Chương 187: Old Habits Die Last

Augustus watched the cliff face through thermal optics from the crest of a dune, his body low against the sand. The two figures below registered as bright silhouettes against the cooler limestone, their heat signatures sharp in the night air. One gestured with the hand holding the cigar, trailing a faint orange streak through the lens. The other stood with arms folded, listening. He kept well below the ridgeline.

Silhouetting himself against the stars was unlikely at this distance, but unlikely wasn't impossible, and old habits kept people alive longer than new ones. Felix's voice ran through the comms, while he himself was still overhead since reporting the sighting.

"The wall opened and closed behind them. Some kind of concealed entrance, right where Talia guessed." When the System had revealed a Guild tab to Alexander, it had also offered communication channels that functioned independently of its other messaging and calling systems. Accepting both vocal and mental communications, it was both instantaneous and global, as far as they could tell, though limited only to guild members officially recognized by the System.

Augustus shared Alexander's mistrust about their growing reliance on the features and functions the System offered, but they were far too useful to ignore.

"Good work, Felix," Talia responded from half a world away across their System comms channel.

"Hold your position and keep eyes on the entrance. Annie, status?"

"Bored out of my mind," Annie said from her position half a klick south, where she'd been watching a different section of the cliff system.

"Nothing on my end. Not even a lizard. Can I come over?"

"Start regrouping. I'm repositioning a surveillance drone toward Augustus's location. Give it ninety seconds to close the distance." The team had spread out across a five-kilometer stretch of the limestone formation shortly after arriving. Augustus had taken the central overlook. Annie covered the southern approaches. Felix circled above in owl form, using his superior night vision to scan for movement across the broader area.

Meanwhile, Talia managed the drone network from the island, cycling units between wider search patterns and the charging bank in their vehicle when the batteries dipped. It was a solid arrangement. The kind of surveillance grid Augustus had run dozens of times during his years with the military, though never with an alien shapeshifter or a woman who could turn into a dinosaur.

"Drone is thirty seconds out," Talia said.

"Felix, can you describe their approximate position relative to the cliff face?"

"South side, about two-thirds up from the base. There is a shallow overhang, and the entrance appeared directly beneath it. They are still standing outside talking." The surveillance drone was one of Alexander's newer designs, built for exactly this kind of work. Quiet enough that you couldn't hear it at twenty meters and small enough to blend into the darkness if anyone glanced up at the wrong moment. Augustus tracked its approach on the display built into his thermal optics. A tiny blue dot closing fast.

"In position," Talia said.

"Capturing now." Silence on the channel for several seconds.

"Got them. Cross-referencing." More silence.

"Matches confirmed. They're members of Harakat al-Sahara. Local militia outfit that's been operating in the border regions between Saudi Arabia and Oman for about two years. Known activities include human trafficking and ransom kidnapping targeting foreign workers in the region."

"Are they our targets?" Annie asked, the boredom in her voice replaced by something colder.

"I don't think so. They're a regional group. Nationalist leanings, anti-UEG, but they're small time compared to what the intelligence suggests we're looking for. Their profile doesn't match the organization holding Gabriel Cross." Talia paused.

"That said, they may have valuable information. Groups like this tend to know who else is operating in their backyard." Augustus considered this while the two men below continued their conversation. The one with the cigar clapped the other on the shoulder. He lowered the thermals.

"Are we moving against them?" Annie's voice came back immediately, genuinely surprised.

"What? Alex said we're not supposed to engage." Augustus raised an eyebrow that nobody could see. Talia answered for him.

"Alexander said you should avoid starting anything. He gave me mission control and Augustus tactical lead. Meaning Augustus decides when and how the team acts in the field, and I coordinate support and intelligence." Annie sputtered across the comm.

"That's such bullshit. He acts like I go around picking fights." Felix's reply was immediate and delivered with the flat sincerity that made it devastating.

"That is exactly what you do, though. You fight every chance you get." Augustus chuckled.

"I have shown so much restraint on this trip!" Annie protested.

"I haven't punched a single person. Not one. That has to count for something."

"It's been six hours," Felix said.

"Exactly! Six whole hours!" Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. Augustus let the exchange settle before speaking.

"Talia, what do we know about their capabilities?"

"Give me a moment. Local government intelligence estimates Harakat al-Sahara at twenty to thirty members. Two confirmed superhumans." She paused, and he heard something that might have been a suppressed laugh.

"Sorry. One of them has limestone manipulation. Calcium kinesis, or some variant. That's presumably how they're getting in and out."

"And the other?" Augustus asked.

"Low-level illusionist. Class C, if the assessment is accurate. Enough to confuse targeting or create minor visual distractions, but nothing that would slow you two down." Augustus processed the information. A limestone manipulator explained the hidden base. The illusionist added a layer of misdirection for anyone who got close enough to notice the entrance.

Together they provided decent security for a small militia in a region made entirely of their strongest asset, but neither would pose a serious threat to Grimnir.

"You have access to local government intelligence?" he asked.

"Through a publicly facing API," Talia said.

