Freedom, Humanity, and Other Delusions (Death's Handmaiden Book 3) Niall Teasdale (best classic books of all time .TXT) 📖

things, but her acting was second to none. She had been quite impressed with Nava’s ability when she had assessed her at Castle Grey, but even Nava was no match for Rhianna. And if Nava was no match for her, Rhianna was quite confident that a bunch of militia hicks were not going to figure out she was faking her reaction to the news that there had been a ‘terrible accident.’

Apparently, some sort of communications failure had resulted in the missile being launched a full eight hours ahead of schedule. Satellite surveillance was showing complete destruction of the Befreit Beherbergen base and, while a platoon was being sent in to comb the ruins for survivors, it was unlikely that anyone in the town was still alive. Rhianna could believe it, but she also happened to know that Nobuyuki and the others were still kicking. Hence the need for acting.

‘There will be an investigation,’ Rhianna said. She was not shouting. She had always felt that cold fury worked better and it avoided strain on the vocal cords. ‘Whoever is responsible for this will face repercussions.’

‘Miss Rhianna Greyling,’ Stefan said, standing up straighter, almost at attention, ‘I am responsible. Whoever made this mistake, I am responsible for the actions of my men. Whatever sanctions the Sonkei clan wish to enact, I’ll be the one who suffers.’

He was not a bad actor himself. This was an effort to defuse the situation. Rhianna was supposed to back down in the face of being told to punish a man who was not directly responsible and who was clearly willing to protect his people from her wrath. Okay. ‘I… can’t ask you to do that, Oberstleutnant. Perhaps I’m overreacting a little. I’m going to return to my quarters and consider the situation.’

She had things to do and being here playing the outraged clan member was not doing them. It was somewhat necessary, but enough was enough. She was going back to her quarters, but she would not be considering anything. She was going to find out exactly how this ‘accident’ had happened, and she had a strong feeling about where that investigation was going to lead.

Graugebiete Region.

‘You know, if we’d been ten minutes slower leaving that town,’ Melissa said, ‘we’d have been in the middle of that explosion.’

‘I was actually trying not to think about that,’ Rochester replied.

‘It’s a valid point though,’ Nava said. ‘Our opponents aren’t playing games. You should remember that.’

‘They weren’t playing games in Alliance City either,’ Melissa countered. ‘We know they’ll try to kill us if they get the chance. I just think we were kind of lucky back there.’

‘Lucky, and more capable than they expected us to be.’

‘Huh?’

‘Someone estimated how long it would take us to infiltrate the factory and do a search. They didn’t count on Chess and his Sorcerer’s Eye. We didn’t need to infiltrate the building to search it and we found the radio system far faster than they expected.’

‘Oh. Well, I’m glad to think it wasn’t down to purely blind luck.’ They were marching through more horribly uninteresting Beherbergen scenery and Melissa came to a sudden stop as she saw Nobuyuki – at point, of course – raise his fist. ‘Trouble?’

‘Do you think the landscape up ahead looks a little odd?’ Nobuyuki said. He dropped to one knee, his eyes scanning the shallow valley they had just started walking into.

It looked like something carved by a small glacier. U-shaped, it was surrounded by long hills no more than fifty metres above the valley floor. It went on a long way, maybe fifteen hundred metres, and it was difficult to tell how it ended, but there seemed to be a sharp drop-off at the end. The maps suggested a plateau of some kind dropping down a couple of hundred metres onto grasslands. They were right at the edge of the Graugebiete region.

After a second, Melissa said, ‘The glacial valleys on Avorna have more rubble in them.’ Pause. ‘Oh! And they don’t have bushes half-submerged in rocks.’

Nava followed her gaze and spotted what she had seen. One of the relatively few rocks in the valley, over on one side, did seem to have the upper half of a rock sticking out of it. Now she thought about it, glacial valleys tended to have more rocky material left behind by the glacier in them. ‘Chess, why don’t you start your Sorcerer’s Eye about twenty metres ahead and go down into the valley from there. See what you can see.’

‘On it,’ Rochester responded, going still a second later. A few seconds after that, he jerked slightly. ‘It’s an illusion! Almost the whole valley is covered by an illusion. It goes down more steeply and it widens out more than you can see. It’s more of a bowl than a valley. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to conceal a camp.’

‘How big a camp?’ Courtney asked. She was not really expecting a reply just yet, but she got one.

‘I’d imagine this is a Free Beherbergen camp,’ Rochester said. ‘It’s big. There must be… There has to be something like a thousand four-man tents down there. They’ve got at least one regiment and a lot of gear.’ Rochester turned, his senses back where they should be. ‘Nava, they’re preparing something. This isn’t a training camp. I think they’re getting ready for a war.’

~~~

‘Perhaps not a war,’ Nobuyuki said, ‘but they seem to be preparing some form of major assault.’

Rochester had scouted them a way under the illusion to a spot with cover on the rim of the valley and they were now in that position, looking down upon the encampment. Valley was possibly not the right word for the hole in the side of the plateau. It looked like something huge had taken a bite out of the cliff, a semi-circular area perhaps two kilometres wide and a kilometre and a half deep. Maybe it was volcanic – Beherbergen did have some active volcanoes and had probably had more activity in the