The Crane War

by Graeme Rodaughan

  Chiara fell into position next to him and whispered hoarsely, “Is there enough time?”

  Peter glanced down at her and then back at the tortured sky. His eyes widened before the impending doom closing in from the north and south. Everyone had to get out of here before the two fire storms joined in the middle and became one. That could be a handful of minutes away - or less.

  Only one thing was certain - time was running out.

  * * *

  The underground hanger doors hummed, sliding smoothly apart.

  A strip of bright sunshine appeared, resting like the finger of God between the two lines of nightfalcons. The six day guards had vectored in on Jay’s position, their footfalls echoing off the concrete floor. The hanger hadn’t been designed for stealth operations - that was for sure. The east side of the hanger was more warehouse than anything else. Pallets loaded up to seven or eight feet high with anything ranging from computer spares, through long-life rations to spare helicopter engines, were lined up in a checkerboard of crisscrossing rows.

  Jay’s last burst of fire had sent two of the guards diving for cover, and he’d dashed forward to the cover of the next stack. The trick would be to get them to fight him on his terms. Up close and personal with an edged weapon where his superior speed, skill and strength would decide the outcome. If they were smart, they’d give ground at every opportunity and try and surround him in a cul-de-sac and bring superior numbers to a gun fight.

  He blurred around the next left corner. There were four guards. Everyone fired, his three round burst matched by four equal answers spearing down the aisle between the pallet rows. Jay pushed hard, his left shoulder flaring back, slamming his body into a pallet of shrink-wrapped cartons. Half a dozen rounds zipped past his chest. One of the guards swore profusely for a moment as all four disappeared into the stacks.

  Where the hell were the first two guards? Jay blurred back to his original pallet, turning and spraying a burst of automatic fire down the aisle. It was empty, running footfalls sprinting along the concrete in the next aisle in front of him - and behind him.

  They were attempting to surround him. In the southern stacks, gunfire flared from multiple locations. Francis was still in action. Someone screamed, accompanied by a low guttural groan, a ribbon of blood splashing above the top of the distant pallets.

  Four grenades rose into the air, they were going to bracket Jay’s position. He blurred forward, leaping and flipping over the nearest pallet, rising above the next aisle. His rifle flamed left and right, sending bursts of fire at two of the guards who’d thrown the grenades. The one on the left staggered backward in a pink mist, his rifle clattering to the floor before he turned and slumped face downward onto the cold concrete. A silver round sparked off the shoulder armor of the one on the right, spinning him around. The hit spoiled the guard’s return fire, bullets spraying up to the hanger roof.

  The thrown grenades exploded in a rapid series of thunderous cracks, shrapnel slashing through the air in the vacated aisle. Jay landed in the next aisle, reversing immediately and blurring back the way he’d come over the middle aisle and into the smoke-filled aisle. He landed, zagging hard left. The guard who’d got behind him in this direction, would be running forward to trap him again.

  Jay emerged from the grenade smoke, catching the guard as he barreled past. Jay picked him up, sweeping him off his feet and bouncing him against the opposite pallet. His right hand drew his katana and whipped it around in a single motion, slashing through the guard’s neck in an instant. Jay blurred back the way the guard had come, the hapless fellow falling to the floor behind him, his helmeted head rolling away from his blood gushing body.

  Two down, at least one wounded, and three at full strength. Jay needed to bring this to a close. He looked around. The smoke from the grenades was dispersing, he rushed forward a dozen steps. The guards were nowhere to be seen. He slung his rifle to his left, pulled his last two grenades from his webbing and ripped out the pins with his teeth. He spat the pins away and shouted, “Oh, fuck it!” in desolate tones, giving away his position at an intersection between the aisles.

  If they wanted to surround him, then let them, but only on his terms.

  Jay slotted the grenades next to the base of the pallets. They were on a four second fuse, he figured that’d be about right. He turned and blurred between two pallets. He turned hard, clambering up onto a set of locked military boxes standing seven feet high and lying flat. He held his rifle in one hand and his katana in the other.

