Conceal Me What I Am Ch. 11

In an unwarranted bout of optimism, I hoped this would mean that most of the soldiers would be now gone from the fort, searching for us in the morning darkness at a place where we weren't.

On the other hand, this alert also meant that the existing guards would beveryalert, and perhaps even the usual number of usual soldiers patrolling the grounds would be now doubled. There sure seemed like there were an awful lot of them at the main security gate, and more annoyed soldier boys also patrolling inside and outside the wire. As for seeing the layout of the Fort inside, the way the hills were inside of the guardhouse on both sides of the road, I really couldn't make out a thing past them.

"Decision time." I whispered to my shivering ladies fair. "I can do something loud and violent to the guardhouse and probably set all of the local brush on fire too, or we can try another night flight into the unknown. Or does anyone else have a clever idea that won't get us all killed, or at least not right away before we can take an awful lot of them along with us."

No one did. Miranda shrugged and just suggested that I flymuchmore carefully this time. Yeah, right.

This time however, I wasn't in as much of a hurry and I didn't want to create a sudden curious gust of wind blowing things like guard towers and big trees over so I took it cool, calm and casual. We took a short and very elliptical flight up high out of sight and no one was more surprised than I was when we reached the top of the leftmost and tallest hill, my exact objective, which I hoped would provide a decent nighttime view of our objective, and with some cover and darkness, we could now reconnoiter adequately enough to make some final planning for our rescue plan.

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We supposed that the quarter of the base that was in darkness might be barracks, or perhaps low importance facilities like administration. Other areas with decent lighting and some nominal personnel activity I thought might be supply or maintenance facilities. Two other locations were lit up nearly as bright as day and both were rather actively patrolled areas that seemed to be of considerable importance.

I didn't dare pull the night flight trick again. The last trip had worked so smoothly that I was sure that something would go badly wrong the next time to help even the statistical odds. Instead, I decided that it was safer to pull the old scouting trick of just sneaking around in the shadows and praying very quietly that no one would see me.

From back in my military service days, I vaguely remembered using (successfully) some sort of an aversion spell that didn't quite cloud men's minds or make the caster invisible, but it did sort of vaguely hint that the semi-hidden person more or less belonged there and that there was nothing of any particular interest to see there, so move along! I hadn't used it in years, and also I'd needed some help to get the complicated spell active, but it had saved my life once or twice when I was lurking around dangerous and extremely unhealthy places in the New Mexico and Nevada desert... and much too close to active battlefields with lurking enemy snipers.

No problem, I thought. It would be just like riding a bike all over again! Not quite... I just couldn't seem to duplicate the effect! Now, I realized that I'd had more help casting this spell back then than I had remembered. Damned Mentalist magic that I was worthless at, once again!

"Whatever you're doing, it clearly isn't working. If anything, you're even easier to see than you were before... you've got a nice blue glow all around you that screams 'shoot me!'" Janice eventually muttered with her teeth chattering as she sat all wrapped up in her blanket, shivering with cold. Unfortunately, Miranda agreed with her.

"If anything," the teen added with a smirk, "the bright halo around you makes it impossible to miss you, let alone ignore you!"

"Damn it Zak!" Janice fumed. "Bel is counting on us and this is our only chance! Didn't you ever learnanythingback in school except how to cause wholesale mayhem and pointless destruction?" I thought this remark was a bit unnecessary but I knew she was tired and extremely unhappy about the mess we were in, so I bit my tongue shut and I sat down next to Janice to stew about the problem. In another hour or so it would be dawn and we'd lose our cover of darkness. I needed to gonow, to find where they'd stashed Bel, or far too soon it would probably get far too dangerous to even attempt a rescue.

The more I thought about, the more I decided that a magical personal aversion field, let alone trickier things like cloaks of shadow, etc, definitely had to be pure mentalist related abilities. More stuff that I didn't have a clue about doing properly, and really never had any sort of knack for. Maybe Bel could have done the spell, as she was smarter about that sort of thing, but obviously we were out here on our own. Well, when in doubt, try something drastic...

