Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) (3 page)

The guardsman hustled
his people into a formation and led the trio back down the art-lined corridor
to a set of ornate double doors bearing the imperial seal.

“You’re sure this is
the right place and not another trap?” Wolf asked, the question earning him a
scowl from the Praetorian captain.

Fitz checked the
structure’s map on her inhead display. “This is it.”

Ari straightened her
jacket, brushed her hair back, and nodded. The guards pulled open the doors,
and they stepped through into the great oval hall. A wave of noise swept over
them; the muttering of countless voices, the shifting of a thousand impatient
bodies. At the sight of the tall, red-haired woman, the crowd stilled, sound
fading as if every person there held their breath.

The Dragon Throne
dominated the far side of the room, surmounted by the golden likeness of a bull
quolla, hood flared and fangs bared, poised to gobble up any pretender to the
seat of power. To the right sat the military contingent, Maks Kiernan at the
fore. The last remaining member of Ashcraft’s Triumvirate, today he wore his
red uniform for the final time. The domestic Triumvir’s position on the left
remained noticeably vacant. The woman who’d held that post had been caught
trying to abscond with a sizable portion of the office’s budget, and if she
watched today’s proceedings at all, it was from a high security detention cell.

An assemblage of
appointed or elected representatives from every star system, world,
protectorate, and orbital habitat in the Empire sat behind the dais, here to
pledge their allegiance to the new Emperor. In the gallery at the rear of the
hall, packed shoulder to shoulder, were the
glitterati
—aristos, businesspeople,
and entertainers who had bought or bribed their way into the decade’s most
prestigious political function.

Fitz commed Wolf.
“Tritico’s not here.”

He scanned the room for
several seconds before replying. “Jan’s here. Somewhere. I’m bloody sure of that.
He may not be ready to make his move yet, but he’s patient. And sneaky. He
reminds me of a
marquat
, a nasty, poisonous lizard that hides in
Rainbow’s sugarcane fields.”

“Afraid of a little
reptile?”

“No, but I don’t like
getting bit on the butt.”

They followed Ari out
onto the main floor, which glittered with a mosaic star map of the Empire. A
cloud of camera-droids descended on them, buzzing on their repulsor fields. One
focused in on Fitz, so close she saw the reflection of her cracked visor in its
lens. It flitted around her and Wolf as if assessing the damage on their armor,
then sailed away to join its companions clustered around Ari. Apparently
battered SpecOps agents were not as newsworthy as a new Emperor.

The party halted at the
foot of the dais. Maks Kiernan’s smile broadened, and Fitz noticed him mouth
the words,
You did good, Kiddo
. Unconsciously, her spine straightened;
she raised her chin. A warm flush of pride spread through her body.

The chamberlain banged
his staff against the floor, his voice a velvet
basso profondo
. “Who
comes before this Assembly to lay claim to the Dragon Throne?”

Fitz, Wolf, and the
Praetorian escort dropped to one knee, heads bowed. The hall’s acoustics and
the camera-droids carried Ari’s voice to every corner of the gallery, and to all
the people of the planet and beyond. The words were formal, the phraseology as
old as the Empire.

“I am Arianne Katerina
Deva-Lorza Ransahov, and I lay claim to the Dragon Throne and demand an Oath of
Fealty from all members of this chamber. Are there any to gainsay me?”

The hall remained
silent.

“Do you accept me as
your liege-lord?”

The crowd surged to
their feet, shouting their approval, the hall vibrating with their chants of
Ari,
Ari, Ari
.

Ari Ransahov stepped up
to take her seat beneath the Dragon’s jaws, and her place in history.

Along with Wolf, Fitz
rose and turned to stand at parade rest facing the throng, hands locked behind
her back. Savoring the moment, she was surprised to find tears welling up. Over
the past few weeks her mission had seemed impossible at times, but she’d clung
to the dream of finding a hero to save her empire. And she’d succeeded. Along
with Wolf’s help, of course. She felt her lips curve into a smile.

The time had come to
move on to her new mission: keeping a head-strong ruler safe and on the right
track to rebuilding a crippled government. She blinked the moisture from her
eyes and scanned the audience, looking for any threat, any anomaly.

