The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel (29 page)

His procession takes him past an odd spoil heap, a head-high mound of cracked and scorched stone statues.
“What’s this?”
he asks.

“All-Highest, these are the remains of urük who stumbled across our air defense batteries today. They are more numerous and more curious than forecast.”
 

He snorts. Ignorant savages, prancing around the landscape as if they owned it. A question occurs to him:
“These are
only
the ones who saw too much? The glamour holds?”

“The glamour holds, All-Highest. There were many more of them during the day than was expected of such a remote site
–
this appears to be a place of some ritual significance to them.”
 

“Well.”
He looks at the basilisk-stricken corpses again:
“See to it that the pile is secure. I don’t want it falling on the tents.”

As All-Highest enters the headquarters pavilion, all assembled bow their heads and salute, fist-to-heart. He walks between their lines to the throne of bones, takes his seat, and looks to his left.
“Honorable Wife,”
he says.
“I believe you have been busy. Report, if you please.”
It is no less an order for being phrased prettily, but it is a signal of his esteem that he words it so courteously. Highest Liege of Airborne Strike Command is pleasing to the eye, lively in bed, and eagerly ruthless: all welcome improvements over her predecessor, the sullen cow whose treasonous plotting she exposed. So he smiles, tight-lipped and teeth concealed from view, as she ducks her head submissively, ears back, and launches into a description of what she has seen from the skies of this world.

“There are many sky-carts passing over this land,”
his wife explains, with an illustrative vision that makes his eyes widen with enlightenment.
“We believe them to be part of the urük society’s transport system, but they are extremely vulnerable. They are also highly visible
…
”

She makes the case for an additional diversion, and All-Highest’s ears twitch appreciatively as she finishes.
“That would be an excellent use of your force,”
he says.
“I have been considering our options for a feint, and this will certainly help misdirect the enemy’s attention.”
He inclines his head.
“I hoped we might have another day or two for final preparations, but in view of the number of urük roaming these hills we must commit our full force to the planned attack no later than tomorrow morning, at the first hour. Accordingly, I am bringing all our plans forward. Honorable Wife, it would please me if you would prepare and execute your plan at dawn tomorrow.”

Highest Liege of Airborne Strike Command displays excellent mastery of her expression, but he cannot help but feel her tension and dismay.
“It shall be as you command, my husband,”
she says, despite the sudden change of tempo: oh yes indeed, she’s an ambitious one.
“I should hasten to obey
…
?”

“You may go.”
He reaches out to touch her forehead as she dips her face, ears back and tilted close to her head. He tastes her apprehension and the hot, dry tension of her desire.
“Bring glory to our house, Honorable Wife, and I will remember your deeds this day.”
It’s an old formula, but she seems pleased to accept it.

As soon as she is gone he turns to his First of Diviners and Records with a broad, undignified grin.
“Well, First!”
he says, now visibly amused.
“How goes our infiltration of the enemy palace?”

“I believe the plan goes well, All-Highest. A siege is certainly feasible, and perhaps easier than anticipated
–
these people are rank amateurs at the art of war
–
but your other scheme is also bearing fruit.”
First of Diviners and Records dips his head.
“Your wife’s animosity towards her predecessor’s get has had the desired effect, and Agent First is indeed motivated
–
and has made contact. The urük lack much in the arts, but they
do
have a handful of magi. And Agent First has become passing close with one of their number.”
First of Diviners and Records looks more than slightly smug:
“So close, in fact, that she has offered the threefold invitation and the sharing of food and drink, and he has accepted.”

All-Highest’s ears go up.
“Really?”
he purrs.

First of Diviners dips his chin.
“Truly, All-Highest.”

