The Cresperian Alliance (8 page)

The
Sea Wolf
eased into the loch, stealth mode fully operational. “Switch to passive sonar,” Commander Captain William Henry ordered.

"Passive sonar."

"Notify me of anything unusual."

"Roger that, sir."

The
Sea Wolf
crept into the fjord toward the tor at its head, running silent and as deep as they dared in the glacially carved inlet.

"Coming up on glacial sill, sir,” the sonar technician noted.

"Copy, sonar. Two degrees up bubble, helm."

"Roger, Cap'n Henry. Two degrees up bubble."

They ran silently for a few moments, rising barely enough to avoid the glacial sill at the fjord's mouth. “Past the sill, Captain Henry,” the sonar technician noted. “Depth of bottom has increased by a good twenty feet."

"Excellent. Helm. Three degrees down bubble."

"Yes sir, Cap'n. Three degrees down bubble."

"Level out when our keel is thirty feet from the bottom. I want a little elbow room, but not much."

"Roger, sir. Leveling out now."

They covered five klicks without incident and without detection and were nearing their rendezvous point. Suddenly the sonar technician twisted around.

"Sir, we have signal! Thirty-six degrees abaft the bow to port, down twelve degrees."

"Alert. Source?” Henry barked.

The sonar technician was typing rapidly; a crude image built up on his screen. “Water's murky with the storm coming in; the image isn't the best in the world. There,” he said, as the image construction completed. “Non-combatant; indigenous life. Looks like a giant sturgeon, sir. There's a freshwater stream that flows in to the north of the tor and wraps around a haystack outcrop.” He glanced back at his captain. “I think we found the source of the sea monster legend."

Henry nodded. “Stand down alert. Ahead stealth speed."

"Standing down. Ahead stealth."

Bangler sneaked along with the others, invisible, listening closely for his comrades’ breathing and soft footfalls. “Mr. McAllister,” Sira whispered in the ear of the unconventional warfare commander, “another guard is exiting the house via a side door. Send one of your men to the back door, and another to the corner. I will erase the short term memory of the first guard so that,” she sighed, “your man may kill him, then I will do the same to the other."

McAllister was attired in active camo rather than an invisibility device but was no more visible to their quarry for that. He flipped a finger at two of his men. They moved into position, and Sira was silent for a moment, concentrating. “Now,” she said. “Number one."

The ninja-like operative dropped the frozen guard as if he'd been a mannequin.

"And number two,” Sira said seconds later.

The second guard fell.

They dragged the two bodies into the heather, then both teams started for the back door. Within seconds they were crouched along one side of the structure.

"All right,” McAllister said, “get ready to move out, kiddies. Faith, you take the back door and play bulldozer. Hope, get—"

"Sst!” Sira's hiss could be heard, though she herself could not be seen, thanks to her invisibility device. “Hold up! The underground network layout is off! They're almost below us!"

"Are you sure, honey?” Tomlinson, her invisible mate, asked in startled tones.

"Positive. The underground facility design is skewed relative to the house, and they dug out from under without realizing it.” A tiny, smooth gouge appeared in the ground, as the invisible Sira delicately wielded her disintegrator. “If I go straight down right there, and the teams use ropes, we might be able to get them out with no one in the house being the wiser."

"Do they know you're here?” Tomlinson pressed.

"Not only do they sense me—and are happy about the fact—they have sensed the disintegrator in use, not to mention the invisibility devices,” Sira averred. “That's the edge of the chamber they're being held in, and they're alone for the moment. It's dinner time for them, and evidently the British don't like watching us eat.” Grim humor was detectable in the Crispy woman's voice. “They've stopped eating and have moved to the far side of the room. They want out, as fast as we can get to them. Is everyone ready?"

Tomlinson and McAllister glanced at each other. “Go, Sira,” Tomlinson ordered.

"Stand back, then.” Abruptly a smooth sided tunnel appeared, some eight feet in diameter, going straight down through first soil and then solid rock for about thirty feet. Near the bottom, a dark rectangular hole opened off toward the house. Three green heads peeped out cautiously. Two were typically Cresperian pyramidal; the third was vaguely human shaped, with long, dark green hair.

