by Tom Dowd
The blow smashed against the magical shield and pushed Kyle to one side, clearing the door for Seeks-the-Moon, who quickly stepped in. The man turned to meet him, and Kyle saw a slash of red energy cut across him as Seeks-the-Moon's own hand shot out. Blood and ichor immediately burst from the man's neck as he stumbled back, clutching at the wound. He fell backward over a crate and crashed down onto the floor. Seeks-the-Moon maneuvered himself between the man and Kyle as Kyle rushed forward into the main room.
The four family members were dead, their bodies twisted and tossed aside. As Kyle rushed in, one of the men, the larger of the two remaining, had just finished snapping the neck of a teenage boy. He let the body drop at his feet and charged at Kyle.
The man was quick for his size, but Kyle let the shield spell dissipate and quickly reworked the energy. It flowed together through his fingers and extended toward the man, almost solidifying into a shaft of physical energy. The man tried to turn, but couldn't, hitting the end of the shaft head on. The energy burst around him like water from a hose, tearing into him and arcing around him.
As the man stumbled, Kyle sidestepped and then lashed out with his own kick, catching him on the side of the knee. Kyle felt the leg snap, and the man twisted, screaming with more pain. He fell, crashing down headfirst onto the concrete floor.
Pain surged through Kyle's side as the other man hit him blind-side. He stumbled, most of the breath getting knocked out of him as the man hit him again across the side of the head. A wave of pain and nausea washed over Kyle as he turned away, trying to protect himself. The man struck again, and this time Kyle felt the blow slice by close to his ear.
Kyle jabbed up with his fist and caught the man's forearm, slamming it away. Expecting another blow, Kyle spun aside, his arms moving in what he knew would be a futile attempt to protect his head. But the blow didn't come. Instead, his attacker stopped suddenly, a look of surprise crossing his face as a bolt of flame chewed its way out his chest to explode across the front of his body. Blood and fire poured from his mouth as he pitched forward to land at Kyle's feet. Beyond him, in the door, the last energy from Seeks-the-Moon's spell faded away, dissipating off the spirit's hand.
"Thanks," Kyle said.
The spirit shrugged. "Are you hurt?"
"No, just banged up. Nothing we can't deal with."
“That one is alive," the spirit said, pointing at the man Kyle had speared. "I don't feel so bad about killing these other two."
"I knew you'd come back," said a frail woman's voice.
Both Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon turned toward the sound. On one of the cots, where Kyle had seen her earlier, was the old woman. She was staring at him. Her voice had barely enough breath to create words.
Kyle walked over toward her. "I thought you were going to leave me like this," she said.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what you . . ."
The old woman looked away at the bodies scattered around the large room. "Or did you come back for them?" she asked, her attention drifting.
Kyle glanced at Seeks-the-Moon, who seemed equally perplexed, and then turned back. The woman had grown very still, except for her mouth, which was moving slightly. Kyle leaned down closer, and she said as she died, "No, you came to take all of us."
Kyle stood up slowly and looked back at Seeks-the-Moon, but neither said anything. There was a moan from the man Kyle had speared. He moved, and Kyle grabbed him, lifting him up and flipping him onto one of the cots. Kyle shifted his senses into astral space and studied the man.
His aura was wrong, twisted, laced with dark streaks, and with his astral senses Kyle could almost smell a stench coming from him. The man, clutching his leg in pain, hissed up at Kyle.
"The bus was going to the main hive," Kyle said. "Where is it?”
The man spat, a glob of blood and greenish fluid that Kyle turned slightly to avoid.
Kyle smacked the side of the man's shattered knee with an open palm, and the man choked back a howl of pain.
"Here's the chip truth—I know what you are, and I know that the spirit that used to inhabit that body is dead. That means I don't have the slightest pang of guilt about doing whatever I need to do to you to make you talk."
The man only sneered. Kyle could see, though, that sweat had broken out across his face. He couldn't tell if it was from pain or fear.
