Vatican City - Paris - 2121
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Illumination
“Polaris! Sirius! Arcturus! You are go for drop!” barked Solaris, the lead for this ANET strike mission.
As I jumped from our dropship (I was callsign Arcturus) I focused my mind on the task at hand. Last week, ANET received intelligence from a Cult of Ramiel defector tipping them off to the existence of an ancient document that would be vital to the salvation of mankind. Our best bet for the location of said document was the Vatican Archives, which we were now descending upon. The Vatican had robust lockdown measures in place to protect the Pope, Cardinals, and other important Church figures from the horrors of the Archangel War, which we would have to avoid.
“Heading at two degrees, we want to land on the west side of the Apostolic Library roof there!” called Sirius.
Just after his call and Polaris and I’s subsequent adjustment of course, an anti-aircraft rocket flew past us. It missed our dropship, thankfully, but hit and destroyed a smaller support copter we had with us for backup. Aside from the Papal Gendarmerie defenses, there was also the matter of the heretical followers of the Archangel Michael to keep tabs on. When the Archangels first rose, a group of high-ranking figures within the Catholic church publicly swore allegiance to Michael, causing a schism within the church and forming a sizeable and willing army for Michael, which had been trying to overtake the Vatican ever since. Hopefully both forces would be too focused on each other to give us much trouble.
“Watch out! Two bogeys emerging from a hatch 15 meters north of drop!” Solaris called.
Solaris was the last to drop so she was still several meters above us as the other three of us activated our landing packs, a sort of compressed-air jetpack setup, to break our falls. The pack guaranteed a somewhat safe landing velocity but we still had to tuck and roll to prevent breaking our legs or falling over and concussing ourselves. Polaris was first to get upright and immediately fired at one of the approaching gendarmes. I heard the officer’s body collapse as I was getting upright myself. The other gendarme ducked behind his cohort’s body for cover, which was futile considering the power of ANET’s custom-spec firearms. I fired two rounds at the corpse and a second later heard the second gendarme’s weapon clatter to the floor.
We moved quickly to the roof hatch the guards had emerged from and entered the library. The official Apostolic Archive of the Vatican was located elsewhere in modern times, though it had once been a part of the Library itself. Our intel told us that in the original archive chambers beneath the main library, certain ancient manuscripts remained unmoved due to combined factors of their fragility and their contents being especially esoteric compared to the majority of the archival collection. Aside from the two gendarmes who had come for us on the roof, security within the library seemed loose. Sirius gave us hand signals to point out a patrol on the level below, and we carefully navigated our way through the stacks to avoid them. Once we made it to the subterranean level, things got more dicey. We didn’t have an exact location for the artifact we were after, so we had to first locate a catalog and go from there.
“Arcturus, on me. Sirius and Polaris, head to the opposite end of the hall and start your search from there. Radio if you find a catalog, and no matter what happens we rendezvous on the roof in twenty minutes,” Solaris ordered, and motioned us to move out.
We ducked into the first room before us while the other two rushed off down the dim hallway. The room was pretty clearly just general storage for the Apostolic Library, there were stanchions and velvet cords for sectioning off for events, tables and chairs, placard stands, and so on. After a quick once-over, we moved on. Across the hall was a supply closet, shelves of office supplies on one wall, and cleaning supplies on the opposite. Beyond the first two rooms we seemed to be getting closer to our target, the next left-hand room housed a very old set of filigree armor and a rather ancient-looking scroll and little else besides dust. In the room opposite that were aisles of tired filing cabinets.
“Do you think this is the catalog?” I asked Solaris.
“Could be, what’s in the drawers?”
We each picked a cabinet and started rifling through the file drawers. The first drawer I opened held dozens of manila folders, each containing a single antique document.
“It’s looking more like this is the collection itself than a catalog,” I said.
“Agreed, and none of these look old enough for our target to be in the same room.”
“I’ll just check a drawer in the next row.”
I checked the middle drawer in a cabinet in the next row; more of the same age documents.
“Yeah, these can’t be older than the eighteenth century, let’s move on.”
