SNAFU: Black Ops

RAVEN’S FIRST FLIGHT Alan Baxter

Raven sat on a hard metal chair and scanned the bare room. A huge mirror on one wall was obviously a one-way window. Otherwise there were two chairs and a square metal table, all bolted in place. The room itself lay buried deep in an otherwise normal office complex, on the top floor of an old brownstone on East 72nd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. An office like a million others across New York. She thought she’d already agreed to join this strange crew, despite the lack of details, but it felt like another interview was imminent. Or maybe she’d misread everything and was being taken for a ride.

Raven. She liked the new handle. She’d never really liked her given name anyway. Real identity no longer exists in the Dark Squad, she had been told. No names, no history, no family, your new life starts here and before that you were nothing. The old you is a ghost.

It suited her fine. Being rid of her loser parents would be no trauma, she’d left them for the Army at sixteen, first chance she got. And they’d left the rest of her family behind in Korea anyway. She hadn’t seen any of them since she was five. Growing up Korean in America, a cultural mongrel, nothing had come easily to her. Estranged not only by distance and emotional coldness, but by her powers too, the odds had always been against much in the way of integration. Which was apparently a large part of why she’d been picked for this weirdo sideline. She was yet to decide if she could really trust the promises that had been made to her, but anything appealed more than a cell. A slight guilt hovered at the thought of her parents receiving a ‘Killed In Action’ notice, the funeral without a body they would have to endure. But still, what did she really care?

A light burst out, blinding her. Raven ducked off the chair, rolled into a crouch by the furthest wall, standard procedure against an unexpected IED. Her Army training fired up and she slipped the automatic 9mm from its hip holster, squinted against the blur as her vision adjusted back to normal. Nothing to shoot at, no burn or explosive damage. A decoy blast? She switched the 9mm to her left hand, trained on where the light had seemed to emanate, and moved her right hand to the jade knife at her belt, slipped it free. Its icy touch emboldened her. Feeling suitably armed, she whispered the samjok-o into her presence. The three-legged raven, it’s jet black feathers glistening under harsh blue strip lighting, stepped as though through an unseen door directly onto her shoulder.

What’s here? Raven mentally whispered to the familiar, the source of her new operative name.

It ducked and blinked, hopped up and circled the room with one wing flap, then settled back to her shoulder. Nothing, it thought at her.

Raven frowned and slowly rose from her crouch. The bird faded back to whatever plane it chose to inhabit once her attention on needing it had drifted. It was never far away, even if it wasn’t always physically with her. A word would bring it every time.

With a sense of disgust, she cautiously lowered herself back onto her chair, slipped the 9mm away, but kept the icy dagger reversed in her grip. The blade pressed coldly against the underside of her forearm. She preferred blades to firearms anyway.

What kind of pointless test was that?

The door behind her opened and she was out of the chair and over the desk in an instant, her small, wiry fame belying her athleticism and strength. Many had underestimated her physical ability to their detriment.

“It’s all right, settle down.”

The voice was deep and accented Scottish, but nothing like anything she had known before. Maybe some country accent, or the remnant of an older dialect. Regardless, it wasn’t broad enough to give her any trouble understanding, but was instantly recognisable. The man who had recruited her, who she knew only as Boss.

“The fuck is going on?”

He smiled at her, wide and open, teeth bright and large in his grizzled head. The man was massive, at least six and half feet, wide as a barn door. His iron grey hair was cut almost to the skull, his stubble a sparse snowscape across a square chin. He looked to be about fifty or maybe a little older, but Raven had rarely seen anyone, of any age, as imposing and dangerous. He put her teeth on edge.

“We’re testing you.”

“The fuck for, you already recruited me.”

“Sure, but we don’t have to keep you.” He held up a hand to stay her burst of outrage, grinning again. “I just wanted to see if you went for hardware or magic first.”

“Did I pass?” She felt the twist of her mouth that reminded her of a teenager, not the twenty-five-year-old military professional she was supposed to be. This guy really put her on edge.

“You went for a gun, then a maged weapon, then called your familiar. Perfect response sequence, really.”

“Being in the army taught me to rely on mundane gear first, and only, if I could. Otherwise too many questions got asked.”

“Exactly, and that applies here too, even if I did see your power and invite you in. So, you ready to meet the Squad?”

She shook her head. “You’ve hardly told me anything about this lot. You don’t have to keep me, you said. Do I have to keep you? I want to know more.”

“If you don’t ‘keep us’, it’s right back to the brig for you.”

She shrugged. “Might be a better option.” She didn’t believe it for a second, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Fair enough. I like your attitude. Come on, I’ll talk on the way.”

Outside the door was another man, clearly waiting for them. He was nearly as big and wide as Boss, his dark skin almost ebony in the low light. His head was shaved bald, glistening, and his smile as wide and welcoming as Boss’s had been.

“This is Smoke,” Boss said. “He’s my right hand man. We started Dark Squad together after I spotted him doing some freaky disappearing act in a rat-infested Middle-Eastern shithole.”

“We’d both had enough of orders and military discipline,” Smoke said. “And we began to question our directives. I was a Marine, Boss was SAS, we saw a kindred spirit in each other.”

Raven walked between the two of them, feeling like a child. She didn’t reach either man’s shoulder. “But this isn’t military, you told me.”

“Not officially, no.” Boss gestured into a side room off the corridor and she went in. Comfortable sofas and armchairs littered the space, a large screen TV was turned off in one corner. A tall guy with sandy hair and piercing blue eyes sat reading a book. Though nearly the height of Boss and Smoke, he was skinny as a rake handle, but exuded taut strength. He looked to be maybe late-twenties.

“That’s Taipan,” Boss said.

Taipan looked up, nodded. “G’day. Good to meet ya.” His Australian accent was unmistakable.