  The pallet started shaking, another tremor reverberating through the fortress. Thunder cracking overhead - whomever the gods were - they were shifting from angry to demented.

  “Shit!” A guard swore from ten feet away.

  “Grenades!” Another yelled.

  The guards scattered. The grenades exploded, fragments ripping through the nearby pallets, and pinging off the heavy military boxes beneath Jay. He was up and moving in an instant, holding his breath against the clouds of smoke. His eyes slitted, diving into the intersection cleared by the exploding grenades. His assault rifle erupted into life, a long burst of fire claiming two of the guards still attempting to flee the grenades. He whipped about taking the second pair a moment later.

  He rushed toward the nightfalcons, clearing the rows of pallets.

  Francis blurred into the open a hundred yards to his left, his katana whirling through a deadly arc, slashing a guard across his chest. The man fell away in a spray of blood. Francis whirled toward Jay his eyes hunting for another foe.

  Beyond him, a dark armored form emerged from an aisle against the far wall of the hanger.

  Francis stood between the guard and Jay, blocking his fire.

  Jay dashed right, shouting, “Watch -”

  The guard’s rifle barked. A trio of bullets slammed into Francis’ back, punching out of his chest and pushing him forward into a pink mist of his blood.

  “- out! Francis!” Jay screamed, sending a long burst of fire thudding into the last day guard. The lone guard staggered back a step, stumbled, and sat down like a broken toy against the distant hanger wall.

  The Mirovar force team’s luck had run out.

  * * *

  A stuttering rip of assault rifle fire came to a halt on the far side of the hanger.

  Oblivious to the gunfire, General Clayton Maze shouted, “What the hell! Who opened the hanger doors?”

  His eyes flashed over the praetorians and the humans huddling in front of them. The intolerable sunlight was spreading in a widening rectangle. In moments it would cover the four nightfalcons in the middle of the hanger. The doors were supposed to be shut until he was safely onboard a helicopter. Then they would be opened to allow him to escape. How could he approach them now with bright sunlight cutting an ever-widening toxic perimeter around the blessed helicopters?

  Commander Siobhan Ulysses, stared at him nonplussed. “Sir?”

  “Get them closed.”

  Ulysses shook her head. “That can’t be done from here, Sir. We’d have to get back to the command and control center or,” she pointed at the nearest helicopter gleaming in the bright afternoon sunlight, “we operate the hanger doors from the cockpit controls.”

  Clayton snarled.

  “Sir,” said Holdsworthy, one of the three surviving praetorian squad leaders. He pointed past the nightfalcons with an armored fist to the eastern side of the hanger. “Order operatives.”

  Clayton’s head flicked left, the concrete past the helicopters was littered with slumped armored forms. A young man with dirty-blond hair was on his knees, cradling an older man who was lung shot and spitting blood.

  Francis Mirovar was at death’s door and Jay Creeley was alone and distracted. Clayton smiled with avid glee, at least two scalps would be his before he departed the doomed fortress. “Carney, Holdsworthy,” he snapped, pointing at the vulnerable Ramp masters across the hanger. “Secure the nightfalcons. Kill Creeley and Mirovar, and bring me their heads.”


  The two squad leaders and their praetorians blurred away, veering left and right around the sunlight encased nightfalcons.

  Once the two Ramp masters were eliminated. It would be a simple matter to get the nearest helicopter to lift off, slide twenty yards out of the sunlight and into the shadows. He and his remaining praetorians could board the craft, and protected by the armored skin of the nightfalcon, they could escape the coming disaster.

  But first they would have to play out the final act, the use of the hostages to secure the Panopticon P-Case when Arthur Slayne inevitably arrived with it in hand. Clayton whirled upon the cowering humans, his fangs bared and hissed, “Strip off your uniforms. You are no longer part of Shadowstone. I free you of your oaths of service. Strip!”

  The humans fumbled and stumbled, attempting to obey his orders. Only Ulysses maintained her composure, frowning briefly before unbuttoning her shirt.

