The Crane War

by Graeme Rodaughan

  Clayton nodded. “Of course, Sir. I see that now.”

  Crane, his eyes dark and flinty, lifted a long finger and pointed it at Clayton. “Have you executed Anton Slayne?”

  Clayton’s arm pits grew clammy and he swallowed once. “No, Sir -”

  Crane leaned into the camera, his face swelling on the display. “What?” He paused for a moment, his lip curling derisively. “Pray tell, why not?”

  Clayton’s mind screamed behind his eyes. Did he dare lie to Crane? His king would arrive in less than eighty minutes; any lie would soon be discovered and the consequences would be beyond his worst nightmare. He whispered hoarsely, “The squad of day guards were killed by the Mirovar force team. They have escaped their cell.” His voice picked up urgency, returning to normal volume. “Sir, Carney, Holdsworthy, Sutter, Tench and their squads are en route to kill them. The rest of our forces are reinforcing the defenses of the Panopticon and the primary systems of the fortress. We’ll recapture them or kill them soon.”

  Crane fell silent for a long moment, his face paling with thinly controlled fury. His fangs descended into attack position.

  Several command and control center operators gasped, a technician leaped from his chair and ran screaming for the exit, others swore loudly. One of the praetorians blurred, seizing the fleeing man and silenced him with a gauntleted hand over his mouth. The helpless fellow’s feet dangling and kicking six inches off the floor. Commander Cormack rose up from her console, her face blanching with abject terror.

  Crane spoke slowly through gritted teeth, his tone acquiring a dark sibilance through his long fangs. “Secure the Panopticon and kill the Ramp masters. I want their heads.” He ran his finger in a flat arc in front of the camera. “I want their heads in a line when I arrive.” He paused for a brief moment. “Bodies still attached is entirely optional.”

  Clayton’s chest tightened, it was difficult to breathe, let alone speak. He finally managed to say, “Yes, Sir.”

  Crane stared hard at Clayton. “If not, I’ll tear your throat out myself - general or no.” He paused momentarily, then finished with, “Now, get it done,” and closed the call.

  Clayton whirled on the remaining four praetorians and shouted. “Secure this room. No one comes in or out without my command.” He turned and glared at Cormack. “Get your staff under control. If they want to live, they’ll damn well obey orders.”

  Cormack stuttered, “B-b-but, but -” then lapsed into silence. She gripped the back of her chair, then lifted her hands and started issuing commands. Her team hesitated for a moment, glancing around at the hard-faced praetorians surrounding them before complying with her orders.

  The praetorian holding the squirming man released him. The technician stumbled and fell, then picked himself up gingerly, glanced once at the armored vampire towering above him, and slunk back to his console.

  Every human in the room would be dead within hours. None could be allowed to survive with knowledge of the secret existence of vampires, but until then they could serve a useful purpose. Clayton studied the main screen. It was filled with picture in picture feeds from twenty different locations within the base. The praetorians had blurred down corridors and stairwells to the subterranean level holding the guardhouse and cell blocks. The Mirovar force team, Arthur Slayne and the traitor Washington were completing the retrieval of their gear and equipment. Unless they moved soon, they would be caught in the guardhouse, and from there - there would be no escape.

  He opened a broadcast channel to all the praetorians and day guard troopers within the fortress. “New orders. All non-authorized personnel are to be killed on sight. Accept no quarter. Take no prisoners. Win back this fortress!”

  In a minute or two, the killing would begin, and he’d be able to regain control of the base.

  The Order operatives were doomed.

  Chapter Seven

  “The gestalt experience of a loremaster vision often invests everything you witness with extreme, hyper-realized emotion. The experience can be so powerful, so vivid, that it overwhelms your capacity to process it. The loremaster technology is not safe, using it can send you insane. This is why we have extensive training protocols to assist the novice loremaster to safely navigate the technology. Even with those protocols in place, one in four loremasters will kill themselves within the first two years.” - Juliette Mirovar

  * * *

  The Panopticon Fortress, Cell Block A Guardhouse, September 11th, 14:41:20

  The team emerged from the store room into the cell block A guardhouse.

