Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner

Chapter 743: Hostage crisis

Back at the Eastern Cardinal, life moved on.

Up in the sky, in one of Eclipse’s ships, Lucas had the controls and the afternoon sun was hitting the viewport at the angle that made the harbor look like it was made of gold from up here. Seraleth was in the co-pilot seat with her legs crossed and an ice cream that she had somehow produced from somewhere on the ship. Marcus was behind them with his boots up on the console that Reyna kept telling him not to put his boots on and Reyna was beside him reading something on her tablet.

"The cat four in the southern district yesterday," Marcus said. "That’s the third one this month."

"Fourth," Lucas said.

Marcus looked at the back of his head. "Fourth?"

"There was one Tuesday in the outer eastern zone. Kelvin flagged it before we deployed. Category four, underground, came up through a drainage tunnel. Response team handled it before it reached the surface population."

"I didn’t see that report."

"It went through at three in the morning," Lucas said. "You were asleep."

"I should be in the loop on cat fours."

"You are in the loop. The loop just runs at three in the morning sometimes."

Reyna looked up from her tablet. "Kelvin has been saying this for six months. The surge numbers aren’t stabilizing. Every quarter the average threat classification goes up by point three. It doesn’t sound like much until you do the math across a full year."

"Point three per quarter is one point two per year," Seraleth said, without looking up from her ice cream.

"Which means in five years," Reyna said, "the average contract that used to read as category two is reading as category three point five. The ones that used to read as category three are approaching four. And the category fours—"

"Are approaching five," Marcus said. He took his boots off the console. "Which used to be a myth."

"Which is no longer a myth," Lucas said. "Red Hollow confirmed a category five plus sighting eight months ago. The EDF classified it immediately and sent the report to the Ark and we haven’t heard anything about it officially since. The beasts are evolving past what we knew they could,"

"We heard about it unofficially," Marcus said.

"Kelvin hears about everything unofficially," Lucas said. "That’s different from the EDF acknowledging it exists."

The ship hummed. Below them the Eastern Cardinal spread out, the rebuilt sections looking almost normal from this height, the scaffold lines visible only if you knew where to look.

"What does a peak category five actually mean," Seraleth said. She had finished the ice cream and set the cup aside. "In real terms. Not classification terms. We’ve fought a few but they still kind of felt weak,"

Lucas was quiet for a moment. "A category four, peak specimens, can level a city block in a sustained engagement. They have enough biological armor that standard military hardware needs sustained fire to penetrate. A single cat four killed seventeen soldiers in the Red Hollow incident before they brought it down." He looked at the horizon. "A category five is what happens when a cat four has enough time and enough resources and nothing capable of stopping it. The classification doesn’t just mean stronger. It means evolved past the point where the previous threat tier’s weaknesses still apply."

"So everything we know about fighting a cat four," Marcus said.

"Doesn’t necessarily transfer," Lucas said.

The ship was quiet for a moment.

"Kelvin says the surge is connected to Harbinger activity," Reyna said. "That the beasts respond to something in the environment when Harbinger presence decreases. Like the ecosystem picking up a signal."

"Kelvin says a lot of things," Marcus said, but he said it without any dismissal in it. Just the acknowledgment of a man who had learned that Kelvin’s theories had a frustrating tendency to be correct.

"He’s usually right," Seraleth said.

"He’s usually right," Marcus agreed.

Lucas opened his mouth to say something and the comms panel lit up.

He looked at it. Faction emergency frequency, the one that bypassed the standard contract queue and went straight to whoever was in the air.

He hit the receive.

"Eclipse mobile, this is Sector Nine ground monitoring. We have a situation at Settlement Varda, coordinates uploading now. Multiple civilian reports, nature unconfirmed, requesting immediate response assessment."

Lucas looked at the coordinates appearing on his display. Twelve minutes out at current heading.

He looked at the viewport. At the afternoon sun on the harbor.

"Show us responding," he said.

He banked the ship and Reyna grabbed the console and Marcus’s boots almost went back up before he caught himself and Seraleth held her empty ice cream cup and watched the horizon tilt.

---

Settlement Varda was a mid-sized civilian community in the sector nine outer district, the kind of place that had grown up around a processing facility and stayed because the people who came for the work had built lives around the inconvenience of the location. Three thousand residents, maybe four. The kind of settlement that ran its own local council and handled its own minor disputes and called Eclipse or EDF when something exceeded the scope of what a local council was designed for.

From the air it looked quiet.

