Like Beatrice.
He wouldn’t argue with the knights that Sullivan had already convinced. That was pointless. Ian had volunteered for this mission for other reasons entirely. “Regardless what happens, at least we’ll give the Imperium a black eye.”
“That’s the spirit,” Diamond said.
Diamond had a sort of constant understated enthusiasm that Ian found annoying. The elders called it a can-do attitude. It was probably also why Diamond had always found himself in positions of leadership while Ian had been bounced around from one petty assignment to another, even though they’d joined the society about the same time and were about the same age.
Of course, it was easy for Diamond and the others like him to have a can-do attitude. It hadn’t been his wife who had been tortured in an Imperium school until she’d gone insane. None of them had been forced to Summon a demon to sneak in and put her out of her misery.
Ian looked around the room at the knights surrounding him. He knew many of them. They were all volunteers, and each of them was here for his own reasons. The Reader, Mike Willis, was the noble heroic type, and an old friend of George Bolander’s. Willis was here because that’s what his mentor would have wanted. Mottl was an Icebox and Simmons was a Torch; they were Diamond’s men, and that whole bunch was always looking for a scrape. Their lone Healer, Dianatkhah, had the reputation of a lady’s man with a thirst for danger. He only knew the others in passing, but the lot of them were capable, dangerous Actives. Regardless of what had gotten them on this ship, heaven help anyone who got in their way.
While the knights had been talking, Schirmer had used his Power to quickly understand the complex mechanism of the landing gear and exactly how it had broken. The Fixer temporarily corrected the problem with some bubble gum and a length of wire. He gave an okay sign to the crewmen on the catwalk.
“Ramp down in two minutes!” the lead marauder shouted.
Jake Sullivan appeared in the cargo bay, holding a bullpup Browning Automatic Rifle, surely enchanted by the master himself. The Heavy seemed even larger and more intimidating than normal all wrapped in fur. Give him a helmet with cow horns and he’d look like a Viking. “All right, boys. It’s time to go.”
The assembled knights cheered. Ian played along even though it made him sick. The society had truly been blinded by Sullivan’s story. They were wasting their time on a fairytale while Actives suffered. Ian’s father-in-law, Isaiah Rawls, had understood who the real enemies were, and he’d sacrificed his honor, but in doing so had won the greatest victory against tyranny the Society had ever seen.
Genesse had asked why he’d volunteered. The Mouth would never understand. Ian’s real mission was to make this fool’s errand of an expedition count for something. For too long the society had been holding back, being cautious. This mission was the most overt action the Grimnoir had taken in years.
Ian didn’t believe in Sullivan’s Pathfinder, but he did believe in killing Imperium.
Axel Heiberg Island
The patrol never knew what hit them.
Sullivan had been a soldier. He understood what cold and monotony could do to a man, and winter in a trench in France was a tropical paradise compared to this blasted place. It didn’t matter how tough or how well trained a soldier was. There were only so many hours someone could stare off into a field of nothing and stay alert. There were only so many days you could guard something that no one knew, nor cared about, before it began to seem pointless. Even for Imperium soldiers, men so fanatical that they’d follow any order without hesitation, the freezing monotony would erode that sense of duty. It would dull you down until you were only pulling your patrols because your superiors demanded it, but even then, you’d just be punching a clock, freezing your ass off, staring at ice, until it was your turn to go back inside.
Until one night you got eaten by a polar bear.
Sullivan tensed as the gigantic white beast came lumbering through the snow. Even with the magically summoned snow storm, it was still far too bright to be the middle of the night, but it was surprising how close the animal got before he saw it, and Lance wasn’t even trying hard now. The polar bear’s face was dripping red, and much of its dirty white fur was stained pink.
“Got ‘em. You should’ve seen their faces,” Lance said through the animal. The bear seemed unnaturally happy, not that Sullivan had ever had a conversation with a bear before. Did the animals Lance controlled still experience things like joy? He’d have to ask Lance later, assuming he didn’t freeze to death first. “Four men, and she put them down before anyone could even fire a shot. Polar bears are great like that. Her nose says that’s it for the perimeter. You’re clear rest of the way in.”
