Ignition Broker: Interlude III

Interlude III

“You were late,” the voice of an aged handler reached out and mentally communicated with his operative. An operative who was currently deep undercover and had been given a large but relatively simple task, identify the one child raised and trained by the legend himself, and report their whereabouts to the Association.

This legend was so infamous that many of his subordinates who he trained went on to create the very Association that now funded, trained, and even encouraged such missions. For his part, this intrusion into the operation was tougher than expected as there was already a lot of attention on the different universal military academies to begin with, something to do with a possible unification of the Cerusians and the Empire.

While this partnership would likely have larger costs and impacts on future dealings, it also highlighted the need for this mission to be successful. Particularly with the Legend’s own history with the Cerusians.

It was believed that despite protestations, at one time the Legend himself had an affair with the Cerusian queen herself, only for her to fall for his brother. Shortly after that, the story got murky, but what was clear was that most all the leadership had not only respect for the Legend but also had a place where he would be easily accepted into, should he be brought back into the fold.

While the Handler himself was not fully aware of all the ins and outs of what was planned, it was clear that leadership was prepared to take the next step in their organizational structure, which relied heavily on recruiting the Legend, either as a trainer, or as a consultant. In fact, a consensus was that so long as the Legend was not actively opposed against their organization, that too would be considered a positive. Meaning this contract, this deep dive into the Academy was only seen as a positive.

What better way to lure or at least lull the Legend into compliance than offer a position for his daughter. Again, a person thought to be a fairy tale character herself, for the Legend did not care for kids and made it a point not to have any ties to anyone or anything. Thus finding this one proposed weakness was paramount, and most importantly under no circumstances was the operative to hinder, harm, or threaten the child trained and raised by Marcon.

“Yes,” the one word guarded response came back from the operative. This was odd, as the surface thoughts of his operative seemed to be somehow hidden or protected against his gentle scans. Most of the time this came after prolonged exposure to such communication techniques, but so far the operative had not shown any signs of being able to mount even this level of defense against his scans.

“Well?” The handler pressed. Yet, as he poked, he could feel tensions and flares of promised pain coursing just under the surface of his operative’s mind. This was odd, as he had never seen nor experienced anything like this in all his days.

“Well what?” She responded, again her tone defensive and filled with just a bit of pain.

“Are you in a safe location?”

“Yes,” no deception and this time the surface thoughts seemed to relax enough to show that she was in an open field somewhere. Again, this too was telling as her thoughts went from being on automatic defense, to blatantly open, the way he was used to her mind appearing before his questions. All odd, which only caused a faint trickle of doubt to form within his mind.

“Have you found the target?” The handler asked flat out.

Shared pain spike.

Like touching a person who was exposed to a live wire, the handler felt a jolt and spike of power course through his mind.

Disconnected.

The surge of pain was so intense and unexpected that the handler for a moment lost his focus and let the connection drop. Taking a moment to recenter himself, the handler paused and then with a focused mind once again reached out to establish a connection with his operative.

This time, the connection was worse than before. The mental landscape, normally strong and vibrant was now vacant and empty.

“What was that?” The Handler asked. As he spoke, he could feel the mental defenses already in place, protecting the surface thoughts of his operative. Worse, just like last time, he could feel the red pulses of agony just circling under the surface, waiting to strike. Almost like ice fishing, all except this time the fish were deadly if they found you first.

“That right there was why I didn’t contact you earlier,” the operative managed to slowly think out, her words short and measured, despite coming at what should have been the speed of thought. Hearing her thoughts, and feeling the surge of pain, an absurd thought filled the handler’s mind.

“An oath? Was that the results of an oath?” The handler asked, going with the most absurd result. His question up there with asking if it was a sign of divinity, or an act of the celestials upon their connection.

Silence.

Standing on the surface of his operative’s protective mind, he could see dozens of red pulsing surges of pain coursing just under the surface of her mind. The pulses clearly designed to render pain should any additional comments be rendered. Seeing this, the handler paused, as his mind almost believed the absurd response, or lack of response in this case. There was no deception, no feigned emotional states, just pure thoughts. Or lack of any thoughts in this case.

“I see,” was all the handler could say to his revelation of what was happening. “Then do you have anything you can tell me?”

This was a shot in the dark, if there was a gesh or otherwise binding mental contract, then of course speaking such things into fruition would cause pain. Just at the thoughts being transferred it was clear more red pulses of angry energy surged just below the surface of an otherwise perfectly serene mind. Finally, the surface tension broke just enough for a thought to sift through.

“Yes, boot polish,” the operative offered.

“Boot polish?” The handler asked for clarification the thought completely absurd as at a military Academy everyone used boot polish.

“Yes, well actually, I will need boot polish remover.”

With that statement, the pulsing red currents of energy activated and seemed as if they would strike out at both of them again. Even now, the Handler could feel the slight discomfort that coming so close to a hint caused his operative. Realizing that there was more to this task than originally anticipated, the Handler prepared to both brief up this new development, along with try to help with the one request that his operative had.

“Very well then, I shall assist you with finding the best boot polish remover available,” the handler admitted and then cut off the mental connection. He watched her from a distance and was surprised to see the moment when his operative began to bleed ever so slightly from her nose.

Seeing this obvious physical reaction, it was clear that whatever had happened was serious. Also, there were no signs that the operative wanted out, meaning she at least felt she was close to completing her assigned task. He would give her time, along with informing the higher ups that this just got a lot more interesting.

How did his operative invoke  gesh, let alone one that caused mental and physical damage to the host and to anyone who happened to try to read the mind of the one under the gesh. This too would be huge, especially if they could weaponize this very thing for their own contracts. Suddenly this side project seemed to bear a lot more fruit than was originally anticipated.

***

Meanwhile, an elven queen sat aboard her flagship, reading the reports.

“Why is the seventh Academy losing resources?” The Queen demanded after seeing that a few sensors had gone out, reducing the overall footprint of coverage for the campus.

“I don’t know, it might be a connection issue as most of the sensors have been thrown into a state of disrepair due to age.” A female officer responded.

“No, these have operated just fine since their creation. Either direct damage or improper alignment are the only cause that these have ever dropped,” the queen noted.

“I do not see signs of damage, though there were scheduled records that indicated that the sensors did go missing after a time. Normally in such cases of vandalism, a student will take the relic and move it, then finally stash it, only once it is stationary again can we begin to get a read on the equipment and send out a team to reacquire the sensors.”

“Right, so why hasn’t that been done currently?”

“I don’t know, either the device hasn’t stopped moving, or…” the officer trailed off.

“Or what?”

“Or it disappeared.”

“We should still see residual traces of the pieces at least.”

“Yes, we should, but it seems that the configuration isn’t working properly.”

Hearing that the queen looked at the report once more and then seemed to come to her own conclusion.

“Take me there, I will inspect this structure myself.”

“Your eminence, surely this isn’t worthy of your time…”

“I’ll determine what is worthy of my time and what is not, the idea that vagrants can come to our sensors, disable them, and distort their emissions so much that we can’t even find microtransmissions is alarming. Either it means the enemy is advancing so much that we cannot rely on the old methods of scouting, or…”

“Or?”