“If you could control them, we would not have to fear them,” a man at Polly’s side said.
Liv shook her head. “I’m sorry, but it won’t work. I have a very limited number of shots. If even half of the demons who came through the Rift survived, I have no way to get to them all, even assuming they would stand docilely in line while I went from one to the next and reprogrammed their brains.”
Polly drooped. “It is futile, then.”
“They’re stuck here on a strange world,” Jordan said. “Maybe you should try to open up communication. Trade with them.”
Polly’s eyes grew wide. “We are not so foolish!”
Jordan shrugged. “They haven’t attacked you. How do you know they aren’t willing? Their need must be getting desperate after weeks of living hand to mouth in unknown terrain. Trade with them.”
Now she looked dubious. “How would we go about doing that?”
“I speak their language. I’d be happy to help you broker a deal.”
“Later, Jordan,” Connor said. “One mission at a time.”
“Right. I’ll come back,” Jordan promised. He held his hands out at Trent’s and Connor’s incredulous looks. “What? This is a unique situation. They’re trapped here. They might be open to peaceful trade.”
“Probably less so if we go in there and do something to their brains,” Liv said.
“So let’s do what Elachai did to you,” Jordan proposed. “Catch one on its own and make it forget it saw us.”
“I did include a memory setting on the device for that reason.”
“Brain ray,” Ben said.
“It’s a plan,” Connor said. “We’ll go now, if you have no objections.”
“Yes. Of course.”
Jordan said, “Think about the deal. What would you trade if you could?”
Polly only gave him a troubled look, watching as they filed back out.
* * *
They headed back to Home World, grabbed a ride with the Soccer Mom that had brought them, and took it twenty miles to the west, where Mallet had indicated the demons were. Then they Traveled back to Demon Rift.
“Looks like we’re in the right place,” Trent said as he looked around.
Liv ascertained her own surroundings per Rule One, and found herself in wet, damp forest and rocky, hilly terrain.
“All right, Jordan,” Connor said. “Find us a demon.”
Liv said, “How is he supposed to track anything in this?” The wet ground would wash away any trace, and the moss that covered everything would carry no footprints.
Jordan just smiled. “Oh ye of little faith.”
He started out confidently but aimlessly, Liv right behind him and the team trailing her. Within minutes, he started to move more purposefully, in more or less a straight line. A short walk later, he held up a hand to halt them and motioned Liv forward. He pointed, and she stared hard at the indicated place. All she saw was a rock outcropping liberally splashed with gray and green lichens, set into the middle of a copse of sapling trees.
Jordan moved his hand, tracing a shape in the air, and Liv realized he was giving her the outline of wings. It was as if the demon appeared from nowhere, one minute hidden, the next second visible. Liv held up a finger and raised an eyebrow. Only one?
Jordan nodded.
She took a deep breath, pointed the brain ray, and fired. When it beeped, she said, “Demon!”
It jumped to its feet with the scary quickness they possessed, and now its wings were visible above the rock, silhouetted against the sky with the wing joint six feet above their heads. She rushed on before it could attack them. “You will not see us or hear us while we are here, and then you will forget. You will allow us to pass out of your mind as if we were never here.”
“Is that going to work if they don’t speak English?” Ben asked.
Liv looked to Jordan, who repeated her words in their language.
The demon peered around suspiciously, looked right at Liv, and sat back down.
She motioned Jordan to cover her and walked cautiously into the open, scrutinizing the demon for any sign of imminent attack, holding the brain ray on it just in case. Jordan’s two unwavering guns gave her more courage than the brain ray.
The demon sat unconcernedly, peering around as if on watch, which it probably was.
Liv fought the urge to squeal and jump up and down, although she sort of wanted to test that and see if the demon noticed. There might be others nearby who weren’t so oblivious. She also wondered how long the effect would last, but because of the likelihood of those others, they had decided this would be a five-minute trial.
