The Crane War

by Graeme Rodaughan

  “I felt something too,” Chiara remarked. “A tremor.”

  Francis stepped in front of Arthur. “What’s happening?”

  Arthur flicked his head at the cameras in the ceiling, widened his eyes, and remained silent. He gestured for everyone to form a line near the door. He beckoned Peter with curled fingers. Peter arched an eyebrow and strode to the front of the line. Arthur positioned Anton directly behind Peter, and then himself, followed by Chiara, Li, Jay and finally Francis.

  Without turning away from the door, he whispered behind Anton’s shoulder, “Get ready.”

  Anton waited, his hands opening and closing beside his hips. Arthur must expect the door to open. The long seconds stretched by, his heartbeat thudding within his ears.

  Jay whispered harshly, “What? The door’s gonna open by magic.”

  Arthur replied quietly, “Its protocol.”

  “Protocol?” Francis asked.

  “Health and Safety.” Arthur stated decisively.

  Jay snorted derisively, “You’re kidding?”

  “Actually, no,” Arthur said with a shrug. “Please note, it’s a brig, not a prison.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s been thirty seconds, get ready to ramp.”

  The lights flickered. A klaxon began to wail in the distance. Arthur snapped, “Now!”

  The door automatically recessed into the left wall. Peter blurred forward. Anton rushed after him. The prison cell opened into a short hall. There was another cell opposite, a surprised Dwayne Washington standing in the middle of it. The remaining two cells were to the left, their doors also open.

  Peter surged hard right, heading for the guardhouse. Anton pushed to Peter’s left-hand side, coming abreast with his friend. The hall opened up into a brightly lit rectangular chamber, a red light glowered over a second doorway opposite the corridor to the cells. A pair of long desks stood left and right facing the entrance, and a pair of closed doors completed the wings of the room.

  There were four dark-suited Shadowstone personnel manning the desks and four day guards in battle armor clustered at the guardhouse entrance. The Shadowstone operatives carried sidearms holstered at their waists. The squad of day guards carried their smart assault rifles. Their leader pointed at Anton and shouted, “He’s the one, kill him!”

  Anton bent low, blurring behind the left-side counter. The nearest operative was reaching for his 9mm automatic. Anton barreled into him with his right shoulder. The man’s ribs shattered in a series of snaps as Anton lifted him off his feet.

  The day guards fired as one, four five-round bursts slashing across the room. The operative jerked mid-air as fistfuls of bullets ripped great chunks of flesh and bone from his torso, splattering the wall behind the desk with blood. He was dead before he hit the tiled floor.

  The second operative on the left was already spinning away to the floor, barely avoiding his comrade’s fate.

  Anton’s hands flashed forward, seeking the 9mm automatic holstered at the dead man’s waist. A moment later, his right hand wrapped around the Glock’s handle.

  * * *

  Bright fire speared through the room toward Anton.

  Peter grabbed the first operative on the right at shoulder and hip. His fists clenching with bone snapping force. He whirled, the man shrieked, flying through the room toward the cluster of day guards.

  The second operative twisted and began to rise from his chair. Peter stepped into him with the full force of his body, his left hand cocked, fingers up, his open palm striking the man’s upper right chest. Peter’s right hand mirrored his left, striking low on the operative’s left hip.

  The simultaneous blows lifted the man and his chair - Peter’s right hand blurred upwards - sending the operative rocketing into the right wall with a bone shaking crash.

  Peter lifted the second operative’s purloined Glock 9mm, and twisted toward the entrance.

  The day guard’s first volley of fire was ripping apart the left-side of the room over Anton’s head. They had split into two pairs to avoid the man thrown at them. The two closest snapped their smart rifles toward Peter, the red beams of their laser sights seeking him with deadly intent.

  Peter blurred further right past the edge of the desk, relying on speed over cover. He fired across his broad chest, pumping the trigger as fast as he could while he raced across the room. The Glock stuttered, brass cases whirling to the side like confetti, 9mm rounds lancing through the air in a widening fan with the two day guards at the apex.

