Thaumatology 07 - Eagle's Shadow

by Teasdale, Niall

  Nita nodded and started setting up a small portable stove. She was looking confused, as though her view of reality had been challenged. Maybe it had.

  Black Fields Army Base

  In daylight the camp looked weirder than it had at night. A vast expanse of grass surrounded two buildings set several hundred yards apart. The high, chain-link fence around the perimeter seemed terribly inadequate for stopping people entering, until you spotted the notices attached every hundred yards or so. “Danger: Electric Fence.” “Minefield!” “Trespassers will be Shot.”

  ‘Comforting,’ Ceri commented as they watched the grounds from the trees.

  ‘The null zone doesn’t come out this far, does it?’ Nita said. ‘I feel like I can still cast.’

  Ceri’s Sight showed her the magic field flowing through the area. ‘The edge of it is about fifty yards inside the fence,’ she said. ‘It’s fascinating.’

  Lily stifled a giggle. ‘It would be.’

  The field Ceri was looking at did not simply flow around the sphere of emptiness in the middle. There was a flare of energy at the boundary, a shell of increased activity that not even the most sensitive mystic would notice while passing through. ‘It’s got a really sharp boundary,’ she said. ‘I expected it to slowly diminish, but it’s like a wall. The sudden change in the Super-magic field density reacts with the faster moving T-Nulls within the sphere as they exit it. It’s kind of beautiful the way the force lines deflect around the edge.’

  ‘Nice,’ Nita said, ‘but not really useful aside from my being able to cast.’ She settled down against a tree and closed her eyes, relaxing.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Lily asked.

  ‘I’m a spy,’ Nita replied. ‘I’m pretty good a scrying.’

  ‘Scrying spells won’t work through the null magic field,’ Ceri said.

  ‘There’s more than one way to scry,’ Nita replied, smiling.

  ~~~

  ‘The bunker entrance has twenty guards on station at all times,’ Nita said. ‘They’re on a four hour rotation, swapping out five men at a time every hour so they’re kept fresh.’ She had been sitting there looking like she was asleep for over two hours. Lily had started to look worried about her.

  ‘Weapons?’ Ceri asked.

  ‘Assault rifles with under-slung grenade launchers, four six-barrel mini-guns covering the four quarters. The building has an ground-to-air missile system on the roof, but I doubt we’ll need to worry about that.’

  ‘Any magicians?’

  ‘I assume they’re working on the theory that no one attacking them will have magic, so they don’t need it,’ Nita replied. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask, this generator needs a practitioner to power up the circle, right?’ Ceri nodded. ‘So… how?’

  ‘They must have a stored magic source,’ Ceri replied. ‘Charge it up outside the zone, take it in, draw on it when they want to power the spell.’

  ‘Charged iron rod,’ Nita suggested. ‘Those need renewing periodically right?’

  ‘Generally. I suspect they’d need to do it fairly often here. The natural leakage is probably higher.’

  Nita nodded. ‘Hopefully they have at least three men bringing it in then.’

  ‘Huh?’ Ceri said.

  Lily looked down at her chest. ‘You better find me a barrel-chested squaddy, Nita.’

  Ceri blinked. ‘We’re going to go in like that? On the supply truck?’

  ‘You can think of a better way?’

  ‘Not right now.’ Ceri shrugged. ‘I guess you’re the one who’s been trained in infiltration. How are we going to do this?’

  ~~~

  It was dusk when the little truck bounced down the track from Norfolk. The two men in the front chatted about the meal they would get when they arrived at the base and the hooker one of them had had the night before. Perhaps he thought he had got lucky again as the brakes slammed on and the truck ground to a halt; there was a woman lying in the middle of the road, stark naked and apparently unconscious.

  There were three men and a woman in the truck and they all climbed out, the woman coming last with a medical kit.

  ‘What the Hell’s she doing out here with no clothes on?’ one of the men said.

  ‘Maybe she’s one o’ them naturists?’

  ‘Someone attacked her, I reckon.’

