“It’s okay, Natalya,” Nero said softly. “She’s gone, you’re free.”
Darkdoom burst through a door on the other side of the roof and ran toward them.
“This whole place is rigged to blow, we have to go.”
Nero watched Raven as she stood staring at the blazing debris of the Glasshouse while the last of the rescued trainees were loaded onto the heavy military troop transport trucks on the road behind them. The trainees were under armed guard for now. Nero could make no assumptions about the Furans’ students’ loyalty. It was possible that some of them might have been as thoroughly broken as Raven was when Nero first met her.
“We should go,” Darkdoom said as he came and stood alongside his friend. “There’s no way the Russians haven’t noticed that explosion—they’ll be here in force and soon. You know, it would be a lot easier for us to disappear if we could just cut these kids loose and let them fend for themselves. Getting them out of here is going to be a problem.”
“That’s the biggest difference between you and me, my friend,” Nero said with a smile, looking at the trucks filled with children who had already received thorough, if brutal, training. “You only see a problem here.” He gestured toward the transports. “I see opportunity.”
“You and your school,” Darkdoom said, shaking his head. “Do you ever think about anything else?” He looked over at Raven. “Do you think she’s going to be okay?”
“She will be,” Nero said wih a small, sad smile, looking at the girl who had so nearly killed him. “Eventually.”
Pietor Furan ran through the snow toward the burning wreckage of the helicopter.
“Anastasia!” he screamed, knowing that the chances of anyone surviving a crash like this were impossibly slim. He flung pieces of flaming debris aside, ignoring the burns he sustained in the process, as he searched desperately for his sister. He suddenly saw an arm protruding from under a twisted piece of fuselage and he carefully lifted the smouldering chunk of metal off the body trapped beneath. Anastasia was burned almost beyond recognition and he moaned with grief as he dropped to his knees beside her, gently cradling her limp form in his lap. He gasped involuntarily as her eyes flickered open for an instant, their whites contrasting horribly with the blackened skin around them. She took a single pained rattling breath.
“Pietor . . .,” she whispered.
“Hush, Anastasia,” Pietor said, tears rolling down his cheeks as he looked at the ruin of his sister’s once beautiful face. “Save your strength.”
chapter ten
Nero walked into H.I.V.E.’s power control center and immediately felt a wave of dry heat wash over him. The huge cavern was the central point of the school’s power generation and distribution network, tapping into the volcano’s limitless reserves of geothermal energy. He saw his father on the far side of the room, looking down into the bubbling lake of magma below.
“H.I.V.E.mind informed me that you wished to speak to me,” Nero said. “I can’t stay long—final preparations are underway for the assault on the Glasshouse.”
“I know you’re busy, Maximilian,” Nathaniel replied. “I won’t keep you long. This is very impressive.” He gestured to the heavy machinery that surrounded them. “I really never thought that you’d be able to safely control the pressure in the magma chamber, let alone tap it.”
“I remember your objections quite clearly,” Nero replied. “As I recall, you thought I was insane.”
“Yes, well, it appears I owe you an apology,” Nathaniel said with a sigh. “It’s been too long since we’ve spoken, Max.”
“I know,” Nero replied. “With everything that has happened in the past few years, I’m afraid that I’ve been rather distracted.”
“Yes, I can imagine,” Nathaniel said. “My various contacts have kept me up to date with your activities. It has been rather a tempestuous time for G.L.O.V.E., hasn’t it?”
“Yes, between Overlord, H.O.P.E., and the Disciples, we have been rather busy,” Nero replied with a wry smile. “To be honest, it was a risk appointing a new ruling council, especially one made up entirely of graduates from the school. I made a lot of enemies that day and I fear that many of them may have then turned to the Disciples for support.”
“The hard decisions are always the most important ones, Max, you know that.”
“I know, but the Disciples are more ruthless than anyone we have faced before. The attack on the Hunt was the perfect example of the lengths they are prepared to go to. I shudder to think what they might be capable of in the future with Anastasia Furan in command. I had hoped that Overlord’s destruction would weaken them to the point of disintegration, but if anything they’ve become even more brutal.”
“An animal is at its most dangerous when wounded,” Nathaniel replied with a nod.
“Yes, at the moment we need all the help we can get,” Nero said, looking at his father. “The return of a founding member of G.L.O.V.E., for example. Someone with the experience to help the organization through these challenges.”
“I’m sorry, Max,” Nathaniel said, shaking his head. “You know I swore I would never return. After what happened to your mother . . .”
“That was not your fault,” Nero replied. “I know that now.”
“Really? Because I thought that was why we stopped talking. I assumed you blamed me.”
“Perhaps, once, but not anymore,” Nero replied with a sigh. “Because now I understand the lengths that people will go to when they want to destroy you. Furan murdered my students because she knew that nothing would hurt me more. I spent days afterward wondering if it was my fault, because I put those children in harm’s way, but the truth is that there is just one person responsible and that is whoever gave the order to attack. There’s only one way we’re going to win this war and that is to remove the head of the snake.”
