21. Getting Connected
Zafira surveyed his forces, wishing that he could say something to encourage them, to prepare them for what he knew was coming. He'd never been much of a talker, though, content to follow where others led. Like a good little doggie, Arf had once commented snidely. He'd refuted it at the time, loftily claiming that he was nothing like the docile modern 'familiars' of Mid-Childa (at which she'd laughed and done something to his elbow that still caused it to twinge in damp weather), but now her words came back with the horrible ring of truth. I am no leader.
There were six of them, discounting him; the least injured of the infirmary's residents. They were invariably young, green, and very, very scared – and he had to admit, they had good reason. Originally, there had been ten, each assault on their position claiming another life as they intensified.
The last had been the worst – a tall, pretty girl of no more than sixteen, ripped apart and eaten by daemons as they tried to clear a path for Signum and the Eventide's quartermaster. They had managed it in the end, escorting the two half-dead captains into Shamal's waiting arms, but the young private's screams still echoed in his ears. He resolved to learn her name if they ever managed to get out of this.
Another wave incoming, Shamal's voice said tiredly. He didn't blame her for her lack of enthusiasm – the constant healing spells and scans for enemies had practically drained her dry.
He relayed the information to his troops, watching them react with calm resignation, and felt an odd surge of pride. No matter how dire the situation, they would not abandon their comrades.
They heard the daemons before they saw them – a cacophony of howls, roars, and shrieking laughter alongside other, less comprehensible things. Those who had Devices gripped them tightly, taking careful aim. Corporal Movano scattered shield-mines across the walls, floor, and ceiling, whilst one of the privates – Tipo, he thought her name was – patched up their wounds and blessed their weapons. As she laid her small hand on his massive gauntlet, he saw a faint turquoise aura suffuse it. He gave her a brief smile of thanks, and she responded with a nervous salute.
Then the enemy arrived, and their brief reprieve ended.
They were a living tide, a cavalcade of bizarre forms and horrifying visages. Most were humanoid, in a way – shadow-faced, kilted wizards, armoured warrior-women, pincer-handed succubae, and decaying, stringy-haired plague victims, each with their features and characteristics exaggerated to grotesque, inhuman extents. Warped, oversized animals accompanied them – tatter-winged carrion crows, iridescent, ethereal hawks, hulking, red-skinned hounds, and strange, unnatural creatures that looked like a mismatched hybrid of snakes and scorpions.
The swarm charged towards them, trampling over the splintered remains of the tables and hospital beds that had once formed a makeshift barricade. Two hatches opened in the ceiling, and a pair of balls of dented, broken wreckage that had once been security turrets slid down to confront the new targets, their shattered sensor arrays swinging back and forth blindly. It wasn't just the living defences that had been worn down by the previous attacks.
"They've got specialists, sir," one of the recruits noted, and Zafira saw that he was right. Two dark figures leapt and sprinted through the horde, forearm-blades extended, and Movano barely managed to raise a shield before their first shots smacked into it.
"Steel Yoke!" The Wolkenritter flicked out a wrist, sending a ribbon of ice-white energy slicing through the daemons' front ranks and causing those it hit to explode into sparks, dried blood, or clouds of gas according to type and preference. His troops followed suit with their own attack magic, and soon the rapidly-closing space between the two forces was criss-crossed with bolts, beams, and projectiles of all possible (and some fundamentally impossible) classifications.
Another few metres, and Movano detonated the mines, felling yet more of the daemons and slowing their advance. Zafira followed it up with a spell of his own, spears of pure magic lancing out from every available surface and into the beleaguered swarm. Curious – nothing we've used yet has been lethal, and yet they vanish when we hit them. Magical constructs, perhaps?
The attendant Hellhounds, however, were very much not. They barrelled out of the sorcerous inferno, wards flaring, and headed straight for Movano. Zafira attempted to get there first, to shove the corporal out of the way, but was too late. The lead cyborg's blade sliced through both his shield and the young mage himself, killing him instantly. Emboldened, the remaining daemons surged forward, and all semblance of order in the battle dissolved.
The Guardian Beast leapt into the melee, switching between forms at a moment's notice and employing fists, feet, teeth, and claws to strike down anything not wearing a Barrier Jacket or TSAB uniform. Tipo's aura served him well, its very touch unravelling the daemons' essence. He bled from a hundred scratches and bites, but simply ignored them. They were irrelevant.