  ‘Get out of the way, you horny idiots,’ the woman said. Pushing between them, she knelt down beside the woman with the mass of black hair, reaching into the curls to find a pulse. ‘She’s alive. Help me turn her over.’

  That they could do, two of them knelt to help and the woman was turned onto her back with some delicacy. The delicacy lasted for a second before the men caught sight of the large breasts. ‘What a rack!’ one of the men said, and the woman smacked her fist into his shin.

  ‘I’m glad you like them,’ Lily said, opening her eyes. Her pupils shone brilliant red. ‘And I’m really glad you’re my build,’ she added to the woman who was sagging over her making whimpering noises. Lily sat up, cradling the woman in her arms and stroking her face. ‘There there, hun. I’m sorry about this, but I’m going to have to steal your clothes. It’s nothing personal.’ She was unbuttoning the woman’s blouse as Ceri and Nita walked out of the trees.

  Nita pulled her pistol and Ceri looked at her, frowning. Nita sighed. ‘I guess I could put them to sleep,’ she said.

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you would,’ Lily said. ‘It takes power to keep this aura up at this level.’

  With the soldiers asleep, stripped, and tied up in the trees, the three women, now dressed in uniforms which more or less fit, got into the truck, Nita at the wheel. Once again the truck began bouncing down the track. Ceri gripped the dashboard, her knuckles white. ‘I’m starting to hate cars again,’ she said.

  ‘Just be calm when we get to the gate,’ Nita told her. ‘That’s outside the zone right?’

  ‘As far as I remember. It was at the fence line.’

  ‘Good. It’ll probably need a little suggestion to get us in and I’d rather you saved your energy.’

  ‘It doesn’t work the same way for me. I draw power directly from the flow of null thaumitons. It leaves a residual charge of thaumic energy in me. That’s the limiting factor. I can do way more than you could, but the more I do, the more dangerous it gets. And it takes me longer to recover.’

  ‘I thought that fireball you tossed at the motel looked kind of big.’

  Ceri grinned. ‘You should see me when I get mad.’

  ‘Huh. Quiet now. The gate’s coming up.’

  Nita pulled the truck up at the gate and one of the guards walked out, glanced at them, and waved to his colleague in the hut. ‘Take it to the rear supply door at the bunker,’ the guard said. ‘Make sure you stay on the road. Regular guy sick?’

  ‘Food poisoning,’ Nita said. ‘I heard he ate a dog in the canteen.’

  The guard smirked. ‘Should’ve known better.’

  The barrier rose and Nita pulled the truck through, giving the guards a wave as she passed. A hundred yards down the road she said, ‘Fucking useless security. They deserve to get breached.’ The road split and she took the right-hand fork, heading for a low, heavily built structure surrounded by lights which were being turned on in the gathering gloom. ‘Leave the talking to me,’ she said as they approached the building.

  ‘I planned to,’ Ceri told her.

  No one stopped them as they drove past the squads of armed men in full battle gear to the rear of the building where two loading docks were built into the side of the more or less dome-shaped structure. Nita reversed up to one of them and cut off the engine. They were watched fairly closely as they got out of the truck to go to the back where the door was rolling up. It looked heavy, probably armoured, and there was a bull-necked man with hair so closely cropped he might as well have been bald waiting behind it with a clipboard.

  ‘You’re late,’ he said.

  ‘Had to change a tyre out, Sergeant,’ Nita said
, her accent developing a southern drawl.

  ‘Nothing comes or goes at night,’ the soldier said. ‘You’ll have to stay here until morning. There’s room in the barracks, so aren’t you the lucky ones.’

  Thinking that it would be the grunts in the barracks that would have it lucky, Ceri let Nita deal with the sergeant while she climbed into the back of the truck to help Lily carry the large, oblong box which was the only cargo. She could feel the leakage of thaumic energy even without using her Sight.

  ‘Get that thing down to the generator room,’ the sergeant was telling Nita as they emerged. ‘I’ll get your truck parked out of the way. You can take the dead one out at first light. You want level seven. Get moving.’

  There was a service elevator at the back of bay marked with buttons down to level ten. Nita stood aside while Ceri and Lily carried the case in and then pressed the button with “7” on it.

