Chapter 25 of Dragon's Legacy (DL) (Patreon)

The Coast Mountains of British Columbia came into sight as I dipped below the cloud layer. They were snowcapped and gorgeous, protruding like the heads of lions above the tall grass.

In the distance, I could see the city of Vancouver. Beyond its urban sprawl was the Pacific Ocean and Vancouver Island beyond it. It was a beautiful sight. It wasn’t my first time in this area, but in fairness, the last time I was here, I didn’t have the time to sight-see.I turned, banking to the right and heading north-bound, away from the city itself and into the mountains that surrounded it. That’s where the Wardens lived, in the military-industrial complex that had once belonged to Dragon herself. It wasn’t the location of the Birdcage, but it was close enough, or so went the common knowledge. Nobody really knew where the Birdcage actually was. A security measure, just one of many.Two years ago, Saint had tried to destroy the Wardens. Dozens, maybe hundreds of Suits had descended on the coastal mountains. The battle zig-zagged up and down the mountain slopes surrounding the fenced off base, into the concrete corridors of the outer buildings, and almost breaching into the main base itself. It was crazy, and everyone from Armsmaster’s faction, the Dragonslayers, the Wardens, the Elite, the Guild and one very, very stressed out Independent named Wraith had been involved.

I’d been here as part of an emergency relief force that showed up to reinforce the besieged Wardens. Frankly, it was a miracle I was even in the area in time to respond. I’d been roaming, trying to handle some of my issues with a good solitary flight… only to wind up in one of the biggest brawls I’d ever been in.Lurch of the Guild had showed up, too, partway through the fight. He was an Independent like me back then, and we fought side-by-side for hours. We kept going until I had no ammo left, no more mines in my hip-mounted dispenser. Just my beamsaber and a new friend by my side. Lurch had fought with his bare hands, tipped in talons from some beast-like Suit that he had mimicked.Communications flashed between the outer perimeter and my Suit. The Wardens knew I was coming, of course. I had called ahead, since I didn’t want to get shot down.The landing zone was clear, and there was a Suit waiting me as I touched down on the pad.

The Suit looked familiar. It was a Light Suit, painted in a dark grey color with a purple tint to it. It had a laser rifle sticking out over its shoulder, and sets of EMP-disablers mounted to its thighs. The Suit’s hands were bulky, reinforced, and on something that small, that meant it had power fists – electrically charged gauntlets that would channel the Suit’s capacitors directly into an enemy. It was the boxes on the Suit’s hips that gave it away, however. They were proximity mine dispensers, just like the one that I had on my hip, though this Pilot had two. I didn’t know many of the Wardens, since they rarely ever ventured away from the Birdcage and their duty to defend it… but I vaguely recognized this Suit. I didn’t know his name, but I had seen him before, which meant he was probably a veteran of Saint’s attempt to destroy the Wardens two years ago.“Wraith, right?” the Pilot asked. His voice caught me off caught – he sounded nervous. He shifted from foot to foot unnecessarily, and nodded his helmet towards me.“That’s me,” I replied. “What can I call you?”The Pilot paused, as if surprised that I would ask. “Courage,” he said, with a wince so powerful that I could see it in his body-language, even behind all that armor plating. “They call me Courage.”I winced in sympathy. Almost all callsigns were hidden insults, but they were personalized insults, fitting each person’s history and behavior. To get a callsign like Courage… not a good sign.“Nice to meet you, Courage,” I said, extending my hand. Credit to the man, he reached out and shook, his much smaller hand nearly disappearing inside my Medium-weight Suit’s grip. “Welcome to Dragon’s den,” he said, turning to gesture to the rest of the base. “I, uh, hope it’s a nicer visit than last time.”“It is,” I said, hoping to reassure him.Dragon had once lived here, and it showed. The entire facility, nestled between mountain ridges, looked like a futuristic research laboratory that had been isolated to better focus on their science. There were smaller research domes sprinkled between the much larger factory buildings that had churned out the Dragonsuits that now filled the world.But despite how advanced everything was, it was also… primitive, in some ways. Compared to the underground base of the Robin Hood Brigade, or the concrete walls that had guarded the Guild, this place’s primary defense was isolation and the Suits themselves. It had a chain-link fence with some barbed wire on the edges, and that was all. The base was woefully underdefended for something so important… because back then, who would have dared even try to fight Dragon in her own backyard?A time-capsule, that’s what it reminded me of. A world from the past, preserved in amber. This base was from a time before the Armor Wars, before the need to build every base against the possibility of a Suit brawl. The Wardens had tried to harden it since then, but there was only so much they could do.

