It was time to join forces with Arthur and the rest of the Mirovar force team.
* * *
A hypersonic cruise missile speared down like a bolt of white lightning.
The first warehouse vanished within a massive ball of light and flame, debris rising high in the air. Man-made thunder cracked across the airport like a giant whip. A sheet of roofing spun through the air like a gargantuan playing card, heading straight for Anton.
He jagged hard left. The shadowstar’s 30mm cannon fire continued to chase him, tearing the sheet of roofing into a cloud of razor-sharp fragments. Anton ducked into a shoulder roll, the plume of white-hot metal shredding the air above him.
The stream of 30mm rounds twisted direction and raced toward him, carving a trench in the grass. He rose to his feet, dug hard, accelerating to the right of the deadly firestorm.
The attack died a moment later, sudden silence gripping the night air around him. The nearby ground was a patchwork quilt of rough sections marked by shallow trenches where the grass and dirt had been torn by the cannon fire. He’d run the shadowstar out of ammunition.
Anton bent over forward, his hands gripping his knees, panting heavily, perspiration dripping from his face and falling in wet splotches on his boots. He rose, arching his back, his hands upraised, the Blue Dragon raised in momentary triumph.
The berserk Ramp had taken something from him, and followed by a death race versus an aerial cannon, there wasn’t a lot left in the tank. He sucked in deep breaths and turned to the second warehouse. What was happening with Arthur and the Mirovar force team?
Jay made it through a doorway on the front corner of the warehouse, decapitating the closest vampire as he went. A steel door slammed down behind him, sealing the front of the building. A group of at least twenty militia vampires howled and shrieked their frustration, pounding fruitlessly on the walls of the building. One turned away and caught sight of Anton. He whooped with joy, and blurred toward him. A moment later, the rest of the vampires turned en masse and raced across the tarmac and grass toward his position.
“Oh, shit,” Anton gasped, backing away from the approaching vampires. The last thing he needed right now were twenty plus vampires attempting to tear him to pieces. He sucked in more air, a pulse of fresh energy coursing through his body with each breath. He pulled a hand down his face; it came away wet with perspiration. He was getting dangerously dehydrated. There was no point trying to run away. Depleted as he was, they’d run him down before he reached cover. He’d have to rely on short sharp ramps and hope to God that he lasted long enough to defeat them.
Anton rubbed his left hand dry against his combat webbing, and then held the Blue Dragon aloft with both hands. His gaze stilled and he dove into silence. The ramp bloomed within and the vampires dropped out of blur as his nerves accelerated to match their pace.
The Blue Dragon gleamed beneath the airport floodlights. The vampires would get everything he had to give. He grinned without remorse. The first of the vampires arrived within striking range, and in its frenzy, ran onto his blade. He stepped backward, his draw cut gutting the creature, who stumbled to the ground.
Two more took its place, and another two spread to his left and right.
Three red laser strings lit up the mass of vampires surrounding him.
Anton’s gaze flicked along the scarlet beams. The red lines originated on the top corners of the second warehouse.
He blurred, leaping backward as far as he could.
Hope burst into life within his heart.
* * *
The targets had been acquired.
Arthur activated the sentry miniguns. Screens on the inside of the warehouse displayed three lances of minigun fire spearing into the vampires surrounding Anton. The 7.62mm rounds traveled faster than sound. Tearing into the vampires before they realized they were under attack. The guns swiveled, a dull thrum drifting through the walls as they fired for two seconds at the remaining vampires.
Anton landed outside the ring of vampires and blurred hard to the right, beginning a broad circle to get out of the line of fire. He needn’t have worried. Arthur’s sensor array was governing the sentry weapons and was perfectly capable of distinguishing vampires from Ramp masters. The displays revealed the carnage. The vampires, intent on killing Anton, had been surprised by the attack and were turned into chunks of bloody flesh and raw bone.
