Ch 6.5 Chiquitita
Seras hadn’t been up on the roof since the night of the Battle, when she’d brandished that ungodly auto canon like a machine gun firing the hip, and knocked that huge zeppelin out of the sky. The burned out skeleton of the damn thing still littered the grounds, the labor of dismantling it wouldn’t start for another month while the rest of the manor was rebuilt piece by piece. Even so, the view from the roof was beautiful, especially with a vampire’s eyes. If she turned around to look north she could have seen the gentle, rolling hills of the country sprawl out past Greater London, but she was facing south, looking in at the city proper. She could see it from miles out. Dawn was at least an hour away, but she could see clearly as if it was high noon. Looking out during the battle, she’d seen a city being burned, violated by death cultists whose only motivation, so far as she could tell was to be ripped apart and murdered in turn. London survived, and enough of the old city still stood to greet the unborn dawn like it had every dawn since Christ walked the earth.
They were sitting together on the edge of the rooftop, dangling their legs through bars of the safety rails like children sitting on a bridge watching the stream go by.
“Seras,” Kade started to say. His voice was strained and tired. It had been a long night and a few unpleasant conversations. “I don’t know what comes next.”
The older vampire, if only by a few years, kept her gaze forward. She’d shot him down earlier, had to. He’d made a tactless, if earnest offer to serve her, for her to “Use him”. The phrase still made her stomach churn, and she hadn’t been able to make him understand why that was, but a flat rejection had left him deflated. Uncertain and far from home, he might have been ready to crawl back inside of whatever shell he’d been in, but having learned a bit about the boy, Seras thought she’d be able to coax him back out on his own terms.
“Do you want to go back to Dagger?” she asked him. He didn’t have to think hard.
“No. I’m tired of her talking to me like that. I want out.”
“Her.” Seras thought. The woman, who under the callsign “Doghouse”, learning the boy soldier was the Sole Survivor of his last mission had told her only son “Goddamn you” before handing up the call up to the agency’s commander, John Valens. Kade didn’t know Seras had seen his burns, but now Seras was almost certain who’d put them there. And she was very certain she was going to kill the bitch, but that would wait.
“Do you still want to be a solider?” Still, and Want were hardly appropriate, he hadn’t exactly chosen it in the first place.
“I want to stay with you!” he blurted out, and wanted to say more, but checked himself. “I know what Hellsing does,” he started again, as careful with his words as he could. “Its work I know, I’m good at it, too.” He added with a confident smirk he hoped could disguise the first outburst from him as much as her.
Inwardly, Seras’ cop brain gave a defeated sigh. Kade had been wrenched away from an abusive mother while still a child and groomed into being a soldier, like a kidnapping victim turned out by human traffickers. And he was asking to go back to the grim trade. Her trade too, now. And whatever else the road ahead held, he was asking to walk it with her. Maybe that’s enough, she thought.
Pip chimed in, Seras could hear but Kade couldn’t.
“By the sound of it, the kid hasn’t known much besides war for a good couple years now. I’ve seen the type; if you shut him out he won’t know what to do with himself.”
She didn’t like it, but he wasn’t wrong.
“Kade, Hellsing lost a lot of men during the battle. We need all the help we can get, but I don’t want you fighting because you think you need to. Nobody’s going to make you leave.“ she said, confident Integra would give her at least that much.
Kade was looking out farther than he’d ever seen before, it felt like he could see for a mile off. His eyes locked on a small brown fox crossing the estate’s huge grounds, peeking about in search of breakfast, half hidden in the early fog, but his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking of the last three years, trying to add it up to a sum total. He’d rucked across miles of desert with men twice his age, ran in full gear until the knot in his gut was too tight and stomach too barren to puke, seen nightmare things with shifting forms and deer’s heads screech out their howling death rattle in writhing piles of burning flesh. All because Valens had told him to do it. I’ve decided how I’m going to use you. Become strong. Come and kill with me. If you’re good enough I’ll even keep her off your back. Sleep, wake, repeat. Kade had become strong, combat had practically been beaten into him over the course of a long year of training, and then he’d “seen the Elephant” when Dagger had deployed to Raccoon City during the outbreak last year. The men and women he’d trained and fought with were brothers in arms, even his Captain, but it was a family he’d never learned to love. He thought he might love Seras.
“Will you fight?” he asked her.
“I really do have to, so yes. My place is with Sir Integra, that’s the last order my master gave me.” She said. Kade looked up at that.
“Your Master was Alucard?” he knew the name of course, but the dossier had only been a few recent photographs captured from the incident in Rio de Janeiro and a summary paragraph amounting to Yes, it’s an anagram, and Yes, That Dracula, to which Valens had added “Do not engage” jotted in red ink.
She nodded with a smile. “He served the Hellsing family for longer than I’ve been alive, for the longest time either him or Walter were beside Integra, sometimes both of ‘em.” Hardly had the words left her mouth when a light clicked on. Walter had almost always been by Integra’s side, it was almost certain Kade’s team would have met him getting to her, if they weren’t already together when the Americans found them.
“Kade,” she asked cautiously, already suspecting the answer. “If you’d found Walter before anyone on your mission list, what were your orders?”
The soldier didn’t skip a beat, quoting the exact directives team Beagle had been given. “’If possible, avoid contact with subject Dolnez. If Contact is imminent, shoot on sight.’ We would have tried to take him out before he knew what hit him.”
