Easing away from the column she had been leaning against, Dee brought up her own pair of special made sunglasses, courtesy of lone gunman technology. And she grimaced as the conference hall, a massive, lozenge-shaped enclosure currently filled with tables and chairs, great chandeliers hanging from the domed ceiling to cast light over the entire chamber, fell into a strange blue light as she set the glasses on the bridge of her nose.
With a stuttered wink, the sunglasses activated a number of passive scanning modes as data streamed past the detective's left eye. And the blue-lit chamber leapt into sharp relief, first under ultraviolet then infrared light.
Finally the pair of sunglasses/scanners went through a psionic energy cycle, utilizing a passive scan quite similar to the devices that Mordecai had used to find the passive ambush devices the Brotherhood had littered the conference center grounds with. And almost she immediately found the moles, touched by Brotherhood coercion, scattered throughout the vast chamber.
The traces of psionic energy in the moles' cortices made the hidden assassins glow a soft gold against the blue in the enhanced scan mode of Dee's visors. The sight of them was enough to make the tall police detective unconsciously reach for the Shiva slung in a horizontal holster under her flak jacket.
"Alpha Two to all units inside the center: pick up your scanning," she softly subvocalized. "We have movement towards the final opportunity for the Brotherhood to strike and the moles are shifting. Pick a target and stay with it. When this goes down, it's going to happen quick. You'll only have a small window to make your counterstrike before this place is turned into a bloodbath. So make each shot count!" She glanced towards the main exit as her hand closed on her Shiva's hilt to give the powerful weapon a light tug, loosening it in the holster.
"Did you copy that, Alpha Leader? Things are about to pop in here!"
"I copy that, Alpha Two," Lash replied grimly, glancing about his security checkpoint. Outside the center things were still calm, the Normals' security forces acting as if nothing was amiss. In fact members of Lash's own unit were chatting softly amongst themselves, laughing and quipping about the cold, completely unaware of what was about to take place. The big vampire grimaced at that thought; they would know soon enough!
"All units outside the center, stand by," he commanded, feeling himself tense as his body anticipated battle.
"Trigger team members are moving into final position, Mr. Martin," Agony reported over her shoulder, her binoculars pressed to her eyes. Now with their night vision function activated, the powerful binoculars allowed her to easily pick out each member of the trigger team still outside.
"We're on the threshold of launch!"
"Excellent," the lean Inner Council member replied as he stood out of the chair he had been sitting in, reaching into his suit jacket to draw out a portable holo-communicator from an inside pocket.
The size of a walkie-talkie, the device beeped softly as Martin activated it. An instant later a holographic swirl of light appeared over the communicator's projection plate. A swirl that quick resolved into the angular features of a mature-looking man, an unruly mop of white hair topping his narrow face.
"Yes?" a tiny voice husked in time to the face's lips moving.
"Launch is imminent," Martin replied smoothly and a slight smile of satisfaction touched his lips when he saw the tiny holographic head nod in acknowledgement.
"Very good. Our time is at hand, Brother Martin. Stand by; soon the reign of the Brotherhood will begin on the face of this world!"
Mordecai grimaced tightly as he felt the probability surrounding and filling the city shift sluggishly. They were rapidly approaching the probability event's threshold. A quick look at Jeriko and Raven revealed expressions of uncertainty and anxiety on both of them, confirming that they too were feeling the approach of the event threshold. Jeriko, being only a hair less in power than he while they were both lone gunmen, looked decidedly uncomfortable. The pressure from the threshold's approaching probability shockwave must be crushing to her, if what he was feeling was any indication.
His jaw muscles rippled as Mordecai clenched his jaws hard together, staring without seeing at the flickering monitors in front of them. Thankfully the increased control that came with the inversion of his psionic abilities prevented the probability visions from filling his waking vision. Else the room itself would be a theatre of the mind on whose stage they would walk in plain view, leaving room for nothing else in his consciousness.
