Arcane Ops

by T. R. Cameron

  When it failed to materialize, her mouth opened in shock. When he laughed, she realized she was in trouble. Without magic, how could she defeat a seven-foot-tall iron monster with a sword almost as big as he was?

  Chapter Eleven

  The knight blurred into motion—far quicker than she’d anticipated he could—and whirled the sword into a powerful downward strike intended to end the battle instantly. She waited until the final second before she spun away, moving to her right since he’d seemed to favor his right hand slightly. I gotta get every edge I can. Staying on his weak side is good. Maybe he’ll get tired of trying to hit me and fall asleep.

  The next blow whipped across at head height, and she ducked under it and rolled immediately to the side as he stopped it and slashed back at a diagonal. Okay, he won’t tire anytime soon with that kind of strength. Plan B rejected. She mentally cataloged the items in her utility belt as she dodged several follow-up attacks and came up with nothing that would be of use in the current circumstance. Dammit.

  He paused his offensive flurry and let the sword rest on his shoulder. “Little girl, let’s end this without undue pain. Stop running, and I’ll take your head off with one blow. I promise, it will be as humane as a beheading can be. If you keep this up, you’ll wind up getting chopped to pieces, which will hurt much, much more.”

  She pushed sweaty strands of hair off her forehead and took a few steps back. “Does that line ever work?”

  The black knight laughed. “Not yet. But it’s always worth trying. It takes forever for my followers to clean the blood up after.”

  He slid forward smoothly and delivered a stroke intended to split her up the middle, but she dodged and retreated out of the way of the follow-up horizontal strike. His words had inspired the beginnings of a plan, but she didn’t love it and really hoped some other idea would miraculously appear. She backed closer to the translucent barrier and it sizzled as electricity flared to connect with her skin and make her shudder. She tried to pull from it to power her own spell and received a nasty shock for her trouble. The distraction almost cost her as the sword whipped in and narrowly missed her clavicle before she ducked and rolled away. He followed and she felt like an idiot as she fled in a circle, then cut across to try to create some distance between them.

  He stopped and regarded her insolently, the weapon resting on the other shoulder now. “You have nothing. It is always those strong in magic who seek Rhazdon’s leavings, and once without it, they cannot hope to defeat me.” He lifted the sword into a high attack position. “You have been an interesting diversion, but it is time to bring this intrusion to a close. Once you are dead, I can return to my vigil and continue to increase the power of my followers in this world.”

  Okay. I guess it’s all I have. She had carefully watched how he moved, noted the weak points where only chainmail protected him, and identified a few places that might offer an opportunity. The cost of reaching them, though, had the potential to be devastating. She circled to her right to position herself perfectly and was rewarded with the one break she truly needed. His mighty strike intended to cleave her in two descended at an angle, rather than straight down. She skip-stepped to the right, raised her left arm with a quick prayer, and pivoted into her own attack.

  The blade whipped downward and struck the armor plate strapped to her left forearm. If he’d chopped vertically, it probably would have overcome the protection and cut her arm in half, but the angle caused it to bite the metal and skid off. The impact fractured the bone and she bit down on a scream when she forced the damaged limb to do its job and grasp his wrist. She finished her pivot and rammed her right palm into his elbow, just above the defensive spike on the guard. The joint broke under her attack, and he bellowed in anger as she spun and stumbled away, cradling her arm. She yanked a healing flask from her belt and drank it quickly, hoping against hope that whatever blocked her magic wouldn’t work against it, too. The vaguest of tingles whispered through her body and the injury throbbed a little less painfully, but that was the only change. She threw the empty container aside with a curse.

  It was nothing compared to the stream of vile epithets that erupted from the dark knight’s mouth, however. His struggles to lift his greatsword one-handed were a source of solid amusement for her until finally, he stood tall and raised it, carefully maintaining the weapon’s balance as he stalked slowly toward her. His stroke was awkward and she dodged it easily. The blood seeping from his broken joint brought a relieved smile to her face. Based on the way he swung the blade and flailed rather than struck precisely, he seemed to know that he was losing any opportunity he had to defeat her. He launched a kick when she was close, but his heavy armor slowed him and she skipped away without difficulty.

  She gestured at the sword. “Lay it down now, and we’ll call this done. I’ll take the weapon and you can stay here and play with whatever idiots are stupid enough to commit to your cause.”

  He snarled and lunged at her, swinging the massive blade wildly. When she saw the opening, her body moved before her mind even registered it. Instead of spinning to the outside, she spun inward toward him. Her torso twisted to avoid the blade, and she levered her back under him, drove up with her legs, and tilted to one side. The impact against his core lifted him enough to break his balance, and he began to topple to the side. She slid out from under the giant man, clawed at his hand, and punched his wrist with a tight fist. He fell to the left and the sword to the right. She raced to it and scooped it up, then turned to find him staggering to his feet and clutching his broken elbow. The arm beneath it was crooked, and she realized he must have landed on it.

  His voice was filled with rage and agony. “Put my sword down, you insolent gnat.”

