Literature / The Cyber Dragons Trilogy

aka: Daughter Of The Cyber Dragons

Party like its the 2080s.

The Cyber Dragons Trilogy is a three part Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk book series by C.T. Phipps and Michael Suttkus.

Keiko "Kei" Springs is a Rider, a specialized form of delivery girl and mercenary all in one. They are among the most highly prized criminals in the dystopian neon city of New Los Angeles. Kei has been running from her past for years and has literally erased it from her mind using a popular street drug called lethe. Unfortunately, you can't outrun your past forever, even on her specialized Nina cybercycle.

Strapped for cash, Kei accepts a job she probably shouldn't after barely surviving a live fire test by a married pair of oligarchs. Teamed up with a group of other mercenaries and cyborgs, Kei is to seek out a stolen computer program that has the power to drive otherwise ordinary individuals to shocking acts of violence. Her team includes her ex, a handsome bioroid assassin, a teenage hacker, and a ruthless corporate exec that all have their own agendas. It'd be the worst time of her life if not for all the ones she can't remember.

Books in the series:

• Daughter of the Cyber Dragons (2022)
• Revenge of the Cyber Dragons (2022)
• End of the Cyber Dragons (2023)

It is part of the Futurepunk setting, which is The 'Verse for all C.T. Phipps' science fiction stories.