Courage started the tour, talking with that same anxious voice, and I listened absently as we walked around the exterior of the base. Here was the primary engine labs where Dragon had designed the standard thrusters. There was the firing range where she had perfected the laser rifles. This was the rail line that had shipped in the raw materials for her foundries.It was like being in some European capital: everywhere on the Warden base was full of history. Even as Courage led me through the tour, I wondered if there was some symmetry here, to have my Dragonsuit back in the place where it had probably been manufactured.

For an hour, Courage showed me around, and for an hour, I paid close attention to everything he said. The Wardens knew that I was considering joining a Faction, and for all his nervousness, Courage was clearly picked so that they could put their best foot forward, and recruit me.“…and that’s why we’re extending this offer,” Courage said, finishing up his explanation. “Many other Factions have recommended you, and if you want, we would be happy to welcome you to the Wardens.”“Thank you,” I said with a regretful smile behind my helmet. “But… unfortunately, I think I have to decline.”

Courage looked surprised at my words, but only for a moment. After a few milliseconds, his shoulders relaxed, and he looked almost as if he’d realized something.“It’s the morality of the Cage, isn’t it?” he asked softly. “The responsibility of keeping all those monsters locked up.”“And the innocent people,” I said, very carefully. “Is Canary still alive in there?”

Courage sucked in a breath behind closed teeth, and he bowed his head in acknowledgement of the point.We were standing outside of the main repair bay, which had its doors open. To my left, I could see the gleaming gantries of automated maintenance bays, and to my right, I saw the Coast Mountains in all their snow-capped beauty. It was a gorgeous view that reminded me of the Dragonsuits themselves – that strange blend of machine metal and natural grace. As if Dragon had taken inspiration from these specific surroundings, and tried to bring them to life in her work.“She is,” Courage said, with pained voice. “And we regret that she’s in there.”“You can regret it all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that you can’t let her out,” I said. I wasn’t trying to argue with the Warden Pilot. He was nice, if a bit shy, and he didn’t deserve that kind of hostility. His tour of the base had been warm, as if I was some old friend that had stopped in to visit, rather than a potential hostile that was evaluating them for the rather mercenary purpose of deciding which Faction to sign up with.

But that was the big problem with the Wardens. That was why they were so controversial.The Wardens maintained the Birdcage. They threw people in the most secure prison in all of Earth Bet, and once you were inside, there was no way out. Not even for the mistakes, like Canary.

Canary’s story hadn’t gotten that much attention back in the days before Dragon’s death. It was just some cape going over the line, and getting punished for it. It took nearly a year for the truth to come out. A rookie Pilot in Armsmaster’s faction had shared his Suit’s audio-log with his leader, and Armsmaster had published it across the whole world – the truth of what Dragon had tried to do to stop Canary’s imprisonment. The prosecutor that hadn’t cared, and just wanted to establish a hard precedent against Master capes.. The chains that the artificial intelligence had been bound by, and forced to follow.From everything I’d heard, the Wardens were incredibly selective about who they put inside the ‘Cage. No more government interference. No more railroaded parahumans that were tossed in to send a message. Hell, no more three strikes rules. The abuses that had been heaped on Dragon, and her inability to refuse them, had been scarred into the collective culture of the Wardens – and now, they refused to allow another innocent to be condemned to the Birdcage.It was a dichotomy that probably seemed very odd to civilians who were neither Pilot nor Parahuman. After all, while the crime rate had dropped in recent years, the fatality rates and property destruction had both gone up. Parahumans still tried to follow the unwritten rules, but Pilots were very different, and so many of our brawls ended in deaths.