Seras felt a chill at the deadpan tone that had nothing to do with the brisk morning. It was a totally different voice than he’d had just a second ago, and instead of the sweet, sad boy who’d helped her and Pip put together a speech to bolster the fighting men, who’d flinched when Integra had told him speak up, who’d asked to hold her hand like a much younger child, she was hearing the voice of a professional killer, maybe no different than some of Pip’s own band of mercenaries, to who battle and dying were just part of the job, and cold blooded murder an occasional necessity. And if they hadn’t been able to kill Walter in an ambush-
“I’m glad it never came to that. He would have killed you all; I’d never have had the chance to save you.” She told him.
“Yeah,” he conceded. “Probably.” Having seen the layout of the place, the manor didn’t offer many chances for an ambush against a man who knew it like the back of his own hand; there just hadn’t been any sure way to bushwhack him, unless the assassins were already embedded in the Hellsing Organization. A desperate contingency for an already desperate relay across No Man’s Land. He’d survived where Cardel and Branwen had died by chance, timing, and shitty luck, same as he’d seen on a dozen other jobs.
They sat in silence for a time; listening to the gentle whistling breeze. Somewhere a pair of owls dove for prey, their wings played a sharp falling lute sound against the wind. Seras’s mind was amok with competing trains of though. Even if she wanted to induct Kade into Hellsing, which she didn’t particularly, could she? It’d mean putting him under Fargason’s command, who was practically the embodiment of a professional solider. He’d balked at hiring the Wild Geese in the first place, and that was assuming Integra’s sanction. Then she thought of what she knew about Walter. He’d been what, seventy? And he’d been deployed with Alucard during the Warsaw Uprising, meaning Integra’s father had sent a boy even younger than Kade to do his killing.
Kade’s mind was amok, but to him the subject of every thought was Seras. Servant, soldier, thrall, he would have been her dog if it meant he could stay. That he’d be allowed to stay, that they’d tolerate him without needing to earn his keep was too good to believe. Of his place in Dagger, beside Valens, his place among those men, even the hell his mother gave him, when he was with Seras, he wasn’t thinking about them at all.
“Miss Seras” he said, breaking the silence even as he stumbled over his words, his eyes were fixed on the brown fox, who was sniffing around a chunk of scorched steel that had been sent flying from the downed airship, and lodged itself into what might have been a rabbits’ burrow. “I’m good at what I do. If there’s room for me, I want to do it. Can I?”
She let out another defeated sigh. “You’re certainly a stubborn boy when you want to be.” She managed a smile through the exacerbation. Of course inducting him into Hellsing’s ranks wasn’t a decision she could make on her own either. She pulled her legs back through the railing and hopped to her feet, stretching her legs as she reached down and held out a hand. Kade took it and she helped him up.
When he was to his feet, Seras reaching into her jacket and pulled out something wrapped in a green kitchen towel. Of all the gear taken from the dead who’d attacked the manor, not a single holster had been able to fit the thing just right. Her cop brain screamed against what she was doing, but as a cop she was out of her reckoning. She heard her Master’s words echo in her head, the same words she’d heard during the battle. “You’re no longer a human… You have become So much more.”
“You had this in your belt when we found you. You should have it.” The former police woman handed the boy his gun.
Kade’s hand gripped it from the top, and he knew what it was. Their eyes met, Seras had a look he hadn’t seen before, and his mind suspected what his heart knew, that he and Seras were two of a kind. The Heart of a soldier. She was also the only person who’s eyes he could look into. Not even his Captain had earned that honor. A wordless nod passed between them and she let go. He unwrapped the broomhandle Mauser he’d taken from a living corpse in the bookstore. It was a huge pistol, even bigger than the Beretta he normally favored, if not as wide, and where a red number 9 should be carved and painted into the grip, it was plain; instead of which “.45 ACP” had been stamped into the side of the gun’s solid, boxy magazine well. The safety, a small lever beside the Hammer was down, and he could see a small white S. The pistol disappeared behind his back, tucked into the drawstring of his pajama bottoms. The cop grimaced at that. There just wasn’t a safe way to Mexican carry, but small things could wait.
While they’d been talking, twilight’s silvery knife edge on the horizon had severed the last wear shades of Night, and a fine layer of fog rolled in from the Thames, so that from where they stood, the dawn too was sheeted in brisk, silvery veils.
Kade yawned as he stood. “We’ll have a long morning ahead of us if you’re joining up.” Seras warned, even as she bit back a yawn of her own. Kade looked to her, and the weary grimace he’d been wearing vanished, a flicker of hope in his eyes. Seras gave him a warm smile that lit a fire in his chest, he thought he’d never seen a field of flowers or a rainbow or sunset half as pretty as her. Even earning his keep, he thought, spending even a bit of unlife with her really was worth dying for. Just one concern poked its ugly head through his eagerness.
“Is there gonna be paperwork and stuff?”
Seras chuckled, her warm smile transformed into an almost mean grin. “Oh yes. Loads.” But first, she suspected, they’d want some coffee.
Ch 7. “Kai su, Teknon”
Integra’s morning ritual, as always, began with Prayer. In lieu of being to attend proper services she knelt on the floor, hands clasped, prostrate before the Holy Ghost, and if her words were unfit for the dedications her heart laid out before the Almighty, what words from a servant can ever be fit before the seat of one’s God?
“Heavenly Father, give us balm to heal. I beg of you be with the men who died defending my House. I beg your mercy and love for every soul that was taken from us. I beg your mercy for my servant, the Vampire Alucard. I beg forgiveness for the cost of my victory. And Heavenly Father, Lord of Hosts, I ask the strength to see my duties through. Amen.”