The whole team was walking around the copse now, the demon oblivious to them all. “It works!” Liv said as she caught Jordan’s eye.
A branch snapped to her left, and she and her teammates dropped to a crouch, weapons pointed at the sound. Liv glanced at Connor, who gave them a ‘fade back’ signal. She found a mossy tree stump behind her, and crept behind it.
The demon by the rock—now just to her right—said something that sounded like, “Beswarch.”
A similar growling voice answered, “Rragmochan,” and its owner crunched out of the trees. The first demon stood, stretched, and grumbled. The second demon took its place, and the first headed off in the direction the second had come from.
Great. Changing of the guard.
Before the new demon could settle down and start listening, Connor poked his head out from behind a boulder. He gave the signal for ‘Safe World.’
Liv glanced to her right. The demon was screened from her by some thin saplings, which meant, she fervently hoped, that she was also screened from it.
Connor held up his hand, three fingers raised. He dropped one, then another, then made a fist. Liv reached for the space between worlds and vanished into it.
Chapter 21
“It worked!” Liv crowed. She had already indulged in her happy dance in Safe World, so she contained herself to a small chair bounce.
General Mace was just sitting down in his chair and looked up with a surprised expression. Then he frowned at her.
Liv had expected him to be pleased. Swallowing her irritation, she sat up straighter and started again. “The trial was a complete success.”
Connor recited the details of the mission as the general frowned at the table.
Gin said, “So this means we can go to Hell, correct?”
General Mace turned his frown on her.
Of course. He didn’t want to authorize that mission. He’d been hoping her brain ray wouldn’t work. Of all the nerve!
The general said heavily, “If the device worked, the Joint Chiefs have ordered me to allow you to Travel to Hell, with the express and singular mission of meeting with Woolfe, using the device on him, and forcing him to stop his plans to attack Home World, along with the other conquests he’s planning. We have very little intel to work from, so reconnaissance first. But they would like this problem dealt with ASAP. Therefore, if you—” he looked at Connor, “—feel that the mission is a go, you may take it. Neutralize Woolfe without killing him, and rescue Elachai’s family. But only if it is tactically the best option. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Trent and Connor said, almost in unison.
“Crystal,” Ben said, and Liv muttered a “Yes” along with the others.
“You’ll leave tomorrow at 0900 hours. Dr. Greenwood, I suggest you think about what you’re going to say to Woolfe. Make sure you cover the bases and leave no loopholes.”
“I’ll help her, sir,” Jordan said.
“Good. Dismissed.”
* * *
At 0900 hours the next morning, the team met again in the briefing room. Jordan and Liv had come up with an elegant and loophole-less order for the Wolf. She tried to swallow the angry swarm that attacked her stomach every time she thought of the Wolf. She hadn’t seen him since she’d observed his execution by lethal injection.
What a strange world we live in
, she thought as the oddity hit her. In any case, it was her reality. She knew it was going to be hard to look into those dead shark’s eyes again and think of her failure to stop him at the beach. Although he had eventually been stopped, each child he’d killed in that schoolyard was an arrow in her heart.
She took a deep breath and pushed it all down in her mind. A touch on her shoulder startled her, and she turned to see Jordan at her side.
“You okay?”
She smiled. “Fine.”
He gave her a skeptical look, but his reply was interrupted by General Mace’s arrival. The general sat immediately and they all followed suit.
“Are there any final points to cover?” he asked without preamble.
There weren’t.
“Then you will Travel to H-666X—Hell. The jump team deemed it safe. You will gather intelligence and report back. If Commander Bryant and I deem it feasible, you will complete the mission. You will neutralize Woolfe, release Elachai’s family only if possible, and get out. Avoid capture at all costs. The last thing we need is to give Woolfe more intel on Home World, especially its technology.” He gave them a hard look.
Connor held up his hands. “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m all for nothing going wrong.”
“All right. Anything else?”
There wasn’t.