But who was I to judge? During that Kansas City brawl, I executed a Pilot with my beam saber when he refused to surrender. I killed him without the tiniest twitch of hesitation. I gave the order to fire a portable black hole at a whole host of criminal Pilots, and had probably killed another dozen people without so much as a flutter of my conscience.So why should I care about imprisonment? Wasn’t death so much worse than being locked up?No.It wasn’t. Death was a kindness compared to being forced to live in the Birdcage with all those monsters. People were wary of me because I was a Pilot that survived four years of flying, but some of the Parahumans inside the Birdcage had been there for over a decade, and they’d been active for a decade before that.And even with the Wardens being responsible guardians of it… it was hard to think about doing that job. Standing on the metaphorical prison wall, knowing what kind of tortures were going on inside. Getting melted by Acidbath, or smashed against a wall by Gavel… or worse, tortured by Lab Rat and mutated into some strange monster.I knew the theory behind it. The logic of imprisonment as a moderating force, no different from the unwritten rules. It was supposed to encourage parahuman Villains to not go full out, and to hold back a little, so that they wouldn’t get a bullet to the brain as soon as they surrendered. What I didn’t know was how well that theory actually worked in practice – if it even did. Maybe someone else knew, someone like Armsmaster who had been around before the Birdcage and afterwards. I had grown up with the Birdcage as a known fact, a solid reality. I had never known the world before it, and if it was better or worse.

All I knew was that there were no Pilots in the Birdcage. The Wardens refused to put any of them inside, for the claimed reasons that it would be effectively an execution, and it would supply too much technology and resources to the Tinkers confined inside – perhaps enough that they could escape somehow.

“I get it,” Courage said, hanging his head. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, coming from me, but… we all think about it. It’s on our minds constantly.”

My eyebrow quirked inside my cockpit, and I glanced over at the smaller Suit standing next to me. “Are you serious?” I asked, unable to hold it back. He nodded. “What happens when the Birdcage fails, Wraith?” Courage asked me, his voice trembling. “We can’t maintain it forever, you know. Nobody could. Only Dragon. We can keep it safe, and we can send in food and water, and we can try to keep the lights on… but one day, the Cage is going to fall apart.”I sucked in a breath. I hadn’t thought about that. It was obvious in some ways, because all Tinkertech inevitably failed without maintenance. Only the Dragonsuits –“But the Suits,” I said in a rush, the words spilling out of me as the thought hit me like lightning. “Dragon’s Suits don’t need nearly as much maintenance. What if the Birdcage is the same? What if-”