She’d woke ahead of the oh five-hundred alarm she’d set the night before, the morning twilight was still young, and her mouth parched after last night’s scotch, but the expected hangover had blessedly slept through its own karmic alarm. It would have been worth it in any case to mend things with Seras. Her prayer said, she seized a glass of water Walter had left on her nightstand and nearly drained it in a single fearsome draught. She stretched, and put herself through a routine of lunges, squats, sit-ups, and pushups; then washed and changed yesterday’s bandages. It was the most exercise she’d had in a week, and taxed her more than expected. A few minutes later, and the metallic click of a polished silver cross at the top of her blue ascot announced the start of another day.
While she’d dressed, the dutiful butler had set out a meal for her, fresh baked beans with rye toast, an omelet with sharp white cheddar, and fine black tea. Abnormally however, he’d forgotten her morning brief. The man hadn’t been tardy in his secretarial duties in months. Well, she thought, it was inevitable. The man had practically managed to run the whole manor for years; Head Butler for the house, he’d had command over eight porters, two engineers, four general maintenance hands, a chef, ten line cooks, four tailors, as well as her executive secretary for Hellsing’s day-to-day operations. And the extent of what passed for a Human Resources department. And the household’s personal armourer-Alucard’s pistols and Seras’ rifles were totally unique firearms of his own manufacture. So of course the man who’d practically helped raise her could be forgiven if, at seventy-two, he’d slipped up. She was about to page him when the door to her apartment opened and in he came, brief in hand.
Except it wasn’t Walter. It was the Wilkins girl who ran the Uniforms department, manila folder in one hand and a china pot in the other to refill the cup Integra had already reduced washing down her toast. Oh, Integra reminded herself setting the cup down. Walter’s dead.
And I’m going to need at least five people to replace him…
Shit. She thought. Lindsay meanwhile, didn’t skip a beat.
“You’ve a meeting this morning with a delegate from the BSAA, Sir, accompanied with a protective detail from the American Secret Service at oh-seven thirty. Progress report from the construction superintendent at noon. Captain Fargason’s also asked for a few moments after lunch.” Wilkins said as Integra skimmed the folder’s contents. Over the course of the next six months, the contractor’s estimate read, practically half the Manor would have to be demolished and rebuilt. The exact plans to rebuild, Integra realized, she’d have to decide today. Having seen the Blitz firsthand, her father Arthur Hellsing had long ago drawn up a set of five similar blueprints in the event the family’s headquarters needed to be significantly reconstructed, each plan offering different renovations for whichever needs the executive saw most pressing. The last major construction to take place on the house had been the excavation of a subterranean shooting range back when Integra had still been bounced on her nurse’s knee. Selecting the most appropriate of any new additions was likely to occupy her through lunch, and she’d want Fargason’s input. She’d also want to backstop the older mans’ estimate with that of the late Peregrin Bernadotte, both men had very recent experience leading combat in the house, and getting Pip’s opinion would really mean asking Seras.
So, she mused, draining the last of her tea, most of the day would amount to housekeeping; the only real work would be with the Americans, establishing exactly Hellsing and this “Dagger” group would be forming, and how to tackle hunting down the Vatican’s Iscariot agency, as well as any remnants of the Millennium network. After all the pains she’d taken to insulate her organisation from the regular arms of the British military apparatus, it promised to be a thoroughly unpleasant exercise. And she still didn’t know how the burgeoning BSAA fit into the equation.
“I take it my vampire is fast asleep?” Integra asked the maid, who’d been stealthily tying up odds and ends about the apartment, learning fast to chase the standard set by her predecessor while her boss breakfasted.
Lindsay bolted to attention, a nervous smile on her face. She’d heard what they were planning. “Actually Sir, they’re outside your office, hoping for a quick word… the both of them.”
Chris Redfield had lived through his share of horror. Not yet thirty, he’d been one of the first to face down new breeds of engineered monsters, he’d seen the Dead walk the earth like something out of an old Romero movie, and the last year and a half of his life had been spent on the cutting edge, Counter terrorism’s new frontier was combatting this new breed of Biological terror. But this? This was torture. The kind of rabid inhumanity even he wasn’t built for.
“Please, God, make it stop.” He said lamely, knocking his head sidewise against the driver’s side window just as Valens finished a pitch perfect rendition of Master of the House. Zombies, Tyrants, even goddamn Nazi Vampires were one thing, but nobody should have to listen to Broadway songs at Seven in the morning. Valens wasn’t just a vampire, the man really was a monster. A monster who lived among humans, served humans, in his own way even loved humans. But only a vermin, malignant storm in the shape of a Man could inflict Les Miserables on his fellow man at seven o’clock in the friggin’ morning.
“Sorry-“ the malignant, vermin storm cracked a single, weary eye. “I like to sing when I’m thinking. At least you stopped me before I got to Philip Quast.”
It was Valens’ first time seeing the Hellsing estate in more than a decade; he could already see the red roof poking through a strategically planted tree line surrounding the estate, a small array of satellite dishes on one end, opposite a vacant helipad. Seeing what was left of the manor where he’d spent more than a few drunken nights scheming and drafting battle plans with Arthur, and Percival Hellsing before him, and the good Doctor Abraham those many moons ago, he found himself regretting the petulant instigation he’d tried to spark the first time he’d met Integra. All the more shame because Alucard hadn’t even taken the bait, leaving him to nurse a nasty bruise up and down his inner arm from Walter’s monofilament wire.
Their truck actually had to wait in line behind a handful of other trucks and work vans, worker bees flocking to the busiest job site in the sleepy suburb. What yet stood of the place was swarming with workers who would never know their job was helping set to rights their country’s greatest weapon against the hordes of Hell.
