Chapter 165: Chapter 159

“Yes, that was my first instinct as well,” Axle agreed in my ear. “If these reaper hounds are indeed coming from Dearth, it is possible they secreted them aboard the last shipment down, then refused the recall order knowing we would be engaged with the dream storm.”

“We’re spending too much time together, Axle. That was exactly what I guessed happened. BlueCleave! Secure the donut! And watch your backs, there’s still one of those reaper hounds out here somewhere,” I shouted, falling through the sky toward the fallen starfish trooper.

“I want every starfish trooper equipped with explosives, and heavy armor. The cameras don’t work, but wide area attacks do,” I told Tollya over coms. Rayna had assigned her the task of sweeping the donut. I wanted all of them to come back alive, and we had no more portals for me to use in case of attack. “Be careful above all else, you get me?”

“Yes boss!” came the standard shouted reply.

Dead on the ground in front of us was a hobb I didn’t recognize. Male, older than the last one had been. But torn asunder the same. Ligaments and vital organs were the primary areas of attack. Three reaper hounds had gotten him while he fought the dream storm monsters, and between the two threats, they’d overwhelmed the suit even more quickly than I’d thought would be possible.

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I growled, swiping the damn thing away.

Axle was in the process of retrieving the body, with a small unit from our BlueCleave regulars. Rayna helped load the body personally. Each of the starfish troopers came from her original tribe in the grasslands of Storage. She did not weep but she treated the corpse with the utmost respect.

Once our single fallen soldier was loaded, Axle and I turned to the reaper hounds themselves. The area around us was scattered with scorch marks from Phyllis, ruined hulls of dream storm tentacle monsters, and thick, gray blood from the hobb.

Axle poked around at one of the reaper hound bodies, jumping back when one of its scythe arms twitched. He took a steadying breath and chuckled, untucking his tail. “These are terrifying. I cannot imagine facing one in combat,” Axle said.

“Not exactly fun, no,” I replied. “They’re nearly impossible to see, but Jada followed her nose and got one off of me.”

“There were four confirmed sightings. You only killed three, but no other hobbs were attacked during the battle,” Axle mused. “That indicates some level of intelligence. These animals are clearly BuyMort capable.”

He peered skyward for a long moment before nodding. “We should get these remains somewhere secure, preferably under BlueCleave guard.”

I glanced back at our escort, a full squad of fifteen regular hobbs and a starfish trooper. Axle must have meant heavier guard than that. I nodded to our troopers, and they began picking up the pieces.

One of the reaper hounds I had crushed as it leapt at me, and its skull was shattered. The other’s torso and limbs had been carved up by my high-intensity twelve-gauge laser beam, but its head was mostly intact. The third we retrieved had died in my carpet bombing and came in several sealed plastic bags.

Axle seemed to think we could learn something from them, and the corpses might become valuable evidence for me to use against Dearth. 

Somehow.

Once everything was loaded in the APC, we piled into our seats and headed back to the city. The BlueCleave mobilization that had taken place largely without me was wrapping up. Spent energy cells gathered, weapons and soldiers retrieved to their regular posts, vehicles packed up neat and orderly, traveling in lines into Prescott, or to secure the donut.

Traffic, in other words.

Axle and I conversed lightly about the reaper hounds, a subject we weren’t worried about being overheard. He suggested we go over the footage, and I pulled up a recording from my helmets ‘magic memory.’

A small fee to MortMobile later, and Axle was able to see the video too. After he perused and manipulated the footage to rewatch certain parts of it, he turned to me and asked, “your helmet is capable of providing you with attack-direction indicators, yes?”

I scowled and nodded. “It's supposed to. But now that you mention it, nothing like that happened with the reaper hound attacks.” My fingers traced a line at my throat, where my sun-tanned skin was replaced with more pale flesh.

Makeup would be fun for my next CTV studio visit.

Axle rubbed his chin and licked his nose. “They must be capable of manipulating light, somehow. If they’re capable of fooling even your helmet, I doubt we’ll have much luck with simple cameras. Even worse, if it is light manipulation, it's possible they can even hide from thermal cameras, though I do think those are our best bet right now.”

