His mind wandered to the crime scene photos of Feng’s execution in the embassy. The blood spilled over the carpets and lush furnishings and the image of the executed emperor nearby were still etched heavily in his mind’s eye.
He almost shuddered, but composed himself when he remembered he had subordinates at desks nearby. The sounds of the small camp came back to his awareness.
He made a fast assessment. If there were five enhanced personnel digging up the first site, it shouldn’t take them much longer.
He leaned forward to his keyboard.
SENDING REINFORCEMENTS TO NEXT LOCATION. MAPPING YOUR TRAJ. BE SAFE.
He tapped SEND.
He looked up and beckoned for one of the sergeants to come over to him. The commander whispered orders to him, and the young soldier nodded his understanding before scuttling out of the tent.
Benjiro sighed and sat back. He should definitely let Raiden know, although there was no real hurry. He had it handled.
He reached into the drawer in the temporary foldout desk and retrieved a pack of cigarettes. After pulling one out, he scrambled for his Zippo in his cargo pants pocket.
He lit the cigarette and inhaled long and hard, his eyes focused into the distance as if it were the future and he was pulling the necessary information back.
Helping him plan the assault.
Undisclosed Location, Tokyo, Japan
Kuro sat quietly working on his sleek MCZ-book laptop. Being wired to a proprietary protocol allowed him to securely access the web from any location.
It had been one of the compelling reasons to bring Raiden onboard. Not so much to develop the protocol, which was already in hand, but to ensure that it was unhackable. That had been worth cutting Raiden in on their plans.
Raiden worked on the other side of the room, his foot tapping to the rhythm of the music blaring through his headphones. He was oblivious to the outside world.
The outside world trying to concentrate in the same room with him.
Kuro sighed, reminding himself of the patience he was trying to cultivate in order to be all he could be. He turned his eyes back to his screen.
Raiden’s foot suddenly stopped tapping.
Finally.
Something had come in on his ops channel, no doubt.
Raiden scanned the communications window on his screen.
It was from Benjiro. Raiden read it once, twice…then a third time. “Son of a bitch!” he hissed, taking his headphones off.
“What is it?” Kuro called, interpreting the removal of the headphones as a sign he wanted to engage.
Raiden spun to him, jerking a thumb at his laptop. “Turns out those chickenshit Chinese soldiers don’t want to engage. They’re demanding reinforcements, and that means more money.”
Kuro straightened his posture on the couch. “Or it means that they have an idea of what they’re going up against now.”
Raiden didn’t respond. He was busy pounding on the keys.
I’LL PAY FOR THE MEN BUT NOTHING MORE. WHEN WE AGREED ON YOUR PRICE THE RISK WAS ALREADY FACTORED IN.
He punched SEND.
His fingers hovered over the keys like a tiger waiting in the trees to drop on an unsuspecting target.
Raiden started typing again and a sneer crept across his lips.
I WOULD ADVISE AGAINST TRYING TO CHANGE OUR AGREEMENT. IT WOULD END UP MOST UNSATISFACTORILY FOR YOU.
He hesitated for the briefest of moments, then hit SEND again.
He leaned back in his chair and exhaled, then quietly steepled his fingers and started giving a low guttural rumbling laugh. “Mwuhahahahaaa…” He turned slowly in his chair to face the spartan room.
Kuro glanced up again, one eyebrow raised.
Raiden, suddenly embarrassed, coughed. “Sorry. I…er...just always wanted to do that, but since I’ve never run my own operation, it just never felt right.”
Kuro nodded once. “And now?”
Raiden nodded. “Hell yeah, now it feels right!” he answered, grinning before turning back around.
Overconfidence will drown you in the sea of reality.
The words sprang into Kuro’s mind like a strategic warning. He shook his head.
There was little point in trying to temper the egocentric mind of youth. He would be better off saving his breath and letting the operation kick the man’s ass. Maybe then Raiden would be willing to ask others for counsel in this and the other projects he had running.
