Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 03 (44 page)
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Authors: Evil Triumphant
I circumspectly questioned Sin about Rajani, her state of mind and her emotional strength. I knew she had the ability to tap into Fiddleback's thoughts, but I also knew it was a draining and even tortuous experience for her. In many ways she was my ace in the hole because even Fiddleback did not know about her skill. With
Vetha having warned me that at some point Fiddleback
would
betray me, I wanted Rajani along as a trip-wire to give me
as
much warning as was possible concerning the Dark Lord's treachery.
Sin reported that Rajani was doing very well and was even looking forward to striking a blow against
Pygmalion and Fiddleback. I caught from him a protective attitude and just a hint of jealously at my inquiry, but that was good. Rajani needed protection in what was likely to be a lethal environment, and Sin having an emotional stake in her survival meant he would take good care of her.
Everything looked perfect except for one detail: Vetha. I very much wanted to leave her behind in Phoenix when we went out. Her message to me had been very clear— despite what she wanted, she might betray me
because of Fiddleback's perversity. I could not afford that because the operation designed to killed Pygmalion also had to neutralize Fiddleback. If she caught even unconscious clues about that course of events, she might pass them along and Fiddleback might balk at the last minute, leaving us in Pygmalion's dimension facing an army of Mickey clones.
A second reason for wanting to leave her behind was her shape. The soldiers with whom we were dealing
were not seasoned extra-dimensional travelers. There was no
way to bring them up to speed and have them work with us under those conditions on such short notice.
Because they were not stupid, they would realize she was not the sort of creature found on Earth, and that might cause problems when we did not need them.
On the other hand, of course, leaving Vetha behind would immediately arouse Fiddleback's suspicions. If he were wary—more so than usual—we would not get him. That concern overrode the others, resulting in an odd
plan where we outfitted her in a ninja -like outfit that covered her from head to abdomen in black. While she still did not look natural, half-hidden in the shadows almost anyone could dismiss her as a hallucination.
As I pulled on my ANPBS-9 and adjusted the nightvision device so the monocular lens jutted from my face
like a unicorn's hom, Vetha opened her mandibles and shook her head. "You are concerned by
my
A B B YY.c
appea
rances, Coyote?" In response to my invitation to talk, she entered my suite and appropriated an ott
oman
for he
r abdomen.
I smiled at her. The nightvision goggles painted her in black with green highlights. While there was no hiding the light shining periodically from her eyes, the dark clothes did soften her outline and made her less
recognizable. The low-light reflective tabs on her shoulders marked her as one of us, which meant friendly fire would not take her out.
"1 only have a 70° arc of vision here, Vetha, so I'm not greatly concerned about how I look, but how what I look at looks. You, in this case, look fine. Just stick with Bat and Match and you should have no problems."
I had split my key personnel into three groups. Crowley and 1 made up one lead element, with Bat, Natch and Vetha comprising the other. I purposely put the two Dark Lord agents together so they could watch each
other, and I left them with Bat because he generally put out enough in the way of emotion to blind almost any empathic
creature around.
Rajani, Sinclair, Hal Garrett, Mickey, Nero Loring and Jytte made up my operations team. Rajani, in addition to what she meant in terms of Fiddleback, could help Nero Loring see in Pygmalion's dimension. That was
crucial to the plan, because Nero knew the control device he carried backward and forward. While Crowley, Jytte and Vetha had been briefed on how it worked and what had to be done to make it work—and Crowley
and Vetha both carried the refurbished Powerbooks needed to drive the dimensional gate—I wanted Nero
there to troubleshoot things on the fly.
Hal and Rajani argued against bringing Mickey on the mission, but Crowley and I pressed for his inclusion and were able to make a case that brought Jytte and Sinclair over to our side. They had argued that what we would be doing would be fartoo violent for a 5-year-old child to take part in, much less witness. Crowley and 1 countered that if we kept Mickey out, he could come to regret not having done anything to avenge his father.
We agreed that his role would be only defensive and give him the job of playing rough with anything that
tried to get to the operations team.
We were all outfitted similarly to the mercenaries we had hired, with assault rifles, body armor and grenades.
Those of us who had personal side arms wore them, with the Wildey Wolf taking its place beneath my left
arm and the Kraits riding on my right hip and at the small of my back, respectively. All totaled, my equipment weighed as much as a small child, but distributed on my combat harness and belt, it did not seem that heavy and did not restrict my movement.
From the suite in the top of the Lorica tower, my people prepared to head up to the roof and into the Peregrine designated Kestrel-1. Before we departed, after trying on
our nightvision goggles and doing a radio check, I gave everyone an appreciative nod. "Look, we all know better than to think we'll all get through this unscathed. I hope we will—1 pray we will—but I fear it won't be so. I think all of us have agreed that stopping Pygmalion and Fiddleback is vital, so we're willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if we are called upon to do so.
