CHAPTER 22

Afu ripped open a fridge locker. MREs and nonperishable food stores poured onto the ground for the captive smokies to dig through. For those who couldn’t move or eat on their own, Tamerica and Brannigan helped them sip water cups and chew on protein bars.

I was glad to be out of the Sub Level, but I was nervous to be so close to where most of the Army was located. The Nusies had only sent one squadron to engage us downstairs. There should have been more soldiers. Something didn’t feel right. But we had little choice. If Calhoun had something waiting for us, we’d still have to engage the Nusies if we wanted to nullify their dragon control. If we wanted to go home.

I felt like a coal mine canary. Or a Judas goat. I didn’t hate every single Army grunt. Just because my platoon sucked didn’t mean there weren’t diamonds amongst the bullshit.

Reynolds was still a good person. A medic’s job is to help people. You can’t be completely corrupt if that’s your cause. She was just confused and hadn’t known anything outside the Army for too long. It wasn’t her fault, and there had to be other soldiers like that. Orphans adopted by the wrong ideology. I was a poster child for one-eighty turnarounds. I’d been a card-carrying Nusie a lot longer than I’d been wearing a power suit. It wasn’t a simple change of teams. It wasn’t only because they’d tried to kill me. I had woken up, and I wasn’t special. There were probably a hundred or more brainwashed young adults in Big Base that would have seen reality like me. But where was the point you knew for sure you couldn’t change their minds? When did you have to use force? When did you know they couldn’t be reasoned with?

In a cold room inside Big Base, Yolanda worked on my suit. I stayed with her.

We’d used a flathead screwdriver to pry off Naveena’s smoker. She screamed when we finally got it loose, and I could see why. A long syringe was sticking out from the device’s underside – a long, nasty looking thing. Blood seeped from a hole in Naveena’s arm where the needle had been lodged. Brannigan rushed over to press his armored fingers against the wound, but Naveena stopped him.

“Back off, Brannigan. I’m fine. Goddamn. It was a kiss, not a marriage proposal.”

Brannigan blinked and backed away. He looked confused, almost drunk. Tamerica’s punch hadn’t made him that loopy. Achilles had his heel. I guess Brannigan had his heart.

Yolanda broke into Naveena’s smoker and pulled out only the necessary wires. She connected these to a panel in the back of the suit.

Sparks flew from inside my suit as she worked a small laser cutter to patch the wires. I didn’t know much about electronics, but it looked unsafe. “So what do I have to do?”

“Just get close enough.” Yolanda took a big breath as she put the cutter down. “The dragons will… twitch. That’s how you’ll know.”

“Twitch?”

“Well,” she closed the panel to my suit, “their body will react to your presence. In some way. When you’re close enough. They won’t be able to help it. It could look like a stroke… who knows?”

“Who knows?” My mouth went suddenly dry. But we’d given out all the tinfoil-covered water cups.

“That’s how neurology works. Afterward, they’ll go back to being regular scalies of their own minds… I think.”

“So, we’ll still have to deal with the dragons like normal. The Nusies just won’t be able to control them. And I’ll know when this happens if I look for a… sign?”

“Basically.”

Dios mio.

“Oh,” I said. “You asked me to remind you about the suit?”

“The suit?”

“Yeah, you said to remind you. That you had to tell me something about it.”

“Huh.” Yolanda leaned against the power suit and looked into the air as if she was searching for a thought. “Can’t remember what it was.”

I could have cried.

“Give me a second,” she said. “Maybe it’ll come to me.”

I waited.

“Nope. Sorry, Guillermo. But, hey. I’m sure if it was important I would remember.”

If it wasn’t important, I thought, why did you ask me to remind you?

I just hoped the suit wouldn’t explode with me in it.

“All right,” Tamerica said, jogging over. “We’re going out the same way we came in. We’ll have a good vantage. It’s better than the front door.”

“I don’t think this place has a front door.” Brannigan followed behind Tamerica. “They’ll be watching the roof. I’m sure of it. But it’s still our best option. We’ll have to defend ourselves. I hope everyone here is okay with that.”