CHAPTER FOUR
Undisclosed Location Somewhere in the Takla Makan Desert, China
“Ughhhhhhh!” Mark grunted as he and Yuko pulled the crate another five feet. “You’ve got to be kidding me! There isn’t a material on this planet that could weigh this much in such a small container!”
Sabine was observing, having already taken her turn at pulling the monstrously weighty crate from the bottom of the ten-foot hole they had spent the afternoon digging. “You do remember the part about this stuff being from another planet, right?” she teased, regaining her strength with each minute she rested.
Jacqueline wandered up, having deposited the shovels in the box. “Aww, is Marky-Warky having to do some work that is more physical than playing with computers?”
Even Eve chuckled at the pair.
Yuko was silent as she exerted her strength. After another five feet, the pair stopped to catch their breath.
“All I’m saying is that it’s very convenient that Mr. ArchAngel is off mind-reading engineers while we’re out here busting our balls,” Mark replied.
The ladies stared at him and he checked himself, “I mean... Busting a gut, that is.”
Jacqueline slapped his shoulder. “Move, vamp-boy. Let me try.”
Yuko heaved with her and they hauled the crate the last five feet into the black box.
The group cheered, albeit in a muted way rather than in outright celebration.
“Two down, nine to go!” Sabine exclaimed, summing up the overall mood.
Mark dramatically collapsed on the ground.
Jacqueline sniffed the air and her body tensed in readiness.
Sabine unconsciously fixed her eyes on the horizon. Already her guns were unholstered, safeties off.
Yuko glanced at Eve. It was almost as if they had communicated with eye contact. Eve dodged into the cabin and emerged with her missile launcher, her arm already adapting to accommodate it.
Mark was the last one to cotton to what was happening. His vamp ears pricked up when he heard the distant shuffle of cloth against cloth and boots against sand, and then there was a distant hum of a chopper.
The team’s minds screamed, AMBUSH!
Eve spoke quietly. “Ok people, this is it. The same people we sensed earlier, except there are more of them. Our primary goal is to protect the cargo. Oh yeah, and don’t die. Michael wouldn’t like that.”
She caught Sabine’s eye, and was going to add something about Akio, but the first of the soldiers came over the mound in the distance.
Yuko had positioned herself for a fight, her sword at the ready, but after seeing the distance the enemy had to cover before they got within sword’s length she dropped her arms.
Sabine grinned. “I got this,” she told them, zoning out. She felt the wind, and could hear the clothes scrape against the leaves and preternaturally see where the next person was without having a clue why.
Gently and gracefully she squeezed the triggers on her Jean Dukes, almost dancing with each shot as the troops started running toward them to engage.
Body after body crumpled like paper dolls in the wind.
Yuko turned to Jacqueline with an eyebrow raised. “Guess we were worried for no reason.”
Mark dusted the sand out of his hair from when he had dropped to the ground and chuckled. “No kidding.”
Sabine stopped firing, and the sound of the chopper suddenly turned from a hum to a roar as it appeared from another direction.
It was above them in moments.
“Protec
t the cargo!” Yuko ordered, her sword out in front of her once more. She watched uniformed bodies fast-rope from the chopper to the ground.
Sabine could make a few shots, but the trees blocked much of her view in that direction.
Within moments there were numerous soldiers with guns and knives fighting fists and fangs with the group.
Eve had moved away from the chopper to be able to angle her launcher correctly, and before all the men were safely on the ground she sent her first missile. The chopper swerved to avoid it and was clipped, sending it spinning.
Yuko sliced through a torso before turning to her. “Something wrong with your aim?”
Eve chuckled. “My hand slipped!” she admitted before popping off a second small missile which tore straight through the body of the machine, tossing it backward like a ball of crumpled paper into a trash can.
Yuko ducked the swipe of a knife-wielding soldier and followed the motion with a slice which cut through him from the chest upwards. “That second shot was much better,” she called to the very satisfied-looking Eve.
