Chapter 13

It was, other than the investigation into the Observers, a pleasant break and I caught up with all my loves and enjoyed a lot of quality time with them. However, all good things come to an end and we found ourselves back on Nansack whilst those who had remained, including the two Seers, took their week’s break. However, as we had Julia ‘inspecting’ us along with Seers Olwen and Mingxia it wasn’t a burden, particularly as we still had Arwen carrying out her duties as temporary Seer.

That Arwen was part of the Seer gestalt was unusual. She’d more or less been part of it since the age of two, yet she wasn’t a Seer, if proficient at doing a lot of things only Seers were capable of. She kind of held a halfway-house position and had been permitted, by her parents; to follow her own path since her eighth year when they realised there was no easy way to stop her from doing exactly as she wished. That’s not to say she was a spoiled brat; she was generally good natured, tolerant of others’ views, mature beyond her years (I suspect being part of the Seer gestalt brought that about) yet capable of being manipulative to the extent of, if you weren’t looking for it, you found yourself doing what she wanted without thinking. However as this was not normally to anyone’s disadvantage I normally let it pass if I caught her doing it to me or my wives. Yes, she knew I’d caught her, but other than Morgana and her mother, I suspect no one else had, certainly Callum hadn’t.

As things stood, Verenestra intended to stand down as Queen of the Fae on Arwen’s twenty-fifth birthday and Arwen would be Queen, though Callum would not be king, only the consort, as Arwen’s father Mage William was to her mother. Knowing this, Arwen had begun a charm offensive of the various Mage Councils, including the non-human realms of the allied Earths, and had garnered support to be recognised as the supreme authority of the alliance in a similar manner as to how her mother was accepted. Hence, on her enthronement, the head of each Council of each world would be represented, an event unheard of in the history of magic. Yes, when it came to getting exactly what she wanted, Arwen was a force of nature.

Thus her current work with Athena was to do with coming up with a way to free the Higher Powers of Nansack from the stasis the Orcs had put them under. Yes, we had a plan (sort of) to get into the meteor chamber, however careful work by Athena, backed up by Arwen, had revealed that the meteor itself was shielded in a manner that Null would not bring down, nor explosives affect.

“You’d think they’d run into this problem before,” I chuckled as we went over the various pieces of data that the Seers and Athena had uncovered.

“It’s most likely, John. It’s certainly something a religion with ties to the Powers would try to do,” Athena acknowledged.

“I believe we need the data from the Æsir and Craebh Ruadh on the nature of Orc shields,” Arwen added.

“Looks like it, otherwise it’s a suicide mission and we aren’t ready for one of those yet,” I nodded.

“I could break it, but the radiation it’s giving off would cook me and anyone else come to that. How the Orcs are immune to it I don’t know as it doesn’t appear to be theurgical,” Athena stated as she went through a series of mental scans and calculations.

“Well, there’s no immediate hurry as Roxanne wants us to capture a waarg and an eviscerator for transport back to the Loegrian side base.”

“You will be careful, Uncle John?” Arwen replied.

“Definitely, my last encounter with an eviscerator was far too close for comfort.”

My team were ready when I reported in to Roxanne that we were prepped to go hunting. She and Arch had been monitoring Orc patrols and movements and had picked out an ambush site for a waarg pack whilst the medic Mages had come up with what they hoped was a knock out dart to enable us to transport one for a deep study, rather than just a scan.

“It’s been noted that Orc patrols now have two waargs with them after the ‘Betsy’ incident. They drop them off to do a quick scout before returning to do their own patrol. We believe we can grab at least one waarg when they do this if we take a sled out after the initial drop off,” Roxanne explained.

“Take it the Seers are going to block all transmissions?” I asked.

“Aye, you should have an hour before their paranoia at a non-reply kicks in.”

“Do we have a good spot for the ambush?”

“If they keep to the same pattern, and we haven’t seen any deviations yet, they’ll be patrolling or scouting out the Rhine valley. So, choose a good spot and get me a waarg.”

“It shall be done, oh glorious leader,” I chuckled.

“I can always promote Clara if you can’t behave, you young rascal,” she replied with a grin.

“Ooh, yes please!” Clara gave a delighted cry.

“Fine, you do the paperwork,” I chuckled.

“On second thoughts...”

“Thought not, let’s go waarg hunting and hope we don’t end up the ones being hunted.”

