Hammer of the Witches

by Kai Wai Cheah

  The forest remained quiet. The inhabitants remained unaware of our presence. As I moved among the trees, I unfurled my charagma. Both of them. My glove contained the light that would have spilled out of my right hand.

  Two hours later, I reached the edge of the forest. Half a kilometer away, I saw the apple orchard. Beyond the orchard were the guesthouse and the farmhouse.

  “Brick, Fisher,” I radioed. “Alpha is at the line of departure.”

  “Copy,” Brick replied.

  Kneeling behind a tree, I set my pack down and fished out a pair of binoculars.

  I identified the crops to my two o’clock. Tall grain stalks, long rows of bushes, patches of ground left to fallow—and the apple orchard that occupied most of the farm.

  The tower silo dominated the field. I couldn’t see anyone on top. Which meant nothing at all: if the enemy was as well-trained and -equipped as we were, we wouldn’t see them until we were up in their faces. Or if someone fired.

  The guesthouse was dark. Light spilled out of the first floor of the farmhouse. I saw no silhouettes at the windows or doors, nothing that betrayed a person’s presence.

  The pasture was completely empty. The henhouse was still and the barn quiet. Squinting at the barn’s walls, I saw dark rectangular shapes on the lower and upper floors. Windows. If the enemy had a team inside, they could cover the orchard in a deadly crossfire.

  Putting the binoculars away, I carefully dug out what appeared to be a dark metal box. I raised my hand to my face and saw blue circles appear over my fingertips. The first three fingers held the names of my team. I lowered my thumb instead, and more options appeared. I activated the map function. A digital map appeared over my visor, set to seventy percent opacity. I plugged my helmet into the box, and a new pop-up appeared: new device detected.

  In the Program it was called the Robber Fly. The device would intercept all wireless voice transmissions in the area, feed them to my ears and triangulate the signal. Even if the signal was encrypted, I could still see where it came from.

  The airwaves were quiet. I listened and waited.

  “Fisher, Brick. Bravo is at the LOD.”

  He didn’t show up on the map, of course. Among its limitations, the Robber Fly couldn’t track short encrypted transmissions that hopped frequencies over a hundred times a second. It would, however, be more than adequate for tracking civilian communications.

  “Brick, Fisher. Roger. Break. Longsword, you’re up.”

  “Fisher, Longsword. Acknowledged.”

  A few moments later, a callout appeared: New transmission detected. A red dot appeared on the map, indicating a spot about fifty meters to my right. The dot was labeled 1A.

  “Grüezi,” a man said.

  Triangulating receiver, the Robber Fly reported.

  “Grüezi,” Eve said. “How is the farm?”

  “Good, good. The harvest is proceeding smoothly. Have you found buyers?”

  “Yes. I found clients in Italia interested in our product.”

  That was the exchange of bona fides. They had used the all-clear signals. They were lying. But that was just the nature of the game.

  “Well done. Where are you now?”

  “Sion. We should be at the farm in ninety minutes.”

  “Excellent. See you soon.”

  A red dot appeared on the map labeled 1B. It was the farmhouse.

  I hit the PTT switch. “All call signs, Fisher. HVT is in the farmhouse. Say again, HVT is in the farmhouse. Kalypso, you are go.”

  “Fisher, Kalypso,” Harding replied. “Roger that. We’ll be in position in three-zero mikes.”

  I pulled out a slate from the pack, hiding it under the burqa and turning it on. Its brightness was reduced to thirty percent, but I squinted against the sudden glare. The surface transformed into the home screen. I activated a custom-designed app, producing another map of the area.

  In a just world I could feed all the data I needed into my helmet. Since we were stuck with civilian equipment and incompatible software, we had to make do.

  More waiting. More watching. As I waited, I played out scenarios in my head. If X happened, respond with Y. I hadn’t seen any red flags, but the enemy always had a vote.

  A half hour later, a dark shadow passed over the sky, slightly darker than the night, impossible to detect if you weren’t looking in the right area and knew what to look for. The airship was running quiet, its engines at low power, so high up nobody on the ground could hear it.

  “Fisher, Kalypso. Millimeter wave radar online.”

