Agents of Order

by T. R. Cameron

  “It has to be another diversion. Glam, Croft, opinions?”

  The two women replied in unison. “Agreed.” Cara added, “Assholes. They are probably street soldiers recruited specifically for this. It could be a double-blind and they’re only the first wave, but I sure as hell wouldn’t trust them in a real op.”

  Tony, who had the most knowledge of the city’s criminal element, nodded. “Total agreement. These aren’t even the top of the bottom. They’re like the middle of the bottom at best.”

  Diana gritted her teeth as adrenaline and certainty surged through her. A loud crash sounded nearby as a pyrotechnic display heralded the start of the concert. “Then it has to be the football stadium. Show me the cameras.”

  Her glasses filled with the feeds and the truck grew quiet as all the agents watched. Cara noticed the first certain sign of their enemies. “The one-armed scumbag is there. Camera four, lower right.” Sure enough, the man they’d put into the Cube after the battle at the office building strode through the image, a bloodthirsty look on his face. Damn. That seems like ages ago instead of only months.

  “We have one. Find me the other, and I’ll be sold.” It was only a minute before the AI identified Sarah and put her picture up for all of them to see. “All right. It’s there. Warn the police on site. No changes to the plan. You all head in on the ground. Rath and I will go in from the top.”

  A quarter-mile away, the troll perched on the pinnacle of the highest point of the casino hotel, an antenna array of some kind. He’d been careful when he’d climbed up an hour before so as not to damage any of the delicate-looking equipment. A half-hour later, the crate at the base of the metal structure opened and one of the surveillance drones flew out.

  He’d waited, watched, and waited some more. Gwen gave him images from the various drones in his goggles so he was aware of what the others saw. His role wasn't to find the enemy, however. It involved something much more fun than that.

  When Diana identified the football stadium as the objective, Rath’s time had come. “Gwen, current map.”

  “Acknowledged.” Air patterns drew themselves into his display—red for ones powerful enough to give him lift, yellow for those that would keep him aloft, and blue for any that would drag him down. He pivoted to face the center point of the target, leapt from the antenna, and pressed the center button on his harness to deploy the glide wings. They snapped into place behind and above him, and he caught an orange stream that led more or less toward his destination and soared along it.

  Flying in the daylight proved to be very different than his normal nighttime glides. It was a little more nerve-wracking, being able to see exactly how far it was to the ground. He checked to ensure his grapnel was primed and ready, and of course, it was. Gwen would have warned me if it wasn’t. The AI anticipated his needs more and more as their partnership continued to develop. She drew a circle on every potential destination for the safety line as he moved across the north side of the city.

  Much sooner than expected, the football field loomed before him. A pulsing yellow target throbbed at the near-left corner of the space, and he saw Hank’s truck below him with an electronic tag indicating it was an ARES unit in his display. He passed the marker and banked to kill his speed as he spiraled down toward it. At the optimal moment, Gwen gave him a signal, and he pushed the button to collapse the wings and descended the remaining feet to the roof of the facility. He ran to the edge and shrugged the long cable off—it was incredibly thin given its strength—and tied one end to a support for one of the flags that dotted the perimeter of the building.

  He threw the other end down to Diana and watched as she latched a small wheeled handle onto the teeth set into the cable and used it to ascend. From his angle, she looked like a superhero with one hand held forward as she ascended rapidly. The device hauled her over the lip of the roof, and she gave him a mid-five. She had an extra harness on over her armor and carried a long black rope with length markings on it. Her expression solemn, she crouched beside him. “We don’t know where they’re headed yet. Once we’re sure, it’ll be Nakatomi Plaza time.”

  Rath laughed when he recalled the scene of John McClane jumping off the roof with a firehose wrapped around him. “Yippie Ki Yay.”

  Sarah heard distant explosions and screams as her underlings and Marcus’s people wreaked havoc in different areas throughout the stadium. The plan had worked so far as there’d been virtually no response to their initial incursion several minutes before. Only now, as they moved into their final positions, was the crowd starting to realize that an event other than the concert was underway. They headed in increasing numbers for the exits. If only I’d managed to get Dreven here, it would have been perfect. Damned useless “leader.”

  Her followers had already locked down the elevators that led from their target area and barricaded the entrances into the stairwells. As the people fled from their boxes into the large glassed-in luxury space that backed them, the doors would lock closed behind them, trapping them inside the long corridor.

  She finished her slow climb up the single staircase that wasn’t sealed and found herself in the center of a chaotic flow of people. Small groups rushed from one place to another, trying to leave the area and failing, then attempting another exit vacated by a previous group. She rolled her eyes at the pathetic display. Sheep. Prey. Idiots.

  The witch spread her arms wide and spoke to her most valued underlings, who had followed her up the stairs. “Corral these fools on the far side. I wish to neither see nor hear them. Find our targets and bring them to me.”

  They moved past her and she strode to a bar that stood abandoned on the wall nearest the elevators and walked behind it. While her people shouted and cursed and cast spells to prod the livestock along, she reviewed the selection of wines. They proved iffy, at best, but one expensive-looking bottle in the back seemed to have potential—a pinot noir. She pulled the cork with a spell and poured herself a large glass.