“Then good luck and God speed.”
“Thank you, sir,” Connor said as he stood. He jerked his head toward the door, motioning his team to follow.
Liv trailed behind him to the armory, where she grabbed her usual ordinance: bulletproof flak jacket in DEPOT gray-green-brown sage camo, tools and gauges she’d need to assess conditions in Hell, her STI Sentinel Premier, her Sig Sauer P238 clutch piece, her standard issue seven-inch belt knife, and her three-inch boot knife.
They were also still on testing detail for the Fluffy Bunny wildfyre grenades, so when Connor handed her two, she took them with a sigh and jammed them into a flak vest pocket. She still didn’t like them—she felt like they might spontaneously combust her.
Finally, she secured the brain ray in a belt loop and followed Connor to the Hangar.
Half an hour later, they landed in the jungle near the pyramids at Teotihuacán. The SM pilot would wait for them there.
Liv strained for a glimpse of the famous pyramids as they stepped through the dense foliage surrounding the site. The sun was bright but a mist hung in the air, dulling colors and fading edges. They made their way to a small rise, and the haze gave way to dripping water that fell from every stick, leaf, and vine.
Connor waited until everyone had clustered together. “Safe World on mark. One, two, three, mark.”
Liv watched Connor’s solid form until she blinked through the space between worlds and opened her eyes on Safe World’s sere sand plain. The dry air sucked the moisture from her clothes almost instantly, and the first breath she took seared her throat.
She looked around and found the tiger-shaped rock formation directly behind her.
When Connor arrived, he judged their distance from the rock. “We’ll just get a little farther away, so we don’t pop into rush hour traffic.”
When they reached a point about a kilometer distant from their landmark, Connor signaled a halt. “Hell on mark. One, two, three, mark.”
Liv wasn’t sure if she was nervous or excited to be the first to explore Hell, confront the Wolf, stop the demons. She exhaled against the butterflies, blinked, and opened her eyes on an empty red plain soaked in smoky haze. If the city really was at the tiger-rock’s location, she couldn’t see it. Her first breath brought her a taste of burnt metal and sulfur. It was like breathing in a rusting sewage tank. Lovely. The second breath didn’t taste better, and neither did the third. The hot, hazy air clung to her like something more dense, as if she stood in a warm pool with water sucking up against her body.
She looked around while she pulled out her air gauges and Jordan, Trent, Ben, and Gin formed a defensive perimeter. They stood on a rise surrounded by a red sand plain with burgundy-colored rock formations curling out of the ground like huge snakes, making natural corridors and twisting paths through the landscape. MacPhisto’s Maze, she thought. She loved eighties rock and U2 had always been one of her favorites. Too bad they weren’t going to meet Bono’s devil persona instead of Woolfe.
Clouds covered the sky, reflecting a glow of fire in the west. The weird thick air blocked only some of the light spectrum, giving everything a dim yellow cast. With the burgundy rock and yellow light it was like standing inside of a fading bruise.
As Connor materialized and assessed their surroundings, she reported. “Quite a lot of sulfur, only eighteen percent oxygen instead of twenty-one, but otherwise comparable composition to Home World atmosphere. No toxins. Radiation levels low, except for ultraviolet. Must be a hole in the ozone layer.”
“Anything dangerous?” Connor asked.
“No.”
“All right.” Connor turned to the others. “Anybody see anything?”
“No, sir,” Ben said, and the other three echoed him.
Liv tucked the tiny gauges back into their various pockets as Connor turned to Ben. “Reconnaissance.”
Ben smiled. “Yes, sir.”
He took a small package out of his fatigue pocket and began to unfold and assemble it. When he was done, he held a small silver plane with the same dull sheen as the SM jets. He took a remote control with a viewing screen from another pocket and pressed a button. The plane began to vibrate but didn’t make a sound. Ben threw it into the air and they watched it float silently away. Then it vanished.
