50. Raid
50 – Raid
The home was quiet, and for the first time, Hector wondered whether Tacitianus had a family. It seemed like something he ought to have found out before planning to invade the man’s home and kill him, but for some reason, he’d always pictured the magistrate alone—with his mercs, sure, but not with a spouse or children. Nobody had mentioned any others, so he was hopeful; maybe he’d be lucky. Maybe Tacitianus was a bachelor, too busy with his climb to power to concern himself with family.
//There are no public records indicating Magistrate Tacitianus had any local family members.//
Of course Evie had been listening to his thoughts, stressed as he was. Even so, Hector’s dumb luck didn’t make him feel better about his lack of foresight. Had his laser focus on delivering justice to the backwater noble become a distraction? An obsession?
Lights flickered away from the foyer, past an open living space, down a distant hallway. Hector crouched behind a bureau, watching, forcing his mind away from stray speculation and into the present moment.
The lights were near the baseboards—automated nightlights that illuminated the darkened hall when someone approached. Tacitianus or somebody else was moving around down there. Hector didn’t think he’d alerted anyone by opening the door and entering; hadn’t the guards been moving around? The room before him was dim, a single pale-yellow light illuminating a glass table and chairs, a couch arrangement, and an arched opening to a kitchen. Hector padded across it to the hallway where he’d seen movement.
He wished he had a team operating with him—someone on comms to reassure him he’d taken out all the security personnel. Someone with eyes on the security feed who could tell him what Tacitianus was doing. He didn’t, though. He had to fall back on his instincts, and luckily, his instincts were good. Hector was a predator—always had been. He found the switch to the motion lights and turned it off, then he moved quickly up the hall, stepping into the first darkened doorway as he scanned ahead.
Lights illuminated a pair of glass-inlaid doors, and he could see wooden furniture beyond them. The natural wood made him think of a study. A shadow moved on the wall, and he knew someone was there, moving around in front of the light source. He spared a glance over his shoulder to fill in his mental map of the residence. He was in a laundry room. Dark appliances lurked in the shadows. A washbasin held a mop. Hector turned back to the hallway and crept up to the next corner.
From that vantage he could see more of the study. A polished wooden table filled the center of the room, with matching chairs on either side. The lamp in the corner illuminated the man throwing the shadows. He was sitting at the far end of the table, tapping away at a crystal-glass tablet, pausing periodically to scribble on a paper notepad.
He was middle-aged with steel-gray hair, a delicate mustache that traced the boundaries of his chin, and sharp, golden-brown eyes. He wore a silken blue housecoat, and Hector didn’t miss the glass of amber liquor on the table, nor the half-empty crystal decanter.
//That man matches images on the net of Magistrate Tacitianus.//
Hector knew better than to hesitate when the clock was ticking. He glanced left and right, ensured there were no unexpected bodyguards lurking nearby, then he strode forward and opened the right-hand door to the meeting room. It was a flimsy thing, that door, and it rattled noisily as he pulled it wide.
Tacitianus looked up, scowling. “I said I was busy—” His words died on his tongue as he took in Hector and the pistol he had leveled on him. “So. You surprise me, Paul. Is this how you repay my generosity?”
Something impulsive took control of Hector’s tongue, and he played along. “You’ve been trying to kill me—my sister, too.”
“You stole something valuable. You ran. You’d have me allow such an affront?”
Hector noted how his right-hand index finger was rapidly tapping away on his tablet. “You won’t get any help from your mercs.”
Tacitianus tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, and pushed his chair back. “You’re not Paul, are you?”
Hector inclined his head. He should have shot him already, but something kept his finger off the trigger. Maybe he wanted more information. Maybe some part of him wanted to confirm that he was corrupt. “Seems you ought to know that your men killed him.”
“Well, they reported success, but then you appeared in Helio. So, they were right? The locals sold the body? Who are you? You know I’m not just a magistrate, yes? I’m a Royal.”
Hector could see his eyes darting left and right as he spoke—a cornered animal looking for a place to bolt. He gestured with the pistol. “Sit still. I’m not sure I’d call myself a Royal if my blood were as diluted as yours.”
“So you know me, then? Someone with a vendetta? Someone from Tharsis? The university? Maybe not…” He narrowed his eyes, shaking his head. “Maybe not one of my old enemies, but rather someone looking to cash in with one of them. Listen, whoever you are inside Paul’s old skull, I can pay double whatever they’re offering you. You’d be making a powerful ally. This—” He gestured around the room, toward the nearby window, likely indicating the mine or Redwick Station. “—is just a stepping stone. I’ve connections in the Valley; a position is opening for me soon in one of the old cities.”
