Tads called a spirit to her, and solemnly handed it a small metal tray, then turned to face the harbour, pointing in the general direction of the water. In her head she pulled up the picture of the sea wall that extended out from the harbour, and at the massive concrete shapes that interlocked to create the breakwater, asking the spirit to take the tray there, stealthily and quietly, then hide it right at the very end of the outcropping.
The spirit materialised, a wispy cloud that gently flowed and undulated through the air, somehow supporting the small tray on the rolling air, then lifted it straight up into the air, rising into the rain clouds above. Physically manifest it was far slower to move, having to float as a current of air rather than travel in the blink of an eye, but it had hours of darkness to perform the task in, and it would be very difficult to spot visually. Tads wondered if the tray might show up on sensors, being metallic – but hoped that it was unlikely and that even if it did, people would assume it was some piece of flying debris…
The team settled in overnight, swapping shifts as they continued their surveillance both out of the house they'd appropriated, and through the camera inserted through the church door. The guard schedule was fairly frequent, but not exact – and the guards were alert and diligent, a most unpleasant combination for them to face. Normally guards on a static facility tended to lose their edge and start taking things for granted, but it seemed the Admiral's troops were considerably more professional. Whether that was through inspired leadership or the threat of heinous fear and retribution was unclear – but as far as the team were concerned, it didn't really matter.
Around dawn Kai and Shimazu slipped out of the house, taking a walk around the area and trying to get a feel for the place. There seemed to be a general movement of people from their houses down towards the harbour, many of them walking the half kilometre or so, with shoulders hunched up and hats pulled down tightly to keep the sleet and rain from soaking them, walking with a somewhat dejected expression and their attention fixed firmly on where they were going. Very few people looked up and around, instead keeping to themselves and focussing on where they were going.
Back at the house, Tads renewed her spirits, and with fresh guards on the tilt-wing and the house, she flitted down to the harbour astrally to check the location out, finding the metallic tray exactly where she'd expected. The harbour made her shudder though, the water stained with oil and other petrochemical spills, the weeds growing over the concrete showing signs of heavy metal poisoning and mutation, while the air was thick with pollution from the nearby factories and mills working to produce goods to support the maritime efforts.
They breakfasted, then Aswon and Hunter headed down the tunnel to relieve Marius, allowing him to come back and eat, then get some rest, setting themselves up for the morning of watching. Aswon adjusted the borescope, draping the cable down as far as he could, ensuring that it was below the plane of the ward that stretched across the stairwell, then moved down to lie on the bottom of the steps. Gazing into the viewing cup, he could see the corridor through the fish eye lens, distorted and difficult to make out as the optics bent the gathered light. With a deep breath he swapped to his astral sight, wincing as the brightness of the ward overwhelmed him. The flickering and chaotic pattern of the magical barrier danced before him, neatly obscuring the corridor beyond and he had a hard time making anything out at all. Sighing, he flicked back to normal and checked the corridor again, relaxing as the bright 'image' faded from his senses.
"What are you trying to do?"
"I want to try assensing the guards as they pass. But if we're on the stairs when I drop into astral, it'll trigger the ward. So I've got to be either above it, or entirely below it. And if I'm above that means I've got to hang pretty much upside down, so I can get my head at the right height without breaching the ward at all. Or, I can be laying down there, but then I have to look through the ward – and that's harder than I thought it would be."
They waited for the next patrol, and when the guards were outside the door, Aswon tried again, dropping into astral and trying as hard as he could to see through the astral interference and examine the guards on the other side. No matter what he did though, he just couldn't seem to cancel out the distracting patterns and effects of the ward, and he heard the receding footsteps before he'd gotten any sense of them.
"You want me to try?"