Afu sighed and looked away, rubbing the armor around his laser arm.

“And what about all the other smokies?” I asked.

“They’ll be fine here in the holding area,” Naveena said. She was jumping up and down in her suit as if she was about to rush out onto a stage to give a motivational speech. She hadn’t said anything about Renfro after we’d told her. She hadn’t said much at all until now. “They need to get their strength up.”

I wondered why she wasn’t included with them.

“Are you sure you don’t want my helmet?” I said.

Naveena shook her head. “You need it more than I do.”

She’d refused to wear one of the Nusie helmets we’d taken off one of the unconscious soldiers.

“We’re going to stay around Contreras and give him cover,” Tamerica said. She turned to me. “Please just go toward one dragon at a time if you can.”

“Don’t worry,” I said.

“Seriously,” said Afu. “The riders will stay in groups. We’ll have to isolate them.”

“They won’t stay clumped together once they realize what his suit can do to them.”

“But they’ll try to take him out one at a time from a distance.”

“So,” I said, “you’re saying this is just going to get easier.”

We left Yolanda with the other smoke eaters and headed down the hall, to the hole in the ceiling we’d originally entered through.

“We’ll have to power jump out,” Tamerica said. She stopped just under the hole, leaning her head back to look through it. She extended her thermagoggles for half a minute, but retracted them with a shake of her head. “Be ready to shoot or slash. I don’t see anything, but I’m not going to lower my guard.”

“Um,” I said, swallowing at my dry mouth. “Who’s going first?”

Tamerica lowered her stare to me. “You wanted to wear the cool suit, right?”

Well, shit.

“Step up, smokie.” Brannigan extended his hand like some showy butler.

“Sink or swim,” I said.

Before I could hesitate, I got under the hole and engaged the power jump. The button was easy to find. It was in the same spot in the left glove. But this new suit’s thrusters had kick. I was launched sixty or so feet into the air. It could have been more. Looked like more. But I was never a good guesser of heights. I wasn’t much of a fan of heights either.

Night surrounded me. The roof lay far below. Naveena – looking the size of an action figure – launched out of the hole next, but her jump was weak. She didn’t reach anywhere close to my altitude, but landed gently onto the roof. She looked up at me and waved her arms.

At first I thought I’d simply overshot. But I wasn’t slowly lowering like in the other suit. I wasn’t moving at all.

I was flying.

“What the hell are you doing up there?” Brannigan’s voice came through my helmet after he’d made it onto the roof.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m stuck.”

I could hear the suit’s thrusters burning at my back, keeping me in the air. From where I floated, I could see destruction all around the building. Bodies, burning tanks. Thankfully, no dragons or Nusies.

A nearby water tower had been punctured and steadily poured precious liquid life onto the ground. Smacking my dry lips, I unconsciously leaned toward the depleting water. My suit moved me forward. I yelped and leaned back to hover again with my feet toward the ground. This slowed me to a stop.

“Huh,” I said.

If I leaned forward, with my belly parallel with the ground, the thrusters would jet me ahead like a superhero. Leaning back to “stand” was like the brakes.

I took a shaky breath and tried the maneuver again. Big Base became a blur and then was gone from sight as I reached the edge of the compound. Turning was easier than I thought. I just had to lean in the direction I wanted to go.

For a brief second I found myself enjoying soaring like a scaly, but then I felt guilty. About Renfro, about Naveena and everyone and everything else. Not to mention the terrorizing knowledge of dragon riders flying somewhere close, and the fear of falling out of the sky if I moved the wrong way. I turned back toward Big Base’s roof, where the others were watching me.

“Bro,” Afu’s voice crackled through my helmet. “You can fly.”

“Clear some space,” I said. “I just want to be on solid ground again.”

From above, a huge hunk of metal careened through my flight path. I almost crashed into it, and would have been torn to shreds, even in my power suit. The mass seemed to roar as it plummeted toward the roof. The bottom half of Happy the droid followed. The head and torso came next. The red smile flashed past my eyes. That’s when I knew what had happened. The metal dragon had been chewed on, balled up, and thrown to Earth missing its shiny wings and most of its head.

