Capture (The Machinists Book 4)

by Craig Andrews

  “It also has to do with proximity,” Allyn said, giving the magi leader a hint.

  “They’ve attacked Families that are not close to other Families,” Arch Mage Westarra said.

  “Exactly. Every Family that’s been attacked is a minimum of forty-five minutes from the nearest Family.”

  Westarra looked back at the board. “This is good work, Allyn. This is good work.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” Allyn said. “Now if Your Grace would please take note of the green dots. Remember, they represent Families who fit specific criteria but haven’t been attacked yet.”

  “What are they?”

  “Potential targets. They’re the Families we think the Knights will attack next.” Allyn pointed at the three green dots on the map in particular. “These three are small Families, far away from other magi Families and populated areas. This is where we think the Knights will attack next. And we intend to be ready for them.”

  Westarra stared at Allyn, his eyes twinkling with excitement. “Tell me more.”

  Chapter 9

  Sedric always got the shakes before an operation. The trembling hands and quivering knees had plagued him ever since childhood when he would step into the ring to spar or wrestle on behalf of his small Georgian school. They’d always grown worse when he met his bullies and tormentors in the parking lot after class. The tremors had even persisted through boot camp, Ranger school, and three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  For the longest time, he’d tried to hide the shakes, fearing they would be seen as cowardice. When his superiors had spotted them, they had tried to train them out of him. For weeks, Sedric had been harassed relentlessly. But nothing worked. The shakes always plagued him right up until the moment the first shot was fired and the battle began. It was then that a cool serenity would wash over him, leaving him at peace.

  To some of his former army buddies, battle and war had become a drug. The ultimate rush. An addiction only cured by more fighting. For Sedric, the opposite was true. It was in the heat of battle that he first experienced what it felt like to be home, understood what it meant to have purpose. For a time, fighting beside his comrades, fighting for his country had been enough, but as the war had dragged on and the cynicism infected even the army’s staunchest supporters, his sense of purpose had begun to waver. It had been at his lowest point, in the weeks following his discharge, that he had found the Knights—or rather, when the Knights had found him—and in their cause, he found true resolution.

  So on the eve of battle, Sedric Lang, Knight Commander of the Knights of Rakkar, paid his trembling hands no mind. His soldiers knew that the shakes weren’t a byproduct of fear, nervousness, or cowardice, but rather a burning excitement for fighting a righteous war and carrying out the Lord’s justice.

  He rode in the passenger seat of the heavily armored assault vehicle as it rumbled down an isolated country road. Two other vehicles—both dark-gray BearCats like the one he was in—filled out the formation behind them. It was late into the night, and as close as they were to their target, they drove with their lights off. The vehicles would be nearly impossible to see, though if the magi Family had posted any sentries, they would hear the engines from miles away.

  Sedric peeled his eyes off the road, glancing into the back of the BearCat, where twenty Knights were doing a final gear check. They’d been through the ritual half a dozen times since leaving their staging area, but Sedric had instilled the habit into his soldiers, just as his own instructors had drilled it into him.

  “Three minutes,” he said, and as if it were on his command, the BearCat suddenly veered right, turning from the country road onto a private drive that climbed a small rise, leaving the road behind. The magi homes were all the same, secluded, hidden, and on large plots of land. Though missing some of the grandeur of the other manors and estates, the Schuster Manor was no different.

  Shaped like an enormous rectangle, the manor was three stories tall and painted a light yellow with white accents and natural wood shutters. What it lacked in ornate columns and grand entrances, it made up for with its grounds. A four-foot retaining wall circled the main grounds, and a beautiful five-acre lake rested at the manor’s rear. Even in the darkness, the land reminded him of home. Replace the paved driveway with an old dirt road and the property could have been mistaken for an old Georgia plantation.

  The BearCats sped up as they approached the retaining wall and a steel gate. Ten feet before the gate, the driver punched the gas and rammed the gate with its reinforced steel nose, ripping it from the stone pillars. Stone crumbled under the weight of the ensuing BearCats as their formation split, and they moved into position.

  The Schuster Manor had two main entrances, each slightly off-center from the central point of the house, and elevated above the driveway by a pair of staircases. Two BearCats slid to a stop in front of each of the staircases, while Sedric’s BearCat glided to a rest in the decorative garden at the center of the circular driveway. Sixty Knights emerged from the vehicles; the men in the front carried battering rams and were protected by shields held by the Knights closest to them.

  Sedric waited, anticipating the first signs of resistance, but the manor remained uncharacteristically quiet, its windows dark. For the first time in a while, doubt crept into the back of his mind. He flexed and unflexed his trembling hand, waiting for the first burst of gunfire to erase his nerves.

  After a silent countdown, the two lead Knights pummeled the manor doors with their battering rams, shattering the hinges and throwing the doors inward. The rest of the Knights streamed inside, and half their number had crossed into the manor’s threshold when the first explosion hit.

  A fireball larger than anything Sedric had seen since fighting in the Middle East burst through the entrance, shattering wood, stone, and glass. The Knights nearest the door were incinerated, and the force of the explosion hurled the others away from the manor. Before the other squad could recognize the trap, another explosion ripped a new hole in the manor, tearing through the men outside the second entrance.