“And you don’t need an old man’s help to do that, Max,” Nathaniel said with a smile. “Not when you have so many capable young people to call upon. That’s why H.I.V.E. is, and always has been, so important. If your mother had not died, you may very well never have persisted with the school. It was she who taught you the importance of restraint and subtlety in our world. Without that all we have is madness and violence. A true villain must be more than that. That lesson, and every student of H.I.V.E. that it has been passed on to, is her legacy.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Nero said, looking down into the glowing chamber below. “I do sometimes find myself wondering what she would do in my place.”
“Your mother,” Nathaniel said, “would have put Anastasia Furan down like a rabid dog. And that, Maximilian, is exactly what you’re going to do too.”
“Do you think this is going to work?” Wing asked quietly as he pulled on the white gloves of his Arctic operations ISIS armor.
“I think we can get inside,” Otto replied. “The real question is whether or not we can get back out again.”
“Yes, that may prove challenging,” Wing replied with a nod.
“We may know the layout of the place, but we don’t really know what we’re going to face beyond that,” Otto said with a slight frown. “We should prepare for the worst.”
“Don’t we always?” Wing replied, raising an eyebrow.
“So it’s true what they say,” Shelby said as she walked over to the suit of armor mounted on the wall rack nearby, “white is the new black. Cool.”
“I’ve been telling you that for years,” Otto said with a grin, running his hand through his hair.
“Yeah, guess you won’t even need a helmet,” Shelby replied. “You’ll just blend right in.”
“I am finding this rather uncomfortable actually,” Franz said as he pulled the armor’s greaves over the legs of his skin-tight thermal body suit. “It is being tight in all the wrong places.”
This was the latest version of the ISIS combat armor that had first been used in the final battle against Overlord. It provided unparalleled ballistic protection with a fully
integrated thermoptic camouflage system and a variable geometry forcefield generator that allowed for low altitude combat drops without the need for a parachute. It was this system that had saved Otto’s life just a few days earlier and that would now allow them to deploy as closely as possible to the Glasshouse.
“Here, let me help,” Wing said, adjusting the straps on the chest plate of Franz’s armor and helping him into it.
“We’d better get a move on,” Shelby said, quickly doing up the fastenings on her own suit. “Francisco said that the Professor has some cool new toys for us.”
“I believe he actually said assault weapons,” Wing said.
“Right,” Shelby said. “New toys!”
“You know, I do worry about you sometimes,” Wing said, shaking his head.
“What can I say? I’m a twenty-first-century girl. Who wants flowers and chocolates, when you can have body armor and bullets?” Shelby said, giving Wing a quick peck on the cheek as she walked out of the room.
“Is it right that I should occasionally be slightly frightened of my girlfriend?” Wing asked as he watched her leave.
“As I understand it, that’s perfectly normal,” Otto replied with a grin.
The three boys followed Shelby out of the room and down the corridor leading to the experimental weapons lab. Raven stood on the far side of the room talking to Professor Pike and Colonel Francisco. She too had swapped her normal black catsuit for a suit of the white armor. There was, inevitably, one difference in her kit—the twin swords crossed on her back.
“Good evening,” Colonel Francisco said as he spotted them, “allow me to introduce you all to your new best friend.” He gestured for them to follow him over to a long bench against the far wall with several black plastic cases resting on top of it. He opened one of the cases and pulled out a rifle with a smooth black casing and a long bulbous barrel.
“This is the Sandman,” Francisco said. “Its non-lethal mode is derived from the same technology as the Sleeper guns that you’re already familiar with, but with far greater range and accuracy.” He pressed a button just above the rifle’s trigger guard and a glowing, blue holographic sight appeared in the air above the weapon. “This targeting array will identify and track multiple targets through heat signature, electromagnetic emissions, or movement. It’s also capable of up to twelve times’ magnification for long-range sniping. If it should prove necessary the weapon can also be switched to lethal mode which fires magnetically accelerated microslugs, which have the stopping power of a bullet but are much lower in mass, giving it greatly increased ammo capacity. Each clip holds two hundred and fifty rounds, allowing for sustained rapid fire if necessary. The Sandman fires almost silently, with no muzzle flash and without the need for a suppressor, making it an ideal stealth weapon. It also has a full thermoptic camouflage coating tied into the system on board your ISIS armor. You have ten minutes to fire the weapon on the range in order to better familiarize yourself with it. Any questions?”
“Are they going to be in the shops in time for Christmas?” Shelby asked.
“No? Good,” the Colonel said, pointedly ignoring her.