Part of that job too, would fall to John Valens, even if this proud order of Knights was galled to accept his help. He was fairly impressed then, as they pulled up along the roundabout driveway, to be greeted by what could only be, as he was, a straggler of those hordes of the Damned. A young woman, she couldn’t have been much older than twenty-three, flagged them over to a side entrance.
Mid length strawberry blonde, almost punkish hair, whose bangs fell over one eye, and wearing an immaculate blue duty jacket with polished brass epaulettes that didn’t look police or military, a matching brass clip across the collar, which might have been enough to distract wandering eyes from the leggings and skirt, emphasizing what both men described mentally as “God dayumn”. In contrast to the other guards, she wasn’t wearing a sidearm. In blatant defiance of the laws of the country both men were guests of, Valens and Redfield were. Not that she needed a pistol of course, with how she was flashing that arm of hers in broad daylight. That must scare the piss out of the day laborers. Valens chuckled to himself. And if Alucard is… That makes you…?
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“Mr. Valens Mr. Redfield? Seras Victoria. Please, follow me.” She said over the dins, rattle, and hum of dozens of power tools and a small Scooper truck that carted off rubble to a heavy loader parked a few dozen feet away from the BSAA truck. Her greeting was curt, appraising the two as they went for the truck bed, which was full up with cases and crates which, like the truck were marked with a Red cross against a plane white field. The younger man was in black turtleneck, a dull green coat, and cheap slacks, while Valens, she finally had a face to put to the name, was dressed up like what he ostensibly was, an agent of the United States Secret Service, a not too expensive, but personally tailored black jacket, slacks cut an inch or two too large around his arse and hips to afford freer movement, and a spotless white shirt that might have seen an ironing board in its career but never heard of starch. The only thing that was out of place were the olive green cuffed rawhide gloves he wore, the same kind Seras herself wore in the field, though hers were dyed a rustic brown and in a smaller size.
Built like an action movie star, large eyes, almost doglike nose and cheekbones framed a wide face that terminated in a sharp chin. He had a strange agelessness, however old he actually was, he could have passed for thirty or fifty, with long, dull gray hair in spikes and bangs like he was auditioning for Priest or Maiden.
Valens grabbed a huge, long trunk from the bed that could have been a coffin, slinging it over his shoulder and holding it by a nylon strap like a schoolboy with his backpack, while Redfield, the brawnier of the two, hoisted a single smaller case, not a little mortified by the effort. A pistol has no damn business being this heavy He swore internally. He’d carried lighter bombs before.
Victoria let them through a commercial kitchen in the manor’s east wing and up through a freight elevator, avoiding most of the construction site and as many of the workers as possible. Contrary to their guest’s assumption, she didn’t actually like scaring people with the arm, but Integra had decided to meet the Americans with the sharpest martial aplomb Hellsing could muster, and the finest uniforms she owned were all short sleeves.
The Americans were led to Sir Hellsing’s office, a large room adjacent to the Residence, floored with checkered marble, where the head of Hellsing waited for them, along with her organization’s most senior officer, Major Peter Fargason. Valens saw a familiar face guarding the Master of the House as Victoria ushered them in. The boy had been away for less than a week, but he was changed, where there had been an almost automatous pall over the boy’s features, now his face was alight with eager relish that Valens had never seen him wear on duty after three years of molding the boy. They locked eyes across the room and the boy didn’t waver, looking down his Captain with a game face that spoke volumes. Each had something he had to tell the other, but business came first.
Meanwhile Chris had approached Integra only to set down the half ton he’d been carrying for the longest four minutes of his life, barely managing not to drop the case on a desk that looked like it cost as much as he made in a month. The woman behind that desk stood to greet the big man, who needed a second to flex his hand after dropping the weight. “Says this is important.” He gasped. Integra stood and they shook hands.
Twenty-seven, a well-shaped face and square jaw, Redfield looked a little bulky to have been an Air Force pilot, but the large frame would have been right at home in the STARs team he’d joined up with after leaving the service. Fargason introduced himself cordially. It was his first time meeting anyone from the BSAA, but he already knew the lad was far more than whatever his job title, “Operations Supervisor” implied, he’d heard rumors of this special tactics Bobby who’d gone out hunting monsters on his own prerogative when Raccoon City went to Hell, and was but newly returned to the ranks of what was trying to forge itself into a real agency with real teeth.
There really was no need for the boy to be here, but nobody dismissed him, so he just stood behind Seras, who in turn stood just off to Integra’s left. Chris wondered if there was a midget to next to Kade like a Russian nesting doll. At 5’8” he and Victoria were the same height, the Fledgling still looked small next to his Sire. He lazily raised a hand and nodded to the boy, who nodded back in wordless, but amiable greeting. Unlike Valens, Redfield even rated a rare smile from the boy. Integra cut and lit a fine cigar. Valens had a torpedo in his jacket but deferred his own tobacco for the moment. He grabbed the case and cracked it open, starting his spiel.
“Sir Hellsing. First, I need to apologize. That stunt a few years ago was uncalled for. I did know your father, and there was a time when our shops did good work together. I’m interested in reviving that relationship. I think, in terms of materiel and support, I’ve got services you may find useful. I also come baring gifts. I was working with the relief teams in the city yesterday, and I believe this may be of some account to you.” He turned to Seras.