That was the first thing Lucas noted. Settlement of three thousand people in the middle of the afternoon and the streets were empty. No foot traffic, no vehicle movement, the market district that should have been loud at this hour was shut and still.

"Nobody’s outside," Marcus said, looking through the viewport.

"Someone told them to go inside," Reyna said.

Lucas brought the ship down to a hover two hundred meters above the settlement’s eastern edge, far enough out that whatever was happening in the center couldn’t immediately see them, close enough that he could see the main community building through the viewport.

The main community building had its doors sealed. Ground level windows covered. Two vehicles parked at angles outside that hadn’t been parked at those angles by anyone trying to park neatly.

"This isn’t a beast contract," Lucas said.

He was pulling up the faction comms before he finished the sentence. "Kelvin."

"Already watching your feed," Kelvin said, his voice coming through the ship’s system. "Settlement Varda. Population thirty two hundred. The community building in the center is the Varda Coordination Hall. It hosts inter-settlement meetings, resource allocation, that kind of thing. According to the public calendar there was a joint session today between Varda and four neighboring settlements."

"Settlement coordinators," Lucas said. "From five settlements."

"And their staff," Kelvin said. "Potentially twenty to thirty people in that building for a scheduled afternoon session."

Marcus leaned forward. "Someone knew they were going to be there."

"The calendar was public," Kelvin said. "Anyone could have known."

Lucas set the ship down at the eastern edge of the settlement, away from the main street, in the shadow of the processing facility’s outer wall. He killed the running lights before they touched down.

"We go in quiet," he said. "No eclipse markings visible, no weapons out until we understand what we’re dealing with. We look like four people walking through a settlement."

"We’re not four people who look like we’re walking through a settlement," Marcus said, looking at Seraleth’s seven feet of height.

"We’re four people walking through a settlement," Lucas said, and got up.

---

The first resident they found was a woman in her fifties, pressed against the wall of a residential building two streets from the coordination hall, her hands wrapped around each other and her eyes doing the rapid movement of someone who had been running threat assessments for the last hour and hadn’t found a solution yet.

She saw Lucas and took a step back.

He raised both hands. Empty. Slow.

"Eclipse faction," he said, quiet. "We’re not going in until we know what’s in there. Talk to me."

She looked at the four of them. Her eyes went to Seraleth and stayed there for a second and then came back to Lucas.

"They came in two vehicles," she said. Her voice was low and fast, the words coming out with the efficiency of someone who had been rehearsing this in their head. "Maybe twelve of them. Armed. Some of them had abilities, I saw it, one of them moved the coordinator’s car without touching it."

"What time," Lucas said.

"Just after the session started. Two hours ago, maybe two and a half." She swallowed. "They cleared the streets first. Went door to door on the main road and told everyone to get inside and stay inside. They had weapons. People went inside."

"Did anyone get out? Before they sealed the hall?"

"One of the coordinator’s staff. She ran out the side entrance when they first came in." The woman pointed down the side street. "She’s in the building at the end. The blue door."

"Thank you," Lucas said. "Stay inside. Don’t come out until you hear from us directly."

The woman nodded and went back the way she came and Lucas moved.

---

The coordinator’s staff member was young, maybe twenty five, and she had been crying recently but had stopped and replaced the crying with a tight, controlled stillness that Lucas recognized as someone who had decided to be useful instead.

Her name was Dara. She had been in the hall when they came in and had gone out the side entrance in the first thirty seconds because the side entrance had been momentarily unguarded and her body had made the decision before her brain had finished processing the situation.

"How many people in the hall," Lucas said.

"Twenty four confirmed," she said. "Five settlement coordinators, their immediate staff, two security personnel from Varda’s local force." She stopped. "The security personnel, they took their weapons immediately. I don’t know if they’re."

"We’ll find out," Lucas said. "The twelve who came in. Describe them."

"Mixed. Some in civilian clothes, some in gear that looked like it had been assembled rather than issued, you know, nothing matching, nothing uniform." She thought about it. "One of them, the one giving instructions to the others, he had a prosthetic leg. Right leg, below the knee. Metal, older model, the kind you could see the joint on."

Marcus looked at Lucas.

"He had a sword," Dara continued. "Not a standard blade. It had an orange glow to it and when he held it the air around it moved, like heat distortion. He didn’t use it but he held it."

Lucas opened his comms. "Kelvin. Male. Prosthetic right leg, below knee, older visible joint model. Fire based sword, category three beast weapon likely. Known criminal background, abilities. Run it."

