Entromancy (10 page)

The line clicked, and I felt my eyes narrow in suspicion.  I had realized that our plan depended on Madge’s inside help, and trusted her implicitly.  We had known each other since we were teenagers, and been through more things together than any two agents should have to.  It hadn’t crossed my mind that she might renege on helping us, or worse, give us away to Karthax.  I liked to think that our bond was stronger than whatever sense of loyalty we had to the NIGHT leadership, but the past two days had given me plenty of reasons to doubt everything.

I pushed the thoughts out of my mind, dismissing them.  Either Madge would help us, or she wouldn’t.  We didn’t have much choice other than to keep moving.

I went to check on the others as Alina steered us within the island’s security floodlights.  Vasshka had stripped off her leather outer clothes and was standing in the middle of the deck in trousers and a black tank top, still dripping.  Buster had his hands on the gunwale, taking in the ocean breeze, and Gloric was tapping at his portable keyboard, his eyes flitting from his glasses’ display to that of his single-eye visor.

“I can see if there are some other clothes…” I offered to the dwarf.

“I’ll live,” she said, taking out a soggy cigar and trying to light it.

“You guys should be good up to the VPen,” Gloric said, referring to the third underground level of the island fortress.  “Anything lower will require a physical keycard as well as the digital security passes.”

I nodded, already knowing the layout intimately.  My own keycard would ordinarily be able to grant us entrance, but Karthax would have been sure to have had its access revoked.  Even if he hadn’t, use of the keycard would alert mission control of its user’s presence, which would initiate all kinds of alerts.  The NIGHT headquarters at large thought me dead, and would presume that anyone using my keycard was trying to break into the facility.  They wouldn’t be wrong.

I helped my companions get situated in a little maintenance area below deck, storing the sleeping guards with them.  They were to wait for the five or so minutes that it would take for us to get into the facility, then take the cruiser north around the island and west towards the Embarcadero, drawing as much attention away from us as they could.

“How are you going to get out?” Gloric had asked as I told him my plan.

“Send me a helicarrier,” I joked.

He looked at me straight, completely deadpan.

“Do
not
send me a helicarrier,” I explained.

Alina came back to meet us as we neared the island’s perimeter, wishing the others well.  She knelt down to ruffle Buster’s soft hair between his ears.

“Take care of them, buddy,” she said quietly.  The wolf licked her palm, whining softly.

I squatted next to her in the small space.  “They’ll be fine,” I reassured her, uncertain.

We closed the hatch on the maintenance shaft, and I brought Gloric’s visor camera up on a corner of my lens display.  The gnome had connected all of our digitabs’ communications systems and synced my video capture with his.  What he saw, I would see, and vice-versa.  Right now, I could only see the shadowed outlines of Doubleshot and Buster, with Gloric’s hand typing away at the portable keyboard.

Alina and I returned to the cabin, and we both looked up at the approaching fortress.  The island had always been imposing; historical photos would show its functionally minimalist buildings and solitary lighthouse squatting territorially atop the small mounds of dirt and scrub.  In the modern era, it had been turned into something that looked like it was plucked from an Arthurian legend.  Three white towers capped by circular turrets formed a triangle at the apexes of the island, surrounding the central structure, which had been rebuilt above and below ground.  Smaller spires poked up from angular white buildings, gleaming with a fey light in the darkness.

I felt my heart quicken as we entered the dock perimeter, a long pair of piers crossed by a breakwater and protected by a retractable gate, which stood closed.  Our plan would live or die by our ability to operate the gate.

Alina slowed the cruiser, decelerating as we entered the piers and letting the vehicle drift up to the gate.  A lone guard was visible in the small building adjacent to the entrance.  I used the console to hail the guardhouse, indicating to Alina that she should do the talking.

“NVC two zero eight one, you’re not scheduled to return from patrol for another thirty minutes,” the guard said through our console.

The Pitcher cleared her throat.  “Orders to return to headquarters by Daypath Marguerite Liu,” she said, giving Talia Watson’s identification code again.

I could see Gloric’s little fingers typing away furiously in my lenses’ video frame, linking Madge’s security clearance with some bogus return request.  The gnome would take control of the gate himself when he, Vasshka, and Buster made their move, but we couldn’t contend with the added attention at the moment.

“Clear to proceed,” the guard said at length.  The gate moved slowly apart with a mechanical whir, giving us entry to the island proper.  I waved at the guard house as Alina maneuvered further between the piers, and saw the outline of a person waving back.

The piers continued for a short distance, leading to several other docks that were mostly empty for the time being.  A few light and heavy cruisers floated here and there, but the majority were out in service of the city battle.  Five guards were visible in front of the facility’s rear entrance, two large reinforced doors that led directly into the base of the main building and underground.

The Pitcher cruised us into an empty space and turned off the engine.  I grabbed a ceridium capsule and made sure my weapons, although damp, were ready.

“Wait here,” I said to Alina, and used the capsule to create a shadow shroud.  There was no way that our disguises would hold up to visual identification among the guards, so I would have to do it the old-fashioned way.

I crept out of the cruiser and onto the dock, a shadow against the dark pier.  Several lights illuminated the area at regular intervals, but I clung to the darkness and quickly reached the cement platform that led to the entryway.  Crouching behind a stone railing, I sent a message to Madge, hoping that she was able to give the camera crew something to do for five minutes or more.

“I’m going,” I breathed, seeing the air in front of me turn to frost. It was considerably cooler out in the middle of the Bay.

“Starting the timer,” I heard Gloric’s voice, and saw his camera shift as he tinkered with his backpack.

