Summer Camp, Part III
"Thank you for your report, Sergeant." The hyena saluted the vixen sorceress and went back to his seat. "Now, you have been told everything we know about this plane and the American Empire and its paladins. Our primary objective is to capture the living golem that calls itself Ferric. Our secondary objective is to capture any other of the paladins we can, for ransom or to pump for information. Tertiary is to pillage any gear or books that we can find, either incidental to the first two objectives or after they have been achieved and we have extra time. Given their speed of response the latter is unlikely."
"Our primary target is currently at some sort of training camp. It is staying in this building - " The vixen tapped a pointer on the large map drawn on the wall. " - and we have not been able to find any sign of a night watch being kept. Our preliminary plan is to go in at night with a temporary portal, do a quick raid, and get out before they can respond. Once they start to respond in strength, we will have to withdraw as rapidly as possible. If our translations of their documents are correct, we have a window of twenty-three days before the golem returns to its native city. So. Sergeant Mahk, Battle-priest Pelleas? You have both seen action against them. I would like you to work out a plan for the military side of the raid for my review."
The minotaur bull nodded. "Yes, Lady Vanya. How long do we have?"
"Two days. I hope to get the necessary spells set up by the end of the week, and I would like to have time to go over things with you before we go. Everyone else? You have your individual tasks to review. Again, two days for your tentative plans. We will meet again as a group in three days to finalize things, and with luck we will launch the raid at midnight the day after that. Questions?"
One hand went up, a badger dressed in the robes of an earth-mage. "How much does this golem weigh? I gather from the Sergeant's report that she will fight if conscious, and carrying her may be difficult."
"We are not actually sure, Garett. Assume a seven foot statue made of iron as a rough estimate."
He winced at that. "May need a wagon to move her, then, as a backup..." He nodded. "Thank you, milady."
"Anything else?" She waited for responses. "Then get busy. The Master has a great interest in this project."
Mahk and Pelleas were already discussing their orders as they left the conference room. The hyena shook his head. "I have a bad feeling about this. That world has been bad luck from the beginning."
"Can't argue with you there, Mahk. But we have our orders. At least this is a limited raid and we won't have to hang around to open a portal once it's done. We should be able to withdraw in good order even if it doesn't work."
"You didn't see what she did to that iceworm, my friend. It swallowed her and she cut her way out from the inside." He shook his head. "Even if we succeed in bringing her back, I am not sure we will like the result."
"Fortunately, that won't be our responsibility, Mahk. We just have to figure out how to capture her. Go in quietly, you think?"
"Aye, but be ready to move quickly if we are discovered. Lady Vanya said the scryers didn't see any guards, but what if they have mechanic arts for -that-, too?"
The bull frowned at his colleague. "Mahk, you are paranoid. But I have the horrible feeling that you may not be paranoid -enough- for dealing with these people."
* * * * *
Sergeant Smash was striding up and down the firing line, making sure that none of the young furs were ignoring the range safety rules while Indigo checked them out on basic pistol use. Techrat, Pooka, and Ferric had all had the course before, so for them it was normal range time. Chromatic was doing fairly well with his shooting, but Merrow was consistently high. It was Techrat who figured out the problem. "You're used to shooting water blasts. Bullets don't drop nearly as badly because they reach the target faster."
Indigo nodded. "You're probably correct. Just center the sight on the target, Merrow. Don't try to compensate for drop."
The doe folded her ears back to try again. Smash looked up and down and bellowed the instructions. "Range is live!" Indigo nodded, and Merrow fired six aimed shots, recovering and re-aiming between each. At the end of the sequence, the wolverine bellowed "Cease Fire!" and nodded to Ferric, who went down to retrieve the target.
She was smiling on her way back. "She's no Tom Knapp yet, but at least she's on the target this time."
Merrow frowned. "I'm not sure I want to focus on this. I'm used to aiming my water jets, and I really should perfect that."
Indigo nodded. "The child does have a good point, Sergeant. She knows now how to aim, but it is just enough different from her normal means of attack to cause confusion."
The wolverine nodded in acknowledgement. "Yeah, that could be a problem. Blasting powers aim differently than firearms, and Firehose here more than most. Yer off the hook, kid." He looked around at the rest. "Looks like we're good for today. You all know how to put bullets downrange, at least."
Ferric grinned. "There's one more thing I'd like to try, Sergeant. Wireless? Can you summon up something for me?"
