Aurora (10 page)

Fox hears the scream and rushes to a tower window. He sees the flash of Pandora’s blue silk dress as her coracle skims across the water like a leaf in a storm. Horrified, he sees the thing that looks as harmless as a log, close behind. But no log moves at that speed.

Swamp dragons.

And there’s another, camouflaged on the slippery mudbank at the foot of his tower. The beast raises its long snout, scenting the approach of fresh meat.

Fox gallops down the twisting stairway. Grabbing a sword and an axe from the weapons rack at the foot of the stairs, he hauls open the huge oak door.

The coracle spins from the water, up on to the mudbank.

‘Pan!’ roars Fox, and he jabs his sword towards the dragon she has not yet seen.

Pandora spills from her coracle and sprawls in the mud, finally spotting the swamp dragon that awaits her. The first dragon, having chased her across the lagoon, now lunges from the water. Pandora gives an agonized cry, and seizes up the coracle as a shield, seeing herself trapped between the two beasts.

He won’t reach her in time! Fox skids on the slippery mud as the squat beasts use their legs like paddles to slide on their bellies at amazing speed. He hears the creak of a dragon jaw as the jagged teeth open wide in expectation.

This is not the war they are meant to fight! They won’t lose their lives here, Fox vows, as inglorious suppers for the swamp dragons.

Pandora stands still, as if in thrall to the beasts. She turns a heartbroken face to Fox.

‘They can have me. I don’t care. I see your eyes when you look at me now. I’m not me any more, I’m just one of the empire’s mistakes and you hate me!’

Would I be out here saving you if I hated you?’ With seconds to spare Fox must break the death-spell that grips her, ‘Come on, Pan – move!’

She drinks in his words for one lethal moment, green eyes glittering with tears. Then as the dragons lunge she hurls the coracle at one and spins around to fire the round pie tin she clutches hard into the wide-open mouth of the other. That beast gurgles and slithers to a halt, the pie tin stuck fast in its throat.

But the other dragon shunts aside the light coracle and slithers up from the water’s edge. Fox slides down the mudbank, feet first, and kicks the dragon’s tail. The beast flicks the huge armoured tail – a swipe could kill him – but Fox is on his feet, and ready. Sweat pours down his face as he taunts the dragon with his sword, poking it, dancing around it, risking another flick of the tail, one that will swipe the legs from under him – and then he’ll be gone in a snap.

A shadow moves across them and the netherworld vibrates with the rumble of an airship. It unnerves the dragon. The beast raises its snout and swivels up its tiny eyes. Fox takes his chance and plunges the sword deep into the unarmoured flesh of the dragon’s throat.

He reclaims his sword and clambers up the mud towards the other beast, still choking on the pie tin and slaughters it too. Then he stands gasping for breath as Pandora flings her arm around him, sleek and cold against his hot human body.

‘You saved me,’ she whispers ‘When you love someone, you save them. There’s no greater love than that, you said.’

‘So no more silly talk,’ he says gently, and peels her off him.

‘Can we save my pie too?’ she asks.

‘Your
pie
?’

He bursts out laughing and the tense moment breaks. He wipes the sweat from his eyes and scans the mudbank and the lagoon.

‘I can do better than a stinking old pie. We’ll have dragon for supper.’ He raises his axe and begins hacking at the nearest one. ‘Keep watch, Pan. There’s sure to be more.’

THE SURGE RISES

Fox bolts the door of the tower and climbs the winding stairs with two huge dragon steaks, dripping hot blood, skewered on his sword. Pan has the fire ready and he flame-roasts the steaks on the tip of the sword. Once he’s eaten his fill of the rich, tangy meat Fox finds his godgem and in the guise of his old fox avatar he connects to the Noos . . .

. . . and leaps into a virtual universe of brilliance and chaos: a frenzy of imagineering, ideas-wheeling and dealing, cyber-trading news and data. Fox travels through maelstroms of energy, ever-changing cyberpatterns and links, as the global Supermind of the Noos endlessly expands and re-creates the miracle of itself.

It’s as if the sky people, so close to the heavens, peered into the mind of the universe and captured its neverending spirit of creation in their Noos.

Spellbound by their own magic, the sky citizens have no need to wonder about the world outside, as Fox knows all too well: he too was caught in the trance of the Noos, once upon a time. It’s that global trance he has worked so hard to break.

Deep in the rumpus of Noospace are doorways to secret clubs. It’s here that young Noosworkers flock after long shifts of cybertrading and imagineering the endless products and technologies – galaxies of invention – that are the engine of the empire and create lives of sizzling luxury for the sky citizens.

In the rowdy gatherings of the clandestine cyberclubs a raw, rebellious energy beats hard and fast. The police rooks ban them if they find them – but the Noos has grown so vast and complex it’s impossible to police it all. No sooner is a cyberclub shut down than it springs up again in another shady corner of the Noos, and the boisterous brilliance beats on.

These restless young spirits weave a chaotic dark energy all through their beloved Noos. Forever adding new links and patterns, endlessly spinning ideas – just to see what happens – each bestows their own random gifts to the virtual universe.

