Short: Op. Monkfish | sanity-line

Operation: Monkfish

The unlooked-for city of Yan'thelas was undoubtedly the most peculiar feature of the geology and geography of the Zaxton Archipelago, not least of which because its highest point was some several hundred meters below the surface of the pacific in which it had grown. A city of perpetual night, its every cyclopean inch suffering several tons of pressure. In such extremes, it was unfit for man, woman, child. It stood so long in secrecy, but no secret shared could be kept, and for some time now, Agency had known of the City of the Deep Ones. They had little traffic with it, for the Deep Ones were like to keep to themselves. Their ways were as strange to Agency as mankind's were to them, and so there had never been much of a go-between, in any formal way.

Of course, there must be the exception to prove the rule, and the exception of concern is Lysander Dagonovich, agency's one and only Deep One Hybrid. A powerful swimmer at the best of times, Lysander came into his own in the darkness of the deeper reaches of the ocean, where he proceeded with extreme swiftness, unencumbered by clothing or equipment.

As the city's softly-luminescant columns loomed through the haze of water's light-swallowing hunger, old pulls stirred within the arcanist. A part of him desired to live here forever. To enjoy the freedom of majority, and take the balance of his exceptionally long life among his own kind. He maintained his earthly commitments as an anchor, setting them as a counter to the draw in much the same way addicts staved off the draw of their addiction with worldly and otherworldly motives.

A reasonably acrobatic series of maneuvers brought him up and out of a warren of waterlogged tunnels and passageways until he was in an air-filled chamber, some ten or twenty metres across, with beys-relieved murals dimly lit in the luminescence of some sort of blue fungus that lined the upper reaches of the cavern. The loneliness of the aphotic dimersal was dispelled immediately, with three other figures in the room. Two, even the youngest of which, towered over Dagonovich. The third, the immense and powerful chieftain who had given the city its name in untold past, filled the space of a cyclopean passageway into the deeper regions of this spire.

Such an ancient member of this society was practically a god to lesser creatures, but if he had grown attached to the deference and humility of other Deep Ones in his presence, there was to be a novelty with Dagonovich. Dagonovich emerged from the pondlike surface of the water in the chamber in lithe, human strides. He walked fully upright, letting the water flow from his squamous body as he gestured toward one of the murals, etched as it was with the geometry taught by infernals. A flickering of light in between partly-webbed fingers became the brightly-burning light spilling in from a newly-opened doorway, a portal in solid stone beyond which was only the shining and opalescent void that would spawn his ally.

If Asmodeus minded being the only figure in the room in any meaningful state of dress, he did not show it. He strode in with a surety of purpose, ankle-length autumnal coat fanning with his motion, a peacock-printed scarf hanging open about his shoulders like an exorcist's stole. Casually, he removed his sunglasses, giving a precisely-measured nod to Dagonovich, as he arrived at the man's side, and the pair looked up.

Yan'thelas was unimpressed. A tree-trunk of an arm gestured dismissively, a voice booming in contra-bass tones so low as to be more felt than heard. “You are most late, Lysander. We have long awaited you, and you were to be alone.”

Valkoinen's bulldog was unlikely to be cowed by imperiousness. “As all sorcerers I arrive precisely when I mean to. And, you will note, I did arrive alone. Ashmodai is here to see that we conduct our business civily.”

“And,” the demon chimed in, imperiously gesturing with his free hand, “to see to it that the terms of your agreement are strictly adhered to.”

A look of apprehension passed between the two stewards, who were formally the Eyes and Voice of Yan'Thelas. Eventually, the one on the left, had spoken. “You brought a devil here to observe us?”

In mirror, a look of knowing passed between the two agents. The distinction between Devils and Demons were as clear to those versed in the ways of Hell as the difference between Fascism and Bolshevism. Dagonovich shrugged, almost dismissively. “To observe our deal. As you know, a Devil's Bargain is as good as carried out from the moment it is agreed upon.”

Behind his back, Asmodeus had crossed his fingers.

