The Crane War

by Graeme Rodaughan

  “Good boy,” Arthur enthused, patting Anton on the back.

  Anton loaded a tray with three steak sandwiches and a couple of bottles of water, and strode back out into the sunshine. Jay came up beside him, similarly ladened with a tray and his assault rifle.

  Jay offered, “I’ll go around the back and check the east side.”

  Anton nodded.

  Jay paused and instructed, “Watch out for the Order helper. It wouldn’t do to shoot him.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Anton responded, somewhat nettled.

  Jay clicked his tongue. “Well, I saw what happened in the hanger. I just hope you’re okay. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, … sure, sure. I’m okay.”

  Jay looked at him strangely, then shrugged and made for the northern corner of the roadhouse.

  Anton watched him go and whispered, “Does everyone think I’m a freak?” He shook his head and turned to the west. Dwayne Washington appeared in the distance, running at a good pace for a normal. Five minutes later he passed Anton with a nod of his head and made for the roadhouse entrance.

  Anton downed the last of his second bottle of water as Dwayne pushed through the doors.

  As strange as his life had gotten since his eighteenth birthday, could it get any stranger than today?

  He shook his head and sighed.

  What the hell is normal anyway?

  * * *

  One of the surgeons clicked away with a micro-suture gun on Chiara’s wounded hand. Another dropped a fragment of metal plucked from Peter’s chest onto the floor. Arthur leaned back in a wooden chair and took another bite of a turkey and rye sandwich.

  Dwayne Washington, his shirt soaked with perspiration, pushed through the roadhouse doors.

  “About time,” Arthur declared, putting down his sandwich.

  “Geez, Arthur. I’m not Superman. How am I supposed to keep up with you guys?”

  Arthur smiled. “It’s okay. Just playing mother hen here. Grab a quick bite to eat and some water.” Arthur glanced at a clock on the wall. It was nearly ten minutes to five. “We need to be out of here as soon as possible.” He glanced across at Peter and Chiara and the surgeons attending to them and stated, “We don’t have any time to waste.” He looked hard at Dwayne and offered, “Out the back room, I have something for you.” Arthur glanced around the main dining room again. Peter and Chiara were being looked after by pairs of doctors from the surgical team. Li had filled a tray of food and was eating from it. Jay and Anton were both outside watching the perimeter.

  Arthur had something he must do. It was a subliminal command given by his previously whole-self to what was left of his mind. An imperative to take Dwayne to a back room and open a cabinet. The command had kicked in as soon as Dwayne arrived at the roadhouse.

  Dwayne avoided the food and grabbed a bottle of water, following Arthur into the back room.

  Arthur made a beeline for a tall, gray metal cabinet at the back of the long room. He unzipped a pocket on the jacket he’d worn since the underground river, and pulled out a key. The sliver of cut metal filled him with surprise. He hadn’t known it was there until he needed it. Arthur put the key into the lock on the cabinet and turned it. The door sprung loose and he pulled it aside.

  Resting on the floor of the cabinet was a common black duffel bag. It appeared to be holding something. Arthur lifted it out, placed it on the floor and unzipped it.

  Dwayne looked past his shoulder and whispered, “Arthur, what the hell is that?”

  Arthur lifted a second P-Case from the duffel bag and replaced it with the original P-Case from the Panopticon fortress. He glanced back over his shoulder, then turned around and thrust the duffel bag into Dwayne’s hands. What he said next felt like it’d been inspired by God. “Take this to Jon Thunder-Axe in Arizona. You know where he lives. He’ll know what to do with it.”

  “Yes, Arthur,” Dwayne replied, his eyes wide.

  “Go now. There’s transport for you out the back. Take what you need and go.”

  Dwayne looked at him, clasping the duffel bag containing the original P-Case with both hands. “I’ll guard it with my life.”

  “I think the plan is that won’t be necessary.”

  “I hope so.”

  “So, do I. Godspeed my friend.”

  Dwayne put his hand out and declared quietly. “It’s been an honor.”

