Gathering Storm

by Danann, Victoria

  Shade’s eyes went to the dagger still in Randeskin’s hand and his face darkened. “That dagger is…”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish the protest before he was interrupted. Looking at the knife appreciatively, Randeskin said, “The dagger will be taken care of. Mark my words or the same will be said about you.”

  Shade’s eyes flashed with hatred. He stopped long enough to give Storm a good hard look before getting in the car. Storm gave him a slight smile and a little wave goodbye that was so out of place it came off looking like an affront.

  The five knights stood in the dim light of a few partially lit neon signs and watched the car’s tail lights until they turned off two blocks away. Storm turned his attention to the knights.

  “Thank you kindly, gentlemen. You know where you can always come for a free Jack and a strange tale.” They laughed. “Any chance I can push my luck for a ride home?”

  “We just gave the biters a six hour holiday, which means our quota is suffering. Still got three hours of night. Come on patrol with us.”

  The offer made Storm’s gums itch. He never would have imagined that he’d miss hunting, but on occasion, when he didn’t run from the truth of the darkness in himself, there it was. His shadow side missed everything about it, maybe even the ugly parts. If he ever got back to his own world, he would have to give that the thought it deserved.

  “Would be an honor,” he said. “Lead on.”

  They clapped him on the back and regarded him with a wholehearted camaraderie that was as welcome as it was unexpected.

  CHAPTER 19

  Archer had made some very fine and very handy improvements to the inter-dimensional transport. One of the niftiest was the fact that the device could be reprogrammed to calculate a new destination intra-dimension.

  The Ralengclan team arrived in Loti Dimension and used a handheld biolocation device to find the Laiwynn. When they discovered that they needed to be on the inside of a secure military base, they set new coordinates for the transport to deliver them next to the building where she was located.

  They slipped into Fort Dixon under cover of night and emerged next to the Jefferson Unit building. Archer had sent a twenty-first man whose only job was to stay with the transport. He would close the portal, making the transport and himself virtually invisible, and reopen every forty minutes starting one hour from count.

  Each of the twenty wore black and carried a pack with an assortment of tools and weaponry.

  After a quick on-the-spot analysis, the team leader, a guy named Farouche, turned to his second.

  “Easiest way to breach a building and maintain an element of surprise?”

  “Not sure, sir.”

  “The roof. We need to get in through the roof. There’s only one other exterior entrance. Secure, but flawed. Electronic mechanism. I need it disabled so that it can’t be opened from the inside without a blow torch or a genius.”

  Browers, second in command, assigned that duty, then turned and said something to the guy carrying the grappling gear. He dropped his pack and retrieved the four prong titanium hook with one hundred feet of cable – way more than was needed to scale a four story building – and the boost, the launch weapon that would silently fire the hook and pulley like a missile without raising either alert or interest.

  “If luck is with us, this very boring building will have a good size lip just begging to be hooked.”

  Indeed, there was a nice size lip to catch and hold the hook. The architects wouldn’t have thought about that as a design flaw.

  Two Whister pilots were on call, playing cards in the pilots’ shed as was their habit.

  One held his free hand up in a motion to silence the other. “You hear something?”

  The second pilot listened intently for a few seconds. “No. All’s quiet.”

  So they turned the music back up and resumed their game.

  The first guy in line was harnessed. When the remote triggered the pulley, he flew to the roof so fast it almost looked like he’d been launched like a human rocket. Within twelve minutes twenty Ralengclan were on the roof awaiting orders from Farouche. His attention had been drawn to the lights and music coming from the pilots’ shed and to the two who were playing cards and laughing about singing along to some bizarre tune.

  Farouche pulled a knife and motioned to Browers, who did the same.

  The Whister pilots had less than two seconds to register surprise before deep slices were carved into their necks, instantly severing both carotid arteries and jugular veins. When the pilots were released, they slumped forward over the table where they’d spent so much time on call.

  The front door was secured. No one was leaving the building unless they could get to the roof and that was a trap. Nowhere to go from there with both pilots dead.

  Browers pulled the scrambler out of his pocket, but wanted to delay enabling until necessary. As soon as all communications devices were disrupted the occupants of the building would be made aware that something was up.

  The entire fourth floor was dedicated to knight’s quarters. There were three banks of elevators. One was centrally located with three cars. The east and west end stations had two cars. All three locations had adjacent stairwells, but the only access to the Whister pad on the roof was from the fourth floor, central elevators stairwell.

  Elora had used one of the two east elevators – the only one that was working - to return home from dinner. It seemed lots of stuff was breaking down since the maintenance staff had been pruned by the transfers.

  Helm had fallen asleep in his stroller. Blackie sat waiting patiently, nose almost touching the seam in the middle where the doors opened and closed. The dog had gone into a crouch and was growling before the doors opened wide enough for Elora to see the problem. She moved to the center of the car and saw men in night camo uniforms pouring out of the central stairwell, coming from the Whister pad on the roof.

  At that point, they were about two hundred feet away.