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Series

• Action Girl: The book is full of them with Kei herself, Lucita, Fate Firenza, and even Paradise to an extent.
• Affectionate Parody: The series is a lot less serious than Agent G and involves copious amount of snark, lampshade hangings, and ridiculous situations that our heroes have to fight their way out of. Multiple references are made to other cyberpunk series and how weird it is the world ended up identical to them.
• After the End: This takes place a couple of decades after a volcano destroyed Wyoming and covered the United States in a year long Winter. It has rebuilt itself into a cyberpunk dystopia using AI-created technology and millions of bots.
• Apocalypse Anarchy: This is a Downplayed Trope as the Eruption of the Yellowstone caldera results in the Collapse, which ends with a billion people killed globally and ten years of anarchy. It's a downplayed trope because eventually society gets, mostly, back on its feet and becomes a Cyberpunk Dystopia.
• The Apunkalypse: The Jackals are groups of nomadic bandit gangs consisting of Neo Confederates, Neo Nazis, and militias that exist to prey upon people outside of the main cities. The government doesn't bother to deal with them as long as they keep their victims to the poor or those outside the arcologies.
• Arcology: Huge massive self-sufficient cities have replaced most of the United States' former ones with other smaller ones being demolished to provide materials to construct them. New Los Angeles is where the majority of the stories take place with mile-tall skyscrapers despite the fault lines and it being explicitly stated to be one of twenty in the former United States.
• Band of Brothels: The Morrigan are a collection of sex workers and their mercenaries that have driven out the other organized criminals from the Refugee Zone, especially the human traffickers.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Snake teaches his students that they should have Undying Loyalty to their employers and always focus themselves on self-improvement as well as becoming the best assassins possible. He also believes that only the strongest should survive and honor belongs to those who are victorious through any means possible. It would be a Proud Warrior Race philosophy if not for the fact Fate and Kei note he's a Mexican gangster working for the Yakuza. Subverted by Revenge of the Cyber Dragons in that all of this is just a facade.
• Cool Bike: Kei's "Nina" is a cerulean super-bike that can navigate New LA's streets and outperform most high-performance vehicles. It also has some modifications that would make KITT from Knight Rider proud.
• Cool Car: The War Wagon, which is nicknamed the "Winnebago of Doom", and is an APC equipped as a mobile command center for hackers.
• Cool Shades: Kei wears one of these on the cover and at several points during the book.
• Cowboy Cop: Miles was this on the force and David uses his influence with the drone division to help a criminal (AKA Kei).
• Cyber Ninja: Has Keiko "Kei" Springs and her mentor, Snake, as two of these. Snake kidnapped her as a child and proceeded to train her as an apprentice assassin for a decade while slowly having parts of her body replaced with advanced cybernetics. The modern Kei is still mostly organic but Snake is a Full-Conversion Cyborg.
• Cyborg: Cybernetics are ubiquitous and used to replace bad organs and missing body parts. They can also be used as enhancements for soldiers or those who don't like their existing bodies with the most extreme example being "Shells" who are all machine but for their brains. Technology is advanced enough that their quality of life improves rather than diminishes.
• Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: G AKA Case Gordon was the protagonist of the Agent G series but becomes Keiko "Kei" Springs' boyfriend and partner in the Cyber Dragons series. Somewhat of a Downplayed Trope because he remains a Sixth Ranger to their party.
• Denser and Wackier: As compared to the Agent G series. There is a lot more humor related to the worldbuilding, pop culture references, and characters snarking at one another. It also includes a talking electric sheep named Harrison (Ford).
• Dirty Cop: Kei's opinion is that the entirety of the NLAPD are composed of this with the possible exception of Miles. He's revealed to be much the same in the end, albeit with extenuating circumstances.
• Evil Mentor: Snake Juarez is a Western Samurai who trains Kei and Fate in the arts of ninjitsu.
• Fantastic Noir: The series appears to be a science fiction action thriller but the protagonist soon finds themselves wrapped up in conspiracies, detective work, and dark pasts they want to forget.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: The series has these bodies but they have become more common place with cheap knock offs and plastic versions replacing the extremely expensive ones from Agent G. They are still extremely expensive but no more so than extensive plastic surgery.
• Genki Girl: Paradise is bubbly and warm despite being a teenager raised in a brothel turned mercenary.
• Honest Corporate Executive: A rarity in cyberpunk but both Case and Lucita qualify as they are individuals who do a great deal of help for the Refugee Zone and its prostitutes in particular. A Downplayed Trope as they're also former professional assassins and work for a massive Private Military Contractor.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Both Paradise and her mother qualifies as do the majority of the This is Paradise brothel. Played with as they're also a organized crime gang that has many other criminal activities.
• Katanas Are Just Better: The Trikuza give their men swords of various quality as signifiers of status with katanas the highest. There's also enhanced versions that can cut through cybernetically enhanced bodies.
• Ninja: What Kei and Fate were trained as under Snake Juarez for the Trikuza.
• Lighter and Softer: As compared to the Agent G series that it serves as a Sequel to. While the world is a Cyberpunk Dystopia, the humor is turned way up with everyone being a smartass prone to quipping in the worst circumstances. The Black-and-Gray Morality is also considerably toned down as the protagonists are criminals but not the Villain Protagonist that G was (even though G is now Demoted to Satellite Love Interest).
• Neon City: New Los Angeles becomes even more an enormous Arcology of holographic billboards, neon signs, augmented reality projections, and lights on fashion as the world continues its slow recovery from the Eruption. Kei says she sometimes has to shut off her feed lest she suffer sensory overload.
• Occidental Otaku: Snake is a surprisingly serious version of it, being a Mexican gangster who has adopted all the trappings of a Japanese samurai while teaching his students martial arts as well as cybernetically augmenting them. This includes a Blue-and-Orange Morality code of ethics that it takes Kei years to shake out of her head. Fate outright calls him a weeb.
• Painting the Fourth Wall: Borderline as the characters, familiar with cyberpunk works like Neuromancer and Snow Crash comment how strange it is the world ended up looking almost identical to Eighties dystopian visions of the future.
• Shout-Out: Neuromancer, Snow Crash, The Matrix, Blade Runner, and Max Headroom are all referenced by name.
• Street Samurai: Called "Riders" in-universe, they are armed couriers that use their job as cover for other, illegal, work. They're officially licensed by the government to carry weapons and cybernetics but, in practice, are smugglers that also do a lot of other criminal activities. Many of them dabble in hacking, theft, mercenary work, and assassination. Having no other skills after being trained as a Yakuza assassin for a decade, Kei ends up drifting into this line of work despite how obvious a target it makes her.
• True Companions: The heist crew go from being Teeth-Clenched Teamwork to this by the end of the story. Sadly, Miles doesn't make it through alive.
• Western Samurai: Snake Juarez is a Mexican man in his late forties to early fifties but acts like a Warrior Poet samurai. Fate finds him ridiculous but he's a high-ranking member of the Trikuza.
• Yakuza: The Trikuza are an alliance of three Yakuza clans that have become international criminal syndicates by absorbing American gangs Post-Eruption.
• Zeerust: The world is an overpopulated corporate-dominated dystopian hellhole similar to classic cyberpunk visions from the Eighties.

