The Crane War

by Graeme Rodaughan

  He had witnessed the departure of Justin Blake in an ambulance, and everything that had passed in the roadhouse followed by the rage-filled departure of Jay Creeley. The Mirovar force team was gone, and the four youngest members stood alone against the might of the Vampire Dominion. Chiara Morte had revealed herself and proposed a plan to ally with the Red Empire. They had emerged from the rear of the roadhouse and mounted their motorcycles. They had just left, heading for the ancient Red Empire citadel of Matahat al Diydan in the Caucasus Mountains.

  As a princess of the Red Empire, she would be welcomed home. As for the others, who could say what the Red Ghost would decide. It was imperative he found a way to re-enter Matahat al Diydan so he could continue to protect the truth speaker.

  There was also the not insignificant matter of the Red Ghost’s perfidious behavior in selling two fist teams into the service of Chloe Armitage to be accounted for. If there was anything that Tamsah believed in, it was justice. Perhaps an opportunity would arise to hold the Red Ghost accountable for his actions while protecting the truth speaker. He would remain watchful and alert, ever ready to seize the moment if such a circumstance was to arise.

  Footsteps approached him from behind and to his right. Two vampires from the recent battle at the airport stepped through the shadows and halted before the fence surrounding the parking lot.

  He watched them for a brief moment before familiarity triggered a memory. These were two of the vampires from the original mob in the southern-most hanger. The two who had discussed fornicating with the dead bodies of the Mirovar force team. The thought of these two rutting over the bloody corpse of the truth speaker set a flame alight behind his eyes.

  Tamsah had made a promise to himself in the hanger, and providence had gifted him the opportunity to fulfill it. He pounced like a jungle cat. With bare hands and feet conditioned by more than three decades of daily training in Red Empire Ninjitsu. He delivered his prey to the dirt and dust of the ground, rendering them unconscious, beaten senseless in less than a second.

  He stripped the vampire closest in size to himself of his clothes. He needed something to wear and beggars couldn’t be choosers. He sat the unconscious vampires up against the fence, separating them by five feet and a steel fence post.

  Tamsah lifted the fence wire, cutting four strands free with a dagger. He took the left hand of the left-side vampire and tied it to the post with a strand of wire. He took the right hand of the right-side vampire and did the same.

  With his third strand of wire he tied an artful knot that connected the index finger of each vampire’s restrained hand to the pull ring of his last white phosphorous grenade. With his final wire he suspended the grenade from the fence post.

  Whichever vampire untwisted the restraint on their hand and undid the connection to their finger first could get away while the grenade dropped to the ground and the ring pulled free detonating it next to the other vampire. He stood, stepped backward and waited for them to wake up.

  Within a minute, the first one roused and almost set off the grenade before he realized his predicament.

  Tamsah frowned at the long string of swearing the young vampire indulged in. By the time the first vampire quieted, the second vampire was blinking, his gaze jumping from Tamsah to the grenade and back again like a metronome.

  “What the hell is this?” the first vampire asked.

  Tamsah stated calmly, like a teacher instructing an unruly student, “Whoever gets free first has the best chance of getting away, the other one will burn. Of course, another option would be to gnaw your own hands off - if you can do that without twitching. I’d imagine they would grow back in time. But you need to make a decision quickly, after all, the sun will rise soon enough.

  He failed to mention that the grenade’s fuse had been dialed down to a tenth of a second. He moved away quickly, he anticipated it would not take long before one betrayed the other.

  At twenty yards distance, the grenade detonated behind him. Tamsah whirled, his eyes tightened with grim satisfaction, a merciless smile curling the edges of his lips. Two forms twisted and screamed for release within pillars of white flame. They fell writhing to the ground, limbs spasming like puppets played with by a mad child. One uttered a final screech while the other thumped the ground with melted fists before moaning a death rattle.

  The two vampires stilled while bright flames consumed their bodies. The only sounds left were the blistering pops of flesh burning beyond recognition.

