Covert Ops

by T. R. Cameron

  She snorted rudely, and the image vanished. When she followed the Drow into the kitchen, she found her rinsing the cups out and setting them to dry next to the teapot inverted on the draining rack. “I apologize. You are absolutely correct. I hereby renounce my position as Morality Sheriff.”

  The Dark Elf’s stiff back softened as she chuckled. “Very good, protégé. You are able to learn. Before our time together is finished, perhaps you will even understand yourself a little better.”

  Diana laughed. “Let’s try to keep our aspirations reasonable, shall we? There’s no reason to go crazy here.”

  Nylotte turned with a serious expression. “You should realize that in our fight against the Remembrance and whoever leads them, I may need to contact people far less savory than those we have already engaged.”

  She nodded. “I get it. No worries.”

  Her teacher answered with a loud clap. “Excellent. Now, gather your magical colleagues together. We’re headed to Oriceran to cause trouble and steal stuff.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  She and Rath had picked Cara up, and they’d driven to the headquarters building to get ready. The vehicle was, as always, a pleasure to drive, and Diana enjoyed each and every twist and turn along the way. She squealed the tires in the garage and skidded to a stop perfectly within the lines of the space that she’d targeted.

  Her second-in-command stared at her like she was crazy. “Showing off much?”

  “You gotta take the fun moments where you can get them.” She laughed.

  Cara nodded. “Amen to that, sister.”

  “Why so serious?” Rath interjected. His impression was good enough to draw laughs from each of them. As they passed through the tunnel, Diana realized that not only was she pumped up about their mission to locate the blades, she felt happy about it. Whatever internal concerns had bugged her had been banished. One look at the bounce in Cara’s step showed that she felt the same. And Rath…well, he could always be depended on to see the bright side of life.

  They traded jokes while they changed into their tunics and strapped their armor on. She and Cara packed exclusively anti-magic rounds since the one thing they could absolutely count on would be magical opposition of some kind. Grenades were another matter, however. She stared at the selection and found no clues forthcoming as to what might be the most useful. With a shrug, she selected one of each type other than incendiary and slid them into the open slots on her belt and left thigh.

  Cara replaced her in front of the grenades as Diana retrieved her carbine from the wall and strapped it on. Her AI collar lay around her neck, but she wasn’t sure how well it would work on Oriceran. She had a notion that some of the processing and data access was offloaded to headquarters via the comm device at the back of her belt and assumed it wasn’t designed for interplanetary communication. The comms would function without a home connection, though, as the redesign after the museum battle had eliminated the need for a base station in favor of distributed networking.

  She noticed Rath peering down at his vest in search of something and sat beside him on the bench. Since he stood on it, the arrangement put them more or less eye-to-eye. “What’s up, doc?”

  He grinned. “Duck season.”

  “Rabbit season.”

  The troll extended two knives to her, and she accepted them and held them up to the light. “These are sharp. A little misused, though. Where did you get these?”

  “Training. Friend of Professor Charlotte.”

  “A Griffin?”

  He laughed. “Not officially. Sometime maybe. Good at throwing things.”

  “Excellent. You can teach Cara a thing or two.”

  From the other side of the room, her second-in-command replied, “I heard that.” After a pause, she added, “And you’re not wrong.”

  Rath gestured toward his vest. “No sheaths.”

  Diana tapped his arms to get him to raise them and looked at the vest. Sure enough, it lacked any open slots to put the knives on. “Wait a sec.” She turned and rummaged in one of the miscellaneous gear bins and found a strap. It was too long, so she looped it before running it around him between his ribs and his stomach and grabbed gaffer’s tape to secure it in four places. She attached two knife holders at the appropriate angles, and he slid the weapons home with a grin.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. But please, don’t stab me, ʼkay?”

  Cara chimed in, “I’ll give you five dollars to stab her.”

  She shook her head. “Traitor.”

  After a couple more minutes, they were as prepared as they could be. Diana concentrated and opened a portal she’d only done once before. On the opposite side, the bedroom that formerly belonged to Nehlan could be seen through the wavering rift. She turned to her teammates. “Ready?”

  They nodded. Neither appeared concerned and both looked as happy as she felt about the quest for the artifacts. Of course, once they find out it’s in a tomb, they might feel differently.

  Good choice not to tell them, then,” her internal voice replied,

  She grinned. Well, you know how it is. Sometimes, Drow are jerks.

  Nylotte waited across the room when they arrived. She was dressed in leather from toes to collar, all of it black except for the tight jacket she wore, which was a deep shade of purple. She’d pulled her white hair back in a braid, which gave her the most martial look Diana had ever seen on her. The satchel she’d carried before was strapped across her chest again and rested on her right hip. Nods and greetings were exchanged.

  The Drow turned to her. “Are you and your team ready to do this?”

  “We are.”

  “Very well.” She waved her arms in a circle to conjure another portal, this one leading to what looked like a darkened hallway. Diana went first, followed by Cara and Rath, and Nylotte stepped through and closed the rift behind her. A cavern surrounded them, seemingly natural stone that had been carved into a rough descending staircase. Light was provided only by occasional flickering lanterns hung from spikes pounded into the walls.