"What is it that you have in mind, Ferric?" Indigo asked.
"An M134 mini-gun Gatling. It's normally a pintle-mounted aircraft weapon, but I've been looking at the specs. I should be able to fire it as a hand-held weapon." She grinned. "Actually, I should be able to handle a Vulcan as a hand-held weapon, but we don't have a safe backdrop here for something that nasty."
Indigo looked at Wireless. "Can you do it?"
The mouse was staring blankly into space. "And... got it. Yeah, I can pull one up. Sergeant? You're the range officer."
For the wolverine a smile was a rare thing, but for this he made an exception. "You sure you can handle it, Shorty?"
"Pretty sure. Like I said, I looked it up, and it's easily light enough for me to handle. It runs at four thousand rounds per minute, but the recoil isn't going to be a problem for me either, it's only NATO standard ammo."
He nodded. "Sounds like you did your research. Go ahead, Xerox."
The weapon appeared, a six-barrelled gatling style machine gun on a pedestal mount, with a bin to catch ejected brass on one side and another to catch the emptied ammo belt underneath. Wireless shrugged. "That's the way it came up. Couldn't find one that was hand-held."
Ferric looked it over before picking it up. "I need the mount to hold it, anyway. I don't need to get my fingers caught in the moving parts." She braced herself, one hand on the control yoke with the trigger, and one supporting it from underneath, and pointed it downrange. "Ready, Sergeant."
"Ear protection on! Range is hot!" He nodded as the rest complied. "This is going to get loud. Fire at will, Shorty."
The sound was deafening. Bullets left the muzzles of the spinning barrels rapidly enough to merge into one mass of noise at sixty-seven hertz on top of the actual explosions in each cartridge as the mechanisms grabbed each bullet from the ammo belt, ejected the belt links, inserted it into the firing chamber and launched it through whichever barrel was spinning past the chamber at the moment of ignition. Empty cartridges poured out the other side. Ferric held the trigger for just four seconds of sound and fury, and the target she'd aimed at disintegrated into shreds as nearly three hundred bullets hit it in that same four seconds. She shifted to a second target and repeated the performance before setting the safety again. "Whoa. That was great!"
Chromatic just stared. "That sounded like God zipping up His jacket."
Adrian had been excused from the exercise, his normal form being too small to handle weapons safely and his transformed self being both too big and its hands too clumsy. He popped out of the boy's dorm and trotted over to find out what was going on. "What was -that-?"
Ferric called "Cease fire!" as soon as she realized Adrian had arrived. "It's an electric machine gun. We're going to fire it some more, so if you want to stick around and watch, get your ear protection on." She put it back on its mount. "Anyone else want to disintegrate a target?"
Behind her, Sergeant Smash nodded to Indigo in approval and leaned over to whisper to her. "Points for range safety. Kid's got her head on straight."
Pooka grinned. "Don't mind if I do. This was definitely a cool idea."
Ferric grinned back. "And since Wireless just summoned it out of the ether, we don't even have to worry about the ammunition cost."
Techrat chuckled. "Or cleaning up the brass and links. They'll just vanish with it when she sends it back."
Sergeant Smash harrumphed. "Hah. I ought to make her hold it here while you police things up, for -that- remark. You're just lucky Shorty kept it positioned so that all that junk went into the bins. So, who else wants a turn on it...?"
* * * * *
"Ryushi-sama?"
The bat who was variously known as Lucy Fujira to the criminal underworld, Murasaki Ryushi to the Bureau of Superheroes, Nightblade to the select few who knew of her powers, and Chief of Station for Worldline 181-314-Tau-Samekh-54-101-226 to her new associates at the Paratemporal Patrol, twitched an ear at being addressed by the artificial intelligence who ran most of the Patrol's monitoring network. <He doesn't usually open conversations outside of the normal daily report.> "What is it, Kami?"
"Colonel Tana'karishi left me with several ongoing directives when he cloned me from his assistant Mycroft. One of them was to monitor contacts from the Orterran worldlines."
"They're making contact again?"
"They have shown a change in pattern. Previously the contacts had been scattered, focused on occasion around pockets of necromantic residue but in general random. There have recently been a great number of probes all centered on one location just to the north of the town of Halifax, Virginia. This is also the current location of one of the trio who were temporarily active in that worldline."
"Chikushou. Which one?"
"The young raccoon sow who goes by Ferric."
"That does not bode well. Only probes so far?"