A Hellhound charged him and he went wolf, diving under its blades and savaging its nether regions, his magically-augmented natural weaponry tearing through its armour with contemptuous ease. As it doubled over, he resumed human form, punching upwards and snapping its head back with a sickening crunch, and followed up with a kick to the stomach as it feebly attempted to retaliate. Even this didn't stop it, as he discovered when it stabbed upwards from the floor and nearly disembowelled him. He stamped on its head, feeling metal crumple under the impact, until it stopped moving, and turned his attention elsewhere.
Two more recruits were down already, one dismembered by the winged warriors' axes and one dragged away by the succubae with a terrified, animal scream that went on far longer than it should have. Corporal Ascona, their other Belkan mage, had cleared a space with his whirling scythe-flail Armed Device, a weapon he referred to as a kusarigama, and Zafira ducked into it, hoping for a chance to better assess the situation.
He didn't get much of an opportunity, though.
The second Hellhound dropped from the ceiling, cutting through the kusarigama's chain and riddling Ascona with crystalline bullets. He howled in pain and collapsed, twitching, to the ground as a reddish-purple spider's web of inflamed capillaries spread across his skin. The cyborg aimed a second salvo at Zafira, but he'd had time to raise a ward and the shots pattered harmlessly off it.
"Chain Bind," he growled, and a mass of ice-white tendrils shot from his hands, wrapping themselves around the Hellhound.
He grabbed the magical chains and pulled to the side, exploiting his greater body-weight to swing his victim around, battering away the encroaching daemons. Two more revolutions, picking up speed each time, and he let go, sending the creature flying down the corridor into the enemy's oncoming reinforcements. He was under no illusion that that would kill or even incapacitate it, but at least it would buy him some time.
He hurried over to check on Ascona, but the corporal was already dead, his back arced convulsively and his face twisted into a rictus of agony. Though the servants of the Tome of the Night Sky were considerably more durable than any real human, Zafira was very glad that none of the crystals had hit him.
The daemons surrounding him closed in, savouring his slow realisation of just how horribly outnumbered he was. He'd lost sight of his remaining two recruits, though disturbances in the crowd behind him reassured him that they still lived – for now, at least. He closed his eyes and prepared to summon more of the magical spears, resolving to take as many of these monsters down with him as he could.
That was when a volley of blasts came from behind, ripping into the assembled daemons sand causing them to turn to meet the new threat.
"Think you'd best get out of the way, sir," said a cheerful voice, and the Guardian Beast's keen ears heard over two dozen Devices charging bombardment-level spells.
He wasted no time, clearing a path to the infirmary door with a field of ice-white spikes and gesturing for his now-revealed recruits to follow his lead. Ignoring the stunned daemons, he broke into a dead run.
One of the junior mages was the first to reach the door, riding a shield-shaped Device like a surfboard. He dived inside, and Zafira was about to follow suit when he heard a distressed yelp from the third of the infirmary's still-living defenders – the support mage, Tipo. He turned round, and saw her being swamped by a pack of daemons, still firing away desperately with her staff.
No. I am not losing another one.
He shifted to his wolf-form and rushed forward, extending a shield ahead of him like a battering ram and sending creatures of all descriptions flying. By the time he reached Tipo, they had already immobilised her with claws, jaws, and tentacles. Two daemons were tearing off her Barrier Jacket, whilst a third was twirling her captured staff suggestively.
Zafira switched back to human, impaling the gathering monsters with precisely-aimed spears and scooping up the support mage in his arms. He bolted back to the infirmary, leaving a shield-mine behind for good measure, and heard the ominous silence that told him their reinforcements' Devices were about to fire.
I am running for my life with a half-naked and not unattractive young woman draped over me, he noted absently. Half a dozen centuries ago, I would have still found something mildly interesting about all this. These days, I am merely relieved that she is lighter than Signum. Whoever said that war was glamorous is a filthy, filthy liar.
The unknown voice spoke again. "All right, people – let 'em have it."
The barrage struck just as he exited the corridor, and he felt it sear the cloth off his back. He deposited Tipo as gently as he could, and turned back to watch the light-show.
He didn't find it entirely to his satisfaction, though.