“Just so.”
All-Highest pauses for a moment, savoring the impending victory: To capture an enemy magus is always excellent, but to entrap a member of the palace magi without their liege even knowing is a triumph of subterfuge. His daughter has excelled: he will have to order Highest Liege of Airborne to leave her unharmed, lest his ruthless new wife inadvertently weakens him by depriving him of a loyal and effective spy. He clenches his fist, recalling his daughter’s
geas
.
“Let her bring this urük vassal to me, that I may bind him as the first of my new subjects and take his face for our convenience. And then we shall proceed: first with the ground-based strike force, second with my wife’s airborne feint
–
and then with the true strike, into the defenseless heart of the enemy’s palace, wearing the visage of one of their own magi.”

Cassie does her best to warn Alex: “This is a really bad idea.”

“I know.” He renews his counting cantrip, crosses the line of salt, and pauses at the edge of the grid. He pulls out his phone and fires up the occult countermeasures app, sets the thaum field counter to buzz the phone if it detects a spike in the flux reading, then shoves it back in his pocket.

Meeting Cassie was not an accident.
That’s the most devastating blow; everything else – alien hominid invaders, soldiers trying to kill them – is trivial. That stuff is all part of the job, but he’d nearly mistaken Cassie for part of the jigsaw puzzle of life, or maybe a thread leading back to the tangled hairball world of mundane humanity. It’s lonely and cold out on the edge, with no stronger connection than a weekly vial of blood in a mailing envelope, but for a while he’d begun to hope that – well, never mind.

The DM taking an interest in Whitby, and later in the Lawnswood bunker, was not an accident either.
Forecasting Ops are notoriously Delphic but they
sometimes
shine a torch beam on dangers lurking in dark corners. Why the DM chose Alex in particular as the tool with which to probe this particular headache isn’t clear to him, but then, it shouldn’t be: what Alex doesn’t know he can’t disclose to the enemy. And that, he is very much afraid, is what Cassie is.

His trainers were keen on drilling a particular outlook into Alex, and now he’s trying to apply it to his situation:
observe, orient, decide, act
. Well, he’s had an eyeful this evening, but what does it mean? It’s time to finish observing and get oriented.

Alex’s pulse fills his ears as he studies the grid. The notation around the outside is unfamiliar, but consistent with the form of a containment field. It might be safe to cross – it probably is, if all it’s for is to distort or divert a ley line – but he can’t be certain without further study and that’s going to take too long. On the other hand, he has a source right here. He looks back at Cassie, feigning nonchalance: “Where are you from, why are you interested in me, and what were those guys doing outside?”

Cassie’s eyes are huge in the darkness. “I wanted to watch a movie with you first, to explain.”

“A movie? Which movie?”

“A famous film called
Dr. Strangelove
. Movies are wonderful! My people don’t have them but I could sit and watch them all day except
Dr. Strangelove
, which makes me cry because it’s so true. I thought it would make it easier to explain. Have you seen it?”

“I’ve heard of it, I think – is it a war movie?”

“Oh yes, but it’s so much more, and I need to show it to you, but there’s no time —” Cassie leans close, almost nose-to-nose with him. “It is important because
it is the story of my people
. Except not, because it is about
your
people and their cold war, but what I mean is, it’s a
metaphor
.” Her speech cadences are shifting slightly, he realizes, her grammar falling into the patterns of an alien language. “After the Sisterhood of the Red Night opened the gateway to the end of the universe by mistake, our All-Highest in her wisdom ordered a, what you would call a strategic attack. She was not expecting the Fellows of the Blind Tyrant to blow up the moon in retaliation, and then the Eaters beyond Time came swarming out from behind the blackened stars to steal the minds of every magus on the surface, and All-Highest and the entire court of the Morningstar Empire were killed by one of the first impactors, and only those of us sheltering deep underground survived the rain of lava when the sky caught fire, YesYes?”

“Um,” Alex says, then stops, unsure what he can say that will cause her to slow down and show him the sense behind this demented tirade of names and apocalypses. “Really?”

She clutches his arm and peers at him intensely: “When the empire fell, the chain of command fell also, the oaths of loyalty, the bindings of obedience. My father is now the All-Highest of all that remains of the empire – dust and ashes and his own small command, lurking at the bottom of a mountain thousands of, of kilometers away from the capital. The
mineshaft gap
, don’t you see?” Her grip tightens as she leans against him again. “The film
Dr. Strangelove
is like the origin story of my people. It is a parable of our recent history! And what happens next is what happens after, after history ends.

