Slumrat Rising

Chapter 43: What's In The Box?

The carriages raced for the secondary airstrip, the backup identified by Plan C. The only reason Truth had any hope whatsoever that their enemies did not already hold it was that the “airstrip” was a flattened stretch of scrub-like desert that some wildly optimistic local tried to turn into a farm. Nowhere was it listed as an airfield. It was a little rammed earth house, a shed made of thin sticks, and a big flat bit of desert in the middle of nowhere. Fingers crossed.

“Sir, I know you can’t tell me what’s in the box, but can you tell me the sort of people who would field a deniable but military-grade force to acquire it?” Truth carefully asked.

The chief suit gave a sort of strangled laugh. “More or less everyone. It really doesn't matter, Sergeant. They will bring everything they have as discreetly as possible. Remember, we are running this mission with the lowest level people we can, precisely to minimize the attention we draw. Looks like they are doing the same thing. Anyone above Level Three making a move would get spotted eventually. And no one can stand an “eventually.”

Truth shook his head. “Comms, eta on the bird?”

Comms checked her wax tablet- ghostly automatic writing carving an update. “ETA thirty minutes, Sarge, which is roughly when we get there. They are reporting contacts in the air. So far, mostly alarm curses, but there are signs of more serious anti-air defenses.”

Truth sat back and closed his eyes. “Let me know if anything changes.” Anti-fucking-air. Oddly enough, operating and defeating anti-air defenses weren't covered when training for bodyguard detail and being a conscript for national service. “Don’t sleep with the bosses’ sixteen-year-old daughter” was covered. “Don’t sell prison hooch to your fellow conscripts” also covered. But not defeating air defenses.

He drew in a long breath through his nose. If he can’t do something about it, he shouldn’t worry about it. “Alright, let's get set up. Grab a bite, drink water, and rearm what needs rearming. Assume the bird is going to be late to the LZ and will be coming in hot. Start setting up deployable wards and getting as many fixed defenses ready as we can. Expect to abandon them.” Truth’s voice echoed in both carriages, thanks to the comms. He looked sardonically at the Chief Suit. “Don’t worry about the lost equipment. It’s covered under the contract for the op.”

“Is it really?” The Chief Suit asked.

“Yep. The second I saw the mission, I insisted it was added to the contract.”

Ludovic was fussing with something on his tablet. The wax filled and smoothed at a terrifying rate, constantly refreshing and telling him… something. Truth didn’t recognize what little bits he saw, and Ludovic was blatantly trying to keep him from seeing. The chief Suit was doing similar but acting a lot more casually. He had the wisdom to put a sight interference spell on the tablet, letting him read in privacy. The box… just sat there.

MANDATORY MISSION UPDATE! MANDATORY MISSION UPDATE! MANDATORY MISSION UPDATE!

The contracted mission terms are hereby overridden in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Starbrite Employee Handbook and Code of Ethics, authorized by Code Zed Star Zed. Operational Command Authority is now assumed by Code Indigo Pyramid Rain.

Contractors from the Starbrite Private Military Corporation are hereby ordered to ensure the safe evacuation of DESIGNATED CARGO and DESIGNATED PERSONNEL in accordance with Operational Plan C, currently underway. On the authority of Code Indigo Pyramid Rain, all losses of Starbrite Company Assets are acceptable to achieve that goal. All unbudgeted operational expenses will be paid by Code Indigo Rain.

Well, that’s not good. I mean, not terrible for me, but you, meatsack, are screwed. It was a short but unpleasant time, and I hope your death is excruciating.

Truth had to read the orders twice before he got it. Everything was to stay the same, but it was ok if only the suits and the box made it out. Everyone and everything else was expendable. They were screwed. Truth racked his brain for anything else he could do to improve the situation and drew a blank. He pulled out a map of the area around the LZ in desperation.

The map was not helpful. The countryside was oppressively flat, desert soil punctured by short, wide bushes with impressively tough, spiky leaves. They weren’t quite like barbed wire, but Truth wouldn’t want to run through them without armor. There was a “city” about two hundred kilometers away. The population of said city is probably less than the block he grew up in. No help there.

The farm itself didn’t have any great revelations either. A rammed earth house, square-shaped, perhaps a hundred square meters. Stick roof. A half-hearted attempt at a wicker fence for penning… something. Chickens? And then the flattened field. It was grown over in the latest surveillance picture. More of those scrubby little weeds, probably. Oh, there was a well. He had missed the well. Yeah, they were dead.

They didn’t get hit on the way to the farm. Truth sent Squad 3 to clear the farmhouse. Abandoned, as it was supposed to be. “Alright, here’s what we're going to do. Comms, tell them we will be holed up in the farmhouse, so they need to land the bird as close to on top of the house as they can manage. Everyone else, deploy everything we’ve got. Park the two surviving carriages on either side of the structure. We can use their armor and spell arrays to toughen the place up even more.”

They looked at him, clearly expecting more. “Bird should be here in seven minutes. Anyone feel like betting their life on it?” They got to work.