The man’s words did nothing to soothe the roiling anger, the disgust, in Hector’s gut. They only reminded him of the Royals’ games. The way they scratched each other’s backs and how the people they viewed as lesser were just pawns—disposable, especially if they had the nerve to upset the natural order. He moved his finger to the trigger of his pistol. “What did Paul take that made you forget his years of service? What was it that warranted his death—his sister’s?”
Tacitianus hadn’t noticed the new placement of Hector’s finger. He didn’t understand the significance of it; Hector wouldn’t put his finger on the trigger unless he meant to shoot. That said, it wasn’t surprising when the man snorted dismissively. “The truth is, I’m not sure. It was an auction item—a vacuum-stasis cargo casket from a Chen Dynasty-era frigate. Some salvagers pulled it out of a slowly degrading Venus orbit and sold off the contents, sight unseen.”
Hector stared. He felt something hot in his chest, and his vision darkened as tunnel walls closed in, and all he could focus on was Tacitianus’s smug face. He really didn’t think Hector would shoot, that his status, his wealth, or his blood could get him out of any mess. Hector pulled the trigger.
The gun barked, and his aim was good—the bullet would have hit Tacitianus dead center of his forehead. It would have, but for some reason it stopped just centimeters from the magistrate’s flesh. It stopped so suddenly that the spinning projectile, notched to split into a dozen needles inside a person’s body, came apart and seemed to peel away against an invisible barrier. The bullet fragments curled up as they drove against that unseen force and then fell to the ground in a series of soft thuds.
Hector was only dumbfounded for a split second. He pulled the trigger five more times, moving his aim up and down his target’s torso and face, hoping that the first bullet’s failure had been a fluke. It wasn’t. None of the rounds hit home, and after the echoes of the reports faded, Hector heard a low-pitched hum and saw the white-hot glow of Tacitianus’s bracelet. Son of a bitch has a gravity mantle.
The magistrate barked a laugh, surging to his feet. The table still separated them, but Hector could see the heat waves rolling off the silver cuff on his wrist as he waved it in front of him. “You think some lowly assassin’s bullets are any threat to a man like me?” Suddenly his body erupted in a steady amber glow—an aura—and his eyes lit up with the same intense light. “Time for you to learn your place, hired gun.”
Hector’s mind reeled. He couldn’t care less about the man’s aura, but the mantle… He’d seen them before, but only a handful, and always on high-value members of the Great Houses. Drake had worn one—the only relic like it in the Conti family. That Tacitianus possessed one was staggering; it was as rare as a fold-enabled starship. The thing was lost-tech—pre-empire, and leagues beyond modern gravity systems.
His pistol was useless. The mantle bent space itself just centimeters from the man’s flesh. When Hector’s bullets hit the field, it tore them apart, stripping their momentum into heat. Mantles had their limits, though; they might stop bullets, but an Aura Blade was another matter.
So, though he was surprised, Hector only let it throw him off for a split second. As Tacitianus bloomed with his amber glow, Hector lit up almost simultaneously. His fiery crimson aura flowed into his left fist, and his gleaming, glass-like blade appeared, hot aura steam drifting from the edge. He bunched his legs, prepared to leap over the table at the magistrate—
And then a rift tore open in the air above the table and birthed a nightmare.
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Summoner! Hector would have spat the word if he weren’t dodging for his life as the creature, a spine thrasher, landed on the table and whipped its spiked tail at him. Blade-like spines ripped through the air, shattering the doors behind him and punching into the walls beyond. As he hit the ground, Hector opened his left hand and let his Aura Blade disappear in a cloud of crimson vapor; no sense wasting the aura keeping it. At the same time, he rolled over his shoulder and took aim at the creature, yanking his finger against the trigger.
Spine thrashers were rift creatures, and they varied greatly in size. This one was somewhere between a big dog and a pony—a quadruped with meter-long legs that ended in ten-centimeter, scythe-like claws. Its tail gave it another two meters, but its head, something akin to an anteater’s, made it longer still. If it were just the creature’s red, leathery flesh Hector had to contend with, his first few shots would have done the trick. The spine thrasher was armored, though—octagonal plates not unlike a turtle’s shell covered its torso.
In a rare stroke of luck, the gun Hector had snagged happened to be loaded with the perfect ammo for a spine thrasher; the shredder rounds broke apart on the armor plates, and the needle-like fragments slid along the hard surface to the gaps between and dug into the creature’s flesh. It bucked and screamed—a high-pitched trumpet sound from its long, slender snout. As it reared, the tail whipped again, and Hector rolled under the table, narrowly avoiding being impaled.