“There’s already a network of security cameras in Prescott, Dearth remnants,” I said. “We could use some of those, maybe help find these things, how they move around unrestricted.”

I leaned forward in my seat. “They got around our primary force and went straight for the starfish troopers.”

Axle nodded, his fur bristling. “That is a troubling detail, but it gives us insight as well. The mind behind this is clearly targeting anyone in a starfish suit,” he said, before looking across the seats at me. “Thank you for pulling Jada out of that fight.”

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“Of course, Axle,” I replied.

The APC rumbled as it engaged the brakes. There was a crowd in front of the donut’s primary entrance doors. The doors were massive, several stories high each, and sealed shut. BlueCleave hobbs stood at the entry ramp, brandishing guns.

Now that the threat was passed, some of the citizenry had apparently taken offense to the way the military handled the donut.

It was back on the ground, with every entrance and exit sealed and under heavy guard. None of the staff working on board were allowed to stay and had been detained for questioning. There were a few hundred of them, and it appeared our actions had worried families and employers alike.

D’lon Stanche stood at the front of a mob, arms crossed as I stood to exit the APC.

I stepped out into the late afternoon sun and walked over to the cordon. “What is this?” I asked a hobb guard.

D’lon himself stepped forward and raised a detached megaphone palm mic. “This is an unreasonable seizure of affiliate property!” His voice echoed from somewhere behind him in the crowd, filling the square. Loud cheers and roars of protest followed his proclamation. “First the water rationing, now this?”

I sighed, deeply, as the hobb shrugged and turned away.

“Helmet,” I whispered. “Cast booming voice.”

My anti-magic helmet had a series of helpful features, so long as I could figure out the proper spell-words to access the programming. Booming voice amplified my own voice so I could shout over the crowd.

“The donut belongs to Silken Sands and is being swept by security for all of our protection. Standard operation, you guys have nothing to worry about. It’ll be back to business as usual as soon as security is satisfied,” I said, my voice echoing over the square and gathered protesters.

The crowd quieted again, until D’lon raised his mic. “The donut may belong to you,” he said, “but the cargo on board belongs to us! What assurances do we have that your BlueCleave hobbs will not disturb our cargo?”

More shouts of assent came from the crowd, but they were significantly quieter than the first time. I took a moment to wonder how they had formed so quickly but fixated on D’lon as their source and ringleader. He had been hounding me for discounts for weeks, and now that his Siberian complex had been destroyed by Kraken Corp, I had the bad feeling I would be seeing a lot more of the formerly wealthy business owner.

D’lon Stanche was the kind of guy who would have hired me, convinced me to work for him for years with minimal pay increases that absolutely did not keep up with the cost of living, and then fired me the instant it became convenient for him to do so. My patience with him was limited, so I stepped forward and deactivated my helmet’s booming voice feature.

“None at all, D’lon. If security finds something of import, they will investigate it fully,” I said. “And the next time you form a mob against me, your rates to use my donut go up.”

D’lon narrowed his eyes and stared at himself in my chrome helmet. He adjusted a lick of curled hair across his forehead and turned back to the crowd, raising his palm mic.

“Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither!” he shouted to the gathered crowd.

“Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither!” D’lon chanted, turning back to face me as his mob took up the call.

Axle grabbed my elbow, and I took a deep breath. I turned to face my friend and advisor. He shook his head at me, slowly, with wide eyes.

I patted his shoulder and nodded reassuringly, before I turned back to the crowd and waited for their chant to die down. They noticed I wanted to say something, and the crowd’s interest outweighed their manufactured outrage.

With booming voice active again, I turned to them and spoke calmly.

“Business will resume as soon as BlueCleave gives us the ‘all clear.’ Make no mistake, what we just faced out there,” I paused, pointing at the still-smoldering battlefield in the distance, before repeating myself for emphasis. 

“What we just faced out there would have killed anyone who came into contact with it. BlueCleave is this city’s backbone! They support us, and we should support them. Everyone is free to waste their afternoon however they like, just clear the road so we can get business taken care of.”

I turned away as the crowd looked to D’lon for a response. He stammered for a moment, before getting them started on another round of their chanting.

Axle and I ignored them and walked up the ramp to the donut’s primary entrance.

 

 

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