  Arthur took his hand firmly. “For me too. Now be off, time is wasting.”

  Dwayne nodded. Turned on his heel and left without a backward glance. The back door swung shut behind him. A handful of seconds later a motorcycle engine roared into life. Wheels spun on loose gravel for a moment and then the revving engine receded into the distance.

  Arthur looked down at the second P-Case. It was wrapped in Faraday tape exactly as he’d wrapped the original P-Case. He couldn’t have told the two P-Cases apart even if he’d been asked to do so.

  He had no idea what was in the second P-Case. That information was hidden within the community of his other selves and they never spoke of it. There were two new imperatives within his mind: treat the second P-Case as if it was the original P-Case containing the Panopticon and never attempt to open the second P-Case.

  Arthur carried the second P-Case from the back room into the main room of the roadhouse. In another fifteen minutes or so, they would all have to leave. The vampires were coming for them and they would never give up.

  There was a certain satisfaction that the vampires would persist in their hunt. Arthur didn’t know why he felt that way, not for sure, but he needed them to persist in seeking him.

  It was all part of a greater plan.

  * * *

  The afternoon sunlight cut across the ocher gravel behind the roadhouse.

  Anton joined the rest of the team and the Order helpers in the shadows beneath a broad porch. Before them, lay a line of black Kawasaki KLR 650 motorcycles. Each bike had a yellow post-it note sticker on it with a name. Anton spotted his name on a nearby motorcycle. More preparation by his grandfather. The man was a demon for planning.

  Arthur gestured to the team of surgeons. “Rebecca, Ben, Mike, and Jess, your work has made a world of difference. Now it’s time to get out of Dodge. You know the exfil paths. I’ll be in touch, and if not me, then Jon will be. Now make yourselves scarce.”

  The medical team turned and mounted their motorcycles. A minute later, the four doctors disappeared at speed toward the east on Black Rock road.

  “Where’s Dwayne?” Li asked.

  “He’s already left,” Arthur answered. “There was no point in him sticking around. The sooner he left the safer it was for him. The same holds true for us. We should assume Armitage and Crane have breached the safe house network via Ramin Kain. They will send resources to this site or come here themselves. Our advantage is speed and stealth. We’re in front of them and we need to stay ahead of them. They will be on the back foot after the loss of the Panopticon,” he raised the P-Case for everyone to see, “and we need to exploit that to make our way southwest to my airport.”

  “You own an airport?” Jay asked.

  “Yes. Well, it’s the done thing if you need to ensure an exfil path. Now, the bikes are full of fuel and all good to go. They all have a GPS unit and it will guide you. If for some reason the GPS fails, or we get widely separated, the airport is just before the intersection of US route 93 and Interstate 15 in Nevada. If we get that far, you can’t miss it on the left as you head toward Las Vegas. Now about fuel, you should be able to get to my airport on a single tank of fuel from here but you won’t have much juice left at the end. If you need to re-fuel, do so at Enoch or Panaca. We can afford a couple of minutes to refuel more than we can afford someone running out of fuel. Okay, it’s more than two-hundred and seventy miles by road. It will take us a few hours and we’re running out of sunlight. Make the best time you can but don’t take too many risks with speeding. The last thing we need is to be picked up by a local cop and given a ticket. Th
e vampires will shift to military and civilian systems of surveillance. We must assume they retain effective co-ordination of those resources. We must blend in with the local population as much as possible. From here to Milford, hammer the bikes. There are no cops out here but whenever you get within ten miles of each town, pull back to the speed limit. As a last resort, each bike has a pair of H&K MP7 sub machine guns with spare magazines in their pannier bags. That is for emergency use only. I hope I don’t have to remind anyone that stealth is now king.”

  Arthur touched his Order nightglasses. “Our tactical network is operational again.” He glanced across at Li. “Li’s loremaster laptop has been fully recharged. However, with the Panopticon down, we’re not hazing it. What we have to watch out for is standard military and civilian systems. Li, I don’t expect you to haze those while you ride a motorcycle. That’s asking too much, even of you.” He looked around the team. “Stay in touch via the network and be prepared for anything. We are on the run and we will be hunted.”