On the roof, Brannigan tackled Naveena to get her out of Mecha Scaly’s path. The dead dragon bot broke through the roof and sent a final flash of blue flames into the sky as the roof began to cave in.

Naveena screamed for them all to run, and though she didn’t have a radio I still heard her. My guts twisted as I watched the roof rupture like a black hole. Tamerica and Afu had power jumped to the edge. Afu, being closer, made it there before his wife and had to catch her by the arm when her boots had no floor to land on. The big man pulled Tamerica up and they straddled the edge, watching the rest of the roof drop.

Naveena had managed to run fast enough to grab onto a set of antennae outside the hole’s reach. Brannigan was limping.

Let’s do it! My uncle’s voice came to me.

I fell forward and shot out of the sky like a damn comet and felt like I was going to release my guts out of all three orifices. But I could see and move well enough. The suit had extended two glass panels in front of my face when I hit a certain speed. My own personal windshield.

The hole swallowed every inch of the roof. Like Tamerica, Brannigan suddenly found the ground to be missing. But Naveena’s hand hadn’t been close enough to grab him. Malnourished as she was, she wouldn’t have had the strength to pull him up anyway. She was barely holding herself from the antennae.

Brannigan landed in my outstretched arms. My back popped as I yanked myself upward enough to shoot back to the sky without stopping.

The Chief was whooping like he was on a roller coaster.

“Stay still,” I said.

“I’m not moving a fucking inch. Don’t drop me. How ’bout that?”

I scoped out a clear enough area on the ground outside Big Base and pointed my nose toward it. All I could hear was the thrusters. Afraid I’d plow into the dirt, I leaned back. We slowed to hover, but we were still ten feet above the ground. I wasn’t going to press the power jump button to find out what would happen. It might have killed the flight but it also might have launched me back into the sky.

So I dropped Brannigan.

He landed with a grunt and began cursing me for an asshole, a bastard, and other things he said so fast I couldn’t catch.

“Sorry, Chief,” I said. “But I don’t know how to land this thing.”

Brannigan staggered to his feet. “I could jump up there and hit the button on your chest.”

“Then I’d fall out,” I said. “Backwards. Without armor.”

“I know,” he said. “It would be fair.”

Three orange bursts came from the top of the building. Tamerica, Naveena, and Afu jogged over.

“The dragons from Sublevel Three are starting to crawl out into the open,” Naveena said. She looked up at me. “Nice catch by the way, Gilly. That thing hard to control?”

Captain Naveena Jendal got a personal hero pass to call me Gilly. Naveena Jendal could call me whatever she wanted.

“He can’t come down,” Brannigan said.

“Have you tried hitting the jump button again?” Tamerica asked.

“Wouldn’t it be more of a fly button?” Afu asked.

“You still want that romantic kiss?” Tamerica said.

Afu clenched his lips.

“I haven’t hit the button again,” I said. “Not yet.”

I was about to. But a roar cut through the air above me. Reynolds, gripping the reins of her yellow Lung dragon, was soaring toward me like an incoming nuke. Murder tensed in her face. The woman I saw in memories looked nothing like this pissed off Valkyrie coming for my head. I flinched at first. Then I remembered she had more to worry about from me and what was in my suit.

When the dragon flipped out and regained its mental liberty, it would dump her toward the ground and eat her either before or after she landed. If Yolanda had been successful.

“Stay back!” I shouted.

Reynolds opened her mouth. The Lung opened its jaws in sync. When Reynolds screamed, the dragon responded by shooting its golden fire.

“Shit!” I raised my arms and flew straight up.

The Lung’s fire remained in the air like burning streamers lighting up the night. An additional twenty feet separated me from the ground, and I was too busy watching it fall away. I didn’t look up. A laser struck me in the chest, sending me spiraling horizontally. Dark smoke blew into my face as the suit wailed a small siren noise. The suit’s voice was telling me that I had only fifty percent armor sustainability. I was good enough at math to understand one more hit would finish me.

