"That was pretty fraggin' stupid," Anne Ravenheart said as she leaned over Kyle and adjusted the bandage on his side. His wound was now only minor; she'd healed most of it within moments of the hypervelocity autofire burst tearing into him, but enough wound and soreness remained to remind him of how close it had been. "Lucky for you the fire-control system on that sentry gun is fragged."
"Yeah," said Kyle, grinning slightly as he pulled himself up into a more comfortable position. "My lucky day."
Ravenheart's eyes narrowed. "Damn straight. That weapon fires six rounds of armor-piercing discarding-sabot ammunition per fire command with barely any recoil. You are lucky.”
Kyle nodded and motioned for her to let up on the lecture. "I know, I know. I'm sorry I sneaked up on you."
"Why the frag did you?" she demanded. "Why didn't you flag Vathoss down on the street?"
"Caution… paranoia," Kyle told her. "These aren't the most stable of times, in case you hadn't noticed. I didn't know if he was still with you or out on his own."
"Fair enough," she said, then stood, offering him a hand to rise to his feet. He took it, and stood up alongside her. She looked like drek, her skin pale and drawn, her normally bright eyes dulled with fatigue, the body armor under-padding she wore over a T-shirt and shorts battered and stained. Seeing him take it all in, she managed a smile.
"Life in the field," she said, turning to lead him into a different part of the room, out from among the piles of stored boxes where she'd laid him down. There, casually seated around a jumbled pile of arms, armor, and supplies were five other Knight Errant troopers. Kyle paused and half-turned toward Ravenheart. "Don't tell me this is all that survived," he whispered.
She looked over at them, and men back at him, matching his gaze. There was a coldness there that he hoped was an effort to block out me pain of having lost so many. "No," she whispered back. "About two dozen were medivacced, and I have another three guarding this building and another four out reconning the city."
“Twelve," Kyle said.
"Thirteen. Don't forget me." Then her voice became even softer. "Lucky thirteen."
They started walking again, and Kyle resumed his normal conversational tone. "Can you tell me what happened?"
She shrugged. "We got crammed, pure and straight."
The other five troopers looked up at their approach, and a few of them, especially Vathoss, shifted angrily at the remark. “Too fraggin' many of them," she went on. "And they got smart just when we got lazy."
Kyle said nothing, but watched the body language of the five troopers. He could tell they'd heard this before, and he wasn't sure if the controlled anger they showed had to do with memories of the massacre or if it was directed at Ravenheart herself.
"Were you in the command van?" she asked Kyle.
"That's the last place I remember being," he told her. "I saw a giant, screeching beetle tearing the roof off like it was opening a can of soup, and then nothing. I woke up beaten to drek behind a dumpster."
She nodded. "Do you know if Soaring Owl got out?"
He shrugged. "I have no idea. He was in the van with me, but I don't remember seeing him at all. Did you search the wreckage?"
Ravenheart nodded again. "We"-she motioned to the other five-"were pinned down for most of a day near the hive. We heard choppers that night, but couldn't get free because of all the fraggin' bugs. We couldn't even raise anybody on the secure channels.
"By the time we got clear, me emergency pickup had come and gone. We searched around the vehicles some, picked up a few stragglers, and then moved out." She grinned and shrugged. "I guess we missed you."
"Somewhat understandable," he said. "I hear I was pretty close to buying it."
"Before we moved out, we swept the area, cleaned out any critical gear, and moved out to an in-city safehouse."
"Here?"
"No." She shook her head. "Closer to the Shattergraves, and actually not far from where the nest was."
"Were you able to get in touch with anyone?"
She eyed him suspiciously.
"I presume there was a communication rig in the safehouse," he said.
"You're right. There was."
"And?"
"We were told to hold our position pending further orders. Then the jamming started and we haven't been able to punch through it since."
"Do you think they'll send in a team to contact you?"
She eyed him again. "Maybe."
Kyle looked around the large storage room. "I take it this is another safehouse?"
