Queen of Avalon

by Jamie Davis

  “I’ve been watching your ass since we were kids, Win. It’s habit.”

  “I’m not helpless.”

  “I don’t know how you got along without me,” Cait said, shaking her head.

  “You’ve still never told me why you let me and Tris hang out with you all the time when we were kids. You had to have had friends your own age to hang with.”

  “Not really. I was never close to anyone before I met you and Tris. I was always too tall for my age and never fit in. I wasn’t girly. My friends played with dolls and stuff, and I liked being outside and getting in trouble. You and Tris never seemed to mind.”

  “You were always so much fun. You waited for us when you went off adventuring in the neighborhood. That meant a lot.”

  “It was fun having you two screw-ups around,” Cait said. “Besides, you both paid me back. No one wanted me around after the army disbanded the chanter division. You and Tris took me back like I’d never been away.”

  “What did you expect us to do? You’re our friend.”

  “You could have acted weird until I eventually stopped coming around. You know, like my family.”

  Winnie put a hand on Cait’s shoulder. “You never told us what happened in the army. I know it’s bad, but I’ve never wanted to come out and ask. But after this last year and half, it’s time to get the unanswered questions out there, just in case.”

  “Just in case we fail?”

  “You think I’m being morbid, Cait? I’m not. You remember what we faced the last time? Well, this is a sun to the Harvester’s moon. Destroying the last machine nearly killed me.”

  “It nearly killed us all.” Cait laid her hand atop Winnie’s. “This is going to work out. You’re the worrier of the group. That’s good when we we’re planning. You cover the bases. But now, the rubber needs to meet the road. Implementation is my job and I know we can get the job done.” She hooked a finger at the door leading inside. “Provided we can calm those techs enough to finish the job.”

  “Tris will get them in line,” Winnie said. “I just hope Morgan and Victor come through with the codes we need to get past the gates and into the central complex without have to force our way in.”

  “Take the problems one at a time. Come on. It’s late. You’ll feel better in the morning. We’ve got a lot of preparation ahead of us if we’re going to head back out tomorrow night on this raid.”

  “Honestly,” Winnie said on their way back toward the bunker’s living quarters, “I don’t know what I’ll ever do if anything happens to you. I’d be lost.”

  “Don’t worry, kid. You’ll never have to.”

  CHAPTER 26

  A trio of vans pulled onto the highway from three different directions, all aimed west. Winnie leaned forward, checking the sideview mirror.

  Both vans were behind them, just as they should be. She’d taken the trouble to cast the same obscuring spell on them as she had on their first van. They’d be unnoticeable to traveling middlings all the way to the camp.

  She thought back to the last planning meeting earlier that afternoon with everyone who was coming along. The teams had all been divided up into their individual groups in the room based on their individual tasks. Garraldi and Cait led a team of enforcers Cleaver Yorke had sent down from New Amsterdam. They were going to take on the main guard house and barracks. Cait assured her it was a piece of cake, but with a guard force of nearly fifty Red Legs and technicians at the camp, Winnie wasn’t so sure.

  “Let’s go over it again,” Winnie had said to the assembled teams, looking around the room and meeting everyone’s eyes. “Cait, you go first.”

  “Garraldi and I will take the van with the reinforced front end and bumper and drive it through the outer gate, breaching it for all of you coming behind. We head straight to the barracks and the headquarter buildings on the outside of the main camp, where we use our gear to incapacitate the guards before they wake up. We deal with those guards and techs as we encounter them.”

  Winnie nodded. “You have to keep them contained and off our backs,” she said, referring to the other two teams. “We will need at least five minutes to get in and get back out again.”

  “Just don’t dilly dally while you’re in there,” Cait reminded the rest of the group. “We can do some of what you need, but we can’t work miracles. Eventually, the guards will recover from our stun spells. When that time comes, whether you’ve reached your final objectives or not, you’d better be on your way back out.”

  “I have faith in you, Cait,” Winnie said. “You’ll figure out how to keep them out of our hair. Artos got us the gear we need to fight if we’re backed into a corner.”

  “We’ll still be outgunned.”

  Winnie turned to Tris’s group. She had the techs plus a couple of random crew members rounded up to supplement her team for security. “Tris, you’re up.”

  Tris gestured to herself and the rest of the tech group. “We’re tasked with going after the central building beneath the tower. We have to dismantle the connection between the tower’s collection dishes and the enhanced Harvester set up in Kane’s basement. Our assistants” — Tris pointed to the extra team members — “will be paired up as extra security with each of the teams — extra cover while we disable the Harvester.”

  “You have to destroy it, Tris,” Winnie said. “You know that, right? We can’t leave anything behind that Kane can use to fix or rebuild it or he’ll just kill everyone outright and we’ll have accomplished nothing.”

  “You have to work fast,” Morgan added. “I’ve given Tris the shutdown codes I recovered from the central Red Leg database, but if the on-duty techs realize what the raid is doing — or that there might be a threat — they’ll go nuclear. They’ll crank the gains on collectors and kill every chanter in the camp, including all of you. It won’t take ten minutes.”

