Ceri nodded. ‘That’s pretty much what I’d worked out. I haven’t seen him, that I know of, but I’m willing to bet he’s one of Levy’s people.’
‘I’d say that’s a given,’ Nita replied, settling down beside Ceri. ‘You got a plan?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Ceri said, settling back onto the bed, ‘we wait for Ed to turn up and hope they can’t get the geny working before then.’
March 2nd
There was a light shining in Ceri’s eyes. Blinking, she tried to make out the shadow behind it and the light was flicked away. ‘You’re a technician?’ The voice was male with a slight southern accent. ‘You’re qualified to work on that generator downstairs? Your corporal says you are.’
‘The General needs someone to fix some power converter, Private.’ That was Nita’s voice.
Ceri grunted and tried to get the light flare to subside in her eyes. ‘Uh, yes, sir. What’s wrong with it?’
‘If we knew that, Private, we wouldn’t need a technician. On your feet, soldier!’ Ceri guessed this was Wallace, though why a general was rousting her out of bed to fix the generator she broke she was really not sure.
‘Yes, sir,’ Ceri said.
‘All of you,’ Wallace said. ‘Get down there and get that generator working. Your president’s life could depend on it!’
Sure it did. Ceri pulled her bare legs out from under the sheets and reached for her uniform. Wallace had the sense, at least, to turn the torch light away while the three women got dressed. As they trooped out of the barracks room twelve men tried very hard to look like they had not been watching.
There were two men in the generator room, a different lieutenant who looked confused and distinctly worried, and a captain who had an emblem on his jacket which Nita had told them marked him as a practitioner. Official military magical specialists, rather like medics, were given rank above normal for various reasons; this man had almost certainly not come up through the ranks, but he had all the self-confidence of a practitioner given power he would normally have had to earn.
The reason he was there was obvious to Ceri as soon as she walked in the door. He had been called down to raise the circle, and he had done just that. A column of thaumic energy occupied the middle of the room. Ceri could see it with her Sight, but it was entirely invisible to normal vision. Turning, she looked back at Wallace and saw what she had half expected to see; a lattice of off-white corruption stains around his Chakral median.
‘Get on with it, Private,’ Wallace growled.
Ceri pretended to rub sleep out of her eyes and turned to the lieutenant. ‘What happened?’
‘We got the order to power up,’ he replied, ‘and Captain Ash raised the circle. Instruments say it’s there…’
‘Of course it’s there,’ Ash said. ‘Any fool can raise a circle.’
Ceri’s eyes flicked over the symbology of the containment circle as the lieutenant went on. ‘I followed the manual,’ he said. The glyphs and circles seemed to have been carved by an expert; there was no way anything was escaping that circle once it was up. ‘First stage is to initiate the resonance coils. I activated the system, but nothing happened. I’m getting no indications of any power in the system at all!’ Wallace was blaming the lieutenant and he was worried it actually was his fault. Ceri almost felt sorry for him.
‘Did you run the diagnostics?’ Ceri asked.
‘Sure,’ he replied, ‘but I couldn’t get anything at all from the resonance generator.’
Ceri sucked at her teeth thoughtfully. Wallace, it seemed, preferred that she acted instead of thinking. ‘Well? Do you know what’s wrong with it, Private?’ he snapped.
‘It sounds like the power converter’s shorted, sir,’ she replied. ‘I’ll have to strip it down to check.’
Wallace gave a disgruntled grunt. ‘Get it done.’ He turned on his heel and marched out.
‘Let me know when I’m needed again,’ Ash said and he too headed for the door.
Ceri was a lot happier with them out of the room. She turned to the lieutenant. ‘I’ll need some tools,’ she said.
~~~
Ceri grunted at the diagnostic readouts being displayed on the screen in front of her. ‘I was right about the power converter,’ she said. Well duh! She had destroyed it.
The lieutenant, who had given his name as Kent, grunted. ‘It’s still not operational. No sign of power flow to the resonance circuits.’
‘The short must have damaged some other components,’ Ceri said.
‘Is this coil supposed to be black and have a break in the wire?’ Lily asked from the room outside the cage.
