Like most of the ruins in Elythia, the site that the breach team occupied had once been much larger.

  In a way it still WAS, but those who would eventually become the grach had broken their world to drown and bury all the remnants of the old sorcerer kings Time, tide, and mud had done their jobs well, and only the uppermost rooftop was still accessible… that, and the ten feet of remaining stair which led down to the round room that Cyrus had designated the operating headquarters.

  What was left above the water table was much like an upside down capital “T,” with the top slash of the T only about a hundred and twenty feet wide, and the vertical part of it approximately eight hundred feet long. It was flat, moss-covered stone that was just long enough to serve the ultra-light as a runway.

  The entirety of the length of the ruin was bracketed and walled off by windowed walls, about forty feet between each window. Occasional remnants of stairs or broken patches of wall led to gazebo-like turrets that were slightly higher than the straight run that the team had taken to calling “The Gallery.” Support columns in the walls occasionally had rib-like chunks of worked stone buttresses arching between them, support for a shingled ceiling that had long since rotted away to time or fallen into the mud.

  The top slash of the T faced south. It was here that stairs descended to the swamp, (and technically further down, if one felt like dredging the muck,) and here that Phillips had stationed his four privates.

  They had a pretty good angle on the open, scummy water that filled the area surrounding the ruins, but the swamp directly south was speckled with remnants of more stonework, breaking up the sightlines a little and offering cover to potential attackers.

  Cover that Jandar’s helots were trying to use as best they could. Yes, they had their orders, yes, she was expecting them to proceed with haste, but… well, the elevated ‘T’ was too good of an ambush position. If the place was crawling with satyrs, then the First among the helots knew they would have real problems once they were about two-hundred yards out. That was generally the effective range of satyr bows, though some were better shots than others.

  But Phillips and his squad didn’t know any of that. All they knew was that they had hostels on their six. And twenty of them had just broken cover, and were walking, WALKING out in the open, moving towards the pillars and heaps of stone that broke up the approach through the swamp.

  ***

  “You think they’ve got magic bullshit, sir?” Redd Keaton asked, feeling his gut churn.

  “I think you should shut the hell up private,” Phillips snarled. “Ain’t the time for stupid questions. And do NOT put that finger anywhere near that trigger ‘til I give the signal. You read me, Keaton?”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” Red muttered. He’d forgotten who he was talking to. Phillips was a mustang, which was what happened when the upper brass decided to promote an NCO to officer, give them a shot at an actual commission.

  Red hadn’t been too long in the Army, but he’d kept his mouth shut and his ears open and the general consensus on mustangs was that they were the worst of both worlds. All the mean of a career sergeant, combined with all the ruthlessness of a career officer who got into the promotion game late and had to fight for scraps.

  But all that was something to bitch about later. Right now, the only problems he had to worry about were right in front of him, and getting closer.

  Six hundred yards out. A long shot, but maybe doable.

  But Phillips said nothing.

  Five hundred. A solid shot, especially from Redd’s elevated position tucked into the corner of a vine-choked window.

  Still, Phillips was silent.

  Four hundred yards, and the first ragged line was scattering, starting to crouch low and raise heavy shields, breaking formation and going into cover.

  And Phillips kept quiet.

  Red started to turn his head, started to check and make sure the man hadn’t been hexed or whatever…

  …and Phillips’ hand came down on his shoulder and squeezed.

  Red got the idea, and kept his eyes front.

  Three hundred yards now, moving more cautiously, staying low, leaving wakes in the water as they slunk from stone to stone. Phillips swallowed hard, and tried to keep still.

  “Now,” whispered Phillips.

  “What?” Red said, but even as the word left his lips his brain kicked in, and even as Phillips squeezed his shoulder again, he lined up his Garand’s sites and took the shot.

  ***

  First had a name once, before he had passed his final training. Before he had faced two of his friends in the circle and left them dying on the floor. The weakness of his old name had been cut away from him then, and he had been given the rank of “Thirty,” in the Crimson Orange Green company.

  He had done every task required of him by those of lower numbers, and as they died, and his own number lowered, he learned how to give proper orders to the young helots who refilled the ranks of the company. He watched those above and learned from their successes and mistakes.

  And the one solace he had now, as magical thunder split the air and Six crumpled into the swamp, her blood pooling red in the water, was that the rest of the assault team would learn from this.

  More thunder pealed out, but he was already moving, crouching low behind the ancient stone, watching the rest of his team do the same. Watching to see who would die.

