It was time. “Heinrich, ready the men.” The Fade nodded once and slid back down the wall. Readying the men would consist of taking off their snowshoes and making sure the actions of their weapons would actually cycle. He waited until Heinrich was out of earshot. “Toru, you can stay out here if you want.”
“Do you question my resolve?” he snapped.
“It’s not that.” Sullivan remembered his own hesitation before they had fought the OCI. “Those are your countrymen in there.”
“Yet they stand in the way of fulfilling my father’s final command. It is unfortunate, but their deaths will serve a higher purpose.”
“If they surrender, they don’t have to die.” That was foolishness, and he knew it as soon as the words left his mouth.
“They are Imperium. They do not understand surrender. Even if we were to take this facility without bloodshed, they would commit suicide for the shame of allowing it. Dying in battle is always preferable… Come. It will be warmer inside.”
They’d brought dynamite in case the door was hardened, but who needs dynamite when you have a Fade?
Heinrich Koenig dropped through the ceiling and landed gently on the floor. There was a single soldier leaning against the wall, struggling to stay awake. Heinrich caught the young man mid-yawn. A candle burned on the table next to him. The base was wired for electricity, but Heinrich reasoned that since fuel for their generator had to be flown in, they probably used it sparingly.
The soldier blinked stupidly, not understanding how a man in unfamiliar winter clothing had suddenly appeared right before him, but before he could do anything Heinrich had gotten one hand over his mouth and driven a punch dagger under his ear.
They stared at each other for the briefest eternity. The violence was so sudden that the Imperium man had not yet realized that he was dead. Heinrich looked into his eyes, seeing the same look that he’d seen dozens of times before, but a survivor of Dead City never hesitated.
Twist. Even if the soldier was wearing one of the magical kanji that granted increased vitality, it would not survive the severing of the spinal column.
Wait a moment. Then Heinrich slowly lowered the body to the floor without a sound.
The exterior hatch had been locked from the inside. There was probably some sort of signal the returning patrols would use to have it opened. There was a rather sturdy padlock on the inside. Heinrich bit one glove to drag it off, then simply took hold of the padlock and imagined it as an extension of his hand. He willed himself to go grey, and the lock went with him. It was just like Fading with the clothes on his back, and he’d done it so much that it was second nature. The lock pulled through the metal and popped out the other side.
It was very difficult to keep out a determined Fade. He rapped his knuckles on the hatch to tell the others to come in. Sure, he could have waited for them, but where was the fun in that? Besides, Fades worked best on their own. Heinrich took up the fallen soldier’s submachine gun, an Arisaka model that he had some passing familiarity with, so he checked to make sure it had a loaded magazine and retracted the bolt. He’d brought his own firearm, but it never hurt to use up the enemy’s ammunition first.
The first room was closed off from the rest of the building with a heavy door, surely to mitigate the heat loss. Heinrich crept through the wall to find a shadowy hallway. It had to be fifty degrees inside, a temperature which now seemed achingly hot, and his skin began to prickle.
Something knee-high and white scurried past. He recognized the now-familiar shape of Ian Wright’s favorite demon. The Summoned hurried down the hallway, surely off to cause some mayhem. Hallways were fatal funnels. Only a fool would walk down a hallway when it was much faster to simply go through the walls, so he did, through supply rooms and empty offices, until he found himself in the barracks.
There were six soldiers in the room, either getting dressed for work or getting undressed to go to sleep, he was not sure. There were no beds, merely woven mats on the floor, and a very meager amount of furniture, which also meant there was no cover. All of them looked up in surprise at his sudden appearance.
Heinrich opened fire.
The room was narrow, so he just held the trigger down and jerked the muzzle side to side. It was a wasteful use of ammunition, but he emptied the Arisaka’s entire magazine. Only one of them reacted in time to try anything useful, but Heinrich put half a dozen bullets into the man before he could get his pistol free of the holster.
Surveying the scene, they appeared to be done for. Heinrich took up the dropped pistol, one of the nicer Nambu models, checked to make sure it was ready, and then stood in the corner where he would be concealed by the opening door. Heinrich had been in Imperium buildings before, and knew they preferred to use sliding doors. Those must not be as efficient at regulating the heat, since this facility used normal doors. He mulled this thought over idly as the Imperium soldiers bled to death at his feet.
There was shouting on the other side of the wall, so he forgot about architecture and concentrated on business. They would want to rush in to see what had happened, but that had been far too much gunfire for it to have been an accident. They would hesitate until there were a few of them, and then they would rush inside. Their attention would be focused. They would have tunnel vision in the direction they assumed danger would come from.
Heinrich smiled. Fades liked to come at you sideways.
Shouting in Japanese. The door flew open. Heinrich stepped through the wall and came out behind them. There were three responders, and sure enough, they were all focused on the room he’d just left. Heinrich had an easy shot and got one of them in the side of the head. The second lurched away while Heinrich fired at him. The Nambu fired an anemic 8mm round, so Heinrich had to hit him several times before he was happy that the soldier was done for. Heinrich was turning to shoot the last when he realized that the Nambu had malfunctioned. A brass case was sticking out the side of the ejection port like a stovepipe, taunting him. The last soldier was spinning around, slipping in a puddle of blood. There was no time.
Heinrich could control the degree to which his body became insubstantial. It did not take much effort to push his way through solid objects, and bullets were no different. He went grey as the first rounds penetrated his clothing. The bullets left a track of warmth through his torso before they exited out his back. The soldier quit firing, mouth agape, and Heinrich reformed, solid, and flung the jammed Nambu toward his face. The soldier flinched away, but that was all Heinrich had needed. Drawing the push dagger from inside his coat, he knocked the soldier’s muzzle aside and then struck him in the chest. Once, twice, the third slipped through the ribs, and the Imperium man fell gasping to the floor.
There was more shooting from the hall. The other knights were inside. The Imperium man was still struggling to fight, even with a perforated heart, so Heinrich kicked him brutally hard in the side of the head so he could bleed to death peacefully and not cause any more trouble. Heinrich took up another subgun and went toward the sound of gunfire.
The knights were making fast work of the base’s defenses. Normally the Imperium would have put up a better fight, but they had not expected this, and if Heinrich could pick only one advantage to have in a fight it would be surprise.
Jake Sullivan, on the other hand, if he could only pick one advantage, would surely choose overwhelming force. And he was demonstrating that philosophy rather well when Heinrich found the Heavy one floor down, twisting gravity in order to fling a group of Imperium soldiers around like leaves in the wind. Heinrich came through the ceiling in time to catch the last bit of the gravity spike, and even that was enough to almost put him through the next floor.