  Arthur paused to let the last point sink in then continued. “We’ll split up into small teams so there isn’t a,” Arthur air-quoted, “‘group of six,’ to draw the vampire’s attention. The teams are Jay riding solo. Peter, Chiara and Li as a group, and Anton and myself. I’ll leave first, followed by Li’s team, followed by Jay. Maintain a thirty second separation between the teams.” He looked around the group. “Last but not least, I have supplied everyone here with a complete fake identity. You have a valid driver’s license and debit card, and your bikes are registered in your fake names. Check the lanyard wrapped around the handlebars for the details. Okay, are we all good to go?”

  Everyone nodded or murmured assent.

  “Then let’s saddle up and get going.”

  The team moved quickly. Anton approached his bike and pocketed the lanyard with his new driver’s license and debit card. He mounted the motorcycle, tilted it to the right, lifting the kick stand with his heel. He hit the starter button and the engine fired into life. He glanced at the metadata streaming down the sides of his Order nightglasses. The bike had a top-speed of a hundred and thirty miles per hour, and a maximum range of three hundred miles. It was already quarter past five in the afternoon. The stop had been necessary to patch up the team, but it’d taken a lot of time.

  He looked across at Arthur. His grandfather nodded. It was time to go. He engaged first gear and revved the engine, pulling away from the roadhouse. The pair cut right around the southern end of the roadhouse before turning left onto Utah state route 257, the main road heading south. They quickly accelerated to a hundred and ten miles per hour. They would make the best time they could while they were outside the towns. They would have to stay within the rules. They needed to blend in. A speeding ticket would alert the vampires to their location, and that would be a disaster.

  Li’s voice came over the tactical link. “Leaving now.”

  The team were exfiltrating from the roadhouse. What sort of lead they had on the vampires; Anton didn’t know.

  All he could do was hope they had enough.

  * * *

  Twin turbines thrummed through the hull with a muted roar.

  The Osprey II drone descended behind the Black Rock roadhouse, landing halfway between the main building and a pair of railway tracks running north to south. A trio of wheeled legs descended from the main body and planted firmly on the hard ground. The twin turbines on the wings began spooling down. The rear cargo door opened, folding down to the ground beneath the high tail of the craft.

  James Haley descended the ramp, fitting a pair of sunglasses to his face. His heavy weapons were stowed, he only carried his uprated .45 Glock in a shoulder holster over his combat fatigues. The scopes on the drone had revealed the site was deserted. He glanced at his wristwatch; it was 17:25. The roadhouse’s kitchen still showed warmth on the drone’s scopes. The Mirovar force team had evacuated the roadhouse recently. James had missed them by less than fifteen minutes.

  He’d activated a blanket sweep of the site from five miles out using the drone’s sophisticated sensor and computing suite. There was an older model Order sensor array built into the building. James had disabled it remotely before landing the drone. The cameras installed in the roadhouse would continue recording, but couldn’t see his drone, the chameleons or himself.

  They were as ghosts pursing the Mirovar force team.

  The chameleons followed him out of the drone and into the late afternoon sunlight bathing the roadhouse. They lifted their pale-gray snouts, sniffing the air. Rising to their full height they stared at the horizon. James figured they could see in spectra beyond normal limits, both infra-red and ultraviolet. His orders were clear. Re-establish contact with the Mirovar force team, maintain stealth and determine where they were taking the Panopticon.

  That is, find the bastards and don’t be discovered and killed doing it. They were simple enough orders to follow while the Mirovar force team were doing their best to get away. James walked through the rear door of the roadhouse, pushing his sunglasses up to rest on his crew-cut scalp. He walked past a long room with an open and empty gray cabinet, a kitchen redolent with old cooking smells, and into the main dining room.