“You people really say ‘G’day’?” Raven asked.

“Not at night so much.” He grinned and went back to reading.

Raven thought these people all grinned too damn much.

“And I’m Jet.”

Raven turned. Jet was not as short as Raven, but not a giant like the three men. Muscular, solid, with short black hair, olive skin and narrow eyes. She maybe had a decade or so on Raven in age.

“Don’t let this cockforest intimidate you.”

“I’m not easily intimidated, but I’m glad to see another woman.”

“We’re all ex-military.” Boss pointed around at each of them. “Australian Army, Israeli Special Forces, you already know I was SAS and Smoke was a Marine.”

“Hoo fucking rah,” Smoke said, and slumped into an armchair.

“Makes my time seem paltry,” Raven said.

“No way, you went into the US Army as a teenager, you’ve got quite a few years of training, and a hell of a record. That’s what we want.” Boss sat and gestured for her to do the same. “You see, after Smoke and I started Dark Squad, we were noticed by a global organisation called Armour. I’m not going into the long boring story now, but the short version is that Armour exists to take care of magical, unnatural, supernatural, etcetera threats to the non-magical, unsuspecting masses. They’re like a global magical army, outside any government. Because we have the crack skills with military hardware and the mad magical chops greater than most, and because our little Squad started making waves, we got pulled in as Armour’s special ops team. We’re their black ops, doing all the direct infiltration and wetwork they don’t want to see.”

“Along with our military and magical skills, we’re also all a bit behind on our anger management classes,” Smoke said with a wry twist of the mouth. “We work best when we’re allowed to kill the bad guys without too much supervision, you get me? But Armour decided we were best off with them instead of maybe, at some point, against them. It’s worked well so far.”

Raven frowned. “So Armour is a secret organisation and you’re a secret within Armour?”

Boss smiled. “Black ops within black ops.”

“The blackest ops,” Smoke said.

Taipan laughed. “None more black!”

Raven frowned. “Why do I suddenly feel like this outfit’s ill-fated fucking drummer?”

Boss shook his head, his face growing serious. “We’ve long established that five works best, it’s an occult number, you know.”

Jet waggled her fingers like a sideshow magician. “The points of the pentacle!”

“Stow that shit, Jet. Truth is, you’re replacing a dear friend called Blinder, who we lost on the last mission. He’d been with us a long time.”

Raven laughed, but there was no humour in it. “No pressure then. Dead man’s shoes?”

“You’ll be fine. I know how to pick my operatives. We’re dealing with the loss of Blinder, but the Squad comes first. And the fact you were prepared to be cut off entirely before you knew the real details of this permanent commission speaks volumes.”

“It’s not like I’m giving much up,” Raven admitted.

“Well, you’ve gained a lot, trust me,” Boss said. “But enough history, we have a pressing mission, which is why you’ve been called in now. It would have been nice to break you in gently, but there’s something to be said for hitting the ground running, yeah?”

“I’m ready.”

“Good. This one comes from Commander Giraud in the Paris Armour HQ.”

The others in the room switched, their attention total and serious in a moment. Raven smiled softly to herself. They might be a rag tag bunch, but they were tight and focussed. The smile faded as she wondered how long it might take her to fit in. Or if she ever would. Regardless, despite what she’d told Boss, she didn’t want to go back to the brig and serve out five years for assault of a fellow soldier. That dick had deserved it, though that was old news and no longer relevant. But she couldn’t be locked up, she’d go mad.

“We going to Paris?” Jet asked.

“No, that’s just where the orders are from this time,” Boss said. “Our target is a necromancer.”

And the full weight of her new position fell on Raven like a wet mattress. After a life hiding her magical powers, thinking she was a freak, she found herself surrounded by others with unnatural skills of their own who talked about it openly and without derision.

“Seriously?” Smoke asked.

“Seriously. He’s been raising rezzers and placing them in various positions of power, slowly securing all kinds of advantages in business and politics. He’s got them in a couple of European governments, several places of power in the Middle East, the CEOs of least three major US corporations that we know of. He’s getting way too much influence, playing both sides of wars, collecting huge sums of cash from dozens of conflicting interests. Clever bastard.”

Taipan held up a hand. “Wait. What’s a fucking rezzer?”

“Resurrected human.”

Taipan’s eyebrows shot up. “Zombies?”

“No, resurrected humans.”

“There’s a difference?”

Boss sighed. “They don’t teach you much in Alice Springs?”

“You know I’m from fucking Melbourne.”

“A zombie is a mindless revenant. It simply wants to eat human flesh, mainly brains, and staggers around with that single purpose, slowly rotting as it goes. And they’re not fucking real. A rezzer is a dead fucker raised up with magic. It doesn’t breathe or eat or sleep or shit, but it can pretend to do all those things, and it looks and acts like a regular person. Except it is entirely under the thrall of the necromancer who raised it. Regardless of any other influence, the necro’s will overrides everything.”

“So that’s how it infiltrates society,” Jet said.

“Exactly. This particular necromancer has either put rezzers into power or found people in power, killed them, and then rezzed them to work for him. They operate exactly like regular people. They conceal the fact of their deadness, and fulfil the necro’s orders.”

Taipan made a face of grudging respect. “Cunning fucker. But must be powerful as hell to control as many as you suggest.”

“Quite. Armour has put out a lot of his fires, taken out a lot of his rezzers, but his power is growing too widespread. Different Armour bases around the world are getting in on it and reporting his feelers reaching their jurisdictions. It’s been agreed the necromancer himself has to go down. When he dies, his influence dies with him. His rezzers will all just drop, nothing but empty corpses the moment the necro’s life is snuffed out. So Giraud at Armour Paris has taken on the gig and he’s deploying us.”

“Because this sounds dangerous as hell,” Smoke said.

