The Far Shores (The Central Series) (63 page)

Mitsuru, Chike will
be apporting you in. Your team will be in charge of sabotaging the World Tree.
Chike, after the initial apport, pull back and hang with Karim, in case he
needs to reposition. Mitsuru will call you in, after she’s secured the
location. Chike’s got a range of demo gear that Vlad provided for this little
adventure. We’ll be hitting the World Tree on a number of different levels, so
if one approach doesn’t work, there will be half a dozen other calamities on
hand.

Chike accepted his
instructions with the quiet modesty that seemed to define his character. The enthusiasm
and pride of Mitsuru’s affirmation, on the other hand, blew away her previous
anger like smoke dispersing in the wind.

As you say.

Understood.

Good. Min-jun, Katya,
Haley, Alex – you’re with Mitsuru. In the event that our psychic link is cut,
she has absolute authority. No questions, no disagreements. The World Tree must
be destroyed, whatever the cost.

There was a general
acknowledgment that took the place of what would have been nods. The nuances
varied – Katya’s was grudging, Min-jun’s curt and professional, while both
Haley and Alex were reserved and nervous – but the agreement was universal.

In the meantime, Xia,
Michael, and I will be making a big mess of things, and keeping as much of the
Anathema force off your back as possible. Karim, you’re on overwatch. Operating
details and fine print will be implanted directly following this discussion.
Any questions?

There weren’t. There
never were.

One more thing.

Alice’s thoughts were
stern and grim. That got all of their attention, when a moment before they had
been shifting and restless, waiting for the brief to end.

This World Tree...it
has some unusual properties. I don’t have a handle on it completely, but I do
know that it’s dangerous. I don’t want anyone aiming at the thing, or using a
protocol or a weapon on it. We’ll destroy the thing conventionally, okay? By
the numbers. With that in mind, I want you all to be cautious using protocols
anywhere in the vicinity of the World Tree. That goes double for Alex and
Mitzi, okay? The two of you are enough trouble on your own.

Thanks to the empathic
link, they could all feel Mitsuru’s temper rise, but Alice stamped it out with
a curtness that struck Alex as cruel.

In fact, Mitzi, I don’t
want you to use your Black Protocol at all on this one. Too many unknowns. You
can do plenty of damage with your implant anyway. We clear on that?

Alex squirmed and wished
that he could leave the conversation, and nearly everyone seemed to feel the
same, aside from Katya, who was amused by the encounter. Alice remained
resolute, the full force of her will turned on Mitsuru, who wavered between
open defiance and quiet resentment.

Understood.

There was an
undercurrent of rage beneath the monosyllabic response, but if Alice noticed, then
she chose not to remark on it. Alex decided to let the others handle it. At
this point in the game, he knew he was in too deep to do anything other than
soldier on and hope that it would all be over soon.

Apports were a tricky business.

The lesson hadn’t simply
been learned in the hours of lecture and theory study that the Program
entailed, though the subject was certainly covered at length. Practical
experience had driven home the point for Alex. Even a relatively skilled apport
technician – like Svetlana of the Black Sun, for example – would often skew
slightly one of the three dimensions that had to be determined, creating a
short but jarring drop to the ground or a displacement of a less than a meter
from the target location. In fact, a small drop was often the mark of an
experienced technician – erring in delivering an apport too low could well be
injurious or fatal to the transported, leaving them embedded in the ground, or
worse. The smaller the target, the greater the hazard these small variations
created. It took a preternaturally capable technician, such as Miss Gallow, to
attempt an apport to an object in motion or to a location based merely on visual
reference material.

Thus, Alex felt a deep
appreciation of the skill required for Chike to land their group of six on a
catwalk above the factory floor that was no more than a meter wide, without the
slightest drop to create a crashing sound that would have alerted the entire
facility to their presence. He hardly knew the Nigerian Auditor, beyond his
friendly disposition and soft-spoken demeanor, but his successful delivery of
their combat group bumped him up several slots on Alex’s list of favorite
people.

Alex glanced around the
room, lit only by halogen work lights on temporary stands arrayed across the
factory floor, casting bright circles of illumination on clusters of
technicians and banks of blue-screened monitors, collections of arcane
machinery and nervous-looking armed men who watched everything with an
intensity that bordered on suspicion. In the center of the floor, there was a
thing that Alex lacked the vocabulary to describe, maybe even the mental
capacity to comprehend. If not for the Witch they had encountered, he wouldn’t
even have had a name for it.

If the World Tree looked
like anything, then it vaguely resembled an upside down tree made from crystal
the color of crushed ice flecked with brown and grey impurities. It didn’t touch
the ground, from what Alex could see, but instead emerged from a tangle of
machinery and Etheric discharge. Even as he watched, the crystal fluctuated,
growing and splintering, branching and disappearing in blatant defiance of
gravity, with a root-like unsupported bulk near the top, not far beneath the
fragile footing of the catwalk on which they stood, and narrowing closer to the
ground, like a frozen fountain.