On his back, he pointed the gun at the tabletop and fired ten more shots, showering himself with splinters as the shredder rounds tore the wood apart. They ripped through, punching up into the creature; he knew so because it screamed in agony—another ear-piercing, otherworldly howl. Meanwhile, Hector flipped onto his stomach and crawled toward the far end of the table where Tacitianus had been sitting.
The man was gone, but a bookcase swung closed off to his left, telling Hector where he’d gone. A thud behind him meant the spine thrasher had jumped off the table—or fallen, he hoped. Under the far end of the table by then, Hector surged upward with a grunt, flipping the table over. The rift creature hissed, and he heard the tail whip in time to jump to the side as those blade-like, bony spikes ripped through the wood. The table was ruined, and the top half broke off as the creature withdrew its tail.
Hector barely noticed; he’d taken sight on the spine thrasher again and was pumping round after round into it. Now that it was on the ground, and he had it from a side angle, he took more careful aim, directing his rounds into the narrow gap between the armor plates on its neck and shoulder. Several shots hit home before it flailed in a thrashing eruption of death throes, flinging the rest of its spines heedlessly around the room.
Hector hit the deck, but not before one of them punched into the dense mesh of his vest, right above his armored chest plate, sinking several centimeters into his flesh. The spine protruded proudly, just beneath his collarbone. It hurt like hell, but he left it where it was; Hector knew all too well that it was barbed, and that it would worsen the damage if he yanked it out.
With a last glance at the dead rift creature, he grabbed the bookcase, still slightly ajar, and yanked it open, revealing a dimly lit stairwell leading down. The steps were hardwood, the lighting more moody than practical, and Hector knew he was probably descending into some sort of wine-cellar or cigar room—not a bunker.
He looked at his pistol; the ammo counter on the top of the grip was down to one bar, flashing red. Hector wasn’t familiar with that exact model, but he figured that meant he had less than five rounds in the mag. Frowning, he put the gun in his left hand; he didn’t think he’d use it, but it might draw Tacitianus’s attention. Meanwhile, his right hand would be free.
The staircase wound down in a spiral, but only twice before he came to the end, stepping down onto polished wooden floors. The walls, too, were paneled in wood; the lighting was soft, yellow, and pleasant, and his quarry was there, fumbling with the biometric panel on a large, metallic door.
Hector sprinted for him, but Tacitianus spun, his body flaring with his amber aura again. “Stop!” he cried. “Stop, or I’ll summon another!” His eyes were wild, wide, and blood-shot. His perfectly coiffed gray hair was mussed, and he looked mad and desperate. Those were clues, but the blood dribbling from his left nostril was the nail in the coffin.
“You can’t,” Hector said, lowering his gun and striding forward. Three meters separated them.
“I can!”
“You’ll kill yourself if you try. That one up there was too much. Your pathways are fried—aura overload.”
“I have other talents! I could—”
Hector had heard enough. He wasn’t going to let the man think of something—some trick or desperate last play. He’d already taken too much time with him. As the magistrate spoke, he leaped, blooming with crimson flames that flowed into his fist. By the time he came down, his right hand held his gleaming Aura Blade, and he drove it into Tacitianus’s chest, dragging it down, cleanly severing his ribs and bisecting his heart.
Hector stepped back, released his blade, and watched it evaporate, a tendril of crimson steam that matched the thick flow of blood pumping out of the hole he’d made in his enemy’s chest. Tacitianus held up his left wrist, looking at his bracelet with stupefaction.
“Won’t work on aura weapons. You should know that.”
The man opened his mouth, and Hector watched as his jaw worked, his throat bobbed, trying to form words that wouldn’t come. His face lost its color, draining to gray, and then he collapsed, a single gurgling wheeze marking his passing. Hector stepped forward and tugged his head away from the metal door, feeling at the base of his neck to see if he had a neurodeck. He did.
“Sorry, asshole, but this death’s final.” Hector pointed the pistol at the deck port and fired three rounds into it. He would have shot more, but the slide locked back; the pistol was dry. It didn’t matter; the shots had been direct hits—one would have sufficed.
He could feel the potentia in the body; it was eager to break free, to drift into whatever strange space it occupied between universes. His heart rate quickened and his mouth filled with saliva as he stooped to press his hand against the man’s chest—the side that wasn’t carved open. He barely had to think the command before his aura system began to churn, drawing the potentia out of the corpse.
