Raven came around to Boss’s voice. “…be all right. You know he can take care of himself.”
“Sure, but let’s hope he can find us again.” That was Jet.
Raven opened her eyes. Boss had dressed her arm, the others had a variety of bandages on arms, legs, heads. Taipan had half his head covered, his left eye obscured by dressings. But they all seemed in good enough spirits.
“Welcome back.”
Raven looked at Boss, felt her cheeks redden. “Fucking hell, I can’t believe I passed out.”
“They have venom and you’re not inoculated,” Boss said. “Well, you are now. You’ll feel queasy for a while, and you lost some blood, but you’ll be okay.”
A spent syringe lay on the ground beside her. Boss glanced at it. “Yeah. One of many parts of our standard medkit. They’re a bit different to what you’re used to.”
“No shit.”
She sat up, and did indeed feel quite nauseated. She took a few slow, deep breaths, felt herself slowly centring again.
“Now I need your help,” Boss said. “You operational?”
No way would Raven say anything but yes to that question on her first mission. “What do you need?”
“Your little friend. We need a recon mission, find out where the target is. We spend too long fucking around here with his pets and we’re giving him time to slip away.”
“You got it.”
Raven spoke the word and the samjok-o stepped onto her shoulder. “We know what this guy looks like?”
Boss pulled a grainy photo from his pocket. It wasn’t much, clearly taken at full zoom, it showed a Caucasian man, perhaps somewhere in his forties, cropped dark hair and a linen suit. “That enough?”
Raven took the photo. “It’ll have to be.” She stared at it, made sure the three-legged raven familiar took a good look too, then asked it to go fetch for her.
The samjok-o took wing and vanished. Raven closed her eyes and stayed with its thoughts. It did nothing for her nausea, flitting in and out of existence, room to room, searching the vast, sprawling complex. Then it found him, stood in the middle of a huge protective circle in the open courtyard at the centre of the castle.
She thanked her friend and opened her eyes. “Looks like he’s waiting for us,” she said.
As they moved out, Boss radioed Smoke but got no response. When Jet cast a hooded look at him he just shook his head and jogged on. Raven worried how they might feel if something bad had befallen Smoke. They had only recently lost Blinder and that clearly bore down on them heavily. To lose another so soon would be more than harsh. Then again, if Smoke were dead and needed to be replaced, at least she wouldn’t be the new kid any more. It was a mercenary thought, but mildly comforting, especially as she hardly knew Smoke. But she had already grown to like the man a lot. She wanted to tell him the story of her dagger.
Come on, you fucker, she thought to herself. Let’s all go home from this one.
They tracked their way through an ostentatious ballroom, eyes sweeping left and right, alert for further attack. But everything seemed still. Almost too still, if Raven believed in clichés. It was as though the castle itself was waiting for something. For some trigger to be tripped.
“I’m on fucking edge here,” Taipan said. “I don’t like having no depth perception.”
“Your eye going to be okay?” Raven asked.
He shrugged. “It’s still there. Whether it’ll be okay or not remains to be seen.” He grinned and looked down at her. “Remains to be fucking seen! Geddit?”
She couldn’t help a laugh escaping, shook her head. “You people are…” She couldn’t find the word.
“All right?” Boss threw back over his shoulder. “Is that what you meant?”
And she realised it was. “Yeah. You people are all right.”
Boss nodded without looking around. “Wind it up, now. Let’s concentrate.”
The ballroom led into an ornate dining room. Polished rosewood table, intricate chandeliers and expensive-looking artworks. The table was laid with enough silver to pay off the national debt of some island nations.
“Looks like the fucker is planning a party.” Boss pointed to a door on the far side. “That way.”
The door had glass panels, light net curtains inside and wan moonlight beyond. They vaguely made out bushes and a stone fountain.
“Seems the cloud cover has cleared a bit,” Jet said.
They slowed, took their weapons up in a casual ready position and advanced slowly. As they neared the doors, there was a click and they swung open. Boss paused, then straightened up. “Seems we’re expected.”
He strode out into the courtyard.
The others gathered beside him. The courtyard was huge, maybe a hundred metres across. It had garden beds and shrubbery all round, mostly Italian in style. Stone fountains sprayed and burbled all over, everything lit in monochrome by the half moon now clear of clouds. What had once no doubt been a central pond was now a raised dais of stone. The circular edge was old granite, carved with runes and sigils of protection. It crackled with power, warding pretty much everything a mage could throw at it. Raven had never felt such concentrated magic in her life. The man in the linen suit stood in the centre, arms casually at his sides.
“Hello, there,” he said, his voice heavily accented Eastern European. “I have to admit, I’m impressed you got this far.”
Boss raised his AK and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He frowned, looked at the weapon, then back at the necromancer. “I expected your wards to stop the bullets, not render this entirely inoperative.”
“More fool you.”
“I guess so.”
The air crackled with tension and magic. Raven found herself useless, impotent. Their firearms were inert, the target was caged against their magic. It was a sudden and seemingly insurmountable stand-off.
“Let’s hope you’re better at hand-to-hand than you are at recognising wards,” the necromancer said.
Movement from either side sent a ripple of alertness through them. The square between the necromancer and the Squad filled with black-clad, fast-moving figures. Some flipped and tumbled as they ran in an ostentatious display of athleticism.
Boss groaned.
Taipan made a tight sound in his throat. “Are you fucking serious? Undead fucking ninjas now? They’re rezzers, right?”
“Almost certainly,” Boss said, his voice tired.
The rezzers gathered in a group, at least twenty of them. Raven looked around, realising that beside the bushes and fountains there was little to no cover. This fucker seemed to have an endless supply of minions.
“Remember,” Boss said. “Take out the spine, brain, or decapitate. No amount of incidental damage will slow them. And it looks like they’ll be a far greater challenge than the abominations in the forest.”
As the Squad crouched, ready for the enemy to rush forward, a door on the far side of the courtyard slammed back.
“Hey, motherfuckers!” Smoke, grinning like the Cheshire cat, lobbed something in a high arc.
“Fire in the hole!” Boss yelled and the Squad hit the deck.
Smoke’s grenade sailed high and dropped into the midst of the massed ninjas even as their voices shouted warnings to each other. They began to scatter, some leaping away in time, but the concussion of the blast whined everything to silence for a moment as bright light flashed out. Body parts rained down among chunks of earth and stone.
“That should even the odds a bit,” Smoke called.
The massed group of rezzed ninjas had been spread wide by the blast. They yelled at each other over the following silence, trying to regroup. Even the necromancer looked concerned.