  As she sipped, the space around her cleared and the clamor dwindled to virtually nothing. The soundproofing that secured this area was very effective in keeping those wealthy or lucky enough to afford a seat up here away from the common rabble from experiencing the chaos out on the field. Except those humans don’t realize that they, too, are common rabble. But they will soon, one in particular.

  By the time she’d finished the glass and secured a refill, her targets had arrived, prodded on by a quartet of witches and wizards with their wands extended. Most of the humans wore their fear on their faces, except for a man who simply looked annoyed and inconvenienced. He was the president of one of the largest companies in the area and also happened to be publicly vocal about his dislike of the magicals “invading” his city, country, and the world. He had become a popular talking head on several networks when they addressed the topic. When they’d needed someone to endanger in order to draw the enemy into their trap, he had been too fantastic an opportunity to pass up when his name appeared on the guestlist for his company’s box.

  She smiled at him, hoping he would see his certain imminent death in her eyes. “Hello, Jeffrey. So nice to finally meet you.” He opened his mouth to reply but a quick flick of her wand stilled the words in his throat as he choked. Once he’d collapsed and turned purple, she relented and he lay heaving, his expression half-murderous and half-panicked.

  Sarah grinned and sipped her wine. “Now, we wait.”

  Chapter Ten

  Cara led Anik, Tony, and Hank through the fleeing crowds, pushing and shoving to clear a path along the right-hand wall. They’d entered near the southwest rotunda and raced through the main hall above the first level of seats. Merchandise stands on either side had been vacated, and the fleeing people were too afraid even to take advantage of the potential freebies.

  Two enemies had waited at the entrance—street soldiers with pistols concealed low against their legs—but hasty stun blasts had disabled them. The fact that they had been dressed normally increased t
he degree of difficulty of the op and Tony had immediately reported the information to the others over the comms. Kayleigh had tasked more drones, and when there was a gap in the throng, Cara could see the black devices whirling over the seats set up in front of the stage.

  An explosion on the field inspired panic in the crowd. She pointed toward it, and the agents moved together, inserting themselves in the wave of people and pushing their way to an aisle leading down. There were two clusters of adversaries below, one who fired almost indiscriminately with a traditional weapon and the other who flung magic into pockets of civilians. She stared ahead, momentarily confused. “Quinn, are they actually hitting anyone?”

  Her AI replied after a brief pause. “A minimal amount of the time. Mainly, they are simply creating noise and smoke. Idiots.” One of the wizards in the magical group was outlined in yellow. “This person is responsible for the majority of the strikes that are connecting.”

  “Copy that to my team.” She pushed another civilian out of the way and vaulted over the railing onto the field, the other agents right behind her. “Take down the marked target. Weapons free on him, stun on everyone else unless and until they start directly hurting people.”

  Despite the range, the man fell when Tony drew his pistol, paused to aim, and pulled the trigger. Quinn gave her a zoomed view that showed the wizard down and bleeding from his shoulder. “Nice shot, Stark.”

  He affected a gunslinger’s drawl and replied “Ain’t nothin’ to it, Croft,” as he shifted into motion toward the groups of terrorists. The Remembrance members appeared to have noticed them and raised weapons in their direction.

  “Uh-oh. Evasive.” She dodged to the right as her team broke in different directions. Quinn populated the combat display that ran along the top of her vision, adding tiny images of each of the enemies they faced, black boxes behind the humans, and blue boxes behind the magicals. Any notables, like Sarah or Marcus, would have red boxes. With a word, she could apply those outlines to the people in her glasses as well. It was a new feature that she and the AI had built together, unknown to the others. She thought Kayleigh would appreciate the video game feel of it, though.

  The urge to put civilians in the hostiles’ lines of fire was a natural inclination since on some level they were simply ambulatory obstacles. She fought it as she advanced, remained in the open, but moved unpredictably. Weapons fired around her, and she had to roll out of the way of a lightning bolt from one of the witches that was quicker on the uptake than her partners. By the time they fully realized that their quarry had arrived, however, the ARES agents were in range to cause trouble.

  Anik had loaded up with grenades and hurled flash-bangs into the humans first, following them with sonics at the wizards and witches before he ducked out of sight in front of the security barrier that protected the stage. A line of bullets stitched it an instant too late to catch him in the open, and she hoped they hadn’t punched through to hit the demolitions expert.

  Meanwhile, Tony and Hank ran in a wide curve and exchanged max-range fire with the humans, counting on the stun rifles’ broader firing arc to overcome the lethal payloads from the opponents’ weapons. They managed it for a short time, assisted by the detonations of the grenades, until Marcus appeared at the head of a group of reinforcements with a black-suited man beside him and another behind whom they immediately recognized.

  “Asset in view,” Quinn reported. She outlined Sloan in green, the standard display color for allies.

  “Shit. Copy that to everyone. Hey, everyone, Face is here, and the bastard with the robot arm has come out to the field to play.”

  The others chimed in with various expressions of alarm and anger before Diana asked, “Do you need us?”

