ONSET: My Enemy's Enemy

by Glynn Stewart

  “I’m not certain political considerations are our priority right now,” David replied. “People died here.”

  “And if the various people trying to protect the United States don’t start working together, more people are going to die,” the Elfin said grimly. “Part of this whole mess is my fault. It was my job to see this kind of shit coming.”

  “It was our job to run security and keep the Conclave safe.”

  Riley laughed sharply, with no humor to the sound.

  “Omicron knows damned well that the argument that the Elfin Warriors report to the local Lords is bullshit,” he pointed out. “You know there’s someone who runs training, equipment, organization at the national level. That person, as it happens, is also responsible for intelligence gathering and making sure we see our enemies coming!”

  “And is you,” David observed.

  “And is me. I am the Lord General of the Elfin Warriors,” Riley confirmed. “The decision to allow ONSET to run security for this Conclave was mine and may cost me that role before this is said and done. But I also should have known this was coming.

  “There are few powers in the world that can coordinate this kind of attack on American soil. None of them had reason to that I’m aware of.”

  “What about the Elfin who killed Ward?” David demanded. “What do you know about them?”

  “Kenner’s people; I think they came with his personal staff,” Riley said instantly. “Of course, the rest of Kenner’s personal staff died in the missile strike.”

  “You dig into them,” David ordered. “We’ll dig into the bodies, the choppers, the parts of this mess that a crime scene team can yank together. We keep in touch, and we meet in the middle. Sound like a plan?”

  Riley offered him a plain white card with just his name and a phone number on it.

  “That’s my private cell phone,” he told David. “It’s as untraceable as magic and technology can make it, and I have it on me at all times. If you have a break, if you need assistance, call me. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  “We’ll find the bastard who killed your people,” David promised.

  “I know that,” Riley said flatly. “The problem is that we have to find the ulundo in seven days.”

  Chapter 11

  It was late afternoon by the time David’s backup, including the forensics team, finally arrived from Colorado. Four Pendragons came blazing in at just under the speed of sound before slowing to an abrupt halt directly above the ruined conference center and beginning a slower, more sedate descent to the ground outside it.

  The first person out of the helicopter was Agent Morgen Dilsner, a scrawny techno-mage who served as part of David’s old team, ONSET Nine.

  “Warner stood us down just after they sent you off to play babysitter,” the Mage told David as he reached him. “Michael and I were still on-Campus, so we volunteered to stiffen your reinforcements.”

  “Michael’s here?”

  “Last chopper down,” Dilsner confirmed. “We brought a second platoon of Apes with us; where do you want them?”

  “Have them take over the perimeter from Ward’s people,” David ordered. “Those boys and girls need to stand down and grab a breather.”

  “I’ll talk to Lieutenant O’Neill,” the Mage replied. “We’ll make it happen. Here comes O’Brien.”

  The big werewolf was accompanied by a woman almost as large as him and with about as much fat on her frame. Tall and muscular, she was wearing a white lab coat and a holstered sidearm.

  “Sir,” David said to O’Brien with a crisp salute to the senior commander. “I don’t suppose this means I’m relieved?”

  “Officially, I am nowhere near anything to do with this deal with the Elfin,” the other man replied. “I am on convalescent leave until Dr. Corb confirms that the last of this damn silver is out of my system.”

  “Which is why ONSET Thirteen has been our flying reserve and in at least four hotspots in the last week,” David pointed out. “I can’t imagine the good doctor is impressed with your idea of convalescence.”

  “You have no idea,” O’Brien said with a grin. “It’s just Morgen and I, though. Ix still draws too much attention, and the new girl, quite intelligently, actually left Campus when I told her to go on leave.”

  The woman with O’Brien coughed sharply.

  “Please, Commanders, we do have work to do.” She offered David her hand. “Dr. Michelle Alston, head of Supernatural Forensics. I ran out of minions who know how to play nice, so you get me. What have you got for me?”

  “Two wrecked helicopters about ten klicks away in a city park,” he told her. “About forty-five bodies with their gear, weapons, et cetera. Those trucks.” He pointed. “Nobody’s moved anything. We have full surveillance footage, and the Pendragon that took down the attacking gunships has forwarded all of their camera and sensor data as well.”

  “Good,” Alston said. “That’s a better starting point than I was afraid of. You are certain the bodies haven’t been disturbed?”

  “One hundred percent?” David asked. “No. We had SPD swarming the area at one point. They’ve pulled back to strategic roadblocks and long-range dirty glares. Nothing has been moved, but I can’t guarantee they’re untouched.”

  “Should be good enough,” she allowed, waving her team forward. “Keep your Agents and the APs out of my way. The less your people get in my people’s way, the faster we’ll be done.”

  “Faster is better,” David told her and O’Brien. “We have seven days to find out who was behind this.”

  “That’s all the Elfin gave us?” O’Brien asked, shaking his head. “Bastards.”

  “Didn’t even officially give us that. That’s just when they meet again.”

  “Well, then, I better start taking photos and setting up, shouldn’t I?” Alston told them. “Out of my way, gentlemen.”

