June 6th, 2013
“No-five. They’re inside. Third floor, gathering at the room we predicted. Rest of the building’s deserted.” The Thunderer darted from position to position, reporting back.
“No-three. Fear’s goons are at the other end of the district,” crackled across the comm.
“No-one. Initiate.”
“No-four, I read you, Number One,” said Captain Crush. He lay on his belly on a five-story building across the street from the target house. His forcefield surged across the gap between the houses, targeting the third-floor window where he knew they were. He’d shaped it into a trench; three feet wide, walls one foot high, long enough.
As it rushed, he pulled the pins from the three grenades, one by one, and placed them into the force-field trench. He was already wearing his gas mask. So, he knew, were the others. “No-four, begun, Number Two.”
There were two watchmen who could see the force field start to appear. Neither one would be noticed until at least three seconds after they dropped. Two messages, almost simultaneously: “No-one, mine down.” “No-two, mine down.”
As they spoke, the force-field broke the window and the grenades rolled into the assembly room, followed by Captain Crush, sliding down his frictionless trench. One flash-bang, first, followed by tear gas grenades. His eyes were closed.
Stolen novel; please report.
He found himself in a room of crying, choking people, all blinded. They had weapons, all very advanced and detailed, none of which they knew how to use. The only fellow who looked at all steady got his arm broken first, Crush’s field hitting hard enough to make him drop it in an instant. One of them, tears streaming from his eyes, tried to turn a gun of some sort on him; he broke the man’s wrist with a force-bolt, then hit him in the chest with another two.
Down below he could hear a crashing sound, explosives, an electric hiss. There was a new hole in the floor a few feet away from him. He was still finishing up; he dropped the second-to-last with a wall of force that slammed him against the wall, then took out the last with his hands.
The rest were fled. He glanced out the window; the Thunderer had taken out the only ones who’d left the building. He checked the elevator shaft, dropped his last grenade down it. Then he looked over the rest of the third floor before reaching the stairwell.
As he did, he heard the crackle:
“Number five, first floor clear.” “Number two, fourth floor clear.” “Number one, second floor clear.”
The four of them met at the bottom of the stairs.
“Did you encounter trouble, sir?” asked the Thunderer with his voice.
“One of them knew how to use his railgun. Tried to ambush me,” said Nicator. “I had to kill a few of them so they’d quiet down enough I could place the tracers. I hope the rest of you took some prisoners.”
There was a chorus of ‘yups’.
“Good. We can hand those over to Pyre with his share of the loot.”
Crush wanted to vomit. “You don’t think we can get anything out of them, sir?” asked the Thunderer.
“Whatever these criminals know they’ll give up to Pyre’s crude methods as easily as to my own,” said Nicator. “We know when they were recruited, and immediately afterwards they were abandoned here by their master with a stash of weapons, and, I suspect, told, ‘Figure out how these work,’ while he disappeared. He knows where they are; why would he tell them where he is?”
The others were silent, but Jim Skullcracker nodded.
“We won,” said Nicator. “We will deliver what is owed to Pyre, we will add a few bugs here, in case the man in the hood returns, and we will prepare for our battle. We have missed him once. We will not miss again.”