  Li walked behind Arthur Slayne’s left shoulder. It was the best place to keep an eye on him. He glanced up at one of the corner cameras; it was tracking their movement across the room. He shook his head and declared, “That’s not a good sign.”

  Li’s eyes widened. “They can see us again.” She cast about while pulling her laptop from her backpack. She dashed behind one of the counters and yanked a security pass from the nearest Shadowstone operative’s corpse. She waved the pass over a reader on her laptop. The machine pinged, subverting the operative’s identity, and connecting to the base’s wireless network. Her implant burned, data streaming through her enhanced nervous system. The guardhouse faded, ghosting away, replaced with an immersive experience of the Panopticon fortress.

  “I’m in,” she whispered.

  The base’s schematics appeared as an illuminated map over everything around her. She flew like a ghost through the maze of corridors and maintenance tunnels, pipes and power conduits. The disposition of the opposing forces was clear, including the sixteen praetorians rushing toward their position in the guardhouse.

  They were five seconds away.

  On the edges of her perception a fell shadow stirred and cold tendrils of terror crept into her soul. She ruffled through the base’s core systems like fanning a set of cards. Kraken-1 was a mess and getting worse, then her attention arrested on the fire alarm system. Anyone could set it off, and it would take five minutes to reset it.

  Three seconds remained until the praetorians arrived.

  The shadow rose, rising, and rising, swelling like a malicious tidal wave over her world. Terror clenched in her gut and she gasped for breath. Li activated the fire alarms - all of them on the main levels. Forty massive fire doors erupted from wall recesses and slammed shut throughout the primary underground levels of the fortress. The nearest trapping the praetorians in a corridor fifty yards short of the guardhouse entrance. It would take the base’s operators five minutes to reset the system and free the vampires. The team had gained a five-minute window. It would have to be enough.

  The shadow deepened into utter darkness, the fortress fading into it. A malevolent intelligence regarded her with a baleful glare.

  A desperate desire to flee ripped through her.

  The darkness reached for her with a thousand tendrils of shadow.

  A single golden flame broke the dreadful gloom before her.

  The darkness recoiled, thundering with deafening malice.

  Li burst out of her vision; the guardhouse and the rest of the team snapping back into sharp reality around her. A whoop, whoop, whoop klaxon wailed in the distance, counterpointed by deep thuds from the fire door as the praetorians tried to break it down.

  “We are opposed,” Li whispered, her words barely audible, her face pale with shock. There was something out there. Something that had regarded her with utter enmity in its alien soul. Nothing human could be that hateful, that pervasive, that dedicated to her total obliteration.

  “Good work, Li,” Slayne enthused, resting a firm hand on her shoulder. “The fire doors will hold for five minutes,” he leaned in a fraction, studying her face. “What else did you see?”

  Li looked at him with wide eyes for a long moment, then straightened, brushing his hand off her shoulder. She stepped in close, poking him in the chest with two tight fingers. She needed answers and she needed them now. “What got us out of the cells? What was that tremor all ab
out?”

  Slayne frowned at her. “The short answer - the underground river is flowing onto the magma beneath the power stations, it has taken Kraken dash one offline.”

  “Pressure is rising in the magma cavern - it’s heading toward a catastrophe.”

  Slayne tilted his head half-quizzically, as if Li’s news wasn’t a surprise. “That so? Well, we have no time to waste worrying about what can’t be stopped.”

  Slayne tapped his watch. His gaze whipped around the team and he flung his right hand toward the reverberating thuds emanating from the corridor. “We have less than five minutes before those praetorians trying to smash that fire door down get free, and the clock is ticking.” Turning to the members of the team in turn, he instructed, “Here’s the new plan. Francis and Jay, you’ve got the second power station and the backup generators on the north side of the base. Peter and Chiara, it’s still the nemesis tower for you. Take command of it, and use it to kill the specter towers before disabling it. If Kraken dash one comes back online, or they fire up the southern bank of diesel generators - take them out hard.” He stared at Anton and Li, a wry grin curling the edges of his mouth. “You two can come with me. After the main power is taken out by Francis and Jay, we’ll steal the Panopticon.”

