He had no time to consider what she’d said, because Taia’s voice echoed through the house’s loudspeaker system. “I’ve found what we’re looking for!” She sounded excited. “I’ve got a location on the Protection Bureau.”
Chapter Six
It took less than thirty seconds for Warbeast Team to gather in front of the one holo-screen still set up in the living room. Bex was there, too, though without her miniature shadow. There was no preamble, no jokes or discussion. For the five of them, everything had instantly become about the business at hand.
“I managed to track Agent Styver’s location to the Cyberwarrens,” Taia said through the surround-sound system. An aerial map of New Avalon appeared on the screen, zooming in on a highlighted section of the mentioned neighborhood. “My efforts to pick him up on CCTV cameras have proven unsuccessful, but thanks to the smart steel Nolan and I were able to plant on him at the last meeting, I was able to get a lock on his position. Only for a few minutes, but it was enough to trace his movements to this building.”
The image on the holo-screen changed to a live feed from a CCTV camera. The footage showed what appeared to be a typical building for the outer fringes of the Cyberwarrens—a plain-looking two-story structure of permacrete and titanium alloy, with no visible indications of its purpose beyond a faded, weather-beaten sign proclaiming it “Allied Holdings Ltd.” Nolan didn’t bother asking her to look into the company name; she’d have already done her digging, and the fact that she hadn’t said anything indicated that it had no apparent connection to the Protection Bureau.
“I’ve searched the footage from the last two weeks, searching for any sign of Agent Styver,” Taia continued. “As expected, his face hasn’t shown up in a single search. However, I found this interesting.”
She zoomed in on a man who seemed to be strolling alongside the building. His appearance was plain and unremarkable, his posture outwardly relaxed, bordering on nonchalant. Yet Nolan instantly recognized his true nature: He was a guard. Undercover, trying to blend into the seedier part of the Cyberwarrens. Nolan had no doubt his eyes were constantly roving behind those sunglasses.
Taia confirmed it by pulling up repeat footage of the same man—along with close to a dozen other men and women, all moving around the same building. Nolan spotted the outline of concealed pistols beneath the jackets, shirts, and sweatshirts they wore to blend in as simple passersby. Armed guards, at that.
“I’ve run them through facial recognition,” Taia said, “and my search of the primary Imperial databases came up with what are clearly aliases. A bit of deeper digging on the darker side of the holo-net, however, led me to this.”
The image on the screen changed to a logo depicting “Black Crow Security,” complete with a bird and fancy lettering. A moment later, more images popped up—internal dossiers on the people Taia had captured patrolling the building.
“I have not yet been able to uncover who is the CEO of Black Crow Security,” Taia said. “However, the files on all these men and women make it clear that they’re experienced. Some former IDF, a few Jackboots, even a few with Imperial military service.”
That was clear enough indication that the building’s ramshackle façade concealed something of value, something that someone wanted very badly to protect. It struck Nolan as odd that the Protection Bureau would contract outside security, not to mention the fact that they had any kind of security in the first place. Their Bolt Hole office had never been patrolled by physical guards, a fact he’d determined after multiple stakeouts. Yet that place had been as fortified as it was secretive. In this new location, which they’d been forced to relocate to in a hurry due to Detective Locke’s prying, it was possible contracting Black Crow had been their only option.
“Judging by the way they’re patrolling and the prints of their hidden weapons,” Master Sergeant Kane said, “they’ve got at least some half-decent training.”
“The real problem’s going to be in numbers,” Zahra added. “You’ve picked up these twelve on perimeter patrol, but there’s got to be at least as many more inside, maybe double that number.”
“According to Black Crow Security’s roster,” Taia said, “there are currently four hundred and eighteen contractors on payroll. There are no records of any contracts or location details to indicate how many of those contractors are currently in New Avalon or on Exodus VI.”
“So we stake it out,” Bex said. “Get eyes on the fuckers and see what surveillance turns up.”
Nolan grinned. That’s another five credits to the Adventure Splash Zone fund, he thought.
