Arcane Ops

by T. R. Cameron

  “No way. They won’t commit everyone to breaking and entering to steal stuff.”

  “Well, you know, that kind of reinforces my point.”

  “Well, you know, you suck.”

  He laughed. “Way to finish off your argument. You’re definitely rocking the logic, sister.”

  She stood and lashed out with a kick that made him yelp when it connected with his shin. “I’m going to see what security they have around that place. Why don’t you start working up a defense plan we can present to the field agents?”

  “Your wish is my command, oh great one.”

  “Bite me.”

  The teasing worked, though, and she returned to her lab a little lighter in spirit than when she’d left it.

  Chapter Six

  When Tony had shared a quiet word about the potential attack on the station with the police chief, her first reaction had been disbelief. She’d moved quickly from there to deep anger and given him the run of the place with orders to coordinate the defense based upon his prior PD experience and his current position with ARES. Kayleigh had monitored Sarah discussing the plan—seemingly to herself in her empty apartment—and knew it was planned for an unspecified time within the next eight hours.

  The agents had considered and abandoned the notion of a preemptive strike against the Remembrance goons en route to the station. The witch’s comment about the authorities knowing things they shouldn’t had spooked them all. Kayleigh was adamant that they couldn’t do anything to jeopardize Sloan’s cover, and the rest of them had conceded with varying degrees of reluctance. The final outcome of their planning was that Tony, Anik, and Hank now pretended to be police to assist in the defense because Cara and Diana were too recognizable. Even if there weren’t bounties on them, their magic was a dead giveaway. The two techs ran drone overwatch but would be unable to provide much more than early warning without drawing additional suspicion.

  One advantage was that they’d been able to bring Starsky and Hutch along. James Maxis and Vicki Greene had been on multiple bounty runs with the team and while unaware of the Security Agency’s connection to ARES, were more than willing to participate in the defense of the station. They had also replaced most of the ordinary patrol officers with SWAT in disguise, and everyone nonessential had been sent home. They were as ready to defend the precinct as they could be. Now, it was merely a matter of waiting.

  Tony completed his walkthrough of the second floor and secured the doors leading to the stairwells. They’d emptied and blocked off the top three floors, leaving only the entrance level and the basement accessible. The techs had a drone positioned high above, so if their foes did something unexpected and breached in one of the upper levels, they would know about it as soon as it happened. But what he didn’t want was the Remembrance idiots running free through the building and thus securing the stairs. The lobby was filled with a few ordinary volunteer officers who would flee at the sight of an oncoming riot and throw the facility into lockdown as per standard procedures. When the enemy broke through, the fun would begin.

  He joined his team in the center of the first floor. They were each responsible for a corner, with the two borrowed police officers working together on the fourth. They’d considered operating as a group but had again abandoned the preferred tactical choice in an effort to avoid giving the enemy any clues about Sloan. That situation needs to be resolved fast. I hope the boss realizes that. I certainly don’t want to be the one to bring it up. He laughed quietly. I’ll mention it to Kayleigh and hide.

  As if thinking about her had been a catalyst, the tech spoke over the comms. “Incoming. They’re not being subtle about it either. There are five vans and the heat signatures indicate twenty-three bodies including the drivers.”

  Anik shook his head. “More than we expected and less than we dreaded. They must have both magicals and street soldiers in there.” One of their faint hopes had been that the enemy wouldn’t include magical backup—which was ludicrous, of course, but that was how hope worked sometimes.

  Tony replied, “The more they bring, the more we arrest and the fewer there are to deal with later.” He keyed the button to add the non-ARES defenders into the conversation. “Incoming—approximately twenty-three, both magicals and not. The current plan stands.” He nodded to his team and moved forward toward the entry area, which was his corner of responsibility. Anik broke right and Hank left. The other two faded to the rear.

  The first sign that things wouldn’t go as expected was when the raiders separated rather than enter the lobby as a group. The techs fed the image into their glasses, and they watched as separate teams took positions on each side of the building.

