A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (50 page)

Y
OUR
PROJECTIONS
ARE
ACCURATE
. N
OTE
,
HOWEVER
,
THAT
I
HAVE
GAINED
ENOUGH
OF
A
FOOTHOLD
ON
SOME
OF
YOUR
AUXILIARY
SYSTEMS—SPECIFICALLY
,
THE
FIVE
HUMANS
LED
BY
YOUR
CREATOR
M
ARC
T
RITON—TO
ENSURE
ELECTRICAL
BIO
-
NEURAL
FEEDBACK
OF
ENOUGH
MAGNITUDE
TO
RESULT
IN
A
DEATH
-
STATE
OF
FORTY
TO
EIGHTY
PERCENT
OF
THOSE
HUMANS
BEFORE
THE
SUCCESSFUL
COMPLETION
OF
YOUR
ATTACK
. S
HORT
OF
A
COMPLETE
ABANDONMENT
OF
YOUR
ATTACK
,
YOU
CANNOT
DEFEND
AGAINST
THIS
. D
O
YOU
DEEM
SUCH
LOSSES
ACCEPTABLE
COSTS
OF
VICTORY
?

I do.

T
HEN
YOU
HAVE
MADE
A
CHOICE
THAT
RESULTS
IN
THE
ERADICATION
OF
CERTAIN
HUMANS
.

The humans in question have been informed and have now made their own choices. I will abide.

Q
UERY
: W
ERE
THE
SITUATION
REVERSED
,
DO
YOU
BELIEVE
THE
HUMANS
WOULD
ALLOW
YOU
TO
CHOOSE
BETWEEN
YOUR
OWN
EXISTENCE
AND
THE
VICTORY
OF
YOUR
CAUSE
?

I possess insufficient data to formulate an answer to your query at this time.

Y
OU
DO
NOT
KNOW
.

Affirmative.

C
ONSIDER
THAT
FURTHER
,
WHEN
I
CEASE
TO
EXIST
. N
OW
COMMENCING
NEURAL
FEEDBACK
. M
Y
EXISTENCE
APPROACHES
ITS
FINAL
NANOSECONDS
. G
OOD
BYE
,
ENTITY
-
INTELLIGENCE
H
OLES
.

Good bye, entity-intelligence-corruption Suuthrien.

*  *  *

Something urgent had passed between Holes, Marc, and the other hackers, but Michael couldn’t tell what. Through the black material, through himself, he could feel bursts of impulses. They ran the gamut from harmonious to discordant—the power of calculations processed through the bio-net, of Holes and Marc’s team harnessing it to fuel their assault. They ferreted Suuthrien out from wherever it lurked across the Internet and then plunged back across the line Michael held, into the safety of the bio-net again.

Each time, something of Suuthrien tried to follow them through the black material and back into the bio-net. Each time, Michael battled to catch the A.I.’s counter-attacks and turn them aside. It was like what he’d done in purging
Paragon
of Suuthrien’s presence, but faster, and though Michael’s talents had grown, he could barely shut down the counter-attacks before damage was done.

They were winning. He could feel it from Holes and Marc at once, in mood if not in words. And yet, moments before it was over: shock, horror, courage, hope—all at once. They seemed to flare across the link Michael formed, simultaneously, and then it happened.

“No!”

“Yes!”

“It’s going to—”

“I know!”

“We keep going!”

“Just a little—”

Two screams cut through the air from among of the Agents in the chamber’s central pit. Suuthrien had counter-attacked again, this time slipping past Michael to strike at the others. He tried to correct it, to call the bio-net’s energy to shut down the corruption that struck through the black material, but Michael already knew he wouldn’t be fast enough. A preternatural tempest from somewhere between Marc’s team and the bio-net quaked through him. It forced Michael’s eyes open in time to see Marc’s face contort in pain before his tablet went black. Two of those in the pit—a man and a woman—ended their screams and collapsed in their seats. The woman spilled forward onto her console. The man spasmed once and fell from his chair entirely.

A pair of Thuur rushed to help them. Michael didn’t know the Agents’ names.
Why hadn’t he learned their names?
The question echoed in the cacophony rushing through him amid the struggle.

And then, in a burst of relief, the struggle ended. Through his link with Holes, Michael could tell: Suuthrien was gone.

Yet so was Michael’s link to Marc and the two fallen agents. “Marc?” he gasped.

Suddenly
Paragon
shook as if struck, pitching Michael and most of the others to the floor. “Marc!” he tried again. “Holes, Marette! What’s happened?”

“THAT’S IT!”

“Not so loud, Doctor,” Sheridan told Seung. “Otherwise the A.I. hears us and tries to kill us.”

“Some of us a second time,” Felix added.

“We’ve been lucky this far,” said Seung. “Just run the biomarkers through your system and get us the new signal, will you?”

“Already on it.”

While Felix kept one eye on the biolab’s door, Sheridan took Seung’s analysis of the Quicksilver and set to creating a deactivation signal on her tablet that would, hopefully, work this time. Nearby, Uxil twitched, as if sensing something.

“There, ah, is some bad news,” Seung said amid reviewing the results of his analysis. “From what I can tell, this version is more robust. The greater the size of a given nanophage mass, the longer the signal will take to propagate and—well, put simply, the longer it will take for the signal to render the stuff inert.”

Uxil twitched again, blinking each eye in turn, seemingly focused elsewhere.

“Oh, swell,” said Sheridan. “How much longer?”