  Li shook her head, her eyes filled with horror. “You’ve just described my vision this morning. I never told you all the details. You’re leading us straight to our deaths.”

  Slayne snorted derisively. He stared at her, his gaze filling with a terrible intensity. “That’s unfortunate for your vision then, isn’t it? We’ll just have to outsmart your anticipation of doom.”

  Li stepped back, her eyes wide, staring at Slayne with dread.

  Francis stepped forward and commanded, “Okay team, we have new objectives.” He frowned momentarily at Arthur. “We have to execute the plan as is. Stay in touch via the tactical network. Watch out for day guards with smart rifles, and watch each other’s backs.”

  “Thanks, Francis,” Slayne said, then tapped his watch again. “You’ve all memorized the schematics. The fire doors cover the main corridors. The maintenance tunnels are on a different system. Dwayne, take us to the nearest entrance to the maintenance tunnels.”

  “Sure,” Dwayne said, he rushed to the exit into the corridor, lifted a hand and said, “Quick, this way. We can reach our objectives before the vampires can try to stop us.” He turned, dashing off to the right, and away from the reverberating fire door at the opposite end of the corridor.

  Slayne instructed, “They can see us on cameras, but they can’t intercept us. We have four and a half minutes to complete our missions.” He looked hard at Li. “Can you haze the cameras? Can you blind the Panopticon?”

  A chill seized Li’s heart. This close to the heart of the Panopticon, it could be literally watching her attempt to blind it. She’d only have seconds before it would swamp her efforts with a network backlash that would fry her laptop and possibly burn out her implant. Then there was the ‘thing,’ waiting in the darkness - an infectious madness filled with utter hate for all life. To be caught by that pernicious loathing, to have it overwhelm her would kill her at best, and at worst send her hopelessly insane. It was clear she didn’t have the defenses she needed to ward off the threat to her sanity.

  “No,” Li declared, “It’s not possible this close to the Panopticon.” She didn’t dare tell him about the ‘thing,’ haunting her visions.

  Slayne frowned, his lips thinning in disappointment. He turned away to follow Dwayne into the hallway.

  Li followed the team into the corridor, past the crumpled, bloodied corpses of the Shadowstone operative and the day guards Peter had killed. Dwayne swiped his security pass over a reader on the wall and lifted back a grill from the floor. There was a ladder descending into a dimly lit gloom. The Order helper pointed down and stated, “I’ll go first, follow me down.” He disappeared through the hole. The rest of the team in front of her quickly followed their guide.

  Anton fell in beside Li, his face filled with serious intent. He whispered, “C’mon Li, let’s see it through.”

  Li smiled weakly, her guts churning, and leaped through the square hole in the floor into the maintenance tunnel below. She dropped twenty feet, landing in a crouch on a solid steel mesh floor. Thin strip lights ran into the distance in both directions. She moved aside, Anton landing next to her a moment later. The rest of the team had disappeared into the maze of maintenance tunnels. Slayne stood at the first intersection, he looked back, beckoning them forward.

  Dwayne Washington was nowhere to be seen; he had vanished. Li figured the Order helper’s chances of survival were no different from her own or the rest of the Mirovar force team.

  Precisely zero.

  * * *

  The fortress command and control center’s main alarm shrieked a new alert, followed by a klaxon whoop, whoop, whoop siren.

  The main screen reverted to the full three-dimensional fortress schematic. Fire alarms were going off everywhere. A wave of deja vu swept through Clayton Maze’s soul and he shouted, “Kill that fucking damned noise.”

  The room fell into silence.

  Clayton growled. “The fortress can’t suddenly be on fire. What the hell is going on? Camera’s on all those locations, put ‘em up, put them up now!”