  “Could we have spotted them somehow?” Hank asked. “Because zapping them with a drone would be a really easy way to end this.”

  Kayleigh snapped, “No,” and Tony sighed. Sloan has become a liability rather than a benefit. He has to come out from undercover. He thrust the worry aside and focused on the situation. “We’re not equipped for life on easy mode, Hercules. We’d be bored.” The laughter—both from the ARES agents and the PD SWAT officers—ceased abruptly when the enemy launched a coordinated attack from all directions.

  Huge explosions echoed as stone shattered inward at the midpoint of all four sides of the building. They ducked for cover, and Tony fed his camera over the desks he crouched behind. A team of five entered through the nearest wall, three with wands and two with rifles. They turned and moved toward his corner.

  “Let them get inside, then engage when the moment seems right,” he whispered. “We only have one moment of surprise.” Technically, the officers waiting on the basement level would be a surprise as well, but that was merely semantics. He yanked the pins from two tear gas grenades—the only kind they could use with deniability—and lobbed them at the invaders. They landed but had no sooner begun to spray before they were hurled outside through the hole in the wall. “Dammit,” he muttered under his breath, darted ahead in a crouch parallel to the enemy’s advance, and hid behind cubicles as he tracked their progress.

  They moved with unexpected discipline—significantly more than the other times when they’d engaged the gang. Gunfire rang out from Anik’s area of the floor, and Tony took it as a signal to dart up and fire a volley of bullets at the nearest targets. The rounds spun in midair and rocketed back toward him, and he crouched to avoid them.

  “Okay, everyone, they’ve revealed themselves. Switch to anti-magic bullets.” This was another decision made to hide their foreknowledge of the event. His magazine exchange was smooth and he raised the rifle again in time to see a wash of flame directed at his face. He ducked hastily and dashed along the aisle of desks, grimacing at the heat when the fire struck the desks behind him. The sprinklers activated to add an annoying new dimension to the battle. He continued his forward movement but headed in a zig-zag diagonal toward the front corner and its staircase, kept his head low, and trusted that the general noise around him would obscure his passage.

  When the desks before him elevated and swung away to reveal a wizard who pointed a wand and a hoodlum with a rifle aimed squarely at him, Tony realized he’d been considerably less sneaky than he’d thought.

  When the enemy broke through the wall, Hank found an excellent place to hide and watched as those nearest to him formed a line and began to jog toward his assigned corner. A magical took the lead, followed by a rifle-holder, and a man with a shotgun trailed two more magicals. Good choice. I should have brought a shotgun. It really was a pointless thought because the model of shotgun he preferred would have revealed the defenders as more than ordinary police.

  He circled quickly and quietly and fired at the line from the rear. The one at the back jerked and fell, his bulletproof vest useless against the bullets that caught him in the arms and legs as the agent swung the weapon up and down. The man’s scream alerted the others and they scattered. The witch now at the rear used her magic to hurl a desk at him. Water from the sprinklers made the f
loor slick and he slipped when he dodged but still managed to evade the heavy projectile. It pounded into the wall behind him as he repositioned. Shouts receded toward the stairwell, and he cursed when he realized his quarry was getting away.

  The agent took a deep breath, changed the magazine in his rifle, and darted out from cover. The invaders had split their forces and the witch who’d thrown the furniture and the rifleman waited for him. He sprayed a hasty barrage at them and received several strikes in the vest in return before a blast of force catapulted him against the wall. He tumbled as he fell and the magical energy surged through him. His talent was unique, as far as he knew, because it required him to give or take damage in order to invoke it, but it was always a thrill when it sparked to life. Hank surged forward with magically enhanced speed and planted the butt of his weapon in the face of the witch, who was clearly shocked that her magic hadn’t stopped him. He aimed a kick at the knee of his second adversary as he brought the rifle around.

