Dragon City

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 minaret poked upward to the clouds; there a low, flat rooftop reflected the dwindling rays of the setting sun as it painted the surrounds in orange and vermilion. Yet despite the differences, each building contributed to the whole, each formed a part of the dragon’s body, head and wings. As the satellite image had suggested, one of those wings—the rightmost—sloped out across the river itself, the juddering struts of low buildings ridging across its surface. And everything, everything was creamy white.

“It’s incredible,” Domi whispered, her voice hushed with awe.

“More than that,” Grant said, “it’s like nothing on Earth.”

“Then where did it come from?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Grant assured her. “Which means we have to get lower.”

With that, the ex-Magistrate flicked the radio transmission button again to speak with the pilot. “Bring us down, Mahood,” he instructed. “Let’s see if we can find us a landing area.”

With a word of acknowledgment from the cockpit, the sturdy chopper banked left, its body rolling closer toward the dragon-shaped settlement. There was something else about it, Grant realized as they got closer. Despite all those buildings, he could see no people out in the streets, no one wandering amid the lifeless structures.

“My cousin Hassood will meet us by the left wing.” Mahood’s voice came over the radio speaker again. “There’s a flat space out there just beyond city limits where we can land. There’ll be a bit of a walk, I’m afraid.”

“Fine by me,” Grant began, but before the last word had left his lips, a bright burst of dazzling scarlet light flashed outside like lightning and the Blackbird shook as though it had struck something. “What th—?”

A moment later the chopper shuddered violently, and Grant, Domi and the others found themselves tossed across the metal decking. They were under attack.

* * *

GRABBING AT WHATEVER PASSED for handholds in the chopper’s interior, Grant hurried forward as the craft continued to shake. Behind him, Rosalia’s dog was barking fearfully.

“What the hell’s going on?” Grant asked as he saw the startled pilot, Mahood, struggling with the controls.

Grant was surprised to see that the piloting system was not the advanced, sleek dash he’d expected. Rather, old-fashioned dials and plates had been wired together and a bucket seat was positioned in front of two stick-style yokes, something like an ancient whirlybird.

Mahood, an olive-skinned Iranian with glistening sweat in the pebbledash stubble atop his head, looked at Grant with wide eyes, shouting something in his own tongue.

“Again,” Grant instructed. “In English.”

“A light ray,” Mahood translated as he fought with the yoke. “Laser. Laser beam.”

Even as he said it, Grant saw another blast zap past the cockpit windows, bloodred and ascending in a thick vertical line that was at least a dozen feet across.

“Shit,” Grant growled. One hit from that thing and they’d lose a wing…or worse. “Can you get us down?” Grant asked urgently, placing a hand on the back of Mahood’s seat to keep himself steady as they rolled and yawed.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Mahood spit as he struggled with the controls, banking the chopper so that Grant had to hang on to stop his head from slamming against the ceiling. Through the cockpit window, Grant could see the narrow crescent of the moon, a thin sliver of white hanging in the darkening blue sky.

Grant was an accomplished pilot himself and he stared at the bucket seat that Mahood sat in, his ample backside resting atop a fluffy pink cushion at odds with the worn brown leather of the ancient seat belt. “Want me to take over?” Grant asked.

Mahood pulled up on the stick as another thick blast of laser light cut through the air ahead of them, its edges crackling like lightning. “We need to land right now,” he explained in his fractured English. “I got her but I don’t think we’re—”

Another blast lit the cockpit, and something on the far right of the dash suddenly burst into flames. Mahood stretched out his sandaled foot and kicked at the flames, stamping them until they went out.

“Must land here, Mr. Grant,” he explained. “But quickly.”

“Yeah,” Grant agreed, “I can see that.”

Mahood banked in on a tight vector as Grant hurried back to the cargo hold, where his four allies were anxiously waiting. Swiftly he explained the situation to them as the ancient chopper rocked in the air, illuminated by another of the all-powerful crimson beams of laser light.

“Be ready, people,” Grant said. “We might have to ditch.”

Rosalia looked up from where she was steadying her dog. “What is that light show, anyway?”

“Looks like a pulse laser,” Grant explained. “Single shot but deadly as hell. I don’t think it’s tracking us. Looks more like it’s automated to react to anything in the sky. But it’s a wide enough beam to cut us if we get unlucky.”

“Local defence, huh?” Rosalia hissed. “Painful.”

Touchdown was as rough as it was unexpected. Grant opened the cargo door and urged his companions out.

“Been a pleasure, man,” Grant said over the radio communicator as he stepped up to the open door. “Clear skies.”

He jumped out into the courtyard where Mahood had landed and sprinted for the cover of the nearby buildings.

As Grant reached the edge of the courtyard the laser blasted again, rushing up into the sky in a column of bloodred lightning. From high above there was an explosion as something went up in flames—the chopper, Grant realized.

He peered up, his eyes aching as they struggled to look into the red beam of the laser. And then it switched off, as suddenly as it had fired, and the sky seemed to be plunged into darkness, the single slit eye of the moon a blurred white streak on his retina.

Grant saw that the chopper had been cut in two by the laser light, an expanding ball of flame bursting from its side as the pieces began to drop. He knew that Mahood was doomed, and threw himself into the mouth of an alley to seek shelter from the flaming wreckage falling from the sky.