Incursion

Chapter 17: Storm

I brought Sarah and Olivia one small steaming cup of instant noodles each, then sat down on the cloth sheet they had spread out between them. The B2 level of the Copperfield | Mahogany Association Centre was buzzing with a low murmur of hope. Most of the civilians we had rescued were now having some late midnight supper from the 41 CBG’s stores: instant noodles, pre-made pastries, canned soup, rice pudding, and microwaveable sausages and burger patties. In the last hour, the 41 CBGs had distributed clothing and medicine to the newly sheltered civilians as well. For now there was some rationing as food and clothing were in short supply, but the damage Shadow Team – in other words, Knight – had doled out to the nearby major enemy outpost meant that the reservists would have less dangers to worry about in the immediate area. They would be able to go on supply runs with more ease.

As my two former cellmates took the cups of noodles from me, I glanced around at the rest of the tired people around me. Space was also in short supply, but right now no one seemed to be complaining that everyone else was within speaking distance of them. On the contrary, some of them were even beginning to smile as they took bites and sips of what was probably their first warm meal in days.

“Thank you, Christina,” Sarah said to me, taking a sip of the beef noodles I had handed her.

“Call me Chrissy, will you?” I sat down beside her and gave her a pat and rub on the back. “It’s not a lot. The soldiers here don’t have much food yet, but they’ll be able to get more in a day or two.”

Olivia took a sip from her own share of noodles and shook her head with a rueful little smile. “After the last couple of weeks, this is more than enough for now.”

“Sorry,” I apologized, bowing my head a little. “It’s not home cooking, or five-star cuisine, or even healthy—”

“Chrissy. It’s okay. We can survive on this stuff in the short term,” Sarah interrupted, lifting her cup for a second. “Plus, we’re safe now, aren’t we?”

The two girls looked at me intently, waiting for an answer.

I took a breath and nodded. “You’re safe now. The city still needs to be liberated, but right now you’re going to be staying here where you’ll be warm and fed, hidden from the bad guys.”

I looked down at my hands, curling my fingers to form loose fists. The city still had a ways to go from being free of the invading forces, but tonight was proof that with care and a can-do attitude, we could make a difference. I didn’t care how long it would take.

We’ll save everyone.

Lifting my gaze again, I asked, “So… what happened after the mess at the Stampede? Did you two manage to get out in the chaos?”

Sarah nodded. “Livi, Bonnie, and I managed to make it out, but we didn’t know where to go. So we went south. Figured we should put as much distance between us and the Stampede. We didn’t… expect there would be more soldiers in the southern end of Calgary. They found us and caught us a few days after we got out of the Stampede.”

“Bonnie.” I remembered the last member of our cage. “Bonnie Trevor, right? Where is she? Is she okay?”

The dark glances Sarah and Olivia exchanged between themselves made me suspect I had just asked a stupid question. If Bonnie wasn’t here, then…

“Is she dead?” I found my voice eerily calm as I asked this question next.

“No,” Olivia replied, though from her expression the answer was of little comfort to her. “She was taken away with several others a few days ago.”

Taken. Where? Back to the Stampede? Or was she en route to who knows where, already out of town and on an Osprey?

“I keep thinking,” Sarah mused dejectedly, putting down her cup beside her, “There had to have been something I could have done. Then she’d still be with us. Here, eating with us.”

The regret was all too noticeable on Sarah’s face. Olivia was looking down into her cup, but I could tell she too was thinking of the same thing Sarah was.

“There was nothing you two could have done,” I said to them sincerely, though secretly I shared their sentiment. “You were up against too many armed soldiers. They’d have shot you if you tried anything.”

“If you were in my shoes, Chrissy… I’m sure you would have found a way.”

This comment made me pause. Was that right?

“I don’t know about that,” I said uncertainly, bringing my knees up to my chest.

“You were the only one of us who stood up to those soldiers,” Sarah went on. Her words should have been a comfort, an inspiration, a way for me to feel relief somehow. But all they did was made me wish harder that I’d done more back then.

I forced myself to smile, hoping I looked embarrassed rather than bitter. “Yeah, but I backed down that time, remember?”

“Because I asked you to,” Sarah countered, clearly still holding on to the image of me as some great leader, some hero.

I shook my head. “I got angry. But I had to back down, or I’d have gotten you into more trouble.”

Olivia leaned toward me. “ ’Could have’, ‘should have’, it doesn’t matter. The truth is that none of us would be alive if you weren’t there, Chrissy. Neither of us blame of you for how things went down after the Stampede. We were worried, actually, when you never came back. We hoped you’d gotten out, too.”

