The Crane War

by Graeme Rodaughan

  She smiled, her eyes glistening. “Of course,” she patted the bandage around her right bicep with her patched left hand. “Never better.” She turned to look down the stairwell and snapped a fresh magazine into a captured smart rifle. Her FN P90 submachine gun slung at her left hip from a strap over her shoulders and a second freshly loaded rifle rested at her feet.

  Oh my God, Peter thought. We’re cutting it fine.

  * * *

  Francis dragged on a pair of giant black levers on an enameled cabinet attached to the wall of the power station’s control center.

  They came down half way, then snapped down and locked in the ‘off,’ position. Giant valves opened, while others closed in the bowels of the power station, sending fresh steam from the magma cavern through pipes bypassing the first turbine. It began spinning down. He repeated the process for the second and third turbines, and sharp whines filled the power station as the turbines began slowing down. He flipped a series of switches disabling the diesel backups. The power station was going down and going down hard. A cold start would take a week and by then the mission would be long over - one way or another.

  Dials lining the wall of the command center began sliding to the left, down, and anticlockwise, every direction indicating shutdown. Kraken-2 was coming to a halt.

  “Gas! Gas! Gas!” Jay shouted over the tactical link.

  Francis looked through the command center’s windows. A dozen or more gas grenades were spinning across the open floor of the power station.

  “Get out of there,” Francis shouted.

  “Moving.”

  Francis turned back to the controls. The guards would follow the grenades into the power station. Their tactical helmets would protect them from the invisible gas while it would knock Francis and Jay out if they got so much as a whiff of it.

  “How long can we hold our breath,” he whispered to himself.

  Machine gun fire erupted from the throat of the corridor leading back to the fortress. A burst of rounds starred the window on a straight line to his head.

  “Contact,” Jay shouted, returning fire.

  There was a faint vibration in the floor. Francis grabbed the front edge of the console. Nothing else happened and he stood up tall. He wiped his forehead, his hand coming away slick with perspiration. He glanced at a dial recording ambient temperature in the power station. The needle was past ninety degrees Fahrenheit and well into the yellow zone. The red zone began at a hundred degrees. The power station wasn’t meant to be this hot and shutting it down should make it cooler - not hotter.

  “What the hell is happening?” he whispered to himself, looking at all the available readouts for a clue.

  The floor vibrated for a couple more seconds.

  The guns in the power station fell silent.

  Francis tapped his ear bud. “Jay, did you feel that?”

  “I sure did, the guards have disappeared - they’re bugging out,” Jay shot back. “I think we need to get the hell out of here too.”

  “I think you’re right. Up to the surface, now!”

  Francis blurred from the command room, dashing across a maintenance walkway to a set of stairs leading up to ground level.

  Jay blurred across a nearby maintenance walkway running above the second turbine. They hit the exit door at the same time, bursting out into the afternoon sunshine. Behind them, the thunder of roaring steam overwhelmed the descending whine of the slowing turbines.

  Chapter Eight

  “I am an initiate of the third rank of the test of the Olgoi Khorkhoi. I have mastered the disciplines of the Red Empire. I will honor the way of my ancestors. I will honor the faith of my mother and father. I will bring ruin to my enemies and see them choke on their heart’s blood before I die. This I vow before God and let my life be forfeit before I break this oath.”

  - “Oath of the Princes,” from The Way of the Faithful, a book of Red Empire lore.

  * * *

  The Panopticon Fortress, Main Server Room Guardhouse, September 11th, 14:46:20

  Arthur, Anton and Li arrived in front of the main server room guardhouse on sub-level-4.

  The door was marked by a thin square outline ten feet across and ten feet high. Rows of cameras ran across the top of the vault door. A pair of bio-metric readers rested five feet off the floor to the right of the door.

  Anton and Li, took up a position to the left of the door, their weapons slung and their hands free. Arthur approached the readers, looked up into the cameras and grinned insouciantly, “Hi guys, I haven’t seen you lot since Brazil.”