  Tamsah nodded once and turned on his way. It was essential to keep his promises, even to himself, such was demanded by the Way of the Faithful.

  Now it was time to return to Matahat al Diydan, the ancient home of the Red Empire. His former colleagues would not welcome him, but the truth speaker was going there and he would follow.

  As he must.

  * * *

  Trust was little more than a fragile web people wrapped around their hopes and dreams.

  Cornelius vowed to eliminate trust from his life. He couldn’t afford it. The human failing had cost him too much already. He stared at the paralyzed form of Tania Morte lying naked and flat on an examination table. He was not going to take any chances with her as a vampire test subject for the loremaster implant. The silver net lying across her would keep her still, unresponsive, but alert. She would be closely monitored as the implant was inserted into her forearm, and the laptop was activated. He would learn everything he needed to learn to ensure the safe insertion of a loremaster implant into a vampire, and then he would eliminate her. It would be safest not to have another loremaster vampire in existence.

  He had come to a decision during the flight from Nevada to New York City. He’d dropped Armitage at his old Citadel, and refueled the shadowstar drone. He’d then flown solo out to a lonely island off the New England coast. An island hiding a single prisoner; Tania Morte, wife of Dalien Morte, mother of Chiara Morte. Taken fifteen years ago from the battlefield and converted into a vampire by himself. He’d picked her up from her island prison and taken her back to research facility number one in Queens, New York.

  Once the loremaster technology was proven to be safe to use on a vampire, he’d use it on the only person he could trust - himself. He would ally the Order loremaster technology with his sorcerous precognitive powers to produce a superior capability for insight into the future. This would give him the edge he needed to outwit his enemies.

  There would be no more death traps like Slayne’s fake Panopticon P-Case in his future. As for the Slaynes, they’d vanished, and with them the real Panopticon P-Case. He’d have to assume that Arthur Slayne would access the Panopticon within the near future. The clock was ticking down to the day the Panopticon was deployed against him. His most recent precognitive vision conducted on the flight from Nevada had revealed the risk from Arthur Slayne had evaporated. The risk from the younger Slayne was still present, but pushed back into the future. The risk from the Red Empire fist team making its way across the Atlantic barely existed now that he’d initiated the evacuation of his Manhattan citadel. What loomed large within his threat matrix was Mekra. She would have to be managed or destroyed.

  He would not kill her lightly, her blood was too valuable to him, but if events warranted it, he would destroy her without mercy or regret.

  Cornelius glanced to his left. The lead scientist stood beside him, tall, cadaverous, his dark hair slicked back with 1920s style hair cream. Cornelius commanded, “Source a supply of vampire ready implant sheaths from our production facility in Tokyo.”

  The lead scientist’s eyes widened, and his skin paled past his usual gray. “You haven’t seen my latest report?”

  “No,” Cornelius replied, his eyes narrowing. The vampire had the look of a rabbit caught in the glare of a vehicle’s headlights. A look that bordered on shameful for a vampire. Still, he’d kept the man in his employ for his inquisitive and ordered mind, not for his courage. He braced himself for more bad news.

  “Unfortunately, my
liege, our capacity to source additional implant sheaths suitable for a vampire has been curtailed. All the data for the sheaths was destroyed and the lead scientist, a human named Hana Tanaka has disappeared.”

  Cornelius blinked and sighed. The situation was regrettable, but regrets would not serve him. He would have to adapt.

  The lead scientist leered, or was it a smile. Cornelius was never sure with him. The man offered with avid enthusiasm, “There is one sheath we could use. The one housing an implant next to your heart. We could remove it and re-purpose it to the loremaster technology.”

  “What!” Cornelius snapped. “And allow Armitage to go free. I think not. No,” he paused for a moment, his mind racing, “there is another source of vampire implant sheaths we could use.”

  The lead scientist looked at him expectantly.

