Blue Angel

by Phil Williams

  “Fae guards in the area,” one of the analysts announced. “At least half a dozen outside the city walls. Sending it through.”

  A new set of lights blinked up, yellow this time, closer to the centre.

  “Give the word,” Hail’s voice came through the speakers.

  “Hold,” Sam said, steadily.

  “We’re ready,” Hail said, clearly irritated.

  “I said hold.”

  A phone rang in Mathers’ office. Sam darted between the desks, telling everyone not to move. Please be something. She whipped up the receiver. “Ward.”

  “You understand that we still possess devastating capabilities.”

  It wasn’t Landon, but a bold female voice Sam instinctively knew, though she’d never heard it before. It had to be the Fae governor, Valoria Magnus.

  “Madam Governor,” Sam said. “I am –”

  “Withdraw your men immediately,” the Fae governor commanded loudly, forcing Sam to hold the phone away from her ear.

  “I can’t,” Sam answered, her jaw locked with frustration. “You have to talk to the Raleigh Commission –”

  “This is on you!” The woman’s voice rose furiously. “Your head will roll!”

  “It’s not my –”

  “It was the humans that struck you!” The governor was all but shrieking. “The Apothel Five. We have evidence, where your people failed – you need to –”

  “You know where they are?” Sam interrupted, and Valoria faltered.

  “Withdraw your men and I will deliver them to you.”

  There was enough hesitation for Sam to confirm the governor was bluffing. But Sam already knew the truth of it; Pax hadn’t unleashed that turnbold. Her silence told the governor she knew.

  Valoria breathed heavily on the other end of the line, making no more threats. She simply said, “Withdraw your men now and we can still forgive this.”

  Sam swallowed. Wishing she could do it. She said, “The order came from the Commission themselves. But if you’re calling here I guess you already know that.”

  Valoria snarled and hung up without another word.

  It was baffling that whatever peace the Fae leadership had with the Raleigh Commission had been so easily shattered. Heinous as the Greek Street attack was, why were London being so quick to act?

  “They’re in position,” Roper announced, the moment the call ended. Sam gave him a worried look. She could simply refuse to give the order, couldn’t she? She wouldn’t give the order. But it wouldn’t matter. They’d take their own initiative eventually; they already had.

  “Tell them to hold, for the love of God,” Sam said, knowing it would make no difference. As Roper reluctantly relayed the command, she made another call.

  The second the pay phone rang, Pax jumped at the receiver, willing it to be good news. Bring Letty back, tell me everything is okay. “Where is she?”

  “What?” It was Sam Ward alright, but she was thrown. “No, sorry, I don’t have that – something’s happened. Our people have been diverted. And. And...”

  Pax was silent for a second. “Diverted where?”

  “The FTC. It’s Protocol 21. Total extermination.”

  Pax stared through Casaria next to her, through the world. That amounted to more or less the worst response to the morning’s disaster. Countless fairies would die, a whole society erased. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “You know the Fae,” Ward said. “You know what happened this morning, you have to give me something. I don’t know why the Commission decided this so quickly, it makes no sense –”

  “It’s not enough that your people hate the Fae? They’d jump at any excuse.”

  “The Ministry is procedural, Pax,” Ward said. “We do things by the book, according to analysis – usually. I’d potentially found your grugulochs, and –”

  “You found it? How? Where?”

  “I traced the energy, exactly as you said – but it’s too late, our men are about to do something devastating.”

  “So tell them to stop! If we can confront the Blue Angel we can end this!”

  “How?” Ward demanded. “I’m up against my superiors – they don’t care and it doesn’t add up! You must have some idea of where all this is coming from.”