Ben grinned. “Ahhh. I love this new spy plane.”
“Are you sure it’s completely undetectable?” Gin asked.
“Undetectable by the five senses or radar.” Ben sounded as proud as if he’d made it himself. To be fair, he had had quite a bit to do with its development.
Liv looked over Ben’s shoulder, watching the viewing screen as he worked the controls. Before long, a group of buildings shimmered into view like a mirage on the horizon. But as the spy plane drifted closer, Liv saw the depressing reality. The city was an ugly heap of squat cubes made of flat gray sheet metal dusted with burgundy sand. Windows were unadorned square holes like blank eyes searching the streets for intruders. The streets themselves were straight and even, but paved only in red sand. A few demons scurried back and forth through the dust.
“There.” Connor pointed. “That’s our way in.” The screen showed a street that dead-ended in a burgundy stone wall—the edge of the maze.
Jordan glanced at the screen. “Where are all the demons?”
“What do you mean?” Connor asked.
“Don’t you think there should be more demons out on the streets?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
Jordan nodded. “Yes. There should be. They have a hive society. A city like this would be teeming with them.”
“Well, it’s not. Maybe they’re off pillaging. Or maybe they’ve depleted their ranks in the campaign against other worlds.” Connor shrugged. “Makes it easier for us to get in, so I’m not complaining.”
Trent said, “As long as they’re not massing for a raid. Like a Home World raid.”
“Thanks, Sunshine,” Connor said.
The plane floated past a building made of burgundy stone, taller than any of the others. Jordan said, “There’s Woolfe’s place.”
“And there’s a building with a cargo bay right next to it,” Ben said. “Easy access.”
“We enter the city where it touches the maze,” Connor said. “Get to the storage building undetected. We go in through this small side door so we don’t have to be in the open for nearly as long. We reconnoiter there. Then Liv will have to do her brain ray thing and get us inside.”
Liv squared her shoulders. She was ready. She hoped.
An image of Woolfe’s dead gray eyes tried to intrude, but she pushed it back down in her mind.
“I’m heading back t
o report to General Mace,” Connor said. “Trent and Liv, with me. The rest of you, stay here, guard our entry point. If you see anything, and I mean anything, get to Safe World immediately. Otherwise, we’ll be back with instructions in a few minutes.”
Liv watched Connor for his mark, and when he gave it, reached for Home World.
She opened her eyes on tropical jungle. After the rusty sulfur air of Hell, the jungle smelled unbelievably green and alive. She sighed. Now she’d have to acclimate to that odor all over again.
Connor was already reaching for his sat comm. He dialed General Mace directly, as ordered. “Sir. We have information.”
He relayed all they had seen, and his plan for getting to the Wolf.
“We don’t have any idea what’s inside the building. That’s why we need the go to get in there and see.”
He listened to whatever General Mace said.
“Yes, sir, but we can just Travel out whenever we need to. If they follow us, we’ve got the secondary Safe World. I can’t imagine them piggy-backing us farther than that.”
He waited, listening.
“Thank you, sir.”
He snapped the phone shut and looked up at Liv and Trent. “We’re green.”
Liv swallowed the swoop in her stomach.
“Back to Hell.”
When they arrived the second time, their teammates stood exactly where they’d been.
Connor asked, “Anything?”
“No,” Jordan answered.
“Then we have a go. Move out.”
Ben, who had been circling the spy plane around the Wolf’s building, steered it back toward them.
Connor led his team into the maze, which formed natural canyons and gave them sufficient cover. When the spy plane reached their position, Ben circled it low over their heads to give them an overview of the maze.
They followed Ben’s directions, avoiding several dead ends. Finally, the city came into view, dusty gray-burgundy buildings squatting threateningly in the haze.
Ben skimmed his plane low, caught it as it floated by, and quickly disassembled and stowed the pieces.
A Despair of Demons (Travelers, Book 1) Page 20
