A Kind of Peace

by Andy Boot

  "Well, duh! That wasn't exactly what I meant."

  "Look, I don't know exactly what they have planned but what I do know is that we should assume that whatever their strategy, they will have cleared and sealed at least one part of the castle. Which is good."

  "Good? What definition of good are you using?"

  "The one that says we have only a duty team to fight through, and not a seemingly infinite number of people blocking our way."

  "Point taken. We'll have to move fast when we reach the bottom of the stairs, or..."

  "They'll be able to pinpoint us from the minute disruption on the imagers. I know. I have every intention of moving fast, believe me. This is what we're going to do..."

  There were a dozen men in a duty troop. Three were positioned in cover around the foot of the stairwell. From their respective positions, each had a clear shot at the mouth of the well. Orders were to fire on sight.

  "Sir, how can we fire on sight if nothing is registering on the imagers?"

  "The motion and weight detectors have placed whatever is in the well three-quarters of the way down. When it crosses the last beam, then you will be ordered to keep up a barrage of fire. Fire low, high, and middle. Dammit, whatever it is, it can't get round that kind of barrage."

  There were, however, contingency plans for if it should. Nine men were left. They were placed at corridor junctions, and each was fed Intel from the tech centre. As both normal, light and infrared showed no results, and the motion and weight detectors had yielded too little information, and that of seemingly contradictory data, electro-magnetic field detectors had been brought into use. These were trained on each corridor, and were up and running with rapidity. In theory, they should show any disturbances, and could be used to pinpoint fire.

  All it needed was for whatever was on the stairs to hit that last motion detector beam, and playtime would begin.

  Simeon could see the beams criss-crossing the last three stairs. The first line tactic was obvious. Wait for them to cross those beams, and then set up a barrage of fire. As soon as they hit the few unprotected stairs between the beam they were about to cross and the beams at the foot of the well, then they were in a no-man's land where Varn trigger fingers would be flexing.

  Simeon's tactic was to make that flex turn into a nervous twitch.

  When he had guided Jenna past the last weighted stair, he stayed her with a touch. She could see the bottom of the well - although, with no night vision headset of her own, she had no idea of the detector layout - and tried to breathe shallowly, quietly. She knew that Simeon would be barely able to whisper any instructions.

  They did not move. She could almost hear her nerves singing with the tension.

  "Wait," he breathed.

  She trusted him. She had to.

  "I don't get it. It's passed the ninth motion beam, and it seems to have stopped."

  "Are you sure about that?"

  "The bastard thing's invisible and doesn't register except on the motion/weight scale. Even that's weird, like it's not got a constant mass or something..."

  The minute fluctuations of two people moving slightly out of sync had confused the tech, making its readings incomprehensible to anyone who didn't actually know that there were two people trying to move as one. To the warriors trying to make sense of the scale, it seemed to be some strange, invisible behemoth.

  Which was why one of the two duty warriors on tech watch posited the following:

  "Look, are we doing the right thing here? This doesn't look like a military assault to me. It looks like magic. So shouldn't we be pressing for..."

  "Hey," his companion replied, "we're pressing for nothing. We're just doing this by the book. Whatever that is up there, it's got a duty team on its ass."

  "Yeah, but..."

  "Yeah, but nothing!"

  The three warriors positioned at the foot of the stairwell were sweating. They knew that the objective was past the last motion detector before the final clutch of beams. Once it hit them, they could hit it.

  But there was nothing.

  What was happening? Was it waiting for them? Had it managed to bypass the beams and bypass them? None of them had felt anything go by but if it were invisible, maybe they wouldn't be able to feel it pass.

  Had it just dissipated and vanished, as mysteriously as it had arrived? Hey, that would suit them (who wants to try and fight something you can't see?), but it was unlikely.

  "Sir, nothing happening this end. Request new orders."

  "Fire a warning blast, see if you can flush it out."

  Synchronising their firing, the three warriors put blasts into the mouth of the stairwell at high, low and medium heights. The bricks of the stairwell were lit up by the bright energy of their fire. Chunks of stone powdered.

  Smoke and dust filled the air after the final volley.

  The three warriors waited in silence.

  In the stairwell, Simeon stood his ground. He had been expecting something like this, and so was able to keep control as the first volley of blasts hit. If anything, he felt a satisfaction warm through him. This was what he wanted: their nerve had cracked, and they could no longer restrain their fire.

  They were rattled. Good.

  Behind him, Jenna wasn't so prepared. When the first volley hit, and the cloud of stone dust hit the back of her throat, it was all she could do to stop her stifled scream of shock turning into a coughing fit. Simeon shielded her from the worst excesses of the blast, but she could still feel the heat as the stone was pulverised by the energy beam.

  Simeon had been sure of himself: he had stayed back this far after casting an eye over the angles at the foot of the stairwell. Blasters were wonderful weapons, but he'd never seen an energy beam yet that could fire round corners.

  In the silence that followed, he turned and breathed in Jenna's ear: "Stay."

