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

past – or the result of a meteorite impacting the plateau in the distant past. Whatever the case, it had been made to look like a shallower incline using sorcery to hide a fairly large encampment of Befreit Beherbergen troops. It was now a staging area for some kind of major operation.

‘Your estimate appears to be correct,’ Nobuyuki went on. ‘I estimate around four thousand soldiers. Of the order of eight battalions or a mid-sized regiment. Their organisation isn’t the issue, however.’ He looked out toward the mouth of the valley. ‘They have armoured vehicles and several assault tiltrotors. They appear to have modern assault weapons which they’re training in.’

‘And they have Kyle,’ Courtney said.

‘Unconfirmed, but it’s probable. It seems likely that Kory and Kyle were taken prisoner to provide information on the ASF’s operations here. We need to extract them, but we also need to get back to Hausman City with this information.’

‘We’re going to need to locate them before we can extract them,’ Nava said. ‘Searching all of that a tent at a time is an unacceptable risk. I’ll keep Chess powered while he does the search. Then we can work out the best way of dealing with this.’

Nobuyuki nodded. ‘And the rest of us will keep watch and observe. We may be able to narrow the search area if we watch how the troops we can see are moving around.’

Nava nodded back and turned to Chess. ‘You’re up again, Chess. Let’s get this started.’

Chess gave a small sigh. ‘At this rate, I’m not going to be sure where my senses are when we’re done.’

‘Easy. They’re where they need to be. Let’s go.’

~~~

It seemed like eight battalions was the right arrangement, probably under a regimental commander. The tents were, on careful inspection, arranged into eight groups of twenty rows and twenty-five columns. Befreit Beherbergen were supposed to be individualistic, but it appeared they had been organised by someone with a clear vision here. These groupings occupied the north and west sides of the valley, away from the opening.

The rest of the area was more open and being used for a variety of purposes. The vehicles had been parked up in the mouth of the valley. A few of them had mechanics working on them, but they all looked fairly new. There was a drill area where a company was engaged in unarmed combat practice, and there was a firing range where another company seemed to be familiarising themselves with their new rifles, firing into the side of the valley. They all seemed to be pretty good with a rifle. There were larger tents down there, presumably used to house supplies.

In more or less the middle of the camp were a group of harder structures than the tents that made up most of the encampment. One was actually an armoured vehicle of some sort with a lot of antennas sticking out of it. Probably a command-and-control vehicle which was in constant use and came with a lot of support gear. There was a generator and what was likely a quintessence aggregator, and what was probably generating the illusion over the valley. More communications gear sat beside the vehicle, including several laser communications devices pointed in various directions; the base was talking to a number of other sites.

Traffic in and out of the command vehicle was interesting. Certainly, there were Befreit Beherbergen soldiers going in and out, but there were also others. The others had different gear and they had a collection of tents away from the battalion groupings. They even moved differently, if you observed them for a while. The Befreit soldiers were, for want of a better word, arrogant; the others were confident.

‘Mercenaries,’ Courtney said.

‘Probably,’ Nava replied. ‘In an advisory role, I think. There are a couple of them training the people doing the unarmed combat drills.’

‘Befreit have become serious enough to get help from outside,’ Nobuyuki said. ‘They’ve always viewed outside help as unnecessary before, even distasteful. This is not good.’

‘Could they be Redwing Faction?’ Melissa asked. ‘The Redwing Faction helped them in Alliance City, right?’

‘They did,’ Nava said, ‘but I don’t think this lot belong to them. If they’re involved, I suspect they’ve introduced and maybe financed the mercs. The Redwings aren’t that… uniform. Literally. They don’t have a uniform and this lot are all wearing basically the same gear.’ She reached out and put her hand on Rochester’s shoulder, sending quintessence in to refill his reserve.

‘Found them,’ Rochester said. He blinked and turned, glancing at Nava’s hand. ‘Thanks. I found them. They’re in some of the tents down there.’ He pointed to their left, toward the back of the valley, not far from the tents the mercenaries were using. Befreit officers had been seen going in and out of that area, but it was definitely in the mercs’ area.

‘How is– How are they?’ Courtney asked. Everyone knew that Kyle was her priority so there was really not much point in hiding it.

Rochester did not meet her eyes. ‘They’re… not in a good way.’ He glanced at Nobuyuki. ‘I think you were right about them being interrogated.’

‘I see,’ Nobuyuki said.

Courtney was silent, but she was not looking happy. Actually, she looked kind of like she wanted to rush down and murder anyone she saw.

Nava decided to cut that impulse off. ‘Okay, we have a target. Now we need a plan. We’re going to need transport to get out of here.’

‘I was thinking we’d borrow some from the carpool,’ Nobuyuki said, nodding toward the vehicles at the valley’s mouth. ‘Courtney can fly a contragrav and there look to be a couple of suitable ones over there.’

Nava nodded. ‘We’ll need a distraction if we have to get two injured men from one end of the camp to the other. I’ll provide that.’

‘Good enough,’ Nobuyuki said without a pause. ‘In that case, I’ll take Mitsuko and Courtney down to get Kory and Kyle out.’

‘What about me and Chess?’ Melissa asked.

‘You two will be handling transport.’

‘We’ll make you invisible,’ Nava