  She strode off, leaving David eyeing her back, then glancing over at Michael.

  “Is she always like this?”

  “There’s a reason she has minions to handle people these days,” O’Brien said with a shrug. “She’s damned good at her job and her people adore her.”

  “Fair enough,” David allowed. “All I need today is a target.”

  #

  While David had a more-than-passing knowledge of just what Alston’s people were up to, the main point he took away from it now was that getting in their way would be a problem. Instead, he and O’Brien kept a careful eye on the perimeter while watching the forensics crew out of the corners of their eyes.

  The team wore gloves and carried cameras, every single item photographed exactly as it was before being tagged and moved into bags marked with runes that would preserve astral signatures. Bodies and weapons were tagged first, but they tagged and photographed items as small as shell casings and as random as debris before anything was removed. One of the team members carried a strange apparatus that looked like a tablet attached to a wooden antenna, directing others to photograph and bag items of potentially invisible significance.

  Shortly before nightfall, a new helicopter arrived—a big transport chopper, slower than the Pendragons but capable of carrying a lot more cargo. It disgorged multiple lights that Alston’s team took a few moments to set up, and then the bodies and other evidence began to vanish into its cavernous interior.

  Taking that as a sign at least some equilibrium had been reached, David found Alston supervising the loading and waited patiently for her to finish barking orders.

  “Find anything?” he asked.

  “Do you really expect me to have all the damn answers in, what, two hours?” she snapped.

  “No,” he readily confirmed. “But if we’re loading everything onto the plane, you’ve at least looked at it all. Anything useful?”

  “A lot that might be useful, but we need to put it all together back at the Campus,” Alston explained with exaggerated patience. “I know you’re on a timeline, Commander, but we can’t rush a l
ot of this.

  “We’re loading everything except the trucks onto this chopper, and we have another one touching down for the helicopter debris. Once we have all of that together, then I can give you some real answers. Until then, all I have are particularly wild-assed guesses.”

  “I know,” David admitted. “What about the trucks?”

  “We’ve swabbed them for prints and DNA,” she noted, “and they won’t fit on the chopper. Plates are gone, but we’re running the VINs now. They were spray-painted black this morning—the paint is still damp. Fifty bucks says one of the armored car companies reported them stolen this morning—they weren’t designed for this kind of use.”

  “I’m not taking that bet,” the strike team leader told her. “What are your guesses?”

  “They’re all wearing ten, twenty grand of warfighting gear, easy,” Alston replied. “My ‘guess’ is that we’re going to find it’s all been sanitized, no serial numbers. Ignoring the choppers, someone threw a million bucks just in guns, gear and armor at you. Add in the helicopters and their gear, and someone threw twenty mill plus of hardware into this op—hardware they had to figure they weren’t getting back.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” David said quietly.

  “And presuming these guys were mercs, I can’t imagine they signed on for anything they knew was a suicide mission,” she pointed out. “Might find they were thralls or something. The autopsies will give us some answers instead of guesses.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon at the earliest,” Alston warned him. “We’ll have everything back on the Campus by midnight, and this clusterfuck has priority, but there’s no way I can get you decent data in less than twenty hours.

  “So I suggest you find some damned patience, follow us back to the Campus, and get some sleep.”

  #

  “The Apes have the perimeter and Morgen and I are here to back them up,” O’Brien told David a few minutes later.

  “The Elfin are all evacuated,” David replied, reading the email he’d just received from Riley. “Last of them just took off ten minutes ago. Whoever the target on the range was, they’re either dead or out of Seattle.”

  “Well, except for you and your team,” the other ONSET Commander pointed out. “The man who killed Ekhmez is not exactly a minor target.”

  “They weren’t equipped to kill me,” David retorted. The thought hadn’t occurred to him, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. “Hell—the ground attack wasn’t even remotely prepared to run into supernaturals. They had silver ammo but that was it.”

  “That’s an odd combination,” O’Brien agreed. “Like someone else told them what they needed, but they didn’t quite believe in the reality.”

  “They believe now,” the younger man replied grimly. He really didn’t like killing people. Demons and other creatures born more out of pure magic than anything else were one thing, but killing humans—supernatural or mundane—always made him feel sick.

  “Hopefully, Alston finds something. You should take your team back and get some rest. We can hold down the watch until the dust settles and we can hand it over to the SPD.”

  “Feels like I should keep the watch until its all over,” David admitted.

  “You’re going to have enough problems wrapping this in a week,” O’Brien told him. “Go. I’ll find some way to make it an order if I need to.”

  Chapter 12

  Between the two-hour flight and the time difference, it was past midnight as ONSET Thirteen’s Pendragon swooped in toward the Campus’s helicopter terminal. Spotlights on the perimeter wall kept the area around the Campus brightly lit, but the interior was mostly dark, with just roads and the taller buildings picked out with lights.

  As the Pendragon approached the terminal, more lights came up on the ground, highlighting one of the landing pads for Pell to bring them in at. Other helipads were lit up by surface lights as workers swarmed over the earlier flights that had brought Alston’s people back.