"It's a simple spell really," Kyle said as a small swirl of black and red energy appeared floating above his now outstretched hand. "As the energy covers you, it'll feel like thousands of tiny red-hot needles jabbing into your body. Nothing immediately serious . . . But now imagine if that energy covered your own body and I could make it hurt more and more until all you had was the pain. No body, no mind, just the pain."
The man shrank back as Kyle spoke and the swirl of energy began to drift toward him.
"Then," Kyle went on, "it'll use any opening it can to get inside your body. . ."
"Cermak and Racine," the man hissed suddenly, holding out his hand to ward off the slowly approaching spell. "The power plant!"
Kyle nodded and stood, confident from the man's expression and attitude that he spoke the truth. "Good." Kyle unslung his Ares combat rifle and aimed it at the man. "I'd have hated to create a spell like that on the fly."
He fired a burst of three bullets, deciding the creature's death was worth the waste.
30
They approached the vicinity of Cermak and Racine carefully. Kyle didn't know the area, except by mentally following the path of both streets from where he knew them to where they had to intersect The neighborhood, southwest of the devastated Noose and northwest of the rebuilt downtown Core, was fairly rundown. In the years following the destruction of the IBM Building, it had gone from being an ethnic enclave to the only sanctuary for many displaced by the disaster.
Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon walked cautiously down Cermak from Ashland looking for signs of the insect hive. It was hard to miss. About three-quarters of a kilometer east of Ashland the two could clearly make out the tall exhaust stack of the power plant where the insect-spirit-inhabited man had told them it would be. It was mostly dark, except for some slowly blinking lights on the tower and around the plant building itself.
They stayed on the opposite side of the street, trying to act casual and avoid detection. As they got closer, and could see the site better, they began to make out some additional smaller buildings and power distribution towers to the right of the main plant building, which stood about six or seven stories high just behind the towering hundred-and-fifty-meter smokestack. There was activity around the building; a few cars sat scattered in the wide-open grassed and rail-tracked area that fronted the building. A dozen meters or so from the only large warehouse doors that Kyle could see, a row of three Chicago Transit Authority buses were lined up, their motors running but lights out. As he and Seeks-the-Moon watched, the large doors were closing, hiding a set of bus taillights inside. There seemed to be guards, but they were milling around the line of buses almost nonchalantly—Kyle guessed that they were relying on spirits in astral space that he could not see.
"Anything?" Kyle asked Seeks-the-Moon, who's own astral senses were always active.
"This is the hive."
"You're sure?"
"There is no question. The air reeks of it."
"Can you see any spirit guards?"
"No."
"No?"
The spirit scowled. "That's what I said. The men and women standing around the bus all seem to be like those we killed at the warehouse, but I see no true form spirits." Seeks-the-Moon told him. “They are here, though."
"In the building?"
"In the main building, and in the smaller ones. Maybe underneath them too. It feels as if there are many hives and nests here. But they're all quiet."
"Any idea why?"
"Perhaps the time is near and the queens are distracted."
"So no one's telling them to do anything."
The spirit nodded.
"I'm only guessing."
"Let's turn at the next street and look for Knight Errant," Kyle said. "They can't be too far."
The two turned north at the rubble of what looked like it had once been the site of a restaurant or cafe that had later become home to a group of particularly incompetent bomb-makers. They also passed a row of rundown and apparently abandoned houses. There was, in fact, almost no sign of life.
"Do you think they were smart enough to take the people who lived in the area first?" Seeks-the-Moon said.
"I don't know if they were smart enough," Kyle replied. "but they are certainly savage enough."
Seeks-the-Moon started to speak, then stopped and gestured up the street with his head. "There," he said quietly. "A large truck and a moment ago a group of people near it."
"Knight Errant."
"Most likely."