  She’d had enough. To have the object of their search finally in her grasp should have felt like a victory. Instead, it was an exhausting end to the effort. All she wanted was to rest. For a month. Only a month. “I’m leaving and I’m taking this with me. Drop the shield.”

  He shook his head. “I explained the rules. Only death serves.”

  “This is your last chance.”

  “Give me the sword, woman.”

  “Okay, you asked for it.” She screamed in rage and drove forward to thrust it into his chest. When the blade pierced him, the body within the armor transformed into a pillar of flame and she scrambled away from it and fell. In moments, it was gone and the hot and smoking remnants of his armor lay scattered on the dais. Nylotte stepped to her side. Her teacher helped her to her feet without a word and opened a portal to the bunker’s bedroom. Diana stumbled as she passed through, then lost consciousness as the Drow laid her on the bed. The last thing she heard was the Dark Elf’s pride-filled voice. “Well done, Diana. Well done.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Kayleigh waved at the bartender to order another round. The Irish Pub was her other favorite spot on the city’s South Side, and she’d decided it was time to share it with Deacon, who professed to be a fan of Manchester United. The bar opened early for those who wanted to gather and watch the game, and the rest of the main street was quiet on a Sunday morning so it was a perfect setting. With a flawless slide, a second pint of Strongbow arrived in front of her and a Guinness was set reverentially in front of her partner. A plowman’s lunch plate sat on the top of the wooden bar between them, almost half already gone.

  A cheer sounded as a goal was scored. Deacon apparently remembered he wasn’t there alone and turned toward her. “So, are you enjoying the game?”

  She shrugged. “Team sports kind of aren’t my thing. Give me a good one-on-one matchup any day.”

  “Sacrilege.”

  Kayleigh laughed and gestured at the crowd. “Don’t let them know my secret. They seem rowdy.”

  He nodded. “Unbridled enthusiasm is a requirement to be a football fan.” He stared at her for a moment and sighed. “Okay, spill it.”

  His partner took a long, delaying sip to order her thoughts. “I’ve been thinking about the R
-gang.” Okay, it’s not a complex code, but there’s no need to talk openly either among these drunken fans. You never know who might be around.

  He nodded and his attention focused more intently on her as he turned his back to the screens. “Everyone is doing all they can where they are concerned. I’m sure they’ll be taken care of.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not doing all I can. Well, we’re not since I’ll need your help to do the thing I’m thinking of.”

  “Okay, walk me through it.”

  “We have the watchers, which give us a good surveillance foundation. We can tap the PD drones as well so I feel like that’s all covered. As long as you’re running traps and watches set up on the gang’s email and stuff.”

  “I do, in a geofence around the storage place.” He didn’t say warehouse, but she knew he meant the Remembrance’s base of operations. “When they’re outside there, we don’t have much other than the ones Face has tagged.” They’d provided Sloan with stickers to attach to electronic devices when the opportunity presented itself. They looked like harmless pranks but allowed for tracking and intercepts. The undercover agent had managed to apply a few of them thus far.

  “Right, so that part is reasonably under control. Then we have the stun ones.” Their own fleet of stun drones now numbered a dozen, with an additional two offline for maintenance at any given moment. The use of off-the-shelf parts had allowed them to ramp up quickly. “Ours are good, and those the PD inherited from when the Cube was in place are there to supplement.”

  He nodded again. The downtown precinct had anywhere from eight to sixteen weaponized drones available depending on tasking and state of repair. ARES had direct access to them by arrangement with the city and indirect access through a small box she and Deacon had installed in each when they took them for “test runs.” Should the police decide not to share—or worse, conclude that BAM Pittsburgh was a target for some reason—they’d find the devices unwilling to obey problematic instructions. That particular operation had caused a little conflict for Kayleigh’s sense of right and wrong but ultimately, it was merely a backup plan against someone else choosing to behave unethically. “Okay, so, that’s the foundation. But what has you tweaked?”

  “I had an idea.”

  “You have many ideas. You’re like an idea machine.”

  “Yeah, but this one is a little more out there than usual. I was laying in the back yard looking at the stars last night when I saw a strange winking, and then some more lights making the same pattern. Alfred tracked them, and it turns out the Air National Guard base out at the airport has some new toys.”

  Deacon frowned. “What kind of new toys.”

  “Serious ones.” She leaned forward so no one would overhear. “Lethal ones.”

  “For urban use?”

  Kayleigh shook her head. “I doubt it, but that’s something you should look into, computer wizard. I’m more concerned with how we’ll deal with them, on two levels. First, if there was a call to use them against us or if the enemy managed to take control of them, we need to plan a defense. That much is obvious. But…well, we might also want to see if we could maybe…uh, hijack them. If we needed to.”

  A look of shock grew on his face. “Are you serious?”

  “I know. It’s totally not like me, right? It’s only that everything seems so dangerous lately and we don’t have the slightest clue what’s going on half of the time. What if they suddenly decide to start killing people indiscriminately? That woman in charge of the group is legitimately crazy. I don’t think we can have these weapons in our backyard and not prepare plans to take them over and use them if the situation called for it.”

  “We’d need to agree on what that situation was if I’m going to be any part of this.”