//23 potentia gathered. Potentia available: 47.//
Hector gasped, bracing himself against the metal door, waiting for the tremors to subside before he straightened and looked around the room, ensuring he hadn’t missed anything. It was empty—just a long, wide antechamber for whatever was beyond that metal door. Bolt hole? Safe room? Armory? It didn’t matter; Hector didn’t have time to play around, and he already had one prize to figure out.
He bent to pick up the dead magistrate’s left hand, peering at the silvery bracelet. He could see it was a snug fit, and he knew it probably had tiny needle-like tines imbedded into the flesh—all the way to the bone. Evie, how likely is this thing to be traced?
//It depends on how Tacitianus came to have it. I’d say extremely likely, however. It’s also almost certainly DNA locked to him.//
That can be dealt with—later.
Hector stuffed his pistol into a cargo pocket on his vest, then he summoned his aura blade and neatly severed Tacitianus’s wrist. He cut it just above the bracelet, then, for good measure, he cut off the hand, letting it fall to the ground beside the corpse. Gripping the gravity mantle—and the chunk of Tacitianus’s arm inside it—he turned and ran up the stairs. He tore through the house, sprinting past the wreckage of the study and the large, alien corpse of the spine thrasher.
He ran down the hall, through the living room and into the kitchen, where he grabbed a hand towel and used it to open cupboards until he found what he’d been looking for: food storage materials. Tacitianus was rich; he likely had a personal chef, or at least a housekeeper who did his ordering. The cabinet was immaculate, with plastic containers in orderly rows, plastic bags, and the bigger prize: foil wrap. He yanked off a meter of foil and wrapped it into a ball around the gravity mantle, then he stuck the wad into a plastic container, sealing the top.
Prize in hand, he carefully closed the cabinet, and he would have put the towel back, but he’d gotten blood on it. He tucked it into his vest and ran for the front door. When he reached the gate, he paused to remove the zip ties from the still-dead mercs—apparently no high-end nanites for them. He wiped the pistol down and folded a merc’s hand around the grip. He doubted they’d think the mercs killed Tacitianus, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to confuse matters.
Glancing at his timer, he saw he still had seven minutes, so he tried to remain calm and careful. He tucked the zip-ties into a pocket and jogged to the security barrier, skirting the gate and the deactivated synths. All the while, the spine in his chest burned, and he bled into his shirt and vest. He was fairly sure that was the only place he’d been bleeding, though. He’d paused several times to look at the ground at his feet and behind him; he didn’t see any droplets.
When he reached Opal, the security synth that had been guiding him, Hector carried his plastic container, and the priceless treasure within, into the woods behind the bench where Opal sat. Evie, pay attention to where I’m going.
//Noting your exact movements.//
After ten steps, Hector found a large pine tree and, at its base, he used his Aura Blade to carve a section of the trunk away. He stuffed the food container into the hollow, then he packed mulch over the opening, smoothing the ground out to hide what he’d done. We’ll come back for this when things aren’t so hot.
//Position noted.//
Hector walked away from the buried treasure, careful not to disturb the ground or smash any small plants. He wasn’t sure his shielding would work to conceal the gravity mantle, but he figured it would be better for someone to find it in that tree than on him. If Tacitianus had a benefactor from one of the Great Houses, Hector wasn’t ready for that kind of fight—yet. There was no hurry for him to get it, either; it would take a special kind of expert to disable any tracking and re-tune the DNA lock. That kind of expertise wouldn’t come cheaply, and it would also require trust.
He had less than two minutes by the time he returned to Opal and his duffel bag. Gingerly, he gripped the top of the spine sticking out of his chest, holding it steady as he, once again, summoned his Aura Blade. Wincing against the pain, he pushed the hot, razor-sharp blade along the spine, into his chest, widening the surrounding hole. The Aura Blade was so sharp that all he felt was the heat of it. He held his breath as he pushed, then, when he was sure he’d pushed it down the full length of the spine, he released it, letting it fade into hot aura vapor.
Inhaling sharply, he pulled the spine, and it came free with an audible suction pop. Hector put the bloody thing into his duffel, then he shrugged out of his tattered armored vest and stuffed it into the duffel, too. That done, he wadded up the towel he’d stolen from Tacitianus and tucked it under his coveralls, pressing it against his wound.
He stood there, applying pressure, trying to calm his breathing as he watched Opal. He was sweaty, and he was sure his security overalls were stained, but all in all, Hector was feeling pretty good about the outcome of his little raid. His mind was buzzing; a thousand thoughts vied for his attention, but he forced them into the background. He was still mission-focused; there’d be time for second-guessing, doubts, and feelings later.
Now, if only Janus doesn’t double-cross me somehow.