Shutting down the power to the resonance system, Ceri called out, ‘That’ll be the problem, yeah.’ She turned and went back into the main room, bending over metal box with its open top and looking inside. ‘Uh-huh, the primary induction coils have both burned out.’
Kent groaned. Ceri was not entirely sure whether that was his first or last name; he was a nervous sort of man and might have given either under the stress of the situation. ‘There should be replacements in storage. I’ll go get them. You start taking the old ones out.’
Ceri nodded and he headed for the door. She waited for him to close the heavy bolts behind him before walking over to the energy bar mounted on the wall. Placing her hand on it, she started sucking the power out of it, forming a ball of thaumic energy in her other hand.
‘What are you doing?’ Nita asked.
‘Giving them another headache,’ Ceri replied. ‘The coils are soldered in, I need to unsolder them and this is the easy way. It also means they’ll need to get another rod in before they can raise the circle again.’
‘They won’t suspect?’ Lily asked.
‘After the amount of time it’ll take to repair that thing? They’ll probably think it wasn’t properly charged when we brought it in.’
Lily nodded, but looked a little nervous. ‘I hope Ed manages to bring help soon,’ she said.
~~~
‘One of the main power regulation circuits has burned out, sir.’ Kent was explaining the problem to Wallace who was standing in the generator room like a thunder cloud waiting to blast lightning at anything which might have been a conductor. ‘There’s nothing on base we can use to replace it. We’ll need to get the part sent in from Pitman-Kelley’s manufacturing plant.’
It was after ten in the morning, Ceri was not sure of the exact time, but she was glad that she was used to less sleep than most people. Nita was looking distinctly tired around the eyes.
‘There’s absolutely nothing you can do to fix this without a replacement?’ Wallace asked. Kent shook his head and Wallace turned his gaze on Ceri. ‘Have you any ideas, Private?’
‘It’s a very precisely calibrated electronic component, sir,’ Ceri replied, ‘and it’s fried. The power surge melted the encapsulation on the ASIC. We need the right component or we risk the whole unit blowing up. The other damaged components are relatively standard, but this one was designed specifically for the job.’ It had been; Cheryl had spent months designing it long before Ceri was involved with the project.
Wallace grunted. ‘Get some rest. I’ll have one flown in. I’ll need you ready to fit it as soon as it arrives.’
There was one advantage to being sent to rest in the middle of the morning, the barracks was empty aside from the girls. Ceri lay in the dark and closed her eyes, but her awareness went wandering. This time she headed straight for the war room, getting there just in time to see Wallace getting off the phone to Pitman-Kelley. He looked satisfied as he got up and walked over to the men operating the communications suite.
‘What’s the situation in Arkansas?’ he asked.
‘Second and Third Infantry Divisions are in place, General,’ a man with captain’s insignia stated. ‘The Fourth Marine Division is moving up to join them from Louisiana. The First Armoured will arrive tomorrow afternoon and we’ll have the required forces in place at that time.’
‘The mobile command
company?’
‘In place and setting up. We have an airship on station in Portsmouth ready to take us there as soon as we’re ready.’ He paused and then added, ‘The team who went out to check on the insurgency unit haven’t come back. They reported finding the site and then they went dark. We’ve had nothing from them since.’
Simurgh was clearly taking his job seriously. Nothing military was coming out of his swamp in one piece. Wallace seemed to have come to the same conclusion on very limited evidence. ‘I want an armoured unit sent into that area. We’ve still got no information on the whereabouts of the British woman Levy is looking for.’
‘You think she could be responsible?’ the captain said. ‘One woman…’
‘Intel said she contacted one of the werewolf tribes. Make sure the men have silver ammunition.’
Ceri smiled. Silver bullets were not going to do anything worth a damn to a dragon. She was about to let herself snap back to her body when the captain spoke up.
‘There was one other thing, sir. We got a report from one of our CIA contacts. He believes someone has managed to get information to the Pentagon about what we’re doing.’
Wallace frowned. ‘Any reports of troops movements toward this area?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Keep me informed and make sure Levy knows about this.’