  ‘We’re in,’ Nita said. ‘What’s next?’

  ‘A small bit of engineering,’ Ceri said, ‘and then we need to try to get to Wilson.’

  ‘Before Ed gets here with the support?’ Nita asked, frowning. ‘The President must have a fairly large group of people around him loyal to Levy. If we make our play too soon they’ll move. Down here they could kill him and no one would know for days.’

  Ceri grunted acknowledgement of the problem. ‘Find out where he is at least. If we need to make a move then we’ll need to know where we’re moving too.’

  The lift doors opened and they were faced with two guards carrying rifles. One of them looked at the case and nodded to his left. The corridor was concrete and long. They walked over a hundred yards before reaching a thick, iron door which Nita opened with a heavy wheel to reveal the chamber beyond. It was more industrial than the lab Ceri and Cheryl had created the original generator in, but all the parts where there in all the same places. Ceri’s eyes fixed on the control unit for the resonator coils; that would be perfect.

  From the back of the room where a silver-iron mesh cage held the control systems, a man with lieutenant’s insignia walked out, looked at them and said, ‘Lock that into the spare bracket and take the other one out.’

  Nita nodded, waving Ceri and Lily toward a large, vertical, metal bar clipped into brackets on the wall. By Ceri’s estimate the bar they were replacing was over half depleted. Lily was opening the case and Ceri turned, helping her lift the new energy source out.

  ‘We can’t take the depleted bar out tonight,’ Nita said to the lieutenant. ‘Lockdown’s in effect. Is it okay if we pick it up in the morning?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Knock yourself out.’

  With the new bar in place, Ceri put her hand on the old one and casually sucked the power out of it as they carried it to the case. Lily closed the lid and Ceri focussed her collected energy on the resonance generator. There were half a dozen key components in it which were quite sensitive to electrical discharge; four of them fried, apparently from a short circuit in the main power converter. Not that it made a sound, or came to the notice of the lieutenant who was busy watching Lily’s behind as she bent over the case.