In the next room, we appeared to have struck proverbial gold. There were card catalog drawers, row after row of them, and a rather dated desktop computer in one corner.
“See if you can figure out the system for these drawers and find a catalog card for the Codex, meanwhile I’ll see if this dust bucket has any answers,” directed Solaris.
I moved over to the cabinets and looked around for any kind of sorting markers. There were eight digit numbers in either upper corner on the cabinets at the end of each row, but it wasn’t immediately clear to me what they signified. I opened a drawer in the first row, which contained catalog cards not unlike what one would find in an out-of-date library. Each card contained a description of an artifact or manuscript, a list of names (finders, owners, and/or donors, I assumed), a location within the Vatican, and a date. Seeing the date on the first card I inspected, I realized the sorting must be by date, and the dates seemed to be the presumed origin of each artifact.
“Catalog is organized by date of origin, what century do we believe the Codex originates from?”
“Loaded question, Arcturus. The Codex we’re looking for is said to be a lost portion of the Key of Solomon. Historians would attribute the Key to the 14th century, but if we’re to assume to Codex is a genuine creation of Solomon himself, it could be as old as 10th century BCE.”
“Well, that would be about half this room to look through, any luck with the commodore64 over there?”
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“It literally just booted up. Start looking through the early 14th century, work backwards, and I’ll try to locate it digitally.”
I found the aisle with a code ending in 1412 and started opening drawers. Most of the cards were handwritten but thankfully the titles were in good sized print so I was able to skim through them fairly quickly. On the downside, a lot of items in the collection were the Codex of something or other.
“Solaris, what’s the full name of the manuscript again?”
“The informant referred to it as the ‘Codex of Holy Geometries’ though it could also be titled the Codex of Solomon, and it could be bundled in with an early manuscript of the Key of Solomon, so keep an eye out for that too.”
“I’m gonna radio for Sirius and Polaris to come help look through these drawers.”
“Sounds good, I doubt there’s more catalog beyond this so no point leaving them on a wild goose chase.”
“Sirius, Polaris, second room on the righthand side from our point of entry. We located the catalog,” I radioed.
There was a concerning pause before a reply came in from Polaris:
“Multiple bogeys this end of the hall, we’ll make it to you if we can, holding them back will be our main priority.”
“Copy. When we find the location of the Codex we’ll signal you and move out,” Solaris answered back.
I tried to pick up the pace as best I could, but Solaris soon came to my rescue.
“Got it. ‘Solomon’s Codex of Holy Formes and Shapes’ aisle 1030-1313,” she called out, and as I moved to the correct aisle she continued, “Drawer 23. I don’t know why they made a digital catalog for the hard copy catalog instead of just digitizing the catalog but here we are.”
I located the appropriate drawer and started flicking through the files. Near the very back of the drawer I found the card.
“Got it! Codex of blah blah blah, pope shitbag, pope windbag, here we go- location... It was in this building, however that is struck through and the card says ‘Remanded to collection of the White family - 2009’.”
“Fuck.”
“Codex isn’t here. Get to the roof ASAP, we’re pulling out,” Solaris called out over the radio, then said to me, “We’re going to fucking Kansas.”
I didn’t really know what that meant but regardless we made our way into the hall. We heard gunfire at the other end of the basement, but Solaris motioned to ignore it and move towards the stairs. We made our way back up to the ground floor and literally ran straight into two more Gendarmes as we rounded the bend of the landing.
I and the Gendarme I ran into both fell to the ground, which resulted in me slamming my right elbow hard into the stone steps. Solaris however rolled with the collision and barreled right through the man she ran into, knocking him completely to the ground and, by the sound of it, stepping on his head. As I recovered from my fall, she took each of them out with a single shot to the head.
There were another two guards on the second floor, but just as we came into their view, they fell to the ground, with Sirius having taken them out from behind as he joined up with us.
Sirius just shook his head. We made our way quickly and silently to the roof access ladder, and as Sirius and I made our way up, Solaris called in our ride and took the rear. On the roof, a few more gendarmes made futile attempts to impede us but we easily incapacitated them before the dropship came low enough for us to hook ourselves onto the grappling cables and make our swift escape.