  Cara peered around with her hands on her hips. “Lovely place.”

  Rath nodded and sneezed. “Dusty.”

  Diana knelt and examined the floor, which had several footprints of differing sizes visible in the grime. “But not as secret or hidden as we thought, apparently. People have been through here. I would guess recently, too, although there’s no way to know how old these are.”

  Nylotte studied them over her shoulder. “At least one is a dwarf or a gnome. Or maybe a mid-sized troll.”

  She stood quickly. “Onward?”

  The Drow nodded. Diana led them forward carefully and left herself time to react to any mundane traps or hints from her magic danger sense. They found one not too far down the path, a tripwire and dart mechanism. It had already been sprung, and the walls were covered in tiny needles. There was no gap to indicate that they’d hit anything. Again, it offered no information on when the trap had been triggered, but she felt an increasing certainty that they were not alone in the space.

  That feeling was confirmed when they reached the next trap, which had found a victim. It apparently used some kind of acid, because a humanoid figure lay on the ground with most of its face disintegrated. The surrounding blood had not seeped away completely, and that which had collected in the cracks and crevices remained damp.

  Nylotte grunted. “This place is more dangerous than I imagined it would be, which increases the probability that Rhazdon’s Vengeance lies within.”

  Diana chuckled darkly. “Or about a million pissed-off wizard skeletons or something.”

  Cara coughed. “Wait, what?”

  Rath grinned. “Skeletons. Groovy.”

  She laughed and held her rifle up to the troll. “This is my boomstick.”

  He dissolved into a series of quiet laughs while their teammate stared at them and Nylotte shook her head. The Drow tilted her head toward Cara. “She may have become my favorite
student.”

  Diana snorted. “Just because you have no taste in movies doesn’t mean you should be jealous of those of us who do.”

  The other agent tried again. “Are you saying we’re in a tomb? Like, an underground crypt filled with dead things lying around?”

  Nylotte offered a wicked grin. “Or no longer lying around, as the case may be. But yes to the first part.”

  Cara pointed a finger at her boss. “We’ll discuss information sharing later, boss. It’s a thing. Look it up.”

  A loud crash sounded from deeper in the tomb, and they all sobered in response. Diana kept her voice at a whisper barely strong enough to reach the Dark Elf in the back of the formation. “Onward. I’m first, then Rath, then Cara, then Nylotte. As long as we can be sneaky, we do it. If we find someone we absolutely must engage, we try to keep it quiet. Maybe we can get near these other bastards without them realizing we’re here.”

  She advanced along the hallway until it reached a pair of open doors. There were signs that others had passed through recently in the dust that covered everything. She paused and searched for traps but detected none. Her attention was caught by a sarcophagus that rested at the front of the chamber, supported on an ornate table and illuminated by a chandelier that hung above it. The room widened as she walked forward, and she shifted her gaze deliberately around the space—left, right, up, and down.

  Even so, she found it difficult not to be distracted by the object ahead. The stone was intricately carved, and as she traced the designs up from the base, she realized that the lid wasn’t on. Great. It’s probably a mummy that’ll attack us. Or a Lich. That’ll suck. Ever since her early experiences with the Tomb of Horrors module, she feared liches with a deep and abiding passion.

  Perhaps the overall abundance of sensory input was to blame for her failure to notice the waiting ambush. Time slowed, and she jerked her head back to barely avoid the needle-thin line of flame that slashed across her vision to sear into the left-hand wall. She threw her body back and down to avoid a possible swing of the weapon that would behead her. A curse sounded from the right, and feet pounded rapidly away down the hallway in that direction. She flipped up and raced in pursuit. Nylotte reacted quickest and was on her heels in a moment. Ahead, the figure darted through an opening and a huge door began to descend from the ceiling with spikes on the bottom. Diana shouted and slid beneath it with space to spare. She twisted and heaved a block of force under it so the Dark Elf could make it through, but the enormous weight of the grid slammed it shut before the others could arrive, which left them on the opposite side.

  Diana spoke into her comms but received only silence in response.

  Cara tried again. “Boss? Are you there?” She shook her head at Rath when no reply came. “Check around and see if there’s a switch or something.” She joined him in the search, but they found nothing useful at all. “Well, damn.”

  The troll grinned. “Guess we go left.”

  She nodded. “I guess so. I’m gonna be honest, I liked the odds better when there were four of us.”

  “Never tell me the odds.”

  Cara groaned. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I.”

  “Yep.”

  At least I’m entertaining the troll. That’s a plus. She led the way into the room with the sarcophagus and peered into it. The empty space within did nothing good for her anxiety. “So, do you think they never actually put anyone in there?”

  Rath jumped up and shook his head. “Nope. I think it woke up.”

  “That’s really not possible.”

  He shrugged. “Magic. Wildcard.”

  “Yeah. You’re right, there. You never know what those crazy wizards, witches, elves, other elves, dwarfs, and Kilomea will get up to.”

  “Don’t forget gnomes.”

  “Right, gnomes.”

  He grinned. “Or Willen.”