The crystalline
structure resonated with a low hum that rattled his teeth and vibrated his
skull, a sound that he had the strange conviction was the transmuted sonic form
of the light it emitted. There was a familiar rhythm to its infrasonic fluctuation,
like the ponderously slow heartbeat of something too huge to exist. It hurt too
look at it, and reminded him vaguely of his encounter with a Horror – a
profound disconnect, the intrinsic wrong of the alien, of the vast outside. The
outer branches sparked and fumed as if subject to an intense friction, though
the air was perfectly still. The surface belched steam that smelled both sweet
and acidic in a way that made his stomach turn. Alex was grateful when Haley’s
arrival was signaled by their shared telepathic link snapping back online,
pulling his attention away from the World Tree below.

Haley didn’t require an
apport – she was carried through the Anathema scrambler by virtue of a
telepathic anchor that Mitsuru facilitated, and looking much the worse for
wear, her insubstantial form flickering and wavering in the half-light of the
supposedly abandoned factory. Whatever the scrambler had done to her, Haley was
still capable of telepathically concealing them from the numerous people on the
concrete factory floor, though it looked as if the effort hurt. Alex had a
moment to wonder about Haley’s physical body back at the local headquarters, if
it suffered when her psychic form did, or if it was as fleeting as a bad dream.
Then everything got hectic, and there was no more time to worry about anything
other than surviving the next few seconds.

Things didn’t start off
badly. Chike blinked out of existence a few seconds after he delivered them,
pausing only long enough to exchange an encouraging word with Mitsuru and give
the rest of them a thumbs-up. He was meant to apport to wherever Karim was,
messing with scopes and trying to account for the distortion created by using a
local relay to augment his remote-viewing skills. The rifle he employed, a
massive Barrett .50 caliber, was purportedly powerful enough to punch through
the rusting walls of the factory, thanks to depleted-uranium-lined bullets and
specialized machining, but Alex couldn’t put much stock in the sniper looking
after them. Nor, to be entirely frank, could he entirely trust Mitsuru, who had
a wild and distant look in her eyes that made him think she was more focused on
winning the battle than bringing them home safely.

It was understandable.
That was the basic idea, after all.

A heartbeat after Chike
disappeared, Miss Gallow stepped out of the shadows of the World Tree on the
floor below them, pulling Xia along with one hand and Michael with the other.
There was a passing lull, a pause in recognition while Mitsuru telepathically
urged them to move from the precarious catwalk that groaned ominously with
their weight to firmer ground, then all hell broke loose. Alex watched as he
stumbled forward, clutching his rifle more out of habit than any real
confidence, while the trio of Auditors laid waste to everything in sight.

Miss Gallow flitted from
one shadow to another, her automatic shotgun spraying buckshot at everything
unlucky enough to attract her attention. Machinery ruptured and vented steam,
monitors shattered, and people died, whole limbs vaporized by clouds of tiny
ball bearings accelerated beyond terminal velocity. Belatedly, some Anathema
attempted to return fire, but at best they found no target. More often, they contributed
to the ongoing disaster by opening fire on the spot where Miss Gallow had been
a moment earlier, hitting their own personnel.

Michael pushed forward,
bullets ricocheting off the indigo barrier that sparkled around him. He ignored
the terrified technicians, charging instead at a massed group of armed men, his
tattooed skin livid with telekinetic energy. One of the Anathema employed a
kinetic protocol, the ground around him fracturing with excess energy, the air
between them rippling as a sheer wall of force tore through, but Michael deflected
it with a gesture, sending it to shred a path across the factory floor. Michael
cast out his hands, and indigo lines of energy radiated out, flaring
soundlessly when they came into contact with the Anathema. Two were protected
by a barrier, but the remainder were decimated, liquefied remains expelled
across the stained concrete floors, in a scene of carnage too grotesque for
Alex’s mind to accept as real. Michael moved on the survivors, hands radiating energy
as he shattered their barrier.

Xia walked calmly
forward, extending his hands out on either side as if he were checking for
rain. All around him, fire blossomed, a terrifying surge of white-hot flame and
superheated air that consumed all that it touched with a sound like a jet at
full throttle.