  David doubted Pell was any less exhausted than the rest of them, but he brought the helicopter in for a smooth landing in the middle of the lights.

  David rose to his feet as the rotors coasted to a halt.

  “Get some sleep, everyone,” he ordered his team. “We’re going to be digging into this whole mess as fast as we can, and we may need to deploy on short notice. We’re on Campus, but consider yourself on active deployment.”

  David waited to get a chorus of assent from his three Agents, then stepped out of the helicopter.

  He wasn’t surprised to find someone waiting for him at the edge of the landing pad. He was surprised to find Major Warner herself standing there, waving him over to her. The Mage who ran the Campus and ONSET’s day-to-day affairs looked even more tired than he felt.

  “White,” she greeted him. “How’s your team?”

  “They’ve been better,” he said quietly, glancing behind him. “We failed, ma’am. Four of the Elfin Lords are dead, and the rest are pissed.”

  “You were set up,” Warner snapped. “Their own people shot Ward. Don’t believe for one moment, Commander, that the people behind this attack weren’t in that goddamn conference room. Do we have any clues?”

  “Ask Alston,” he told her. “She said she’d have a briefing tomorrow afternoon, pull together whatever she could from the bodies and the wreckage.”

  “Can’t rush her,” the Major said after a moment, “but damned if I don’t want to. The Colonel’s coming in, David. He wants to debrief you personally.”

  He winced. He’d met Colonel Ardent, the official commander of ONSET, exactly once.

  “The President and Committee are…exploding,” Warner said grimly. “Not your fault, not in the slightest—but you were just in the middle of one of the worst public firefights we’ve ever had. He wants to make sure he’s telling the President the right things.”

  “Understood, ma’am,” David confirmed. “When?”

  “He’ll be on Campus by eleven hundred tomorrow. Meet me in my office at ten hundred, and we’ll get through it. Until then, go get some damned sleep.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  #

  Colonel Kyle Ardent was a gaunt man, almost skeletal, with warm brown eyes and a ready smile that never reached them. He wore an expensive, conservatively cut black suit and white shirt, the only sign of his allegiance the pin on his collar of the lightning-bolt-crossed O of Omicron.

  To David, the man also had the single flattest aura he’d ever met. It was almost as if Ardent didn’t feel emotion.

  The old man moved with an exaggerated care, as if even the slightest expenditure of effort was rationed from an explicit budget, and poured three cups of coffee that he laid out on Warner’s desk.

  “This isn’t an interrogation, Commander,” Ardent said as he slid a cup toward David, adding cream and sugar to his own before offering the tray to David.

  “I understand, sir,” David said carefully, taking a sip of the coffee black. He’d stopped adding anything to his coffee as a small-town cop a decade before, and habit had rebelled against his attempt to add calories with sugar.

  “Manhattan was bad,” ONSET’s leader explained. “The President is, frankly, furious that a supernatural affair spilled over that widely. We managed to keep it under wraps, but we have no friends in Washington right now, Commander.

  “In many ways, though, Seattle is worse,” Ardent continued. “There’s no pretending nothing happened. No sweeping it under the rug as a ‘precautionary evacuation in the face of a terrorist threat.’ Someone attacked a conference of supernaturals in broad daylight, using silver ammunition, and was stopped with blatant supernatural force.”

  “There were no civilians in the area by the time we escalated,” David pointed out.

  “Thankfully, yes,” Ardent agreed. “And because you were already linked in to the local surveillance systems, we have successfully suppressed what footage was taken. It is simply one more item to stick in the
President’s craw.

  “I’m not judging your actions, but I absolutely need to know the full story of what happened.”

  He dropped a recorder on the desk and gestured for David to begin.

  #

  It took longer to explain everything that had happened than the entire sequence of events had taken to occur.

  Ardent and Warner both stopped him at various points, asking for more detail or clarification. By the time he was done, David felt completely wrung out. Ardent turned off the recorder and walked over to the plaque above Warner’s desk David knew held a security spell.

  “This is a disaster,” ONSET’s commander said flatly. “Not of your making, Commander. You did well, so far as I can tell. We’ll need a full written report as well, sadly, plus all of the footage.

  “I’ll need everything I can assemble to show the President we did exactly what we should have,” Ardent concluded. “This wasn’t in our control, but that doesn’t mean the politicians won’t blame us for it.” He shook his head.

  “What about the deal with the Elfin?” he asked. “Your opinion, Commander: how badly has this mess screwed us?”

  “From what Riley and Langley said, it will depend,” David told him. “Riley thinks that if we can find the people behind this and deal with them, that proof of competence should be enough to get the Conclave back on board.

  “If we can’t track this down before the Conclave meets again, we may be in trouble. Langley seemed to think that they’ll probably reject the deal as it stands now,” he warned his boss. “He suggested more concession, but I’m not familiar with the text of the deal to know what would be needed—or what we could put on the table.”

  “I’ll talk to Morrison,” Ardent said. “We’ll see what we can come up with, but I won’t lie to you, Commander: there isn’t much else we’re going to be able to put on the table. Not”—he sighed—“without a large and visible failure on ONSET’s part, anyway.”