Khanjar’s eyes widened for a moment. “That was better than military-grade rolling encryption on our comm systems. You are a useful one.”
“And you’re a damn useful ally. Thanks.”
Khanjar licked her lips as if they had gone dry. “This cannot be Celestial? She is not, so what is—” she said, but immediately shook her head. “No. I do not wish to know. We will take left flank.” With that, she whistled shrilly, and her team formed up.
John turned to Sera, cocking his head to the side. “After this is all over, remind me to ask you what the hell that was all ’bout sometime.”
“Trust, beloved,” Sera replied, her gaze bathing him in warmth. “It is all about trust.” She hurried after Molotok. “Quickly! We must go!”
Belladonna Blue: Forward Medical Unit
Bella sagged forward, holding herself up against the cold steel of the medical table, sweating and shaking from the things she had witnessed. And it hadn’t only been Red team that had nearly been destroyed, it had been ECHO Europe and Corbie as well. If it hadn’t been for Khanjar…
That…had been close. Too close. How in hell Khanjar had managed to sneak her forces in through that open portal…
When we were moving into place, everyone was concentrating on what was ahead, not what was behind? No, that can’t have been it. Blacksnake must have some stealth tech we don’t know about. That stood to reason, they were a PMC that often did covert operations anyway. But how had Khanji managed to distract Verdigris long enough to get a force of any size put together, much less infiltrate them behind ECHO?
I must have been kidding myself when I thought Verdigris wasn’t paying attention. I bet he is, but right now, he’s figuring to let us and the Thulians butt heads, then cozy up to whoever starts to win. That would make perfect sense. Except for Sera. He wanted Sera, and I doubt he’s given up on getting her. Dominic Verdigris never gives up on what he wants.
She wrenched her thoughts away, and concentrated on the images being projected in her vision by her implanted HUD. Blue Team was still on the move, still undetected, and still behind the main Thulian forces. Somehow Red Djinni was keeping them safe.
But all of the teams had been cut off from the portal now; she could see the concentration of red dots at that spot, and if the Thulians hadn’t closed it down, they’d certainly booby-trapped it, or were waiting in ambush. If it was still open, maybe the SFO troops in reserve could—
Stop it. That’s not your job now.
“Bella…”
The only reason she heard that thread of a whisper was because his mouth-mic picked it up. Bull was awake.
“Overwatch: Bull, private,” she said quietly, shoving herself away from the table and taking a few unsteady steps towards the curtained-off section of the recovery tent where he’d been left. Lucky Bulwark; as the first casualty, he’d gotten the corner spot, where two of the walls of the inflated Forward Medical Unit met. He’d have a tiny amount of privacy. “Gairdner, don’t move. Don’t even try, or I’ll sedate you, if your conventional team doesn’t beat me to it and do it first.”
“Yes’m.” This is what passed for humor with Bulwark. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. At least he was feeling “good” enough in a relative sense to make a stab at humor.
“Did you playback yet?” she asked, hurrying past the airlock in the middle of the structure. Positive airflow kept the “building” inflated, and at the same time, would keep chemical or biological agents out. Probably.…
It was surreal in here, all the empty cots, everything white or steel. Overhead was the inflated fabric of the “building” itself, also white, to let in the most light. Like a scene from a 1960s science fiction movie.
“Yes.” She was almost to his spot, easy to see by the curtains pulled shut around it.
“Good.” She was through the curtains, eyes only for him, ignoring all the gear that was hooked up to him, quietly doing its monitoring. Everything was green, but she already knew that.
He still looked like hell, but Sovie had gotten the swelling down on his face somewhat. It only looked blue and puffy and his eyes weren’t swollen shut anymore. No surprise, they were also so bloodshot, the whites were veined like marble. His eyes tracked her sensibly as she checked his chart, checked the IVs to make sure they matched the chart, then went down on her knees beside the cot and laid her hand as lightly as a feather on his. Please, let me not have triggered something else. Please…
“Got me…on the good drugs…” he rasped. Good, then the pain isn’t unbearable right now.