Arthur stared at the displays. Anton rushed across the open ground. Would the praetorians initiate another attack from one of the shadowstar drones? Anton closed the distance to the warehouse, blurring at maximum Ramp. “Door,” Arthur shouted. The one human-sized door on the front of the warehouse lifted in a flash and Anton rushed through it. Once inside, he slumped to the floor. The door closing automatically behind him.
“He’s heat stressed,” Chiara declared, rushing to Anton’s side. She opened a large bottle of water and lifted it to his lips. Anton, his face pale, blinked sweat from his eye, and drank greedily from the bottle.
“Peter,” Arthur ordered. “Grab some bags of ice from the freezer.”
“Got, it,” Peter replied, and blurred away. He returned in seconds, with four large bags of crushed ice.
Chiara took charge of Anton’s care, lying him down on the cold concrete floor. She took the bags of ice from Peter and laid one behind Anton’s neck and head, and then put the other three beneath his armpits next to his ribs and over his heart. She asked, “Peter, please get some more.”
Peter dashed off.
Satisfied that Anton was out of immediate danger, Arthur called out. “Okay, everyone, listen up.”
The Blake force team rested against a shipping container, facing Arthur. To their right stood Jay and Li. Peter and Chiara continued to assist Anton to cool down, rehydrate and get his strength back.
“Now, here’s the situation,” Arthur continued. “Crane can’t attack us with heavy weapons, because he needs the Panopticon and the P-Case more than he needs to destroy us.”
“Oh, he wants that too,” Jay remarked.
“But, Jay, it’s beside the point. His only option is to break into this fortress and hit us hand to hand, which is not a good option against the two best force teams in the Order - even with three hundred plus vampires.”
Jay spread his hands wide. “This is your fortress, your base, your vampire trap. What’s the exfiltration plan? How do we get the hell out of here?”
Arthur looked steadily at the young force team leader and instructed, “We let the vampires do our work for us. They will send their main force against this fortress. We use our miniguns to thin them out. I have plenty of weapons and ammunition stocks. We’ll kill more from the shooting slits on the wall to convince them we are here. Once their numbers are down to manageable levels. We put the miniguns on automatic defense, and evacuate through the tunnels to hanger number one. I have a long-bodied private jet good for sixteen passengers and we get the hell out of Dodge.”
Jay nodded. “And as you suggested behind the gas station, we pick up a set of Stinger III prototypes and take out the shadowstars.”
Justin pushed himself away from the wall of a container and asked, “Are the SAMs here?”
“No,” Arthur answered, “They are stored in two secret caches in the tunnels. The caches also easily reach back up to the surface near the center of the airport. And, yes, there’s a reason for that which we can go into when we have the leisure to do so. For now, that’s where they are. Each missile is a single shot shoulder fired system that has been explicitly designed to take out a shadowstar drone.”
“Really?” Jay asked skeptically.
“Yes, really.”
Anton pushed the half-melted ice bags aside, rose to his feet and offered, “Do you need someone to get them?”
“Are you volunteering?” Arthur asked.
“Sure. What do I have to do?”
“Just follow the maze map via the nightglasses, and the cache disarming instructions from the sensor array. Th
e tunnels are a deliberately confusing maze. The map will take you through the first, second and third levels to the cache. The sensor array instructions will show you how to open it. There are four single-shot shoulder launchers in each cache. They come with carry straps and weigh about forty pounds each. You should be able to manage carrying all four.” Arthur tapped his nightglasses and said, “I’ve sent you the first cache location. Now off you go.”
Anton squeezed Chiara on the shoulder, and stepped away to the open container behind the Blake force team. He vanished between the open doors. In moments, he was heading down the stairs and into the tunnels.
Arthur’s eyes narrowed. The lower set of tunnels were probably the safest location in the airport. He was glad Anton was down there. It was only a matter of time before the vampires responded to the destruction of their first and second waves.
