Hammer of the Witches (The Covenant Chronicles Book 2)

by Kai Wai Cheah

  A dark van passed through the neighborhood. It was the first time I’d seen a van this shift. Fifteen minutes later, another dark van appeared. Or was it the same one? I couldn’t make out the license plate.

  I cycled through the microcams. All clear. Nothing to see. I visited the washroom, taking the slate with me. Got out. Stared at the holograms again. Cycled through the cameras once more. Nothing, a couple crossing the road away from us, a blurry streetlamp, nothing, more nothing…

  A blurry streetlamp?

  I cycled back.

  I returned to the feed and saw a splash of amber across the sidewalk. I swept the camera left and right, up and down, saw nothing.

  Nothing?

  Maybe it was just a stray dog or something. Not the first time it had happened before. Still…

  I rapped my fingers against the table and brought up the big picture view again. A series of smaller windows filled the holographic window. I kept my head moving ever so slightly, banking on my peripheral vision to pick up movement. Left and right, up and down, left to…

  Motion. Lower right corner. I pulled it up.

  This camera covered the elevator in the outside hallway. The doors slid shut. Might be nothing…

  No.

  I panned the camera. Concentrating. Willing myself to see everything.

  More motion. In my mind’s eye it looked like a black shroud. I tracked it with my camera, and saw four tall men in black overcoats.

  The black shroud wasn’t a trick of the light. We called it an invisibility cloak. It wouldn’t turn anyone invisible, but it would redirect attention away from the wearer unless you were consciously seeking them out. And just like that, the cloak fell apart.

  The four men marched down the hall, their hands buried in the pockets of black overcoats. Every footfall was clean and precise, like robots on parade. And they were wearing black balaclavas.

  They were the killers from Chios.

  I dashed into the bedroom. Eve was sound asleep.

  “Eve! Wake up!”

  She bounced out of bed, instantly awake.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s a kill team coming in. Four men. They look like the Chios shooters.”

  She swore. “What do we do?”

  “Ambush them when they enter and then evacuate.”

  “Got it.”

  She drew her ambrosia and chugged down a slug. Her charagma flared in the dark. I dashed out the room and entered Frank’s room.

  “Frank! Get up!”

  Frank rolled about in his bed. The other guys in the room stirred. I shook Frank awake.

  “What? What is it?” he asked sleepily.

  “Hitters incoming. Get your things. Get ready to move when I say so.”

  “Huh? What?”

  “Grab your stuff. Run when I tell you.”

  I checked the slate. The four giants parted their coats, revealing plate carriers and war belts festooned with pouches, and reached for the weapons slung around their shoulders.

  The plate carriers were colored in wolf gray and studded with laser-cut negative space webbing. The giants were armed with MP99 machine pistols which were fully decked out with suppressors, pistol grips, lights, lasers and red dot sights.

  This wasn’t surplus Soviet kit. This was modern Western equipment.

  Whatever the hell was going on, I didn’t have time to gawk. I ran to the next room. The occupants were slowly waking up, still groggy.

  “What’s happening?” a woman asked.

  “No time to explain. Get your stuff and get ready to run.”

  I ducked back into my bedroom, reaching for my flask. Eve was gone.

  “Eve!” I whispered.

  “Here!”

  She was standing by the door, next to the hinge, her charagma bright, her arms glowing. She opened her palms. Light poured out, condensing into a shimmering longsword.

  If we were breached, the bug out plan was to hole up inside the room and toss the ambrosia at attackers before escaping. This was not the plan.

  This was madness.

  “What are you doing?”

  She held up a finger to her lips.

  The door shook. A heavy BOOM reverberated through the apartment.

  I glanced at the slate. The giants were stacked and ready to breach. One of them was backing away from the door, ready to boot it again.

  I drew my aethertool. Flashed my pesh-kabz. Flipped it into a reverse grip.

  BOOM

  The door shuddered. Metal creaked. The wedge popped out.

  Ambrosia or Void? Had to be one or the other; each would cancel the other out.

  The giant revved up.

  I unfurled my charagma.

  BOOM

  The door burst open, damn near falling off its hinges.

  The giants trooped in, heavy boots pounding the floor. White light shot into the dark room, barely missing me. I took a deep breath.

  Compressed.

  Every living being exists in four dimensions: length, width, height and time. Usually, people can only go forward in time. I tapped into the Void, shrinking my being down into three dimensions. This was time compression: the art of stopping time relative to yourself.

  It was like pulling in a massive spherical bubble of consciousness, reeling it in until it was a millimeter away from my skin. Any deeper and I could stop my own biological processes.

  Colors faded to sepia and crinkled grays. Things flashed in and out of the edge of my sight. Indistinct sounds gibbered into my ears. I ignored them all and stepped out into the living room.

  The giants stood a full head above me and then some. They were dispersed throughout the room, frozen in mid-step. The lead shooter followed the right-hand wall, racing for the far corner. Behind him, his partner planted his back to a corner—so close to Eve she could reach out and touch him. The third one was right next to the door. The last giant occupied the other corner.

  They were pros. Just too slow.