“Well, you earned them,” she retorted, after a quick check revealed nothing more going on than meta-healing. Not quite Untermensch-level, but faster than she had dared hope. The relief nearly made her faint.
“Art’s doing…all right.” So, he was tracking the teams himself. She’d been biting her thumb most of the time, second-guessing the Art of War, and not knowing if what she would have done would have been better, worse, or made no difference at all.
“So’s Molotok,” she replied. “Putting Djinni in charge of Blue seems to have worked out.”
Bulwark’s swollen lips twitched downward a little. “In spite…”
“You were right. I was wrong.” And it almost cost us everything. “I am never going to countermand your…”
“Stop.” Bull’s hand stirred a little under hers. “Done. Over. She’s…Red’s problem now.”
“Yes,” she said, her heart alternately aching and rejoicing. “And now, you’re mine.”
Blue Team: Ultima Thule
In the open square surrounding one of the tall, dome-capped towers, five full squads of Thulian guards stood at attention, scanning their immediate perimeter for any sign of intruders. In the distance, sounds of combat raged throughout the city, though they had yet to see any of it. Orders were orders. Their tower could not be compromised and they were to defend it with their lives. Beside them, dozens of robotic wolves sat on their metallic haunches, still, but ready to leap into the fray with a single command. High overhead, the eagles continued to soar and act as aerial scouts. This part of city was secure, and with ample time to dig in, nothing short of a legion of invaders would unearth them from this spot.
So they were taken completely by surprise when three invaders emerged around a nearby building and were marched unceremoniously into the square, herded by a lone figure at gunpoint. As one, the wolves came to their feet while each guardsman turned and raised an energy cannon in their direction. It was an impressive sight, and coupled with the synchronized sound of hydraulic legs and the heavy stomp of armored boots, along with the eerie hum of each cannon ramping up with deadly intention, it was intimidating enough to stop the three captives in their tracks. They looked hesitantly back at their captor.
“Did I say you could stop marching, ECHO schwein?” he snarled. “Into the tower with you! Our, how do you schwach, erbärmlich Narren say it, ‘play date,’ will have to wait. I must be elsewhere and see to our other unwanted guests.”
From one of the Thulian’s squads, one trooper detached himself from the ranks, motioned to two of the wolves, and approached the newcomers. He kept his cannon raised, and barked at them in German.
“Unglaublich,” the captor muttered. “Das trottel… Does he honestly not recognize me?”
He stepped forward past his prisoners, glared at the Thulian, and let loose a blistering barrage of contempt in German, enough to give the Thulian pause and lower his cannon, slightly.
“Doppelgaenger?” The Thulian said, and looked down at the wolves. The wolves rose up, bared their teeth, and bathed the newcomers with a probing red light from their eyes. After a moment the light faded, they relaxed, and they turned to pad their way back to their place in the guard formation.
The lone Thulian watched them go and turned back to the stranger. Seemingly satisfied, he came to attention and saluted smartly.
“Herr Doppelgaenger!” he barked.
Doppelgaenger approached him
slowly, his lips parting into a sadistic grin.
“Was hast du mich nennen?”
The Thulian faltered, bewildered, then snapped to attention again.
“Verzeihen Sie mir, Herr! Ich wollte sagen, Meister Doppelgaenger!”
“Besser,” Doppelgaenger snarled. He pointed his rifle at his prisoners. “Diese ECHO Abschaum sind meine Gefangenen, ich will…”
“Excuse me,” Mel said, interrupting. “Would y’all mind speaking english? If you’re planning on just killing us here, least you could do is let us see it coming.”
Doppelgaenger stiffened up, turned on his heel, marched quickly up to Mel and gave her a vicious backhand. Mel gasped, her head flying back, and spat blood. Silent Knight gave an angry cry and lunged forward, only to meet the barrel of Doppelgaenger’s rifle firmly pressed into his neck. There followed a tense pause, but Doppelgaenger merely chuckled and let the rifle drop to his side.