  A gravelly voice came over the intercom. “Ahhh, Slayne.”

  “Still alive, huh! You guys are in ‘B,’ company. Be here when they leave, and be here when they come back. What are you really doing? Waiting for the pension plan to kick in?”

  “What’s your strategy Slayne? Bore us to death with your talking?”

  Arthur placed his right hand over the first reader. It glowed green around his palm. He stated, “Well, you do have us at a disadvantage. You being behind a vault door and all.”

  “Do you really think we’re so dumb that you can insult us into opening it for you?”

  Arthur leaned down and positioned his left eye over the retinal scanner. A light above it flicked from red to green. He stepped away from the door to the right, turning to face Anton and Li. His right hand appeared in the gap between his thigh and the wall. He thrust out four fingers and said, “Of course, not. I know you’re smarter than that.” He thrust out three fingers.

  Anton and Li grabbed pairs of grenades from Anton’s webbing, pulling the pins, and releasing the arming catches.

  “I know the row of cameras above the door gives you a good view of everything -” Arthur said, snapping two fingers out in a downward ‘V,’ “- except for the bio-metric readouts.”

  A seam appeared in the middle of the door. It split into a pair of foot-deep halves, sliding smoothly and silently back into the walls. The gap opened up to a foot wide.

  Arthur nodded at Anton and Li and whispered, “A bit of an oversight really.”

  Anton and Li threw their grenades through the gap and into the guardhouse.

  Four gas grenades shot back through the gap, bouncing against the far wall, landing and fizzing across the corridor floor in front of them

  Arthur’s eyes widened. He spread his hands through a wide, flat arc, blurring away from the door. Anton and Li vanished in the opposite direction.

  Three of the fragmentation grenades returned back through the doorway. They exploded with whip-like cracks, flame and smoke consuming the space in front of the door. The last grenade exploded within the guardhouse, eliciting a howl of pain and furious swearing.

  “Flame burns the knockout gas off,” Arthur called over the tactical link. “Quickly, attack now.”

  Anton hit the doorway first, Arthur a yard behind him, and Li a yard behind them both. The Blue, Black and Green Dragon swords gleamed in the overhead lights within the guardhouse.

  Four praetorians attacked. The one at the rear shouted, “Kill them all! Accept no quarter!”

  “Fabulous advice,” Arthur declared with a straight face, leaping into the fray.

  * * *

  For the third time, an alarm blared its warning note through the fortress’ command and control center.

  Clayton dismissed the alarm with a chopping motion of his right hand and shouted, “What the hell is it now?”

  “Kraken dash two has shutdown,” an operator called out.

  “The backup diesels have not come online,” a second operator declared, panic seeping into her voice. “We’re running on emergency fuel cell power.”

  A third operator shouted, “The Panopticon has initiated its evacuation protocol!”

  Clayton opened his mouth to issue a command.

  The main screen shifted to a full view of Cornelius Crane’s pale face, his fangs in full view jutting past his bottom lip. His brown eyes bored into Clayton’s like a pair
of pitiless lasers, and he hissed past his fangs, “The Panopticon is offline! What the hell is going on? Do you understand the operations you are putting in jeopardy with your incompetence?”

  Clayton snapped to attention. A thin sheen of perspiration appearing on his smoothly shaven head.

  An operator called out, “The fire doors are open.”

  Commander Ulysses, her voice an island of calm within the thinly held panic in the command and control center, said, “Carney, Holdsworthy, Sutter, and Tench are all en route to engage the enemy with their squads, Sir.”

  Crane paused for a moment, his fangs retracting. His long forefinger loomed in the middle of the screen and thrust in the general direction of Ulysses. “Promote that woman, she’s keeping her head while those around her are losing theirs.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Clayton replied, a touch too quickly. “I already have.”

