"Tales of Aegis STAR The Beginning--2" by James C. Oliver

            Once we had all regained enough of our bearing (again) to be effective listeners, our boss continued.  “There is a movement afoot to grant those of us the rights of any normal citizen.  It has been handled in secret up to this point, for our own security, and that of our bretheren in the lycanthrope communities.  It should be released to the public in the next few months.  At that point, I expect, there will be quite a bit of interest in our activities, and I will forced to become a more public figure.  That was the primary reason for my desire to merge our corporations.”

            “So, lemme get this straight,” I said.  “You mean to tell me that we’re protecting you all, and you are all… dead?”

            Mr. Russell smiled.  “Not so much ‘dead,’ Mr. Cunningham, as we are just not fully alive.”

His eyes bored into mine, and I had this wicked sense of falling.  Terror, without even suffering any physical threat.  What the hell?  I closed my eyes and tried to regain my mental footing.  This was nothing that I had endured before, and I’ve endured some pretty serious stuff.  After a few moments of this, I was snapped back into the real world, none apparently the worse for wear.  “OK, now I’m really certain that this is really not anything I would like to be a part of!”

Mr. Russell did not smile.  “I did that to prove a point, Mr. Cunningham, to show the threat.  As I said before, I am not the leader of the vampires for this city.  Should something happen to those in power above me, there will be threats like me placing all of us in jeopardy.  There are ways to counter-act this, but we need time to find them, time which we may or may not have.”

“Why wouldn’t we have that time, Mr. Russell?  Are you telling me that more attacks like the one we had a few days ago are certain?”

He nodded slowly, his face becoming very serious.

“Why haven’t you reported this to the police?  They can legally go around and offer protection.”

Mr. Russell sighed.  “The human law enforcement agencies are simply not good enough.  They cannot understand our nature, and they do not recognize us as citizens.  Were we to be granted rights by the movement, we may use that option, but I do not trust them either.  Several times in my life the police have pursued our kind.”

I nodded and thought about where he was coming from, that what, five hundred years of distrust can probably be pretty effective in rendering any sort of advice to go anywhere other than an in-house unit silent.  “Well, this will change our decisions about how we protect you and yours.  It will also change our need to know.  We’ll need to be read in on how to inflict damage on any possible hostiles.”

“Yes, I will get that to you tomorrow.  For now,” he began addressing the group as a whole again.  “I welcome you to enjoy the club this evening, and enjoy the refreshments.  Good night.”  Mr. Russell departed, along with his entourage.

With the vampires gone, I stood up.  “OK, this has been an enlightening night.  If anyone at this time has any doubts, express them now.  Speak freely.”

For a few seconds, there was dead silence.  One of my best operators, Matt Rodriguez, stood up.  “Sir, this situation is rather FUBAR.  I cannot see how this goes anywhere except bad.  But neither can I turn my back on the team or you.  I’m in, just so long as there isn’t any compromise of my soul…” because the Church would likely excommunicate me was the unsaid bit left in the air.  I understood where he was coming from.  I too was Catholic, and dealing with the undead was likely a good way to not end up on God’s good graces; at least, that is what the Church was going to tell us.

“Sir?” Song Mu-Chin, the Aegis One squad leader stood up.  “I’m of the opinion that this is a great opportunity.  Think about it: we can probably sell the information and training to various police forces and even the FBI should that movement actually garner results.  Not only that, but we get information back that can assist in protecting our principals.”  That got a lot of head nods.

“OK, so what are we doing?  Are we going to stay with this, or are we going to split away?”

Silence.  Both Song and Matt sat down, their views on the matter were essentially the whole problem: could people put aside their own closely held religious or moral views in order to do their jobs that might benefit the greater good?  I decided to revert back to elementary school.  “OK, everyone close your eyes.  Raise your hand if you think that this whole thing is immoral and we shouldn’t be doing it to save our souls.”

Five hands went up.

“Right, now, if you think that we can stick with Mr. Russell and complete any objective he gives us, raise your hand.”

All but the five that raised their hand to the first question and the members of the HQ detachment had their hands in the air.  “OK, open your eyes up.”  Everyone looked around and saw the majority.  “Look, if you don’t want to be part of this, then that’s fine.  I will not think any less of any of you.  If you think that you can put your eternal soul aside and keep working to protect and serve, then I’d suggest staying on.  As the man said, enjoy your nights, I’ll see you all at the office on Monday.  Dismissed.”