Ceri did not wait for any reply. Sinking back into her body she let herself fall asleep. Hoffman was doing his job. If news of what he was doing had got to Wallace it seemed likely that he was being successful. Now they just had to hope he was successful quickly.
~~~
‘Diagnostics are all in the green,’ Kent said. ‘We can initiate at any time, sir.’
Wallace turned to Ash. ‘Get this thing up, immediately.’
The urgency in his voice seemed odd and Ceri glanced at Nita. An almost imperceptible shrug was the only reply she got. They had been down in the generator room for the last three hours fitting the new component and there was a noticeable increase in tension in the room with the general standing in the corner for the last hour, his foot tapping in irritation.
‘Do you need us anymore, General?’ Nita asked. Ash was walking to the energy rod on the wall; technically the “technicians” were no longer required.
‘We have an emergency situation, Corporal,’ Wallace replied. ‘The upper levels of the base have been compromised.’
‘By who, sir?’ Nita said. She sounded alarmed and her posture straightened instantly as though ready for action.
‘I don’t have that inf-‘
‘General,’ Ash broke in, ‘I can’t do it.’
‘What do you mean you can’t?!’ Wallace roared.
‘The power rod is depleted,’ Ash replied, remaining outwardly calm though his brow twitched in irritation. ‘We waited too long.’ Wallace was going red in the face. ‘Your orders, sir?’ Ash said.
Ceri ignored them. She was sure enough of the dissociated awareness spell now to do it standing up, even if she was leaning against a wall. The only thing she was bothered about was rising up through the concrete and stone to the barracks level. It was a little like drowning, even though she was essentially immaterial and did not need to breathe. She made it, rising into something a little like total chaos.
There were wounded men in the corridors, but they were being treated and the place seemed to belong to heavily armed assault troops in black combat gear. They seemed to be being directed by men and women in suits with body armour strapped over the top. Secret Service, possibly FBI as well; that was Ceri’s guess anyway. They seemed to have full control of that level, but the lift system was no longer operating and the emergency stairwell was sealed off with blast doors which they currently had no way of getting through.
She located Hoffman in one of the barracks rooms which seemed to be being used as the command post. He did not appear to be in charge, but he was talking to a small, commanding woman who looked like she was.
‘We’ve got no communications with the levels below, Directory,’ Hoffman was saying. ‘I’ve been through all the rooms on this level. If Brent and her friends are still alive, they’re down below and they might be the only hope we have.’
‘You’ll forgive me if I prefer to believe in cutting our way down to the control room and the President.’
Ceri snapped back to her body and did a double-take. Wallace was aiming his pistol at Ash and screaming, ‘Get that circle up, soldier!’ He had lost it; assuming he had ever had it in the first place.
‘It’s over, General,’ Ceri said calmly. Wallace wheeled around, his gun levelling at Ceri’s face. ‘The Secret Service has taken over upstairs,’ Ceri went on. ‘Your plans are royally fucked. Put the gun down and give yourself up.’ Out of the corners of her eyes, Ceri could see Nita and Lily tensing to act, but Wallace was on a hair trigger, even if his gun might not be. Talking him down would be better, if he could be.
‘No,’ Wallace said, ‘she said we had to do this… for the glory… You! You’re the Brent girl. I can do one thing right.’ Ceri saw his finger starting to squeeze the trigger and reacted on instinct. Wallace froze, his finger relaxing and his eyes going unfocussed. Ceri stepped forward and removed the gun from his unresisting hand, giving it to Nita. She pointed it at Wallace.
Ceri turned to the other two men in the room. ‘You gentlemen want to be charged with treason?’ she asked. Ash and Kent looked at each other and then back at Ceri. ‘Good. I suggest you get anyone here still loyal to President Wilson and take the control room on level eight. Get the blast doors on level two open and give yourselves up to the troops up there. And you can’t trust the men in the control room.’
‘Are you nuts?!’ Ash asked. His eyes darted to the still dazed general. ‘What the Hell are you?’