"Ropes!” McAllister ordered, and Unit Faith flung three ropes down the hole, wrapping the top ends around nearby rock outcrops and belaying with their own bodies. The first sheets of rain moved in just then, heavy and soaking, and within seconds they were all dripping. But the gusty mist and swirling fog that came behind it obscured their rain soaked outlines, effectively eliminating any possibility of their being spotted.

Sira called out softly in Cresperian, and the three below ran for the ropes. Bangler noted that two were still in full Cresperian form, but one was evidently in mid-transformation: it had the body of a human female, but still possessed soft orange eyes and green pelt. They were all naked except for metallic armbands wrapping each of their arms, whether two or four.

The two normal Cresperians used all four arms and both legs to shin rapidly up the ropes, but the half morphed female desperately cried out something in Cresperian, as she struggled with the rope near the bottom of the pit. She leaped upward a good ten feet, grabbing the wet rope and managing to haul herself another foot up it before losing momentum.

"She can't!” Sira exclaimed in a low tone. “She doesn't yet know how to do it with only two arms!"

Having gotten a short distance up the wet rope, the partially morphed Crispy lost her grip and slid down to the bottom. Bits of green and red stuck to the rope, and the Crispy involuntarily wailed in pain, a high pitched, distinctly inhuman sound.

At the cry, lights flashed on inside the house.

"Shit! That did it!” McAllister cried. “Get ready to boogie, kids! Time to blow this joint!” He started waving off his people.

"WAIT!” Bangler blurted, ditching his pack on the ground and deactivating his invisibility device. “I can get her! Wersky, help belay the rope!"

Tomlinson nodded permission. Without hesitation, Wersky slung his gun over his shoulder and anchored the rope as most of the members of the Faith UW team hustled the two rescued Crispies toward the coast and the waiting sub. Sira called something down to the third Crispy, and she stepped back, rubbing her raw palms. Bangler grabbed the rope, looped it once around his left leg, and leaped into the pit, crudely but rapidly rappelling downward.

At the bottom, he gestured to his back. “Do you speak English?” he asked urgently.

"English, some,” she said in a decidedly aristocratic British tone. “They not talk us much. Order me to fix this, heal that, make this stronger. Anatomical terms I know well. Other things, not so much. I named Piki. What you want?"

"Okay, Piki, get on my back and hang on!"

Piki nodded and clambered onto Bangler's back, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs about his waist, careful not to put her raw, rather bloody palms on anything.

"WERSKY! PULL!” Bangler bellowed, bracing his feet on the wall of the pit and leaning back.

Suddenly the pair surged toward the surface, the big Pole anchoring a good half a dozen men and women as they hauled fiercely on the rope. Bangler fairly ran up the wall of the pit.

"HURRY!” Sira cried, and Bangler heard a scream, abruptly terminated, from near the house. “They're coming!"

Bangler topped the edge of the pit with so much momentum that he landed on the ground standing up, the Crispy still clinging tightly to his back. The rope team staggered backward as the opposing force was released. They dropped the rope, and in one motion, Wersky swung the machine gun around his body and opened it up, adding its firepower to Sira's disintegrator as British soldiers emerged from various doors. Piki scrambled off Bangler's back.

A burst of gunfire from below angled upward, missing them all. The next round was angled lower, and Bangler jumped in front of Piki, then gasped in pain as a round caught him in the vest, and another found his upper arm.

"GO!” Tomlinson yelled, dropping the rope and glancing at his chronometer. “Three minutes! Bangler, activate your invisibility!"

One last burst of disintegrator took out a corner of the building as well as several persons inside while Bang initiated his invisibility device. Wersky and the other heavily armed extraction team members covered Bangler, Tomlinson, Sira, and the new Crispy as they retreated across the farm house's small herb garden toward the rough valley and the submarine waiting in the fjord below. Sira led the way, avoiding traps and snares, and the others fell in line.

Just before they crested the descent to the fjord at the edge of the lawn, the Crispy Piki, having observed everything, declared, “STOP."

Bangler, and everyone else, instinctively screeched to a stop.

"Sira. Tchchlk."

Without question, Sira removed the disintegrator from her hand and tossed it to Piki, who donned it.

Before anyone else could say anything, the Crispy pointed her hand at the house. A man, barely discernible in the dark, stood in front of it gesticulating violently in the pouring rain. A string of filthy curses floated toward them on the misty wind. In the darkness and confusion, Bangler just managed to recognize the man from their briefing materials: it was the British Prime Minister.

