“Captain Bolivar, if I find the people I’m after, calling the Guardia in for backup is only going to result in more dead Guardia,” Roslyn said quietly. “The only people I’m going after these bastards with are Marines.
“I may not have found my enemy yet, Captain, but I know who they are, and I will not underestimate them.”
Connor ad Aaron was a name to conjure with in her head, after all. The man had successfully hacked every record needed to infiltrate his team of Augments as Mage-Admiral Alexander’s security detail from the Protectorate Royal Guard. He’d kidnapped Jane Alexander and Roslyn Chambers from the middle of a Protectorate battle fleet, leaving everyone believing them dead.
Part of her was grimly certain that if he’d remained responsible for their security at Styx, the Republic’s continuity-of-government station in Chrysanthemum, she never would have escaped.
Instead, it seemed, he’d ended up here. Roslyn wasn’t sure what to do about that…but she was sure she couldn’t underestimate him again.
Back in the shuttle, Roslyn leaned against her chair and took a moment to close her eyes and attempt to decompress. Instead, a slew of memories of meeting with the big Mage who’d held her captive for weeks of transit flickered across her mind, and she exhaled a long sigh.
“I’m guessing ad Aaron is a name that means something to someone,” Killough said in the silence.
“Run Jackson’s locations against the map from Triple Q,” Roslyn ordered, ignoring the question. “Mooren, is the squad ready?”
“Give us five to lock into exosuits, and we’re ready to drop and rock at your order, Commander,” the Marine replied. “Do we have a target?”
“It’ll take us more than five minutes to answer that question,” Roslyn replied. “I need to record a message back to Huntress to send on the Link. Ad Aaron was presumed dead in the destruction of Styx Station.”
“RID?” Killough asked quietly.
“Yeah. He was the son of an ass who kidnapped Mage-Admiral Alexander,” Roslyn said. “And me. I remember him and none of it’s pleasant.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but the fact that she’d crushed on the attractive Royal Guardsman Mage before finding out what he really was contributed to the sense of betrayal. And now, he’d been involved in this kind of monstrosity?
“If people have been going into that facility, they have to have been coming out, right?” she continued, her eyes still closed as she struggled with her memories and her traumas. “Mooren, did we see an increase in…I don’t know, John Doe bodies?”
“I’m not as good at this as you are, but I’ll take a look,” the Marine replied. “Looping Knight in.”
“I ran the analysis already,” Killough admitted. “Plus…well, Jackson’s numbers still don’t cover the full excess-missing-persons number, even if all of her kidnapping was here in Nueva Portugal.”
“Which it wouldn’t be,” Roslyn sighed. “How many people are we looking at here, Killough?”
The shuttle headrest made for a solid physical focus as she tried very hard to keep her mind on the moment and the task in front of them, but past and present horrors were rushing together far too quickly.
“Over the last four years, at least a thousand from Nueva Portugal alone,” he told her. “And no, there’s no statistically significant increase in John and Jane Doe bodies. Those people have just completely fucking disappeared.
“Unless the lab is bigger than I think it is, they’re not alive in there, either.”
Roslyn nodded, focusing on the spike of sheer anger that gave her.
“So, these fucking murderous monsters have killed a thousand people in their goddamn lab,” she whispered. “And then went on to kill thousands more with that bomb in your apartment. I don’t… I can’t… Why?”
“Because they’re convinced that they are better,” Killough said, his voice very quiet. “Because they’re convinced non-Mages don’t matter—that even other Mages sometimes don’t matter. Because the science and the possibilities are so incredible to them that the consequences and the prices of their actions don’t register.
“It’s not even the Republic,” he noted. “The Republic you could respect; they had an ideal…They lied and manipulated, but at least they stood for something. Finley didn’t. Finley was in it all for his own power.”
“Thankfully, someone put a bullet in him,” Mooren replied. “But these feel like the same mold. What do we do?”
“We find them,” Roslyn said firmly, finally opening her eyes and studying the holographic map that Killough was creating. “We find them, and we capture them—and then we give them scrupulously fair trials and then we shoot them.
“Because we are better than them and we will do it right,” she told the Marine and the spy. “But before that, before anything, we need to find the fuckers. So, tell me, Agent Killough, what does the map look like now?”
It didn’t look like an answer; that was certain.
The six red splotches of Jackson’s rendezvous locations formed a lopsided circle some fifteen kilometers across. Inside that circle were at least four of Triple Q’s projects, including half a neighborhood—elementary school included—a large park and two apartment complexes.
It didn’t include any office towers, but there were two just outside it.
“Well, that cuts our targets pretty significantly,” Killough noted. “Four projects, assuming we’re only looking at the ones that would be convenient to all six locations…”
“Or Lafrenz and ad Aaron could be intentionally creating a pattern to fool the mob,” Roslyn pointed out. “From what our contact said, the mob was already getting twitchy about Jackson’s methods. Our targets might have realized that and set up a false trail.”
“Agreed,” the spy said. “But we don’t have anything else to go on. We’ll need to start working through Triple Q’s construction projects eventually, and this gives us a place to start.”
