‘She will. I have absolutely no doubt at all.’
~~~
In a panel on advanced medical spells and their potential effect on society, Courtney and Kyle both got to their feet as the detonations echoed through the building. Mitsuko did not stand, but she opened her ketcom out, reached for the messaging app, and then paused as she noticed the flashing indicator which said she had no connectivity.
‘The building’s network is down,’ she said. ‘No, I’m not even seeing a weaker signal from outside.’
Courtney bent to look at Mitsuko’s screen. ‘Jamming,’ she said, her voice low to avoid panicking the people nearby. ‘Someone’s jamming communications. Combine that with explosions…’
‘Someone’s attacking the symposium? Maybe the increased security suggested something might happen, but–’
‘We won’t know until we go look.’
‘We should stay put,’ Mitsuko said firmly.
‘What? But–’
‘Right now, Nava is on her way here. She’ll either stop off and bring Chess and Mel, or she’ll be heading to wherever they are from here. You did notice that she made a point of finding out where we were all going to be before we split up, didn’t you? When we’re all together, then we can see what needs to be done.’
‘The president has a point, Courtney,’ Kyle said. ‘She’s right about Nava. She is going to be heading this way and we would be better off working as a group.’
Courtney frowned. ‘You’re right.’ She realised that she sounded sullen and her frown got deeper. ‘I wish we had some information. What the Hell is going on?’
~~~
‘What’s going on?’
Nava found it interesting that Darius thought she would know. He had emerged from one of the theatres and fallen in beside her as she walked through the corridors of the centre, avoiding the relatively few individuals who had left the panels so far. That was going to change: pretty soon, she figured, there would be a large-scale exodus and total chaos.
‘I don’t know,’ Nava replied, ‘but if the first two people on my list have kept their heads, we’ll have more information soon.’ She turned left, pushing past a group of delegates who were standing at the door of a theatre, looking out with trepidation and confusion on their faces.
‘How are you going to–’
‘Mel,’ Nava said before he could go on.
Melissa and Rochester moved out into the aisle as Nava approached. ‘It’s bad,’ Melissa said.
Nodding, Nava turned to Rochester. ‘You did some scouting?’
‘Briefly,’ Rochester replied. ‘There’s one of those robot tanks in the lobby. The spider-shaped things. It wiped out the ASF people, and everyone else, down there. People in combat gear came in after it. They’re securing the ground floor, but they’ll be up here soon.’
‘Armament?’
‘The tank has machine guns and light cannons. The men are carrying assault rifles. Old-style things like you see the goons in action movies using.’
‘Okay.’ Nava mulled over that for a second.
‘How do you know all this?’ Darius asked. ‘You’re a support student. You can’t have been out there to scout.’
‘Sorcerer’s Eye,’ Melissa said. ‘Support sorcery does exactly what it says on the tin. Chess can go look around in conditions you’d get shot to pieces in. So, we provide the support you need to do the simple part.’ She frowned at the VP. ‘Nava understands that. Why don’t you?’
‘Never mind that,’ Nava said before Darius could start an argument, ‘right now we need to go pick up Suki and the others. When we’re all somewhere secure, I’d like Chess to do some more scouting.’
‘Of course,’ Rochester replied. ‘Where is more secure?’
‘Good question. Let’s go get everyone else first.’
~~~
The convention centre was basically built on three levels. Down at ground level there was the lobby, security facilities, the cafeteria, and the largest theatre where the opening ceremony had been conducted. At the top there were offices and meeting rooms. In the middle there were the bulk of the theatres and the bulk of the delegates who were now starting to panic as armed men rushed in, shouting for people to get down on the floor and make no sudden movements.
Nava had taken everyone up to the third floor and into an empty meeting room, ignoring Courtney’s questions until they were inside. ‘Melissa, lock the door,’ she said as soon as they were in. ‘Then I want you to put a wall up right behind it. Even if they break through the locking spell, they won’t be able to open the door.’ She neglected to mention the possibility of them blasting their way in with a grenade or something. Better to stay positive at a time like this. ‘Chess, get your Sorcerer’s Eye going. Fast survey of all three levels and the roof, please.’