“Exactly.” Boss spread a map out on a table and the Squad gathered around to see. “According to Armour intel, our man is holed up in here.”

“Is that a castle?” Jet asked. The map showed a hill surrounded by forest. Atop the hill blueprints marked out the rooms and walls of a huge square building with a large open space in the middle.

“Yep, that’s Castle ThisGuysFucked. We don’t need any more information than that. We’re being air-dropped in here.” Boss tapped the map, south of the hill.

“Right in the trees?” Smoke said.

“Definitely not Paris,” Jet said. “Where is this?”

“Somewhere in the arse end of Belarus, not far from where the border meets with Ukraine and Russia. Deep ancient forests, miles from any civilisation.”

“Getting in is one thing, but then how do we get out?”

“Gonna be tricky, but this necro is canny. He’ll have transport we can secure, I’m sure, or we might be able to call for an extraction, depending on the lay of the land. No matter, we’ll worry about that later. We drop in, we mount the hill, gain the castle and find him. Kill him and somehow get home in time for tea and fucking crumpets. All good?”

“All good,” the others said in unison.

Boss looked down at Raven. “All good?”

“I guess so.”

He threw his overlarge grin at her. “You’re not here to prove yourself, right? You’re part of the Squad now, testing is all over, so just accept that and roll with it.”

“Okay.” Though she felt anything but okay. This was all a hell of a long way from tours of duty in Afghanistan.

They sat in the back of an Armour stealth helicopter, ten minutes out from the drop. Raven felt good back in full fatigues and pack again, weapons strapped across her body. Her knives were close, especially the jade ice dagger, always right there ready. Despite the issues she’d had with command, the trouble hiding her skills, she had loved the fight of active service. Anger management, Smoke had said, and she smiled. Maybe a little more complicated than that, but taking death to shitbags who deserved it was her jam.

“You’re a mudang?” Jet said suddenly, breaking her reverie.

The question caught her off-guard. “Er, yeah, that’s right.” How much did the Squad know about her? She knew next to nothing about them and the disadvantage bothered her.

Jet nodded, like she knew exactly what that meant and respected it.

“The fuck is a moo-dang?” Taipan asked.

Raven glanced to the front and Boss and Smoke’s broad backs watching over the pilot’s shoulder. “We doing this now?”

“Got anything else to do? No offence, just wondering.”

Raven forced herself to lighten up. These people were her new family, the enemy was out there. The enemy was always out there, never inside. Remember the mantra. “It’s like a Korean shaman, you know. A folk magus. But I grew up in America since I was five, so I hate all that cultural purity bullshit. My magic is rooted in the culture of my birth, but I gathered all kinds of things over the years.”

Jet gave a casual thumbs up. “Same for all of us, really. Mixed like colours on an artist’s palette, right? Anything of use?”

“Something like that, I guess. What about you?”

“Can it!” Boss strode back into the cabin, Smoke on his heels. “Make ready.”

They switched mode in an instant, like Raven had seen before. Wordlessly they went through self-checks then checking each other, lined up, and the door opened. The sound-proofed cabin roared with the rush of air outside, icy cold and buffeting, the rotors chopping the wind into sound bites. They lined up, watched the light flick from red to green, and jumped in quick succession.

It was a low drop and black silk ‘chutes opened right away. The thick forest canopy rushed up, far too fast for Raven’s liking. She watched between her black boots, adjusted course a little left and right in the hope of coming in between trees and having the best shot at an easy harness escape.

From the sudden roar of the chopper into the cold fall, silence pressed in. She didn’t waste any attention on the rest of the Squad, drew hard on the ‘chute as her feet crashed into the foliage, drew her elbows in, tucked her heels against her butt. Crashing and snapping of leaves and branches filled her ears then she bounced and held up, hanging in her harness in utter blackness. She flicked down her night vision goggles and scanned below. The forest floor was about twenty feet down. If it was soft enough she could drop that far and roll.

Leaves and branches burst beside her and Smoke fell into view. His ‘chute snagged up a little lower than hers and he looked up, his wide grin pale in the darkness. Then he was gone. The harness hung limp, Smoke had vanished. She caught movement below, looked down and there he was, looking up at her again. Like he’d teleported from one spot to the other. She smiled crookedly. I guess that’s where he gets his name from then.

“Want me to catch you?” he called up.

“Fuck no!” She hit the harness release, dropped, tucked and rolled through leaf litter and came up into a crouch. It had been a little further than she thought and her heart raced at the prospect of injury, but she was fine.

“Ballsy,” Boss said, striding up beside her.

“A little help?”

Jet joined them and the four looked around until they spotted Taipan upside down some thirty feet off the ground, spinning in a gentle figure eight.

Boss sucked air over his teeth. “Fucking hell.”

“I got it.” Smoke took two or three paces forward then vanished. Several moments later he appeared without breaking strike along a thick limb only a few feet from where Taipan hung. In seconds, with a knife and rope employed judiciously, they were all gathered on the forest floor.

Boss checked his compass and pointed. “That way. No lights, use your night goggles, single file. If anything comes at us, use hand-to-hand if possible. We don’t want to warn anyone in that castle we’re coming by sending gunfire through the night. Quiet as church fucking mice, all right?”

Without waiting for a response he led the way.

Raven didn’t know her natural spot in the Squad, but Boss took point and Jet fell in behind him. Taipan waved her forward, then Smoke took the rear guard, so it seemed she was in the middle. She wondered if Blinder, the dead ex-member, had been in the middle too.

The forest floor was dense with undergrowth and tree roots, reaching up to trap an unwary ankle. The going was slow, machetes deployed left and right. Several times they had to double back and cut a new path when the vegetation became too thick even for chopping. After half an hour, Raven’s muscles had a nice burn happening, sweat soaked into her black fatigues. The sixty pound pack wasn’t a burden yet, but it would be if they had to keep up this pace and exertion for too long.