‘Ceridwyn Brent,’ Ceri said. ‘I’m a thaumatologist and currently the last person you want to fuck with. Take the control room, Captain.’
‘What do we do?’ Lily asked.
‘Tie this pacted piece of shit up, and then we’re going to get the President,’ Ceri replied. ‘Wallace wasn’t alone, or in charge. I think Wilson’s still in danger.’
Kent, apparently, was better under pressure than Ash was. ‘Take his ID badge,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it to access level nine and ten. We can lock him in the cage. I’ve got the key, he won’t be getting out.’ Lily turned and gave the lieutenant a smile which actually made him blush.
‘All right,’ Ceri said, ‘let’s get this moving.’
The guards at the lift looked at the three women marching toward them a little strangely, but said nothing. ‘You two,’ Nita said, ‘go help Captain Ash in the generator room.’
‘Our orders…’ one of them began.
‘Your orders just changed, Private!’ Nita snapped. ‘Move!’ Ceri got the feeling that Nita was used to giving orders when she had to and the rank insignia she was wearing gave her the authority. The guards bolted past the women toward the generator room.
Ceri hit the lift call button and the doors opened immediately. ‘Hit six,’ Nita said. ‘We’re going to need some supplies.’
‘Six is the armouries,’ Ceri said.
‘Yeah. You want to go up against armed Secret Service agents with one pistol?’
Lily beamed. ‘Can I have a sub-machine gun?’
She got a submachine gun, a bandolier of smoke grenades, and a half-dozen spare magazines. Nita seemed a little surprised that Lily seemed to know how to use them. Ceri had seen her with a grenade launcher; she was less surprised. However, Ceri had no clue how to use a gun, aside from the obvious. Nita gave her the pistol, just in case, and took a supply of magazines and an assault rifle. Then she handed out gas masks.
A swipe of Wallace’s ID card lit up the lower level buttons and Ceri hit nine. ‘Level nine was empty,’ she said as the car went down. ‘There’s a staircase linking the two floors which, I think, will be rather more tactically advantageous than this thing.’ Nita nodded, but she flicked her rifl
e’s safety off before the doors opened.
The caution was unnecessary. No one stopped them leaving the lift, no one was waiting in the corridors as they marched purposefully through toward the stairs. That changed as they got closer.
Ceri spotted the first of the agents as he aimed his automatic at her. She raised his hand as if to fend off the bullet, which was an appropriate gesture since there was a thud as it impacted the wall beside her. The agent did not have the advantage of magic and Nita’s return fire hit him in the chest, throwing him backward down the stairs.
‘Now we’ve got trouble,’ Nita said.
‘My turn,’ Lily stated. First one, then a second smoke grenade was tossed at the staircase. They were still rolling down the steps as smoke began to billow out of them, accompanied by a shower of sparks. Ceri hurried to pull her mask on, prompted by Nita.
‘Spray fire as we go through the smoke, Lil,’ Nita said, her voice muffled by the heavy rubber of the mask. ‘Which way to the lounge? Wilson’s probably still there.’
‘We have most of the floor to cross,’ Ceri said. ‘Head straight through when we get down the stairs.’
The rattle of Lily’s sub-gun battered at Ceri’s ears as she showered the area ahead of them and started into the smoke. Lily held the weapon at her hip, not worrying about aiming, and launched bursts of suppressive fire as they walked down. There was a sharp cry as she fired at the bottom of the stairs and she shifted hard right in time to avoid the bullets which came back from another agent. Both Nita and Lily raised their guns and fired at the origin of the gunfire.
As they emerged from the smoke cloud Ceri spotted the knot of agents waiting about mid-way down the corridor, saw them raising their guns, and reacted. Something like a trail of twisting distortion in the air flew from her hand. It hit the ground in the middle of the group and exploded. Ceri had never tried the spell before and was quite impressed herself. The sound was massive, as though someone had literally set a bomb off in the corridor. Men were slammed against the walls, others were left stumbling about with their ears ringing. Lily and Nita moved in, their gun-butts making short work of anyone still upright.
Thaumatology 07 - Eagle's Shadow Page 20