‘On it,’ Melissa and Chess chorused.
‘That door doesn’t lock,’ Darius pointed out.
‘It will for me,’ Melissa replied, pressing her palm to the door in question. Light shimmered over the surface and she smiled. ‘You’ve never heard of Magelock? It’s funny because we don’t use the term “mage” these days. It was actually named for a spell found in fiction going back centuries. It’ll seal any door, lockable or not.’
Darius’s cheeks coloured. ‘I had actually heard of that,’ he mumbled just as Melissa summoned up a wall of energy which sat no more than two centimetres from the door and covered the entire wall. ‘That, um, that ought to hold them.’
‘Hope so. My walls aren’t the strongest, unfortunately.’
Fawn was now with them having appeared in one of the corridors as they made their way to the stairs up. She was ASF, but she was unarmed. She did not even have sorcery to work with and she was as much in the dark as everyone else. ‘What do you have on what we’re facing?’ she asked.
‘Chess spotted a spider tank, the autonomous kind, in the lobby,’ Nava replied. ‘I’m sorry, the officers down there are dead.’ Fawn’s fists clenched, but she gave a curt nod at the blunt news. ‘We also have troops. Combat fatigues and assault rifles. By now, they’ll be invading the second floor. That should take them some time since they’ll need to control all the delegates. Then I’d expect them to search up here.’
‘And we have no communications,’ Courtney added, snapping her ketcom’s screen closed. ‘We figure it’s a wide-area jammer. This is a well-coordinated attack and I’m not sure I see the point.’
Chess blinked as his senses returned to his body. ‘Uh, I haven’t finished going through everywhere, but these guys are speaking some weird language. Like, “Durchsuker den dritten stock.”’
‘German,’ Kyle said. ‘That was badly pronounced German, but they’re probably speaking German.’
‘Free Beherbergen, then,’ Nava said.
‘I’d say that’s not unlikely. And, if Chess heard someone say that, it means they’re heading up here.’
‘Chess, see what you can see on the stairs, then check the roof.’
‘Right,’ Chess replied. His eyes closed.
Nava turned to Fawn. ‘So, Free Beherbergen are attacking this symposium. Why?’
Fawn shrugged. ‘Hostages? They have plenty of hostages here. They can afford to lose quite a few and still have people to spare. I’d like to know where they got a robot tank from.’
‘The Redwings? They may have jammed comms, but this is going to be noticed. What’s the response?’
‘Isolate the convention centre from the rest of the compound. Riot shields in the tunnels. Deployment of marines. The shields will take… seconds to minutes. The troops will take longer, but they’ll have the area surrounded in thirty minutes. Then… negotiation. If they’re willing to negotiate.’
‘Befreit Beherbergen want Beherbergen to secede from the Clan Worlds Alliance,’ Kyle said. ‘I don’t think negotiations are going to go well.’
‘I think they know that,’ Rochester said. ‘Looks like they’re in this for the long haul. I found a couple more robots on the r
oof and in the vehicle park at the back. They’re not as big as the tank. Six legs and they look more like walking weapon mounts. Definitely a pair of miniguns each and possibly lasers.’
‘Point-defence units,’ Fawn said. ‘They’ll be there to stop assault teams getting in from the rear or the air. Those lasers can take out missiles as well as assault ships. They’ve got the tank on the front entrance… This isn’t going to be easy.’
‘That’s way too coordinated for Befreit,’ Kyle said. ‘They use whatever weapons they can get their hands on. Improvised bombs and a few grenades. Flak jackets are usually their best defences.’
‘Well, these ones have modern military combat dress,’ Rochester said. ‘The guns are classic terrorist weapons, but they’ve all got at least five modern fragmentation grenades. I saw people with missile launchers.’
‘We need to know where the jammer is,’ Fawn said. ‘If we can take that out somehow, we can re-establish comms.’
‘I didn’t see anything, but they’ve got a scrying block up around the entire main theatre. If I had to guess, that’s their command centre, and it’s where they’ve got the jammers.’
‘Great. Getting to that is going to be tough.’