The last Hellhound danced through the firestorm, flipping over some blasts and using its daemonic comrades as shields to block others. Its eyes were invisible behind its helmet, but Zafira knew they were locked on his.
He felt a hand on his arm, and heard Tipo's voice.
"Lion Strength."
His hands flared with turquoise energy, and he felt a surge of power shoot through him. The Hellhound leapt, and he slammed his fist into its solar plexus, sending it flying backwards, limbs flailing, for a second time. It came into contact with one of the larger beams and collapsed to the ground – though not before the Wolkenritter had set up a few magical spikes to greet it on the way down. He still remembered what it had done to Ascona.
He looked down, and nodded to his rescuee. "A useful power you have there."
She only managed a wan smile – one's first near-death experience was not conducive to conversation. She was scarcely more than a child, he saw – far too young to be dealing with something like this. So many of them are. Nevertheless, he could see that she was a survivor. How she had reacted to the daemons' assault was a good indicator, and a Guardian Beast soon learned to trust his senses. There was something about her that reminded him of Hayate at that age, beyond the vague similarities in height and build.
"I shall watch your future career with interest, private. Shamal, would you mind getting her some spare clothes and some medical assistance?"
His fellow Wolkenritter walked over, drying her hands from the infirmary's wash-basin. "Of course. Will you need patching up as well, Zafira?"
"Unnecessary. My wounds are not sufficient to impair me, and there are others who require your assistance more. Perhaps later."
He concentrated for a moment, and restored his ruined tunic with a quick infusion of will. That done, he stepped back into the corridor to meet their rescuers.
They were not what he had expected – a rag-tag assortment of almost fifty caterers, cleaners, and support staff, brandishing an equally motley arsenal of equipment and led by a pudgy, middle-aged man in a sergeant-major's uniform and a short, grandmotherly-looking woman wielding a Device shaped like an enormous meat cleaver. Despite this, they carried themselves like soldiers, subduing and restraining those enemies who were still corporeal (not many, and the daemons had a habit of dissolving when bound) and posting lookouts to ensure against unpleasant surprises.
As he approached, the sergeant-major flipped him an inept salute. "Evening, sir. I'm Quartermaster Sergeant Jones. Looks like we got here just in time."
"Indeed. Your arrival was most fortuitous."
"Oh, it wasn't just luck, sir. We were headed this way anyway. You'd be the Wolkenritter's Guardian Beast, right?"
"The tail, yes? Always gives me away."
"And the ears."
"True. Very well – what did you wish to speak to me about?"
"My idea for getting the comms back online. I'll need your help, sir – with your permission, of course."
"Hrm. We should head inside, then. Shamal and Signum are there, and something like that requires an officer's perspective. I am merely a specialist, after all."
"Fine by me. In that case, shall we bring Lieutenant Weismann along?" He indicated the elderly Head of Catering, who was currently sawing off a particularly obstinate daemon's head with her cleaver. "She's the field commander here – I'm just the ideas guy."
"So why were you coordinating the attack?"
"Because it was a low-responsibility job, and I like to feel important every so often. Is that so wrong?"
Zafira grinned a grin that only a wolf-type Guardian Beast could manage. "Sergeant-major, I believe this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
As they entered, Signum looked up wearily from where she lay on one of the beds. "Quartermaster Sergeant Jones, did I not request that you alert and safeguard the non-combatants?"
Fred Jones's face was the very picture of injured innocence. "Well, ma'am, that's exactly what I did. Not my fault they wanted to join in the fun, was it? I was just compelled to tag along and ensure they didn't get themselves into anything stupid."
Zafira had been on the receiving end of the knight's patented eyebrow-raise before. He was very glad that it was aimed at someone else this time.
"'Stupid' such as leading a charge on an army of daemons?"
There was not a twitch, not the faintest flicker of motion on the sergeant-major's round face. "Precisely like that, ma'am."
Signum glanced at her neighbour, a wiry, bespectacled man who looked to be in his mid-fifties. "Is he normally like this?"
"Why I seldom give him orders," he replied.
"I see. Sergeant-major, I commend you and your associates for your timely rescue. That said, if you creatively misinterpret my orders one more time I will introduce you to new and exciting worlds of pain. Is that understood?"
This salute was rather tidier than the one he had first seen. "Yes'm."