I didn’t respond to that. I couldn’t save Barbara Brown. I was too late to rescue Bonnie Trevor. If they were both sitting here with me right now, would I feel any better?

I’m no hero. Far from it. Not after what I…

Mikey’s smiling face flashed in my mind. He was telling me for what felt like the thousandth time since that night, that it was okay. That everything was going to be okay.

What did you mean, Mikey? How would you have lived with what I’d done? What I let happen?

After a moment, Sarah cleared her throat. “So… you’re a soldier, Chrissy?”

“Huh?” I looked up at her distractedly.

She glanced down at my thigh holster holding my handgun, then to the submachine gun stuck to the side of my backpack.

“Are you with the Canadian Army?” Sarah asked me again, taking a slightly more upbeat tone. “It would certainly explain how you’re always so brave.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip. “Well… I’m not really part of the Canadian military. Those guys in uniforms upstairs, they’re with the Canadian Army. Me, I’m not military.”

“So, what are you, then?” Olivia piped up curiously.

I hesitated, not sure how to answer that.

“I’m not… supposed to say, but let’s just say I’m some kind of, err, super spy.”

Sarah burst out laughing, startling me and several others nearby. I smiled awkwardly as she contained her laughter. Even Olivia was trying to suppress a smile.

“Some kind of secret agent or something?” Sarah asked. There was some disbelief in her tone.

I chuckled, nodding slightly. “Can’t tell you more. If that’s what you want to believe, then I’m not going to discourage it.”

I put my index finger up in front of my lips in a sign of silence. “But really, keep that quiet.”

“I believe you.”

I glanced in Olivia’s direction. She was looking at me with an almost earnest expression, as if she wanted me to take her word for it.

“You do?” I asked her.

“I do,” she answered. “You, uh… really looked like you knew how to use a gun. And you knew how to… to fight.”

She paused for a second, then added: “Kind of makes me wish I could, too.”

“I’m flattered you feel that way, Olivia, but… leave the fighting to me and the soldiers upstairs. It’s… not as easy as it seems.”

“What do you mean?”

“Killing isn’t as easy as one may think.”

“Oh.” Olivia seemed to deflate, though in this case I was glad she reacted this way. “I guess you’re right.”

A voice behind me spoke up suddenly.

“Angel.”

I turned a bit from my sitting position to glance up at Knight, who was standing over me with his usual stony-faced look.

“Time to go,” he continued, already in mid-turn back to the stairwell.

“Oh. Okay,” I said, quickly glancing at my TACPAD to check on the time. It was half past twelve in the morning now.

I was considering introducing Knight to Sarah and Olivia, but before I could get to my feet, my team leader had already walked off toward the exit.

“ ‘Angel’? ” Olivia echoed, sounding confused.

I turned back to the girls. “Oh, that’s just my spy name.”

“Ah.”

Sarah shook her head, looking after the retreating Knight. “For a moment I thought he was using some pickup line, but no one uses pickup lines that gloomily. He’s a ‘super spy’, too?”

I straightened up, adjusting my backpack’s strap. “Yeah. He’s kinda my boss.”

“Really?” Olivia frowned thoughtfully. “He looks… scary. He looked like he was gonna snap at one of us.”

For some reason, I couldn’t suppress a smile as I shook my head. “No, he’s actually… not that bad.”

“Seriously?” Sarah raised her eyebrows skeptically.

“Mmm-hmm,” I hummed in affirmation.

I cleared my throat. “I’ve gotta go. But I’ll be back when our business brings us here.”

Sarah nodded, smiling at me with genuine warmth. “Okay, then. Whatever it is you super spies do, take care, Chrissy. Livi and I will be here waiting for you to visit. Not like we’ll have much to do for the next little while.”

“Yup. You two get your strength back. I’ll see you later.”

Sarah nodded and Olivia waved as I made my way over to the staircase to catch up with Knight.





I woke up the following morning feeling slightly more energized than usual. A quick check of my bedside clock in my quarters revealed that it was already ten past eight, which would explain why I felt considerably less tired after having just woken up.

I was about to slide out of the sheets when I heard three light knocks on my door, followed by a muffled but familiar voice.

“Ian? Are you awake?”

Even with the door between us, it was impossible to mistake that voice for anyone else’s.

“Yeah,” I called back to her, rubbing my eyes with the back of my fist.

“Can I come in?”

I had just enough alertness to glance down at myself and notice that I was topless. My bandages were in plain sight.

“Give me a second to get dressed,” I told her, throwing my comforter aside.

“Ooooh, how about I don’t?”

“Stay there.”

I got up and rummaged through my closet to find a long-sleeved, navy sweater and jeans. I hastily put them on, then strode over to the door and opened it.