  The joint cracked and the man fell with a wail and landed hard a second after the witch. He bound them together with zip ties, snapped the woman’s wand in two, and threw the pieces away. The sounds of battle resounded from every area of the floor as the ARES agents and their allies battled the invaders. He considered, for only a moment, charging into the fray to assist the others. The loud slam of the stairwell door banished the thought from his mind, though, and he rushed forward after his quarry, only to discover that the barrier wouldn’t budge. He gave it a kick, put all his magical energy into it, and only managed to dent the metal. Damn. Good construction, police people. “Khan, Stark, they’ve secured the stairwell going down somehow. I can’t break through.”

  After a few moments’ pause, Tony confirmed that the situation was the same on his side. Anik replied, “Clear these idiots who have me trapped and I’ll get us through.” Hank raced in that direction, and from the sounds of pistols fired in quick succession, Tony approached from another angle doing his gunslinger impersonation. They arrived together with Starsky and Hutch close behind them and quickly eliminated the witches and wizards that had kept the demolitions expert pinned down.

  Anik rushed forward to the corner and Hank turned to the police officers. “Is everything okay on your end?”

  Greene pulled her helmet off and ran a hand across her sweaty brow as she shook her head. “We tried to engage, but they kept us down and moved to the stairwell too fast. We got two but the rest made it through.”

  Maxis asked, “Why don’t they simply portal in?”

  Hank shrugged. “They have to know where they’re going, is how I understand it. As in they need an anchor of some kind to connect to.”

  Greene laughed. “Otherwise, they wind up inside a rock or something, right? I’m sure I’ve seen that in a movie.”

  Maxis added, “Or Star Trek.”

  Anik announced, “Take cover,” and dashed past them. They followed and hid behind an overturned desk as he detonated the explosives he’d placed.

  Hank stood and grinned at a giant hole in the wall beside the door. “Nice.”

  The ARES demolition man shrugged. “They can ward or secure the door all they want, but people usually don’t do the same for the walls. That one was heavy block but fortunately, not essential to the building’s structural integrity.”

  Tony chuckled. “Okay, whatever. We can talk shop later. Get down the stairs. Starsky and Hutch, rear guard.”

  The large man led the way down the staircase with the former detective on his heels. They found the door to the basement level unsecured, which was unexpected. However, that wasn’t nearly as surprising as the complete darkness and silence that greeted them when he opened it, rather than the expected sounds of battle.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Anik muttered. “Hercules, you go first.”

  His teammate, still in the lead, nodded. “Good plan. You all stay here until I say otherwise.” He tapped the toggle on his glasses to activate low-light mode and took a step forward into the silent shadows.

  Chapter Seven

  Hank dialed his comms reception to the lowest perceptible setting and amplified the audio pickups to search for any sound in the basement. The hallway ahead was rendered in greens, blacks, and grays as the night-vision function, assisted by computing technology in the glasses, turned absolute darkness into twilight. He took several cautious steps forward before the first figure came into sight—a SWAT officer face-down on the floor. The woman’s pulse was strong but when he rolled her over and shook her shoulder, he failed to rouse her.

  “I found a SWAT,” he whispered. “She’s out cold but seems otherwise unharmed. I’ll keep going. Stand by.” The lower level’s outer hallway tracked the perimeter of the building with entries toward the inner section at intervals. When the first swam into his vision, he placed his back against the wall and extended the camera from his left sleeve to poke it around the corner above head height. The room beyond was dark as well, but there was a glimmer in the door that led from it, he assumed deeper into the facility.

  “Glam, map overview please.” The view of the basement’s layout appeared in a window on the far side of his display with a pulsing dot that indicated his position. Okay, so the evidence room is still a couple of rooms in and to the right. That’s where they’ll probably be. His adrenaline spiked as he connected the recent conversation with the present moment. Shit. They don’t have to fight their way out. They can merely portal everything away once they’re in there unless there are anti-magic emitters nearby.