  Moss and stone fragments flew as his team scrambled, and Twenty-two gasped and wailed, clutching his bloody arm as he fell into cover. He thrashed, gasping and grunting as he tried to work the shield off his wounded appendage. There was a hole in the shield, First saw, a hole that caught the light as the helot finally got it free and threw it down, before cradling his arm.

  Beyond him, down the way, another helot floated face down in the swamp, their skull a gory ruin. He could not read their number from his angle.

  The thunder had fallen silent. One breath, two… a minute’s worth and no more helots fell. Which meant that unless the mage in the ruins was playing with them, they needed to use sight to use whatever spell they were slinging.

  Well. That was easy enough to counter. First reached for his necklace of charms, searching for one embossed engraving in particular…

  ***

  Nathan Phillips’ father gave out more beatings than praise, when he was growing up. So the first chance he’d got, he signed up with Uncle Sam and found out that a sharp word and a reputation for being a hardass went further than beatings did when you were trying to get a bunch of greenhorn FNGs up whichever hill needed democracy at any point in time that he was ordered to do so.

  They called him “Phillips, head screwdriver,” behind his back, because he was considered a tightass, both when it came to not letting the boys under his charge screw around, and because he was pretty good at screwing over whichever America-hating basket full of unlucky sons of bitches needed screwing over when the orders came down from above.

  He’d been blooded in Korea in ‘53 as things were winding down; caught a bullet in the thigh defending some hill with no name. And the Army, in its infinite widsom, had decided during his convalescence that while they had plenty of good sergeants already, (which was a fucking lie in Phillips’ estimation,) but what they really needed were more experienced second lieutenants.

  That was about the point Phillips had gone from annoyance at his job to REALLY hating his job. But he had too much pride to retire, so he stuck at it, and managed to get another bar on his shoulders. That had been no mean task in peacetime, for someone who had only scorn for desk jockeys with gold on their shoulders and no real connections compared to the younger LTs that had kissed ass to get on the ladder up.

  His modest rise had come at the cost of enemies. Phillips was not a political creature, and the assholes he was forced to compete against were. Soon enough the writing was on the wall. His time in the service was going to end, and he’d be forced out of the only life he’d only (grudgingly,) enjoyed.

  And then a man in a suit had come along with a good offer in one hand, and a concerning knowledge of Phillips’ darkest secret in the other.

  On paper, he’d been transferred to the Air Force and promoted to Captain. Whether or not that would stick after this job was over… well. Who knew?

  But that was a problem for later Phillps. Right now Phillips had his biggest problems in front of him, and the mathematical problem was one of subtraction. He much preferred things that way.

  Once the last bald bastard dug in, once Keaton had stopped firing from the left and Potts had gone silent from the right, Phillips moved back from his position behind Keaton and put his back to the wall. He looked up to Greg Holden’s little nest and waved his left arm twice in the prearranged signal that meant “how many down?”

  Holden stuck his pale hound out of the clump of vegetation he’d hauled up there, put it over the black stone of the bowl-like structure he was in. He splayed out his fingers, then folded back all but his index finger. The hand withdrew.

  Six. Six dead or wounded was Holden’s assessment. Not a bad start. For a second Phillips smiled, let himself feel pride for the young men he’d been training hard. But he wiped the smile away. Can’t let anyone see that.

  Then Phillips glanced back to the window, and saw mist rising smokelike from the water. Well, shit. Phillips drummed his fingers on the grip of his 1911 pistol. The enemy was basically laying down smoke. Not poison witchy bullshit presumably, because they’d called it down on themselves and the smoke wasn’t entering the ruins, where he would have put it if he had poison witchy bullshit and no risk of answering to a tribunal later.

  “Can’t see a thing, sir,” Keaton muttered back to him.

  “No shit, private. Shush.” Phillips muttered back without any particular heat. He was listening, and it was hard to tell, but a few splashes in the suddenly thick mist told him what he’d already guessed: the enemy was displacing.

  But which way?

  If he’d been on the other side, and had around thirty percent losses from and ambush and enough cover to withdraw, he fucking well would have taken the opportunity to withdraw. Gotten the wounded dragged back, and checked with command to see how badly they wanted the objective.

  But he wasn’t on the other side. Some medieval motherfucker was, and Phillips couldn’t rule out a push forward. And he’d learned that when he couldn’t rule something out, he had to be cautious. Any other way led to the stupidity of underestimating the bad guys.

