Lovett Travel Plaza was the largest rest stop within driving time of Babylon. An asphalt oasis just off the highway running northwest out of the metropolis, it serviced the needs of everyone coming and going from the city by ground. It had a diner, a convenience store, a filling station, a workshop, organized like a strip mall. Behind the plaza was a modest motel, just far enough away from the parking lots and the highway that the occupants’ rest wouldn’t be too disturbed by the never-ending bustle.
Day and night, hour after hour, fleets of vehicles pulled in and out of the complex. Long-haul trucks, condemned to road wheels by the weight of their cargo. Private gravcars needing a place to recharge before taking off again. SUVs packed with families or white collars stopping over for meals or sleep or both. With all that activity, no one paid attention to just another gravcar flying in.
At three minutes past twenty-three hundred, Yuri Yamamoto descended on the designated landing pad. He rolled off the instant the wheels hit the road, making room for the other gravcars circling overhead. He drove with extra care, navigating around the fleets of big rigs occupying the parking lots. He was the very model of the conscientious driver, aware and alert, on the lookout for dangers of every kind.
Including the New Gods.
He pulled into the filling station and topped off his tank. He paid with cash at the convenience store, keeping his head angled away from surveillance cameras. On the way out, he strolled through the establishments in the strip, as though window shopping, studying the faces and body language of everyone he saw. Satisfied, he brought his gravcar to the parking lot, grabbed his things, and headed to the motel.
The vacancy sign burned in crimson neon. The word ‘No’ flickered beside it, as though an afterthought. Yuri strolled right past it and stepped through the front door.
The desk clerk was staring at a screen below his table. His eyes flickered up at Yuri, then swiveled back down.
“Sorry, no vacancies,” the desk clerk mumbled.
“I’ve got a reservation,” Yuri replied.
The clerk perked up instantly. Making a subtle gesture with his left hand, he offered Yuri a vacuous smile.
“May I know your name, sir?”
“John Woo.”
“May I see some ID please?”
Yuri fished out a wallet and pulled a driver’s license, made out to one John Woo. It was one of his clean cover identities, painstakingly put together after the fall of the STS. His docs wouldn’t stand up to a full court press, but it would be enough to pass muster with a civilian.
Humming to himself, the clerk pecked away at his keyboard, turning his face to reveal his black wireless earpieces. In the silence of the lobby, his mouse clicked away at painful decibels.
“I have you booked for a corner room for one night,” the clerk said.
“That’s right,” Yuri said.
“How will you be paying?”
“Cash.”
Yuri drew his wallet and slipped out a pair of fifties.
“Can you do me a favor?” Yuri asked.
“Yeah?”
Yuri drew two more fifties.
“I’ve got a few friends coming in later tonight. They all have reservations. Take care of them for me. And forget we were ever here.”
The clerk’s eyes sparkled. “Sure!”
At the door to his room, Yuri took his keycard in his left hand. His right slid down under his jacket, resting on the butt of the pistol holstered at his hip. Positioned beside the doorframe, he unlocked the door, then slowly cracked it open, ready to leap back the first sign of resistance.
He slipped into the room. The door swung shut behind him. He activated his weapon-mounted light. Five hundred lumens spilled forth from the deceptively small device. With swift, aggressive movements, he swept the room.
Queen sized bed. Closet. Bathroom. Under and around the furniture. All clear.
Only then did he relax.
Turning off his weapon light, he inserted the keycard into the reader. With a loud click, every light turned on. The air conditioner hummed to life. The television displayed an inane late-night talk show.
Yuri turned up the volume and drew the curtains. He set his pack down by the dresser, then pulled out a piece of cardboard and a roll of tape, and taped the cardboard over the peephole. He sat by the window, back to a corner, oriented towards the door. He fished his eyeshields from his RFID-blocking pouch, then slipped it on and woke it up. He brought the fingers of his left hand to the camera, letting it track his fingers, and called up his secure messaging app.
_Good to go. Room 108. _
Tiny icons appeared next to the message, tracking everyone who saw it. Thirty seconds after the fifth icon appeared, the message deleted itself.
He sat in the chair, and waited.