  Once the P-Case was secured, only the vampires would be leaving. The humans would be left behind to be claimed by the raging forces rising from beneath the fortress. Of course, it was only fitting that the mortals perished while their betters survived.

  It was the natural order of things.

  Chapter Ten

  “The berserker is the rarest of the Ramp talents. In fact, it is so rare the Ramp masters have forgotten Ramp berserkers exist. But I remember, how could I forget the most dangerous foe I ever faced.” - Cornelius Crane

  - Cornelius Crane’s personal diary.

  * * *

  The Panopticon Fortress, Underground Hanger, September 11th, 14:50:35

  “Vampires,” Francis whispered past a hacking blood-drenched cough.

  Jay’s eyes flicked up. A dozen praetorians had entered the hanger on the far side of the nightfalcons. They hesitated, disconcerted by the growing strip of sunlight spreading across the four helicopters. There was a narrow corridor of shadow north and south of the nightfalcons. They’d come as soon as they saw Francis and Jay, but they’d have to veer hard left and right. The sunlight would funnel them into a pair of narrow paths. The opportunity to attack them while they were constrained by the sunlight would only last a moment.

  Jay carefully pulled his hands back, letting Francis drop gently back onto the concrete.

  Francis coughed once, his head barely rising and whispered, “Leave me.”

  Jay ignored him, rising to stand astride his force leader’s body. He slapped his last fifty round magazine of high-performance rounds into his rifle. Every fifth bullet was a silver hollow point, designed to fragment upon impact. He pumped the under-barrel grenade launcher priming the 40mm high-explosive armor-piercing grenade within it. He pushed aside the impending loss of his beloved mentor and best friend, and plunged deep into silence.

  The hanger resolved into crystal clear view. Every noise resounded with sharp and distinct clarity. One vampire, a tallish black man with a bald head dressed in a fine suit with a katana at his waist, shouted, “Carney, Holdsworthy, secure the nightfalcons.” He pointed directly at Jay and shouted again, “Kill Creeley and Mirovar. Bring me their heads.”

  Jay waited to see which way they would run. If he was really lucky, they would all bunch up and run to one side of the hanger to avoid the sunlight.

  They split up. One squad of four running to the right-side and the other squad running to left-side of the helicopters. Their paths describing an oversized baseball diamond as they skirted the growing rectangle of sunlight covering the nightfalcons in the middle of the underground hanger floor.

  Jay snapped his rifle around to the right. He triggered his launcher, sending his only 40mm grenade spearing away toward the shadowy strip between the nearest nightfalcon and the right-side hanger wall. The flight of the grenade was obscured by the long body of the helicopter. If Jay had timed it right, they wouldn’t see it until it was too late.

  The second squad had further to run, they would show up after the first squad came into view.

  The first praetorian rounded the nightfalcon on the right, closely followed by the rest of his squad. The 40mm HEAP grenade lanced into the space between the nightfalcon and the hanger wall, striking the lead praetorian in the chest. The grenade flexed for a microsecond, grinding into the nano-ceramic plate of his armor, then it exploded. A molten copper whip shot through the vampire’s chest, carving a six-inch-wide hole through his body. The detonation of the grenade opened the rest of his body cavity like a can of tuna hit with a sledge hammer. His helmeted head sailed off his body, rising high on a tide of super-heated air. The rest of his body down to his knees evaporated in a red streaked ball of white fire. His legs below the knees skidded off in opposite directions. The three vampires near him, caught on the edges of the explosion were thrown aside like leaves on the wind, cartwheeling into the nose of the nearest nightfalcon and the hanger wall.

  Jay had to leave Francis; his best option for saving their lives was to get the praetorians into an edged-weapon fight. He scooped up the gore-slicked White Dragon where it lay on the concrete floor with his left hand. With his right holding his assault rifle like an oversized pistol he blurred to the left.

  The first of the praetorians in the second squad rounded the nightfalcons and opened fire, a stream of bullets spearing toward him.