A deep moan rose up, drifting through the trees from somewhere ahead. Boss’s fist shot up and the Squad froze. Something moaned again, then another off to the left. A third joined it, then a fourth and then there were too many to place and count.

The Squad split their line out wide, scanning left and right through the darkness. Crunching and cracking of leaves and twigs joined the melancholic laments as several somethings shambled towards them.

“Two o’clock,” Smoke said, then vanished. He reappeared moments later behind the silhouette of a man and took its head from its shoulders with a single machete stroke.

Then there were figures everywhere, pushing out between the tree trunks, faces slack and groaning, the stench of rotten flesh filled their nostrils.

“They fucking zombies now?” Taipan asked

Jet stepped forward and said, “Sit on the floor.”

Her voice was deep, powerful, and the compulsion to drop her ass to the leaf litter was almost too much for Raven to ignore. And the command hadn’t even been directed at her.

“Sit down!” Jet ordered again, clearly using more than mere sound, the waves of her voice something beyond the simply auditory. “Not working!” Jet told the Squad, but they could see that for themselves.

Smoke blinked in and out again, machete flashing. Heads rolled.

Taipan crouched, made complicated gestures and barked a short word. Flame shot from his outstretched fingers and engulfed an approaching figure. The attacker went up in flames, flesh and clothes crackling, but didn’t slow for a moment.

Taipan pulled a machete free and hacked the burning man down. “Fuggen hell! Flaming zombie attack!”

“Engage and destroy,” Boss shouted. “Decapitate for your best chance. Questions later.”

Raven chose to ignore the nature of the enemy, treat it like any other, and fell into the dance. Her jade dagger was more than a simple edge, its magic froze everything it cut. Limbs and heads shattered to flesh cubes when they hit hard roots or branches, or she hit them with fists and feet after a stab or slice. The machete in her other hand carved bigger wounds, her ambidextrousness making her into a whirling, scything tiny tornado of death. This is what she lived for, to get in close, to move, dive, duck and weave, cutting anything that strove to interrupt her movement. Nothing was as pure as the slice of a sharp edge.

She caught glimpses of Jet, expert strikes of hands and feet, fighting like some master from a movie, not speaking at all. Smoke popped in and out of sight, appearing randomly to decapitate, then vanish again. Taipan reached and lunged, wiry and fast, chopping two-handed with his machete as though it were a sword. When he took out a leg and the thing fell, he’d lob flame at it to burn it where it lay. Boss slammed all around himself, sometimes lifting the revenants high to smash them down over a bent knee. He left more alive than dead, disabled with destroyed spines and necks, reaching and dragging themselves over the rough ground. The Squad’s magic pulsed and flashed, quick-fire spells of speed and protective wards, deployed smoothly with fists and feet and blades. Raven used combat magic of her own, practiced surreptitiously in theatres of war around the world, but realised dimly that she had so much to learn from these people.

In minutes it was over, silence settling but for the gasping of breath as the Squad re-joined one another.

“Anyone hurt?” Boss asked.

“One of the fuckers bit me,” Jet said. She held up her left arm, a deep crescent in her wrist leaking thick blood that looked black in the night.

Boss started to dress the wound, rinsing it with saline and disinfectant first. “Anyone else?”

Taipan leaned forward, stared hard at Jet’s eyes. “Er, Boss… Were they zombies?”

“There’s no such thing, you fucking idiot, I already told you that,” Boss said. “She’s not going to become one of the walking dead.” Something moaned near his foot, a broken man twisted in all the wrong directions, dragging itself one-handed over the ground. Boss slammed a boot into its head, stoved the skull in. The stench of rotten meat swelled in the air.

“You’re sure?”

“These are rezzers. They could have been here for years, decades, without the magic refreshed, so they’re starting to rot, that’s all. There’s probably a lot more.”

Jet reached up and slapped Taipan’s cheek. “Stop being such a buttercup.”

Smoke put a hand on Raven’s shoulder. “You were quite something to watch there. Like a razor-sharp godsdamned ballerina or something.”

The others nodded, smiled agreement.

Raven couldn’t help smiling too, wondering if she’d earned her place a little more securely. “It’s my gift.”

“Fall out,” Boss said. “Go wide, and listen for more.”

They proceeded more cautiously than before, fanned out across a wider area, eyes peeled. Moaning and guttural coughs erupted now and then, homing in quickly on the Squad. Taipan took out a pair of rezzers with quick double-handed machete strokes.

“I thought you said these things were intelligent like regular people,” he said.

Boss stepped sideways, slammed a fist into a rezzers face, collapsing its head with inhuman strength, then threw a scowl at Taipan. “It’s not only the flesh that rots when the magic is left to degrade. The orders remain, but their brains have moulded out too.”

Jet grimaced. “That’s fucking horrible.”

“Yeah. I’m guessing they have two over-riding commands. Stay within a certain area and kill anything that enters that area. The necromancer would check in on his more active thralls, keep the magic fresh and therefore the rezzer would retain its humanity. These ones, he’s just left to nature.”

Raven shivered at the thought, imagined their active brains understanding their fate as their sense of self slowly decayed. “This is actually a fate worse than death. I thought that was just a figure of speech.”

Boss glanced over at her, slight shake of the head. “There are many fates worse than death. Concentrate, people.”

Something swung down from a tree limb directly in front of Raven, leering and drooling, it howled as arms thrust forward, fingers wriggling like hard, hungry worms. Raven bit back a yelp of surprise, ducked and slashed upwards. Her jade dagger clipped one arm and it stiffened immediately. She spun to one side, whipped around a heel kick, and the arm shattered into a thousands shards of frozen meat. As the rezzer strained about, its remaining arm clawing at the air, she ducked back under and slammed the dagger into its back. Hard ice spread like a fast-blooming flower across its body and she punched right through, destroying its spine and organs. It fell limp from the tree and she stepped over it.

