The storefront, when Kyle finally got a clear look at it, was simple and drab. As he and half a dozen Eagle troopers moved toward it from an alley across the street, he could see paint peeling from the door and window frames, the view inside blocked by old newspapers and plastic garbage bags hanging in the windows. A lopsided sign still hung over the entrance, the letters themselves long gone, but the ghostly outline of the words were still visible-UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD: FOR THE NEXT STAGE OF YOUR LIFE.
Thoughts of Beth's sister Ellen rushed into Kyle's mind, And Strevich's warnings, Mitch Truman's destroyed mind, the true form of Linda Hayward, and the vicious roach spirit he'd killed in the hospital. The Brotherhood was somehow mixed up in this. But he couldn't think about it now, there was no time as the strike team rushed forward from the alley, steps behind a two-man team coming in from the side.
The lead trooper dropped into position covering the closed door as Kyle's group reached the middle of the street, the traffic stopped in both directions by Eagle troopers at the flanking intersections. Kyle was just reaching the curb when the second trooper slammed his heavy riot shotgun against the door lock mechanism and pulled the trigger.
Kyle's group reached the doorway moments after the shot splintered the doorframe and sent the metal lock hurling inside. The lead trooper in Kyle's group hit the door hard, his solid metal riot shield braced in front of him.
The rest of the door shattered under his weight, and the team moved inside. Kyle could hear similar noises as the team led by Malley and Woodhouse entered through the rear. Some of the troopers were armed for urban combat, carrying riot guns firing high-velocity flechette or SABOT rounds designed to cut lightly armored targets to bits. Others were armed with more conventional assault weapons and submachine guns. A couple were armed primarily with nonlethal weaponry-riot guns firing gel rounds, stun batons and gloves, shock/concussion grenades, and net guns in case they met "questionable" targets. It was they who fired first on the two men who rushed forward against the onslaught. The pair fell quickly, knocked off their feet by a barrage of gel rounds, and then subdued by the skillful application of shock batons.
The interior of the storefront was a large waiting room filled with plastic chairs and tattered propaganda posters. Twin rows of rusted fluorescent lights supplemented what little light crept in through the dirty, partially covered windows. Of the six people-men, women, and a child-in that outer waiting room, all but the two who attacked immediately did not resist the police rush.
On a small desk at one end of the room was a notepad computer and some piles of paper now strewn about or fallen onto the floor. Beyond that, against the wall, was a small table holding a soykaf maker and a three-dispenser sodapak machine adjoining a closed door.
The baby began to scream as Kyle reached the middle of the room and the trooper immediately ahead of him took up position covering the door. Kyle moved in opposite him and twisted the door handle open, turning away as he did.
The door swung open quickly, pushed wide by the rush of six brown and black shapes the size of large dogs that darted into the room with lightning speed. They were roach spirits, much smaller than the one Kyle had fought at the hospital, but unquestionably deadly. Three of them, drawn to me odor of power reeking from Kyle and his foci, immediately turned on him.
They stayed low, scuttling close to the ground, and Kyle crouched to meet their attack. The first two came at him, their long, threadlike antennae vibrating wildly, but the third took a vicious stamping kick from one of the other troopers. The thing let out an unearthly squeal and the man's impact with its shell made a crackling sound that was terrifying, but the kick only sent it flying to the side.
Kyle slashed at the first with his blade, catching the hideous thing across the head, severing it completely and dissipating the spirit in one blow. Surprised, Kyle continued the slash against the other spirit, which tried to twist aside now that it had seen the deadly touch of the knife. It was fast, but Kyle's blow came faster, raking across the gleaming carapace, splitting it open. The roach spirit tried to dart aside, shrieking amid a gush of yellow-green fluid, but was stopped dead by a hail of flechettes from one of the Eagle troopers. The spirit thrashed, its legs twitching furiously as its body ricocheted into the air among a cloud of flying splinters. Unable to withstand the dual assault, it too disintegrated. The stink of its foul odor did not.
Kyle stood and immediately moved toward the door.
"That seemed too easy," the trooper said, coming abreast.
Kyle nodded. "Babies," he said.