"That is all my scanners have detected, Ryushi-sama."
The bat exhaled in a slow wooosh of breath while she considered this. "Send Director Morningstar a text message advising her of what you just told me. If she calls back, put her through immediately, and if the Orterrans open a full gate, send alarms to Morningstar, Ranger, Eldritch, the BoS monitor desks in both Colmaton and Washington DC, and me."
"Hai."
"Last thing we need is more zombies.,," She blinked. "Watashi wa bakada. And set up to record a message to my opposite number in Orterra. I need to ask him what he knows about any of this from his end."
* * * * *
Farouk al-Ustul was the first to respond, in spite of being much farther away. The bat-eared fox turned serious after his usual flowery greetings. "You are right to be concerned. The number of attempts to scry in that one spot..." He shook his head. "A great deal of power is being expended, and it is not being done by the young raccoon's friends. They send messages back and forth to her regularly through me. Now, it may be that they merely hope to find the Orb by following her around, but I suspect that the Necromancer will get bored with that and try to get revenge on her, if that was not the intent from the beginning. There is a reason the Colonel wants him on the preventive assassination list. Keep your eyes open, and let the... Bureau of Heroes, is it? Let them know there is a problem. This is well within the guidelines for contacting the locals. I will see what I can find out from my end, and keep you informed. Farouk, out."
Ryushi sighed. <Not that much help, but at least I know I'm handling my first real incident correctly.>
Morningstar returned her call only a few minutes later. "Miss Murasaki? Do I understand your message correctly? Someone is spying on Halifax Academy?"
"If that is where Ferric is, then yes. Someone from Orterra, and my fellow Station Chief is trying to run that down, is attempting to scry that area very thoroughly."
"I'd have preferred a priority call rather than a text."
"I'll make a note of that. But so far it is only observation. If they had attempted to make an actual Gate, I'd already set alarms to go off for you and several other members of the Bureau as well as your monitor posts both here and in DC. I'll add this Academy to the list if you can give me their contact information."
"I'll send you that, as well as Ferric's number. You should probably have Endopossum's and Exit's as well, just in case. Any idea why they might be focusing on Ferric?"
"As I understand it, she caused the Necromancer the most damage personally. It may simply have been a target of opportunity, since Kami reports that this Academy is not as well warded as your main bases."
"You know where they are??"
The bat chuckled. "No, I don't. Which is rather the point, isn't it?"
Morningstar huffed a brief laugh in spite of her annoyance. "Okay, fair point. And I do appreciate the heads-up." She sighed. "I'll have to get one of our magicians to set up wards on the Academy, now. And give the kids a call and brief them in on this. Is there anything you can do to block them?"
"Not yet, Director. The station is, as you are aware, very new, and it hasn't been a priority for extra protective measures since you folks can do a pretty good job on your own. The Patrol does try not to interfere with events unless there is a serious imbalance of forces or contraband is being smuggled. Judging by the reports on the Arlington Incident, you're still stronger as long as you're not taken by surprise."
"And you have taken steps to prevent that. All right. If that's what you can do, then we'll live with it. As I said, I do appreciate the warning. Keep us posted."
"Mochiron. If they try something serious, you will know as soon as I do."
* * * * *
***Crack*** "Good one, Adrian! Ready to play a real game with the rest of us?"
"...Maybe?"
* * * * *
The caracal answered her phone. "Indigo."
"It's Morningstar. We have a potential situation. Some rather nasty customers have been sniffing around the Academy, probably targeting Ferric."'
"Ferric? Why her?"
"A fairly long and involved story. We're going to set up better screening against magical intrusion for you as soon as I can get it arranged, and in the meantime, you'd best be on alert. I'm going to ask Ferric to brief you all in on the details, so interrupt whatever they're doing and have her stand by for my call. Kids and staff both, if you would."
""Very well, ma'am. I'll see to it. They're doing martial arts training at the moment, so she might not have her communicator to hand. Give me five minutes."
"Thanks, Indigo. I'm hoping your staff can handle this, but if anything goes down, we'll be arriving with reinforcements within a couple minutes. Just in case."
The caracal was already moving, and raised an eyebrow at that. "As you say. Actually, if you stay on this line, you can talk to the girl as soon as I get to her."
"Good point. How are things going so far?"
"Well, aside from the Sergeant having trouble adjusting to the difference between 'children' and 'recruits', it's been fun. Especially Adrian. He's a sweet kid."