  Cara gritted her teeth and shook her head. “Hell no. We’ve got them. They merely think they’ve turned the tables.” She fired her stun weapon to snag a couple of witches at the periphery of the magical group, then discarded it as she was forced to dive into a somersault and roll to dodge a force blast that ripped the ground apart at her feet. Her angle took her toward the right half of the huddle, farthest away from Marcus and the other newcomers. She bolted up and removed a wizard from the battle with a triple burst of anti-magic rounds from her carbine that ignored his shield, staggered him with two successive strikes to his vest, and felled him with one in the shoulder.

  A small smile crept onto her lips and she adjusted her aim, then had to bob and weave to avoid the flurry of folding chairs that some clever wizard threw at her. Stupid concert. “Glam, I’m reasonably sure they’ve shown their hole card down here. How about deploying ours?”

  “Affirmative. Thirty seconds.”

  Deacon sounded like he was holding his laughter in check. “Did you tell them that you’re using Roombas these days?”

  Kayleigh growled. “Shut it, Warlock. Make yourself useful and take over at the ballpark.”

  “Got it. Taking control of the police drones now.”

  Cara managed to fire a few shots while she dodged. They forced the other magicals facing her to keep their heads down, although they continued to cast spells that her deflectors shunted away. Chatter over the comms suggested that the others were doing well against the non-magicals and had eliminated a few of the wizards and witches as well. The scoreboard still showed at least a dozen and a half up, including the newcomers when Kayleigh’s drones entered the fray.

  The heavy-duty devices were shaped like small aircraft with engines at the back and on the wings and antennae on the top. They took off and landed vertically as the thrust pods rotated. The tech had described a more optimal system that would launch the vehicles like rockets from a high point for faster acceleration but hadn’t yet received the go-ahead for that experiment. It’s probably only a matter of time before there are missile and drone launchers on top of the mobile armory if Hank has his way. I’ve set a monster loose, there.

  Cara yelled “Cover,” as six of them–two-thirds of Kayleigh’s full complement—strafed the enemy with a barrage of stun blasts delivered as rapidly as the weapons could cycle. The ARES agents’ gear contained transponders that would prevent the drones from aiming at them, but it still made sense to get as far out of the field of fire as possible. She ran in a wide circle toward where she’d last seen Marcus. If the drones kill him, I’ll rip that bloody arm off just because.

  One of the wizards saw the incoming aircraft and sent a wash of flame at the line of drones. They plowed through it but the first took the brunt of the blast and spiraled to careen into the stage and explode. The structure caught fire immediately when the fabrics and video screens were damaged by flaming pieces of the wreckage. The rest were successful and fired stun blasts into the crowded hostiles to fell most of them, including the quick-reacting mage. Smoke from the immolated stage was carried on the wind and swirled over her, and there was a thunderous crash as a vertical set of speakers fell from where it had been suspended. By the time she choked out, “Quinn,” the AI had already shifted to other visual modes that allowed her to make out the people nearby. There were three near her, presumably Marcus and his flunky, plus Sloan.

  She was about to order the others to flank them from the side, almost salivating at the opportunity to confront the enemy leader, when the scoreboard in her display started to populate again. “Where?” A map appeared to reveal two more groups of combatants running onto the turf from behind the stage. “Damn it. Khan, Hercules, Stark, incoming from the south. They’re yours. Glam, bring the drones in again if you can.”

  “Currently making a pass at the nearest college field in support of the police since we stole theirs,” Kayleigh replied. “They’ll be back to you in about seventy seconds.”

  That was a veritable eternity in combat. Anik yelled, “Flash-bang out,” followed quickly by, “Damn telekinesis—scatter!” She presumed that a witch or wizard had hurled the device back at them. I wonder how much anti-magic grenades would cost. Probably a ton.

  Then, her enemies were rang
ed before her and there was no more time to worry about the others. Marcus grinned. “Well, well, well. How lovely to see you again.”

  “Do you want to surrender before you lose another arm?”

  His grin widened. “Losing another arm would merely make me that much stronger. Allow me to demonstrate.” He raised the limb, and she was instantly forced to one knee by a furious blast of lightning.

  “What’s the deal, Friday?” Diana’s AI had been programmed to sound exactly like the character from the Marvel films, which made her smile every time she heard it. Endgame had broken her heart, so she’d only been able to watch it twice in the theater. The AI reminded her of happier moments in the series.

  “There are many enemy targets gathered in the luxury box hall. Subject Sarah is among them.” A three-dimensional rendering of the area developed in her glasses and the system gave her a virtual fly-through of the enemies and neutrals in the space. A distant part of her mind cataloged the goings-on below, and when Sarah’s human partner appeared on the field, she considered abandoning the witch. Fortunately, Cara claimed to not need her. Hopefully, she’s not being overconfident.

  She gestured to Rath and led the way at a run. The roof that overhung the top seats on the northern end of the stadium provided a path to reach the space the enemy had invaded. When they arrived, she yanked the small but super-powerful magnet from her belt. It was about the size of a grenade and would stick to anything metal for a short time. She laid on her stomach and leaned over the edge so Friday could verify the drop length and spooled the rope out accordingly. The carabiner at the end snapped onto the magnet and there was nothing more to delay her.