---

It hadn't taken long, after all, for this particular squad of ZGSDF infantry to suss out that Zephyr was an outsider in more ways than having been freshly-attached to their unit. There were certain expressions and gestures idiomatic to every career, and the military was no exception. Zephyr had not done his homework, but he didn't care. He'd passed the excuse long enough to land his force ashore in their rubber boats two days ago, and from there they were stuck. The convenient lie of his lieutenant's commission was a convenient lie they could believe in, at least well enough to follow him into conflict, no doubt planning to dump the “civilian” at the first opportunity.

Zephyr supposed that when these men were debriefed, and word of this returned to Valkoinen, it would be debited against him in her mental accounting of his performances. So far as he saw it, however, you didn't use a punishment unit like Team Kether when you wanted to be subtle. Valkoinen and Dagonovich could be as sneaky as they wanted to be. It was his and Asmodeus' job to get shit done.

The most expedient and secure route had involved travel-in-darkness a few miles, before they'd gained access to Galba Roy's extensive maze of half-planned, half-incidental sewers, subways, and steam tunnels. A route they had each memorized then took them across the worst of the suburbs over the course of two days, until they were deep in the urban core, undetected, and at the edge of an outlet in the harbour.

All that stood before them and a relatively clean breath of early-morning air was a fifty metre stretch of tunnel, at the end of which was a grating, and along which, they knew, was at least one motion detector. This, a technical sergeant was explaining to him, was a real problem. There were work arounds for so-called laser alarms and all manner of alarms, but with the motion detectors, you had the problem of not being able to easily identify them.

Somewhere around an explanation of the different operating principles of various kinds of motion detector, Zephyr got bored. Valkoinen had authorized such extensive and unorthodox PT for this simple reason: boredom, for this homonculous, was an exceedingly dangerous condition. Terminal, in fact, which was why, he claimed, he went to such vast lengths to relieve it.

He was up and moving before anyone noticed he'd begun to move, and by the time anyone was able to crane their neck and watch where he was going, he was already functionally airborn, feet imparting momentum to the rest of him by working against the walls of the storm drain, pushing up and aside just enough to keep from falling down, relying on his forward momentum to keep him from “falling” away from the wall and losing his speed. Toward the end of the tunnel he pivoted in the air and brought himself to a halt just under the sensor, just in its blind spot.

Through the chain-link gate obstructing his view of the harbour, he could see the placid waters as yet undisturbed, vessels sitting at their quays in stark, naval grey. He smirked, slightly, and reached up, using a bit of spare wire and a resistor from his vest to bypass the motion detector entirely, in a method best learned by long practice and years of having to wait for slowpoke, useful humans to catch up with him.

When he was done, he looked down the tunnel to half a dozen shocked faces, and rose an un-manicured eyebrow. “Well? Are you waiting for an invitation?”

---

Conventional military wisdom was to not use ground forces, or indeed any form of human-operated warfare, for such an easy operation as this. Conventional military wisdom was to use that most dangerous of Von Braun machines, the cruise-missile, and take out the target from well over the horizon and well beyond the point of detection or practical retaliation. Conventional Military Wisdom rarely applied to operations in which Agency Division had a hand, and the operations of Team Kether were no exception.

Some bright young weapon systems engineer in Research had clearly not had much oversight when he developed the XT-2, though at least he seemed to have had some foresight. Someone in the Disbursements department must have had equally confusing judgement, because the project was funded. One-way flight provided by a vehicle of roughly the same form-factor as a standard cruise missile, for one occupant, with self-destruct at the terminal flight to destroy, ideally, any evidence of anything other than a surprisingly ineffective cruise missile. Agency's squishy human Enforcers were hardly up to the task of riding in such an unusual vehicle without significant technological sorcery. Team Kether, of course, were exceptions to the rule.

