“The logistics infrastructure is mostly in place to provide that same animal blood to every vampire in North America and large chunks of South America,” the Arbiter told him. “If the Committee will grant my teknon the rights of their citizenship, then I shall do all within my power to have them honor the responsibilities of it.”
David inhaled sharply.
“I can’t guarantee that,” he warned. “That falls to the Committee.”
“I know. What falls to you, Commander White, is to guarantee the safety of my charges, and the security of this facility against the storm my brethren will shortly unleash upon it.”
David sighed and nodded.
“That, Arbiter, I can do,” he admitted. “If you are prepared to accept the warrant and surrender.”
“The safety of the teknon is everything.”
“What does that word even mean?” David asked.
“Children, Commander White. Their adulthood, their selves have been stolen from them by the transformation. We teach them how to be people again.”
“My orders are that they are to be unharmed. Securing this facility is a requirement,” David noted. “We cannot allow the Familias to retake it.”
“Then my oaths leave me no choice,” the Arbiter said calmly. “Neither I nor my people will fight you. We surrender the Mountain.”
“What aid can you give me to defend it?” David asked. “You would after all, be protecting the teknon.”
The Arbiter shook his head.
“We…cannot so broadly interpret our oaths,” he pointed out. “More so than most of parahumanity, we are predators and must struggle with our oaths. We must err on the side of pacifism, Commander, especially when we know that the Familias will do all in their power to avoid harming our charges.”
David stared at the vampire for a few seconds. That was nuts—even with both sides trying not to hurt the fledglings, collateral damage was a distinct possibility.
“Accidents happen,” he finally pointed out.
“Yes,” the Arbiter agreed. “But we are bound by our oaths, Commander, as are you. What aid we can give—materiel, intelligence, assistance with the Mountain’s systems—we will give. But we will no more fight for you than we will fight you.”
25
Still feeling somewhat off-balance, David strode back into the main loading dock. He glanced around the dozen Keepers still standing there.
“Where are the controls for the doors?” he demanded.
“Over here,” the same blonde Keeper who’d been his guide earlier told him, materializing out of the shadows like a ghost. “I’ve been assigned to keep you informed and enable your operations,” she continued. “What do you need us to do?”
“For now, open both main doors and turn on the lights,” David ordered. “Then I want all of you to go to your living quarters and stay there, except as needed to take care of the fledglings.”
“I am to assist you, but otherwise, those were the Arbiter’s instructions as well,” she told him calmly. “Come with me and we’ll open the doors.”
The woman turned to the rest of the Keepers.
“You heard the Commander,” she told them. David hadn’t spoken loudly, but given that everyone there was a vampire… “The Mountain has fallen; we now answer to Omicron.
“This is necessary for the salvation of our race,” she continued. “We are oathbound, and the Arbiter’s Truce binds us as well. The same oaths that bind us to yield if the teknon are safe mean we will not fight with Omicron, either—our kin will not harm our charges.
“We know the Familias will come. We will not fight them. We will not help them,” she said flatly. “This is the Arbiter’s command.
“Go back to your rooms. Fulfill your duties. The next few days will decide the fate of our race…and our oaths demand that we do nothing.”
More Keepers had appeared in the big open space as she spoke. Whoever the blonde was, her voice clearly carried weight. When she finished, the vampires began to disperse, disappearing back into corridors and tunnels leading deeper into the mountain.
“This way,” she said, turning back to David. “I’m trained on the control systems for the bunker.”
“Everyone seems to be listening to you,” he replied. “Just who are you?”
“The Elder Sister,” she explained with a grin. “You met the Younger Sister when you met the Arbiter the first time. We are his bodyguards, aides, and”—she shrugged—“occasional lovers. We speak for him, help him with computers and the other modern technology he occasionally has trouble with.”
“Do you have a name?” David asked.
“You can call me Jenna,” she replied with a giggle. “My sister is Gabriel. Come, Commander.”
“I’m surprised you’re so willing to be helpful,” he said as he followed her into the control room and she began to tap keys on the computers.
“The Arbiter thinks that a formal Truce, re-binding us to human law in exchange for the right to exist, is necessary for our survival,” Jenna told him. “Without such a deal, Omicron will eventually exterminate us, and that, Commander, my oaths do not permit.”
David heard motors whir to life and the doors begin to open.
“I cannot follow you outside, of course,” she noted. “But I would hope that you can talk down your strike forces and fire support before they blow up my charges. I and the Arbiter would be…upset if this went wrong now.”
JENNA HANDED David the keys to a Jeep and sent him back outside. He could have reached his people by radio inside the Mountain, but he suspected that being visible while telling people to stand down was a good idea.
“All right, people,” he said into the radio, stopping the vehicle in the parking lot where Jamie Riley and his Second were waiting beside McCreery’s helicopter. “The good news is that so long as we aren’t planning on massacring the fledglings, the Keepers have surrendered.
“We have achieved our initial objectives without bloodshed, but that always means there’s another shoe coming,” David continued. “I want everyone on the ground in the main lot by McCreery ASAP. This isn’t a briefing I want to give over the radio.”