“Good work,” Sullivan said through chattering teeth.
“Work? Hell. My body’s back on the Traveler warm and toasty, sitting by a heater vent. Follow her tracks and I’ll take you to the door. Stick to the tracks. There are crevices all over the place.” The polar showed all its teeth in a terrifying smile, then staggered to the side and ran away. It was invisible within two seconds.
He was wearing a mask, but the cold had already leached through and his face was numb beneath it. It was so cold that his eyeballs were freezing in their sockets beneath his goggles. Sullivan’s nose had filled with snot and frozen so bad that it wasn’t until after the bear was gone that its foul, musky odor finally registered. Turning back, he could just make out the next few men, crouched, weapons ready. He signaled for them to follow. The first man who reached him was wearing so much clothing that he was simply unrecognizable. Sullivan repeated what Lance had said about sticking to the tracks, had the knight repeat the words, and then had him pass it back down their single-file line. The last thing he wanted was to lose a man by something stupid like falling in a hole. They should’ve tied ropes to each other like Heinrich had suggested.
The snowfall was so thick he could barely see the bear’s fresh tracks. Each step was treacherous and slick. They’d brought snowshoes, which had been a good bit of planning, but he’d underestimated how damned hard it was to walk in the things without practice. The muscles in his legs burned, which made him sweat, which then simply froze on his skin, making for a truly miserable situation. Luckily for Sullivan, he could cheat and alter his own gravity a bit, so he quit sinking so deep with every step. He could have made himself light as a feather, but didn’t want to burn through too much Power. There was no telling what exactly they would face inside the Imperium base.
He should have taken out the Spiker armor. It had spells engraved on it to regulate the wearer’s temperature. But it was big and weighed a ton, and the last thing he wanted to do was clumsily fall off a cliff. Sure, he would probably live, but then everybody else would’ve had to get him unstuck, and that would’ve just been embarrassing.
Always being the experimental type, Sullivan decided to try using his magic to increase the density of just his skin. It seemed to work at holding his body heat in, but it took quite a bit of Power, so he let it drop. He’d have to play with that more later. It could come in handy if he fought another Icebox. And while he was thinking about not having enough Power, it made him think of the spell he’d copied from Bradford Carr’s spellbook, which was hidden beneath his bunk. With that thing on his body, he’d probably have Power to spare, but that spell had such a dangerous track record, he’d only try it if he had no other choice.
Cold made the thoughts wander, so Sullivan got his head back in the game.
Toru hadn’t known much about the polar stations other than the fact that they existed, and that all Imperium soldiers dreaded being assigned to such a godforsaken hellhole. Twenty years ago, the Chairman had built them, one in the Arctic and a second in the Antarctic, as an early warning system for a Pathfinder’s arrival. For whatever reason, his Cogs had declared that they needed to be built as close to the poles as possible. This was one of the last bits of solid ground in the region, so one of the many companies secretly owned by the Imperium
had bought the land from the Canadians. It wasn’t like they were using it for anything.
The station’s magic was untested. It had been nearly fifty years since the last Pathfinder had come, so it was unknown if it would even detect the creature. The Iron Guard hadn’t been counting on them working well, if at all. This type of magic was odd and untestable. However, when it came to understanding spellbound items, the Grimnoir had a secret weapon . . .
Sullivan’s goggles were fogging up, which was making it even harder to follow the tracks. He was thankful for Lance’s Beastie magic, because running into a patrol of soldiers conditioned to this would have been a nightmare. He never wanted to get into a gunfight when he was wearing gloves too thick to work a trigger, assuming his BAR’s action wasn’t frozen solid anyway.