Confusion took hold, amidst
flame and light and the discharge of protocols, the rattle and whine of
bullets, and the background chorus of screams. If it weren’t for Katya’s hand
on his shoulder, Alex might have frozen, or even fallen to his knees in raw,
wordless horror, but she drove him onward. Alex was unable to look away from
the ongoing carnage beneath him, so he was the only one to see the beam of
focused light that cut neatly through the catwalk two meters behind Katya, severed
steel beams bubbling and writhing like boiling water. The beam passed directly
through the catwalk and sliced the roof overhead, tracing a smooth arc as if it
were a line drawn with the aid of a compass, then reversed direction and cut a
diagonal across nearly the whole of the building, passing through the catwalk
again at a more distant point and tearing open an enormous section of the
ceiling. Alex was dazzled by the intensity of the beam, still trying to blink
away the vivid afterimages when they were suddenly exposed to daylight.

It was impossible to say
whether it was a deliberate attack. Of course, they were meant to be
telepathically hidden, but that only held if the Anathema did not have a more powerful
or capable telepath than Haley among their numbers. Then again, it was bedlam beneath
them, with all sorts of weaponry and protocols employed in a manner that was at
best chaotic. In the end, it made no difference.

Alex intended to cry
out, but the din was so great that even he couldn’t hear himself, so there was
no way to be sure that he did. He crouched instinctively as a severed I-beam
fell from the punctured roof, then his point of view shifted and he found himself
scrambling as the ground slid from beneath him. Something hit him in the head,
with a pain that Alex heard more than he felt, a dull ringing that reverberated
down to the soles of his feet, and then he was tumbling, bright moments of pain
where he came into contact with the things gone too fast to identify.

The catwalk fell to the
factory floor, with the majority of the roof of the old chemical plant not far
behind.

***

Alistair just smiled when the
perimeter guard burst into flames, screaming horrifically as they alternated
between fruitlessly rolling on the ground in an attempt to extinguish
themselves and frantically trying to shed burning clothing. The technicians
clustered around him, monitoring machinery as it gradually cycled up to full
power, glanced at him fearfully.

“Continue, continue,”
Alistair said, chuckling. “It appears our guests have finally made their
entrance.”

“I thought apports into
this location were impossible,” Drake growled, rubbing the back of his neck,
where two poorly tattooed eyes stared out blankly and unevenly. “Is the
scrambler still on?”

“It is,” Alistair said,
glancing at the tablet he held briefly, then casting it aside to shatter on the
ground, causing the technicians to jump. “Apparently, the Auditors have devised
a solution for that particular problem. How troublesome.”

“You don’t seem that
upset,” Drake observed, flipping the fire selector on his M-4 to automatic.

“I’m not,” Alistair
agreed. “I have scores to settle with this lot. We all do, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh.” Drake scanned the
growing chaos around them through the scope of his rifle. “That’s great.”

“It will be, won’t it?”
Alistair nodded with satisfaction, turning his attention to the trembling
technicians. “You lot – how long until the World Tree is operational?”

They looked from one to
the other, before one of them worked up the courage to speak. A striking black
woman with tightly braided hair looked at him levelly across a bank of glowing
dials.

“Hard to say, sir. We’ve
never brought it up to full power before. If I had to estimate, I would guess
that it’s a matter of minutes. Ten, fifteen – could be more, could be less.”

Alistair gave her a
pleasant smile.

“Excellent. Your name?”

“Talia Banks,” the
female tech answered, returning her attention to the control board, as if she
had lost interest in the conversation.

“Very well, Talia. You
are in charge. I need this working in ten minutes. Make it happen.” Alistair
didn’t bother to see the reaction his words invoked. He motioned to his
assembled troops, walking toward the source of the screaming and destruction
with the crisp gait of a man who enjoys his work. “The rest of you, spread out.
Stay in groups. Find the Auditors, and kill as many of them as possible.”

Drake and Michelle
exchanged a look. Her head was still slightly but noticeably misshapen, the result
of a bullet Alice Gallow had very nearly put through her head in their last
encounter. Michelle had brought her barrier up in time to save her brain, but
not before her skull had been shattered.

“Great,” Drake said
again, spitting tobacco juice on the floor.

“Try and show some
spine,” Song Li suggested, shambling by in the mildly decomposed corpse of a
Malaysian man that she currently occupied – an Operator they had killed the
week before, during an altercation in Brussels. Curtis followed her at a
respectful distance, mindful of the stomach-turning smell. “Don’t you want
revenge?”

“Shut up,” Michelle
responded angrily. “They killed you last time, you bitch.”

Leigh Feld patted her on
the shoulder as she passed, perfectly formed and aloof, twin white fangs barely
protruding from her pouty lips, dressed in Lycra and Spandex, as if she were
planning on getting in a quick workout. Martin Cole hurried after her.

“Don’t worry,” she
offered airily, walking carelessly through the fire. “It will be different this
time. We are different.”

Michelle and Drake
waited till they all disappeared before heading out, choosing the direction
with the least amount of carnage and destruction.

“Sometimes I think we
are the only people here who aren’t insane,” Michelle said, shaking her pretty,
if slightly malformed, head.