Hammer of the Witches

by Kai Wai Cheah

  “I can get behind that,” Pete said. “We’re all on the same team here. Okay? One day, we might have to face those supersoldiers. We have to know what we’re in for.”

  Keith held up his hands. “Fine. But Eve, I’m telling you this: I’m reserving judgment until I know what’s really going on.”

  She nodded tersely. “Fine.”

  “What are you guys doing here anyway?” Alex asked. “Another lead?”

  “Meeting,” Eve said.

  She was falling into one of her moods again.

  “With?”

  “Local asset,” I interjected. “He didn’t know what’s going on either, but he did give us bucketloads of liquid aetherium. If we meet the supersoldiers again, we’ll be ready for them.”

  Harding cleared his throat. “We also resupplied the airship. You’ll be happy to know that we’ve taken on a load of fresh food.”

  “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” Pete sang.

  Everyone stared at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  Eve shook her head and chuckled softly to herself. The tension broke. Everybody relaxed ever so slightly.

  “How about telling us what’s going on first?” Keith asked.

  It took a while. Eve and I sat side by side on a couch, recounting everything that happened from our initial meeting in Hellas to our evacuation from Dietsland. Harding went off to attend to his airship. Pete stood in a corner and listened.

  When we were done, Bob rubbed his chin.

  “That’s not much of an investigation,” he said.

  “We were kinda busy dodging the cops,” I said.

  “Yeah, but can you trust what your friends told you?”

  “Why would they lie to me?” Eve asked. “I could give you the recording I made of the interview and let you hear for yourself.”

  “He could have altered the armory records.”

  “What for?” I asked “Hexenhammer does its work up close with blades and pistols. Those are surgical operations. What happened at Chios was not like them.”

  “Our records use a customized blockchain solution,” Eve said. “Every alteration leaves a permanent record on the blockchain. We have proof that there were no alterations.”

  “Show me,” Alex said.

  She pulled out her holophone, called up the document and placed it on the table.

  “The upper window is the inventory list for our Hellas cell. The lower window is the blockchain. As you can see, the only changes he made are to the ammo count.”

  The operators crowded around the phone, scrutinizing every byte. When they were done, Keith leaned back and crossed his arms.

  “It doesn’t mean jack,” he said. “He could simply have ‘neglected’ to update the records.”

  Eve sighed. “We conduct snap inspections, too. If the physical inventory doesn’t match the records, someone will have a lot of explaining to do.”

  “Do the records automatically update themselves when someone draws weapons and ammo?” I asked.

  She shifted in her seat. “Well, no.”

  “So there’s nothing stopping someone from drawing weapons from the cache, firing up a camp, and then returning the weapons and restocking the expended ammo,” I said.

  “That may be true, but Cyrus doesn’t have the means or motivation for that. We don’t recruit psychos, and we don’t condone terrorism.”

  “And you expect us to take your word at face value?” Keith asked.

  Eve’s voice went cold. “Our operational history speaks for itself. We’ve never engaged in mass murder. It’s not our style. And if it turns out whoever orchestrated the Chios attack was one of us, we will turn him over to you.”

  I’d expected another outburst. Maybe she was learning to get her emotions under control.

  Keith snorted. “Even if you’re on the level, it doesn’t mean you’re one of us.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “You’re not part of the Program. Until or unless you meet our security requirements, it will stay that way.” He glanced at me. “Regardless of what Luke may think.”

  I ignored the words he didn’t say. “Of course. In the meantime, we’re got the ghosts of Project Conjurer running around Pantopia. We might have to confront them someday. Best we get on the same page here.”

  Keith rapped his fingers against his knee. “They don’t know anything about Conjurer.”

  “A history lesson?” Pete asked.

  “She needs to know,” I replied.

  Eve shook her head slowly. “You guys have been talking about Conjurer for a long time now, and I still have no idea what you mean.”