Genel inclined her head to look directly at my eyes. She had a neutral expression on, but I knew that could change as easily as Calgary weather could.

“Good morning,” she greeted, “You slept in.”

“I did. Sorry, I don’t usually.”

She smiled faintly. “No, I don’t mind. Popping in to say that Chairman Coste had an update regarding the Special Forces team earlier. He said they would be arriving in town this afternoon and we should orient them.”

“I see. Thanks for the update.”

The already faint smile on her face became even fainter. I could tell from her demeanour that she wasn’t here just to report about the Canadian Special Operations Regiment team.

“Can I come in?” she asked gingerly.

I gripped the doorframe a little uneasily. “Why?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“About?”

“Something we’d both rather not talk about in the hallway like this.”

Ah. So it’s about the last operation.

“Can’t this wait?” I asked, trying to remain impassive.

Genel didn’t blink. The smile on her face had vanished by this point, replaced with a subtly determined expression. “Until when? Tomorrow? Or the end of the mission?”

Whether I liked it or not, I wouldn’t be able to put this off indefinitely. Since Shadow Team didn’t have any planned ops at this point, I couldn’t exactly hide my refusal behind C.O.S. business.

Without a word, I stood aside and lethargically gestured for her to step inside. She obliged, striding into my room with equal silence. I closed and locked the door and turned around to face Genel, who had leaned against my desk, facing me in return.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “So, what is it you wanted to talk about?”

“Last night.” She answered me near-instantly, using that tenacious tone that I didn’t often have success defending myself against.

Suppressing a sigh, I stood my ground, keeping a few steps away from Genel.

“All right,” I said with resignation, “I’m sorry that I was a bit short with you yesterday.”

“Oh no, you’re not getting out of this with that weak-ass apology,” she snapped at me, her demeanour flaring suddenly. “Besides, it’s not my feelings I’m here for.”

“No?” I raised my eyebrows, trying to look lost even though I knew a facade like that wouldn’t work on her.

“I’m talking about that insanity you pulled while the rest of us were securing the prisoners,” she elaborated stoutly. Her hands gripping the edge of my desk were white at the knuckles.

I didn’t say anything to that at first.

“What were you thinking?” Genel demanded, her displeasure and sheer frustration plastered on her face as clearly as red paint on a white canvas.

“Look,” I said steadily, trying not to lose my level voice, “There were too many civilians and even more enemy soldiers. We couldn’t possibly hope to—”

“Just,” Genel interrupted me, raising her voice abruptly and bowing her head. She stamped her foot loudly on the floor, silencing me. “Cut through the bullshit, Ian. You didn’t do that for the prisoners’ sake any more than you’re an agent because you’re concerned to hell about Canadian lives.”

“I am concerned—” I protested, but this only made her more agitated.

“I said, cut the bullshit. What were you trying to do? Do you want to die so badly, huh?”

Would that be so bad?

“I’m alive, aren’t I?” I asked her, raising my voice a little now, too. “And barely a scratch to show for last night.”

Genel’s lip twitched. She stared hard at me for several seconds before pushing off the desk and stomping over to where I stood.

When she was within arm’s reach, she grabbed the bottom of my sweater before I could stop her. She lifted it up to expose the bandages around my abdomen.

She glanced up at me defiantly. “And this? When did this happen? Can’t have been too long ago.”

I had half a mind to ask her how she knew, but I was too mentally exhausted to care to know how. I didn’t bother to answer her, either. We both knew when I got the injury.

Genel pulled my sweater down over my stomach again and let go of the fleece. She took a few steps away from me and turned her back to me, placing her palms on top of her head.

“Okay, so I got wounded,” I told her placatingly, lowering my voice again. “Not my first time getting hurt, and I doubt it’ll be the last.”

Why was she being so difficult with me? Did she really expect us to come out of this without some scrapes?

“What’s the problem here, Genel?” I asked tiredly.

“The problem?” She placed her hands on her hips now, bowing her head while still facing away from me. I could tell by her change in pitch that my question pissed her off more than anything else I’d said in the past two minutes. “I’ll tell you what the fucking problem is, Ian Alcantara.”

She spun around to face me again. To my surprise, I saw that her eyes were shiny and her face had reddened significantly. She sniffled a little but stayed determined to be heard.

“The problem is watching my best friend devolve into some other person entirely. The problem is me worrying if he’s lost his goddamn mind. The problem is seeing him try so hard to kill himself. The problem is that despite all that, I’m still the dumbass who cares about him too much but at the same time, I don’t know how else to help him.”

She said all of that in one breath. She drew in a shaky one once she was done. She put her hand up to her forehead and roughly pushed away some strands of hair that had fallen across it.

