“It’ll be Ardent’s call,” David replied. “But even if we aren’t certain, we can’t pass up even the chance that it’s accurate.”
“I’ll make what arguments I can,” Riley promised. “But this is your territory, David, not mine. I can’t push Ardent at all.”
“I know,” David conceded. What influence the Elfin Lord had needed to be preserved for keeping ONSET from abusing his people. Such abuse wasn’t likely, but…there was something about Colonel Kyle Ardent that made anyone with the Sight uncomfortable.
“Seems easy enough, though,” Klein pointed out, interjecting himself into the conversation. “We go to this Mountain, blow in the doors, kill all the vampires. What’s the difficulty?”
David smiled grimly.
“The difficulty, Klein, is that we’re cops. And, so far as I can tell, the vampires in that facility aren’t actually guilty of anything.”
DAVID WASN’T sure he’d ever actually been in this particular briefing room before. Most ONSET briefings he’d attended had been either individual Commanders briefing their teams, or at most two or three team Commanders being briefed simultaneously.
Today, they’d needed a room for almost thirty people. A dozen Elfin Warriors surrounded Riley on the other side, while Major Warner and Colonel Ardent had both brought matching sets of young, black-suited bodyguards.
David, O’Brien, Mason, and every member of David’s board of inquiry filled the rest of the room. Seven ONSET Team Commanders was more than he’d ever seen gathered in one place in the entire time he’d been in ONSET.
“Ladies, gentlemen, thank you all for coming,” Ardent told them from the podium at the front of the room. He was a gaunt man, almost skeletal, with brown hair and a ready smile that never touched his eyes or his aura.
His aura, in fact, rarely changed. It wasn’t shielded or otherwise blocked from David’s Sight; it just…didn’t change. Where most people’s auras were a constantly shifting pattern of colors showing personality, emotion and supernatural powers, Ardent’s was simply…flat.
It was disconcerting.
“Most of you are here, well, because you were on Campus,” Ardent admitted. “Lord Riley was requested to attend to validate some information that Commander White brought into our hands. While it isn’t possible for us to deploy all seven ONSET teams currently here on the intended operation, I wanted to make certain everyone is in the loop, as the risk factors mean you may be required to rapidly redeploy as backup.
“To begin, I want to ask one of our intelligence chiefs, Charles, to give us a summary of what we have discovered about the vampire known as the Arbiter and the secret Familias facility called the Mountain. Charles?”
The big projector lit up with the image of the Arbiter from David’s encounter. The dark red Catholic robes accentuated the vampire’s pale skin, shaven head and glittering black eyes. He was creepier in the image than he had been in person.
“This, ladies and gentlemen,” Charles’s brogue said over the speakers, “is the vampire who identified himself to Commander White as the Arbiter. We have most of his life story now, but little of it is relevant to us prior to his entry into the United States in 1790 as Adam Waters.
“What is important to know about him is that he was Anaxis of Athens during the reign of Philip of Macedon,” the dragon continued. “He is approximately twenty-four hundred years old, which makes him the oldest vampire Omicron is aware of.
“Those priestly robes are his by right. He was a Bishop in France prior to the French Revolution, and fled the country about two steps ahead of the guillotine.
“He was at that time already a Keeper, part of an order of vampires Omicron was not aware of until we acquired this intelligence,” Charles noted. “They apparently give up human blood as a necessary component of their task of raising the fledgling vampires to be useful adults again.”
“Vegetarian vampires?” Klein asked. “That seems hard to believe.”
Ardent’s glare silenced the Elfin, but Charles caught the question.
“They’re hardly vegetarian,” the dragon pointed out. “Details are hazy, but they appear to subsist on animal blood. Cow and pig, by preference.”
“That doesn’t fit with what we know of vampire feeding,” Riley objected thoughtfully. “They consume the life force as well as the blood. It’s part of why their victims usually die instead of turn.”
“I believe that they have to drink from the live animal for just that reason,” Charles replied. “Or did, at least. Some of the intelligence we have acquired suggests they have established a solution for that in recent years, but it wasn’t relevant to the question, so our source didn’t provide us details.
“What is relevant is that the Arbiter is the single most powerful vampire in North America…and always has been,” he concluded. “That said, he has also always stood apart from Familias politics. He is the most powerful nursemaid in the world.
“The Familias send all of their fledglings to him, and he returns them as adult vampires a year or so later, restored to their senses and taught what it means to be a vampire and how to survive in this world.”
“You can understand, everyone,” Ardent cut in, “what this means as a potential weak point. The Arbiter’s facility is their future. Without it, they will have a far harder time expanding their numbers and replacing their losses.”
“It also represents an opportunity,” Commander Frost noted, the old man’s voice thoughtful. “If we were to co-opt that facility, we would control what those fledglings were taught about ‘what it means to be a vampire.’
“That is not a possibility we can ignore.”
“This is true,” Ardent allowed, “but it’s also not a possibility that we can allow to blind ourselves to necessity. The Arbiter and his Keepers represent an unknown but extremely high level of threat. He himself appears to be an extraordinarily powerful Mage, and his Keepers include several more Mages of unknown power levels.