The droning of the TV faded into the background. The humming of the air conditioner melted away. The sounds of the engines and the gravity mirrors outside the motel blended into a sonic soup.
Though the world was noisy, his heart, his mind, his soul settled in emptiness, as calm as a pool of clear water. He drew himself to his full height, straightening his spine, stacking his neck and his skull upon his vertebrae, allowing his bodyweight to pass through his soles and his butt into the ground, and half-closed his eyes.
He breathed, he waited, he was.
A subtle wave of invisible force washed into the room. Softer than a breeze, as substantial as a cloud, a lesser man or an unobservant man would have missed it completely. He registered it as the ripples of a lake flowing over his skin, distorting the image of a reflected mountain.
He opened his eyes.
The doorbell buzzed.
He rose from his chair with predatory grace, smooth and weightless, ready to pounce in any direction. Pistol by his side, he strode to the door, lifted the cardboard from the peephole, and looked out.
Familiar faces crowded around the door. Some he’d seen recently, others less so. The sight sent liquid warmth trickling through his heart.
He holstered his pistol and opened the door, revealing—
“Kayla,” he said.
“Yuri,” she said.
Luscious red hair tumbled down to her shoulders. Emerald eyes, hard but brilliant, glowed in the light. Her lips twitched into a half-smile, her arms crossed under her chest. He pivoted aside, letting her in. Her lithe frame brushed against him as she walked, leaving behind a clean, fresh fragrance of soap and flowers.
They’d last seen each other after the Riveria job, barely three days ago. After Zen’s text, the team had split up and headed their separate ways. Yuri volunteered to make contact first, while the others would stage themselves outside the city limits and stand by for further orders.
They were operational. That was all the time they had for greetings.
Zen Tan was next through the door, a laptop bag slung around his neck. He made a beeline for the worktable and set up his oversized portable computer.
Behind him came Will Connor. Dense, dark hair billowed down his temples and cheeks, flowing into the beginnings of a beard. In his polo shirt, denims and worn boots, he could have passed for one of the many truckers that passed through here. In his left hand he held a black nylon bag.
“Brought your hardware with you?” Yuri asked.
“Always,” Will said.
Will sat down in the chair Yuri had once occupied. He set the bag in his lap, unzipped it partway, and snaked his hand through the opening.
Karim Mustafa strolled in. While dressed similarly to Will, he carried himself with strength and confidence, forged in the fires of combat. Though he was the junior man on the team, he was also a leader in his own right, and an Elect of a Bright Power.
Too confident. Too bright. A trucker wouldn’t carry himself like this. Yuri made a note to speak with him later about it.
Last of all was the one man Yuri hadn’t seen in months: James Wood.
“Yuri! You doing good?” the burly black man rumbled.
“I’m fine. Glad you could make it,” Yuri replied.
They shook hands. Yuri matched James’ grip foot-pound for foot-pound, the best he could. Though Yuri did his best to keep himself in shape, life on the road was a world away from life in the fields and the swamps of Moreno Island.
The door locked behind James. The team spread out across the room, orienting towards Yuri. Yuri planted himself by a patch of wall.
“Thanks for coming, everyone,” Yuri began unceremoniously. “We’ve got a potential Babylon Black situation on our hands. We have to stop it from happening. No matter what.”
James made a sour face. “That bad? Damn… I never knew.”
“How are things over in Moreno?” Kayla asked.
“Quiet. We’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the Sinners or the Guild ever since the evacuation.”
“But they’re still out there,” Karim prompted.
The team’s last job at Moreno Island was supposed to be a training gig. It ended with the STS teaming up with the Special Response Team of the MI Sheriff’s Department to raid the headquarters of the Singularity Network and the Guild of the Maker. That had ended with both factions unceremoniously pulling out of the island after the joint task force wiped out a goodly number of their soldiers.
Not all of them, though. And the casualties would all be replaced by now.
“You bet,” James said. “MISD gets reports of strange lights and noises in the swamps every so often. By the time SRT organizes a sweep of the area, whoever or whatever responsible for them is long gone. If we’re lucky, sometimes we find footprints. But they don’t lead far before they disappear.”
“They haven’t shown themselves in town?” Yuri asked.
