Padre McCreedy raised his Sig and I aimed down the holographic sight of my MP7A2, but Jorgensen signalled for us to lower our weapons and we complied. Suppressed though they might have been, neither the Sig nor my Heckler and Koch personal defence weapon was silent. Lind slung the SA80 assault rifle and took out her composite bow, nocking a broadhead-tipped arrow from her quiver. She took aim as the Templar closed in on our position, the beam of his torch creeping too close for comfort. With a thwish the arrow launched, travelling the short distance between Lind and the Templar, piercing his neck and severing his spine.
The Templar’s rifle fell and his body wasn’t far behind. Jorgensen rushed and caught him, lowering him gently to minimize sound. He checked to confirm the Templar was dead and incapable of calling for support. Jorgensen turned off the rifle-mounted torch and dragged the weapon and body into a dense thicket off the road. I got the impression from the speed and efficiency of the whole process that it was well practiced and frequently implemented by Lind and Jorgensen.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t turn me on just a bit.
“Are we good to go?” I whispered to Roth.
He bobbed his head and placed the map and penlight back in his kit. Roth indicated the direction we needed to go and we crept that way at a glacial pace. Jorgensen ranged ahead and Padre McCreedy brought up the rear. I covered Roth, and Lind stayed with us, bow held at the ready.
Forty-five minutes of creeping along abandoned streets and dodging patrols later, and Roth gestured toward a relatively intact building. There was nothing to distinguish it from any of the other relatively intact buildings apart from a pair of guards standing by a hole in the wall vaguely shaped like it was made by a linebacker on super-steroids.
Xorin was here, I told myself.
These Templars appeared significantly more alert than the one dispatched by Lind earlier. Even more inconveniently, they remained firmly rooted at their station and were encased in complete sets of armor — helmets and all. We watched from a distance for a while but they stood at attention the entire time, not even shifting slightly to prevent cramp. Could’ve earned themselves a penny or two as human statues on Venice Beach.
Jorgensen cased the joint and found two locked doors in back and around the side and some busted windows too small for any of us to fit through. Every minute we wasted increased the risk of the dead Templar’s disappearance being noted.
We needed to act.
Padre McCreedy and I were the only ones with suppressed firearms. Guns are rare enough in the age of the Savior Gods but suppressors are almost impossible to find. I knew my 4.6x30mm rounds could defeat Templar body armor but I wasn’t sure if McCreedy’s Sig would do the trick, let alone if he could hit the target from that distance with a pistol.
“Got anything capable of penetrating ballistic plate tucked away up your sleeve?” I murmured to Lind, half serious.
She selected an arrow with red fletching from her quiver and showed me the nasty-looking bodkin tip affixed to the carbon shaft.
“Will that do the trick?”
“Hasn’t failed me yet,” she remarked.
“Fair enough,” I conceded.
“You take the goon on the left, I got the one on the right. You shoot first and I’ll follow your lead.”
I shouldered my MP7 and acquired the guard to the left of the god-shaped cavity. I took deep controlled breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth. The holographic reticle hovered on the dodecagonal badge of the Savior Gods emblazoned on the Templar’s gleaming breastplate. I breathed out one final time, pause, and my finger stroked the trigger.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
The guard convulsed and collapsed as three tungsten carbide penetrators bypassed his armor in quick succession and shredded his heart. Beside him the second Templar fumbled with an arrow that had sprouted unexpectedly from his gorget. Before he could cause too much of a racket Jorgensen was there, knife in hand, to deliver the coup de grâce. Jorgensen ducked his head inside Xorin’s improvised entrance and signalled to us the coast was clear.
We hustled down the street and dragged the dead guards inside behind us and out of immediate visibility.
“Lind, Jorgensen, patrol the perimeter. I want to know if anyone comes within two blocks. Padre, mind our egress point. I don’t want any surprises if a Templar manages to slip their net.” At this, Lind huffed. “Roth you’re with me. Find us that silver bullet.”
Whatever purpose the premises once served was no longer identifiable. The God of War had redecorated the interior with the subtle eye for design of an artillery shell. Splintered desks and shattered monitors served as tombstones for skeletons bearing the evidence of excessive trauma. Yet more weeds sprouted from craters stamped into the flooring tiles by massive footprints. Pens and various other office paraphernalia crunched under the tread of my boots as Roth and I delved deeper into the facility.
Roth picked his way through the wreckage, examining each long-dead tablet and opening every desk drawer. I was starting to doubt he would find anything of value to the cause. If there was even anything of value to find. Would the Savior Gods really leave any stone unturned if they believed a threat to their reign existed? It would have been deliciously appropriate to punish such hubris in the manner of the pagan gods of ancient Greece but the longer Roth spent scouring the debris the less plausible it seemed.
“Do you even know what you’re looking for?” I asked.
“Have some faith, Ethan,” Roth chided. I snorted to hear that coming from a fellow Luminous operative but he failed to register my amusement.
“My life’s work has consisted of collecting accounts of the research these brave men and women were conducting here.” Roth gestured to a pulverised skull. “Exclusively from secondary sources, mind you. Trakiin and his cronies aren’t invulnerable, you know. They’re too reliant on the Dominions for that to be the case.”
Roth approached a safe embedded in the wall. Or partially embedded anyway. In the process of forcing the fortified door Xorin had wrenched the safe loose.
“Some even theorize the Dominions are intended to protect the Savior Gods from each other as much as from us,” he said.
He turned on his penlight and probed inside the gaping hollow. The narrow beam darted around, illuminating naught but bare metal surfaces.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Xorin wasn’t going to come all this way from orbit, slaughter a bunch of nerds, nearly rip a safe out of the wall in the process of trying to open it, only to leave behind whatever he found inside it,” I said.
“Unless he didn’t know where to look,” said Roth. He stuck the penlight between his teeth and began feeling around the empty box with both hands. The whole mission objective was beginning to seem absurd. I needed to weigh the odds of success against the lives of the men and women under my command. I mentally agreed to indulge him for another minute when I heard a click followed by a triumphant “Aha!”
“And this is why you don’t send the God of War to recover sensitive materials,” said Roth as he removed a steel plate from the safe and placed it on the floor. “False bottom. Classic misdirection. That big meathead would have snatched whatever was in the primary safe and never given it a second thought.”
“Well? What’s in the box?”
He rummaged around inside the recess and retrieved what looked to be an autoinjector and a sheaf of papers. He flipped through the papers and a smile spread across his face, gleaming white in the dark.
“Salvation,” he said.