  In an instant, more than half of their advanced force was down—either dead or severely wounded. Those who remained able rolled onto their feet and raised their guns, providing cover for others who helped pull their fallen comrades to safety. Sedric waited for a tense second, expecting more attacks to come, waiting for the first barrage of gunfire, but save for the crackling fire and the cries of the wounded, the scene returned to silence.

  “Second wave!” Sedric shouted.

  His own squad mobilized, shoving open the rear hatch of the BearCat. It slammed against the ground with a dull thud and echoed with the sounds of boots as his Knights raced down it and then across the manor grounds, trampling the garden. Sedric’s squad was larger than any other—twenty men in all instead of fifteen—and they split into two sub squads, each making for the wounded outside the manor doors. As they did, the magi finally made their presence known.

  The second – and third-story windows shattered as fireballs and ice blasts rained down on Sedric’s men. The night came alive with battle. Gunfire sang in response as the Knights targeted the hidden magi.

  With the battle finally underway, Sedric’s shakes vanished, and he sprang into action. He launched himself out of his seat, grabbing Jackie, his M4A1 assault rifle equipped with an M203 under-barrel grenade launcher, and exited the BearCat. Sighting one of the broken windows, he pulled the fully automatic trigger. Ejected casings smoked through the air as they were flung from the rifle. The stock of the M4 kicked against his shoulder with a familiar rhythm. Bullets slammed into the manor, chipping away stone and shattering more glass. He kept his bursts short and controlled, moving from window to window, laying cover fire as the last of the Knights regrouped behind the BearCats.

  “Looks like our friends want to play,” Sedric said, grinning from ear to ear. “Who wants to ha
ve some fun?”

  “Let’s play, sir!” several of his Knights shouted.

  Sedric’s smile widened, and he quickly organized the remaining Knights into three squads—two to carry out the assault, and a third to watch their rear. When his men were ready, Sedric emerged from the cover of the BearCats, fired a series of bursts, and switched action to his grenade launcher. The M4 kicked hard as it launched the grenade forward, sending it sailing through a shattered window. The grenade detonated inside, smashing other windows and spraying dust, smoke, and debris outside.

  Sedric continued his advance, reloading the M203 with another cartridge, and targeted a second window. Thunk! Another grenade blasted from the end of the under-barrel launcher and also landed inside the room. Unlike the first, the second explosion was accompanied by screams and cries from those inside.

  Sedric smiled and waved his squads forward. They raced up the steps, guns trained on the interior in front of them, stepping over the bodies of their fallen squad mates.

  The inside of the manor was dark, eerily quiet, and more concerning, completely vacant. Not only were there no magi or any resistance to speak of, but the manor was uncharacteristically void of furniture and decoration. That wasn’t to say that there was no adornment—it was just that the entrance and nearby rooms lacked the overbearing ostentatiousness that Sedric had seen in every other magi manor.

  Is the Family less well-off than the others, or is something else going on?

  A sense of unease sweeping through his body, Sedric led the Knights up a nearby staircase. The magi resistance had come from above, so that’s where they would go. No more pussyfooting around. It was time to be relentless.

  Pausing on the second-floor landing, Sedric searched the dark corners and recesses of the floor, then seeing nothing, crept down a narrow hallway toward where he guessed the original counterattack had originated.

  The second floor was much like the first, strangely lacking decoration, including the historical pieces he’d taken great pleasure in destroying in the other manors. To destroy the magi art was to destroy their culture. Destroy their culture and you destroy the people. In Sedric’s estimation, he’d inflicted as much damage on the magi by destroying their history as he had by killing its people.

  A series of doors lined the hall. Sedric split the Knight force back into two squads, allowing the original squad leader to take lead of the second, then ordered the other squad deeper into the hall. He turned his attention to the first door. The door was closed, the room quiet.

  Sedric took up station against the wall, gun barrel up, and commanded the next soldier in his squad to kick down the door. After only one kick, the door flung open, and Sedric dashed inside, gun raised, ready for a fight.

  A light haze of smoke still hung in the air, though Sedric could see through it easily enough. It was a long room with four large windows that overlooked the front entrance. At the other end of the room, beyond the large hole Sedric’s grenade had created, was a second entrance, the door also closed. The room was empty. No paintings, vases, sculptures, or books. And more importantly, no fallen magi.

  Sedric lowered his gun as his men checked the doors and corners. He knelt beside the blast radius and dragged his gloved fingers across the blackened wood. They came away dark with soot and sticky with something wet. Sedric held the fingers before him, rubbing them against his thumb.

  Blood. They were here, and they’re injured.

  “Freeze,” he said sharply, and his men stopped moving. Sedric rose, scanning the floor like a bloodhound searching for a scent.

  There!

  Two steps forward, Sedric crouched again. It was another droplet of blood. He followed the trail, finding a third. The person had rushed to the second door of the room.

