Chapter 37 – Coordinated Extraction

  Now, with the run of the base, Cole went looking for the Kicker who had requested his support. He found a familiar face on the way.

  “Hey, hey!” said the enormous gunner, Deadlight, clapping him on the shoulders. Even without a Lewis Field, the man was two-seventy pounds of corn-fed Midwestern stock. Probably terrorized his local football divisions in highschool. “Glad to see you survived and my midnight rescue didn’t go to waste. You owe me one, yeah? I heard you can enhance otherworld armaments. Maybe see about pushing my work order to the front of the line?”

  “See what I can do,” said Cole. “But I don’t know if that pig of yours gets any fancier without sprouting wings and flying off. Know where I can find Mike Mitchells”

  “You mean Moriarty? Sure. Ops center,” Deadlight jerked his head back the way he’d come. "I just came from there.” Deadlight did an about-face and stalked back down the corridor, not checking to see if Cole was keeping up.

  “Moriarty?” asked Cole, catching up.

  “Get used to the callsigns, Airborne. Kicker tradition, hooah?” At Cole’s eye roll, he laughed. “Be glad. You were this close to getting Mario,” he held up his thumb and index finger a hair apart. “Lucky for you Morganstern’s nickname stuck, instead.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Cole badged into the multi-tiered ops center, ascending up a set of stairs to one of the top tiers where a squirrely guy with glasses was going over a field report. He looked up. “Ah, you got my message? Good, good. Pop a squat. How do you feel about demons?”

  “They’re not my biggest fan, if Kevlesh is the benchmark,” admitted Cole.

  Moriarty chuckled. “Not all demons are four-armed and eat hearts. Mission I’ve got lined up has local support, but I need Kickers to run parallel with them while my team does the extraction.”

  “That sort of thing happen often?” said Cole, “Local support?”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Deadlight. He grabbed himself a cup of coffee from the pitcher—the last cup, with no move to make a fresh pot. He also took the only available chair. So he was one of those. Not that Cole minded standing, but he certainly reevaluated Deadlight’s position on the list.

  “Yes. Two sides to every conflict, you know. The humans on Vael are fighting off a demonic invasion in a struggle that’s lasted, oh, a hundred years or so. Lines dug, fighting over a few miles of toxic wasteland. Imagine if World War One was still going on in the French countryside. Summoning a hero from Earth is something like giving the Kaiser an atom bomb. The opposition is understandably worried. Now, our contact in Vaelian logistics has told us they’re moving the hero to the front line to power-level him. He’s under heavy guard, high-level knights, a court mage, and a priest from their ecclesiastic order. But here’s the trick: the knights went ahead of him to scout the line, make sure our boy won’t get his head clipped off when he sticks it too far out of a trench. That means his party is split, and it’s vulnerable in transit.”

  Cole leaned forward, looking at the profile pulled up of the kid, one Leon Jacobs, fourteen, of Jacksonville, Mississippi, and the party of warriors assembled to escort him. “So you’re nabbing this kid en route. What’s my team’s objective?”

  “You’ll be making sure the knights don’t double back. They’re all at least level twenty. Serious threats to the extraction. Engage the garrison and force them onto the field, but don’t commit. Once we’ve got the kid, you pull back and we all go home.”

  “Sounds simple enough,”

  Moriarty leaned back. “That’s only because I’ve been laying the groundwork on this for the past four months. I need solid scouts for this, and I need those knights off my back. You and the other newbies need field experience. This is a risk-index 2 world. Don’t fuck up my op, Airborne, and we’ll get you some levels and maybe some loot. And I’ll owe you a favor. From what I hear, you’ve already got the rest of your training push hanging off your dick. Let’s see what you can do with them in the field. Let me have your finalized roster by tomorrow, and I’ll get Bricker’s stamp. Drills and brief on Thursday. We’re off-world by Friday.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Cole checked his watch. Tuesday. Hell, he was still exhausted from Curahee, but he didn’t join DOR to sit in a basement, and guns needing enhancement would still be there when he got back. “Let me talk to the others. The team isn’t ‘official’ yet.”

  Moriarty flashed him a thumbs-up. Deadlight slurped his coffee.