"You can't do any worse than me, Shimazu. I was getting nothing there. And your techniques might give you an advantage – or maybe even just a different point of view." Aswon moved over and squeezed past Shimazu, settling in for the two to three hour wait until the next patrol came around. When it did, he too stared into the eyepiece, and struggled to ignore the distracting effects of the ward as he stared down the tube. Something clicked mentally for him, some recognition of a pattern or sequence in the flickering of the ward, and slowly he was able to focus past it, seeing the indistinct forms of the guards beyond. He threw all of his effort in to his reading, using every scrap of his skill and experience, and his gaze focussed on them, slowly revealing faint and indistinct details. It was frustrating, and his read was nowhere near as complete as he normally managed – but it was something.
A few seconds later the guards moved away, continuing their patrol and wandering down the corridor until they disappeared from sight. Shimazu sat back, blinking and then just closing his eyes for a moment, rubbing at his temple as he too tried to get the bright after-image to recede.
"I got something, not much, but something. Both guards were calm and professional. Not alarmed but alert. Both have got some form of cyber in their head, specifically around their eyes, and I thought I saw something in their palms as well, so I'm guessing an induction pad for a smartlink system. They also had long fibres of darkness running up and down their spine, so we should count on them having enhanced reactions as well."
"Great. Well, that's not unexpected. But now we know. If it does kick off, we're going to be potentially even in terms of combat speed." Aswon looked over at Shimazu, and saw a look on his face. At first he thought it was confusion, but after a few moments he decided that trepidation was probably closer. "What is it? You see something else?"
"I don't know. It was more a feeling. A weird kind of peacefulness… tranquillity. It was…kind of hard to describe. But I just think we ought to look at non violent ways of dealing with these people. Strange as that sounds."
"No… not strange. I wonder…" Aswon looked up at the ward, then placed a hand on the stone foundations, almost caressing the building with his large palms and fingers. "This place is old, and has been a church for many years. Over time, the prayers and belief of the worshippers could have soaked into the building, impregnating it with their faith. If it's a place of sincere religion, of people following the meaning of their teachings, that wouldn't surprise me to find it's somewhere it's hard to do violence and commit evil acts."
"I also saw a strange look on the guards as the checked the door. It was a burst of concentration, of intensity. Like they were trying to see something not really there."
"Or like someone trying to break or pierce an illusion?"
"Yeah, that. Maybe someone explained to them how an illusion would work, and they've done their best to explain to someone without talent on how to defeat it." Shimazu stopped speaking as Aswon raised a hand, then motioned to the eyepiece. He bent down just in time to see multiple people walking down the corridor, entering view from his right and moving to his left. He spoke quietly, reporting what he saw. "Party of four… no five. All in naval uniforms. One at the front has lots of bars and gold on his shoulders and cuffs, maybe a captain or commander or something. Two behind with fewer rank marks. Ones at the back are carrying briefcases, only a single marking on those. Heading down the corridor now, as a group."
Aswon noted down the makeup of the group and more description as Shimazu kept up his commentary, adding to their observations so far. He'd just finished quizzing him and adding as much details as he could when Shimazu stiffened again.
"Got a second group coming in. Much like the first – definitely different people though. Six in this group, um… a captain or lieutenant or commander at the front, and some lower ranks behind, and then more lower ranks behind them. Ones at the back have cases again. But all dressed up neatly, just like the first lot. Heading the same way."
"You ok holding here Shimazu? I'm gonna sprint back and get the others. I'll set up the communicator at our end of the tunnel so you can listen in on the conversation."
"Got it."
Aswon slid down into the undercroft, then crawled to the tunnel entrance, swiftly climbing down into the tunnel. He didn't sprint – he couldn't – the tunnel just wasn't big enough. But he could run in a weird crouch that had him slightly twisted and still made very good time. When he got to the house he started calling the others together, then set up the comm relay to bounce their conversation down the tunnel to Shimazu using a minimum power signal. Forseeing that this might happen, Marius had cobbled together a very long cable for the headset, allowing the actual comm-link to be down in the tunnel, with only the audio components up with Shimazu – hopefully keeping any electronic emissions deeper underground and beyond detection range.
