Dashing devil omnibus 2.., p.161
Dashing Devil Omnibus 2: Books 4-6, page 161
“Kuh-he!” Mind Witch chortled as she stepped into the room beside Tinker, who had her visor down and wore an expression somewhere between disappointment and boredom.
“She probably didn’t tell you because thinking you would be first motivated you to go through that last group quickly and efficiently. Besides, you are overjoyed that your Darling got here first,” the petite pink armored woman explained.
Devil’s gothic love nodded to Tinker before she turned to him with a pleased smirk and added, “If Silver got here first, she was going to stall him with banter until her Darling got here, anyway. She thought he should be the one who arrested that jerk.” She nodded at Cobolto, who lay at his feet.
“I’ll admit this feels pretty good.” The big demon smiled at his loves. “So thank you for the consideration, my love, but we still have a job to do. Let’s get these people in restraints, sweep the rest of the base for any stranglers, and then head back to Glorith.” He scowled. “I don’t like being so far away.”
Chapter 51
Boyd sat in his absurdly comfortable command chair with it turned around to face the couches and the open door to the Osprey’s rear bay. The ship was currently outfitted for prisoner transport and filled past its official capacity. They’d stacked some of the unconscious non-Powered guards—who were probably mercenaries hired by the Ascended—on top of each other in the small cells that lined the ship’s bay.
Every one of their prisoners had been dosed by Naiad through use of either her Power or a syringe with an obsidian needle he’d charged with his Black Flame for the few with energy-based resistance. While she’d assured him they would all be out for the next twelve hours, Boyd had thought it prudent to keep an eye out and patrol the rear bay occasionally. The flight back to Glorith only took seven hours given the Osprey’s speed, which gave them another five hours before they could pass their prisoners off to a proper containment unit.
Daryl handled the occasional patrols—mostly because he preferred having his long tail extended down the hall with his torso leaning against the doorframe next to the couch when not checking on the prisoners. Anybody else would have had to step over and around his thick tail to do the patrol. Shelia sat on the couch just beside the door, with Raev and Laura beside her. Laura was in the process of brushing one of Raev’s tails, something they all pitched in on a little.
Silvie, Hope, and Mindy were on the other couch, the angel having cuddled into the gothic beauty, where she was taking a little nap. She enjoyed a good afternoon nap, and at one point over the preceding months had decided that Mindy was almost as comfortable as Boyd as far as a cuddle-buddy went. His darkest love didn’t mind in the least, finding Hope’s thoughts and dreams quite soothing. This particular nap’s dreams must have been a little less pure than you would expect of an angel, given the occasional wicked smirk Mindy gave Boyd whenever Hope’s golden halo shifted to bright pink.
Tinker and Raev were at their stations at the front of the cabin but readily joined in the muted conversation. They had spent an hour after taking off discussing the details of the mission in an after-action hotwash, as well as sharing some laughs and teasing each other about certain moments during it. It hadn’t been a particularly intense or difficult mission, to be honest, so it didn’t give Boyd all that much fuel for the lessons learned.
If anything, it felt like a rather anti-climactic ending for the Ascended Coalition.
He had felt pretty good locking Cobolto up, at least. Boyd had never suspected that he would have cause to, so hadn’t even fantasized about it. He sighed, wishing his old tor-Mentor had shown up. Tinker had found a hard line that ran to a transmitter a dozen miles away that had received and sent out several signals after their assault began.
Victory Seeker wouldn’t have showed up, even if they’d waited in an attempt to trap him.
For the past hour, they had been discussing next steps and how to spin this with the public. Boyd had shushed everyone, and they’d started speaking in hushed tones once the angel started to doze.
That’s when the alert came in.
It popped up on the screen attached to his chair. Evidently, there had been an explosion in Glorith, and the mission control floors of The Tower had been damaged.
“Shit!”
Boyd spun his chair around as his stomach sank. “Max speed,” he ordered, “take us sub-orbital, Raev. We need to get back, ASAP. Tinker, plot us a parabolic extra-terrestrial course. Get me an ETA as soon as you have it calculated. Everyone, get back in combat mode.”
They were still in their suits, as they were transporting prisoners, but he wasn’t asking them to re-equip, he was calling for them to get back into the mindset for another fight. Boyd then placed a communication request in Davis’s queue so he could answer it when he had the chance and opened a line with Royce—or he tried to. Neither went through.
“Tinker?” Boyd did his best to avoid growling her name as a question, but the rumble worked its way into his voice anyway. He didn’t like being out of contact—not one bit.
“The course is set, and we are on it,” Tinker replied, an edge in her voice, as well. “The final calculations for our arrival time should be finished right about… now. Fifteen minutes and thirty-six seconds to the Tower in Glorith.”
In truth, with the Osprey being capable of space flight, they could get anywhere on their world in less than an hour by using ballistic flightpaths similar to Old Earth’s intercontinental missiles. The problem with doing so was that the very intricate and expensive stealth system had to be sacrificed, as it was over the ship’s heat shield.
The stealth shielding that helped part the air and assisted with undetected high-speed flight in atmosphere wouldn’t stand up to the forces of re-entry. This meant that they could get most places quickly, but at the cost of the ship requiring a resource-intensive refit that would have it out of action for two and a half days to get the stealth system back online.
