Baen Books Free Stories 2017

by Baen Books

2197 shook his head. "Because magic is so weak here, yes. The only manifestations you have seen are those supportable by the remaining . . . ambient field, I suppose you might say, or those—like myself—who carry our power within, at least until we can create a link to the world we have entered and draw upon what strength it has."

  "That's why we can contain you?"

  "Certainly. You—by good procedure, no little talent, and a quite startling amount of luck—prevented me from establishing that link, and thus this," he gestured about him," can restrain me, turn my power back, prevent me from reaching beyond these walls except in the most trivial ways.

  "What is coming may throw the gates wide, Agent. Magic may flood back into your world like a destroying cataract, and even if not, the beings that are coming are already linked to a world, one whispered only in your most ancient legends and secret nightmares. It has tried this before; it was one of those attempts, indeed, that made it possible for me to have the potential to manifest.

  "But it is not my ally, nor that of any other."

  "So you're saying we should be helping the other one. The girl."

  "The girl? Ah, yes, Prinkípissa Ierí Ávra, Gōngzhǔ Shèngjié Guānghuán, Alii Pomaikai Uhane, the Ruler-Child of the Sacred Spirit. Or, perhaps, the Child who Rules the Sacred Spirit—translations are so difficult, are they not? Help her, you say? Perhaps, but you know not how delicate the situation is. There is a way of these things, Agent, and if you attempt to change it—in either direction—you could cause the very cataclysm you seek to prevent."

  She heard her own frustrated snort. "So what? Are you saying do nothing?"

  "Have you not been listening, Agent? I have given you the advice you need. I advocate neither a given action nor inaction. I have counseled you to use wisdom and caution—and given you some quite specific warnings." He leaned slowly back in the chair. "And that, Agent Kisaragi, is all you need to know."

  "Dammit, no! What are these forces that are coming? Why are they so powerful they would threaten you? Who's this Princess Holy Aura, and where'd she come from? You can't just . . ."

  But 2197 was simply sitting there, eyes closed, the faintest of smiles playing about his lips as she shouted at him. She knew he was quite capable of sitting exactly like that for hours.

  With a curse she wheeled around and marched towards the exit. She wasn't sure if the low, mocking laugh echoed from behind her, or only in her head, but she refused to look back.

  It was a genuine relief to face the entirety of SCF-6 pointing every possible weapon of destruction at her as the exterior door opened. Eneru was studying readouts as she stood, absolutely frozen, on the threshold.

  "Clear," he said, finally, and the whispering sound of collectively released breaths sighed through the corridor. "Come through, Agent. Sir John said you were to be brought to him immediately after the interview, if all went well."

  She knew that "well" meant "if Agent Kisaragi was not killed or suborned," not anything about what she might have learned. "Lead on, Captain."

  Chapter 7.

  Sir John stood as she entered, and then came around to shake her hand. "Agent, thank you. I know how difficult that must have been for you."

  She nodded, studying him. She had never been in Sir John Covenant's physical presence before, and she was struck by the strange mixture of predatory confidence and empathy he radiated. He was probably older than he looked, and he looked to be a good fifty-five to sixty, though still very fit—slender, strong, graying-black hair that showed no sign of thinning, with one lock that seemed difficult for him to control just over his forehead. That dangerous, dissecting gaze from piercingly blue eyes both attracted and chilled her.

  "Please, sit down. A drink, perhaps?"

  "I'm on duty, Sir John."

  "Humph. In my day that made no difference. And this isn't a mission at the moment, more a debrief."

  She found herself accepting a martini, poured from the shaker by John Covenant himself before he sat down with his own. Dana took a sip and raised her eyebrow. "That's . . . good. Different than any I've had before, somehow. Bitter, but not in a bad way."

  He nodded. "You have excellent senses. Not unusual in an agent, of course. Cocchi Aperitivo Americano added to the mix; many decades back it would have been Kina Lillet, but that's been gone a long time. It's the quinine, mostly." He gazed at her across the glass rim. "This could be quite quick, Agent; is there anything you're willing to tell me? Any recordings? Or will we finish our drinks and return to our duties, with myself none the wiser?"