  He didn’t waste any more precious seconds worrying about it but slipped into the room. His glasses adjusted as the light increased to provide an optimal view at all times. Two SWAT agents lay on the floor, slumped behind desks they apparently used or had planned to use as barricades. There was no sign of a fight. Illusion? Sleep spell? Time-stop? Who the hell knows? It doesn’t matter at the moment, anyway. He slid his camera around the frame of the door leading deeper into the facility and identified a trio of wizards who guarded an intersection to the right. One faced in each direction, and there was finally definite audible signs of their quarry—glass shattered as what he imagined were evidence cases broken open to allow access. At least we were able to separate and hide the most dangerous artifacts in there. Although if they have some way to detect them, that probably won’t help for long. He shook his head. There are too many unknowns. It’s past time I went with what I’m good at.

  He whispered, “Going noisy,” and dialed his comms back to normal. The other team members spoke in short bursts as they emerged from cover to follow him. He barreled around the corner and raised his rifle to fire at eye level as he ran toward the invaders. The foe facing him yelped and ducked, and the others began to turn as a protective shield appeared to block the incoming rounds. It stopped none of the anti-magic bullets, but the enemies’ reflexive flinches enabled them to evade the shots. Hank grinned when he located where the shimmer ended and launched himself into a slide on the linoleum floor, which he could now see was old but carefully polished, year after year. He careened into the first wizard and hooked his arm around the one to the side as he continued, and they all collided with the remaining man.

  Whatever spells they might have tried to cast were lost in the impact, and the agent used the moment of surprise to his advantage. He thrust an elbow sideways into the face of a wizard and reversed the motion to deliver a punch to the forehead of the next. The third staggered to his feet but the ARES agent looped one foot behind his ankle and kicked his shin with the other. Bone cracked and the magic-user howled as he tumbled. Hank punched the man he’d stunned with the forehead blow and this time, caught him cleanly in the temple and rendered him unconscious. He scrambled to his feet and delivered a kick to the man with the damaged shin in the same moment that the witch appeared in the intersection.

  She was visible only for an instant before a blast of force hurled him the length of the hallway. It stuck to him and shoved him ever faster until i
t hammered him into the far wall. His head cracked against the stone and his vision failed, replaced by blackness and white spots. It returned as a blurry mess a moment later, and he groaned at the discomfort of the unyielding floor beneath him. He managed to roll out of the way of the fireball that roared into the wall he’d impacted with but he could hardly put his thoughts together. With no time to spare, he snatched the healing potion at his belt and drained it in a single long draught. His back arched and he screamed in anger as the magic surged through him before he bounded to his feet and raced down the corridor toward the witch.

  She’d been distracted in the interim by his allies, who fired at her from the same room he’d been in earlier. The woman used a fallen wizard to protect herself by levitating his body to absorb the incoming rounds. She failed to sense the large agent’s approach until his fist met the place where her spine joined her skull. He didn’t need to expend any of the magic that burned within him and a single blow was enough for her to sag and fall, out of the fight one way or the other. He spun as a hail of ice hissed down the hall toward him and stepped back to avoid it. A brief look had revealed a portal in the evidence room beyond and figures throwing boxes into it.

  “Dammit, they’re getting stuff out. I don’t suppose any of you broke the rules on equipment, did you?”

  Anik sounded sheepish but not particularly apologetic. “I might have a couple of extra grenades.”

  “Boom-boom kind?”

  “The boomiest.”

  “Excellent. There are magicals defending the entrance. We’ll lay cover down, you throw your explosives, and then we’ll see what trouble we can cause.” The others moved into position, Tony on the other side of the hallway that led to their targets while Anik readied himself for a run. Starsky and Hutch remained a few steps behind, their weapons aimed. Hank nodded, stuck his rifle around the corner, and fired blindly. Tony did the same, and the demolitions expert dashed across the opening and hurled two canisters as he did so. They detonated an instant later, giving the wizards no time to react, and the large man rushed forward into the smoke and noise.