Kate Randall sprinted into the vast hangar and skidded to a halt in front of the control panel that stood beside the wide-open doors. She thumped the flat red button in the centre, and instantly the deafening klaxon of the general alarm screamed through the Loop.
The Duty Officer came flying out of his office on the other side of the door, shouting at her as he ran.
“Hey!” he yelled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Kate turned to face him, and her expression stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Open the armoury!” she shouted. “Open everything we’ve got, and get everyone up here now.”
“What the hell is…”
The Operator’s voice trailed off as something caught his eye beyond the open hangar doors, and he turned his head towards it. His mouth fell open momentarily, then snapped shut. He turned away from her without another word, and sprinted towards the side of the hangar. Kate watched him work a series of controls, then saw two wide panels of the side walls slide back, revealing long
racks of T-Bones, Russian Daybreakers and countless other weapons. She watched him lift a T-Bone from a rack, then turned and sprinted back out of the hangar.
“Wait!” bellowed the Duty Officer, and she turned back to face him. “Where are you going?”
“My friend is out there!” she yelled, and ran towards the runway.
Larissa replaced the radio on her belt. She could hear Jamie’s voice shouting her name as she did so, but there was nothing more to say. She flexed the muscle in her jaw that few people possessed; her fangs slid smoothly down from her gums, and her eyes blazed a deep, swirling crimson. She stood in the vast shadow as it swept towards the Loop, her feet set, her shoulders back, her hands dangling at her sides, her gaze locked on what was coming.
Valeri Rusmanov floated above the grass, at the head of an army of vampires.
They numbered more than two hundred; they flew at his back, their combined shadow sweeping before them. They were not hurrying; their progress was steady, and ominously silent. Valeri had sent word throughout Europe, and the men and women who followed him now were the ones who had answered the call. They had arrived at the chateau in ones and twos; some he knew, or knew of, many he had never met before in his life.
He didn’t care. His master had given him an order, and he needed soldiers to help him carry it out. They had flown to England the previous night, and lain low in the stately home of a loyal follower of Valeri’s late brother, Alexandru, an elderly vampire whose excitement at hosting the oldest Rusmanov brother, even for as little as twelve hours, had bordered on the pitiful.
He had given two orders before they departed, as simple as any he had ever given in his former life as a General of the Wallachian Army: Henry Seward was to be captured alive; everyone else was to be killed. His new army had hungrily agreed, excited at the prospect of unrestrained violence against the men and women of Blacklight. Everyone who had answered Valeri’s call knew someone who had been destroyed by the infernal black soldiers; it was the reason the vast majority of them were there.
The others, the small number who had come for the sport, for the opportunity to maim and murder, were the ones that Valeri knew he had to keep an eye on. They would be useful, he knew, but they might also be difficult to control. For their benefit, he had a large printout of the photo from Henry Seward’s ID, and had explained in intricate biological detail the punishment that would befall anyone who failed to obey the order to bring him back alive.
They had made their way carefully through the woods that surrounded the Department 19 base; Valeri had been prepared to alter his plan if they were detected, but the information his informant had supplied was accurate. The long column of vampires had snaked through the trees, keeping beyond the range of the motion sensors, floating over the pressure pads that littered the forest floor.
When they had reached the fence that marked the perimeter of the compound, Valeri had taken a deep breath; this was a moment he had often dreamt of, although he had never foreseen a time that it could be put into action. Dracula’s order had changed that; it no longer mattered if a frontal assault on Blacklight was foolhardy, or suicidal. He had been ordered to do it, and he was nothing if not a loyal soldier.
He had barked a simple command at his assembled army, and as one, they had leapt into the air, over the high fence, over the
ultraviolet no-man’s-land, over the laser array, and had flown steadily towards the distant dome of the Department 19 headquarters. As they crossed the runway that bisected the circular base, Valeri’s superhuman eyes picked out two figures on the grass below; as he watched, one turned and ran for the open side of the dome, from which yellow light blazed in the gathering gloom.