The five cruise missiles that sailed into the harbour, barely above the surface of the waves they made in their own passing, pitched up unexpectedly at the last second, bursting open like the fairings on a spacecraft to reveal four falling balls of arcane-blue coronal discharge (the four Enforcers thus bouyed to ground on wings, so to speak, of artificial inertia). The fifth, pre-programmed to rise slightly higher than the others, was the more spectacular show.

Asmodeus was ejected into the open air above the Old Admiralty Building without much by way of protective gear. He wore a ballistic trauma vest over a plain black t-shirt, close-tailored pants of a vibrant blue and gold faux-camouflage, and his hair in the characteristic long rainbow for which he was known. He let momentum carry him upward a moment longer, arms thrown wide to show his lack of practical armament or equipment. Then, at the precise moment when gravity cancelled out his upward velocity, when he was briefly weightless, he unfurled his wings.

This is, of course, a simplification, for Infernals were of curious and less-than-formally-tangible construction. His wings were spectra of light, at first, though in the moments between when he hit the rooftop at a run and their eventual disappearance, they seemed to crystalize and take actual form. Even the enforcers nearest him could not figure out quite how the “trick” was achieved, nor say his wings had exactly been “attached” to him in any physical way, rather than being some emission. This was fortunate, for even cloned Enforcers were expensive, and most, uncleared for knowledge of Kether's existence, would have to be 'retired' if they were overly-exposed to the truth of “Team Leader Spectra” and his otherworldly origins.

Asmodeus turned at precisely the right time to avoid a close encounter with a rapidly slung bullet. His left hand, honed in long reflex, slashed outward, creating a briefly-physical arc of green, upon which the falling blade of an attacker had deflected. Asmodeus processed what had happened as he stepped backward, drawing the weapon at his hip with a flick of his wrist. The attacker, clad in a uniform of leather and brass, had seemingly dropped in from the sky himself, as were many of his companions.

This Colonel, Asmodeus could tell by the markings on the man's uniform, and the Demon stared each other down. Asmodeus's weapon reconfigured itself in his hand, extending, unfolding, and reassembling itself in only the ways an Infernal Soulblade could.

It appeared, for the moment, anyway, that Team Kether might have had a Dean counterpart.

Behind Asmodeus, the Blasted Bay Fleet erupted, immolated by the limpets the Deep Ones had secretively placed upon the hulls of the craft docked at the Naval Yard. Regardless of the outcome of this encounter, he knew, victory in this battle was already assured.

His scythe caught the light as he made the first move.

---

Valkoinen was impressed by the ease with which she and Dagonovich had been able to traverse Galba Dea. Unlike in Zaxton, where even the subcultures were curtailed and nature's surprises governed, the Dean cultural eccentricity had, in its own at times perverse way, embraced the sheer strangeness of the natural world. It had been trivial to pre-arrange for solitary passages throughout the hotel to their vehicle (and visce versa), allowing the notably-strange Dagonovich to pass without much of a second glance. Outside, and in public, they joined the throngs fleeing the destruction of the Naval Yard – privately gleeful at their success.

For Valkoinen, the glee was short-lived. Once she was in the air on the chartered flight that was bringing her, Dagonovich, and a few unimportant personnel from the Embassy back to Zaxtonian territory, when the moment of impact had lessened its grip on her psyche, she was free to consider what had just happened, and left no real choice but to do so.

Dagonovich seemed to remain his constant and enigmatic self. She was surprised, then, to hear him speak out.

“We never should have made that bargain.”

“I know what you mean,” she cooed back, after a suitable pause to complete the phrase she had been typing for her after-action report. “Even knowing that Vidcund would escape safely, it seems foolish to have risked his potential over something as trivial as a fleet.”

Dagonovich considered that for a moment, looking almost alarmed. Then again, he almost always did, with his great gaping eyes and slightly gapped mouth drawn back in perpetual, frowning grimmace. “I meant at all. We required no assistance with the attack. A competent tactician could have destroyed the fleet using standard resources and sufficient surprise.”

“A competent strategist would never have made that attack,” Valkoinen countered. “Considering the greater threat from Figaro.”

