by Ramy Vance
One of the gnomes agreed with Sarah. He spent nearly an hour getting in contact with the other four groups, all of which were raiding other parts of the defense ring. While the gnomes organized their meetup, Sarah continued to survey the final ring.
During the hour, not a single orc came outside. Not a single guard could be seen. Whatever was in that final ring between her and the command center was going to be deadly. Much deadlier than an orc.
The other gnome refused to leave Sarah. He’d decided that he was getting into that defense ring with her no matter what. Sarah didn’t bother trying to dissuade him. She knew how stubborn gnomes could be.
The gnomes said their goodbyes, and the one who was leaving thanked Sarah for giving him a chance to get out before anything terrible happened. Then Sarah and the remaining gnome returned their attention to the final ring.
Sarah outlined the plan. They were going to work their way along the outside of the ring, sticking close to the sparse foliage for camouflage. There would be a few instances when they had absolutely no cover, but those moments would have to be spent sprinting.
The gnome agreed, and they began to make their way through the ring, working slowly as they moved horizontally, crawling at times to keep out of the potential line of sight from anyone watching from the center’s windows.
The going was slow, but it was happening. At this rate, Sarah thought they’d be in the center of the defense ring within the hour.
Chapter Two
Sneaking into the control center was easier than Sarah had expected. Once Sarah and the gnome had penetrated the last defense ring, they snuck through one of the open windows they found, the gnome strapped to Sarah’s chest like a newborn child.
Once within the building, they found a broom closet to hide in while they figured out their next step. They hadn’t been able to get any intel on the layout of the building. There was no way to find out where the information about the Dark Gate was being held. And it was a big building.
Normally, Sarah would have just deployed her stealth cloak and taken her time getting the lay of the building. That was one of the reasons she had tried so hard to convince both of the gnomes to head back home. But this gnome, whose name she hadn’t even bothered to learn, had refused to go. Now his presence was complicating the entire mission.
It would have simplified everything if Sarah was alone. But this wasn’t only her fight. This was the gnome’s homeworld. It made sense that he would want to be part of the battle to reclaim his home. Sarah just wished that he had chosen his battles better.
Sarah whispered to the gnome, “We’re going to have to figure out a way to move around in here.”
He said nothing, though he did point at the air ducts above them. It was an old-school way to gain access. Sarah hadn’t had to make her way through an air duct in years. Why the hell not? she thought. He’s small enough. It won’t be a problem for him.
Sarah prised the metal grating off the air duct. Then she climbed into it, situated herself, and tossed a rope down to the gnome, who pulled himself up effortlessly.
The unlikely pair made their way through the duct, occasionally stopping to listen to the conversations happening beneath them, trying to make sense of where they should be going. The building was larger than Sarah had expected. Usually, defense rings had smaller main buildings. The only large-scale center Sarah had heard about was one that a group called the Mundanes had happened across. Still, Sarah hadn’t been able to verify it for herself.
From various conversations, Sarah was able to glean that there were different wings to the building. What she was looking for was most likely in the development wing. It blew her mind that there were orcs who were working in science. Sarah felt she had a good grip on the racial politics of the nine realms, but even she couldn’t imagine orcish scientists.
Either way, that was where they were heading. It wouldn’t be too hard to find, just take time, of which there was none to waste. The two unlikely companions continued their search.
Abby had finally forced herself to get out of bed. She knew she wasn’t tired. There wasn’t any point in lying around. No ideas had come to her. She was still just floundering, wishing she could help someone, but only feeling useless.
A slight headache was gnawing at the back of her head. They had become a regular occurrence since she had taken the nanobots into her body. The two were obviously linked, but Abby hadn’t had time to investigate how. She showered quickly, then stared at her reflection in the mirror.
As the fog from the hot shower evaporated from the mirror, she looked closely at her eyes. They were so different with odd, halo-like rings of green and blue along the edges. The skin around her eyes had a metallic hue.
Abby dressed and returned to her desk, her mind full of different thoughts. Nothing was certain. When she had first come to Middang3ard HQ, everything had been relatively straightforward—do what she could to destroy the Dark One and avenge her father. Nothing had changed, but it felt like everything had.
Destroying the Dark One was also tied to saving someone’s life. And possibly endangering her own.
Abby did the only thing she could think of— she called her mother.
The phone didn’t ring long before Ma picked up. “Abby, is that you? Oh, my God, how are you doing? I haven’t heard from you in—”
She was cut off by Abby bursting into tears. It was a terrible sound, worse than any of the other times the girl had cried. She hated the sound. It made her feel weak, which was one of the reasons she tried to keep her tears to herself. People didn’t need to see this side of her. But her mother already did. She’d seen Abby through the worst of it.
When Abby stopped crying, they were able to talk. She let it all out—everything she’d been worried about, all of the pressure she felt from working with so many smart, capable people. She dumped the contents of her soul out for her mother in the way that only children can.
After she was finished speaking, her mother was silent for a few moments. Then she said, “You’re trying as hard as you can. That’s all that anyone can ask of you.”