“Damn fine knife,” Smoke said. “You made a rezzer ring donut.”

Raven grinned. “Yeah, long story attached to this.”

“You’ll have to tell me some time.”

“Sure.”

The night was largely starless and the darkness under the trees wasn’t much relieved when they emerged from the densest part of the forest and began the slow climb up the mount on which the castle sat. It loomed over them, massive and foreboding, a black silhouette against the slightly lighter sky. Night goggles on, marked for silence, the Squad crept over rocky ground, hunched low, eyes everywhere.

They gained the foot of the castle wall without incident and Boss gestured to his left. Tight to the huge grey stone blocks, they moved single-file in the wall’s shadow towards a corner. As they rounded the corner, they found themselves beside a rectangular lake some twenty feet across that ran along the entire front of the building. Halfway down was a large portico that led to a bridge over the lake that in turn led to an imposing double door.

“A fucking moat,” Taipan whispered. “This is like Disney’s last nightmare.”

“Moat’s go all the way around,” Smoke said. “This is… a fucking pond, who cares.”

“We going in the front door?” Jet asked.

Boss pointed across the bridge. “Those doors are thick and heavy, but it’s the only ground level point of entry. Short of some serious grappling or climbing, it’s our best bet.”

Jet sighed. “We’re going in the front door.”

Smoke chuckled, low and rumbling. “The time for stealth appears to be over.”

“We’ll see,” Boss said. “This is as little warning as we could give them. We’ve no idea what we’ll find inside. Certainly more rezzers, but who the fuck knows what else. Smoke, you wanna check, let us in?”

“Sure thing.”

Smoke vanished.

“The fuck does he keep doing?” Raven asked. “That’s some skill.”

“He’s a planeswalker,” Boss said. “He can step from our realm into another and back again. Right now he’s walking however far he estimated he needed to go to get to the other side of that door. Then he’ll step back into our realm and be inside to open up for us.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. There’s not a cell on earth that can hold Smoke, or a building that can keep him out.”

“Where does he go?”

Boss laughed softly. “No idea. He won’t say and I’ve given up asking.”

“Huh. And you throw fire around?” Raven asked Taipan.

“We all have many skills, but my specialty is pyromancy, yeah. And Jet here has a fucking powerful voice of command she can turn on.”

“Which is apparently useless against those mindless things.” Jet’s face was set in frustration.

“A necromancer’s commands are designed to always be the foremost thing in any rezzer’s thoughts,” Boss said. “Seems that even overrides your voice.”

“Great.”

“And my flames don’t even slow them down,” Taipan said. “If anything, when they’re burning they’re more dangerous! Fucking nightmare.”

The double doors clunked and one side creaked open. Smoke leaned out with a grin and waved them in. As they hunched to scurry across the bridge Smoke called out, “Don’t worry about being careful. There are cameras everywhere in here like mushrooms in a wet field. We’ve been made.”

They stood tall and sprinted to him. As Raven stepped inside she saw the interior was completely at odds with the outside. The ancient fortification housed a modern interior of expensive décor and up-to-the-minute technology. Smoke wasn’t lying about the cameras, they sprouted from every wall and corner.

“Get ready to engage,” Boss said. “He’s sure to send something against us now.”

As the words left his mouth, a ravening roar and howl rang through the tall, wide hallways. Then more than one, then dozens and claws skittered and scrabbled on the wooden floors.

“Fucking dogs,” Jet said. “I hate it when they make me kill dogs.”

“Yeah, not so much dogs,” Taipan said.

They turned to see where he was looking. A crowd of huge, leathery creatures with wide maws crammed with sharp teeth tumbled around the corner, clambering over each other in their need to get to the prey first. They bore the barest resemblance to dogs, more like massive dog-shaped beasts with some parody of a crocodile’s head. Jaws snapped and slathered. The barking and growling doubled as another crowd of them hurtled around the other end of the hallway.

“Great!” Taipan said. “Dark Squad in a giant teeth sandwich.”

“Rain fire!” Boss yelled.

Raven swung her AK47 into play simultaneously with the others and they dropped into a ragged formation. She stood beside Smoke facing one way while Jet, Taipan and Boss faced the other. The corridor exploded into thunder and lightning as the automatic weapons barked and kicked. Armour-piercing ammo filled the air and the leathery flesh of the beasts erupted and split. Raven had a moment to marvel at the accuracy of her team mates. She thought her marksmanship was top notch, but these guys were a class above. Then she was distracted by the realisation that no blood came out of the perfectly placed wounds. The monsters didn’t even slow.

“Brains are too fucking small in those giant heads,” Boss yelled. “Get the eyes or shoot out the legs!”

But the things were almost on them.

Raven re-sighted, carved full auto low to the ground and took off the legs of the lead two beasts. They went down, still snapping and wriggling as more tumbled over them. The pile-up barely slowed the rest and those behind were already clambering over their fallen. She got a couple of bullseye shots right through eye sockets and two more dropped. Then Smoke blinked out beside her and Raven faced a hoard of monsters on her own.

First mission and this was it. What the fuck even were these things? She’d never imagined anything like them and they were so close she could smell their fetid breath. She let the AK go and pulled the jade dagger. As the one closest lunged for her, she slashed out and leapt up, put one foot to a sturdy table against the wall and flipped. As she turned over in the air she exulted to see the beast she’d slashed falter and collapse. Its head shattered as it hit the ground.

At least the dagger works! she thought, and came down on her knees on the back of another beast.

As it twisted and writhed, teeth slamming together only inches from her leg, she stabbed down into the back of its neck where she hoped some spine might be and leapt again. I’ll show you a fucking ballerina. She jumped and danced between the beasts, slashing for legs and heads wherever she could. If she stopped moving she was dead, but if she changed direction often enough, and had a little luck, she could avoid the worst of their attack.