"Running," Kelvin said.

Fourteen seconds.

"Harlan Voss," Kelvin said. "Forty one years old, Eastern Cardinal native. Prior record includes aggravated assault, illegal weapons modification, and leading a coordinated attack on an EDF processing checkpoint in the northern Cardinal four years ago. Four EDF soldiers injured, one critically. Sentenced to five years, served three and a half." A pause. "Released from Sector Nine detention facility eight days ago."

Lucas looked at the ceiling for a moment.

"Eight days," Marcus said.

"Eight days," Lucas confirmed.

"Someone planned this around his release," Reyna said.

"Or he planned it the moment he knew his release date," Lucas said. "Either way he’s not doing this alone and he’s not doing this without a reason." He looked at Dara. "Did you hear anything? Any conversation about what they wanted?"

"One thing," she said. "When they were moving everyone to the main hall, I heard the man with the prosthetic tell someone else to get the comms ready. He said." She stopped. Thought about it carefully. "He said they’d be sending their terms soon. That was the word. Terms."

"Get the comms ready," Lucas said, to himself more than anyone. "He came prepared to negotiate. This isn’t a robbery, this is a pressure operation. He wants something specific."

"Can we get a device in there?" Reyna asked.

"We need to get a device in there," Lucas said. He looked at the door. At the street outside. At the two hundred meters between them and the coordination hall. "We need someone who can move between buildings without being seen and get a comms unit close enough to the hall that we can push it through an unsealed gap."

He looked at Seraleth.

Seraleth looked back at him.

"The Faithful Feathers at minimum profile," she said. "I can move between rooftops without touching the street."

"Quietly," Lucas said.

"I’m seven feet tall," Seraleth said. "I’m rarely described as quiet. But I can be fast."

"Fast is fine," Lucas said. "Fast works."

He pulled a compact comms unit from his kit, the kind small enough to fit through a window gap or under a door, and handed it to her.

She took it, checked the weight, nodded once, and went out the back of the building.

Lucas looked at Marcus and Reyna. "Perimeter. Three points, north, south, west. Nothing moves in or out without us knowing. I need to know if they have people outside the hall we haven’t seen yet."

They moved.

Lucas stayed with Dara and watched the street through the blue door’s narrow window and waited.

---

Eleven minutes later his comms clicked twice. Seraleth’s signal. Device placed.

He pushed the channel open and waited.

Thirty seconds of static.

Then a voice.

Male, somewhere in the middle of its range, carrying the flat affect of someone who had rehearsed being calm and was executing it correctly. "I wondered how long before Eclipse showed up. You’re faster than I expected."

"We were in the area," Lucas said. "How are the people in there?"

"Comfortable," the voice said. "Nobody’s been hurt. I’m not interested in hurting anyone."

"That’s good to hear," Lucas said. "What are you interested in?"

A pause. Not long. Just enough to be deliberate. "Getting what we came for. Which I’ll tell you in a moment. First I want to know who I’m talking to."

"Lucas Grey," Lucas said.

Another pause. Longer this time.

"The lightning one," the voice said. Something in the tone shifted. Not surprised exactly. More like recalibrating. "S ranked. The one who was in the shadow dimension. You’d be surprised how much you can find about someone on the internet,"

"That’s me," Lucas said.

"They sent you," the voice said. "Not bad. Where’s Eclipse?"

Lucas looked at the wall.

"Noah Eclipse isn’t available right now," he said.

"Find a way to make him available," the voice said. "Our terms are straightforward. One hundred thousand credits, transferable, untraceable. And Noah Eclipse. In person. Unarmed." A pause. "You have six hours. After that the conversation changes."

The channel went quiet.

Lucas held the comms unit and looked at it for a moment.

Then he looked up at Marcus and Reyna coming back through the blue door, having heard the whole thing through their earpieces, and the three of them stood in the building that smelled like old wood and looked at each other.

"Noah Eclipse," Marcus said.

"In person," Reyna said. "Unarmed."

Lucas looked at the coordination hall through the window. At the sealed doors and the covered windows and the twenty four people inside with a man who had been out of prison for eight days and had apparently spent some portion of those eight days planning this specific moment.

"Someone told him Noah would be available," Lucas said.

The room was quiet.

"Someone who knew he wasn’t," Reyna said.

Lucas opened his comms. "Kelvin."

"Already thinking about it," Kelvin said.

"Good," Lucas said. "Think faster."