“We have the same problem with ground-penetrating radar as before,” Roslyn said. “Plus, if we fire it across the entire zone, people are going to notice. It won’t cause a lot of trouble, but enough burnt-out microwaves and cheap electronics, and people might notice a pattern.”
“The alternative is we see what overhead we can get from Huntress and look for oddities,” Mooren suggested. “That’s what you did at the casino, and it helped confirm there was something there, right?”
Roslyn nodded slowly.
“Overflight by the shuttle is going to draw just as much attention as the radar,” she admitted. “More, probably. But Huntress can get into position and give us an orbital view. It’s a starting point.”
“And what happens if there’s nothing visible from above?” Killough asked. “There’s a school right there. We can’t exactly go in shooting the same way.”
“If we’re certain, we can bring in the Guardia to evac the school as we move in,” Roslyn replied. “But if we’re quiet, no one on the surface ever needs to know anything.”
She studied the holographic map again and sighed.
“Herbert,” she called the pilot. “Can you get us down in that park without drawing too much attention?”
“There’s a Guardia precinct on the south edge, opposite the school,” the pilot reported after a moment. “If we ask nicely, do you think they’ll let us borrow their shuttle pad?”
“I think so,” Roslyn agreed. “All right, people. Let’s move.”
Maybe a rooftop view would bring answers the orbital view didn’t.
27
Nothing. There was nothing on the orbital overhead that stuck out as unusual. It was a suburban park, three kilometers square of mostly untouched wilderness surrounded by stormwater ponds.
To the east, toward the main continent, there was a suburb that Triple Q had built. To the west were a slew of apartment complexes, including two built by their target.
North was a low-sprawling commercial district of shops and some small apartments and office tow
ers. The far northern side was marked by a pair of Triple Q-constructed office towers.
The south was a light industrial district, with the Guardia station they’d landed the shuttle on.
Nothing about the region screamed “secret evil lab” to Roslyn, but based off what Jackson had told them, more than two hundred people had vanished in handovers around the area—and it was one of their three highest-density areas of Triple Q construction.
“Triple Q built the suburb here,” Knight told them, the cyber-Marine having joined the analysis now. “They also built these apartment complexes directly across the park, and about forty percent of the storm drain system for everything around here. All funneling to these drainage ponds to help sustain the natural wetland.”
“And the park?” Roslyn asked quietly.
“Triple Q put in the paved pathways and the two security-and-maintenance stations,” Killough said. The agent stroked his stubble thoughtfully and then tapped a structure well away from everything else.
“Water processing plant,” he noted. “They use the stormwater ponds as a counter-flood reservoir as well, but the water goes back into the city system eventually and has to be treated.
“It’s not on our Triple Q list but let me take a look.”
A minute ticked by. Then another. Roslyn was pulling up data on the stormwater drainage system around the park and then stopped.
“Oh, fuck me,” she murmured. “Or is it supposed to be Eureka?”
“Commander?”
In response to Knight’s query, Roslyn threw the drainage map onto the hologram. All six of their rendezvous locations for the human traffickers’ contacts with the lab were within a block or two of a maintenance access to the drainage tunnels.
“How big are those sewers?” Mooren asked.
“They’re storm drains, not sewers,” Knight replied. “This is almost a monsoon-esque area, isn’t it? They have a rainy season… Figure the storm drains are big enough for a truck?”
“Easily,” Killough said grimly. “What isn’t visible from the air and wasn’t on our list because Triple Q didn’t build it was the reservoir.”
“The reservoir?” Roslyn asked.
The MISS spy tapped a command and added a new orange oval shape under the park.
“Surface stormwater ponds are handy, but as Knight pointed out, this is a monsoon area,” he told them. “Rainy-season storms have rainfall measured in centimeters. Despite everything we do, water that washes down our streets isn’t safe to go into the ocean without treatment, and they can only treat it so fast.
“So, there are reservoirs positioned throughout the city. The newest of them is here, under the surface-water ponds. Designed to hold approximately twenty-five cubic kilometers of water, the excavation was done with off-angle drilling to keep the surface park untouched.”
“How easy would it be to fudge the numbers on how much fill you removed?” Roslyn asked quietly.
“Easy,” Killough replied. “Especially if you’re funneling the fill over to other major construction projects and not reporting it as disposed. Triple Q didn’t just help them hide materials incoming; it also helped them hide the fill coming out from the project.
“The company that did the work isn’t on our list,” he continued. “But they subcontracted it…and the company they subcontracted to was privately owned and appears to have only existed to do this one project.
“We don’t know who owned it. We don’t know where the equipment came from or where the equipment went, but they were drilling in the right place at the right time and installing a massive underground concrete structure.”
“And with access to that and Triple Q’s materials orders, they could have built a second structure alongside or under it,” Roslyn concluded. “I think you found them, Killough.”
“Your catch on the drainage network says they have at least some access from there, but that wouldn’t be reliable,” the agent said. “They couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t flood.”