  “I don’t know!” Pax replied, equally exasperated. She caught Casaria watching her, face sour as ever. He’d invite Fae destruction, like the rest of them. Pax insisted, “There was only one fairy behind this that I know of for sure – Lightgate. She’s itching for a fight, maybe nothing more – and the FTC know that. She said herself that their council turned her down, they weren’t interested in her plan. She got anonymous support, from just one source, not a sanction from their whole damn society. That sound like something you want to start a war over? Hell, all she had was a written note...” Pax trailed off, remembering the fairy’s words. “She had an anonymous note. The same sort of manipulative shit this Blue Angel is always doing. Look – you don’t have to tell your bosses it’s the Blue Angel’s doing, just convince them it wasn’t the FTC!”

  “I can’t – we have a written order.”

  “What? Who gives a shit about a written order?”

  “You don’t understand how this office works – the field agents wanted action, and nothing says decisive bloody leadership better than a Commission order, printed and notarised.”

  “Which you happened to get as quick as possible?” Pax snorted. “You don’t see that as a problem?” Ward didn’t answer at once, and Pax pictured the insane bureaucratic scenario, office workers deciding things with numbers and printed commands. She paused. The answer was hanging between them; it was in the detail Casaria had already given her, and in the unsettling feeling she’d had in the MEE building. It wasn’t just their superiors’ speed, it was how they gave the order. Pax said, “This printed order, was it faxed?”

  “Directly from the Raleigh Commission. From Lord Asquith. It’s how –”

  “Through the fax machine on that same floor where that monster tried to tear us apart,” Pax said. “The room at the end, a little useless stationery cupboard, right? Home to the same fax machine that’s been giving you orders for years. Christ, no wonder it’s stayed so well hidden.”

  “What?”

  “The Blue Angel,” Pax said.

  Silence. Casaria was waiting for the conclusion with a frown, and Rufaizu, beyond him, was grinning, anticipating something good. Encouraged by that smile, Pax told herself her instinct was right. The Bright Veins were real, and they told her where the goddamned Blue Angel had its eyes and hands and mouth or whatever it needed to screw the world. She said, “There’s a blue screen in your office. Where you’ve got that fax machine. They can change the appearance of walls, alright? Why not the writing on a piece of paper?”

  Ward stayed quiet. Thankfully. It meant she might buy it. She might question everything.

  Pax pushed the point. “You’ve wondered how your organisation could be so incompetent or ignorant of things like the dangers of the minotaur or the behaviour of the Fae. The answer is, they aren’t. The details that would tip the Blue Angel’s hand are hidden – I bet you get numbers through this Commission prick, too? Revised balance sheets about your costs and benefits or whatever?”

  “Rarely,” Ward answered uncertainly.

  “Rarely is good; it knows how to do just enough to keep up the ruse. It’s the Angel.” Pax thumped the wall triumphantly. “In your office, under your noses, playing its games.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense –”

  “It’s not supposed to. It’s always had you believing the minotaur’s a good thing. That no one should go into the Sunken City. That the Fae are best kept at arm’s length. Now it wants you to believe the FTC should be wiped out, because we’re asking too many questions, we’re talking. Someone or something in the FTC can take this thing down, with our help, and it doesn’t want us anywhere near joining forces.”

  “But that turnbold could’
ve killed everyone here –”

  “Exactly,” Pax said. “No one left to ask questions and a bunch of outsiders coming in to clear up the mess. You got goons on their way from the main office in London? Is that right?”

  Ward hummed affirmation, not liking it.

  “Dammit, don’t you see? It’s been manipulating all of you and it didn’t even need an inside man, it can just fuck with your correspondence.”

  Ward was quiet again, giving Pax a second to reflect on that image.

  Paper being manipulated, messages coming out of nowhere.

  “Jesus Christ, it was the Angel. It did what none of the Fae was prepared to do, too. It gave Lightgate that fucking note with the charge codes. Listen to me, this is all the Angel; it wants the Ministry torn apart and it wants the FTC torn apart. This is scorched earth.”

  Ward still hadn’t said anything.

  “Sam?” Pax said. “You still there?”

  “Yeah,” Ward answered, voice weak.

  “Stop your people attacking the FTC, however you can.”

  “I will,” Sam promised.