Daughter of the Cyber Dragons

• Ax-Crazy: This is all Blipvert is good for as it was meant to be an advertising algorithm but turns out to be much better for finding vulnerable people and pressing all of their buttons until they go on killing sprees. Rather than a failure, this makes it an excellent weapon to sell on the black market to create homegrown terrorists.
• Big Bad: Fate Firenze who is actually Helen Troy, James Madison's trophy wife, in disguise. She is the person who originally stole Blipvert before losing it. All of this turns out to be an elaborate plan to get it back before punishing Kei for her "betrayal."
• Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Solomon Jones stole Blipvert and is planning to sell it on the black market to whoever will pay after using it ro conduct multiple terrorist attacks. Despite this, he claims he's going to free mankind from capitalism and the corrupt governments of the day. Kei speculates it may be a case of Believing Their Own Lies but is left ambiguous.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Kei ends up a prisoner of Fate who wants Miles to kill her after gloating over conscious body. Kei even notes that Fate could have had her killed several times during the mission but wanted to draw it out.
• Complexity Addiction: Fate has this as she comes up with an elaborate plan to lure Kei into a mission to recover Blipvert for her with the explicit plan of betraying her in a way that will be personally painful, using her ex-lover Miles to kill her, but all it does is expose her to the one person who can take her down.
• Dead All Along: Rebecca Ashe was killed before the beginning of the story with Miles accidentally shooting her while trying to reacue her. The Becky inside the books is actually a bioroid made in her image.
• Cool Sword: Fate's Thermal Katana. Kei ends up with it at the end of the book.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Surprisingly Downplayed Trope example. James Madison is trying to retrieve mind-affecting technology but he only wants to use it to sell computer products. He also wants to stop it being used for terrorism. He does, however, do a lethal test for his potential mercenaries. Helen Troy is a more typical example since she's actually Fate Firenza.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Blipvert is actually just a superpowered version of using internet targeted political and social ads in order to radicalize a person to violence. It is apparently valuable enough as a weapon that many governments are willing to pay for it.
• The Mole: Miles Ashe turns out to be one of these as he was planted by Fate Firenze to eliminate Kei and the others once they acquired Blipvert. This is due to her having what he thinks is his niece. Miles proves unable to do it due to the fact his niece is already dead and he subconsciously knows it.
• Moral Myopia: The plot is largely driven by how much Fate hates Kei. Despite the fact Kei was the one betrayed by Fate. During a heist for the original "Sun" AI, Fate used Kei as an emergency transport for half of the data and then blew up a large chunk of the city block. Unfortunately, they got separated and Kei was forced underground. This deprived Fate of the AI data and she has been fuming every since.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The initial heist crew consists of a Hooker with a Heart of Gold, an ex-Yakuza Ninja, an ex-cop, and two assassins.
• Replacement Goldfish: A rather dark example. Miles' niece, Rebecca, was killed in an attempted rescue of her from kidnappers. Overwhelmed with guilt, he accepted an offer by Fate to replace his niece with a bioroid replacement as well as an erasure of his memory that she was ever killed in the first place. In the end, Miles gets himself killed and Kei adopts the bioroid as his daughter.
• Revenge Before Reason: Fate Firenze would have gotten away with her plan to acquire Blipvert and make a fortune off of it if not for the fact she recruited Kei specifcally to pay her back for "betraying" her during their last heist together. She also stays long enough to kill James Madison and all of their rich friends.