We swiftly portalled to a site where it was believed an Orc patrol would turn up and set about digging hides and getting the Loegrian snipers into place. All my squad were toting tranquilizer guns as well as our normal array of lethal weapons as we prepared for what we believed would be the easier of our two tasks.

“Detecting a sled headed our way,” Kate announced.

“Prepare,” I stated as well as sending it out mentally to the two Loegrian snipers.

The site we’d chosen was big enough to permit a sled to land and drop off the waargs and the Orcs had so far been nothing but predictable in choosing similar sites. Again, things initially went to plan as the sled dipped and dropped off two waargs who immediately began to sniff around as the sled lifted off vertically. We then waited for the waargs to clear the area where we believed the sled would come down before I sent off a mental ‘Now!’.

It was a perfect shot from the Loegrian rail gun, smashing through the lightly armoured brain case of the sled and penetrating the gravity vortex generator causing it to implode dragging the occupants into a powerful gravity zone which killed them swiftly and then cut out dropping a highly compressed mass of metal and mashed organic parts to the ground.

The waargs of course were startled, but after a minute or so restarted their scouting and picked up the unmasked trail Clara had released mentally.

‘True to form, ‘ I mentally murmured to all. ‘Blindly follow a set of orders unless newer orders are given.’

‘Only at the lower levels, we believe, ‘ Xi replied.

‘True.‘

‘Here they come, ‘ Kate warned.

‘Blocking all channels, ‘ Clara added.

‘Take them down!‘ I ordered.

There were a couple of sharp cracks as our Drow component used their specially adapted tranquiliser guns (no iron or steel parts), causing the waargs to jump and turn to detect where the sounds had come from and, presumably, what had stung them. The Drow were however well cloaked and at some distance from the creatures and by the time the waargs had figured where they might be they were distinctly wobbly on their legs.

Two minutes later they were down and out for the count as we signalled Arwen, who was on duty that afternoon, to portal us out to the base and a couple of very heavy duty cages we had ready for the waargs were waiting.

“Easy peasy,” I commented to Roxanne as she approached to get her first non-mental view of a waarg.

“Aye, I wasn’t expecting any bother from their hunting dog variations. The eviscerator though ... well that’s a whole different kettle of fish,” she replied. “Smelly articles, aren’t they?” she added.

“Oh yes, distinctly fragrant,” I chuckled.

“We’re ready to send them through to the Loegrian path side,” Arwen said once the cages were secure.

“Off with the beasties then. I’m sure Olwen and Mingxia are keen to do a deep scan where they can’t be interrupted,” Roxanne acknowledged as the hidden portal opened and the cage was levitated through.

“Anything on a roaming eviscerator?” I asked Arwen.

“Not yet, John. They’re pretty hard to detect when they don’t want to be detected and my sister Seers suspect they have been ... ordered to keep hidden,” she replied thoughtfully.

“Yes, I get the feeling the Orcs don’t like to lose one, unlike a waarg,” I nodded.

“Possibly, it might just be the creatures’ natural caution after the first incidents.”

“True, they do communicate amongst each other according to Xi, though it’s more a radio transmission, not a mental one.”

“Anyway, when I spot one, you’ll be the second to know, after Roxanne.”

“OK,” I acknowledged and then went off to clean up and grab something to eat.

“They attacked a sled? That’s not exactly unusual,” Crnnch said with a frown as his analyst staff brought the morning report.

“They attacked it after it dropped the waargs off, Adept. There is no sign of the waargs,” came the reply.

“Interesting, I suspect they are trying to learn about us from our creatures,” he nodded thoughtfully.

“That appears to be the case, Adept, and they can clearly block our transmissions too ... at least at the lower levels.”

“Perhaps we can set a trap; it’s most likely they will go after a psionic eviscerator. Perhaps we should give them the opportunity to find one.”

“We’ve found traces of an eviscerator patrolling in this area here,” Roxanne announced several days later. “We don’t have an exact spot, but I want your squad to take a look as it’s behaving a bit strangely in that we keep detecting it. Take extra care; ensure that this isn’t some sort of trap and that there isn’t more than the one eviscerator in the area.”

“Or an entire hidden horde,” I chuckled by way of acknowledgement.

“That too,” she replied with a grin.

“There was some activity there a couple of a day ago,” Seer Olwen stated. “However, we do not know what, hence the need for extreme caution. I do not believe the Orcs realise just how widely we scan and this may just give us a small advantage here.”