The Nightmare Stacks

by Charles Stross

  He turns his helmed head to survey the air defense basilisks behind him. There are four of them, sleeping where they stand in pits dug into the top of the hill. Their long, sauropod-like necks droop, hoods tightly furled around their eye clusters and feeding tentacles by the handling crews. Not far away, the precognitive magi who select their targets are waiting under cover by the stockade where their dull-eyed soul-fodder lies bound, awaiting their sanguinary fate. Forecasting the movement of aviation assets is mana-intensive work. Slave blood runs like water before the huge basilisks are induced to open their crystal eyelids and turn their mindlessly lethal gaze towards the eye-warping air knots that mask enemy fliers. But things are different this time round. If Highest Liege of Airborne is right, the urük flying devices are little more than cattle-carts, easily detected, defenseless, and sluggish.

  Satisfied with this final survey of his forces, All-Highest turns to Third of Infantry and inclines his head. “Is your force prepared?” he asks bluntly.

  “My Lord.” She raises her mailed fist to the base of her throat. “All are equipped and briefed. Once the cavalry have left I will move my force downslope, ready to march at your command.” Unlike the cavalry with their brilliantly polished reflective armor and anti-cognition countermeasures, the ground troops merely wear dull metal, their layers of mail and protective plates muffled with rubberized fabric. The Host’s infantry are not required for the opening stages of this campaign. A single battalion is mustered at the top of the cliff, out of the way of the cavalry, while the rest bring up the rear of the army traversing the shadow road, shuffling under the weight of the final load of supplies. Infantry Third’s battalion is the highest rated in the Host, which is why she has been selected for this task. “All we await is the pathfinder and our occupation objectives.”

  “That is in hand.” All-Highest’s expression reflects his satisfaction. “You must be ready to move at noon, local time, possibly earlier if readiness permits.” He pauses a moment. “The guards on the ley line endpoint just outside the hive. Have they reported in recently?”

  Infantry Third doesn’t hesitate. “Two hours ago, my Lord. The ley line was secure at that time; they are next due to report an hour hence.”

  All-Highest’s near-smile fades. “Fifth-of-day intervals? That’s not good enough. I want you to raise your situational awareness to operational levels immediately.”

  “The plan called for that to happen at dawn; I will bring the schedule forward as you direct.” Infantry Third’s face is impassive, but All-Highest senses her fear as a tightening in the silvery spiderweb of obligations that is an ever-present tingling at the back of his head. “There is a problem keeping the magi fed: constant contact is expensive . . .”

  “I don’t care if you run out of sacrifices. Have a squad round up some natives. Our magi are perfectly able to consume urük blood.”

  “That will make life easier! It will be as you command.” All-Highest feels Infantry Third’s relief immediately. “By your leave . . .”

  “Go.” All-Highest gestures. Infantry Third marches over to her team and begins giving orders: her men and women attend, and presently messengers depart towards the magi’s pavilion. All-Highest watches for a minute, then turns back to his own bodyguards. “I have seen enough.” He turns his mount away from the cliff face and rides slowly downhill. From experience he knows that it will take half an hour for the last of the cavalry force to leave the valley, and another half hour for the infantry battalion to get into position. But everyone will be in position an hour before dawn, including the onrushing cavalry spearhead—and then it will be time to engage the enemy.

  * * *

  As Pinky pulls out of the driveway and turns onto the empty dual carriageway, Pete glances in the back of the van. Brains is busy with the rack of routers and the picocell base station; it’s hard to be sure in the slowly strobing shadows cast by the streetlights, but he looks worried. “Where next?” Pete asks.

  “Quarry House car park.” Pinky sounds distracted as he gears up, making the diesel engine bellow hoarsely. “We can unload Ilsa there: she should be safe for a while.”

  “Hang on,” calls Brains. “What was that again?” He’s talking into a headset, Pete realizes. “Yes, I’ll tell them. Change of plan, guys. We’re going for a spin around the Inner Loop before we drop everything off at QH.”

