Chapter 77: Into the Darkness |
Cole sized up the engagement. At a distance of twenty feet, it was obvious he couldn’t risk a mad dash. The guy was far enough that he had time to squeeze one off, and a single gunshot in a city this quiet would carry for blocks.
So Cole settled for throwing his knife. His arm was already cocked all the way back when Elina’s hand settled on his shoulder.
“Wait,” she said.
Cole stopped without giving it a second thought.
By the time the word had truly registered, the old man had already started to slump. His posture sagged first, shoulders rounding forward. Then he started sliding down the container wall, settling into a seated slouch at the base.
Cole held position for a beat, knife still raised, watching for any sign that the drop had been voluntary. The man’s fingers had gone slack around the lantern handle, and the gun sat loose across his lap at an angle that would’ve sent it clattering if he shifted even slightly. His head had settled at an angle that was going to leave him stiff in the morning. Then the snoring kicked in, loud enough that Cole was more worried about the guy drawing attention than waking up.
He must’ve been sound asleep, because if it was an act, the guy deserved an Oscar.
Cole glanced back at Elina.
“Sleep magic,” she said. “Neither will he recall this encounter.”
She shook her head. “No. The spell is too small to distinguish amid the ambient mana.”
Well, that was good enough for Cole. Anyone who stumbled on the scene would find exactly what it looked like – an old man who’d wandered outside and fallen asleep. Cole relaxed a bit and gave Elina a nod.
They cleared the remaining containers without further issue, slipped through a gap in the perimeter wall, and put the building behind them.
The city loosened up over the next few blocks. The tight commercial rows gave way to wider lots and lower buildings. Eventually, they ran into the ocean breeze and the sound of waves lapping against the shore.
They followed the road south as it climbed a gentle rise.
The first things he saw when cresting the hill were the cranes. Or rather, what he assumed were cranes. They towered over the compound on frames of spiraled glass, the whole structure twisted together like wire rope. The only metal he could pick out was the functional stuff: chains, hooks, any moving parts.
The port spread across the coastline below them, a small portion of it shining like daylight, much like the lighting the Celdornians used. It was bright enough that it looked like driving up on Vegas from the desert – one pocket of light in a whole lot of nothing.
Cole pulled the team into a residential block overlooking the port and found an intact apartment building with access to the roof. They set up along the parapet and broke out the spyglasses.
He started at low magnification to get the overall picture.
The layout was about what he’d expected. Warehouses, cranes, admin buildings, loading infrastructure – a port was a port; nothing special. The road they’d come in on continued straight to the port’s main gate, with a secondary road branching off and running parallel to a glass perimeter wall that rolled along the compound’s edge in low, wave-like crests.
The whole operation was organized loosely around a harbormaster’s building that sat on a central quay extending out into the harbor. Most of the dock space was empty, save for three schooners moored along the main pier – cultist vessels, presumably, given that nobody else sailed these waters.
The compound’s footprint was just as straightforward, and consequently easy to define: it ended where the lights ended. Their activity stretched from a cargo terminal half a mile to the left of the harbormaster’s building to another half a mile to the right. All told, the cultists operated within a thin coastal strip well under a square mile, small enough that both destroyers could level everything within an hour.
Cole pulled out his notebook and started recording.
After sketching the overall layout, he brought the magnification up a notch and swept the individual structures. This was where the port actually stood out. Like any other Istraynian place, the open areas and structural glass were unmistakable, but the resemblance to Ashpoint stopped there.
The difference was about the same as between Naval Base San Diego and the city’s civilian waterfront: austere and functional versus cultural and decorative. The port here had the latter all over the place – softer geometry, statues, gardens, and everything else a nation used to wow incoming tourists and immigrants.
He then tightened the scope toward the quay, where most of the activity seemed concentrated.
Evidently, their intel had been fairly accurate. The picture on the ground revealed several dozen dockworkers moving between the ships and the warehouses. Among them, a handful of orcs hauled crates between the warehouses and the pier – war creatures reduced to manual labor. It would’ve been mildly amusing if the whole operation didn’t run as smoothly as it did. From the looks of things, this place must have been up and running for a while. Maybe even since before the Kidry incident.
Cole panned the spyglass along the perimeter, sweeping left to right. The cultists hadn’t bothered adding any defenses beyond what the Istraynians had left behind, which amounted to the glass wall and not much else. Not that they needed to – this was demon territory through and through. The only people crazy enough to show up uninvited were currently sitting on a rooftop half a mile out.
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The only real perimeter was the patrols, and honestly, Cole had seen better security at a mall. He counted about ten guards at the left gate, walking in pairs at a pace barely above loitering. Not one of them even glanced at the surrounding blocks. If his team ever had to push through here on foot, they could damn near waltz in through the front door.
The other end was just as lazy. He counted another ten on the right gate and about eight more patrolling between the two, none of whom seemed any more motivated than the first bunch.
He pulled back to low magnification and spent the next few minutes logging patrol routes and timing intervals. He’d just about finished when two large shapes lumbered out of one of the warehouses near the pier, trailed by a few handlers working reins.
He dialed up the magnification.
