Chapter Six

Agent Jason Rayne of the Psi commando division, at least according to his current identifications, leaned hard to the left as he swerved around a corner at roughly triple the speed limit. The police lights and sirens he was emitting had everyone doing their best to get out of his way, but he had still been slowed significantly by the heavy traffic. On more than one occasion he had been forced to use the sidewalk to get passed an obstruction in a timely manner. Luckily the hoverbike was ideal for such uses and he was able to jump over and back without too much difficulty. He couldn’t even imagine how much longer the car would have taken.

As he got closer to his target, he felt his calm slipping away. Replaced by a dizzying combination excitement and burning rage he had kept buried for far too long. Coming out of another turn Jason felt his phone buzz. Tapping his ear to take the call hands free he said report. “Milord they have been made tracker lost the aetheric lock thirty seconds ago. Strike team is moving in. you need to hurry.” An extremely sexy voice transmitted directly into his head”. “Got it” he sent back then disconnected the call and pushed his already reckless pace even higher.

(Elliana)

Elly stepped out of the car with Smith and Sanchez after they received the go ahead. While Smith was on the phone relaying the go order to the strike team Sanchez popped the trunk and ran around the back. Pulling out a pair of vests he tossed one to Smith who caught it as she hung up the phone, and began putting his on. Next, he grabbed a pair of assault rifles with the signature silver etchings of aether tech that couldn’t have been standard issue. “So much for trying out the new toys,” Smith lamented taking one of the rifles. Dressed out Sanchez turned to Elliana. “You stay here,” he said his tone brooking no argument. Smith nodded in agreement as she moved to slide back into the car.

“I’m coming,” she argued, fixing Sanchez with a determined glare. She wasn’t going to be treated like some fragile girl that needed to be protected. “Even if we were inclined to allow that. We don’t have gear for you,” Smith interjected before Sanchez could respond. Elly reached into a pocket and pulled out five, three-inch-long, quarter inch round silver needles that tapered to a point and were covered in silver etchings. Opening her hand, Elly reached out to the Aether. Instead of simply listening like she normally did She invoked her Will commanding it to bend to her desire. The needles abruptly lifted off her hand to hover in the air in front of them. With a flick of her wrist all five shot through the air and punched through the back wall of the nearby abandoned warehouse. Clenching her fist, the needles shot back through the wall creating five new holes on the way out. Trackers didn’t have much in the way of raw power compared to most other psionics but even a small amount of power could be deadly if properly applied. The needles were light and extremely easy to control thanks to the aetheric inscriptions, they allowed trackers to focus their limited strength into a single point to deliver deadly blows with great flexibility. The needles were one of two main tracker weapons the church had come up with after countless experimentations in an effort to improve the survivability of their precious trackers beyond the wall. They compensated for the trackers lack of raw strength and perfectly took advantage of their abundance of finesse and control making it the perfect mid to long range weapon for them. Without waiting for a response, she un-buttoned her jacket and opened it up to reveal the intricate silver lines spiderwebbed across the inside. “I can fight, and I’m even better protected that you are by those vests,” she said. “Plus,” she added with a challenging glare. “I may be useless against the target but I can sense if he tries anything”. After a couple seconds of silence, Sanchez swore, “Fuck, we don’t have time for this. Get in”. “We go in behind the strike team, you go in behind us, if you sense anything pass the word over this” Sanchez told Elly as they slid into the car; handing her an earpiece identical to the ones He and Smith had donned at some point. Seeing her nod in agreement he started the car and hurriedly followed after the tactical vans that had begun moving about twenty seconds prior.