It was something he would only order in an emergency—like this one.
“Thank you. Switch over to seeing if you can figure out why I can’t reach the city,” Boyd rumbled.
“On it,” Tinker replied.
While he couldn’t make out many details, Boyd recognized most of the many diagnostic screens as they popped up, including one that had a cartoonish version of an animated paper-clip, of all things, that popped up in the corner of Tink’s screen.
Tink scowled at it, then rolled her eyes. “Really, Granny?!” she muttered under her breath.
Boyd spun around in his chair again, seeing Daryl had turned around to check on the prisoners. He currently moved down the corridor between cells with his head on a swivel. The big demon sensed the rising tension in each of his loves; they didn’t like being this far away from the city when something was going on any more than he did.
His grip tightened on the armrests of his chair as he sensed the urgency and worry in most of his team. Boyd's mind raced with possibilities, thinking through and then discarding each of the various scenarios that might have resulted in an explosion at The Tower.
“Fifteen minutes until contact, expect to go in hot and be prepared to enter a Code Black situation,” his deep voice cut through the tension in the air.
Tinker's fingers flew over her console, brow furrowed in concentration as she tried to establish a secure line of communications back to the city. “We’re still connected to our base,” she said after a moment. “As well as all the cities that established comms with us that fall into our regional response range. The issue must be on Glorith’s end...”
She looked up with a frown. “Meaning there is nothing I can do to fix it from here. Granny would deploy some drones from our base, but we will beat them to Glorith. Nothing in the last footage I have from the city that she reviewed explains what might have caused the explosion.”
The big demon confirmed Mindy had shaken Hope awake and everyone was awake and alert. Boyd took a deep breath, then blew it out. “Thank you for trying, Tink.” He turned to meet the gaze of each of the ladies in the cabin. “It looks like we are going in blind, everyone. Prepare yourselves.”
Thirteen minutes ticked by, each second feeling like it took an eternity to pass. Although seeing the edge of space in the thin port at the front of the ship was neat, no one even commented on it.
“We should be entering short communication range in a moment, and have a visual shortly after that,” Tinker said as they descended back towards the ground, orange and yellow flames dancing over the strip of the outside world he could see.
The big demon turned back to his console, having left the communication screen open with the requests blinking in the lower left corner. He watched as the error icon that originally told him the signal couldn’t make it through to Glorith was replaced by a circling icon that indicated they were pending an answer.
To his surprise, it was Davis—who he’d thought would be preoccupied with whatever emergency the city was facing—who responded first. “Devil, you weren’t due back for at least another four hours,” the Director said as he answered Boyd’s request.
The man’s voice sounded weary, but not overly distressed. It was enough to lower the demonic Hero’s anxiety level a little, though not enough to assuage it. This was mostly because he detected a faint hint of concern in the man’s tone that told him whatever had happened, The Devoted weren’t going to like it.
“We got an alert of an explosion in the vicinity of The Tower then all communication with the city was cut off,” Boyd rumbled as calmly as he could. “We went hot to get back as quickly as possible, so the Osprey’s stealth system will be down until Tink has a chance to repair it, but we are almost back. What happened?”
Boyd assumed the lack of distress in the Director’s voice meant that whatever it was, was over. Through the slit of a viewscreen at the front of the cabin, he saw Glorith rapidly growing in size as they descended on it. Everything looked fine from where he was sitting.
“The situation is resolved,” Davis replied with a sigh. “You just showed up on radar…” He paused. “Wow, you’re really moving fast.”
Director Davis sighed, the weariness back in his voice making him sound older than his fifty-six years. “It will be better to brief you in person anyway. Land on the executive floor’s pad. I’ll meet you there. Davis, out.”
The line disconnected, and Boyd sighed at the non-answer. He turned to their pilot and added, “Raev, you heard him.”
“Course adjustment made, switching over to manual control,” Raev replied. “We’ll land in about a minute.”
Boyd stood and made his way to the back ramp, with everyone but Tinker and Raev getting up and following him. It might no longer be an emergency, but they still operated as a team.
The big demon glanced at his team as they waited, “We need someone to stay with the prisoners. Volunteers?”
“We’ll do it,” Daryl was quick to volunteer, nodding at Shelia to explain who the other part of the ‘we’ was. “It sounds like a job for the newbies, anyway.”
Shelia let out a sigh, evidently not happy about it, but admitted, “He’s not wrong… even if watching sleeping prisoners sounds about as much fun as watching grass grow.”
“Thanks,” Boyd nodded at the couple as the ramp dropped.
Tinker and Raev trotted down the hall between the cells and he and his loves walked down the ramp together before making their way into the building.
Director Davis was waiting for them in the hall beyond the executive entrance, an unusually concerned expression deepened the lines on his face. “Follow me,” he ordered, “we’ll walk and talk.” He turned and started walking back toward the elevators before Boyd and his team reached him.
Boyd’s unease grew, but he silently fell into step behind the older man, his team keeping pace behind him.