She found one.

At the railing of the
highest balcony, a man stood motionless, watching, with arms folded across his
chest. Amid a crowd that cheered and waved scraps of purple cloth to honor
their new Emperor, that stillness marked him as a threat. She zoomed in on his
face, found him studying the tableau on the dais. He smiled, directly at her,
it seemed, and the malice in his gaze prickled across her skin.

“Wolf,” she called on
her comm, but before he could answer, Janos Tritico turned and faded into the
crowd.

Running silent on her repulsors,
the
Elizabeth Angstrom II
eased westward following the Arkus-Indos
River, her underside clearing the sluggish, brown flow by scant centimeters.
The rainforest canopy arched above the waterway, forming a living tunnel that
scraped and splintered against her upper fuselage, threatening to amputate her
communications whiskers and dishes.

“Are you certain a
vessel my size can make it through this?” Lizzy, the ship’s computer, asked
Fitz. “If those branches get any lower, I’ll have to become a submarine.”

“The shuttle racer I
talked to swore he made it through here in a Lister Firecat. It’s not much
smaller than you. Granted, that was dry season, and the water level was lower,”
Another proximity warning shrilled. “A warship is a lot tougher than a racing
shuttle, so I figured you could force your way through.”

“It’s not
your
paint job that’s getting scratched.” With her new Chimera-class attack shuttle
hull, Lizzy had become more conscious of her appearance. “If your pilot friend
had a functioning vessel, why not fly to his destination at altitude? It’s
simpler than blundering through this muddy wasteland.”

“It’s a sport. They
race down rivers or through canyons to prove who’s the fastest.”

“Sounds like a good way
to get yourself killed. And destroy a perfectly good ship.”

“Hold up here,” Fitz
instructed the ship. “The vegetation thins out ahead. Our target is half a
klick away.”

Her extra scrutiny of
the Warren’s alleys and tenements had paid off. Intelligence picked up the
trail of two augies, former Department of Internal Security assassins. When
they’d broken cover, they’d headed south to an abandoned lodge here in the
Kristavaar rainforest.

She’d had the site
under surveillance for several days when a man fitting Janos Tritico’s
description arrived in a PS-5 courier ship, evidently the one he’d used to
escape from Baldark. Her satellite feed confirmed the vessel still sat on the
lodge’s landing pad, between a military cargo hauler and an atmospheric
shuttle.

Fitz glanced at the
empty seat next to her. Wolf would have insisted on being here to capture
Tritico—if he’d known, but she’d made a point of not revealing her plans
yesterday when she kissed him goodbye before he went into the cyber-tank. He
would have used it as an opportunity to postpone his augmentation upgrades.
Again. Tomorrow night, when he awoke from the anesthetic, he’d find his old
friend Jan ensconced in a high security cell awaiting trial.

Alone in the darkened
control room, Fitz watched the tactical feeds while the mission clock in the
corner of her inhead display counted down. A rambling structure, built in a
style a century out of date, sat at the edge of the river, trees pressing close
on the remaining three sides. Red icons representing three squads of Special
Forces converged on it, moving through the predawn darkness. She and her party
would be the final arm of the trap to snap shut.

The counter hit zero,
flashing a message across her inhead that the SpecFor troops would be in
position now, awaiting her signal to launch their assault. At her mental
prompt, the console display transferred to her inhead.

“Let’s go, Lizzy. Take
out those ships and put us down on the beach.” Fitz felt the thrusters kick in
as she stood and shouldered a pulse rifle. Her knees felt stiff and achy from
sitting curled up in the seat so long. She injected a hit of painkiller from
her onboard pharmacopeia, and headed aft.

On the landing pad
below, the three ships disappeared in an eruption of flame and whirling shards,
the go sign for Major Baltasar to launch his offensive. Since Lizzy’s brain box
had been removed from the old wrecked freighter and transferred into the
shuttle, her personality had taken on a decidedly bloodthirsty slant.

The ship flared hard
and settled on the sand in front of the building.