That wasn’t enough. Abby needed something else, something more from her mother. She needed the platitudes her father had given her, the wise sayings that seemed to come out of nowhere but which perfectly explained everything away. And that knowledge of her need lit up in a flame of anger. But she kept it to herself. She knew she wasn’t angry at her mom. The anger was deeper than that.
Ma could never be Pa. She knew that. She’d gotten other things from her relationship with her mother. Encouragement. Love. Understanding. It was unfair of her to expect her mother to fill the void her father’s death had created. Yet she couldn’t keep herself from wanting just that at this moment. “You think about him much?”
“Every day. So much it hurts.”
“Ma…I don’t know if I can help these people. Someone…their life depends on me…and I don’t know what I’m going to do. Don’t know if I can help them. And if they die, it’ll be just like—”
“Abby, you saved your entire family. Your father would be proud of you. We all are.”
The two were silent for a bit as she considered her mother’s words. They hadn’t been groundbreaking, yet even in their straightforward statement of the truth, they were profound beyond their instance. “Abby,” her mother said, “you can do this. And you know it. Just because it’s hard, it doesn’t mean you can’t. Just means it’s going to be hard. And we didn’t raise no quitter.”
Abby looked at her hand as the nanobots came out of her pores and covered her skin. “You’re right. I’ll figure it out. I love you. I have to go.”
“I love you too, sweetie. Call again soon.”
Abby hung up the phone, stood, and went to the mirror. “Martin, how integrated with me are you?” she asked.
It took a little bit of time for Martin to answer. “At the moment, maybe six percent,” he answered. “I’ve been trying to keep myself separate, but the nanobots
are connected to my mainframe, so there’s an overlay. I didn’t want to worry you about it since I’ve been keeping it steady at six.”
“What would happen if we bumped it up to fifty percent?”
“An increase in your processing ability. But…not sure about what else would happen. Integrating AI and organic is new territory. I know it wouldn’t kill you, but that’s about it.”
Abby stared at her reflection. Her eyes were her eyes, her skin her skin. Her mind was her mind. “Do it,” she whispered.
Martin hesitated before answering. “Are you sure? There’s no—”
“Do it.”
Abby felt a tinkling in the back of her head, down in her brainstem. Then there was nothing but pain as her body seized up, every nerve on fire, her muscles twitching as her teeth clenched, her eyes wide as if she were in the grip of a vision. She fell to the ground, foaming from the mouth, her fingers twitching as her consciousness became something entirely new.
Sarah and the gnome were making their way toward what they thought would be the science department. They needed to get to the functioning Gate. Something the resistance didn’t have the resources for. They had overheard multiple conversations between the orcs and had pieced together the layout of the center.
There had never been a mission with so little resistance in all of Sarah’s career. Outside of the lost gnomes in the tunnel, there had hardly been any casualties. That included Sarah’s kill count. She hoped things would continue in this way.
They continued through the air ducts until Sarah raised her hand. The room ahead was supposed to be the science department. When Sarah looked through the air ducts, she saw three orcs sitting around a coffee table, talking as they sipped their drinks. Sarah figured she must have gotten turned around. But this was as good a chance as any to figure out where they were.
Sarah turned to the gnome and pressed a finger to her lips, gesturing for his silence. She felt kind of silly, making a point to remind him to be silent since he’d not made a sound since they entered the last defense ring. Then Sarah removed the air duct’s grating and planned her attack.
None of the three orcs had noticed the faint noise of the grate moving.
Sarah dropped from the air duct a few feet from the trio of orcs, her daggers in hand. She threw blades into two of the orc’s throats. Before the last orc could react, Sarah grabbed him by the throat, pulled him to the ground, and choked him out. Sarah waited for a moment to make sure no one walked by.
A supply closet led off the right corner of the room. Sarah dragged the two corpses over to the closet and stuffed them inside. Then she wrapped a thin wire around the waist of the orc she had knocked out, leapt back into the air duct, attached the wire to a mechanical pully, and pulled the orc up into the duct.
Once the orc was in the air duct, Sarah raised some smelling salts to his nose, and he snapped awake. She held her hand over his mouth and pressed a dagger to his throat. “You’re going to take us to the Dark Gate research facility,” Sarah growled. “You understand?”
The orc nodded vehemently.
“Good. Now get going. If I hear a sound out of you, I’m going to carve out your asshole before I slit your throat. Got it?”
The orc didn’t need to respond. He oriented himself before leading the way. It didn’t take too long. The directions Sarah had figured out hadn’t been that far off. Once the orc moved out of the way, Sarah could see the Dark Gate.
“Perfect,” she murmured.
The orc whispered, his voice trembling, “Can I go now?”
Sarah nodded as she drew her pistol. She pressed the orc’s head against the side of the duct and fired, the sound of her pistol dampened by the attached silencer. “Come on, let’s go,” she said to the gnome, who climbed gingerly over the orc’s corpse.