Francisco handed each of them one of the rifles and Otto walked over to the range on the other side of the room. They had all received extensive weapons training, but Otto had never really been a fan of guns. He was a firm believer that there were very few problems which bullets could solve that brains couldn’t. On the other hand he did understand that on a mission like the one they were about to undertake, a gun was one of those things that it was better to have and not need, than need and not have. He raised the Sandman to his shoulder and aimed through the holographic sight at the paper target at the far end of the range. The rifle was unusually light, since its body was made from the latest reinforced composite materials rather than metal. He fired first in non-lethal mode and there was the usual slight distortion of the air as the neural shock pulse shot down the range, just as with the security guards’ Sleeper guns. What was unusual was the lack of the distinctive zapping sound that those weapons made. Francisco had been right—it was almost completely silent. Otto flicked the switch and selected the weapon’s lethal mode. He fired again and was surprised by the lack of recoil as the rifle discharged with a soft pop. It was hard to believe that it was as potentially deadly as a normal assault rifle, but the neat hole it had punched in the distant target suggested it was. He spent a couple more minutes firing down the range. He wasn’t the world’s best shot by any stretch of the imagination, but the ease with which the weapon handled meant even he could get most of his shots on target. Otto engaged the safety and placed the rifle on the shelf in front of him before pressing the button that brought the paper target whirring up the range toward him. Nearly all of his shots were within the confines of the man-sized silhouette which, given the distance he’d been firing at, he was fairly pleased with. In the cubicle next to Otto’s, Franz finished firing and summoned his own target. Francisco stepped forward as Franz lowered his gun and pulled the sheet of paper from the clips.
“Argentblum, you never cease to amaze me,” Francisco said, shaking his head. There were two perfect, tight clusters of holes in the target, one in the center of the abstract figure’s forehead and one over its heart.
Shelby and Wing finished firing and Francisco collected each of their weapons. Wing handed his rifle to Francisco with a look of distaste that Otto recognized as an expression of his friend’s feelings toward firearms in general.
“I’ll have these loaded onto the Leviathan,” Francisco said. “I’ll see you in the hangar. Wheels up in twenty.”
“What’s the matter, big guy?” Shelby asked, seeing the frown on Wing’s face as Francisco left the room.
“I just hope we don’t have to use those weapons,” Wing said.
“At least they give you the option of not killing someone,” Otto said.
“Yes, I suppose that is a small improvement,” Wing said with a nod. “They still lack subtlety though.”
“As opposed to the subtlety of a good butt-kicking,” Shelby said with a grin.
“Accurate enough to make the shots you need to make, Franz?” Otto asked.
“Yes, they are being very nice,” Franz said, nodding happily. “Do not worry, my lack of accuracy on the range was due to the compensating for increased muzzle velocity.”
“Right,” Otto said, not bothering to point out that if they had been keeping a tally his shots would have outscored all the rest of them put together.
“Otto, I have the devices you gave us the specifications for,” Professor Pike said. “The fabricator only finished them half an hour ago.” The Professor handed Otto a small metal case. Otto opened the case and looked at the dozens of tiny machines arrayed in rows in the case’s foam lining.
“Thanks, Professor,” Otto said, snapping the case shut.
“Okay, if you have everything you need we should head to the hangar,” Raven said.
“I’ll meet you there,” Otto replied, slipping the case into his backpack alongside the other pieces of equipment he’d brought along. “I need to go and pick up H.I.V.E.mind.”
Otto headed out of the door and made his way through the quiet corridors of the school. It was after H.I.V.E.’s curfew now and the other students were all safely tucked away in their accommodation blocks. Despite his desire to save his friends from the clutches of Anastasia Furan, he had to admit that there was a small part of him that rather envied his fellow students as they prepared for a comparatively normal night’s sleep. He arrived at H.I.V.E.mind’s datacore and waited patiently as the biometric scanners above the door analyzed him.
“Identity confirmed,” a soft synthetic voice said, “student Malpense, Otto, access granted.”
The heavy steel door rumbled aside and Otto walked across the long gangway that led to the core. He looked down at the black monoliths dozens of yards below him on the cavern floor. These obsidian slabs were the school’s primary data storage and were the clo
sest thing to what H.I.V.E.mind might call home when he was not taking up temporary residence in Otto’s head. It was strange to think that the massive quantities of computer equipment and processing power in the giant cavern were only as powerful as the walnut-sized supercomputer embedded within his own brain. The technology that Overlord had installed in Otto’s head was still staggeringly advanced, even now. The truth was that even Otto didn’t know what limitations there were to its abilities. As he approached the huge central processing column at the center of the cavern, the white pedestal in front of it lit up and a thin beam of blue light slowly expanded to form the hovering holographic head of H.I.V.E.mind.
“Good evening, Otto,” H.I.V.E.mind said. “I am ready to depart.”
“Okay. Any news on that homework I gave you?” Otto asked.
“I have conducted an extensive search of G.L.O.V.E. records,” H.I.V.E.mind replied. “There is no mention of any group with the name Artemis.”
“Well, we know they’re American intelligence,” Otto said with a slight frown, “and they were operating on foreign soil, apparently without official sanction, which suggests CIA or NSA maybe.”