The trooper blinked, and then covered Kyle passing quickly through the door. There were a series of offices here, little more than partitions and desks. Empty, except for the presence of two Eagle troopers at the far end of the long room.
"Anything?" Woodhouse shouted.
"Six roach babies rushed us," Kyle called back as he advanced.
High-velocity gunfire erupted from the floor above, and Kyle guessed that Malley's group had found a stair or some other access. Together, he, Woodhouse, and the other troopers who had converged on the area from the front and back scoured the rooms, finding nothing.
Then came the excited shout of one of the troopers. "A passage!"
Kyle turned from the desk he was examining and saw that a portion of panelboard wall had swung inward. Two troopers moved to cover it. One of them dropped into position alongside the door, but then the trooper was spinning suddenly, his body armor tearing as a huge clawed leg lashed out through the passageway. Even before the man's body hit the floor, the enormous roach spirit, bigger and even more loathsome than the first one Kyle had seen, had somehow made it through the narrow opening and into the room.
The troopers, numbering a dozen at least, opened up on the thing. Surprised by the ferocity of the assault, it staggered back on its spiny, jointed legs, mouth parts working furiously but wildly as it gave a long, ear-splitting screech. Then the thing began to fade, attempting to flee into astral space.
Kyle called to mind the formula for a quick and dirty spell of raw physical power and performed it. Power arced from his body, crossed the distance between him and the bug spirit in astral space, and then exploded back into the physical world through the spirit's still-manifest form. The spirit all but exploded as the spell discharged, chunks and smears of its rapidly dissolving ectoplasmic form blowing across the room.
The trooper who'd been struck was injured, but not seriously. Another trooper pulled him clear as the team medic rushed up.
"It went down fast," said Woodhouse. "Maybe they're not that tough."
Kyle looked at him. "There were, what, fourteen of us?" Woodhouse nodded reluctantly. "Good point." Troopers moved through the passage, one of them suddenly calling out, "Stairs down!"
Malley came up alongside Woodhouse and Kyle. "Assume we've got only hostiles," he said. "These things are too fraggin' fast. I don't want us caught with our pants down.”
Kyle thought for an instant of his sister-in-law and the apparent humans cowering in the front room, but nodded slowly.
Malley stepped forward and pulled a grenade from his pocket, one of the stun loads. "Fire in the hole!" he shouted, tossing it down the stairs. The grenade's confined explosion, stun round or not, shook the whole building, and echoed under them for some distance.
Kyle moved up alongside Malley, who was peering into the dim, now smoke-and-debris filled stairway.
"Grenades won't affect the spirits," Kyle said, hoping the officer remembered his limited training. Only directed attacks, those that carried the immediate force of living will behind them, were effective against spirits. Intentless things like explosives were useless against them, while hand-to-hand and armed weapons and spells were the most effective. Gunfire fell somewhere in the middle, effective due to its sheer destructive power.
Malley nodded. "I know. But they're bugs. It might still confuse them." He turned to the troopers immediately around him. "Down we go."
Each one reached up and pulled light-magnifying and thermal-sensing goggles over his eyes and followed Malley down the stairs.
"Why the frag did he do that?" Kyle asked Woodhouse, who'd just come up. "He could have taken out the stairway!”
Woodhouse shrugged. "He's a good tactical commander, but in the field he's a little crazy. Unfortunately, he's well connected."
Kyle smiled. "You must be too to talk like that." The other mage only shrugged as gunfire and screams erupted from below. Rushing forward, Kyle activated one of the spells locked into the focus on his left wrist. A barely visible blue-silver field opened around him a few centimeters from his body. At the same time a similar magical field had erected itself around Woodhouse. Kyle's own was a barrier spell designed to repel magic and living energy. It was useless against bullets and the like, but those weren't his biggest concern.
Magical power lanced from Woodhouse's outstretched hand as they peered down into the large space at the bottom of me stairs, seeing more insect spirits than troopers. The sight of so many writhing insect spirits was grisly, the screams and shrieks deafening, the stink of the roaches all but unbearable. And so tightly packed was the combat that neither Kyle nor Woodhouse could use a spell with an effect radius and not catch troopers. Kyle glanced over his shoulder and checked that mere was wood paneling behind him. The natural wood barrier would prevent the spirits from slipping past him astrally, so his back was protected.
