Dragons' Wrath (novel)
Dragons' Wrath is the sixty-third Virgin New Adventures novel. It reintroduced Irving Braxiatel, whose first major appearance was alongside Benny in Theatre of War, and depicts his first meeting with Benny from his point of view.
Publisher's summary
"Trouble?"
"What makes you think that?"
"Oh, you know, the usual. Cordoned-off area, security guards swapping war stories," Benny said, smiling. "The fact that you're here."
The Gamalian Dragon — a jewel-encrusted statuette captured by the Imperator Gamaliel from the Knights of Jeneve at the legendary Battle of Bocaro.
When Bernice Summerfield gets asked on an expedition by Gamaliel's descendant, Romolo Nusek, it is an offer her department can't afford to let her refuse. But, as usual, there are a few problems.
For one thing, Nusek is an evil warlord out to consolidate his power by any means necessary. For another, there's a body in the Theatrology building — and the dead man had an appointment with Benny's old friend, the mysterious Irving Braxiatel. Most worrying of all, the Gamalian Dragon, one of the best guarded and most valuable archaeological relics in known space, seems to be lying in a battered Gladstone bag on the floor of Benny's bedroom.
Aided only by Braxiatel and historian Nicholas Clyde, Benny must unravel the dragon's ancient mystery before the warlord's plans reach completion — and an assassin closes in for the kill.
Chapter titles
- Death in the Night
- Meeting People
- Enter the Dragon
- The Castle of Ice and Fire
- Dead of Night
- The Grave Robbers
- Fighting in the Trenches
- Departures
- Nusek's Gambit
- Model Behaviour
- Knight Visitor
- Death in the Night
- Breaking Glass
- The Historian's Tale
- An Independent Inquiry
- Knight Moves
- Teetering on the Brink
- The Dragon and His Wrath
Plot
At St Oscar's, Newark Rappare sells a pair of artefacts to Mastrov and is horrified when Mastrov destroys the mould that it had been agreed would remain in his keeping. Rappare removes an object from his safe and, knowing he is being followed, carries it away in a bag which he drops when he bumps into the drunk Benny outside Cordelia's. Benny takes the bag for safekeeping and, in the morning, notices that the Department of Theatrology's Shakespeare Building has been cordoned off following the discovery of Rappare's body, apparently dead because of massive heart failure. There, she is reunited with head of Theatrology Braxiatel, who is meeting her for the first time and believes that Rappare is the victim of murder. Later, Braxiatel finds that Rappare had sent him a video message the previous night informing him that he would be visiting with an important artefact and discovers that Rappare's bank account has been closed.
Benny is invited by her head of department, Follett, to a meeting with Kamadrich, who offers a substantial sum of money in return for assistance in an expedition to Stanturus Three funded by Romolo Nusek, a descendant of legendary hero Hugo Gamaliel known for wiping out the Knights of Jeneve and being associated with the Gamalian Dragon statuette. From the description given by expert Nicholas Clyde, Benny realises that the Gamalian Dragon must be what she found in Rappare's bag and shows it to him, but he states that the statuette is jealously protected by Nusek on Tharn and Braxiatel, having seen Rappare's studio full of duplicate artefacts, believes that Benny's is a fake. Braxiatel also informs her of the likelihood that Nusek's aim is to establish a valid claim to Stanturus Three through his descent from Gamaliel so that he can take control of the Gang of Five and build up a power base against Earth's empire.
Benny heads to Nusek's Castle of Ice and Fire on the side of a volcano on Tharn with Nicholas, Kamadrich and Gilder to meet him in person before joining the dig. She is given a tour of the palace and permitted to see the Gamalian Dragon as well as the tomb of Henri of Bosarno, Gamaliel's right hand man who died in his arms after the defeat of the Knights. Despite Moxon Reddik, Keeper of the Archives of Tharn, claiming that the Dragon has not left its case in over a century, Benny notices that it has been removed and replaced in a slightly different position on its cushion and at night secretly returns to the archives with Nicholas, who is intrigued by the omissions and gaps in the library's books and documents. Avoiding the cryvoks, Benny swaps the Dragon with Rappare's and Nicholas identifies the missing books and documents as ones which are less favourable of Gamaliel, works which Reddik, whom they find in a hidden cavern, admits that he removed so that Nusek could not destroy them. They help him remove a statue of a lion-wolf creature from Henri's tomb and take it to keep it safe should Nusek decide to destroy the tomb.
On the flight to Stanturus Three, Benny compares Nusek's Dragon with a hologram of Rappare's and confirms that they are indistinguishable. She is scratched and bitten by rat-like creatures whilst working on the planet thanks to a geophyz scanner not being connected and, whilst she recuperates, Kamadrich has Nicholas act as an independent observer in Benny's place. Nicholas informs Kamadrich when the team finds a ruin in surprisingly good condition, although Kamadrich keeps Benny from seeing the entirety of his message, and most of the team there subsequently die in an explosion. A third Gamalian Dragon is found where Benny was attacked, but she suspects that it has been planted there to bolster Nusek's claims about Gamaliel and that Nusek has been trying to kill her and/or Nicholas, whom she finds alive as the sole survivor of the explosion. With the goal achieved, Nusek's troops take them both aboard a shuttle to leave.