Part of me wanted to close the gap between us and apologize. Maybe put my hand on her shoulder and tell her not to worry about me, that I was fine. There was a time when I may even have taken her in my arms.

But that wasn’t now.

I stood where I was, letting Genel catch her breath for a moment I spoke in a mumble.

“I can’t die yet,” I told her quietly, watching her trying to hide her tears. “I’ve still got a job to do.”

Genel shook her head vigorously, sending her raven hair swinging side to side lightly. Keeping her head lowered, she sniffled again and coughed before speaking back in a trembling voice.

“This isn’t what she would have wanted for you, Ian.”

That made my heart stop a second.

“What?” I asked, my throat feeling dry and raw all of a sudden.

Genel lifted her head to show me a couple of tears streaking down her cheeks. I resisted the urge to step forward to stand closer to her.

“I know why you’re doing this. All of this,” she said weakly, gesturing carelessly at me, then the room. “I’m asking you, please, to stop.”

I stared at her, watching her tears trailing down her face. It was suddenly harder to speak. My breaths became shallower.

“Stop?” I repeated. “Stop… what?”

“Stop looking for the people who killed her,” Genel begged. “Please.”

At the mention of “her”, my hand began to tremble.

“Wh-What, you want me to just… stop? Right now? This mission? What are you— I can’t do that,” I said, my voice starting to become unsteady.

“No. Not this. After this mission, Ian. I’m asking you once this is all over, to stop. Let it go. Miyaku wouldn’t have wanted this for you. She would have wanted you to—”

At the mention of that name, my legs seemed to move of their own accord. I lurched forward and grabbed Genel by the shoulders. I pushed her against the wall and pinned her there, breathing harshly through my nose as I brought my face within a few centimetres of hers. I couldn’t process what I was feeling – anger? Fear? All I knew was that I didn’t want her talking any further. I wasn’t going to tolerate it, not even from Genel.

She yelped a little when her back slammed against the wall, but she kept her wet eyes on mine. From this distance, there was nowhere else to look.

“You don’t know that,” I growled at her. “Shut up.”

She squirmed a little in my grip. “Ian, you’re hurting me—”

I wouldn’t be surprised if I was. I was barely aware of my fingers digging into Genel’s shoulders, almost as if they were trying to inject some of my venom into her.

“You don’t know what she wanted,” I continued, ignoring her attempts to break free. “Do you want to know how I know you don’t, Genel?”

Genel whimpered, but if she had formed words within the noise, they didn’t register with me.

“Because she never told me,” I spat. I wanted to stop, but the dam had broken and part of me wanted the water to keep running. Months’ worth of composure was being carried away in the current. “She never told me. You know why? Because she’s dead!”

I screamed the last word in her face, causing her to flinch and close her eyes in response.

“You know,” Genel whispered to me, her eyes still closed, more tears slipping out between her eyelids. “She was as much your friend as she was mine, so we both know she’d have wanted you to move on… be happy…”

“You want me to be happy?” I said, feeling myself slipping further into that loathing of everything that I was. “Then stay out of my way. No one and nothing is going to stop me from finding everyone behind that bombing. And when I find them, they’re going to die. All of them. Nothing’s going to stop me. Not this war, not the C.O.S., and not you.”

Genel sniffed noisily and opened her eyes, red and sore from her weeping. She slowly lifted her hands and put them on my wrists. I winced when her fingers gently closed around the braided cord that I had around my left wrist.

Both of my hands were now trembling, fatigued from gripping Genel’s shoulders so hard. Despite the pain I was barely aware I was inflicting on her, she gazed at me almost calmly yet grievously.

“Revenge isn’t going to bring her back,” Genel said wistfully. “Miyaku always wished for you to be happy, Ian. This won’t make you happy. Please, you have to trust me.”

Maybe she was right. Maybe seeing this through to the end wouldn’t make me happy. Nor would it bring her back.

But this is all I have left.

A frigid calm came over me all of a sudden like a blanket. With it came the disappointment and shame of having let my composure slip. A warm, mortifying sensation rose from the pit of my stomach and shot up my neck, thick as tar and not unlike guilt. My fingers felt numb and my arms seemed to lose their strength.

I managed to slowly release Genel. I backed away from her a couple steps and took a few deep breaths.

Genel stared at me dejectedly while I mustered my next words with difficulty.

“Leave,” I told her in an eerily placid tone that I wasn’t sure was my own. “I’ll call you and the rest later to discuss the CSOR team.”

Genel meekly bowed her head, ran her forearm over her eyes, and nodded without a word. With equal silence, she stepped up to me, wrapped her arms around my torso, and gave me a momentary embrace. She buried her moist face against my sweater before letting me go and stepping out of my room without further incident.