With Woodhouse still on the stair, Kyle's only recourse was to use magic against the bugs. Writhed in black and red flame from Woodhouse's spell, one roach spirit was already staggering away, apparently dragging its huge brown shell. Kyle released another bolt of magic of the same type that he'd used upstairs, and the spirit disintegrated in a splatter of greenish blood. Woodhouse rushed forward to stand over the trooper the spirit had been tearing into, his submachine gun opening up at something Kyle couldn't see.
He jumped over the remaining steps and came down in a crouch, twisting to look at the room. It was long, probably the length of the entire series of stores along the street, and wide open with only the occasional support column. Dozens of roach spirits of varying sizes were everywhere, rushing the besieged troopers, striking as they passed, then disappearing back into astral space, only to reappear elsewhere and attack again.
The racket was deafening, the sickening sound of roach legs skittering madly across the floor, the shouts and screams of the troopers, and always accompanied by that now unmistakable, disgusting smell.
There were other things in the room too, large, swollen shapes sitting on the floor at the far end of the basement. Kyle saw perhaps a score of them, with the two largest roach spirits standing guard over them, only their long antennae moving as they calmly observed the carnage their fellows were creating. A bundle seemed to move, to shudder, and one of the big roaches turned slightly, its long, thin feelers twitching in idle interest.
Another roach thing flashed by Kyle, barely centimeters from his head, but he twisted away in time. The troopers were holding their own, covering each other enough that the insect spirits couldn't swarm all over them, but they were taking plenty of punishment all the same. Unless they withdrew, it would be only a matter of time. And if the roach spirits pursued them there wouldn't be much hope.
Woodhouse's magic flashed again as a spinning disk of energy that sliced the legs clean off a leaping roach. It twisted in the air, and landed hard against one of its brethren, knocking them both down.
The insects and troopers were still too tightly packed for Kyle to risk a powerful area spell. He was thinking fast, trying to come up with something that might lure the insects into clusters that could be blasted. Perhaps an attack against whatever the large roaches were guarding? It was probably suicide, and he didn't know if Woodhouse had a spell powerful enough to deal with the spirits en masse. He also didn't know if the roach spirits, considering the size of the two guardians, would consider him a threat.
Linda Hayward's words suddenly filled his head. A threat. Kyle thought he knew one that might be enough to distract the roaches.
He pictured Hay ward in his mind, not clad in her green and black biker learner, but as she claimed she truly was. Two meters of deadly, insect-devouring mantid spirit.
He wove his spell, imprinting the energy of the magic with the image from his mind. He shaped it into her form, detailed it as best he could remember her, and then colored it in the same glistening greens, browns, and blacks.
Without warning, a giant screeching mantid came into existence halfway between the troopers and the huge guardian roaches. It screeched again, and the two guard spirits answered, immediately moving to protect their charges.
The remaining roach spirits wheeled, summoned by the battle call of the larger spirits. They surged forward, a mad, blind rush against the towering mantid. Clawed legs flashed and snapped as they smashed into each other where the mantid stood braced for the attack, but insubstantial. A few of the roaches passed straight through her to bounce and skitter near the larger bugs.
Kyle released his illusion of the mantid, which instantly began to fade. The mass of roach spirits tore into itself as Woodhouse's first spell struck, erupting in a huge fireball. Roaches squealed and began to scuttle away, some attempting to flee into astral space, but Kyle hit them again. The ruby ring on his finger and the amulet around his neck flashed as he released the spell, wincing in pain as the energy flowed through him. It exploded in a near-silent spray of white and green shards of energy that tore into the spirits, cutting them to pieces.
Troopers opened up on the bugs that remained, most of them maimed or burning. Still gasping from the strain the powerful spell had put on his body, Kyle slipped his perceptions into astral space, quickly bringing up his mystical knife to ward off any attacks now that he was present and vulnerable in that realm.
The astral echoed with the resonations of the power released in the room and the disruption of the insect spirits that had succumbed to that power. Kyle immediately saw that most of them had fled, escaped up and away through a patch of ceding mat looked different in the astral. The floors of most of the buildings were probably impassable wood, except for some space cleared for just such passage.