“Forty percent,” the voice said.

Less than one more laser hit then.

I dropped my arms and came to a stop. The Nusie who’d fired was barreling at me on the back of his Spike-Crown Wyvern. The scaly’s horns looked like several racks of antelope antlers, but twice as sharp. The dragon’s cat-like eyes glowed orange, while its bird-like mouth, full of teeth, snapped repeatedly. The Nusie was riding closer to the dragon’s horns than I would have, but he seemed too preoccupied with aiming his rifle at me. I readied to fly out of the way, but I held still. Told myself to wait a little longer. I had to see if my suit would work.

“I surrender!” I shouted. I couldn’t throw up my arms because then my suit would take me higher.

The Nusie laughed and lowered his rifle. But the dragon didn’t slow down. It sped up. The soldier made a chomping motion with his teeth. The Wyvern lunged, biting. But just before it could sink its teeth into my suit, it flailed and careened backwards, shrieking as if its head was going to explode.

Feedback screeched from the speaker in the Nusie’s ear. As he fought to control the scaly, he reached up and jerked off the device he’d been wearing and tossed it to the night. The Spike-Crown thrashed its head back. Two of its horns pierced through the soldier’s head. The dragon flapped its wings to hover there, and when it lowered its head back, the soldier’s body was lifted out of the saddle, left to dangle on the scaly’s crown.

The scaly saw me and roared, flapping its wings twice to pick up speed. I already had my weapon up.

The first two discs sliced into the mess of horns on its head. The lasers severed the ones where the Nusie’s body was impaled. The dead man fell toward the ground and soon, after the other laser discs sliced into the Wyvern, I sent scaly pieces tumbling down after him.

Reynolds and the Lung came in hot.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Sarah, please.”

She pulled at the reins and circled back to slow down. The Lung hovered there, thirty or so feet away, the tendrils below its nostrils flapping in the air. The dragon was far enough that Reynolds still had control of it.

“You just can’t stop killing good soldiers,” Reynolds said, “can you?”

“Don’t come near me,” I said. “I didn’t kill that guy. But it’s not safe to be around me. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“You’re gonna hurt me, Gilly?” The Lung’s roar sounded like a thousand trumpets.

Heavy whooshing came from above. “Why are you wearing my suit, you shit stain?”

The big red Fafnir sailed down and circled us. Calhoun had his pistol drawn and aimed at me. Three more dragon riders fell from above to join us. I felt like a duck surrounded by a horde of alligators. But I was hoping they’d get closer. All of them except Reynolds. And I couldn’t explain to her why. Not with the others there.

“Lieutenant Reynolds,” Calhoun said. “Why haven’t you eliminated this enemy?”

“I believe I heard him surrender, sir.”

“Surrender? Thanks to this asshole and his friends, there isn’t a base to put the prisoners we had to recapture.”

What? We’d saved all of the captive smokies.

Calhoun noticed the look on my face. “Oh, yes. Those smoke eaters didn’t get far after the roof caved in. And that backstabbing propellerhead, too. We’ve got ’em cordoned off over there.”

He pointed but I didn’t look.

“Sir,” Reynolds said. “I think he did something to Bowers’s dragon. He’s been telling me to stay back.”

“He’s a liar. Can’t trust a liar. He has my suit, but this ungrateful bastard is surrounded now, isn’t he? I think some waterboarding would be a nice start for him. But not the end. Oh no, Contreras. There are plenty of techniques I’ve been dreaming of trying out. And I bet I could learn so much about what you’ve been doing since you left us in Waukesha.” Calhoun brought the Fafnir in to hover beside Reynolds. “Did I ever introduce you to my dragon, Contreras?” Calhoun patted the Fafnir’s neck. Its dark red eyes were motionless as it stared at me. “This is Sitri, demon of lust and death.”

Calhoun smiled and the dragon bared its teeth. I thought I saw a few pieces of shiny metal stuck between them, but the dragon closed its mouth before I could know for sure.