  I lunged for the nearest threat, shearing away his support arm, pulling him down to my height and slashing through his throat. A kill shot, but not enough. Even with a cut throat, a human can take nearly a minute and a half to bleed to unconsciousness. No sense taking chances. Not today.

  I pried his left hand off his weapon’s forward pistol grip and cleared his arm. Stabbed and sliced up the biceps of both arms. Seized his neck and slammed his head into the wall. Danced out, stabbed the back of his right thigh and comma cut out.

  A voice, rich and deep and golden, laughed.

  There was no point trying to disarm the giant and turn the weapon on his buddies. The moment a fired bullet exits your time bubble, it reenters the time stream. From my perspective, the bullet would be frozen. Time to move on.

  I grabbed the second customer by the throat and drove him onto Eve’s sword. The blade skittered off his back. He must be wearing a back plate too. I pulled him off and cut his throat. Filleted his inner left arm and peeled it off his weapon. Severed his right biceps, too. If he needed further servicing later, Eve could take care of him.

  “You really think that will work?”

  Writhing things bulged into the world and melted back into the Void. Whispers overlaid the gibberish, inviting me to listen. I ignored them all, going for the third guy. Going low, I yanked his lead leg into a thigh slash. He went down, crashing against the floor. I stomped his head once, twice, three times—

  Pain burst in my head.

  “C’mon, FisherI. Is that the best you got?”

  “SHUT UP!” I roared.

  My temple pounded. Unseen oily stuff oozed against my skin. My eyeballs felt like they would burst. If you touch the Void, the Void touches you back. I was reaching my breaking point. But there was only one more giant left.

  No time for subtlety. I spun the shooter around. Kicked out his leg. Smashed his head against the wall. Aimed at the back of his skull and stabbed—

  BANG

  The blast tossed me aside.
<
br />   And I slipped.

  Time sped forward. I caught myself against a wall. The giants collapsed all at once. Weapons clattered to the ground. My head throbbed.

  “Luke? You all right?” Eve asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I glanced at my hand. The aethertool had shattered. Only a small fragment of aether was left.

  How?

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “Time compression,” I mumbled. “We should be…”

  No blood.

  I blinked.

  There was no blood. Not on the aethertool. Not on my hands. Not on my clothes, the walls, the floor, the ceiling.

  “Eh?”

  BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

  Bombs of brilliant colors blasted through my head. I gritted my teeth, forcing out the pain, taking in a deep breath.

  The giants picked themselves up.

  “HAVE FUN!” the Unmaker sang.

  Not good.

  Pocketing the useless aethertool, I latched on to the Void again, this time manipulating gravity and space. I levitated the giant in front of Eve and flung him toward the first giant I had slashed. Hammers pounded inside my skull. I kept up the pressure, pinning them down with high gravity.

  Two giants left. One on the floor, the other on his feet. I rewrote the laws of physics, sending the latter flying into his buddies. He entered the high-gee zone and slammed into the flailing mass of muscle.

  Strength fled from my limbs. Sucking in a deep breath, I looked at the last giant. He had picked himself up. Extending his arms, he trained his weapon on me—

  “RAAAAAH!”

  Eve’s sword flashed. The giant’s severed hands fell to the floor.

  She slashed at his head. He ducked, faster than anyone his size should be able to move. As she recycled the weapon, the giant shot in and head-butted her, slamming her against the wall.

  I drew on the Void again. As I lifted the giant off the ground, I felt my brain stretching and twisting to the limit. I threw him into his friends.

  SNAP

  My limbs became molten lead, sluggish and burning. At the same time, the inside of my left arm grew as cold and frozen as the heart of the Void. My vision grew gray and blurry. Black formless things encroached on the threshold of visible reality, eager to break in. I wobbled.

  Fell.

  Landed on my ass.

  The gravitational pressure was gone. The giants scrambled, getting back up. I reached for the Void. The cold surged up my left arm, flowing into my heart. I didn’t care, I had to—

  Golden light washed through the room.

  “DIE!” Eve roared.

  She extended her left hand toward the giants. Blinding bolts of white lightning surged from her palm and outstretched fingers, tearing into the giants.

  A foot away, an MP99 beckoned.

  It must have come from the giant Eve had disarmed. Its hands lay inches away.

  I got up. Grabbed the weapon. Racked the charging handle. An unspent round flew out of the ejection port. Slung the machine pistol around my neck. Spent a second adjusting the sling to my neck.

  The light show ended. Eve slumped senselessly against the wall.

  And the sons of bitches were STILL moving.

  This ends here and now.

  I flicked to semi-auto and extended the weapon as far out as it could go, using the sling’s tension as a makeshift stock. I turned on the weapon light, illuminated the closest giant’s skull and pressed the trigger.

  The gun bucked in my hands. The bolt clacked back and forth, the actual report barely audible above it.

  I fired again and advanced on the giants. I found another target and double-tapped him in the face. I kept walking, kept shooting, shooting the other two giants twice in the face. I still had some ammo left, so I shot them again and again and again and again and again and—

  CLICK

  There was a sound in the room. A moment later, I realized it was me, yelling incoherently.

  I released my finger from the trigger. Stopped screaming.

