The entrance into what appeared to be a small hanger or large storage area was, thankfully, unlocked. And, after the blinding light of day, mercifully dark.
Flipping up his polarized goggles and going to night vision, Lash slowly scanned the space within. And in doing so, he quickly found the two transport trucks sitting near the far door, a pair of humans, unmistakable with their hot IR signature in his night vision, standing in front of them.
"Commander," one called out softly, his vampiric colored by an Irish locution. "Lady van Tallert's contact told us to expect you." Then the two of them were kneeling down and tilting their heads to the side to bear their necks in the universally accepted gesture of passive offering that the familiars' sub-culture had.
"Thank the Dark Father," one of the vampires Truk had picked, muttered. "I'm famished!"
Apparently that was a common sensation as, moving as a single group, the soldiers dropped their weapons from ready and began towards the two familiars, their hunger exaggerated by having to operate in the daytime. Even the normally stoic Lash, well-trained in suppressing his blood thirst in combat situations, felt a rumble twist his belly at the sight. However, he didn't move.
'No,' he silently mused as he stared hard at the two apparently vulnerable familiars. 'This is too easy." Weapon still at the ready, he looked up at the roof several meters up, his warrior's instincts howling in the back of his mind. 'Something doesn't feel right here.'
"Hold your positions," he growled even as Truk and Anna began forward, equally intent on taking a drink from the offered necks. It was interesting to note that, out of all the Ventru soldiers, only Narcist along with Lash hadn't moved, the warrior tech keeping her weapon trained on the two familiars.
In tribute to their training as Ventru nestari, the soldiers jerked to a halt at the order, Truk and Anna both going further by looking questioningly over their shoulders back at the grim vampire who had growled the command. That was when the two familiars suddenly leapt to their feet, machine pistols in hand, to open fire at the team.
Lash grunted as several rounds caromed off his body armor. Then he and Narcist were returning fire, cutting the familiars down where they stood in a hail of high-velocity rounds. But it didn't end there.
Even as he and the tech opened fire, sniper fire from hidden positions near the roof sliced down through the darkness to hammer into several stunned team members, including Anna, striking with enough hitting power to drop them onto the ground, body armor notwithstanding.
"Snipers!" the Wolf of Frankfurt snarled even as he dropped to one knee to reduce his profile and angled his weapon towards the roof.
"Take cover!" Truk barked, rolling back to one knee from where a sniper bullet had dropped him as well. Bringing his rifle back up to sight at the roof, he began to look for heat signatures even as additional weapons fire from the shadows rained down on them from every angle.
"We're easy prey out here, Wolf."
"Copy that," Lash snarled as he took a sniper bullet off the shoulder. A quick look yielded that over half the team was down on the ground, some even unconscious.
"We need to move."
"The trucks?"
"Affirmative." Then he was opening fire at a movement he barely caught against the greater darkness of the shadows that were making the roof their home. "Lead 'em out, Truk."
"On it," the veteran nestari commander replied, firing up at the roof as well. "Ventru, on me!" Then he was crabbing forward, alternating his fire with a careful forward motion, moving as quickly as the situation would allow.
Now jerked back to their senses by the continuing weapons fire and the sight of most of the team now on the ground unmoving, the remaining soldiers began moving towards the two transport trucks, staying low and returning fire when the opportunity presented itself. Seeing that tightened Lash's expression slightly with satisfaction. At least they knew how to move while under fire. Then he was moving sideways past a grim Narcist towards where Anna lay unmoving.
"Anna!" he hissed as soon as he was in audible range. Seeing her remain unresponsive, his expression tightened. Then he was reaching out with a big hand and grabbing her by the collar of her armor.
A quick surge of strength and motion and the lithe figure of the vampiress was over his shoulder. Holding her there with his off-hand, Lash continued to pick out targets and firing as he scampered towards where the nestari that were still moving had taken cover between the trucks. Seeing the big vampire move, Narcist quickly fell in behind him, giving them both additional covering fire as she expertly targeted barely-seen movements along the roof and wall junction line.