  Keith sighed. “All right, I guess you need to know. Project Conjurer began life as a Soviet supersoldier program called Cosmic Soldier. But they’re not supersoldiers as we would use the term.

  “The Soviets didn’t value human life the same way we did in the West. Stavka, their high command, operated under the assumption that people will die in war. They didn’t seek to minimize casualties at every turn. Rather, they sought to end the war as quickly as possible. They don’t think in terms of lives saved or lost—only in terms of military value.

  “If they could knock out a nuclear weapon storage facility in exchange for a company of Spetsnaz, they’d do it. If they can get the Spetsnaz out, that’s a bonus. But if they can’t—if they think extracting them will be too troublesome or costly—they won’t lose sleep over it. In the first twenty-four hours of the war, they sent entire regiments on suicide missions.”

  “My God…” Eve said, aghast. “That’s inhuman.”

  “Yes. But it worked. The Atlantic Alliance very nearly lost the war on D Plus One.

  “But there was a major flaw with that strategy: manpower and money. A Soviet male is conscripted at eighteen. Spetsnaz were all professional soldiers, so Ivan Ivanovich would only eligible for recruitment after two, maybe three years. Usually more. When, or if, he passes selection, he’ll spend at least a year in training. By the time Ivan Ivanovich is formally inducted into the Spetsnaz, the state would have waited maybe twenty-two years and spent over a million of our dollars. And Stavka can’t guarantee that every Ivan will complete selection, much less training.

  “The Soviets wanted Spetsnaz-quality soldiers faster and cheaper. So they turned to daimons.”

  “That’s insane,” Eve said.

  “Absolutely. They began work in the seventies, as I recall. They aimed to implant daimons into human bodies. Early experiments failed utterly. The daimons would always break free and either return to the Void or slaughter everyone in sight. Or both. But the Soviets persisted.

  “And they succeeded.

  “I’m not entirely sure of the details myself. But as I understand it, they found a way to leash the daimon to a human controller. If the daimon misbehaved, the controller could punish it, up to and including banishing it.”

  “Where did they get the bodies to house the daimons?” I asked.

  “It was the Soviet Union,” Ricky said. “Plenty of bodies everywhere. If you need more, just go to the nearest gulag. No shortage of undesirables to choose from.”

  “They used… dead people?” Eve asked.

  “They weren’t picky. They just needed bodies. If the subject were still alive, they executed him on the spot.”

  Eve looked away, covering her face in her hands. “My God…”

  “How did the Soviets get Spetsnaz troops from that?” I asked.

  “That’s the beauty of it,” Keith replied. “The daimons didn’t just possess the bodies. They were allowed to… change them. The Soviets scooped out the brain and internal organs and replaced them with nythium. The daimon then used the nythium to make whatever changes it wanted.

  “Eventually, the Soviets discovered that a giant would make the puppet stronger and faster than a baseline human. Better yet, giants are already predisposed to combat; just run them through a weapons-handling course and tactical training, and you have an army of instant s
oldiers.”

  “So the Soviets got the equivalent of a fedayeen under the control of a majus,” I mused.

  “Yes. And they didn’t even have to sacrifice any souls.”

  Eve shook her head. “How did that turn out?”

  Keith snorted. “Horribly. The Cosmosols were incredibly strong and incredibly smart, and they could regenerate wounds if they weren’t killed outright. They always schemed to break free of their human controllers. Sometimes they succeeded. Finally, the Soviets decided to use it to their advantage.

  “The Cosmosols were deployed as terror units. Without controllers. When World War Three broke out, they were inserted into the West and told to wreak havoc. They ran around the countryside, killing and destroying everything they came across. Soldiers, noncombatants—they didn’t care.

  “Alliance Command initially thought the Soviets had inserted several divisions of paratroopers to reinforce the Spetsnaz units. It tied up the West Pantopian forces, allowing the Soviets to overrun Germania and most of Gallia. I’m sure you know the rest.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Pete remarked.