As she turned in one leap, she spotted Smoke appear far down the corridor, the other side of Boss, Jet and Taipan and the beasts they were fighting.

“Hey, motherfuckers!” Smoke yelled. Several beasts turned at the sound, then took off after him. Smoke bolted around the corner out of sight.

Boss and Taipan were ducking and shifting, chopping with machetes and firing with high-calibre handguns, taking a decent amount their enemies down. With the reduced numbers thanks to Smoke’s distraction, they gained the advantage and turned to help Raven.

She paid a little more attention to their magic as she kept moving, trying to learn as she cut and froze flesh, moved again. She couldn’t count how many there had been or how many she had killed but she suddenly found herself standing alone in the corridor, some distance from where the fight had started. Heaped mounds of dead and broken leathery flesh lay between her and Boss and the others. Beyond them, more fallen beasts. Several of the things still snapped weakly and writhed, bodies quivered, but none had the ability to attack any more, spines severed or brains crushed.

“Rezzed fucking hellhounds,” Boss said. “As if the fuckers aren’t bad enough alive. Who’s hurt?”

“Who isn’t?” Jet asked.

Raven felt warmth over her left hand and looked down. Blood ran in rivulets from her sleeve. Her arm just below the elbow was opened in a wide gash. As she noticed it, the pain set in. She knew that once the adrenaline eased it would only get worse. She looked up, lifted the arm. “Err…” Then everything went black.

Raven came around to Boss’s voice. “…be all right. You know he can take care of himself.”

“Sure, but let’s hope he can find us again.” That was Jet.

Raven opened her eyes. Boss had dressed her arm, the others had a variety of bandages on arms, legs, heads. Taipan had half his head covered, his left eye obscured by dressings. But they all seemed in good enough spirits.

“Welcome back.”

Raven looked at Boss, felt her cheeks redden. “Fucking hell, I can’t believe I passed out.”

“They have venom and you’re not inoculated,” Boss said. “Well, you are now. You’ll feel queasy for a while, and you lost some blood, but you’ll be okay.”

A spent syringe lay on the ground beside her. Boss glanced at it. “Yeah. One of many parts of our standard medkit. They’re a bit different to what you’re used to.”

“No shit.”

She sat up, and did indeed feel quite nauseated. She took a few slow, deep breaths, felt herself slowly centring again.

“Now I need your help,” Boss said. “You operational?”

No way would Raven say anything but yes to that question on her first mission. “What do you need?”

“Your little friend. We need a recon mission, find out where the target is. We spend too long fucking around here with his pets and we’re giving him time to slip away.”

“You got it.”

Raven spoke the word and the samjok-o stepped onto her shoulder. “We know what this guy looks like?”

Boss pulled a grainy photo from his pocket. It wasn’t much, clearly taken at full zoom, it showed a Caucasian man, perhaps somewhere in his forties, cropped dark hair and a linen suit. “That enough?”

Raven took the photo. “It’ll have to be.” She stared at it, made sure the three-legged raven familiar took a good look too, then asked it to go fetch for her.

The samjok-o took wing and vanished. Raven closed her eyes and stayed with its thoughts. It did nothing for her nausea, flitting in and out of existence, room to room, searching the vast, sprawling complex. Then it found him, stood in the middle of a huge protective circle in the open courtyard at the centre of the castle.

She thanked her friend and opened her eyes. “Looks like he’s waiting for us,” she said.

As they moved out, Boss radioed Smoke but got no response. When Jet cast a hooded look at him he just shook his head and jogged on. Raven worried how they might feel if something bad had befallen Smoke. They had only recently lost Blinder and that clearly bore down on them heavily. To lose another so soon would be more than harsh. Then again, if Smoke were dead and needed to be replaced, at least she wouldn’t be the new kid any more. It was a mercenary thought, but mildly comforting, especially as she hardly knew Smoke. But she had already grown to like the man a lot. She wanted to tell him the story of her dagger.

Come on, you fucker, she thought to herself. Let’s all go home from this one.

They tracked their way through an ostentatious ballroom, eyes sweeping left and right, alert for further attack. But everything seemed still. Almost too still, if Raven believed in clichés. It was as though the castle itself was waiting for something. For some trigger to be tripped.

“I’m on fucking edge here,” Taipan said. “I don’t like having no depth perception.”

“Your eye going to be okay?” Raven asked.

He shrugged. “It’s still there. Whether it’ll be okay or not remains to be seen.” He grinned and looked down at her. “Remains to be fucking seen! Geddit?”

She couldn’t help a laugh escaping, shook her head. “You people are…” She couldn’t find the word.

“All right?” Boss threw back over his shoulder. “Is that what you meant?”

And she realised it was. “Yeah. You people are all right.”

Boss nodded without looking around. “Wind it up, now. Let’s concentrate.”

The ballroom led into an ornate dining room. Polished rosewood table, intricate chandeliers and expensive-looking artworks. The table was laid with enough silver to pay off the national debt of some island nations.

“Looks like the fucker is planning a party.” Boss pointed to a door on the far side. “That way.”

The door had glass panels, light net curtains inside and wan moonlight beyond. They vaguely made out bushes and a stone fountain.

“Seems the cloud cover has cleared a bit,” Jet said.

They slowed, took their weapons up in a casual ready position and advanced slowly. As they neared the doors, there was a click and they swung open. Boss paused, then straightened up. “Seems we’re expected.”

He strode out into the courtyard.