  “No pressure or anything,” Tris said.

  “I’m just saying … ” Morgan sat. She’d brought the codes in person and planned on driving out to the camp with Victor behind them, to run the surveillance drones and watch their backs.

  “Thank you, Morgan.” Winnie turned to Tris. “The shutdown, the Harvester, then what?”

  “Find the twins you’ve told us all about a thousand times.” Tris rolled her eyes. “Seriously, Winnie, you don’t have to tell me how important it is to find someone who can do what you can.”

  “They’re important.” Winnie turned to Danny and Cricket. “You two know what we’re up to, right?”

  “We help you get inside camp section two and find your mother.” Cricket looked up from trimming his nails with a pocket blade. “No sweat.”

  “Don’t you two screw it up,” Cait said. “Keep her safe.”

  “We follow her in while she goes magical mojo on the guards. Then we bring Momma out and load the van while we wait for the rest of you guys to finish your jobs.”

  Much of the plan relied on Winnie being able to use her abilities to keep the tower and gate guards from interfering with the two rescue teams inside the camp. Cait couldn’t help. She’d be pinning guards inside the barracks.

  Winnie had picked up some ideas while talking to Artos. He always knew about things she might be able to do based on rumors from the old days. This type of offensive magic had once, according to the older chanter, been common on the battlefields. Winnie wasn’t so sure how that worked, but the stuff Cait had learned in the army was different from what she and the others had learned growing up. So it sort of made sense.

  “Morgan and Victor will be on over watch, checking the drone feeds and keeping us updated on what’s happening on the other sections of camp,” Winnie reminded them. “If you need help or need to check in, use your remote comms. They’ll relay in to the rest of us.”

  Artos had also supplied them with enough headset comms to talk with each other, and back and forth with Morgan and Victor, on multiple channels. They could listen to all three groups and coordinate as needed. It was a great way t
o use their input without exposing themselves to being recognized by any Red Legs in the camp.

  The group loaded the vans and started west. Winnie’s heart beat faster as open road left a wake behind them. This was it. The next twelve hours was everything.

  It was time to fight the Red Legs.

  Winnie checked her phone and the map tracker. They were a half hour from the camp. She checked her headset, wondering if it might distract her, or in some way dilute her magic. They had to communicate. This was a complex plan with many moving parts. Something might force them to pivot.

  “Almost there,” Danny said. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m going over the plan again and again. I keep wondering if we’re overlooking something.”

  “Cait said we’d run into snags during the briefing. I think it was something like, ‘no plan survives the first minutes of a battle’ or something like that. We need to be ready to improvise. You’re good at that, Win. We’ve got this.”

  “Yeah, but … ”

  “No buts about it. Two hours from now, we’ll be on our way to the new hideout with your mom, the twins, and anyone else who wants to fight.”

  “I hope Colton gets everything set up at The Pike. Baltimore will be hot after the rescue. They’ll know it was me, and I’m sure they’ll flip the city upside-down looking for us. It’s a good thing we came up with that as a fallback location.”

  “Colton Sico knows how important this raid is, and what it means to the long-term fight against Kane. He’ll be ready. No one will know where to find us. It’s the perfect place to hide after the operation is over.” Danny looked ahead and pointed. “There’s the exit coming up. Why don’t you check in with the other vehicles? Make sure everyone’s ready to jump when we get there.”

  “Good idea.” Winnie tapped her headset and started talking to the team.

  This was it.

  CHAPTER 27

  Three vans and one unmarked Red Leg cruiser peeled off the highway, then barreled down the road toward the camp. They’d left the drone equipment behind. Victor and Morgan waited in the car until all the vans pulled to the shoulder to let them pass. He pulled the car forward to just past the lead van and saw the dirt track to the right, toward the ridge line and surveillance gear they’d been briefed about.

  “Do you see the path?” Winnie asked in his earpiece.

  “Yes. Looks sketchy.”

  “It’s level to the ridge line. We got the van there, no problem. You’ll be fine.”

  “Alright,” Victor said, pulling his cruiser onto the dirt track. “We’ll get set up, fast as we can. I’ll contact you the second we’re ready.”

  Morgan reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be alright, honey. It’s a good plan.”

  “No plan this complex is good.” Victor shook his head. “But it’s the best we have. I can’t help but feel like I should be down there with her. The Fae said I’m supposed to protect her.”

  “You can keep her safe better from a place where you can see it all, Victor. She needs us up here, keeping everyone on track with the timeline.”

  Victor said nothing. Worries swirled through his mind.

  The car crept forward over uneven ground. It took longer than he wanted, but soon, he reached the gear. Everything looked just as Cait and Winnie had described. Untouched and undiscovered. Surprise was still on their side.

  Victor pulled the car up next to the gear and got out. Morgan powered up the monitors and workstation, expertly orienting herself to the controls, watching the views change on the multiple screens as she dialed through the different drone cameras eyeing the camp below. He moved to the top of the ridge and peered over with a pair of binoculars he had found hanging from the monitor table.

