Shedding the Demon (15 page)

They met at the Woodall’s one hour later, and they all
agreed to disappear the following morning. If they waited any longer, they
could run into trouble, and if they didn’t coordinate their actions, it could
leave some of them exposed. They also agreed to contact each other in two weeks.
If anyone missed the rendezvous, the others would stay hidden for another two
weeks and repeat the process. Steve and Ted would do their best to track down
anyone that was missing, but otherwise no overt moves could be risked.

 

**** ****

 

Once everyone had left, Lauren turned
to Kevin and asked “Do you seriously intend to take the children out of school
and go into
hiding
?”

Kevin drew his mouth into a thin line. He knew that there
was probably good evidence of danger, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe
that it was true. It had been so long since they had been involved in anything.
His life was completely different now with the kids in the picture. Picking up
and disappearing was easy before, but now everything was more complicated.

“The kids make it more difficult, yes, but don’t they also
make it more
important
to stay safe?”

Lauren made a disgusted sound before responding, “We weren’t
real
revolutionaries! We talked about it a lot, but we were mostly pretenders
back in the day! We can’t just uproot and start over. I won’t do it.”

Kevin closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “I can’t argue
with that, but we don’t know what Joann brought down on us.”

Lauren snorted “Yeah,
her
again! She was trouble back
then, even before she ran off to become some big-shot scientist working for the
Council. And now she comes waltzing back into our lives dragging her demons
with her.

“I’m not running away. I’m staying here and living my
everyday normal life. You do whatever you want.” Her anger melted away into
crying, she sat down and put her face in her hands, her shoulders spasming with
quiet sobs.

Unsure of what else to do, Kevin sat next to her, put his
arms around her and whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry, we’ll stay together and
we’ll be fine.”

 

**** ****

 

“This mission is a little more serious,” Gregor stated with
no inflection whatsoever.

After the debacle of his first mission, Damon had been given
a few very simple tasks to accomplish. He assumed that the Council was trying
to bolster his confidence by giving him easy targets.

“It’s an assassination again, although much easier than the first
one.”

Damon felt that he was trying too hard not to sound
accusatory. Damon decided not to call him on it, but to simply appreciate the
gesture instead.

“How so? No rail guns I hope!”

Gregor made a small sound that could possibly have been a
laugh. “The target is a popular movement driven by the personality and charisma
of the leader. Her name is Colina Correale, and she has fermented an uprising
based solely upon her speeches beseeching people to leave Kyndraism and follow
her. You won’t find any subterfuge and hypocrisy here, she doesn’t dip into the
donations to buy personal items like . . . say . . . an over-sized
luxury personal spacecraft, for instance.”

A tremor of fear ran through Damon, but he realized he realized
he couldn’t deny it. “So you know about that, do you?”

“Really? That ship is too big and too special to avoid
notice. It is probably the
worst
possible way to travel. I don’t care if
you keep it as your home base, but you can’t move around in it. The amount of
interest it draws is significant. Even if people are only curious, they may
decide to track
you
as well. And that, I’m sure I don’t need to tell
you, would be bad.”

Damon wasn’t really sure how to respond. Gregor obviously
knew much more than he imagined, and his secretive commandeering of
The
Abyss
was not nearly as secret as he imagined. Once again he realized how
little he actually knew about the people and situation surrounding him. He felt
overmatched and out of his league.
I really do need to get some help,
he
realized.

Gregor proceeded with the mission briefing. He explained
that while the target was not militant, the Council suspected that there would
be hidden weapons, stockpiled supplies, and other valuable intelligence to be
found. They wanted Damon to take out Correale, but they also wanted him to find
out as much information as possible. Once Gregor finished the briefing, Damon
thanked him for the intelligence and initiated radio silence.

The target location was much different than anything he had
experienced previously. All of his life he dealt with cities in various states
of disrepair, but today’s objective was a sprawling ranch in the middle of
nowhere. Damon approached in the middle of the night since he was nervous about
the setting and the darkness would give him an advantage. His sensors and HUD
provided vision that was comparable to midday, so the darkness had no effect on
him.

Traveling at an enhanced jog, he made a circuit outside of
the ranch perimeter in a little less than an hour, scanning with passive
sensors and low-power actives. Much to his surprise he did not find any
evidence of weapons emplacements and only a handful of lightly-armed guards. He
also found a slightly raised area with a commanding view over all of the
buildings on the ranch. Timing his movements easily between the guard patrols,
he moved in closer and positioned himself on the higher ground where he could
observe the largest building near the center of the compound.

It didn’t take long for his target to show up in one of the
rooms in the main house. She was easily visible through a large picture window,
and made no effort to conceal herself.
Too easy,
Damon thought to
himself and a familiar voice came to mind.

 

 

With the memory of his first mission
still too fresh in his mind, Damon decided he would approach this one as if he
didn’t have armor at all.

He checked the positions of the guards, confirmed that they had
not altered their routes or times, and tried to find the anomaly.
There must
be something I’m missing
. He retraced his path around the ranch, slower
this time, trying to find something different or unusual. The only thing he
found that he missed on his first transit were two bunkers on either side of
the access road armed with ancient large-caliber, rapid-fire slug guns. He had missed
them initially since they weren’t manned, and now he wondered if this rebellion
could truly be this amateurish.

Something’s not adding up here.
He couldn’t shake his
misgivings, but he truly had no choice but to trust what he was seeing. His
doubts about the opposition changed to doubts about his orders.
Why would
they use me to take out such a soft target?
He wondered,
unless it’s
simply a reaction to my performance on the first mission.
This idea made
sense, but he could not convince himself that it accounted for everything he
observed.