  The operators rushed to comply. The screen changed again, revealing corridors and intersections across forty locations. There wasn’t a wisp of smoke or lick of flame to be seen anywhere.

  Commander Cormack broke the silence, her voice a strangled whisper. “It’s a false alarm. They’re back in our networks.”

  Clayton’s gaze flashed over the screens. The Order operatives had vanished. His fists clenched into black hammers and he snapped, “Where the hell have they gone?”

  “Sir,” An operator called out. “The praetorians have been trapped in a corridor on sub-level dash two.”

  A second operator called out, “Sir, day guard squads numbers one and twelve, en route to the main server guardhouse on sub-level dash four have also been trapped behind fire doors.”

  “Trapped?” Clayton asked incredulously.

  The first operator quailed. “Yes, Sir. By the fire door next to the cell block A guardhouse, Sir.”

  “Then lift it,” Clayton ordered. He raised both hands palm up and shouted. “Lift them all!”

  “Ahhh, Sir,” Cormack offered. “It will take five minutes to reset the fire alarm system and open the doors.”

  Clayton turned and stared at her. He drew a hand slowly down his face, and stated with deadly calm. “Five minutes.” He paused for a long moment. The faint susurration of the air conditioning competed with the drum beats of human hearts to fill his ears. He wanted to rend and tear, but no - he needed these animals to save the fortress and protect the Panopticon. His king would punish him if he failed. He swallowed once and declared with quite forcefulness, “Then we must find them, and position what forces we may to slow them down until our vam- … praetorians are free and we can hit them hard.”

  His lip curled. His momentary lapse meant nothing anymore. These blood bags would soon be dead. No human could be allowed to live with the knowledge of vampire existence. That was a given of the world Clayton lived in.

  The operators worked their consoles. Three new screens opened up on the main display. They flickered as they swapped from camera to camera. Whatever they were recording was moving fast. Clayton accelerated his senses to match the video feeds. There were three groups of Order operatives ramping to whatever objectives they were seeking. They were using the maintenance tunnels. Why the maintenance paths didn’t have fire doors was a question that would have to wait. He’d already memorized their names. Francis Mirovar and Jay Creeley were passing underneath the main northern wall. He slowed down and snapped, “Commander, what forces do we have at the northern power station?”

  “I’ve already sent three squads of day guards to Kraken dash two, they arrived moments ago.”

 
Clayton nodded; his forces were already waiting for the two Order operatives to arrive. A direct assault by Creeley and Mirovar would be suicidal. They’d be sitting ducks in the tunnels approaching the power station, mere targets for the merciless accuracy of the Panopticon guided smart rifles of a dozen day guards.

  His eyes narrowed with calculation and he accelerated again. Peter Lamb and Chiara Romano were rising through the maintenance levels, they were on a direct course to the base of the nemesis tower. A chill crawled up his spine. If they dared suicide, they could destroy the whole base with a single hypersonic nuclear-tipped cruise missile. They could kill him. He dropped back to normal speed. “Commander, what of the nemesis tower?”

  Cormack blinked. “The towers are fully operational - the weapons are hot in accordance with red alert protocols. They’re unmanned, slaved to this command and control center, or the Panopticon if the command and control center fails.”

  “Are there manual overrides?” Clayton asked.

  Cormack’s mouth opened and closed without a sound.

  Clayton snarled, blurring across the room. His hands appearing on the woman’s shoulders, shaking her back and forth like a rag doll. “ARE THERE MANUAL OVERRIDES?” he thundered, spit flying from his mouth across the commander’s face.

  Her neck snapped, her head lolling backward, sightless eyes staring upward.

  Useless! Useless! Woman! Clayton seethed, throwing her across the room like a broken toy. She crashed into the wall with a coldly satisfying crack of snapping bones, slumping into a heap on the floor, blood dripping from her nose and mouth onto the pale tiles.

  The four praetorians standing guard at the corners of the room bared their fangs, hissing loudly at the remaining humans.

  The surviving operators were about to be schooled in their true status as food, but first they had to do something about Lamb and Romano.