Chapter 51

“You sure it’s alive?” I chuckled, as I observed the ghosin in its cage after the emotionally charged leave-taking ceremony where we’d said farewell to three good friends.

“Oh yes,” she replied with a grin. “Pulsing away nicely on this microwave frequency,” she showed me.

“I can’t even read surface thoughts.”

“Yes, good mental shield, we’re very interested as to how it does it. The only reason Kyra could read it was because it was unconscious, until it healed itself. As soon as it regained consciousness, the shutters came down.”

“Have we tried contacting it?”

“Yes, it won’t respond.”

“Seers?”

“Gave us its physical specs, but say it has locked itself away inside. Probably planning an escape, though it can’t affect the cage with the one-way dampening fields running through the adamantium glass,” Xi shrugged.

“What does it live on?”

“Meat,” she replied before teleporting a haunch of beef into the cage.

For a split second, nothing happened before an appendage shot out, speared the haunch and dragged it into a maw that I could have sworn wasn’t there a few moments before.

“Gruesome,” I shuddered.

“Oh yes, it’s a piece of work alright,” she grinned. “Take it you’re all forgiven now?”

“Yes, Róisín was just pissed I didn’t take her with me when I took it down,” I shrugged with a wry smile.

“Her shotgun would have been useless.”

“That’s what made it mild,” I chuckled. “Bit peed off with the team for not having AP; Kate definitely had some when we took down the eviscerators.”

“Weight, you and Róisín are the only ones with access to higher magic and have access to pocket universes, the rest actually have to lug stuff around physically,” she noted.

“True, but we’re going to work on a few things whilst Roxanne has us stood down. Just glad the Loegrians still had their heavy-duty darts with them or it could have been a lot worse,” I nodded.

“True, very true,” she sighed. “Alice is being sent home, or rather to Loegria, along with her team, for Benjamin to check over.”

“Standard operating procedure now. Council mandated.”

“Yes, though I doubt the Drow survivors need it.”

“Hard to tell, they tend to conceal their feelings from others. But Esira, in an informal setting, can be very passionate on subjects that interest her,” I replied thoughtfully.

“Yes, I heard about your ‘date’ and the Mardi Gras,” she chuckled, watching me blush.

“I don’t talk about things like that, Xi,” I stumbled out, red faced.

“I know, but we lady Mages do,” she laughed as Arwen entered the ‘zoo’ where we kept the creatures we were studying.

“Hi, Xi. I’m here to do a deep scan on the ghosin,” she said with a bright smile.

“Be my guest. It’s for certain I can’t get in there,” Xi chuckled.

“Neither could we at Grmmar, it blocked us totally,” Arwen nodded as she started concentrating on the creature. “Ah...”

“Ah?” I questioned.

“It’s trying to contact its masters, something called patripures, only it can’t figure out where it is or how it’s being blocked,” she shrugged. “It’s a predator, pure and simple, they simply point it at something or place it somewhere and wait.”

“Must have some smarts if it’s trying to report back,” Xi murmured.

“Yes, but limited. Think of it as a beast of war that can take a few limited orders and will report back after a while. It’s also conditioned to leave their soldiers ... they’re called adelshaut, alone, though its instincts are still telling it that they are prey.”

“Wonder if they’re palatable to it,” I mused.

“Probably not, but it would hunt for sport, which is what it was doing with team Alice.”

“Can we remove the conditioning?” Xi asked.

“My sister Seers will look into it. At the moment, no, I don’t think we can.”

“The detectors you sent have been assigned to the various Squad-bosses,” Adept Slaarg reported.

“Good, though what use they’ll be if we cannot kill one of these creatures is anyone’s guess,” Crnnch sighed.

“The Inquisitor also wants to know what happened to the evidence we removed from the temple of the footfall,” Slaarg added nervously.

“I’ll inform him it was overrun by the Vultoqi, but if he wants it, he’s free to go to the area where it was,” Crnnch chuckled.

“But it’s still in our secret storage facility, along with the statue, is it not?”

“Yes. Knowing the Inquisitor, he’d only destroy it,” Crnnch muttered, knowing that the storage facility was regularly visited by his team of Adepts, supposedly for study, but from what his nanite spies told him, they mostly just gazed at the statue.

“Yes, that would be a shame,” Slaarg nodded.

“Any reports on the new enemy?” Crnnch asked.