  "Just like that?"

  "Exactly like that, yes. Highly against procedure and regs, of course, but anything touching on 2197 lies somewhat beyond the pale. So?"

  She hesitated. But if she was going to work for the OSC at all, Sir John at least deserved something. "I made a recording. I'll be keeping it sealed for a while, though. In case."

  "Your privilege, Agent. But I am gratified you made one. Anything else?"

  Agent Kisaragi, you must be exceedingly careful, the voice whispered from memory. She weighed her options. "He wasn't joking or tricking us. He sincerely believes we're dealing with a Class Ten threat."

  Sir John sucked in his breath with a hiss that was unpleasantly reminiscent of the being she'd just left. "Indeed. That's most unwelcome news."

  "And he says I am . . . somehow . . . involved. I have to be careful, he says." She saw Sir John's steady gaze and decided to be straightforward. "He said . . . if I act as the ideal Agent, I could cause the disaster."

  He pursed his lips, gazing at her, then granted her the narrowest of smiles. "You're facing a Class Ten threat and he thinks I'd be unwise to send in larger and more experienced teams, leaving it to a local Agent and her small response force. No, more; leaving it to the judgment and decisions of one person. The one that caught him."

  "I didn't catch him. I just helped."

  "Really." The word was filled with dry doubt and curiosity. "Well, we can discuss that another time." He leaned back, sipping at his drink; she took one of her own and waited.

  Finally he smiled, with a sad edge to the expression. "He gave no guarantees."

  "No. Not even many specifics. He knows a lot about what's happening but he's hoping to make use of it. I think he wants me to save the world for him, though."

  "What was it from some recent movie . . . ah yes, can't the world stay saved for, oh, ten minutes?" He chuckled, looking into a distance she couldn't see. "You'd be amazed how often the world—at least as we ordinary humans understand it—is in peril."

  She swallowed. The OSC existed to protect the world, and she'd heard hints that it was much older than ordinary intelligence agencies, but the way Sir John was talking, she suspected the agency's history was even grimmer than she'd guessed . . . and she'd guessed an awful lot.

  "One special Agent to save the world, eh?" Sir John went on, smiling. "Or destroy it, if she guesses wrong. And on the word of a monster trying to protect itself from another monster."

  "Something like that, I guess." She squirmed inwardly at the thought of saving the world. It was too big a responsibility. Too big a thought.

  Again Sir John sat quietly, gazing into his glass. "I was not so different from you, Agent Kisaragi. Well, yes. I was. But we had the same . . . eye-opening experience, entering a case expecting that we knew what we were dealing with, and suddenly seeing the world as we knew it erased forever, replaced with something . . . awful and terrifying and wondrous and monstrous. Then using all the pathetic skills we had and finding that it was, perhaps, just barely enough. This time. And then being recruited. Yes, I remember that myself, though it was years ago."

  "He said I didn't really know the OSC," she said, with a thrill of trepidation.

  Sir John sighed. "In many ways, no, you do not. It has not been necessary. May not be, even now." He tossed back the last of his martini and stood. "Very well, Agent. I'm sending you back. I'll get you more resources to work with, but I will leave you in charge."


  She felt a rising sense of both elation and panic at this gesture, and took his hand. "Thank you, Sir John."

  "Not at all. Just try not to get the entire planet killed." He smiled coldly. "Won't look good on your annual review."

  Chapter 8.

  "Agent Kisaragi! You're back!"

  She found herself unexpectedly warmed by the looks of relief and welcome on all four of her team—Hughes, Gilbert, Morales, Marsters. All of them had stood, smiling, taking a step or two towards her as she entered. I guess working together, especially on this case, has connected us more than I'd expected.

  That was of course something not always to be encouraged; the more you were connected to people, the more you were likely to make choices based, not on the mission and rationality, but on the value you placed on those people. The OSC preferred to keep things rational and professional.