Instead of turning east again as they'd intended, Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon continued along the street toward the shapes the spirit had seen. As they got within half a block they could see someone walking toward them. It was the ork trooper, Douglas. He nodded as they stopped a few feet from each other.
"You can't shake us that easily," Kyle said.
Douglas smiled. "No, Captain Ravenheart said she thought you'd show up before kickoff. She's over here." He gestured toward what seemed to Kyle just another deteriorated building, this one a walkup with a long front stair.
"Kickoff?"
Douglas' face clouded and he looked away as he escorted them up the steps. "We've found the hive," he said quietly.
Kyle nodded and said, "I understand," as Douglas pushed open the battered front door and made way for them to enter. Inside, another trooper stood, weapon ready, covering me front door. The building had once held apartments, and Douglas directed them toward the partially open door of one just beyond the lobby.
Inside, Ravenheart and two other troopers were studying a small display Kyle recognized as a remote control deck, undoubtedly for the drone. Sergeant Vathoss stood nearby and frowned slightly as Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon entered.
"Glad you could make it," Ravenheart said. "Sorry we had to cut and run on you like that, but when the bus bolted I was afraid we'd lose it."
Kyle nodded and shrugged. "No harm done. Like I told Douglas—you can't shake us that easily."
For no reason Kyle could guess, Ravenheart glanced at Seeks-the-Moon. "I suspect you're right."
"What's the plan?"
She turned back to the remote control deck. "Well once we get the reprogramming done, which shouldn't be much longer,"—she stressed the words for the benefit of the other two troopers working the display—"we're going to set it on autopilot, get it airborne, give us some time to get clear, and thread it like a needle through one of those windows over there. After that, we cut power, it loses altitude, drops as far as it can, and . . ." She let her voice trail off. "Well, then it explodes."
"How far off can you remote pilot it from?" Kyle asked her.
Ravenheart smiled and shook her head in mock disbelief. "You are sharp, Teller, I'll give you that. With the deck we have here, and with the minor damage to the drone—"
"It's damaged?"
"Slightly. It apparently hit something while Soaring Owl was trying to launch it. Probably the sides of the bay or the cover doors. Anyway, with that and everything else factored in, our guess is about a kilometer and a half for any reliability."
"Just at the edge of the blast radius."
She nodded. "Just beyond it, we hope."
"What's your timetable?"
She looked back at the display. "I hope to detonate within the hour."
“That is good,” Seeks-the-Moon said suddenly. "It is beginning."
Nearly everyone in the room turned their attention to him. He was staring off in the direction of the power plant, and to Kyle he looked wan and drawn.
"You feel something?" Kyle asked.
The spirit nodded. "Power is being drawn away from here, everywhere, into there," he said. "I can feel it; I am weaker."
"How soon?" asked Ravenheart.
"Soon."
"Then we have little time." Kyle turned to Ravenheart. "I want to get the people out."
"What?"
"As many as we can, just before the bomb goes off. There are buses there. We can use them to carry people away." Before Ravenheart could answer, he turned slightly and addressed the others in the room. "Any idea how quickly they're taking the buses inside?"
One of the troopers, a short woman with dirty-red hair, said, "There were three other buses here when the one we were following arrived. It got in line, and about a half-hour later, just before you got here, one pulled out from inside and the other pulled in to take its place."
"Going in is suicide," said Ravenheart angrily.
"I didn't say we'd go in," Kyle told her. "I don't like it, but from the look of things and from what Seeks-the-Moon senses now, and the fact that it seemed to him that there were many, many more spirits inside the building, I think you're right."
"Then what?"
"The buses outside. Few seem to be guarding them. If we hit them hard and fast we could gain control of the buses within the space of a few minutes. There's plenty of room to turn them around." Kyle shifted his attention to the others in the room. He noticed that the trooper who had been watching in the hall was standing in the doorway listening. "If we do this right, we could get us and the buses clear before the bomb goes off."
"They'll come after the buses," Ravenheart said. "And the bugs'll tear them apart."