“Naw. Not openly. But now and then, we see signs of break-ins in the houses formerly occupied by the evacuees. We don’t know if it’s kids messing around or guerrillas shifting between safe houses, but we’re assuming the worst.”
“You sure you can leave MISD alone?” Will asked.
“They’re big boys. They can handle my absence for a few days. Besides, I was never meant to be a permanent member of SRT anyway.”
“At least things are quiet in Moreno,” Karim said. “Things are getting tense between the New Gods in Babylon. The temple militia says the Court and the Pantheon are sniffing around our borders again.”
Kayla shook her head. “When will they ever learn?”
“Never,” Yuri said dryly.
Karim muttered darkly under his breath, then said, “If we’re looking at a Babylon Black scenario, I need to evacuate the temple when this is over.”
“Come to Moreno,” James said. “Once we mop up what’s left of the Sinners and the Guild, it’ll be a safe haven. As close to one as we’re ever gonna get in Nova Babylonia.”
“We may just have to take you up on that,” Yuri said.
Over the next half hour, Yuri and Zen briefed them on the job. On the politics of the New Gods, on the pending alliance between the Network and the Void, on Mr. One.
“Peter, the hacker formerly known as Alex, has prepared a black site for us to hold Mr. One,” Yuri concluded. “Assuming we take him alive, we will move him to the black site for download.”
James frowned, crossing beefy arms across his massive chest.
“How are we going to download him?”
“We’re not doing it. Joshua Gregory will be bringing in a specialist for that.”
“He’s finally lifting a finger to help?” Will asked.
“Finally,” Yuri replied.
There was no way they’d get this done without the support for their former boss, now a ‘consultant’ with the federal government. The moment Yuri had briefed Gregory on the details, he’d been too eager to offer his assistance.
“What’s going to happen to Finn when we’re done with him?” Kayla asked.
“That’s for Gregory too decide. My guess is, once we’ve downloaded all the time-sensitive intel in his brain, we’ll hand him off to Gregory for long-term detention and interrogation.”
Even as he spoke the words, nightmares danced in his head. An eternity trapped in a tiny concrete box, brought out only for questioning and exercise, stuck in a limbo between life and death.
Or they’d just take him to a quiet spot and put a bullet in the back of his head. Less legal hassle that way.
“We can just hand him off straight away,” she said.
“It’ll lengthen the kill chain. Gregory will want to detain Finn in a high-security facility, bring in his own team, clean up the paperwork. All that will take time. Time is the one thing we don’t have. Once we pull the trigger, we’re on a short fuse. We’re going to hand off Finn regardless; we’ll just do it after we acquire any time-sensitive intel in his head.”
Kayla sighed. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”
Me too, Yuri thought.
“When this is over, what are we going to do with Finn?” Karim asked. “I mean, this is an illegal raid. He doesn’t have any warrants either. We can’t just drop him off at BPD HQ or something.”
“That’s Gregory’s problem. Not ours.”
“That’s not a solution,” Kayla said.
“It’s not,” Yuri acknowledged, “but it’s not our problem either. Our focus is on dealing with the New Gods.”
“This is war,” Will said. “You can’t fight a war and keep your hands clean. Especially not a war like ours.”
“We’re supposed to be the good guys,” Kayla said quietly.
“We are,” Yuri said. “But when the law no longer serves the people, we have to revert to a higher law. An older law. A law true to reality and human nature.”
“And what law is that?”
“The law of God.”
“And does God permit torture and unlawful detention?”
“You’re worried about that?” Will asked.
Her face set. “You know that’s what Gregory will do to Finn. They won’t deal with him through regular channels. They can’t. If Finn won’t talk, they’ll put the screws to him. And when they’re done? Either they box him up forever or put him down. That’s not what we do. That’s not what we are.”
“Finn is a threat to society. He was a threat to me,” Yuri said. “We have to remove him from the streets. We know the cops won’t do that. That means we have to. Either we let Gregory hold him indefinitely, or we execute Finn ourselves. Is that what you want?”
Kayla frowned. Looked away. And, very slightly, shook her head.
“We can’t allow ourselves to do what the bad guys do,” she said.
“We won’t. There are lines we won’t cross.”