Vathoss slammed a full clip into the automatic rifle he'd been cleaning. He didn't look at Kyle, but instead began to polish the barrel. Kyle had no doubt the gesture had been directed at him.
Ravenheart ignored the display. "Yes. The other one was lost to the bugs. We're lucky this was still inside the containment area."
"More interesting luck," Kyle said. She nodded, and the two of them sat down on one of the crates. One of the other troopers, an Asian man with a fresh scar on his face, offered them both cigarettes. Ravenheart accepted, as did Kyle, even though he'd quit nearly a decade before.
"So, what are your plans?"
Ravenheart regarded him for a few moments. "I'd say I should be asking you that."
Kyle dragged on his cigarette, the smoke scorching his throat. "My plan is simple. I want to find my ex-wife and my daughter and get the frag out of this mess."
"You think they're still inside?"
"I don't know. I can't assume they're not."
"Is anyone with you?"
"Seeks-the-Moon, my former ally spirit."
"Former ally spirit?" she said, eyes widening slightly. Being a mage, Ravenheart understood the full import of that statement.
"Former," Kyle repeated. "I told you I was pretty close to buying it."
"And he didn't tear your head off once he was free?"
"No," Kyle said. "He didn't."
Ravenheart blew out a plume of smoke with an emphatic puff. "Lucky day? Frag, it's been your lucky week."
Vathoss looked over. "We're not running a refugee center here. Teller."
Ravenheart scowled at him. "Just keep cleaning your gun," she muttered ominously, then turned back to Kyle. "It would be a good idea if both you and your spirit were here."
Kyle nodded. Anne Ravenheart knew the potential power of a free spirit like Seeks-the-Moon and wanted it under her control. Kyle was willing to set up the situation, but only Moon could decide what he would or wouldn't do.
"How tight is the army's blockage?" he asked, shifting his body to include all the other troopers in the conversation. Everyone responded, except for Vathoss, though they first glanced at Ravenheart for permission before actually joining in.
"Pretty tight," said Asian. 'They're doing it by brute force, the way it has to be done. Zero tolerance-nothing in or out"
They've got a couple of surface-to-air missile batteries along each flank," another officer said, a tall, thin, Hispanic man with thick brown-red hair. "They're shooting down anything that isn't cleared, regardless of why it might be going in. The only mercy flights are the ones they stage. Everything else gets grounded."
“They send in the occasional hunter-killer flight of choppers, or more recently drones, gunning for suspected new nests or gathering spots," the Asian added. "The drones are pretty ineffectual."
Kyle looked around at them. "Gathering spots?"
The trooper looked uncomfortable, as did Ravenheart, though he could see some of the anger and coldness had returned to her eyes. "It would seem that human, or human-appearing, agents of the insect spirits, maybe insect shamans, are gathering people into groups."
"What the frag for?"
"We know the bug spirits are kidnapping people for the new hives," Ravenheart explained. "But they've got to be careful about the rate they grab host-bodies since the nests can only convert a finite number at a time."
"So they're herding people into holding areas," said Vathoss, looking up again. "That way they're all ready and waiting when it comes time to take them to the nest."
Kyle was shocked. "Spirits! How are they managing that? How can they control the people? Force?"
"Food," said Ravenheart. "Some of the fragging things, like the ants, can secrete an edible substance. They lure the refugees in with promises of food, give it to them, and then keep them there. Naturally, the sites are safe since it's the bugs themselves that control them."
"Jesus fragging Christ,"
She nodded. "We've disrupted six of these sites already, and we think we have leads on two more. If we can't handle it we pass word over the barricades and let the army send in choppers."
Kyle shook his head. It was all monstrous. And somewhere out there, maybe even in one of those sites, were Beth and Natalie. Kyle reached into his pocket and pulled out the holopix of the two that he'd been showing among the refugees. The troopers passed them around.
"Do you remember either of them at any of the sites you broke up?" he asked.
They all shook their heads.