Dagonovich considered that a long while. His people had fostered their own theories over what was happening at Figaro, and what had happened at Kraterburg in the first place. The Deep Ones had their own designs on this new bay, of course, which was why they had wanted permission to summon up Old Leviathan without fear of reprisal. They'd couched it under vaguely environmentalist, vaguely protectionist terms. The directive to make the deal had been surprise enough, but for Valkoinen to come back saying that word from upstairs was to let them loose their demigod... unthinkable.

“I hear rumours the Yellow Sign has been seen flying in Figaro,” he said at last, in his laughably graceless way. He had been charming once, when he presented as fully human, Valkoinen was quite sure. Now, the vagaries of his form and the changes his bloodline were wrecking upon his body had stolen that from him, and he'd yet to learn to be a new, more practical kind of subtle.

“Those rumours have been confirmed by Agent Dark's evidence from the scene,” Valkoinen replied, deliberately avoiding the deeper question, which was, of course, whether or not the Carcosan Host had been loosed upon the world, or some other, stranger thing like Paris had occurred.

It was enough to make Dagonovich wonder if some civilian, doubtless some Executive Council member, had not been adequately briefed, when they had made the decision to continue to prosecute a war against Galba Roy, when everything else was down to circumstance. “... I keep feeling as though we are getting played.”

A cold weight slid into Valkoinen's own stomach. He wasn't alone in that.

The Deep One turned his gaze out the window, over the newly-carved bay they were traversing. He was facing the south, in the clear air, and from this altitude could just make out the presence of the Razeland Guardians mountains. Was Leviathan out there, still? Or had the storm the vast beast brewed in the east taken enough of its rage to pacify it back into abyssal slumber?

---

Zephyr had been in tighter places, but they were few and far between. Nearly twenty minutes had passed, thus far, since he had opened the gate and his squad spilled into the Naval Yard, with every intention to occupy the stockades and take home the good Union men and women there held prisoner. This liberation had been some time in coming, it was thought, and they fought valiantly to achieve it. To their credit, they had taken considerable ground by the time that Zephyr managed to lead them around a wrong-turning, into what had seemed to be an alley but was in fact a sort of three-walled court-yard. Cover was surprisingly ample, in the form of concrete planter-boxes and a dumpster, but cover made you static, and static made you dead.

There was, Zephyr was quite sure, an attitude that the same remarkable skill-at-motion that he had displayed in the culvert could have remedied the situation. Instead, he seemed content to languish with the rest of the squad, taking the occasional, ineffective cluster of shots whenever he could safely round a corner. It was only after the first hit, when Private Clendenning took a round to the shoulder and had to be dragged back behind cover, that Zephyr snapped out of his rut.

Zephyr liked Clendenning. The pair had spoken quite a bit during the initial transportation in beneath the waves. Zephyr liked to talk, and Clendenning had the rookie's classical need to prove himself, combined with the anxious-introvert tendency to overshare with new people. Zephyr knew all about the young man that Clendenning was seeing back home – an ikebana florist by trade – and the children they planned to have together, once Clendenning's term of service was up and her debt to society for an otherwise free engineering degree had been paid.

The homunculus sprang into action where others dared not. He crossed the gap between his current cover and the next closest to the enemy with such speed that, but for the muzzle flash from his sinister-gripped handgun, he might have been missed entirely. To the surprise of everyone watching, friend and foe both, he didn't come to rest behind that cover, but launched himself atop it, continuing to gather speed as he bounded back down, zig-zagging across the alley with such rapidity that one onlooking camera would report him in having been at two places at once, while the others, working more normally, recorded less of him and more of a Zephyr-coloured blur moving across the screen as he dramatically exceeded their scan rate. He threw himself the last soldier in the squad that was suppressing them, and the man was dead before he hit the ground from the force exerted on his head and neck by the very sudden change in their freshly-combined momentum.

