ONSET: My Enemy's Enemy
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“Lots of entrances and exits,” he mused. “Could be a headache.”
“I agree. I’ve checked, though, and there are security shutters for all of the entrances,” David noted. “I’m planning on shutting all but two entrances and the parking garage. We’ll still need to maintain patrols and surveillance, but we’ll only need to run security vetting and verification at three points.
“Surveillance center is here”—he tapped a room on the map. “It’s almost perfectly central to the building, so I’m thinking we hold my team and one of your squads here as a mobile reserve while we run your other squads in patrol patterns around the building. We slot the Elfin security into the patrols and have them hold down security verification except when the Committee members are arriving.”
Ward looked it over, then tapped at the same place.
“I agree in principle,” he said slowly, “except that if this is a surveillance center, there’s a lot of gear in here. We can’t keep sixteen guys in full gear in there without getting in each other’s way.” The Lieutenant poked at a room probably thirty feet away in the actual center. “This is a secondary meeting room; designed for about forty people but too small for the Conclave. Would hold sixteen guys and a relay of the surveillance gear easily.”
“And then we can feed the center’s camera feeds into our own gear,” David agreed. “Good call, Lieutenant. I think I’m going to enjoy working with you.”
Chapter 6
David guided the big black government car in a slow circle around the convention center. It was a mid-sized hunk of concrete and glass, what he understood to be called brutalist architecture—a name it certainly fit.
Six sets of doors, each of at least three matching sets of double doors. A parking garage with a manually secured entrance. Concrete and brick walls would stand off anything short of heavy weapons, but the glass doors and surrounding windows were a vulnerability.
“We could have a less defensible venue,” he said aloud. The rest of ONSET Thirteen filled the car, each studying the conference center through their own skillsets.
“I’m sure they could have found an uglier one, too,” Hellet pointed out. “It looks like a bunker.”
“The US government is paying for it,” David pointed out. “Are you surprised we booked the cheapest conference center in the city?”
“And someone is probably invoicing for the most expensive, too,” Stone grumbled from the backseat. “It looks like it’ll stop bullets; I can’t say I mind that.”
“A lot of exterior approaches,” Pell murmured. “Six different roads. Locking down the doors reduces entryways but not the approaches for an actual assault.”
“Are we really planning for someone rolling an armored column into Seattle, though?” Stone asked.
“That seems unlikely,” David pointed out. “But a ground attack is not entirely out of question. There are surveillance cameras out here; I’ll talk to our people and see if we can link them in to our tactical network. Early warning could make all of the difference.
“Now, let’s go see who the Elfin have set up as our contact,” he said as he turned the car toward the parking garage. “We take over security of the building in about five minutes.”
#
Taking over the building was extremely low-key. The shift supervisor for the current security shift handed David a large ring of keys, shook his hand, and said his people would be ready to support in any way David needed.
Their only role in his plan was running the surveillance gear, and they seemed entirely okay with that.
He’d finished locking down all of the shutters when Stone let him know that the Elfin contingent had arrived.
“I’ll meet them at the front entrance,” David replied. Like the rest of his people, he wore a suit and clip-on tie over a light enchanted-armor vest and had traded his helmet with all of its augmented reality systems for the same communication earpiece used by the Secret Service.
Returning to the front entrance, he had to take a moment to be certain that the group waiting for him weren’t his people, as they were wearing very similar plain black suits. Each, however, had a two-inch silver brooch in the shape of a leaf pinned to the left lapel of their suit blazers.
He picked out the leader a moment later, mostly because he’d met Elfin Lord Jamie Riley once in the past. Riley was a tall older man, his black hair cropped short and showing only the tiniest hint of gray at the temples.
Unlike everyone else in the room, he was openly wearing a sword. David’s own blade was contained in a scabbard that hid the majority of the blade in a pocket dimension. Riley’s wasn’t even concealed by his coat, the delicately fluted steel handguard with its gold runes an odd contrast to the man’s expensive black suit.
“Commander White,” Riley greeted him loudly and cheerfully as he offered his hand. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”
David shook the proffered hand, smiling and surveying the half-dozen young men and women Riley had brought with him. His Sight showed him their auras, letting him know that they were all supernatural. None were unusually powerful, but all six would have been accepted into an ONSET team without hesitation.
“Lord Riley,” he greeted the Elfin leader. “I take it you are our contact for security?”
“I am,” Riley confirmed. “Of course, I’ll be in the Conclave tomorrow, so my people will be reporting to you. There will be no problems.”
He said the last with the self-satisfied certainty that told David that if any of the Warriors in the room did cause problems, they would regret them before the dust settled.
“Brianna Young here”—he gestured to a tall woman with a dark-red-dyed pixie cut—“is my Second, commander of my Warriors. She will be your first point of contact, though I’ll also give you my direct cellphone number.” He smiled grimly. “I won’t be the only person in the room getting their texts and emails, I assure you.”
“Miss Young,” David nodded to her. She smiled thinly back.
“There are a number of the Lords that would like to meet you, Commander,” Riley continued. “If you would be able to make yourself available for a meet-and-greet tomorrow before the Conclave begins, I suspect it will not hurt Omicron’s chances of getting this deal.”