Moving carefully back to his best vantage point, he found
that more people had entered the main room, but his target was still easily
visible.
They asked for quick and quiet, I’ll give them exactly that.

He deployed a targeting laser from his left wrist, and trained
it on Correale. The laser was invisible and provided valuable feedback to his
targeting system.

He extracted a second laser from his left wrist, this one
called the Assassin. It was a long-range, single shot weapon that delivered a
high-powered pulse to the target. Rarely useful since it took a long time to charge
and required the targeting laser, Damon felt it was the perfect option in this
particular case. Once deployed, it automatically integrated with the targeting
laser and practically guaranteed a perfect strike.

He only had to wait a minute until Correale was in a
favorable position. Once it appeared that she would stand still for a few
moments, he took the shot.

The invisible beam made no sound, covered the distance
instantaneously, passed through the window without any evidence and burned a
neat half-inch hole completely through Correale’s skull and into the wall ten
feet beyond her. Immediately, and for no apparent reason to those around her,
she crumpled to the floor. The intense heat of the laser cauterized the wound leaving
no telltale blood and the occupants of the room were thrown into panicked
disarray when they discovered the neatly-cut hole in her head.

No alarms sounded, and Damon wondered again about the
rationale behind taking out this particular target. He kept hearing the voice
of Shrigauri Krych saying “pawn, pawn,” over and over. After only a few seconds
of indecision, he devised his best escape route and started following it to the
rendezvous point.

Once he reached a safe distance, he contacted Gregor by
sending the data packet from the mission, he did not speak directly to the man.
For obvious reasons, it took Gregor only seconds to evaluate the mission log
and exclaim “What? You’re leaving?”

“Yup.”

“But all you did was kill her! What about intelligence, what
about weapons and equipment?” Gregor was incredulous.

“I reconnoitered the site; there were no stockpiles and no
weapons. I think your information was wrong. I took out the target, which in my
opinion was the only viable objective.”

Gregor sighed, “I’ll take this to the Council. I’ll tell
them you were unable to find anything useful and we consider this uprising
terminated.”

 

**** ****

 

“He finished the mission, in any case,” Jeffrey Allen stated
matter-of-factly, “but I would hardly call it a success.”

“Did he kill Correale?” Renard asked harshly, unable to
contain his irritation.

“Well, yes, but he didn’t get any intel on their activities,
members, or weapons.”

“Does it matter? She’s dead, and we both know that they were
poorly armed anyway.” Renard didn’t want to quibble over the details of levels
of mission success. He and Jeffrey had argued over this latest mission plan,
and Renard was tired of the subject.

“Most importantly,” he continued in a gentler tone, “are the
missionaries in place?”

“Absolutely, they are ready to help Correale’s followers
with their grief and fill the new void in their lives with Kyndra,” Jeffrey
replied.

“Then we could consider this a success,” Renard concluded.

“I suppose so, but I wish he’d gotten more.” Jeffrey looked
at Renard and a small smile crept onto his face. “Are you becoming a Demon
supporter?”

“No.” He smiled despite himself. “Not exactly. The idea
behind the Demon program is a good one, since it eliminates threats to the
Council— actually the whole Consensus—without full-scale military involvement.
In fact, it works against the Pryke style of control, and I like that a lot. Being
able to take out specific targets covertly makes it the perfect tool.”

“Then why—?” Jeffrey started, but Renard continued before he
finished the question.

“Because we can’t control it. The Demon himself is outside
of our direct control and we have only diplomatic influence over the mission
targets. Sure, we got what we wanted on this one, but look at how hard it was
to get the others to agree. If we lose any Council influence to Pryke, he’ll
gain greater control of the Demon and use it as his own personal army. The idea
of covert surgical strikes will be gone, and the Demon will become a public
symbol of terror instead of a secret weapon of peace. And you know Esme
Burdekin is already in his pocket. All it takes is a little waver from Stacey
Magourik and everything tips his way.

“We need something else, something that I can control and
direct myself, only then will I feel comfortable.” He paused, and all traces of
humor left his face before he added, “Something that can take out the Demon.”

Jeffrey nodded. “We have the team working on new weapons, and
they’re making good progress, but I firmly believe that Dr. Baksa is the only
person who can come up with a sure way to stop the Demon.”

Renard sighed, “I know, but will she do it? And how do I ask
her? This is her life’s work.”

Jeffrey’s screen beeped and he looked down at it. His eyes
widened and he said, “Well, we know one thing, she met with Pryke and felt the
need to leave in a big hurry. Alexander scrambled warships to intercept her and
two of ours had to come out of hiding to cover her escape.”

Renard stood up and asked with genuine worry in his voice, “Where
is she now, is she safe?”

“She got away, but we lost her in the tunnel. No idea where
she is currently, but she’ll turn up. She’ll probably come to us.”

 “What was that bastard up to? Trying to kidnap her
. . . or worse.” Renard clenched his jaw as the anger built inside
him, “Can we take him out?”

“Who? Pryke? Are you serious?” Jeffrey’s voice betrayed
amusement which only angered Renard even more.

“DEADLY serious. Cut the personal commentary and tell me.
Can we take him out?”

Jeffrey stepped back as if Renard had slapped him, offended
by the implication. He turned formal and serious. “We can’t. If we hit him with
everything we’ve got, it would be an even match. The problem is that our forces
are spread throughout the Consensus while his are mostly concentrated at Lorah.”