  At the conclave, the 9mm rounds had mostly bounced off the day guard’s armor. Peter couldn’t rely on them. He sank deeper into his ramp, drawing upon the utmost of speed and strength, pursuing the last of the bullets to their targets.

  The day guards fired as he reached them. The tips of their barrels pointing at empty space a foot to his left. Peter still held the empty Glock; he drove it point first under the chin of the nearest day guard. The barrel penetrated its full length, hot blood jetting past Peter’s right fist. His unstoppable momentum carried the first day guard into the second, Peter’s open hand, shaped like a knife spearing into the throat of the second day guard. Both men, lifted from the floor as Peter carried them through the guardhouse entrance and into the hall outside. He smashed them into the polished rock wall opposite the entrance, gore splashing in wide swathes across the cream-colored stone.

  Peter stepped back; the two day guards slumped to the floor in growing pools of their own blood.

  The operative he’d thrown at the day guards, had ended up in the corridor. He was scuttling backward on the floor, shouting into his headset’s microphone, “Backup! We need -”

  Peter threw the empty blood-soaked Glock with all his might. It embedded itself in the middle of the man’s forehead. The operative fell backward, sliding half a dozen feet across the floor.

  Automatic gunfire erupted from within the guardhouse.

  Peter whirled around.

  The corridor was empty of other threats. He scooped up a fallen smart rifle and dashed back into the guardhouse.

  * * *

  Anton grabbed the second operative’s ankle and jerked.

  The man slid across the tiles. He twisted and flipped, frantically attempting to pull his weapon from the holster at his waist.

  Anton lunged forward, slapping the operative unconscious. Twisting aside, he gripped the blood-soaked corpse of the first operative with his free hand and lobbed him blindly over the desk in the general direction of the day guards. The guards fired a second fusillade.

  “Trigger happy,” Anton muttered. The shots had told him where they were. He ramped hard, blurring back to the right, the 9mm automatic pumping rounds at the two remaining day guards. They’d already moved deeper into the room, the 9mm rounds sparking off their armor.

  Arthur rushed into the guardhouse from the corridor and broke left behind the desk.

  The guards snapped their rifles around at Anton, red laser sights lining up on his chest.

  Anton dived behind the right-side desk. The guard’s rifles thundered, rounds stitching holes in the wall above his head.

  Arthur lifted a desk chair and threw it with bone-breaking force at the nearest day guard.

  Automatic gunfire erupted from the guardhouse entrance, followed by a pair of thuds as bodies hit the floor, and a chair clattering harmlessly into the far corner. Peter shouted, “Clear.”

  Anton rose to his feet.

  Holding a smart rifle in the middle of the entrance, his arms drenched in gore, Peter regarded Anton with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, so that’s where you were hiding.”

  “Did you keep anyone alive to question?” Anton asked.

  “Alas, no.”

  “Well, I did,” Anton declared, turning back to the last surviving operative.

  Arthur pulled the slapped operative to his feet. The man swayed woozily, then jackknifed forward, vomiting his lunch onto the blood-smeared floor. Arthur danced to the side. Once the man recovered his breath, he lifted him upright aga
in and asked. “Where’s our gear?”

  The man’s eyes barely focused on Arthur’s face and he slurred, “Store room.” He lifted his hand, pointing weakly at the door past Anton’s right shoulder.

  “Locked?” Arthur asked.

  “Not locked.”

  “Good.” Arthur said. His hands flashed, snapping the operative’s neck. The man slumped to the floor and lay still.

  Francis, Jay, Chiara, Li, and Dwayne emerged from the corridor. Arthur regarded them with steely eyes and stated, “No prisoners.”

  Francis’ eyes tightened and he remarked, “Clearly,” then glanced to the door on the right. “Our gear should be in there.”

  Dwayne scooped a plastic card off the surface of the right-side counter and exclaimed, “Hey, there’s my access pass!”