"Miranda, you've been watching me try this. Do you think you have any sort of feel for the way I wastryingto meld the spell around me? Give it a try and think hard about 'not' being seen."

"Like this?" She giggled and then she quite disappeared from right in front of us then reappeared with a smile and a whispered "Ta-da!" and gave us a showgirl flourish. Smart assed teenagers!

Going off scouting with two us huddled together was going to be risky enough and Janice was far from delighted to hear that she'd be left behind on the hill to stay hidden and remain quiet while we were gone. Even shielding two of us was going to be tricky and covering all three was quite out of the question for Miranda's still limited power abilities. The look she gave us when Miranda borrowed back the Tommy gun was positively malignant! Frankly it was safer with us, because if Janice ever needed to use it while we were gone, she'd be pretty much screwed, and between the two of us, Miranda and I needed to remind her at least four times to stay down low in the brush and don't budge. Even if we ran into serious trouble that was going to require malicious and excessive application of terminal magic forces, up here on the hill was pretty much the safest place to be for awhile.

"Lay down, shut up, and go roll up in your blanket and take a nap!" Miranda snapped from the shadows the moment she suspected that Janice was about to follow us anyway down the hill. She muttered a few vile oaths at our backs but did give up and hunkered down. Our FBI beauty certainly could get cranky when she was cold, hungry, tired and footsore from walking half the night without any sleep.

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Now that I was certain that Miranda could hold the aversion field around us, the other thing the spell needed for duration was ground pepper, and I was glad I'd rescued my small bag of the spice powder from my ruined duster coat, along with a few other useful goodies. Reagents are not always necessary with spells or magic working, but in certain clever applications and combinations, they can be an extreme boost, doing some of the work for you so you didn't need to exert as much internal will. The aversion field worked best, I remembered, with just a tiny bit of the pepper constantly rubbed between the caster's fingers, so I handed Miranda the bag and with my arms wrapped as tightly around her waist as I could manage, we started to slowly shuffle in tandem down the hill towards the base.

With the help of the pepper, Miranda didn't have to concentrate as hard but she didn't have much in the way of internal reserve internal power left to start with. Here in the heart of our enemies, it was far too dangerous to risk using any Ley energy fields, as this could allow any local wizards to sense us. Instead, I tried to flow my own energies slowly and weakly into Miranda which she then could fairly easily channel into her aversion field. The pepper seemed to add nicely to the effect, just as I had recalled, and we had enough for at least an hour or two of covert exploration.

By the time we reached the base of the hill and started to wander into the occupied portions of the base, our act was pretty well coordinated and we thought well enough that our protection would hold against anyone other than a decently powered wizard, and we hoped to avoid them for now.

I wouldn't say that we skulked around the whole base utterly invisible to mortal eyes, but none of the local guards or wandering soldiers within visual range ever gave us a second glance. We tried to stick to the shadows and move silently but it looked like the aversion spell was doing everything exactly the way it was supposed to.

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The first heavily lit and active area we checked out turned out to be a mustering area. Squad by squad, groups of soldiers were being roused from sleep to either go out on local patrol or else load up into a waiting truck for transport. This was certainly nothing that I wanted to interrupt. The more that were gone, and the sooner - the better.

The next place that I wanted to take a look into was an extremely over- guarded warehouse. Knowing the Deseret clowns, they didn't believe in hiding anything in plain sight, instead they stacked on the guards and then added some more guards to guard the guards, and so forth. The main warehouse door was closed and heavily guarded, but lights inside and lot of talking voices convinced me that this place was hiding something worth knowing about, so we slunk to the shadows and mentally broadcasted, "There's no one here"as loudly as Miranda could manage.

In full slink mode, we sidled and shuffled over around to a side door that only had one guard on post. I wouldn't call the two-striper on duty quite exactly bored, but tired and 'extremely disinterested" would quite likely fit the bill. A couple of obvious maintenance drones in drab zippered coveralls were carrying a few last wooden crates inside from a parked truck and no one particularly noticed when we slithered in behind them. It was a stupid risk I really shouldn't have taken, but I'm sometimes an impulsive little prat, and Miranda was already too scared to be afraid... if that makes any sense!