  “Even more fun was when the forward line of Soviet troops ran into their own terror units,” Alex said, smiling darkly. “The Cosmosols turned on the Soviets. They didn’t care who they were fighting so long as they got to fight someone.”

  “Karma is a bitch,” Eve observed.

  Keith sniggered. “Yeah. Near the end of the war, Soviet defectors allied with Western forces to destroy the remaining Cosmosols. That was how bad it got.

  “Just before the New Year’s Revolution, Soviet defectors aided a Hesperian spec ops unit to capture the facility that produced the supersoldiers. The facility was demolished, and the equipment was quietly shipped to Hesperia.

  “Thus began Project Conjurer.”

  “If the giants were so dangerous, why keep the damn things?” she asked.

  Now Bob spoke. “Because they were dangerous. The facility held fully developed Cosmosols in cryogenic storage. The moment the Cosmosols were taken out of storage, they would thaw out and wake up. Nobody knew how to destroy them without setting the daimons free. Not even the Soviets.

  “You’ve heard of Operation Jackhammer? It was a program to recruit Soviet scientists to work on secret Hesperian projects. Among them were the scientists who worked on the supersoldiers. Those scientists initiated Project Conjurer, claiming they wanted to learn how to safely destroy the remaining Cosmosols without releasing the daimons.”

  “World War Three was, what, forty years ago?” Eve said. “You’d think they’d have found a way by now.”

  Bob nodded vigorously. “Exactly. The true purpose of Project Conjurer was not to destroy the Cosmosols. It was to reverse-engineer them. Improve them.”

  Eve shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

  “And twenty-five years later it blew up in their faces,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Bob raised an eyebrow. “Luke, you’re a psion, right? Wouldn’t you have been deployed to deal with Conjurer?”

  I shrugged. “I was at OCS at the time.”

  Eve reared back. “Wait. Luke? You’re an officer?”

  Damn. That was careless. I’d forgotten Eve was not one of us.

  “Was,” I emphasized.

  “You don’t look like one,” Eve said.

  Pete guffawed. Bob and Alex shared a chuckle. Even Ricky looked away and laughed.

  “If I did, I wouldn’t have survived so long in this line of work,” I replied.

  She looked around the room for a moment and then looked at me. “Like, how old are you anyway?”

  “A year older than you.”

  “No way! Really?” She cocked her head. “Really. Huh. But you look so… so…”

  “Young?” Pete volunteered.

  “Old,” she said.

  The men laughed again.

  “Not as old as these guys,” I said.

  “Eve, among us guys, Luke here is the youngest,” Alex said.

  “Eh?” She looked at me. “But… I thought you were in charge.”

  I grinned. “Being an officer has its perks.”

  “Command goes to the man on the ground who’s the most qualified or who’s running the op,” Alex said. “Rank doesn’t matter anymore once you’re in the Program.”

  “I… see. I think.”

  Bob looked at Pete. “So where were you when Conjurer went down?”

  “Overseas field exercise. By the time I got back, it was all over.”

  “Ah. I guess you only heard what the press said?”

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  “I see.” He licked his lips. “Where do we start?”

  “From the beginning,” Eve suggested.

  “I first heard of Conjurer when I was summoned for an emergency briefing,” Bob said. “I was in the Mobile Assault Division at that time. My battalion was the ready force, so we got the tap. Initially, we were told it was a possible domestic counterterrorism operation and we had to pack heavy. We had no idea what we were in for.”

  “Why didn’t they tell you everything?” Eve asked.

  “Fog of war. Plus, the higher-ups were trying to figure out what exactly to tell us without compromising security.” He snorted. “I think it took, what, twelve hours before we were told everything.”

  “Really?” Keith said. “I was fully briefed within the first eight hours.”

  “You Detachment boys get all the goodies.”

  “What were you told?” I asked.