Plus, he needed to check in with Warner before things went further.
“Lord Riley.” He inclined his head to the Elfin. “I’m going to call home. Can you get everyone organized and ready?”
“And here I forgot my orange jacket and flares,” Riley told him, but nodded. “We’ll make it happen. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
David stepped into McCreery’s Pendragon to take advantage of the aircraft’s sound-dampening. With ten helicopters headed his way, even magically stealthed ones, any tool to make the conversation easier was useful.
“Major Warner, this is White,” he pinged the base commander. “Reporting in.”
A few seconds passed while she got on the channel.
“What’s your status, Commander?”
“You’ll probably want to have Charles or Leitz pull the footage from my camera of the conversation I just had with the Arbiter,” David told her. “The summary: if we’ll commit to protect the facility and not harm the fledglings, the Keepers have surrendered.”
“The Committee made a good call,” she replied. “That’s fantastic, Commander, the best possible outcome.”
“The Arbiter also has a suggestion for a long-term truce,” David continued. “At the minimum, he has the ability, on his own, to bind any new vampires who leave the Mountain to honor our laws and not harm humans. Assuming, of course, that we’re willing to accept these ‘Truce-bound’ vampires as exempt from Order Twenty-one.”
Warner was silent for a few seconds, then exhaled heavily.
“Damn. That’s…”
“Hope for the future, ma’am,” David said. “For us and them. And if we can convince some of the Familias to sign on, too…”
“Then suddenly, we have vampire Elders and commandos to throw at the demons,” Warner finished for him. “I’m n
ot sure the Committee would sign off on that, David. You’re talking beings with rap sheets a mile long and piles of dead bodies to their name.”
“I know. The Arbiter didn’t even suggest it, but I think it’s something we need to realize has to be on the table.”
“I don’t know if we can sell the Committee on a blanket pardon,” Warner told him, putting into words what they both knew would have to be the Familias’s requirement for signing off on the Arbiter’s Truce. “But…to end the violence, to bring the vampires back into the fold as productive citizens?”
“I’ll make the case before the Committee myself if we need it, ma’am. I’m pretty sure the Arbiter will come with me to do it—and any of them that break the Truce are fair game for us.”
“That might be enough, Commander White. But I get the feeling there’s a catch you’re not telling me.”
“The Arbiter admits the Familias have agents among his Keepers. Their oaths forbid them from violence, not sending text messages.”
“Oh. Fuck.”
“I figure we’re probably safe enough tonight, but tomorrow night, we’re going to see the massed firepower of the North American Vampire Familias thrown at this base,” David stated. “How long can I keep those planes and artillery?”
“I’ll make damned fucking sure you have them that long,” the Major told him flatly. “I don’t know if I can scrape up Omicron or Elfin reinforcements, though; you already have everything we can spare.”
“I know.” He paused. “Ma’am, this is going to cost us if we hold. It’s the right thing to do, but I’m not certain I have the authority to make this call.”
“Fuck that,” Warner said. “You made the call already. We’ll back you. Hold the line, Commander White.”
She chuckled softly.
“The survival of the vampire species may depend on it.”
EXITING THE PENDRAGON, David found himself facing a field of confused and questioning faces. It was intriguing, to him at least, that he could almost tell who had worked with him before and who hadn’t by how calm they looked.
Mason and Klein both looked curious but unbothered. Riley and Young were even calmer. Most of Klein’s usual squad and Mason’s ONSET Fifteen looked concerned but confident.
Sokol, ONSET Six, and the thirty or so Elfin Warriors who hadn’t worked with David before looked like they were half-expecting the ground they were standing on to explode.
“All right, people,” he addressed them. “We just had a major change of mission profile. The good news: the Arbiter and the Keepers have surrendered. We now control this facility.
“The bad news is that Familias knows this,” David warned them, “and they cannot, if they wish to survive as they currently are, permit us to maintain that control. We have seen the resources even a single one of the Vampire Families can bring to bear: when we hit the Golden Twilight casino, we met mobile artillery, modified antiaircraft units, and heavy military weapons.
“When all of them bring their worst to the table, we can expect that we are facing a conflict that we have not seen in some time. It appears to fall to us to fight a war on our own soil, against an enemy we have battled for years now.”
“Why?” Sokol asked. “Let’s just blow this place and go home.”
“We promised the fledglings would be unharmed,” David pointed out to the other ONSET Commander. “If we are to end the war with the vampires, once and for all, we need to hold the Mountain. So long as the future of the vampire species is in our hands, we can dictate peace.
“But to do so, we must hold the Mountain.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Mason asked, stepping forward. “Everything we’d briefed on, everything we prepared, was for an all-out assault on this place, not a defense.”
“So, we know how we were going to hit it,” he replied. “So, we set up countermeasures to those. The Pendragons will need to act as close air cover, but I’ve been told we will continue to have both artillery and air support.