  “Fall back to Bravo!” Phillips yelled, then took his own advice and moved back to the next position.

  ***

  Twenty-two studied his wounded bicep grimly, breath hissing between his teeth. The pain throbbed and manced like a ball of fire in his arm, and the blood pattered freely into the swamp, clouding over where he’d dropped his unexpectedly useless shield. He fought to think, recited the mantra of loyalty under his breath to try and focus. There was no shaft; the weapon that struck him was neither bow nor crossbow, so it must have been magic then.

  More importantly, the wound was bad enough he would need healing. Perhaps he could ask to withdraw? He looked to the first, and found himself looking through a rapidly-building mist.

  Twenty-two frowned. No time to head back, he would have to use his healing charm. But as he fumbled at the chain of metal tags on his breastplate, he hissed and jerked his fingers away. One of the charms was broken and hot, where it had been used to depletion and burned as a result. He rummaged past it, ignoring the throbbing in his now slightly-seared fingers, and found the healing charm. A quick chant later, and he felt his flesh knitting, felt a flare of fresh pain as something was forced out of the wound, to drop into the swamp with a heavy ‘plip.’ Then the charm grew hot in his fingers, and Twenty-two let it fall back onto his breastplate. It was done, just in time, too.

  “Go! Advance!” Twenty-two heard First call, and rose, working his off hand and elbow to get feeling back as he strode through the mist.

  There would be time to figure out which defensive charm had activated later. For now, it was time to get a little revenge…

  ***

  Christopher Potts was a long way from Pittsburgh. He was also shaking, his hands trembling and his heart pounding in his throat as he scrambled to his feet, almost slipped on the moss, and started jogging to point bravo. He made it a third of the way there, before he remembered that he’d taken out his extra mags and left them on the sill of the window so he could reload faster.

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  Without thinking, he skidded to a stop and ran back for them…

  …just as black and white uniformed figures emerged from the mist, clambering through the hole in the western wall.

  The woman in the lead froze, staring at him as he stared at her. Then she yelled a word he didn’t know, and pulled a crossbow off her back harness.

  Potts shot her and she crumpled, but the ones behind her were moving, spreading out. Potts backed up, firing and missing, firing and missing as the shakes fucked up his aim, and oh god, a big sonovabitch was whipping out a sword, raising a shield, and charging him.

  Potts couldn’t miss at this range…

  ***

  Seventeen cleared the mist as another great CRACK tore through the air, and Forty-eight fell nerveless to the ground, her blood painting the ancient stone. Beyond her, a man in green worked a mechanism on a knife-adorned tube, staring at the helots who had preceded seventeen and were now getting into cover.

  They had taken all the nearby cover, Seventeen saw. Seventeen raised his shield and charged the green wizard instead. The only way out was through!

  Crack! Something bounced off his head, staggered him for a second. Seventeen kept going, assuming that his charms had handled it. The enemy wizard backed up a few steps and kept the tube pointed at him.

  Crack! Something tugged at Seventeen’s uniform sleeve. He kept going, almost to his target.

  Crack! Something caught his shield and half spun him around, just as he was stabbing forward. The strike that should have impaled the wizard was knocked off line, and what should have been a killing blow missed the man’s pinkish throat by inches. Unable to stop, Seventeen slammed shoulder-first against the wizard as they both went down ass over rations pot. The green wizard’s tube fell clattering, rattling across the ground, and Seventeen lost his sword, but he could work with that.

  Planting his shield on the yelling and dazed wizard’s torso, Seventeen punched him once, twice, as the man struggled and struck back. Seventeen took a few blows, grinned through the pain, and landed a solid strike on the wizard’s jaw. Bone cracked and the wizard went limp, eyes blinking fast and frantic as he screamed.

  Seventeen pushed himself up, drew out his dagger, and—

  CRACK!

  ***

  Greg Holden wasn’t happy.

  Oh, he was happy enough to be in the spot Phillips had designated “The Crow’s Nest,’ even if it had been a pain in the ass to climb up to this bowl-shaped carving atop a sturdy column. The spot was good, about two-hundred yards back from the front of the temple and maybe ten yards up. That was pretty good.

  No, the problem was the damnfool private who’d decided to charge the enemy for some stupid reason. Not only was that private a dumbass, but he was quite possibly a dead dumbass, who was way too close to the bad guy on top of him for Greg to risk a shot. Greg was stuck staring through his scope, watching the two struggle.