Then both were in the slightly quieter gap between the trucks.
"Damn it," Truk hissed as he helped ease Anna off of Lash's shoulders. "We can't get the trucks moving without exposing ourselves. And three quarters of our team is down and out in the open!"
"Aye," Lash tersely agreed, reaching down into the utility pouch that held ammo for his Shanzi machine pistol. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for, its tingling warmth against his skin announcing its presence long before he actually touched it.
Pulling it free elicited a hiss of surprise from both Narcist and Truk even as they continued to try and find the snipers holding them down.
"What in the name of Shadow is that?" Narcist, ever curious about the strange tech and weapons Lash was producing apparently at the drop of a hat, managed to ask as Lash turned the small, ten-centimeter long cylinder over in his hand.
"It's called an Apollo round," he revealed before manually chambering it into his rifle.
"Apollo? As in the Greek god of the Sun?"
"Affirmative." Then, in one smooth motion, he was lifting his rifle and firing at a spot along the roof line where most of the weapons fire seemed to be coming from.
The Apollo round flew free and streaked towards the roof leaving a tracer-like visible line behind it. Then it was exploding in a brilliant flash of light as it struck.
Instantly vampires close to the round were screaming as they were showered with an intense pulse of ultraviolet radiation, powerful enough to cut through even the day cloaks they were wearing. Then they were burning as they fell from their perches like moths dropping to the ground after flying too close to a flame, fanged Icaruses falling after grazing the sun.
"Nice," Truk noted with grim satisfaction, the sniper fire abruptly cut by two thirds. "Another gift from your friend that gave you the armor?"
"No." Lash pulled a second Apollo round out of his utility pouch, his last. "From the Brotherhood, actually."
"Fah!" Truk said with obvious distaste and hatred for the psionic group that spent a great deal of its time in Europe hunting down vampires, even as Narcist dryly commented: "Aye, that looks like the kind of weapon those bastards would develop." Then both were reflexively ducking as Lash fired the round into what seemed like another knot of sniper activity, triggering a second splash of light followed by screaming vampires dropping to the ground, their bodies bursting from the ultraviolet light consuming their nervous systems from within.
This time Lash used the light to his advantage, visually picking out the locations of the two or three snipers that managed to avoid getting turned to ash by the Apollo rounds. Quick, precise shots to the head dropped them and, in the eerie silence that followed the silencing of the screams from the burning vampires, he heard their bodies hit the ground.
"Clear," he rumbled, slowly standing to give the roof one more scan in the fading light cast by the exploded Apollo rounds.
"Clear," Truk echoed, quickly followed by Narcist, then the remaining nestari. "Ventru, get our wounded into the transports. No doubt the humans in the terminal heard the racket. If they're not familiars they'll be calling in local law enforcement to deal with the weapons fire. And if they are, they could be calling in reinforcements." He looked over at a grimly thoughtful Lash. "We need to be gone before they get here."
"Agreed. And bring the two traitorous familiars," the big Qos Viran added. "An examination of their bodies may give us a clue who they knelt to."
Retrieving their casualties was a quick and simple operation consisting of grabbing collars and dragging limp bodies back to the trucks where they were carefully lifted inside. The downed familiars, however, presented more of a challenge.
With their blood generously pooled around their ventilated bodies, it was inevitable that those working to lift them up and put them in body bags would get some of that red nectar on their hands. Already blood-hungering thanks to being up and active during daylight hours, one of the nestari easing the first body into containment began to automatically lift a blood-covered hand to his mouth afterwards to lick the thick fluid from it.
"Hold," Lash rumbled, stepping forward to lay a big hand on the vampire's arm.
"Wolf?" Truk asked from the other side of the familiar's bagged body, his hands also covered in blood.
"Nobody taste that blood," the Qos Viran commander firmly directed before looking over at Narcist. "Do you have a taint kit on you, Narcist?"