  Cara rolled her eyes. “Let’s stop now.” He laughed and followed her as she moved down the hallway leading from the left side of that room. It turned to the right and curved right again, then led to a space that would have been immediately behind the chamber they’d entered earlier. Judging by the way the space in front of her seemed to open up, it was a mirrored arrangement to the other, although no corridor extended in the direction Diana had gone. Dang. That’s one hope dashed.

  She paused as an unusual shuffling noise emerged from the area at the end of the hall. She raised her rifle and rushed forward to discover six skeletons that lurched awkwardly into motion, but their movement seemed to become smoother with every step. Rath skidded in behind her, and for a moment, neither of them reacted as they stared ahead.

  “Do you see this too?” she asked,

  The sound of his batons extending to full length accompanied a nod. Her glasses verified that they had no heat signature at all. They were, literally, the walking dead. Or, maybe for clarity and with due respect to zombies—please, don’t let there be zombies—the walking really dead.

  She raised her barrel and sighted down it. “Watch out for whoever’s waking these jerks up. Logically, they’ve gotta be around here somewhere.” Inside, a part of her brain that still shook its head in disbelief suggested that logic had nothing to do with what they faced. She pulled the trigger, and the skull on the nearest shattered. Naturally, that didn’t stop the rest of the body at all.

  Rath darted in, hammered the closest skeleton on the right side, and his batons struck it in the knees. They shattered and it fell. He looked up with a smile, but she shook her head. “Look again.” He did and grimaced when the skeleton dragged itself toward him. He regained his cheerful demeanor as quickly and leapt up to land on its back and break the brittle bones before he finally dispatched the skull to the rear of the room using his baton in a golf swing.

  Cara grinned. You know, this would make a good VR game. I need to talk to Kayleigh about that. She let the rifle fall and attacked with her fists and feet, weaving her way through the slow-moving assailants and literally disarming them, then making another pass through to remove other important limbs. Rath raced her on the opposite side as he disabled his targets one by one and pounded them into the ground. A skull whizzed past her head, and she glared at him. “Careful, there, Arnold Palmer.”

  He laughed. “Hail to the king, baby.”

  It was a passable impersonation, and she laughed. While she’d been engaged with the skeletons, she’d remained alert and wondered if and when the person who’d raised them would appear. They had finally dispatched the last of the bony warriors when a witch in a red dress with scarlet ribbons in her blonde hair suddenly winked into existence. She pointed a wand at Cara and shadow energy extended toward her. It expanded into a larger and larger cone as it approached in waves that reminded her of the ocean. For a moment, they were almost captivating in their slow roll, then she recovered her wits and flung herself to the side to avoid them.

  Rath ran at the witch with a battle cry, and the cone vanished as their enemy pointed the wand at him. She released a much faster thin bolt of shadow, but the troll simply vaulted over it. Cara took an instant to perfect her aim and fired three bullets at the woman’s chest. She staggered back but didn’t fall. “Dammit. Vests, again. It’s like they’re standard dark side issue these days.” The fact that they’d made it to Oriceran didn’t shock her. Criminals love discussing how to beat the authorities. She raised her aim and fired at the woman’s head, but she dropped out of sight behind another one of the tables that, fortunately, didn’t have a coffin of any kind on it.

  The snap of Rath’s batons echoed through the space, and she dashed over in case he needed help. He was on top of the witch and stabbed his weapons into her again. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped, as boneless as the skeletons they’d destroyed. She bent to zip-tie her wrists, and Rath did the same to her ankles. That done, she snatched the wand up and threw it far across the room while the troll connected the two ties with a third, which would keep her immobile.


  Cara stood and peered around the room now that she had time to notice the details. Ledges extended from the walls, three on each side, for the skeletons to rest on when they weren’t sent to kill intruders. Two were at rib height, and the middle was at eye level. All of them were empty. The chamber had only one exit other than the one they’d used to enter, and that again led to the left.

  She shrugged and headed toward it. “C’mon buddy. Maybe we’ll find some zombies or vampires to play with.”

  The troll skipped up beside her with a grin. “Hope so. Fun.”

  The agent laughed. “You know, this once, I’ll have to agree. I hope Diana doesn’t face anything worse.”

  At that moment, in a different section of the labyrinthine crypt, Diana made a hasty retreat as a giant golem—at least twelve feet high and enormously wide—lumbered out of the pit where it had been hiding. It was a hideous creation, an amalgam of pieces of bone and bodies in various stages of decay. In its hand was a broad club formed of overlapping bones held together with what looked like razor wire. Closer inspection revealed it was actually some kind of sinew with teeth embedded in it.

  Her stomach fluttered as she turned to Nylotte. “I hope you have a good idea because right now, all I can think to do is run screaming.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Nylotte shook her head. “Even in my experience, this is an abomination. I have never heard of such a thing.”

  A mocking voice spoke from outside the portcullis that had fallen to block the front exit from the room. Matching grids had descended to cut off the room’s other exits. “Foolish Drow. You should have been quieter, like we were, and avoided waking the beast.” He was barely visible from their position and seemed shorter than average.