“You are right, of course,” he said. “Please, excuse my manners. I was just about to tell my subordinate here that I am taking you to the holding cells, until I have such time to deal with you properly. We seem to be in the midst of an assault on our fair city, if you haven’t noticed, and I am needed elsewhere. But do not worry, I will make it a priority to see that you are personally and properly bled dry and gutted like the sub-humans you are.”
He glanced back at the Thulians standing in formation, chose one at random and and gestured with a flick of his head.
“Du, da,” Doppelgaenger barked. “Diese drei sind unter meiner Kontrolle. Führe uns zu den Zellen.”
The Thulian stepped forward, gave a quick salute and marched back to the tower.
Doppelgaenger bowed to his captives with a grandiose wave of his hand. “After you, my honored playthings.”
Mel glared at him, wiped the blood from her lips, and started after the dispatched Thulian guard. Knight and Scope fell into step behind her. Doppelgaenger trained his rifle on them again, and whistled a jaunty marching tune as he brought up the rear. Ahead, the guard had already opened the gate and was waiting in small antechamber inside. Once they had all entered, the guard keyed in a passcode and signaled the heavy door to close behind them.
That’s when they jumped him.
The guard screamed as Knight barreled into him. Not that it did any good, no sound escaped from his lips, or from anywhere at all, as the armored man’s suit absorbed it all. They fell to the floor, grappling, when the guard noticed the muzzle of a heavy revolver just inches from his face. Scope’s expression was dispassionate and cold as she squeezed off a few rounds point-blank in complete silence. The bullets pierced the thin mesh just under the nose guard, and bounced around inside the otherwise impervious helmet. The Thulian’s body stiffened up, then relaxed as Knight released his grip and picked himself up off the floor. He looked about, gave the thumbs up, and turned off his sonic dampening so they could speak normally.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Scope said, shaking her head.
“I admit, I got a little worried when those wolves started probing us,” Doppelgaenger shrugged. “Wonder what that was about…?” He turned away, took a deep breath and grunted as he shed his face. Scope reached into her sack and threw him a long, red scarf. The Djinni reached out, caught it blindly, and wrapped it around his head.
“That’s better,” he said, turning back to them. “That’s not a face I want to wear any longer than I have to.”
“You wore him well,” Mel said in congratulations. “Well enough to convince those goons anyway.”
“I’ve seen him in front of his men,” Red offered. “He’s not much more than bluster and snarls to them. He saves the poetry for his enemies, not to mention the true depths of his sadism.” He swore, reminded of something. “Listen, Mel, about that slap…”
“It was a good touch,” Mel interrupted, smiling. “I mean, not a good touch, cher, and we both know just how good you can be…”
“Get a darn room,” Knight muttered.
“… but it worked,” Mel finished. “I think it got us where we needed to be.”
“We’re not there yet,” Red disagreed. “We need a new reading.”
Mel nodded, and pulled out the scanner. She studied it for a moment, and smiled. “Confirmation,” she crowed. “Two hundred feet, give or take, right below us.”
Red looked up. Of course, all he saw was the ceiling, but it didn’t take any imagination for the rest of them to know he was thinking of that mushroom shape up there. “So…the generator is down under us, but the operational end is up there…field projector?”
He looked back down and straight at Silent Knight, who was the closest thing they had to a techie. “Seem likely,” Knight agreed in his synthesized voice. “But why not ask—”
“Vix!” Red interrupted, slapping his head. “Overwatch: open—”
“Never left you, bonehead. Nice job with the impersonation. Sec while I make all of your sensors do what I never intended them to do.…” Red could have sworn he heard the tapping of keys… tapping that sounded far too fast to be strictly human. “Roger that. It’s…and this is kinda unnerving…a variation on the Tesla energy projector. So, yeah, my guess is these towers are doing two things, powering everything in the city and powering the field generator up above. Since there’s a ring of these, they gotta be working together, take one down, the whole shield’ll fall apart. Exactly as you said, Red; they form a keystone, and the shield cascades from that. I take back the bonehead part.”