As they hurtled down the road towards the target Elly found herself hoping she had made the right decision by coming along. While she would definitely sense it if the target made a move there was absolutely nothing she could do to even slow down spells of the same magnitude as the ones that destroyed the hawks, and her inscribed cloths that could make a bullet feel like a light push wouldn’t offer much protection either. As she slid her earbud into place a cacophony of sounds erupted in her ear as the strike team leader conveyed his plan “These are foreign spies. They likely have a psi or two and maybe even a spirit mage. Don’t let it catch you off guard. They know we’re coming but won’t expect us to move this fast, skip the doors we’ll make our own and come in through the sides. We lead with flash bangs and explosives, then follow that with gas and smoke. After that we go in shooting and don’t stop till we run out of ammo. I don’t care how dead they look I want those magazines empty.” said a gravelly voice over the comms. There was a brief pause before he continued. “The two heavies on each team are on target duty. Leave the light weights two everyone else. We’re after a weapon that almost single handedly annihilated an entire gang from an inferior position. You’re to hold till you see it and then light whoever has it up with everything you have. That thing comes into play we’re all dead”. “How do we identify it?’ said another voice a couple seconds later. Elly touch her ear and chimed in. “This is Agent Walker I’ll be able to identify the target when it powers up. When it does, I’ll pass word.” “works for me,” the gravelly voice of the team lead responded before adding. “One last thing. Mission briefing said the egg heads want this thing intact. I don’t give a damn. Their convenience isn’t worth your lives and its damn sure not worth mine”.

Hearing the commander give orders to go for the kill without hesitation or quarter had Elly’s hackles up yet again. It seemed like everyone involved in this mission simply wanted to kill all of their targets in the most expedient way possible. These were obviously very bad people but going for the kill without hesitation or quarter went against everything she had been taught. Unless of course they were cultists or heretics, and even they really should be put to trial by the church first if you wanted to get technical about it.

A few seconds later they pulled into the parking lot of the target building. The back doors of the vans opened each allowing the fifteen strong tactical team to exit in pairs with the team commanders bringing up the rear. As they spread out Elly turned her attention to the building in question. A stream of civilians was filing as the could down the outside stairway that provided access to the upper levels, but it would take them at least another ten minutes to evacuate. Time, they didn’t have to wait. Elly could still sense a good number of people on the lower levels, all of them moving around in hurry so she couldn’t get an exact count, but with the Aetheric lock wiped out she couldn’t identify the target. He might even already be gone, and who knew how he might slip away given another ten minutes.

His crew organized the strike team leader turned to Elly and her crew and tossed them each a gas mask, tactical goggles and over ear hearing protectors. “Any updates,” he asked without formality looking at Elly. “There’re still people in there, at least twenty maybe more, but I can’t tell if one of them has the target,” she said. Also, the upper floors are a long way from evacuated”. She reported quickly. “Right, we’re going now,” he responded. Then Elly heard his voice come over her head set, “All units this is Sierra 1, We’re cleared hot. Prepare to move on my mark, no mercy, they will show you none”. There was a few second pause and then, “Execute. Execute. Execute.” Came across the earbuds in a clipped tone.

Elly followed closely behind Smith and Sanchez as they moved around the side of the building. When they got there one of the Strike team members stepped forward with a large rectangle made of what appeared to be square tubes. After pressing it against the wall he left it stuck there and stepped back to the side. Once clear he pulled a cylinder out of his pocket. After, counting down over the earbud to coordinate with his counterpart and pressed down. The resulting explosion blasted a door shaped hole into the building. Door created; the strike team lobbed a series of items through the opening resulting in a tremendous noise that made Elly extremely glad she was wearing hearing protection. Then quickly filed into the building the point man firing before he even stepped through the opening. followed by Smith and Sanchez with Elly bringing up the rear her needles hovering in the air behind her.

Sounds of gunfire rang out almost the second the first trooper came through the door. When Elly finally entered their air was thick with a combination of smoke and gas that limited her vision even with the filters on the goggles. Rushing to the side she ducked down behind a pile of scrap metal next to Smith. Extending her mind Elly was able to get a much better look at the building now that she was inside. The targets had had some warning. But the sheer speed and ferocity, not to mention the unexpected entrance point of the assault still appeared to have caught them off guard. She sensed the bodies of eleven enemies that had been poorly positioned when the assault began scattered around the building, riddled with multiple holes from aether enhanced bullets. They were covered in dark red robes with black trim. Recognizing the attire Elly was about to speak when she heard the commander shout over the comms. “They’re not spies they’re cultist heretics. Kill them all”.

