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

Invisibility spell and then set off for the next person. Courtney was, of course, impatient.

‘Has he found them yet?’ Courtney asked as soon as Nobuyuki was gone.

‘He hasn’t said anything,’ Nava replied. She looked out of the window and across at the factory. There was still no sign of life in the place. It was starting to worry her.

She had set up in a house no more than thirty metres north of the factory. The building was intact but entirely empty. The windows were still whole, which probably indicated the exodus had not happened too long ago, but there was dust everywhere and no real indications that anyone had ever lived in the place.

‘I wonder where they’re hidden?’ Courtney asked, following Nava’s gaze.

‘No, I mean he hasn’t said anything at all. He usually gives a commentary on things as he spots them, but all he’s done since we started is tell me when he’s getting low on power.’

Courtney frowned. ‘That seems… odd.’ Her frown deepened. ‘He can’t hear us either, so there’s no point in interrupting him.’

‘None at all. He’ll give us something when he has it.’

And, three seconds later, Rochester turned and looked at them. ‘Oh, Courtney, you’re here.’

‘Did you find him?’ Courtney asked immediately.

‘I’ve found nothing.’

‘What? Maybe they’re underground. Is there a base–’

‘No,’ Rochester said firmly. ‘You’re not grasping my meaning. I’ve found nothing. There’s no one there at all. The building is empty. If it’s a factory, they even stripped the machinery out of it when they left. There’s no basement, just two floors of empty space with a few offices on the upper floor.’

‘But they detected radio signals from the place. And they’ve been watching. They’d have seen if everyone left.’

‘It’s something of a puzzle,’ Rochester said in a tone which suggested agreement.

‘Check the roof,’ Nava said. She reached out and refilled his reserve, just in case it took a while.

‘The roof?’ he asked.

‘Yes. See what you can see on the roof.’

‘As you wish.’ Turning, he fixed his gaze on the edge of the roof across the road. His eyes went blank and his body became still.

‘What are you thinking?’ Courtney asked. She sounded a tiny bit desperate.

‘It’s a decoy of some kind. If radio signals are being detected, then there has to be a transmitter somewhere and the roof seems a likely place. Now, if we’re lucky, what they’ve done is put their communications hub here so that their real base isn’t so easy to pinpoint.’

‘And they’d have to have some sort of link, something hard to detect, connecting them to the satellite site here.’

‘There’s some sort of transmission system here,’ Rochester said, though his senses remained on the factory roof.

‘Yes,’ Nava said, though it could have been a response to Rochester or an answer to Courtney. ‘Now, if only they’ve got something we can follow…’

‘I think part of it is a laser comms system,’ Rochester said. ‘Must be infrared or something because I can’t see a beam. It’s pointing… south-west.’

‘If we can get up there,’ Courtney said, ‘we can take a proper bearing. They might have it rigged with sensors though…’

‘I’m going to check to see whether it’s got any alarms or sensors,’ Rochester said. ‘If we can get someone up on the roof, we can take a proper bearing for the laser.’

Courtney looked at Nava and grinned. ‘It’s almost like he can hear us.’

‘I think he’s just smart enough to know what’s needed. If it’s clear, I can go over there and take a bearing with my suit. Then we just have to follow the line to wherever they’ve set up camp.’

‘Yeah. But I’m checking the map and there’s nothing for several klicks in that direction.’

Nava gave a shrug. ‘If there’s a laser communicator up there and the militia have detected radio transmissions from here, there has to be something at the other end of that laser. Hopefully, one of the things at the other end is Kyle and Kory.’

~~~

They were almost two kilometres away, following the line Nava had placed on their maps toward the laser’s target when a sound made Nava turn and look back. Nobuyuki was doing the same and it was him that said, ‘Down!’

Something streaked in from the west and slammed into the middle of the town. An instant later, a vast ball of fire was rising from the middle of the town along with a lot of dust.

‘What the hell?’ Courtney exclaimed. She dropped to the ground, Mitsuko and Melissa just behind her with Rochester a second after that.

Nava dropped to one knee and lowered her head. ‘They went early with the missile.’

‘Indeed,’ Nobuyuki said, ‘they–’ He cut off in a grunt as the pressure wave from the explosion slammed into him. At eighteen hundred metres, it was still enough to hit like a hammer. ‘That hurt,’ he commented, rolling onto his back and then to his knees. ‘Are the rest of you okay?’

‘We’re in high-tech armour,’ Nava pointed out. ‘Sealed armour. How badly did it hit you?’

‘I’m bruised.’

‘Better than the town,’ Mitsuko said. There was still a mushroom cloud of smoke and debris rising from the impact site. Smoke was rising in a couple of locations where the missile had caused fires.

‘Still,’ Nava said, ‘we want you fit to do your job.’ She did not even raise a hand toward him, but a second later his body was relaxing as the pain he had been concealing evaporated.

Nobuyuki bowed his head to Nava. ‘My thanks. That would have impaired my efficiency.’ Reaching into his jacket, he produced a ketcom and rolled out the screen. ‘I’ll inform Rhianna that we’re not dead.’

‘Do we want to do that?’ Courtney asked. ‘If someone in the militia just tried to kill us–’

‘The Greylings have their ways,’ Nava said. ‘No one but Rhianna is going to know we survived until we want them to.’

‘Okay, so what do we do now?’

‘We keep going. I’m beginning to think that what we find might be very interesting indeed.’

Hausman City.

Rhianna was a fair expert at many