Fitz checked the ammo
counter on the slug thrower. With Wolf in the tank, she carried his pistol on
this mission. She’d grown fond of the antiquated weapon’s stopping power. When
he wanted it back, she’d have to track down the original specs and have a copy
made.

“All ashore who’s going
ashore,” the ship announced as she opened the airlock and dropped the ramp.

Wolf might not be here
for this morning’s mission, but his proxy was, in the form of Sergeant
Bartonelli. Doubly suspicious of the Praetorian Guard after the attack at
Ransahov’s coronation, he’d hired his own security team, comprised entirely of
Gold Dragons mercenaries. While he underwent the implantation surgeries, he’d
assigned the diminutive NCO to keep an eye on Fitz.

For most of the trip,
the mercenary had appeared to be snoozing, her chin against her chest, but as
Fitz reached to shake the sergeant’s shoulder, her head snapped up. She
scrambled to her feet, shouldering her heavy weapon—an over-under pulse rifle
with an EM launcher for kinetic rounds. Her mismatched armor sported a Gold
Dragons emblem on the plastron, and vivid green curls peeked from beneath a
helmet painted to resemble a grinning skull.

The only Normal of
Fitz’s four-member team, she had the most combat experience, but then a
mercenary like Bartonelli could hardly be considered your run of the mill
Normal. The other three, although augies, didn’t have enough combat time
between them to warrant a single battle ribbon, but she trusted them. So far,
they were the only three to go through her vetting process and be reinstated
since the reassessment of the augie program began.

Even before the start
of Ari Ransahov’s reign, lobbying to outlaw combat augmentations had been
intense. The general population, and then the newsies, had taken up the cause,
pressuring the Emperor to end the program. Only Fitz had voiced a dissenting
opinion, pointing out that a properly staffed and administered program was
worth maintaining. As a reward for her candor, Ari dumped the job of
reorganizing CyberOps, rooting out all the bad eggs and establishing a small
and tightly controlled organization, into Fitz’s lap—as an adjunct to her
already hectic schedule as Head of Imperial Security.

At first she planned to
quietly recall all augies and pull their spikes to deactivate their
augmentations until they could be certified for service, but after the newsies
leaked the story, augies scattered like gerbats when the lights flash on.
Sixty-five remained unaccounted for, sixty-five potential superhuman killers
loose in the Empire, and all she had to do was track them down and neutralize
the threat—by any means necessary.

Fitz paused at the
hatch. “Sergeant, stay with the ship, and make sure no one gets out this way.”
If she got Bartonelli killed, Wolf would be rightfully pissed at her.

“Begging your pardon,
Chima, but your bossy little ship is quite capable of doing that on her own,
and my orders were to stick with you, no matter what.”

Fitz clenched her jaw.
“We’re going in hard and fast. You won’t be able to keep up, and when things
get hairy, I can’t take the time to look out for you.”

Shouldn’t have said
that to the merc.

“No need to fret ’bout
me, Chima. I got my friend here to watch over me.” The sergeant slapped a fresh
power pack into the rifle and ducked through the hatch.

The merc had taken to
calling her Chima. Fitz wandered what it meant; no doubt
dumb ass
from
the looks Bartonelli gave her.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep
an eye on her.” Lieutenant Braylin Pike winked and followed the sergeant out.
In his black SpecOps armor, the young man resembled a schoolboy playing dress-up.
He was Fitz’s compiler, an analyst, and not combat tested. Only a year out of
the academy, he hadn’t been an augie long enough to be corrupted by Tritico’s DIS,
and had been the first to come in and surrender his spike after the recall.

And he seemed to have a
crush on Bartonelli.

“Cover our backs,
Lizzy.” Fitz herded her remaining two troopers out and followed them down the
ramp.

Captain Nickolai Costos
had graduated from the academy two years ahead of Fitz and spent most of his
career there as an instructor. Nearing the end of his service, that’s where he
belonged, behind a desk. But she had to use what resources she could scrape
together. The overweight, balding man had jumped at the chance to participate
in a field op one last time before TKS sidelined him permanently. At the other
end of the career scale, Becky Chin was still technically a cadet. Green and
scared, she tried to hide it with tough talk and too-loud laughter. Fitz saw a
lot of her younger self in Chin, and thought she’d make an excellent SpecOps
agent—if she managed to survive her baptism of firepower.