  The Inner Loop is a five-kilometer-long one-way route that snakes through Leeds city center like a particularly demented level from Grand Theft Auto, twining between town hall and railway station, alongside hospital and under Victorian viaduct. It’s not an actual road: more a succession of loosely coupled street signs that direct traffic around the pedestrianized core, in such a way that unless the driver knows exactly which exit they’re aiming at they’re locked into a frustrating twenty-minute stop-go detour. “What for?” demands Pinky. “Isn’t everywhere closed at this time of night?”

  “Yes, but that was Lockhart. He wants us over at the Royal Armouries: he’s getting one of the curators out of bed to let us into the special repository. It’s going to be”—Pinky joins in suddenly, and they chorus—“just like Christmas!”

  “Um,” says Pete, in the sudden gap as Pinky hurls the van and trailer across the deserted roundabout with the ring road, “am I missing something?”

  “Lockhart wants us to raid the nightmare stacks for anything that isn’t nailed down. That’s the special collection at the National Firearms Centre,” Brains adds. “Silver bullets, cold iron, banishment rounds, that sort of thing.”

  “The National Firearms Centre?”

  “The Ministry of Defense has a hobby: they’ve been buying one of everything ever since Henry VIII’s day. They used to keep it at the Enfield Royal Small Arms Factory—it was the Enfield Pattern Room back then—but it got too big and cumbersome, so when they built the Royal Armouries Museum up here they bolted a secure underground archive on the side. That’s the NFC. It’s basically a reference library for firearms. You’ve seen The Matrix?”

  Pete racks his brains. Shiny black latex, bullet-time video, cold-faced agents— “You mean that bit with the guns?”

  “Yeah, it’s just like that,” says Pinky. “Only it’s real.”

  “But what are we going to do with a load of guns?” asks Pete.

  “I don’t know, Brains, what are we going to do with a half-track full of guns?” Pinky asks.

  Brains chuckles. “Same thing we do every night, Pinky—”

  “Fort up and wait for reinforcements,” Pinky says flatly. “Because Alex has disappeared, Lockhart is spooked, and Forecasting Ops are convinced the world could end tomorrow.”

  “But, guns—” says Pete, channeling his inner British unease at the idea of prepping for survivalist role-playing games in built-up areas.

  “Relax,” says Pinky, flooring the accelerator as he drives past Woodhouse Moor Park, “we won’t be taking anything too big. Did you know,” he adds, taking his eye off the road to grin manically at Pete, “that the original Quarry Hill Flats were designed to be defensible with machine guns from any approach in case of a Communist revolution? That was in the 1920s! I just bet Lockhart’s aware of that . . .”

  Pinky steers them onto the Inner Loop and then turns off, to crawl through backstreets between red brick warehouses refurbished and given an afterlife as riverside apartments. They come to a halt in a pedestrianized courtyard before a modern building with a glassed-in entrance, incongruously flanked by eighteenth-century naval carronades. “Right, this is it,” he says, opening his door and climbing out. “Pete? You’re driving Ilsa, we can stack a bunch of extra stuff on her and use the trailer. Brains, you handle filling the van. I think this is our man now . . .”

  “Our man” turns out to be female, thirty-ish, and distinctly annoyed at being pulled out of bed at two in the morning. “You,” she says, pointing her flashlight at Pinky in a no-nonsense way that s
uggests a personal history encompassing time in the military, “you realize this is a no parking zone?”

  Pinky raises his warrant card. “Jan Downum?” he asks.

  “Yes—oh hell, wait. Are you why I’m here?” She steps forward until she can see his card clearly. “Bugger. Who are your mates?” Introductions are made. “Okay. I’m the designated keyholder for the stacks. If you’d kindly move your van and park over on that side of the cannon, yes, over there, I’ll take you in through the side entrance. You all have official ID on you? And you’re unarmed? There are metal detectors and we’ll have to search you if you set them off.”

  She leads them through a windowless entrance in a neighboring building, then through a keypad-secured door leading to a corridor with a freight lift at the end. They descend at least two stories before the lift stops. It terminates in a lobby with a uniformed guard on duty beside a metal detector arch and a baggage X-ray belt. He is, Pete realizes with a lurch of unease, carrying a holstered pistol at his hip. Armed guards at a British museum? “Good morning,” the guard says. He nods at Ms. Downum. “If you’d present your ID, please? Jackets and shoes go on the belt, along with any bags, phones, wallets . . .”

