Dragon (A Histories of Purga Novel)

Rone was lying on his plush, circular couch, watching his vid-screen. The newest Harmony Vector movie was on, but it wasn’t very good. He stared at it without seeing, his mind on other things. He was glad that his plan to oust Lord Guilder had gone off without a hitch, but he was a little disturbed at just how crazy the man had gone. He felt sorry for Lady Guilder. If the man was really that bad, then he couldn’t even imagine what she had to endure over the years.

There was a knock on his door.

“Who is that, Bastion?” Rone asked.

“It is the King.”

“Open it.”

The door slid open and King Rowan came inside. He walked over to Rone and stood in front of the vid-screen.

“Did you enjoy that scene? Was it entertaining enough for you?” he asked.

Rone’s guard came up instantly. His father was clearly angry.

“I thought you were proud of my ingenuity,” he replied carefully.

“Yes. It was a remarkable bit of cleverness on your part, I must admit, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that you behaved inappropriately for a person of your stature,” his father replied. “You’re seventeen, Rone. You’re not a child anymore. You’re a role model. You’re someone that others look to for leadership. For guidance.”

Rone stood, his face screwed up with anger. “I never asked for that! I never wanted to be everyone’s role model. You forced that on me!”

“I did not force that on you, son. It is your birthright,” King Rowan replied. His voice had lost its edge of anger. Now it was full of only disappointment. “I wish your mother were here. She was always better with you than I was.”

“That makes two of us.”

Rone walked away from his father. He went outside to stand on his balcony. The moon was high tonight.

His father followed him.

“When are you going to realize, Rone? This world is dangerous. Our people are constantly under attack from the Terraquois. They need us. They need leadership. If we were to fail them-”

“Then the savages would overtake us all and eat our people,” Rone replied, twirling a finger lazily through the air. “I’ve heard it all before, but you know what? I’ve haven’t heard of them attacking any of our people for years. The only times they’ve been known to attack nowadays is when our own bloody soldiers provoke them.”

“It’s not about whether they are actively engaged in war with us. They are a threat!” his father shouted, enraged. There was hate in his eye. True, unyielding hate.

“Well, maybe when they do start a war with us, I’ll come around to your way of thinking. Until then, I just want to be left out of the nonsense ruling Roanoke has become. You may hate me for that, but that’s how I feel. Now, can you go? I think I’m going to go to bed.”

“All right.” King Rowan walked away. When he got to the glass doors leading back into the apartment, he turned around and looked at his son. “Just think about what I said. Can you do that much? You can even take that flight you asked for earlier. No guard. Maybe it will clear your head.”

“Really?” Rone asked, hesitant. His father didn’t like him flying off by himself and when he did let Rone go flying, it was always with a squadron of Imperial Guards tailing him. “You’d let me fly off by myself?”

“Yes, I mean it. Just try to be careful.”

“I will,” Rone replied, unable to contain his smile. He quickly brought up his left forearm. The surface of his mechpak turned into a bright screen that glowed pale green. An icon of his family’s crest slowly spun in the middle of it. He pressed his finger to the little crest and it opened onto the home screen. Dozens of little icons popped up in neat rows.

Rone found the one he needed almost immediately. It was a simple blue square with BP in a white, blocky serif font. He pressed it and he had access to all his blueprints. He quickly selected his flightpack blueprint that he had created when he was younger. The best part about being able to create without a blueprint, is that he could convert whatever he did make into one. That way, it was easier to make it the next time he used it.

His vents opened, spewing nanos into the air. They coalesced until they solidified into something that looked like a cross between a machine and a school backpack. Two well padded, black straps fit over Rone’s shoulders. Another strap went around his waist, while two others went around his thighs. The device itself was small and compact. More so than one would think, considering what it was meant for. Two wide mouthed cones were attached to the bottom and helped direct the thrust of the burners.

When the nanos were finished creating the device, Rone went to the railing of his terrace and promptly jumped off before his father had a chance to change his mind. There was a moment of total free-fall before he commanded the pack to fire its burners. Then he was soaring, laughing the whole time.

King Rowan watched for a moment more and then left his son’s apartment. He navigated the somewhat confusing passages and side hallways of the Citadel until he was on the bottom floor. He found a shadowed, secluded alcove. When he was sure he had a private moment where no one was looking at him, his image turned hazy. It fogged and flickered until twin columns of nanos were being sucked into the mechpaks on either arm. King Rowan was replaced by a tall figure draped in a dark cloak and a dark hood.

He raised an arm up to his shadowy face. The screen on his mechpak had a little box with a person staring fixedly back at him.

“The Prince is on the way,” he said into it, his voice going back to that oddly mechanical sound. “Be prepared.”

****

Rone felt a crazy moment of exhilaration during his free-fall. His whole body seemed to fill with a rising sense of pure joy. He loved flying the most. There was nothing he couldn’t do. There was nowhere he couldn’t go. It was the ultimate freedom. It’s why he enjoyed it so much. He felt in control of his own life. It was the only time he really felt in control.

He rocketed over Roanoke. He saw the lights of the city brighten the darkness hundreds of yards below him. He hated those lights. Those lights were manacles that chained him to a life he never sought and had certainly never wanted.

He needed to be far away from them, so he banked and shot off toward the Qandari Desert. There was nothing but darkness there. No lights. No chains or manacles.