“Before you told me your name, I knew who you were. By all rights miss, this is yours.” He replaced the open case on the polished maple, and all six looked at one of the most ridiculous pistols ever machined. It looked like a 1911 longslide chambered for an artillery shell, thicker than the standard Colt by two centimeters, and nearly a foot long. He’d taken it down the night before, cleaned and polished each component with the same meticulous reverence he showed his own tools , and by some miraculous means found replacement grip panels and three new magazines that sat under the stainless steel slide, the huge ejection port showed the titanium nitride coating that gave the barrel the look of gold plating. The slide was engraved in a neat, blocky script. Hellsing Arms Co. 454 Casull Auto.
Seras didn’t know she’d had her arms crossed until they dropped lame at her side. The gun was absurd. It was also, had been her Master’s. The same gun he’d used to put a big game slug through her left lung to kill the vampire had used her as a human shield. Her place at Hellsing started with this gun and rotten luck that she’d been on call that night. She didn’t even realize Valens had slid the case across the desk to her, or that she’d momentarily become the center of attention of all but Kade, who was gawking at the cannon. She shut the case and took it in both hands, nodding respectfully to the old villain. “Thank you.” Came a quiet, flustered murmur.
“There’s something I’d like to know, Mister Valens.” Integra said, wrangling back control of the meeting. “Three men. Did you seriously believe that three men would be enough to kill Hellsing’s Angel of Death? If you think we’re some paltry chop house, I fear we won’t have much of anything to gain working together.” Her guest wasn’t fazed.
“If I thought this was a chop house Sir, I’d hardly be wasting my time. Those three, hmm” he chewed on the thought for a moment. “Those two and a half men killed more than two score vampiric Panzer grenadiers, best as I could figure it. I hope you don’t think I spent all day antique shopping.” Valens turned to Kade, and addressed him for the first time. “Ignacio Cardel and Bill Branwen are coming home with me on Air Force Two tomorrow. The bookstore, your idea?”
The Kid nodded, but didn’t make eye contact.
“We left the hotel right after the rockets hit, beat a fighting retreat, it was move and shoot for awhile. I saw the staircase from the street, we were about to pincered, I thought we could set up a kill box. It worked. Poured fire and grenades downstairs. Then they got wise and jumped in through the windows. Rushed us. I... got macked in the head pretty hard, next thing I remember I was looking at… I don’t know what it was, it was like Seras’ arm but there was a flood of it. A red flood. The Gomers went under. I didn’t know Nacho and Bill were dead until it was already over.” He’d raced through his After Action Report, not even hearing himself stumbling over the words. It’d had been the first time since waking up in the mansion that he’d thought about the operation. During the action he’d drowned out the screams, the terror of the attack on thousands of everyday people, now it came back to him. And then the flood. Those faces, hundreds on thousands of them swarming in one terrible mass. He heard the voices and for a second he was there again, half blind by his own blood, ears blown out from gunfire, wearing other men’s blood like pagan war paint. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and he was back in Integra’s office being grilled by his former captain. It was Seras’ hand, flesh and blood, and he felt the warmth of her nearness, something he’d never known before meeting her. Her nearness grounded him and the bookstore was a memory again.
“What you saw, Soldier boy-” Integra said. “Was the full power of the vampire, Alucard. Six Hundred years’ worth of the Dead, consumed and interred in the depths of his being, called upon at once to cleanse this island of two invading armies. A trait your former Captain is more than familiar with. Now, Mister Valens, I’m curious to hear what it is you really want with us, as you can see, we’ll be rather preoccupied for the time being.” She declared with a sweep of her arm.
No charming this one. Valens thought. “Full disclosure Sir, we watched most of the battle via Predator Drone, that is to say myself and the President. I want quite a few things, actually. To debrief you and Miss Victoria and learn everything you saw on board the enemy mothership. I want to ask you how those Germs found a way to shut down the most terrifying vampire in the history of our race. I also want my idiot stepson not to fucking die on his first time leading men in the field. ” The boy lowered head at that, he was used to laying down to take his beatings, but John saw Victoria’s eyes flash, and knew she would have gone for his heart.
“I’d also like to boast that I stood beside the house of Hellsing again, two orders of knights embarked on the field of battle. That’s enough to satisfy my vainglory.” He lied. Integra tightened her fists; she’d just realized what the man really was.
To Integra, Alucard had been both her unbreakable sword and immovable shield. The product of a century’s worth of her antecedent’s experimentation and research into the occult alchemy and sorcery behind Vampires. He’d been her trusted servant, at turns both confidant and commentator, almost a friend. He was a monster. Her monster. He’d been hers! And now he was gone.
To the eyes of the Royal Family, the American President, and any in the world who’d seen the second battle of London, Alucard was a National security asset. A Weapon of Mass Destruction that the United Kingdom had just deployed on their own soil, and their own people. And Integra realized the man sitting across from her, in the guise of a Secret Service bodyguard was the United States’ answer in the arms race of weaponizing the Undead. But while Alucard was bound to serve Hellsing, whatever relationship John Valens enjoyed with the American President, he was bound by no such oath.
“Dagger’s an unnamed partner in this, Sir. Weird thing to ask a man’s bodyguard ‘what’s in it for you?’”. Redfield cut in, surprising her.