Courage shook his head, and cut me off.“It’s not,” he said, his voice aching with sadness. “Whatever she did to the Suits, she didn’t do it to the Cage. It’s going to break one day, and when it does, what do we do?”The Pilot’s voice cracked on those last words, and I stared. “Everyone thinks it must be horrible to be a Warden, because we have to keep all those people locked away,” Courage said, his shoulders shuddering even through his Suit. “But that’s not what scares us. We’re all too busy worrying about what happens when the Birdcage breaks.”“The deaths,” I murmured, eyes wide.“If we’re lucky!” Courage replied, with a half-laugh, half-cry. “If the Cage just failed one day, just imploded and killed them all, it would be bad, yeah, but honestly, that’s the best case scenario. Do you know who’s in there, Wraith? You want String Theory running around, building another mass driver with Dragonsuit tech? You want Gavel looking at all the people that us Pilots have killed, and deciding that makes us guilty to his code?“What if the Cage starts breaking, and they get out?” Courage asked me, his chin tilted up to look at my taller helmet. Even with the armor, even with the emotionless metal, I got the feeling that he was crying underneath it. “What if, in order to prevent all that death… we have to pull the trigger ourselves?”The Pilot gestured out at the mountains around us with a pointed finger, ranging from one to the next. I knew as he did, that the real Birdcage was probably in the Canadian Rockies, which was an entirely different mountain range, but his gesture still made the point. Somewhere out there was the Birdcage, hiding within one of the many mountains. If the Wardens ever decided to destroy it, then that mountain peak would disappear forever – crumbling down to fill the hollow void where the prison had been.“There’s kids in there,” he said, and a horrible chill spread down my spine. “What?” I asked, my voice croaking like it hadn’t since high-school.“Kids,” Courage repeated. “Dragon used to put contraceptives in the food, but when she died and Dumas took over, we didn’t know that, and there was a gap. Fifteen pregnancies in two months, before the inmates realized. They spotted it before we did. Demanded we start putting them back in. Even they know that it’s not right. We’re lucky that they all agreed to not hurt the kids. That’s how Crane the Harmonious died. She tried to take one of the kids, and the other inmates killed her for it.”“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.Children in the Birdcage. That – that was a new kind of horror. Arrogant as I was, I hadn’t ever considered the possibility of it. The Birdcage was… out of sight, out of mind. Even when I’d fought to defend this very base, and keep Saint from cracking it open, I hadn’t considered the possibility that the men and women of that prison might have children.“When the Cage starts to fail, what do we do?” Courage asked, his voice miserable. “Saint wants Teacher out, we all know that. If Teacher gets out, then what if they start making new Suits? What if they can finally figure out how to steal a Suit from someone? Can we take that risk? Or do we blow it all up, just in case?”I started at the Pilot, and I didn’t have an answer for him. It was almost too horrible to contemplate. The Dragonslayers were monsters, and I’m not just saying that because they killed Dragon. They were monsters because they had somehow built an entire society of criminal Pilots. It shouldn’t have been possible, because Villains rarely managed to work together in groups that large. The Elite of the old days, like the Fallen and so many other gangs, had been forced to splinter into cells and lesser affiliates not because they couldn’t afford to gather in numbers, but because that many criminals just couldn’t get along with each other. But somehow, Saint had managed to pull all those Pilots together. He somehow kept them going, kept them unified. That was more terrifying than anything else. The idea of the long-vanished threat of Teacher coming out of the Birdcage, and being handed an organization of Pilots with Dragonsuits, all primed and ready to follow his orders.“Suppose…” I tried to say, only to cough, and try again. “I suppose it depends.”“Oh?” Courage asked, looking back at me. “Depends on what, you think?”The man’s voice had changed. He didn’t sound as sad anymore. Instead, it sounded like he was curious. Maybe he’d already though about this exact question, because it was obvious that the Wardens had been thinking about these problems for a long time while the rest of us had just been smashing our Suits against each other like children with dolls.“I think it depends on the future,” I said slowly. “It depends on whether you think the world is going to get better, or get worse.”

Courage didn’t speak for a moment. Then, with a deep inhale, he nodded.“You might not like us,” he said slowly. “But you’d fit in well here, Wraith.”“Really?” I asked, surprised by that.“That’s how Dumas talks,” Courage said. “He tries to teach us all. Not the future stuff that you just said. The other things, about what would be the right choice. He deals with that problem all the time. We’re just the guards. He’s the boss, and he’s the one who might have to make the decision.”Courage started walking forward, and I followed him. He was ambling forward with a methodical pace that should have looked leisurely and relaxed, but instead looked nervous and hesitant. “He’s honest with us about that,” the Warden told me. “He shares his thoughts, his worries, his beliefs. He doesn’t want people in the Wardens if they aren’t thinking about this kind of stuff.”“But you offered me a spot,” I said, pointing out the flaw in his logic. “You offered that to me before I said anything like this. How does that fit?”“We don’t always get what we want in life,” Courage answered, with an exhausted voice. “You’re a good Pilot, Wraith. We’d be happy to have you for your skills alone. The next time sometime tries something, you’d be there with us. Maybe you wouldn’t have been thinking about this kind of thing, but that wouldn’t mean much, just that you wouldn’t get as many promotions. But skill… we can use skill.”He paused for a moment, and we both watched as a pair of Dragonsuits rolled forwards along the perimeter of the fenceline on their treads. They looked like mobile AA batteries, one with a quadruple mount of forty millimeter Bofors, the other with a twin rack of advanced missile launchers. “If we ever lose, that’s the decision that Dumas had to make,” Courage told me quietly. “If Saint ever gets close to winning, then Dumas has to push the button or not. Can you imagine what kind of burden that man’s carrying?”“Not really,” I admitted. “I don’t think I ever met him.”“He’s a good leader,” Courage said, with a bit of warmth in his voice. “I know I’m making a mess of this, and maybe someone more charismatic should have been here to give you the tour, but… Dumas cares. You can tell when he’s sitting with us. Even though he doesn’t eat with us, he still takes the time to sit down, every meal, and talk with everybody. Get to know them.”Something was odd about that.“He doesn’t eat?” I asked. “He’s got one of those weird sets of nanites, then? The ones that allow a Pilot to not breathe, eat, drink, or sleep? What do they call it, the mycelium upgrade?”“Maybe,” Courage said, unhelpfully. “Or maybe he just eats in his quarters. But whenever we see him, he never takes off his helmet.”“Helmet?” I asked, surprised. “What, like, when he’s in his Suit?”“No,” Courage told me, shaking his head. “Dumas wears a helmet all the time. Nobody’s ever seen him without it. His face, it’s… a mystery. Why do you think we call him Dumas?”It took a moment, but Mom’s old lessons finally clicked in my head. Alexandre Dumas, the author of the Three Musketeers. One of the later books, after the eponymous musketeers had split up, had involved the infamous ‘Man in the Iron Mask’. Funny thing to call their leader… but if he walked around all the time in an identity-concealing helmet, then maybe it fit.