“But the most important thing is that we now know the location of the Mountain, if this intelligence is correct. Lord Riley?”
Riley rose to his feet.
“Colonel Ardent provided me with a copy of the information around these Keepers,” the Elfin Lord told the group. “Apparently unlike Omicron, we were aware of the existence of the Keepers.”
Riley managed to not sound too surprised, but it was clear the possibility that Omicron didn’t know about the Keepers hadn’t occurred to the Elfin.
“We have, in fact, had several peaceful interactions with the Order in the past,” he noted. “This was a surprise to us because we, like Omicron, have basically been in a low-grade war with the Familias for years. This brings me to a major point: the Keepers are not part of the Familias. They stand entirely separate.”
“They are a support network for the Familias,” Ardent objected. “They are hardly separate from our perspective, even if they keep apart from the vampires’ point of view. The intelligence, Lord Riley?”
“We, obviously, cannot confirm the details of the Arbiter’s past,” Riley replied. “Our encounters with the Keepers have been at a much lower level and, well, transactional. We were aware that there was a central facility for teaching the fledglings, run by the Keepers, but our attempts to locate it have been fruitless.
“We have, however, heard it referred to as the Mountain,” he noted. “And have localized it to the Rocky Mountains in Nevada. That’s a vast expanse to search, so we didn’t try—but it lines up with the location you have acquired.”
“Given the verification that Lord Riley has been able to provide,” Ardent told the briefing, “I have made the decision to move forward with an assault on the Mountain.”
“Sir,” David interrupted, “on what grounds? So far as we know, these Keepers are guilty of no crimes.”
“This is true,” the Colonel admitted, his tone unwilling. “However, their support of the Familias renders them an active, immediate threat to the security of the United St
ates of America, and Standing Order Twenty-one gives us the authority to do whatever we have to to neutralize that threat.
“Do you understand, Commander?”
“Yes, sir,” David accepted.
“Good. I must confess that I have never seen nearly as unanimous a recommendation from my subordinates as I have for this operation,” Ardent replied. “Everyone, from Major Warner to Commander O’Brien to members of the Committee of Thirteen itself, appears to agree, Commander White, that you are the only suitable officer to command this operation.
“Given your…misgivings, are you prepared to take on this task?”
“I am,” David agreed instantly. Certainly, he wasn’t going to leave it to anyone else. “I must say, however, that given the circumstances, it may be wisest to summon the Keepers to surrender before we kick in the door.”
Ardent glanced around the room, clearly take the temperature of the Commanders and Elfin in the room before responding.
He must not have seen what he hoped to see, because he sighed and nodded.
“That is reasonable, Commander White,” he allowed. “I doubt these vampires will so blithely stand down as that, but that will be within your authority.” Ardent paused. “It has also been made clear to me by the Committee that if the fledglings are, in your opinion, safely contained, they are to be kept so until we have a chance to study the facility and its occupants.”
“There will be no massacre under my command, Colonel,” David replied softly, only for Ardent to bark a laugh.
“I don’t think anyone in this room or on the Committee expected a massacre under your command, White,” he replied. “We just want to be clear on what’s actually expected.
“You’ll command a three-team strike force: your own ONSET Thirteen, Commander Mason’s ONSET Fifteen, and Commander Sokol’s ONSET Six, plus two platoons of Elfin Warriors under Deputies Klein and Santiago,” Ardent reeled off.
“We have arranged for you to have air and artillery support if needed,” he continued. “There will be two squadrons of F-22s on standby at Mountain Home Air Force Base. The squadron COs are in the know, but the pilots will be only briefed in the air if you call them in.
“There is an artillery battery on the road from Sacramento as we speak,” he noted. “They will be in position with eight M109A7s by sixteen hundred hours, marking the beginning of your operations window.
“Officially, it’s a mobility training exercise, but, again, the battery CO has been fully briefed.”
“That’s a lot of firepower, sir,” David pointed out.
“It is,” Ardent confirmed, “but there’s a reason for it. Charles, can you brief everyone on just what the Mountain is?”
“Certainly,” Charles agreed. The image on the big screen switched from the image of the Arbiter to an overhead satellite image of a chunk of the Rockies.
“This is the Crater Lake National Park,” the dragon told them all. “On the east side of the lake, on the lower slopes of Mount Scott, facing towards Russia, there is an old Strategic Air Command ICBM base. Four Minuteman II silos and a central command bunker.
“The siloes were decommissioned, imploded, and the sites and intact upper levels sold to civilian developers in the nineties,” he continued. “The command bunker was sealed and abandoned. It was not officially sold, but the land it sits on was.
“Between the four silos and the surrounding land, no less than six developers were involved in the purchases of the land, which, unlike most portions of the Park, is cleared for development.
“They’ve spent twenty years arguing over how to develop the site, with multiple conflicting plans issued with local authorities.”
“And in truth, they are all owned by the Keepers?” Riley asked.
“Exactly,” Charles confirmed. “While the paperwork showed the rights and work tied up in years and years of problems, the Keepers simply moved in and set up. While only the top few floors of the silos are intact, that still provides quite a bit of real estate, especially as it appears that they accessed the command bunker and reactivated the generators.