  “Perhaps they haven’t deactivated it,” Arthur offered.

  Anton tried the store room door. It opened easily, sliding into a recess on the left. The room was lit. All their equipment was neatly laid out on a pair of long tables. He reached for the Blue Dragon, and called out over his shoulder, “It’s all here.”

  “Two minutes, everyone,” Francis called out. “We have to move quickly.”

  Peter appeared beside Anton. “We’re back in business.” He grabbed his MGL and reloaded it with a fresh 40mm grenade to replace the spent one.

  Anton strapped the Blue Dragon back into place across his shoulders.

  Peter was absolutely right.

  * * *

  Alarms blared, a red light strobing slowly across the command and control center’s ceiling.

  General Clayton Maze shouted, “Kill that damned noise.”

  One of the staff flicked a switch and the alarm died, a moment later the red light ceased strobing. A diffuse illumination filled the room, eliminating shadows and putting the displays and monitors into sharp contrast.

  The ten feet high and twenty feet wide main screen dominated the wall opposite the primary entrance of the command and control center. The display was filled with a three-dimensional graphic of the complete fortress. The primary power station, Kraken-1 had shut itself down. A sharp red line drew a square around the deepest underground structure of the station. Clearly visible text beneath the red square declared that the heat reapers were offline. The base’s power supply had shifted to the secondary power station, Kraken-2.

  Clayton had felt the vibration through his shoes half a minute earlier. Now he had an answer for the implications of that tremor. He turned to the stout woman standing on his left and snapped, “Commander Cormack, what the hell is going on?”

  The woman’s heart rate had risen above a hundred beats a minute, and her face had blanched into a damp pasty gray shade. Clayton stared at her. The last thing he needed was someone who would freeze in a crisis.

  Cormack reached out and grabbed the chair in front of her, her knuckles pale against the dark leather. Her gaze broke away from the main screen, her head flicking right to stare at Clayton. “Sir, we’ve just had a fail-over.” She took a deep breath, steadied and stood upright, her hands falling to her sides. “The base can run perfectly well on Kraken dash two.”

  Clayton watched her, his vampire senses penetrating her responses. She’d never been trained in deception; she was like an open book. She seemed to be quickly calming down, but still, he asked in quiet tones, “This has never happened before?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “What happens if the second power station fails?”

  “Both stations have auxiliary diesel backups, either of which are capable of keeping the Panopticon and our defensive systems operational.”

  “And if they fail?”

  “Sir? Two power stations, two ranks of distributed diesel backups, that’s quadruple redundancy. The probability of all four systems failing at the same time is astronomical.”

  Clayton smiled grimly. “Assume this base is now under attack.”

  “Sir, Ma’am,” one of the technicians shouted, standing up from his console, one hand outstretched toward the main display. “We have casualties in the guardhouse outside cell block A.”

  Clayton stared at the huge screen, eight white-cross markers where clustered together in the guardhouse and the corridor outside it. The squad of day guards he’d sent down to execute Anton Slayne were all dead. He snarled. “Open cameras on cell block A.”

  The schematic of the fortress vanished, replaced with a series of picture in picture views. The cells were empty. The guardhouse was an abattoir of human flesh. The prisoners had escaped. He shouted, “Open views on the nearest twenty camera locations.”

  Twenty picture in picture views lined up in four rows of five on the main screen. The Mirovar force team were still at the guardhouse, clustered in a store room off the guardhouse reception area. They still had them caught in one location. The spoofing of the Panopticon cameras they’d used to infiltrate the base was over. While it was regrettable they were able to rearm, a result of lack of time to remove their gear to a safe location and assuming the cells would be failsafe, it would not save them from being destroyed.

  Clayton glanced at a secondary screen displaying the locations of all friendly forces within the perimeter of the outer fence. He still had twenty-four praetorians and forty-four day guards available. Four of the praetorians were deployed at the main server room guardhouse; the final vampire defense of the Panopticon core. That left him with twenty that were immediately available. He whirled around and commanded, “Carney, Holdsworthy, Sutter, and Tench, take your squads down to the guardhouse and kill the Mirovar force team.”