Aswon quickly relayed the data they'd gathered through the ward and the results of their assensing, before moving on to the new visitors that had arrived, before confirming with Shimazu that nobody else had since turned up.
"So – there's people in the house now, a fair few – what does that mean?" Kai raised an eyebrow and looked around.
"They are all uniformed officers. I would say the Admiral is either receiving a briefing, or giving instructions – but rather than do this via message, he prefers to do things personally. Or, at least he prefers the personal touch with favoured captains, perhaps."
"If they were favoured captains, they might be living up here." Aswon snorted suddenly. "Unless that's also part of the process. Call the less favoured ones here so they can see how good they could have it if they worked harder on being yes men."
"Maybe Aswon, Maybe. But – we don't know if the Admiral is there do we – none of us have seen him yet."
"No Kai, we haven't – but we might not. Certainly we shouldn't be expecting it. It's his house after all, and he's important – so the people come to him, not the other way around. Unless there's some reason for him to leave, why would he? And why would he come down this passage perhaps – we've only got a very small view on the place."
"Should we start the distraction do you think? If so, I need to go and get in position so I can cast the illusion and send the spirit off."
"I'm not sure. If we raise the alarm, I think it's a good bet that those guests will leave at high speed, to get back to their ships. But what will the Admiral do?"
"I reckon he'll have to go as well, Kai. I can't see him not going. Not if there's an emergency, and some of his Captains are having to go deal with it. Besides, it's his fleet isn't it?"
"He is the Admiral of the fleet yes, and he has a flagship – so one of those vessels is designated for his use." Marius confirmed, recalling the information from the briefing document provided by Halys.
"So, we could launch the op now, and try to get them all out of the church on the run, and down to the docks. Then we only have the guards to deal with. Or we can get them out, and keep them out for however long, and continue to wait – and maybe start the op when they're back, and all tired and grouchy…" Kai shrugged. "Or maybe we should just keep the distraction in the back pocket – and save if for if we need to cover our escape, if things are looking tricky."
"If we raise the alarm, I have to maintain the illusion whilst the periscope is visible. But after that my spirit will last until either dawn or dusk, whichever is next, and it can keep making some noise and serving as a distraction. But how long will they keep chasing it?"
"I reckon at least an hour. Maybe more. It depends on the procedures they have in place I guess. And that's the problem – it's just a guess. I've done plenty of merc ops on land, but I've not really done much from a naval standpoint. It's a different set of skills, different equipment."
"I think that would be a very pessimistic mate." Hunter leant forward, his usual smile gone as he carefully framed his words. "Submarines are normally tracked on passive sonar. Very rarely on active – it finds stuff, but it also gives away your position to everyone nearby, so most captains never use it. Not unless they're desperate anyway. But that means you're tracking on passives, listening for the noise of engines and plant machinery, transient noises. It's a very slow, patient game. I've heard about some stalks lasting for days, where a sub has been shadowing other vessels trying to get into firing position whilst avoiding their escorts. I reckon if they fall for this, we're going to see the base go on alert for most of the day. Their anti-sub warfare group are gonna scramble, and go nuts trying to prosecute the possible attacker." Hunter stopped for a moment, deep in thought.
"This might be one of those times where one of the boats goes active, just blasting away at the water trying to find the target. Especially if it's close to the flagship and the other main units. Certainly I could see them forming a line abreast, trying to make a fence or trip-wire, to stop any attack on the larger cruisers. But it's going to take time – if you're going fast, you can't hear anything – the water flowing over the hull drowns out the noise from other sonar contacts. So they have to go slow, just a couple of knots. And that means that everything they do, is going to take time. Lots of time.
"Can we use that then? If we start the alert in the harbour, get most of the people out of the church and down to the harbour, leaving just the guards… then we set off an alarm in the church. Wait for them to investigate, then set it off again. And repeat, until they get frustrated and tired, and maybe even disable the alarm thinking it's bust?"