  Then the bad guy solved the problem by sitting up and pulling a knife so Greg put a bullet through the guy’s skull, racked the slide on the M1D rifle, and immediately lifted his gaze from the scope to survey the situation. He’d done all he could for the kid; time to help out the rest of the team.

  Damn, there were a lot of them tucked back in the southern pillars, now. At least eight or nine, and what’s worse, he recognized one of those who’d gone down in the initial ambush. Maybe he hadn’t been wounded badly, maybe he had some kind of magical bullshit; hard to say.

  The guys in among the fallen statues and pillars had put shields down and pulled out crossbows, and were slinging bolts back at the big alter-looking stone block to the north that Phillips had designated fire point Bravo. Sporadic shots from the heaped rubble fortification told Greg that Phillips and Keaton were still up, and their gunfire had probably masked Gregg’s own shot. None of the bad guys were looking up at him.

  Two more bald bastards charged out of the mist as Greg watched, and one of the guys in good cover snapped at them, and gave what had to be orders.

  Well, it always did make Greg a little happier when his targets saved him the trouble of having to guess. Greg braced the M1D and got back to work.

  ***

  Hierolon listened to the thunder from the south, and glanced to Denetha. They both knew what it was; neither elf felt the need to vocalize it.

  Neither of them would, anyway. They were not among the L’sharakiel, the severed souls. Elves had no need for words when among their own.

  They both knew that the noises were the things called “gones.” Dangerous weapons, but limited in many ways compared to bows. However, they could kill easily at a good distance, so the three elves had changed their approach once the unknown enemies inside started firing. Valbeliss had fallen back to the treeline, to come in from the side of the ruin. Hierolon and Denetha had turned their full attention to crossing the few hundred yards of swamp at the northern end of the ruin, going slow and using every inch of cover. Even swimming underwater, at a few points. That was… uncomfortable. Elves had not been made to do well when submerged.

  But they had reached the northern entry point without trouble. Once it had been a solid wall here, but time and erosion had done their work, left a space big enough for one to pass at a time. They peered within, their eyes piercing the shadows with ease no stormborn could match, and saw only rubble-choked stairs winding around the edge of the building. The route down looked to be choked with mud and water and rubble, but the way up to the main floor looked clear. Vines flourished within and without, coating the walls and steps with a green and wild lattice.

  Hierolon concentrated, listening carefully…

  …and twitched an eyelid in annoyance, as those damnable gone shots echoed and drowned out any chance of hearing softer sounds.

  He shared a glance with Denetha, taking comfort at her own signs of slight irritation, knowing their experience was mutual. Then simultaneously, they drew their curved blades and slid inside.

  Hierolan went first, sliding up the stairs, using centuries of experience to step quietly through the vines and loose scree below. Crouched over with a flexibility that the stormborn could not match, he knew that Denetha was close behind him, monitoring the way above and ensuring that he was not moving into an ambush.

  Even so, he nearly missed the wires.

  At the last moment, Hierolan caught a glint of light from the mass of vines ahead, and whipped a hand up to halt Denetha as he lifted a leafy vine to reveal metal wires… and two metal cans that were connected to them.

  Hierolan did not recognize the cans, and shifting his eyes to see things truly revealed no magic. But he knew a trap when he saw one, so carefully, carefully he began stepping in between the wires and vines, with a grace that no stormborn could ever match.

  Motion to his side, and he froze. A clink of metal on stone. And Hierolan had just enough time to look down and see a hatchet embedded in the stone step next to him, the severed wires snapping free, and the light shifting slightly as someone high above him moved back into cover.

  Then everything went dark and quiet, and Hierolan was no more.

  ***

  After the ruckus was done, Barty Mossjaeger shut his mouth and popped his earplugs out. Wow, that had been a loud one! Kinda too close for comfort too, but the fragment of mossy stone ceiling that he was lying on had been a real pal and eaten the shrapnel from the blast that had come up his way.

  Two MI6 mines had seemed a little like overkill at the time, but after watching the elves slide in from the swamp, he was glad he’d set them up. You betcha!

  Barty started to wiggle out for another looksy-do, then stopped as the shrapnel that lived in his head told him “no.” That shrapnel had changed his life! At the time he hadn’t appreciated it much when he woke up and all, but it had whispered to him and they’d come to terms and shucks, it was an old friend by now. Barty trusted it. So instead of leaning out like when he’d thrown the hatchet, he looked around, hoping to find one of the small mirrors he’d placed on the other rib-like chunks of ceiling that criss-crossed what was left of the roof.