This once, we got away with it. Already Miranda's nerves had been stretched quite a bit further than she would have preferred, but she trusted me that we were doing the right thing and she would follow wherever I lead her.

The interior of the warehouse, which was quite open and brightly lit in the center area, revealed some sort of mag-lift vehicle, nearly the size of a truck and much more obviously armored with three visible mounts for weapons, not to mention a nasty looking pair of large rocket tube barrels mounted right at the front. The crew of supply drones shuffled over towards this vehicle with the last of their cargo, and a couple of younger but official looking types in uniform nearby visibly sighed with relief. I had them pegged for junior officers given a shitty job that potentially had ratfuck written all over it, and they were delighted that there was one less thing now that could go wrong.

"By the Prophet, I cannot tell you how glad I am that this is over. Now that the last of the ammo has arrived, we just need to stow it onboard, mount the guns and run a quick alignment test. There are going to be entirely too many Great Lords and other high wizards blessing us with their presence tomorrow for the final demonstration testing. Are you sure your team has prepared enough of the master power cell modules?"

"Too many..." his partner complained. "The Colonel grabbed every single ArcCell that our department had made over the last six months. The range of the BattleCar is still much too limited, enough only for less than an hour on a roadway and much less over heavy terrain like the testing grounds. And with the plasma guns firing on the testing range, the power cells will drain out even faster! Half an hour of simulated combat time, at most. The twelve storage bays are stocked, plus the installed module of course. Enough for the complete battle simulation test of six to eight hours of constant operation. Enough to spearhead the main assault for the planned spring offensive."

"Is the Great One going to be able to replace the cells when the car runs out power during the evaluation?"

"No Great One is likely to get their nails marred doing servant's work." The young research and development officer laughed, albeit quietly. "My Colonel knows the procedure and it's simple and can be done in less than a minute, even by an officer! Still, since your boss will be likely be manning one of the three plasma guns as well, I can show you how it's done so you can then privately instruct him, in case his assistance is necessary."

"That would be prudent, but let's get the last of the crates stowed. They want to demonstrate the vehicle filled with a full projected combat load, the crew of four and full normal load-outs of power cells and silver matrix balls. A fortune in silver my friend is going to be wasted tomorrow, blowing up simulated buildings and old rusty targets out on the testing range!" The gunnery officer laughed. The two of them spent the next twenty minutes completing the battle load-out and then reviewed and rechecked everything carefully once again. Fuck-ups in the junior officer rank didn't apparently survive very long.

Once everything was stowed and triple-checked for accuracy, the gunnery officer bent over and grunted a moment, lifting and then mounting an extremely large multiple barreled gun unto one of the sturdy fixed side frame mounts, of which the vehicle had three, one on each side of the vehicle except for the rear. The weapon was extremely heavy and possessed six revolving barrels that seemed to be composed of some nearly clear glass crystalline or ceramic material. He then mounted a pair of large and extremely thick electrical cables to the underside of the weapon and carefully showed his curious partner how the cables were attached and secured for combat. As each cable seem to have color coded mounting brackets, this task seemed to be easy to perform. Loading the ammo feed tube was slightly trickier, but he demonstrated this task twice before permanently disconnecting it and then carefully inspecting the gun's feed mechanism to ensure that the weapon was unloaded.

"By all of the Saints, it wouldn't be good at all to have left even a single silver ball inside the feed hopper! Even one shot turned to magical plasma would take out most of the wall!" The gunnery officer chortled to his fellow.

"Indeed! I've heard but not yet seen what this wondrous new chaingun can do, turning 1cm round balls of silver into magical ionized plasma at the rate of over 1000 rounds per minute. Each plasma bolt capable of burning through the front armor of an Alliance or US main battle tank at over 1000 meters, or also destroying aircraft or helicopters within line of sight. If my division can construct even a few dozen of these invincible BattleCars, and enough means to power them all, then our forces shall advance without stopping until we reach at least the Mississippi!"