“I can do that,” David said with a sigh. “You support this, then? I had the impression that you and Omicron didn’t get along well.”
“Commander White, I was an OSPI Inspector when you were in training wheels,” the Lord said grimly. “We did not part on the most positive of terms, and I won’t pretend that the Omicron Branch has done much to change my opinion of its flaws over the last twenty years.
“But”—he raised a single finger—“certain members of Omicron have at least tried. And for all of its flaws, the United States government is a large improvement over anarchy—and Omicron remains our best defense against any major supernatural incident.
“So, yes, Commander, I support making a deal with Omicron,” he concluded. “I won’t pretend we don’t plan on soaking the Committee for everything can get in concessions, but unless Wright and Day show up with an offer that’s completely out of line with what my information suggests, we can make a deal.”
“Speaking as one of the people this deal is supposed to help keep alive, that’s what I like to hear,” David admitted.
“Show up tomorrow and you might be able to get some people on that page,” Riley told him. “The odds are in Omicron’s favor, but when ‘not having my country eaten by demons’ is on the list of pros, I’m perfectly willing to stack the deck.”
#
Breakfast, in David White’s opinion, should never be a black-tie affair. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an opinion apparently shared by the majority of the Elfin Lords, so when he arrived at Riley’s “meet-and-greet”, he was back in the plain black suit, white shirt, and clip-on tie. He looked the part of the stereotypical government man in black, an image that the various Omicron agencies made no effort to avoid.
David made a beeline for the coffee, where he was intercepted by Lord Riley.
“Good morning, Commander.”
“Lord Riley,” David acknowledged while filling his coffee cup.
“If your metabolism is anything like the other Empowered I know, I suggest you grab a pastry quickly,” Riley murmured. “You probably won’t get much of a shot at the buffet.”
Taking the Elfin Lord at his word, David inhaled a pair of pastries stuffed with some kind of jam as quickly as he could, then finished his coffee. He’d eaten at his hotel as well—he’d figured he wasn’t going to get to eat much here—but ever since his powers had fully awoken, he found he needed every calorie he could get his hands on.
Riley waited patiently while David ate, then arched an eyebrow as the Commander put down his coffee cup.
“Ready?” he asked.
“For politics?” David asked wryly. “Not really.”
“No one ever is. Shall we?”
“Carry on, Lord Riley,” David agreed.
Riley moved almost immediately, with David following behind. A moment later, Brianna Young materialized to drop in at Riley’s right hand, and David got a moment to study the crowd that was filtering in.
Most of the crowd were older men, all wearing the silver-leaf brooch of a senior Elfin member. A little over a third of the people in the room wore swords similar to Riley’s with their expensive tailored suits, giving a strange, anachronistic air to the proceedings.
With everyone in similarly expensive suits and everyone except David being a senior member of the Elfin, those swords were the only way for him to pick the Lords out from the rest of the Elfin. While all of the Lords were powerful Mages whose auras glittered to his sight, so were some of the Seconds and other high-ranking Elfin who filled the room.
Only Elfin Lords bore the rune-engraved swords, however. Forging such a sword, a process that involved far more magic than blacksmithing, was required to claim a Lordship.
David wasn’t entirely clear—and he suspected no one outside the Conclave and possibly their Seconds was clear—on whether forging an elf-blade allowed an Elfin the ability to inherit an existing Lordship or automatically made the forger an Elfin Lord.
Riley led him through the crowd toward a trio of sword-carrying Lords and a Lady. The quartet stood off to one side, sipping coffee and, despite auras that suggested a uniform warm contentment, were watching the meet-and-greet with a cool standoffishness David suspected wasn’t particularly promising.
“My Lords, my Lady, may I introduce Commander David White of ONSET?” Riley told them cheerfully. “He’ll be in charge of security for this meeting of the Conclave on behalf of Omicron.”
The youngest of the Lords, a broad-shouldered blond man, smiled broadly at David.
“The demonslayer,” he greeted him. “I am Lord Ulfgar Heinrichs. My stodgy companions are Lords Hugo Lachappelle and Matthew Grant, and Lady Amanda Rainier.”
“We can introduce ourselves, Ulfgar,” Grant said coldly. He was a pale-skinned man with watery blue eyes, but the gaze he turned on David was hard and flat. “I’m surprised your conspiratorial overlords haven’t briefed you in detail on us all,” he told David. “The better to manipulate us.”
“My job is to provide your security, my Lord Grant,” David pointed out. “Any attempt to manipulate you was entirely Lord Riley’s idea, and he sadly failed to provide me with briefing notes.”
Lachappelle and Heinrichs both laughed, and Lachappelle laid a hand on Grant’s shoulder as the man’s glare intensified.
“My dear Grant,” Lachappelle, a frail-looking man with aristocratic features, said in a faint French accent, “the Commander is not your enemy. Indeed, we owe Commander White a debt of gratitude.” He bowed slightly toward David. “Not enough, to be honest, that I or Grant intend to support this deal with your Committee, but understand that it is not from ill will toward Omicron or—especially—yourself.”