"Even if we did," Ravenheart put in, "we probably wouldn't remember. We weren't paying that much attention to human faces."
"Have you tried any conjuring?" Kyle asked her.
"Just minor stuff, a couple of watchers," she said. "I haven't had the time or the materials to try anything bigger. We did hear about a shaman who got himself torn to pieces while trying to summon up a nature spirit. Apparently the bugs are particularly sensitive to that."
"Makes sense," Kyle said. "Seeks-the-Moon indicated that they were very sensitive to him as well. He's been walking around physical and masked the whole time."
"Bet that thrills him."
Kyle grinned. "Yeah, I bet it does." He was about to ask her if she knew of any specific spells or magical techniques to which the bug spirits were vulnerable when one of the piles of gear in front of him began to emit a series of loud electronic beeps.
"Son of a bitch!" said the Asian trooper as he kneeled down in front of it He opened the casing, and Kyle saw that it was a compact field communication unit. Its three liquid crystal displays were active, showing data that he couldn't read and three-dimensional wave and field matrices that he didn't understand. "Mr. Cryptographer strikes again," the trooper said with a smile.
"What's the ident code?" Ravenheart asked.
"Operations HQ. This one's from the top of the drek chain. The box is verifying the codes." He leaned in and reread the data display, then turned to Ravenheart. "It's 'eyes only'," he said. "Yours."
"Can we reply?" she asked him.
"No. It's a hyperburst transmission, and it looks like UCAS has already changed their jamming algorithms." He shook his head. "I for one would never have believed they'd have anything we couldn't breach."
This time Kyle grinned. "What? You don't think that's been a priority at the National Security Agency for at least thirty years?"
"Point taken," the trooper said, then stood up and gestured to the communications rig. "It's all yours, Captain."
"Thanks," Ravenheart squatted down next to it, shifting it slightly for a better view. As she did, Kyle spotted the lightweight optical cable attached to its back. His eyes followed it through the pile of gear, up a support column, and out the room through a perfectly round hole in the ceiling. He guessed the hole was recent, and that the cable led to a field satellite dish on the roof.
Ravenheart typed in her personal ident code, and then pulled a small cupped device from a panel on the side of the case. Another optical cable led from it into the case. She placed it against her right eye and held it there for a few moments until the communication rig beeped its approval. It began verifying her retinal pattern.
"Doesn't Ares have any satellites with laser downlink capability?" he asked. "That would eliminate the jamming problem."
Ravenheart sighed and shook her head. "Sure we do, but we're not getting any replies on the linkup. I don't know if it's us or them."
The machine beeped again, and Kyle saw the data display change, and a couple of words on it began to flash.
"Tox," Ravenheart said, her eyes widening slightly. "The message is cyber-encoded." She reached down and pulled out the retinal scanner unit, but detached the optical cable from it. From the same compartment she removed a small adapter plug with a round swivel-pad attached. She connected it to the end of the optical cable and then slotted the entire attachment into a jack behind her right ear, from which it hung. That done, the displays on the communication rig changed, and Ravenheart's eyes became unfocused. Her jaw, though, suddenly clenched.
Kyle turned toward the Asian trooper. "Induction link?" he asked.
The trooper nodded. "Easier to interface with helmet gear I and the like."
Kyle nodded and then leaned in toward the man, extending his hand. "Kyle Teller," he said.
The trooper shook Kyle's hand. "Corporal David Lim."
While Ravenheart stared into nowhere, Kyle exchanged introductions with the rest of the troopers present. Vathoss merely gave him a grim smile when Kyle came to him. "Yes, I suppose we do already know each other," Kyle said, turning away just as Ravenheart yanked the cable out and stood up quickly. Her body was tense, and her eyes hard. She looked around at the other troopers, and then at Kyle. "I need to talk with my team," she told him tersely. "Why don't you go get your friend?"
Kyle nodded and turned to leave the room. "Soaring Owl did get out," he just barely heard Ravenheart say. "The message was from him. He sends his condolences that we survived."