The Dragon Commander (SkyLine 1)

“Machaeus!”

“WAKE US!”

Sheba shot straight up in her and Chris’ bed. The sheets wrapped her tight. They stuck to her skin with cold sweat. Her hand shot for the phone in an instant, but then she remembered her promise. Sheba pulled her shaking fingers back. Instead, she headed for the window, to draw back the curtains. A beam of midday sun lit the gloss of her skin. She’d overslept by hours. He’ll be back soon, she reminded herself, then I can tell him all about it. As she stared out over the garden towers of Beijing, though, she was afraid to close her eyes. She was afraid of the distant echoes from a dream. Machaeus...

“This is your Precinct Office?” asked Tim, pistol up at the door. He, Chris, and DA-Vos crept up a set of cement stairs to an old iron door. The weeds poking through the cracks had been such long-time residents that many of them bloomed with tiny blue flowers. The color jumped from the otherwise gray high-rise backgrounds around the tiny little Precinct office. The door hung ajar.

“It is,” said DA-Vos. One arm shifted to a barrel, while the other sharpened to a razor blade-edge. Chris cocked his rifle. “The FOS Link station is towards the back, by the Chief’s Office.”

“Lead the way,” Chris ushered. DA-Vos glided up the stairs.

An empty wind whistled through the open windows of the Precinct office. A chill sat in the air, like the tangible fallout of so much death. The three waded through it, quiet as they could, though even a breath was loud in such grim silence. Shaken as even he was, Chris felt the hand of each lost friend at his back, pushing him on. Their names were his silent creed. Gendric… Morgan… he turned off the long entrance hall behind DA-Vos. Lee… he crossed the office, which wreaked just as he pictured from the blood-smeared footage. Selene…

“The Link station,” DA-Vos announced. His blade tip pointed out at a steel door sealed with a password-panel. His glossy sword jerked back an inch, then impaled the lock. His nanocomputers spread inside it, tapping the electronic tumblers until the door clicked open. DA-Vos pulled his blade back. The three stood in silent wait, expecting something to bleed from the walls or jump from their feet to stop them. The feeling hadn’t relented for a second since the warehouse ambush. Tim wondered if it ever would, before he took the lead for the first time. Pistol up, he slipped into the FOS Link station.

A computer cylinder was mounted on the wall, a magnified version of the one Lee had used in the bakery. Tim moved for it, while Chris and DA-Vos turned out to the otherwise open room, weapons up. Tim flipped a lever on the monitor. The front plate of the cylinder slid down for a long glass lens inside to shoot up a wall-sized screen. A thin shelf slid out from the bottom of the cylinder. Across it, a holographic keyboard sparked to life.

“Tim,” said Chris, while Tim began a basic firewall breach. He peeked back over his shoulder at a mass of shadow in the door. Tim turned immediately, pistol up to fire. He froze when a second cloud of nanocomputers leaked down through a vent in the ceiling. A third climbed up in thin ribbons through a crack in the wall. As soon as one of them formed a Squire’s red-face, Tim put three bullets in it. Chris’s bullets chopped the rest of the way to the blackbox while he screamed, “Our only chance is you now! Leave them to me! Link DA-Vos!” Tim’s muscles groaned back to life, to uncurl from around the revolver. He belted it as the first Squire fell, and turned for the keyboard.

Chris missed what happened to Tim, only saw the flash behind him. He looked back to find Tim limp on the floor. A pulse of electricity had jumped through the keyboard so strong, it knocked him right out. The paralyzing flash made Chris acutely sensitive to the absence of light in the room. He realized at once that there were three Squires in the room with him, four including DA-Vos, yet no Fusion fire.

“DA-Vos?” Chris turned to find him backing away. His weapons reformed to neutral arms.

“I’m sorry, Chris,” said DA-Vos through teal face-light. Chris popped out the clip of his rifle to reload, while he hissed,

“It was you? All this time? Everything?”

“No,” DA-Vos told him as he slunk away, “It was Machaeus’ idea.”

“I thought you were free from his control?” Chris barked. He snapped a new clip in, and drilled with bullets through the onyx head of an approaching Squire. It dissolved with the pierce of its blackbox. Another Squire slashed at a Chris with an arm-blade. He sidestepped it, and countered with the knife in his sleeve. An arc of nanocomputers scattered across the floor.

“I am not under his control…” said DA-Vos, back to the wall. “I agree with him.” Him, Chris realized, another AI with a personality matrix? He didn’t have much time to ponder, before a hurricane of nanocomputers gathered around him.

Faster than Chris could hope to fire and reload, black clouds surged from the vent, the door, and the cracks in the walls. DA-Vos vanished in the rising crowd of red Squires. Chris’ brain was in no shape to read the odds, and it was against every fiber in his being to go out with bullets left in the chamber. Not when Tim lay helpless behind him. Not when his friends had given everything for him to make it here. Not when Sheba waited for him. Each one of their faces flashed through his mind between pulses of adrenaline. He fended off an enclosing sea of red faces on shiny black heads.

“Major General Christopher Droan…” a voice came through one of the Squires. It was different. Not quite robotic, but not quite a man. Chris shoved the tip of his knife through its red face with inhuman fight-over-flight menace.

“I feel I should call you Chris, now… after everything you and I have been through,” another Squire picked up, in the sa

me voice. The voice of Machaeus.

“You mean all of my friends you went through!” screamed Chris. He hoisted his rifle to the red face and fired until it dissolved. He popped out his clip. Chris checked his belt- he had one left. His hand never got to it.

“Not just friends. Mentors. Years,” said yet another red Squire. A metal hand closed on each of Chris’ shoulders. The Squire yanked him back into its cold frame. “We’ve met once before, Chris.” He flailed while black nanocomputer strings wrapped his chest. Chris got his knife in time to cut some of them, but the few cords that tightened around his waist squeezed the last of the fight out of him. “Four years ago,” said one of the countless Squires gathering before him.

“You… no… that was…” Chris mumbled. He wrenched his shoulders left and right. But the Squire had him bound too tightly now. Strings of dark metal wrapped him like a glossy cocoon.

“That was me,” said Machaeus, through a red face inches away.

“You… you’re an idea, an AI. That’s what you meant, when you killed Grendal?” said Chris. Even with mere inches of mobility, he thrashed. So long as he had any range of motion, he moved, he struggled.

“All will be explained. If only you listen,” said Machaeus.

“Sorry, I’m not feeling too open-minded right now,” Chris clenched his teeth, “You’d have better luck opening it with a blast than your bullshit!” Still, he couldn’t help the prickle of his neck when the Squire moved a step closer, instead of finishing him. Why? Chris wondered, when Machaeus had so indiscriminately slaughtered all else.

“You’ve no interest in a peaceful resolution then?”

Chapter Nine: A Deal for Everyone