"I'm not sure we can Kai – we'd have to be inside to do that, and that means getting past the alarms anyway… but also the alarm is most likely going to be part of a security system, and it's going to register things like which sensor is going off, and why. I think it's really risky to try." Aswon looked around the group. "Especially as we don't have the layout of the place known. We'd be going in blind, looking to hack their security system – which is designed to detect exactly that kind of thing. I think that's a bad plan."
"Speaking of the security system, I'm pretty sure I can manage the pressure pads easily enough – but not the other systems. But I did have a thought." Shimazu's voice was quiet as he whispered into the microphone, ensuring his voice wouldn't carry up the stairs and into the church. "Tads – I don't know how hot it is in the building. But could you raise the temperature to match a body, so the heat sensors wouldn't work?"
"I think so. It's only a few degrees above freezing outside, and with the building being of stone and the type of windows, and how old it is – I'm guessing inside is not that much warmer. It'd be a difficult job to push the temperature that high, but I think I can do it – as long as I'm not trying to do too much else as well."
"We could try to open up a second way to get in to the building. I did find a roof arch with a few missing stones – maybe we could get through there?" Aswon suggested.
"Not a good plan." Hunter held up his hand to Aswon. "For technical reasons. The building was probably put together at a time when they didn't use mortar or cement, it was all based on quality stonemasonry. So those archways rely on gravity and friction to stay in place. They can hold tremendous forces when they're intact – but it doesn't take much to change that. Take the keystone out of a stone arch, and the whole thing collapses. From what I can see of the roof that you're talking about, it's a few of the stones packed in between the main arches that have fallen – they're not that key to providing strength. But it's a fine balancing act. Take one more stone, it's fine. Take two – it's fine. Touch the third one, and the arch collapses, with no warning. And that removes the support from the one next to it, causing it to bulge out to the side, and collapse. You could start a chain reaction that spreads all down one side of the building."
"Ok, that doesn't sound so good. So – are we doing anything? Or are we waiting and observing?"
"Wait and observe Aswon. I think you're right – we need more intel. Let's continue observations until…" Kai checked his watch quickly, "until 15:00, then we'll decide from there. If nothing has changed, let's look at getting Marius involved then to get some more data. Can we get your recon drone in there?"
"Ja, if Tads can create a small hole through the wall for me. I can then pilot the drone around the internal structure and gather additional information."
"Ok – that's the plan then. But let's be ready in case we get an opportunity present itself."
Aswon headed back down the tunnel to re-join Shimazu, and a few minutes later they detected a faint reverberation through the stonework as music was played again. The infrequent rumbles transmitted through the stonework indicated it wasn't something with a heavy bass line or other low frequency effects, but it was impossible to tell any more just by listening – no matter how good Aswon's hearing was.
Other than the regular patrols, nothing happened of note until nearly two in the afternoon. The corridor suddenly filled with people, as both groups of officers appeared all at once, along with the Admiral – the first time they had seen him. His uniform was covered in rank markings, with more and thicker gold bands than anyone else in the group, at least making him easier to spot. They travelled from left to right, which meant that they were probably heading to the front door and the outside – so Aswon ducked back down to the tunnel and sent a message to Tads. She was the only one that could feasibly get in position quickly enough to do them any good.
As soon as she heard the message, she laid down on the floor and sent her astral form skywards, then shot across the hundreds of metres in less than the blink of an eye, finding a tree to land in that overlooked the front steps. Positioning herself along the thick trunk, she let just her head rise over a large branch, then manifested slowly, using the tree to conceal her presence, but allowing her to see into the physical world.
Sure enough, a moment later the front door opened, and she could see the bright flashes and swirls of the ward as it crossed the threshold, hiding the inside of the building. Officers started to pop into view, emerging like a bubble popping to the surface of water, their bodies melding out of the ward line. She watched for a few minutes as the officers stood on the steps, arrayed around the Admiral, before they saluted him and left, then headed back to her body to report.
