Giraud smiled. “Indeed you do. You are a very reliable squad.”
“Almost too reliable?” Boss asked.
The air in the room electrified, a sudden tension that put Raven on edge. She had no idea what had just happened, but the friendly greeting seemed distant as a new, icy atmosphere rippled up.
“Too reliable?” Giraud asked.
“You really didn’t expect us to make it back, did you?” Boss said. “I mean, those were some pretty massive odds.” He gestured at Raven. “Without our new recruit here, we would have had some serious trouble.”
Giraud nodded, flicked a quick smile at Raven. “I must admit, I didn’t know you had replaced Blinder already.”
“Yeah, I thought not. I find it helps to play my cards close to my chest, even with the people supposedly on my side.”
“Supposedly?”
Raven saw Giraud’s hand move surreptitiously and press at something under his desk. Her own hand drifted close to the jade dagger.
“Why didn’t that necromancer bleed when I took his fucking head off, eh?” Boss asked.
Giraud’s eyebrows rose. “Didn’t bleed?”
“You think I wouldn’t fucking notice a small detail like that? That the necromancer supposedly behind all this was a fucking rezzer?” Boss’s voice rose in volume with each word.
The door behind them opened and two large Armour operatives stepped in. Giraud began to rise from his chair and Boss’s hand came up with a Magnum .44 and blew the Commander’s head into mincemeat. It burst like a melon, spraying the wall behind the desk with blood and bone and brains.
Shocked shouts and movement erupted outside the office. As Giraud’s body collapsed back into his chair one of the operatives who had come in fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. The other, reaching for Boss, paused, staring open-mouthed.
Boss raised both hands and let the Magnum clatter onto Giraud’s desk. “He was the real necromancer,” he said loudly as people crowded into the room. “The fact that one of his rezzers dropped when he did is proof of it. Now I realise there’s a lot of paperwork to do, but let’s all just calm down, yeah? No one else needs to get hurt.”
Tension drained slightly, giving way to shock. Hurried conversations travelled out across the base like a wave.
“Better get the Deputy Commander in here,” Boss said.
The operative who had come in with the rezzer nodded. “I’ll go and make the call.”
Raven looked from the Commander’s corpse to the dropped rezzer operative, mind reeling as she figured out the course of events. Her eyes finally reached Boss to find him smiling at her.
“You see why I brought you along now, then? Give you a better idea of our role in all this. You can see why we’re needed?”
She smiled. “Black ops within black ops?”
Boss laughed. “None more black.”
SONS OF APOPHIS
Christine Morgan
“You are asking us to betray our king.”
“I am commanding you to save Egypt.”
It will be, when it is finished, a great and glorious city, a shining palace-temple, a fitting home and place of honor for the one true eternal shining ruler of the land.
Sefut-Aten.
The Bronze Fire of the Sun.
Where Pharaoh will rule his people in benevolence and peace. Where the waters will flow as honey, the land give forth its fertile bounty, and rich treasures be rewarded for both this world and the world beyond to those who serve with loyalty.
At the moment, the great city might be a jumble of clay and hay and scaffolding, but will soon rise anew in its full splendor. The statues lifted, the cut stones placed, the murals painted. In cool courtyards, pools will ripple. In gardens, bright birds will sing.
Over Sefut-Aten, day will never end and night will never come.
Teb smiles to think of it.
Those who serve with loyalty.
Rich treasures. Rewards.
This world and the world beyond.
Such thoughts keep him brave through the dark hours. Though born to humble farmers, facing a life of planting and the plow, now here he is, entrusted with this most sacred and dangerous of duties, standing watch against the outer reaches of the night.
When the city is finished, when the sun no longer sets, when he and his fellow sentries have well done their duty, they will have fine houses. Plump wives. Many children. Lives of pleasure and ease. Respectable tombs.
Such promise is well worth these lonely watches as the sky stretches black and the stars cut sharp. He listens to the breeze-stirred rushes, the croak and plop of frogs, the distant cry of a jackal, and sleep-sounds from the workers’ camp.
Further on, a single light blazes in the tower shrine where chosen priests hold their own late vigil, tending the sacred sun-flame in its bronze brazier, catching of its rays in polished mirrors so as to not let them all be swallowed up by darkness. Teb touches the miniature sun-disk amulet he wears. Though the metal is cool beneath his fingertips, a warmth goes through him. He feels his chest swell with pride, and smiles again.
He, Teb, who came from mud and dung… whose parents were superstitious peasants, little better than slaves… is here. Will be here to see the everlasting dawn—
A sudden loop drops over his head, a heavy length cinching tight against his throat.
Teb gags and chokes. His spear falls to the dirt as he brings both hands to claw at the strangling constriction. His mouth forms screams, shouts alarms, but only the thinnest whistle of air emerges. He feels his heart-pulse thudding like the pounding of bull’s hooves. The night sky’s star-sharp blackness seems to sweep over his eyes.
As his nostrils flare, inhaling desperately, a strange scent fills them… something earthen and oily and coppery and cold. The breeze-stirred rushes whisper louder than ever, hissing cold and harsh in his ears. The frogs have fallen silent.
He lurches forward and is yanked back. His sandals kick and scuff. He can get no purchase on whatever is twisted taut around his neck. He cuts the pad of his thumb on his own sun-disk amulet’s edge—
Ut-Aten!
Seizing it, he uses that edge to slice and saw, frantic, hardly caring how he slices and saws his own skin, hardly caring as blood runs down his body… blood, blood is nothing, it is breath, breath he needs!
Roiling turbulence fills his head, stormclouds in evil colors of yellow, grey, and green. Portending rains of poison, portending floods and death. No life of ease, no fine house, no plump wife to give him many children—
Then a sense of give, of fray and loosening stretch, of snap—
— and fall, the ground leaping up to strike Teb in the face—
— a grunt from behind him as if of surprise—
— wheezing and gasping, miserly air, miserly breath through throbbing bruise-meat, sobbing-throbbing breath—
— his spear, his spear crossways under him, he’d landed atop it, scrabbling to clutch it in his blood-slicked hands—
— something seizing him, seizing him by the shoulder, heave-rolling him onto his back—
— the sight, a glimpse, a looming shadow outlined by sharp white stars, a man-like shape but scaly-hairless-sleek-supple—
— the spear, grasping it, bringing it with him as he rolls, bringing it with him and swinging it—
— sweeping the bronze tip in a wide, wild arc—
— slashing it through scales and flesh—
— another grunt, not just surprise but shock, but of pain! Yes, good, praise Ut-Aten, pain!—