  She nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking. You and me—only you and me. We find out how to do it, we do what needs to be done to make it possible, and only ever mention it to anyone else if we agree to do so. We don’t ask permission and we don’t allow anyone to order us.”

  He looked into his drink. “That’s kind of professionally dangerous.”

  “Everything we do is dangerous.” She snorted. “The key element is we have to be able to live with ourselves. And I don’t think I could do that if someone else held the keys to that option.”

  He slapped the bar. “Okay, I’m in. Let’s do it.” A loud cheer filled the room, and they were both startled, then realized that the home team had won the game.

  Right. Let’s do it.

  The alert that the sensors inside the Remembrance witch’s apartment had gone active came as she entered the house. Rath and Diana were out training together—a rare occurrence these days—so she headed to the basement to listen in. A muttered command to Alfred switched her gaming setup to work mode and changed the lighting, the sources for the monitors, and her keyboard layouts. By the time she was seated, the captured video and audio streamed into the high-end displays and the speakers.

  It was always weird peering into Sarah’s life like this. Kayleigh had no voyeuristic tendencies whatsoever, given her feelings about the importance of privacy, so watching as Alfred displayed the woman lying down and rearranging her furniture felt very unnatural. A clock in the corner indicated the feed was running on a 173-second delay, the duration it had taken her to get into position. The witch must have been eager to commune with whoever it was she talked to since she hadn’t changed, made food, or done any of the things normal people did when they came home.

  Okay, I didn’t do any of those things either, but I never claimed to be normal.

  The tech retrieved a herbal energy drink from the mini-fridge, popped the top, and took a large sip as Sarah began to talk. It was also extremely weird to hear only one side of the conversation and have to try to piece together the other part. On several occasions, she and Deacon had spent an occasional giddy hour replaying the feeds and putting their own hilarious comments in place of whoever was chatting with the witch. Fortunately, only the two of them plus Alfred knew of it, and they’d all promised never to tell.

  She sounded fearful. “Yes, you are correct. It was a dismal failure yet again. Everything went according to plan, but one police officer had magic and used it to wreck the escape.” She paused as if listening. “No, I’m not sure why he wasn’t eliminated with the others on the way in. My people tell me they killed everyone they saw. Maybe he used his power to hide. But if so, they should have detected it. No, I honestly don’t know.”

  Sarah’s body—wearing a black dress that had gone slightly grey with repeated washing and her stringy hair in need of a wash—twitched on the camera as Kayleigh waited for the next comments. She was already typing a summary of the discussion in one window and spinning up the watchers throughout the city in another in case there was something revelatory on the way.

  “As I mentioned before, I have long thought there was someone working against us from the inside. I guess it was wishful thinking to assume it was Marcus and that it would stop once he was gone.” After a pause, she continued with palpable anger in her voice. “No, I don’t think it was random. I think one of the human scumbags is a traitor.” Her head tilted as she scowled in silence. “There are maybe thirty who have been with the group since the beginning. Too many to simply kill outright, unfortunately.”

  Kayleigh pressed the buttons to send the recording to Diana. The threat against Sloan was clear and hopefully, once she listened to the feed, she’d find a way to get him cover—or, even better, pull him out of the gang.

  The witch laughed, and it was an evil, unhinged sound. “Oh yes, I think I can spin together a trap that even the cleverest mouse wouldn’t be able to resist and won’t be able to escape. Consider it done.” The tech tapped more buttons and flagged the recording to Diana as an urgent priority. The boss’s AI would interrupt if it were possible to do so to draw her attention to the message.

  On the screen, Sarah waved a hand in the air. “That other thing is all taken care of.
The word is out, and there are apparently a number of people vying for the prize. Setting the bounties that high had the result we intended. Maybe it’ll even pay off in the end.” She laughed again. “The underling has already weathered one attack and more are sure to come. The leader should face her own imminently.” There was a pause, and she sounded defensive when she spoke again. “No, we don’t really control the timing. We merely put the contract out and they bring back the proof and get paid. They’re not employees or anything.”

  The witch screamed, and her body thrashed and fell off the couch onto the floor. Kayleigh tapped a command to zoom in on her face and saw that it was bloodless and looked frozen in fear. It took several seconds for the enemy leader to gather her wits before she climbed to her feet and muttered, “I hate it when she does that.” She staggered toward her bedroom, looking tired, and the tech returned the systems to automatic surveillance.

  She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes while stress gathered like a steel ball in her stomach. The generalized danger, the specific contracts that had been put out on Cara and Diana, the threat to Sloan, and the plan to compromise the National Guard drones all warred within her for the position of chief worry. She checked the clock, saw that it was far too early to find a decent online matchup, and turned to her computer with a sigh. I can start working on the code for the drones and wait for the boss to tell me what to do about Sloan. It’s not everything, but it’s something.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Diana stepped through the portal to her old house and immediately noticed that Lisa had repainted. She was about to say something snarky when her best friend forever pulled her into a hug that crushed the breath out of her. When she managed to wiggle out and speak, the excitement in Lisa’s eyes was too genuine to dent with her sarcasm, so she told the truth. “It looks great. When did you find the time to do this?”