  “Just out of curiosity,” said Cole, “How come Deadlight doesn’t roll through with his hand-held A-10?”

  “I don’t get out of bed for less than RI-5,” bragged Deadlight.

  Moriarty snickered. “Ever hear the saying ‘when all you’ve got is a hammer’ in relation to one of your soldiers? This was an intel job, getting times, dates, intercepts, and knowing where to apply a scalpel. The Vaelian front is incredibly entrenched with layered defenses. Not even someone like Deadlight could fight his way in. We need subtlety and guile on this one. You’ll be sneaking in with some… irregular soldiers.”

  Cole nodded. He pulled out his new secure phone that Sophie had given him and made a group chat with Howie, Roxy, and Besson. He hesitated when he thought about adding Nona, as well. He still had to talk to her. Hell, he didn’t even know what her voice sounded like. He tapped out a quick overview, and asked for go no-go’s from each. Roxy and Howie were immediate go’s, while Besson took a minute longer. Didn’t take any of them for slackers, either. Satisfied, he also reached out and sent Nona a request to meet and talk. Their elusive last Curahee companion had specifically requested to be on his team, and he had to find out why. But first, Sophie had said the Termlink lab had information on everything the Analyzers touched. Maybe he could get some advance intel of his own.

  * * *

  “I saw how you let Besson operate on his own. You didn’t push him. Bricker said I have to join a team. I need a team that will let me do things my way, like you do.”

  Cole looked around Nona’s billet. It was a mess. The kitchenette was filled with dirty dishware, clothing and gear was thrown on the floor, and it looked like she’d been sleeping on her couch, instead of her bed. He was surprised she’d even let him in—but anyone who lived like this probably didn’t care if anyone saw them doing it.

  “You mean you need someone who will let you fuck off and do whatever you want,” said Cole.

  Nona’s dark eyes narrowed. “Did you come here just to insult me?”

  Cole tapped his hand on the only clean spot of the counter he could find. “I came to find out more about you. I looked you up—and your abilities. Tried to, anyway. It’s all locked behind special access. Me and the others, we’re all fighters. We’re soldiers, marines, and Roxy was Fleet Marine Force as a corpsman. We’re shaping up to be a combat recon and front-line team. I don’t even know what it is you do.”

  “I’m… useful,” said Nona. “My abilities aren’t suited to combat. But I’m useful.”

  “What are your abilities?” Cole asked.

  Nona looked away. “I… can’t tell you. Not that I don’t want to, I can’t. It’s from Bricker. Ask him if you don’t believe me. He’ll vouch for me.”

  “Why?! Why will Bricker vouch for you?”

  Nona met his eyes. “Like I said, I’m useful. Especially when it comes to getting in and out of places. I was there when you brought Morganstern into Last Fall Hold. Did you see me?”

  “No…” Cole admitted. “How did you get in?”

  “I walked through the front gate,” she said. “Two hours before you did. No one even looked at me.”

  Cole sighed. “Can you at least tell me what level you are?”

  “Twelve,” she said. “But I was already level four when we left.”

  “How?” asked Cole.

  Nona looked away, as though she’d just said something she shouldn’t have. Cole took a breath. Moriarty had said this was an intel op. “Maybe you should join the extraction team for this operation. They’re more experienced and they might be able to use someone who can get in and out of places in Otherworlds.”

  “You won’t even give me a chance?” she asked.

  “It’s a lot to take on trust,” said Cole. “Too much for our first op as a team. Howie, Roxy, and Besson all fought beside me on Curahee. While you, what, watched from the shadows? Our lives were on the line. Did you even think about helping?”

  Nona looked away, again.

  “Like I said, it’s too much to ask for our first op. What about joining Moriarty’s team if you want to get in on the op?”

  “I don’t trust Moriarty. I trust you and Roxy and Howie.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ve got a strange way of showing it.”

  Nona glared at him. “I asked to join, didn’t I?”

  That was true. And it wasn’t nothing. Cole had known soldiers like Nona, people who played things so close to the chest they were practically stone statues.

  “Let me run it by the rest of the team,” said Cole. He sighed and got to his feet. “I want to trust you. If you’re so slippery that even I couldn’t spot you, then yeah, you’d be useful. But I don’t know you, and I’m not the only one in the group.”