Miles got back just as they were wrapping up, which saved Cole the trouble of sending soone to check on him. He gathered the group and led them across to the garage.
The inside was pretty much just any old motor pool – six vehicle bays in two rows of three, maintenance stations along the back wall, storage racks on both sides. Of course, the Istraynians had scaled it up by the usual margin, but the underlying logic was universal.
The main difference was in the equipnt, though most of it tracked once he got past the aesthetics. Among the more alien items, he confird quarantine lockers for hazardous materials, charging cradles for mana gems, plus the basic infrastructure any maintenance facility needed to keep its vehicles running and its power sources topped off.
Other devices near the maintenance stations were harder to place – probably diagnostic or calibration tools, but the chanisms weren’t analogous to anything Cole could map onto. Even Graves and Vale couldn’t offer much beyond educated guesses.
They catalogued it the sa way they had the office building – entrances, sightlines, cover. The vehicle bays offered the most substantial concealnt, with the maintenance stations and storage racks filling in the gaps. At so point Graves flagged a crate of mana cores near the rear wall as volatile; a hard enough impact would rupture them, and in an enclosed space, the blast radius would be a serious problem.
Cole filed that both as a hazard and as a potential asset. Though realistically, the odds of finding a conveniently placed crate of explosives next to a room full of cultists were pretty bad outside of video gas.
The remaining buildings in the section were variations on what they’d already covered – more office and administrative layouts with the sa Istraynian tendencies toward generous spacing and increasingly adventurous geotry above the ground floor. The specifics differed, but nothing deviated enough from what they’d catalogued to warrant a deep dive. Cole had them note the layout differences and move on.
At this point, they were well past architectural surprises, but it was still useful to build pattern recognition so they could walk into a structure in Ostreva and already have a working model of what to expect.
They finished up right around the ti Dunmar’s squad ca into view, crossing the courtyard in a loose column. He’d brought twelve n with him, all carrying air rifles. Cole t him outside the main office building.
“We’re set on our end,” Cole said. “Here’s how I want to run it: your team will represent the opposing force, defending this building. My team’s objective is the fifth floor. I’ll leave the defensive setup to you – positions, patrol routes, rally points, whatever you think gives us the hardest ti. Assu a heightened security posture. You know soone’s coming; you just don’t know when or from where.”
Dunmar studied the façade for a mont. “What are the limits, sir? Are the lads to use magic, or are we to confine ourselves to the air rifles?”
“Hmm… Air rifles only for this round. We’ll fold magic in once we’ve got the fundantals down.”
“Aye.” Dunmar signaled one of his n, who brought over a crate. “We’ve brought a set of air rifles and wands for your lot as well.”
Cole took one out and checked it over. It had a small-bore barrel sized for pellets and a mana crystal in the chamber powering wind runes running along the side. Nothing about it could accept live ammunition. He passed it along, and the others each ran through the sa checks.
“How long are we to have for our preparations, sir?”
“Thirty minutes. We’ll be waiting just outside the section. Send a runner when you’re ready.”
Dunmar gave a curt nod and turned to his n, already issuing orders as he walked.
Elina watched them file into the building. “Captain, wait. If we are rehearsing an infiltration, ought we not simulate the conditions we expect to find? The cult will not be anticipating our approach.”
“Nah, that’s the whole point,” Miles said.
Elina glanced at him, then back to Cole.
“He’s right,” Cole said. “We call it a rehearsal of concept. We simulate the conditions, and then so. We run the operation against the worst case scenario – with the hardest conditions and the best-prepared enemy. If Dunmar’s guys are dug in, covering every approach, and we still make the fifth floor? Then that ans anything less should be manageable.”
Elina considered that for a mont, then settled back with a small nod; the logic was self-evident once frad.
Cole led the team out of the section to wait. Thirty minutes wasn’t much prep ti, but Dunmar didn’t seem like soone who wasted it.
He found a spot along the courtyard wall and gathered his group. “So, while we wait, let’s do so speculation. What do you guys think Dunmar’s gonna do?”
Ethan started with the broad strokes. “Thirteen n can’t hold the entire sector, so he’ll almost certainly consolidate inside the main building. Which ans we’ll have free rein on the outside.”
“Even inside, five floors is a lotta ground for thirteen guys,” Miles said. “I reckon he gives up the first floor, maybe the second too. If that security room was runnin’, he’d probably stick sobody in there for early warnin’, but we know it ain’t, so…” He shrugged. “No point wastin’ bodies on sothin’ that don’t buy him nothin’.”
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Elina tilted her head. “Wait, why should he relinquish the second floor? To do so would grant us unimpeded access to the building.”
“’Cause of the paraters we set,” Miles said. “He only needs to keep us off the fifth floor, don’t he? He knows he’s goin’ up against Slayer Elites – he ain’t gonna spread his boys thin tryin’ to hold ground that don’t matter.”
“Would that not defeat the object of infiltration?” Elina said, looking between Cole and Miles. “Surely we do not an to storm the compound by open approach.”
“Nah, definitely not. Think of this more like a test run,” Mack said.
“Pretty much,” Cole affird. “Worst case scenario, like I said. Plus, we still need to get Graves and Vale up to speed with the rest of us, and that’s not gonna happen in a briefing.”
“There’s also the coordination piece,” Ethan added. “Without magic, we’ve got less margin for error across the board. I an, we’ll be able to throw up barriers and whatnot during the actual mission, but what can you do here? You can’t. Sa goes for opfor, actually, which leads to believe they might just decide to fortify the upper levels and sit there.”