He drew in a breath and sighed. The first two waves were throwaways. Designed to test their defenses and draw them out. They had worked perfectly for his opponents. The vampires still held the upper hand. A pulse of satisfaction washed through his soul. Apparently, that was precisely where he needed the vampires to be - for now.
Arthur shrugged his shoulders, feeling the weight of the P-Case strapped across them. Whatever the end game was, it was still in front of them all.
* * *
The command drone’s battlespace displays revealed the two Order force teams co-located within the second warehouse.
“Slayne will have another exit,” Crane declared. “That warehouse is a fortress designed to expend our forces on. Since there is nothing visible above ground, he must have tunnels. Initiate a search for entrances in all the hangers we occupy.”
Chloe nodded. “That command has already been sent.”
Crane instructed, “Make sure the hangers holding the first and second waves are also checked. It wouldn’t do to miss an entrance.”
“Already happening.”
“Once the tunnels are open, we’ll send our main force through to their holdout and get inside that way.” Crane paused and frowned momentarily. “And contact Haley, why is their sensor array still operational?”
“I’ve sent him a status request fifteen seconds ago.”
Crane sat back and looked at Chloe. “If only you were of the habit of anticipating my needs so assiduously as you operate this battle.” He arched an eyebrow. “Perhaps then you wouldn’t have an implant at the base of your skull.”
Chloe didn’t answer, staring back at Crane in silence.
His eyes narrowed and he said, “Order Cantor to take out their sentry weapons with his 30mm cannon, we can’t have them decimating our third wave.”
“Yes, Sir,” Chloe replied with chilly formality and sent the commands to Cantor. The second drone dropped out of formation, spearing down to a mile above the airport.
A ping resounded through the cabin. James’ status report scrolled down a display, ‘Outside a locked server room in the basement of the administration building. Anticipate the sensor array will be down in less than sixty seconds.’
Chloe scanned the displays. Cantor opened fire on the warehouse. Streams of bright 30mm rounds ripping into the upper corners of the building. The miniguns resident in the corners of Slayne’s fortress erupted in flames, showering streamers of brilliant sparks as stored ammunition detonated. In moments, the four sentry miniguns were destroyed.
Crane whispered, “And now their fangs are drawn.”
Chloe wondered to herself what else Slayne had up his sleeve.
* * *
The basement level of the administration building was made of cream painted concrete lit with halogen down lights.
James Haley strode along a basement level corridor. He carried a handheld device linked back to the sensor arrays in the Osprey II and the shadowstar drones circling high above the airport. He was converging on the Order sensor array server room. A pair of heavy steel doors loomed in front of him.
James pointed at the doors and ordered quietly, “Tear them down.”
Gullette and Kavanne ghosted from thin air beside him. They moved sinuously forward, James dodging left and right to avoid a casual bone-breaking flick from their tails. Long dark talons emerged from their fingers, and short, heavy claws from their toes. Razor sharp spines bristled along the backs of their thick arms, over their bulging shoulders and down their broad backs.
Their hands blurred forward, punching the doors. Their talons ripped through the steel with sharp bangs. The chameleons jerked backward, the doors ripping free from their hinges before the lizards threw them disdainfully to the floor with a pair of echoing clangs.
“Nice,” James remarked, following the chameleons into the server room.
Gullette and Kavanne turned to regard him with silent eyes. There were a pair of server racks labeled ‘secondary,’ and ‘primary,’ and battery power packs standing in the middle of the small room. James nodded, and commanded, “Destroy it.”
The chameleons blurred, the racks falling apart in a shower of silvery sparks and blue smoke. In moments, Arthur Slayne’s active sensor array was rendered into junk metal.
* * *
Anton paced his way through the maze of tunnels.
