Hammer of the Witches

by Kai Wai Cheah

  “The gods remain absent,” the Stormbringer replied. “Until they show themselves, all we can do is do our duty the best we can. Even the gods cannot fault that.”

  The Stormbringer could only hope his confidence reflected the truth.

  8. Training Day

  Moving our new kit to the airship was refreshingly hassle-free. The embassy simply slapped diplomatic seals on the crates. It was a paper-thin fiction, but the airport had to honor that.

  Luigi and his cell elected to take refuge in Hesperia. At the airport, while waiting for the Agency plane to pick them up, we hashed over our next step in a cafe.

  “The enemy might be monitoring our communications over our websites,” Luigi said. “While we should use this to our advantage, if they know that we know that they are monitoring us, they will take countermeasures. You must be careful.”

  “Yeah, we’re planning to offer them a target too juicy to resist,” I said. “When they come out of hiding, we will strike.”

  “Not a bad idea, but I don’t expect it to work more than once or twice. The Gallian Resistance favored this tactic in the Third World War. They would deliberately transmit false information about Resistance activities on compromised Soviet radio channels and ambush whoever showed up. The Soviets quickly adapted by regularly changing their radio frequencies and never acting without independent verification.”

  “What do you suggest?” Keith asked.

  “Thus far you have only been engaging their foot soldiers. You must identify their leaders and work your way up the chain.”

  “I tried,” I said. “He committed suicide when I tried to snatch him.”

  Luigi frowned. “Challenging. Have you recovered any intelligence from them?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Your enemy is formidable indeed. I suggest you lure him into a battleground of your choosing. Control the environment and then do your best to take prisoners. Even if they commit suicide, you’ll still be able to recover the bodies—or at least take DNA samples—and harvest what intelligence you can.” He raised an eyebrow. “You do have the resources to do that, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  That was all I could tell him about the Program’s resources.

  “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” Eve suggested. “The enemy has a great deal of influence over the media and the police. Instead of attacking their field operatives, we should go after the influence agents.”

  Luigi laughed, sorrow creeping into his voice.

  “Oh, Eve… It is not wrong, but I don’t think it’s possible.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The media is already primed to believe that xenophobia, racism and bigotry are the causes of evil in Pantopia. Every day they declare that ultranationalism is a greater threat to society than Wahism. Who is to say that there are, in fact, access agents telling them what to say? Our enemy need merely plant a few false leads, and the media will build their own narrative without prompting.”

  “Someone is feeding them cover stories,” I said. “They couldn’t possibly have created the Mafia gunfight story all by themselves.”

  “Yes, and that means someone in law enforcement or politics is giving them that information.” He rapped his fingers against the table. “I still have friends in the international law enforcement community. I’ll make inquiries and see if they know anything that can help.”

  “Thank you,” Eve said.

  “Va bene. Just promise me one thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “Destroy the enemy. No matter what.”

  ***

  Under Luigi’s guidance, Eve fired a series of posts on Hexenhammer’s internal forums. The gist of the message was the same: We are being hunted by an unknown enemy. I’ve been attacked twice by unidentified gunmen, and the enemy covered up the strikes. You might be next on the hit list. I have powerful friends who are willing to provide shelter. Contact me if you need help.

  Then it was just a waiting game.

  When the Agency hypersonic plane arrived for Luigi, it carried many useful goodies for us. Laser boresighters, maintenance kits, chest rigs, ammo pouches, the works.

  Once aboard the airship, we hit the gym. Taking up my AK, I cleared the weapon and loaded the laser boresighter into the empty magazine. The device was shaped exactly like a 5.45mm cartridge. I racked the charging handle and sighted down the corridor, aiming at the door to the war room. About a hundred meters away, a bright red dot appeared on the polished wood. I grabbed my sight adjustment tool and aligned the front sight with the dot.

  The AK wasn’t perfectly zeroed. It wasn’t capable of approaching Pete’s standards of accuracy. But at this range, it was good enough.

  I loaded my M57 with a 7.62x25mm boresighter and repeated the procedure, this time aiming it at the far wall of the gym. Like the AK, it was good enough for me: if I had to engage a target with a pistol beyond twenty feet, something had gone terribly wrong. or I could just move closer.

  With the weapons zeroed, we donned and fitted our chest rigs. Printed from open source designs, these were slim and low profile, meant for snipers, recon teams and undercover operations. The rigs came with magazine and utility pouches, just enough to be useful, not so many that they would get in our way. After I donned mine, I helped Eve adjust her rig to fit her body. When we were done, Eve’s training began.

  I pulled up a video on the gym’s active panel.

  “This is a training video by Hal Talbot, an AK subject matter expert. You will watch it from start to finish. You will run through the manipulation and dry fire drills as indicated. The lesson objective is to become proficient in the technical handling of the AK weapons platform. If you need to watch a segment again, let me know.”

  All of us joined in. We needed the refresher. Eve didn’t complain. She simply made her weapon ready.

  The hours faded into a martial rhythm: the clattering of magazines against the deck again and again; the rustling of fabric; moments of minor resistance as my thumb engaged and disengaged the safety; the snap of the trigger as it launched the bolt to find only air.