Suddenly he—and a substantial portion of the house behind him—disappeared. Two elegantly shod feet, the bloody stumps of ankles protruding above them, were all that were left standing where he had been.

Piki removed the disintegrator, wiped it clean of her own blood, and tossed it back to Sira. The female Crispy commanded, “GO."

They all started running again, as the female noted, voice thick with something like emotion, “He bad man. After I start to change—hope it helps me get away soon, get helps—he hurt me between my legs, and beat me. Make Piki scream."

"Oh, dear God,” Bangler huffed, struggling against the pain in his chest and arm. “Tell me that doesn't mean what it sounds like."

Sira's voice murmured something in Cresperian, and Piki answered in kind.

"It does,” Sira noted grimly. “He raped her."

Between highly effective machine gun fire and disintegrator rays, the safehouse was in complete disarray, and soon the extraction team realized they weren't being followed. Everyone in the small group was invisible except Piki, and her green pelt blended with the foliage reasonably well, so it was unlikely anyone could see them well enough to target them anyway. They didn't slow down, however; an aircraft carrier was off the coast in international waters, and its Harriers carried more than just training missiles, as did the F-22s covering them. Tomlinson called out checkpoint times as they went, and although they were slightly ahead of schedule, due to the “shortcut” down to the underground level, it wasn't enough to suit them. Tomlinson, in the lead, suddenly blurted, “Otter slides!"

"What?” Bang wondered.

"Look at these!” The Hope Leader subvocally deactivated his invisibility neckband and pointed to several smooth, muddy rivulets running down the side of the tor, avoiding rock outcrops and boulders like a bobsled run. “They're sea otter slides! We can use them to speed up our descent!"

"I don't think they have sea otters in the Atlantic, sir,” Bangler replied thoughtfully, feeling somewhat dizzy and seizing on the concept in an effort to focus. “It might be the Eurasian species, though. They're making a comeback around here."

Tomlinson rolled his eyes. “Either way, Bang, somebody's watching out for us!"

"Biology major,” Nunez noted with a grin.

"Lead the way, boss!” Wersky declared.

Tomlinson plopped down on his ass in the slippery mud and shoved off. He zipped downhill on the slick, rain-wet surface, easily following the contours of the animal-carved descent. Sira followed immediately. Nervous, Piki located Bangler by perception and clambered onto his back. “You helps?” she whispered in his ear.

"...Yeah,” he agreed, hoping his arm and chest would hold out. He didn't think his arm was bleeding too much—he hadn't felt blood on his fingers yet—but he was pretty sure his ribs wouldn't take much more pounding, and as heavily as he was breathing, his chest hurt bad. Nevertheless, he eased himself onto the otter slide, Piki on his back, and shoved off.

Seconds later, the rest were following suit.

There were a couple of mishaps, where the otter runs ran out or ended in mud piles, and once Bangler went chest first into a boulder, burdened as he was with Piki's additional weight. He managed to protect the Crispy's hands and feet. But he thought he felt something crack in his chest. Suddenly breathing became a lot more painful.
Shit. There goes a rib. Thank God for body armor, or I'd be singing soprano about now,
he thought, looking on the bright side. He picked himself up, hefted the lightweight Piki more firmly onto his back, and ran after the others, trying hard to ignore the pain.
After all, if I don't make the sub, that'll hurt a lot worse.
Adrenaline coursed through him, and instantly the pain diminished.

The shore was predictably rocky, with waves breaking over boulders the size of Volkswagens and seaweed, ripped from the bottom by the passing storm, lodged slimily in every crevice. The team could faintly hear boats already headed out to a dark, sea monster like shape barely discernible in the foggy bay. Another two rubber boats rested onshore, their pilots antsy to be off. The last of White Horse bailed unceremoniously into the rafts, Sira and Tomlinson in one, Bangler and Piki in the other. Several of the remaining team jumped in with Sira and Tomlinson, including Taylor, who had stayed behind to help haul up Bangler and the third new Crispy. Wersky and Nunez joined Bangler and Piki, and Nunez eased a clinging Piki off Bangler's back as the pilots shoved off and revved the stealth engines toward the submarine. The female medic gently surveyed Piki's hands.