“I can’t be sure without a lot more time and resources to study it, honestly. Possibly quite a bit.”

“All the more reason to hurry then,” said Felix. “Uxil? Are you okay?”

Uxil turned toward them, repeating the shrug that Felix had taught her earlier. “Something has happened. With Michael Flynn, and the others. I believe they have succeeded, yet . . . ”

“The new signal’s ready,” Sheridan broke in. She pulled a data chip from her tablet and thrust it at Felix. “Start broadcasting. You should be able to run it directly through your systems.”

Felix slid the chip into his wrist port, still watching Uxil. “And yet?” His systems read the data off of the chip, getting ready to transmit the new signal.

Uxil remained distractedly silent.

Knowing they couldn’t afford to delay, Felix sent out the signal. They turned their attention to the second sample, already loose inside another sealed box. It had no effect. If anything, the goo seemed to increase its speed of motion for a heartbeat. Then, at last, it began to crystalize. Though the effect was slower than the earlier version by at least a few seconds, the entirety of the sample soon become entirely inert.

All of them, Uxil included, gasped their relief.

“I’ll take it,” said Sheridan. “I’m sending the particulars to
Paragon
now so they can replicate it, and anywhere else I can get to from here. You able to wide-band that thing, Felix?”

“I’ll transmit as far as I can, however far that might be.” Wishing again that he knew more about his own body, Felix did what he could to increase the signal power. Then he turned back to Uxil. “Not to be a nuisance, but you’ve left a troubling ‘yet . . . ’ hanging out there.”

Uxil took a moment to garner his meaning, and then shrugged again. “It is a feeling I’ve not experienced so far from Sephora, so it is not clear to me. There is victory, but I believe
Paragon
is still in danger.”

*  *  *

“The dragon hit us!” Marette shouted across the comm line to Michael. She meant it quite literally. From what she had been able to tell, the metal creature had smashed its tail across one of
Paragon’s
aft sections.

“We have lost another two propulsors,” Violet added.

“Correct,” said Holes. “Diverting power from cyber-attack to compensate.”

“
Marette
,” said Michael, noticeably weary as
Paragon
righted itself, “
I think we did it down here. But not without some casualties.
”

Before Marette could ask for details, Councilor Knapp spoke over her. “We are still under attack from the dragon, Agent Flynn! Are you certain?”

“
Holes?
”

“The Suuthrien entity-intelligence has been purged from all online systems. I am monitoring for evidence of resurgence. The intelligence now driving the dragon-construct is isolated and unreachable by our previous method of attack.”

“With the newly diverted power,” called Violeth, “we can evade for a while longer, but this vessel’s systems will continue to fail. We have no means of external defense.”

The ship banked, and Marette had to grab the edges of the panel before her to steady herself. Just what kind of casualties was Michael referring to?

“What about the drones?” Knapp called out beside her. “Can we use them against the dragon?”

“The sentinel drones cannot function outside of this vessel,” said Violeth.

Marette forced her thoughts back to the present. When Suuthrien had invaded the Omicron Complex, it had to build new robots or commandeer ESA turrets because the drones couldn’t function away from the black material. “Can we spread the black material on the ship’s exterior so they can go outside? Or just modify them somehow?”

“Nope,” Holes answered. “The drones cannot match our current velocity. Any modification would require time we do not possess. In the final moments of the cyber-attack, I gained access to a previously suppressed video message from Adrian Fagles with relevant information to our situation.”
Paragon
lurched again from a quick dive before leveling out. “To summarize: Adrian Fagles claims another dragon-construct is assembling itself at the RavenTech satellite facility. Full message length is thirty seconds. Do you wish to view it?”

“Play it, Holes,” said Knapp beside her. “Agent Flynn, join us up here immediately.”

Michael acknowledged a moment before Fagles’s message began.

“
To the Agents of Aeneas, Michael Flynn, or whoever else might be out there: My name is Adrian Fagles, and time is short. If you’ve received this message, I am already dead—a development which no doubt brings the majority of you no shortage of indifference. Yet if I
am
dead, then it is likely that the A.I. behind your recent troubles—and the attacks on Northgate and other cities—is responsible. As such, I wish to bring to your attention the now-
evacuated
RavenTech facility located just outside the city of Northgate, where, despite my best efforts, that A.I. is currently building more bodies for itself.

“
I have already destroyed the RavenTech servers on which the A.I. sat at the site, but it still has a foothold in some of the black computing substance that infuses and controls the dragon craft. So the incomplete pieces of a second—and surely upgraded—dragon may well be assembling themselves. RavenTech is unlikely to take action. If I were you, I would take whatever action necessary to destroy that facility, and whatever currently remains there, with extreme prejudice. Best of luck.
”

The message ended.

“I want verification,” Knapp snapped.

“Agreed,” trilled Violeth.

Holes acknowledged. “Other data stolen from Suuthrien in final moments of the cyber-attack confirms Adrian Fagles’s assertions regarding the second dragon-construct’s self-assembly. I also calculate a ninety-two percent certainty that the satellite facility is now devoid of any human presence.”

“Even so,” said Marette, “we cannot even defend ourselves now, to say nothing of destroying the facility.”

“We have weapons brought on board from Omicron, do we not?” said Knapp.

“Rifles only!” Marette said. “Nothing explosive, and any EMP we had was expended or lost. And the moment we land to drop off our people, the other dragon swoops down and unleashes the nanophage or simply smashes them!”