Hammer of the Witches Read online

It was Swiss German. My language implant kicked in, returning Hello.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Hey,” she said, switching to Anglian. “Thanks for calling.”

  “Thanks for reaching out to me. What happened out there?”

  In the background I heard a car honking. Was she out on the street?

  “I don’t know. I didn’t authorize what happened at Hellas. Neither did anyone I know in my organization.”

  She was deliberately being vague to avoid tripping telecom intercept programs—the kind every First-World nation ran on the rest of the world.

  “That’s not much for me to work with.”

  “You can’t prove a negative.”

  “I remember you told me once that you only use the name of your organization within your group. You use other names for outsiders. It stands to reason that someone in the organization did it.”

  She sighed. “Yes. I know how it looks, and I want to work with you to resolve the situation. I have a list of persons of interest who might be able to help us understand the situation.”

  “People inside your organization?”

  “Yes.”

  “People who could pull off something like that?”

  “It’s…” She sighed. “They may have the motivation, but I’m not saying they did it. For now, I just need to interview them.”

  ‘Persons of interest,’ my ass. They were suspects. Eve was downplaying the severity of the situation lest we burn her. I wouldn’t blame her; I’d have done the same in her shoes.

  Besides, she had suspects barely an hour after the attack. That made no sense unless Hexenhammer was more ideologically fragmented than we had thought.

  “Is that why you want to meet me?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’d like you to come with me. We can interview them together.”

  She was trying to demonstrate her innocence through transparency. After all, only the guilty had something to hide. And she must know that her continued survival had to hinge on the Program’s continued goodwill.

  “If there were a traitor within Hexenhammer, he’d have every reason to lie to you,” I said.

  “I’m counting on it,” she said. “If the traitor thinks he’s been spotted, he’ll try to throw us off the scent and hide or destroy evidence. He’ll leave a trail that we can follow.”

  She sounded optimistic, but I’d have done the same if I were her.

  “Fine. Where do we meet?”

  “Hellas. That’s where my principal lead lives.”

  “Back to the scene of the crime? Sounds dangerous.”

  “No choice. I have to pin him down before he goes underground for good.”

  “You make him sound guilty.”

  “He’s… paranoid. With news like this, he’ll definitely run and hide. He’ll only come out of hiding to meet people he knows.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Where is he?”

  “I can meet him at Amarantopolis. We can meet there, too, before we speak with him.”

  “Works for me. I need to make arrangements on my end first. I’ll mail you when I have more information. But let’s shoot for an in-person meeting at Amarantopolis by tomorrow. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  I hung up and searched for plane tickets to Amarantopolis. Moments later, Pete reentered the office, canned coffee in hand. He popped one and hazarded a swallow.

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “I ain’t no fancy coffee drinker like you,” he said. “If it’s got caffeine, it’s good enough for me.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said.

  Sipping at the surprisingly sweet brew, I filled Pete in on my phone call with Eve. And my conference with Hakem Dunya.

  “You think the Unmaker’s involved?” Pete asked.

  “In some fashion. Don’t know what.”

  “And what’s this about needing the airship? It’s in multiple pieces.”

  “Got to put it back together.”

  ***

  “That’s not possible. Six months, no faster,” Lisa said.

  Lisa and Harding lived on site. After we woke them, they almost broke the land speed record getting to the conference room. Not that it helped.

  “We’ve got an urgent operational requirement for air transportation with secure communications and cargo carriage capabilities,” I said. “The airship fits the bill.”

  “And I’m telling you that the airship is a no go.”

  Harding held up a hand. “What do you need to do in those six months?”

  She counted off her fingers. “Module design, construction and testing. Equipment upgrades. Flight tests. Instrument checks. Safety certifications.”

  I glanced at the notes I had compiled yesterday. “It seems to me that if you put the frame back together now, she’ll be fit for flight.”

  “No. Not without safety inspections and certifications. And what about the upgraded equipment?”

  Harding stroked his chin. “Mr. Luke, what kind of capabilities do you need precisely?”

  “Long-endurance flight, secure comms, secure holds. I can work with civilian-grade avionics and all the other existing equipment.”

  “Well, Miss Taylor, if we can skip the equipment upgrades, how much time do you need for certifications?”

  “It’s not that simple. I’ve got a team assembling and testing the all-weather radar. They’re halfway done. Other teams are also partway through equipment installation and testing. We can’t just ask them to pull everything out and put the old equipment back in. It’ll take more time than just assembling everything in place.”

  “All right,” Harding said. “How much time do you need to bring her to a minimum state of airworthiness?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “One,” I said. “No more.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “We’re the government. We can expedite inspections,” I said. “I bet I can have all the inspectors you need within twenty-four hours of calling them.”

  She exhaled sharply. “If you can do that, then… Call it five days. But…”

  “But?”

  “I’ll need to bring in every crew member, hire temp staff, get them working 24/7. And the overtime will be a killer.”

  “Do it. I’ll worry about the bill.”

  “All right. Five days it is. And Luke?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Whatever it is you’re planning to do… Good luck.”