  “And give me the location of the grugulochs. I don’t know if it’s another trick or whatever, but I’ll know when I’m there, I’m certain. Let me deal with the Blue Angel while you prevent a massacre.”

  16

  The Ministry men were waiting by the front of their car. Ginger had goggles on, now, like these prats might wear to play squash, and he was talking into a headset. His partner had a rifle of some kind. Or the product of two rifles taped together – ridiculously wide and crude.

  “Sends out a blast a mile wide, that thing,” Lightgate said. “Be behind him when it goes off.”

  “I don’t want to be near any of that shit,” Letty said. Were the FTC prepared, in any way? They’d been on alert since the weekend, ready to evacuate, but they would’ve been reluctant to flee. A thousand people behind those walls, penned in, waiting for death to arrive.

  Lightgate held a pistol over her face to stifle a yawn. She shook her head to wake herself up. “Sorry.” Reminded of the gun in her hand, she held it out again. “Yeah. Take it.”

  “You’re a goddamned psychopath, Lightgate,” Letty told her. “Those bastards could do for our whole society.”

  “I knew you’d get it eventually.”

  The ginger was moving forwards, his flame-thrower, or whatever it was, ready. His mate trotted to the edge of the road, taking cover against a building. Letty pushed up with her wing, over the roofs, to get eyes on the next car. Two more pricks in suits, similarly armed. No prizes for guessing what was happening with the other cars. There might be more, even, way out of sight.

  They were three blocks out from the FTC. Two blocks from the no man’s land where the scouts would open fire. Humans usually got deterred before that, through non-violent means. The roads in one direction were blocked by rubble, in another by a broken-down truck. The rest of them had fields of shattered glass or nails earlier in the approach. These guys were watching their feet, aware of such traps. The ginger’s pal with the unlikely rifle called out and the pair stopped. He had something on top of the gun, a blinking panel of lights. He pointed off to the side and Ginger approached it. He took another gadget from his pocket and activated it with a beep. Something puffed from between the bricks of a half-fallen wall.

  Well shit, they could deactivate Fae defences.

  Sam pulled Mathers’ phone as far into the main office as its lead would allow, receiver cradled against her shoulder as she shouted, “Tell them to stand down! Tell them not to engage!”

  The phone kept ringing, Tarrington not answering.

  The analysts looked at her like she was mad, none of them in any hurry to move. One of them even shook his head, pityingly.

  “It’s a direct order! No one is to advance!”

  Roper took the lead, relaying her words through the radio in an uncertain mumble. He looked sideways at Sam, clearly torn. Hail’s voice came back over the speakers.

  “We already have our orders. Ready to move.”

  “The orders have been compromised!” Sam said, louder. “Listen to me, you insubordinate –”

  “Ms Ward, I warn you.” Tarrington’s voice cut her off. “You’re in danger of overstepping many lines.”

  “Sir,” Sam gasped into the phone. She quickly tried to recover. “Sir, please – there’s something I need to ask you – it’s crucial in rescinding Protocol 21 –”

  “What Protocol is that?”

  “The FTC,” Sam said, hurriedly. The fool wasn’t even aware that they were about to slaughter a civilisation? “We have men in place on the orders of the Raleigh Commission, but I believe there’s been a mistake.”

  Tarrington took a second before replying. “You’ve questioned my commands already today, Ward, and I can’t say I cared for it. Now you’re questioning one of my colleagues and, what, expecting my support?”

  “Sir, did you actually sign off on Protocol 21?”

  Tarrington paused again. “I was sent papers earlier, I suppose, what of it?”

  “The order to assault the FTC? To wipe out the FTC, you agreed to that?”

  “If I did,” he answered, “that’s not your concern, is it?”

  There was uncertainty in his voice; he either didn’t want to admit he didn’t know what she was talking about, or he’d committed to something he hadn’t fully understood. Either way, it was the best response she could have hoped for: confusion. But Sam needed to get him off the defensive. “Sir, I believe a document we’ve received, issuing the order, may have been tampered with.”