  Screw that. I don't have time to worry about being professional when I'm dealing with a Class Ten. She smiled back. "Yes, I am, and in one piece."

  "So? Anything you can tell us, or is all of it 'die before thinking' kind of stuff?" Morales asked.

  "There's a lot of hush-hush, but I can say that Central's sending out ten response teams—and they'll be under our direction, not the other way around."

  "WELL now," Hughes said in an impressed voice. "You must have knocked them dead on your visit; that's a promotion for sure."

  She displayed her ID case. "Crisis Directorship, full Regional authority, no less."

  "Holy crap." Gilbert's salt-and-pepper beard quivered then showed the white of teeth. "And we're your Directorial staff? Promotions all around!"

  "Which will last about five minutes if we don’t get results," she reminded them. "They took me out of here on the fast transport but I came back the regular way, so what've you learned in the last day or so?"

  The smiles faded. Owen Marsters sighed. "Not much, boss. Agent. That Holy Aura girl zipped out of the mall real fast, and she went high. Not many security cams on the top of the building and most of them were out anyway. Can say that she wasn't going the same direction that she was on her prior appearance."

  "So either no stable base of operations, or she's smart enough to never take a direct route."

  "I'm betting on the second."

  "Safest that way. Anything else at all?"

  "Thing was definitely after our Princess," Hughes said. "Witnesses and what recordings we have agree on that. And she worked hard to keep its attention, so there were no civilian casualties—at least no physical ones."

  "Psychological damage? Or something else?"

  Gilbert pointed to a stack of thumb drives. "Data on there says it's both. I mean, being the witness to a manifestation on that scale is trauma, no matter how you slice it, and the metawave effects . . . that thing was radiating in the psychoaffective bands a lot. We figure two, three hundred cases of metawave-mediated PTSD, at least, and at least a few of those are going to be untreatable in the short term, maybe in the long term."

  Dana cursed under her breath. "So a true horror; Lovecraft-type mental damage."

  "Makes sense; while you were on your way back, Central tentatively identified that thing as a shoggoth, though it's sure not what I thought a shoggoth was supposed to be like."

  She nodded, sat down and sipped at the coffee she'd picked up on the way in. At least Central knew that much. Finally she looked up at the four, who were watching her expectantly. "Thoughts?"

  They looked at each other. Finally, Hughes shrugged. "I'm more convinced that this Princess is a potential ally. Sure, it could still be a trick, but . . . hell, if that thing was a throwaway trick, what kind of a disaster are we being set up for?"

  She held a quick internal debate. "I can answer you that, anyway. We've got good information that whatever's behind all this rates a Class Ten."

  Even Josephine Morales' face went pale; the others looked like ghosts for a moment. "Ten?"

  "Ten."

  "Fuck me," Owen said distinctly. "And we're the point on this?"

  "Exactly."

  "Holy Blessed Mother of God."

  After a moment of silence, Hughes shook himself. "Well, then, we'd better get to work. Orders, Agent?"

  She'd been thinking about that for a while. "Two manifestations within a few miles of each other, both extremely high power and connected by the Princess—that argues that at least for the moment there is a local connection. Concur?"

  The others looked thoughtful, then nodded. "Works as a hypothesis," Morales said. "There's an awful lot more of the country they could have appeared in."

  "Right. And we were seeing small metawave spikes in the interim, yes?"

  "Several, but they were very short and hard to pull out of the noise." Gilbert gave an apologetic shrug. "Without a signature on them we can't even guarantee they're connected, though."

  "I'm willing to bet that they are, or most of them are. There wasn't much activity in this area at all until this whole thing started."

  Hughes looked up. "Ahh, I see your idea. Since we're getting all the extra teams—"

  "Yes. We'll distribute the response teams through the entire local district. Assume the next manifestation's going to happen somewhere close by—maybe another shopping area, a store, a school, something like that." She paused, and thought. "In fact, I've got a real good idea where to concentrate. More on that later. I'll requisition more metawave sensors and we'll saturate the area with them, as much as we can. That way if and when something happens we'll have bearing and distance, at least."