The silence as he rose back to his feet was nearly total. The rumble of fires aboard sinking and sunken vessels and the distant sounds of some other combat seemed deadened and irrelevant. A lot of that was traumatic stress. Nobody present could be blamed for making impossible statements, at this point. Most entrapped soldiers did. He rose with the Dean's assault rifle in his hand, reflexively clearing the chamber, allowing the bolt to force a new round into the chamber before changing the magazine with the dead man's convenient spare.

A tone played in Zephyr's ear, followed by the telltale-flattened sound of an encrypted radio transmission. “Agents Kinesly and Spectra are hereby ordered to withdraw.”

Zephyr looked back to the squad, which were just now beginning to emerge from behind their respective covers, two of them dragging the injured Private Clendenning. He forced a hand through an untamed main of thick, Mediterranean hair, swung the rifle up to the hip, and discharged it down the dead-end alley.

Abandoning the weapon beside the soldier he had looted it from, he departed, over a guardrail and across the harbour itself to the less-secured civilian port. Time would finish the job he had started for him.

---

When the order to withdraw had come for Asmodeus, the timing could not have been worse. His opponent, which he now assumed to be a Brass Knight Colonel, was no push-over. The demon had tried all manner of dirty tricks and weapons to gain the upper hand before settling on his current straight-bladed saber, but the Colonel had come with friends. Asmodeus had come with minions himself, but his had fallen in relatively short order, leaving a surprising number of the other Brass Knights intact. Instead of being able to bring his magic to bear on the Colonel, Asmodeus instead had to ration his time to protect his (relatively) fragile physical body. The pair danced around the rooftop and its various obstructions, never more than a good swing distant from each other, while Asmodeus flourished, pointed, gestured, and in all manner of other ways used his free, right hand to direct multicoloured bolts of destructive force from out of his general aura and into the Colonel's support.

It was only on the fourth or fifth that he had actually been able to catch, from the corner of his eye, the moment of his target's destruction. The stricken Dean Spec-Operative quite literally exploded, spraying blood and mechanism where should have been blood and bone, falling out of view behind an HVAC unit before Asmodeus's primary opponent forced him to once again focus.

The colonel's pack carried him backward several yards, and the faint glow of protrusions at the shoulder of his armoured left arm intensified like vacuum tubes as his momentum suddenly reversed, and he rushed forward behind an energized cone of red-ionized air, only dispelled as he again reached Asmodeus, and the two clashed again. The weapon in Asmodeus's hand shifted again, returning to that most-familiar scythe. The metal danced around him in his hands, providing a seemingly inviolable barrier against the colonel's persistent sword, chewing up the gravel and tar of the rooftop and throwing it every which way.

The final stroke passed through the roofing, and, as though a trap door had opened beneath him, Asmodeus fell through. Not, as the Colonel had likely suspected, into whatever room they had been fighting above. Indeed, Asmodeus didn't fall anywhere on earth. The circle he had covertly etched had, imbued with his own authority, provided a means for him to return bodily to Hell, or at least pass through it.

That was, he supposed, a good enough withdrawal for him.

---

ATTN: HRH Valerian, Colonel in Chief, Brass Knight Regiment

Your Royal Highness,

AS REGARDS THE ACTION AT CURWEN SHIPYARDS it is the official conclusion of HQ Coy, BKR that:

The assaulting force was composed of both regular and irregular forces of the Zaxtonian Ground Self Defence Forces;
The irregular forces may not have been entirely Zaxtonian in origin;
The particular nature of two entities involved in the action is highly irregular and suggestive of a paranormal origin;
The ease with which this attack was launched upon Curwen represents a clear failure of Dean Special Branch, and;
Viscount Isambard Louis Rainwright is the responsible figure for the operations of Dean Special Branch as pertains to monitoring the activities of the Zaxtonian Union's “Agency Division” paramilitary group.

Therefore it is the conclusion of HQ Coy that Viscount Rainwright bears some significant culpability in the outcome of action at Curwen, and should be made to answer for his crimes.

Your Servant,

Baxter Smith-Jamison

Colonel and Officer-Commanding,

Brass Knights Regiment

Royal Dean Army Special Forces