“Okray, arshole,” I said while trying to slurp several straggling noodle ends into my mouth at the same time. “Whayyawan?”
I craned my neck to see which pissed off soldier wanted a piece of me this time, but instead, Lieutenant Stanton was standing directly behind me.
I spun around and leapt to my feet. Stanton had dropped his shoulders at my less-than-delicate response, but quickly hitched them back up by the time I’d stood.
“I believe that’s Lieutenant asshole,” Stanton said dryly.
I suddenly swallowed my mouthful without chewing, which, given the limpness of the noodles, shouldn’t have been a problem. “Sorry,” I said, clearing my throat. “Some of the soldiers have been giving me trouble.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Stanton replied dryly.
“Look,” I said, “Did you come here to insult me, or would you care to join me for a plate of dirty noodle surprise?”
Stanton wrinkled his nose. “As much as I’d love to share whatever that is dangling from your mouth,” he said, “Captain Patel has sent me here to tell you that we’ve just located the Dominion force’s hiding place.”
I ran the back of my hand across my mouth, knocking loose a stray piece of noodle onto the floor with a tiny splat. “Good for you,” I said, swallowing again. “But my team is grounded, remember?”
Stanton gave a too-quick smile. “How could I forget?” His expression quickly became serious.
“But now I’m afraid I’ve come to cut your quaint family meal short,” he said. “Captain Patel has ordered your team to join her on location immediately.”
14
“ONCE AGAIN, COLONEL Vaiega has come to your rescue,” Captain Patel said as I stepped out of our transport and onto the uneven pavement of downtown Kalliste. She pursed her lips, then continued. “But mark my words—he can’t keep saving you. Sooner or later, you’ll be on your own.”
“Then,” she said with a wicked grin, “you’ll be all mine.”
She paused for dramatic effect, but when she saw that we just kept going about our business, her shoulders fell. Patel cocked an eyebrow as she watched Rand hoist a large, lumpy black duffel bag over his shoulder and it made a loud jangling noise. Kovac emerged, wearing his almost comically small protective vest and carrying a large rectangular box made of metal. Instead of cocking another eyebrow, Patel cocked her entire head.
“Don’t worry about those, Captain,” I said to Patel. “This is why Colonel Vaiega wants us here.”
She glared at me for a long moment before leading us around the corner of a tall building with graffiti-covered walls. We came to a stop at Captain Patel’s mobile command unit, which was essentially a glorified, double-wide armored transport. Two soldiers with plasma rifles stood stiffly on either side of the entrance at the rear of the vehicle, like sphinxes guarding an oracle—only they weren’t glowing, and I was pretty sure that laser beams weren’t going to shoot out of their eyes if we lost confidence in ourselves.
Patel motioned us inside. We climbed up the crate of ammunition which served as makeshift stairs and looked around. Unlike other general transports, this one didn’t have benches that ran along the length of its walls. Instead, one wall was covered in vid screens and consoles, while the other wall was a single screen with a detailed map of the city. A narrow table sat in the middle of the space, with folding chairs tucked underneath. Lieutenant Stanton was sitting at the far end of the table.
“So, you’ve brought everything but the kitchen sink, have you?” His deadpan expression didn’t falter.
“Now, wait a minute,” Rand shot back. “If the governmental machine in which you’re so invested wasn’t so woefully unprepared to handle this conflict on its own, we wouldn’t have needed to acquire any additional items.”
Stanton shook his head slightly. “Well, in that case, I hope you have an abundance of opportunities to use them.”
Lopez looked down at Stanton with an equally emotionless expression on her face. “You’re actually kind of cute. Don’t go ruining it by making dumb jokes.”
Stanton’s mouth fell open. It hung there until he suddenly stood at attention as Patel entered.
“Take a seat,” she said, gesturing to the right-hand side of the table as she moved to the center of the opposite side and stood there rigidly.
Rand and Lopez sat down at the far end. Kovac followed, but the space between the table and the wall was just barely wide enough for him to squeeze through if he shuffled sideways. By some miracle or feat of magic, he made it into a seat.
Patel looked at us with barely-contained contempt. “For the record, I protested your involvement here,” she said. “However, I am under orders to bring you up to speed and integrate your team into my current operation.”
Rand grumbled softly. Patel snapped her head in his direction. “Excuse me, is there something you’d like to say to me?”
From the end of the table, Rand looked up from the mini data pad he was scowling over. “Yes,” he said. “The UFS makes it damned difficult to file patents, and I need to submit this one before my new materials are recorded on camera.”
Patel shook her head so sharply that her tight bun looked like it was about to fall out. “This is exactly why I didn’t want your team involved. Put that away, immediately!”
Rand stared back at her, without breaking eye contact as he reluctantly folded his mini data pad in half and slipped it into a chest pocket.
“See?” Patel said, looking at me now. “Following orders isn’t that difficult, now is it?”
I bit the inside of my lip to keep from saying something nasty in response. Patel kept her eyes on me for another long moment, as if she had special powers that allowed her to sense when lower-ranking officers wanted to unload on her. But when it became clear that I wasn’t going to break, she turned slightly to the side and pointed at one of the monitors behind her.