“The way I see it” he went on,” There’s real no difference if it’s zombies, mutants, vampires or Frankenstein’s damn monster. As far as I’m concerned, it’s something engineered against Man, by Man. Raccoon City was a pretty small town, inconsequential. So when it had to be vaporized to contain the outbreak last year, the hateful truth is most of the world didn’t really give a shit. Both our governments are still full of old thinkers who imagine Biological terror begins and ends with germs and disease, things like Anthrax, Ebola, Plague. After what happened here? They just got dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day. We’re here working disaster relief when we should be going after those responsible. We don’t have the authority or the manpower to do that, Hellsing does. Dagger does. And neither of you really exist. I’m representing the BSAA in this campaign, in exchange for our assistance in crushing these bastards-“ here he hammered his fist into an open palm. “The United Kingdom will officially endorse the BSAA before the Security Council.” There was a little more to it than that, there was hardly a man on the Island of Britain for whom the right wouldn’t be personal, the Americans included.
“What bastards though?” Seras broke in. “You want to hang the whole attack on Iscariot? Millennium’s destroyed, every single one of thems’ been put underground now. I mopped up their last men myself.”
“Don’t be daft-“ Integra retorted. “Think about it, a battalion sized force with a dozen airships lying hidden and operational for the last half a century? Not to mention their production of the Freak Chips. This was a massive undertaking that needed hundreds of people in support to make possible. I highly doubt every one of them were combat arms.” She turned back to Valens. “So it isn’t just Iscariot we’re after, you have an idea on who’s been harboring the Nazis for the last fifty years?”
“We’ve got a few damn good leads, starting with the airships. Graffe Zeppelins don’t just come pre built from the dealer these days, there’s a pretty sizeable compound somewhere in puddle jumping distance that needed a lot of people working there to get a whole fleet of those hot air balloons off the ground. As far as I go, we, the United States and me, personally let far too many of these mongrel cocksuckers slip through our hands the last time around. It galled me then. The privilege of exterminating them to the man is another prize altogether…” His rusted-iron eyes flashed red at the prospect of settling that old score.
Chris cut in again. “As far as Rome goes, Vatican assassins are a little over my head. History isn’t my strong suit and I’m not personally observant, but they do have something we need secured before they weaponize it again. What do they call them? Regenerators?”
“And what all do you know exactly about Regen-“ Integra was cut off by her secure desk phone ringing. She smacked the speaker button like swatting a mosquito, without bothering to look at the number. “Speak.” She commanded, and the de factor commanding officer of the Ministry of Defense answered in an oddly chipper tone.
“Integra, I believe you’re sitting with a couple shabby Americans at the moment, correct?”
She grit her teeth and started rubbing her temple. What the hell now? “That’s correct, Lieutenant General. I’m looking at a Christopher Redfield, Operational Supervisor, BSAA, and a mister John Valens of the Secret Service.”
“Valens?! I figured you’d show up eventually you old cunt, you’re a little late to be banging the war drums I’m afraid, we could have used you here a few nights ago.”
John Valens couldn’t stop smiling if he tried. Imagine that! That scrawny little prick making Lieutenant General! Another rare man who hadn’t let the last decade driving a desk dull him. “Busy week, Bobby, we were just going over some details on this end.”
Seras groaned internally, wondering if there were any regular, sane folk left in her government. Walsh went on.
“I do apologize for the rush Integra, but there’s hot news come in, the Security Service has pieced together something rather interesting, you should be getting it riiiight about” the heavy double doors of the office swung inward, Chris and John turned around in their seats to see a scrawny clean cut young man holding out a manila folder. Seras recognized him as that Chambers lad from the Signals Office. “Oscar Priority, Sir, from acting Headquarters at the Old Admiralty.” He butted in between the two Americans and handed his package across the desk to Integra, who mouthed “Yes he’s just told me”, nodding to the lit Speaker light on her phone. Chambers nodded back and excused himself as abruptly as he’d come in.
Integra was already halfway through the first page before Walsh continued, Seras and Kade both leaning in to read along silently. “Hugh and his boys at MI-5 were able to positively identify the remains, that is to say the remains of the remains of one of the Section Thirteen terrorists, one Yumie Takagi” Integra and Seras both groaned, they’d seen the poor girl sliced into ribbons.
“She was a Welsh National, raised in-“ Integra cut him off, she’d had already reached the second page and seen all she needed to. “When, Robert? How long do we have to move on this?”
“We’re moving tonight, I’ve sent this to Hereford as well, we understand you may be a bit understaffed at the moment, you’ll have their full support for this mission, but it’s got to be tonight, lest the buggers try to make a run for it when the travel restrictions are lifted at midnight.”
Integra felt a reflexive tinge of anger. Understaffed? That cheeky old… Never mind that it was factually correct; Hellsing had been called upon by the Crown to march into battle, and so march they would. Then her mind was plotting, certain she had the tools necessary and only need apply them. A headquarters of the SAS, from which Hellsing had formerly enjoyed first pick for recruitment purposes, enjoyed a far greater war chest than she’d ever had to play with. And the cover of having them suborn the local police for support would let Hellsing keep it’s anonymity for the time being. I’ll show you understaffed, you Sandhurst prat! She had all the manpower she needed right in this room, awaiting her orders.
She checked her watch. It’d work out perfectly… and give her an excuse to put off some of that housekeeping for a day. “Tell them to expect us by sixteen hundred hours.” she hung up before he could answer.
She handed off the folder to Kade, giving him his first orders as a member of the Hellsing Organisation. “Boy, I need to you run back down the hall and have copies made, three of the entire dossier then straight back.” She handed it to Kade, who nodded wordlessly, and sprinted out of the room.
“I do hope you’re not all talk, Mr. Valens, it seems we have rather urgent need of miracles. Do you think you can hack it?” Integra asked Valens as she handed over her own copy. She’d just put on a smile of her own, an easy grin brimming with dark mischief.