Despite that control, however, he could feel them lurking on the edges of his awareness, waiting for the slightest slip in that iron-fisted control to explode in Technicolor into his mind. Swallowing heavily against the flicker of the visions dancing just out of sight and the increasing pressure on his mind announcing the probability shockwave's imminent arrival, the man in black shook his head slowly as both abruptly become much more powerful. The event was upon them.
"Here we go!" he muttered softly. Armageddon was finally about to happen!
Dee slowly eased her Shiva free, the weapon already set on autofire, the second setting that would allow it to fire bursts of ordinance only when a set target fell into its sights' scan pathway. As she did, she watched the delegates rise from the chairs to move towards the stage, Secret Service, MI:6 and other security services moving to cover them.
That set target, of course, were the Brotherhood moles, many of them rising as well along with the delegates and their security detachments, even if they weren't required to be on stage for the photo opportunity.
'Damn! There's too many for us to cover all at once!' she realized with a start after doing a quick head count.
But it was already too late to do anything about it: as the delegates, ministers of finance and leaders from across the world, assembled on the stage and turned to face the battery of video and still cameras placed to capture their images and beam them across the world, she heard a soft 'beep' coming from her wrist. It was the monitor that Mordecai had equipped each member of Alpha Team with, set to detect the incoming pulse of telepathy that would activate the moles and send them lurching on their deadly missions.
That soft sound meant only one thing: the wave of telepathy that would launch the moles had just swept over her!
"Shit!" Dee hissed, snapping the Shiva up to take aim at the moles down on the floor.
And she was in time to watch all of them moving in odd synchronization as they reached into pockets to draw out pieces of what could only be special weapons, crafted for the specific purpose of breaching security. Dee felt a chill travel up her spine as she watched them move as one to fit the pieces of the disassembled weapons together until every last one of them held what was clearly a pistol in their hands.
Her jaw clenched as the remaining moles still sitting, now stood to slowly bring their already assembled weapons up to bear on the knot of delegates at the chamber's head. At the same time the remaining audience began to stand as they clapped and cheered in appreciation for their leaders' efforts while camera flashes went off in a cacophony of strobing light. Dee groaned at that: the weapons' discharge would be perfectly hidden by the discharging camera flashes. The delegates wouldn't even know what hit them!
Ironically it was one of the Normals in the audience that caught sight of the moles and their weapons that finally raised the alarm. The pretty wife of one of the delegates, she happened to look across the table at the woman that had been her husband's personal secretary. And she found a creature transformed, without expression as she pointed a massive pistol up at the stage.
Her reaction was immediate: she screamed. And the result was instant pandemonium.
"Shooter!" snarled one of the Secret Service agents covering the American president jerked free his weapon, a heavy mini Uzi as he and the rest of his detail, along with the MI:6 agents and others, caught sight of the weapon-wielding moles. A shout that, of course, in combination with the woman's earlier scream made everybody in the building stand up and try running for the exits.
"Keep your targets!" Dee snarled into her comlink as the audience erupted into chaos, surging around the weapon-wielding moles. The Brotherhood weapons however, hidden so long beneath layers of manufactured personality, ignored the chaos that thronged around them.
Instead, under the influence of the programming that now swept aside the artificial personalities they had worn, they focused on their task. Without hesitation, the mole assassins began to fire their awkward but effective weapons pointblank at the startled delegates even as the security details opened fired on them. And with the soft 'pop' of silenced weapon discharge, a handful of the delegates went down, red blossoms of lethality appearing on the white fronts of their tunics and shirts.
"Shit," Dee grated, flipping her comlink frequency to the general frequency used by the security forces protecting the conference center. "All units alert! Go to condition Red. We have multiple shots fired inside the conference hall. Delegates are down and details are engaging. I repeat, we have shots fired and delegates are down! Secure the perimeter and grounds and send the paramedics!" And then she was jumping back to the secured Alpha Team frequency.
"All units open fire, damn you!" she barked as she, true to her own command, squeezed the trigger on her Shiva.
