Blue storm, p.1
Blue Storm, page 1
part #6 of Blue Wolf Series
Copyright © 2020 by Brad Magnarella
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Ron Uzilla
Cover titling by Deranged Doctor Design
Wolf symbol by Orina Kafe
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Author Notes
Available Now
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Blue Storm
bradmagnarella.com
1
“Captain, we need to move,” Reginald Purdy said.
On the large screen, the map continued to flash hot spots of some kind. It’s called DAWA, Purdy had said, our Doomsday Advanced Warning Algorithm. We’ve taken the dire prophesies of every major belief system, broken them down into more than five hundred thousand pieces of data, and constructed a system of pattern recognition. If something’s coming, DAWA knows.
Urgent voices rose from the men and women stationed at computers around the mission control-type room. But for me that scene was fast receding into a staticky wash of gray. Pressing the sat phone to one ear and a hand to the other, I turned from Purdy, my wife’s revelation still ripping through me.
“Cancer?” I repeated. “What kind?”
“Breast,” she said. “And it’s spread, apparently.”
“Do you hurt? Are you in pain?”
“Except for the fatigue, I feel fine.” She let out a sad laugh, as if she’d been pranked. “All this time, I had no clue anything was wrong.”
My protective instincts roiled against the wall going up around my emotional core. “You said they’re starting treatment?” I asked, retreating into spec-ops mode. I hated it, but I wouldn’t be able to help her if I couldn’t think clearly, analytically.
“Aggressive chemo,” she answered. “The goal is to stop the spread, shrink it. If I respond, there’s a chance surgery can remove it.”
“How good a chance?”
She hesitated. “A chance.”
“When does your treatment start?”
“Later this morning. I’m in the oncology unit at the main hospital.”
I needed to get down there. Releasing my pent-up breath, I said, “Give me a minute.”
I covered the phone and turned to Purdy, who had remained facing me. Deep lines creased his brow. “There’s no time, Captain,” he said, anticipating me. “You have a new mission. Assemble your team for an emergency briefing.”
“It’s my wife,” I growled.
“I overheard, and I’m sorry. I’ll send someone from Houston to liaise with her doctor.”
He meant a Centurion scientist, probably an expert in cancer research, but that wasn’t enough.
“I have to be there,” I said through my quickening breaths.
Removing his handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit, Purdy pressed it to the corners of his mouth as if to compose himself amid the increasing commotion in his control room. “I’m going to put this bluntly, Captain.” He passed the kerchief over the line of his mustache. “If we fail to stop this thing in its tracks, your wife’s cancer will be the least of your concerns.” As he replaced the kerchief in his pocket, I picked up an electric scent, like alarm, rising through his icy aftershave.
“Sarah can take lead until I get back.”
“No, Captain. It needs to be you. It has to be you.”
When my lupine hearing picked up Dani’s voice, I put the phone back to my ear.
“I’m here,” I said.
“Listen, Jason, I’m not alone. My parents are with me. I know you can’t just drop everything and rush down here. Hearing your voice is enough right now. I mean that. I’ll be okay until you can come.”
Purdy watched me intently. Past his head, the large screen continued to flash. Sixteen patterns appeared this year, he’d said. We received further confirmation of four last month. Two more confirmed early this morning.
Confirmation of what? I’d asked.
Something bigger than any Prod you’ve ever faced.
After the mission in Drochia, I had damned good reason to doubt Purdy, but he wasn’t faking his scent or the taut conviction in his eyes. Whatever DAWA was forecasting scared him. And my lupine was responding to his cues, my ears peaking, hackles bristling. Before I could check myself, I was speaking.
“Are you sure?” I asked Dani.
“Completely sure.” Even battling a life-threatening disease, she didn’t want to burden me.
“All right,” I said reluctantly. “There’s something I need to finish up here, but then I’m heading straight to Beaumont.”
I looked at Purdy in a way that told him, contract or not, me leaving post mission was a done deal. That I was still the Blue Wolf didn’t matter. We’d figure that out, whether it meant moving final testing to Houston or some other solution. Following Takara’s revelation that the biogen team couldn’t do anything for her dragon placed my cure in doubt anyway. But that all felt strangely distant.
Peering into the eyes of my hologram, Purdy returned a nod.
“I’ll be there as soon as humanly possible,” I said into the phone.
“I know.”
“I love you, Dani. We’re going to beat this together.”
“We will,” she said softly. “I love you too.”