"I registered a mercenary outfit specializing in disrupting supervillain operations. The subscription fees are steep, but it hooks us into several government intelligence portals across the region." Augustus said nothing for a moment, turning that over. He had a fair idea of what it took to get a mercenary outfit licensed through the proper channels. Months of auditing. Background vetting for every listed operative. Financial transparency reviews. Bonding requirements that would choke most small organizations.

Insurance policies with premiums that reflected the inherent risk of fielding superhumans against other superhumans. There was no way Talia had gone through that process. He decided not to ask. Some questions were better left for quieter conversations, and the answer would likely only make him curious about what else she'd been building without telling anyone.

"Here's what I'm thinking," Augustus said.

"We only have a week. Two if Alexander and Maximilian agree to extra mediation. If this were one of the larger groups, I'd suggest we sit on it. Monitor it for a day or two. But it sounds small enough that I say we crack it open and send the wrecking ball in. See what we can learn."

"Am I the wrecking ball?" Annie asked, the eagerness barely restrained.

"I concur," Talia said.

"Drones are being redeployed to secure a safe operational net around the area. You're free to engage on your call."

"Copy that. Assuming command." Augustus lowered the thermals and reached out with his right hand, conjuring the wand into his grip.

"Felix, expand your search pattern. Keep an eye out for anyone escaping through another exit."

"Understood."

"What about me?" Annie practically shouted across the comms.

"Am. I. The. Wrecking. Ball?!" Augustus snapped the thermals to his belt and held out his left hand. His spellbook materialized above his waiting palm and immediately began flicking through pages.

"That depends. How are your wings coming along?"

"What?" Annie asked in surprise.

"Uh. I mean, I can launch pretty far up now, but I mostly just glide using my back-wings. I can fly a little if I make my arms into wings as well and flap them."

"Like a chicken," Felix said.

"Doing squats." Annie growled back.

"Yes, like a chicken." Augustus stifled a chuckle.

"Then I want you to launch and be ready for a heavy landing."

"But I can barely see a thing. I won't know what I'm aiming for."

"I'll light your way. Jump." He flicked the wand through a series of motions. The spellbook stopped at one page, resumed flicking, stopped at another, then rested on a final page. Around the wand, one rune, lit by faint light, appeared. Then a second. And a third. Gather. Amplify. Pierce. Augustus stood and aimed the wand at the cliff face. Around it, three runes rotated. Dim, but noticeable now that he was silhouetted against the night sky. A shout of alarm went up from below.

He could still make out both figures under the moonlight, one of them pointing up at the dune. On habit, he almost asked for a final weapons free confirmation. Then he exhaled, envisioned the nuance and intent behind the runes, and invoked the spell.

"Fireball." Power surged into the wand. The runes spun faster, pulling energy from the air around him, compressing it into the tip. For a brief, vulnerable moment, nothing happened. Augustus held his aim steady, feeling the spell build until the wand hummed against his fingers. Then it launched. The fireball tore across the desert in a blazing line, painting the sand orange as it passed. It struck the cliff face directly behind the two men and kept going, punching through the limestone with a grinding shriek.

Rock sprayed outward from the entry point as the spell burrowed deeper, slowing, the glow dimming as it fought through layer after layer of stone. It stopped. Both men had spun toward the wall. Augustus could see them in silhouette against the fading orange light embedded in the rock, frozen, staring at the thing that had buried itself in the cliff beside them. Augustus counted two heartbeats. The cliff face detonated. Stone blew outward in a shower of jagged fragments, the blast rippling across the rock face.

Fire bloomed from the wound, expanding outward in a rolling wave that caught both men and hurled them across the sand. They tumbled and came to rest in the dunes, motionless. Sand and debris billowed into the night air. The mouth of the tunnel gaped open, edges glowing with residual heat. Then a roar split the sky above him. Guttural. Primal. The kind of sound that bypassed thought and went straight to the base of the spine. Even with decades of combat experience, Augustus felt his grip tighten on the wand.

The air whistled. Something massive plummeted from above and slammed into the sand in front of the shattered opening. The impact cratered the ground, hurling sand and rock outward with the shockwave. Combat drones streaked overhead from behind the dune where their vehicle was parked, banking hard toward the two prone figures. They took up sentry positions without a word from Talia, hovering in silent formation. Augustus flicked the wand forward.

A portal snapped open and he stepped through, emerging at the base of the cliff. Heat washed over him from the still-glowing tunnel mouth. Dust hung thick in the air, lit orange by smoldering stone. Rubble crunched under his boots. To his right, a massive clawed hand gripped the lip of the crater as Annie hauled herself up and out, metal scales catching the moonlight as she rose to her full height beside him.

In Spinosaurus form, she towered over him, the sail along her spine cutting a jagged line against the stars. Her head swung toward him. One enormous eye studied him, the pupil a vertical slit reflecting the dying firelight. The intelligence behind it flickered, something raw and hungry surfacing. Augustus held still and met her gaze. The moment passed. She blinked, and the predatory edge receded. He turned toward the blown-open tunnel. Smoke curled from the darkness within.

Somewhere deeper, voices shouted in panicked Arabic.

"Do you think Alex is having fun?"

"I think he's climbing the walls of his hotel room." Annie turned back to the tunnel, her mouth opening into a strange, salivating grin.

"Good."