by O. J. Lowe
What he was going to argue with was the way Ragwort had brushed away his concerns, not that he cared really what the Arknatz colonel thought. He was in charge here, not Ragwort. This was a Unisco operation. “Something doesn’t feel right here,” he repeated. “Anything you know about this place that we don’t?” He let an easy relaxed tone slip into his voice, nothing accusatory. They were supposed to be sharing information after all. Trust but verify.
Ragwort replied as much, the disgust palpable in his voice. “Agent Roper send them in for Divine’s sake.”
Nick took a moment further to consider his position one final time. Ignoring the bad feeling, there were three outcomes he could see ahead of him. One, that Ulikku had been lying and they would find an empty warehouse. That would be acceptable to him personally, none of his team would be hurt and they could come back. His bad feeling would be unfounded, only the waste of time and resources but Ulikku was someone else’s prisoner and people above him had chosen for the information to be acted on.
Two, Ulikku was telling the truth and they’d catch a Coppinger operation unawares, make a whole bunch of arrests, maybe gather more intel and the whole thing would be a massive success. Maybe there’d be casualties but that wasn’t always unavoidable when the choice had to be made. Worst case scenario, it would only be a minor Coppinger facility but taking it off the board would be a victory no matter what, it’d be something to cheer about. Best case scenario, they’d remove a whole bunch of scientists and weapons and people who could tell them more about Claudia’s grand plan.
Three, Ulikku was telling the truth and sending them into a trap. If he examined the bad feeling and searched for any possible source behind it, this would likely be it. He had personal experience of what the Coppingers could bring to bear when they wanted to make a statement. He’d seen their soldiers, he’d seen the creatures they’d created, and he wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of them, never mind sending a team to face them. He’d fought one or two before, the one she’d called Cacaxis according to her brother, he still had the container crystal containing Unialiv on his person.
Three options, two good, one bad. Statistics said that a two out of three chance of a positive result was worth going through with. And he had faith in the team, he’d overseen some of their training himself. They were new recruits in the role, experienced in other areas but raw in this. Add the knowledge that they couldn’t have been trained any better to that two-in-three chance of it all going well…
“You have clearance to proceed, Aurora team” he said. “Good luck.”
Sometimes the silence that these sessions passed in was the most bearable thing of them all. Sometimes he didn’t want to think about the consequences of what Steinbru was suggesting to him. Something about what she said managed to stick in his head, lay down ugly roots and branch out.
“I’m sure it wasn’t like that,” he said eventually. He didn’t have any sort of conviction in his voice, he wasn’t sure if he believed it himself. He knew exactly what it was she was doing, trying to make him think about it, but that didn’t make it any easier to ignore it.
“She concealed all this important stuff from her past about you,” Doctor Steinbru continued. “And it was all in her past. From what we now know, the Vedo were extinct. They weren’t coming back. She was out, even if they did. So why keep it a secret.”
“It feels like we’ve been over this before.”
“Because you’re not perhaps hearing what I’m saying. You’re hurting, that’s right, I can tell that. Director King could tell that. I think you’re screaming out in silent pain and you just want someone to hear you.”
He shook his head. “Doc, I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“Which in itself isn’t right. Your traumas have been many. I think you’re working to actively suppress them.”
Nick wasn’t impressed, he raised an eyebrow and glanced towards the door. Wondered if it was too late to stop these sessions. Maybe like a rolling boulder, they’d now started, and they weren’t stopping any time soon.
“Let’s talk about the island.”
That didn’t sound promising. Ever since the Quin-C, he’d done too much talking about that whole damn island. The very thought filled his stomach with bile, made his head ache and he threw his hands up in frustration.
“Doc, I’ve done nothing but talk about the island over the past few months,” he said. “Believe me, I don’t want to bring it back up. I want to put that behind me.”
“It’s not going to go away though, Nicholas. It happened. I think you’re remembering it all too vividly and I think it’s suffocating you. Talking helps…”
“And I’ve spoken enough about it!” He was surprised by the venom in his voice. “I’ve spoken to Arnholt about it, to Brendan, to people who I trust, the media’s asked repeatedly about it. Even spoke to Claudia fucking Coppinger about the whole damn thing. And now you’re making me do it again! Seriously…” He let his voice tail off, a little out of breath from the suddenness of his rant.
It probably wasn’t the first time Steinbru had had to hear a rant like that, she just smiled slyly and leaned forwards in her seat. “And on that subject of Claudia Coppinger… Going undercover like you did with her. That was reckless.”
“It was something that needed to be done.” That was what he’d said to himself at the time and it was what he’d continued to repeat after the event. He believed it as well.
“It didn’t need to be you.”
“I think it exactly needed to be me. I think everything just fell into place there for the perfect trap. Right there and then, I was everything they wanted and everything they needed. There are still spirit callers out there who joined up with Claudia Coppinger who we can’t account for. Divines know what they’re doing! But it can’t be anything good.”
“Nicholas, you shouldn’t have been anywhere near anything like that at that point. I’ve spoken to some of the people who were around you at that point. William Okocha said you looked like you were on the verge of some manic breakdown when you and he put it all together.”