“To that end,” Taia said, “I’ve secured a safe house two blocks to the southeast of the target. We’ll have clear sight lines, and it’s a low-traffic building with plenty of routes in and out.”
As she spoke, blueprints, infil and exfil routes, and a detailed layout of nearby CCTV camera locations popped up on the screen.
Nolan couldn’t help being impressed. She’d moved quickly, even for her. All that remained to be seen now was whether or not that actually was the Protection Bureau’s location. He was still on the fence about the veracity of her intel. If she was somehow still under the Protection Bureau’s thumb, they’d find out soon enough.
“What’s the flight time to New Avalon?” Master Sergeant Kane asked.
“The Phantasm will make the journey in two hours and five minutes,” Taia replied. “The Scimitar, two hours and thirty-six minutes. However, there is a storm brewing in the Frostbarren, and there’s a fifty-two-point-nine percent probability that it will shift south by tonight. I’d recommend departing as soon as possible, as that will allow you to reach the Iceglades landing zone well ahead of the storm. After that, it’ll be a three-hour wait until sunset before you travel to the Cyberwarrens safe house.”
Master Sergeant Kane looked around, and the four Silverguards nodded their agreement with the plan. “So be it,” he growled. “Desai, Askvig, get that gear down to the hover-rail and ready to transport. I’ll deal with the weapons. Garrett, Ajeen, we move out as soon as you’re ready.”
Though Bex’s face remained a calm, expressionless mask, Nolan saw the sudden tension in her posture. She’d known that she would have to leave Roz, but perhaps not so soon.
Even so, she just nodded. “Copy that. I’ll be ready to leave in ten.” With military precision, she turned on her heel and hurried up the stairs to the second floor.
The briefing over, the three Silverguards turned to their tasks without a word to Nolan. None of them had any goodbyes to say—everyone they cared about was either by their side or, in the master sergeant’s case, in the grave. At the moment, the mission was all they had on their minds.
Nolan had just ten minutes. Determined to make the most of them, he strode down the hallway toward the room where Jared lay resting.
Jadis looked up from her meal as he entered. She’d only just finished eating, and the bottle of sparkling water was still half-full. As if reading the truth in his eyes or his expression, her face tightened and a hint of shadow darkened her eyes.
“This is a good thing, right?” she asked quietly. “You’ve figured out what you need to do?”
“First steps, at least.” Nolan moved around the bed and sat on the side, close enough to her armchair that he could reach out and touch her. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
Lines appeared around her mouth and eyes, but she simply nodded. “However you do it, just get it done.” She fixed her gaze firmly on him. “Put this matter to rest so you can get your life back. And his.” Her eyes strayed to Jared. “He’s already lost so much. Your parents. His fiancée. Nearly two years of his life. He might be losing you, too. Soon.” She swallowed. “He deserves a chance at something better. We all do.”
Nolan had told her the full truth about his condition, and the diagnosis Doctor Sladek and Val had given him. “Funny thing about that,” he said. “Turns out my time in the Vault wasn’t all bad.”
At her questioning l
ook, he explained. “Evidently they gave me something that neutralized the tungstenite and reversed the effects.” Hope shone in her eyes, and he hated the fact that he had to dash it. But she deserved the truth. “It’s only temporary, though. Taia’s still working on the nano-scrubbers, and I’m still expecting a call from Doctor Sladek any day now. But we’ve got a bit more time, at least.”
“Good.” Jadis took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “I’ll take as much of that time as I can get. And hopefully it’ll be enough for you to have some with him, too.” She raised her other hand to caress his cheek. “So come back to me in no more than four pieces, yeah?”
Nolan laughed. “All the important bits attached, I promise.” He leaned forward and kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, but it held all the feelings he couldn’t—and didn’t dare—put into words, not yet. While on the mission, he couldn’t look back, couldn’t worry about her, couldn’t waste any of his mental energy wishing he could be with her. He needed single-minded focus to get the op done. So he’d save the dramatic “touchy-feely shit” for after.