Valens riffled through the folder, going straight for the Imagery, already formulating different plans of attack. Kade practically flew back into the room and passed out copies to Fargason and Seras, and, seeing Chris was reading along Valens, gave his new commander the final copy before resuming his place next to the women.
“They always make it easy for you?” Valens asked. The job was a tall order.
“The good news Sir” it was Fargason, “Is we can field a seven man squad. This still looks rather dicey I’m afraid, if it were simply a Kill mission, Victoria could handle it on her own, this seems to ask for a bit of a delicate touch, however.”
Seras just grimaced; it got worse the longer you looked at it. They’d need more men than they had to secure the site. Fargason was right, she could break down the door and “Kill ‘em all”, but that certainly wasn’t the job.
“I can help with that,” their guest chimed in. “If we’re stopping by Hereford I can have some of mine meet us there, borrow a bird and fly out from there. That gives you fourteen plus two.”
“Plus two?” Integra asked, already guessing what came next.
For explanation he formed his right hand into a finger pistol, the “barrel” was covering Seras Victoria, while he cocked his thumb back for the hammer, pointing back at himself. “Seven sworn agents of the United States Secret Service, plus Tiny here and the men you’ve got makes fourteen. On top of which you’ve got two perfectly good vampires to send in.” he grinned as if that really settled it. It didn’t, quite.
“Human troops and Vampires in the field together?” Fargason asked incredulously.
“I like going in with the door kickers, Peter, always have.” Valens retorted with a relish, stretching his back and shoulders while he sat. “Yes, Dagger is an integrated unit.” Fargason would have scoffed at that liberal attitude, but kept it behind his mustache. Prior to Victoria joining up, Hellsing’s human soldiers and the vampire element, that is to say Alucard, had operated in more or less cordial segregation from each other, a model he’d assumed the BSAA would share, but one of that agency’s founding operatives was before them, apparently playing second fiddle for this vampire’s private War band.
“Your math’s’ off, Mister Valens.” Integra smirked at the smug bastard around her cigar, breathing out a delicious cloud of Cuban perfume. “The Hellsing Organisation boasts two perfectly good vampires.” And she was just as happy to put off her housekeeping for another day. Hellsing’s real work had come a calling, and the souls of the damned called out to be consigned to Hell.
Integra keyed her phone for her new secretary. “Lindsay, inform the superintendent our meeting will have to wait until tomorrow, I’m afraid I’ll be caught up with an operational matter. Yes, that will be all.” Click. She turned back to the two Americans. “Since you’re in such a generous mood, Captain, I’m rather curious to know what you’ve filled up that truck with.”
The bastard smiled, he’d been waiting for someone to ask. “Body Armor, small arms, thermite, plastique, and all the blessed silver bullets your men can shoot. FMJ’s and hollow points, too. The one I brought in with me is… more of a personal matter.”
Integra gave orders that they’d leave for Hereford before noon, no sense letting the prey wait down the clock. Until then, the assembly had a few hours at liberty. The meeting broke off, Seras kept her place at Integra’s side, part assistant and part protective detail, while Kade was led off by Fargason to be shown the Manor’s commissary, armory, light weapons range, and given time to get acquainted with Hellsing’s remaining able bodied men, twenty five survivors of Pip’s Wild Geese company, and ten survivors of what had been Able squad prior to the attack on the manner by the Valentine Brothers four months prior. By the time his orientation was complete, Valens and Redfield had finished importing their cargo into the armory, and the fighting men was taking stock of their new presents, and preparing for the work ahead. The news they’d be going on a revenge mission fired up the blood of even the most stoic professionals in their ranks.
Seras, true to her new post had stayed on guard beside Integra for some time after the meeting, helping where she could to make sure what remained of Hellsing’s various compartments were sufficiently equipped that the house would survive the temporary absence from both its executive and its most senior military officer. They were left with a few precious moments of downtime when she found herself a bone to pick.
“So where did ‘Soldier boy’ come from?” she asked indignantly, and Integra gave a dry English chuckle.
“You should know I’m not the easiest to impress, Seras. I can’t go too easy on the boy. Besides, I was curious to see how his former master would react. So what’s your read on our new acquaintances?”
“Redfield seems solid enough. The other one’s acting awfully generous. I think he’ll deliver what he says he will, but he’s not telling us everything. He’s plotting something.”
“Well of course he’s plotting something.” As if it weren’t obvious. Ostensibly an agent of the United States Secret Service, he’d arrived with a small light weapons shipment like it was a bottle of wine for a house party. “Let him plot and scheme as he wishes. Hellsing is the sword of the Church of England and Her Royal Majesty, we are on a mission from God. And God is the best of Schemers.” A quotation of the Muslim faith, Integra thought it perversely fitting. Indeed she was already scheming herself. Hellsing had its’ own War drums to beat. She heard the beep of her pager and checked the time. But God, the day was determined to run away from her.
“At any rate, we’ll be departing shortly. It would be rather poor performance if your fledgling were tardy for his first operation. Rendezvous in the vehicle bay.” She ordered.
“So how do you like it?” Valens asked when they’d found chairs.
“I burned myself pretty bad the first day, sunburn.” Was all the report he got. The kid had never been much of a talker. Valens smiled at that.
“Happens to the best of us. Down to business, Swordsman was pissed off to find out you were on the payroll. That means you’re out. Scram kid, you’re fired.” He told his stepson flatly. The boy bristled like a housecat feeling a jolt of static shock, for a moment Valens thought he looked like that blue hedgehog from the videogame.
“You can’t fire me, I quit!” he snapped.
