Chapter Thirty-Three – Kris

 

I wasn’t exactly sure who Roxy was selling to on a regular enough basis to necessitate this kind of firepower stockpile, but I honestly didn’t want to think too much about it.

If anything, I felt like Neo in The Matrix asking Morpheus for guns. And that feeling was more than enough to push away the nascent thoughts of Hunter Jackson and Ms. Roxanne Soot having a long, eventful history together.

The room was about half the size of a basketball court, and packed with enough weapons and ordnance to start, or finish, a small bush war in a third world country. Every wall was covered, with middle chest-height cabinets running in a grid in the middle of the room. M4 carbines, Kalashnikov rifles, bullpup automatic and burst-fire shotguns, sniper rifles, so-called anti-material rifles from the old Soviet bloc countries, which were strong enough to punch through the fuel tanks of an armored military helo. Magazines and scopes and under-barrel lights and IR dots.

“Can I touch?” I asked, my hands already reaching for an unmodified M4 that reminded me of the firearm I’d preferred back during my PRB days.

“Suit yourself, sugar,” Roxy drawled from behind me as I pulled the rifle down and checked it over. I opened the receiver’s breech, checked inside. Clean, well cared for. Idly, I wondered if Mike was responsible for the upkeep, or if Roxanne paid an outside service.

The succubus spoke up, as if she were reading my mind, her voice like a used car saleswoman reading off the features of the vehicle I’d just spotted: “The vault is kept in a pocket space, which means there’s no degradation over time. Time might as well not exist. Far as you’re concerned, these weapons were all serviced two minutes before you picked them up.”

I glanced up at her from beneath one eyebrow as I brought the surprisingly light weapon to my shoulder, sighting down the top of it, away from both the dragon and the succubus. “Have all the peripherals?”

“Anything you could dream of,” Roxanne said. “Silver, too, even, for all of them.”

“How much?”

“On the house.”

“You must really owe him one,” I said, looking around the room, “for you to give us a blank check.”

“A,” Roxanne said, smiling, “you’re just not the one picking up the tab. And B, I ain’t exactly what you’d call a fan of the White Feather, either. Given a choice between the status quo and that cult’s perfect little vision of the world, I’d much rather go with the current state of affairs, sugar.” Her smile widened as she and I locked eyes. “Humans need to keep knowing as little about us as possible. Believe me, I saw what happened when the paranoia about my kind was high. Let’s just say my hair got more than a little singed before the Middle Ages were done and over with. Inquisitors can get downright nasty when they want to. Took me forever to get back here, and I’ll be saved before I go through that again.”

“Strictly self-preservation, then?” Hunter asked.

Roxanne arched one exquisite eyebrow at him. “Not all of us can be thieves with hearts of gold, Mr. Jackson. Some of us gotta eat, you know, and the hog slop ain’t free ’round here.”

I nodded.

“Demolitions?”

Roxy turned questioningly to Hunter. “Explosives,” he explained, conversationally.

“Ruins are involved here,” I said, setting the M4’s butt back in the universal cradle at the base before resting the barrel back into the coated metal prong it had been leaning into. “Not sure exactly how, but we may need to collapse some things before the mission is through.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Harrington had mentioned that.” She pointed off, waggling out a little circle with the tip of her finger. “The back corner. And, if you’ll excuse me, I need to have Mike make some quick arrangements regarding a few things.”

“Yeah, sure. Take your time,” I said as Hunter and I both made our way down the aisle in the direction she’d pointed.

“You know demolitions?” I asked as we turned the corner.

When he spoke, his tone was almost wistful. “Nothing makes quite the distraction, or impression, like an abandoned building’s unscheduled implosion.”

I chuckled as we made our way down to where Roxanne had everything stored. “Where’d you learn to work with explosives?”

“Initially? Little over a century ago during my trench tenure.”

“Trench tenure?”

“Great War. Sapper with His Majesty’s Army. Back then, though, we were using TNT and nitro.”

“Jesus,” I breathed, looking up at him. “Wouldn’t have mattered if there was silver in that, or even a St. George. You really know what you’re doing, then?”

He held up both hands and wiggled all his fingers for me. “What does it look like to you?”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “Touché.”

“And you?”

“Standard training,” I said, looking down at the bricks of featureless plastic explosives, C-4. On a shelf nearby, within grabbing distance, were spools of MDI cable, blasting caps, and ignition switches used for detonation, along with some good, old-fashioned radio transmitters. Not much had changed during my time out of the PRB, or any of the services. “Enough to set this.”

“In your educated opinion, then, how much do you believe we’ll need? From the sound of the complexes described by Smith, we’re going to need quite a bit to make those places unusable.”

“How much do you think we can carry?” I asked.

“Depends on how big the truck is they’re using to run us across the border.”

“And what kind of support we can expect within the site location. I’m going to assume very little to none.” I bit my lower lip as I looked around. “I think we’re going to have to go with none.”

“Which means?”

I didn’t say anything at first, briefly thinking of Imogen Smith and something she’d said back at FMS, just before we adjourned our earlier meeting.

“Above all else, we must be pragmatic.” Her eyes had been hard and piercing, like diamonds, almost, as they’d captured mine in their grasp and drilled deep into my psyche. “Pragmatism is our watchword, Ms. Cole, Mr. Hunter. That is what wins these skirmishes and keeps people safe. You would both do well to remember that as you ready yourself for the breach.”

Now, as I looked over all the goodies I desperately wanted to take—the anti-armor rockets, the sniper rifle, the Squad Automatic Weapon—I bit my lower lip and shook my head. Even the amount of ammunition I’d planned on taking would have to be sized down.

“Which means…take only what we can carry in human form. If it doesn’t fit in one bag each, that’s it. It stays here. Sidearm, rifle, explosives, ammo, knives, no more than the bare minimum we’ll need.”

“But, Kris? What if there’s just not enough for multiple installations?”

“Then we do enough to delay them. Set them back so they have to regroup while the colonel comes up with a different plan, or puts together the cavalry to come get us.”

Hunter’s face remained impassive for a moment before he nodded, briefly. The look in his eyes told me he knew there wouldn’t be a cavalry, though. Or anyone else coming along to pick us up. “Yes, er, ma’am. You’re the boss.”

“Damn straight I am,” I said, grinning as I left him to his work. I came to a stop in front of the array of armaments I’d been looking at before and stared at them, hands on my hips. Now all I had to do was follow my own orders.