The others gathered beside him. The courtyard was huge, maybe a hundred metres across. It had garden beds and shrubbery all round, mostly Italian in style. Stone fountains sprayed and burbled all over, everything lit in monochrome by the half moon now clear of clouds. What had once no doubt been a central pond was now a raised dais of stone. The circular edge was old granite, carved with runes and sigils of protection. It crackled with power, warding pretty much everything a mage could throw at it. Raven had never felt such concentrated magic in her life. The man in the linen suit stood in the centre, arms casually at his sides.

“Hello, there,” he said, his voice heavily accented Eastern European. “I have to admit, I’m impressed you got this far.”

Boss raised his AK and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He frowned, looked at the weapon, then back at the necromancer. “I expected your wards to stop the bullets, not render this entirely inoperative.”

“More fool you.”

“I guess so.”

The air crackled with tension and magic. Raven found herself useless, impotent. Their firearms were inert, the target was caged against their magic. It was a sudden and seemingly insurmountable stand-off.

“Let’s hope you’re better at hand-to-hand than you are at recognising wards,” the necromancer said.

Movement from either side sent a ripple of alertness through them. The square between the necromancer and the Squad filled with black-clad, fast-moving figures. Some flipped and tumbled as they ran in an ostentatious display of athleticism.

Boss groaned.

Taipan made a tight sound in his throat. “Are you fucking serious? Undead fucking ninjas now? They’re rezzers, right?”

“Almost certainly,” Boss said, his voice tired.

The rezzers gathered in a group, at least twenty of them. Raven looked around, realising that beside the bushes and fountains there was little to no cover. This fucker seemed to have an endless supply of minions.

“Remember,” Boss said. “Take out the spine, brain, or decapitate. No amount of incidental damage will slow them. And it looks like they’ll be a far greater challenge than the abominations in the forest.”

As the Squad crouched, ready for the enemy to rush forward, a door on the far side of the courtyard slammed back.

“Hey, motherfuckers!” Smoke, grinning like the Cheshire cat, lobbed something in a high arc.

“Fire in the hole!” Boss yelled and the Squad hit the deck.

Smoke’s grenade sailed high and dropped into the midst of the massed ninjas even as their voices shouted warnings to each other. They began to scatter, some leaping away in time, but the concussion of the blast whined everything to silence for a moment as bright light flashed out. Body parts rained down among chunks of earth and stone.

“That should even the odds a bit,” Smoke called.

The massed group of rezzed ninjas had been spread wide by the blast. They yelled at each other over the following silence, trying to regroup. Even the necromancer looked concerned.

“Engage!” Boss hollered, and Dark Squad sprang into action.

They sprinted in different directions, ensuring the rezzers couldn’t regroup. Raven headed for a clutch of three, jade dagger in hand. These were definitely not the mindless, broken things from the forest. The way they moved, communicated, readied themselves, showed them to be every bit as alert and dangerous as an enemy could get, only far harder to hurt. At least the dagger gave her a distinct advantage.

She heard Smoke’s high-pitched laughter as she engaged the first assailant, then nothing existed but her own fight. The ninjas were fast, faster than any enemy she’d met before. The first kick came at her so suddenly it clipped her ribs before she could dodge fully, forced most of her air out. The shock of being hit so easily winded her more than the impact, but she managed to swipe the dagger across and felt it drag through flesh. The ninja put his foot down and his leg crumbled, sent him tumbling to the ground. She was already past him, blocking a furious flurry of blows from the next, barely twisted as the third threw another kick. The one she had cut was up on one leg already, hopping expertly to re-engage. She was hurt and still all three faced her.

Raven took a deep breath and whispered the word to her samjok-o. She asked for help and the three-legged bird stepped into the air again followed by a cloud of other shining black avians. They swirled and mobbed the ninjas, interrupting their approach. Raven let her mind slip into the state of wu wei, a Taoist concept of non-being. Her mind removed itself from her actions and she let pure training and instinct take over. No longer trying to learn or emulate, she let her magic flow as she danced with the flock of ravens, knives in hand, a lyrical, swirling display of athletic grace and deadly accuracy. As the birds dipped, she rose, as they fanned out, she dove in. The rezzed ninjas scored hits here and there, but she put off that pain for later. She felt the occasional searing burn of a blade strike and ignored that too. Her own dagger swept and flew, shattered flesh raining around in musical accompaniment to the dance.

Once her three assailants were gone, she moved with her cloud of birds across the courtyard, engaging wherever there was movement not of her Squad. Howls and shouts, cries and slaps of flesh on flesh, and then stillness.

Arms out to either side, the dagger held low in one hand, hair come loose and hanging over her eyes, Raven stopped moving. Statue-still but for the fast rise and fall of her chest, the rasp of rapid breathing. She let the emptiness drain away from her, slowly raised her eyes to look around.

Boss and Taipan stood side by side, hurt but smiling. Smoke strolled across the courtyard towards them. Raven’s eyes fell on Jet, sat back against a fountain, bleeding and bruised, one eye already swollen shut. Jet gave a shaky thumbs up as she hauled herself to her feet.

The Squad regathered and stood before the protective circle. In its centre, the necromancer looked shaken.

“What’s next?” Boss asked.

“You people are tenacious,” the necromancer said. “But let’s see you face this.” He began chanting, knotted his fingers into complicated signs and mudras.

“He’s summoning something,” Jet said, slightly slurred through swollen lips.

Smoke tilted his head to listen. “A demon, I think,” he said with a smile.

Raven’s eyes widened. A demon? Seriously? And why were they all so casually amused about that.

“Oh ho,” Boss said. “This’ll be fun.”

As the necromancer’s words gained strength, rapidly blurring together, Boss raised his arms as if in supplication. With a rush of burning hot air, he faded and vanished. Before Raven had drawn a shocked breath, Boss reappeared inside the protective circle, standing right before the necromancer.

The necromancer’s eyes went wide, his mouth fell open. “What the hell?”

