7.

pulvis et embra sumus


It took them two months to prepare and leave for the city beyond the edge of their world. Four ships loaded with every remaining member of their flight corps and enough supplies that they'd have to run on every pad to keep the weight from bottoming them out. But the tiny caravan did leave and begin the long trek. They expected it would take them another month to reach the city depending on the condition of the tunnels.

Fifty-two days after leaving Zion they crossed the last set of mechanical lines and halted in front of massive gates almost twice the size of Zion's…

"Are you broadcasting?" Roland asked as he peered out of the view screen at the gates.

"I am." Ghost answered, and his hands fluttered across the boards, the Defiant settled down to the bottom of the tunnel. "But they're not receiving anything. We're going to have to try a manual override. Sacẻ. We've got no entry. I'm putting her down."

There was a crackle of static. "Fine."

The two men shared a look of equal parts irritation. They didn't like her, very few people did, and even her own crew tended to avoid their captain if at all possible. A sharp difference between the tightly knit team that Niobe had and the large sprawling family that Roland called his own. But Lock had always argued that a strong fleet was diversified among its members with many skills and talents, as she had been one of the few ships to survive, neither man could argue with his assessment.

The gates rose in front of them. Huge steel wrapped doors that showed no signs of battle or damage. They were shut and mute on what lay beyond them.

The Defiant settled to the ground and Ghost let her drop into an idle as Roland got back on the mike to the ships behind them. "All ships stand by while we try to breach the gates."

"Roger that." The Ave Maria.

"Aye, aye." The Aurora.

"What the hell are you waiting for? Let's just blast 'em." The very young and slightly crazy pilot of the Olympus.

"You lock one gun onto those gates and I will personally feed you to the next Sentinel we encounter." He clicked off the handset. "Goddamn crazy…" The words faded away as he glanced up and saw two figures at the back of the bridge. The first was too young to be in the fleet but Morpheus had overridden all objections. The second was her.

"We're here." He told them, just to have something to fill the silence.

"Oh wow." Kid bounded forward and leaned into the windshield so that he could see the gates better. He was still too gawky for his own good but the time spent rebuilding Zion had added muscle to his frame. "That's it, that's Agartha. It doesn't look like much but those gates are big. Really big. Do you think they had ships that large? I mean, they wouldn't barely fit in any of the lines. If…"

"That's it." Ghost gave him a look. "Why don't you help the operators get their equipment set up? I'm getting some residual power signatures, it might mean that the mainframe is still on-line."

"Right. Right. I'll get right on it. Man, this is so cool." Kid raced past Miri without a word, caught up in the excitement of what they'd found. Then, five feet past her, he skidded to a halt and looked back at her. "You coming?"

"In a minute."

Three months had given her a soft cap of curls and made her look younger than her thirty two years. Roland hadn't seen her very often during the shipboard preparations. First, Morpheus and the Council had monopolized her time, seeking answers that she did not have to give. The Oracle had sent them to save her, but now no one could find the Oracle or Seraph inside of the Matrix. She might have been fortold as a savior but no one had bothered to tell Miri and she found it difficult to believe that she was capable of something more. Then, when they had finally accepted that truth, the Kid latched onto her. He believed that she'd seen Neo in the Matrix despite her assertion that she didn't know exactly what had happened. Roland believed her. He'd seen strange things deep inside the supernova. A creature that looked like nothing human had held two struggling dragons in either hand as they burned from the inside, flaring incasdescent and super-hot, torching the code around them with the force of their death. The creature had two spiraling horns sprouting from the top of his head and curlicuing in wide spirals around his face and throat and then under either arm. A body made entirely of light and darkness with neither dominant. He would have sworn it was Seraph.

"We are more alike that you know." It told him while the twin dragons turned to ash and coal in his hands. "Protect and …" Roland couldn't hear the second command. The world was exploding around them and it was all he could do to hold onto the form at his side and pray that the tracer would find her. He shouted at Seraph to repeat himself but never heard the answer.

"Roland?" Ghost's voice startled him.

"Yeah."

"I'm heading down. You got the ship?"