  The security check is thorough by airline standards, in line with the flaming hoops Pete has become desensitized to ever since he got himself sucked into one of the more obscure lagoons of the security state. “Remember: no photography, no phone use, no wandering off, and no touching the exhibits without prior permission,” Downum warns them once the blue-suiter on the front desk signs them in and signs them off as definitely not carrying anything illegal, immoral, or fattening. “This is a working archive and all the items we keep here are operational, which means they’re capable of killing you. Any questions?” She stifles a cavernous yawn, then glares at them.

  “Er, yes,” says Pete, just as Pinky asks, “Have you been told what we’re here for?”

  “Yes. Follow me,” she says, unlocking another windowless door leading into a white-walled corridor wide enough to take a shipping pallet. “I’m to take you to the special collection and sign out anything you need—” She opens the next door and Pete stops dead in his tracks, heart hammering.

  Beyond the doorway Pete sees a windowless room with a high ceiling. Every square centimeter seems to be covered in gun racks; the opposite end of the room is a solid wall of rifles. The floor facing him is occupied by a different kind of exhibit. Eight tripod-mounted heavy machine guns are drawn up side by side, their rifled muzzles converging on the doorway; in the middle, the black cylindrical bundle of an M134 Minigun’s six barrels squats atop an electrical ammunition feed and a battery pack, aiming straight at his face. A laminated placard dangles from it by a string. It warns: SHOPLIFTERS WILL BE OBLITERATED.

  “Ooh, that’ll do nicely!” says Pinky.

  “I’m not sure it’ll work.” Brains bends over the minigun and peers at its mounting bracket. “Remember it’s American and Ilsa is all-metric—”

  “But we could weld a mount to the top of the tow hitch!” Pinky is clearly getting excited. “I’m pretty sure there’s room for the ammunition box to fit in the engine cover storage—”

  “Children,” says Pete, “what are we here for?”

  Pinky looks up guiltily. “Didn’t Lockhart tell you?” he asks Brains.

  “Sure did.” Brains straightens up, shoves his hands in his pockets, and looks smug.

  “Spill it, love.” Pinky’s eyebrows furrow minutely, but Brains is clearly annoyed about something: possibly the idea of his partner wreaking such indignities on an eighty-year-old vehicle, or perhaps something else that Pete isn’t privy to. “Come on, not now—”

  Downum clears her throat noisily. “If you gentlemen would care to stop drooling and step this way, we’re not there yet.” She sounds more than slightly peeved. “I’m not the only person you’ve got out of bed this weekend, and you don’t want to keep Harry waiting.” She doesn’t wait for a reply, but walks rapidly past a rack of bolt-action rifles towards a door at the back.

  “Harry?” asks Pete, trailing after her.

  “Harry?” Pinky echoes, a trace of awe in his voice: “Harry works here now?”

  “Whoops,” says Brains, his mustache crinkling in a smile, “what a surprise! Don’t tell me you hadn’t wondered where he got moved to after they closed Dansey House.”

  “I thought he was in the New Annex . . .”

  Pete follows their guide through another echoing arsenal that smells of machine oil and (very faintly) of powder fumes, keeping half an ear on Alex’s two tech support housemates as they bicker good-naturedly. Surrounded by the tools of violence he feels cold, lonely, and a million miles away from his calling. This is not for him, he realizes, this callously light-hearted joshing amidst a hundred half-filled graveyards. He’s too used to seeing the other side of the equation, to offering comfort to the numbed survivors and weeping bereaved. It’s not that he’s a pacifist: the theology of the just war doesn’t seem obviously wrong to him, and some of the things the Laundry are called upon to protect humanity from are so unambiguously outside the light of creation that it’s an open-and-shut case. When the enemy is the end of all life he can’t even object to the use of demon-haunted tools and ritual magic in self-defense. But these aren’t tools for blocking the incursion of nameless horrors from beyond the walls of the world: these are instruments of human slaughter. And the bodies at the crime scene outside the ring road might have pointy ears, but they were human enough that the blood puddling around them in the headlights was red.

  Downum eventually pauses at another door. She knocks: two slow, then a pause, then three fast. A muffled voice from the other side replies, “Yuss, coming.” There’s a sound of heavy objects shifting, then the door scrapes open.