The pair dropped into the room as silently as shadows. The orc had led them to the right spot. Ten Dark Gates were scattered around the room, all hooked up to one main, large Gate. “Looks like we found the motherload,” Sarah said. “Okay, let’s get to work. Download anything you can get your hands on.”
The gnome got started at one computer as Sarah went to another terminal and did the same. She was looking for one specific piece. Or at least information about the piece. Whatever was allowing the orcs to use the Dark Gates as a two-way street.
Luckily, Sarah had enough experience with Dark Gate schematics to avoid shooting in the dark. She scanned through schematic after schematic on the computers before she became frustrated by the lack of results. So she studied the actual Dark Gate instead.
These Dark Gates were different from models she’d seen before. Even newer than the models she’d seen with Kravis a few weeks ago. The Dark One was obviously still trying to improve the system, and he had the resources to do that as well. That was the most troubling part.
The ability to move back and forth through the Dark Gates wouldn’t have been so frightening if the vast expense of creating Dark Gates were a problem. But it wasn’t. They were most likely being churned out without the slightest worry concerning the cost of resources.
As Sarah looked over the backside of one of the Dark Gate, she focused on a part she’d never seen before. It was next to the module responsible for syncing and matching the hadron collider’s frequency. Sarah recorded the location of the part, then returned to the computer, and identified its purpose.
A schematic had the piece labeled as a redundant frequency generator. Sarah hoped she was right as she turned to one of the Dark Gates and pulled the generator off. Then she began to download as much information off the computer as possible onto a flash drive.
After a couple of tense minutes, the gnome came over to Sarah. “There are orcs on their way.”
“How do you know?”
“There’s a map on my computer. It shows a group is on their way, a large one.”
Sarah nodded, disconnected from the computer, pocketed her flash drive and the generator, and then helped the gnome up into the air duct. They both watched as, after a couple of minutes, orcs poured into the room.
What looked like a chieftain went to the computer Sarah had been working at. He looked over something, grunting softly to himself. Then he turned to the orcs in the room. “Brothers and sisters, fellow servants of our glorious Dark Lord,” he said. “Today will be another of our victories. We go to Earth. Our victory will not be rushed, though. We will take our time and listen to the patient wisdom of our Dark Lord. Soon the humans will understand what we offer them. They will rush to be embraced into the fold of our Dark Lord.”
Sarah leaned in to get a better look at the computer screen behind the chieftain. All but one of the Dark Gates were operational. She could barely make out the coordinates. Instead of straining her eyes any longer, she pulled out a small camera, zoomed in, and snapped a couple of pictures. Then she nudged the gnome to get moving.
The orcs were about to launch a raid. Sarah didn’t need to stay to see that. She had to get as far away as possible and warn someone who could help.
It took Sarah and the gnome nearly six hours to get back to their camp. They debriefed with the other four groups. There had hardly been any casualties, and both of the other groups had been able to siphon off a good deal of intel.
The combination of all five groups’ intel allowed Sarah to piece together the Dark One’s plan of attack.
There were over twenty Dark Gates in the center. Nine were being used for an invasion on the human homeworld, but the invasion was broken into nine different spots, each Gate leading to a separate destination. The Dark One was attempting to overwhelm humanity with confusion, rather than try to take over one central position.
This was more subtle than anything Sarah had seen the Dark One try before. Small skirmishes that resulted in human death would generate fear. And fear toppled empires.
Sarah sent a debriefing file to Myrddin and hoped he would know what to do with it. She included everything she found, deciding that it was better to not
keep anything for herself. She was tired of squirreling away bargaining tools in case something didn’t go her way.
After the gnomes cleared out, one stayed. It was the gnome who had been at Sarah’s side the whole mission. Sarah still didn’t know his name, and she felt slightly embarrassed by her rudeness. “What are you still doing here?” she asked.
The gnome extended his hand. “Name’s Bim-bop. We never formally introduced ourselves.”
“Sorry, I’m not used to working in teams, let alone leading my own. Doing introductions seemed to be a waste of time. But you did good. Really kept up. Don’t think I’ve seen a gnome be so sneaky before.”
“Thank you. I just wanted to thank you for a chance to work alongside you. It meant a lot to me. Watching other people save my world doesn’t sit right. And I’m not a warrior. Not really a fighter like some of the others. But this…I think I can do this. It was great to be able to watch you work.”
Bim-bop bowed slightly and turned to leave.
Sarah didn’t know why, but she waved at the gnome and said, “You got potential. A lot of it. I was moving full force by the end and you… What I mean to say is, I know some people who could train you. Hell, if we live long enough, Kravis and I could train you.”
Bim-bop turned to meet Sarah’s eyes. How had she not seen how young the gnome was? He couldn’t have been any older than a teenager. “Thanks,” he said. “I would really appreciate that.” With those words, he disappeared into the night, leaving Sarah alone with her thoughts.
Sarah returned to her tent. Kravis was already sleeping, snoring loudly. He’d left a plate of food out for her. Sarah sat and ate, poring over the information she’d sent Myrddin. She hoped he would make sense of it in time. Coming up with plans wasn’t Sarah’s job. Making sure people had the information to plan with was.