  The floor was a mess of bone chips and bullet holes. The sickeningly sweet stench of roast pork filled the air. The giants’ skulls were completely and thoroughly shattered, but there was no blood. Through the wounds I saw dark pulsating masses.

  “What the hell?”

  Behind me, Frank asked, “Is it over?”

  “Yes!” I said, my voice hoarse. “Go! Get to the vehicles! Run!”

  The hackers didn’t need to be told twice. They made a beeline for the door, luggage in hand. Eve moaned. I helped her up.

  “What… what happened?” she muttered.

  “It’s over,” I said. “We have to sanitize the place.”

  “Right.”

  We hurried to our rooms and picked up our bags. I sprayed a liberal dose of ambrosia across the room and focused my attention on it. In my mind’s eye the liquid was a soft, dazzling foam of infinite possibility. I grabbed one and willed it to become reality. The aetherium responded, bursting into flame.

  As I stepped out, Eve left the kitchen.

  “I turned on the gas,” she reported.

  “Okay. Let’s–”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Gott im Himmel!”

  I turned.

  The giants. Were. Getting. Up.

  Eve screamed, lighting up her charagma.

  Thin beams of blinding light seared into the giants. Wincing, I shut my eyes and turned away. When I looked back, spots floated across my field of view.

  Charging toward them, Eve flashed her soulblade into existence. She leaped from the floor and decapitated a giant.

  She became a glowing blur, her arms rising and falling, her hips swinging, her feet dancing back and forth, faster than I could track. Heads, hands, arms and legs flew all over the room.

  “Why!” Slash. “Won’t!” Cut. “You!” Thrust. “DIE!” Slash.

  There was still no blood.

  “EVE!” I screamed. “THE GAS IS ON! WE HAVE TO GO!”

  She came to her senses. None of the giants was still intact. Nodding, she doused her charagma and extinguished her soulblade. I grabbed her hand and ran.

  We made it to the corridor before the world exploded.

  The blast wave hammered us down. I threw myself over her. Alarms shrieked. I picked myself up and helped her to her feet.

  She said something. All I heard was a distant ringing and a jumble of sounds passing through heavy soup. I looked at her lips as she spoke again.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Let’s go.”

  We ran down the stairs and headed for the getaway vehicles. The hackers had waited for us. I bundled Eve into the sedan and then boarded the van. I slugged down a hit of ambrosia. Cleansing fire burned through me, and I could hear again.

  Frank twisted around in the driver’s seat. “Where to?”

  “Just get us out of the city,” I replied.

  Frank drove. The sedan followed. I booted up my holobuds and called Pete.

  “Kill team attacked the safe house. We’re fine, but we need extract,” I said.

  Pete cursed. “We’ve just arrived in Pantopia ourselves. We’re two hours out from Dutch airspace. Can you hold out?”

  “After what just happened? It’s suicide to stay in the same city. Hell, it’s suicide to stay in the same country. We’ll cross the border in our vehicles. You can pick us up at a Dutch airport—maybe in an open field if we have to.”

  “You sound shook up, brother. You okay?”

  “I will be.” I paused. “Did you stock the airship with weapons?”

  “No. The brass refused to release them for a non-combat operation.”

  I groaned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We are so screwed.”

  Part Two: The Survivors

  You are of your father, the Unmaker, and your will is to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in
the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the Father of Lies… Whoever is of God hears the words of God.

  —Ionnes, The Theograph

  1. Extraction

  We drove through the night, following the Autobahn southwest. Along the way, I made sure everyone dumped their SIM cards and changed their IMEI numbers.

  Dawn broke as we entered Vaalsberg. The town was a tri-border point, the intersection of Germania, Dietsland and Belgia. In a tourist town with inhabitants from the three nations, we would seamlessly blend in. Here was one of the few places in the world where nobody would blink an eye if the hackers broke out into their native tongues.

  Over breakfast and coffee in a local cafe, I checked my mail.

  Brick:

  We’re now just outside Dutch international airspace. Give the word, and we can land anywhere you like in Dietsland.

  O’Connor:

  I’ve got an asset in Amsterdam Airport Schiphol who works the morning shift. He’ll get you through Customs.

  Brick:

  Sounds good. Captain Harding says we can be there within 45 minutes.

  Around me, the hackers munched on open-faced sandwiches, small pastries and cereals. They were gloomy and quiet despite Eve’s efforts to engage them.

  “Hey,” I said, “does anybody know how long it’ll take to drive to Amsterdam from here?”

  That motivated Frank into action. He fiddled with his phone for a few moments.

  “Two hours and fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  I returned to the mail and typed my response.

  Fisher:

  We’ll be at the airport by 0930.

  I always made time for delays.

  We hit the road again. Traffic was uneventful, and the Dutch police didn’t seem terribly interested in us. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

  We arrived at the airport fifteen minutes early. Our inside man was already there. So was Kalypso.

  She was parked at the airport’s second terminal, dedicated solely to airships. Sited safely away from the blast-proof hangars housing hydrogen airships, her twin hulls were painted a dazzling white with yellow stripes. The asset went out of his way for us, personally driving a bus to deliver us to the Kalypso.