Morningstar chuckled. "He is that. We're hoping he'll be a good influence on Nibble. Jury's still out on whether it's working."
"Pooka's teaching him baseball, Merrow and the girls are teaching him to swim, and Techrat's tried taking him birdwatching. Ferric, of course, is still his big sister."
"Glad to hear it."
"Just a moment." Indigo cupped a hand over her phone. "Hold, everyone! Ferric! Morningstar needs to speak with you!"
The raccoon hustled over and took the phone when Indigo handed it to her. "Ma'am?"
"Ferric? Your old friends from Orterra seem to be targeting you. We're setting up countermeasures, but for now you need to brief everyone in on what happened during the month after Arlington."
She gulped. "That bad?"
"Might be. We're not taking chances. Code Paratime, Baronet Yeager."
Ferric came to attention. "Yes, ma'am!" She handed the phone back to Indigo and saluted. "Ma'am, can you gather the rest of the staff? I've just been given orders to brief you all in on a threat."
"They're on their way. Morningstar told me that much when she told me to find you."
* * * * *
"All right. So first of all, this makes sudden sense of a rather cryptic message I had from the other side - 'they see, but cannot hear.' I, and by extension we, are being observed but not listened to. So as long as we -act- as though we're all watching martial arts practice, my enemies won't realize we're talking about them."
Sergeant Smash gave one of his rare smiles at that thought. "Artemis? Why don't we demonstrate some advanced moves for the kits while Shorty entertains us?"
The hound grinned back at him. "It would be my pleasure, Sergeant."
Ferric sat down to watch them while continuing her briefing. "So, I got involved during the zombie invasion in Arlington back in 2016. Techrat was there for the beginning of it, but got taken out by some kind of fear spell,,," Techrat shuddered at the reminder. "... so he wasn't around for the Boss Fight." She chuckled. "And no, I wasn't supposed to be along for that, either. Got my butt chewed out over it when we got back, believe me."
"So anyway, there was this necromancy artifact hidden here by a bunch of fantasy-game heroes something like five centuries back, and the necromancer finally figured out where it was and came looking for it. Turns out I'm immune to it, the whole iron body thing, so I was able to take it away from him even after he'd gotten it turned back on, and I'd managed to toss it to Disruptor, who thank God was also immune on account of his whole power-damping schtick. That shut down the zombies, but I was standing right next to the little punk when they activated their recall spell. Exit and Endopossum came along for the ride, too. Exit grabbed us and got us out of their headquarters, and we all discovered that she can't 'port home across dimensional boundaries, but that she -could- take us to the equivalent location of it in another world without needing a reset."
"So, long story short, we made contact with the local good guys, got shanghaied by the local mysterious esoteric dudette to go on a mission for her before we got to go home again, and succeeded. So the Necromancer now hates all our guts, but especially mine, both for keeping him from getting this Orb back and for busting up his ability to keep himself alive forever. Apparently being here instead of Colmaton Base let him find me again and I've just gotten a heads-up about it from some friendly players in the alternate-worlds game via Morningstar."
"Friendly players?" Indigo was also feigning interest in the martial arts demonstration while listening carefully.
"Bunch of folks calling themselves the Paratemporal Patrol. Kind of an interdimensional version of Interpol from what I understand. Morningstar and the Council know more about 'em - all I know is a contact point to send messages back and forth to Orterra and the location of our Gate to the place. The Orterrans gave me a title after the whole affair was over and all three of us stay in touch with friends we made on the other side. Endopossum even invited a few of them to her wedding last fall, but they missed all the excitement with Darkara."
Phenomenon snapped her fingers. "This is where you got that Geh-mince-pie language you mentioned, isn't it?"
Ferric huffed. "Gemynse. The Common Speech, it means. Seems to be a cross between English and German, though Skydancer said it was more like an alternate version of English without the Norman French contribution."
"Skydancer?"
"One of the Paratemporal people. Tiny little bat fellow who doesn't need any gadgets to cross between dimensions. It's an alias, but I can't pronounce his real name. He helped bring us back the first time. Nowadays, Vortex and Eldritch can handle it. Anyway..."
Smash paused in his demonstration. "What matters is the threat level. What can they do?"