“No, they appear to have gone to ground after the incident with this ghosin.”

“Probably dissecting it and finding out how to kill one easily,” Crnnch posited.

“It’s what we’d do, so yes, Seeker.”

“I have ordered the TechnoYr’ch to look into new weaponry, deeper penetration, faster cycling and recharge rates,” Crnnch added.

“A good idea, Seeker. A standard grunt weapon is ineffective against the Vultoqi and our beam weapons take too long to recharge.”

“One only hopes they are not going to be silly about it and find ways to avoid it,” Crnnch shrugged, before going over various reports from the front lines.

“I have received a complaint from the TechnoYr’ch that your Seeker threatened their staff and interrupted their production to make these anti-cloaking devices for Grmmar,” the Most High stated at a meeting of the Council.

“As have I,” Takkas added along with several murmurs of confirmation from others.

“A question, revered Archimandrites. Do we wish to explain to Beog how we lost control of Vultoq?” Karkol asked into the silence.

“Sooner or later we must explain to him,” Takkas threw back.

“Then let it at least be at a time when we can prove that we actually have been doing something, rather than having the TechnoYr’ch making trinkets and toys,” Brnnt answered. “Even with this anti-cloaking screen, our grunts and hordes are at an extreme disadvantage; their weapons are all but useless against the psionic screens the enemy use. Now we have reports on ghosin being introduced as well. A creature that does not need to cloak and who is impervious to a grunts weapons,” he added.

“They claim essential maintenance had to be cancelled,” Takkas hit back.

“Has anyone ever seen them doing ‘essential maintenance’?” Karkol asked. “I only ask because until recently the TechnoYr’ch were boasting about how reliable and efficient their products are.”

“I presume they must do some,” Flernos, the Archimandrite in charge of priest training, shrugged.

“As far as I can tell, they direct their drones to do such and the Seeker did not threaten to conscript drones,” Brnnt chuckled.

“Nevertheless, you will instruct your Seeker to stop threatening the TechnoYr’ch,” the Most High ordered.

“And if they refuse to produce the weapons we need in the quantities our hordes require?” Karkol asked archly.

“They have assured me they can and will, once they have designed them.”

“Pah, they assured us they could produce the anti-cloaking devices in the numbers we required too,” Brnnt groused as the two Archimandrites met after the meeting.

“They say one thing and do another,” Karkol chuckled. “Bit like members of our own Council.”

“So, do we tell our Seeker to cease and desist?”

“Of course we do, brother. Whether he chooses to or not is up to him, plus he has that nice shiny new sword to play with now. Worst comes to worst, we shall threaten for him.”

“Yes, brother, indeed we shall.”

“Right, new mission,” Roxanne stated in the morning meeting. “Are all your teams locked and loaded with the armour piercing, explosive cored ammo?”

“Yes, Mage Roxanne,” the three remaining team leaders affirmed.

“Object is to see if we can actually kill a ghosin. Your mortar operator is to lay down a nulled zone and I want you to take out all the ghosin in it. The Seers will have their locations marked for you, but scan for their microwave emissions anyway, it’s possible some might get lost in the confusion.”

“Mazdani and Nosferatu reckon their axe blades can penetrate the armoured hide on them and want to come along,” I added.

“They would, but keep them as a rear guard as I have grave doubts about their belief,” Roxanne chuckled.

“I suspect they’d be able to take out these adelshaut fighters though,” Heimdor added.

“That’s true, so long as they use nulled blades. Oh, Arwen confirms the ghosin can track you by the sound or vibration of your footsteps, so the Loegrians have modified some mortar rounds to vibrate almost supersonically to mask this.”

“Clever,” Naimh commented, getting a grin from Dunon.

“Aye, there are areas where their tech trumps our magic for its ability to work if we’re distracted,” Roxanne agreed.

“Why we don’t use force blades,” I chuckled.

“Aye,” Roxanne grinned. “Now gather your teams and be prepared to bug out if it goes tits up.”

“No backup?” I asked.

“Arch has assembled a team to help with that. Hopefully though we’ve learned a few lessons and can teach them that their ghosin are not a solution to us.”

“They’ll probably try something else,” I shrugged.

“Aye, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Ghosin is marked for you,” Lagertha stated, showing us a mental image of what to ordinary vision would be a large fallen chunk of concrete.