"Yeah, I've got the ship." But still neither of them spoke while Ghost brushed between them and left the bridge.

"I…" her cheeks flared bright with embarrassment and she turned as though to leave.

"It's going to be chaos down there. I don't mind if you stay."

It took her a moment to decide. Then, with a small smile she gestured to the bridge controls. "How does it all work?"

The topic was a safe one. Roland left all other thoughts in the dark as he retreated into a familiar world and began to explain how the ships operated.


Persephone walked amid a garden that ran riot with vegetation all around her. Lush and humid, the tropical heat didn't cause a sheen of sweat on her face or condense moisture on the copper colored dress that she wore with stilettos despite the dirt underneath her feet. They didn't even dent the ground as she moved among the plants, a false image then.

White flowers hung thick around her as she trailed one hand among them, double petaled around a tall stamen that glistened yellow as though waiting for its pollinators that would never come. A faint frown drew at her lips as she reached up suddenly, viciously, and yanked a handful of them away from their roots. They held their sharp for a moment and dissolved with tiny fragments of light back into the Matrix.

"Nothing grows here." She said in bitter truth. It was not the first time that she had said it.

"Power grows here." The Merovingian answered from the place where he watched her. "Nymphaea tropical. The night blooming hybrid. That always was your favorite flower, ma cherie."

His observation irritated her. With a single wave of her hand the jungle disappeared to be replaced by another. This one was full of birds of paradise, hibiscus and orchids. A garish display of color and fragrance compared to the monochrome image of earlier.

"What do you want?" She didn't bother to add any pet names. Their triviality had dampened so much since she'd tasted the love that bound the humans together. Neo and Trinity. Word had come from the Machine City of their death and Persephone had found herself aggrieved over it. She had known that it would not last, such brightness never did, but she envied them for it even as she remembered that it was such love that had bound her into this world.

"A gift."

"A gift?" It wasn't like him. And a gift without strings was even more alien to the Merovingian's soul. Everything led to power.

"A gift." He repeated.

He held the tiny red velvet box in his outstretched hand as though offering a treat to a feral cat. Likewise, Persephone approached it warily. Her eyes flickered between the box and her husband, as though he would slip suddenly and betray that his gift had other value.

"Oh, pour l'amour d'un dieu." He said in exasperation and ripped the top off himself. Inside he had packaged the code into a chocolate, an edible treat with words inscribed in cursive across its smooth sweet shell: Mangez moi.

"Eat me." Persephone laughed suddenly as she realized that it was his attempt at a joke, from the man without a sense of humor. "What is it?"

"How long has it been since you were human?"

Persephone's eyes darkened with anger. She didn't like to think about it. She was a program, she had been a program for so long that whatever had once been mortal was so far gone that she could barely recall it, a fading memory of a dream. It was another life. Not even her own.

"Would you like to taste it again? Life?"

"How?" She lifted the chocolate and felt the code writhe through it as though a worm had taken refuge inside the candy, but there also, was the truth.

"I made a trade. A very valuable trade. And I got two things from it. One thing for me and one thing for you, my love." The Oracle's eyes felt like burning orbs in his pocket but he was not about to take them out, not before he'd decided what he was going to do with them. Mounting them was a pleasant option but he hadn't decided on that yet either.

The chocolate stood on the tips of her fingers, not melting, as she imagined the sweet taste of something other than code. Air. Water. Real love like Trinity had known. She forgot to ask what the downside was, for no gift of such value would be without a price, but it was too tempting amid the memories of the garden. With her eyes closed in pleasure she popped the chocolate into her mouth.


The gates opened.

Despite the age that had held them closed, they rolled apart easily, and majestically, opening onto a hangar bay that vastly outstripped that of Zion. The domed ceiling was not machined, but a natural cave sparkling with the deposits of quartz that studded its contours even as the flashlights of those explorers ran in long raking lines across the surface.

