by Peter John
The black tar substance looked like a huge turd. I mean literally; it looked like an animal had shat inside the bag. It was a dark putty substance that stank. I cautiously opened the second partition within the bag and found two metallic cylinders. They both looked like small cattle prodders with two contact points sticking out of the bottom and a big red button at the top. I guessed these were the detonators. So the gel was explosive and the det’s had to be inserted. I looked at them more closely and discovered a small digital interface on each det, directly between the two spikes at the bottom of the device. More evidence that the Scalar were getting help from a more advanced society. I looked at how the det’s worked.
Once you stuck the device into the gel, there was no way you would know how much time was left on the counters. The display had a place for two digits to display only. That meant a max count of 99. I really hoped that the number counter was longer than an Earth second otherwise there was no way Raúl nor myself would be able to haul ass far enough to get away from the blast radius.
At last satisfied that the contents were safe to move, I picked up the bag and realized it contained about five kilograms of the explosive. I packed it all up and headed back to meet with the others without incident.
I was pleased that Raúl and Charlie were back. They had met a different pair of Scalar men who were in the process of making the drop off at waypoint two and were about to continue to the drop off at point three, but were thus intercepted. Major Stone was very unhappy and was busy unloading his ire that Raúl had gone off script. He seemed to be blaming me like the useless influence that everyone was doing their own thing. Raúl just shrugged and handed over the two backpacks. Charlie hung back and kept his mouth shut.
“….you and that fucking Armpit have changed the mission entirely. Which part of “no contact with the local inhabitants” don’t you understand?”
I crawled into the overhang cavern with my backpack and was suddenly included in the tirade. I could see Major Stone was not used to things changing or rather, not used to his troops improvising outside the parameters of his orders. Strange for a Spec Op’s leader because Special Forces are renowned for going off script and improvising. I began to realize that Major Stone relied too much on his tight ship rather than spontaneous ingenuity.
At last, he began to relent, and Hugo stepped up and put a calming hand on the Majors shoulder.
“We better see what we have in those backpacks and make new plans Major. What’s done is done. They already knew we were coming here before we arrived. There is nothing we can do about it.” His guttural English accent cut to the point and Major Stone stepped away for a bit to compose himself.
I didn’t want to mess up their team dynamic, and the last thing I wanted was to drive a wedge between command and control. Instead of designating what they should do next, I followed Stone and decided we needed to have a little chat, man to man.
“Major Stone, could I have a minute?” I inquired politely to the seething man.
“Don’t ye come coddle up to me now, Armpit. This is all your fault. We are supposed to get in and get out with Mala, no contact with anyone. This mission is so far off the fucking radar. What will the Absinthe do to us when they find out about this?”
And there it was. I suddenly realized what was troubling Major Stone. It wasn’t that we had done wrong exactly, rather; it was that his position within the Absinthe hierarchy was in jeopardy. Not just his position, but the teams’ position. He was worried that there would be repercussions and that he would, no, “we” would face repercussions. Stone was a good man, the best of men and a leader, he was worried about how this would affect his team.
“Well with your record, there is bound to be some leniency Major. But if we do this right, it could be the start of a serious escalation against the Reapers. The Absinthe reticence be damned. It is what we want after all. We both know these punitive raids you have been doing are never going to win any war.”
Major Stone sighed. His shoulders sagged, and I realized how on edge he was. I also realized how having me along was messing up his mojo.
“Look, man, don’t be a Rupert. You are better than that. Those REMF Absinthe don’t have a clue what goes on out here.” I said using the SAS vernacular for pen pushers or in layman’s terms the guys making the orders but without having to actually perform those orders. Those Rear-Echelon Mother-fuckers.
“A Rupert?” Now Stone’s glare crinkled with amusement. “Damn you Armpit, you know I’m concerned about after this mess. I’m the furthest thing from a Rupert you will ever meet. I’m Scottish. We don’t have gentry blood. I know it seems I’m being unreasonable, but you are the one acting like a muppet.” A muppet was Royal army slang for a newbie with no common sense, a Rupert, on the other hand, was a British Officer with familial connections, who relied on family reputation to inflict their bad decisions upon their troops.
“You know that our very lives are on the line. That we have humanities best interest at heart. We are dependent on the Absinthe’s good graces.”
“I agree with everything you say Major, except the part about being a muppet, think of this as a way to forge a binding alliance with the Illuminous crowd and the Scalar all in one. The Absinthe are not militants, and as we are on the ground, we have to make the calls. You have to make the call.”
“So if I forbid you to rescue the Princess, you will do it?”
I paused, this was tricky ground. His piercing glare could see right through me.
“Let’s just say I would try less hard to rescue her, but if she got rescued, then we could call it a happy coincidence.”
Stone was already shaking his head. The rueful smile on his face.
