B3 Chapter 2 - Logistics

Dealing with field work was much more irritating when Syl was temporarily handicapped. He had nobody to blame except himself for that, of course, but that only made it more irritating.

With networks across Auria in the state that they were, it was difficult to even confirm which of the other prismatic families had conquered which segments. Nobody knew where the king was, either—any stealth measures taken by pretty much anyone were much more effective when entire intelligence webs had been upended in a single day. It was difficult enough to stay on top of events that were out in the clear at the moment, let alone ones operating behind an institution of secrecy.

Still, they had a start. Bianca had maintained some interest in the Aurian space program and some of the inconsistencies in secretly archived files about their existence, which meant it had made its way up to the special unit.

Syl had outgrown the unit in some ways, but there was a reason he’d still remained in it all these years. Other than technically not existing for ten of those years, of course. He still lacked the kind of international intelligence network the general did, and it was sometimes comforting having someone else direct him towards the fires that needed to be put out. As part of the unit, he had no responsibility to be the hero some other paragon-class magicians felt the need to be, but he could keep the most immediate threats from treading on his ground.

That status quo was gone now, but there were still benefits from having connections. Though it was even more inconsistent with the Aurian intranet infrastructure largely destroyed by the Cascadian offensive, he still had connections to the general.

Through a mix of the general’s ongoing surveillance as well as the information Bianca had mined, it wasn’t too hard to create a model suggesting the most likely locations for their target.

“Looks good to me,” Bianca said, passing a simple cleanse spell over her to wick off the sweat and dirt she’d gotten on herself sparring with Uriel earlier. “Five locations.”

Uriel had come with her, as had Waylan. Jennifer was the only one not present, multitasking as she was. The refugee group that had come earlier hadn’t been the only one, and she’d floated the idea of creating an easy-to-spot beacon for similar groups. There were a lot of them out there, apparently, and there were very few functioning facilities out on the surface. The Viridian and Incarnate estates both had fairly protected food and water synthesis plants specifically for this kind of emergency, and given the loss of personnel both had experienced during the offensive, they had room to take in more.

As with their current discussion, though, the number one problem was simply time.

“The first pieces of the moon are gonna hit in less than a week,” Waylan said, leaning against a pillar and side-eyeing the data the rest of them were looking through. “Are you sure this should be your first priority?”

Defending humanity from extinction is easy, Syl signed. Destroy, deflect, or redirect. A big enough gun will make that work. People around the world have already figured that out.

Like she had been for every conversation where Waylan was around, Bianca provided live translations of what Syl was signing.

“If by ‘people’ you mean the paragons, maybe,” Uriel scoffed. “I think you vastly overestimate how much confidence the average magician has in staying alive past this week, let alone the average human.”

I don’t deal in averages, Syl signed back. Bianca, to her credit, defused the venom in that statement when she spoke.

“Maybe you should,” Uriel said, shrugging. “I talked to a few of the families that made it here. All of them have lost people. They’re scared. A leader would recognize that.”

I’m no leader. Syl was wasting time on this conversation, but Uriel had promise, so he allowed it. I’m an engineer, a magician, and a fighter.

“A Sinner,” Uriel challenged.

“He’s right,” Bianca interjected. “Jennifer is handling the human side. Paragons around the world are going to realize that this is stoppable. It’s not on the scale of anything humanity has dealt with before, but intranets are still up in enough places to run analyses. Even if others cannot build weapons, they will bring their brightest and best to take the place of one.”

Not to mention the Sinners, Syl signed, nodding towards Uriel as if to acknowledge what she’d said earlier.

“Been meaning to ask about that,” Waylan said hesitantly. He still had a bit of a skeptical tone to his voice, which was fair. Seeing wasn’t always believing, and he hadn’t even seen Syl cast Ouroboros—only witnessed the aftereffects. “About Sinners, that is. There’s never been an established MO, no rhyme or reason behind appearances, motives, who they’re fighting for, the like. Care to shed some light on that?”

I do what I do, Syl signed. I didn’t choose the title. The others do the same.

It was unsatisfying, but that was the truth. If he had to distill what he would guess to be the most common shared methodology into a sentence, it would be do as you please. It happened that most of the Sinners tended towards trying to keep the planet from collapsing in on itself, but that also lacked the kind of consistency Waylan was looking for.

Only Zero knew the real reasons. Only he could see those patterns.

Syl didn’t particularly care about the philosophy behind his fellow Sinners’ existences. He cared about advancement.

Jennifer and I are reasonably close to a working prototype for a dual-function mass driver and momentum redirector, Syl signed. To save you the technical details, it would be enough to divert a good portion of the pieces into a semi-stable orbit.

“A good portion,” Waylan repeated flatly, looking from Bianca to Syl and then back. “I did my time in physics. Do you think we’re dumb enough to not know what a good portion means? One of those things hitting—“

“Is not an extinction-level event,” Bianca finished. “The smallest ones, at least. The larger ones, yes. None of those are going to make it into the lower atmosphere in one piece.”

“You seem confident in that,” Waylan said.

“I believe it.” Uriel fiddled inside her pocket, thumbing over what Syl knew was an old, worn pocket watch. “Before they cut me out of the system, I saw some discussion from my family. They’re trying to blow a piece up and mine it.”

“Everyone is looking towards the future,” Bianca said. “We need to be doing so too.”

“I guess so,” Waylan said. He didn’t sound entirely convinced, but he also didn’t argue further.

It’s true that time matters, Syl signed. We’re going to be operating on multiple fronts. Bianca and I aren’t likely to be of much use as single units, but we can still operate as a pair. Ideally, we find the space program by the end of tomorrow and have a functioning weapon to keep our chunk of Auria from blowing up by New Year’s.