“Let’s go then,” the Djinni said. “Double-time. Our guys are fighting for their lives out there, so we’re going to need to throw the sneaky playbook out and up the risk factor here for speed. We might meet resistance. If it moves and isn’t us, take it out. Knight, make with the quiet.”
Silent Knight nodded, and together they moved deeper into the tower, weapons drawn. From the antechamber, they found their way into a short corridor lined with recessed doors. Red noted the banners above each, shook his head and motioned them forward until they arrived at a solid security portal at the end. He studied the console for a moment. With a grimace, he shook one hand free from a glove, sprouted his claws and pried the console face loose from the wall. He noted the tangle of wires beneath, selected a few seemingly at random, and neatly snipped them with his finger tips. He was rewarded with an small shower of sparks, and then darkness as all the lights in the hallway powered down. One by one, they lit up their shoulder-mounted flashlights—tiny, but ridiculously powerful LEDs—and went to work. Red reached into his satchel and pulled out a number of small, sticky rubber spheres. He handed them to Scope, who pressed them in place at regular intervals along the edge of the door while Mel emptied the contents from her hip sack over the floor. Red threw a detonator to Knight and they retreated back, finding cover in the door recesses that lined the hallway.
A countdown flared up in their HUDs, and they braced for detonation.
Each silent explosion fired off in turn, a series of sharp flares of light accompanied by the vibration underfoot of broken steel pistons as the door supports shattered and collapsed. They emerged in time to see the security door collapse inward and a squad of Kriegers rush out towards them, weapons drawn. The Thulians opened fire and Red ducked back behind cover, barely dodging a lethal blast from an energy cannon. Pinned down, he looked across the narrow hall to see Mel, also pressed back against a door. She held up her hand, flashed him a grin, and pressed down firmly on her own detonator.
The Kriegers, eager to press their advantage, didn’t notice the tiny red LEDs that sprang to life under their feet, not until they were engulfed by sudden jets of fire, goo and plasma that shot up from the floor beneath them.
“Thank you, Dominic Verdigris,” Red heard Vix mutter under her breath.
As one, Red Djinni’s infiltrators flew out from their nests and riddled their foes with bullets. The Krieger armor, suddenly caked with ECHO incendiary gel and superheated to a fragile state, cracked and shattered under
the rain of gunfire. Confused and silently screaming, they succumbed to the onslaught and fell in place, charred, smoking and bleeding out.
Red’s squad rushed forward, pausing only to plug a few rounds definitively into the head of each Krieger, and dashed to the inner well of the tower. They arrived at a well-lit, open shaft, ringed with grated walkways and a circular staircase leading down around an enormous pillar of steel. Extinguishing their shoulder LEDs, they raced down the stairs, with only a few stops to scan for opposition, above or below. When they reached the bottom, they hesitated, and peered cautiously through an open security door. The remaining guards, in their haste, had left the portal open and as Red’s group entered a cavernous chamber they were met with near blinding light from beneath them. They found themselves on another grated, circular walkway, with open stairs spiraling down the outer walls of a large bulbous room. In the center, an enormous Tesla generator rose up and disappeared into the steel pillar lining the open shaft. Red motioned to Knight, who nodded and turned off his noise dampener, releasing the crackle and electrical hum of the Tesla generator. They peered down into the room. Aside from the coil and a few large monitoring instruments, the chamber appeared to be empty.
“Clear,” Red said with satisfaction. “Overwatch, we are at target, Ladies, let’s get those bombs set.”
Mel and Scope nodded and raced down the stairs to the chamber floor while Red and Silent Knight stood guard at the door. Mel ran ahead and began planting explosives around the base of the Tesla coil, while Scope struggled to remove the detonators from her rucksack. She knelt down to set the first, and cursed as the display scolded her with an error message. Frowning, she tried another detonator, but was met with the same error message. Her expression turned to panic as she removed yet another detonator, then another, only to be met with that accursed error message. She scooped the detonators up and went down the line of explosives. None of the bomb connections registered correctly.
Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 50
