by O. J. Lowe
Part of him wished he was with them. It’d be easier than standing here watching them possibly go to their death. It was unsettling, his heart was pounding in his chest, almost beating out a need for attention. He wished he could ignore it. Too many wishes, not enough of them threatening to come true. This watching thing was torture. In the past, he might have gone with them. Now, he’d been told he was too important to send on a mission like this. He blamed that therapist they’d assigned to study him, if he was honest. Covering for Brendan while he was out in Vazara was a dream assignment, one he couldn’t have dreamed of months ago. Or it would have been more enjoyable if things were different. If they’d been a lot different, he might have been enjoying it.
The thoughts of Sharon hadn’t faded with time. Nor had he expected they would have. How long does the hurt take to fade? Even his little reunion with Natalia Larsen hadn’t done much to abate the guilt. It was eating him up inside, a carnivorous little parasite devouring his insides and spitting them out before starting the process again. Some memories weren’t leaving him. Just when he thought they were behind him, something would remind him of that hotel room on Carcaradis Island.
“Do you feel guilty about what happened with Agent Larsen?” Doctor Steinbru had asked, looking over her clipboard at him. Through her glasses, she resembled a giant owl perched on the edge of a leather seat, he always thought.
“Should I? I mean… Look Natalia is a great woman. Do I want to be with her? Honestly? Well I think she can do better for a start. But right now, I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.” He’d laid down on the couch, purely for the sake of playing the game then they couldn’t level that against him. He didn’t want to be here. They’d made him. It was nigh-on almost the first thing they’d made him do when he’d returned to active duty.
Nick, Brendan had said, all fatherly and with a hand on his shoulder. It didn’t suit him. Nobody took Brendan King seriously when he was trying to be friendly. When he was sternly barking orders, you knew where you stood with him. This had been… unsettling, he’d found. You need to go see someone.
“When you say you don’t know what you want…” Steinbru pressed, focusing in on him with those large-rimmed eyes. He didn’t want to stare at them for too long. Instead he’d focused on the ceiling, examining a large crack that ran the length of it. If there was going to be something she wanted to add to what she’d started, he was going to let her. He stayed silent while she studied him. The silence weighed on him like a chain.
“I don’t know where I go from here,” he finally offered. He wanted to be out of here as fast as possible and sitting in silence wasn’t going to do him any favours. It was supposed to be confidential. But he didn’t know that he entirely believed that. Unisco didn’t do confidential when it came to their agent’s medical reports.
“That’s natural. Where did you think you were going before all of this?”
“Honestly? I did think of leaving the agency for a time. I mean some agents manage to juggle the family and job, manage to do both. I don’t think I could. I wouldn’t have wanted to lie to her like that. Keep lying anyway. I know its kingdom security and all that, but it puts me in an uncomfortable position. I wouldn’t have liked to have leave but sometimes you have to do what’s right, you know?”
“You spent a lot of time apart before she died, am I correct?”
“I wouldn’t say a lot,” Nick admitted. “We tried to catch up wherever we could. Those weeks at the Quin-C, they were… bittersweet.”
“I imagine that it never felt like the best way to have a relationship though, never mind one running to marriage. Being pulled apart when you wanted to be with her.”
His voice caught in his throat and he tried to clear it away with a cough. “That was why it should have all come together when I left Unisco, but it was ripped apart. Guess some people just don’t get happy endings.”
“You found out she had a secret herself,” Steinbru then said and Nick glared at her despite himself.
The building was a good distance away, a kingdom from him. The pictures were good quality, video drawn from the headcams on the operative’s helmets. What they saw, he could see. This had to go well. He’d gotten the intelligence from Ulikku, he’d given up the location of a Coppinger storage facility in the south of Premesoir. To say he was suspicious about the whole thing was an understatement. There had to be some sort of catch. All initial efforts at scouting it out had been inconclusive. Recon had reported it to be mostly abandoned. He’d had some of Will’s staff go over hours of security footage. They’d studied the blueprints of the building so many times he saw the outlines of it when he closed his eyes.
And yet, he had a feeling.
Nobody had gone in or out for too long according to local records. That didn’t feel right. Even abandoned buildings had someone by to check on them every now and then. And it felt like too random a location for Ulikku to specifically give up. To the best of their knowledge, Ulikku had never been to Premesoir. There was no motivation they could see for this address to be random.
Nick rubbed the bridge of his nose. His head ached, and he hadn’t slept well for a long time. It wasn’t nightmares, but something else he couldn’t describe. Nightmares he might be able to deal with.