  Her first thought was that it was some sort of drill and that she hadn’t been advised. That idea was quickly overruled when one of them seemed to identify her on sight and pointed something that resembled a weapon in her direction. That, and the fact that strange men, whom she didn’t recognize, who were definitely not supposed to be on the Whister pad, were racing up the hallway in her direction, brought her to a quick, but accurate conclusion. Jefferson Unit was under attack by Ralengclan. No matter how “silly” that might be.

  She grabbed Blackie’s collar to keep him from lunging forward, pushed the CLOSE DOORS button, and set the destination for Sublevel 1. Some of the intruders had stopped to kneel, shoulder automatic weapons and aim. At her. And Helm! And Blackie.

  The doors closed before any of them were hit, but it felt like time was standing still while she waited for the elevator car to descend. She heard five pings from above. Bullets hitting the outer doors of the elevator on the floor she’d just left.

  She scooped Helm out of his stroller setting him astraddle the shelf where her waist met her hip, and got ready to move as soon as the doors opened. The elevator wasn’t fast, but it was a lot faster than the time it would take to descend five floors in the stairwell. Even assuming commando-level fitness.

  As soon as the doors opened, she pulled the emergency stop button to decommission that elevator. One down.

  Running straight for the closest alarm that Monq had installed, she broke the glass with her elbow and pushed the big yellow button to set off the gas, then braced to be stripped of enhanced abilities. Get ready to be an average elf.

  Initiating Monq’s Equalizer released the gas, but also set off the alarm, which was ten times louder than it needed to be and sounded like a giant goose was honking once every three seconds. With frayed nerves and juices flowing, all she needed was the irritation of a sound like that.

  While she still had speed to call on, she raced down the hall to the media center which also contained the intercom equipment. At that
point she didn’t know that the Ralengclan had scrambled communication signals, rendering cells, wireless, and cybernet useless. She was going for the intercom because it was the most efficient way to communicate an emergency to Jefferson Unit occupants. The fact that it was the only form of communication still operational, since it was entirely independent of externalities, was good luck.

  The intercom system was WYSIWG. The wired mic was built into its own base and sat in a base in the middle of a table. She picked it up and started to speak into it, but got nothing. Pulling away, she found an ON switch on the back and tried again.

  “This is NOT a drill. Repeat. This is NOT a drill. We are under attack. All non-essential personnel, stay in your quarters. All others report to your stations. And Monq! Shut off that FUCKING noise NOW!”

  Elora dropped the mic and ran for the hallway to the west end stairwell. Helm was crying so loud he was practically screaming because of the sound of the alarm and she didn’t blame him. She felt like doing the same thing herself.

  Before she reached the west end stairs, two things happened. The alarm stopped. By all the gods, living and dead, thank you, Monq. And the hallway filled up with twenty-three teenaged trainees who had just descended two floors from their quarters on the second story. Quickly.

  That was two bits of good news. First, the fact that the boys were there meant that the west end stairs were clear for Elora to get to Sublevel 2. Second, after the alarm went off, Helm stopped crying.

  The bad news was that she had nearly two dozen kids standing in front of her, none of them bullet proof and none of them where they were supposed to be – safe in their quarters behind locked doors.

  “Do you not understand what all those drills were for?” The trainees could see that Elora was furious, but they were unfazed. And, come to think of it, not the least panicked by the fact that Jefferson was under attack. Elora’s odd response was to observe that Black Swan recruiters obviously knew what they were doing.

  Kris Falcon crossed his arms over his chest and raised his chin. “We know what drills are for.”

  “Never mind. Come with me.”

  Helm had grown heavy and so had her own center of gravity. She glanced at her watch and quickly did the math in her head. Three hours and seventeen minutes meant the effects would wear off at half past midnight.

  The good news was that she had to assume the Ralengclan didn’t have any more advantage than highly trained, super fit male commandos would in any dimension.

  She stood at the top of the stairs descending to Sublevel 2 and gestured for the kids to go down before her, keeping a watchful eye on the elevators and the hallways.

  “Hurry. Wait for me in the armory. Go. Go. Go.”

  Sublevel 2 contained the research labs, Monq’s suite, training simulators, firing ranges, and, most importantly, weapons. It would typically be quiet and deserted on a week night after dinner, with Monq being the only one who was quartered there. On that particular night, however, Deliverance hadn’t come to take Angel to the vineyard. Angel had waited around for a while after dinner and finally decided he might as well get some target practice in.

  Just like Elora had suspected, he was a natural with guns and liked shooting so much that it was recreational for him.

  When the alarm went off, he reasoned that sooner or later people would make their way to the armory. So that’s where he was waiting when Z Team rushed in.

  “Hey,” he said.

  The four of them gave him strange looks. The one with the tat tails curling up his neck said, “Hey? He’s not even looking at us like something he just scraped off his boot.”

  People could accuse Angel of a lot of things, but being slow wasn’t one of them. He figured that if Storm had a deal with these guys, he’d better preserve the deteriorated state of relations. So, he said, “My mistake. Thought you were somebody else.”

  When Elora and the kids broke in, they found the four knights who had been left to defend Jefferson Unit and one knight-in-pretense. Her eyes took in the scene and locked on Angel. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was doing target practice.”