The two of us stood there for a moment, and I thought about the fact that I’d been offered a spot in yet another Faction. That made four now. The Robin Hood Brigade, the Guild, Khagan’s Raiders, and now the Wardens. It should have been enough. I was only doing these meet and greets because I knew that I needed to do more with my life, or I’d fall apart.

My negative emotions were like a ravenous beast chasing me, and I couldn’t out-run them forever. Maybe, just maybe, if I could repair my Suit faster, and contribute more, I’d be able to overcome those emotions. Even with four offers, I was hesitating. I didn’t want to join Khagan’s Raiders, because they were barely a step above criminals now. I didn’t want to join the Wardens, because I didn’t like the moral complexity of the Birdcage. But the Robin Hood Brigade, or the Guild? Both of those Factions were full of good people, close enough to my university, and they weren’t doing anything that I had doubts about. And yet I still couldn’t muster up the courage to join either of them. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t fear of dying, because I’d come so close a dozen times, and that sensation had been almost entirely burned out of me. It wasn’t concerns about their loyalty, because I knew most of their senior officers, and they weren’t the type to abuse my trust.There was something holding me back. Something emotional. I didn’t know what, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t come up with any good answers.“Hey,” I said softly, glancing at Courage. “I’m not joining up, but if you’re OK with it, then I’d like to put my contact info down. If something goes wrong, and you need help, you can call me.”The Warden nodded. “We appreciate that,” Courage said. He went to continue, but something else cut him off before he could speak.A howling siren cut across the base. Red warning lights started flashing. Noise erupted from every corner of the base, from modern-sounding nuclear alarm whines to the infamous banshee wail of older, World War Two air raid sirens. It was loud enough that I could have heard it inside my Dragonsuit even if I’d cut off all external audio feeds. Everybody froze. The patrolling Pilots with their anti-air Suits, the nearby mechanics, Courage, even me. It wasn’t because we were confused, or wondering what was happening. Everyone knew exactly what that siren meant.It was the Endbringer siren.Courage held up a panicked hand to keep me from speaking, and we all stood there for a moment, counting. If the pattern repeated, if it continued again, then it meant that the Endbringer was coming here, right now. If it didn’t, then it was going somewhere else.Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. The sirens faded, and a man’s voice boomed over the base’s speakers.“Behemoth has been detected across the border in America. He is approaching the city of Tacoma, Washington.”Software sprang to life with a thought. I glanced frantically through maps. I was an East Coast girl, I didn’t know where Tacoma was. I got the answer near instantly, Dragon’s programs calculating not only the location, but also the distance.Two hundred miles. That’s how far Behemoth was from me. It was close enough that I could get to that location in a little more than ten minutes.