ONSET: My Enemy's Enemy

by Glynn Stewart

  “Do they have thermal surveillance of the compound?” Stone asked. “Shouldn’t that help?”

  “Checking,” Charles responded.

  A slew of photos in the faded colors of infrared cameras played through the screen.

  “Stop,” David ordered. “Go back two.”

  The picture showed four figures moving around at night and, in the middle of them, barely visible, the outline of another figure.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “That would be someone in the dark, in the rain, with a body temperature of under twenty-seven degrees Celsius,” Charles said slowly.

  “No human has a body temperature that low and is still alive,” O’Brien said slowly. “Not necessarily a vampire…”

  “But definitely a supernatural,” David agreed. “Pull that all together and dump it back on the disk for me, Charles. It seems I may have enough to talk to the judge after all.”

  #

  Justice Nabahe looked tired.

  Given that it was now creeping past midnight, David wasn’t entirely surprised. He doubted he looked particularly awake or energized, though he also didn’t look like someone who’d been blown up the previous morning.

  “Commander White,” the judge greeted him, waving him to a seat in the conference room. “I had heard you were badly injured; I’m pleased to see you up and about.”

  “I was,” David admitted. “Like Commander O’Brien, however, I thankfully don’t require normal healing times for my injuries.”

  There was no point in letting her know just how badly he had been injured. David had been aware of the extent of his regenerative abilities for only a few months, but he fully understood the logic all of the regenerators he’d met subscribed to: that making a point of their abilities was a bad idea.

  He could recover from wounds that would kill anyone else, heal from any disease, and would age across centuries instead of decades. That…wasn’t something you really wanted people to be thinking of when they looked at you.

  Nabahe shook her head.

  “I’m glad you weren’t permanently injured, then,” she said. “Now, Inspector de Bergen caught me on my way to my hotel’s very comfortable bed. I presume you have something worth my still being awake?”

  “We believe so,” David confirmed, loading the USB drive he was carrying into the judge’s computer. “The original source of the information is…questionable at best, but we’ve done our best to verify it. We believe we’ve located the base used by the Romanov Family of vampires to launch the attack on the Conclave.

  “I need a full warrant for unrestricted supernatural force to assault and seize control of the facility. It’s a militia compound in the Cascades known to contain illegal military-grade weapons. If we’re correct, the facility will also be protected by vampires.”

  She nodded slowly, opening the files on her laptop and then chuckling.

  “I see Charles’s talons have been involved again,” she noted. “He does know how to put the file structure conveniently. All right, Commander. I’m assuming you want a go/no-go by morning?”

  “We’ll want to be in the air at first light,” David confirmed.

  “Where did we get this tip-off?”

  “I had an…interview with Caleb Dresden,” David admitted. “It seems the Familias are undergoing a certain amount of internal turmoil. The Dresdens and the Romanovs are struggling for power, and the Romanovs made a deal with someone in the Conclave that they’re providing muscle to.”

  “That…is a severe accusation, Commander,” Nabahe said slowly. “One that could cause a lot of headaches even while it may solve others.”

  “I know. That’s why I need proof,” David told her. “The ATF has the compound under surveillance, which has allowed us to confirm the presence of at least one supernatural. It has the facilities to turn around the helicopters and was close enough to do so.”

  “What do you expect to find, Commander?” Nabahe asked. “There isn’t going to be paperwork in the compound, detailing the deal with the Romanovs.”

  “I don’t know,” David confessed. “But if they ran the operation through this base—and if it is a Romanov facility, it would be a logical place to launch it from, it’s the most likely place for us to find something.”

  “If you’re wrong, Commander, the warrant you want will mean you’re taking a supernatural strike team—I’m presuming both ONSET Thirteen and Nine—up against purely mundane opposition that will have no inclination to surrender. A lot of people will probably die either way.”

  “We can’t permit a vampire nest we know of to exist,” David argued. “I don’t know if I trust this new leader of the Dresden Family as far as I could throw him, but this seems to be the real deal. We may not find the evidence we want, but taking out a vampire base with an armed militia under their command is hardly a loss, Your Honor.”

  Nabahe nodded and sighed.

  “Give me till morning to go over your documents,” she told him. “But unless they tell me something completely different, you’ll have your warrant by dawn.”

  Chapter 28

  After demolishing several plates of food at the hotel’s breakfast buffet, David was finally feeling something resembling fully human when he and O’Brien got into the black car that would carry them back to OSPI Seattle in the predawn dark.

  “Did we get any updates overnight?” he asked. “I’ll admit to heading directly to the buffet. I’m not used to being this hungry.”

  “It’ll pass,” O’Brien assured him. “Nothing significant; you were copied on it all. We have satellite surveillance on the site starting in about twenty minutes and holding for thirty-two hours before we start having gaps.”

  “Handy. Did we get in touch with the ATF?”

  “Charles sent them an email from your account that you may want to read before they call you,” the other man told him with a chuckle. “I haven’t seen a response yet, but it isn’t even light yet. They may not get back to us soon.”

  “If they haven’t got back to us by the time we hit the ground, they’re going to be left in the dark when we go in,” David said quietly. “We need their intel—and we could use their manpower.”