Twice Mark had been pushed to the side by his girlfriend, her snarls ripping toward soldiers attacking him.
Twice she had been hit by bullets in his place, her howls of pain quickly followed by men screaming as a male-sun walking vampire shredded their bodies in his anger, ending their lives.
Sabine had been popping bullets into anything she could see that was coming from the chopper, but now that it was gone she turned her pistols on the crowd, deftly spotting the opponents who were narrowing in on her friends.
Sabine was in her zone. She turned to the right, shooting a man who had been thrown by Jacqueline in the head, which exploded before his body landed twenty feet away. Continuing her turn, she shot another in the leg and his gun jerked up, the bullet uselessly hitting some leaves before Yuko’s sword sliced through his neck.
Completing her turn, she waited the barest of moments before squeezing her trigger. The chest of a mercenary exploded and her bullet exited the first man to hit another fifteen feet behind him in the neck, taking out a chunk of flesh the size of a hand.
It took somewhere between seven and fifteen seconds before the only things breathing—if not entirely living by traditional measures—were the five who had been digging up the crates.
Yuko gazed at the carnage and sighed, carefully wiping her blade on the nearest body. “We probably should clear up this mess, but I for one am too tired.” She glanced at the others. “What say we just finish packing up and get out of here?”
By the time she’d finished her sentence the crew had gathered the rest of their equipment and were loading it into the black box.
Yuko smiled, satisfied. Nothing like the mundane tasks to motivate movement in the troops, she mused, stepping onboard and pulling the door closed behind her.
She was kind of getting used to having a larger team.
Lanzhou Region, China
Cigarette smoke hung in the air, visible only where the daylight entered the tent and directly under the artificial lights illuminating the workstations.
Crushed cigarette butts lay on the dried grass around the righthand side of the commander’s chair.
“Sir, we’ve lost contact.”
Benjiro leaned forward to retrieve the last cancer-stick from the beaten-up pack and nodded, dismissing the messenger.
He paused, looking at the cigarette. Instead of putting it into his mouth, he placed it back on the desk in front of him and shuffled his chair closer to his keyboard.
This couldn’t wait.
UPDATE. ALL 30 TROOPS AND CHOPPER TAKEN OUT. AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTION.
He hit SEND.
He sat back, eyes falling to the cigarette again. If this was going to continue, he figured he’d need that hit more later than right now.
He tried to still his mind. He could sense the chatter amongst his men increasing, though they’d never comment to him directly. He glanced at them, noticing one in the huddle around the work station looking at him . The soldier quickly gazed back down at the screen, pretending to be absorbed in a conversation about the work.
Benjiro knew better.
He’d been in their position many a time when he was a younger man. Wondering if he was going to be next, wondering how his teammates had been taken out by an enemy who had very little in the way of manpower or artillery.
It was one of the things that had led him to his current position. Fear.
The computer icon blipped, displaying a new message.
ALL IS NOT LOST...
The cursor blinked at the end of the ellipsis.
Benjiro waited, subconsciously reaching for the cigarette and putting it between his lips.
COMM SIGNAL STILL ACTIVE. MEN DEAD, BUT TECH OK. ONE TRACKER PLACED AS PLANNED. HAS BEEN ACTIVATED. TRACKING TARGETS NOW. WILL SHARE FREQUENCY IN A MO.
Benjiro waited, reading and re-reading the message. His thoughts were interrupted by a flurry of quiet activity at the other console. One of the soldiers hurried over to him.
“Sir, they’ve activated Phase Two. We’ve just received the signal and we’re tracking them now. If all goes well, we’ll be able to triangulate their next location within the hour. So far it looks like they’re moving inland.”
Benjiro nodded, and the sergeant went away.
A new message had appeared on his screen.
TRACK THEM. HAVE NEXT TEAM IN PLACE FOR NEXT LOCATION. WE TRY AGAIN.
