Dragon (A Histories of Purga Novel)

Rone, Darvian and Fiona walked quickly through Judicial Hall. No one stopped them and no one questioned them. They merely looked at the group in passing, with bored, uninterested eyes. Like they’d seen things like that thousands of times before. Rone couldn’t help but feel a little bitter about that.

How many people do they have imprisoned here? he asked himself. Doesn’t matter. Whatever I do, I will see them safe, free, and unharmed. It’s my duty. For the first time in his life, that fact didn’t weigh heavily on him. That single thought burned in his mind and lent him strength he didn’t know he had. To watch his people be killed or enslaved enraged him and he felt swept up by his powerful need to protect them and make things right.

They passed another group of soldiers. Rone, struck by a bout of cleverness, pushed Darvian in the back with the barrel of his rifle.

“Move it!” he shouted. “Act like your legs work for once!”

“Yeah. I’m getting tired of you lazing about. Get moving!” Fiona exclaimed with a deep throated voice, pushing Darvian with the barrel of her rifle also, albeit way more roughly than Rone had.

Darvian stumbled forward a bit and then turned his head back so he could see the both of them. He had an angry, fierce scowl on his face.

“Yes, sirs,” he growled.

“Give him hell!” one of the passing soldiers commented.

“Sure will,” Rone shot back.

He led them to where a door that opened onto a bare room with four Blak Soldiers inside looking bored. To the right was a metal security gate barring their progress.

“We got a straggler. Was told to put him in Detention Sector 1,” Rome explained.

One of the soldiers looked up from a bank of monitors and eyed them dispassionately. He hit a button and a buzz sounded. Then there was a click as the metal gate unlocked itself.

The soldier waved them through with a blank, bored look on his face.

Rone, Darvian, and Fiona went through it and continued down a long hallway. Eventually, they came to a lift with gleaming metal doors. Fiona stepped up and pressed a button next to it. It lit up bright blue. She stepped back and the three of them waited.

It seemed to take forever and anxiety tore at them. They all felt exposed and vulnerable. However, due to the busy nature of Judicial Hall, no one gave them a second glance.

Finally, the doors opened and they stepped inside.

“Look,” Darvian said as the doors closed again.

They saw what he was talking about instantly. The biometric scanner that allowed access to the prison was cracked and dark. Only authorized personnel were allowed in Detention Sector 1, but due to the massive amounts of people that were now imprisoned there, the lift’s security had been bypassed. Directly over the scanner was a makeshift button. Someone had drawn DTN SEC 1 on it.

Rone pressed it.

“Here we go,” he said.

The lift started its descent.

Darvian relaxed a little, although he kept the manacles on his hands.

“So, how are we going to get all of these people out of here?” he asked. “And how are we going to get to the King? I doubt they have him locked up with all the other prisoners.”

Rone thought about it. He imagined all the people held captive and imprisoned for no reason except that they wouldn’t bow down to rebels and remained loyal to the crown. He thought about his father. A strong, proud man that was a fierce commander and a deadly fighter and how he’d been captured and brought low. Finally, he thought about his family’s crest and the hundreds of years of hard work and toil that his ancestor’s had put into creating Roanoke and making her function smoothly.

Now a group of rebel soldiers invaded and killed a lot of his people. They took his father and most of the citizens. He wouldn’t stand for that.

“I want to hit these Blak Soldiers hard,” he replied, his voice cold. “I want to make them regret that they ever tangled with the Varlamagnes or Roanoke.”

Fiona smiled.

Darvian didn’t look pleased.

“I’m with you,” Fiona said, clapping Rone on the back.

“But first. We need to let these people know that their Prince is free and has come to help them.”

Rone’s disguise wavered and then turned foggy. The nanos used to create his outer image were sucked back into the mechpaks on either forearm. Rone stood as he was, clean and well-groomed, although wearing the plain clothes of the Terraquois. The silver of his prosthetic leg could be seen through a hole in his cotton pants

“I like the sound of that plan,” Fiona said eagerly.

Rone wasn’t surprised. Fiona had always enjoyed a good fight.

Her imaged fogged over and then her nanos were sucked back into her mechpaks. She re-tied her hair into a ponytail and stood with a fierce look on her face. She was still wearing the military gear they’d seen her in Raleigh.

“Well, it’s not much of a plan but…dog,” Darvian said, dryly. The manacles around his hands burst apart and the nanos rejoined Fiona’s others. He looked at Rone. “Will your leg hold up?”

“It’s strong enough,” Rone said, ignoring the dull ache coming from his stump. The new leg wasn’t exactly enjoyable, but it allowed for greater mobility. In the time spent at Vitari, Rone had adjusted remarkably well to not having the lower part of his left leg. He could still run, jump, and fight. The only problem was that after about an hour, it started hurting. Most of the time it could be ignored, but the flashes of lightning-like, tingling pain tended to catch him off guard. “Don’t worry.”