  With the two ONSET teams combined, they only had six supernaturals to launch the assault with. That was more than enough to assault the compound, take out any active resistance and secure the buildings, but they wouldn’t be able to establish a perimeter to catch anyone who tried to run.

  Normally, they’d use Anti-Paranormals for that, but AP Six had been hammered far too badly to be deployed and was needed to watch over the Talon Security detainees in protective custody. Borrowing manpower from the ATF would help, if that Bureau happened to have enough people around to do so.

  Checking his email on his phone—de Bergen had sent a driver as well as a car, thankfully—he checked the one from Nabahe first.

  “Our warrant is waiting at the OSPI office,” he told O’Brien. “We’ll get there, suit up, and move out. Hopefully, the ATF will touch base along the way, because we are going in.”

  “Like I said, David, it’s your op,” the senior Commander replied.

  “Until I screw up badly enough you need to take over?”

  “I’ve seen you nearly get yourself killed, but I haven’t seen you screw up badly enough for me to take over short of that,” O’Brien replied. “Try not to do either this time. These bastards will almost certainly have silver rounds and play for keeps.”

  “We’re going after a nest. It’s always for keeps.”

  #

  Operating out of an OSPI office rather than the Campus or an ONSET base meant that David’s people didn’t have the lockers and preparation space they normally did. They’d taken over the armory area set aside for the tactical squad that OSPI Seattle currently didn’t have.

  Boxes and crates of armor, guns and ammunition had been offloaded from the Pendragons and stacked in the room, giving the two teams a space where they could check over
their equipment before going into action.

  First was the bodysuit, a garment that was fitted to each wearer via a laser scan. Woven of Kevlar and other anti-ballistic fibers, it was then augmented with carefully cut ceramic plates and had its interior coated in golden runes that glowed to David’s Sight.

  The armor wasn’t impenetrable, David having taken theoretically fatal wounds through it himself, but it was superior to any unenchanted body armor available on the planet. Armored webbing attached two long protective cases to the lower back, containing the CPUs that drove the augmented reality gear that linked in to the weapons and helmet.

  Wire leads connected to both the Omicron Silver sidearm, a specially designed caseless high-caliber sidearm capable of firing a three-round burst, and the M4-Omicron battle carbine. Both weapons were built around delivering a specialized high-velocity, high-caliber silver bullet capable of taking down most supernaturals.

  More leads clipped into the suit itself, attaching to various cameras and sensors woven into the fabric. A magically encrypted tactical network linked David in to the rest of the team as he put his helmet on, allowing him to bring up their sensor scans with a verbal command and check their vitals with a glance.

  The rest of the team carried mageblades, enchanted twelve-inch knives that could cut through almost anything. David carried Memoria, the demon-forged blade capable of cutting through the few things the mageblades couldn’t.

  While their subordinates wore only the combat gear, David and O’Brien also dug out uniform jackets with the lightning-crossed O of ONSET. If any coordinating with other departments arose, it would fall on one of them.

  Fully equipped, David checked his email on his phone and found a note there.

  “Looks like I need to make a call,” he told O’Brien. “The ATF got back to us.”

  #

  “This is Special Agent Mark Freeman,” the man who picked up the phone replied. “You are…Agent White?”

  “Commander White,” David told him. If they were going to be working together as closely as he was hoping, they couldn’t afford to risk confusion or misunderstanding.

  “Commander, then,” Freeman allowed. “I’m not familiar with the organization of the FBI’s Division O. To be fair, I wasn’t aware a Division O existed.”

  “We’re a semi-covert counterterrorism unit,” David replied. “We keep our operations and our existence quiet to avoid potential retaliation from domestic and foreign enemies against our people’s families.

  “We got called in the aftermath of the Seattle attack and are pursuing leads, which brought us to an area of mutual interest.”

  “You said you were preparing an assault on the Night Stallions’ compound?” Freeman said slowly. “That’s…that’s risky. They have seriously heavy gear.”

  “The…Night Stallions?” David asked with a chuckle. “I’ll admit, I don’t think I’d looked at the name.”

  “The Rampant Stallions of the Night of Freedom Militia,” Freeman reeled off. “Pretentious white supremacists convinced the world is out to get them. Also, gunrunners and drug smugglers. I can prove enough to put every man living in that compound behind bars for ten years to life.

  “I haven’t, because they have enough gear in there that any attempt to arrest them would be met with massive force and firepower,” he continued. “Short of rolling in an Army company, those guys are dug in hard enough that I can’t touch them without more bloodshed than smuggling charges are worth.”

  “They were the base for the attack in Seattle,” David told him. “I don’t know what you’ve got on them, Special Agent, but I have the sanction to blow them to hell.”

  There was a long pause.

  “My professional ethics tell me I am not allowed to be thrilled by that,” Freeman told him. “My experience watching these pricks, though, makes me worry if you’ve got enough firepower.”

  David glanced back at the room behind him. Two Mages. An Empowered who could ignore bullets. A werewolf—and himself.