The surface to air missile caches were toward the middle of the tunnel network. Accounting for turns, backtracks, and stairs up and down, they were both about a mile from the second warehouse. The tunnels formed a squashed diamond with the first and second warehouses over the western corner. As to why the missile caches were so far from the fortress warehouse - Anton had no idea. He assumed his grandfather had a good reason for putting them this far away from his main base of operations, and when they had a spare moment, he planned to ask him why.
Anton tracked the green line displayed in his Order nightglasses. Arthur’s maze map and sensor array was an amazing system. It would lead him directly to the nearest cache and show him how to open the locks.
He turned into the final corridor, pausing to finish off a bottle of water. The southern-most of the two caches was thirty yards away on the left and he strode toward it. All he had to do was unlock it. There was a brief chirp in his earbuds as his nightglasses lost the Order tactical network. The green line of Arthur’s map flickered for a moment within his Order nightglasses and then held steady.
He looked down the corridor. The tunnel walls were lined with floor to ceiling matte-gray panels. They all looked alike. He approached the one indicated by the green-line endpoint. He tapped on it with an exploratory finger. Nothing happened. He rubbed it with his hands. No hidden consoles appeared on the gray surface. The panel appeared to be dull, smooth metal, and nothing more.
“Oh, fuck it,” he whispered. So much for relying on technology, he thought bitterly. He turned around and looked back along the corridor. He was stuck out here in the middle of nowhere without a clue. He didn’t want to come back empty handed, and determined to try and work out how his grandfather’s cache was hidden. If Li had been there, she would have cracked it open in less than a minute, and Peter would have torn the panels from the wall until he found the cache. Anton was at a loss as to how to proceed. His skill set as a champion hockey player falling far short of what he needed right now.
Anton set a countdown timer on his nightglasses. He gave himself three minutes to work it out. If he hadn’t found and opened the cache within three minutes, he’d cut his losses. He shook his head. The vampires must have got around to taking the sensor array down. That meant their next attack was imminent. He had to make his way back to the team. They would need his help, but first he needed to complete his mission and get the missiles.
He hoped giving himself three minutes would be long enough to find the cache, and short enough to get him to the battle on time.
Anton frowned and set to work.
* * *
Arthur stared at the dead private feeds in his nightglasses.
He was certain of what he’d seen just before his sensor array was destroyed and the feeds die
d. Two giant gray and white lizards had torn through his server and tactical uplink room beneath the administration building. They had cut through the steel plate doors like they were tissue paper and ripped the server racks apart. The server room managed his sensor array and the local uplink tower for satellite communications. With its destruction, Arthur and the two Order force teams had lost situational awareness of the battlespace.
His heart sank, this was wrong on so many levels. As horrible as the idea was, he had to admit what he had just witnessed was real. The Vampire Dominion had chameleons. He didn’t know the details, but Crane or Armitage, or both, had two chameleons working for them. The battlespace had just gotten a helluva lot more complicated. There was no time to worry about how the Vampire Dominion had a pair of the ancient warm-blooded reptiles working for them, he just had to deal with it and adapt.
Arthur strongly suspected his whole-self had never planned for the presence of chameleons in this fight. How could such a thing be anticipated? How could anyone mitigate the alliance of an ancient apex predator with the vampires? The implications slammed through him like a freight train. He swore, “Oh, damn it!” Anton was out there by himself in the tunnels, cut off from contact with the rest of the team, with invisible opponents potentially hunting him.
Li dropped her gaze from the gray display screens in the warehouse. She frowned at him, her dark brown eyes half-accusing, and said, “The sensor array and tactical network have just gone down. So much for your vaunted situational awareness.”
“Yes,” he replied. He had to own this situation. Li had called it right. Something had happened he was sure he’d never thought of. “Clearly, we’ll have to adapt.”
Li inquired, “And what of Anton stuck out in the tunnels without comms?”
“He’s a bright lad, he’ll work out the need to come back.”
Li looked askance and shook her head slowly. “We can only hope he gets back in time and isn’t caught on his own out there.”
The Crane War Page 35