‘Not really,’ Nava said.
‘You are not thinking what I think you’re thinking.’
‘Reading minds isn’t one of my talents, but I probably am.’
~~~
Maya watched the proceedings from a seat in the front row of the main theatre. Up on the stage, the Befreit Beherbergen people were prepping for their big announcement. A camera was being set up facing a portable stand which showed their flag – they had actually come up with their own flag – and a slogan in German which she had been told said ‘Return Our Lands!’
Out of sight of the camera, some of Maya’s colleagues from the Redwings were watching the video feeds from the robots. Actually, they were watching visual feeds from cameras and the echo displays of radar systems, and they were also monitoring the radio jammer. The scrying blocker ran pretty much autonomously once it had been initialised by a magician. By Maya, in fact. There were few magicians among the assault team. Maya considered that a mistake, but she also considered herself powerful enough to make the difference.
If she actually needed to. She was not really that bothered about this mission. It had been set up to cause the Clan Worlds pain. The chances of the Beherbergen group getting their wish granted was up there with being hit by lightning while wrestling a shark, but the ASF would be shown up as ineffectual and the assembly would lose face when a lot of ‘innocent’ people were killed right on their doorstep. And Maya? Maya would vanish without a trace when the ASF stormed the place having completed her personal mission.
Maya had a traitor to kill. She just needed to know where the bitch was.
~~~
The door of the meeting room gave a shudder as someone put their shoulder to it. Then there was a sound like a foot being applied to the wood. Then there was the sound of voices.
‘“It’s locked,”’ Kyle reported softly. ‘“It can’t be.” “Well you open it.”’
There was another attempt to break the lock which was not there and then more voices.
‘They’re reporting in to someone.’ There was a pause and then more German. ‘They’re leaving someone outside the door and moving on,’ Kyle said.
‘Interesting,’ Nava said. ‘Why didn’t they try shooting?’
‘Something else in mind?’ Courtney asked.
‘Almost certainly.’
~~~
‘Agent Maya.’ The speaker was Nikolas Wolfe Redwing, Maya’s superior. Well, he had superior rank and he was in charge of the operation on the Redwing side. In every other way, Nikolas was Maya’s inferior and she thought he probably knew that.
Whatever, Maya got to her feet and walked at a steady pace up onto the stage and across to the portable command centre where Nikolas was directing things. ‘Sir?’ she asked.
‘Our colleagues have found a room on the third floor which appears to have been secured with a spell. Go up there and eliminate anyone you find inside.’
‘Of course, sir. Has the traitor been located yet?’
‘No one matching her description has been found on the second floor. They’re still checking.’
‘But she could be in that room.’
Nikolas nodded, a smile on his lips. ‘It’s possible. I did say to eliminate everyone in there.’
‘Consider it done,’ Maya said, turning on her heel.
~~~
‘It’s this door.’ The words, in English, came through the door. Someone had arrived to back up the soldier left to guard the meeting room’s one exit. Whoever they were, they either did not reply or did so sufficiently softly that their voice did not carry.
Nava tensed, ready for what she was sure was likely to come, but there was only silence for several seconds. Nothing happened. No one pounded on the door. No one shot at the door. No one blew the door apart with explosives. There was just silence and waiting.
A wave of something passed through the room, invisible but definitely having an effect. Rochester, Fawn, and Kyle keeled over, falling to the ground. Kyle was as pale as a sheet, Rochester curled immediately into a foetal position and lay there trembling, and Fawn just sat there, staring into space. Melissa let out a shriek of panicked terror, dropped to her knees, and began to retch up what was left of her breakfast. Darius did much the same but without the screaming.