  The praetorian squad leaders assented enthusiastically and strode from the room with their men.

  Clayton had to protect multiple assets to keep the Panopticon operational. While splitting his forces might appear inadvisable, in the absence of knowing Arthur Slayne’s strategy he had to cover all elements. He turned back to Commander Cormack and ordered, “I’m delegating command of the day guards to you. Secure the power stations, pumping station, hangers, and access to the main server room.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Cormack replied, turning and striding away to a secondary set of consoles manned by half a dozen of her own staff.

  Seven Order operatives were about to be confronted by sixteen fully armed praetorians. Better than two to one odds was standard Vampire Dominion operating procedure when confronting Ramp masters.

  His praetorians should be enough to stop anyone.

  * * *

  Geophysics had fascinated Wesley Jackson for most of his adult life.

  As much as he loved the field, the data he was receiving from the magma chamber beneath the Panopticon base sent a cold chill crawling up his spine. He’d have to alert the general. He glanced up at General Clayton Maze. He was possibly the most intimidating man he’d ever encountered. While the praetorians left him with a cold fear he’d managed to get used to, the dark-blue suited general made him want to crawl into a hole, and pull the earth in on top of himself.

  However, the only thing worse than confronting the general was staying silent about what he was witnessing on his data feeds. Wesley rose from his chair, raised his hand and said tremulously, “Sir, … there might be a problem.”

  Maze glared at Wesley and snapped, “What now?”

  “Sir, it’s … it’s the magma river, Sir.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s getting bigger, Sir.”

  “And?”

  Wesley’s words came out in a rush. “The underground river is diverting onto the magma. The water explodes into steam on contact with the molten rock. The stone shelf at the edge of the magma is cracking and exposing more magma. More water is flowing from the river resulting in more cracking and more magma - it’s a runaway process. The pressure within the cavern is growing exponentially.”

  The General’s face froze, he snarled then declared, “Well, we’d better lock this situation down before anything,” and he air-quoted, “’BAD!’ happens.” He glared at Wesle
y and snapped. “Keep the status monitored and keep me up to date if anything changes.”

  The scientist looked back at his screens. He was possessed by a deep and growing need to flee, a need he barely managed to hold in check.

  Was anything going to change? For sure, but by then it would be too late to do anything about it. No, scratch that. It was already too late.

  Wesley had an urgent need to go to the bathroom, and from there, to his car in the parking lot. Perhaps today was a good day to leave work early, but it was too late, the base was in a red-alert lockdown. No one was coming in and no one was going to leave.

  He stared at his main console screen. A readout displayed the increasing pressure within the magma chamber in sharp red numerals. The whole base was sitting directly above the middle of the cavern and the pressure cooker within it.

  What crazy son of a bitch signed off on this design, he thought bitterly.

  Wesley’s guts turned to water, cramping hard. Now, he really had to go to the bathroom. His head flicked left and right. All he needed was an opportunity and he’d take it.

  It was time to run.

  * * *

  A new feed overrode the main display.

  Clayton Maze whipped around, what new irritant was about to bedevil his world?

  Cornelius Crane’s face appeared on screen, a few wisps of dark hair escaping from beneath his tactical helmet. Behind him was the main cabin of his command nightfalcon, it was filled with praetorians arrayed for war. He’d stripped the remaining forces of the citadel. He stared hard at Clayton and snapped, “Kraken dash one is offline. What the hell is happening down there?”

  Maze frowned for a split second, then stood tall and said, “The fortress is under attack, Sir. It appears the Mirovar force team have detonated munitions against the wall of the magma cavern diverting the main underground supply river onto the lava flow.”

  Crane’s eyes hardened. “No. Not Mirovar, it would be Arthur Slayne. The operation being conducted against the Panopticon is beyond the likes of Mirovar. Only the elder Slayne could accomplish such a thing.”