"It looked and sounded like a fairly friendly chat. The Admiral was in the middle, and the officers were spread around him. From what I could see the two most senior officers were closest, on the first step down, and then it went down and outward in rank. He made a couple of jokes, and they all laughed – but the impression I got was that only a couple of them found it funny, the rest laughed to fit in. I heard them talking about food as well, so I think they had dinner or a meal. Maybe discussed work over it. But they were definitely very deferential to him, and it was only the senior officers that spoke with him, everyone else just listened."
"I saw him come back in, and listened as carefully as I could. I'm pretty sure I heard his footsteps now the music had stopped – he wandered down the corridor and turned, and it sounded like he was heading to the middle of the church. I can't be sure though – it was very indistinct."
"How did you manage to hear even that much Aswon?" Kai asked curiously.
"I er.. took a bit of a chance. Climbed up through the ward and then wedged myself up next to the door, and turned my powers back on, and managed to get myself up and stuck to the wall with my gecko crawl, then just stuck my ear to the wall. Like I said though, it was very indistinct. Oh – but I have had a thought. I wondered if the church was likely to have something like a font or statue, or some other kind of centrepiece. If it does, I bet it would be in the middle, and if it was something like a fountain, it'd need pipes to it – which might mean a raised floor. And if so, that's another spot for stuff like pressure pads. But I have no idea how churches are designed – does anyone else?" He waited, but only got back a series of grunts or negatives from the rest of the team.
It fell quiet again after that, and the time gradually marched on towards three. As they reached the deadline Kai had set, Marius moved down the tunnel with his drone and the relay equipment, swapping places with Shimazu in the cramped confines of the spiral staircase, whilst Tads replaced Aswon. After checking the timing on the guards, they waited about ten minutes after the last patrol had passed them by before Tads slowly gathered mana to her again and started to shape the stones to the side of the doorway, opening up a fist sized tunnel through the blocks with care and precision. As soon as the hole was complete, Marius lifted the spider-drone into position and sent it scuttling through, turning abruptly as it cleared the tunnel and started it up the walls to gain some height. Behind it, the stones flowed back into position, closing up the tunnel and returning the wall to normal.
"Spider drone is in."
"Great – when can we view data?"
"I can relay now Kai, but it will be easier if you come down the tunnel to view it – less chance of interception. But there is an… issue."
"What's up?"
"I do not know exactly. But the drone is not performing quite right. No – that is not correct. The drone appears to be operating correctly. However, my control over it is not quite what I expected. It is as if the interface between my rigger link and the drone has a high degree of latency, and some kind of low-level corruption. I will monitor further."
"I wonder if that's anything to do with whatever Ares installed or tweaked in you." Aswon suggested.
"I do not know. But, I must concentrate now."
Marius spent the next two hours piloting the drone around the church, moving slowly and carefully with the tiny robotic spider. He kept to the shadows and the high areas where possible, moving painfully slowly to avoid drawing attention to himself, and feeding the data from the sensors back to his rigger deck, then exporting it out over his datalink to Hunter. Hunter in turn fed the data into his GPS, spatial recogniser and orientation system, doubling down on his earlier work and generated a 3d simulation of the churches interior. The software he had didn't have an accurate match for all the assets, but it was certainly good enough to generate a tactical map and to show all the doors, sensors, cameras and guard locations to let them plan their assault.
A little after five, Hunter gathered the team together to work through the plan and describe the interior of the church so that everyone else could see.
"Ok, we're down here in the bottom left corner, our door is facing the top of the map – call that north for sake of argument. You can see the corridor heading off ahead, all the way along the length of the church, before turning at the end. At the far end of the corridor is a small storage closet, holding cleaning supplies and cushions, spare chairs, crap like that. Just behind that is the north-west corner of the church, which as far as we can work out is solid. Heading to the east, we have a bedroom, presumably one allocated to one of the captains or senior commanders, and beyond that is the Admiral's quarters. Very nicely decorated, very plush, lots of marble and gold leaf and stuff like that. It's also got a decent-looking mag-lock on the door. He's got an en-suite bathroom attached to his bedroom. On the other side of that is what looks like a communal bathroom and toilet area, and that brings us to the north-east corner."