“I can’t even get you to change your mind. You are supposed to be under my command, learning from me, and yet you are more bloody stubborn than me. Than me?… a Scot no less. Who is more stubborn than a Scotsman?” He sighed, and I knew I had won him over.
“Let's get on with it then…” he relented.
I felt bad for him,… a little. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it is what it is. We were definitely escalating the conflict and putting a massive “up yours” sign out for any Reapers to note. However, the situation was beyond my control at this point, and now we were all stuck in our roles. We just had to play this one out and pick up the pieces of the aftermath.
CHAPTER 32
Teamwork
The final hour before insertion had everyone edgy. We were men of action and the waiting was driving us all crazy. Raúl and I had crept up the canyon through a gorge and could see the building we were to insert in the distance. The area had only one approach road from down in the valley to the south. The area around the complex made a natural cul-de-sac and thus a formidable defensible position. The only way to approach was along the road or down the surrounding treacherous mountains and cliff faces. Each area was clearly exposed and difficult to navigate. There was a milling crowd of the zombie-like Reapers patrolling the wooden fence surrounding a robust concrete building shaped like an “L”. It had a clearing directly in front about the size of a football field before the main gate structure. The entire building was stark, with dark gloomy windows in almost every room. If someone was positioned inside, they would have a birds eye view of the entrance and be able to marshal their troops for a formidable defense.
It was an hour before full dark would descend upon the valley, and the gloom of evening was already asserting itself. At least fifty of the Scalar zombies were moving about haphazardly and making discerning a pattern of patrol movement almost impossible. Our previous plan would never have worked, and we were now waiting for the Scalar rebels to attack and distract the horde so we could insert over the fence during the disturbance. Raúl and I both carried one backpack with explosives as we found it could not fit into our dimensional containers. The space was already full of our various weapons, rations, and health potions. It didn’t matter much though; the packs were light on our shoulders compa
red to packs we had carried in our previous lives, additionally; we didn’t have ammo to carry, so if anything, it was a comforting weight rather than a burden. We had separated the large wad of putty-like explosives of all three packs to spread between the two of us.
In my pack, there were several lumps of the putty, akin to grenade size, which I could ignite with well placed electrical bolts. I had also rolled the putty balls in gravel, making sure the gravel stuck to the outside of the improvised grenades, making the explosives that much more lethal as the small gravel rocks acted like shrapnel. Hopefully, we wouldn’t have to use them, but it gave us more weapons to use and so made us breathe easier. The problem was that only I could ignite them. Both of us had three larger mounds of putty the size and shape of a loaf of bread with the accompanying detonators, which would bring down the complex.
Our biggest concern was the smell of the explosives. The peculiar smell permeated around the packs like a veritable wall of dust motes flushed from a dusty carpet being beaten on the line. Even when we were invisible, the smell followed us like a stream of dust and if the Reapers knew the smell, they would detect us in no time. According to Shav’s detailed instructions included with the packs, we could wet the explosives to dampen the smell without them being compromised. When we had done this, however, the area we set the detonators into had to be kept dry. So preventing the smell leaking out further, I had conjured some cotton rags and bound each one within. A kind of grizzly wrapped present of gravel and explosives that unwrapped itself when an electrical charge pulsed through it in a flaming explosive vortex of shrapnel. The wet rags further enhance the conductivity when I lanced them with an electrical bolt. The few experiments we had performed near our hideout were quite successful and our mood was upbeat.
“I haven’t seen Stone so grumpy on an op before,” stated Raúl in barely a whisper. “I think the Absinthe really did a number on him before we came here. They must suspect something is up.”
“No doubt they are worried about their own skins, but they forget it is us, the humans who have to face these monsters,” I replied flippantly and Raúl nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s just that there are so few offensive magic users and especially Prodigies.” he continued, “we aren’t in any position to take on these creatures without incurring bad, bad losses.” and I nodded in agreement. My attention now going to the complex, where lights shone brightly onto the yard and around the wooden slat fence.
“This is it, Raúl. Those Scalar guys better come through for us. A lot is riding on their distraction.”
No sooner had I said this when a terrible whining noise screamed through the valley and a huge burst of flames erupted at the impact point in the front yard of the complex. Mortars! or at least the Scalar equivalent were landing in amongst the guards. The Reapers, some set on flames seemed completely undaunted. They just stood there, as if unsure what to do. The few who had been blown aside simply got up, some with missing limbs and milled about as if searching for something or someone to attack where the shells had exploded. The next salvo landing in roughly the same spot caught even more of them and flung them aside like rag dolls. This time, less of them rose than before, their gruesome flaming visages highlighting the area around them and I noticed more were heading towards the disturbance in the building's front leaving the area we wanted to infiltrate unguarded. This was it.
As one, Raúl and I moved from cover and ran stealthily towards our target and invoked our spells. Invisibility and Aura suppression. As we ran closer, I immediately felt strange.