It had been Will Okocha himself who’d cottoned onto a reason for them to act. The sort of one in a thousand spot that had made Okocha so good at his job for so long. He’d glanced at the footage while in the room, observed and then rewound and fast forward it several times. His attention had been locked on that one bit of footage for the best part of an hour, his eyes never wavering, sometimes not even to blink. There hadn’t been anyone go in or out, at least not where the camera could see them. But…
He could still remember the sound of triumph Okocha had made as the credit had dropped, as he’d made the moment of realisation. Some sort of strangled cheer, he’d jabbed a finger at the screen, showed them the glimpse of the furthest wall. How every six hours, like clockwork, the glow of a light shone against the back wall, a reflection in one of the other windows. Not bright, had to be quite a distance away from the actual window, but it was there. Someone was moving around in the building. They were security conscious, he had to give them that. But they weren’t as good as Unisco. Which meant there had to be another way in. Maybe an underground entrance, maybe through the sewers…
So many ifs and maybes. The blueprints of the warehouse showed no other entrance but that didn’t mean anything. It could have been modified. Records of the place showed that it had long since been bought by a company several times removed from Reims itself but still a very distant subsidiary. That in itself should probably have been enough to convince them that something was wrong.
Regardless, the team was on their way in. They’d find something. They had to. With how much effort it had taken Ulikku to cough it up, they better find something worth crowing about, otherwise none of them would look particularly good.
Right now, they needed a win. They couldn’t afford anything less. The fall of Vazara hadn’t done anyone any favours at Unisco. The Senate was asking questions of them, like how they hadn’t seen it coming. As if anyone could have seen that move coming! Anything to hide their own incompetence, like refusing to aid Nwakili, probably more of a factor in the kingdom falling than anything Unisco had or hadn’t done.
“Yeah, Sharon’s secret… I was keeping stuff from her, so I really can’t complain about her doing the same, can I?” It sounded hollow as he said it, he knew that. Steinbru knew it as well judging by the way she looked at him over the top of her notes. She had a way about her, something that hinted she didn’t believe much of what he said to her.
“It wasn’t entirely the same thing though, was it?” she said softly. She said it with a lot more conviction than he’d managed to say his bit. Still he had to try and drag it out. They both knew he was doing it.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you did it as a job.
National security, international protection, you had to keep it a secret. Not just for your sake but for hers as well. We all know how Unisco operates, what you have to do. We all know why we ensure that our operative’s identities are kept as secret as possible.”
He did know that. Part of the reason he’d not been out in the field much since the whole event at the Quin-C final. There’d been a lot of videocams about there, most of the carnage had been recorded for posterity. And given his lack of a muffler, he’d been caught running around, kicking arse and outright murdering a whole bunch of Coppinger grunts. Granted, they’d deserved it. He’d been able to explain it away partially as self-defence training, an excuse that wouldn’t fool anyone who knew even the slightest thing about fighting but the media had bought it in the immediate aftermath.
There was a great deal of magnitude between being able to defend yourself against someone trying to kill you and proactively putting them down before they could try. At least what had happened between him and Rocastle and Coppinger down at the docks after hadn’t been widely witnessed. If Scott Taylor wanted to talk about it, he hadn’t done. Gratitude perhaps. The director’s daughter hadn’t died. Taylor was screwing her, everyone knew that now. It wasn’t a secret. If he’d ratted out Nick, it would hardly have been charitable given he’d spared him from cold nights alone.
He’d kept out of sight. Lived off his funds, done some low-key work for Unisco. Worked hard. Shadowed Brendan in his new role, slowly gone through the role of re-inventing himself. Made himself indispensable. Even worked on his shooting and his hand to hand. He’d spent more time in the training facilities the last several months than the last several years, throwing hours every day at it.
“You kept secrets because you had to,” Steinbru continued. Her voice commanded authority. Before she’d become a psychiatrist for Unisco, she’d been an agent, but the stories told she’d been glad to get away from it. Some people didn’t take to the lifestyle which wasn’t as glamorous as was made out. “What was her excuse?”
Many, many times he’d wanted to talk to Ruud Baxter about Sharon, he’d never quite found the nerve. Baxter likely knew her better than any man alive, as much as it pained him to admit. He’d seen the side of Sharon that she’d kept secret from Nick for so damn long. He had the answers. More than once, he’d made to approach Baxter in the halls, when he deigned to appear at headquarters and yet the moments had passed, his motivations had failed him.
Perhaps, just perhaps, he didn’t want to know. As hard as not knowing was, the truth could be so much worse.
The moment had arrived. Nick knew it. The team knew it. Everyone in the ops room knew it. And yet, it’d be up to him to proclaim it. He was sweating, his brow covered in the stuff. He felt hot and damp, uncomfortable where he stood. There was a difference. He’d been on these missions himself. He’d survived them. Statistically, there was something like a one-in-six chance of a fatality on them. Twenty-seven missions he’d been on like this. Against the statistics, he’d done well. He’d beat the odds. That was all you could ask for. He’d come through unscathed, at least physically. Mentally, he’d probably have had to get Steinbru’s opinion on that and he doubted it would be anything approaching perfect sanity. Functioning might have to be the best description of him these days, at least on the worst of them, and that was all he needed to be. On his best days, even Brendan had said he was up there with the best of them. Not to his face admittedly.
Not that Brendan would ever know that he had viewed those files. He didn’t even know Nick had long since worked out the secret way into his office. Forewarned is forearmed. A little bit of knowledge was always a handy thing to have in a crisis. One day he might need it. He didn’t want to go into thought about why that may be or when that day may come but better knowing it and not needing it than the reverse.