Benjiro lit the cigarette, knowing that he had no choice. He was going to have to sacrifice another thirty lives on a mission where they really didn’t stand a chance. He leaned forward and sent the confirmation before sitting back and looking off into space.
Tokyo, Japan
Michael watched as the next candidate crossed the floor. She bowed to Akio and reached over to shake Michael’s hand. “Hello,” she started when Akio waved to the chair. “I’m Yuko.”
God, no! Michael told Akio immediately. Can you imagine what would happen if we had two Yukos on our team?
“Please, take a seat,” Akio asked. “This will be a very short conversation about the skills you suggest you have, and your honesty.”
You are telling me that even if she is fully capable you would remove her from consideration since she has the same name as Yuko?
Absolutely, no question, Michael replied. I can already hear the bitching if we had two with the same name. The help would crucify me. Michael thought about that for a second. No pun intended.
Just for having two Yukos?
Imagine if you will, Michael started, that someone says, “Yuko told me to take this gadget down to Sublevel Six.” Now, an easy—and very subtle—mind-read would confirm she is telling the truth. The problem—
Would be this Yuko was actually the one who gave the order. Akio nodded his head ever so slightly. I understand.
The woman stared at the two men, who had yet to say anything although they had smiles plastered on their faces. “One moment,” the Japanese man said and turned to her.
Would it help to know, Akio continued as he reviewed the information on this applicant, that she goes by “Hideko?”
Well, if she wasn’t a plant by a man named Raiden, then probably. Michael stood up. Why is it always the pretty ones? Doesn’t anyone have any sense around here? I’ve met many smart people who are not necessarily attractive, and they all go under the radar. It’s almost a slap in the face to assume I wouldn’t presume that any attractive applicant wasn’t a spy.
You are very cynical already, Akio mused.
It doesn’t change the accuracy of my statement, or the reality that she is a plant.
Or that you have now identified someone we can take down?
Well, it’s small recompense for my butt having gone to sleep sitting on these old plastic chairs.
Akio shrugged. Most of the available chairs I could grab were left over from government buildings, and I figured the humans would wish to leave quickly if we used them. It
worked out well with the last applicant. Akio tried to smile, and it almost looked right. I figured our nanocytes would protect us.
From gunshots, yes, Michael replied with an annoyed look on his face. But not from government chairs hurting my ass. He stood up. “I’ll let the next person know they can come in, and then I’ll take the young lady to HR.”
What HR? Akio asked.
Me, Michael replied. I wear many hats.
You are just happy to get out of these interviews for a moment.
Moment? Michael replied, a smile touching his lips. This might take me hours.
When Bethany Anne gets here I’ll have to admit it took you a long time to interrogate her.
He shook his head. Or it might be very quick. Whoever taught you to loosen up should have their ass kicked.
Akio just chuckled. Their candidate’s eyes were wide in shock, which turned to fear when Michael stood up since his eyes were glowing red.
“You will come with me,” he told her.
CHAPTER FIVE
Tokyo, Japan
Akio stood outside the building they were using to interview subjects, watching Michael as he sent mental commands to the male and female next to him.
“Eve?” he called, waiting for her to answer the comm signal.
“Here,” she replied. “We will soon be heading back to the warehouse for the Clan’s material.”
“I need you to track down a name on the dark web. Is this possible?”
Eve’s voice, if it could sound cocky, sounded that way now to Akio. “You know the dark web is just another name for my house, yes? No one comes into my house without me knowing who they are.”
“Good to know,” Akio replied. “I need to find out who TigerDragon_NV is, since he has visited your house, and locate him. I have two additional names you can use to narrow the communications which happened in your house, and request you deliver to me an address to visit. I do not believe this person will ever visit your house again.”
“Am I sensing an attitude? Not that I mind, of course, but I need to know. Is it one of annoyance, or of challenge?” the android asked. Akio could tell he was receiving only a small portion of her analytical capability as she continued the discussion.
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