“But you’re going to hand Finn over to someone who is willing to cross the line,” Kayla said.
“If you don’t want to do what has to be done, feel free to step out,” Will said.
She scowled at him. “You know I’ve been doing this for the almost three years now.”
“So why are you so hesitant?”
“I didn’t sign up for this. I signed up to be a cop, not this… whatever the hell we’re doing now.”
“We’re not cops anymore,” Yuri said softly. “This is war. War runs by different rules.”
“Deep down, you know that too,” Karim said. “That’s why you came to help me the way you did.”
“That’s why you helped everyone,” James said.
Kayla exhaled sharply and ran her fingers through her hair.
“What we did… it was quick, it was clean, it had to be done. But this? With Finn?”
“It also had to be done,” Yuri said softly. “It’s not pretty, but the New Gods created this world that we live in. A world where the only way to stop them is to go into the dark and do dark things. That’s on them. We’re simply showing them the consequences of their actions.”
“I don’t want to be a part of this.”
“We won’t. We’re just going to hand Finn over to Gregory and his men. That’s all. What happens next is on them. Not us.”
She sighed. Nodded. Looked away.
“Fine. Just… I’m just a shooter. I don’t want to be part of anything else that might follow that.”
“We won’t,” Yuri said.
The doorbell chimed. The team shifted, turning to the door. Will held his bag in both hands. Yuri approached the door, hand on his handgun, and peeked out.
Smiled.
And opened the door.
In stepped a silver fox in man’s clothing. He was all muscle and gristle, without a trace of fat. A long mane of gray hair crowned his head. Every movement was clean and precise, speaking of a lifetime of training. In each hand he hefted a humongous duffel bag.
Daniel Lamb.
“Hey everyone,” he said.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” Will said, a wry smile spreading across his face.
“Looks like you’ve got a party going on,” Lamb said.
“And you brought the party favors,” Yuri said.
Lamb lifted his bags.
“Got them right here.”
He set them down on the floor with audible clanks. Crouching, he unzipped the bags and spread them open, revealing their contents.
One bag held armor. Helmets. Trauma plates. Elbow and knee pads. Tucked away at the bottom were assorted hard goods, specialist tools no self-respecting operator could do without.
The other was filled with weapons. MR-77 carbines, hand-assembled to Lamb’s and Yuri’s specifications. OZ-72 pistols, the preferred sidearm of the New Gods. Suppressors. And enough munitions to blow the motel sky-high.
Gathering around the bags, the team organized themselves, handing out and inspecting their gear. Metal clacked in the cramped room, smothered by the television. Gun oil wafted through the air. Darkened alloys drank in the light.
“I had to move heaven and earth to put everything together on such short notice,” Lamb said.
“We appreciate it,” Yuri said.
“What are you planning to do? Fight a war?”
Yuri shook his head. “Start a war.”
Lamb’s face turned grim.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Deadly serious.”
“Able to tell me what that’s about?”
“The New Gods are trying to form alliances. We’re trying to disrupt them.”
Lamb whistled. “Damn. How do you plan to do that? Stack bodies all the way to Valhalla?”
“If we have to.”
“You’ve been giving them headaches for years. You do this, they’re going to put you at the top of the hit list.”
“Which is why we got non-standard equipment.”
The MR-77s were civilian reproductions of the government-issue M83 carbine, built to military specs. Which was to say, built by the lowest bidder to meet the minimum acceptable standard. The carbines weren’t terrible, but they would never meet the STS’ demanding standards. Not in accuracy, nor in build quality, and most definitely not in terms of reliability.
But they would do.
Yuri checked his own carbine. The accessory rails were slick, sporting only a set of folding iron sights. The furniture was bland, lacking the 3D-printed grips and customized buttstocks offered by the competition. It didn’t even have a sling. It was the quintessence of rifle, no more.
A casual observer wouldn’t—couldn’t—imagine that it had been worked over by a master gunsmith.
Facing a wall, Yuri ejected the magazine and aimed the carbine at the ceiling. He pulled the charging handle back and peeked into the chamber. Clear. He released the handle, letting it fly forward under its own power, then reinserted the magazine. He racked the charging handle again. Then he thumbed the selector lever down.