Sure enough, they were Nevskors – the same oversized chitinous insects that Ethan and Miles had killed during the K’hinnum operation. These ones were smaller than those had been, though still larger than any horse he’d ever seen. And somewhat amusingly, they were being put to work like horses, hitched to wagons like pack mules.
Cole logged the count and lowered his spyglass. He’d gotten about as much as passive observation was going to give him. He turned to the group.
“I think we’ve got what we’re going to get from up here. Once everyone’s wrapped up, we’ll head back to the insertion point and –”
Graves held up a hand. “Captain, I must object.”
Cole braced. He would’ve preferred not to linger, but Graves wasn’t the type to hold things up without good reason. “What’ve you got?”
Graves lowered his spyglass and took a moment before answering, as if he were still working through what he wanted to say.
“I should not wish to speak beyond what I can confirm, Captain, yet something is at work within the compound – a ritual signature, if I am not mistaken, though faint enough that I might not have caught it had we not lingered.” He glanced at Vale, then Ethan. “It puts me in mind of what I encountered at Coramore.”
Cole looked at Ethan, who apparently had the juicy context.
“Does that mean they’re summoning a Lich?” Ethan asked.
Graves shook his head. “It may well be, but I would not assume so. A summoning is but one form the ritual might take – the most common, to be sure, yet there are others of equal concern. I should need to draw a good deal closer before I could speak to its nature with any confidence.”
Cole had figured that was where this was heading. “Can you tell which building it’s coming from?”
“That is the trouble. I do not think it originates from anything aboveground. Were it upon the surface, the signature would present far more strongly than it does. I must think it lies well beneath the compound.”
Cole glanced back at the port and sighed. “We’re gonna have to investigate it, then? Up close and personal?”
Graves nodded.
“Fuck, alright. Any ideas on the approach?”
Miles shrugged. “Well, if it’s under the compound, it stands to reason there’s a way into it from inside the compound. Ain’t much mystery to that.”
Vale glanced toward him, unimpressed. “Spare us the revelation. I’ve little patience for the notion of this company wandering an armed compound in hopes of stumbling upon it. Were subtlety of no concern, I would gladly purify this place of its mongrels and be done with it. Alas, butchery is ill-suited to stealth.”
Miles folded his arms. “Well alright. If wanderin’ ain’t the play, what is? You got another way in there?”
“If I had, I should not have wasted breath lamenting the alternative.”
Cole scratched his head. “Alright, alright. We’re not getting anywhere with this. If there’s no other way, then —”
“Wait, wait,” Mack interjected. “I think I uh… I think we passed by a subway entrance on the way here, maybe a few blocks back.”
“You’re not sure?” Cole asked.
“I mean, everything here kinda looks the same. All glass and shit. Or rubble. Or glass and rubble.”
“Right, fair enough.” Cole pulled out his map and traced a finger around, pinpointing their location. “Yeah, looks like there is an entrance around there. No guarantee it’ll connect to the port, but it’s worth a shot.”
From there, they retraced their route back through the commercial district. Mack had point on the way back, since he’d been the one to spot the entrance earlier.
They found it about fifteen minutes later, ruined so badly that Cole was surprised Mack had spotted it at all. The Istraynians had demolished the entire entrance, dropping the whole thing into the stairwell and packing it with enough rubble to fill a dump truck. Whatever had been down there, they’d wanted it sealed for good.
The good news was that most of the debris had fractured on impact. If it had come down in intact slabs, they’d have had a real problem, but the concrete had shattered into chunks small enough that a couple of guys with some light enhancement could move them by hand. It’d take a while, but Cole figured they could have it cleared in under twenty minutes.
He put Miles, Ethan, and Graves on the rubble and had everyone else set up a perimeter.
The guys kept their enhancement magic dialed back to the bare minimum as they worked through the pile one piece at a time. It took them about ten minutes to clear enough room to squeeze through single file. The work was louder than Cole would’ve liked, but thankfully nobody ever came to investigate.
The air that rushed out of the gap had probably been sitting in there since the city fell. It tasted like dust and stone, thin enough on oxygen that Cole could feel it in his first breath. They could work in it, but not for long – maybe an hour before it started affecting judgment, less if they exerted themselves.
Worse still, the tunnel was basically a pitch-black void. His NODs handled it fine, but the Celdornians were a different story. The community hall had at least given them some starlight through the windows, enough for them to get by on adjusted eyes alone. Down here, there was nothing to adjust to. Without their night vision spells, they’d be dead weight.
With the air already limiting their time, Cole couldn’t afford a slow, careful approach with half the team blind on top of it.
He turned to the Celdornians. “Your eyes won’t be able to adjust down there. Think the cultists will be able to detect if you guys run some spells?”
Graves shook his head. “Mayhaps not. Their ritual may well conceal the mana we expend.”
“Yeah, better than having half the team out of commission, I suppose. I’ll leave it to your discretion.”
Elina, Graves, and Vale cast their spells without further discussion.
Cole put Miles and Ethan on point and kept the Celdornians between them and the rear, where he and Mack could cover the six. Once everyone was set, they descended into the darkness.