A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (22 page)

“Down the end of this hallway there’s a door on the left side,” Dr. Sheridan reported from behind her. “Then we’ve got a hemispherical room that looks to be an antechamber to the—well, whatever that gigantic room we’ve been trying to get to is.”

“Assuming our map is correct,” Marc added.

“It has been so far,” Marette said.

Moondog crept up the length of the corridor. When the robot reached the end without incident, Marette led the others after it. Marc and Dr. Sheridan came right behind, with Cartwright and Kotto guarding the rear.

Their footfalls echoed through Marette’s sealed helmet.
Paragon
’s atmosphere still read as breathable, but who knew what they would encounter while exploring? The whisper of her suit’s oxygen feed was a second heartbeat in the background of her senses as they caught up with Moondog and the hidden door beside it.

“I’m reading heightened energy levels on the other side of the door,” said Dr. Sheridan. “Nothing dangerous, but more than we’ve usually seen.”

“Understood,” said Marette. “Councilor Knapp, did you copy that?”

Knapp’s voice came over the suit comms. “I copy, Agent Clarion. Proceed with caution.” Occasional pops of signal loss punctuated her aristocratic accent, but she came through far clearer than Marette had expected this deep into
Paragon
’s structure.

Marette motioned to the black-coated wall beside the door. “Marc, if you would care to make it official?” None of the doors encountered in deeper areas responded to the known opening sequences that had gotten them into earlier areas of the ship, but as a matter of course . . .

Marc touched a hand to the wall, causing alien glyphs to glow from the previously inert surface. He brushed a finger across one symbol, which displayed further glyphs: a keypad on which Marc entered the first opening code.

To Marette’s surprise, the black material peeled itself back from the wall beside him to uncover a door three meters wide. The door began to open.

Marette hadn’t been ready. It was too easy! “Marc, Sheridan: Back from the door! Kotto, move up!” She readied her rifle and moved behind Moondog for cover as the door completed its slide into the ceiling to give her a view of the object beyond.

TRUE TO THE MAP,
the space beyond the door was indeed hemispherical. Twenty meters wide and half as deep, the two-story high chamber held empty space dominated by an oval object about three meters tall and twice that wide. The object sat upon a balcony halfway up from the chamber floor, close to the far wall. A single line of tiny, emerald crystalline projections studded the dull gray metal that framed the wide triangular window set into the oval around it. Shinier metallic coverings formed a shell along the object’s curved outer edges, each criss-crossed with a thin lattice of emerald, like cracks in a shattered windshield. Every few seconds the lattice pulsed with a light barely noticeable even in the otherwise unlit chamber.

Aside from the pulsing, nothing else moved. Marette and Kotto shined their lights over the area. A broad ramp, narrow at the top but spread wide at the bottom, extended down from the front of the object’s second-story platform to meet the floor midway between the object and the door where the team stood. Most of the second level was open air save for the object’s platform, and what appeared to be narrow walkways that circled the room’s outer edge until meeting the wall in which the door the team had just opened was set. Solid, waist-high walls bounded the walkways.

Marette played her light across one of the walkway walls with a whisper to Kotto: “Be cautious. Something may be hiding up there.” He acknowledged only with a nod.

Another ten heartbeats passed in waiting for any surprises. None were forthcoming, but in that time Marette became aware that the black material only coated the curved outer wall. The floor, the ceiling, the ramp, the balcony’s retaining walls—all were uncovered metallic surfaces.

“Every door we have encountered recently has been blocked or sabotaged in some way,” Marette said. “Why not this one?”

“Maybe there was only so much sabotage that could be done in the time available?” Marc offered. “Or this door needs to stay working for other reasons?”

Kotto cleared his throat. “Or we’re being fed into a trap.”

“All valid possibilities,” Marette said. “Doctor Sheridan?”

Dr. Sheridan stepped into the doorway, brandishing her scanner. “The energy readings are definitely coming from that oval thing up there. Nothing dangerous. Not yet, anyway. Levels are fluctuating across the spectrum.”

Marette smiled. Angela Sheridan had a knack for anticipating her questions. “
D’accord
. Kotto, with me. The rest of you wait here.”

