The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Chapter 20: Extraction

Right where Lash said it was, the straight flight of steep stairs at the back of the building dropped into the darkness. Already committed, the five vampires didn't hesitate, flying down the stairs as quickly as it was safe to do so.

Hearing the approach of several pairs of feet from his left, Lash gathered himself as he hefted one of the cromags' belt knives in his hand, which was more like a short sword to him, and turned to face the approach.

After cutting their way through the merpeople guarding the entrance, along with several submersibles of various size and technology, Tanner was the first of the marines to slowly surface, her Kali up and ready.

"Clear," she said after a brief recon and the rest of her squad bobbed to the surface of the oblong sea entrance.

It took a moment to clamber up on the edge and shed their wetsuits. Then, after a couple of adjustments to re-secure their tactical gear, they were gliding forward down the short corridor leading away from the door.

"I've got a good trace on Lash's transponder," one of her squad members indicated. Tanner nodded in acknowledgement as the transponder's pulsing light appeared on her HUD. Good; it appeared as if he was only a few meters ahead. Just behind a broad door in front of them, in fact.

Reaching the door, she waited a moment while her traps and munitions specialist gave it a quick scan for boobytraps and trip wires. Then, at her nod that it was clear, they pushed the door aside. And almost immediately staggered to a halt.

Surrounded by the untidy bodies of no less than a full dozen cromags and at least twice that many shifters, Lash was standing at the ready with what looked like a sword in his hand. Seeing that the footsteps he had heard on approach belonged to Tanner's squad, he relaxed ever so slightly.

"Tanner," he said, flipping the sword tip down into the floor. "Good to see you girls."

"Good to be in the fight, Lash," she quickly replied after a slight hesitation to get past the impulse to call him by his rank. Then she was stammering into silence as she caught sight of the captive liliths in their bondage suits.

"Dark Father have mercy on them," one of the other Force Recon legionnaires whispered hoarsely. "Are they still alive?"

"Each and every one of them," Lash grimly confirmed. "Their captors put them in those suits so they couldn't use their Compulsion on anybody. But they are fully contained. They just need air supplies so we can move them underwater. Once we have them on the Nighthawks, we'll peel those suits off them and get them all revived!"

Then he was reaching out to give Tanner a shake to break her out of her shocked reverie.

"You with me, Tanner?"

"To the end, Lash," she said smartly in return, giving her head a second shake to further clear it. "Where do we start?"

"Knife," he said, holding out his hand. Nodding, she pulled her belt knife out of its scabbard and handed it hilt first to him.

"I'm going to assume you brought extra air supplies in case we had to evacuate the liliths out through the sea entrance," he said, turning back to the liliths and walking towards the nearest one.

"Yes, s ... sure did," she said, barely catching herself. "Rollins, double time to the entrance and grab the go bag."

"Right-o." The named legionnaire turned and ran back towards the door they had come in. Tanner then joined Lash as he carefully walked around the dangling lilith in her harness. Seeing her beside him, he quickly pointed to the tubes in order.

"Air, blood, food, waste, and zombie lotus. Cut the last four as close as feasibly possible to the suit and tie them off so that they're waterproof. Then, when those extras get here, we'll tie off the air tubes and get them connected to the air supplies. Once that's done, we'll cut her down and move her to the entrance. Did you run into any merpeople outside?" he then asked without looking away from the tubes connected to the lilith's shield suit.

"Sure did. And we found out they don't like Stingers very much," Tanner replied.

"Heh, I can imagine. Seawater is one of the most conductive substances on the planet for electricity. Hopefully you gave them enough of a zap that they'll steer clear when we go back out."

Tanner nodded in agreement.

"We did see a handful of submersibles parked around the entrance on the way in as well," she reported. "Maybe we could use one of them to do our transportation."

Lash shook his head.

"It'd take too much time getting in without flooding the damn things and figuring out how to pilot them and fit all these liliths inside for a trip that's, what, fifty meters at most?"

He reached out and took hold of the tube he had named as having the potent drug with the powerful paralytic effect, zombie lotus. With a smooth stroke of the knife, he severed the plastic tube and let both ends dangle to allow the drug to drip out as much as possible. He then turned back to Tanner.

"This shifter syndicate has allies close by, or it wouldn't have grown so large. Allies that, while we could take them out, would delay us further and paint a target on us that the White Flames and the Hand may be looking for. Not to mention, there are traitorous vampires involved in this treacherous act so they may have already tipped either one or both of our enemies off. So, the sooner we exfil, the better. Now, if there was a cargo sled out there, preferably self-propelled, that we can use!"

Seeing Tanner frown, he sighed.

"Too bad. We'll have to get the Nighthawks to drop their cargo nets from open belly doors and pull the liliths aboard a few at a time. Get on the horn and tell Ellie, Dru, Fiadh and Meredith to be ready. We're going to need them to stabilize these liliths so we can get them out of their suits as soon as possible!"