  Crane stared hard at Clayton and rubbed a finger above his left eyebrow, as if he was developing a headache. He glowered. “Both power stations are offline. The diesel backups are disabled. In less than four minutes the Panopticon will complete the evacuation protocol, downloading itself into the P-Case. The nemesis tower has been captured -”

  Crane broke off speaking, his gaze suddenly distant. Clayton glanced around the command and control center. The staff’s faces were filled with horror, except for Ulysses who maintained a grim impassivity. He followed her gaze to a secondary screen displaying a scene of utter mayhem in the main server room guardhouse. The room was awash with blood, the last of the praetorians falling into five separate pieces beneath the blades of the two Slaynes and the Wu girl.

  “Catastrophe,” Crane whispered. In harsher tones he snapped, “Secure the P-Case and evacuate it from the fortress. Under no circumstance allow Slayne to depart the fortress with it. Recapture the nemesis tower, he no doubt plans to use it to facilitate his escape. Take back the tower, or destroy it if necessary to block his escape. Secure the P-Case, or see it and Slayne destroyed!”

  “Yes, Sir!” Clayton shouted.

  Crane stared at him for a long second, then vanished as the screen reverted to a fortress schematic littered with red boxes surrounded by flashing warning messages.

  Evacuation? Yes, perhaps it is time to secure my own survival. “Ulysses! Status report!”

  “Sir, Carney and Holdsworthy are en route to the main server room with their squads. Day Guard squads one and twelve are en route as well and will arrive first.”

  “Set a cordon with the guards.”

  Ulysses nodded. “Sutter and Tench are en route to the nemesis tower, and another three day guard squads are evacuating Kraken dash two.”

  “Evacuating?”

  “Large amounts of steam are issuing from pipes rendering the station impassable.”

  One of the technicians, a thin man with a crew cut, and a ‘geophysics is cool,’ badge on his left chest, lifted a trembling hand. Clayton ignored him and commanded, “Send the guards to secure the underground hanger and prep the nightfalcons for immediate lift off.”

  “What about us,” the thin geophysics technician asked in a tremulous voice.

  Clayton stared at the man, who promptly looked down at the floor, and said with complete surety, “We stay here until the P-Case is secured and the nemesis tower recaptured, then we evacuate.” He sneered silently. Of course, you’re not coming with us. There’s no room for useless baggage on our nightfalcons.

  He turned back to the screens, watching sixteen praetorians advancing through the corridors and tunnels of the base toward their objectives. There was still time to take back the P-Case, defeat the Ramp masters, and win the battle.

  Nothing was beyond saving.

  * * *

  The timer on the bottom right hand corner of Li’s nightglasses flashed zero.

  “The praetorians are free,” Li said briskly, striding from the blood splattered guardhouse into a short corridor to the main server room.

  “I know,” Slayne remarked, flourishing the Black Dragon to clear it of blood. He strode beside her on the right, Anton flanking her on the left. “You need to break into the fortress’ core networks.”

  Li nodded grimly.

  “You have to free up the nemesis tower,” Slayne stated. “The praetorians will hit it and us in eighty to ninety seconds from now.”

  Li stopped walking for a moment. “Can you keep them off me?”

  Slayne nodded. “Actually, you will. Once you’re in, you can disable the bio-readers on the door. No one will get in or out until you open it again. Anton and I will head back there now and guard it until you close it. Then we’ll be back for the P-Case. Okay? You good with that?”

  Li pursed her lips and nodded. They had no idea what she’d faced in her last loremaster vision. She watched them blur away for a moment, then turned away, opening and passing through a final doorway into the main server room.

  She entered a large circular chamber. An outer rank of racks hosted hundreds of servers. She shivered, suddenly enveloped by a strong current of freezing air rising through the steel mesh floor. Li strode forward past three concentric sets of full server racks surrounding the core of the server room.