Everyone stood at once, a remnant of their former military training.  As they moved out, though, conversations about what they had learned through the course of the evening.  I myself stood at the front with Kimberly Shumate and Chaz Szrozinski, my Chief Operations Officer and Chief Financial Officers respectively.

Chaz spoke first.  “Boss, that was genius.  Boy, totally genius.  Link up with a group of people that are nearly always at war, inside the states where we are completely restricted by Federal and State laws as to what we can carry.”

Kimberly responded before I could get a chance, “Chaz, honestly, do you think that it’s really just his fault?  You saw Mr. Russell, he’s one scary Charlie-Fox.  I’m amazed that we got the kind of response from the crew.”

Chaz snorted, obviously angered, “Of course we got that response… he mind-freaked us into thinking that they were the right side to support.  I really think that this is going to end up in a war, a war that we are more than a little outclassed in.”

I interjected for the first time.  “Somehow, I don’t think that we’ll be entirely defenseless.  I’m sure that bullets will bring these people down—“

“Yeah, just like they brought down the were-rats or whatever they were,” Chaz snorted again, shaking his head.

“As I was saying, I’m sure that Mr. Russell knows the weaknesses for each of the groups that we might be facing.  Once I get this information, we’ll go over it, and make a final decision.  For now, we have to abide by our contract, which, if you recall, they own our company anyways.”  I didn’t like the arrangement, but it wasn’t really my call anymore.

I didn’t stay much longer at the club, and headed home with a small contingent to fill out the humvee, since we hadn’t brought our own vehicles.  Once back at the building housing our headquarters, I stepped out of the front passenger seat.

I noticed it right away.  Something didn’t… smell… right.

I pulled my Kimber Warrior out of the inside-the-waistband holster that I had worn to the event, and flipped off the thumb-safety.  Since I had been the first one to step out of the desert-tan humvee, everyone else quickly followed suit with their personal sidearms of choice.

Glancing about the company motor pool parking lot, I tried to notice everything I could, just to notice if anything was different.  Five other humvees, similar in style to the one we had stepped out of were parked on the southern side of the fence.  We only had twelve, and the other six were still at the club.  A pair of big Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTTs) were parked on the western side, next to our garage.  To the north was the headquarters building itself, floodlights on the side directed into the yard casting long shadows.  We’ve got more, but don’t turn them on unless we’ve got a problem.  “Light up the yard, Jack.”

Jack Videnski hit a button on the console of the humvee, triggering the lights…

Well, yeah, of course.  It was supposed to trigger the lights.  What it did instead was not do anything positive.  It extinguished those lights we actually had on, plunging the yard into darkness.

“Get back into the vehicle!” I yelled, not caring if someone out there heard me.  We all jumped back in, slamming the doors shut.  I grabbed under my seat for the bail bag, each humvee had one for every position.  Inside was a set of PVS14s, night vision monoculars or NODs, and a few other necessities should it become necessary to bail out of the vehicle like ammunition, food, water, radios, batteries, and a spare set of body armor.  I put on the headset, as I didn’t have a helmet to attach the monocular to.  Glancing about, I again scanned the area.  There were several extra lumps behind the vehicles and amongst the low bushes near the building.

Of course, most of them were in the bushes.  Get a few of them to jump out at us, drive us where we would naturally run to (ie, the building), and then double-ambush us with the main effort as we got closer.  I tightened up on one of the figures on the far side of our remaining humvees.  “They’re talking amongst themselves.  I’m guessing that they don’t have guns, otherwise, we’d already be dead.”

“Yeah, I can’t see anything like a gun amongst them,” Jack confirmed.  He led Aegis Two, and was a former Force Recon Marine.  “Whadda we do now, boss?”

“I’d stake my… sorry, bad pun.  I’d say that they’re wererats.  I don’t want to mess with them at all, especially considering the numbers problem.  They’ve got about twenty people here.  We’ve got six.  Put out a call to the rest of the crew.  Tell them to get down here.  In the meantime, we sit tight, and hope to high hell that they don’t decided to—“ I stopped, seeing one of the shapes dash out from behind the vehicles and speed towards us, running on all fours.  “Drive!”

Jack hadn’t even bothered to listen to me, he had turned the truck back on after getting back in, and he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal about equal to the time that I was ordering him to drive.  The humvee leapt forward, careening right as Jack spun the wheel to run over the attacker.  It hit the charging figure as it changed its route to give chase, thinking that we were trying to run.  The fender managed to cause massive trauma to the beast’s head and neck, severing the spinal cord.  We heard nothing of the wet snaps over the roar of the engine.  Jack spun the wheel around again.  More of the shapes charged out, obviously angered that their comrade was dead.  “PINCH!  Tell me that message went out!”