“If I may,” Graves called, stepping up. “Let us not presu that Sergeant Dunmar would fix his n. Despite what you may gather from our great walls, our doctrine seldom asks a line to stand rigidly. Positions are held in depth, each ant to yield in its turn, that the whole may bend rather than break. And if Dunmar has any skill – and he has – he will have kept two or three aside, uncommitted, that he may reinforce whatever point begins to fail. Such n serve for ambush, and compensate well against such disparities.”
Cole recognized it for what it was – guerrilla warfare.
That was a mild surprise coming from the Celdornians, whose military culture had so far read as fairly conventional and hierarchical. Though, honestly, Cole’s fra of reference for pre-industrial military doctrine mostly ca from West Point electives and whatever he’d read on his own ti, and none of that accounted for centuries of fighting demons that could co through walls and ceilings.
He looked at Vale, who’d been leaning against the wall with his arms crossed through the entire discussion. “Anything to add?”
Vale glanced up as if mildly inconvenienced. “Were the choice mine, I should leave broad gaps – for nothing draws the witless so readily as an offered weakness. Yet I suppose Dunmar must contend with the want of n, and what I would fashion as bait he must accept as necessity. In either case, I trust none here would mistake such openings for fault, nor rush to them as the simple are wont to do.”
“That’s a good point,” Ethan said. “It’s possible we see this in Ostreva, too – from the demons. I imagine there’s gonna be so stuff they won’t want to share with the cultists, which ans they’ll have set up a way to catch cultists who get too curious. Or so of Celdorne’s guys pretending to be cultists.”
Cole had arrived at more or less the sa conclusion. Between Graves’ mobile reserve and Vale’s designed gaps, the picture had more layers than a straightforward stacked defense. If Dunmar was as competent as he seed – and everything about him suggested as much – then he’d make it hell for them. There was no other option but to break down his defense thodically.
“All right,” Cole said. “So here’s what we’re probably looking at. Light presence on one and two – if any at all. Heavier on three and four, with the fire escapes covered at least at one level. Hard stop at five. And sowhere in there, a reserve that could move to reinforce.”
“Given that, I think we go about it like this.” He pointed at the main office building, then at the adjacent structure connected by the walkway. “We’ll split into three teams and attach the Celdornians, since they don’t have radios. First is , Elina, and Mack. We’ll take the connector from the adjacent building – that puts us on the second floor without touching the lobby. Walker, you and Graves take the fire escape, also to the second floor. Garrett, you and Vale enter through the back door and clear the first floor.”
Cole looked between Elina, Graves, and Vale. “If you see sothing and your partner’s occupied, let them know and they’ll relay it to the other teams.”
They nodded.
“Now, floor three is where it gets real,” Cole continued. “We converge from three directions: staircase, elevator shaft, and fire escape. That forces Dunmar to split his attention across three approaches. If he’s holding a reserve, he has to commit it to one of them, which opens the other two. Garrett, your team takes the elevator shaft – climb to the third floor, hold just below the doors, and wait for us to start making noise on the staircase. Once they’re oriented on us, you pop ’em.”
He turned to Ethan. “Walker, you’re going up the fire escape. Sa principle – hold until you hear contact on the staircase, then push in. My team drives the main approach up the stairs. We repeat for the fourth floor, then consolidate for the final push.”
“And unfortunately, that’ll be the main problem. There’s only one way in, so whatever he’s got left is going to be sitting right at the top of those stairs waiting for us.” Cole didn’t have a clever solution for that, especially without tactical equipnt to speak of and magic use banned for this round. “We’ll just have to take it straight. Stack up below the landing and push through on numbers and speed. It’s ugly, but by that point we should have the advantage in bodies.”
He looked around the group, mostly focusing on the Celdornians, who needed to catch up to modern doctrine. “The idea throughout is controlled noise. We’re running this as an assault, but keep your movent as quiet as you can for as long as you can. Stealth is the priority for the actual mission in Ostreva, and while we’re not ready to test that as a team yet, everything we practice here should be building toward it. Make contact when you have to, not before. Everyone on the sa page?”
Affirmations around the group confird it.
“All right. We’ve still got about twenty minutes, so let’s sit back and take a breather.”
With nothing left to hash out, the conversation drifted into aimless small talk and banter.
Cole used so of the downti to feel Vale out – where he’d operated, what he was used to, basic stuff. Vale gave back the bare minimum on every count and volunteered nothing beyond it. Most people who behaved like that were either hiding sothing or just antisocial. With Vale, Cole got the impression it was neither – the guy simply didn’t see the value in small talk and wasn’t going to pretend otherwise out of politeness.
What he did get out of him, through a brief exchange about the cult and how Vale intended to handle himself around them, was that the hatred wasn’t going to interfere with the mission. Vale didn’t say it in so many words – sothing about contempt not being the sa thing as recklessness – but the aning was clear enough. As long as Vale wasn’t gonna go out of his way to rack up bodies when the objective didn’t call for it, Cole wasn’t concerned.
So ti after that, Miles made the mistake of ntioning Kathyra within earshot of people who had nothing better to do, and that was pretty much the end of any serious conversation. Mack led the charge, which was good to see – he’d been in better spirits lately, and Cole wanted to keep it that way. Miles handled the interrogation about as well as anyone could when the only winning move was not having brought it up in the first place.
Thankfully for Miles, Dunmar’s runner showed up before the interrogation could get any worse. The sergeant was ready.
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