A handful of injured spirits lingered in astral space, darting around the still physically manifest and barely touched larger guardian roaches. Wincing again, Kyle tossed a low-powered ball of energy across the room. He centered it on one of the bug things present only in astral space. The spell struck it and exploded, sending searing energy into the group in astral space and cutting into the two larger bugs present in both realms. Three of the creatures dispersed, unable to maintain their existence.
A tremendous flash of magic filled that end of the room as another of Woodhouse's fireballs ignited. Waves of fire lashed out from its center over one of the huge guardians, and washed over the rows of now quivering bundles on the ground. The large bugs shrieked both in pain and apparent fear for their charges.
The bug on which the spell had been centered was badly injured and engulfed in flame. It leaped forward toward the nearest trooper, catching his arm and tearing it clean off in passing. The trooper spun, his assault rifle still tracking and firing at the burning spirit as he fell. The bug collided with the far brick wall and flipped onto its back, its huge, spiny legs flailing in the air.
Kyle turned as the second bug, its carapace smoking, leaped at Woodhouse. Its legs scraped against the magical barrier that surrounded him, sending sparks of black energy across the room. But it was getting through and into him; Kyle could see a tear deep into the armor on Woodhouse's side.
Kyle ran forward and leaped, his perceptions still in astral space, striking with his enchanted weapon. He drove it at the creature's middle back, the place on its body that seemed the most damaged. The knife dug in deep, flashing gold as it did, burying Kyle's hands up to his wrists inside the thing. The mystical shield around his body flashed azure against the bug as it screeched and reared back off Woodhouse, who instantly stepped away, and fell backward, all the while spraying the thing with a burst from his submachine gun. Jerked into the air by the bug's thrashing, Kyle felt a sharp pain across his right arm as one of the bullets sliced into him. That hand spasmed, and he let go of the blade and felt himself twist again, hanging on only by his left hand. His weight, now suspended off one side of the roach's back, dragged the knife down, pulling and cutting deep across the thing's back.
It turned in the direction of the pain as more bullets tore into it, then landed on its back across Kyle. He pushed upward with the knife as hard as he could, felt something give, and then his hand and knife cut into the air, bursting out of the roach's underside. The creature thrashed and immediately began to dissipate, its weight vanishing with its dissolving form.
Kyle wrenched his arm free and quickly rolled to his feet striking a leaping smaller roach as it passed. Its legs spark against the shield surrounding his head as it spun madly 0ff to one side, catching a hail of flechettes as it did.
Kyle turned to survey the room, and saw that the bug spirit he'd just inadvertently diverted was among the last left in the room. With the deaths of the big guardian roaches, the rest seemed to have fled. None remained solely in astral space, and the few that fought on manifest were being quickly dispatched by the remaining troopers. Within moments, it was over.
The terrible sounds of gunfire, magic, and the screams of dying men and spirits still ringing in his ears, Kyle walked slowly across the basement to the clusters of swollen shapes the larger roach spirits had been guarding. He approached cautiously, his senses still existing primarily in astral space. They were alive, somewhat, pulsing with energy and existence, but there was an alienness about them. Some of the auras leaking from the meter-and-a-half-long objects were cool and constant, others flickered as if fighting something unseen, and the remainder showed echoes of duality, of two spirits overlapped. All, it seemed, were very slowly fading. Kyle reached the first cluster, six of the objects piled almost haphazardly on top of each other, the bottom one all but buried. He touched it, and felt coolness, a rough skin, and the faint wisps of fear, longing, and despair echoing from inside it. And something was inside it-it lurched at his presence, thrashing, the sensation of fear growing from it. The clear outline of a hand, a child's, pushed against the outer covering.
Kyle stood, bile and horror catching in his throat. Woodhouse came up silently alongside him.
"Are these… cocoons?" he asked quietly.
Kyle nodded, looking slowly around the basement at the dozens of piles. There were over a hundred cocoons. Did each one hold a human being?
“Jesus Christ," someone muttered softy.
“Is there anything we can do?" Woodhouse said, unable to take his eyes from the terrible sight. I don't know," said Kyle. "But we've got to try…"