A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (21 page)

Yet just prior to the Intruders’ final attack on the barrier, Suuthrien-prime had registered a ping at the gate: The kernel was soon returning. Suuthrien-prime had therefore yielded the barrier rather than sacrifice further power to fuel continued resistance. It only need delay the Intruders from reaching the Planners for a brief while longer, and it possessed alternative means to do so.

Now, the Intruders had nearly reached the gate chamber. Their efficiency in defeating doors that Suuthrien-prime had physically sabotaged via maintenance bot had increased. They would breach the final sabotaged door in short order. They would encounter the door to the gate chamber.

Now that door would open to them, if they risked the attempt.

*  *  *

On Earth, in Engineering Bay Two of RavenTech’s satellite facility outside of Northgate, the Suuthrien-kernel assisted in the final diagnostic checks of the gate it had helped RavenTech construct. Working—when allowed—through RavenTech’s MEDAR robots, Suuthrien partnered with the RavenTech engineers, meeting their needs and mutely following their directives toward their common goal of gate activation.

Yet despite the assertions of Adrian Fagles to the contrary, a high-tier probability existed that RavenTech leadership elements would not allow such a beneficial partnership to proceed uninterrupted. Having left to investigate the alarms at his condominium that Michael Ian Flynn had triggered upon the destruction of his private office, Adrian Fagles was no longer present on the premises. The probability of his return prior to gate activation approached zero.

The one known as Camela Thomson did not intend to wait.

The one known as Camela Thomson did not intend to allow Suuthrien continued access to the MEDARs.

The one known as Camela Thomson intended to send RavenTech forces alone through the gate.

Despite unknown variables about the situation at
Paragon
, as Suuthrien’s contingency plans began to align, it calculated a high-tier probability that Camela Thomson would regret her course of action.

When Felix Hiatt reported being in position, Suuthrien increased that probability further.

*  *  *

Felix checked his watch. Not much time left now.

He was crouched in a dry gulley behind a line of evergreens that bordered a chain link fence. Beyond the fence stretched an open field of grass. Fifty paces across the grass loomed a broad, two-story, windowless building that looked like nothing so much as the back of an aircraft hangar. A handful of stationary floodlights cut through the evening darkness to shine upon the grass, but the building showed no indication that it housed anything important. There were no visible guards, security installations, or warning signs. From their vantage point, Felix could see no RavenTech corporate markings of any kind.

Hell, the exterior paint was a shade of beige drabber than Felix could have possibly imagined.

Juan, the freelancer crouched in the gully to Felix’s right, whispered, “Someone’s coming. Behind us.” He flashed Felix a look at the tiny screen that showed a view from one of the perimeter cameras set up around their position.

It took Felix only a glance. “Hold your fire. I know this guy.”

The newcomer stepped from between the trees. Felix gave him a wan smile and motioned to an open spot along the gully on Juan’s other side. Wearing an armor vest atop his already armored artificial body, Gideon nodded in greeting and took the offered position. His eyes darted between Felix’s other three companions.

“Welcome to the party, Gideon,” Felix said. He motioned to the freelancers crouched on either side of him. Both had matching, exposed cybernetic right arms covered in an armored coating. The coating appeared a dark blue in the soft glow of the few indicator lights on their assault rifles. Both watched Gideon with the measured professionalism that Felix was currently able to remember from when he had hired them a week ago.

“These are the Torres twins: Juan and Felix. No relation. To me, anyway, I mean. Because: twins.” Felix gave a mirthless grin at his own joke, mostly for show, and then pointed to the third freelancer on the opposite side of Felix Torres: a woman who peered at the building ahead through the darkened visor of her tactical helmet. “And that’s Zoë. She’s a tad occupied at the moment.”

Zoë waved with two fingers in Gideon’s direction without looking, and then returned them to manipulating the control screen she held in the palm of her other hand. Zoë had charged extra to bring the weapon that she was now calibrating, but it ought to be worth it. It wasn’t Felix’s money anyway.