Two of the guards stood close to me, on either side of the centermost ledge that led to the piers.  Another two flanked the entryway, with the extra guard pacing interminably up the central path and back to the doors.  All of them were visibly armed, their ceridium assault rifles strapped across their shoulders and chests.

I reached down over the platform, grabbing some loose soil from the ground beneath and placing it in my pocket.  I then pulled a couple of tranq needles from my wrist pouch, placing them lengthwise in the grooves of my palms in between my first and middle fingers.

“No one gets killed,” I remembered cautioning the group as we put together our plan coming back from Reno.  “They’re all just trying to do their jobs.”

“You know what I do, right?” Vasshka had said through the speaker system.

“We’ll get you some non-lethal bullets,” I conceded.  We hadn’t.  I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out.

I waited for the patrol make her way onto the pier, then vaulted myself over the stone railing behind the platform guards, who were facing the ocean and away from the building.  I landed silently in plain view of the man and woman guarding the entrance, their backs against the stone wall.

What they saw in that moment would have chilled most people to their core, bringing their darkest nightmares of murderous shadows to life.  These two were seasoned guards in the NIGHT corps, used to seeing all manner of magic at the service of Nightpaths, Daypaths, and Inquisitors.  They squinted in the fluorescent light, confused.

If they had put together any cogent thoughts about my appearance, they did not have time to voice them.  I stood from my crouch and fanned my hands outwards, flinging the needles in their direction.  The one on the right clutched his neck, and the left, her cheek.  They both slumped to the floor, the night wind and distance muffling the sound considerably, but unable to block out the clattering of their weapons.

One of the platform guards began to turn, alarmed by the clamor.  I closed the distance in an instant, spinning to gain momentum and leaving the ground.  My boot met his jaw with a crunch, and he tumbled over the platform’s railing and onto the dirt below.  I bent my knees to cushion my landing, stepping in the direction of the other guard and thrusting my hand in my pocket. 

He looked at me and his jaw began to drop, eyes widening.  I tossed the dirt from my pocket at his face, preempting any sound or scream.  I moved swiftly around him to place my arms around his neck in a three-pointed choke, dragging him out of the light and away from the platform.  He struggled against my grip but soon relaxed, unconscious.  I turned his head to the side to make certain he wasn’t going to swallow any more dirt, and pressed myself back against the stone railing.

The patrol finished her round, walking back towards the platform.  Halfway up the gangway, she noticed the prone forms of the other guards, and turned her walk into a run, holding her rifle in one hand and reaching for her digitab with the other.  She would press a button and sound an alert, bringing more guards on top of my head.

I didn’t give her the opportunity.  I drew my stunner and steadied it against the railing in one swift motion, firing an electrified round at her moving profile.  It wasn’t my best shot, and hit the reinforced padding of her uniform, startling her but not attaching to her skin.  She turned around, looking for me, and grabbing again for her digitab.

A bolt appeared from nowhere, sticking like a dart in between her nose and lip.  Her eyes rolled back in her head and she wavered, falling back against the railing and then forward to lie on her face.

I looked in the direction of the NIGHT cruiser to see Alina standing behind the prow, still looking down the holoscope of the sniper rifle in her hands.  She held the position for a moment, and then looked over the weapon at me, raising a hand.

“Thanks,” I said.  I spoke a word and dispelled my shadow shroud, returning the gesture.

“Ayup,” her voice said into my earpiece.

I waited for the half-auric to put away the sniper rifle, idly watching Gloric type.  Alina joined me after a moment, and we walked towards the building.

“Hope these things work,” she said, pulling up the NIGHT cruiser guard’s stolen profile on her digitab.

“They’ll work,” Gloric’s voice reverberated in our ears.

We walked up to the entrance, using our digitabs to verify our clearance to enter.  They worked without a hitch, silently swinging the reinforced doors outwards.

“Hold up,” I said as the Pitcher took a step forward.

I bent and grabbed the door guards’ simple caps, offering one to Alina and putting on the other.

“Keep your hat low and eyes forward,” I instructed.  “And walk like you own the place.”

There would be a small number of personnel about, officials and staff mostly, with the lion’s share of combat-ready agents on the front lines.  No one would question two guards on their way through the facility, particularly if their access codes checked out.  It was unlikely that anyone would notice the sleeping guards outside before the camera crew came back online, giving us about four minutes to reach Tribe and locate the data drive.

I looked up at the line of holocameras overhead as we strode through the doors, hoping against hope that Madge had been able to do her magic, and that we wouldn’t run into any other agents on our way.  I wouldn’t know whether to fight or reason with them, and either option would take too much time.

The NIGHT facility was exactly as I had remembered it, plain whitewashed walls with simple blackened chrome trims along the baseboards and door frames.  Digital notices scrolled automatically in holodisplay monitors recessed within the walls, all currently projecting location information about the impending war.  The air smelled like paint and rubber shoe soles, with the faint metallic aroma of ceridium weaponry.  I felt a strange sense of cognitive dissonance, a homecoming in someone else’s house.

The area we had stepped into was a secondary checkpoint, a short hallway that opened up into a larger room with a square booth in the middle.  Reinforced glass walls that blocked entry and exit flanked the kiosk, uninterrupted save a door panel that had been cut into either side.  The booth itself was concrete up to waist level, and glass all the way to the ceiling.  A guard sat behind a desk in the kiosk, watching a holodisplay report on the state of the battle.

“Karen,” I said under my breath to Alina, recognizing the guard.

We walked up to the entrance wall, using the stolen profiles to verify our identities against a freestanding console next to the door.  The computer beeped in authentication, waiting on the guard to provide confirmation.

The guard, absorbed in the report, pressed a button without looking at us.  The door slid open against the glass wall, and we walked briskly through.