“This,” she said, pointing to a large monitor about halfway up the wall, “is Cosmart’s primary factory on Triton.”
The screen showed a long rectangular building with a blue-gray exterior and solid walls that were only interrupted by a single row of skinny windows along the top fourth of the building. Across the entire building was a giant Cosmart logo: thick, pale yellow letters outlined in black and a white ring around the “O,” tilted at a slight angle—all on a solid blue background.
“Best deals in the solar system,” I said under my breath to Kovac.
Patel kept talking. “We received multiple reports of suspicious-looking individuals in this area after the Dominion incursion.”
A raised hand from Lopez stopped Patel. She exhaled loudly, then said, “What is it, Private Lopez?”
Lopez’s expressionless face stared blankly at Patel. “Did they say these individuals were ‘suspicious,’ or ‘covered in fur’?”
Patel ignored the question. “The factory is closed for the night, so we sent a drone to look for unusual heat signatures inside. This is what came back.”
She touched the screen to reveal an aerial vid of the factory. Over the dark blue background were thick, light blue lines indicating the building’s outer wall, with thinner lines that suggested smaller rooms within. Scattered throughout the building were various soft yellow-colored shapes with hard right angles, where factory machinery was idling. And near the center of the building was a very large cluster of orange and red shapes, the outer ring of which were moving.
The drone moved closer to the building and approached what looked to be a window, when suddenly there was a quick blur of yellow mixed with orange, and then the screen went suddenly blank.
Patel ran her finger across the screen and reversed the footage to a view of the entire building and froze the frame. She pointed at the mass of orange and red at the center of the building and said, “We’re confident this is where the monsters have taken their captives.”
“So, what do we do?” I asked.
Patel glared at me. “You will do nothing for
the time being. My orders were to ‘bring you in’ to my operation, which is exactly what I’ve done.”
She flashed a brief, disingenuous smile, then continued, “You will remain here with me and observe why I deserved every bit of my promotion to Captain—and more, now that you won’t be around to muddy things up.”
Patel turned to face the wall of monitors, pressed a button on a console near the center of the wall, and said, “Theta team, this is command. Come in.”
A nearby monitor switched to an exterior dark-vision view of the Cosmart building, which cast the scene in eerie shades of light gray.
“Command, this is Theta team,” came a gruff voice through the console speaker. “Awaiting your order.”
I cleared my throat. “Captain, permission to speak?”
Patel kept facing the screens, her back to me. After a moment, she said, “What is it, Sergeant Walker? I’m trying to run an operation here.”
I swallowed, then said, “I know I mentioned this before, but you really should consider bringing in Winnifred Harker.”
Lopez snorted, but I pretended not to notice. “I’m sure she could tell you what that thermal image means—she might even be able to tell which of those colored blobs are vampires, werewolves, or civilians.”
Patel spun around. “You mean the enemy combatant who’s attracting and distracting every male in the medical wing?”
“She’s not a distraction!” I shot back, maybe a little too quickly. I lowered my voice. “She’s a reliable source, and I was getting information . . . wait—every male?”
Patel narrowed her eyes.
I shook my head. “Even if she’s not exactly what she says she is, her intel could save lives. She at least deserves a chance to prove herself.” I paused for a moment, waiting for the force of my argument to change her mind.
Stanton snickered and Patel bowed her head. “This war will be won by the United Federation of Sol’s Peacekeepers,” Patel said, staring straight at me. “Not a pair of bedroom eyes.”
She spun back around, pressed another button on the wall console, and said, “Theta team—proceed as planned.”
My cheeks burned, but I kept my mouth shut and watched the monitor. At the bottom of the screen, a team of five or so soldiers crept toward the building in a “V” formation. They had only gone a few meters when the building’s high windows suddenly flared to life, washing out the vid feed. A string of curses followed over the speaker.
“Theta unit,” Patel said quickly. “What the hell was that?”
A gruff voice replied, “No idea, Captain, but out here it’s bright as —”
The vid image of the building slowly began to resolve. “Huh. Looks like the light’s fading, Captain. Standing by.”
Patel was staring at the screen, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. She tilted her head from side to side, then, after an agonizing minute or so of silence, she finally replied, “Theta team—continue to the building.”
She tapped a couple of buttons on the console and the image on the main screen changed slightly as our view switched to the dark-vision helmet cam of the lead soldier.
“Roger that,” said the voice from the speaker. “Proceeding to the build—”
In the background, I heard a faint clanging noise, followed by the scraping sound of metal on metal. On the screen, from one of the building’s wide metal cargo doors emerged a solitary, shadowed figure.
15
THE DARK FIGURE in tattered clothing took a few halting steps forward, then stopped. Its head was bowed so that its dark hair dangled, swaying slightly from side to side like a greasy curtain. The team of soldiers were only about twenty meters away now.
The mobile command center was silent. Captain Patel’s hands dropped to her side as she leaned toward the vid screen. A loud crackle from a nearby speaker made everyone in the room jump.
“Captain,” a gruff voice said. “It’s a civilian. I think they’ve escaped.”