“No, he didn’t,” Nick said. “You may be paraphrasing it, but I’ll bet you any credits you like, he didn’t say it in those exact words. Will’s my friend.”
“And your friends want you to get help. As for attacking Ritellia in front of everyone…”
“That was satisfying.”
“You could have killed him.”
“I pulled my punch. His dignity probably took the biggest blow. And right now, I imagine he’s too dead to care.”
“And then, what happened at the stadium after… I’ve seen some of the footage of you tearing around like a one-man army. You could have been killed.”
“I might have been killed if I’d hidden under my seat. Least doing that, I gave myself a fighting chance. I did what I’m trained to do. And I saved lives. I mean, do you know how many people were at risk? All of them!”
“And I think the most at risk person there was you. Nicholas, you didn’t run after Harvey Rocastle for altruistic reasons.”
“He’d kidnapped the director’s daughter…”
“People were dying,” she pointed out. “One spirit dancer in the scheme of things is no more or less important than anyone else in that stadium. Nobody would have blamed you if she’d died.”
“Rocastle was someone we needed to capture,” Nick said quickly. “He already escaped from Unisco custody once already. An embarrassment we needed to put right, if nothing else.”
“You didn’t try to capture him though. What did you actually do, Nicholas? Beating him senseless wasn’t the best thing for anyone involved.”
“One of his spirits was ready to kill a hostage. It was the first thing that I could come up with that’d distract his attention. You know what happens with the bond between spirit and caller when the caller is in danger. At least, I assume you do. It’s an old tactic, I’ve used it before myself.” That last remark was unnecessary, he knew that
, but he’d made it anyway. He didn’t like the way he’d done the job being questioned.
“I’ve seen your notes on the Lucas Hobb incident,” she said. “That’s a whole new set of circumstances that we might discuss at a later date.”
He said nothing. That felt like a bloody long time ago and he didn’t want to go over old ground with it. “Can we get back to where we were before? I don’t want to talk about Hobb or Carling for that matter. One’s dead. One’s not going anywhere from jail. They’re not important!”
“Okay, Rocastle killed your fiancé. I don’t think you’d have shed too many tears at the prospect of beating on him,” Steinbru said slyly. “Apparently you gave him quite a painful one. Several broken bones, the reports say. Mia Arnholt described it as brutal. Scott Taylor described it as vicious.”
“Did what I had to do. I doubt either of them were complaining too much at the time. You know, because of the situation that they’d found themselves in.”
“Nicholas, if you’d shot him through the head, there’d be one less Coppinger in the world,” she said. “Do you ever think of that?”
He shook his head. “Not an important Coppinger. And besides, that’s not our way. Shooting him then would have left at least two bodies. Minimum. More if his troll had rampaged. I don’t regret the choices I made that day.”
“And yet, a lot of people would have made different ones. Not even regular people, a lot of Unisco agents would have done the same. I’m worried if I’m honest. In fact, do you want to know what I think, based on your actions in their entirety, since you discovered Sharon died?”
The room went into silence as everyone watched the screens, all different angles of the same view, the doors to the warehouse, followed by the flash and the bang of the breach charges forcing them open. They all saw the weapons rise, as the two teams of five broke into the warehouse, saw the dirty green linoleum on the floor, dust covered and disused barring the faintest trace of days old footprints. Shelves of aged products lined the walls, their labels too faded to be read, not with the swift glances the minicams gave them.
Probably the first sign that the place wasn’t abandoned was the way the lights flickered on above the teams as they entered, humming slowly into brilliant life. Nick remembered seeing somewhere that this place had been used to store foodstuffs before it had become abandoned. If the old packaging on the shelves was anything to go by, it probably stank in there. Somewhere in the corner of one cam, he was sure he saw a rat scurrying away into the murkiness of the mezzanine. Maze looked like a good description of the place, not too many wide-open spaces so far, not huge clear lines of sight. That had its perks if it came to a firefight.
He still didn’t like this, couldn’t help but feel uneasy. He wouldn’t have liked going into this situation if it were him going into the unknown. He’d done it plenty of times but that feeling never waned.
Across the room, Ragwort was clucking his tongue in his mouth, he looked as unsettled as Nick felt. Probably for entirely different reasons. They both wanted this to work well. From Ragwort’s perspective, they needed a result, something worth taking back to their high command, absolutely nothing would be a bad result for them. From Nick’s perspective, he’d be happy if none of the team were wiped out. That wouldn’t reflect badly on Unisco. A bust would suit Unisco fine. Wouldn’t look great but they’d survive it with ease.
He hated politics. On the screens, the team were approaching the middle of the first floor, one of them audibly confirming what they could all see…
“… Approaching stairwell, ready to secure…”
They’d suspected as much. There was more below the surface than first met the eyes. One of them reached the stairwell, peered over the railings, far into the darkness below. Either it was deeper than it looked, or the feed was screwy. Far in the distance, he was sure he could see some pinpricks that might be lights.