“See Tree?” I said. “I haven’t seen any trees for a long time. You and those fucking things you’re riding made it impossible.”

“Show some respect!” Calhoun shouted. His dragon growled. “I’m taking that suit back. We can do that with you still alive in it, or we can all fry you here and have that propellerhead fix any damage. Dig out all your burned guts and bones. Your choice.”

They were all flying side by side now. Reynolds was right in the middle.

“Guillermo,” Brannigan’s voice came through my helmet. “What’s stopping you. Move in. This is the perfect opportunity.”

I couldn’t. Reynolds had been the only ray of light for me in a dark place, even though she didn’t get to shine it often. A life debt twice. That’s what I owed her. I owed her more. What I was about to do was stupid as hell, but I counted it as payment

“Come and get me, you assmunchers.” I dropped into a fall, my head pointed down, soaring for the dirt.

Lasers flew around me. They raced ahead of my path, chewing up the dirt. When I saw an opening, I took it, zipping straight ahead.

“Where are you guys?” I cast through my radio.

“We never left our spot,” said Tamerica. “Had to take out a few of the dragons from the sublevel. We see you. To your left. What can we do?”

“Help me fucking land,” I said. I spotted them to my left and turned for them.

The lasers chewed up the ground behind me.

“Oh, great,” Brannigan grumbled. “Kid, just get above us, as close as you can.”

I leaned into a hover and hit the button. My whole body dropped like an anvil. Brannigan and Naveena caught me so I didn’t fall onto my face, while Tamerica, having the only laser suit, ran across the dirt firing rounds back at the incoming dragons and Nusies. Her lasers struck one of the scalies in the wing. It dropped into a tumble and the Nusie flew off. I jumped over to the dragon and blasted a few of my own shots into its body.

I heard someone swear and groan to my right. The soldier was back on his feet, and although blood was pouring from his head, he had his rifle pointed at me.

Brannigan flew in, used his laser sword to slice off the rifle’s barrel and punched the Nusie in the face. The man dropped and writhed on the ground. Heavy thuds sounded nearby. I turned and saw that Calhoun, Reynolds and the others were riding toward us on the ground, as if the dragons were slow-moving horses.

“Fuck the torture,” Calhoun raised another gun, a snub-nosed rifle, to join his pistol.

A scream filled the air. Naveena soared into a power jump, flying right for Calhoun. He turned his guns and fired. The shots hit Naveena in the chest and she dropped from her jump. Landing in a heap, on both of her knees, she bent all the way back to slide across the dirt. It would have looked cool if it had been intentional. She remained lying in the dirt when she stopped.

“You son of a bitch!” Brannigan raced toward the colonel with his laser sword raised.

The red Fafnir breathed hot orange flames at the old man. Brannigan dropped onto his face. I had to leap out of the way to avoid getting fried.

When the flames died, Calhoun was speaking. “You goddamn smoke eaters are like a virus. You won’t go away, fire doesn’t kill you, you grow and grow. But we don’t have to kill you, do we? We can use you, your blood. We’re going to fix the world you left to burn.”

One of the soldiers to Calhoun’s right made a confused gasp as he turned around in his saddle. Afu had climbed up the back of the Nusie’s scaly, a green Drake with a fat tail, and had his laser axe lifted over his head. He brought the blade down. The soldier screamed as he was cut and burned. The soldier dropped onto the ground, swearing and screaming, but still alive

Sitri, Calhoun’s dragon, reared back, snatched Afu by the leg and threw him fifty feet away. The big man tried to get up, but his armored leg looked like it had been squished by a car crusher. The green dragon began to slither over to Afu. The soldier he’d cut with his axe laughed and winced from the dirt, apparently still able to control his scaly.

I looked at all the smokies around me. Tamerica was the only one left standing and she was bent over, huffing breath. She’d been going for a long time and looked to be running out of steam.

“Contreras,” Calhoun called. I heard a click and turned to see he had both guns trained on me again. “I changed my mind. I’d rather just have the suit.”