“Looks like more of a lateral transfer to me. Let me guess, that Victoria girl?” John asked with a raised eyebrow and a shit-eating grin. Kade almost got up to leave without answering. He’d never tried even tried that to get away from his mother, let alone his captain, but that captain didn’t stop.
“You’ll be wanting some of your native soil, Vampires need that sort of thing. Do you know where you were born boy?” the boy froze. Integra had asked him the same thing earlier, and he was mortified that he hadn’t been able to answer it, then or now.
The boy didn’t say anything, so Valens went on. “You were born out of wedlock in a place called Hemet, northern California. Your father was a smuggler who worked for me running reefer and coke out east, then flipping that profit to sell guns back home. It was a good racket, made me a good deal of cash. He got careless and died on the job. I kept your mother in work. I don’t think he would have approved of how she treated you, for the record. She’s not well, you see.”
He’d asked about his father before, this was the first time hearing the story. He’d been on jobs in California, but had no idea where Hemet was. Valens held out his hand, palm up.
“The legend your came over with is burned. I’ve got one better for you.”
Kade pulled out his wallet and extracted his ID, and the passport, both were counterfeits of the highest quality. He was about to hand over the money too, but was waved off. Valens took the papers and closed his gloved hand around them, there was a sharp crackling sound, and a fierce red blaze flared and in an instant a pile of paper ash poured from his hand. He blew the ash clear and reached into his coat, pulling out a folder from which he handed the boy another Identification card, this one was almost real.
“Kade Pegan. That card says you’re eighteen. It’ll make it easier to find work.”
“I’ve already got work.” The kid protested. Valens grinned again. Oh yeah. He mused. Definitely that Victoria girl.
“In any case, I’m sure your new employers will find it easier if they don’t have to fabricate another cover identity.” Yesucristu, just take the damn thing. He thought.
Kade did take the damn thing, and replaced it in the plain black billfold. Pegan? His mother’s family name was Valdinez, but since being carried out of her apartment after the last time she’d burned him, he hadn’t used any surname, just a series of legends fake as a three dollar bill when a last name had been needed for his schooling or travel.
The chest, was everything he could call his own in the world and more. A small collection of books and compact discs and cassettes he’d snatched up where he could, a few changes of clothes, some trinkets, approximately two hundred-thousand dollars in cash, a handful of gold ingots the size of his hand, and a small envelope of unused credit cards under half a dozen different names. “I figure I owe you backpay,” Valens explained, “For three years of service. Plus a severance package.”
That “severance package” included a small arsenal; a collection of pistols, long guns, and melee implements, most of which had been customized according to Dagger’s own specifications, with blades and barrels forged in smoky damascene patterns, receivers, magazine wells and slides engraved with alchemic or runic devises, or some bore the chapter and verse of passages of the Abrahamic faiths.
Two plain brown vans left a large private manner in Finchley a quarter before noon, just two more vehicles decamping a busy construction site. From Firth Lane they took B1462, circling the quiet suburb to Regent Park Road, where they stopped at a Metro police checkpoint. The drive of the first van was a man named Packmen, a lean, hawkish looking man who looked a few years older than he actually was. He showed the officers a ledger identifying the vehicles as belonging to the Royal Logistics Corps. From the checkpoint, these vans took to the A406, showing nothing but contempt for the local speed limits.
Four days ago, huge swaths of the City of London had been destroyed by two competing terrorist attacks. What was left of the government was in shambles being held together by the three survivors of the Round Table Conference, Lieutenant General Robert Walsh, Sir Hugh Irons of the Security Service, and Sir Integra Hellsing of the Royal Order of Protestant Knights. A Vampire in the employ of the Hellsing organisation had taken in a survivor of the attack, a child solider, and bound him to her as her vampiric fledgling. The boy was a soldier still; as was Seras. And the Hellsing Organisation was going to War.
Eight hundred and sixty miles away, Heinkel Wulf awoke. She was in a real bed at last, even if it was a hospital bed. She worked up some spit to wet her mouth and swallowed. Her body was sore all over. Muscles she didn’t even know she had felt like they’d been taxed with the work of ten men. She felt the sheets and mattress under her feet. Both feet, and under both hands, even the leg and half an arm that fucking butler had taken off.
A Paladin, that is to say an executioner of the Vatican’s Section XIII, she’d seen most of her unit die fruitlessly fighting the vampire, Alucard in the battle of London. Hellsing’s vampire. That undying dread Count who’d killed the Paladin Alexander Anderson. Then Hellsing’s butler killed Yumie. Yumie. That adorable bumbling Welsh girl who’d eschewed Iscariot’s frock for a nun’s habit, who’d sliced and carved hordes of unbelievers and heretics, katana in hand. The only woman Heinkel ever loved. And Heinkel had been crippled and left for dead before she’d been able to avenger her.
“The operation was successful” said a man’s heavy accent said from across the room. Heinkel didn’t need to look up to know who it was, which worked out for the best because she couldn’t have even if she wanted to. The man was the Jesuit, Father Makube; The Bastard Sword of the Black Pope.
“Ten Regeneration Nodes, the same number as Anderson had.” He went on. “We had to transplant a lot of tissue for the arm and the leg. My best estimate is that you’ll be on the mend for a couple of weeks. After that, sister Wulf, I believe His Holiness may yet have need of your service.”
Oh, you’ll have it you smug bastard. She thought. That the Reconquista had failed was irrelevant. That the Vampire Alucard was destroyed was irrelevant. Hellsing still stood. And Heinkel was going to murder every last one of them.