As she ended the call, my wall came down. Emotions smashed through me. Shock, dread, my overwhelming love for Dani. And anger. I was truly and thoroughly pissed off—at the cancer, at the fact it was attacking her. And at myself for choosing revenge on a lowlife vampire in Lavaca County when I could have gone to her instead.
I didn’t feel helpless, though. Not with an advanced research lab in my corner.
“Who are you sending?” I asked, turning back to Purdy.
“One of our top bioengineers. She’s leading a team at work on a cancer-targeting enzyme. Early results have been promising.”
“How soon can she get there?”
“How soon can you assemble your team?”
My hands balled into massive fists as I loomed over him. Still an operator, Purdy was trying to further seal my commitment. His dark eyes fixed on mine, unmoving. With a growl, I stood down. If it meant help for Dani…
“Give me thirty minutes,” I said.
2
As my teammates gathered, they looked how one would expect following a grueling mission, a transatlantic flight, and little rest. Sipping a large coffee, Sarah sat at the end of the conference table, eyes struggling to focus through her glasses. Rusty and Yoofi dropped into their chairs with grumbles, Yoofi immediately dozing off inside his hooded coat. Only Olaf, who required as little sleep as me, looked more or less himself. He stared, awaiting instructions.
I paced the front of the room, coaxing my thoughts from Daniela. The best I could do for her right now was ready my team for Purdy’s mission.
“Takara’s in the infirmary,” Sarah informed me, her clipped voice raw around the edges. “She’s still exhibiting systemic stress and extreme exhaustion. I can’t clear her to join the assignment.”
My hologram was off now, and I nodded my wolf head. Takara had shifted twice within twenty four hours and been life-drained by a powerful wraith. It was only by a dark fae’s healing powers and Sarah’s follow-up care that she was doing as well as she was. Still, Takara’s absence would be a blow.
“I hate to be that guy,” Rusty said. “But three assignments in a row, boss?”
“Who ordered this one?” Sarah asked, checking her tablet. “I don’t see any mission info, much less a communication.”
“Purdy,” I replied. “He caught me coming in.”
Her eyes sharpened. “Isn’t that Director Beam’s job?”
“This one’s going to be different.” My replies felt far away and a beat slow, like I wasn’t entirely in my body.
“Different?” Sarah asked. “How?”
I considered how to follow up. Purdy was running a secret side program that involved coordinating with competing monster hunting divisions. A major security breach. I’d been keeping that info from Sarah and the t
“This assignment isn’t sanctioned by Centurion,” Purdy announced from the corridor. He entered the conference room, closed the door behind his back, and strode toward the table. “The assignment is coming from DAWA.”
“The heck is DAWA?” Rusty asked.
I moved back as the aging man in a dark pinstripe suit crossed the room. Though he’d played a role in recruiting each of us, this was the first time he was addressing us as a team.
As he passed the table, he gave it two knocks, causing Yoofi to jerk upright and rub his eyes. Purdy pulled a small tablet from his pocket, and the tri-panel screen on the wall glowed to life, displaying the map from his mission control room.
“It’s a sophisticated program of pattern recognition. DAWA takes apocalyptic prophesies from beliefs the world over and examines the data against events on the ground. For the past several years, we’ve received hits but no hard confirmations. That changed a few months ago. Six confirmations to date, and they’re accelerating.” He indicated the flashing areas on the map, two of them in the U.S.
“Are you saying it is the end of the world?” Yoofi asked, fully awake now.
Sarah frowned. “Apocalyptic prophesies are hardly a basis for data analysis.”
“Yeah, sounds like garbage in, garbage out,” Rusty muttered, clearly wanting to be back in his bed.
Purdy produced his handkerchief and proceeded through the ritual motions across his lower face. “I hear your science talking,” he replied to Sarah. “And I appreciate the skepticism. But consider your supernatural cases in the past year. Consider the uncanny nature of your own teammates.” He motioned with the hand holding the kerchief to include me, Olaf, and Yoofi. “Surely you don’t deny them.”
“No,” Sarah said tightly. “But I can observe them. I can confirm their abilities. You’re talking about predictions made hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago by unknown individuals who may have had ulterior motives or been clinically insane.”
Yoofi giggled while still managing to look alarmed.
“DAWA uncovered consistencies across the prophesies,” Purdy said.
“Yes, because belief systems didn’t originate in a vacuum,” Sarah countered. “In many cases, they informed one another. Especially where there were trade relations or colonization by foreign powers that influenced local beliefs. One would absolutely expect to find consistencies across prophesies.”