“She’s going to raise the alarm,” hissed the vampire at his side, a Ukrainian he had once hunted with on the Russian steppes, whose name was Alexey Grigoriev.
“Let her raise it,” said Valeri. “It will do no good now.”
The second figure turned to face them, and Valeri saw twin points of red light blazing from the place where it stood.
The traitor,
realised Valeri, with a rush of pleasure.
The vampire girl who helped them to kill Alexandru. How fitting that she will be the first to die.
Kate screeched to a halt beside Larissa, and grabbed at the vampire girl’s arm. Her friend turned on her, her eyes blazing.
“Come on!” Kate yelled. “You can’t stay here!”
“Go back to the hangar, Kate,” said Larissa. “Before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late!” Kate screamed. “And I’m not going without you. So come with me. Now, Larissa!”
Larissa looked at her friend; her face was full of worry, but there was no fear to be seen. The vampire’s heart was suddenly full of love for Kate; she was so brave, so determined that she would not leave her friend behind.
She smiled at Kate, then grabbed her effortlessly round the waist and rocketed into the air. Larissa flew through the air like a missile, barely two metres above the ground, and slid easily on to the
concrete floor of the hangar. She released her grip on Kate, who stared at her with disbelief.
“When did you get so fast?” asked Kate, breathlessly.
“Later,” said Larissa. “If there is one.”
There was a thundering noise behind them, audible even above the howl of the general alarm, and then the doors at the rear of the hangar burst open, and black shapes poured into the wide-open space. An intense din of shouted orders and the metallic hammering of loading weapons filled the air, and then Admiral Seward was beside the two girls, staring out at the oncoming vampires, a look of utter horror on his face.
“Report!” he yelled. “Where the hell did they come from?”
“Out of the trees, sir!” shouted Kate. “On the far side of the Loop.”
Paul Turner skidded to a halt beside his Director, a Russian Daybreaker in his hands. “Why didn’t Surveillance pick them up?” he demanded. “How did they get so close without us knowing?”
“They must have come in below the radar,” replied Seward. “Stayed on the ground until they got to the fence.”
“The sensor arrays,” said Turner, his voice as blank as always. “In the woods. There’s no way through them unless—”
“Unless you know the way,” finished Seward, his eyes never leaving the slowly approaching army. “Unless someone gives you the maps.”
There was a moment of silence, as they all considered the implications of Admiral Seward’s words. Then a voice bellowed from behind them, and they turned towards it.
It was Cal Holmwood who had shouted. He was standing to attention, his jaw set, a look of formidable determination on his face. To his left and right, stretching to the very edges of the hangar,
stood the entire roster of Department 19: almost two hundred black-clad figures, bristling with as much weaponry as they could carry. Every one of them was staring at their Director, who felt his heart surge with pride as he saw the absence of fear on their faces.
“Weapons free,” Seward barked. “No quarter, no mercy. We fight to the last. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” boomed the Operators, with one voice.
Seward turned back to the open hangar, and watched the vampires slide gently to the ground, two hundred metres away.
Valeri Rusmanov looked at the assembled ranks of Blacklight, and stifled a laugh.
“We outnumber them,” he said, softly. “This will be the work of minutes.”
He felt an incredible sense of nostalgia sweep through him. This was how battles had been fought in his day, before laser-guided cruise missiles, before remote Predator drones and pinhole satellites; two lines of soldiers on the opposite sides of a field, until death or surrender.
It was almost always death.
But because he lacked the sadism of his late brother, or the appetite for chaos of his master, Valeri would at least offer them the alternative.
“Henry Seward!” he shouted, his voice rumbling and echoing across the open space between the two armies. “You know me, and who I stand for. Submit both yourself and my brother to me, willingly, and I will make the deaths of your men quick. This is the only offer I will make.”
Kate gripped her Director’s arm, tightly. Admiral Seward looked down at it, a look of surprise on his face, then smiled at her. He
turned back towards the vampires, opened his mouth to reply, but was beaten to it.
“We reject your offer, Valeri!” shouted Paul Turner, his usually expressionless face raging with pure anger. “It is as worthless as you and your master.”
