The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Chapter 39: The Blood Debt of a Traitor

- They've upgraded their nanites, Lash, - Mordecai grimly reported. - Me compromising that White Flame officer back in Ireland must've rattled them. Because even the White Flames I can physically see on the siege lines outside of our Orleans base, I cannot mind scan without some effort. -

- Not to tech-splain to a psionic but nanites are machines, Mordecai. And machines generate EM fields. Is it possible that the hundreds of thousands of nanites in an infested person's bloodstream could network together and generate a damping field of some sort? - Lash offered.

- More than possible, my friend. We're seeing it happen, - Mordecai confirmed tautly. - Hold on, though. I just had a thought. I think our enhanced mundane friends didn't account for something. Shadows. -

- I'm afraid I don't follow, - Lash confessed.

- Think of it like sonar. You send out a pulse of sound and detect what it bounces off of, - Mordecai explained.

- We use a psionic pulse the same way, detecting what it bounces off. Except, in this case, it doesn't bounce. It's absorbed. So, when you look at the entire picture, you see everything that the pulse bounces off, just not the damping fields. Which leaves holes in the picture like ... -

- Shadows! - Lash finished for him, eyes widening as he understood where the psylord was leading to. - So you can see where they are, but not read their minds. -

- I believe so, - Mordecai said. - Only one way to find out for sure. Send a psy pulse over your location. -

- Do I need to prep my squad against any collateral effects? - Lash wanted to know.

- Considering I just pinged your location and you felt nothing, no, - Mordecai replied. - Hmm. I'm reading seven shadows and an echo thirty meters northeast from your current location. -

- Echo? - Lash repeated with a frown even as he mentally pulled up the Castle's map to see what was thirty meters to the northeast from where they were.

- Somebody using nanites that haven't been upgraded yet, - the psylord tersely explained. - So I am getting some information leaking through the damping field, generating a ghost image instead of a blank, or shadow. -

There was a slight pause. Then:

- Henrik Kasperitas, - Mordecai said. - That is our echo. -

Lash's eyes narrowed.

- The commander of the Hand of the Council, - the big vampire indicated, his mental voice grim. - He eluded us at the Nocturnum. I was wondering if he would resurface during the effort to extract Demaskieros out of our custody. His presence confirms his collusion. -

- Then I'm guessing you'll be making him dead, - Mordecai said. - I'll give you a visual overlay so you can pick them out. Then I need to go. Things are heating up on our perimeter ahead of your drone strike. -

- Thank you, my brother, - Lash said, preparing to disconnect. - I'll check back in once we've dealt with our vermin problem. -

- Copy that. Good hunting, brother. -

With that, the psylord was gone, the entire exchange happening in a matter of seconds, thanks to the speed of thought. And, with a blink of his eyes, Lash could look through walls.

There! Seven ghostly outlines and a glowing man-shape, holding position through a couple layers of thick stone.

"We need to move! Now!" Lash tautly hissed, tossing Narya's comm unit back to her. He then snapped his Kali to the ready and bolted forward.