For just one fleeting second, I wished she’d stayed. Just for one second.

Then, it was gone.





Josh stopped the truck in the half-empty parking lot in front of the Sobeys grocery store by 162nd Avenue, not far from my ‘permanent’ address.

He engaged the safety brake and glanced sideways at me. “Coordinates point to here. Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

“I’m sure. Keep an eye out here. I won’t take long.”

I stepped out of the truck, keeping my rifle lowered but ready. Gusts of freezing wind buffeted me as soon as I was outside. Tonight was much colder than the previous nights, with the temperature dipping several degrees below minus twenty, even without wind chill.

I began walking the parking lot’s expanse and headed toward the grocery store, whose lights were all shut off.

Well, of course if they are in there they don’t want to be seen by the odd patrol driving by this place.

When I got to the entrance, I raised my assault rifle and flicked on the tactical light attached near the muzzle, then carefully made my way into the Sobeys.

The store was silent and empty, though for the most part the shelves looked stocked as normal. It felt eerie here as well, walking inside a grocery that was functionally closed. It almost felt as if I had broken in after hours to raid the place for food and other supplies.

I passed the cashiers’ area and made my way down an aisle with pasta supplies to my right and other canned goods to my left. I kept panning my light around methodically to check my surroundings for anything out of the ordinary: a fallen tin of sausages, or a discarded magazine from a rifle.

As I was roughly halfway down the aisle, I heard a small, quiet noise that I recognized as footsteps coming from behind me, at the end of the aisle. I was about to spin around and bring my rifle to bear when a sharp, steely voice that I recognized as a woman’s voice called out to me from that direction.

“You turn, you’re dead.”

I froze, fighting the inclination to turn around and fire back.

“Drop your gun,” the same voice commanded.

Keeping still, I replied, “I’d rather not. You first, or I’ll get a fifty cal to tear through that window behind you.”

“Hmph. Smart, but I’ve got a sniper on your driver, too.”

They’re prepared and expecting us. Of course.

“Just out shopping this lovely January evening?” the woman behind me asked. She sounded like she was on a hair trigger, but I knew we were just practically bantering at this point. “You must’ve missed the darkened store interior and the lack of other customers. What are you looking for?”

“Three special operations personnel, ideally.”

“That so? I might have seen them. What’s your offer?”

I kept quiet for five seconds, which was apparently enough for the woman to get impatient.

“That you, Grim Reaper?”

I hesitated before answering. “I go by ‘Knight’.”

“Chase told me you’d say that.”

“Right. Can I turn around now?”

“Sure thing.”

I slowly spun one-hundred eighty degrees and aimed my light such that I wasn’t blinding the person there with it while still illuminating them fully.

At the end of the aisle stood a female soldier dressed in temperate woodland CADPAT camouflage fatigues. A bit of straight reddish brown hair flowed out from beneath a dark patrol cap, reaching down to her shoulders. She lifted a pair of mounted infrared goggles from her face to reveal a pair of turquoise eyes. She was wearing standard issue plate carrier body armour and a military rucksack. In her arms she held a modded C7 rifle.

One good look at her angular face and her subtle, smug smirk allowed me to recognize her right away.

“Miss King,” I nodded at her a little.

The woman gave a cheeky scoff and casually walked down the aisle to meet me. When she was close, she stopped and gave me a look of mild resentment.

“You make me sound like a middle-aged schoolteacher,” she complained, “How about you just call me Angie.”

Chief Warrant Officer Angela King gave me a once over while I answered back.

“I’ll stick with ‘Angela’, if that’s all the same to you.”

The twenty-nine year old woman made a ‘tsk’ noise to show her slight annoyance. “Still an uptight bastard, aren’t you? How long has it been, Grim Reaper? Two years?”

“Twenty-seven months and some change,” I replied after a quick recall, then added, “You should know I’m designated ‘Knight’ now.”

“Why? Spooks like you sound better when you have sinister names.”

“It’s a long story that I can’t tell you anyway.”

King shook her head, then winked. “I’ll stick with ‘Grim Reaper’, if that’s all the same to you.”

I stifled a sigh, rapidly growing tired of the woman. “Anyway, where’s your team?”

King responded by placing a finger to one side of her headset. “Jacobs, we’ve got a positive ID on our contact. Stand down. Reid, meet us up front.”

As she lowered her arm, I jerked my chin toward her slightly. “Did Sergeant Garret make a full recovery?”

King nodded. “He’s fine. Shrapnel from the blast confined him to a wheelchair the last two years. Just three of us Julietts now.”

I bowed my head a little out of reflex. “I see.”