Already locked on target, a heavy-set man from the Middle East that was currently trying to kill the Prime Minister of Israel, Itzak Barak, the Shiva flung a knot of ceramic bullets at supersonic speed towards him. They crossed the intervening space in the wink of an eye to slam hard into the man's thick body.
But instead of the impact hammering the man aside as bright flowers of red appeared through the man's clothes to mark the impact points of her bullets, it merely staggered him as if he had been caught in a sudden gust of wind. Apparently unfazed, the mole resumed his firing on the stage, splashing his bullets off the stage's backdrop. Just as were the other moles that were under fire by the suddenly uncertain security details.
"No way!" Dee grated, mind whirling wildly. The Brotherhood must've reinforced the moles' bodies so they could take damage and remain functional thusly spreading their destruction more widely before they were taken out. Her jaw tightened grimly.
"Well, let's see just how far that reinforcing goes!" she muttered harshly, shifting her aim slightly upward. "Maybe they won't be able to handle a head shot." Then, just a little louder: "Go to laser sights."
"Laser sights," her Shiva's A.I. acknowledged in its tinny voice and indicator lights danced along the side of the flattened rectangular sights that had swung up out of the Shiva's body when Dee had activated the autofire function.
With a flicker of energy, a blue dot appeared on the back of the stocky man's head just as a number of other moles were staggered from weapons fire coming from the other members of Alpha Team inside the hall.
"Let's try this again, shall we?" she growled, once again depressing the Shiva's trigger.
This time, as the ceramic ordinance ripped the mole assassin's head apart like a melon hitting the pavement, the man was spun around before dropping heavily onto the table in front of him, blood and brain fragments spraying in all directions.
"Bingo!" Dee breathed hoarsely. And then she grinned tightly as the first downed mole was quickly joined by a handful of others, the vampires having seen the effectiveness of her head shot. It hadn't taken them long to follow suit, being seasoned veteran combat troops. They were swiftly followed by the security details, who were now taking fire themselves as the moles moved to try to clear their lines of fire to continue their deadly work.
Abruptly her attention was torn from the firefight by Lash's frantic voice in her ear.
"Alpha Two, Alpha Two, do you copy?" The big vampire was nearly shouting. "What's going on in there?"
"A firefight, Alpha Leader," she darkly reported, swinging her weapon around to target another mole. "They outnumber us nearly four to one, but we're getting the upper hand. A number of delegates are down, but the fighting is too fierce for us to reach them so we don't know if any are dead or not. Are you approaching the building?"
"Negative," Lash snarled, ducking as a powerful blast of energy ripped apart the cluster of trees his security team had taken cover near, their checkpoint already reduced to nothing more than a heap of smoldering rubble. A number of them popped up while debris was still raining down around them and opened fire with their automatic weapons at the half hidden enemy taking cover in the shadow of the conference center itself. They were nearly hidden by the gloom that now covered the grounds, the lighting that had illuminated every square inch taken out in the first wave of the attack.
"We're under attack from the trigger team." Lash grimaced as several more energy blasts went by, powerful enough to make his skin tingle despite the neuron armor protecting his nervous system. They impacted nearby, ripping apart more trees and another security checkpoint, sending a number of dark clad bodies flying, dead almost instantly and seared beyond recognition.
"Somehow Agony gave them the ability to use psionic weapons. And they are currently using that ability to pound the life out of the security forces. You're on your own in there! We can't even budge a centimetre." He grimaced as he watched a knot of psionics detach themselves from the shadows under cover of heavy plasma fire to advance forward, moving into line-of-sight of the shelter he was crouched behind, an overturned concrete bench.
"In fact, we're in a bit of trouble!" he husked as the humans' automatic weapon fire bounced harmlessly off psyken shields, serving as no deterrent to the trigger team's advance.
Outside of the heavy perimeter fence that had been erected against an outside terrorist attack against the conference center during the conference a large news van came skidding to a halt in front of the main gate. Which was now hanging half open, the right side virtually shattered by a plasma bolt impact and just dangling from its hinges.