A group of just over a dozen of the remaining cultists were concentrated near the center of the building using furniture, a couple stacks of wooden boxes holding God knew what as well as the two vans they had been loading them into as a make shift cover while they attempted to fight back. The tactical team was spread out well using various piles of junk and equipment, like the pile Elly and Smith were currently behind, as cover while they laid down a steady stream of fire from multiple angles. On the other side of the warehouse Elly could sense the other half of the strike team similarly arranged and also laying down heavy fire. Under normal circumstance the superior numbers and weaponry of the strike team in addition to a far superior tactical position should have already had the cultists on their last legs if not already dead. The only heretics that were well placed to do any harm were the two up on the cat walk, but the Strike commander had a couple men keeping the pinned down so they couldn’t do too much damage.

Unfortunately, these were not normal circumstances. Four of the enemies were alternating throwing up psionic barriers far stronger than anything Elly could possibly manage. The short reprieves, granted by the randomly placed barriers, gave their allies time to reposition and let them lay down enough return fire to keep the strike teams wary. Three had already suffered injuries from this method so far, but they were luckily minor. The good news was the psionics needed a couple of minutes to recover between each shield so even rotating they could only pull the trick every thirty seconds or so. The biggest threat so far had come from three of the four in the center of the cultist formation. Turning her attention to them, Elly shuddered as she sensed their twisted souls. If she had ever had any doubts about the Churches views on spirit magic, they had vanished the first time she sensed the soul of a captured spirit mage during her training. Normal souls appeared like a candle in a still environment to her mind’s eye, burning bright and steady unless their owner was Gravely ill or injured. In that state that would dim or even flicker if their host was near death. Spirit mage souls were different. They were bigger and stronger, but also warped. They bent and twisted like flames under the effect of fierce winds. Elly thought this was likely the reason they were all so chaotic and prone to fits of violence. The twisted souls also gave of an aura of wrongness so strong it actually disturbed the aether. Most trackers used the disturbance they caused in the aether to identify them, but Elly’s ability to sense souls directly made that pointless. The spirit mages had sent several disrupting attacks since the altercation began. The inscribed tactical gear had spared the strike team the worst of it, but even so six of them had already gone down from their attacks impaled by blades of pure force. Fortunately, Elly could sense they had spent most of their strength to break through the protections provided by the strike team members aether tech enhanced body armor, otherwise they could have methodically wiped out the entire assault force. The fourth heretic hunkered down next to the spirit mages was the one that gave Elly the most pause. She hadn’t made a move yet but she could sense that he was both a psi and a spirit mage. Too make matters worse her soul was stronger than the others, and while still warped, was far more stable.

“Look out for the one in the middle. She doesn’t have the target but she’s easily the most dangerous of them,” Elly announced over the headsets. Keeping a part of her attention on the dual talented cultist, Elliana swept the building looking for her target. After all, the being she was looking for was more dangerous than all the cultist including the dual attributed on combined. Finding nothing on the main floor she stretched her senses pushing through the floor to scan the basement. Solid objects disrupted her psionic senses somewhat, but from this close she could manage to look through the floor without too much trouble. Elly frowned when she finished sweeping through the floor below with her mind. Damn its empty, she determined after several sweeps. Not even an asura could hide from me from the range. Fuck the targets gone. Accepting the mission objective was no longer possible, Elly announced her findings to the others. “Targets gone must have ghosted with it the second I lost the lock,” She said grimly. “What’s your certainty level?” the gravelly voiced commander inquired instantly. “100 percent,” Elly quipped, “If it was in this building; I’d sense it”. There was no response for a few seconds before Smith surprisingly added “I’d trust her commander. Her files say she’s the most sensitive tracker ever trained and she’s the only reason we got this far. There’s no point in holding back the big guns anymore end this before we take more casualties”.