Darvian didn’t look overly convinced, but he let the matter go. After all, they were already in the lift and already about a minute from Detention Sector 1 and the Blak Soldiers guarding it. There was no going back.

All three stood still, the anticipation causing their hearts to leap and jump in their chests. A cloud of nanos burst from each mechpak on Rone’s forearm but stayed as an unformed cloud. Darvian’s nanos flew out and enveloped him in a cocoon that quickly camouflaged him. It was like he wasn’t even there. Fiona’s nanos converged to create a long spear with a huge, barbed head. A solid metal bulb was attached to the other end which made it a great instrument for clubbing people. A helm covered her face and tendrils of wire-like nanos sprouted out of it. It reminded Rone of the helmets he’d seen warriors using in the history books he’d studied. The only difference was that the tendrils whipped and writhed around, as if they had a life of their own.

“Are we absolutely sure about this?” Darvian asked, his voice coming from seeming nothingness. “Our chances of success don’t seem altogether high.”

“Quit being such a baby,” Fiona whispered harshly. “And man up. You sound like a frightened little girl.”

“What good is it going to do if we let Rone walk in there only to get himself killed,” Darvian shot back, offended. “Moron,” he added, although much quieter.

Fiona, however, still heard the remark. She went to smack him but her arm sailed through empty air. She growled low in her throat, her eyes narrowed, and tried to find where Darvian was. Options were limited however because the lift was so small. She tried for another smack but missed again.

“I’m going to get you one of these times, twit,” Fiona scowled.

She made to smack again.

“Stop. Both of you,” Rone said, his voice ringing with authority. “Fighting each other is stupid. Now get ready, we’re almost there.”

That tension tripled and then quadrupled. All three went silent and stared straight at the doors to the lift. They watched the numbers on the screen above gradually descend until it read Dtn. Sec. 1.

Rone took a deep, steadying breath. He heard Darvian and Fiona do the same.

The lift stopped and the doors opened.

“Go!” Rone shouted.

The dozen or so Blak Soldiers in the hallway leading to the cytium reinforced door stared in open-mouthed shock. Rone was happy that their distraction of charging out of the elevator paid off. Despite their training, the soldiers gaped in confusion. Rone threw out both hands and the unformed clouds of nanos collected themselves into about twenty wickedly sharp spikes. They flew forward at Rone’s command with unthinkable speed and impaled five of the soldiers. The force of the flying spikes sent each one soaring through the air. They smashed into the cement wall and the spikes embedded some of them into it, leaving the Blak Soldiers pinned like butterflies on a card.

Darvian ghosted through the hall and dispatched two of them with a silver blade. Neither one even knew he was there. A Blak Soldier that witnessed their deaths stabbed at the empty air. Then he screamed in pain as a knife suddenly sprouted out of his back. He dropped to the ground.

Fiona screamed out her rage the minute the doors opened like some kind if wild, crazy animal. All of her anger over her missing father was in her eyes. She jabbed forward with her spear, gutting one of the soldiers. She ripped it free with a twirl and then swung it in a two-handed, downward arc. The barbed blade smashed into another soldier’s left shoulder, near the base of his neck. He dropped to the ground and Fiona ripped the blade out.

“Look out!” Rone heard Darvian shout. He glanced at Fiona and saw a Blak Soldier behind her with a blaster pointed at her unprotected back. Before he could pull the trigger, the writhing wires of her helm sprouted like weeds and pierced the soldier in a couple of hundred different spots. Then they whipped around and slashed the last Blak Soldier across the face and chest, splitting his military grade armor like it was paper. He let out a strangled cry and then fell to the ground, his face smacking into the floor.

Darvian shimmered back into view and the three of them raced to the thick door at the end of the hall. They each stood there, trying to figure out how to break in.

“How do we get past that?” Darvian asked.

Rone stepped up to the door. Cytium was one of the rarest, yet most indestructible substances on Purga. It allowed the door to take hit after hit and still resist damage. It wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Rone stepped up to it and examined every inch. There were no nicks or scratches. It was smooth and flawless. He cursed. If there had been any kind of flaw, he might’ve been able to send his nanos in to widen it and eventually breach it. To the right was a control panel with a glowing screen. A series of random numbers bound into the shape of a cube floated endlessly on it. It was, by Rone’s guess, the only weak point the door had. If they could somehow circumvent the door’s security protocols, then they might be able to open it.

“I was never good at hacking,” he said, mostly to himself.

“Stand back. I got this,” Fiona said, confidently.

She shoved herself past them and stood at the control panel. Then, without warning, six of the tendrils on her helm jetted forward and speared into the plastic casing. The glass remained smooth and unharmed. The square’s rotation started picking up speed and several numbers in it started to glow bright green. Fiona closed her eyes and Rone and Darvian watched them roll around in their sockets. A couple seconds later, lines arced from one number to the next, clearly in some undefined pattern. The last number to light up green was a 6.

“There,” she whispered.

A loud hissing sound filled the air and then the door that led to Detention Sector 1 opened.