ONSET: My Enemy's Enemy

by Glynn Stewart

  “The number of supernaturals in the world increases every year,” Riley continued. “We are entering a new age, I think. I shudder to think what it might bring if we aren’t careful.”

  Chapter 8

  “Hellet!” David called the Mage over to him as he studied the security cameras around the conference center.

  “Sir,” she replied questioningly.

  “I’m getting pulled into the Conclave as an observer,” he told her, making sure that Ward could hear as well. “I’m taking my earpiece in and I should be accessible in the case of an emergency, but if there’s any question that doesn’t need me, you’re in charge. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  “Ward?”

  “Agent Hellet is in command,” the ex-Marine Lieutenant said cheerfully. “Mutiny punishable by frog transmutation.”

  “Watch it,” Hellet said warningly, “or you might be hopping to your post, Lieutenant.”

  Ward put on a fake wounded expression.

  “I’ve got everything under control,” the Mage told David. “Enjoy your politicking, sir.”

  “Is it still too late to break a leg and beg off?” he asked.

  “Everyone knows how long it would take you to fix a broken leg, sir.”

  With a chuckle, he traded salutes with her and headed for the conference room. He had several days of being bored to look forward to.

  #

  “Kal on sina opéle.”

  With the Elvish words that David didn’t even pretend to understand, Dominic Langley took the center stage in the meeting room.

  “Mime otorno, mime seler,” he began, then repeated himself in English. “My brothers, my sisters. I am honored to be the first of us to speak today.

  “We stand at an important juncture for our society. We have always had a mixed relationship with the United States government and its supernatural branches. They have laid down laws in areas we often understand better, and it is inevitable that we clash in our different understandings of magic as it returns to the world.

  “But we have always respected the secular authority of the Omicron Branch,” he noted. “Whether we always agree or not, Omicron is the representative of the government of the land we live in. It is not for us to ignore the laws of our country.”

  That, David knew, wasn’t an entirely accurate statement. At least some Elfin had delved into everything from magically enhanced drugs to running mind control–based prostitution rings.

  “But we have always stood apart, a civilian organization no more linked to the United States Government than Applebee’s. Our Warriors are armed security, not a paranormal army.

  “And Omicron asks us to lend them our Warriors,” he continued. “Our brave young men and women who have taken on the role of our guardians. They ask because they have no choice, because the country we live in is under dire threat.”

  Langley looked around the room.

  “We know Omicron, we of the Conclave,” he said harshly. “We’ve all had our run-ins, positive and negative, with OSPI and the dozen other agencies that make up the Omicron Branch. We know they don’t ask for help. They like their secrets.

  “But they have asked us nonetheless. How bad must it have gotten, mime otorno, mime seler, for them to ask for help?

  “Demons emerge across our country, a new weakness in the Seal created by the Incident. We owe our countrymen our aid.

  “I call for us to accept Omicron’s offer—it is generous enough, to be sure—and lay all of our resources and powers at the disposal of America’s defenders.

  “After all, we, too, are American citizens.”

  David joined in the applause as Langley bowed to his audience, waving for the next speaker to come up.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Langley told them. “Now I yield the floor to Lord William Kenner of Oregon.”

  The frail-looking Lord stepped off the stage, yielding the podium to a man who could easily have been his brother. William Kenner was more solid-looking than Langley, but he was equally white-haired, with lines on his face that seemed to mark him as a man who smiled broadly and often.

  He was not smiling today.

  “Mime otorno, mime seler,” Kenner echoed Langley. “I’m sure it’s a great shock to you all that I do not agree with Lord Langley.”

  From the chuckles that echoed through the Conclave, the pair had some degree of antipathy.

  “I have nothing against Omicron,” he continued, “but let’s not pretend this crisis is from some exterior force. It was OSPI’s own leadership that turned Ekhmez being summoned from a disaster into a catastrophe. We’ve all seen Omicron get more and more hands-off in dealing with the newly awoken for years now—and recruiting less and less.

  “They brought this crisis on America, and now, instead of changing their own path, they ask us to backstop their failures. We have a few hundred supernaturals who have pledged their lives to defend their brothers and sisters—Omicron has the United States Army.

  “Why should we fight? We’re a social club with a security force. Omicron is the United States government!”

  Kenner shook his head.

  “I do not think we should push for a better deal, otorno, seler. I think we should tell Omicron to do their damn job!”

  The applause was sparser for Kenner but more fervent. David couldn’t even bring himself to disagree with the man—while he could see the logic for recruiting the Elfin as a short-term stopgap, the long-term solution had to be a change in how Omicron was recruiting.

  That discussion was for a different place and a different time, though, and a third Lord was already approaching the microphone.

  He wasn’t sure just how they were deciding who got to speak or when they would vote, but it looked like it was going to be a long day.

  #

  Eight hours and twenty-two Lords and Ladies later, David couldn’t help feeling like the local piñata. While over half of the speeches had been in favor of the deal and most of the ones against had simply argued that Omicron should give the Elfin more—more money, more privileges, more something—in exchange for their help, none of them had been particularly positive toward the government he represented.