After ordering Moondog a few paces ahead up the middle, Marette entered the chamber to stalk around the right side. At her direction, Kotto went left. Marette’s spotlight focused on the balcony edge above. They would need to check the balcony level, yet that meant ascending the ramp and squeezing past the object.

“Looks like there’s open space behind the ramp,” Kotto reported. “Under the platform.”

Now along the right wall, Marette shined her light into the shadows behind the ramp. Though the ramp was supported beneath by a solid structure large enough to conceal a good-sized elevator shaft—or four Moondog robots—there was indeed space behind it: a wide alcove framed by the rear of the ramp support in front, the level above, and the curved, black-covered wall behind. The space appeared to hold nothing but darkness broken only by the beam of her and Kotto’s lights.

She halted Moondog at the base of the ramp and told the robot to guard. “Kotto, meet me in that alcove.”

“Looks empty back there,” he said. “Gives me a bad feeling.”

“You would prefer it held a security drone for each of us?”

“Who’s to say it doesn’t have them hidden away somewhere behind the black stuff?”

She scowled. “I am well aware of the possibility, Agent.”

Together they crept forward, flanking the alcove from either side. Marette watched the black material on the wall for indications of an ambush. The surface remained glassy and unbroken. She met up with Kotto in the alcove without incident, yet neither dared to relax.

Kotto pointed to the bare metal of the solid structure supporting the ramp. “Might be something in there.” He rapped on it with the muzzle of his rifle.

“It may be just the housing for further components of the object above,” she offered. “I don’t see any openings.”

Together they made a sweep around the ramp and returned to where Moondog stood sentry. Marette eyed the upper walkways, noting that they could only be accessed by passing close to the pulsing, oval object—too close for her liking. But for now, all they needed was a visual check. “Moondog: launch camera. Maximum vertical station.”

A hatch in the robot’s back folded open; out of it rose a tiny rotor-propelled camera drone. The drone’s visual feeds sprang to life on the heads-up display in Marette’s helmet, giving her an aerial view of the chamber. The upper walkways were empty. She minimized the views and waved in Marc, Dr. Sheridan, and Cartwright from where they waited outside the chamber door. “All clear. For the moment.”

“Councilor Knapp,” Marette called. “Are you still monitoring? We will take initial readings on the oval object, and then confer for further instructions.”

Knapp’s response came through so fragmented that Marette couldn’t make it out. A side-effect of their proximity to the object, or—

Cartwright’s voice broke Marette’s concentration. “The door’s closing!” she shouted.

“Block it!”

“It’s too late!”

Cartwright and Marc had both rushed back to the chamber door, but it had been halfway down when they started. Before they could reach it, the door collided with the floor. Marette felt a rumble through her suit boots that stopped with a
thunk
, as if a tumbler had locked into place.

Marc and Dr. Sheridan brought up the alien interface on the black material beside the door to try getting it open again. The latter scowled at Marette and shook her head: the usual sequences weren’t working.

“See?” Kotto said. “Trap.”

Marette turned back toward the object. There appeared to be no change. The camera feeds showed the upper walkways remained clear. “If it’s a trap, then why has nothing more occurred?”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not going to.”

She sighed. “Marc, continue working on the door. Doctor, what can you determine about that object? Is it safe to approach?”

“I can’t tell you that without getting closer readings myself,” Sheridan said. “Sense-cat?”

Marette nodded. “Sense-cat.”

It was, perhaps, a silly name, yet Marette enjoyed its whimsy. She was unsure if the name came from the size of the robot—equal to that of a sleeping feline—or from the twin caterpillar treads that it used to deliver its sophisticated sensor suite to wherever it was needed.

As the doctor began to unpack the ‘cat from her equipment pack, Marette shifted to watch the room with Kotto. Moondog’s weapons swept back and forth, seeking targets to track.

Moments later, a whirring sound heralded the ‘cat’s path behind Marette’s ankles as it sped around them into the chamber. It paused after a short distance, swiveled to the right, then to the left, and—with an imagined air of satisfaction—sped on toward the object. It reached the ramp and began its climb, rolling slower to take readings and send them back to Sheridan.