Aurora Team were in position, ten highly trained Unisco operatives, two groups of five, one at each end of the building and ready to enter on a count of five. Already right now, they were readying their breach charges. Across the ops room, feeds ran live across viewing screens from the minicams on their helmets, real-time views on everything that they saw. They were armed up to the teeth, they knew what they were doing. Every inch of him knew that they should be confident here.
Something felt off. Truly off. A feeling he couldn’t explain in his gut, tiny, nagging, just a hint of distrust. A hunch, nothing more but one that demanded his attention relentless in its nag.
“Clear to proceed?” came the request over the comms. The words echoed inside his head, he repeated them over and over again. The smart thing to do would be pull them out of there right now. If you weren’t sure, then don’t risk it. The first damn thing Brendan King had always said to him. And it was always the best thing to go with your instincts. They could be misguided but rarely wrong. If something looked bad, it probably was.
He reached down to the Abort button on the console, hovered his finger over it. Everything told him he should do it. If he pushed it, they’d slip away into the night, the op would be over, and he’d have to deal with the consequences. If he didn’t push the button, he’d have to deal with the consequences, but the team might well not survive.
“Don’t do it.”
He wasn’t alone. Of course, he wasn’t. Aside from the techs and the various others doing a dozen little jobs around him, Walter Swelph had come down himself, the new head of the management department. He didn’t know him that well. They moved in different circles. He was in theory, only second in command in the entire organisation to Arnholt, his department dealt with internal appointments, disciplinaries and indiscretions as well as running the inquisitors. The command hadn’t come from him. He’d remained silent, watching with impassive curiosity.
No, he recognised the voice. Ragwort. Colonel Alvaro Ragwort, the Senate representative of the war effort. He resented the presence of the man here, not least because of his background. Ragwort was a Serranian but hailing from the icy north of the region, an insular people in Nick’s experience. They didn’t think their way was right, they knew it was right and to hells with what everyone else thought. Ragwort was balding blond, heavyset and carried himself like a fighter. He looked like a killer, even before you got to the leather patch that covered his right eye amidst a mess of scarring. In short, if you needed subtlety, he wasn’t the man you selected for the job. His presence here was a message, everyone knew that, and they were on eggshells around the man. Not least because of his Arknatz background.
Arknatz itself was a bit of an anomaly in the way the five kingdoms had structured itself over the last fifty years. Ever since Unisco had been founded by the five premier intelligence agents of their day, it had been recognised as the dominant force in maintaining law, order and peace across those kingdoms. It had very quickly reached the top of a hierarchy that needed building and maintaining. The people had been gotten in place, the missions had been undertaken, the lines in the sand had been drawn. Before Unisco, there had been more than a dozen independent agencies running their own agendas over increasingly lawless kingdoms, refusing to share information with each other, refusing to work together. They spent as much time fighting each other as any actual villain. Arknatz was one of those organisations that had been there before and about the only one still clawing out an existence at the table. They had their secrets, their people were trained well and because of some side deal made many decades ago, they’d not only survived the cull of all those other organisations but managed to thrive in their absence. Nobody at Unisco liked them but they tolerated them by decree.
And as a senior senator from Serran had once commented, sometimes you needed an organisation out there to do things that Unisco might find distasteful. Nick had often considered the Unisco situation over the last several months. It tried to be everything for everyone, running from specialised law enforcement backup to intelligence gathering to its own military taskforce to covert operations and assassination when the need arose. Sooner or late
r, it’d trip over itself, overreach. Sooner or later, every Unisco agent found themselves involved in a situation they found themselves uncomfortable with.
With the war against the Coppingers breaking out when it had, Unisco had been reorganised, Arknatz had been given a larger role and they were being forced to cooperate. Ironic, given their previous lack of desire in that department going back many years. Nick certainly didn’t feel comfortable enough with the way Colonel Ragwort was feeling confident enough to start barking out orders to it. It was the sort of voice that implied it expected the order to be carried out and quickly.
“I’m sorry,” he said mildly. “I didn’t catch that, colonel.” He smiled politely enough, aware it might piss him off and not even really caring. Even wondered if it was worth pushing it further. “Sounds like you’re catching something. Been some of the wild coughs going about the building lately.”
“Agent Roper,” Ragwort said with a look of disgust. “Your concern about my health isn’t needed. I’d rather you gave the order for your team to begin their mission.”
Finger still above the Abort button, Nick clucked his tongue. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” He might as well lay it all out on the table. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
“Or it might be empty warehouse,” Ragwort said with disgust. “Ulikku is a known deviant, he sounds convincing but maybe he’s a liar. Only one way to find out.”
Nick wasn’t going to argue with that. His opinion of Ulikku wasn’t something to be repeated in polite conversation. Ragwort’s accent was thick, but understandable. It wasn’t overtly dissimilar to listening to Derenko, if Nick was honest. No doubt, they’d each claim there were subtle differences to where they came from, but he could hear the northern influences in their tones.