The Citadel was only four or so miles from the Great Sea while the outer walls were nearly an hour and a half due east. He headed that way, pouring on the speed. He managed to shoot past the walls after about an hour and twenty-five minutes.

A new best, he thought to himself, proud.

He went past Roanoke’s massive outer walls without stopping. A couple hours later, he was past the collection of settlements and cities outside Roanoke called the Outposts. Then there was nothing but shifting sands and complete solitude. He barrel rolled to the left and then to the right. He rose into a steep climb, did a flip, and then cut his burners. He plummeted again and relished the feel of the wind gusting past his face. When he was about three hundred yards from the shifting sands, he restarted his burners and angled his dive until he was parallel with the ground. It blurred past him and he laughed wildly.

He rose higher and higher until a weird sound caused him to stop in mid-air. It was a loud, whistling shriek. He turned around and hovered, trying to find the source of it. It didn’t take long. Something was coming toward him, rocketing through the sky with alarming speed.

Whatever it was, it was definitely not good.

****

Lord Guilder sat hunched outside the base of Roanoke’s massive fortress wall, all but invisible. In his hands was a powerful bazooka that fired special ammunition. He could imagine the bright silver disk inside, waiting to fly toward its target and destroy it. He smiled coldly to himself, thinking about revenge and the satisfaction of putting the brat Prince in his place once and for all.

“The Prince is on the way,” a voice said, coming from his mechpak. He glanced at it and saw his liberator looking back at him. “Be prepared.”

Lord Guilder simply nodded and waited patiently, his mind so focused on his task that nothing distracted him. Then, an hour and a half later, something soared past the walls and jetted into the desert.

The Prince, he thought to himself. That sinister smile widened.

He placed the bazooka up to his shoulder and sighted through the viewfinder until it locked on the flying Prince’s form. It was hard work. The little bastard was a fast flier. He was nearly gone from the sighting tech in the bazooka when it suddenly let out a satisfying beep. It meant the weapon now had a heat-print lock on the Prince and could track him anywhere. With a cold smile and no hesitation, Lord Guilder pressed the trigger.

The recoil was astounding. He was flung into the solid cement and cytium reinforced walls. The breath exploded from his lungs and he took a moment to get it back. He coughed loudly until his breathing evened out and he got control of himself again. He turned his eyes up to the faint smoke trail made from the T-EMP disk and tried to track it. He lost it within the second. He wouldn’t be able to see the brat prince fall, but he imagined it and his satisfaction burned brighter.

He tapped a finger to the screen on his mechpak and the two-way video call opened up again.

“Is it done?” the man asked expectantly.

“Prince Rone is no longer a problem for us,” Lord Guilder replied.

He hung up and headed to the hidden entrance in the defensive walls the hooded man had shown him.

****

“What is that?” Rone asked himself. Then he saw the smoke trailing behind it and realized it was some sort of weapon. A bolt of fear shot through him and he turned. His burners powered up to their max and he shot off like a bullet. The thing following him, however, was persistent. Rone flew for over five consistent hours, trying to fly higher and lower in an effort to shake it. His face was ravaged nearly raw by the constant wind. His lips were cracked and bleeding. His eyes stung and he was growing tired. But he kept going, intent on evading the weapon. He even did a couple of loops, barrel rolls, and freefalls but it wouldn’t be fooled by any of his clever flying or by his swiftness.

The thing put on a burst of speed and a minute later, it smacked into his left leg and stuck there. His nanos, sensing the weapon coming, created a nano-shield around it first to protect it, but he still reached a hand back to try and pry it off. Before he could grab it, long thin needles sprouted out of what looked like a disk about four inches in diameter.

The needles looked wickedly sharp.

Rone watched helplessly as they plunged forward with sickening speed, pierced his nano-shield as if it were paper, and then buried themselves into the flesh of his calf. He yelled in pain that turned into a high-pitched screech as a targeted burst of electricity was dumped into his leg. His nanos burst apart as the electric current disrupted their programming. They fell through the air, little more than dust in the wind. The weapon poured more electricity into him, but the worst of the damage was done to his leg. He thought he smelled burning flesh but he refused to acknowledge it.

The pain was enormous. His vision went nearly black but he managed to hang on. The good news was that the disk stopped electrocuting him. The bad news was that it was still attached to his leg, which looked horribly burned now. Rone did his best to ignore how gruesome the burns looked as he reached for the device again.

He had to get it off.

He reached for it and almost had a finger on it.

Just a few more inches.

He just managed to brush it with his fingertips when it detonated. There was a brief pulse of purple light that caused the bottom of his stomach to drop out.

He knew what that light was.

A second later, his nanos died. The purple light was an EMP burst and it knocked them out.

He plummeted yet again, but this time he was filled with hopeless terror. He watched as the Qandari Desert rose to meet him.

He willed his nanos to start back up, hoping that the EMP bomb was a small one. The smaller they were, the quicker the nanos would start up again. He urged them and urged them, all the while the ground kept getting closer and closer. About two hundred or so yards from the bone crushing sand, his nanos finally responded to his call and his flightpack was able to fire up again. He managed to turn his nearly vertical dive into something pretty-much parallel to the ground again.

He yelled in triumph, pumping a fist in the air.

Then he smacked head first into a big sand dune.

There was a moment of pure, white pain and then everything was dark.