"We reckon this is where the font used to be, or maybe a small fountain or something – just to the south of that corner is the kitchen, so everything that uses water or needs a waste pipe is all up in that north-east corner, and directly connected – so it seems pretty logical. Anyway, just south of the kitchen is a small utility cupboard or pantry – we can see bulk food stuffs in there along with pots and pans and stuff. Then there's another long corridor down the eastern side of the church, leading to the south-east corner, which again looks solid. Now coming west along the southern wall, we have the guard room which holds about six guys. The patrols look to be two of these at a time, leaving four in the room, and one of them always seems to be manning the desk with the monitors for the security system. The desk looks out into the entrance way through a one-way mirror as well, so they can check people coming and going. The other side of the entrance way is a cloak room, and then there's another bedroom – this one looks more like a guest room, as it's just got a few generic pictures in, and no personal effects. And that then brings us back to our corner in the south-west, next to our door."
"In the middle there's a big block of rooms…um… eight of them. Closest to the north-west corner is two more bedrooms, both opening out into the corridor to the north. We've marked them as Captain's quarters as well, from the size and decorations. To the east of them is a turn off from the northern corridor – and that's got a nice big patterned carpet laid down, covering the entire thing, so we've earmarked that as a likely spot for one of the pressure sensors. That corridor runs south for a couple of metres and stops at a door, and there's also a double door to the east. That goes into a galley-style dining room, perhaps room for a dozen people to eat, maybe more if you get close. The door to the south opens up into a pretty huge living space – they've got a big ass trid and music unit in there, soft seats for maybe twenty people, drink cabinets, a library corner… looks pretty swish."
"In turn, there's another door in the east side of the living room, and that has a maglock on it too, leading into an east-west corridor. On the south side of that corridor are two rooms, one set up like a study, and the other looks like a decent meeting room – we can see a projector and screen, conference phone, and what looks like a high-spec terminal in the corner, along with some network and communications kit. But – on the north side of the corridor, we have a smaller and more personal dining room, and next to that – is the museum. Or what we're calling the museum anyway. It's got a bunch of display cases in, and a bunch of guns, some suits of medieval armour, couple of swords… lots of old stuff. And that has a mag-lock on it as well. The eastern end of the museum and briefing room touches the wall of the corridor running down the eastern side of the church, but we can't see any doorways or accesses on that side – so you have to go through the corridor with the carpet, into the living room, through the security door and then into the east-west corridor – which also has a long carpet laid along it – to get to the museum normally."
"So can't we just climb over the top?" Kai interrupted. "Don't all the walls only go up three metres or something."
"I was getting there – just trying to outline the basic layout. So – we're all clear then, corridors on the west and east side, guards at the bottom, Admiral at the top, living area and museum in the middle. Now… the thing is that while all of these rooms look like they were designed from some kind of modular kit, and they're not built into the church structure, not all of them are open topped. There's a whole bunch of them that have a covered roof. It's transparent, but we're not sure if it's glass, plastic, armour-glass or something else. It's thick enough that it can make looking in a bit tricky, what with the refraction and all, so it's likely to be pretty tough regardless – even if it was just glass panels, it looks thick enough you could walk on it. It covers the Admiral's room and bathroom, the three Captain bedrooms, the study, meeting room and the museum. So all of those, you have to go in through the door – or make a hole somewhere. All the rest are open topped. I'm guessing the kitchen and dining rooms to let them air and to stop them steaming up, and the same with the bathroom – and the living room because of how big it is. I'm a bit surprised the guard room is open – but it does let them probably hear a lot more of what's going on as well."
"Ahh, right. Get it. So, we can see in those rooms, but not get in a bunch of them?"