  “We’ve got the firepower,” he said calmly. “What I don’t have is a perimeter team, Special Agent. Or a detailed brief on just what these guys may have on hand—I’ve read your reports, but I’m a pessimist about how much actually makes it into those.”

  “I see,” the ATF agent replied. “My reports probably cover the gist of it. I don’t have a lot of manpower on the ground here; this is a surveillance op. What I do have is a nice friendly relationship with the local sheriffs. What sort of timeline are we talking?”

  “We’ll be on site in an hour,” David told him. “I can hold the strike until noon at the latest, then we have to go in. We’re worried about destruction of evidence.”

  Freeman whistled softly.

  “I’ll need to make some phone calls, but I think I can get you your perimeter,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the site.” He reeled off a set of GPS coordinates that David noted down. “I’ll need time,” he warned. “Noon’s probably better than right now.”

  “Move quickly, Special Agent,” the ONSET Commander ordered. “If I have to choose between letting some of these people go and not getting in there today, I’m going in today.”

  “Understood. I’ll see you when you get here.”

  #

  “Are we good?” O’Brien asked as David strode back into the prep room.

  “As good as we’re going to be,” David replied. “ATF has a Special Agent, Freeman, in the area. He doesn’t have a lot of manpower, but he thinks he can borrow enough to give us a perimeter.”

  Checking his harness and gear one last time, he scanned around the room to be sure everyone else was prepped as well. As he put his helmet on, it happily informed him that dawn would be in about five minutes.

  “If anyone has any concerns about their gear or their readiness for action, now is the time,” he said aloud. “Questions? Problems? Gear issues?”

  Silence responded.

  “All right, then,” he told them. “Mount up. The Pendragon should already be spinning up on the roof.”

  #

  The Pendragon helicopter preferred by the various Omicron offices was almost perfectly the stereotypical black helicopter of urban legend. Based on the chassis of the ubiquitous Black Hawk helicopter, they’d first added a limited supersonic-jet ability and then taken the vehicle apart, enchanted every piece, and put it back together.

  It was highly fuel-efficient, magically stealthy, and designed to carry a squad of ten plus pilot and copilot. Presumably in some long-ago age, the plan had been for ONSET to field ten-man teams—a goal, David reflected, that they hadn’t been meeting before the current crisis had forced them to teams of four supernaturals.

  With ONSET Nine’s fourth member having barely made it back to the Campus and Pell in the morgue, two teams barely half-filled the helicopters troop bay, and both flight crew were mundane women borrowed from the Anti-Paranormals.

  “Won’t be much of a flight,” the fair-haired pilot told David as he settled in. “Not even far enough to justify turning on the jets. I make it thirty-five minutes to your coordinates.”

  “Do you ladies have a full load for the weapons?” he asked.

  “Fully stocked on bullets, bombs and rockets,” she confirmed. “All AG-shrapnel, too. Any fang that runs for it isn’t going to live long enough for the sun to give them a bad day.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” David replied with a smile. “Take us out, Lieutenant.”

  The helicopter lifted off from the roof of OSPI’s Seattle office with a barely perceptible vibration, turning and flying into the light of the slowly rising dawn.

  Vampires weren’t as vulnerable to sunlight as some popular media made them out to be, but a vampire wasn’t going to run far in it, either.

  Chapter 29

  Quiet and stealthy as the Pendragon was, it still threw up a massive amount of dust and debris as it slowly dropped onto the rural road Special Agent Freeman had directed them to. A semicircle of trucks with v
arious county sheriff markings and a trio of black government SUVs shielded a crowd of men and women from the downdraft.

  Once the helicopter had settled down, an absolutely immense black man with a shaved-bald scalp and a bulletproof vest labelled atf stepped past the impromptu safety barrier to approach the chopper.

  David led the way out, jumping down to the ground and offering his hand to Freeman. The black man had the unusual distinction of being even more massive than O’Brien, making him probably the single largest individual David had ever met.

  “I’m Commander White,” he introduced himself as he shook hands with the ATF Special Agent. “This is Commander O’Brien.”

  “You’ve got one helicopter and, what, a dozen guys?” Freeman said slowly. “You did say you read my reports, right?”

  “I did,” David confirmed. “Believe me, Special Agent, we have the firepower. Don’t worry about that. Do you have the manpower for the perimeter?”

  “Not yet,” the Special Agent told him. “I’ve got my guys and three sheriffs are already in the area, but we’re waiting on another forty, fifty deputies. Give us an hour, Commander, and we’ll make sure no one sneaks out on you.”

  “Do you have any idea just how many bad conspiracy theories that chopper makes you look like you walked out of?” a second man said as he approached, eyeing the Pendragon behind him.

  “This is Sheriff Donnelly,” Freeman introduced the man, a tall but spindly man with red hair and a massive beard.

  If it wasn’t for the badge and gun, Donnelly could easily have been taken for a lumberjack or farmer. Something in the way he carried himself, though, suggested that his county’s people were in good hands.

  “Someday, we may upgrade from black vans and helicopters to pink,” O’Brien suggested from behind David. “I keep suggesting it, but nobody at the Agency thinks it’s a good plan.”

  Donnelly laughed with a broad grin.