It’s here that Fox found rebels who ask the same hard questions about the world that he once did. They have become his Surgent allies, working up a revolutionary spirit in the dense jungles of Noospace. Its a gift of purl rebel energy from the Noos weavers who want to see what happens when all systems crash and everything is rebooted in the real world. The best of human nature, Fox has realized, exists deep within an empire built on the worst.

We are creeping along a ledge of history, Fox tells the young rebels in the Noos. Are you ready to jump with me into the unknown?

Fox zips through the beautiful tangle of energy, the hairs tingling on the back of his neck. At last he finds the outlaw den he seeks, deep in the undergrowth of a simmering electronic jungle.

‘Kitsune?’ he hisses.

The eyes of an old friend shine through the thick cyber-foliage. ‘About time. What happened to you?’

‘Unexpected rescue mission,’ says Fox. ‘Early invasion of swamp dragons. I thought we’d be gone by the time they came, but the heat – it’s so early this year.’

‘Hottest spring ever known,’ Kitsune responds. ‘About the
other
invasion,’ he reminds Fox. A turquoise fractal of data spins by, ruffling the electronic foliage. Its mutating patterns glint in Kitsune’s warm, excited eyes. ‘I was updating you before we were so rudely interrupted by your dragons.

Fox checks the shimmering cyberjungle for snooping presences, then burrows deeper into the foliage beside his greatest ally and friend. Kitsune is his most trusted Surgent, a secret rebel at the heart of the empire in the powerful sky city of the Eastern oceans, New Jing. Noosrunner rivals in their youth, he and Fox are bonded in friendship and name. In old Eastern legends, Kitsune is the sly thickster fox.

So well hidden is the trickster fox that only his cyber-eyes can be seen.

‘Sky fleets have been landing at various places in the Northlands,’ Kitsune reports. ‘At Coldheaven in the Far North, inland of Narwhal Sword Bay in the west, and now at Fort Aurora in the east. The Arctic pirates are scouting their activities. But that’s just the start,’ he warns. ‘You know what’s to follow – fortresses all over the North, slave camps to mine for resources, domed cities for the empire-builders . . .’

‘My father is making a huge stake in the Northlands,’ Fox agrees ‘But he’s so desperate to grab power from the eastern cities, sent away so much guardpower and weaponry in the airships, he’s left New Mungo weak.’

‘Other cities have rushed to follow,’ Kitsune continues. ‘They all want their stake. All the cities of the northern hemisphere have left themselves open to attack. But what we do here will shake the whole empire. The global Surge is ready to fight for high lands all across the planet. The empire is too overstretched to cope with attacks on so many fronts. You’re right, Fox. This is our best chance. It’s now or never.’

Fox’s jaw unclenches. The line between his brows smoothes out. Tension seeps from his muscles.

At last.

The frozen years of waiting and planning are almost over. The moment he has been moving towards for so long, like the captain of a ship in blank fog, rises up before him like a brand new continent.

He takes a smooth, deep breath. He feels sharp and clear and sure.

‘Alert all Surgents within the empire to begin the attack on the Noos.’ His voice catches in his throat. ‘Let’s begin’

Kitsune’s eyes sparkle with reflections of Nooswonders unfurling all around. He winks at Fox, then disappears.

Back in realworld, Fox feels Pandora’s arms enclose him. Her tangled head is cool and soft on his shoulder but Fox seems to feel the weight of a planetful of desperate hopes and dreams.

HISTORY WHISPERS, HISTORY JUMPS

All across the Earth, the Surgency waits in tense readiness as the comrades in the sky cities launch the biggest robbery in history upon the Noos.

Fox leans from a window of the old steepled tower to look at one of the last netherworld nights he will ever see. The sky city is draped in a luminous glamour of phosphorescence. Beads of starlight glitter on the interlinking sky tunnels. He breathes in welcome dregs of coolness from the air.

It’s hard to believe, this peaceful night, that every sky city on the planet is under the most audacious cyber-atteck there has ever been. If all goes to plan, the trade systems that are the lifeblood of the empire will soon begin to collapse, as if a slow bomb has detonated in the Noos.

It’s just the beginning. With so many cities vulnerable and their Guardians’ attention fixed on the North, the vanishing of trillions of Noo$dollars will send the masters of the empire into spasms of shock. And all across the world’s oceans as the sky cities are left reeling and exposed, the Surge will break through walls.

Strike only when the enemy can be taken by surprise.

The mildewed pages of an old book, his touchstone, hoard these dangerous gems of rebel warfare:
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
by Lawrence of Arabia, a freedom fighter of another age. Fox knows his diamond words by heart.

He should grab some sleep and food while he can. Fox scours the nooks and crannies at the top of the tower until he has gathered a pocketful of birds’ eggs, then makes his way back down the tight-winding stairway to the tower room where Pandora is sprawled on a great heap of silk gowns, snoring softly, after a long session updating Surgents in the virtual wreckage of the Weave. She must have raided the museum’s
Ancient and Lost Civilization
wing too because she has gathered around her a small armoury of luck-infested jewellery – a red scarab-beetle brooch, a small jade frog as green as her eyes, Norse amulets, magic square rings, pendants with crosses and mandalas and stars.