“So be it!” shouted Valeri. “By all means, have it your way.”
“When they come,” said Seward, loudly, “move out to meet them. We’ll engage them in the open.”
“Inside the hangar their speed will not help them as much,” said Turner, in a low voice. “We should let them come.”
Seward looked at his Security Officer. “It will not be enough,” he said, softly. “Our only chance lies out there.”
“With what, sir?” asked Turner.
Seward didn’t respond; instead, he pulled a small metal screen from his belt, and placed his thumb in the middle of a black panel. The panel powered up, and a ten-digit number display appeared. Seward quickly typed in a long series of numbers, and waited; after a long moment, the panel turned red, and the word ARMING appeared in the middle. Beneath it, a counter began to run down from four minutes, the seconds and milliseconds rolling back in a red blur.
Then Valeri’s vampire army burst forward, a pulsating mass of red eyes and violent lust, and the time for talking was over.
“Go,” bellowed Admiral Seward, and the Operators of Department 19 sprinted forward. There was no cheer, no battle cry, just the drumming of boots on concrete, and the flat crackle of gunfire.
Paul Turner led the charge; he sprinted out on to the black tarmac of the landing area that lay before the hangar, and lifted his Daybreaker to his shoulder. The heavy Russian weapon was not standard issue for Blacklight Operators; it had been deemed by the
Chief of the General Staff to be nothing more than a portable war crime, and too unsafe for general use. It was, however, remarkably effective.
Turner rapid-fired the weapon, rolling with the recoil that forced his shoulder back each time he pulled the trigger. The sticky charges whined through the air and attached themselves to six of the oncoming vampires; the Security Officer’s aim was unerring. With a series of revolting crunches, the pneumatic charges on the rounds fired, and the vampires screamed in pain as the explosive cores punched through their flesh and into their bodies. A second later the charges fired, and the six vampires exploded like fireworks, huge sprays of blood thumping into the night sky and falling to the ground like rain.
Turner didn’t even wait to see the results of his shots; he trusted his own abilities completely, and by the time the explosives had detonated he had pulled the T-Bone from his belt and sent its metal stake whistling through the heart of an onrushing vampire woman. She burst with an audible pop, spraying her contents across the tarmac. As the stake wound itself back into the T-Bone’s barrel, Turner drew his MP5 and fired it into the tight mass of vampires, sending blood spilling into the air as he ran to his left, seeking the flank of the vampire army.
Kate Randall paused for a moment, despite herself, and watched the former SAS Sergeant go to work. Paul Turner was a legend in Blacklight, but she had never seen him fight. His role as the Security Officer kept him almost permanently at the Loop, and seeing him unleashed was a sight to behold; he was nothing less than a killing machine, a calm, precise instrument of death. She watched him run to the far end of the landing area, then returned her attention to the battle.
The vampire army cannoned into the Operators like a tsunami,
spilling them left and right, splintering their line almost instantly. They descended on them like birds of prey, dropping from the air to rend flesh and spill blood. Kate was suddenly inside the chaos; around her black figures fired weapons, and blurred shapes swooped and dived.
She ducked her head and ran forward, her T-Bone in her hands. Ahead of her, a vampire man in his early twenties hauled an Operator she recognised from the dining hall into the air, then sent him crashing back down to the tarmac. She heard the dry snap of breaking bones, and sprinted forward as the vampire leant over the stricken man, his mouth wide open, his eyes glowing red.
She raised her T-Bone as she ran, and pulled the trigger when she was within range. The stake whistled through the cool evening air, and crunched through the vampire’s armpit. He threw back his head and howled in pain, before the injured Operator raised his remaining working arm and hammered his stake into its heart. It erupted in a column of foul-smelling blood as the metal stake thumped back into the barrel of Kate’s weapon, and she skidded to the floor beside the wounded man.
His right arm and leg were broken, she saw instantly; open fractures had sent jagged splinters of bone through his skin and out through the material of his uniform. She was about to tell him he was going to be all right when he suddenly slid away across the tarmac, screaming in pain as his broken limbs thudded against the ground.