  ***

  Lisa worked fast. When the day’s airship arrived, it wasn’t just carrying crates of provisions, feedstock and other supplies. Four dozen technicians hopped off the vessel, making their way to the hanger. Project Kalypso had four dedicated crews working four-day shifts; Lisa had recalled everybody and hired new staff. At the terminal, she gathered the newcomers around her and explained the new shift system.

  Last off the airship was Will O’Connor, briefcase in hand. He was in an immaculate blue suit, matching it with a violet polka dotted tie that almost, but not quite, matched the rest of his outfit.

  “I see you’ve gotten the ball rolling already,” O’Connor said.

  Better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission.

  “No time to waste,” I said.

  “You could meet Eve and assess her within forty-eight hours. What do you need the airship for?”

  “Call it a hunch,” I said.

  He frowned. “A hunch?”

  “See, we have here an opportunity to test Kalypso’s capabilities and our own operational procedures in a real-world op with low stakes. Better we find and iron out bugs now than to stumble upon them later when the stakes are high,” Pete explained.

  “It can’t wait until she’s fully reassembled?”

  “Like Pete said, this is a low-stakes op,” I said. “We won’t be hobbled if it doesn’t work out. Just chalk it up to a learning experience.”

  “And what about the money to pay for all this?”

  �
�We’ve got billions of dollars just lying around,” I pointed out. “This won’t cost taxpayers a dime.”

  O’Connor shrugged. “Fair point.”

  Inside the conference room, he laid out the contents of his briefcase: a slate, papers, stationery. The documents all bore security classifications, either Secret or Top Secret.

  “Hexenhammer has been designated as a transnational terrorist network reaching across Pantopia,” he said. “Interpol is setting up a counterterrorism task force to coordinate the hunt for Hexenhammer.”

  Pete raised a hand. “Hold up. Interpol is already swinging into action?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “Interpol is a multinational bureaucracy,” I said. “Even if they have a rapid-response counterterror plan, this is way too fast. It’s been barely twelve hours, and they have already designated Hexenhammer as a transnational terrorist network? How did they know so much about it already?”

  O’Connor tapped a document. “In their manifesto, they said, quote, ‘We have members across Pantopia, from Anglia to Gallia, Germania to Hellas. No one can escape our wrath.’”

  “Terrorists shoot their mouths off all the time,” Pete said. “That means nothing.”

  “Yeah, and nobody in Hexenhammer even uses the name outside the group,” I added. “How did Interpol get confirmation so fast?”

  “The impression I got was that the Pantopians were already aware of Hexenhammer’s existence. They’ve been monitoring some of its fringe members but didn’t have enough information to act. Until now.”

  Pete crossed his arms. “You really believe that? The Pantopian Union’s a big bureaucratic mess. How did each country’s security agency suddenly realize they have intel on Hexenhammer—enough to say that it’s a ‘transnational terrorist network’—sit down at the table to share intel and then kickstart a task force, all within half a day? How likely is that? Come on, man. You know how bureaucracies work.”

  “You’re saying there’s a conspiracy?” O’Connor asked.

  “Interpol, a multinational, multilingual organization, moved faster than our own FBI on a terrorist investigation,” I said. “How plausible is that?”

  O’Connor laid his hands flat on the table. “I’m not saying I don’t have any misgivings about this. I’m saying I just don’t have any intelligence to confirm anything.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go over what we do know.”

  O’Connor turned on his slate and produced Exhibit A: a video of the attack. It was composed of footage from multiple cameras spliced together into a patchwork whole, but there was no sound.

  The first minute showed four men in black carrying machine guns exiting a dark van. Pete paused the video and zoomed in.

  “Looks like PKMs,” he said.

  “Lots of Eastern Bloc guns floating out there,” I said.

  He pointed at the man in the lead. “See the wooden furniture and iron sights? Seriously old school. We’ve talking at least forty, fifty years old. Maybe more. And his chest rig. Soviet infantry standard issue. His gear dates to the Third World War or earlier.”

  After WWIII, vast numbers of Soviet-issue weapons and munitions, and no small quantity of Western arms, had vanished into the black market, turning up in gang wars and petty crimes across the continent.

  “Except the radio,” I said. “Low-pro ears, throat vibration mics. Looks modern. Likely encrypted.”

  “Wonder what that means,” Pete said. “Two different suppliers?”

  “Who knows.”

  The next scene showed a pair of civilians approaching the quartet and passers-by ignoring the terrorists.

  “Idiots,” Pete said. “Are they blind or something?”

  “They’re all looking at their phones and buds,” I said.

  O’Connor pointed at the idiots approaching the shooters.

  “And these two?”

  “Too stupid to live if ya ask me,” Pete said.

  The shooters loomed over the civilians. The lead gunman was at least a full head higher than the civilian who challenged him. I hit the pause button.

  “Do we know how tall the shooters are?” I asked.

  “Six seven, six eight?” O’Connor hazarded. “I think one of the witnesses made an estimate in the interview.”

  “Huh,” Pete said. “That’s odd.”

  “What is?”

  “The bad guys are all the same height.”