  Cornelius commanded, “Continue the work here and keep me informed of progress on a nightly basis. That is all.” He turned away from the cadaverous man. It was time to return to the hidden fortress of the Obsidian Claw Ninja clan. The Mekrarian vampires he’d killed in the courtyard would have withered to dust in the sunlight. Their implants would be left on the flagstones. He could retrieve them.

  Cornelius strode down the empty corridor of research facility number seven’s lowest level, his boots echoing off the cold, polished concrete floor. He would tell no one of his mission to Japan.

  He would maintain his secrets, and cloaked by secrecy he would grow his power once again.

  * * *

  The metropolis of New York City lay before her.

  Chloe stood on her balcony, freshly showered and dressed in a black silk bathrobe. A fine Japanese dragon print dominated by red and gold threads rose over her breasts. She gazed at the full moon sailing across a velvet sky laced with stars. An ideal moon to hunt by. But hunting was not on her mind, a greater need held her attention. The need to be free of Crane’s rule burned like a hot coal within her soul. She whispered fervently to herself, “I value liberty above all else. Without liberty, no other value can be realized.”

  How could she achieve anything of real value whilst crouched on one knee to another?

  Chloe took a breath, let it out slowly, and calmed herself. James had provided a report five minutes ago at three in the morning. He’d been tracking Crane’s command shadowstar drone via the tag and half a dozen co-opted military satellites.

  After dropping Chloe off for a healing blood feast at his citadel, Crane had flown to a remote island off the New England coast. He’d only stayed minutes. Long enough to pick up a passenger. He’d then traveled back to the hidden research facility in Queens discovered by James. The same one Clayton Maze had taken the Order dead to after the battle at the conclave hall. She had no doubt the Queens research facility was Crane’s loremaster technology research lab. His passenger would be a vampire with Ramp ability - his only available test subject. Given Haras, and herself were the only other options, the only feasible test candidate was the missing wife of Dalien Morte.

  This was a step forward for Chloe’s plans. Tania Morte would be a key bargaining piece when it came time to negotiate with Dalien Morte. There had to be a new alliance between them, one that would transform the Red Empire into a tool of her bidding. Tania Morte would be the bait she could use to draw Dalien Morte into a trap he could not escape. Human bait, no longer a vampire once she had secured the ‘vampire cure,’ from the Tanaka sisters.

  She would collect all the Morte’s and the Red Empire. She had collected Arthur, she would collect others, Anton, Li, Peter, and of course Chiara would make worthy additions to her list of assets. In the end she would need them all, and she must act quickly. The window of opportunity would inevitably close.

  Her mind turned to deeper subjects. Events with low probability become certainties over long enough time frames. It was inevitable that the forces she’d witnessed in the forests of southern Germany in the dying days of the second world war would return. She must be ready; she would build an unstoppable vampire army and then make a pre-emptive strike.

  If need be, she’d conquer hell itself to preserve her world. But first, she needed unfettered access to the Metaframe with the Key of Ahknaton. The operation of power was mediated through bribery, deception and violence. The blunt instruments of desire, credulity and fear had long been exploited by those who sought to rule. An exploitation borne from a simple fact - obedience was never guaranteed - people could always disobey. But what if obedience was a necessity, as necessary as an apple falling from a tree and just as natural.

  In such a world, the use of bribery, deception and violence would be obsolete, and wasn’t that a good thing?

  Chloe stared into the darkness between the stars. She would never demand more obedience than was strictly necessary, not in the world she would create. She expanded her senses to their vampiric maximums, drinking in the glorious majesty of the night sky, and dreamed of a reality yet to be realized.

  One day she would confront the old gods. She had seen how they had manifested beneath the forests of southern Germany in 1945. She had seen something of what they were and was building toward the day she would engage them in mortal combat.

  The boldest ambitions were always laced with terror and awe.

  Her heart soared with joy within the darkness.

  * * *

  The morning sun was poised just below the horizon, pre-dawn light glowing softly off the granite rock face over the cave mouth.

  Arthur issued the final command to ground drone #500 and it rolled off into the shadows of the cave complex. The drone faded into the dark. The dark faded into the mountain. The mountain grayed out and faded away too.

