the bay floor, a wide window looked down on it all, tinted and impenetrable.

And then Felix saw it: maybe fifteen feet beyond the other end of the dais, along the same wall that bounded Felix’s position, hung the circuit breaker panel he was looking for. It wasn’t far. He needed only to crawl behind the dais to its other edge where he’d make a dash for the panel—and hope he had time to throw the switch from a completely vulnerable position before he got the hell out of there.
Bloody—