There was a lump ahead of him, and the tracks led right over the top of it. He was already at the top before he realized that it had actually been a wall at one point in time before the wind and ice had simply devoured it. On the other side was a big lump of snow . . . No. That’s a building. There were other lumps nearby, probably smaller buildings.
Someone joined him on top of the wall. “We’re here.” And he could only tell it was Heinrich because of his voice. He was indistinguishable from the others in his masked mound of furs. Heinrich’s goggled head scanned across the smaller buildings. “I bet those are their antiaircraft batteries.”
“It would’ve taken them half an hour to chip one loose. I’m thinking we could’ve just parked right on top of this place and been fine.”
“Yet we would have missed that wonderful nature walk.” Heinrich looked back the way they’d come. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”
Sullivan looked back. With Southunder’s magical obscuring snowfall, there really wasn’t much to see. Dead City must really have set the bar low. “You say so.”
“I am glad we were able to come during the spring.”
Another shape joined them. This one was easily identifiable even before he said anything. Only Toru was strong enough to make the trek carrying that many weapons. Sullivan figured that he was only hauling the big metal war club and the sword to prove some point to the Grimnoir. “I am cold.”
“No kidding . . . What do you think?”
Toru studied the compound. “Their cannons are obviously inoperable. If I had inspected this station, I would have ordered the commander executed for dereliction of duty. This is unbecoming of Imperium military.”
“You sound disappointed,” Heinrich said.
Toru might have grunted, but it was hard to tell in the wind.
Sullivan counted the figures as they appeared through the snow. They were clumping up, huddling together for warmth. A dumb tactic in case the Imperium had eyes on them, but he was so cold he couldn’t rightly blame them. It looked like they’d all made it. Good.
“I see an entrance,” Heinrich said. The polar bear had walked right up and over the mound of the building. There appeared to be a depression where the last patrol had dug their way out with snow shovels.
It was time. “Heinrich, ready the men.” The Fade nodded once and slid back down the wall. Readying the men would consist of taking off their snowshoes and making sure the actions of their weapons would actually cycle. He waited until Heinrich was out of earshot. “Toru, you can stay out here if you want.”
“Do you question my resolve?” he snapped.
“It’s not that.” Sullivan remembered his own hesitation before they had fought the OCI. “Those are your countrymen in there.”
“Yet they stand in the way of fulfilling my father’s final command. It is unfortunate, but their deaths will serve a higher purpose.”
“If they surrender, they don’t have to die.” That was foolishness, and he knew it as soon as the words left his mouth.
“They are Imperium. They do not understand surrender. Even if we were to take this facility without bloodshed, they would commit suicide for the shame of allowing it. Dying in battle is always preferable . . . Come. It will be warmer inside.”
They’d brought dynamite in case the door was hardened, but who needs dynamite when you have a Fade?
Heinrich Koenig dropped through the ceiling and landed gently on the floor. There was a single soldier leaning against the wall, struggling to stay awake. Heinrich caught the young man mid-yawn. A candle burned on the table next to him. The base was wired for electricity, but Heinrich reasoned that since fuel for their generator had to be flown in, they probably used it sparingly.
The soldier blinked stupidly, not understanding how a man in unfamiliar winter clothing had suddenly appeared right before him, but before he could do anything Heinrich had gotten one hand over his mouth and driven a punch dagger under his ear.
They stared at each other for the briefest eternity. The violence was so sudden that the Imperium man had not yet realized that he was dead. Heinrich looked into his eyes, seeing the same look that he’d seen dozens of times before, but a survivor of Dead City never hesitated.
Twist. Even if the soldier was wearing one of the magical kanji that granted increased vitality, it would not survive the severing of the spinal column.
Wait a moment. Then Heinrich slowly lowered the body to the floor without a sound.
The exterior hatch had been locked from the inside. There was probably some sort of signal the returning patrols would use to have it opened. There was a rather sturdy padlock on the inside. Heinrich bit one glove to drag it off, then simply took hold of the padlock and imagined it as an extension of his hand. He willed himself to go grey, and the lock went with him. It was just like Fading with the clothes on his back, and he’d done it so much that it was second nature. The lock pulled through the metal and popped out the other side.