  His eyes flickered open, the gray of the mountain in his dream spreading out to cover ceiling, walls and floor. A thudding head-ache, throbbed through his skull. It would wear off once he’d rehydrated. He was fully aware of the effects of a Shadowstone sleeper dart - he’d shot himself twice, once to experience the effects and the second time to confirm the process.

  Arthur opened his eyes wider, rubbed his forehead and looked around. He was in a twenty-foot by twenty-foot cell carved out rock. One wall was dominated by crisscrossed bars as thick as his wrist and a door with a vault like lock. There was a low bed carved from the rock. It sported a mattress, a pillow and a single gray blanket. There was a half-gallon plastic bottle of water and, wonder of wonders, a slops bucket.

  “No plumbing, brilliant,” he said quietly. He opened the plastic water bottle and drank freely from it. If his captors wanted him dead, he’d be dead. He took the bottle with him and sat down on the bed. He took another long slug of water and studied the space beyond the bars. There was a corridor of sorts, perhaps ten feet by ten feet running beyond what he could see to his left. To his right it ended in a wall flush with his cell. They had put him in the cell furthest from the entrance. There were strip lights in the corridor, but none in the cell, leaving the chamber stippled with spears of light and shadow.

  He sniffed. The air was cool, clean and fresh. He scanned the ceiling. There was a small three-inch-wide vent in the left rear corner. He put his hand near it, and discovered a gentle and constant breeze flowing through it.

  Arthur sat back on the bed, resting his head against the cool stone. His headache was easing. The Ramp healing effects were working overtime breaking down the aftereffects of the sleeper dart. A regular person would forget the previous twenty-four hours and be unconscious for twenty-four hours, functionally losing two days. The sleeper drug still had a potent impact on Ramp masters. It would wipe out at least twelve to fifteen hours of memory, and he would’ve slept for another twelve.

  What was his last memory? He wracked his brain. He was crystal clear about sending the last drone into the cave complex to mine the river system with explosives. He had a range of fuzzy memories that slipped and slided away whenever he tried to grasp them. It seemed that he’d met up with the Mirovar force team, and met Anton again. His heart swelled with pride with t
he memory. The kid had punched him hard in the mouth as soon as he could. Arthur grinned, what wasn’t there to like about that? They’d talked on the way to the caves, and the kid had unburdened himself about something - whatever it was, it was like trying to hold onto fog to remember it. The last memory he had was leading the team into the caves. Then it was a blank, he had no idea who had shot him, who had caught him, where he was now, and only a rough idea of the time. It would be late Monday morning on the twelfth of September.

  Arthur considered his options. The first thing to do was throw off the effects of the sleeper dart and restore his health. He settled onto the floor in a cross-legged pose and dropped into silence without ramping. He modified his breathing and activated deep controls over his parasympathetic nervous system. He stilled further, while cellular engines kicked into high gear and accelerated the elimination of toxins from his body.

  A slight scuffing sound reached his ears. He emerged from his meditation and glanced through the bars. There were two guards in Red Empire robes, twin heavy-bladed swords at their waists. He puffed out a breath of air. If the Red Empire held him captive, then something must have gone drastically wrong with his whole-self’s plan - whatever that was going to be in the end?

  The taller one suggested, “Perhaps he can spend his time meditating on accepting his fate.”

  The other guard stroked his chin through his thick beard. “He might even find some, ‘inner peace.’”

  Arthur’s gaze lashed the guards and he snapped. “Acceptance is often portrayed as gentle, easy, a simple ‘letting it all go,’ and achieving,” he drawled the next two words, “‘inner peace.’ This is naive, superficial crap. Real acceptance is forged like fine steel. If you have not confronted true horrors, understood evil, suffered hopelessness and despair, found faith, and made yourself completely accountable for your own choices, actions and outcomes, then I can guarantee that any acceptance you pretend to have will be as brittle and temporary as a snowball in the middle of summer.”