  Talbot used live ammo in his drills. We had to adjust, making do with what we had on hand. Not ideal, but good enough. As we worked through the video, we kept an eye on Eve and answered her questions.

  “Lean into the weapon some more. You need to control the recoil.”

  “Do not lift your face from the stock. Maintain your cheek weld.”

  “Reach under the weapon to recharge it. Yes, it’s awkward, but it’s the most efficient method. You just need to get used to it.”

  “Talbot said he reaches under the weapon to avoid interfering with the optics,” she said. “We don’t have any.”

  “You still need to maintain situational awareness,” Pete said. “You can’t do that with your arm in front of your eyes.”

  “Okay, but why don’t we get optics, too?” she asked.

  “If our enemy sees tricked-out AKs with optics, they’re going to think Rhosian Spec Ops or Western Spec Ops pretending to be Rhosians,” I said. “I want them to underestimate us.”

  “The iron sights suck,” Bob complained.

  “Get used to it,” I replied.

  ***

  When we broke for lunch, the first thing Eve did was check her mail. At the dining table, when everyone was settled down, she announced, “A Hexenhammer Kraken emailed me just now. His name is Mike. He says he knows what’s going on, but he wants to meet in person.”

  “Mike is one of the suspects you mentioned, yes?” Keith said.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Can he be trusted?”

  “Normally, I’d say yes, but…”

  “These aren’t normal times,” I said. “Where does he want to meet?”

  “Amarantopolis. At the Hagia Aletheia.”

  Pete shook his head. “He wants to set up a meet in a country that is still actively hunting Hexenhammer? At the most important chu
rch in the world? Is he crazy?”

  “He says he’s being hunted by daimons. He thinks the Great Paling in the Hagia Aletheia will hold them off.”

  “There’s the little problem of the church being guarded by police twenty-four/seven,” Keith said. “And that’s in regular times.”

  She scrolled down her mail. “I told him that, too. He says that the police will make sure nobody tries to kill him.”

  “Yeah, because they’ll arrest him,” I said. “This smells like a trap.”

  “He says it’s a chance he’s willing to take, and he’ll go in heavily disguised.”

  “This makes no sense,” Bob said. “If he just wants to talk to you, he can upload the info securely. There is no need to meet him in person.”

  “He’s also requesting an extract. After the meet, he’d like us to escort him to the airship and take him to safety.”

  That made a bit more sense, but the Hagia Aletheia was too high-profile a place for an ordinary meeting.

  “It’s the only lead we’ve got, but it is fishy,” I said. “We need to be ready for anything.”

  “There is that ‘we’ again,” Keith said.

  “What are else are we gonna do? Stay here at the airport?” I asked. “This could be a chance to extract another Hexenhammer member and learn more about the enemy… but we need to treat it like a meet inside a denied environment. Or a trap.”

  “Denied environment?” Eve asked.

  “Local law enforcement has control of the area. Weapons and ambrosia will be strictly forbidden inside the church. If they know who we are, they won’t hesitate to stop us. We need to act accordingly.

  “Eve will enter the church to contact the target. I will shadow her. The rest of you will stay outside as our quick response force. If something goes wrong, come in and get us out.”

  “Why are you going in?” Alex asked.

  “Because I’m the best hand-to-hand specialist among us.”

  Ricky snorted. “Really?”

  It sounded like a challenge. I didn’t have time for that nonsense.

  “You guys are unknown to the law and Hexenhammer,” I said. “Presumably unknown to our enemy, too. If the enemy wants to try something, I don’t want to spook them. I want you to take care of them.”

  “I recall a man and a woman busted up a bunch of EKAM operators in an Amarantopolis subway,” Ricky said. “That was you and Eve, right?”

  “What about it?”

  “The local law may know about you. If they recognize you…”

  “Eve and I are psions,” I said. “We have plenty of aetherium. We can use shapeshifting.”

  “Shapeshifting is dangerous,” Keith said. “It could burn you alive.”

  “I’ve got plenty of practice.”

  And a god on my side.

  “What if the cops flipped your man?” Bob asked. “Maybe he’s just there to point you out to EKAM.”

  “C’mon, man. The Hagia Aletheia is a prime tourist attraction. EKAM is not going to risk getting people caught in the crossfire,” Pete said.

  “Why don’t I go in with Eve instead?” Keith asked. “Luke, you can stay on the outside to coordinate.”

  “No,” Eve said.

  “Why?”

  “I know Luke. I trust him. I don’t know anything about you.”

  Silence descended on the table. Keith looked at me, looked at her, looked at me again.

  “Luke, be upfront with us. Is there anything between you and Eve?”

  “No,” we protested simultaneously.

  Alex snorted. “Not helping, guys.”

  “Look. What’s your Voight-Meyers score?” I asked.

  “Sixty-fifth percentile,” Keith said.

  Which barely qualified him for psionic special operations.

  “Bob, what about you?”

  “Seventy-second.”

  “I scored ninetieth. After I shapeshift, I can keep my form longer than either of you. We don’t know long this will take, and I don’t think they’ll allow us to take ambrosia inside.”