  “Back then they were still sticking to the cover story—that Project Conjurer was about destroying World War Three relics,” Keith said. “We were told that there was a containment breach and the Cosmosols had broken loose. They hit the base armory, grabbed all the guns and ammo they could find, procured vehicles and then went tearing off into the countryside.”

  “Doesn’t sound likely,” Pete said. “How the hell could the Cosmosols have done that? It’s not something you can do on the spur of the moment.”

  “Exactly. That was when we knew it was a load of hooey. Sure, they stuck to the cover story, but my guys visited the base ourselves to find out what was really going on. We cornered some of the survivors and demanded answers. They said the Cosmosols broke free of their controls during a live-fire exercise and then escaped the training grounds.”

  “Oh, man,” Pete remarked.

  “You got that right. The Cosmosols had been freely walking around the base up to that point. They knew where the weapons, vehicles and guardposts were. When the time was right, they shot their controllers and escaped.”

  Ricky folded his arms. “While you D-boys were gathering info, the Cosmosols occupied a small town. The Rangers were the closest special operations force to the site, so my battalion was dropped in to ‘contain’ the enemy.”

  “How did that turn out?” Eve asked.

  “A goddamn massacre. We established a cordon around the town. Those mother…” He glanced at Eve and cleared his throat. “Those monsters took hostages and threatened to execute them if we didn’t let them go. Our CO decided to launch a hasty assault to free them.

  “We knew it was a trap. We went in anyway. We had to.

  “We thought we were ready. We were a battalion, and there was just a platoon of them. Thirty, I think. We would go in hard and fast, hit them heavy, take no chances.

  “But those goddamn sonsofbitches just wouldn’t die.”

  “Yeah, I had that same reaction earlier,” Eve said.

  “You fought them?” Ricky asked. “How?”

  “With loads of ambrosia and a gas explosion,” I said.

  “Crazy. Absolutely crazy.” He smiled. “But the good kind of crazy.”

  “Uh… Thanks?”

  Ricky nodded. “No sweat. But back to the story. Those monsters, they were like walking tanks. I emptied my entire magazine into one of them, and it didn’t even slow down. Hell, my entire squad lit the bastard up with hundreds of rounds, and the damn thing didn’t
even flinch.”

  “My God…” Eve whispered.

  “Yeah. They counterattacked and broke through the cordon. Decimated us. Left us with a hundred dead and twice that wounded.”

  Eve looked away and muttered something dark in her native tongue.

  “Yeah, exactly,” Ricky said.

  “After that, for the next three days, the entire Hesperian military was on a manhunt,” Alex said. “The enemy rampaged through the South. They were supposed to have implanted trackers, but they cut them out after they escaped. They were moving faster than Big Army could track them. All we could do was try to anticipate them.

  “We figured they were rushing for the border. The Pentagon stationed troops in border towns and cities and had drones patrolling the skies twenty-four/seven.

  “Then we got lucky.

  “Street cameras caught them stealing trucks at a rest stop. Airborne drones followed them to San Luis. The military called in everybody they could spare to stop them. They tried to evacuate the area, but… well, the city was just too damn large.

  “My team was embedded with a mech infantry company at the time as advisers. The plan was to funnel the giants into a kill zone. But it didn’t work.”

  “Why?” Eve asked.

  “I saw, with my own eyes, a Cosmosol take a twenty-five millimeter high explosive incendiary autocannon shell to the torso. It blew off most of its lower half. The damn thing… I don’t know. I think it extruded nythium from its body, reattached itself and kept fighting. All this while laying down fire.”

  Pete flinched. “Damn, man, just… damn.”

  “You got that right,” Keith said. “At least the conventional forces bought us—the Detachment and the MADmen—enough time to deploy in force.

  “It was World War Three all over again. Absolutely brutal. Street to street and house to house, with arty, armor and air support. We didn’t bother with room clearing. If they were holed up inside a building and we were sure no humans were inside, we surrounded the place and dropped the damn building on top of them. If we had to fight them, we used everything in our arsenal: rockets, grenades, machine guns.