  Leaving her standing on one stair, he moved carefully down two, so that he was within one step of the first of the three beams. It was low enough for him to stretch over it, and take a look around the corner of the stairwell. He hoped that she would be able to extend her invisibility charm so far, but to be safe he made a few passes and cast his own as he looked round, cancelling it as soon as he drew back. Hopefully, it would have been so brief that she wouldn't have registered the change in magical energy.

  She was looking at him a little strangely as he turned to face her, but he wasn't sure if it was the magic, or merely because she couldn't work out his tactics. He wasn't going to give her the chance to clarify these thoughts. Time was of the essence.

  "There are motion detectors on the last three steps. They don't know if we're here or not. Follow me, jump when I do, and try to land on your feet. Don't worry about the charm - we want them to see us. But be ready to do it again, yes?"

  She realised what he was planning. He squeezed her hand, and then turned back towards the foot of the stairwell, drawing his blaster. Jenna did likewise.

  He got to the fourth step, then hurled himself forward, lifting his feet up with a bend of the knees as he did. Jenna took a deep breath, then followed suit.

  It all happened so quickly. One moment they were looking at an empty stairwell, the next they were under attack.

  A man and a woman. He was in dark battledress, a Bethel warrior easily discernible even as he flew through the air. She was in a short battle tunic, camo style, with the colours of Kyas. Both of them had blasters.

  There was confusion both amongst the front line warriors and back in the tech room. They had been dealing with a shapeless, invisible mass; now they had two flesh and blood warriors.

  Even as they hit the ground - he smoothly, she stumbling slightly but still keeping her feet - they began firing.

  The first shots went wild, as they blasted in an arc, trying to locate their targets. It took only a moment for each of them to lock on to one of the covered positions. A shot from the woman ripped through the battlesuit of the Varn warrior, scoring into his shoulder. The pain
made him black out.

  One down.

  The male warrior's shooting was less exact - or less lucky - but he took out a chunk of ceiling that caused a blinding cloud of dust, the debris falling on the concealed position and forcing his target to retreat.

  Two out of the game.

  But the third had not been fired on. He judged that the male warrior was the one to take out first. He drew a bead on him as the man whirled to locate him. Their eyes locked over the sights of his blaster. And then the man in black did something with his hands, and disappeared from view.

  The Varn warrior cursed. His training kicked in, and he whirled to take aim at the woman. She was staring open-mouthed, and was an equally open target. He was about to squeeze off a blast at her when he felt his weapon being knocked upwards. He fired a shot that blew a hole in the ceiling, and felt a fist crash into his jaw. It drove him backwards, the blaster tilting up so that it spiralled back over his head. He tried to keep balance, lashed out at air hoping to take out his opponent by accident, and felt a blow to his ribs that impacted like a heavy combat boot. He gasped out his breath, and before he had a chance to draw air back into his aching lungs another boot caught him in the chest. Sharp, burning pain seared his upper body, paralysing him. A fourth blow caught him under the chin and the world went black.

  Simeon appeared once more in front of Jenna, who was still slack jawed. He had been so keen to keep his own little trick as a surprise that he hadn't figured on her reacting like this.

  "Jen - do it!" he yelled, shaking her.

  Snapping out of her trance, she cast the charm, enveloping them both, though, on reflection, she realised that this was hardly necessary.

  Simeon took her by the arm and pulled her down a corridor.

  "Okay, so I should have told you," he babbled, "but we can argue later. Now we've got to get out of here. We stick as close together under your charm as we can."

  As he spoke, he pulled her down the corridor, keeping his voice as low as possible under the clamour of the alarms triggered by the blaster damage.

  "We try and pick past them... only fire if we have to... try not to give ourselves away."

  "What the..."

  In the tech centre, the two warriors on duty could not quite believe what they were seeing. Two men down and one thrown back. The mysterious presence revealed as two people. Appearing and disappearing.

  "This is magic. This is nothing to do with us. They have people for this, right?" One of the warriors asked, punching in a security code.

  The warrior was correct. In every military hierarchy across Inan there were warriors who were assigned to deal with anything that used magic to achieve military ends. In this case, the warrior in question was reviewing the holovid recordings of the appearance of the two rogue warriors over and over again, enhancing the image.

  The woman he didn't know. She had a Kyan Ensign's battle uniform, but that was all he could say.

  The man, on the other hand... that was a face that anyone with even a passing interest in current affairs would recognise. He was the man the whole of Bethel was searching for; the man who had been proclaimed a traitor in league with Varn. The man who had just taken out two warriors of the nation state he was supposed to be in sympathy with.

  The Chief Minister would have to know about this. There had been rumours around the Ministry and military buildings about what had really been going on. Unless this particular warrior missed his guess, the rumours were true.

  Simeon didn't know the layout of the building, but he knew enough about this kind of old construction to figure that if he kept going in one direction and downwards, then he would come to ground level and a way out onto the streets of Ilvarn. It was simple. It was also something that he could not have pulled off without the invisibility charm.