As soon as it came to a halt, the satellite transmitter dish on the roof swung up into a ready position and began to telescope upward as the van's doors flew open.
"Holy shit, it looks like freakin' Afghanistan in there!" a hatchet-faced cameraman husked as he fumbled open the back door to grab a video camera and a battery pack belt.
"Yeah," the sound man, a graying fellow with broad shoulders and the look of a news veteran rasped as he glanced over at the person responsible for getting them here: Katherine Hollingcott, who was bustling around the side door, getting her mike ready. All of them were dressed for the cold but, by the sounds of automatic weapon fire and in the light of the plasma bolts that lit up the tattered conference grounds, they should've worn flak jackets.
"Let's just hope we don't end up a statistic like a lot of camera crews in Kandahar did!"
"Looks like your source was right on the money," the station's field producer, Hamilton 'Ham' Dokken dryly noted to Katherine as together they stepped away from the van and towards the partially destroyed gates. "There sure as hell is some sort of attack going on in there!" He looked over at the beautiful weekend news anchor that was taking a big chance trying her hand at field reporting.
"Think it's really this 'Brotherhood' that he told you about?"
"Who else can it be, Ham?" Katherine fired back as she paused in front of the shattered gate, glancing over at the heavily damaged security checkpoint that had been guarding the front gates. Of the checkpoint's assigned officers, there was no sign.
"According to what my source said the Brotherhood was going to attempt to wipe out the world leaders at the economic conference tonight, a terrorist attack that would leave the entire world reeling!" She frowned as she watched a knot of plasma blasts dart through the darkness to rip another security checkpoint apart with a flare of light and a shower of debris.
"If that isn't an attack by the Brotherhood in there, I'll eat my mike!"
Becoming aware of the cameraman and his heavy, direct-feed video camera at her other shoulder, Katherine glanced over at him then back at the van to the final member of the five-man team she had commandeered at the station.
"Are we linked to the station?" she called out to their communications technician, who bent over a number of monitors as he held a set of headphones to his ears.
At hearing Katherine call out to him, he glanced up and quickly gave her a thumbs up signal.
"Good," Katherine said perfunctorily, turning back to the conference center, the building's bulk hidden mostly now in shadow, lit occasionally by plasma bolt fire.
"We have a live feed to the station. Kent, get your camera on all that fighting in there. I want to make sure they're getting it all back in the studio!"
"Right," Kent tautly replied, hoisting the camera to his shoulder before turning it on. As soon as it was in focus, he was panning it over the devastation inside that was visible from the front gates.
"Sound, you ready?" Ham said with a nod of satisfaction at seeing the camera go flawlessly to work.
"Ready here, chief," the soundman acknowledged with another thumbs up as he shifted the boom mike he held in his gloved hands into maximum reception position. "You are live and giving good sound, Katherine. We're even picking up the automatic weapons out on the grounds."
"Then roll sound. Katherine, give Kent a moment to capture then we'll swing to you and you can begin your report," Ham went on to direct, his hands moving with almost as much animation as his face as he spoke.
Continuing to pan as Ham gave his instructions behind him, Kent was just about to make another sweep of a open section that lead towards the building's main doors when he caught sight of some movement. Frowning, he dialed up the magnification on his lens set. And thusly was in perfect position to watch as a lean woman stepped out from behind cover to raise her hands.
"No way," he breathed softly as those hands began to glow with the same blue light that was darting about the grounds with such destructive effectiveness. Then he was blinking away the afterimages of the blast that suddenly shimmered into existence between the glowing hands before darting away into the darkness.
Tearing his eye away from the viewfinder, he looked over at Katherine and Ham, who were talking in low tones.
"Did you ... did you see that?" he stammered.
"See what?" Ham demanded as both turned to look at him with expressions of irritation on their faces. Kent was supposed to be taking pictures of the fighting, not talking to them!