And forward.
Most basic MR-77 lower receivers had two firing positions: safe and semiauto. Lamb had drilled a third hole. Then he’d dropped in what appeared to be an innocent wall-mounted coat hanger, 3D printed from common metal.
And just like that, the sporting carbines were now select-fire assault rifles.
The entire package cost a little over seven hundred bucks per, most of them in material costs. The right price for a merc looking for a disposable weapon.
The OZ-72s were equally expendable. Flat, black and bland, they were everywhere on the streets of Babylon. The polymer pistol had as much personality as a brick, but were just as reliable. Lamb had swapped out the stock sights with green fiber optic three-dot sights. They weren’t the battery-powered red dot sights the team was used to working with, but they were good enough.
Each sidearm was only slightly less expensive than the carbines, coming in at six hundred dollars or so. It had been a long time since Yuri had used such cheap gear. His time in the Unit, and later in the STS, had spoiled him. On the other hand, with what they were going to do with these guns, it was extremely likely the team would have to toss them into the ocean when they were done. Better to throw away only a few hundred bucks than a few thousand.
The guns reminded Yuri of his early days in the Special Activities Unit. Back then, he had learned the art of war from grizzled veterans, retired soldiers who had returned to serve on the training cadre. They had seen active duty in the era before opto-electronic sights, lasers and other accessories. The oldest among them carried weapons that didn’t even have accessory rails. Instead, they’d secured everything in place with custom-manufactured brackets or lengths of gorilla tape. Or both.
The team would have to transfer their sights and accessories over to their new guns for this job, then pull them off before disposing of the weapons. It was a bit of a hassle, but they didn’t have the budget to blow tens of thousands of dollars on one-use accessories that were even more expensive than these guns.
“I’ve never used this before,” Karim said, holding up a helmet.
“That one’s a newly-released model. Never got around to testing it in the STS before we were shut down,” Yuri said.
Karim doubtfully rapped his knuckles against the crown. “It’s thin.”
“Don’t judge armor by its thickness,” Lamb said reproachfully. “What you’ve got there isn’t a standard para-amid fiber helmet. It’s made of amorphous metal, an alloy with a non-crystalline atomic structure similar to glass, coated with a spall liner. It’s rated to stop shrapnel, blunt impacts, and all handgun calibers, including special threat rounds. And protection remains consistent across its entire surface, even at the edges.”
Karim blinked. “You’re saying that even if a seven point ninety-two AP round strikes it on the rim, it will stop the threat?”
“Tested it myself. It’ll stop the bullet.”
“Damn…” Karim tested its weight in both hands. “Feels solid too.”
“Unlike conventional helmets, it won’t break if you drop it. It won’t rot or rust either. It’ll last practically forever.”
James held up a metal plate. “What’s this? Some kind of face shield?”
“You got it,” Lamb said. “You can bolt it on the mounting brackets on the sides of the helmet.”
“What’s it rated for?”
“Same as the rest of the helmet. It’s lighter, tougher and thinner than the mandibles you used to run in the STS. It fits so close around the face, it won’t interfere with aiming.”
“The viewport isn’t armored.”
“Yeah, you’re supposed to pair it with ballistic-rated glasses for max protection.”
“It’ll block whatever facial recognition tech we might encounter in the field too,” James said thoughtfully.
Kayla had told Yuri once how a pair of guards from the Void Collective had recognized her even though she was in disguise. He didn’t know if the shields could prevent magic users from reading their faces, but every little bit help.
“Why don’t we just use those new-fangled full-face helmets instead?” Kayla asked. “Those come with integrated ballistic lenses.”
“Two reasons. First, those lenses actually _reduce _your peripheral vision from two hundred and twenty degrees to a hundred and eighty. If you haven’t trained with them before, it’s a wrinkle you don’t need. The viewport of the face shield doesn’t limit your peripheral vision. Secondly, those full-face helmets use a two-piece design. The front piece is attached using rare earth magnets. When the helmet takes a bullet, or if someone pulls on it with enough force, the front piece will pop off. Sure, it’ll shed extra ballistic energy that way, but with the kind of threats you guys run against, I figure you don’t need PPE that a bad guy can peel off so easily.”