  There were a couple of chairs covered with blood-stained sheets. IV poles stood nearby, empty fluid bags and IV lines dangling from them. Bloodied swabs and fragments of gray metal littered the floor. The Mirovar force team had taken some injuries. There was another table with the scattered remnants of a small feast. James sniffed the food. It was still fresh. He lifted a ham, cheese and egg sandwich. It was well made, the aromas of the fresh egg and ham making him salivate. He put the sandwich down. There was no guarantee the Order hadn’t poisoned what they’d been forced to leave behind.

  There was a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest the Mirovar force team had used the site. They’d fed, drunk, got patched up for whatever injuries they’d sustained at the Panopticon fortress, and then bugged the hell out of there. James turned on his heel and strode back out of the roadhouse, dropping his sunglasses back into place as he stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight. It was time to find out what the chameleons had discovered.

  The three chameleons stood in a triangle facing each other. The two males were focused with sharp intensity on Shemina.

  James froze. Were the two males about to attack the lone female?

  Shemina bowed low, like a seven and a half feet tall ballerina pretending to be a swan, and made a soft, low coughing sound for almost a minute.

  He didn’t move. The males were not about to attack. No, this was something entirely different.

  Gullette and Kavanne gave a loud croak in unison. Shemina rose to her full height, gave a long coughing cry and then settled back to her normal resting-alert posture. Her eyelids dropped halfway over her eyes and she studied James with a slight smile lifting the edges of her lipless mouth. The two males flicked their heads around and stared through him. James stood reflected in their black eyes, a military statue staring back at them, his face pale with fear.

  He lifted his right foot and backed carefully away. If the male chameleons were about to get feisty with each other over the female, he didn’t want to get in their way, or become a snack the victor offered to the lucky girl.

  Gullette shifted on his feet, his tail lashing once. He lifted his right hand, the long fingers uncurling like an alien machine. “What you see? Nothing important.” The chameleon paused for a long moment and stared silently at James, a thin line of drool dangling from between his shark-like teeth. Nothing further was said but the message was clear. Gullette raised his head an inch and finished with, “Search complete.”

  “What did you find?” James asked quietly, just managing to keep his composure.

  Gullette flung his right hand out, pointing east along Black Rock road. “Four go there.” He turned to the south to look down Utah state route 257 and said, “Six, all changed, and one not.”

  “Six?” James asked, nonplusse
d.

  Gullette nodded. James allowed himself a grim smile. One of the Mirovar force team was missing - did they leave someone behind at the fortress? Did they have a casualty? His smile evaporated. Had they split up?

  “What sort of transport?”

  Kavanne mimicked perfectly the sound of motorcycles.

  “Motorcycles?”

  Gullette nodded.

  “How long ago?”

  Gullette smiled and held up ten fingers.

  Excellent, the Mirovar force team had left ten minutes ago, riding motorcycles south on Utah state route 257. They possibly had an Order helper with them. Another four Order helpers had left to the east. And it looked like they had taken a casualty or split up. He’d report back to Chloe and await orders.

  As for the chameleons and their strange behavior, he’d wait until he was well and truly alone with Chloe before mentioning it. What was it? His best guess was a mating ritual, and with two males and one female - that could only spell trouble.

  “Back to the drone,” James declared, moving past the chameleons and up the ramp. He settled into the pilot’s chair, opened the drone’s communication console, composed a brief report and sent it to Chloe.

  “Now,” he whispered to himself. “She wanted a micro-tag.” He reached for his combat bag, searched briefly inside it and withdrew a small black box marked with Shadowstone technical directorate symbols.

  He was ready for the next step in Chloe’s plan.

  * * *

  James Haley’s report flashed across the command drone’s screens.

  The report read, ‘17:31:24. Six Ramp masters identified fleeing south along Utah state route 257. Estimated to be currently located north of Milford and using motorcycles for transport. Five Order helpers identified. Four heading east on Black Rock road, and one heading south with the Ramp masters. Roadhouse on the intersection of Utah state route 257 and Black Rock road identified as an Order safe house. Order Sensor array identified and disabled. Suggest that the Mirovar force team have taken a casualty or split up. Remaining on site pending further orders.’