"But what will they do?" Seeks-the-Moon asked. "What will happen when the bomb detonates?"
Ravenheart turned toward him, scowling. "The buses will be sardine cans in a microwave."
"No," said the spirit, evening his tone. "What will happen to the spirits when their queens are dead?"
Her face blanked. "I don't know."
"Nor do I."
"What have they done in the past?" Kyle asked Ravenheart.
"What do you mean?"
"You said you've destroyed hives and nests before. What happened to the spirits when the queen died?"
She frowned and looked away for a moment, thinking. "It depends on which kind they are. Roaches don't care. They really don't have queens. Same for flies and beetles and the others that have 'nests' rather than hives. The true hivers, with real queens, they usually go nuts and either mill around the queen's body or start attacking each other. I think the ants tend to do that"
Kyle nodded. "Then we have to hope it's true hivers chasing the buses."
"You're insane," she said. "I can't jeopardize the mission doing this."
"You won't be. The drone'll be airborne and the clock will be ticking. No matter what happens, the drone goes in and detonates. Freeing the buses and targeting the drone aren't related; the drone mission won't be compromised, no matter what happens to the bus mission."
"I can't give you any of my people," Ravenheart told him evenly. He could see, though, that she was fighting to control her anger.
"I'd like your help," he told her, "but I don't need it. I can do this alone."
Now her eyes widened and she shook her head. "You're truly insane. There's no way you can do it."
"I'll bet I can."
She pointed at him, and Kyle could hear the edge in her voice. "You aren't thinking clearly. The only reason you want to do this is because you think your wife and daughter were on that last bus. What about the other two buses, Kyle?
"Assuming you take out the guards quickly, assuming there aren't too many inside the buses that we can't see, and assuming that you don't immediately attract the attention of the billion or so bugs that are in the fraggin' building, what then? How are you going to drive all three buses?"
"You're right about me not thinking clearly, and I'm glad I'm not," Kyle retorted. "I'm glad I haven't become some emotionless robot ready to kill maybe thousands but too cowardly to save maybe a hundred."
&nbs
p; Her eyes lit up and she stepped closer, jabbing at him with her finger. "Don't you dare tell me—"
Douglas' voice from the doorway cut her off. "I'll drive the other bus."
There was silence as Ravenheart, startled, turned toward the ork trooper who'd just entered the room. "Excuse me?" she asked.
"I'll drive the other bus," he said. "We know we can save those people. We have to do it."
Ravenheart was furious. "There's too much risk! I won't allow it. The destruction of the hives has to come first. There's no other alternative."
"I’ll drive the third bus," said Sergeant Vathoss from where he leaned against the wall.
Ravenheart spun to look at him. "What?" she all but screamed.
"What we're doing is something terrible, and awful, and necessary," he said to her. "But I won't kill those people, people who can still be saved, just because it's risky for us to try and save them. If we don't try, what's the fraggin' point? We destroy hives to save people. Well, Captain, I got bad news for you—the people on those buses are literally the people we're doing this for. That's the chip truth."
Ravenheart began to slowly look around the room, and Kyle did the same. It seemed most, if not all, of the Knight Errant troopers had come in or were standing in the hall within earshot. Many looked fearful, yet were nodding at the sentiments Sergeant Vathoss had unexpectedly voiced. The consensus was evident.
Ravenheart closed her eyes and shook her head violently. "You're all fraggin' glitched," she muttered, but she looked and sound very, very tired. "All right," she said, turning to Kyle. "Let's do it."
31
"The wacker is," Anne Ravenheart said as they stood alone in a large, loft-like warehouse space some blocks away from the insect hive, "that we don't even really know if the nuke will hurt them."
Kyle nodded, but said, "I'm pretty sure it will. We're talking about one hellacious blast of energy."
"Conventional blasts don't harm them," she countered. "No real mystic, human impetus behind them. No emotion, no energy."