“I’m reading a highly-localized gravitational field,” Sheridan reported. “Somehow it’s confined to less than a one square-meter area at the center of that triangular window. Energy levels are steady.”

The ‘cat crested the top of the ramp, paused, and then crept its way closer to the object. The emerald lattice in the object’s exterior began to pulse faster almost immediately.

“Doctor?”

“I see it. Backing off.” The ‘cat reversed to the ramp’s edge again, yet the pulsing only quickened. “Energy levels spiking. Getting a lot of weird readings. I don’t think it’s reacting to the ‘cat.”

“Coincidence?” Marc asked. He’d stopped his efforts at the door and now watched with the rest of them.

“Well I did back it off.”

The ‘cat withdrew down the ramp, yet the object remained in its excited state. “Moondog,” Marette ordered, “provide cover.” The robot obeyed, turning sideways and expanding its chassis from head to tail. It then crouched to the floor to provide an obstruction behind which four of the five of them could hide. Marette motioned the others to take cover, but Kotto remained standing. Choosing to not delay the situation with an argument, Marette crouched down at the end beside Marc.

“Okay, Doctor,” Marette said, peering over Moondog’s armored spine, “move it back up. If we are not causing this I want to get as much data as possible.”

“Roger that. But analysis is going to take time.”

Marette hoped they would have it. Ahead of them, the ‘cat crested the ramp again. The crystalline projections on its interior had begun to glow.

“The gravitational field is intensifying . . . ”

“Are we in danger?”

“It’s still extremely localized to the object, though I don’t understand how that’s— Wow!”

A pinpoint star at the triangle’s center caught Marette’s attention and then burst outward in a glowing sphere of swirling violet. The team gasped, and Marette had to shut her eyes to center herself against the wave of disorientation that followed—as if the light itself resonated inside her skull.

The disorientation retreated swiftly. Marette forced her eyes open again to find the entire chamber reflecting the sphere’s alien, amethyst glow. The swirling sphere had engulfed not only the object, but the sense-cat beside it.

*  *  *

Camela Thomson’s grin stretched the corners of her cheeks until her jaw ached. The gate they’d constructed was functional and stable (insomuch that it hadn’t yet exploded), and it glowed in the engineering bay below the observation room window where she stood. She’d tinted the window glass to hide what she figured was the less-than-professional expression on her face.

“
It’s still reading stable,
” reported one of the engineers below over the intercom. “
We’re sending in Alice.
”

She touched the intercom key. “Hold up. Confirm the MEDARs are out of the A.I.’s control.”

A technician waved from the wall with the junction panel that housed the circuit breaker they used to disconnect the A.I.’s terminal from access to RavenTech’s MEDAR engineering robots. Cutting the circuit to the MEDAR controls was possibly unnecessary, but it didn’t hurt to be safe. She trusted that thing far less than she trusted Adrian, and, even with their prior relationship, that was saying a lot.

“
Disconnect confirmed.
”

“Then let’s see what’s on the other side, shall we?”

At that, the remote-controlled, four-wheeled USV nicknamed “Alice” rolled its way forward. Looking like little more than a miniature all-terrain vehicle bristling with cameras, the unmanned sensor vehicle would enter the translucent violet curtain of energy that had formed like a captured soap bubble within the gate’s triangular aperture. If Suuthrien and Fagles were to be believed, it would transit a short-cut in space-time and emerge nearly 240,000 miles away beneath the surface of the Moon.

On the other side of the curtain, they could just make out a darkened chamber of some kind. Alice trundled forward to the curtain and slipped through the looking glass.

*  *  *

It was Kotto who spoke first. “
Definite
trap.”

The sphere withdrew almost as quickly as it had come, vanishing save for a violet curtain that clung to the inside of the triangle. Marette could barely make out moving shapes beyond, yet the curtain was so insubstantial and turbulent that she could not be sure if what met her eyes was real or an optical illusion.

In front of the object, knocked to one side by the original blast but intact, was the sense-cat.