King stared at me a bit sternly. “Don’t even think about it. I haven’t forgotten what you’ve done for us back then. We’d all have been casualties if you hadn’t stepped in. I appreciate that.”

“…Right.”

“So when Chase Coste came calling for SF support to back up a certain ‘Reaper’, the three of us practically volunteered,” King said, sounding rather proud of the fact.

“It’s ‘Knight’ now.”

“Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.”

Am I surrounded by nothing but childish women?

“And I’ve got a team of my own now. I don’t work alone anymore.”

She shrugged. “Good for you, I guess? Makes no difference to me. I’m happy to return the favour.”

“We get Calgary liberated, and we’ll be even.”

King led the way back out to the front of the store, where two men in similar uniforms stood waiting by the curb.

“Guys, you remember the Reaper,” King waved to me when we were back out in the blistering cold.

The taller African-American man stepped toward me, taking his right hand off the grip of his C14 marksman rifle to tip his winter cap and then holding his hand out to me.

“Good to see you, man.” He gave me a good-natured smile as I gave him a handshake. “Not sure if you remember. Warrant Officer—”

“—Caleb Jacobs,” I finished for him, letting go of his gloved hand. “I remember.”

The second soldier carrying the assault rifle with the underbarrel grenade launcher held out his hand too. His own smile peeked from behind his frost-dusted ginger beard.

“Sergeant Ethan Reid,” the man said briskly as he shook my hand. “It’s good to be working with you, Reaper.”

“Likewise. But my callsign has changed to ‘Knight’.”

“Roger that.”

CWO King spoke again, prompting me to glance at her. “Command told us you’d bring us up to speed on local troop deployments and other relevant intel. We were briefed on what they know about the city five days ago when we deployed, but it’s better we get updated info from a local force.”

“That can be arranged,” I said. “We’ve collaborated with the remnants of the 41 Canadian Brigade Group that were stationed in the city. You’ll be bunking with them while we work together.”

“No complaints here.”

“Come on, let’s get you to them. We’ll give you a lift.”

I led the three special ops personnel to where Josh had parked the armoured truck. I stood outside the driver’s side door and gestured to and from both parties.

“Goliath, these are Chief Warrant Officer Angela King, Warrant Officer Caleb Jacobs, and Sergeant Ethan Reid. We’ve… met before. And this is callsign ‘Goliath’, my team’s pilot and weapons expert.”

Josh gave the CSOR operatives a casual salute. “Always a pleasure to be working with those who serve, too.”

King smiled roguishly. “You do?”

“Did. Used to be RCAF.”

Sergeant Reid gave a lighthearted chuckle. “Yeah? Glad to be working with you then, brother.”

“Hell yeah.” Josh tipped his head good-naturedly.

“Let’s get a move on,” I urged the new allies, pointing toward the back of the truck. “You can stash your rucksacks in the back.”

The three of them obliged, then the four of us piled into the truck. With my instruction, Josh drove us to the rec centre.





Less than an hour later, the CSOR operatives had been acquainted with Sergeant Damon Burke, who welcomed the three Special Forces personnel immediately. After introductions and giving the new arrivals a report on the 41 CBGs status regarding personnel, supplies, and recent developments, Josh, the SF soldiers, Sergeant Burke, and I came together at a table outside Burke’s office to talk about our next move.

As we pored over a physical paper map of the city marked with ink and casings to indicate known enemy presences, we ran through our available options.

“To recap,” Burke said about half an hour into the briefing, “We have four known hot spots where we know there’s a significant concentration of civilians we can attempt to rescue.”

He began pointing them out on the map one by one.

“The most obvious is the Calgary Stampede. It has easily the largest number of housed prisoners within the city. Estimates range in the five or six hundreds, though that’s outdated information from early on in the invasion. We don’t know how many civilians are there now. Regardless, it’ll be the most guarded, and with that many people, we’re looking at a high probability of civilians getting caught in the crossfire.

“Next option: the Max Bell Arena. Not a lot of intel on this one. Just that civilians are being held there. If we want to know more, we need to scope it out. Getting in for recon is, naturally, difficult. It’s an enclosed building.

“The McMahon Stadium holds what may likely be the second largest concentration in the city, judging by its size. The good news here is that since it’s an open stadium, we can get some aerial recon going for some basic intel on civilian and enemy numbers.

“Lastly, there’s the Peter Lougheed Centre. Much like the South Health Campus that we and Shadow Team attacked yesterday, I can’t imagine there being too many prisoners there compared to the Stampede or the McMahon Stadium. Tight quarters, as you can tell. If we’re going by what we know of SHC, then there’d be between fifty to a hundred prisoners there. Again, just an educated estimate.”

