‘Chess spotted a spider tank, the autonomous kind, in the lobby,’ Nava replied. ‘I’m sorry, the officers down there are dead.’ Fawn’s fists clenched, but she gave a curt nod at the blunt news. ‘We also have troops. Combat fatigues and assault rifles. By now, they’ll be invading the second floor. That should take them some time since they’ll need to control all the delegates. Then I’d expect them to search up here.’
‘And we have no communications,’ Courtney added, snapping her ketcom’s screen closed. ‘We figure it’s a wide-area jammer. This is a well-coordinated attack and I’m not sure I see the point.’
Chess blinked as his senses returned to his body. ‘Uh, I haven’t finished going through everywhere, but these guys are speaking some weird language. Like, “Durchsuker den dritten stock.”’
‘German,’ Kyle said. ‘That was badly pronounced German, but they’re probably speaking German.’
‘Free Beherbergen, then,’ Nava said.
‘I’d say that’s not unlikely. And, if Chess heard someone say that, it means they’re heading up here.’
‘Chess, see what you can see on the stairs, then check the roof.’
‘Right,’ Chess replied. His eyes closed.
Nava turned to Fawn. ‘So, Free Beherbergen areattacking this symposium. Why?’
Fawn shrugged. ‘Hostages? They have plenty of hostages here. They can afford to lose quite a few and still have people to spare. I’d like to know where they got a robot tank from.’
‘The Redwings? They may have jammed comms, but this is going to be noticed. What’s the response?’
‘Isolate the convention centre from the rest of the compound. Riot shields in the tunnels. Deployment of marines. The shields will take… seconds to minutes. The troops will take longer, but they’ll have the area surrounded in thirty minutes. Then… negotiation. If they’re willing to negotiate.’
‘Befreit Beherbergen want Beherbergen to secede from the Clan Worlds Alliance,’ Kyle said. ‘I don’t think negotiations are going to go well.’
‘I think they know that,’ Rochester said. ‘Looks like they’re in this for the long haul. I found a couple more robots on the roof and in the vehicle park at the back. They’re not as big as the tank. Six legs and they look more like walking weapon mounts. Definitely a pair of miniguns each and possibly lasers.’
‘Point-defence units,’ Fawn said. ‘They’ll be there to stop assault teams getting in from the rear or the air. Those lasers can take out missiles as well as assault ships. They’ve got the tank on the front entrance… This isn’t going to be easy.’
‘That’s way too coordinated for Befreit,’ Kyle said. ‘They use whatever weapons they can get their hands on. Improvised bombs and a few grenades. Flak jackets are usually their best defences.’
‘Well, these ones have modern military combat dress,’ Rochester said. ‘The guns are classic terrorist weapons, but they’ve all got at least five modern fragmentation grenades. I saw people with missile launchers.’
‘We need to know where the jammer is,’ Fawn said. ‘If we can take that out somehow, we can re-establish comms.’
‘I didn’t see anything, but they’ve got a scrying block up around the entire main theatre. If I had to guess, that’s their command centre, and it’s where they’ve got the jammers.’
‘Great. Getting to that is going to be tough.’
‘Not really,’ Nava said.
‘You are not thinking what I think you’re thinking.’
‘Reading minds isn’t one of my talents, but I probably am.’
~~~
Maya watched the proceedings from a seat in the front row of the main theatre. Up on the stage, the Befreit Beherbergen people were prepping for their big announcement. A camera was being set up facing a portable stand which showed their flag – they had actually come up with their own flag – and a slogan in German which she had been told said ‘Return Our Lands!’
Out of sight of the camera, some of Maya’s colleagues from the Redwings were watching the video feeds from the robots. Actually, they were watching visual feeds from cameras and the echo displays of radar systems, and they were also monitoring the radio jammer. The scrying blocker ran pretty much autonomously once it had been initialised by a magician. By Maya, in fact. There were few magicians among the assault team. Maya considered that a mistake, but she also considered herself powerful enough to make the difference.
If she actually needed to. She was not really that bothered about this mission. It had been set up to cause the Clan Worlds pain. The chances of the Beherbergen group getting their wish granted was up there with being hit by lightning while wrestling a shark, but the ASF would be shown up as ineffectual and the assembly would lose face when a lot of ‘innocent’ people were killed right on their doorstep. And Maya? Maya would vanish without a trace when the ASF stormed the place having completed her personal mission.
Maya had a traitor to kill. She just needed to know where the bitch was.
~~~
The door of the meeting room gave a shudder as someone put their shoulder to it. Then there was a sound like a foot being applied to the wood. Then there was the sound of voices.
‘“It’s locked,”’ Kyle reported softly. ‘“It can’t be.” “Well you open it.”’
There was another attempt to break the lock which was not there and then more voices.
‘They’re reporting in to someone.’ There was a pause and then more German. ‘They’re leaving someone outside the door and moving on,’ Kyle said.
‘Interesting,’ Nava said. ‘Why didn’t they try shooting?’
‘Something else in mind?’ Courtney asked.
‘Almost certainly.’
~~~
‘Agent Maya.’ The speaker was Nikolas Wolfe Redwing, Maya’s superior. Well, he had superior rank and he was in charge of the operation on the Redwing side. In every other way, Nikolas was Maya’s inferior and she thought he probably knew that.
Whatever, Maya got to her feet and walked at a steady pace up onto the stage and across to the portable command centre where Nikolas was directing things. ‘Sir?’ she asked.
‘Our colleagues have found a room on the third floor which appears to have been secured with a spell. Go up there and eliminate anyone you
