Freedom, Humanity, and Other Delusions (Death's Handmaiden Book 3) by Niall Teasdale (best summer reads txt) 📕

The chameleon surface of the suits adapted to their surroundings and made it tough to spot them moving through the rather blighted landscape. Everyone except Nobuyuki was wearing such a suit; the resident ninja was actually dressed in what would best be described as a ninja suit. It was a bit more high-tech than the outfits worn by ancient shinobi; Nobuyuki could change the colour manually to suit different situations. Right now, he had the cloth set to a sickly, rather unpleasant beige shade which did do a good job of concealing him.

The region was known as Graugebiete. Apparently, that translated as something like ‘grey areas.’ That was supposed to be a reference to it being contested land early in the colony’s existence, but it fitted the landscape well too. Everything was a subdued beige with hints of grey rock showing through here and there. They had landed among low hills, but the land flattened out the closer they got to the town and it became a featureless wasteland dotted with grey-leaved, drought-tolerant bushes. Nava had never seen plants like them; they had to be things the Harbingers had seeded here when they had colonised the place. The few animals they spotted were of no Earthly design either. Mostly it was birds, except they appeared to be more like lizards with feather-like coats, and their wings seemed to have more joints than a typical bird and came with grasping digits. Nothing came near them though, and there seemed to be no danger.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve sensed any Harbingers?’ Melissa asked as they walked.

‘Nothing’s pinged my radar,’ Nava replied. ‘Why would they come out here? The place is nothing but scrubby bushes and bare rock. Somehow, I can’t imagine it was like this while they were here.’

‘It could have suffered some climate change since then, I guess.’

‘Mm. There’s the town.’

Visible ahead of them was a collection of fairly low structures clustered around one larger one, the factory. Even the buildings were grey. It looked like the entire place had been cast from concrete, a rapidly fabricated mill town, now deserted by those who had created it. It was maybe eight hundred metres away and, at least from this distance, there was absolutely no sign of life.

Nobuyuki signalled for them all to conceal themselves in an area of bushes – the bushes did seem to be getting denser as they went south – and then there was the discussion of how to proceed.

‘We need to know where they are,’ Nobuyuki said. He was looking at Rochester.

‘C-can we get closer?’ Rochester asked. ‘I can do it from here, but I can only project out to a hundred metres. After that, I have to move my point of view at normal speeds. That takes time and uses power.’

‘Power isn’t an issue,’ Nava said. ‘I can feed you quintessence to replenish your reserves.’

‘You can?’ Melissa asked. ‘Then why did I have to learn Gather Quintessence for Flight Club?’

‘Because,’ Nava said, ‘you should learn it anyway. Also, I can now cast Recharge Magician as a cantrip. Prior to my recent… change, I would have needed to work it from the schema every time.’

‘Oh.’

‘Putting that aside, if we cast Invisibility on everyone, we should be able to get as close as we like. The issue will be coordination. We won’t be able to see each other any more than they’ll be able to see us.’

‘You take Rochester to a suitable location and transmit your coordinates to us,’ Nobuyuki said. ‘You’ll know where you both are because you’ll hold hands. Once you’re in position, I’ll bring the others over one at a time while Rochester begins searching the factory.’

‘This is where experience trumps academic learning,’ Mitsuko said. ‘Though maybe you should’ve thought of that, Nava.’

Nava shrugged. ‘I’m not used to doing missions with other people. Chess, give me your hand.’ Chess put his hand out and Nava took it. He vanished from sight almost immediately and Nava followed a second later. ‘Let’s go see what we can see,’ Nava’s voice said out of empty air. There was the sound of footfalls, and they were gone.

‘They’ll be safe, won’t they?’ Melissa asked.

‘An invisible Nava could take on an army,’ Courtney replied.

‘Fair point. I just hope she doesn’t have to.’

Hausman City.

Rhianna had stayed behind when the others went out to get Kyle and Kory Greyling. She had things to do and she was not really an assault trooper. Rhianna was stealthy in a different way to Nobuyuki; she specialised in persuasion, social manipulation, and more conventional espionage.

She was not at all bad at computer intrusion techniques either. Right now, she was employing those skills to crack the militia’s secure servers and get at the intelligence they had on the Befreit Beherbergen base Nobuyuki and the others were invading.

Something smelled off about the entire situation. She had got the feeling that Oberstleutnant Stefan Sieger was not telling them the whole truth. It was almost as if he did not want the two ASF officers to be rescued. It seemed likely that someone had done something stupid and/or incompetent and this was all the House clan’s military trying to cover it up. But it was possibly something worse. If there was something nastier than soldiers covering their behinds going on here, Rhianna wanted to know what it was sooner rather than later.

Deserted Town, Graugebiete Region.

Nava had come to the conclusion that Rochester needed to work on expanding his quintessence reserve. Normally he would extend his viewing time by using his body’s energy to gather the required quintessence once his reserve was spent and he could go about ten minutes without resting on that basis. However, Recharge Magician could only refill his reserve, so Nava was having to cast the spell about every four minutes to keep him going. Melissa had more than twice that available and she was hardly over-endowed in the reserve department.

They had been going for ten minutes now and Courtney had just arrived with Nobuyuki. He had deactivated her