Dragon City. James Axler

and in itself it shouldn’t be cause for alarm. What was alarming was the shape of the burgeoning ville—it quite clearly took the form of a winged creature, drawn across the fertile soil of the riverbank.

       “A dragon,” Grant had said as he had stared at the incredible surveillance photos.

       “Or perhaps a dragon ship,” Lakesh had said, emphasizing the word ship. His implication was clear. The Cerberus team had become aware of the Annunaki starship Tiamat as it lurked high above the atmosphere, and Grant had been a part of the team on board when the ship had begun its self-destruct sequence, watched from space as its exploding form had filled the heavens with light. To have another of the starships appear like this—on Earth—was without doubt a cause for concern.

       Well prepared for the briefing, Lakesh had called up backdated surveillance footage showing the expansion of the settlement from apparent nothingness just six months ago. While it appeared to be a city, there was no mistaking the implication of that swooping, winged shape. Several miles across, it crouched by the banks, head pointing off toward the north while the right-hand flank abutted the river itself, a curving tail winding downward in a southerly direction. The mighty wings were stretched wide in imitation of a crescent, the creature’s right wing crossing the width of the river in a curving bridge. It was unclear from the photographs, but it appeared that buildings were constructed on the wing-bridge as elsewhere, adhering to the dragonlike shape of the vast settlement.

       “We need to look into this,” Grant had agreed. “If only we had the Mantas, then me and Kane could…” He stopped, the words turning to ashes on his tongue. He had partnered with Kane for so long that to take on a mission like this without him, even a simple recce, seemed anathema to the way things worked.

       “We’re just amassing reports from the local area,” Donald Bry had explained from his position at another computer terminal in the makeshift ops center. “It seems it’s something of a no-fly zone,” he explained. “Reports are hazy but there’s suggestions that some low-flying aircraft have failed to return from the area in the last few weeks.”

       “Sounds serious.” Grant nodded. “What about the interphaser—could we access a gateway in there?”

       The options that Grant was suggesting covered many of the established forms of long-distance transportation that the Cerberus rebels had come to rely upon. The Mantas were transatmospheric aircraft that were stored at the hangar of the old Cerberus redoubt in Montana. The interphaser, the teleportational device that opened a quantum window through space, relied on established destination markers called parallax points. Unless there was one of these in place, the jump to a specific location could not be completed.

       Lakesh had pointed to the surveillance photo on screen, indicating the area where the right shoulder blade of the creature would be. “There’s a parallax point here,” he confirmed, “but I admit a grave reluctance in using it. This specific area was the exact location of the ancient city of Nippur, where Enlil was said to have made his home. It seems too much of a coincidence for this new settlement to have appeared by chance, especially taking the dragon form of the Annunaki mother, Tiamat, as it has. While the interphaser could send you there instantaneously, I’m inclined to think you’d be walking straight into the belly of the beast.”

       “Almost literally,” Grant muttered as he eyed the dragon form.

       “And if there is any Annunaki connection at all,” Lakesh continued, “the very first thing they would have established is a security detail or automated expulsion system for the parallax point itself. Which is to say, it could well be like walking into a blender. Not clever.”

       “Sounds reasonable,” Grant accepted. “So what do we do?”

       “We have established some local connections in the area,” Lakesh explained. “We’ll open a gateway into an old military base in Syria, and you’ll take a ride from there.”

       “What kind of ride?” Grant had asked warily.

       “Helicopter,” Lakesh had explained. “A retrofitted cargo chopper.”

       Retrofitted was right. Whatever its original configuration, the craft had been gutted and refitted so drastically over the years that it looked like a flying junkyard. Grant looked around him now, saw the rusting patches that lined the wall behind Rosalia and the two guards, the sloppily painted plastic-and-ceramic bowl that formed the uneven ceiling. From the outside, the whole airframe was a patchwork of pieces, different-colored plates worked one over another to complete its shell. It had no doubt been found in some military redoubt somewhere, tucked out of sight for a century or more before finally being called into action, pieced together as best the local mechanics could based on the design. That the vehicle flew—and flew well—seemed nothing shy of a miracle to Grant, but he had traveled in worse.

       Dressed in dark, supple armor, two Tigers of Heaven had agreed to accompany the three Cerberus warriors on this reconnaissance mission to find out what the deserted dragon city was all about. Their names were Kishiro and Kudo and they displayed that studied calmness that all of Shizuka’s warriors seemed to have. Grant admired them for it.

       With Cerberus in disarray, field missions like this were proving problematic to staff. Kane and Edwards were out of commission, Brigid was lost and almost two-thirds of the personnel were still in hiding, spread out across North America. If they were going to use subs like this, Grant would rather they include his lover Shizuka, whose ability with a samurai sword was nothing short of artistic. But the world was different now; there were dangers on all sides. This growing cult of Ullikummis seemed to be expanding at a colossal rate, and even threatened the shores of New Edo, the territory Shizuka governed.

       Thus, Grant found himself leading an untested pairing of teammates into the unknown. He had come to trust, even respect, Rosalia after their most recent escapade, and he knew he could rely upon both Domi and any member of the Tigers of Heaven. Still, racing across the skies in a rattletrap cargo chopper accompanied by four teammates he only half knew, Grant felt a sense of unease. Reluctantly he turned his attention back to the triangular window created by his touching fingers, willing his worries to slip away. Whatever else happened, he couldn’t change it now.

      * * *

      “WE ARE ALMOST NEAR,” a voice called over the fuzzy speaker system from the cockpit. It was the pilot, a local man called Mahood, whose English was heavily accented with the emphasis on the wrong syllables, making it hard at times to decipher.

       Grant nodded, inhaling deeply and projecting a sense of calm. “How long?” he asked, his finger depressing the radio comm button set in the wall.

       Mahood muttered something in the local dialect, then repeated it in English for his passengers. “Two minutes is maximum.”

       “Great,” Grant said, wondering if the sarcasm in his tone was lost on the foreigner. He hoped it was; the man was risking his own neck for the Cerberus team, skirting the edges of the dubious no-fly zone.

       Swiveling on the bench, Grant turned to look out the window nearest him. It was a horizontal slit of perhaps three inches in height, and Grant had to peer closely to get a decent view of the outside. The others crowded over to their own windows, all except for Rosalia, who stayed with her dog, hushing the animal as it whined in time with the straining engines.

       “There it is,” Grant muttered, pushing his face closer to the window without thinking about it.

       Down below, off to the port side of the renovated helicopter, the dragon seemed to crouch at the banks of the wide strip of river. Wisps of cloud cut the view for a moment, a V-shaped flock of squawking geese swooping by, and then the dragon reappeared, ill lit in the dwindling light of dusk. It was hard to assess the size of it from so far away, but Grant had seen the aerial photographs from the satellite and he already had a rough idea. That idea hadn’t prepared him for looking at the structure itself, however.

       It was not a dragon, even though its shape suggested one. Close up, it was not even a single structure. Rather, a series of buildings were poised along the banks of the Euphrates, with no apparent uniformity to their designs. Here a