There were whispers and cries, not from the burning Reapers, but from the very air itself. The words were alien, foreign, but they screamed harshly in my mind, it was as if they had placed me within a thick blanket and the voices were as hands trying to tear away the blanket. This assault on my senses never let up and seemed to get worse and worse the closer I came to the research building. All the while the mortar shells cascaded into the front yard, tearing swaths of the enemy apart and leaving four-armed zombie torches to stand around until they either succumbed to the flaming napalm or the fires went out.
The stench was appalling as a slight breeze shifted the smoke in our direction. I had a rough idea of where Raúl was relative to me, as I had leveled up in the skill of Invisibility I could now make out his vague outline when he was invisible at the same time, although it required a mental adjustment by both parties to allow this to happen as well as his advanced level.
We kept ourselves roughly five meters apart until we reached the fence towards the back of the “L” shaped building. It was then that the final part of Shav’s plan asserted itself. A vehicle, something unexpected in this medieval place, but no less surprising than the mortars or explosives were. It was driven by some kind of engine that groaned and spluttered smoky belches ominously, possibly steam-driven, and had no-one in the cockpit. It streaked out of the gloom along the lone road and directly into the front gate. It crashed with considerable force to cast aside the makeshift barriers and rocks that made up a wall against the entranceway, to roll to a stop against the metal reinforced gate.
As the Reapers at the gate rushed to swarm the vehicle it detonated and thankfully, we knew in advance that it would happen, because the blast flattened everything around for a good fifty meters.
Dismembered corpses, mortar, stones, and flame screamed past our flattened bodies as we hugged the ground. We lay behind the perimeter fence now, still outside the complex. Huge chunks of stone crashed through the fence near us as if it were wet paper rather than stout timber poles and struts. The jagged splinters from the wood sped off in all directions, impaling and dismembering the horde. It was at this point that the forces inside the complex began to spill out. The glass windows had long since shattered from the explosions and the ghoulish creatures began spilling out from every egress point like angry ants from an anthill. The sudden peace surrounding the complex immediately after the explosion was both because of my ears ringing and the fact that there was nothing much for the Reapers to do besides look around dumbly and twitch awkwardly as they assessed the situation while they smoldered.
It was then that the Scalar Rebel force, which had crept undetected to the complex perimeter along the main road made itself known.
The Scalar men ran into the road and made an infantry line, they all had blades and shields and the second row behind them had spears and knives, with the rest grouping up and collectively forming a wall of resistance. They began to march towards the hole in the perimeter where the gate had been and began to dispatch the few Reapers in their vicinity. I did a double take when I noticed our very own human, Hugo, the great bear of a man at the front and center of the Scalar troops. I motioned to Raúl, who also stared in amazement.
The tall Norwegian had his rugged blond hair tied back and reflecting in the flames. His tall massive frame dwarfing even the large Scalar males alongside him.
He was not supposed to be there, and I was doubly sure Major Stone was having a fit. If ever there was a mission where things had gone completely off, this was it. I laughed inwardly, perhaps maliciously, not at Stone’s unhappiness, but at what this meant for the Absinthe. After this, there would be no more skulking in the shadows.
The entire Reaper swarm was heading towards the front gate where the large crater lay and the phalanx of Scalar Rebel troops stood ready. A subtle sibilant hiss issued from them collectively and I could feel that simpering pervading malevolence in the surrounding air. There was a physic presence, a force pressing and urging and contorting around me. A burrowing worm trying to enter my mind. I shored up my will, trusting that my inner senses would protect me from it and I urged Raúl to follow me. It was our chance to get in undetected while the evil forces within the complex streamed out and attacked the Rebels at their gate.
We turned towards the rear of the building, making our way to the entry point. We turned our backs on the Scalar rebels engaging the enemy. We could hear screaming and cries of pain and cour
age, and above all, we could hear a Nordic chant as Hugo, the Viking of old went about his work. The clock was ticking.
CHAPTER 33
Insertion
Moving into the building, we met no opposition. It was eery, sinister and extremely nerve-wracking. I missed my night vision goggles, the security of my H&K MP5 submachine gun, my 1911 Browning sidearm and the comforting snug feeling of weighty body and chest armor. I had the advantage of the internal map though, small comfort that it was, and with pinpoint accuracy, I could navigate through the building to the stairwell. Raúl said nothing as I took the lead and directed him to follow my six. We didn’t waste time clearing each room in the building as would be standard protocol for a similar insertion on Earth. We didn’t need to clear it; we only had to move through to the objectives. Similarly, we were using only our natural abilities to sneak, without the invisibility and aura suppression spells, resting so our Mana regeneration could top up our Mana reserves. Our aim was to find Alfred Malabourne, and we set ourselves to the task with a vengeance.