  “Ha,” Tarrington said plainly. “Ms Ward, I told you to take some time off. Your –”

  “Please, sir, take this seriously,” Sam said, “or a lot of people could die.”

  Another pause. “Go on, then.”

  “We received a fax telling us to enact Protocol 21 and assault the FTC. Did you agree to it?”

  “I can’t keep track of everything I’m sent, and I trust my fellow members of the Commission to act in lieu of assembling the entire board.” And that was exactly it, wasn’t it? He could pass the buck; if anyone thought to question the details of their orders, it was someone else’s problem.

  “Ms Ward,” Roper called out, voice wavering, “they’re advancing.”

  “Sir,” Sam continued, “quickly, please. Have you had any direct contact with the other members of the Commission regarding this order? Have you spoken to them in person, or by phone?”

  “No, Ward,” Tarrington answered petulantly. “Have you?”

  “No, sir, not at all. The order originated from Lord Asquith. Please can you speak to him directly and confirm it.” Tarrington laughed derisively, making Sam frown. “Sir?”

  “Let me get this straight, Ward,” Tarrington said, “you want me to talk to Asquith for you?”

  “Sir. You are our main point of contact within the Commission.”

  “But of course.”

  “Ms Ward,” Roper called out again, “you should be monitoring this!”

  Sam waved a hand for quiet, as Tarrington continued, “You talk to me because I have my finger on the pulse. No one talks to Lord Asquith, because the man’s a veritable recluse. I’ll happily ping him a message, but don’t expect a quick response. He won’t touch modern electronics, you know.”

  “Sir, we don’t have time.”

  “There’s nothing else I can do. I’m hardly going to chase him down in the Chilterns or wherever he’s camped out.”

  Sam paused, realising what he was saying. She spoke very carefully, to make sure he appreciated the gravity of the question. “Lord Tarrington. When was the last time you actually spoke to Lord Asquith in person?”

  Tarrington was quiet. Yes. He got it.

  She drove the point home. “Sir. You can stop this assault.”

  “Sharp bunch, aren’t they?” Lightgate commented, as the MEE agents defused another trap with an electric pulse.

  “You wan
t a fight so bad,” Letty snarled, “what are you waiting for?”

  The pair of Fae kept pace above Ginger and his mate, as the men reached the end of the road. They checked from side to side, not up and down, and continued. Lightgate said, “Bloody amateurs.”

  “It’s been so long, there’s barely a mug left in their cupboard that knows Fae fighting.”

  “None of them knew it back then, either,” Lightgate said. “Our people fled. Our people fought amongst themselves. We never get to hurt them. It’s delicious.”

  Letty gave her a sideways glance and Lightgate returned a crooked grin. Then she laughed and shook her head. “The look on your face, Letty. Lighten up. Enjoy this.”

  The agents crossed the boundary, one foot over the invisible line.

  A sniper rifle in the distance flashed soundlessly, like a penny reflecting the sun. The bullet struck Ginger square in the eye, an incredible shot at that distance. He took a step back, head jerking to the side. Then he straightened himself up.

  The goggles had taken the bullet.

  “Those rifles can put a hole through plate metal,” Letty gaped.

  “That,” Lightgate said, “is an interesting development.”

  Another flash from the distance, and Ginger took it in the chest. It knocked him back, but he kept his balance. He swore, a little wind knocked out of him. That plastic armour was far tougher than it looked. Another shot caught his shoulder as he was straightening up, making him twist the other way and drop the tube of this weapon. He shouted, “Take them out!”

  The other guy fired in the direction of the shots, with the crack of a sonic boom, a pulse spreading from his gun like a heat shimmer. Even flying behind them, Letty and Lightgate had to steady themselves against the blast, as it arced through the buildings ahead, shattering the scant remnants of windows and shaking loose brickwork. It hit home as mortar erupted around where the sniper’s flashes had come from.