"Yup, you got it. Now, Marius has done a bang up job of steering the drone round, and we've spotted sensors all over the shop, on little short poles stuck up from the various junctions between the rooms. A lot of the time they won't be on alarm mode because of people being in and moving around – but they'll generate data and logs, for sure. But if everyone leaves for some reason, they can put a fairly solid security net up. The other thing we have, is some pretty good shots of the stuff in the museum. Some of it, we've ID'd already, some we haven't – but I've got the best pictures of the stuff for us to look through, and work out."
Hunter started to work through the images, flicking back and forth between different view-points to help identify the weapons. Some of them it was impossible to determine quite how valuable the item might be without doing things like a serial number check, or some kind of metallurgical testing to reveal some unique characteristic, while others were unique enough in their design or age to have a certain value regardless of anything else. After ten minutes of working through the images and comparing notes though, they had pretty comprehensively identified the weapons and equipment, and Hunter gave a summary.
"So, we have six large cases in the museum, each a solid clear box built on top of a pedestal. We suspect that the boxes are alarmed for vibrations or movement, and possibly weight. We've got our 1911 positively identified, along with a LeMat revolver that also has a built in underbarrel shotgun. There's a Winchester lever action rifle and what we think is one of the original model M1 Garand rifles, a German Luger 9mm pistol, a Thompson submachine gun, and two medium or heavy machine guns, an MG42 and an FG42. All of them are more than a hundred years old and pretty rare, so probably also valuable in their own right. Though, stealing more than the 1911 which is the only one we have a duplicate for, will give up the game straight away."
"I've been thinking about those cases some more." Kai gestured to the large clear tanks. "I've seen stuff like that before in several museums and art collections, and they commonly are held at a negative pressure – for two reasons. One is for security – you have a sensor that will detect the pressure change if anyone opens or breaks into the case and that sets off an alarm. The second is that it helps stabilise the antiques – you give them the ideal atmosphere to preserve the relic or item and keep it's condition good. So, we may need to work around that."
"Interesting. Well, that would explain why they're all on solid plinths. I bet if we examine those we'll find air compressors and stuff built into the base, and feeding into the bottom of the case." Hunter scratched at his chin for a moment. "Oh, and there's another thing. Running around the outside of the church, above the level of the rooms, there's a weird kind of balcony. It's quite high, like four or five metres up, and runs in and out of each of the corner pieces, turning to go along the next wall. When we checked it out, it's not that dusty, so someone clearly goes up there and cleans it every now and again – but we did spot some tracks in there. So someone occasionally goes up there for some reason. It looks like the access to that is a ladder on the outside wall of the guard room, right down in the south-east corner."
"So that gets us up and above the internal wall height and we can look across all the rooms below, but the ones we really want to get into, all have covers anyway?" Aswon asked.
"Yup. There's massive stained-glass windows on all four sides of the church, and they seem to let a lot of light in, which then gets to the rooms below. There's also chandeliers hanging from the roof with electronic bulbs in, shaped to look like old-fashioned candles for night time. But otherwise, it's a lot of big empty space above, especially in the centre. Like, ten metres or more headroom."
"I have an idea." Marius's voice came out of the speaker, transmitted down the tunnel from where he was still monitoring the recon drone. "Tads – to influence and shape the perceptions of a person. Do you need to touch them, or just see them?"
"I can do it by sight."
"Well, if we can get you up and onto the ledge surrounding the church, you should be able to get a line of sight to the Admiral. Can you then just try to control his mind to make him use his key or credentials to unlock the gun, and leave it somewhere we can get at it?"
"That might work – my main problem with that is that he's likely to be very strong-willed. I just can't see a man getting to his position without having to have fought his way through politics and internal fights, to get promoted to where he is. I could try and he might get suspicious about what he's doing because it's counter to how he'd normally act."