Nick Green, aka Pinch, shouted back, “Yeah!  I’m getting on the radio now!”

Thank God, I thought to myself as we swung around and around, running down several of the attackers.  “Jack, get us the hell out of here!”

Jack spun around one more time, knocking a fifth wererat with the heavy armored sides of our humvee.  He aimed at the gate, and flew at it, as if he would be able to make the humvee fly.  We crashed through our own gate, and for a microsecond, I thought about how in the name of God I was going to explain that to the insurance company.

We managed to hit the road, and screamed out of the area.  Twelve rats poured out after us, gaining rapidly, even though we were doing nearly seventy miles per hour.  “Open up the rear hatch, engage targets as they appear!” I ordered, turning in my seat.

Stephen Cramer popped the hatch, swinging it up until it was open most of the way.  The rats were still behind us, but only by about twenty meters.  I watched for a minute as Stephen fired repeatedly, the front of the pistol spitting fire that glowed white-hot in my NOD’s display.  Ian Gurkin had opened up another box on the side of his seat, the last-ditch weapon of choice: hand grenades.  He grabbed one, ensuring that the spoon was in the meaty part of his hand between the thumb and forefinger.  Looping the middle finger of his left hand in the pin, he yanked it out, simultaneously striking the pose before heaving it out the back hatch like a heavy baseball.  He screamed, “FRAG OUT!”

Not that it mattered, but everyone flinched a bit as the explosion ripped through the air, but it had worked.  Several bodies were flung into the air, others just skidded down the road a bit.  The main objective though, was that no one else was following us any more.  “Close the hatch.  We’ll go to the substation.”

The substation was a rented warehouse of ours that we had in the Warehouse District on Tchopitoulas Street.  It wasn’t carried on our company profile, nor had we reported it as part of our company infrastructure.  It was owned by a puppet company to a puppet company, and through an understanding that we had with the City Council, no one bothered us about it.  We drove up and stopped in front of the garage door.  It rose, not exposing anything but a dark interior.  Once inside, the door closed behind us.  Only when this happened did the lights come on.

There was another door in front of us, one that required a keycard.  I swiped my badge on the reader that was inside the humvee.  It beeped green, and the inner door opened up.  As we drove through, the lights were on, and the bay was already filled with the other six humvees from this evening.  As we dismounted, the rest of Aegis began to appear from the back, all of them having changed into combat attire.  “You alright Boss?” Kimberly asked, the first to get to me.

“Yeah, I’m fine.  The gate back at HQ isn’t going to be, though.  We’ve got to work on our systems.”  I jumped up on the hood of the humvee.  “Alright, our security is compromised, and I’d think that we shouldn’t split up for the night.  Grab out the cots, and get some shut eye.  We’re going back in a few hours.  Aegis One, you’ve got the first shift,” by which I meant the armed guard in case something happened.  As the activity wound down, and those who were on watch were the only ones awake, I allowed myself to bed down as well.  Tomorrow was going to be a long day…

At the end of it all, nothing was there when we went back the next morning.  Whoever the hostiles had been (other than that they had been wererats), they managed to clean up after themselves well.  Only blood stains remained on the ground around where they had been harmed, and not even the police could find anything.  Nonetheless, we had them take DNA samples, and see what else they might have been able to turn up.

My crew spent much of that day cleaning up the yard, and repairing our one damaged humvee.  Most of us had been amazed at how much just hitting these things caused damage, even to the ceramic armor that we had put on our humvees.  Chaz was standing next to me when we were watching the guys pulling off some of the front-quarter panels of armor.

“Jim, those panels were freaking expensive.  Whatever you hit with them, they damaged it, beyond repair, without even having to try.  What the heck are we getting ourselves into?”

I looked at him briefly before turning back to what was going on in the garage.  “You know, I thought I knew.  Apparently, I don’t.”

Chaz was silent for a few beats and then spoke again.  “Last night, after you guys left, I talked some more with a lower ranking vamp.  She expressed to me that there is a lot of tension between the groups here.  Apparently, there is something that we weren’t told about the head honcho vamp, that they can ‘summon’ one of the local animal groups… I think it was the ‘gators.  Whichever it was, somehow, they snubbed one of the other groups, and now its practically a cold war.”