“You really should consider,” Boss said. “If you plan to summon a demon, it’s best to know who’s already around, otherwise what you expect to appear outside might already be there, and then your spell simply reverses itself.”

Boss whipped his hand around, grip tight on the hilt of his machete, and the necromancer’s head sailed up off his shoulders, spinning over and over, still wearing its expression of shock and disbelief. The body crumpled to the floor at Boss’s feet.

Boss looked down at the body for some time as the magic of the protective circle drained away, then he turned and strolled back to the Squad. “There we go then.”

“You’re a fucking demon?” Raven asked. Her heart beat faster at this revelation than all the fighting up until this point.

Boss shook his head, slipped his machete away. “It’s really not as simple as all that. Perhaps I’ll try to explain it to you one day. Bad luck for him though, eh?”

Raven looked around the group. They all smiled and she felt like they were all in on a joke to which she wasn’t privy. It was frustrating, but she supposed there was an awful lot to learn about these people.

Boss turned to look at the raised dais with its ring of carved sigils. “That’s big enough for a chopper to put down, don’t you think?”

“I would say so,” Smoke agreed.

Boss turned to Jet. “Call it in, please. Tea and crumpet time.”

They were taken to an Armour base in Berlin to have their wounds taken care of. Taipan needed to wear a patch for a few weeks but was told he had been lucky and would retain his sight. Other than several dozen stitches between them and a few set bones, they weren’t in too bad shape. Some of the Armour mages used a few less than natural techniques to hurry their healing along.

By the time they were in a comfortable lounge being fed, it seemed to Raven that the whole encounter had been weeks ago instead of hours.

“It’ll be good to get back to New York,” Taipan said. “There’s a young man I know there who’ll be very impressed with my eye patch. I’ve got this whole story about defending myself from a mugging to earn his sympathy.”

“Don’t you ever think about anything but sex?” Jet asked.

“I think about fighting a lot.”

She laughed. “Fair point.”

Boss crammed in the last of a sandwich and stood. “Right, I’m going to Paris to debrief with Commander Giraud. You lot head home, I’ll see you in Manhattan. Except you, Raven. You’re with me.”

She frowned. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I want him to know how well you did, and for you to see a bit more of Armour operations.”

It wasn’t too long a chopper ride to Paris and the Armour HQ there. They went through a command centre with computer banks, busy personnel, a large round desk in the middle with holographic projections hovering over it.

“It’s like the bridge of the fucking Enterprise,” Raven said.

Boss laughed. “Armour has been around since the Crusades, fighting evil and gaining wealth and power. Come on.”

He went along a hallway to a door marked Commander and knocked.

“Come.”

Inside was a large office, filing cabinets and a sofa on one side. Behind a large mahogany desk sat a short man with dark, intense eyes and jet black hair. His face was deeply wrinkled, showing age that seemed to go beyond any mortal lifespan. Raven had no idea why, but she sensed immense power about him. It would take some experience and skill to be an Armour Commander after all, she supposed.

“Aha, Boss, please sit,” Giraud said. His French accent was strong, but something else was in there too. Something Slavic maybe. “It all went well?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Boss said. “But you know us. We prevail.”

“You hit some tough resistance?”

Boss nodded slowly. “We really did. The enemy were immune to Jet’s voice, fire barely slowed them down, it’s almost like they were the perfect thing to throw at us. Especially without Blinder and his skills. But like I said, we prevail.”

Giraud smiled. “Indeed you do. You are a very reliable squad.”

“Almost too reliable?” Boss asked.

The air in the room electrified, a sudden tension that put Raven on edge. She had no idea what had just happened, but the friendly greeting seemed distant as a new, icy atmosphere rippled up.

“Too reliable?” Giraud asked.

“You really didn’t expect us to make it back, did you?” Boss said. “I mean, those were some pretty massive odds.” He gestured at Raven. “Without our new recruit here, we would have had some serious trouble.”

Giraud nodded, flicked a quick smile at Raven. “I must admit, I didn’t know you had replaced Blinder already.”

“Yeah, I thought not. I find it helps to play my cards close to my chest, even with the people supposedly on my side.”

“Supposedly?”

Raven saw Giraud’s hand move surreptitiously and press at something under his desk. Her own hand drifted close to the jade dagger.

“Why didn’t that necromancer bleed when I took his fucking head off, eh?” Boss asked.

Giraud’s eyebrows rose. “Didn’t bleed?”

“You think I wouldn’t fucking notice a small detail like that? That the necromancer supposedly behind all this was a fucking rezzer?” Boss’s voice rose in volume with each word.

The door behind them opened and two large Armour operatives stepped in. Giraud began to rise from his chair and Boss’s hand came up with a Magnum .44 and blew the Commander’s head into mincemeat. It burst like a melon, spraying the wall behind the desk with blood and bone and brains.

Shocked shouts and movement erupted outside the office. As Giraud’s body collapsed back into his chair one of the operatives who had come in fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. The other, reaching for Boss, paused, staring open-mouthed.

Boss raised both hands and let the Magnum clatter onto Giraud’s desk. “He was the real necromancer,” he said loudly as people crowded into the room. “The fact that one of his rezzers dropped when he did is proof of it. Now I realise there’s a lot of paperwork to do, but let’s all just calm down, yeah? No one else needs to get hurt.”

Tension drained slightly, giving way to shock. Hurried conversations travelled out across the base like a wave.

“Better get the Deputy Commander in here,” Boss said.

The operative who had come in with the rezzer nodded. “I’ll go and make the call.”

Raven looked from the Commander’s corpse to the dropped rezzer operative, mind reeling as she figured out the course of events. Her eyes finally reached Boss to find him smiling at her.

“You see why I brought you along now, then? Give you a better idea of our role in all this. You can see why we’re needed?”

She smiled. “Black ops within black ops?”

Boss laughed. “None more black.”