It would be real annoying to have to pick up a discarded helmet piece to prevent BPD forensics from analyzing it while in the midst of a firefight. And it would be even more annoying if a camera happened to capture the wearer’s face. But the most annoying possibility was having a monster yank your armor off you in a face-to-face confrontation.
Will lifted out a trauma plate. “Is this made of amorphous metal too?”
“Yup,” Lamb confirmed.
“Huh,” Will muttered, running his fingers down its length. “Pretty thin, but deceptively heavy.”
“It’ll stop every rifle caliber out there.”
“No shit? Even armor piercing rifle rounds?”
“You got it. I’ve also got rifle-rated ballistic applique for your helmets if you need them.”
“Could’ve used this kit in the STS,” James said wistfully.
“Could’ve used it in the Unit,” Yuri said.
“The Unit?” Karim asked.
Smiling, Yuri shook his head. “Another time, another life.”
Seated in a circle on the floor, the operators loaded their magazines. Lamb had come through for them once again, scrounging up boxes of ballistic tips and tungsten-cored penetrators from who knew where. The former was civilian-legal but expensive, the latter was military and law enforcement only. Yuri didn’t ask how he’d scrounged up the ammo, and didn’t want the answers either.
As they worked, Lamb rooted around a duffel bag, then produced a large paper box.
“Boomer, got you a special order of breaching slugs,” Lamb said.
Will accepted it with a wolfish grin. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Is that for the piece you got there?”
Lamb nodded at the bag slung around Will’s shoulder.
Will’s grin grew wider. “Maybe.”
The men laughed.
“What are you running?” Lamb asked.
“A Witness.”
“Nice. Retro, but nice. You need more boom-boom?”
“I still have some, but… can’t hurt to get more.”
“I’ll place an order for more stock.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“You know what we really need?” Kayla said. “Assault railguns that actually work in close quarters battle.”
“Hell yeah,” James said. “I’m sick of having to wait for the damn thing to recharge before I can shoot again.”
“Real inconvenient too,” Will agreed. “Bad guys don’t like to lie down and die after taking just one shot.”
“I hear ya. The mil-industrial complex hears ya too. How urgently do you need them?” Lamb asked.
“Not right now, but soon,” Yuri said.
“Soon, huh. Alright. Just let me know when you need them. Might even have a surprise for you.”
“What’s the surprise?” Kayla asked.
“Now that would be telling.”
Everyone laughed.
When the weapons were ready, they kitted up. Helmet and plate carriers. War belts and holsters. The soft goods all came from budget brands, the kind of brands a mid-tier outfit would pick for heavy duty. They didn’t come with all the bells and whistles Yuri was used to, but they held his gear where he wanted them to go, and that was all that mattered.
He inspected himself in the closet mirror. He looked like a larper pretending to be a shock trooper. The helmet was the only quality gear he had that was visible to an observer, and few people would recognize it for what it was. Tucked away in the plate carriers, no one could tell that the trauma plates were made of a high-end superalloy. Everything else screamed of penny-pinching and budgetary desperation. In the reflection he saw everything he was not.
His enemies would see an urban mercenary. A gun for hire, one of the scores of mercs running around the nation, offering their services to the highest bidder. The kind of dishonorable or dishonored ronin the New Gods would hire to carry out their wet work.
They wouldn’t see a former operator of the world’s finest special law enforcement unit.
“Looking good, Samurai,” Lamb said.
Yuri nodded. His helmet and face shield added weight and gravitas to the movement. But as Lamb had promised, the generous viewport had preserved his peripheral vision.
“Got everything you need?”
Yuri nodded again.
He opened his mobile cryptocurrency wallet on his smartglasses. Lamb pulled out his smartphone from an RFID-blocking pouch and booted up his own wallet. Inside ten seconds, eight grand worth of Silcoin crossed the electronic sea, flying from one stealth address into another, the transaction shielded from prying eyes through its privacy mode.
Lamb stuck out his hand. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“Same here.”
They shook.
“Kill some bad guys for me,” Lamb said.
“I always do,” Yuri promised.
Join the fight against the New Gods here!