  By the time the final Elvish blessings had been said and the room started to empty, all he wanted was a drink. Instead, he found himself corralled by Riley as he was heading toward the command center.

  “How are you holding up?” the Lord asked gently. “The Conclave aren’t the biggest fans of Omicron; some of those glares must have hurt.”

  “I’m honestly surprised that even the people who want the deal seem to hate us,” David replied, somewhat bitterly. “Plus, I’ll admit to not having a clue how everything is being organized.”

  “It’s the swords,” Riley pointed out. “If a Lord is wearing their sword, they haven’t decided anything yet. If their sword is in front of them, pointed toward the speaker’s stage, they want to speak. If they’ve decided and are calling for a vote, their sword is in front, flat to the speaker.”

  “So, what, when a majority of the swords are flat, a vote is called?”

  “Two thirds,” the Lord replied. “About half are calling for a vote already, we’ll probably have a first vote called by end of day tomorrow.”

  “Will it pass?”

  “I think so,” Riley said. “If not, there won’t be any huge addendums added when we counter-offer to the committee.”

  As David understood it, the key points of the deal were that Omicron would pay any Elfin Warriors who were deputized the same rate as an ONSET Agent and cover any medical needs incurred; and that in exchange for allowing the Warriors to be deputized, the Elfin would have the right to provide lawyers for trials before the Omicron Courts.

  Given the esoteric nature of supernatural law in the United States, currently the Omicron Courts required you to use a lawyer they provided. Allowing Elfin legal experts to act as counsel would take a degree of pressure off that system—and also be a massive
potential source of revenue for the society and its members.

  Of course, as some of the Lords had pointed out, forcing people to use government lawyers was probably unconstitutional.

  “I look forward to this being over,” David told the older man.

  “So do I,” Riley admitted. “I never liked this part of being a Lord. I don’t normally attend Conclave, but this one…this one, I didn’t really have a choice. We need to stand together.” He shrugged. “Plus, Langley called in a favor. He’s pushing everything he can to get this deal through.”

  “Good man to have on one’s side,” the ONSET Commander observed.

  “A good man in general,” Riley replied. “Let’s check in on our people, Commander White. We need to be sure they didn’t die of boredom on us!”

  Chapter 9

  By the time the fifth speaker was on the stage, repeating a different variation on the same pros and cons that had been repeated over and over again the previous day, David was paying a lot more attention to the tablet in his lap and its link to the surveillance cameras than to the speeches.

  Noticing a fire truck and an ambulance go screaming around the conference center toward the west, lights blazing, he linked to Ward and spoke softly, relying on his throat mike to pick up his whisper.

  “What’s going on to the west, Lieutenant?”

  “Major accident,” the AP platoon leader replied instantly. “Police radio are saying that an eighteen-wheeler rolled over, caught at least one other vehicle underneath it. The entire road is blocked off and it looks like it might stay that way.”

  “That’s the main egress for the parking garage, isn’t it?” David asked, glancing around to be sure none of the Elfin around him were listening in. Riley was clearly aware he was having a conversation, but the others were focused on the stage, where the Lord for Florida was engaged in a recitation of what David thought was an Elvish poem from one of Tolkien’s side works. Presumably it was related to the man’s point.

  “Yeah, but the blockage is at the end of the block,” Ward replied. “There’s no traffic coming from that direction, so we’ve lots of space for people to turn around in if the road hasn’t opened by the time they wrap up.”

  “Anything on the cameras around us?” he asked suspiciously. “Being blocked off makes me twitchy.”

  “Checked through all the cams,” the AP officer told him. “Nothing unusual.”

  “Keep an eye on it,” he ordered. “I don’t like anything that draws attention to this area or cuts off escape routes.”

  “We’re on the police radio, keeping an ear on their updates,” his subordinate told him. “Will update if the situation changes.”

  David turned his attention back to the Conclave. The speaker had finally finished their Elvish poem and was segueing into a condemnation of moral decay into weakness and failure, something to do with the fall of the elves; hence the poem.

  He was reasonably sure the Lord was supporting the deal, though it was hard to tell.

  Glancing around the room, he took mental stock of the swords as Riley had explained the prior night. At least twenty were still pointed toward the speaker, claiming the right to speak. Some of those had to be repeat speakers, but that appeared to be allowed.

  If anything, fewer of the swords were in the flat position that indicated a call for a vote than there had been at the end of the meeting yesterday. Twenty-five of fifty swords marked a call for a vote—nine short of the threshold to actually call one.

  When he looked down at the tablet, the screen switched to a camera at the east approach to the building. With the west exit closed off, the road was now empty. With no other vehicles on the road, it took him a moment to realize that the first one that appeared was on the wrong side.

  Then three more vehicles—trucks, the armored ones used by security companies but painted an unmarked black—whipped around the corner. All four advanced down the street in a line abreast that blocked the entire road.

  “Ward, go to lockdown,” he ordered in a whisper. “We have incoming trouble.”