Benny produces a hologram of the Stanturan Dragon and finds that it is not identical to the other two, indicating that it is the original, removed from Nusek's archives, whilst the other two are copies created using the same modern technology. Now unable to denounce it as a fake as she intended to, she agrees to give evidence at the hearing on Talisman Station to assess Nusek's claim and is permitted to return to Dellah with Gilder. She is attacked upon arriving at her home, but Braxiatel scares them off, repairs the damage the attacker did to Joseph and updates her on his findings; he believes that Rappare copied the Dragon for Nusek and planned on selling the second one he made in secret to Braxiatel so that he could flee Dellah. He has also been in communication with Grand Master of the Knights of Jeneve, who sends Dr Archduke as a representative to speak with him. Archduke confirms Braxiatel's deduction that the Knights deliberately lost at Bacaro so that they could hide and so that Gamaliel would take the Dragon from them.
Braxiatel looks over blueprints of the Dragon provided by Archduke whilst Benny goes for a drink and is approached by Kamadrich, who claims that Nusek is trying to kill her and that the two of them have to expose him. Benny agrees and takes her back to her rooms where she realises that Kamadrich, giving away that she had searched the rooms thoroughly given how easily she finds the hidden coffee, is the one who has been trying to kill her and that she is not the real Kamadrich. She throws coffee into the face of Kamadrich, who is actually the cyborg Mastrov, and flees to Braxiatel by breaking into the Shakespeare Building. He has discovered that the Dragon contains a camera which the Knights used to spy on Gamaliel and that, if they can get a hold of the real Dragon now back in Nusek's possession, they could use the footage to expose Nusek's scheme at the hearing, which Braxiatel has ensured he will be overseeing as chairman.
Braxiatel flies his spaceship to Talisman with Benny hidden beneath a false floor. Whilst he is being given a tour of the space station, Benny uses the ship's systems to download a map, identify the likely place where Nicholas is being held and rescue him, but the guards begin their search before they can reach Braxiatel's ship and they are forced to hide. Nicholas tells Benny how the team discovered that the ruins on Stanturus Three had belonged to the steggodons and not Gamaliel and that it was Nusek's men who caused the explosion to cover this up. They are then found and captured by Mastrov and Webbe, Nusek's Head of Internal Security, and watch the inquiry remotely from their cell. On the second day, Braxiatel insists on the two of them being called as expert witnesses and Webbe takes the two of them there.
Nicholas, at Braxiatel's prompting, tells the story of the expedition including the deaths of the archaeologists at the hands of Nusek's men, a claim that Braxiatel notices both Nusek and Webbe seem genuinely surprised by. Benny tells the inquiry that the Stanturan Dragon is a fake made by Rappare, presents the copy that she took from Tharn and threatens to smash all three to find which contains video circuity and a microphone, at which point Mastrov orders the director and technicians to stop the broadcast. She smashes the copy from Tharn, but Nusek remarks that she will never risk smashing a genuine artefact and is angered by her and Nicholas's claims about Gamaliel being a corrupt despot and a criminal. Unaware that a single camera is still broadcasting, Nusek openly states that he would cheat, lie and kill to achieve his aims and admits to faking archaeological evidence. Benny grabs one of the Dragons and runs to the docking bay with Braxiatel and Nicholas.
Benny, Braxiatel and Nicholas leave the station with an escaped steggodon which dislikes Nicholas. As the steggodons on Stanturus Three disliked Mastrov, Benny sees this as an indictment on Nicholas's character; she questions the antique keypad that he carries with him at all times, one which he had previously claimed was the first artefact he had unearthed despite also having said that he had never been on a dig before, and him having previously used the valediction of the Knights of Jeneve. He admits that he is a Knight and that he killed the archaeologists to cover up the fact that the ruins did indeed prove Gamaliel's presence on Stanturus Three to keep Nusek from gaining power, which would have threatened the Knights. After doing so, Webbe's cruiser catches up with Braxiatel's ship and he boards, capturing the trio and taking them to Nusek on Tharn.
On the journey, Braxiatel deduces from the Knights' choice of lead as shielding for the Gamalian Dragon that it is actually a fission grenade, one that Nicholas explains they did not detonate due to the risk of damaging the Dragon of Jeneve statuette that Henri of Bosarno had taken from them. Said statuette acts as an encryptor for the Knights' archives and is what Reddik, the Knights' Archivist Major, handed to Nicholas from Henri's tomb after Benny gave a description of an Eastern-style dragon which made him realise it had been under his nose all along. Nusek has Benny hand the Gamalian Dragon in her possession over upon their arrival and orders the three of them to be executed, but Reddik saves them and Braxiatel uses force fields protecting them from the volcano's lava to block Nusek's men's fire. Nicholas falls into the lava and pulls Mastrov with him, but before doing so he throws Benny, who has grabbed her Dragon back, his lucky keypad.
