About four hundred men had volunteered to assault the base if Danislav deemed it worth the risk. Boris’ adopted son was still annoyed at having missed the big fight, but had been partially placated by the command of the base assault force. It helped his attitude that one of the drones had caught the battle on camera so anyone that wanted could watch the action later. Boris was quite sure it would be popular viewing by many.
Still, Boris doubted that any formal attack on the base would be necessary. Another thousand of his troops would be filtering into the area within a day, so they could stand off and reduce the base then if they needed to without the chance of additional casualties. To increase the one-sided nature of the encounter, the mortars were on their way with the reserves. Without the vampire leading the base forces, Boris suspected many who had joined the NVG would disappear into the forest or surrounding villages.
With the NVG force shattered, he would be surprised if there were anyone left living on the base when he got there. Janna’s appearance would spread the panic quickly, ensuring that those that had not already fled upon hearing of the death of their vampire leader and the decimation of the special Were troops would rapidly depart. Not one NVG Were had escaped, although they had caused forty of Boris’ fatalities. A bitter toll, but lighter than it would have been without Bethany Anne’s support on the logistical front.
He slowly got to his feet and went to assist those organizing the evacuation of the wounded from the area. Perhaps they didn’t need to move far… not yet at least.
Janna was shocked when she approached the base. There was no defensive fire, in fact, there was nothing but silence. It looked like Evgeni was right. The fear of the routed thugs had spread to the base defenders, and the news of Konrad’s defeat and death had caused widespread abandonment.
She had changed back to her human form when the main areas had been cleared and the defensive weaponry secured. Evgeni had been surprised and a little confused that it was her and not Boris. Janna promised to explain it later which seemed to calm him.
Danislav had brought her pants along with him. She was relieved more than a little. Being one of less than fifty women and the only one that was half naked had been kind of embarrassing, even if none of the men had looked at her inappropriately or commented.
They had two reasons to avoid any commentary she supposed. First, she could break any one of them over her knee. While that was scary enough, it didn’t even approach what Boris was likely to do to them if he found out they had disrespected her.
She heard the trucks with the wounded and the remainder of their force approaching in the muted growl of engines. The vehicles passed a group that was organizing the dead for recovery and burial. This late in the autumn, it was best to just cover the bodies and set guards. It had already been decided to bury them in the Romanovka cemetery before they left.
Boris had jumped out of the lead truck before it was fully stopped and immediately went to her.
“Have the buildings been cleared yet?” he asked
Janna replied, pointing to each of the buildings in turn, “The barracks, base hospital, and mess hall have all been checked along with the armory and towers. The main administrative building and base brig are being searched at this time by combined teams of Weres and Spartans.”
Boris nodded and waved the convoy towards the base hospital that Janna had identified. The trucks moved obediently toward their target. With over eighty moderately wounded troops that had not been treated with nanites due to a supply shortage, the most lightly injured might end up in the barracks. Still, none of those were life-threatening or critical, so there was no reason for concern.
One of the Spartans came running from the administrative building toward them.
“Sir, Ma’am, we have found a man being held in one of the basement offices that had been converted to a cell and office combination. We thought it best to inform you immediately and ask how you wanted to deal with the situation.”
Boris turned to Janna, who nodded. “Lead on. Maybe he knows something that could be useful to us.”
When they entered, the odor of both old blood and unwashed human was overwhelming. It was evident that the man in the room was a prisoner. One that Konrad had, for whatever reason, felt was valuable, but was not controlled enough to let roam free. The prisoner looked a little gaunt as if he had not been receiving enough food. He had distinctive East Asian heritage but was taller and more muscled than common in the area. His hair was a dark brown rather than the more prevalent black as well. After a few moments, they could detect the odor of a Werecat under the stronger smells.
Janna’s attention was immediately drawn to the desk. Despite having a laptop on it, her focus was the folders on the surface. On top of the filing cabinets, on top of every flat surface in the ‘office’. Folders and more folders. She opened the filing cabinet drawers to find even more files, most of which contained a mixture of printouts and handwritten notes. Showing obvious delight, her expression turned to disgust as she looked more closely. A variety of curses wafted around her like stinging bees.
“Goddamn, paranoid needle fucker,” she muttered.
“What’s wrong?” Boris asked.
“All of this is written in German or one of the Norse languages for starters. I know German but never studied the northern languages. Despite the ability to recognize them, I have not the capacity to translate anything in the language to something we can use. Even then much of it is in shortened forms that would take a team weeks to decrypt. Some of it also looks like code.”
Boris looked at her incredulously. “Why is that a problem? Why would we need a team to decrypt them? We send them up the chain and get them to sort it,” he said, very conscious of the prisoner’s presence. He thought to her, ADAM can probably help us there.
She blushed at slipping into her past role, and forgetting the resources available to her now.
The prisoner spoke up at this point. Softly and hesitantly he said, “Make sure you send the laptop with the papers then. He would often refer to it while writing. I suspect it has some of the code keys on it.”
“Who are you anyway? What had you done to attract the attention of these motherless bastards and made them give you such palatial accommodations?” Boris asked with irony in his voice. Before Shen could answer, Boris raised a commanding hand, speaking with absolute steel in his voice. “Before you answer, I’ll inform you now I want the truth and am feeling quite tired. Killing a powerful vampire is never easy. We will be checking the truth of your answers. But afterward, I will promise you at least a hot shower and a meal. Be aware, however, if you lie to us, it will be your last meal.”
Shen was worn out. He had meant to gloss over his past, but it wouldn’t be worth trying to fool the Ghost Bear. His reputation, as the saying went, preceded him. If he had defeated Konrad, as seemed likely given the situation, he was out of Shen’s league. Konrad had made Shen feel like a kitten. Not that fighting was Shen’s skill set.
“I was trading the location of a Soviet-era weapons cache for some quantum processors. Prototypes. When I turned up to make the deal, there was the smell of vampire. I was ambushed as I left and felt that changing in such a built up location to escape was a… bad idea. It was a painful discovery to find that the vampire was interested in me as an experimental subject. He’d take my blood at least once a week and try to make more werecats with it. Only had one success, a real shitjacker called Andrev.
“Between the pain and the boredom I was slowly going insane. When what I am assuming were your attacks started to be a problem, he gave me profiles of groups opposed to him and set me on pattern analysis. Basic stuff for a computer science major, especially since I’ve studied human to machine cybernetic interfacing. I came to the conclusion that you were a likely cause of his problems.