Fireteam Delta Read online

  That was what worried him the most.

  “So, what fresh hell are we looking at today?” Cortez tried to keep her tone light.

  “I convinced Pat to let us into Rhodes’s room,” Summers answered.

  “Any luck getting our weapons back?” Nowak looked at him with interest.

  “He hasn’t made any promises.”

  Cortez chuckled. “Surprised he didn’t roll over so you could rub his belly.”

  “He’s an all right guy.” Summers voice sounded a little more defensive than he’d intended, but Cortez didn’t seem to mind.

  “Not saying he isn’t. It’s just pretty clear he’s got a huge man-crush on you.”

  Summers gestured to Nowak. “You want to take the room? I don’t think I have the brain cells for something like that right now.”

  Nowak nodded.

  Summers doubted Rhodes would have anything useful, but the man had known something about the base in Nevada, and the strange creature the locals called the hamr.

  Summers flexed his hand, remembering what Rhodes had asked him. Somehow, the man knew there would be something wrong with him. He’d recognized something. And he’d died before Summers got any answers.

  “Asle, you up to tagging along?” Summers nodded to Nowak. “Pat’s a bit of a talker.”

  Asle thought for a moment before nodding. He appreciated that she was pushing herself to help them and hoped some familiarity might do the same for her. Or at least, offer a distraction.

  “Speaking of, his pops . . . or whoever’s in charge set up some kind of ceremony for the dead.” Nowak pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know you’re all tired, but they’re expecting us to show. Logan’s going to be a . . . Asle, how did he put it?”

  “Honored,” Asle replied. “He’ll be honored by the city.”

  <<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>

  Summers lifted a boulder the size of his head a few inches before setting it down in the street. He’d been acting as a human excavator while others, mostly refugees and volunteers, helped to clean up the remnants of what used to be the market.

  Nobody had tasked them to do it; in fact, most of the city’s guards had looked to them to take over for Rhodes.

  They were largely uninterested in that, though. They’d learned the army that had been waiting outside the walls finally began a very hasty retreat after the explosion, and Summers couldn’t help but feel they’d lucked out there. If they attacked now, he wasn’t sure they stood a chance.

  Cortez cursed in the distance. A few elves milled around in a half-collapsed warehouse.

  “Dangerous.” She spoke in Nos, emphasizing the word while she pointed.

  Summers had done his best to help the others with some shorthand during their time training, and it was mostly effective, even if it was supplemented with plenty of hand gestures and cursing.

  “Summers, tell these fucking morons this thing’s going to fall,” Cortez shouted.

  He sighed before dusting off his hands and heading over.

  Sure enough, Cortez was right. Summers was no engineer, but he knew a building that size needed more than one working support.

  “It clear?” Summers looked back at Cortez.

  “My team’s the only one here.”

  Summers nodded.

  “Stand back.” He gestured to the elves around them, and they backed up more than a few steps.

  Summers put a foot against a wall and pushed. It tilted before collapsing entirely. The rest of the building followed shortly thereafter.

  He waved a hand, coughing as the rubble began to settle.

  “I ever tell you you’re bullshit?” Cortez surveyed the building with a distinctly jealous look in her eye. “Dangerous.” She pointed to Summers as he walked away, trying not to laugh. “Very dangerous.”

  He returned to his pile, picked up a stone, put it on the street. Lift, step, drop. It was like that for a long few hours before he’d hit the floor of what would have been a small shed in the market district.

  Then Summers saw a familiar face and froze.

  As it turned out, Beorn’s family had made it to the city.

  He put the rock down, took a deep breath, and began to walk.

  He’d at least see they got a proper burial.

  <<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>

  Asle sat on Rhodes’s sleeping furs, swinging her legs back and forth. They were plusher than she would have expected.

  A servant walked by, watching the room with more than a little fear in her eyes. The city as a whole had blamed Rhodes for what happened, and there were rumors that he’d been speaking to the creature in the nights leading up to the disaster.

  None had so much as looked in her direction.

  She didn’t know how to feel about that. Every time she’d acted, someone close to her died. And now, no matter how she looked at it, every person that monster killed was laid bare at her feet.

  The others had tried to explain that it wasn’t her fault. That she was just “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  She wasn’t so sure about that.

  The payrst spoke excitedly with Nowak as he rifled through a bag. She was summarizing most of what he said, which was largely unimportant. But she didn’t want to offend the man. He was, if nothing else, a friend to her friends.

  Nowak continued to take one document after another. He’d been like that for a while now, not even pretending to pay attention to them.

  “Asle . . .” Nowak spoke without looking. “We need to get the others. Right now.”

  <<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>

  “What do you mean there are more of those things?” Cortez looked pissed, staring down at the paper on the table in front of them.

  Servants had come looking for Summers and Cortez, hurrying them back to the castle. Asle sat, looking just as confused as Summers felt.

  “This is why the army sent someone to our base.” Nowak pressed a finger to the document in front of them.

  It was a map, one that denoted the progress of something called the “adversary.” It led from Nevada, all the way to the city they found themselves in.