Fitz hit hyperkinetic
speed and sprinted past Bartonelli. Weapons fire erupted out of the building
and from a laser emplacement on the roof, aimed primarily at the SpecFor troops
closing on the other three sides. They would keep their targets pinned down and
contained, while she went inside with her people.

Intelligence speculated
that Tritico had several augies with him and an undetermined number of Normal
troopers. The latter she could discount; they wouldn’t have the reflexes to hit
an augie moving flat out in the half light, as the bolts kicking up sand around
her proved.

A shot pranged off her
armor, briefly staggering her.

Or they could get
lucky.

Fitz zig-zagged more
creatively.

She reached the terrace
and vaulted over its low wall, taking up a position to one side of a set of
ornate double doors. Costos covered the other side, breathing hard despite his
augmentations. Fitz jumped out and drove the butt of her rifle against the
door. The shock of the blow rattled up her arms, and she reeled back. They must
have replaced the old glass panes with armorglass. Bartonelli appeared next to
her, sooner than expected, and bumped her aside. With her pulse rifle on full
auto, she walked the blasts up the door and down in a broad X pattern,
following it up with a round from the EM launcher. Exploding clouds of
armorglass shards and pieces of molding clattered and bounced across the marble
floor of the empty dining room beyond.

“That’s how it’s done,
Chima,” the sergeant said.

Yep, if connotation was
any indication, Chima definitely meant
dumb ass.

Braylin Pike tossed a
small object through the shattered doorway. The canister bounced and slid across
the floor, coming to rest against the far wall and did…nothing.

“Uh… is that all it’s
supposed to do?” Pike asked.

Fitz checked her inhead
display. Still functioning. “You have your augs?”

He nodded, tapping the
side of his helmet. “But these are supposed to shield our spikes. Only the bad
guys will get burned.”

Cyber-tech’s newest
toy, the EMP grenade, used the same principle as the remote she’d faced on
Baldark: frying the circuitry on any exposed spike. Doctor Joachim DeWitt, the
head of CyberOps, had assured her they’d be protected by the shielding in their
helmets. He had that part right, but had the device shut down the other augies
they were about to take on?

Weapons fire erupted at
the front of the lodge. That would be Major Baltasar’s diversion, hopefully
keeping the majority of their opponents too busy to deal with the incursion
from the rear.

Fitz signaled the
others to follow, and eased into the empty dining room, glass gritting under
her boots while each footstep echoed off the barren marble floor. She fought
the urge to sneeze, spawned by the stench of decades of rot and neglect. The
space retained little of its previous opulence, its wall coverings water-stained,
and woodwork riddled by insects. Exits on either side led to the service areas
and kitchens, and at the front she noticed a pair of stained glass doors, one
standing open. With hand signals, she directed Costos and Chin to check out
what lay beyond that, then gestured for Bartonelli to watch the entrance they’d
just blasted through. The twist of the sergeant’s lips suggested what she
thought of the order, but she stayed to guard their backs. Fitz took the left,
while Pike hugged the wall on the right.

Weapon at the ready,
she entered a corridor wide enough for service carts to pass. The faint but
identifiable aroma of neubeast steak and eggs drifted from the door at the end,
not old and decayed, but fresh enough to make her stomach churn. She slid along
the wall until she could peer into the kitchen. The room had been stripped of its
appliances, but a portable processor sat on the counter, jury-rigged to a power
outlet. A thermal scan revealed no human-sized heat sources, only a pair of
plates cooling on the table amid a puddle of spilled coffee from an interrupted
breakfast.

Where were they?

A shout echoed from the
dining room, followed by gunfire. She charged back down the corridor, sliding
to a stop at the exit for a quick assessment. Pike was down, crabbing backward
across the marble. As she shifted her perspective into HK, the blur stalking
him resolved into a ginger-haired man pumping shots into the lieutenant’s
chest. Fitz recognized the shooter from the attack at Dragonhalle.