The vid image zoomed in on the figure, revealing a male wearing a torn checkered shirt, somewhere under two meters tall, and thin as a toothpick. He raised his head slightly, then started stumbling forward again hesitantly.
“My God,” I said in a low voice. “I’ve seen him before.”
Patel craned her neck to the side. “Where?”
“That’s the teenager the werewolves ran off with from the park,” I said.
“You say he’s a teenaged boy?” Patel asked.
I nodded. “As far as I can tell. But I’ve been burned one too many times to say for sure.”
Patel gave an impatient snort and turned back to the vid screen.
“Theta team, the civilian is not a threat. I repeat, the civilian is not a threat. Clear him out of the area, then continue into the building.”
The slow-moving boy with dingy, shredded jeans was now about fifteen meters away from the soldiers, his steps a bit awkward.
In a slightly more distant voice, we heard the gruff soldier say, “Hey, civvie! Get your ass out of here, now!”
The boy kept shuffling forward at the same speed, as if he hadn’t heard the soldier’s command.
“Did I stutter, boy? Move it!”
No response—just a slow, steady shuffling forward. From somewhere off-screen, someone else yelled something unintelligible, and a medium-sized water carton came flying at the boy. It struck him in the head and bounced off, which was followed by a round of laughter over the speaker. The boy looked up, sneered, then looked back down and continued his halting gait forward. He was only about ten meters away now from the helmet cam.
The soldiers began tossing more trash at the kid, who tilted his head to the side, finally facing the cam. His narrowed eyes flashed briefly, and I could see now that he a pretty pronounced under bite. His long, coarse hair was parted down the middle and fell down around his surprisingly prickly chin.
I cleared my throat. “Um . . . Captain?”
Patel remained facing the vid screens. “What is it now?”
“Something isn’t right.”
“Damn straight,” Patel said forcefully. “Civilians here have no respect for Peacekeepers. We’ve gone easy on them for far too long—it’s about time they were reminded of who’s in charge.”
A much more precise throat clearing came from the far end of the table. “If I may, Captain,” Stanton said, “This really isn’t good form.”
“No—there’s something else,” I chimed in right behind Stanton. “That kid doesn’t look right. And the way he’s moving—I don’t know. It’s . . . off.”
The steadily-moving boy in tattered clothing was now only five meters or less from the belligerent soldiers. This time, I noticed his hands—they were surprisingly hairy.
“Wait—were his hands always that hairy?” I said quietly, unsure if I was seeing things. For some reason, an image came to mind of a secondary school student in a blue and yellow letterman’s jacket.
There was another barrage of trash that rained down on the approaching boy. This time, when he raised his head to confront the yelling soldiers, he parted his lips to reveal two sets of enlarged canine teeth. In my mind, the secondary school student in the letterman’s jacket suddenly sprouted fur and howled.
My stomach hardened. “Tell them to fall back, now!” I yelled.
But it was too late. The boy’s mouth suddenly lengthened into a muzzle, his skin sprouting dark, greasy fur. As he reared back his elongated head, his skinny chest and arms swelled to nearly twice their original size, shredding what was left of his checkered shirt. His quadriceps grew too large for his jeans to stay in place, and when his his leg lengthened from the knee down, his ratty shoes burst to reveal large, sharply clawed feet. Lopez’s data pad fell to the table with a loud clang.
The gruff voice sounded again from the speaker. “What the frak?!”
In an instant, the dark-furred werewolf leapt off-screen to the left. When the helmet cam swung to catch his movement, the monster had already ripped throug
h one soldier’s protective vest, leaving a set of deep gashes across his chest. As the first soldier fell, the next closest soldier raised her rifle. The creature leapt onto this soldier’s shoulders, grabbed her helmeted head, and twisted it quickly 180 degrees. The entire room groaned. Rand covered his eyes.
Plasma slugs flew past the werewolf and one of the projectiles caught him in the shoulder. He yelped in pain and dropped quickly to the ground. The blast was more than enough to incapacitate a human. However, this creature simply snarled and leapt at the soldier who had fired the shot, who stood just to the right of the lead soldier.
The helmet cam swung around just in time to see the the next soldier doubled over, with blood darkening the waist and legs of his fatigues. The werewolf was now grasping the only other remaining soldier by his protective vest and, in a blur, he lifted the soldier above his head and slammed him onto the solid street below with a sickening crunch.
The lead soldier stepped backward with his plasma rifle raised, just in time for his helmet cam to catch the snarling werewolf spring upward at him. The rifle fired high, and the beast’s furry arms shot out and clamped down onto the soldier’s wrists. The wolf placed a thick, clawed foot onto the soldier’s chest, and, with a guttural grunt, he yanked back and tore the soldier’s arms cleanly off.
There was a scream of pain as the soldier dropped to his knees, helmet cam still fixed on the monster. The werewolf’s snarl fell and he bowed his head, his eyes watering. A moment later, the werewolf shuddered. He howled, spun around, and bounded toward the building and back through the open cargo door, just before the helmet cam fell forward and filled the screen with darkness.
16
THE COMMAND CENTER was silent. I looked around the room and saw open mouths and wide eyes, staring at the darkened screen. We had just had front-row seats to a one-wolf massacre.
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