The gaunt quartermaster let out a dry chuckle. "Should learn how to do that."
Fred fixed him with an accusatory glare. "Traitor."
Signum smiled. "I have found some uses for it over the years. It is all about establishing-"
"Don't encourage him!" the sergeant-major wailed.
Shamal moved to intervene, and Zafira saw that she was having great difficulty keeping a straight face. "Pardon me, Mr. Jones, but you mentioned a plan?"
"Ah, yes. Let me explain..."
It took scarcely ten minutes, against the backdrop of Shamal's orderlies tending to the living and moving away the dead. During that, the expressions of those assembled traced the full gamut of incredulity, bemusement, fascinated horror and gallows-humour amusement. Eventually, Zafira spoke.
"So... allow me to summarise. You intend to have us and a small band of non-combatants blast our way across a station under assault by ravening monsters in order that I might hook my brain up to an untested, jury-rigged device of incredible power and do battle with a sentient, predatory curse. Am I correct?"
"Apart from the fact that the DSS office isn't all that far away? Yeah. Pretty much."
He barked a laugh. "Good to see you catching on to how we do things around here, sergeant-major."
Fred shrugged. "I'm a fast learner. Anyone else have anything they want to add?"
"We still need to keep the infirmary safe," Shamal pointed out. "Mrs. Weismann, would you perhaps be able to help with that?"
The cook smiled at her as one would at a favourite niece. "Certainly, dear. I'm sure some of my kids would be happy to oblige. Some of them have a bit of knowledge of healing magic, as well – you'd be amazed at the sort of things that can go wrong in a ship's galley."
"Excellent," Signum said, businesslike as always. "Sergeant-major, Specialist Zafira, prepare your troops and alert me when you are ready. I shall relay the information to Mistress Hayate. Dismissed."
They dispersed to tasks appointed by themselves or others, ingrained Bureau discipline overruling inexperience, injury, and the dozen other factors that might have paralysed ordinary civilians. Zafira headed back for the entrance to check on the defences, absent-mindedly wishing that someone had bothered to fit an automatic door on the infirmary. It is not as if the TSAB lacks the budget, after all...
He was about to shove open said door when he saw the neatly-stacked pile of bodies next to it. Their brightly-coloured Barrier Jackets had vanished upon death, leaving them in a haphazard assortment of night-wear, off-duty clothes, and the brown TSAB uniforms. Someone had folded clean, white towels over their faces as a gesture of respect – those of them that still had faces, anyway. Or heads.
Zafira had seen a lot of corpses in his centuries-spanning life. Given what he was, it sort of went with the territory. That didn't mean he enjoyed it, though – especially when he recognised a few of them, and knew that they had been far too young for such savage, abrupt endings, regardless of whether there even was a definable 'old enough'.
I want their names, he told Shamal.
Whose? she asked.
Those who volunteered to defend this place. The ones who lived, and the ones who died. I want their names.
Her voice over the telepathic link was quiet and gentle as always. You'll get them.
Thank you.
Back outside, he watched Fred Jones's ad-hoc army assembling for their next mission, and smiled a contented smile. He had people he trusted giving him orders, things he cared about to protect, and a truly vile enemy to fight. Just what this old dog needs.
No more failures. No more deaths. Now, we begin to reclaim our home.
Hayate was having the busiest half-hour of sitting at her desk in her life. As a matter of fact, she'd had to borrow one of Yuuno's mental tricks to deal with it – a custom accelerator spell that enabled her to run her thought-processes on three tiers at once and, more importantly, not become hopelessly confused in the process. One tier was monitoring the various holographic displays projected by said desk, one was processing the communications from the Wolkenritter, and a third she had permitted to wander aimlessly, lest the continued tension drive her slowly insane.
At present, two of the projections in particular were occupying her attention. One was an annotated list detailing what she knew so far of the enemy's nature, capabilities, and potential weaknesses, whilst the other was an enormous three-dimensional map of the central office that looked rather like an imploded mechanical sea-urchin. An accurate depiction, therefore.