  Some of them had fallen or been blown away by the blast, but Barty managed to find a mirror with a good angle and hoo boy, that was a dilemma that his mother would have called a double-edged sorehead.

  One elf was down.

  The other was nowhere in sight.

  Barty held his breath and tried to listen, but shucks, those boys to the south were still making a racket.

  He thought for a second.

  Yeah, no. One elf had dodged two mines from twenty feet away, give or take. Exposing any part of himself would be asking for arrows, and Barty knew he was good, but not against reflexes like that.

  Then the shrapnel spoke without words, cold and demanding in the back of his mind, and Barty knew what he had to do.

  Barty stuck his glove on the end of his knife, poked it out from the edge of the ceiling chunk, and yep, arrow! The stick whipped from his fingers, and Barty tried to calculate the angle. There were only so many places elf number two could be that weren’t in the mirror’s view…

  A second arrow shot past, going high, high…

  …and Barty realized they hadn’t missed. He scrambled back in time, as the arrow hissed down and hit where he’d been, bouncing away.

  Another arrow hissed past and Barty thought he had their angle figured out.

  Now Barty was very, very glad he’d listened to the shrapnel and brought three grenades along to this little shindig.

  The second arrow hit close enough to bounce his way and cut his BDU trousers as it spun away, drawing a little pain, pain that he grinned through as he crawled back up to where it had struck. The third arrow glanced off the slab further down to the place he would have crawled if he hadn’t mixed it up but by then he had the grenades out and cooking.

  The fourth arrow missed his head by inches, embedding and quivering into a deep pocket of moss just as Barty threw the grenades, one left, one right, and one towards where the elf should be.

  Oh. Oh, that was loud. And the second the blasts were done, Barty tossed the coil of rope he’d secured before the start of all this hullabaloo and rappelled down, letting his remaining glove eat the friction, pistol ready in his free hand.

  Yep, there was elf number two. What was left of them, anyway. Boy howdy, they looked like a big sneeze! Green and gooey and chunks all over the wall.

  He took a breath and relaxed a little, staring down the gallery. They were still firing to the south, but it was more sporadic now. Something had happened, and the mist was seeping in badly enough he couldn’t get a clear picture.

  And speaking of things being clear, he wasn’t, not yet. Two did elves didn’t mean there wouldn’t be more elves later. So Barty began the tiring task of shimmying back up the rope. Hopefully the others were managing just fine.

  ***

  The thunder rang out again, and Fourth watched First’s head come apart when he tried to peer around the pillar he was sheltering behind.

  Fourth felt jubilation for a second. Now she would be third…

  …if she survived.

  The jubilation faded a little.

  She looked around at the survivors. Perhaps a dozen of them, scattered around th cover of the entryway. Many of them showed signs of being struck by the lethal magic. Some bore bloody scratches or bruises, where their charms had taken part of the blow before breaking. To their credit, they were busy sending bolts back at the enemies as best they could without exposing themselves to the deadly return fire, but it was hardly a good situation. And even as she watched, another gasped and fell to his knees, clutching his side.

  Her gaze lit upon the dead helot about thirty paces north, and the unmoving green form under it. They had slain or incapacitated one of the strange wizards, at least.

  That decided her; a charge could maybe get the other two wizards on the ground, and let them get a good angle on the one sniping from above, but the casualties would be immense and the odds of victory were not good. No, there was only one thing to do.

  “Withdraw! Back to the Company!” Fourth bellowed, and followed her own order, retreating into the slowly dispersing mist.

  ***

  Valbeliss slid through the crack in the eastern wall, eyes shifting left and right, and curveblades at the ready. He’d come in roughly around the middle of the structure and to his surprise, nobody seemed to be watching this section. Crouching low, he moved behind a fallen column, keeping it between himself and the gonne shots to the south.

  Taking a breath, he started to peer over the stone...

  …and explosions rocked the northern end of the ruin.

  Valbelis fought down concern for his siblings. His ears told him there were at least three enemies with gones to the south, and one of them was up toward the ceiling. If he put his head up to see what had happened to the north, he would risk being seen by the southern shooters.

  So he stayed down the few moments it took for the gones to start barking again, and only then did he look over and around to see what he could see.