Truth checked around the doorframe for talismans or wards and found nothing. He frowned. Even the most bumblefuck nowhere farmer wouldn’t leave his home completely unprotected. Hmm. He cast sharp and used his metallic hands to dig out the bottom of the door frame. It was just dirt. About thirty centimeters down, he found a spell bowl. Cheap terracotta, unglazed. He didn’t recognize the language, but these things were all pretty much the same. Various names of God, or Gods, invocations of angels and demons, and right down at the bottom, a sigil. Looked like it was literally better than nothing, but probably not a lot better.

Still, there was something about houses. Endless reams of papers had been written (Truth had been told) trying to guess why a home responded differently to magic than a shed, but it did. Done correctly, it would amplify wards keeping out demonic spirits. It might not stop a heavy needler from chewing the house into nothing, but at least no demons would do the chewing. Truth sighed and started linking in proper, professional demonic warding talismans. It was better than nothing.

“Sarge- incoming! The house’s tagged, and we have necromancers coming in fast! More contacts in the air- bird’s punching through, but it’s delayed.” Comms yelled.

“You heard her! Protectees and the cargo in the pit!” He had ordered the floor of the room be dug out. Trenches make everything better, he felt. “Everyone else, look alive! Summoners, get the bees out and launch eye-spies.”

The guards set up spelled riot shields against the walls and cut out little loops to put their fetishes and talismans through. They had only had a few minutes to prepare. Nevertheless, a Starbrite Man Is Always Ready, and as some guards showed, Starbrite Women were too. Something flickered in the corner of Truth’s eye. He looked over and squinted. “Get me an eye-spy south-southwest. I want-”

The witch-crafted puppet broke its veil as it deployed an alchemy cannon. Its four skinny legs seemed to barely hold the barrel up and collapsed under the weight of the recoil.

“Contact, south-southwest. INCOMING FIRE!”

The house shook. The wards resisted the incredible concussive blast of superheated air, but the sheer noise shook their brains. They lashed back out, saturating the puppet with fireballs, acid, and their own burst of air pressure, and tore it apart. It also revealed a dozen more puppets incoming.

Little red dots appeared around them as the eye-spies painted their targets. Clouds of dust and faerie fire swirled out from the cars as the comms operators got them running. Just in time too.

The tortured ghosts were back, fleeing ahead of the hungry demons and rushing towards the house. Truth grinned nastily as he jabbed his fetish through the loop. The ghosts smashed into the ward around the house… and vanished. House magic wasn’t good for much, but when juiced with a military-grade spell installed by a (former) talisman maintenance technician… Level One and Two ghosts could return directly to the essence.

The demons were a bit more serious. They clawed against the ward, draining it horribly quickly. The attackers had gone all out. Earth demons hit one side of the house while fire demons hit the other. The earth demons were attracted to the fire demon’s heat and were doubly motivated to claw through. The fire demons were smarter. They just hung back from the ward and focused narrow streams of blue-white flame at it. Burning it down without damaging themselves.

Truth snarled out a curse and loaded up his spells. “Radiant Blade. Lassirs Icy Grasp.” The spells combined to launch an ice-cold steel blade through the only somewhat material fire demons. They screamed in four octaves, shifting and twisting with the exploding remnants of their physical form. They would pull back together, given time. It was almost impossible to completely kill a demon. But you could kill their summoners just fine.

“Aqua Fortis. Severing Whip.” He lined up the fetish with a red dot and fired. A fine glass needle, tempered seven times with seven different herbal baths and the blood of seven auspicious animals, flew with malicious speed across the open ground. He didn’t see the person it hit but saw the spell go off. A pinwheel of acid compressed into thin cords and whipped around so fast they could cut through trees. He could see limbs flying into the air. Looks like he caught at least two. He loaded the next needle and tried to find another cluster. It was a target-rich environment.

There was a familiar ripping noise, dozens in a few seconds. Holes were quickly chewed through the wall, then through the guards. One member of his squad went down screaming, clutching their gut. Others just went down forever. Heavy needlers, using spellbreaker ammo. Fuckers.

He tried to trace the fire back, but it came from three directions. He shoved more power into his riot shield, feeling the accumulating burn of the wild stellar rays. Good that he did- the enemy mages figured out they should shoot low. The spell breakers punched through the wards without breaking pace but ricocheted off the reinforced steel of the shield. He launched spell after spell downrange, dropping enemy mages and crushing spell beasts, but it would never be enough. They were getting swarmed.

“Attention, Starbrite Mercenaries!” A heavily accented voice projected from outside. “Do you know what you are trying to smuggle? A little girl! You have a child of the Shattervoid Clan in that box! Do you know what that means? It means that when the Shattervoid Clan hears about it, they will embargo the whole planet! Everyone you love will die. We won’t kill them. Their neighbors will, in the food riots.” The voice took a deep breath.

“I know you cannot surrender. But stop fighting. We can give you a quick death, and you will save the world.”

The fuck? He absolutely could surrender. And would, if this went on any longer. Then he smiled. There was a rapidly approaching thunder, and explosions of green flames swept through the attackers.

The spell bird was here. Then Truth heard more rushing thunder and frowned. It didn’t come alone.