“My father commands the only remaining Host. Barely three thousand knights and their slaves and warbeasts survive, and we are running short of food. Our own lands are lost forever, the world destroyed and the ruins ravaged by monsters. So he ordered his magi to unseal the shadow roads and lead us to a new home. And my stepmother persuaded him to send me first, to probe the way forward. Or to die, she hopes.”

“So what am I walking into?” Alex asks abruptly.

“There is a ley line at the bottom of this mineshaft, and this is a defensive spell set to protect it from intruders. Which means it must lead to my people. Hold my hand…” Cassie raises one foot, then delicately steps across the edge of the ghostly glowing design on the floor. Alex looks down and realizes:
She’s still holding my arm.
“Come
on
.” She tugs him after her. “It is configured to kill anyone not of the Host or accompanied thereby who tries to enter,” she explains, “but I am one such and you are with me.”

“Well,
fuck
.” He tries to stop as Cassie begins to descend the stairs but his feet aren’t listening; and his phone begins to buzz in his pocket, the thaum sensor vibrating a warning. “You’ve got me caught in a
geas
of your own,” he says mildly.

“Yes.” Her tone is almost apologetic. “I was sent hither to gather intelligence and find the magi of the enemy and bring him to my father. That is my
geas
. I invited you three times and you accepted, YesYes? But I’m not totally constrained —” She stares at him over her shoulder, an expression of desperation on her face as she continues in another language.
“I set you free.”

Alex lurches to a halt as she steps off the staircase into the tunnel leading into the bunker. His expression is most peculiar. “I didn’t know you spoke Old Enochian,” he says. Then he swallows, and walks after her.

“Speak? Of course I can speak, what – what are you
doing
, idiot? You should flee!” She stops dead and stares at him, her expression shocked. “This isn’t going to end well! One or both of us is bound to die, and then – and then —”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” She’s vibrating like a live wire as he takes her hand, and he can see the muscles in her neck standing out. He strokes the back of her hand very gently as he speaks, trying to convey the calm certitude she clearly needs. “I thought it was obvious what I’m doing: I’m coming with you to see your father. But first, we need to talk about what we’re going to do when we find him…”

When Alex hit the button to send his text message on its merry way, he expected it to produce a shit-storm of epic proportions – but he had little or no idea of the sheer
scale
of the events it was about to set in motion.

It is 2314 hours BST on a Saturday night in London when the Duty Officer’s phone terminal displays the message. The Duty Officer tonight is, as usual, sitting alone in the Duty Office in one of the decontaminated wings on the second floor of the New Annex. First he checks the origin of the message and verifies the caller ID by hand from the official (printed, top secret) departmental phone book. This takes him approximately thirty seconds. Having authenticated the sender, he then looks up a second number. Then he picks up the telephone handset and calls it.

At 2315, the phone rings in a conference room on the fourth floor, where the DM is morosely pondering probabilities, Vikram Choudhury is catching up on a couple of briefing documents he needs to be familiar with in time for a meeting on Monday morning, and Johnny McTavish is snoring quietly, an early copy of the
Mail on Sunday
shielding his face from the flickering overhead lighting tubes. Vikram twitches violently, sending papers flying, and makes a grab for the handset. “Room 414,” he says, “yes?” He listens intently for a moment, frown lines forming on his forehead. “I’ll tell them,” he replies, finally. “Notify everyone on the Red List. We’ll be ready when you call back.” He puts the phone down, and looks across the table to where Derek is watching him. Vikram clears his throat nervously. “We have a Code Red in Lawnswood,” he states. “Report from Alex Schwartz. He’s announced CASE NIGHTMARE RED.”

Johnny sits up. “Dear me,” he says mildly. He pulls out his phone and speed-dials a number. Seconds later: “Duchess? We’ve got a Code Red in Leeds, and an EAT case report tagged RED to deal with…”