“Aurora team, you have clearance to check it out,” he said, unable to help himself. His curiosity had been piqued. Nick looked to Ragwort, then at Swelph. “Looks like it’s something at least. That wasn’t on the building plans.”
Swelph said nothing. Ragwort rubbed his hands together, his face splitting open into a grin. “Looks like Ulikku was partly telling the truth, no?”
“That’s the foundation of a good lie, in my experience,” Swelph said finally, a little testily. “A little truth to hold up the bullshit.”
Nick had to smirk at that as he turned away from the two of them. As curious as he might be, he didn’t like stairwells. Going up was a bit of a bitch, leading with your head, vulnerable to someone on the high ground… Going down was easier, but still an ambush was possible at the bottom. If what was going on down below was an active Coppinger operation, they had to know someone was here by now.
“Aurora team, you see any signs of surveillance?” he asked. A chorus of negatives came back to him. That assured him but not completely. These men and women were professionals. They knew how to spot any sort of known recording implement. Didn’t mean one hadn’t been invented yet that could give them the slip. He’d seen the sort of technology Claudia Coppinger had been pushing her people to invent. Nobody did business with Reims anymore, the company had been effectively disabled, forbidden from operating in the business world, but most of the brilliant minds had vanished into the void. A worrying prospect.
A team of Unisco accountants had gone over the company books, discovered huge profit holes across their margins, billions of unaccounted for credits swimming into holes and not reappearing again. In that respect, they’d had a little luck in finding out what was going on when they did. Coppinger wouldn’t have gotten away with it forever, but another year or two might have been feasible. Earlier was always better. She might have been able to squirrel away even more funds for her war, even more technology and firepower to give her a better advantage in the long run.
Of course, now that she’d gotten in bed with Mazoud and had a say in how Vazara was run, she in theory had access to the wealth of the kingdom, which while not infinite was definitely not insubstantial. Any hope of bankrupting her was gone. Vazara might have been plundered for years, but the well of minerals there wasn’t dry by a long shot.
On the screens, the team had left two men on the top of the stairwell. He approved that decision. It meant that they wouldn’t be flanked from behind easily. The chances of two Unisco operatives being dropped without them giving any sort of warning were low. Not impossible, but difficult. Very difficult. Their minicams showed the rest of the team heading down into the darkness, headlamps lighting up the other eight to show a sterile stairwell, a dirty brown colour cut down deep in the foundations of the earth.
“You ever see anything like this?” Ragwort asked. “Before or after this war started?”
Nick shook his head. On the screens, the bottom of the stairs panned out into smooth floor, a plain grey door cut into a dull metal wall a few metres away. It looked out of place, diminished as if it didn’t belong, the door misshapen and not quite the same size as the gap it covered. “Expected something a little more high-tech if I’m honest,” he said. “Nice to know that they’re rag-tagging it just as much as we are sometimes.”
Ragwort looked confused. “Rag-tagging?”
“Putting it together on the fly,” Nick explained, rubbing the back of his head. The first man had reached the door, they could see his hand on it, ready to yank at the handle. Those behind him readied their weapons, they could see the faint glow of summoners being activated as spirits were brought into being. They were ready to go to war. “Not well thought out, a bit of a mess… You know what it doesn’t matter.”
The team were all using the same spirits, large saxcion hounds from the west of Serran, a little town called Saxca which Nick had only ever been to once and had no desire to do so again. Unisco had a training facility there, used to work on squad-based spirit combat. Probably where Aurora team had been put together before being shipped off to be based here
in Premesoir. Those dogs were bloody massive, vicious and loyal.
The door opened in front of them, Nick wasn’t sure what to expect, but already the dogs were through the gap before the first man, BRO-80 aimed and ready to fire. First sights of the other side, he got the impression of some sort of huge chamber, he was trying to watch eight screens at the same time to get a view of the whole, eventually gave up and focused on one of them.
Chamber wasn’t a million miles off the mark, he guessed, on first impression. Cut out of the earth underneath the warehouse, something had definitely gone on here, though it was hard to tell what from the poor quality of the feeds. Sometimes underground, the reception wasn’t great. Dirt floors covered in a grey mesh that gave it minimal covering at best, leading up to a great groove in the ground ahead, a groove that as the minicams moved closer, turned into a pit.
That was when the first minicam went black and suddenly there were only seven screens active. Nick forced himself not to close his eyes, he needed to see this. Credit the team, they reacted swiftly enough, spinning to face the threat, already the dogs were snarling into attack, weapons were coming up and muzzle flashes were filling the remaining views, roars of blaster fire ripping through the speakers.
Behind him, Ragwort was shaking his head. He only saw it out the corner of his eye, didn’t react, not as he continued to move his eyes from screen to screen, trying to make out what was going on. A dog went for something, came crashing down with two bleeding puncture wounds in its side, wounds the size of plates. Something swept back, he briefly saw a flailing… he wanted to say limb… sweep out and catch one of the team hard, something solid and golden coloured. Not quite a pure gold, a sickly gold tinged with a crusty green filth.
“Divines!” Swelph exclaimed. “What is that?!”