"I just want to let you know that your courage and effort over the past months is what has made me willing to risk life and limb. I was created a minion of a Dark Lord, but Coyote freed me from his service. In my
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assoc
iation with you, I have recaptured my humanity. Without it, I would not be here, and because of it, I
am
going
to do what must be done to stop the evil of the Dark Lords."
I glanced at my watch and saw both the digital and analog portions reading midnight. "The Witching Hour.
It's time."
Bat smiled and brandished his Ml 6A2. "Let's go make something bleed."
With Lilith at the controls, Kestrel-1 headed off to the northwest, skirting City Center and cutting between the Digital Express and Build-more complexes on our shot out toward Mercury. 1 glanced at the Build-more
citadel and saw lights burning in the offices at the top. I could easily imagine Watson Dodd there sweating over how he would implement my security selections in time for another test penetration later in the week.
Kestrel-2 and Joniak's bird, designated Merlin, joined up from the west. While the raid was well within the range of all three choppers, Lilith had made arrangements for all three aircraft to refuel and, if needed, recover themselves to a small private airport outside Kingman. If we had pushed it and had not refueled, we could have made the trip in two hours, but haste was not an issue, so it ended
up taking closer to three-and-a-half hours.
Once we were on our way up from Phoenix, Lilith radioed instructions to the Rangers, and they began their infiltration of the building site. Earlier in the day, they had gone up into the Mercury area and used old DOE
access roads to bypass the town itself. With the three-hour lead time, we expected they would be able to
penetrate the site and position themselves to take out any pockets of resistance the guards might create when things started to get hot. One group was to secure the approach to the base, preventing reinforcements from coming in, while the rest of the Rangers would move in and occupy the base.
Lilith put Kestrel-1 through a single orbit over the site, but nothing looked unusual, so she shifted the wings to vertical and dropped straight down on the helipad. All our passengers dismounted, breaking into their teams and scattering to three comers of the pad. Kestrel-1 took off again, and its sister-ship came down, disgorging the mercenaries. They immediately established a perimeter, pronounced the area secure, and released their bird to fly Combat Air Patrol with Lilith's Peregrine.
Crowley and I ran to a stairway, ready to respond with the proper code words if challenged. We saw no
guards, so we worked our way down into the center of the site unmolested. The stairway brought us down
approximately 50 feet east of the Fair Lady electronics area of the upper floor, but enough of the drywall had been roughed in to actually channel us farther east before we could move north and come back in at it heading west. That was still in keeping with our plan, but might spoil our timing and, if Bat's team ran into similar delays in their approach from the north, we could have had a problem.
As I crept through the darkness, moving my head back and forth to give me a normal range of view because of the
nightvision goggles, I also let myself sense for emotions and life. Crowley proved black hole because, while I could see him as we moved forward and overlapped each other, 1 could sense nothing from him. In many
ways, that was good because it left me free to actually seek out signs of life, but 1 still found it disturbing.
Relying on my empathic ability to sense others, I moved forward at speeds that were somewhat more than
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prud
ent, given the circumstances. Having once before visited the gateway core, I moved directly towar
d the
centr
al chamber when 1 got into the Fair Lady area. I sensed nothing and, in my first visual sweep
of the area,
noted nothing out of order. "Alpha in. Clear. ETA Beta."
"Beta, green minus five."
"Copy, Beta. Kestrel-1, phase one red minus one, phase two green." In keeping with military practice where radio signals might be intercepted, we had codes for numbers. Green indicated 10 and red five, which meant Bat felt he was five minutes out. In radioing the codes order to Lilith, I had her make the call to Warner at the dam to tell him that he was to do his bit in two stages, four and 10 minutes apart, respectively.
"Copy, Alpha."
I took another look at the area and saw something I had missed before in the core. A slender cable, no thicker than standard co-ax, hung down in the darkness. Except for when its slight swaying let the gentle green light from the gem rectangle paint it, it remained invisible. Looking more carefully, lalsosawtwo small cubes, each about half the size of a shoebox, sitting on either side of the platform in the center of the core.
I keyed my radio. "Deuce, I have something odd in the core. I'm moving up to check."
Crowley double-clicked his radio in acknowledgment, but offered no comment. As I moved forward, I
visually
scanned the chamber again. While the ANPBS-9 did a great job of letting me see in the dark, it forced me
into a tunnelvision that could have proved disastrous. While I could sense the location of folks, I could not aim and shoot based on that feeling alone. I needed to keep my head moving to give me the normal
cone of vision.
Things remained clear for a second, then I felt a presence in chamber. Exiting the gateway on the
northern edge of the circular platform, I caught a glimpse of a profile I had seen before in what seemed an earlier lifetime. I started to swing my MP-7 toward him, but the bright flashlight he had taped to the
barrel of his pump-action shotgun got to me first, and the AMPBS-9 went "green-out" on me.