  “They’re hunting these things down.” Nowak covered his face with a hand. “I don’t know how, or why, but Rhodes was supposed to link up with the 63rd. I have containment procedures that make it sound like these things are contagious, some raw data I can’t make sense of—point is, they were ready for two of them. And by the sounds of it, there are even more than that.”

  “If one of these was anywhere near us, we’d have seen it,” Cortez pressed.

  “Maybe we did,” Summers countered.

  The others looked at him with concern.

  “I think it’s in the springs. The same one that’s making that fog,” Summers concluded. “It explains why the army was interested in the ‘drug,’ and why I’m . . . like I am. Maybe it got trapped there. Maybe something else got to it.”

  He didn’t want to mention the half-remembered vision of something in that water. As if it were calling to him.

  “Wait, so you’re . . .” Cortez looked at Summers, more than a little worry on her face.

  “I’ve been using parts of the things I eat, just like that creature. But . . . slower. I don’t know why it works like that, but it matches up. Synel even said the fog was new.”

  Summers took a breath. What they’d learned about the creature the locals called the hamr hadn’t amounted to much. Most of the elves understood the meaning of “hamr”—it literally translated to “body”—but only a few knew what it meant in terms of a god.

  Most villages had some form of patron gods, forest gods, and gods of the home. But the hamr was more of a boogeyman. It came from a creation myth, a story that explained how life had come about by accident, created from the pieces of some incomprehensible being. And that, eventually, it would return for what it was missing.

  After what Summers had seen, he could understand why the locals might think the story held some tru
th.

  “What makes you think there are more?” Cortez looked at Nowak, then back to Summers.

  “Because this was breach four.” Nowak indicated a few documents on the table. “I don’t know what that means to the rest of you, but it sounds to me like there was a breach one, two, and three.”

  Cortez took a breath.

  “We should take another vote.”

  “A vote for what?” Nowak looked at her, confused.

  “Whether or not we go to Nevada.” Cortez gestured to the room around them. “Rhodes might have had the right idea here. We should stay put and wait for the army to find us.”

  “And then what? How are we going to explain a city of fully armed, trained elves?” Summers cautioned.

  “That it’s what it took to survive that thing. I got nothing waiting for me there. And we don’t know what’s happening with Summers,” Cortez cautioned. “Not trying to be a bitch here.”

  “If anyone’s going to have answers, it’s the army,” Nowak countered.

  Cortez held up a hand. “I’m just saying, it’s something we should think about.”

  “How about we vote after we know where we stand with the city?” Summers looked over at Nowak. “That sound fair, Sarge?”

  “Fine.” Nowak cleared his throat. “We, uh . . . we should get ready. That ceremony’s tonight.”

  “Right . . .” Summers hesitated a moment before standing.

  As they headed back to their rooms, Summers took one last look at the others. They were all starting to feel the strain of what they’d been through.

  He just hoped they could hold it together for a little longer.

  <<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>

  That night, they gathered outside the castle. They’d been supplied with furs that Summers assumed was some kind of formal attire. Pat led them to a cleared area of the market, where a truly gigantic pyre had been built.

  Bodies lay on top of it, arrayed one after another. They were those who had fought in the war, were victims of the creature, or casualties of their bomb. Seeing now how many that had been was more than a little unnerving. The few guards who lined the streets watched them as they passed. Even through their normal, placid expressions, Summers could see something . . . strange on their faces.

  From this distance, he could recognize Logan’s face at the highest point; he assumed that was a place of honor. He was dressed just like them, his arms folded over his chest. They’d taken his dog tag, adding it to the growing pile.

  Asle cried softly from beside Cortez, doing her best to hide her face.

  The pyre had already started burning by the time they arrived. In front of it, thirty men stood facing them. Summers recognized a few—Orvar, though the man was hunched over slightly, the twins, and more than a few from each of their squads. Pat led them through the crowd to the front, and as they arrived, each man began to kneel.

  Summers looked around, trying to figure out if they were meant to respond somehow, only to have Pat hold out a hand to stop them.

  He moved to the group, going to a knee himself.

  “I’d have died outside the gates without your help.” Pat spoke in a solemn tone.

  The fire crackled at their backs, the pyre beginning to burn in earnest.

  Pat’s words were taken up by the others behind him. “We offer you our lives for a debt we could never repay, and as a final thanks.”

  Summers stared back at the group for a moment, dumbstruck. The others just looked at him, waiting for the translation.

  “Asle . . . how do I say, ‘you’re welcome’?”

  Chapter 29: Shipping Out

  “Asle, if we don’t go along with this, will it . . . you know, offend them?” Summers looked at the girl questioningly. Her eyes widened for a moment before she began to slowly nod.

  “Fantastic,” Nowak groaned.

  Asle had more or less walked Summers through accepting the elves’ vows, not that he fully understood what was happening. That was something they were still trying to sort out.

  Summers took a breath.

  “So, what does this debt . . . uh, involve?”

  “First, they follow you until death.”

  Cortez raised a hand.

  “Hold up. You know you don’t have to do that, right?” Cortez looked at Asle worriedly.