The mainframe was still active but decay had not left the city untouched. While a few lights flickered along the catwalks and landing circles, many were left dark. The gloom rose all around them even as they valiantly fought to pierce it with light, then suddenly, Ghost onboard the Defiant kicked her spotlights into action and lit up the world in front of them. The crowd cheered, a sound almost hysterical, as the light played off the ships set in even rows across the back of the bay. One after another. An entire fleet, proving that Lock was right, he had found something of more value than any rebuilt wreck would ever be. Ship after ship of all sizes and obviously the precursors to those that stood behind them. It was a treasure trove that seemed to be the salvation of them all.

"My god," Roland breathed at the front of the crowd. Colt and the rest of his crew flanked him as they walked out across the bridge towards Agartha. The lights continued to move behind them, shining on a massive control tower ringed with dark windows, and then across to doorways that seemed to lead into the city. "Where did they all go? To leave the ships and evacuate? It must have been desperation or insanity."

"Look at them." Colt kept running his hands over his head as though the motion soothed him. "That beast is bigger than the Hammer."

People were spreading out all behind them. Wandering the catwalks and exclaiming in excitement ever time they found something familiar. Someone screamed in happy hysteria as they opened an adjacent hangar door onto a fleet of smaller, sleeker APUs. People were jumping up and down all around him like they were children. Hugging, kissing, throwing fists into the air as though they couldn't contain the elation that drove them.

He caught sight of Niobe guiding the ships through the opening to empty landing pads and jogged back to her. A long jog through the shady light and the wide expanse of glittering roof, enough strangeness to give him a sense of vertigo.

"Niobe." He said to get her attention.

"I know we should get to work today," but a small smile quirked her lips. "But I think we should let everyone explore. This kind of thing is a once in a lifetime."

For once I'm not going to argue with you. But I'll bet you my next ration of sludge that we'll have to drag half of these fools of off those ships. Have you looked at them?" He couldn't help himself, he'd never seen anything that looked so beautiful in his life. Even the Hammer resurrected would find it hard to compete with that sight.

"Beautiful." She agreed - then shouted. "What the hell are you doing, Whisker? You're crowding the Aurora. Back off and reseat that bitch."

He grinned. "You always did have a way with words." His eyes caught on a figure all the way across the left catwalk. It was mostly dark in that section, but he could see the frail light that moved in front of the person as they approached one of the doors that looked like it led to the main city. There was something on the path in front of the doors, a darker patch of space that was only evident by the sudden feeling that something was there. Something he couldn't quite see, not at that distance, and not through the dark.

He took Niobe's handset and lifted it to his mouth over her sudden frown of protest. "Whisker, give me spotlights at your one o'clock. All the way across the bay."

"Land here. Put the lights there." Whisker complained back over the line. "What do I look like? A frigging…"

"Shut up and do it."

The large beams traced across the catwalk. Roland started to run and Niobe followed him as the light pushed out in front of them, spreading back the darkness.

The lights raced ahead of the two Captains and caught up to the slender form of Miri as she continued towards her goal. They shone across her, and then broke through the last few feet.

It was a statue.

Carved from white marble and layered with thick dust it seemed to wear a shivering coat as the light caught it and blasted away the darkness. A humanoid creature stood eight feet tall, with curved horns that fell away from its head and wrapped around its throat in a shape that no natural creature could have sustained. Its face was bland and featureless, as though someone had molded it to simulate humanity without wanting it to look human. Two things were ravaging at its sides and back as it tried to fend them off with a single slender spear. They had the shape and form of a lithe and lean crocodile, more serpent than hulking shape, with long fierce teeth and long frilled scales - dragons. One had bitten the left wing off of the creature, dragging the feathered mass to the ground even as the creature tried to defend its remaining side from sacrilege.

Roland was out of breath but ignored it as he and Niobe finally caught up to Mirielle. Her flashlight fell out of her hand as they caught her, clattering metallically against the catwalk and rolling away from them. He could feel her body shaking as the three of them took the last few steps and looked at a scene they were achingly familiar with.

"Seraph." Niobe whispered.

"Holy Christ." Roland knew the epithet didn't add anything to the discussion, but it made him feel better. "What the hell is going on?"


Latin translation: We are dust and shadow