  “Eve, what’s your score?” Bob asked.

  She smiled. “Ninety-fifth.”

  “Whoa,” Keith said.

  If she was telling the truth, she was the most powerful psion I had ever met. She was literally one in a million among psions—themselves one in a hundred. In my time, I was among the highest-rated psions in the MAD and the Detachment. No one else scored higher than us.

  But the higher your VM score, the greater your vulnerability to mental disorders. Few psions who scored above the eighty-fifth percentile stayed in the military or police. Above the ninetieth percentile, the odds of long-term sanity became vanishingly slim.

  “Eve and I will shapeshift and go in. The rest of you will stay outside as our quick response force,” I said.

  “Who’s going to lead the QRF, then?” Keith asked.

  “You,” I said.

  “Me?”

  “Sure. You’re the most senior operator amongst us. Most qualified for the job.”

  Eve smiled dazzlingly. “We’re counting on you.”

  He snorted. “No doubt. But I won’t let you down.”

  ***

  After lunch, we focused on tactics. No more training videos; we were all graduates of the finest shooting schools in Hesperia and passed on what we knew. In the gym we practiced basic fire and movement until we were sure Eve wouldn’t accidentally shoot us in the back or walk into our line of fire. Then, we used the rest of the airship as our training ground, clearing every room and demonstrating to Eve the basics of close quarters combat.

  All we had was live ammunition. No blanks, no simunitions. Instead, we printed a bunch of targets, scattered them throughout our training area and engaged them with universal ammo: aiming at a target and yelling, “BANG!”

  After a short break for dinner, we continued well into the night. When we were done, Eve had reached the minimum standard of proficiency. Boot camp standard. By ours, she still sucked.

  “Do not flag anyone with your muzzle. Think about where your bullet will go and what damage it will do and point your weapon in the safest direction. On the A deck, you point down so the bullet will pass through empty air. On the B deck, you point up so a bullet won’t strike anyone below you.”

  “When transitioning to your secondary, do not just drop your primary. You must retain positive control. Lower your primary to one side so you do not foul your draw.”

  “Put your back to a corner and follow the walls. You do not need someone jumping out at you from uncleared space.”

  “Do not cross the room like that! This is how you get shot!”

  “Yes, there will be obstacles. Don’t just freeze in place. Call your movements and flow around them.”

  “Your job is not to shoot every target. Only those in your arc of fire. Leave the rest for us.”

  The training wasn’t just for Eve, of course. The rest of us needed to be on the same page. Everybody came from different parent units, with different techniques, tactics and procedures. It was the little things that counted: when engaging a target, Alex would stop and shoot while Pete just kept moving, shooting as he went. It may not sound much, but in close confines you had to know if you were going to bump into someone or stray into his line of fire.

  It was a long day, and tomorrow would be longer. Training ceased at ten in the evening. After, we retreated to our cabins, I sent a quick message to Eve.

  You up for extra training?

  Sure, she replied. When?

  Meet me at my cabin at 0400.

  So early?

  I’d like to finish before the guys get up in the morning.

  OK. See you later.

  Sleep came fitfully. My dreams were a jumbled mess of blades and lightning and explosions and gunfire, rendered in high-definition sound and color. It was Fallujah and Kabul and Persia and a dozen other cesspools wrapped into an interactive film set to the soundtrack of war. And above it all I heard her voice.

>   Angela Suarez. Classmate, best friend, girlfriend, more. Her voice haunted me: her laughter, her good-natured jibes, her singing, her screams as the ifrit reduced her to ashes at the New Haven World Fair. Her voice transformed, and then she was Eve, Eva Martel, giggling and pouting and spouting nonsense and moaning and—

  And I forced myself awake at half past three.

  Fifteen minutes before my alarm. I deactivated it and then washed up and brushed my teeth. Leaving the room lights low, I sat in the middle of the room, half-closed my eyes and engaged in the breathing and meditation exercises I had learned in the Detachment.

  Meditation, religious or otherwise, helped you focus. It helped you think quicker, act swifter and integrate your thoughts and actions. And, most of all, it cleared out the gunk in your mind.

  Breathe in deep, deep into your belly, for four counts. Hold for four counts. Breathe out to the count of four. Hold for another four. Repeat. Focus intention only on breathing and tune awareness to every sensation, internal and external.

  The hum of the air conditioner. The cool, dry air. The rise and fall of my belly, filling and depleting my lungs. The soreness radiating from my muscles, the stiffness in my neck. The contraction and expansion of my spine and limbs as I adjusted my posture.

  The knock at my door.

  I glanced through the peephole. Eve. I unlocked the door and let her in.

  She was dressed in a steel gray tank top with matching sweatpants and white sneakers. Her long blonde hair was tied up in a neat bun. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but she was just fine without it.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Morning,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You look tired.”

  “Rough night.”

  “Still up for training?”

  “Of course.”

  As she slipped past me, I caught her scent. It was fresh, different. Angela was cream and spice stirred together in a simple uncomplicated blend. Eve was vanilla and sugar hiding cocoa and salt with an overlay of soap.

  Focus, I told myself.

  “Your cabin is huge,” she said.