  "What about defenses?" Owen asked. "Either of those monsters would've wiped out our entire group if they'd come after us. Can't bet that our princess would get there first."

  "Well, the response teams are already well armed and protected. But I'll also requisition some combat-level metawave shielding matrices and anything else you think we need. Give me a list ASAP."

  "Will do."

  She looked out the window; the summer sun shone, deceptively peaceful. "Next time our monsters poke their noses out of the darkness, we'll have a god-damned spotlight for them!"

  Chapter 9.

  Dana looked up from her desk as her new office door opened. The fact that it had opened without a knock told her who it had to be, and her gut was already tightening with annoyance before she actually saw the well-trimmed blond hair and square-jawed face of Agent John T. Miller, Special Response Team Commander, multiply-decorated Agent, and major pain in her ass.

  "Agent Kisaragi—" he began, with the subtly-impatient drawl that he seemed to feel made him sound both reasonable and superior.

  "Agent Miller, are you incapable of knocking when entering your Director's office?" she cut him off.

  His lips tightened. "My apologies . . . Director Kisaragi."

  "Better." She repressed a sigh. "What can I do for you, Miller?"

  "My teams are getting restless, Director. We haven't gotten a decent response alert in all the weeks we've been here."

  This isn't really his concern. He's just using this as a lead-up to something much more important. "Miller, the interval between our first manifestation and the second was months. We have to assume it could be the same with the third. We assume there will be a third. There are still metawave spikes seen in the area—but we can't localize them."

  "Yes. There's a reason for that, Director."

  Ouch. If he knows something and my team hasn't caught it . . . "And that is?"

  "Well, to keep my teams from being completely bored, I've had them doing on-the-ground metawave scans—covert, of course—and they started noticing some odd patterns." He gestured at her terminal. "If the Director permits?"

  She nodded and stood up; Miller spun the chair out, sat in it, and rolled back to the desk in one smooth economic motion. He quickly accessed a project folder under his team command and pulled up a graphic. "See anything, Director?"

  She studied the image. It was an overlay of metawave survey scans on the city surrounding their a
ssumed target area. At first glance, she saw nothing amiss; there were areas of higher and lower metawave concentration, though none of them of any significant level, scattered through the city. This was normal, since there was always a "background radiation level" of metawave energies, usually somewhat higher in heavily-populated areas, and it wasn't evenly distributed, for reasons that the theoreticians were still arguing over.

  However, the not-quite-concealed smirk on Miller's face told her there was something out of the ordinary in this image. After a few more moments, she thought she had it. "These areas. Here, here, here, others like them. It's . . . smoother distribution. Looks superficially the same taken in isolation . . ."

  "Right," Miller said. "If you had just one or two guys walking around doing a survey, or even if you were a class four or five metawave manifestation looking around for targets, you'd probably never notice anything. The combination of us having installed a huge network of metawave sensors and my having a large number of agents doing active survey sweeps so we could track the shifts is the reason we could catch this."

  She noticed the date on the image. Two weeks ago. The son of a bitch has been sitting on this for two weeks? Probably working out what it meant. Probably in his own reports and not in mine, making me look out of touch.

  A part of her was grinning at her cynically, saying oh, you expected this kind of politics to stop just because the world might be in danger? The rest of her was just coldly angry.

  But expressing that anger wouldn't help right now; she'd deal with Miller's clumsy maneuvering later. "Do we have any idea what it means?"

  Miller grinned, the self-satisfied expression of someone getting to show off. "Metawave shielding. Very, very sophisticated, subtle metawave shielding."

  "You mean like our wards?"

  "Asked Keldering the same question—you know Keldering, he's my resident big brain on metawave stuff?" At her nod, he went on, "anyway, Keldering laughed at that. Seems that our stuff is pretty straightforward, blunt-instrument. Way he put it, we build big walls and cover them with guns, but these things are more like someone built a giant maze and no matter where you enter, you just come out the other side without ever finding the center."