“A cold war that’s heating up,” I responded.  “With us in the middle.  How should we handle this?”

“She said that she had not expected such—retribution, was the term she used—from the group.  Apparently the belief was that they had persuaded the rats that they were not in some sort of power play.”  He shook his head.  “I dunno.  I’m not entirely sure that this information can be trusted.  I mean, can a vampire get drunk?  Is she feeding us incorrect information in order to secure our trust or something?”

I turned away from the damaged humvee and looked at my watch.  Only eleven.  It was too early in the morning for these sorts of questions.  “I’ll talk to Mr. Russell again today.  See if he can get me that information he promised.”

I sat down that day with Mr. Russell again, but this time I had Kimberly and Chaz in the room with me.  Also, Mr. Russell looked a bit less pale, more… human? Shall we say?  I guessed that he had time to prepare for this meet; at least it looked like it.  One we all had shaken hands and sat down, I spoke first.  “I’m sure that you are aware, Mr. Russell, that we—myself and several of my team—were attacked again last night, again by the wererats.  We could not put them down.  We are not put together for hand-to-hand combat, Mr. Russell, and we rarely have the firepower to face distinct odds of something like 10 to 3.  Since our bullets won’t put them down, we need that information about who is susceptible to what.  You said you’d have that ready.  We need it now.”

Mr. Russell opened up his briefcase, and extracted out a very large binder with a whole lot of paper.  Kimberly’s and Chaz’s eyes got wide, but I managed to keep my eyes mostly normal.  “Here you are, Mr. Cunningham.  I have compiled the list, most of the lycanthrope items are the same, but there are a few items that are have not come up in several hundred years.  I have included them for completeness.”

“Mr. Russell,” Kimberly spoke up.  “Why are we still being targeted by the third party?  I mean Aegis STAR specifically.  I could understand if it was us when we were escorting or otherwise interacting with you and your faction; but seeing as they were lying in wait for us in our own motor pool, it begs the question: why?”

“The answer, Miss Shumate, is quite simple.  They attack you because they see you as the spear of the vampires.  While they are misguided, due in some part to the misunderstanding of our envoy, it may be something that they may have to be talked to in person by a representative of Aegis in order to completely understand.”

“So, we go talk to the rats, and we’ll not be faced with another attack, just so long as we’re not protecting your people?” Chaz raised an eyebrow.  “That seems silly, seems like it opens us up for more attacks, not less.  Why the heck are they attacking you anyways?”

“Combined with the were-alligators, we are the most powerful faction of preternaturals in the region.  The wererats, combined with some of those groups that do not have many members, are the second most powerful coalition.  The other lycanthropes have attempted to not become involved, but it is likely that they will not succeed, and several of our consultants have suggested that they will join with the other lycanthropes should the wererats push the issue.  It is covered in this report.”  He tapped the binder.  “However, to answer the question more directly, they attack us because they are afraid of our power.  The wererats see themselves as those who shall put together a lycanthrope empire.  It is a concern really for all of the other groups as well, but they are leaning more towards their cousins.”

“So, they are attacking all groups that are opposed to them, just to counter-balance you?” I asked.

“Quite.”

“Well, then why don’t we just call up the heads of the rat coalition, get them around a table with your group and we can be the mediators,” Chaz said off-handedly.  “Oh, wait, didn’t we already suggest that to you?”

Silence reigned for a minute, before Mr. Russell spoke up.  “Mr. Szrozinski, your distaste for this situation is not appreciated.  We have attempted on numerous times to discuss the problem.  They do not respond.  It is why we have called on you in the first place, and your refrain from espousing your personal views would be greatly appreciated.”

“Chaz, Kimberly, would you excuse us?”  Without another word they stood and left.  I looked back at the vampire.  “Mr. Russell, I’d appreciate it that you keep any harsh words for me.  My people are just that, my people.  They signed on to work for me, and that makes them my responsibility.  I’m sorry for Chaz’s outburst, but I sort of agree with him.  I also think that the wererats will not listen to us, even if we tell them that we’re just protecting you and have no part in forcing them to the table.  However, I think it would be good to try.  How would I go about getting in touch with them?”

It took a week just to get into a decent conversation with the wererats; during which we had to nearly double our escort profiles.  While expensive, the general sight of heavily-laden operators as well as helicopters deterred any strikes on the principles.  Once I had finally made contact, it took me another week just to get them to agree to a sit-down time with both myself and Mr. Russell.  Finally, we had an agreement, time and place for the meet.