  At the center of the chamber, six quantum processors arranged in a hexagon six feet on a side, maintained an intricate shifting lattice of blue light between them. The Panopticon AI was a thing of light and now it was dying, but its crypt was a resurrection chamber called a P-Case. The P-Case was neatly slotted in a large briefcase sized holding bay next to a desk-console with a chair facing the near side of the hexagon.

  Li strode to the chair. Time was evaporating away. The praetorians were on the march and she had to act quickly. She placed her laptop down on the console. A cable was available for administrators to plug into the core networks and she attached it to her laptop. A moment later and she was connected into the core network and … went nowhere, but …

  The chamber vanished for a moment and then reappeared - was it real or a vision?

  Cryptographic characters streamed over every surface like a living skin with a mobile technophilic tattoo. It was a vision, she was surrounded by an intense layer of encryption, and she’d have to break through it before she could do anything else. Her implant pulsed. Beating like a living thing, faster and faster until it burned like an iron spike driven through her flesh.

  The characters flowed and swirled in patterns beyond prediction. On the axis between the ranks of server racks the shadows thickened and darkened, swelling with a living presence promising abject horror.

  The temperature dropped, her breath misting before her face. The characters ran in rivers, fractal patterns teasing her mind with broken slivers of recognition. They swirled and swirled, mesmerizing in their movement. The shadows advanced, but with them came a soporific calm, a settling quietude. “What is the urgency?” they whispered. “There is none,” they answered with a comforting surety.

  The cryptographic characters danced at the edge of her skin, probing against a thin golden glow that lay a fraction of an inch outside the boundary of her flesh.

  Li looked at the soft, golden luminosity, half-curious, her eyes drooping. It was beautiful, fragile, temporary - like a summer flower destined to last a single fragrant evening before being extinguished by the night.

  Like all living things.

  Eternal darkness swelled in the depths of the shadows, beckoning with fluttery fingers.

  If only she could remember.

  Golden light flashed on the far edges of her vision, like a wedge opening a distant door. Gunfire reverberated from somewhere behind her.

  What?

  Li blinked. She lurched to her feet, slamming her hands on the console. A hot, indignant rage surged through her - how dare they trick me! The light on the edge of her skin flaring into warm, golden flames - alive with her will.

  Something clicked into place within. She had to establish control over her environment within the loremaster visions. The golden flame was the ke
y, she was sure of it. It was linked directly back to Juliette. It was her legacy. A protective gift she’d accepted over her former teacher’s grave, and it kept appearing whenever she needed it the most.

  She looked around, seeing the chamber with new eyes. In this place - the rules were different. Li centered herself, drawing the flame forth from her deepest sense of being. Instinctively, she lifted her hands up, palm outward, describing a pair of circular arcs. The golden flame followed her hands, billowing outward to form a thin luminous sphere a dozen feet across centered on her heart.

  Beyond her sphere of flame, the shadows hardened, thickening into a tangible darkness filled with malice.

  Li focused, pushing the boundary of light past the hexagon of six quantum processors. The Panopticon was gone, the intricate web of light had been abandoned. Her sphere of light spread, encompassing the whole of the hexagon. The web of light hosted by the quantum processors shifted in color, matching the flame wreathing the boundary of her sphere.

  The cryptographic characters fled with the stalking darkness. The shadows remained, but now they were simply shadows cast by her own light.

  Warmth suffused her being, she broke out in a broad spontaneous smile.

  Golden light flashed again, shouted warnings ripping through the guardhouse. “Watch out!” automatic fire tearing from the throats of multiple weapons behind her.

  Her smile vanished. What was the time? Numbers washed through her: 14:48:05. “What!” she called out, bursting out of her vision. She whirled around. At the end of the corridor, Anton and Slayne were trading shots with opponents down both sides of the corridor.

  She was still connected to the core networks via her implant and the laptop. She’d passed through the encryption like it wasn’t there. She reached through the networks, snapping invisible commands. The vault doors began sliding shut.