Nodding, the warrior tech produced the simple kit that used a blood sample on a swab and tested it for chemical and bio-chemical impurities. It was fairly standard for vampires working out in a human populace where the cleanliness of their blood couldn't be guaranteed like it could with trusted familiars.
Taking the kit, Lash pulled the swab free.
"Your hand, soldier," he directed. The nestari instantly lifted his hand for Lash to swab. The sample then went into the kit and he activated the test cycle. It didn't take long before the indicator lights went red. Frowning, Lash tossed the kit to Truk after glancing at it. The veteran Ventru, who wore a frown of his own, looked down at the display as soon as he caught it to note the contaminant. What he saw there turned his frown into a grimace of dismay.
"High speed, targeted EVD," he reported with a shake of his head.
"Which variant?" a grim Lash pressed.
"Three," Truk indicated.
"Death in hours," Narcist supplied with a shake of her head as the rest of the team still on their feet muttered uneasily. "Pretty big risk to put genetically-altered Ebola Virus into a familiar and not have them dead before we could drink them." She looked at Lash. "Whoever sprung this trap on us must really want us dead!"
"That's because we're getting unexpectedly close to something they want to hide," Lash rumbled, his expression hard. "Everybody use your purity kits. You don't want HST EVD on your hands at the most inopportune moment." He looked over at Truk. "Bag the second body and let's mount up. Time is wasting!"
Ten minutes later found the team free and clear of the airport and driving down the single lane paved road leading away from it into town. Normally it would've been the two familiars that had greeted them, likely locals, that would've taken over as drivers. Both because they knew the territory and they would be less likely to be questioned if stopped by local law enforcement.
With those two now contained in body bags, however, driving duties fell to Lash and Truk, Lash knowing the area due to having trained at Magnar's estate as Qos Viran, and Truk because he was a senior officer.
"It was a strong play, using those familiars to decoy us like that," Narcist admitted, the warrior tech serving as Lash's co-pilot. "I mean, if we had drank, we'd be dead from the accelerated EVD before we could reach the estate. And the snipers were set up to take us down if we realized the ruse, which you did."
"Hand tactics," Lash said, his mouth twisting with distaste as he used the truck's large steering wheel to maneuver the big transport down the road. According to his mental map, there'd be a turn off coming up on the left that would take them into the hills and towards the estate.
"They used familiars in a safehouse in Frankfurt in a similar fashion to hold me long enough for strike teams to penetrate the house and take me down in ambush. Only the timely arrival of my sister, a M'tada commander for the lilith Emma, enabled me to escape alive."
Narcist slowly and thoughtfully nodded at that.
"Counting the Atlantic transit from North America and making your way into the city, you would've been pushing three days without a blood meal," she reasoned. "They used your blood hunger against you."
Lash confirmed with a curt nod.
"While they didn't catch me feeding, they did catch me with my back to space," he admitted with a growl of frustration at his own weakness. "I had expended considerable energy cutting through Hand operatives outside of my family's hunting cabin in the hills outside the city on top of the transit time. It made me ... vulnerable to the lure of the familiars' clean blood."
Narcist shifted uneasily in her seat.
"This marks a significant shift in recognized tactics, Wolf," she indicated. "It's always been unwritten law that the clans didn't use familiars in operations against each other. It's ... dishonorable."
"The Hand knows nothing of honor." Lash had to fight the impulse to spit, his distaste in the Council's pet soldiers only growing.
"No, they do not," Narcist agreed. "Which makes them the perfect tools to use by unscrupulous Council members looking to purge the Elder House." She turned and looked at Lash, her nano dragon tattoo sinuously making its way over her face. "I know we have enemies, but who would stoop ...?
Before the warrior tech could finish, a soft chime of an electronic alarm came from her pack to interrupt her.
"Ah!" she said with a small smile of satisfaction. "The trace is finally finished!"
Looking on in interest, Lash watched as Narcist fished her tablet out of the backpack and activated its touch display. A few finger dances across the control surface brought the trace's results into focus.
"Is it Magnar's estate as we suspected?" Lash asked, unable to wait any further in his impatience to either vindicate or vilify his former mentor.