  The taste of blood on his tongue, Sedric stormed through the second door and out into the hall, but he hadn’t gone more than two steps before he heard the commotion outside. He spun on his heels, colliding with a Knight who’d been trailing behind him, and pushed his way back into the room.

  The third squad of Knights, the one Sedric had left outside, was falling into a defensive formation meant to repel a force away from the manor. Sedric watched helplessly as the squad split into two sub squads, each taking up position on the manor stairs behind the BearCats. It wasn’t a terrible position—the BearCats would repel nearly any attack, the stairs offered a clear vantage of the incoming enemy, and in the event the squads were overwhelmed, the Knights could fall back into the manor itself.

  What concerned Sedric was not the appearance of a second force, but the speed with which it had arrived. His Knights couldn’t have been at the manor for more than fifteen minutes, and he’d targeted this specific Family because of its distance from the next-closest magi Family. Even if the nearest magi had been notified of the attack the moment it began, reinforcements should have taken at least an hour to arrive.

  Sedric backed away from the windows, his eyes narrowing as he replayed the attack in his mind. They’d been met with resistance, but not the same kind of resistance he’d come to expect. Then the inside of the manor had been surprisingly empty. No magi. No desperate people fighting to protect what they held dear. No decoration…

  They knew we were coming. But that was impossible. He would bet his life that he had no moles among his men. No leaks. He must have made a mistake somewhere.

  Or they got lucky. It was a happier thought, for sure, but Sedric quickly discounted it. Even luck required a level of skill, and that meant he’d left some sort of trail for the enemy to follow. He had to clean up his tracks.

  “With me!” Sedric bellowed then stormed into the hall, where he found the other squad leader.

  “What are you orders, Commander?”

  “Cover our men below,” Sedric said. “When I begin the counterattack, return to the BearCats and reinforce C Squad. From there, I leave it to your best judgment.”

  “How will we know when you’ve begun your counterattack, Commander?”

  “Believe me, son,” Sedric said with a wide smile, “you’ll know.”

  Chapter 10

  Allyn leaned against the bank of the pond behind the Schuster Manor, watching the rear of the house with intense anticipation. The long grass circling the pond obstructed his view and, he hoped, the view of anyone inside who might look in his direction. Lined up beside him and stretching out across the bank was the rest of his squad—a mixture of machinists and Order magi, including Nolan, Nyla, and Ren—that numbered twelve in all.

  Waiting for Sedric and his Knights to fall into the trap had been more difficult than he had originally imagined. Fortunately, the plan had worked out perfectly, though they were quickly approaching the most important part of the ruse—a moment which could turn the battle from a massive victory to a colossal defeat. He refused to think about the backlash that would cause.

  “There,” Ren whispered. “Here he comes.”

  Allyn sank deeper into the weeds, the soft, cold mud of the bank further soaking his compression armor, as a small group of Knights emerged from the back of the manor.

  “Wait for it,” Allyn whispered. Then two heartbeats later, “Now, Canary. Now.”

  Canary nodded and closed her eyes, placing two fingers on her right temple. Since she’d embraced her machinist abilities, they had grown at an exponential rate, and where she had previously only been able to receive communication signals, she could now send them, as well. And that was exactly what she was doing now.

  When she opened her eyes, Allyn knew that she was done, and he refocused his attention on the rear of the manor. If he hadn’t known where to look, he might have missed the two dark figures slipping from the shadows at the rear of the garden. Myanna and Rohn, two of the arch mage’s Elemental Guard, had taken on the most dangerous part of the mission.

  They stalked forward to
ward the Knights from opposite angles, Myanna from the front, Rohn from behind. Then just when Allyn thought they couldn’t get any closer without being seen, Rohn buried an ice blast in the nearest Knight’s back. The man fell to the stone patio with a sharp yell, startling the other Knights, who spun around to find their comrade bleeding at their feet. They switched to combat mode in a fraction of a second, scanning the darkness, guns at the ready.

  Then Myanna struck. She too attacked with an ice blast, but inside the magical creation was a torrent of air. Upon impact, the ice shattered and the concussion of air exploded, sending out a dangerous shockwave.

  The explosion of air wasn’t enough to hurt the Knights beyond the bits of icy shrapnel they hurled, but the sudden movement was enough to ignite the magical creations Myanna and Rohn had hidden on the patio earlier in the night. The inferno mines were a combustive mix of air and fire encased in an icy wrapper. The melting ice had weakened enough that the concussion from Myanna’s attack detonated the magi creations.

  A sharp crack was followed by a flash of orange light as the two inferno mines detonated. Then the bulk of the Knight’s force was down.

  “Now!” Allyn commanded. “Go! Go! Go!”

  Allyn rose from his cover and willed himself forward. Around him, his squad did the same, and within seconds, twelve magi were descending on the Knights.

  Gunfire erupted as a small number of Knights clustered into a pair of groups, three men apiece, and fired at the incoming magi. Allyn’s squad split, dodging the gunfire, and came to a stop on either side of the patio, where they were protected by a brick retaining wall. Using the wall for cover, they sent their own fireballs and ice blasts in return.