  Victor checked his watch. It was just after three in the morning. They were running a bit behind, but still in their window. He surveyed the camp through the binoculars once more before heading back to stand beside Morgan. “Is everything ready to go?”

  “Yep, most of the drones are still online,” she said. “Diagnostic says the others ran low on battery power and went into hibernation mode. They’re programmed to automatically hide when they do that, so there’s little danger anyone discovered them in camp. We can make do with those that are still online. I’ve re-tasked them to spread the coverage. I’ll need five minutes to get them in position.”

  “Then I guess we’re good to go in five.” Victor tapped his headset. “Five minutes, people. I’ll count you down. Check in by teams.”

  He waited until all three teams said they were ready. He nodded and returned to the ridge to check the camp once more with his own eyes. He picked up the binoculars, then scanned the camp from the barracks and headquarters building outside the main gate to the central building circling the tower in the camp’s center. Everything seemed quiet. He glanced at his watch and nodded, then keyed the mic.

  “All clear below. You’re good to go. Good luck and Godspeed.”

  He heard the vans in the distance, racing away from their staging area.

  He turned his binoculars back to the camp and waited for the action to start.

  ———

  Cait heard the go order from Victor over the comm.

  She tapped Garraldi on the shoulder. The big man pulled their van out of position in the group’s rear and passed the other two vans, heading up the road towards camp. They had their headlights off, so the guards wouldn’t see them coming downhill. They’d eventually hear the engines, but wouldn’t see the vans themselves because of Winnie’s spell. Each of the chanters had cast a simple starlight spell that magnified their night vision enough that they could see without headlights.

  She checked her rifle and sidearm. Her team was the only one carrying firearms —necessary to keep guards pinned in the barracks if their stun spell wore off before the team had pulled back to the vans. She’d offered to arm some of the team, but Winnie wanted everyone to rely on their magic for this raid. Too much could go wrong with firearms if you weren’t properly trained. Cait’s team had weapons training, or at least familiarity.

  Garraldi gunned the engine, cresting the hill then rolling down the road toward camp, gaining enough speed to ram through the main gate, then break through the internal barriers.

  Cait braced herself, praying the reinforced bumper and steel ram they’d welded in front would do the job, without ruining the vehicle for their return trip.

  They hit the gate and metal folded like paper.

  Garraldi kept going, past the inner gate.

  Then he swung around and pulled up beside the barracks.

  Cait hopped out of the passenger side before he’d come to a complete stop. She yanked the side doors open. Her team of six poured out and scattered to their assigned areas. Two grabbed a box from behind the front seat then ran to the barracks. Another two grabbed a matching box and headed for the headquarters building.

  She looked at Garraldi and nodded. He climbed out and then they headed for the barracks to oversee the stun grid setup next to the building’s electrical supply. Surely guards at the perimeter would have heard the crash.

  Cait barely noticed the other two vans speeding into the inner camp. She had her own job to do. If she didn’t get this done in time, none of them would ever leave.

  She raced to the side of the barracks. Two team members — a man and a woman — were setting up the stun box. It would tap into the electrical system and create a magical grid on the floor. Anyone stepping on the charged areas would be down for five minutes or more. But it was a one-time thing. Once all the charges had fired, they’d be vulnerable to any guards who’d managed to avoid them all.

  She checked to make sure they’d attached it correctly, watching as they flipped up the failsafe and hit the activation button. She switched to the magical spectrum and watched the flows enter the electrical junction box on the building’s side.

  Cait slapped them on the back. “Head back to the van and take cover. I’m sure som
e of the Red Legs will avoid the charges. Be ready for them.”

  The two nodded and jogged back towards the van. Cait and Garraldi turned and ran to check on the headquarters team. She met them on their way to the van.

  The lead member gave her a thumbs up. “The stun box is in place and activated, Boss.”

  “Good. Now we wait for the other teams to finish their jobs while we hold the back door open. Head back to the van and get under cover. Shit’s about to hit the fan.”

  Cait looked over at the main camp and saw a few muzzle flashes from the tower guards just before the shots found her ears. If Winnie didn’t have that under control, they’d be sniped in seconds. Cait bit her lip and headed back to her van.

  Winnie was on her own.

  ———

  Winnie watched Danny follow Cait’s team over the hill and down into the camp.

  The gate collapsed under the first van’s assault. She gripped the door’s handle on one side and the armrest on the other as Danny drove over the collapsed main gate and then through the open interior one. Cait’s team sprinted from their van towards the barracks.

  She jumped out. A mistake.

  While the vans were essentially invisible to the tower guards, the occupants disembarking were not. The van’s side was pocked by three bullets in quick succession as the guards opened fire. Winnie froze, then worked past the shock, raising her arms and calling the magic to her.

  People would die if she didn’t work fast.

  She’d never used magic offensively. It felt awkward, like she was forcing the magic to work through a tiny hole in a wall. But Artos had warned her and Winnie was ready.

  She opened her mind, coaxing the flows rather than forcing them. Slowly, surely, the feeling of forcing the magic disappeared. Clarity came in its place.

  Winnie turned and surveyed the nearest tower. It was as if her vision had a zoom function. The guard was practically standing in front of her.