  Given what she’d explained, Pat and the others had more or less done exactly what she had. That is, vowed a life-debt to each of them.

  “I know.” Asle nodded.

  Summers let out a breath. Last thing he needed was knowing they’d dragged Asle through all of this because of an imaginary promise she’d made.

  Cortez leaned back in her seat. “I’m gonna be honest with y’all, this sort of sounds like slavery.”

  “No.” Asle responded with a little more emphasis than Summers would have expected. “You take care of their families, and they can break a vow.”

  “So, it’s a give-and-take type deal?” Nowak had his head in his hands, clearly still trying to process things.

  Asle nodded.

  “Ah shit, I think I get it,” Cortez groaned. “Most of them are refugees, remember?”

  “Christ, right . . .” Summers rubbed at his temple. “Without Rhodes, whatever deals they made are probably dead in the water.”

  Summers realized there was a good chance most of them were just trying their damnedest not to starve. With the war over so soon, there was no guarantee the city would hold on to them.

  “All right, fine.” Summers sighed. “Asle, a lot of these people saved my ass, too. If we were to give them some similar vow, would that cancel the other one out?”

  “No. It would be stronger.”

  “Fucking how?” Cortez looked at Asle, confused.

  “You would be brothers . . . sisters?” Asle stumbled on her words for a moment. “Blood,” she said before nodding to Summers. “Like us.”

  Both Nowak and Cortez looked at Summers questioningly.

  Summers just looked back at the girl.

  “You wanna run that one by me again, Asle?”

  “Ugh.” Asle spoke with a tinge of anger in her voice. “You saved me. I saved you. I said thank you.” She gestured to herself, then Summers. “You said thank you.”

  Summers blinked. He realized then that when he’d first recovered from the fog, and the girl had given him this same “vow” they’d been discussing, he might have done the same. If by accident. And so, he may have made a blood pact with a twelve-year-old girl.

  He really needed to stop talking to elves.

  “Not even going to begin to unpack that. Either way, doesn’t mean they have to follow us.” Nowak rested his head on his hand. “Comes down to it, I think you can have Pat set them up as permanent guards. Serving the city under an oath would still leave their ‘honor’ intact, right?”

  Asle thought for a moment before she nodded again.

  At least they had a plan.

  <<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>

  The next day, they’d hidden in their quarters, mostly because they couldn’t get a minute to themselves otherwise.

  “I know that you always planned to leave, but please, reconsider.”

  The man in front of them was the same councilman Summers had seen kissing Rhodes’s ass back when they’d first arrived. His name was Sigurd, and he’d spent the last hour trying to convince them to take Rhodes’s title, something Summers couldn’t even pronounce.

  “Again, while we’re, uh, honored . . .” Summers looked back to Nowak and Cortez. “We can’t accept something like that right now.”

  The man looked down, thinking before he responded.

  “I understand. You’re still in mourning,” Sigurd agreed. “Forgive my rudeness.”

  He bowed.

  While they were still recovering, both physically and mentally, that wasn’t why they were turning the man down. In truth, they had no idea what the position entailed, and it had seemed like Rhodes was struggling to hold things toget
her, else he wouldn’t have brought them on board.

  And if there was one thing Summers was certain of, it was that people would usually do what was in their best interest. Someone like the councilman was no exception. Knowing that, they’d be morons to blindly agree.

  “It’s fine.” Summers heard Asle clear her throat, bowing to the councilman in turn. They each took the hint and bowed.

  Etiquette was a tricky thing.

  Pat, Orvar, and the twins stood flanking them with spears. They’d more or less barged into their rooms the next morning to report for duty. Summers had tried to dismiss them, but the men were annoyingly adamant.

  “I’m in your debt as well.” The councilman glanced at his son, then back to Summers. “I hope you understand that I intend to repay it.”

  Summers glanced to Asle, who bowed her head once again. Summers followed the motion.

  “We’re honored.”

  Asle had explained to him that tacking the word “honor” to anything you said would go over well in almost any situation. So far, that had proven true.

  The councilman excused himself a few moments later, bowing to his son as he left.

  Summers stifled a groan. The entire day had been spent in meetings of one kind or another, mostly with important officials wanting to extend their thanks. That was fine, even appreciated. Especially when a few had brought some absolutely ridiculous gifts. Liquor, weapons, and in one case, a marriage proposal that Nowak couldn’t turn down fast enough. That was only the bulk of their meetings. The rest was spent talking to the men that had given them their vows.

  Most of them had good reasons for handing over their “lives.” As they had suspected, many had no prospects to feed their families, with their villages most likely pillaged and their homes gone. Pat had, thankfully, promised that the city would take care of their families for both their service, and as a thanks to their group. He half-suspected Pat had arranged things this way for just that reason.

  They’d learned that Pat may have lost his birthright if he didn’t thank them formally. He was only third in line for whatever constituted nobility here, but something about the ruling class’s honor dictated a reward of some kind. Given what Summers had learned from Synel and a few of the other merchants, that could have been done with lands. Pat was basically going above and beyond.