Realising that the keypad is the detonator for the Gamalian Dragon, Braxiatel has Benny activate it and begin the countdown to destroy the real Dragon. Benny, Braxiatel and Reddik run from the damaged Mastrov and retrieve an optical sphere containing the entirety of Nusek's collection whilst Nusek refuses to leave the Dragon on a ledge onto which it has fallen despite it scalding him when he touches it. Nusek is killed when the Dragon explodes and Mastrov is severely damaged by lava and torn apart by a steggodon, allowing Benny, Braxiatel and Reddik to escape to Braxiatel's ship. Webbe declines to join them, however, as he intends to rescue as many of his men from the eruption as he can. On the return journey, Reddik admits that the information that Benny and Nicholas used to destroy Gamaliel's reputation, which he removed from the library to keep Nusek in the dark, was almost entirely fake and disseminated by the Knights over the years. Braxiatel also wonders if the Gamalian Dragon ever was a surveillance device as Archduke claimed.
Benny and Braxiatel attend an exhibition of Rappare's fakes and wonder about the true purpose and motives of the Knights of Jeneve. Although Braxiatel has some ideas, both are content to leave the matter for now. Taking pride of place at the exhibition is Rappare's copy of the Gamalian Dragon.
Characters
- Bernice Summerfield
- Irving Braxiatel
- Joseph
- Wolsey
- Ferdinand Archduke
- Polybus Arex
- Bjork
- Callum
- Nicholas Clyde
- Divson Follett
- Hugo Gamaliel
- Martha Gannymede
- Mappin Gilder
- Grodzki
- Harker
- Truby Kamadrich
- Krama
- Alain Lassita
- Marjorie Marjorie
- Menson
- Mike
- Romolo Nusek
- Newark Rappare
- Anton Rastian
- Moxon Reddik
- Anne-Marie Rose
- Skutloid
- Tapshorn
- Timyan
- Lanslot Webbe
- Emilia Winston
Worldbuilding
Bars and pubs
- Benny drinks with students at the Witch and Whirlwind, the Garland College pub.
Businesses
- Hugo Gamaliel was allegedly chairman and chief executive of BrokTek.
- Ormand-Seltec are a technology company.
Food and drink
- Nicholas Clyde drinks Captain's Ruin.
Individuals
- Irving Braxiatel meets Bernice for the first time.
- Irving Braxiatel is head of St Oscar's University Department of Theatrology.
- Newark Rappare is Professor of Art and artisan-in-residence at St Oscar's University. He is an excellent art forger.
- Ferdinand Archduke is Professor of Earth Literature, in the Department of Literature of the Milky Way. He is a specialist in Obscure Theatrical Forms.
- Benny meets Irving Braxiatel for the first time (for him); however she met him in most likely his future on the Braxiatel Collection.
- Webbe's brother trades out of Xanta.
- Symon Dextro's Tom-Tom Ensemble perform at Cordelia's.
Locations
- Nusek's palace is at Omensk on Tharn.
- Cryvoks were created on Pogodus.
- Benny requests information from the University of Praxis Maier, the Musée des Arts d'Antiquites and the Collegiate Archives of Thrast.
- Alain Lassita comes from Deyton Beta.
- Four warlords of the Gang of Five watch the Stanturan Inquiry from Klapidon Major.
Media
- Martha Gannymede contributes to Historiography Today
- Aural Schedule is a vidcast schedules infospool.
Organisations
- The Knights of Jeneve a group of humans holding knowledge for the safety of all humanity, their saying is "Knowledge above all".
Technology
- Braxiatel gives Benny a floptical disk including the software agent Mike.
- The Knights of Jeneve used fireraiders.
Notes
- This was the sixth novel (though only fourth BNA) to be adapted by Big Finish Productions as part of their Bernice Summerfield series. Though the adaptation omitted Braxiatel, the scene where he met Benny for the first time was later adapted and appeared in Gallifrey: Disassembled.
Continuity
- This is the first appearance of Irving Braxiatel (in the Benny New Adventures). It is also the first chronological meeting of Braxiatel and Benny from Braxiatel's point of view; Benny first met him in PROSE: Theatre of War.
- The Knights of Jeneve may be a descendant of UNIT, which was headquartered in Geneva. (TV: Spearhead from Space [+]Loading...["Spearhead from Space (TV story)"] et al.)
- The Knights of Jeneve would later appear in PROSE: Deadfall.
External links
- Dragons' Wrath at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: Dragons' Wrath at The Whoniverse
- The Cloister Library: Dragons' Wrath