  Using my fingers, I navigated the map. The extremely high frequency radio waves would penetrate barriers to reveal objects on the other side. It would see through clouds, walls, roofs, and, more importantly, invisibility cloaks.

  As expected, there was a pair of snipers lying on the roof of the tower silo. The resolution was so fine I could make out their scoped rifles. Two two-man machine gun teams were holed up inside the barn. The guesthouse had ten more shooters. And the farmhouse held twelve. I relayed the information to the team.

  “Fisher, Brick. This is going to suck. Bad. I bet that’s not everything they’ve got either.”

  “Brick, Fisher. Roger that. Hold in place. I’m going forward on a leader’s recon.”

  I refastened the strips covering the infrared patches and donned my gear. Taking a deep breath, I lowered myself to the ground and began to crawl.

  The critical advantage of the invisibility cloak wasn’t stealth. It was speed. A ghillie suit was still a visible object. Move too fast, and you resemble a walking bush. Snipers had to inch to their target, moving each limb slowly and smoothly to avoid attracting attention. With a cloak on, you disappeared. If you didn’t leave tracks, nobody would spot you.

  I high-crawled across the grassy earth, using my hands and knees and feet. Touching my aetherium, I layered myself in a psychic cloak. I was a wraith in motion, and no conscious mind could notice me.

  Every so often, I paused to check my bearings and to observe my surroundings. The grass bent under the weight of my body and sprung back up as I left. In daylight it might have been a concern; in darkness it would be unnoticeable.

  Halfway across the field, I halted. Reaching for my nythium, I activated my voidsight.

  The world revealed its true form to me: mass, density, gravity, the primal chaos that lay behind mere matter. I swept my head carefully from left to right, up and down, careful not to disturb the cloak.

  The voidsight revealed a pocket dimension wrapped around the orchard like a torus. A menagerie of creatures floated within the doughnut-shaped ring. Three of them were mono-eyed watchers. Four were massive snakes of the kind I’d seen in London. The last was an ifrit—a huge, muscular creature that sprouted horns from its head and massive claws from its paws.

  I gritted my teeth. An ifrit had burned my soulmate to ashes a lifetime ago. This was one of its brothers.

  I kept scanning. My voidsight was limited to a radius of five hundred yards. Beyond that was a deep haze. I squinted, but I couldn’t see anything past it.

  Closing my eyes, I visualized my soul. It was still a bright golden pearl, but it was smaller than before. The dark whirlpool lapped at its edges. The shining gateway to Creation had grown dim.

  I peeled away the surface layer of the soul, feeding it to the Void. The whirlpool ate it all, expanding in size. And with it, my voidsight grew.

  There were other daimons hiding among the crops. A couple of watchers. A knot of snakes. A quartet of afarit.

  There was no way in hell we could take all of them on and win. Humans were bad enough. With these daimons in play, we’d need a battalion to safely take this objective.

  I kept scanning. The guesthouse glowed like a bonfire.

  There was a paling inside the guesthouse.

  I sucked down water from my hydration bladder. The paling. The daimons. Didn’t make sense. The former had to prevent the latter from manifesting…

  Unless it was a mi
cropaling. The kind the West deployed in the Near East to protect firebases out in the country. Exactly fifty percent enriched aetherium, micropalings produced mainly alpha radiation, making it almost safe to work with. But its area of effect was limited to a couple of hundred meters.

  So much for the plan. I reached for the radio.

  “All call signs, Fisher. There’s a squad of daimons in the orchard and another among the crops. Watchers, afarit, umara. There’s also a paling inside the guesthouse. Stand by for frago. Break.

  “I’m going to turn the daimons. Once they attack, we will use the confusion to infiltrate. Alpha will warp to the orchard, rally on me and knock out the paling with rockets. Bravo will close in on the tower and destroy it. Do not take the objectives under fire. Shoot only if you can confirm a target or if fired upon. Out.”

  I heard voices over the radio. I couldn’t afford to listen. My soul was shrinking, fading, and I was no hurry to experience catastrophic soul loss again.

  I reached out with my mind, expanding my consciousness to engulf the farm. I touched the daimons, and they turned to me.