She moved her hands across the latter, manipulating it as if it were a physical object rather than a technosorcerous illusion. There was a cluster of labels around the location of their headquarters, denoting all the information she had about the disposition of their and the enemy's forces – which wasn't much, really, given the comms blackout. The map had still proven useful, though, if only for suggesting alternate routes for Zafira's strike team and alerting them to potential ambush sites.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she glanced at her office's external monitors. Something had caught the pop-up turrets' attention, and they were bathing one of the adjoining corridors with waves of azure fire. Whatever-it-was beat a hasty retreat, and the turrets slid back into their housing with a nonchalant satisfaction that she was only halfway-sure was imagined.
Though Hayate knew that Signum would look upon her incapacitation as an unmitigated failure, her stand (and the intervention of Quartermaster Krebs, which had led to the colonel considering adding 'suicidal tendencies' to his psych-evaluation) had nevertheless bought her mistress sufficient time to power up the office's own built-in defences. Their designers had spared no expense – the layered wards and thaumaturgical-alloy rods reinforcing the walls were designed to protect against anything short of a precision strike from a passing warship, and the electrified steel door had already claimed one victim – a particularly agile Hellhound whose signature forearm-blades had proven to be tragically conductive.
And then there were the turrets.
The brochure she had read upon taking up residence had had quite a lot to say about those – apparently, their employment by the office's architect had been a major selling-point with the Bureau. They were semi-sentient, essentially Intelligent Devices minus the wielders. As such, they had not only a sophisticated IFF system with several thousand permutations of TSAB uniforms and approved Barrier Jacket designs logged onto it, but also pin-point accuracy and a bewildering array of weapons systems both lethal and otherwise. The last included the magical pseudo-flamethrower, a solid-shot chaingun of questionable legality loaded with an infinite supply of armour-piercing rounds, and a targeted EMP burst modelled on technology recovered during the Scaglietti Incident that would absolutely ruin the day of any attacking cyborg or drone. It came as no surprise to her to see that the insane contraptions had been designed with the assistance of Chief Librarian Yuuno Scrya.
Yuuno...
They hadn't spoken much since the incident at the end of their trip to the parallel Earth. Quite understandable, really, given that both had extremely busy jobs with minimal overlap, though she couldn't help but feel that she'd been putting even less effort into attempting to talk to him than was entirely within the boundaries of the reasonable. Which was stupid, really. All she'd done was offer a bit of comfort to a friend in a tough situation – and not even that much, either. She'd done more for all of the Wolkenritter... well, minus the cheek-pecking, except the occasional maternal one to Vita, but the analogy still stood. She was getting flustered over absolutely nothing.
And if you believe that, girl, then I've got a lovely little investment project in the outer colonies for you.
She shook her head, attempting vainly to clear it.
Sorry, but have you forgotten who you're thinking about here? Yuuno. As in, Yuuno Scrya. Mentor, surrogate-brother-figure, and head-over-heels in love with one of your best friends since pretty much day one. Remind me, what does the TSAB field manual have to say about engaging in no-win situations again?
These were reasonable arguments. Logical. She should have listened to them, and duly did so. After all, she was a military commander, not some clueless teenager. It wasn't exactly easy, though. She still remembered the feel of his skin, rough under her lips. He hadn't shaved that evening.
A voice intruded on her thoughts, and she almost collapsed in relief.
"This is Dr. Solara Kamri of the Deep Space Surveillance department to Colonel Yagami. Testing, 1 2 3... testing, 1 2 3. Come in, Colonel Yagami."
"Reading you loud and clear, Doctor," she said, switching one of the desk's holograms to show the scientist's perpetually-harried face. "Did it work, then?"
"So far," he replied. "Kaiser's balls, but it's good to hear a friendly voice on this thing. We've only just started to clear out the channels, but we thought you should be amongst the first to know, seeing as your lot were kind enough to help us out. I swear, that Guardian Beast of yours has been a real lifesaver – literally, in fact. They hit us again just as his squad arrived, and they chewed right through them. Never seen anything like it."
Hayate grinned. "Zafira may not be the most versatile soul, but what he does, he does well. Glad to hear you're safe. I'd probably best start restoring order, but before I go, I'd like to ask you another favour, if that's all right."
"Not a problem, ma'am. What do you need?"
"Well, I realise that it isn't exactly your speciality, but could you please see if you can tighten the focus of some of your scanners and run a few sweeps of the station? I think it could prove useful."