  “Pinky my son! And your prodigal brainiac!”

  The grizzled man stares past Pete and Downum at Pinky and Brains. He looks to be in his sixties: one eye is covered by a piratical black patch, and he’s wearing overalls and cotton gloves which once were white but are now stained with gun oil.

  “Long time indeed, Harry.” Pinky grins. “Pete? I don’t believe you’ve met Harry. Harry the Horse, meet Pete the Vicar . . .”

  Brains doesn’t smile, or take time for social niceties. “Lockhart sent us. I believe you have a picking list for us.”

  “I do indeed.” Harry backs into the room, wheezing slightly. “An’ I’ve been busy, as you can see.” A wooden pallet sits atop a small forklift, piled high with metal ammunition boxes and odd-shaped drab fiberglass carriers. Behind it, the room is tricked out with floor-to-ceiling warehouse shelves, crammed with storage boxes and wooden crates. “Something tells me you’ve got some ideas of your own”—he finally focusses on Pete—“and your new friend. So tell me son, what’s going on upstairs?”

  Pinky shuffles aside, then half-turns and hams it up: “Brains . . . what is going on upstairs?”

  Brains takes a deep breath, then shrugs. “We’ve got an incursion, but it’s not the normal kind.” He stares at the loaded wooden pallet. “Long on pointy ears and cold iron, short on tentacles and mindless brain eating. Colonel Lockhart thinks they’re heading this way, maybe targeting HQ North. We’ve got one OCCULUS team in town, but they’re busy—another is on its way up the M6 but won’t be here for a couple of hours yet. They’ve got one of our people; Gerry wants us tooled up in case we can get him back—or in case the bad guys come for us.”

  Harry shakes his head. “Children’s crusade. Children’s fucking crusade.” He taps the pile of boxes on the pallet with one size-eleven boot. “If we are talking about fair folk”—his eyes narrow—“then this little lot will only get you so far. But if you come into the back with me, I think I can get you something more useful.” He turns and walks back between the shelving units; after a brief shared look with Downum, Pete finds himself following. “Bang-sticks.” Harry snorts. “No,
you don’t want regular guns for dealing with those fuckers. What you want is back here in the stacks, where we keep the really useful nightmares . . .”

  15.

  RAIN OF STEEL

  While the British armed forces are administered by the Ministry of Defense in London, the army itself has a headquarters complex in Andover, a picturesque town in Hampshire, about forty-five kilometers from the deep water port of Southampton on the south coast of England. Andover is an army town, home to the headquarters of the Defense Logistics Organization as well as the Chief of General Staff. It’s part of a sprawling complex of army headquarters bases in Hampshire and Wiltshire, near the south coast channel ports, including the Army Air Corps’ helicopter squadrons, the main battle tanks of the Royal Armored Corps, and the Royal Artillery.

  (It is possible to get from Hampshire or Wiltshire to Leeds by road, but not without aggravation; it’s nearly four hundred kilometers by motorway, the traffic congestion is legendary, and both routes are prone to being blocked by accidents.)

  Well-run armed forces do not operate on an office-hours-only basis and close for public holidays in the face of active threats. One of the oldest tricks in the book is to launch a surprise attack the weekend before a public holiday. However, maintaining readiness around the clock is expensive. The British Army burned through huge accumulated stocks of equipment during the turbulent first decade of the twenty-first century, and the draw-down from Iraq and Afghanistan coincided with an austerity-minded government intent on cutting the national budget to the bone. Furthermore, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union nobody anticipated a military attack on the homeland at short notice. (Terrorism is one thing, but you can generally spot a mechanized strike force with air support preparing for operations weeks or months in advance.) So staffing levels fell to the lowest level since the 1920s, and by the spring of 2014, with no clear threats on the doorstep, the Army was unready to deal with out-of-hours invasions. Reserves and active forces were reduced, equipment was not replaced, and by the small early hours of one Saturday night in March, the office of the General Staff is occupied by a handful of sentries, some outsourced cleaners, and one tired and irritable major. The major is staying awake by multitasking, dividing his attention among a stack of procurement process manuals (soporific), a mug of tepid coffee (stimulant), and the website of ARRSE, the Army Rumor Service (distraction).