“We’re going to want to pre-sight artillery target zones and air-strike corridors,” he continued. “The facility itself has no weapons, no defenses beyond being a giant concrete bunker. My preference would be to fight the bastards outside the Mountain, so we will prepare positions on the surface here.
“The vampires can only move so much in terms of personnel and gear during the day, so we will likely only face light attacks tonight. Tomorrow, though, we can expect to face everything the Familias can throw at us.”
David smiled grimly at them all.
“If we hold, ladies and gentlemen, we end a two-hundred-year-long war and allow our government to lift a standing order that is arguably the worst violation of the Constitution Omicron has been forced to embrace.
“Let’s make it happen.”
26
David left his people pulling supplies out of the helicopters in the main parking lot and returned to the shadowy underground of the Mountain. Jenna was waiting for him, accompanied this time by the raven-haired woman in the black armored bodysuit who had driven the Arbiter to their first meeting.
“We are limited in what our oaths allow us to provide,” the bodyguard—Gabriel, Jenna had said her name was, the Younger Sister—told him. “But there are supplies and resources you can access. Sandbags and so forth would be useful, I believe?”
“They would,” David allowed, gesturing for Stone to join him. “Stone, pull a work team together from the Elfin and follow Miss Gabriel here. Any addition we can make to the surface defenses will be of value.”
“Any guns?” Stone asked bluntly.
“We keep very little in terms of weaponry in the facility,” Gabriel replied. “Some sidearms, a few assault rifles. Nothing that would qualify as heavy weaponry.”
“After what the Romanovs protected the convoy heading this way with, I’m surprised,” the Agent grunted.
“That convoy was Petrov Romanov’s last chance to expand his Familias and make up for the losses you inflicted,” Jenna pointed out as her sister led Stone away. “They pulled out everything they had to make sure they reached us safely…and you stopped them.”
“They made it here,” David replied.
“Because the Arbiter promised they would be oathbound,” she noted. “Such would be of no use to Romanov.” The blonde vampire smiled. It was a…toothy, predatory thing. “He hates you. I don’t think you even begin to comprehend how deep Romanov’s hatred of you runs.
“You have destroyed his dream of ruling the Familias, but his own power means he can only lose by dying.” The predatory grin widened. “He knows he is doomed, and whoever kills him in the end, it is your hand that set into motion his downfall.”
“Or his own,” David suggested. “Omicron never sought war with the Familias, only to protect people.”
“And enough of our kind truly were bloodthirsty monsters to set into motion events that could not be stopped,” Jenna told him. “I wish I could say differently, but the conflict was inevitable. And now it must end. We cannot conquer humanity, we never could, and as the world moves forward, we can no longer hide.”
“You speak like you were there,” he said.
“I was,” she admitted. “My parents brought me to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Commander White—a ten-year-old blonde thing struggling to see over the shoulders of others. I have seen the growth of our nation from the beginning, but for much of it, I have been hidden in the shadows, avoiding a war my own kind started.”
She shook her head.
“Gabriel is five years younger than me. We were in our twenties when we turned. We owe everything to the Arbiter, more so than many here. We will die for him.”
“How does being a Keeper reconcile with Gabriel being his bodyguard?” David asked.
“Gabriel isn’t a Keeper,” she replied calmly. “She swore never to touch human blood, but she refused the rest of the oaths to allow her to defend us. Come,” she continued. “The Arbiter wishes to speak with you
with less…time pressure, shall we say.”
David gestured for her to lead the way, wondering suddenly how many of the white-robed vampires around him were actually sworn to nonviolence…and how many could turn on the people he’d committed to defend them if things went wrong.
JENNA LED him into what appeared to be the main control center for the Mountain. Dozens of screens showed the view from cameras mounted around the exterior, and David suspected that the computers there could also open and close the various doors into the complex.
It had chairs and stations for easily a dozen people, though from the look of them, only four or so were currently in use—and the room’s only occupant was the red-robed Arbiter. The vampire stood alone in the middle of the room, his head shifting minutely every few seconds to study another set of screens.
“Welcome, Commander White. Thank you, Jenna.”
With a wordless bow, the blonde vampire withdrew, leaving David alone with the master of this facility for the first time.
“You realize, I presume, that you cannot trust my Keepers not to open the way for the Familias,” the old vampire said without preamble. “They will honor their oaths, they will not fight you, but that does not mean they necessarily agree with me.
“And even if they do, the bonds of loyalty and blood run strongly in our kind. If Reginald or Romanov or Sakura order a Keeper of their blood to open the door to one of the silos, it will happen.”
“I suspected as much,” David agreed. “I intend to meet them outside the Mountain. We will need maps of the interior, though.”
“Gabriel should be providing them to your Agent Johnson as we speak,” the Arbiter told, still facing the screens instead of his guest.
“Jenna said Gabriel was not a Keeper,” David noted. “Are there others like her here?”
“You worry about knives at your back,” the old vampire replied. It wasn’t a question. “No. Gabriel is not unique, but she is alone here. I once swore the oaths she is now bound by. I failed, Commander. If you know the names you called me by earlier, you know what happened.”
ONSET: Blood of the Innocent Page 18