  Zed Company had the full complement stash opened up, all cabinets and the vault that required top security clearance to open the combination, and were outfitting themselves like it was a world war. Monq ran in looking unsettled.

  Elora moved toward him. She held Helm out to him, but Monq shook his head. “Take him!” Monq shook his head again. “Monq! We’ve got two jobs here. Fighting or babysitting. Which one do you want?”

  After one second of consideration, Monq reached for Helm, whose displeasure with the new arrangement was equal to Monq’s if not greater.

  Glyphs spoke up. “You kids need to get cover and stay out of our way. We’ve got work to do.”

  Falcon looked at Glyphs. His body language screamed defiance. “We don’t take orders from you. We take orders from her.” He jerked his chin toward Elora.

  “Yeah?” Glyphs looked at Elora and sneered. “Well, you’d better stay out of our way, too, Red.”

  Elora gaped at him, wondering if she’d imagined the lip curl, but didn’t have time to deliver a lecture about the courteous and respectful regard knights are expected to extend to one another. She called after Z Team as they were leaving the room. “Don’t be in the wrong place at the wrong time because we’re sealing passageways.”

  They didn’t acknowledge hearing her in any way.

  She turned back to Monq.

  “Okay. Take Helm and all these kids to Fire Testing. Get inside and lock up. It will act like a bunker until we either get rid of the threat or help comes. Go right now.”

  Monq motioned to the vault. “The new stuff is top shelf on the right in little bubble size vacuums. You’ve got to be extremely careful with it. They look like poppers, same size and shape. And they perform the same way except that, instead of making a big pop, each one will take out everything in an area of about fifteen feet. Make sure you’re twenty feet away just in case. Throw it hard. The vacuum case will break open and the popper will detonate.”

  “So it requires somebody with a pitcher’s arm.”

  Monq started to say, “Or you,” then remembered her extras were temporarily sidelined.

  “Monq. Your mission is that baby. Do you understand?”

  He nodded and turned to go. “Come on, boys.”

  They didn’t move.

  Elora stopped arming herself when she realized the kids weren’t moving. “This is SO not the time for rebellious acting out. Go with Monq!”

  Bo spoke up. “All respect, ma’am. We’re Black Swan. That means we may not be knights, but we’re not hiding either. If you want to call that ‘acting out’, then so be it.”

  “Monq. Go on. I’ll deal with this.”

  Elora talked to Bo while she was making weapons choices and shoving things into a pack. When she was satisfied, she handed the pack off to Angel. She knew he was good with guns and packed accordingly.

  “Here. See what goodies Santa brought you and figure out a way to make yourself useful.”

  “Yeah. Batch me up one of those goodie bags, too, mama.”

  Elora wheeled around to see Fennimore. She grinned. “You’re a sight.”

  “Why, thank you, darlin’.”

  “You got our girl locked down?”

  “She has sworn on our unborn children to stay put and keep the door locked. No matter what.”

  “One less worry.”

  “It is. I’ll go with him.” Fenn’s eyes slid to Angel, whom he believed to be Storm. “We’ll sort out the east end.”

  Elora jerked her eyes to Angel who nodded as if to say, “Don’t worry. I got this.” Then he opened his mouth and said, “Don’t worry. We got this.”

  She nodded and handed them a pack with the C9. “This is the new stuff. Just one will seal a passage, safe distance twenty feet. Whichever one of you has the strongest, most accurate arm, throw them like poppers and make sure you’re clear.<
br />
  “These are the same aliens who came for me in Ireland.” She gave Storm a look to let him know it was a shared memory. Then she said to Fennimore, “They’re wearing black. They’re trained, but not like us. I’m their objective.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Don’t know. I had to get the baby out of harm’s way and couldn’t stay to count.”

  “Okay. What’s the plan?”

  “Two prong ambushes. We’re going to try to lure them to S3, seal them in and shut off heat and air from the main controls on S1.”

  “How are you gonna do that, Elora?” Fennimore looked dubious.

  “I’m going to get on the intercom and tell them to come and get me. They probably won’t be dumb enough to send everybody down there, but they will send some.

  “So here’s what I want you to do. Get down there first and blow every elevator from the inside. I don’t know, maybe you can throw the popper just before the doors are closing?” Angel and Fennimore just looked at each other. “We need all seven out of commission. Don’t leave any operating. Then seal off the east and west stairwells so that their only route is by way of the Hub stairs. Give me a time frame?”

  Fennimore looked at Elora hard while he was concentrating on calculations. She could almost see his brain circuitry busy running scenarios. “I think we can do it in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll give you twenty including time to get above S3 and out of sight. When you think that all the rats that are going to eat have taken the bait, blow the stairwell.”

  Angel said, “Suffocation. Not exactly a warrior’s death fantasy.”

  Elora grinned. “It’ll take a while, but… yeah.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “After we’ve culled the eager beavers, I’ll get back on the mic and tell them I’ve moved to the Courtpark.” She handed Fennimore a pack. “Make sure there are no civilians in the stairwells before you light ‘em up.” She paused. “Z Team’s out there. Rogue.”

  Fennimore pressed his lips together. “Just what I’d expect.”