Jadis leaned into him, too, and Nolan felt the truth in the force of her kiss and the tightness of her hand gripping his. Long seconds passed before she broke off and pulled back. She opened her mouth to say something, but a knock at the door stopped her.
Both Nolan and Jadis turned in time to see Bex nudge the door slowly open. “Uhh, you guys busy?”
The hesitance in her voice surprised him. It wasn’t like Bex to be anything but brazen. Hell, he was surprised she hadn’t barged right in and laughed that she was catching them “in the act.”
Then he saw the little girl cradled in Bex’s arms. Roz sobbed into her mother’s neck, arms clasped tightly around Bex.
Jadis stood now. “Come in,” she said, her voice gentle. She moved around the bed and came to stand in front of Bex, yet stood silent, waiting for Bex to speak.
“Roz, baby,” Bex cooed to her child. “Mommy needs to go now.” Pain flashed across her face, and Nolan saw the tension lining her eyes and mouth. “But Jadis is going to keep y—“
“No!” Roz wailed. “No, no, no!”
Bex winced. “Boop—“
“No, mommy!” Roz’s arms tightened around Bex’s neck, her grip almost strangling. “You can’t leave again. I just got you back!”
“I know, baby.” Bex’s voice came out clipped, and she seemed to be struggling to hold back tears. “I don’t want to leave. More than anything else, I want to be with you, always and forever like I promised.” She stroked her daughter’s hair gently. “But there are bad men who are trying to hurt mommy’s friends. Mommy needs to make sure her friends don’t get hurt.”
“But what if they hurt you?” Roz asked.
Nolan’s heart broke—for Bex and her daughter both. He knew just how much Bex had fought to regain custody of Roz, and how much she’d given up to provide her daughter with a safe life.
Yet he also knew how Roz felt. He, too, had lost his parents young, and though Littlewood Home had been a good place to grow up, it hadn’t been easy being an orphan. The Imperial Fostering and Care System was, like every other government program, flawed, and it couldn’t be easy for a girl so young to grow up bounced around from foster family to foster family. Now, finally reunited with her mother, the idea of losing her again—of losing the one thing that felt like home—would be tearing the little girl apart inside.
A hand rested on his shoulder, and he turned to find Jadis looking meaningfully at him. “Go,” she mouthed, pushing him gently toward the door. “Give us a moment.”
Nolan obeyed. Once outside, he pulled the door closed, though he could still hear Roz’s sobbing and Bex’s gentle voice faintly.
He hated the fact that he was the reason Roz and Bex were both suffering. She’d only done this to help him—whether because she felt she owed him or, as she’d said, she genuinely cared. Either way, the knowledge that Roz was devastated and clinging to her mother because of him filled him with guilt.
Then he remembered that he’d gone in to say goodbye to two people. He’d gotten his moment with Jadis, but Bex had come in before he’d been able to speak to Jared. He couldn’t go back in now, so he’d do the only thing he could.
“Taia,” he said mentally, “I need you to run every test you can on Jared. Find out exactly what’s wrong with him, and what we can do to get him back on his feet.”
“Of course,” she replied. “The master bedroom still has all of the medical equipment Tanis’ mother needed in her final days, and I intend to run a full battery of tests. I just wanted to wait until you left to start running tests. To give you some time before your brother was hooked up to machines and tubes and wires.”
A lump rose in Nolan’s throat. “Thank you.” It was a surprisingly empathetic gesture, a degree of humanity she might not have been capable of before.
Just then, the door behind him opened, and Bex strode out. A quiet wail and more soft sobbing echoed in the bedroom, and Nolan caught a glimpse of Jadis cradling a weeping Roz before Bex shut the door behind her.
“Bex—“ Nolan began.
“Don’t.” The quietness of her voice was matched only by its intensity. Nolan had seen Bex furious and spitting fire, but never with this ice-cold hardness. The lines of her face revealed just how much pain she was in, how much her choice cost her. “Just…don’t.”