  Yes, there were the two enemies at ground level, both wearing matching green clothes with identical metal helmets. And about forty strides past them, the column that their third was perched atop. Easy shot for Valbeliss, though the one on the column would require him to arc the arrows upward. The shooter was in a bowl-like carving that gave him ample cover against a straight-on shot, and the occasional crossbow bolt that overshot it or skittered off the side showed its efficacy.

  That said… these were Stormborn. Inferior to him. He could prevail with minimal risk. Unless…

  Valbellis pulled his head back down and thought, risking closing his eyes as he dove back into the warm green feeling of his last reverie. The last time he had shared wisdom and memories with the others while nestled in the Mish Egan greenroot.

  Pictures swam to the surface of his mind, gleaned from another’s memory and stored for just such a scenario. Pictures in alien books and bundled papers taken from the Mish Egan home they had conquered and hidden within. Yes, these stormborn were from the fast-time world; the one filled with unawakened stormborn, with their toys and foolishness. These were soldiers, their equivalent of the Unicorn’s helots.

  The Lion had brought them here, obviously. He had a new host, a stormborn native to the realm of Mish Egan and Tegs Ahz and Guwata Mauler, and those other places they had established gates.

  Clearly, the only explanation for their presence was that the Lion had brought them here. Had enlisted them to his cause.

  Was the Lion here? That was the big question. He had not acted in the battle, and that was unlike him. But then, his new host was a child. Perhaps he was too fragile? Or perhaps he was waiting for the right time?

  There was a room, a hidden room at the midway point of the ruins gallery. It was not far to the north, close to the storm gate. The Lion might be waiting there. Yes, Valbellis thought. He would scout that and report back—

  Three more explosions echoed from the north, one after the other. The gone shots paused. Valbellis went still until they resumed. Clearly, venturing north was risky. He would have to chance trying to kill the three soldiers to the south, but he didn’t know what charms the Lion had given them, and he couldn’t risk breaking cover long enough to use truesight to check. Not with Hierolan and Denetha up against what was probably a huge force of soldiers.

  Then again, Valbellis thought, I don’t have to kill ALL the soldiers to the south. There had been twenty in that initial group, all with charms against ranged projectiles. Yes, the gones might hit a little harder but how much more deadly could they possibly be? All Valbellis would have to do was take out the sniper. Five quick arrows should break through any charm he had, then the helots could rally, and—

  “Withdraw! Back to the Company!” a helot bellowed in the Unicorn’s language.

  Valbellis felt his eye twitch. Right. Of course. He had forgotten the first lesson: Never rely on L’sharakiel for ANYTHING.

  Voices from the two soldiers on the ground to the south, speaking in that fast-time world’s language. If he had the time and a guarantee of safety he could have drawn up the memories of the language they were using and listened in. But he had neither time nor safety. The foolish helots had lost the battle. It was time to leave and rendezvous with Hierolan and Denetha in the designated fallback point to the east. Together they would inform the Unicorn’s minion and let her figure out the next steps.

  ***

  “We’re just letting them go, sir?” Keaton asked.

  Phillips didn’t respond, peering through one of the firing slits in the stacked rubble they’d used to fortify point Bravo. Only when the last moving hostile was out of sight in the fading mist, did he scowl at the private. “Always give the enemy a chance to retreat, Corporal.”

  “Corporal? But I’m…” the penny dropped. “Oh!”

  “You earned it.” Phillips reached behind himself and pulled a bolt out of the back of his flak jacket. His back throbbed, but the belt was bloodless. Probably just a bruise. This bolt had arced high over, and ricocheted off a column, come straight down on him. The aluminum plates of his M-1952 armor had saved his life. Guess the marines are good for something after all. At least their gear is, anyway.

  “Sergeant!” Phillips called up to Greg Holden. “Are we clear?”

  “Think so! Sir!” Holden called back.

  Phillips switched his attention to Keaton. “Get back to HQ Corporal. Escort the medic up, cover him while he checks on Potts. Go fast, he might be alive. We’ll need him. If those bald assholes find their balls and come back, the next one’s going to be harder.”

  The newly-made corporal scrambled, and Phillips took a second for himself. He studied the bolt, then snapped the metal head off the wooden shaft, and tucked it away. One more lucky charm to go into his trophy box.

  Then he looked out over the field. At the corpse of one of the baldies he’d shot three, maybe four times before she’d fallen.

  Phillips really hoped he’d make it back to his trophy box. On the upside, if he did, he’d have plenty more things to put in there.