“Polaris?” I inquired.
As we pulled up into the air, I took in the view of the Vatican: Everything from St Peter’s Basilica and north was under gendarmerie control, but the antipope and the army of Michael had taken control of the Saints’ Palaces, the gardens, and the buildings on the garden grounds. Armed with Michael’s golden rods, the soldiers assaulted the walls, and though the gendarmes fired upon them they did not fall, sustained beyond mortality by the sheer will of their Archangel patron. I hadn’t been so observant when we dropped in but in the hindsight of our departure it was quite clear why we had met so little resistance throughout our operation.
Stepping away from the open side of the dropship, I turned my mind back to the mission.
“So what’s this about Kansas?”
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Solaris didn’t give much of an answer immediately, “save it for the briefing room” and all that. Luckily for my curious ass, debrief from this strike and planning for the next was happening the moment we touched down at the Paris outpost. On the approach, the sight here was even more dismal than the Vatican. At least the pope was still putting up a fight; here, Hadraniel had transubstantiated everyone within 25 kilometers of the edge of the metropolitan area into crystalline puppets, and when no more archangels advanced on their domain, the puppets simply stood in place. Apparently the whole city went dark within a month of the start of the war, to this day I don’t know why ANET didn’t distribute anti-node crowns from our base here. Metaphorical water under the bridge I suppose, especially considering the whole leadership team got overthrown between then and when I even got to Winterbase and joined up with them.
History aside, the stillness of the city and the knowledge that outside of our bunker, the only thing between me and becoming a glass doll was the little crown on my head was a little terrifying. More terrifying was the presence of Hadraniel himself, his true form being a small and impossibly bright orb floating over city center, and external transfer plates in the shape of a hundred spiked crosses each stretching thousands of feet across the city skyline like a glowing birdcage. As always, I found myself unable to look away from the angel until the helipad bulkhead closed above us.
Inside the base, we remaining three from the strike as well as our pilot, callsign Eris, made our way to the briefing room, where we were greeted by ANET Operations Force Captain Raike Stearns.
“You lost us a heli and two good soldiers, and you did not recover the Codex?” he clarified, voice thick with disdain and disappointment.
“Correct,” Solaris said as she, Sirius, and I nodded in unison.
“Please tell me we have at least determined a precise location of the manuscript now?”
“It was previously in papal possession and was remanded to the ‘White collection’ in 2009, according to the Vatican archival records,” I offered.
“Bringing in my archaeological background here, I can tell you beyond a doubt this artifact is in the White family compound doomsday bunker outside of Kansas City,” Solaris said, and I involuntarily raised my eyebrows to maximum height.
“That sentence is trying to do a lot of work you’re gonna have to do for me here, Solaris,” said the Captain.
“Okay then here’s your thirty second history lesson: The White family were one of the most hated names in twenty-first century archaeology. They were evangelist fanatics with deep pockets from their national craft store chain who bought up tons of black market artifacts and held them in private collection for years. To this day, we don’t know the full breadth of the collection because when the Socialists won the second American Civil War, the family grabbed their shit and ran to Argentina. After the chaos of the third American Civil War, when a lot of the midwest and southern states became no-man’s lands, the Whites moved back to their previously state-seized estate, and have presumably remained there through the Archangel war. It’s a known fact that much of their collection was held in an archival bunker attached to their luxurious doomsday bunker. There was probably an HGTV episode about it back in the day.”
I felt like I had whiplash from the speed of Solaris’ history lecture.
“The fuck is HGTV?” asked Sirius.
“Nevermind that,” interjected the Captain. “So you’re confident we’ll find the Codex in Kansas?”
“Yes, and if we get there and I’m wrong, you can drop a house on me,” Solaris said with finality.
I think I got the reference but it felt even more esoteric than the HGTV thing. Sirius was completely lost now:
“What is even going on?”
“Don’t worry about it champ, grandma here is taking us to Kansas,” chimed in Eris.
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