“How do you plan on doing that?” Waylan asked. “I ran a couple scouting missions. We might be able to get to a location and scope it out over a couple days, but that’s optimistic. You want to do a heist or something like that, you need logistics.”

Did you forget who I am?

Syl reached into the canvas bag he’d been carrying around for the past couple of days, picking out an apple-sized orb that he knew would be familiar to the rest of them.

Uriel blinked. “You’re carrying artifacts with you.”

He nodded.

“Artifacts. Weapons that magicians have been trying to replicate for decades. Power on the level of a nuclear arsenal.”

Syl nodded again.

“And you’re carrying them in a rucksack.”

Another nod.

Uriel shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

Two groups should be enough, Syl signed. With these to move us around, it should be trivial.

“It does simplify things a lot,” Waylan admitted. “We can take more, though. There’s a few other Viridian magicians who actually do field work. You have more too, right?”

Jennifer had shared some details about the special unit with Waylan and Uriel, but she didn’t know all that much herself.

They’re not available, Syl signed.

Though they hadn’t planned for this exact series of events, the special unit had contingencies within contingencies. At this very moment, the bulk of them were going around the country picking up personnel and ferrying them to an isolated supercarrier in the deep Pacific that the general had commandeered. Aside from that, he didn’t actually want the general that involved in this business.

“If we’re agreed on a plan of action, let’s talk details,” Bianca said. “Jennifer is in.”

“Of course she is,” Uriel sighed. “Alright. I’ll see if I can’t call in a couple of favors.”

#

Ultimately, three groups of magicians departed from either Incarnate or the Viridian facility. Syl and Bianca made up one, while both Uriel and Waylan were running their own with a group of four other magicians. They’d picked those magicians up from the Viridian headquarters, using anchored teleportation artifacts to get to Jennifer’s position.

Syl hadn’t been able to make anything more complex than one-target teleportation anchors, but they were already proving to be terribly useful—creating a near-instant way to group up was going to be crucial to this.

Neither Incarnate nor the Viridian estate had a stealth plane on hand thanks to the saturation nuclear bombing of much of the countryside, so Syl and Bianca went by hovercraft.

Since he’d teleported in last time, Syl hadn’t gotten a proper view of most of Auria. Prior to the offensive, he’d had a solid idea of its important locations as well as its general makeup—densely populated urban areas with a largely magi-industrial countryside. In some ways, it was a much less machine-infested version of Taiwan. Then again, most developed nations were like that these days.

Now, though, it was devastated. Even the places that hadn’t been bombed and attacked were feeling the effects. Critical infrastructure sabotage combined with a great deal of radiation and more esoteric knock-on effects meant that a lot of the industrial areas were nonfunctional, whether that was because the people manning them couldn’t come in or because sensitive equipment had been broken.

Almost every building they whipped past was shuttered. The roads were devastated, sparsely populated with dead vehicles. There was evidence of further destruction in certain regions. More important facilities had been bombed out, taking much of the native flora out with them, and there were certain areas where the residual flux in the air was so dense it resembled that of the area around a Tower.

Bianca clicked her tongue as they passed through it, not trying to hide the emotion on her face. This was her country more than it was Syl’s, and she did care for its people.

Syl felt worse about her pain than he did about the tragedy that had caused it.

“I should have killed him when I had the chance,” Bianca said, fist clenched.

You were ten years old when you were excommunicated, Syl signed. The past is past. Don’t blame the problems of the present on your younger self. There’s nothing we can do to change that.

“You’re right,” Bianca said. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to taking on a facility? I still feel weak, and I didn’t take the bulk of the backlash from Ouroboros.”

Syl hefted the assault rifle he’d brought from Incarnate, flashing her a smirk. His hands weren’t free to sign, but she knew what he was saying.

I always am.

#

The king was not physically present at the Death Valley black site, but his presence lingered. Prior to his visit just days ago, it had been years since he’d physically entered the place, yet his orders and the raw magic he exuded still seemed to weigh down on the strike teams and engineers working there.

Compared to the majority of black sites that had been slowly decommissioned after the third world war, this one was bustling. They received their orders, they executed on them, and they did not ask questions that they weren’t supposed to.

It was also one of the best defended locations in the country. Despite how leaky Aurian infrastructure had been, this location hadn’t been given up to the Cascadians. The one band of hostile magicians that had wandered near it had been summarily executed by two separate master-class strike teams. Numbering over a hundred strong across engineers and combat magicians, they were entirely self sufficient and visited by nobody but the king.

Until today.

Sirens had started screaming the second the hovercraft had been spotted, and engineers had evacuated to panic rooms just in case, failsafes ready to blow on sensitive information.

The sole exterrnal entrance into the labyrinth of this facility was a pair of blast doors fifty feet tall and thirty wide, reinforced by a number of methods both magical and technical.

The cameras had gone down before they could catch sight of the intruders, but the strike teams waiting on the other end had grown steadily more anxious when they realized the enchantments were giving way at unprecedented speed. Locks were always meant as a deterrent to give them time to mobilize, but this… it was like the creator of those doors himself had come.

Except he couldn’t have. The king himself had worked through some of these designs.

Less than five minutes after the hovercraft was spotted, the blast doors opened as casually as they would have for a member of this black site.

On the other end, two strike team leaders held up signs for their other magicians to take ready positions. A total of twenty of them were arrayed against the intruders, all with FCDs attached to conventional guns.

The first strike team leader had a perception-type spell focused on the entrance in case those intruders tried to stealth past, but it proved to be unnecessary.

He froze, fear gripping his body.

“Oh, god,” he said. “It’s him.”