  Simeon and Jenna moved at speed through the corridors. The blaster that each of them carried had only a limited charge. They had used some of that in their first assault. A second assault could drain their weapons totally. Negotiating a duty team that couldn't see them was a relatively easy task. It was only when they hit the ground level and the exit that they realised that they had would have trouble.

  The Chief Minister had been informed. A detachment of warrior security had been sent to the Institute, and Vixel had been informed. Given that he was using magic along with warrior skills, it was obvious that Simeon 7 would know where the Mage was being held. If he had been given magical assistance, then it was a given that he had been able to track Ramus-Bey to the Institute.

  In truth, it was seen as nothing more than a safeguard. There was no way that the two intruders should be able to escape the building.

  Simeon cursed. There were over a dozen warriors clustered around the outside of the building. The area inside the exit had been left clear. The building was deserted at this point: the streets outside, beyond the gathered warriors, had been cleared. Like many fortresses across Inan there had been adaptations over the years, subject to the whims of fashion and practicality. Now they were faced with a strengthened glass wall. It gave anyone who wished a great view of the outside. Conversely, it gave those outside an equally great view in: this didn't matter while they used the invisibility charm. It did, though, mean that if they wanted to get out, they'd have to announce themselves by breaking through the doors and fighting through the cordon. Invisibility could only take them so far. By the very act of getting through this barrier, they would have to betray their position.

  "Go to the right, get ready to fire, and run like hell," Simeon said before making the passes that brought his own charm into being. She moved off, and lost sight of him as he passed from her area of charm.

  Jenna waited.

  Simeon appeared out of nowhere with a shimmer. He fired three times into the middle of the doors. The blaster fire shattered the glass doors and wall, the beam defracting in the shards. It would harm no-one from this range, but would serve a certain purpose.

  He vanished before the blaster fire reached him, and had already dived across the floor as the beams flew over his prone body. The remainder of the doors and wall vanished beneath a hail of blaster fire.

  Jenna took off at a run into the gap. She had no idea what she was doing, driven only by blind panic. She could see where the warriors were aiming, and so knew where to avoid.

  Behind her, Simeon was acting as a distraction by reappearing, firing a few well-aimed shots at the warriors beyond, then vanishing before they could successfully direct their fire.

  His shooting had made a gap in the ranks; Jenna took her chance and charged through, unnoticed.

  Now she could see that Simeon was trapped, and could not evade the continuous fire indefinitely. She fired from the rear, causing confusion in the warrior ranks.

  Some turned to return fire, pulled up short as they realised they had no direction in which to aim. Others kept firing at the building.

  It was enough. Simeon, invisible, was able to pick his way through the gaps in the ranks. His only problem now was how to find Jenna. He yelled at her to move out and took off to his right, heading for a side street. He kept running until he was out of view of the warriors, who were still firing at empty air in each direction, then briefly cancelled his charm, giving her a chance to locate him. He would be picked up on surveillance imagers, but hopefully only for a fraction of a second.

  Jenna suddenly appeared in front of Simeon, running into him. He held her as she hit against him, realising that he would now be in her charm field and so safe from surveillance.

  "Why...why am I doing this?" she breathed at him. "I hate you! Gods, I'm scared."

  "Because we have no choice. Because it's the right thing. Because we can't stop now..."

  "We might have to."

  He frowned, looking over her shoulder to where the random firing was still occurring. "We'd better keep moving, they'll catch on we're not there before too long." He started to move off, taking her arm. Then it struck him. "Why might we have to stop?"


  "Do you know where the Varn Institute is from here?"

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Year Zero - Period Three

  A feeling of exhilaration swept over Simeon as he and Jenna searched the streets. The invisibility charm allowed them to move freely, and they were able to catch the wave of disbelief that swept through the people of Ilvarn and revel in it. Ordinary citizens were emerging from the buildings, murmuring discontent at the events. From the tenor of the snatched conversations they heard, they were able to determine that the people of the capital were as ignorant of the presence of the Bethel Mage in their midst as was the rest of the globe. Rather, many of them launched into ill-considered diatribes against their own government and military, questioning both competency and parentage.

  This was most instructive. It told Simeon that the people of Varn were about as ready for war as anyone else on the planet. It told him that the reasons behind the fighting at the military building were either being suppressed, or had not been released to the public.

  Either way, it gave them some time. A hostile and mobilised populace would make their task that much harder. Assuming, that was, they could find the Institute.

  Another advantage of an invisibility charm was the ability to move amongst the people and listen in on their conversations. Strangers would not be able to elicit information with direct questions, but invisible strangers could glean useful information from scraps of half-heard chatter.

  It was a roundabout way of doing things, but given the lack of options, and the small size of the capital, it was fairly simple for Jenna to lead the two of them to within sight of the Institute.

  Now the sense of exhilaration passed, and the reality of the situation hit home. Simeon realised that he had been on a high because the initial break-out had been much more simple than he had feared. It gave him a sense of confidence in his abilities that was, perhaps, far from warranted.