Nolan closed his mouth. She didn’t need words or comfort or thanks. Right now, she, like he, needed an outlet for his fury. Something to hit, shoot, or rip apart with her bare hands. Time would dull this particular agony, but the sooner they got the mission over with, the sooner the storm raging within Bex would subside. She was torn between two desires, two duties, and the choice she’d made was a damned difficult one to live with.
But live with it she would, because that was what Silverguards did.
With a nod, he turned away from the bedroom—the room where both his and Bex’s futures awaited their return—and marched down the steps toward the inevitable battle.
Chapter Seven
The two-hour journey to New Avalon passed in near silence, with only the humming of the Phantasm’s engines to break the quiet. Darren and Zahra had opted to ride in the Scimitar with Bex, and Master Sergeant Kane wasn’t exactly the conversationalist.
Nolan didn’t mind. At the moment, he was in no mood for talk. His thoughts were consumed by the mission ahead.
Taking on the Protection Bureau would be a monumental task in itself, but the addition of armed security guards made it an even greater challenge. He and his teammates would have to take the mission slow. They wouldn’t move until they’d learned everything about the movement patterns of the Black Crows, analyzed the opposing force, and gotten a complete sense of what lay beneath the façade of the target building.
About an hour into the trip, a low ringing from Master Sergeant Kane’s side of the cockpit cut into the quiet. The grizzled man pulled out a comm device and pressed it to his ear. A few grunts of acknowledgement passed before the master sergeant said, “Copy that. I owe you one, Falcon.” Then he slid the comm device back into his pocket and returned his attention to the landscape flashing past beneath them.
Silence descended over the Phantasm. After nearly a minute, Nolan ventured, “What was that?”
“A contact,” Master Sergeant Kane replied. “Asked him to dig into the Protection Bureau. Came up emptier than a cake-eater’s bowels after a firefight.”
Nolan scowled. That tracked with what Taia had found—precious little, to be precise. The Protection Bureau had always operated deep in the darkest shadows. The jobs Warbeast Team had run for them during the war with the Terran League had black-bag funding and never wound up on a report anywhere.
Digging into an organization like that had proved frustrating in the past, and Taia had always come up empty-handed. Now Nolan knew the reason why: her programming had made her the Protection Bureau’s digital slave. There was no telling just how much information she�
��d buried, deleted, or simply been unable to tell him because of their coded commands.
Yet even since she’d liberated herself from their control, her efforts hadn’t yielded much better results. She’d spent most of the trip from Genesis trying to uncover any kind of digital trail that could lead her to them, yet had unearthed nothing. Indeed, were it not for the smart cells Nolan had her plant on Agent Styver—and how she’d bypassed her programming to make that happen, he didn’t know—they might not even have this tenuous lead.
Nolan had hoped Master Sergeant Kane would find something. The man had contacts everywhere, official and unofficial. Hell, during the war, he’d had connections on both sides of the battlefield. But if the master sergeant couldn’t track down intel about the Protection Bureau, it meant the organization had done a damned good job of covering up their activity. So good, in fact, that the vast majority of the Empire—including most of their own fellow government agencies—could find no trace of their existence.
“Still kicking, eh?”
Nolan was surprised to hear Master Sergeant Kane speak. More so when he realized what the man was asking.
“Hasn’t killed me yet,” he said. “Not for lack of trying, though. It got pretty bad on the last op. Not sure how much longer I’ve got.” He glanced over at the master sergeant. “You?”
The man’s shoulders gave a little twitch. “Day’s coming, but not yet.” He reached up and scratched the skin above his cybernetic right eye. “Brain’s still working mostly right. Things get a bit fuzzy first thing in the morning, but once it clears up, I’m sharp as always.”
Nolan hid a wince. It was hard for him to think of Master Sergeant Kane as mortal. The man had always been as solid as the mountains of Terra Omega, looming larger than life and unafraid of anything. He was still unafraid, yet now he was slowly dying from tungstenite poisoning, just as Nolan was. Only the damage was occurring in his brain, and for a man like the master sergeant, losing cognitive function was a fate far worse than Nolan’s paraplegia.
Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10) Page 5