  Jay zagged violently to the right, returning fire with his assault rifle. Bullets whipped past him on the left. He dove deeper into the silence, as deep as he could go. He was Francis’ last defense.

  It would have to be enough.

  * * *

  Carney evaporated in a blinding glare on the left-side of the hanger.

  Clayton hissed past his fangs. “What the fuck?”

  The rest of Carney’s squad were bouncing off the shadowed wall and the sunlit nightfalcon next to them. One slid screaming off the helicopter’s armored nose, bright flames licking around his dark helmet. A moment later, raging fire immolated his head, a great tongue of orange flame rising a couple of feet above it. The vampire howled, staggering for the nearby shadows. He never made it, slumping to a smoking heap a yard short of dark sanctuary.

  A brief queasiness assaulted Clayton’s stomach. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. The praetorian’s fiery death by sunlight was not something he needed to be reminded of with a great block of bright light shearing through the air mere yards away. He steadied his nerves and accelerated his senses to vampire maximums. The world slowed down, snapping into razor sharp clarity. Holdsworthy’s squad were disappearing round the far-right-side of the nightfalcons. Gunfire erupted from his vampires, followed by immediate return fire.

  Creeley wasn’t so vulnerable after all.

  They needed to finish the lone Ramp master quickly before Arthur Slayne showed up with the P-Case. He needed all his forces and the human hostages to force the elder Slayne’s hand. He opened his mouth to shout a new order.

  Something new moved on his far left.

  The younger Slayne blurred out of the sub-level-1 corridor from the main administration building.

  Crane’s orders swept through his mind like a cold wind. ‘Execute Anton Slayne. Immediately!’ What a stroke of good luck the Mirovar force team had so thoroughly divided their forces. They were all over the place and able to be defeated one at a time. Anton Slayne paused a dozen feet inside the hanger, his attention arrested on something on the far side of the hanger.

  Clayton jabbed his left forefinger at the young Slayne and shouted to his personal guards, “Kill him!”

  His four praetorians blurred toward the hapless, gawping fellow. Clayton followed the young man’s line of sight. He was fixed upon something lying past the nightfalcons. Something barely visible through the space between them slumped on the cold concrete.

  Mirovar.

  Clayton’s head flicked back to the left.

  Anton Slayne’s face paled, a thin foam appearing at the corners of his mouth. The rest of his body becoming incredibly still.

  Clayton stared.

  Slayne’s right eye darkened, the pupil
expanding to its maximum extent. A red ring of engorged blood materializing around the dark pit at the center of his eye. He threw away his rifle, a magnificent katana twin to the one borne by Chloe Armitage appeared in his hands with astonishing swiftness.

  A rare chill crawled up Clayton’s back.

  His personal guard attacked.

  * * *

  The polished concrete was ice cold beneath him.

  The world drifted, the agony of battle fading away. Someone was near, an invisible presence hovered over him. Francis tried to lift his right arm, but his flesh was heavy, oh so heavy.

  Juliette ghosted out of the air, a gentle smile caressing her face. She whispered, “Francis.”

  She was here. She’d come back for him. Francis lifted his hand; now it was easy, everything was easy. He rose up from the floor, his fingers tracing the smooth curve of her cheek.

  His heart glowed with light.

  The world vanished behind him.

  * * *

  A red mist descended.

  Francis was dead. The vampires had killed him. Francis had given him a home. He’d defended Anton when the Order had wanted him dead. He’d given him a new place to belong. He was family.

  Something touched upon at the burial test at the Maine safe house snapped. A barrier hidden deep within himself disintegrated in a blue flash. A cobalt fire, as cold and implacable as a glacier, roared through him with terrible urgency. It was beyond containing, shooting out of the top of his head in blue sparks and violent pulsing silvery streams.

  There could be but one purpose - to bring utter ruination upon those who opposed him. He might have grinned, a rictus smile promising sudden death - he was lost, floating freely, beyond all self-awareness - possessed by an overwhelming need to kill and kill again. Every fiber of his being devoted to a singular end - the delivery of death to his enemies.