“Then consider the case of the Kwumu people,” Purdy said. “Isolated from the rest of the world on a Pacific archipelago. No trade routes, no foreign visitors, never subjugated. Indeed, the tribe wasn’t discovered until only a few decades ago. And yet their doomsday beliefs mirrored those of the Hopi in the American Southwest.”
Before Sarah could reply, he raised a finger. “However, I’m not referring to observable consistencies. DAWA operates on an advanced AI. It uncovers deep, complex patterns, well beyond the ability of a human brain to suss out. DAWA was begun on the theory that true mystics exist but see future events through different cultural lenses. Part of the AI’s job is to reconcile those differences, discover the underlying pattern. Outliers, perhaps the clinically insane you mention, were weeded out.”
I watched Sarah’s brow go taut as she processed what he was saying.
Rusty straightened, intrigued by the technology. “And it found a pattern?”
“Several,” Purdy said. “And recent events appear to be mirroring one of them with disturbing accuracy.”
“Can we trust the AI?” Sarah asked.
My teammates were posing good questions, questions I should have been considering, if not asking. But between the one-two punch of DAWA and Daniela’s phone call, I remained in a fog. As a soldier I’d gotten good at sectioning off my emotions to focus on the task at hand. But I couldn’t section off my wife. Not as Jason and not as the Blue Wolf, whose protective instincts were firing on sixteen cylinders.
“The same AI runs many of Centurion’s advanced systems,” Purdy was saying. “So the short answer is yes.”
“Then why hasn’t Centurion sanctioned the assignment?” Sarah pressed.
When Purdy glanced over at me, I returned a hard look. I may have been in shock, but my mind was clear on one point: I wouldn’t be hostage to Dani’s condition. If he tried to lie to my teammates, I would set the record straight.
Purdy cleared his throat. “Because Centurion doesn’t know about DAWA.”
The admission caught me off guard, but I remained wary. He was a long-time operator in arguably the world’s most powerful company.
“How is that possible?” Sarah asked. “Are you running some kind of dark project?”
“As the head of program development, I have latitude to experiment. Linda Fein, Centurion’s CEO, is hands-off in terms of my discretionary fund. In lieu of disclosing key details, I’ve described DAWA as an enhancement of our Prod 1 detection system, which it is. Doomsday events can deliver powerful beings. World-destroying beings. I created the Legion program partly with them in mind.”
“Wait, what?” Rusty said.
Yoofi looked around anxiously. “You created us to stop the end of the world?”
“Your missions to date have prepped you for this moment,” Purdy said. “Of that, I’m confident. And in Drochia, you earned something that will help us enormously.” From a pocket, he pulled out the plastic bag with the ring of lumina mineura, a powerful ore he’d connived to obtain and now planned to weaponize.
As he looked from the ring to the table, his eyes took on an almost zealous light.
But Sarah was unimpressed. “That still doesn’t explain why you’ve kept DAWA a secret.”
“Because there’s no money in it for Centurion,” I said, my critical faculties glinting through the brain fog. In the past year, there had been ongoing tensions between Purdy and Director Beam, and it always boiled down to profitability.
Purdy nodded. “DAWA goes against the company’s essential interests.”
When he looked over, it was as if to thank me for coming to his side. But with my thoughts clearing, my protective instincts were growing beyond just Dani to encompass my teammates. My pack.
“Why now?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Like Sarah pointed out, some of the prophesies have been around for thousands of years. So why come to fruition now? Only a few years after you got DAWA up and running? A year after you assembled Legion?”
Purdy had long been a mystery to me, but I’d learned some things in the last mission. He ruthlessly went after what he wanted. In Drochia that had meant secretly bombing a mining site to obtain the remaining lumina. The operation failed, releasing a powerful wraith and seven wights, resulting in the deaths of innocent villagers. But he had coolly pivoted, making it a Legion mission. When I pressed, Purdy admitted that, to him, the lumina had been worth the human cost. I didn’t know his endgame, but if it was bigger than Legion, there was a good chance we were just as expendable as those villagers in his mind.
“The timing does seem highly improbable,” Sarah put in.
Rusty raised a finger as if to come to Purdy’s, or at least the AI’s, defense, but his mouth seemed to stall. “Shoot,” he said after thinking about it another moment. “I have to agree with my buds.”
Olaf, who had been staring at Purdy, narrowed his dull eyes slightly.
Raising a palm, Purdy stepped back. “Look, I understand your skepticism. On the surface, the timing would appear improbable. But let me show you what I have, then you can judge for yourselves.”
As he turned toward the screen, I grunted. “A prepared presentation? I thought you said the last two confirmations came in just this morning.”