"Powering them all... that's the bitch! You said that your top boss, Count-Warlock Heumac, had a plan for that, but I don't see how. From what I've heard whispered, nearly every wizard of the lower circles is already engaged with other projects at the command of the First Circle."

"No, even with every Great One already engaged in constructing the ArcCells, it would never be enough. Like the existing procurement of weapons, the Hands of the Prophet have been busy elsewhere, helping our enemies give us the tools we will need to defeat them! There is a new Confederate Arc-Tec plant in Florida that is nearly ready to supply our need. Its chief administrative wizard has been possessed by one of the dark ones and now serves us. The power cells will soon flow to us in abundance... and if the Prophet wills it, in plenty of time to complete the capture of the entire American midwest."

"May it be so!" They both muttered together, palming their hands together and bowing in a moment of prayer. Unlike the slaves and pismires, you could always count on the officers being suitably indoctrinated. The conventional wisdom about Deseret military officers was that they were tactically knowledgeable and brave to a fault, usually leading from the very front. Their weakness was thateverythingin Deseret society, particularly the military, was heavily regimented with a very vertical chain of command that didn't encourage individual initiative or creativity. Following orders was beyond second nature for these guys, but if you could knock them off of their game plan they'd often become confused and dither, waiting to receive further orders from their superiors. Improvisation and 'maverick' leadership were not encouraged.

The pair of officers test powered and dry-spun the six-barreled Gatling type weapon with its multiple rotating barrels for about a minute or so each, spinning the chain gun around upon its mount, up and down and in all directions, watching the bright red target point of the laser aiming guidance system. Certain that everything, except the disconnected pneumatic feeding tube of silver ball ammo, had been tested thoroughly, the duo then carefully dismounted the gun and proceeded to close down the warehouse for the remainder of the night, dismissing the remaining enlisted maintenance crew to go and get some early breakfast chow before returning at dawn.

One of the officers left with the crew, to probably to go eat as well, and the other one wandered off to a desk quite a bit off, next to a side wall and sat and reviewed some paperwork. From there he didn't have direct line of sight to the BattleCar prototype and I was pretty certain that I could risk a peek inside.

It was really something pretty unique, even for Deseret. My own GWA had used flyvers and some much smaller Arc-Tec powered mag-lift jeeps for light transport, but nothing this blatantly military. Sure, wecouldhave built one ourselves, I guess, but some bureaucrats in accounting probably convinced the Generals that this sort of battlefield beast would be too horrifically expensive to build and operate, and they'd be probably be right. A quick glance inside one of the spare boxes of ArcCells revealed a rather creative but probably underpowered module chockfull of linked Minor Arcana stones wired up in jury-rigged sequence for power storage.

Not at all the way I'd have designed it... if money and materials were on my own dime, but I assumed that obtaining enough Majors was impossible or impractical for them at this time. In theory, Minors were much easier to recharge and maintain, so maybe reliability was another important issue for using these weaker Arcana stones.

If the ArcCell power modules were interesting, then the stored ammo boxes of 1cm diameter round silver balls were even more so. With a quick glance at the chain gun's ammo pneumatic feeder tube it was easy enough to figure out that once hooked up to an ammo box, a strong air pressure within would feed the silver balls quickly and easily up the tube and into the gun's ammo hopper, transformed by extreme magical energies as matrix material to be turned into lethal bolts of superheated magical plasma. One crate seemed to contain one thousand balls, or one full minute of a gun at its maximum possible rate. Even with those special glass or ceramic barrels, I was pretty sure that these guns couldn't stay locked on full auto for long before this material would overheat, melt or just explode. A quick look at the gunner control settings indicated that the default setting was a burst of six rounds. Enough to blast a single round from every barrel of the weapon in less than a third of a second. Yeah, that was probably enough to melt a tank, armored personnel carrier or a few helicopters and would be way overkill if used upon infantry.