“They also appear to have quietly moved in a large quantity of boring equipment and have dug out multiple floors inside the old silos as well as linking tunnels and…well, they’ve built quite the underground warren, though they appear to be using the old command bunker as their central home.
“That bunker is built into the mountain. Its most vulnerable sections are under twenty feet of concrete, and much of it is buried under several hundred to several thousand feet of mountain. It was rated to survive a direct nuclear hit on the silos themselves.”
David whistled softly as he studied the overhead.
“Entrances?” he asked.
“At least five, one for each of the SAC facilities,” Charles told him, highlighting them on the screen. “All of them were powered, foot-thick steel doors. Those were removed or destroyed at the decommissioning…but the intelligence and overhead suggests they were replaced with functional equivalents.
“The Oracle’s intelligence suggests there are approximately sixty Keepers and four hundred fledglings in the facility,” he noted. “Armament available to the Keepers is unknown; they may be relying on the ability to lock down the base to defend themselves, but the original facility had remote-controlled weapons and concealed firing positions to protect the entrances, at least.”
Several people in the room inhaled sharply as Charles gave the numbers, but David had been expecting something similar from the moment he learned just what the Arbiter was doing. There’d been forty fledglings in the convoy they’d intercepted. Even assuming that was an unusually large number, he’d presumed there had to be hundreds of vampires in the “school”.
Four hundred new vampires a year didn’t seem like much, but it was likely the largest expansion of the supernatural population going on, too.
“I leave the details of the operation to Commander White and his people,” Ardent told them all. “But this appears to be one of the most important missions of our time. Success, however it ends up occurring, could change the entire nature of the war with the Vampire Familias.
“All of you need to be aware that this is going down,” he continued. “Do not hesitate, Commander White, to call for aid. The Arbiter and his Keepers must surrender or be destroyed.
“Nothing less will secure the safety of our country.”
21
“All right, people, now that Charles has filled you in on the background, we’re going to talk specifics,” Commander David White told the crowd of people he’d assembled in the same briefing room Ardent had given him his briefing in.
Three ONSET Commanders. Nine ONSET Agents. Eight mundane Pendragon pilots. Forty Elfin Warriors. Elfin Lord Jamie Riley and his Second, Brianna Young, sat with the Elfin. Those last two weren’t supposed to be in the operation per David’s briefing, but no one was going to tell Riley he couldn’t be here.
And the Elfin Lord’s presence was welcome. The Arbiter was terrifying; any extra magical firepower was going to be worth its weight in gold.
“This was Strategic Air Command Base Crater Lake,” David continued, the screen behind him zooming in on the facility. “We have confirmed five entrances, but it looks like this one, to the old command bunker, is the main access.”
It flashed on the screen.
“We have detailed maps of the interior of the structures as they were after decommissioning,” he told the crowd. “We have some intelligence on the modifications made since, as well as the portions of the complex the Keepers have dug out since. The accuracy of that new information should be good, but relying on that is a good way to get people killed.
“We have designated each of the entrances Targets One through Five,” David noted. “ONSET Thirteen is going to go door-knock at Target One and demand the Keepers’ surrender. If we get it, we can all feel relieved and glad we brought a massive amount of overkill.”
He smiled grimly.
“I pu
t the odds at maybe twenty percent,” he admitted. “According to my one meeting with the Arbiter, he and his Keepers are sworn to nonviolence—except in the defense of their fledgling charges.
“I think we can safely assume that if we attack their crèche facility, fighting us won’t count as a violation of their oaths. We can expect heavy resistance, headlined by a supernatural who may well be the equal of Ekhmez or another high-court demon.”
That shut up most of the mutters. Ekhmez had taken over OSPI headquarters by a mix of mind control and outright slaughter, and the only reason David had managed to kill the creature was that it had underestimated the will of the seven people it had forged into Memoria—the sword had betrayed him, and that surprise had allowed David to triumph.
If the Arbiter was of a similar power level, which David suspected might be underestimating him, it could easily take all three Commanders, Riley and Young to take him down. Five Class One Supernaturals, all of them of phenomenal power, and it might well not be enough.
“ONSET Six and ONSET Fifteen will move in Targets Two and Four,” he continued. “Klein, your people will go with Mason. Santiago, you’re with Sokol.”
“What about the other two entrances?” Sokol asked.
“When I give the go signal, our Pendragons will bombard those entrances with heavy anti-armor missiles and collapse them. We know the exact specifications of the access tunnels, and given the skillset of Agent McCreery and the other pilots”—he nodded toward the ONSET Thirteen pilot—“I am fully confident in our ability to bring the entrances down.
“Once that is done, Six and Fifteen will move in through their entrances, supported by the Elfin. ONSET Thirteen, having knocked on the main door, will hold position to prevent any escapes.”
“Which means the Arbiter is likely to try to go through you,” Riley pointed out. “If you will permit, Commander White, I would like to attach myself and Second Young to ONSET Thirteen for this strike.”
ONSET: Blood of the Innocent Page 15