  ‘We were told to report to the barracks,’ Nita said as Lily straightened up and the lieutenant regained his focus. ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘On two.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Nita told him and the three women started for the door.

  ~~~

  The barracks room they were directed to had twelve double bunks and the sergeant who put them there told them, in no uncertain terms, to stick to the far end of the room away from the men. After a meal in the mess, about all they wanted to do was lie down, so that was okay.

  ‘We need to find a way to search the place, find the layout,’ Nita said under her breath as they headed for their bunks.

  ‘You already showed me how to do that,’ Ceri replied. ‘I watched your trick in the woods outside. Let me get horizontal before my stomach rebels and I’ll go looking.’

  ‘You figured out what I was doing just by watching?’ Nita asked, sounding incredulous.

  ‘I told you she was awesome,’ Lily replied.

  Ceri laid down on the bottom of a pair of bunks. ‘Just make sure I’m not disturbed,’ she said and closed her eyes. Summoning power was no more difficult or easy than usual, but replicating the effect Nita had used took more concentration than she had expected. The lack of a normal magic field to work through seemed to make it harder to work complex spells and she had to admit the awareness shift spell was relatively complex. There was a feeling like her mind was stretching and suddenly she was standing over her bed looking down at her own body. The hair really did not look that bad. Shame she was a bit stuffed with stodgy food.

  Turning, she headed through the rows of beds, past the small group of men who were mostly watching what the three girls were doing, and then out through the door. Passing through solid wood was surprisingly discomforting; Ceri shuddered when she was through it. And it was not going to be the last. This floor was entirely set up as barracks and other accommodation for the troops and security personnel; they had managed to discover that without resorting to any trickery. She headed for the lifts, closed her eyes, and allowed herself to sink through the floor to the next level down.

  The bunker was certainly set up to keep its occupants safe for a long time. Ceri went through four levels of storage before she got to the occupied levels. Two levels of food in giant freezers and a third level of dry goods was followed by an armoury which could have supplied a small army. Level seven had both the high-output thaumic generator and a more traditional diesel one, as well as other machinery which recycled water and air. The whole base could operate as a self-contained unit if necessary.

  Dropping into level eight she found herself in what looked like a TV studio. There was the emblem of the United States at the back of a desk with a pair of cameras pointed at it. Ceri looked at the big, moulded eagle. A studio for addressing the people in the event of an emergency complete with appropriate symbology. The rest of the floor was given over to communications suites to back up the studio and, apparently, talk to the armed services wherever they were. Right now, according to the huge, digital maps which took up one entire wall, they were heavily concentrated in the southern states. Ceri wondered whether Wilson had seen any of these maps; she kind of doubted it.

  Level nine seemed like a different world. There was a gymnasium, a swimming pool, not exactly Olympic sized, but still… There were a couple of suites there, unoccupied, but apparently meant for VIPs. You could hold an orgy in the beds and the en-suite bathrooms were all luxury. If there was a war, someone was going to be living in style. There was also a flight of stairs between this level and ten. Ceri figured Wilson and his wife had to be on the floor below and that the two floors were essentially the “Presidential Suite.” Rather than sliding down through the concrete, she went down the stairs and immediately found people.

  They were agents, probably Secret Service and almost certainly there because Levy owned them. None of them seemed to be aware of Ceri, or whatever part of her was walking past them as she searched deeper into the bottom level.

  There was a large meeting room, a smaller dining room, a couple of bedrooms, and a lounge. The latter was where she finally found the President and his wife. Neither of them looked happy. He was pacing the floor in front of a fireplace which looked like it ran on gas rather than solid fuel; fake logs sat in a fake grate and there were no flames. She sat on one of three large sofas, half curled up with her head in her hands.

  As Ceri watched a woman in a grey skirt suit walked in and Wilson stopped, looking at her. ‘Any word on the communications situation?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘We’re still in total blackout, sir.’ Well, that was a lie. The soldiers in the upper levels were able to communicate with outlying bases and the operations room was fully functional. ‘General Wallace is supervising attempts to break through the jamming, but so far nothing has worked. We don’t know how they cut the har
d lines, but all telephone and network connections are still out. The technical crews sent out to resolve the issue haven’t returned.’ The woman paused. ‘Sir, forward observation spotted several large explosions on the borders of the swamp.’ That might actually be true. Ceri had no idea what Simurgh had done to stop the black ops team, but she suspected it had been fairly terminal.

  ‘Thank you, Mel,’ Wilson said. ‘Please keep me informed.’

  All right, they had Wilson isolated on level ten and were feeding him a steady stream of disinformation. Meanwhile the troops at the top had no way of knowing that the man they were there to protect was actually their prisoner. There were eight levels and a lot of security to get through in order to present their case to him, and no way of know whether he would listen, or whether it would do any good if he did. How tight a hold did the military leaders here have on things?

  Ceri allowed her consciousness to snap back to her body and opened her eyes. Lily was sitting on the edge of the bed reading a magazine she had found somewhere. From the picture Ceri could see on the folded over page it was some sort of military life periodical; that had to be absolutely fascinating. At least it felt as though the high-carb-and-protein dinner had settled some.

  ‘Where’s Nita?’ Ceri asked.

  ‘Doing some scouting of her own,’ Lily replied. ‘The base went onto a higher level of alert about ten minutes ago.’

  ‘I think Sim did something drastic and they’ve put it out there that it’s a threat.’

  ‘Nice improvised cover-up.’

  ‘I’d be impressed if I wasn’t annoyed.’ Ceri sat up and looked down the room to where the soldiers had finally decided that a couple of attractive women were not that big a deal. She felt sure they would change their mind around the time the lights went out. ‘Wilson’s down at the bottom level. They’ve told him communications are out. They’ve also got a war room down there monitoring troop movements down south, but I’m pretty sure neither Wilson nor the troops up here know a thing about it.’

  ‘They don’t,’ Nita growled as she walked up from the far end of the room. ‘They’re on alert because of “unknown hostiles,” but they’ve got no idea what’s going on. There seems to be a General Wallace in charge.’