He sensed when Mindy’s emotions became erratic, spinning off in several directions all at once. She probably couldn’t resist taking a peek into the Director's mind to see what was going on. Suddenly, she slammed their Bond shut, hijacking his control over it so he couldn’t sense anything about her emotions.
The big demon looked over his shoulder at where she was walking beside Tinker behind Hope and Silvie.
Her always pale complexion had turned to ash and her pretty amethyst eyes had gone dark. As he frowned at her, they teared up—something he wasn’t sure he had ever seen. Stepping up, she pushed past his other two loves and pressed herself into his side, pulling his arm over her shoulders as she buried her face in his shoulder.
“What happened?” Boyd asked, frowning down at her as they entered an elevator.
Davis turned and saw Mindy’s expression. His frown deepened. “It was Victory Seeker,” the Director explained as everyone piled into the elevator. The Tower’s transportation system was designed to handle large groups, so it wasn’t all that cramped. “He started by taking out our long-range communication systems. That was the explosion you detected.”
Davis pulled a handheld datapad out of his pocket, tapped it a few times, then nodded at Boyd’s wrist. “Pinnacle Watch moved to engage him, but he fought through them.”
Boyd glanced down to his FDU and saw a blinking message with a video attachment.
Pulling it up, he watched as Victory Seeker flew up the side of The Tower dressed in a gray suit, complete with double-breasted jacket. Crimson Contender flew out to meet him, calling out for him to surrender, but Victory Seeker didn’t even pause before closing and delivering a smooth combo that ended with Contender hurtling toward the ground.
Gold Fist then jumped out a window from a higher floor and managed to catch Boyd’s old Mentor with a surprise attack that knocked him off course. It wasn’t enough to take the ex-Hero out of commission, though. And, without the ability to fly, Gold First could only fall away from his target after that initial strike. When Victory Seeker flew into the building, the video ended.
“Are they okay?” Boyd asked as he looked up and found himself being led down a non-descript hallway lined with office doors.
Mindy was still tucked under his arm and must have been guiding his steps, because he hadn’t even registered that he was walking. There was some debris in the hallway, mostly a bunch of papers that fluttered around their ankles in a breeze. The wind made him look down the hall where he noted a broken window. Based on the glass that was scattered around just inside the empty pane, that must be the window Victory Seeker where had entered The Tower, not the one Gold Fist had jumped out of.
“Other than some bruised egos, both Crimson Contender and Gold Fist will be fine. The rest of Pinnacle Watch didn’t have a chance to respond,” Davis explained as he stopped just outside of a door that barely hung on to the doorframe, dangling by one hinge.
Davis’s pained gaze met Boyd’s confused look. “They were not his target, Boyd… Royce was.” The older man held Boyd’s eyes, the sorrowful meaning in them clear.
Boyd’s heart twisted in his chest. It tried to tear itself apart at the message the Director’s pale blue eyes conveyed.
“I know how important he was to you,” Davis added.
Those words settled an iron weight on the big demon’s already strained chest. “No…” Boyd stated simply, unable to accept the news.
“I’m afraid so.” Davis frowned. “His body hasn’t been moved because forensics still needs to process the room. But if you want to see him… he is just inside.”
Boyd numbly stepped through the busted door, certain this was all just a bad joke. His handler and closest friend would be waiting just inside, ready to jump out and yell “Surprise!” and then enjoy cracking some jokes at the big demon’s expense for a couple of weeks.
It was the first time he had been in Royce’s office in The Tower. Boyd didn’t even know which floor it was on if he’d wanted to visit their Handler. The room blended function with barely organized chaos he was sure Royce would insist was part of a system. A desk and a few file cabinets filled the space, each with a number of odds and ends scattered across their tops.
He only had two pictures on his wall. One was a picture of a pretty, smiling, forty-something-year-old blonde woman. The other was a picture of Boyd taken in the Hero suit Tink had made him, likely from right after their victory lap after Omega Ray. There was a small, brass plaque attached to the bottom of the frame that identified it as Boyd’s ‘First Honest Smile’.
Royce was in his chair, head leaned back against the headrest, smiling just like Boyd knew he would be. Except it wasn’t the teasing smile he had expected to see, the one that said that his Handler had just pulled one over on him. It was a small, satisfied smile—maybe a touch on the smug side.
It had been the last expression he’d made.
The left side of his chest was caved in, just over his heart.
Boyd recognized the cause of death as a Powered fist being driven into his friend’s chest at high speed with enough precision and force to avoid damaging the surrounding tissue. At least his death had been quick. The blow had probably come right after he’d offered his killer that final, taunting smile.
The big demon felt his world shift. Everything grayed out, becoming cold and distant, as he stared down at Royce's lifeless body. A confused jumble of emotions squeezed his heart, but riding above all the others was a searing anger at the injustice of it all. His Handler—the man who had seen him at his worst and still believed in him… the man who had guided him, supported him, and ultimately helped him reach his dreams—was dead.
Royce had been more of a father to Boyd than a friend.
He wondered what his final thoughts had been as he stared his killer down. Was it fury and rage similar to what boiled within Boyd? Had an anger so intense it threatened to consume him body and soul possessed him as he considered the future he wouldn’t have with Debra.