It was very difficult to keep out a determined Fade. He rapped his knuckles on the hatch to tell the others to come in. Sure, he could have waited for them, but where was the fun in that? Besides, Fades worked best on their own. Heinrich took up the fallen soldier’s submachine gun, an Arisaka model that he had some passing familiarity with, so he checked to make sure it had a loaded magazine and retracted the bolt. He’d brought his own firearm, but it never hurt to use up the enemy’s ammunition first.
The first room was closed off from the rest of the building with a heavy door, surely to mitigate the heat loss. Heinrich crept through the wall to find a shadowy hallway. It had to be fifty degrees inside, a temperature which now seemed achingly hot, and his skin began to prickle.
Something knee-high and white scurried past. He recognized the now-familiar shape of Ian Wright’s favorite demon. The Summoned hurried down the hallway, surely off to cause some mayhem. Hallways were fatal funnels. Only a fool would walk down a hallway when it was much faster to simply go through the walls, so he did, through supply rooms and empty offices, until he found himself in the barracks.
There were six soldiers in the room, either getting dressed for work or getting undressed to go to sleep, he was not sure. There were no beds, merely woven mats on the floor, and a very meager amount of furniture, which also meant there was no cover. All of them looked up in surprise at his sudden appearance.
Heinrich opened fire.
The room was narrow, so he just held the trigger down and jerked the muzzle side to side. It was a wasteful use of ammunition, but he emptied the Arisaka’s entire magazine. Only one of them reacted in time to try anything useful, but Heinrich put half a dozen bullets into the man before he could get his pistol free of the holster.
Surveying the scene, they appeared to be done for. Heinrich took up the dropped pistol, one of the nicer Nambu models, checked to make sure it was ready, and then stood in the corner where he would be concealed by the opening door. Heinrich had been in Imperium buildings before, and knew they preferred to use sliding doors. Those must not be as efficient at regulating the heat, since this facility used normal doors. He mulled this thought over idly as the Imperium soldiers bled to death at his feet.
There was
shouting on the other side of the wall, so he forgot about architecture and concentrated on business. They would want to rush in to see what had happened, but that had been far too much gunfire for it to have been an accident. They would hesitate until there were a few of them, and then they would rush inside. Their attention would be focused. They would have tunnel vision in the direction they assumed danger would come from.
Heinrich smiled. Fades liked to come at you sideways.
Shouting in Japanese. The door flew open. Heinrich stepped through the wall and came out behind them. There were three responders, and sure enough, they were all focused on the room he’d just left. Heinrich had an easy shot and got one of them in the side of the head. The second lurched away while Heinrich fired at him. The Nambu fired an anemic 8mm round, so Heinrich had to hit him several times before he was happy that the soldier was done for. Heinrich was turning to shoot the last when he realized that the Nambu had malfunctioned. A brass case was sticking out the side of the ejection port like a stovepipe, taunting him. The last soldier was spinning around, slipping in a puddle of blood. There was no time.
Heinrich could control the degree to which his body became insubstantial. It did not take much effort to push his way through solid objects, and bullets were no different. He went grey as the first rounds penetrated his clothing. The bullets left a track of warmth through his torso before they exited out his back. The soldier quit firing, mouth agape, and Heinrich reformed, solid, and flung the jammed Nambu toward his face. The soldier flinched away, but that was all Heinrich had needed. Drawing the push dagger from inside his coat, he knocked the soldier’s muzzle aside and then struck him in the chest. Once, twice, the third slipped through the ribs, and the Imperium man fell gasping to the floor.
There was more shooting from the hall. The other knights were inside. The Imperium man was still struggling to fight, even with a perforated heart, so Heinrich kicked him brutally hard in the side of the head so he could bleed to death peacefully and not cause any more trouble. Heinrich took up another subgun and went toward the sound of gunfire.