Ferric nodded to him. "Thank you, Sergeant. First time, they had a squad of hyena soldiers, your basic minions. There was a bull who was about your equivalent, Sergeant... couldn't do the armor skin thing, but he had some kind of magic boosts going on. They all had medieval era weapons, and they were very good with 'em. They also brought a pair of magical types, one was mainly handling transport, the other was throwing all kinds of attack and shielding spells. They've got something called shadow-walkers, they can do what Pooka does, only they do it by moving from shadow to shadow. Went on a run with one of them during our mission on the other side, and I don't want to do it ever again, but it works."
"The Necromancer himself was running the Orb when we fought with them, and that was the source of the zombie invasion. All by himself, he was on the way to animating and controlling the entire National Cemetery as zombies. I doubt we'll have to worry about him, though, since we cut off his ability to drain other furs to stay alive. He's too much of a coward to risk his own life." She stared into the distance at a painful memory, then shook herself and resumed her analysis, "And they discovered that lightning spells don't work too well on me. Apparently I just ground them out. So what we can expect? Minions who are very skilled with medieval weapons, all kinds of spell attacks, and possibly zombies as cannon fodder. The first two times they were here, they had to set up elaborate return spells, but I know there are other alternatives and we can't count on them being slow to retreat."
Buck Rocket nodded. "So what will they be after?"
Ferric shrugged. "Me, probably, Like I said, we messed him up big time and like most supervillains, he's very good at grudges. Fortunately, I have no idea where this Orb of Souls is, so I can't give that away. The three of us have been helping his opponents improve their technology and economies, so he might also be looking for information to help him catch up."
"You're sure they won't have firearms?"
"Pretty sure. Exit and Endopossum discovered that gunpowder doesn't work on their side, and neither do steam engines, for some reason. More modern explosives -do- work, but they don't have the chemistry to figure out how to make the jump past gunpowder to guncotton. As far as we know, the Necromancer hasn't made any independent contacts to Earth; the Patrol folks would notice that and warn us."
The Sergeant grunted. "And you trust them?"
"Morningstar does. And even if we can't, Eldritch would still warn of an incursion. He did the first time, before the Patrol was here."
Indigo resisted the urge to get up and pace as Artemis and the Sergeant resumed their match. "My first instinct is to get all you kids out of here. But... where would be safe? If they're watching you in particular, Ferric, they might just be able to track you back and discover where Colmaton Base is. Sending you somewhere without a base is just asking for trouble. Morningstar would have my head on a platter if I even suggested that." She glared at the raccoon. "You keep getting involved in things you have no business being involved with at your age, and only once has it even been your fault. No wonder you give the Director gray hair."
Ferric shrugged. "I've been lucky so far. And the Orterran business had a prophecy about me anyway, so it was kinda fore-ordained. De maed von eisen werd endet der Nordherren."
Techrat started snickering. "Iron maiden?"
Ferric chuffed. "It's not -that- funny."
Indigo shook her head. "Those kinds of prophecies usually have an 'if' clause, Ferric. This is how it will happen, if it happens at all." She sighed. "All right, we'll hold off on the evacuation. I'll ask Morningstar to expedite the defense upgrade, and in the meantime everyone stays here where we can protect you. No wandering off individually, especially you, Ferric. And we will hope that they are not yet ready to move."
* * * * *
The vixen gestured the two soldiers over to her map. "What do you think should be our plan of attack, Battle-priest?"
The bull stood respectfully in front of the sorceress and tapped the table-top display. "It will depend on how accurately you can place the Portal, your excellency. Ideally, here. Directly on top of them would be perfect, but can we do that?"
She shook her head. "No. The spell needs open space to work properly."
"Then here." He placed his finger in the courtyard between the buildings. "As close to the doorway into her quarters as you can. The sergeant's squads will deploy first, left and right through the portal to guard our flanks. My unit leads your people in, kicks in the doors for you. We go in, grab the golem and the others, and get out, as quickly as possible."
The hyena sergeant cleared his throat. "May I ask how you plan to disable and move the golem, milady? We have had little luck with it in the past. Neither lightning nor weapons do much to it, nor did your fear spell work."
The sorceress flicked her ears at that painful reminder. "We will have several different attacks aimed at it. It cannot be immune to everything, after all. As for moving it? That is what the earth-mage is for. An elemental should be strong enough to carry it, And as a backup, a levitation spell to lift it clear of the ground and move it. However strong it is, it can do little when suspended in mid-air."
Mahk nodded, bowing in respect. "Thank you, milady. And we are still on schedule to depart tomorrow at midnight?"
"We are. Ready your squads."
Both the bull and the hyena saluted. "As you command, milady."