"That, that woman in there, fire something made out of blue light with ... with her hands!"
"What??" Ham exclaimed, his look of irritation quickly replaced by one of stunned surprise.
"Here," Katherine said, tugging on Ham's coat sleeve to direct him to the small playback monitor that sat at Kent's feet. She quickly rewound the recording then pointed to the image of the woman emerging from the shadows. "I think that's the woman that Kent's talking about."
They both fell into silence as they watched what Kent had seen live: the woman's hands glowing before creating the ball of fire that darted off into the darkness. The scene flickered then went back to live recording as both Ham and Katherine took a step back in shock.
"And just what the hell was that?" Ham breathed hoarsely.
"We got bigger fish to worry about," Kent abruptly interjected over his shoulder. "That woman, the one with the glowing hands?" Eyes wide, he stared at Katherine and Ham. "She's coming right at us!"
"What??" Ham snarled for the second time and, as one, the two of them looked back down at the playback monitor. And they immediately took another step back when it showed the same woman that had flung the first fireball, now striding with determination towards them.
"For shit's sake, Kent, drop your magnification!" Ham barked as he stared hard at the monitor.
"I've got no mag on, Mr. Dokken," Kent replied, looking like he wanted to step back from the fence himself. "She's almost right on top of us!"
"Look at that!" Katherine breathed as they watched the woman's hands begin to glow. There was no doubt in their minds as to where they thought the woman was going to send her next ball of blue fire.
Somehow the small knot of humans had managed to catch the trigger team member's attention. Seeing that the humans represented a threat to the Brotherhood by knowing what was happening at the conference center, she was now taking steps to eliminate that threat. By the most direct means available to her: psionic plasma fire!
"We're toast," Ham husked as the woman, now clearly visible without the camera, some ten metres away, began to raise her hands in that move they knew proceeded the generation of the fire ball. And they felt shivers of cold anticipation race down their spines as the fireball appeared between her glowing and upraised hands.
But before the woman could sling the seething mass of blue light towards them, she abruptly jerked as if struck from behind. Then she was falling bonelessly to the ground, dark blood oozing from a wound in her forehead, the ball of blue light vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
"Somebody ... shot her?" Katherine husked in a stunned voice.
"About time you decided to show up, Alpha Three," Lash hissed as he watched two more trigger team members drop in rapid succession, sprouting spurts of blood from their foreheads as the Kala's high powered ceramic rounds punched through their psyken shields and into the back of their heads almost without pause.
"I was just waiting for them to come into my line of fire, Alpha Leader," Tahsis replied tightly into Lash's ear. "But I've got the range on them now!"
"Then sweep the field of fire, damn you," the big vampire subvocalized with a growl from behind his concrete barricade. "Before the rest of the trigger team drop down on us and wipe us out!"
The blue line of light that was Tahsis' activated laser sights moved off the second fallen trigger team member and darted through the darkened air seeking its next target, a shimmering column of energy the thickness of a pencil stabbing through the gloom, deadly in its intent. And almost immediately it swept across a cluster of psionics, moving without pausing across the back of their heads.
As the line of laser light brushed over the back of the psionics' unaware heads, each jerked as a ceramic bullet hammered into their skulls, ripping their heads apart with lethal energy. Then the last was falling before the first had hit the ground, Tahsis eliminating five more trigger team members with deadly efficiency.
Lash nodded in satisfaction as he watched the line move away, hungrily searching for more targets as it left unmoving bodies behind in its wake. That had evened up the odds slightly. Now, if he could only find out what Duffy and his people were doing!
"Rapid fire," he hissed at his Shiva, held tightly in his gloved fist.
"Rapid fire," the weapon acknowledged, the indicator lights going blue. Seeing the weapon switching modes, Lash snapped it up over the barricade and aimed it at the shadowy figures that were still lurking close to the building.
"Eat this, you psi bastards!" he snarled and squeezed the trigger, letting fly with a hail of ceramic death.