“I can accept that, my Lord,” David said carefully.
Heinrichs chuckled again and Lachappelle made a “go ahead” gesture to the blond man.
“The problem is that Omicron likes their shadows far too much,” he explained. “This great nation was built on the concepts of checks and balances. Omicron short-circuits too many of them to allow them to keep magic secret from humanity.
“The Elfin act as a check on that power,” Heinrichs said genially. “We offer an alternative to those who are terrified of a shadowy government organization. If we allow ourselves to be absorbed into Omicron’s ecosystem, we remove an alternative for all of the United States’ supernaturals. We serve a purpose, and we serve it best when we stand apart from Omicron.”
“I don’t entirely disagree, Lord Heinrichs,” David replied. In his own case, without ONSET intervention he’d have died, but he could see how having an option for induction into the supernatural community that wasn’t an OSPI “detained to allow for education” was beneficial. “However, are you prepared to place that principle above the safety and protection of the very people you seek to serve?”
“The Warriors will never stand by while supernatural incidents occur,” Lachappelle told him. “We do not need to place them under Omicron’s command to participate in the defense of the weak and the innocent. If Omicron simply allows us to operate, much of your need is already met.”
“A blanket authorization for an armed militia to enforce the law without government backing is a recipe for chaos,” David argued. “Not only that, but without Omicron’s information networks, you won’t know about supernatural incidents until it’s too late.
“We achieve our goals best when we work together—and no one says this is intended to be a long-term arrangement,” he pointed out. “We can stand shoulder to shoulder against the current crisis and then, when the crisis has past, go our separate ways, allowing the Elfin to continue acting as a balance to Omicron.”
“The government does not give back what it has taken,” Grant hissed, though the other two men looked thoughtful. “Once Omicron commands us, they will never let us go.”
“I don’t think anyone is expecting to command anyone,” David pointed out, glancing over at Lady Rainier. She was a tall woman, with delicate features that belied her swordswoman’s shoulders and the blade at her hip. “Lady Rainier, your thoughts?”
“I think Omicron is far too willing to embrace expediency in the pursuit of its goals,” she said in a cold voice. “I have friends in Manhattan, Commander White. They owe you their lives—but your Colonel Ardent was prepared to sacrifice them in nuclear fire to stop Ekhmez.”
David sighed. He wasn’t sure how that particular fact had leaked outside Omicron, but he hadn’t liked it as an option at the time.
“If”—he stressed the word—“Omicron had been considering anything of the kind, can you truly argue that it was out of scale to the threat Ekhmez represented? And I’ll note that if we were considering such a thing, it would have been due to the very lack of resources and personnel this deal is meant to correct.
“Standing with us is far more likely to prevent such a stupid decision being considered in the future,” he pointed out.
Some of Rainier’s stiffness faded and she looked at him thoughtfully before looking at Lord Riley.
“Are you sure you didn’t give him briefing notes?” she asked with a soft laugh. “I’ll confess, Commander White, I had not thought of it that way. You have not changed my mind, but you have given me food for thought.”
“And we need to move on,” Riley said before the other Lords could interject. “I see Lord Langley, and he wished to speak with you before the morning was out.”
#
“Well done,” Riley whispered as he guided Davi
d through the crowds with a deft certainty. “Langley won’t be quite so much of a headache. He’s one of the senior Lords pushing for this deal from our side.”
“A bit more of a heads-up before dropping me into a snake pit would have been nice,” David observed.
“You did fine—and if I’d coached you, they’d have been able to tell,” the Elfin Lord pointed out. “The Lords are all Mages, White. They all know how to control their auras and they can all see yours. Anything less than perfect honesty is just going to get you ripped to pieces.”
No wonder everyone’s auras projected them as warm and happy. That was a bitter pill for David to swallow—he was used to being able to judge people’s thoughts based on what he saw in their auras, and it hadn’t occurred to him that the Elfin Mages would also have that gift.
“I don’t think anyone mentioned I was walking into a room of living lie detectors when I agreed to this meet-and-greet,” David replied.
“You are a living lie detector,” Riley said. “Which makes everything fair, don’t you think?” The Lord smiled. “If this whole deal works out, I promise I’ll teach you aura shielding. It’s not quite a spell; you should be able to pull it off.
“Now come on. We shouldn’t keep Langley waiting.”
With a sigh, David followed Riley through the crowd. Young had stepped forward, the pixie-haired Second acting as an icebreaker through a slowly increasing crowd to clear a path for her boss. After a few seconds, her cleared path intersected a clear space on the floor, kept open by the intimidating presence of a broad-shouldered black man in a military buzzcut.
“Second Paulson,” Riley greeted the big man genteelly. “Lord Langley asked to speak to Commander White.”
“He did,” the big man rumbled, offering a hand to David. “Sharif Paulson. If I look familiar, I used to play football.”
David shook the big man’s hand—a Mage like most of the Seconds. It was unusual for any supernatural to have been involved in professional sports or similarly public vocations, and he wondered if Paulson had discovered his gift before or after his football career.