He sighed.
“It gives them a lot of ways out. Too many for us to cut off.”
“But not too many for Song of the Huntress to watch from orbit,” Roslyn told him. “That means we can’t call in more Marines. If the shuttles and the rest of the Marines are needed for containment, it’s just us going in.”
She shook her head, looking at the orange highlights of the underground drainage system hiding their enemies.
“I’ll talk to Daalman and Dickens. We’ll make it work, try and pull out another squad, but we’ll have to do,” she said grimly. “Any idea where the best entrance to bring in exosuits is?”
“Here,” Killough replied, tapping the water treatment plant that had sent them all in the new direction. “It’s a secured, automated facility. A lot of material goes in, but there’s only people there when trucks go in and for weekly inspections.
“If they have control of the security, they can run any number of people in and out. The main access is concealed in the park, so no one will really question the numbers.”
Roslyn sighed.
“That’s right next to the damn school, Killough,” she said. “We’re going to have kids drawing exosuits for weeks—and that’s assuming everything goes smoothly.
“We can go in at night,” Mooren suggested.
“It’s noon, Sergeant,” Roslyn replied. “Every hour risks the lives of hundreds of people waiting for some kind of answer to the toxin these people built.
“No. I’ll make the call upstairs, and then you see if you can borrow something from the Guardia that will let us get to the door unnoticed. There is no time.
“We go in now.”
The shuttle barely had the space for Roslyn to find a private corner to establish a link with Huntress. A proper assault shuttle would have, but this was a light transport with token armament. Assault shuttles were designed to carry entire platoons of Marines, after all, not a single squad.
“Daalman,” the Mage-Captain responded when she finally connected with her superior. “What is going on, Chambers? That last stunt turned out to everyone’s benefit, but you’re starting to look a tad rogue here.”
“Sir, we are facing a serious threat,” Roslyn said quietly. “I believe that the toxin used to send several thousand of Nueva Portugal’s citizens into madness originates from the same location I was looking for under my orders from the Mountain.”
“I’d guessed,” Daalman told her. “Commander, we are well past the level where I am comfortable with one of my officers operating independently and under secret orders. I trust you and I have faith in the Mage-Queen, but this is too much.”
Roslyn paused for a moment, considering how to approach this. She had Daalman’s support so far, but she believed the Captain—and she needed Daalman’s full support going forward.
“Then you need to know,” she concluded quietly. “We’re pursuing a secret laboratory set up by rogue Mages from the Republic’s Project Prometheus. I now suspect they were working on alternative uses of the basic brain-interface technology used in the Promethean Interfaces.
“At the very least, we are looking at a high-level Mage-Surgeon and one of the RID’s handful of Mage operatives,” Roslyn continued. “We both know I’m operating under orders from the Mountain, sir. Neutralizing this lab and taking the Mages into custody is absolutely necessary—and doing so without it becoming public knowledge is critical to maintaining the fragile peace we have with the former Republic worlds.
“If it comes out that rogue Mages murdered thousands of people on a former Republic world, it’s not going to matter that those Mages worked for the Republic,” she said quietly. “It should…but it won’t.”
The channel was quiet.
“Well, I should know by now that you don’t pull punches,” Daalman finally said. “You’re talking multiple names from the Red List and an active Prometheus lab?”
“Yes, sir,” Roslyn confirmed. “We believe we have located the lab, but we have confirme
d they have a lot of ways out.”
“You have a plan,” Daalman said flatly. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m taking my team in through what we believe is the main entrance. I’m forwarding you a map of the drainage tunnels they have previously used for entering and exiting the facility. The network is large enough to handle transport vehicles.
“I need Huntress’s Marines to move against anyone who exits from that network as we move in. I don’t think we can afford the time or the risk to bring in the Guardia or the local Army.”
“No. This has to be Martian,” Daalman agreed. “You’re talking about kicking in the front door with twelve Marines and one Mage, Chambers. Surely—”
“We’re looking at over a hundred potential exits, sir,” Roslyn interrupted. “I need Major Dickens’s Marines to make sure no one escapes. I trust Sergeant Mooren and her people to back me while we punch through whatever they have.
“They can’t have an army down there. They couldn’t have hidden that from the locals—and all of this was as hidden from the Republic as it was from us.”
Daalman sighed.
“All right,” she agreed. “But I’m moving Navy Mages in with the Marines, and you will call for backup if you need it, Commander. I’ve got your back, to the end of the line.
“Let’s not fuck this up.”
“I’m not planning on it, sir. I will keep you in the loop as much as I can.”
“You’d better. At the end of the day, if this goes wrong, the court-martial will string me up right next to you,” Daalman told her.
Roslyn chuckled bitterly. They both knew the truth: if this went wrong, Roslyn would be long dead before any court-martial took place.
28
“We don’t have much that fits exosuits,” the young Guardia Lieutenant said nervously, watching as twelve Marines, each augmented to a full two meters in height by the battle armor, crossed his precinct’s front yard.
A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10) Page 14