  I looked again. From this angle, I could see the terrorists standing in a line. They seemed to be the same height, but we’d need an image analysis specialist to confirm that.

  “Sure looks like it,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “Me neither,” Pete said.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” O’Connor remarked.

  The video played on. The terrorist smacked the civilian down and continued past him. O’Connor winced.

  “That looked painful,” Pete said.

  “Efficient, too,” I said.

  “Eh? What do you mean?”

  “His movements. They’re clean and sharp. No wasted motion, no telegraphing, no hesitation. He’s well-trained.”

  “Everyone’s marching in sync,” O’Connor said. “Very mechanical. Like… like robots.”

  “Parade square soldiers aren’t battlefield soldiers,” I said.

  “What’s up with these guys?” Pete asked.

  The next take showed the terrorists at the entrance to the camp.

  “At this point, witnesses claimed the shooters yelled, ‘Ktistes Nika,’” O’Connor said.

  The Creator conquers. The war cry of the Amarantine Empire, still used by Phosterian zealots today.

  “Eve used that last year when we were grabbing Selim,” Pete said.

  Back then she had wanted to disguise the job as a hate crime or a gang hit. We played along; we didn’t need the Gallians figuring out it was a snatch. The Gallians rolled with the narrative for the first twenty-four hours and then quickly suppressed it.

  Her words came back to me.

  Is that why you do what you do? I’d asked.

  Yeah. Someone has to stand up for Pantopia, she said.

  And you’re that someone.

  And soon, many more.

  Maybe she’d finally gotten her wish.

  Lost in thought, I almost missed the next scene: the terrorists opening fire.

  “Okay, this is some BS right here,” Pete said.

  “How so?” O’Connor asked.

  “These are GPMGs. general purpose machine guns. You’re not supposed to fire them like that. You’re supposed to get nice and low on the ground and shoot them from a bipod or tripod. They aren’t meant to be fired from the shoulder like what these guys are doing.”

  “It’s not impossible,” I said.

  “PKMs run seven point six two by fifty-four. You are not gonna fire it from the shoulder at full auto with any kind of accuracy. Not the way these guys are doing.”

  “Speaking of accuracy…”

  I rewound the video. Played it at one-tenth speed.

  “See the tracers?” I said.

  “Yeah. What about… Holy hell!”

  “What?” O’Connor said.

  I pointed. “Look at the tracers. And the barrels. No muzzle climb. No recoil. They’re hitting whatever they’re shooting. At full auto.”

  O’Connor blinked. “Uh…”

  Pete shook his head. “Okay, this is some video game BS right here. That’s not possible. Not even with powered armor.”

  “Maybe they’re psions,” O’Connor said. “Or covenanters.”

  “How’s that work?” Pete wondered.

  “In the Mobile Assault Division, we experimented with manipulating gravity to increase the weight of machine guns,” I said. “It would, in theory, reduce recoil and improve accuracy during full auto fire.”

  “How did it turn out?” O’Connor asked.

  “There wasn’t much of a point,” I said. “Sure, it worked,
but outside of some limited use cases, there just wasn’t any benefit to doing it. We use MGs to suppress the enemy and gain fire superiority. You’re not supposed to run them like assault rifles. We found it more useful to make MGs lighter so the gunners could keep up with everyone else.” I paused. “Then again, we never needed to shoot up a camp filled with civilians.”

  “The Soviets don’t run their MGs the way these guys are doing either,” Pete said. “This just don’t make no sense.”

  “But it is intimidating,” I said. “Accuracy plus volume and weight of fire equal terror. The tracers exaggerate the effect.”

  “Y’know, that ammo is old,” Pete said. “Pretty much every modern military has switched to low-observability tracers by now. Even the Rhosians. LO tracers are only visible from the rear. But these tracers? Everyone can see them from all angles. It’s World War Three stuff at least.”

  “Ammo that old can still be fired?” O’Connor asked.

  “If you store it properly, sure. I know a guy who dug up a sealed can of .45 over a century old. He shot a hundred rounds through his pistol without stoppages or misfires.”

  “Maybe the bad guys got their kit from an old Soviet cache,” I said. “Or they want people to think that.”

  “Why would they?” O’Connor asked.

  “I don’t know about that yet. Let’s keep going.”

  The terrorists ceased fire. Slowly, still at one-tenths speed, they marched through the camp, shooting up everything and everyone. O’Connor gritted his teeth. Pete stared at the terrorists, studying their motions.

  “See how they’re shooting?” Pete said. “One gun is always up and firing. One guy is always watching their back. They know what they’re doing.”

  “Does Hexenhammer strike you as the kind of organization with the resources and training to pull this off?” I asked.

  “No way,” Pete said. “If they have death squads like this, why bother sending Eve?”

  “Maybe they only send her and other Kraken operators if they can’t mobilize a death squad,” O’Connor suggested. “Like if they can’t smuggle in weapons and other kit to outfit their team.”

  “Jobs like this are loud and messy,” I said. “That’s the point: to send a message. If Hexenhammer—or, really, any other terrorist network—had this kind of capability in Pantopia, we would have seen them in action long ago.”