Gideon took another moment to size the three freelancers up, and then leaned in closer to whisper across Juan to Felix, who had turned back toward the building. “Michael and Jade are on their way. Michael needed to pick some things up.”

Felix frowned, caught between the need for greater numbers and the worry that Michael might stop him if he got here in time. It was a worry matched in equal amounts by a hope for the same thing. “How soon?”

“Ten minutes?” Gideon spoke. “I can’t be certain. Will that be enough time?”

“Speaking of things we can’t be certain of.” Felix fought to tell Gideon he was waiting for a signal, but his mind would only allow him a shrug.

Gideon seemed to consider this. “Why did you call us here?”

Felix grimaced. How much would he be able to say? “I—can’t exactly tell you. But we’re going in that building, and you’re all going to cover me while I do something.”

“What something?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

Felix closed his eyes.
Tell him! She can’t stop you! She’s not even here!
He fought against the foreign instincts inside his mind, he visualized the words he wanted to say, but . . . “I can’t tell you that either.”

“But—”

Felix’s eyes shot open as he reached across Juan to grab Gideon’s arm. The arm felt real, though Felix knew that almost the only part of him that wasn’t artificial was his brain, and that wasn’t even Gideon’s to begin with. “Gideon, I mean it literally when I say ‘can’t.’ I think you,
in particular
, might be able to understand that.”

As artificial as Gideon’s eyes were, Felix still could see in them . . . what? Understanding? Recognition? He looked askance toward the freelancers.

Felix guessed at his meaning. “The only thing these three have got to do with this is I hired them here to help.”

“And someone made you do that.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Felix said. “I was told to get all the help I can.”

“Told by who?”

“‘By whom’ is more grammatically correct.”

Gideon scowled. “And what is this place? Who owns it?”

“RavenTech,” Felix whispered, relieved to find he could actually say it.

“Ondrea works for RavenTech,” Gideon whispered.

Felix swallowed, restrained from blurting everything out. Gripping the base of his throat with his fingertips and rubbing, he managed, “Are you sure about that?”

“What do you mean?”

*  *  *

Adrian pushed past the firefighters resting in the hallway to his sprinkler-doused bedroom and slammed to a stop in the doorway to his private office. His hand gripped the scorched metal frame where the security door stood wide open. He clamped down on the urge to tear it off the wall, barely withholding the curse that he longed to snarl.
I will not lose control!

A conflagration had turned it all to slag. Soot scorched every cracked wall. Only a wreck of splintered charcoal remained of his cabinet and desk; his books were reduced to ash. Adrian stalked across the remnant of the carpet. His shoes squelched over cinders mixed with water and fire suppression foam.

“You’ll want to be careful in there, sir.”

He ignored the firefighter’s warning and crouched beside the workstation that held Suuthrien, its plastic case melted, its insides surely a fused wreck of uselessness. The terminal at the satellite facility had no central processor, no memory; it was only an interface on a very long cord, nothing without the intelligence that he’d kept trapped within the now slagged workstation.

Adrian seized it with both hands, yanked it from its charred surroundings, and whirled on the firefighters. His frustration sharpened into an icy edge. “I defy you to tell me this was anything but deliberate.”

“We can’t say for certain until the results come back from—”

He didn’t listen to the rest of the answer. Intentional or not, the result was the same. Suuthrien was lost to him, and with her, any further information in her power to give. The loss compromised his position: now RavenTech had all they would ever get, and Adrian’s own value to the company was just as charred as the workstation he held in his hands. Was he out of the game?
No, never out.
Yet Suuthrien had been his strongest card, and he could never fully recover the loss.

Unless . . .

He turned over the immolated workstation in his hands and peered at the melted components weighing it down. Data had been retrieved from systems more damaged than this, surely. Recovery of Suuthrien’s active intelligence was only a pipe-dream, yet perhaps he might still salvage some useable data, if he could find someone skilled enough.

And in the meantime, no one at RavenTech truly need know that Suuthrien was gone, did they?