  I release you from your bonds and command you to serve me. You will attack the humans who summoned you.

  I felt a wave of resistance in my mind. An ifrit clenched its fists and bared its teeth at me. A flight of watchers glared malevolently. The snakes spread out, hissing and flaring their hoods.

  This is my will. This is the will of al-Hakem al-Dunya. This is the will of Asul. YOU WILL OBEY.

  A shockwave rippled through the world. A collective groan filled my head. The jinn shrieked and stepped out into the material world.

  “All call signs, Fisher. Execute, execute, execute!”

  The daimons charged through the night, howling and screaming and yelling. I cut off the flow of my soul to the Void, turning again to the nythium cell. The headache went away. Mostly. I sent my mind to the orchard—clear—and warped in. I landed next to a tree and leaned out.

  A cacophony of gunfire filled the air. Suppressed gunfire. Heavy metallic swats with the edges rounded off. I picked out two types: slow, heavy, sustained; fast, higher pitched, bursts. In fusion vision, I saw green lasers flashing from the guesthouse in short flashes. Aiming lasers and light discipline. And I had no doubt at least some of the enemy would have dedicated night vision scopes. Tiny red pinpricks streaked through the night. Light spillage from one-way tracers.

  The enemy was first rate.

  The air rustled. I caught motion to my right.

  “It’s me,” Eve said.

  I nodded. “All call signs, IFF on.”

  I raised my hand to my face and lowered a couple of fingers. Now I saw a blue diamond floating before my eyes, with the word LONGSWORD above it. Against a First World threat the suits’ IFF emissions could be tracked, but I figured the enemy had more important things to worry about at the moment.

  A pillar of fire consumed the barn. Some of the gunfire slackened. Everyone inside the barn would be ashes. So would the cows.

  I bit my lip and forced myself not to laugh. I didn’t know why that was hilarious, but adrenaline played strange tricks on the brain.

  Keith and Bob warped in beside me.

  “Fisher, where to?” Keith asked.

  “We warp to the far side of the orchard,” I said. “One at a time. Moving up.”

  I found a spot behind a tree and warped in.

  “Fisher is up. Move!”

  Ahead of me, daimons burst apart in blobs of smoking nythium. The enemy had aetherium bullets. The surviving jinni charged across the open field—… and abruptly halted. It was like they had slammed into an invisible wall. The watchers tried circling around it, the snakes launched themselves at it, and the afarit pounded their fists at the air, but to no avail.

  Kneeling, I set my backpack down and wrestled out a short tube strapped to the pack’s right-side pocket. It was an ATS-90. I popped the covers of the launcher’s night sight and turned it on. The rest of my team warped in, forming a skirmish line.

  A final volley of gunfire, and the last of the daimons flashed out of existence.

  “Brick, Fisher. In position. Where are you now?”

  “We’re about ten seconds from our firing point.”

  “No good. I have to launch now.”

  “Go for it.”

  I yanked the safety pin and glanced behind me, checking the backblast area. Activating my voidsight, I rested the tube on my shoulder, set the warhead to delayed penetration and trained the crosshairs at the exact center of the glowing mass.

  “Fire in the hole!” I warned.

  I pressed the trigger.

  The tube bucked. Saltwater sprayed out the rear. My earpro and eyepro kicked in, and now I saw the world with my regular vision. The rocket’s red glare flashed across my visor. A wall of sound rolled across the field. Windows and doors blew out, and small tongues of flame licked at the openings. In voidsight, I saw that the glow was gone. The paling was destroyed.

  Return fire came swiftly. Heavy caliber rounds pounded the tree and the dirt all around me. Smoking wood filled my nostrils. Gathering my power, I warped to the right, out of the line of fire, landing behind another apple tree.

  The team returned fire of their own accord. Lasers probed the night, seeking targets. Eve kept her laser turned on, playing it across the window.

  “Longsword! Laser off now!” I ordered.

  Autofire raked her position. The world contracted. Expanded. A blue diamond appeared on my right.

  “It’s me,” Eve whispered.

  “Goddammit,” I said. “We told you before. Never hold down the–”

  A loud POP passed through the air.