"Check for the location of those dimensional disturbances the bad guys are so fond of? Good idea, ma'am. You're right, it isn't what our stuff's meant to do, and what help we can offer is limited, but I'm sure we can come up with something. On the plus side, we've got the Warped Mirror fired up – turns out killer cyborgs work just as well as blowfish."
"Excuse me?"
"You really don't want to know, ma'am. Anyway, we'll let you know as soon as we find something. Kamri out."
His face vanished from the screen, and Hayate tapped into the main network, feeling it slowly open up like a gargantuan, virtual flower. She opened all the available channels she could, listening to reports, issuing orders, and adding more and more information to her map. Another mental tier was focused on attempting to recall her training in space-station boarding actions, whilst the last kept tabs on the evolving organisational structure of those forces she could reach. It soon became apparent that she was the highest-ranking officer alive in this particular section of the central office – clearly, there had been a ruthlessly efficient method to the invaders' madness.
"Sergeant Lanos, you've got a big group of daemons headed your way. Try to hold them off as long as you can – I can't promise reinforcements, but I'll see if I can find you an exit solution. No stupid risks, all right?"
"They're going after the power plant on Deck Seventeen, Lieutenant. Get your platoon over to the rec-room junction – you should be able to cut them off with time to spare."
"Almera, DSS is picking up some weird energy readings from the med-bay near your position. Send a couple of your invisibles to check it out, but under no circumstances engage. I'm sending Corporal Mbeki's heavies to do the muscle-work – share any intel you gather with them, is that understood?"
"Another portal in Accounting? Thanks, Major. I'll chalk it up."
She felt a glorious, visceral thrill surge through her. Finally, she was out of the darkness and back in control, and whatever the outcome, she had a chance to make a difference. Even if she couldn't use her magic in this environment, her mind and her training were quite intact, and she intended to use them to their fullest extent.
Scrolling down the list, she saw a new channel pop up – a very familiar one.
"Corporal Lanster, this is Colonel Yagami. What's your situation?"
"Colonel! You're back!" The irritable young NCO sounded positively delighted – for a moment, at least. "It's not good, ma'am – they're all over the crew quarters, and we only just managed to evacuate the hubwards block. The other's a lost cause. Too many of those freaks in the way, and there's only about half a dozen of us able-bodied. Sorry, ma'am."
Something cold and heavy settled in Hayate's stomach. The spirewards block had been where Erio and Caro had been berthed. If it had been overrun... no, they're all right. They have to be. They're tough kids. They've survived worse than this. Right?
"Not your fault, Teana. A full evac from a surprise assault? You've done good. Head to the infirmary – sounds like you've got injured, and we need more combat mages over there anyway. As soon as we have the manpower, we'll take back those quarters. That's a promise."
Teana saluted the screen and turned away. "All right – you heard the lady. Lock, load, and move out in five. Subaru, see if you can help out the wounded. I'll scout out ahead."
Hayate cut the link, satisfied that the evacuees could handle themselves. Think I'll have to keep an eye on young Corporal Lanster – that girl's showing some serious leadership potential, and it's hardly the first time. Another promotion might be advisable if we all get out of this alive.
If.
She remembered a pair of laughing children, deliriously happy at being placed under the command of the famous Lieutenant-Colonel Yagami. Their adoptive mother had been so very proud that day, watching them get their forward mages' wings with a smile that had threatened to split her ordinarily grave face in half. Without thinking twice, Hayate moved liberating the crew quarters several places up her mental list of priorities. They were Fate's kids. That was all there was to it.
In the meantime, though, she had other things to deal with. Double-checking the available intelligence, she opened Fate and Nanoha's comm-channels.
Time to go on the offensive.
offensive.
Author's Notes: Because I figured Zafira deserved his time to shine as well.
I can definitely see the Bureau military having a serious re-think of their stance regarding firearms in the aftermath of the Scaglietti Incident. Not enough to relax Mid-Childa's exceptionally strict civilian gun-control laws by any standards, but enough for them to start seeing a bit of use in combat, especially in space battles where just about everything's lethal anyway. After all, it's hard to imagine how non-magical solid-shot weaponry could be much worse than something like Signum's Sturm Falke attack, which, lest we forget, involves impaling the enemy with a metre-long arrow which then explodes, sending shrapnel (and bits of the aforementioned enemy) all over the place. I mean, that's just unfair.