"Ok – let's bypass the Admiral for a bit. I presume we can get to the area underneath the museum ok?" Kai looked over to Hunter, who nodded at him. "Right. Tads – could you melt a hole in the roof without letting it collapse then, right under the cables? There's got to be cables, right, going from the pedestal into the computer system, to monitor the alarms and transmit data? So if we can get Marius close to it, and make a hole big enough to get through – can you cut the data line, or tap into it or something, to take the alarms off-line?"
"I should be able to do that. I can shore up the area on either side and reinforce the arches. Yes – I think that should work." Tads nodded firmly, sure that she could manipulate the earth around the position as required.
"I am not sure I could tap in successfully into the cable like that. It would not be easy, even from a good position. Trying to access the cable through a hole would be sub-optimal. However, you have given me an idea. Please wait."
They chatted some more as they examined the layout and the 3d map Hunter had generated, doing some virtual walk-throughs to get a feel for the layout before they even set foot inside the church, while Marius worked on whatever idea he had. They waited nearly fifteen minutes, and Kai was just about to call him when Marius's voice emitted from the speaker once more.
"I have new information. All of the pedestals have trunking, and presumably cabling, going into a conduit that runs around the base of the museum room, leading to the eastern edge. There are cables that also run from the terminal in the meeting room to the south, that appear to run through the trunking in the museum room, and head north. All of those cables go into the utility room, just next to the kitchen."
"So?"
"The cables then run up, and across the top of the kitchen, into the north-east corner, and follow the same path as the water pipes. That is almost certainly the location of the hard-line that leads down to the harbour. But more interestingly, there is a small network router in the bottom of the utility cupboard, that runs up to the top of the wall height, and there is a small directional transmitter there. And that appears to point directly at another small transmitter on the edge of the guard room. I think all of the signals are broadcast from the security sensors via that link, to the guard room – as there are no cables heading overhead that way. It must be a very tight beam-link – possibly a laser – as I'm not picking up any wireless traffic. But that IS a weak point in the design. If we can get me to the utility cupboard, we can connect directly to the network equipment and try to break into the security system using a standard port."
Hunter 'walked' his avatar through the 3d map into the utility room, looking down over the man-sized figure from a 3rd person perspective to see how much room there was.
"If Tads can create a safe hole in the bottom of the floor, Marius can get through to at least waist height, and probably not be visible to the sensors up on the tops of the walls. Or if Tads can get in and squish to the side, she's above and inside the ward, and could cast an illusion over the roof space." Aswon said excitedly, gesturing at the screen. "Once the illusion is up, people can get into the room and stand up, no issue. Marius or Hunter can jack the security system, and look to disable or suppress the alarm then. Once the alarms are shut down or on a loop, we can get out of the door, through the kitchen and round towards the living area, through the locked door and into the museum and swap the pistol over. We'll probably need to mechanically defeat any lock on the case, but with the security offline, we shouldn't have to worry too much about that. Then we can swap the guns over, backtrack and put everything back how it was, and get out of there, with no-one ever knowing we were in. At least not until they check the serial numbers on the gun…"
Kai looked around at Hunter and Tads, waiting for them to nod agreement with the proposed plan, then keyed up the microphone to Marius when he had seen them both signal it was possible.
"Sound good to you, Marius?"
"Ja. I am sure we will encounter some issues along the way, but the plan is basically sound."
"Ok, Tads and Hunter – head down and get to work under the utility room them, let's make us an opening, and we'll go in tonight when everyone has gone to bed and the patrol has just finished. That should give us over ninety minutes as a window to get it done."
Five minutes later, Tads was sat crosslegged on the floor, manipulating mana to form two large support walls extruded from the earth below to support the arched ceiling above her, before she slowly opened a hole in the stones above. The material was tough and resilient – but still no match for her high-force spell, and the rocks melted away slowly as she explored the roof, widening a hole until she could see the floor tiles of the church. She stopped then, leaving a pillar of rock in place to support them, until they were ready to move in.
The team settled in to wait until night and for the inhabitants of the church to settle down and the timing to be right to stage their raid…