Revenge of the Cyber Dragons

• Ambiguous Situation: Whether or not Winston Billions is Ken Springs, Kei's brother. Snake claims it was just Legion impersonating him but he is an Unreliable Narrator.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Snake extorts Kei to do seven tasks for him in order to clear her debt to the Trikuza. The last of these is to help him bring down the Elysium Hotel and Resort that the other tasks were related to.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Snake arranges for the destruction of Legion as well as a massacre of the Elysium resort. This turns out to have been designed to provide the US government and Atlas plausible cover for a war as well as eliminate their political opponents.
• Blackmail: The super rich are brainwashed into becoming serial killers at Elysium and then the Trikuza uses this fact against them as well as their newfound addiction.
• Big Bad: Legion AKA Solomon Jones seems to be this but is usurped at the last minute by Snake Juarez.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: As mentioned in the previous book, they've only succeeded in being able to make technology that turns you Ax-Crazy. The Trikuza have still managed to harness it for their own use.
• Broken Pedestal: Kei discovers that Snake is actually just a con man and all of his talk of honor as well as a warrior's code is just a front for being able to brainwash new recruits to the Trikuza into becoming his minions.
• Cowboy Cop: Parvati Rao is a combination of this and By-the-Book Cop (the two actually related to each other rather than antagonistic due to the setting). She's a Magistrate for the United States Emergency Government but by the simple fact she actually wants to do her job, she has to ally with criminals and commit crimes herself in order to save lives.
• Evil Versus Evil: The plot of the book turns out to be this as Snake wants to destroy Legion and his Elysium murder house as a matter of honor, except that turns out to be a load of bull. He's actually going to kill everyone at the Elysium resort in order to allow Atlas Securty cassus belli to start a war as well as remove the President from power.
• Face–Heel Turn: Atlas Security and presumably all of the of people involved in it from Agent G cross the Moral Event Horizon by faking a terrorist attack that kills ten thousand people before using it as justification to start a war.
• False Flag Operation: What the entire plot turns out to be as Elysium is destroyed by "terrorists" that are stated to be from a small foreign country suffering a recent civil war. Atlas Security uses the attack to kill their opponents in the federal government, remove the President, and then launch the war to restore American prestige abroad.
• Hell Hotel: Elysium is a massive California resort in the middle of the desert that is run by the Trikuza. It appears to be a normal hotel but provides Lotus-Eater Machine fantasies to its special guests. This is a cover to make them Brainwashed and Crazy.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Happens twice in the course of the novel. The first time is the revelation that Legion is actually an AI copy of Solomon Jones from the first book and after he's destroyed by a virus, he's replaced by Snake who was the villain for the previous book behind the scenes.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Harrison the Sheep makes a large number of sheep puns.
• Lost Lenore: Case's shelf contains pictures of women that are implied to be this from the Agent G series.
• Monster Misogyny: The Legion AI is implied to be this by Snake, brainwashing rich billionaires and politicians into becoming Serial Killer murderers so the Trikuza can blackmail them as well as supply them with victims. The truth is that Legion actually is doing so as part of a plan to destroy America's faith in its leadership. Kei points out it is a needlessly and stupidly sadistic way of doing so.
• Morality Pet:
  • Becky becomes this to Kei to the point of her being a Morality Chain. She's willing to do anything to protect her, even work for her Evil Mentor.
  • Harrison is implied to have been given to Case by his daughter in order to become one of these.
• Path of Inspiration: Snake is revealed to be a leader of one of these as he's been recruiting hundreds of children for the past thirty years and teaching them to be ninja. He freely admits his warrior code is nonsense, though, and it is just weird for the sake of being weird.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Snake suggests that this is the perfect sort of ethos to instill in young children in order to make them fanatically loyal to you as an adult. The only reason that it doesn't result in Child Soldiers is he waits until adulthood to make use of them.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Kei, unfortunately, plays right into Snake's hands and delivers the virus that kills Legion as well as triggers the massacre that allows Atlas Security to carry out its coup against the United States.
• Noble Demon: Deconstructed with Snake Juarez as he's shown to be a selfish tyrannical psychopath who just so happens to project airs of being an honorable warrior. His affection for his students is also just another tool to use against them.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: David Yagami decides that this is too much for him to handle and leaves the group at the end, traumatized by his involvement in the deaths of thousands of people. Also, unwilling to try to take on the entire US government.
• Shout-Out: Harrison is a long one to Phillip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
• Team Pet: The book introduces Harrison (Ford) the Sheep, who is an animal bodied AI that serves as Case's butler.
• Xanatos Gambit: Snake manipulated Legion and the Trikuza to weaken the US government so he could make a private deal with Atlas Security in order to eliminate their political opponents. Faking a terrorist attack at Elysium, they remove President Trust and the Emergency Council to install their Puppet King.

End of the Cyber Dragons

• Arc Welding: This turns out to be a Prequel to Moon Cops on the Moon and Space Academy.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Snake is brought down due to Ken AKA Winston Billions setting him up for the murder of Samantha Sanders AKA S.
• Becoming the Mask: We finally find out Snake's origin. He was a gym teacher from El Paso, Texas who was a petty hitman on the side. He greated his persona as an unstoppable badass with the Long Winter before cybernetics let him become a ninja.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Despite insisting that everything he did was just to control his students, Snake chooses to die in a quick draw duel with Kei rather than escape.
• Bittersweet Ending: First Contact with aliens is made and the cyberpunk dystopia of Earth is about to change forever. Snake is dead and most of Kei's group is alive as well as wealthy. Several friends died unnecessarily, though, for her revenge.
• The Coup: Snake plans one of these in the Trikuza to become their Shogun. It only fails because the US government interrupts with their Special Forces.
• Cult: We discover that Snake raised all of the children that he kidnapped over the years into one of these, filling their heads with his Path of Inspiration.
• End of an Era: First Contact signals the end of the Cyberpunk era as the world is about to be changed forever.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Kei refuses to believe in aliens despite living in a sci-world of robots and AI. Also, several trusted people trying to tell her that First Contact is imminent.
• Happy Ending Override: A rare in-universe example. Kei wants to go after Snake to avenge all of hi victims but all of the others in her group point out that doing so risks their lives as well as safety. It also would do very little to make the world a better place. Kei gets her wish in the end, for better or worse.
• Killed Off for Real: Samantha Sanders AKA S, Parvati Rao, and Tom Fisher all die due to the plot to take down Snake.
• Path of Inspiration: Snake's cult is built around the ideas of bushido and the warrior way while secretly being just a way to make loyal soldiers for his crime syndicate.
• So Proud of You: Snake's final words to Kei is how proud he is that she's become such a capable killer and managed to defeat him in battle.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Kei can't help but feel this after the death of Snake as he dies praising her for how much he accomplished. Also, she lost some of her few friends killing him.
• Was It Really Worth It?: Kei is asked this at the end of the book and has no answer.
• You Killed My Father: Diane Alders sends her forces to kill Snake because she (falsely) beieves he killed her mother.

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