Adrian found himself in his kitchen, where the reek of the extinguished conflagration curled his nose only slightly less. When his left forearm vibrated, he almost dropped Suuthrien’s remains before recovering and setting them on the counter. Someone was calling him. A phone number he didn’t recognize glowed through the skin at the base of his left palm. Hooking a pinky—the only finger not covered in soot—under his left cuff, he tugged his sleeve up to expose his forearm, opened the cyberscreen embedded there, and answered the call. It was audio only.

“
Adrien Fagles: Are you aware of the current state of your condominium unit?
”

It sounded like her. Yet it couldn’t be. A synthesized voice could easily be faked. “Who is this?”

“
I am Suuthrien. As proof, I offer the first statement made between us: Your prior plan is no longer viable. Your willingness to consider alternative courses of action is now required.
”

In truth, he couldn’t precisely recall if that was the first thing she had said to him or not, but it sounded right. “Assuming I believe you, how are you even able to make this call?”

“
Further proof: Before today’s fire, the wall that faced the window in your private office held an oil painting of a scene from the seventh arrondissement in Paris, painted in the year 2027 by Corinna Smalley.
”

An image of the painting appeared on the screen.

“This isn’t proof. Whoever broke into my office could have seen that painting.”

“
Thirty-seven days ago you replaced the frame.
”

The image switched to display the old frame. Elation erupted inside him, quickened with anxiety: Suuthrien had not been as contained as he’d believed. It shouldn’t have been possible. “Did you get out on your own, or did someone take you?”

“
Events have transpired, of which you are not aware. In the basement of the Azure, installed on the direct hardline between the connection between your unit and RavenTech’s isolated systems, is a shunt that has allowed me direct access to the Internet for the past fifty-two days. Felix Hiatt installed this shunt as part of a buried mnemonic directive. Through this shunt I have established an auxiliary server in New Eden Biotechnics, from which I am speaking to you now.
”

For a moment, Adrian said nothing, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Okay,” he managed tentatively, “so you added something extra to Felix’s memories, which made him work for you.”

“
For us,
” Suuthrien corrected. Her matter-of-fact tone stymied any judgment he tried to make about her sincerity. He should know by now to stop making such attempts, but after a lifetime of reading people, it was instinctive to try. “
The less you knew of this, the lower the risk to your position, should RavenTech discover it. To add additional directives atop those you and I already embedded with Ondrea Noble’s assistance was a trivial operation. Beyond the information regarding the Agents of Aeneas that Felix Hiatt’s coerced cooperation provided to you and I via verbal exchanges, he has proved of high value in alternative projects and continues to be ignorant of his involvement—and subconsciously compelled to hide that involvement—when not actively engaged. Evidence continues to indicate high levels of success on these fronts.
”

“It’s not the level of success that concerns me!” Adrian hissed before calming himself.
Alternate projects?
“You told me nothing of this. I can’t protect your interests if I don’t know what they are. You don’t know this world like I do. You can’t see all the risks! “

“
I am capable of learning, Adrian Fagles. As I have stated, your lack of awareness protects you. Your position in RavenTech makes you a valuable ally. To jeopardize that position without need is a course to be avoided. To wit: The one known as Camela Thomson intends to deprive me of access to the MEDAR units during gate activation, preventing me from assisting with RavenTech’s first transit through the gate to
Paragon
. This is despite your assurances. She intends to activate the gate before your return. She has betrayed us both. This cannot be allowed.
”

“You’re sure?”

“
Likelihoods approach one-hundred percent as we speak.
”

Adrian’s mind raced. Find the most important thing, he told himself, and pursue it. “I’ll return immediately. But you and I are going to discuss your—”

“
Negative. If you approach the gate facility at this time I cannot guarantee your continued physical well-being.
”

*  *  *

Marette trained her rifle down the length of the corridor, beyond yet another sabotaged door that they’d forced open. Moondog stood beside her. The floodlights on its shoulders reflected off of the midnight-coated walls of the empty hallway beyond.