  A rocket whooshed uselessly into the sky.

  A red notification appeared on my visor.

  “Fisher, Brick. AR is down.”

  I swore again. At least I had a clean shot at the tower silo from here.

  “Roger. Suppress the silo. I’m going to take it out. Break. Alpha, suppress the farmhouse.”

  I set the expended tube down, dismounted the sight and affixed it to my spare tube. Eve crawled away from me, her carbine chattering. I readied the launcher, took careful aim and fired.

  The 90mm rocket flew true. The top half of the silo disappeared in a fireball. Flames crawled down the length of the structure, devouring the grass around it. The pressure wave battered my lungs. The blast must have ignited the stored grain.

  I warped away, retreating one row behind and two trees to my right. Moments later, a fresh volley of gunfire pounded my old position, practically sawing the apple tree in half. The bad guys were good.

  “Fisher, Brick. Good hit.”

  “Brick, Fisher, roger. I want fire on the farmhouse.”

  The original plan was shot to hell. Warping in would be too dangerous: I couldn’t tell where the enemy was. Even with time compression, with so many rounds in the air, one small mistake, and you’ll pop in front of a bullet.

  Besides, the farmhouse looked like it could withstand a rocket.

  “Longsword, Fisher. On me.”

  She warped in by my side. “On you.”

  “Give me a fresh rocket,” I said.

  She set her pack down, unfastening an ATS-90 and handing it to me. “Here.”

  As I migrated the night sight, I said, “Where do you think the target will be?”

  “He’s not a fighter. He’s probably taking cover in the cellar. Wait. Let me check… Yes. I see a sole male in the cellar. Must be him.”

  We didn’t have eyes on the cellar. There was too much material for the millimeter wave scanner to penetrate. We had to flush him out the hard way.

  “Roger.” I pulled the safety pin and keyed the radio. “Kalypso, Fisher. Where’s the heaviest concentration of enemy forces?”

  “Fisher, Kalypso. Farmhouse, second deck, green side. You’ve got four bad guys with big guns over there.”

  The green side was the wall to the left of the main door. If Kalypso was armed,
she could simply shoot through the walls and take out the enemy from a distance. If… when we got back, I had to prioritize development of the weapons modules.

  “Copy, thanks.”

  I readied the rocket. Checked the backblast zone. Aimed.

  “Fire in the hole!”

  I pressed the trigger. The tube rocked. A scarlet streak raced into the night and blossomed into a fireball. Fresh thunder split the night. The pressure wave collapsed the adjoining garage. A large, burning hole appeared in the wall.

  All gunfire ceased.

  “All call signs, Fisher. Prepare to–”

  Eve grabbed my shoulder. “Someone’s deploying aetherblades. Four of them.”

  The fabric of the world twisted and stretched. It was like a powerful tugging sensation against my skin, dragging me toward a ravenous black hole. Four of them. At the house.

  The enemy was compressing time.

  “Tick tock! Tick tock!” I warned.

  I fired my nythium, shrinking time into myself. The aetherium resisted me. I forced my way through it, punching through an invisible barrier. Colors dulled. Shadows darkened. Sound faded. Releasing my weapon, I reached for my left hip. My fingers closed around the shaft of my scabbarded tomahawk.

  A man stormed out the front door, armed with a machete. He was unnaturally large and bulky, his movements fluid and graceful.

  He was wearing power armor.

  And if there was one psion, there would be more.

  In the Detachment we attempted to develop tactics for group combat in compressed time. One guy would go forward to lure the enemy out. Once the enemy committed his forces, we’d send the rest forward to flank them. To counter that tactic against us, we always kept a reserve, which was recountered by yet more reserves. Complicating matters was our inability to communicate over radio.

  Inevitably, the situation would devolve into a general brawl.

  I snapped the tomahawk free, switched it to my right hand and glanced at Eve. She crouched against a tree, resting her longsword at her shoulder. She nodded at me. I held out my left hand. She took it in hers.

  I warped.

  Space-time shrunk into a sepia pinprick. Darkness enveloped me. Unfathomable things swum in the depths of the Void. An ocean of red inhuman eyes opened, staring at us.