  There was no answer.

  “Ward?” he repeated.

  There was no response from his command center—and a moment later, his tablet’s screen went dark, the app announcing it had lost signal.

  “Problem, White?” Riley asked quietly.

  “I think we have incoming and Ward isn’t answering his radio,” David replied. “Can you hold down the fort here? I think I need to go actually be security.”

  “This room is sealed against sound by magic,” Riley warned. “Radio if you need help—we may not hear gunfire.”

  “Keep them calm,” David instructed. “The last thing I need is fifty Mages deciding they’re in critical danger. I can’t see the result of that being easy to cover up!”

  #

  Almost immediately after leaving the conference room, David ran into one of the four-man patrols of Anti-Paranormals. They didn’t seem particularly bothered by anything, continuing a watchful patrol of the interior of the building.

  “Do you have contact with Lieutenant Ward?” David demanded, clearly taking the Corporal in charge of the team by surprise.

  “Of course I do,” he replied questioningly, then tapped his earpiece. “Lieutenant Ward, the Commander is looking for you.” He paused. “Lieutenant Ward?” he repeated more slowly, then looked back at David with a nervous look on his face.

  “What’s going on, sir?”

  “I don’t know, but we have incoming vehicles on the east side and I can’t raise the command center at all,” David said grimly. “Get on the radio to the rest of your platoon; move everyone to cover the east entrance.”

  “Yes, sir!” the Corporal snapped. “What about the command center, sir? Without our AR gear, we need someone relaying surveillance data.”

  Like David and his ONSET Agents, the Anti-Paranormals had traded their normal heavily computerized tactical gear for thaumically enhanced armor vests and suits. No one had been expecting a major assault.

  “The command center is my problem,” David told them grimly. “Go.”

  The troopers went, heading toward the east entrance with the Corporal barking orders into his microphone.

  David went the other way, heading deeper into the conference center as he ordered his own team to move to support the Anti-Paranormal infantry.

  #

  The conference center wasn’t that big, especially not for a nervous Empowered with superhuman speed. David was no Flash or four-color superhero, but when he decided he was in a hurry, he could move.

  The two men in the command center weren’t expecting him. One was busy disconnecting computer cords and dismantling the surveillance setup, while the other was carrying Lieutenant Ward’s body toward the corner where two of his men and an Elfin Warrior had already been dumped.

  Enough of the camera feeds were still up for David to see that the four black vans had stopped outside the center’s biggest entrance, forming a blockade of black metal across the road as they disgorged at least sixty masked men in heavy combat gear.

  “Shit!” the man hauling Ward swore as David charged through the door. He managed to finish the curse as the other man was closer—so David shot the curser second. Both men went down hard before David even registered the silver oak leaves on their suits.

  “ONSET Thirteen, report,” David snapped as he checked on Ward. It was too late for the cheery young man. All four of the people who’d been in the commander center, one of them a trained Mage, had been shot in the head.

  “This is Stone. Breaking Becky out of the trunk, will be in position to back up the Apes in sixty seconds.”

  “Becky” was the big man’s modified M60 machine gun. David hadn’t even realized Stone had brought the heavy weapon, but he certainly wasn’t complaining. Even the AP’s rifles were locked away with an expectation of redundancy.

  “Pell, I’m in the parking garage, with Stone,” the machine animator reported in turn. “I can hold t
his entire entryway myself with this toy collection. What are your orders?”

  “Hellet, I’m in the main entrance with the Apes,” David’s Mage reported. “I, ah, may have closed the shutters on the entrance that was open. Forcefully.”

  “That’s probably for the best, Kate,” David told her. “Pell…” He studied the video footage. At least one ten-man squad looked to be heading for the parking garage entrance. “Stay in the parking garage,” he ordered. “You’ve got ten heading your way.

  “Stone, Hellet, APs.” He linked the platoon in on his channel. “You’ve got at least fifty combatants, in major tactical gear, heading your way.” Hooking a particular set of cables up, he sent an Omicron distress signal.

  “Pull in any of the Elfin Warriors that reach you,” he ordered. “I’m on my way to support, but whatever happens, they don’t interrupt the Conclave.”

  Bringing up another channel, he pinged Riley.

  “Riley, it’s White,” he said sharply. “We have unknown soldiers closing on the center. I’m expecting an attack in the next few seconds.”

  “I can get out of here and support,” Riley replied urgently. “Even if we’re being subtle, most of the people in this room are more than worth their weight in a fight.”

  “Except I need you to keep them right where they are,” David ordered. “Lieutenant Ward is dead—he and the rest of the people manning the command center were shot. By Elfin.”

  “By Elfin,” Riley repeated, his voice flat.

  “I can’t have the Lords coming out behind my people until I know if they’re going to be shooting at me,” the ONSET Commander said harshly. “If I’m going to keep everyone safe, I can only fight one battle at once.”

  Riley was silent for a long moment.

  “I agree,” he said harshly. “I’ll lock down the chamber. Good luck.”