Then Maya appeared, standing in the middle of the long table which took up the centre of the room. She was dressed in grey, camouflage-patterned fatigues with a row of four ammunition cases strapped across her stomach and a pistol at her right side. In her hands was a rifle, not one of the assault rifles Rochester had described, but a modern one with a spell-assistance component mounted over a standard weapon. She spoke immediately, her weapon scanning around as she turned. ‘Where are you, bitch?! Traitor! Where–’
Nava moved, jumping up onto the table to close the distance, but Mitsuko and Courtney had pushed the Terror spell aside and were still in the game. Mitsuko threw out a Slice spell without pausing to aim. Maya ducked out of its way, a plane of energy appearing to slide the blade of quintessence aside – a Shield spell. Courtney went with Concussive Force, but again, Maya twisted out of the path of the spell and, dropping her rifle to hang on its sling, she twisted and swung her leg up for a strike at Nava’s head. Nava caught the swinging leg.
‘You were never that great at unarmed combat, sister,’ Nava said. She was in close now and Mitsuko and Courtney hung back, not wishing to accidentally hit Nava. Well, there was the danger and the surprise. Sister?
Maya attempted to break free of the hold, but Nava had too firm a grasp. ‘Traitor! You were never my sister! I am Death’s Handmaiden!’
‘You’re a reject,’ Nava said softly. ‘They told me you were dead. Let’s not make them liars.’
‘You–’ Maya’s voice cut off suddenly. Her eyes widened and the leg she was standing on gave out under her. Nava let her fall onto the table where she lay, staring up at the ceiling. Unmoving. Dead. Killed in an instant by something unseen and unknown.
Silence fell. Silence aside from the continued sound of Melissa and Darius violently retching. They had run out of stomach contents and were dry-heaving, unable to stop the visceral reaction to Maya’s Terror spell.
Mitsuko broke free of the non-magical spell holding her as Nava got down onto one knee beside Maya. ‘Is she dead?’ Mitsuko asked.
Reaching out, Nava closed Maya’s eyes. ‘Yes. Her heart stopped. You could probably get it started, but if you did, I’d just have to kill her again. So… please don’t.’
‘S-sister?’
Nava did not reply. She moved to the edge of the table and climbed off, not looking at either Mitsuko or Courtney.
‘Nava,’ Courtney began. ‘Who is–’
‘Tell them.’ Fawn struggled to her feet, blinking away whatever horror
had caused her to fall.
‘First Lieutenant?’ Nava asked, turning to face the ASF officer.
‘Tell them,’ Fawn repeated. ‘All of it, Specialist. They’re just going to speculate and keep poking at it now. It’s better they hear it all and know why they have to keep it quiet. I’ll take responsibility.’
Nava straightened her back and nodded. ‘Very well. But we’ll wait for everyone to come around, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to have to do this twice.’
~~~
‘About twenty years ago, the Redwing Faction began a project they called “Death’s Handmaiden.”’
Everyone was sitting around the table while Nava told her story. They had moved Maya’s body to the end of the room, away from the door and themselves. There had been nothing to cover her with, but she had been laid out with a degree of solemnity. The room was quiet, aside from the sound of Nava’s voice. But not for long.
‘That’s what the girl said,’ Courtney broke in. ‘“I am Death’s Handmaiden.” That’s what she meant?’
‘This will go fast if you leave questions to the end,’ Nava said. Courtney frowned, but she said nothing more. ‘Death’s Handmaiden was meant to give the faction a decisive lead in sorcery. A lethal decisive lead. They were aiming to produce sorceresses capable of killing anyone the faction deemed to be a target. Sorceresses, because it was thought easier to ensure the expression of the right genes if two X chromosomes were used. They spent four years getting their hands on genetic material from all over the known galaxy. DNA from the most powerful and skilled magicians they could find, inside the Clan Worlds and beyond. Equipment too. I understand they got some of it from Beherbergen, but a lot was sourced outside the Alliance, where the restrictions on genetic engineering are far less prohibitive.’
Nava paused. Her eyes were fixed on the table and she did not look up. ‘I came out of the incubator about six months after they gave up trying to find better DNA.’ There was a little gasp from Melissa, even if everyone had worked out this revelation was coming. ‘Maya was five days ahead of me. So, in a way, we’re sisters. She was the thirteenth successful product. I was the fourteenth. There were twenty-three in total, but six of those died in the incubation tanks and were never numbered. The first five numbers died before they were nine and so did the three born after me. They were trying some really strange variations with me and the last three. The first ones suffered from premature aging.’
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