The five of us kept quiet as Burke’s voice dropped off. All of our eyes were set on the map with the scribbles and shell casings on it for markers.

King was the first to break the collective silence. She put her hands on the edge of the desk and leaned over the map, her eyes darting from here and there. “Basically, we’re looking at two locations with wide open engagements, and two others where we’d be fighting almost exclusively in close quarters.”

She lifted her eyes up to look at me and Sergeant Burke. “Remind me again. How did you pull off the South Health Campus prisoner extraction?”

“We did some recon and sabotage prep,” Burke answered her promptly. “Attacked the next evening, using the confusion afforded by the explosives.”

“You said you extracted fifty-four civilians with no casualties. Is that right?”

“Correct,” Burke replied.

“No disrespect, Sergeant. But how the hell did you manage that with your numbers? The hospital parking lot should be a killbox, and against projected enemy numbers you should have been fish in the proverbial barrel.”

I caught the young officer’s eyes flickering over to me before he cleared his throat.

“We… had a diversionary force pull hostiles away from the extraction force in the sublevels.”

King raised her eyebrows. “Diversionary? Wait, you said the SHC is now effectively a neutralized outpost.”

“Well… maybe that’s a stretch, but with how much damage we dealt to it, it wouldn’t be feasible for the US Army to keep using it as an outpost.”

“What damage?”

“Crippled their comms and took out their power sources as part of our preparations,” Burke reported, “The extraction force neutralized under two dozen hostiles guarding the civilians, while the diversionary force… uh—”

He glanced at me, silently asking me to take over.

Crossing my hands over my chest, I sighed softly. “I didn’t count.”

“Count what?” Warrant Officer Jacobs asked me from across the planning table.

“How many I engaged.”

“Well,” Sergeant Reid piped up beside the warrant officer, “How many soldiers were on site, exactly?”

“Hard to tell without a head count, but it was easily a hundred at least.”

“If you say the outpost is effectively done,” King said slowly, as if she was trying to run the numbers through her mental calculator, “then there must be few to no hostiles left there when you extracted.”

I kept quiet, watching her eyes as she appeared to put two and two together. She glanced at me with growing incredulity.

“Who was with the diversionary force?”

“Just me,” I said hesitantly.

“My math must be shitty, Grim Reaper. If that’s true, then you engaged fifty-plus hostiles… by yourself.”

I opted not to comment on that, staying still and looking at the CSOR team CO. After several seconds of silence, she spoke again in a tone matching her expression.

“The fuck.”

Josh gave a snort beside me. I turned my head toward him, prompting the weapons expert to wipe the smirk from his face and stifle his laughter hurriedly with a forced cough.

“You’re kidding me.” King glanced from Burke, to Josh, and then back to me.

I drew in a large breath. “I got lucky. Any more and it would have ended differently. I was practically out of ammo by the end of it, and I didn’t get out scot-free, either.”

“But… No. Really?”

“For the last time, yes.”

King dropped the wide-eyed look partially. “Well, fuck me. I see you’re not the Grim Reaper just because you dress in monochrome.”

“Anyway,” I raised my voice a little, trying to steer the conversation back into more relevant waters, “We need to decide which location to hit next, how, and when. And I’d really appreciate if everyone here weighed in on the decision.”

There was a moment of silence as the six of us pondered our choices.

Surprisingly, Josh was the first to share his thoughts.

“I think going for the Calgary Stampede at this point isn’t smart. It’s practically next door to the downtown bulk of the enemy force. And in the very slim chance we do succeed in neutralizing all of the guards there, how are we going to extract hundreds of civilians?”

“More to the point,” Reid added, “Where do we bring them? Not here, that’s for sure.”

“We could use a second base to take more prisoners to,” Burke said in agreement. The rec centre could hold only fifty or so more prisoners in the bottom sublevel.

I silently agreed with Josh’s assessment. Attacking the Stampede now would be suicidal, to put it lightly. Our last assault of the location was already too risky for my comfort. It only worked because we weren’t looking to free every single prisoner on site. We weren’t looking to kill every single enemy soldier there, either. We were after only one specific person. As far as hit-and-run ops went, that was as textbook as it could get. Add to the mix how we’d attacked the place before, meaning the enemy would be more alert than last time, and only an army of comparable size… or a madman would attack it now.

Jacobs reached out and tapped a finger next to the shell casing marking the Peter Lougheed Centre in the city’s northeast quadrant. “I vote we take this hospital. There’ll be risks, but if we’re looking for an option with the highest probability of success, this is it. Less prisoners to extract, less soldiers to deal with. Reasonably far from the downtown core, too. Get in, grab the civvies, get out.”