Narcist quickly shook her head.
"Looks like a location in Galway City, actually," she went on to explain at the silent question implicit in Lash's raised eyebrow. "Likely a safehouse for either the Hand, or one of the clans involved in supporting the pogrom." She looked over at the big vampire. "I've made note of the address. We should take a look after we confront Lord Magnar."
"Agreed," Lash said. "While finding the source of the signal in Galway City doesn't directly implicate Magnar, it doesn't exonerate him either."
At that both vampires fell silent, focusing on their thoughts instead of talking. For his part, Lash kept only a half a mind on the road as he reviewed the battle in the hanger in his mind's eye.
To say he hadn't of expected any resistance to their efforts to reach Lord Magnar would've been false. As had Lady van Tallert; that was why the team was so well-equipped and heavily armed. He just hadn't expected it so soon after hitting the ground.
Unfortunately it also meant somebody somewhere had told their enemy where and when the team would be landing so they could set up a rather complex, multi-level ambush. As Narcist had observed, HST EVD killed quickly, human or vampire. To run the risk that the humans might die before they got the chance to infect the vampires they were trying to lure in to bite them meant they had detailed knowledge of the team's schedule or the risk was simply too great to take.
So, either the spies that Lady van Tallert was going to hunt down while they were flying to Ireland were closer to the situation than she suspected. Or ... Lash felt his jaw clench with sudden tension. Or that spy was currently embedded in the team and feeding information to their enemy live!
Instantly the roster Truk had given him was floating in his mind's eye for scrutiny as if he could somehow tell who the spy was just by looking at their name. A list that included Truk and Narcist as well. After all, the only one he could trust at this point to have not given them up to the enemy was himself and none other. While he had fought with Truk to relieve the Hand siege on the van Tallert fortress, he didn't know him very well and the rest of the team he knew not at all. Not to mention, Truk had assembled the team from nestari he trusted, which meant either he didn't know who the spy was, knew them and purposefully placed them on the team, or was the spy himself.
"Narcist, do you have the equipment to detect any signal coming off us, passive or active, right now?"
The warrior tech shifted in her seat to throw a quick, curious look over at him then nodded.
"I believe so," she added, pulling up the duffel bag that was on the floor by her booted feet. "Do you think we picked up a bug or something in that hanger back there?"
The big vampire hesitated. Considering that Narcist herself was possibly the spy, did he risk telling her what he suspected and possibly lose the opportunity to uncover the mole in their ranks? If indeed there was one??
His expression tightened with resolve. Unfortunately there was no other way to test his theory that they had a mole transmitting their location without using Narcist's equipment. So ...
"I think we have a mole," he bluntly declared. "One transmitting our location to the Hand."
Narcist slowly nodded, her expression thoughtful as she drew out a signal scanner from her bag.
"Makes sense now that you've said it out loud," she said and Lash could see that she was resisting the impulse to look through the cab's back window to the soldiers sitting in the troop compartment. "I only assumed the team members were trustworthy because Truk is trustworthy and he picked them out."
"Not an uncommon assumption," Lash said. "Which is why a mole makes more sense than a spy. They're already trusted enough to be included in important operations or decisions."
"Right." Narcist frowned. "So, since any one of us could be the mole, why are you trusting me? I could totally be transmitting our location to the Hand right now! After all, I have most of the team's tech in my possession."
Lash smiled ruefully.
"Don't think I didn't consider that," he admitted. "And, with that tech in hand, you certainly would be an obvious choice. But I reasoned that there's obvious, then there's obvious and frankly I think you're a little too obvious. Not to mention, I had to start somewhere or prepare myself for more ambushes."
Narcist nodded, her frown fading into a wry smile of her own.
"Fair enough. Either way, I appreciate the fact that the Wolf of Frankfurt has chosen to trust me." Her smile broadened slightly. "At least, for now." She looked down at the signal scanner. "Setting it up to look for something fairly passive. Something that wouldn't have triggered our countermeasures on the plane."