I nodded slightly. “I agree.”

King frowned thoughtfully while Burke stared long and hard at the casing.

“I’m in,” the latter said to the group. “I’m not sure how we’ll handle this one, though. More sabotage prior to the assault?”

“I don’t think they’ll be as relaxed as they were, now with the SHC setback they suffered,” Josh commented, shaking his head a little. “By now, the US Army would be on heightened alert after the attacks we carried out on the Stampede and the SHC.”

“They must suspect we’re trying to get through their ranks covertly,” Burke said. “I doubt we’ll be able to slip behind enemy lines again to set up C4 charges.”

“Then we’ll have to just hit them hard and fast. Find out where the civilians are being kept, secure them, and get out before any backup arrives,” Jacobs proposed. He looked around at all of us. “This is about as ‘kick the door in’ as it gets.”

I looked up at King, who met my eyes near simultaneously. Days ago when Shadow Team was effectively going it alone, I would have rejected the idea instantly. But now, with Sergeant Burke’s help, plus the addition of invaluable manpower in three Special Forces operatives…

“Impossible?” I asked her.

She shook her head, a devilish smile taking shape on her face.

“Audeamus,” she told me simply.

It was Latin for the CSOR’s motto:

Let us dare.





Rhodes watched as the unmarked gray helicopter descended gradually. Eventually, it touched down on the tarmac. He was still largely against this, but unfortunately this wasn’t his call to make. It was Lancer’s, and Hayden’s, too.

The troop compartment door slid toward the rear of the fuselage, and out came only one person.

From their standard olive drab fatigues, it was plain to see that the man was with Northstar Security Solutions. Their long sleeves were pulled neatly up to their elbows, however, which was normally frowned upon when it came to newer Northstar operatives. Still, Rhodes knew even at a glance that this was no regular grunt. Even from a distance, the man looked… off. It was in the way the way he moved, like he needed greasing at the joints in the legs and the hips. There was a certain stiffness to his gait that was just a little too pronounced to be considered normal military discipline.

And that expression. It was like looking at a doll. Lifeless. Static.

The soldier didn’t bother to duck as he exited the aircraft and walked toward Rhodes, who had pulled his hood up to keep his head warm in this cold winter evening.

When the soldier was near enough, he stopped and snapped to, giving Rhodes a rigid salute.

“Sir.” The man spoke with a thin accent that Rhodes barely discerned above the sound of the helicopter’s whipping rotors. The accent was European for sure, perhaps Romanian or Polish from Rhodes’ reference of men he’d served with before in Northstar. The thick monotone of the voice made it hard to be sure, however.

Rhodes chanced a look into the man’s eyes. They were a rich, clear blue, though for all they appeared to contain they might as well have been solid white. Rhodes saw very little human in them. The man’s dark blond hair was buzzed extremely short. Rhodes fleetingly glanced at the inside of the soldier’s exposed wrist during the salute. A distinct, faded pink scar ran vertically from the inside of his wrist to about three inches from the inside of his elbow. The scar resembled that of a classic Caesarian incision, except this one was nowhere near the abdomen. With knowledge of cuts and other wounds, Rhodes could gauge the age of the scar from a cursory glance: two, three years at most.

“At ease,” Rhodes blurted, feeling immediately foolish for saying such a thing; this man’s demeanour was unnervingly… formal.

The man lowered his right arm, replacing his hand on the barrel of the AR-15 he was carrying.

“What’s your name?” Rhodes asked the soldier, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling he felt just looking at this man.

There was a slight pause before the soldier replied. His expression stayed frozen like a mask.

“Heimdall.”

Rhodes forced himself not to react. He wasn’t expecting a first and last name, but he still found the callsign a bit too exotic.

“Right. Heimdall.”

“Permission to speak, sir.”

Rhodes drew in a sharp breath. “I’m Hornet. And yes, go on.”

“I was informed you would have information on my targets,” Heimdall said in that same haunting monotone.

“I have hunches,” Rhodes clarified. “Surely you don’t mind some sleuthing to find your targets?”

“Negative, sir. I have worked with zero clues before. I simply ask for the purposes of finishing my task expeditiously.”

Rhodes nodded slowly, unable to cast off the feeling that he was speaking to a machine.

“All right,” he said finally, “I’ll give you some locations to keep an eye on. Your targets are likely to attack some of them. Is that fine?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rhodes hesitated before allowing himself to turn his back on the soldier.

“Follow me,” he told his guest. “I’ll give you the relevant intel.”

Rhodes began walking toward the Currie Barracks with the other man in tow.

Every now and again, he took quick glances over his shoulder at Heimdall, who seemed not to produce a sound while walking.