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The Strongest Link

Jamie Ibson


May 210

Jefferson, Capital Region District (Occupied)


Brad Ministrelli parked the airtruck on the north side of Liberty Park and nodded to two ten-year-olds he knew lived in the area. They drifted apart as he unloaded crates of produce. The older of the two returned and gave him another curt nod. Rifles went into foam cases, and he popped the false floor off the gun compartment to withdraw a squat, rectangular cooler. Several of the apartments next to the park sat quietly, tragically empty. Brad’s colleagues had lived here, but they were gone now, killed by the opening salvo: weapons of mass destruction, fired from orbit, without warning, without mercy.

His absent friends still had contributions they could make, though, and in the days and weeks following the occupation, Brad and others went quietly about securing the homes and apartments. Now, the vacancies were caches, comms points, sniper hides, and safehouses. This building manager in particular was a veteran, and he had quietly agreed to keep the units “occupied” despite the loss of income.

There were tiny villages, towns, and farmsteads all over the Capital District, and one by one, as the network came online and surviving FMF troops, reservists, and veterans checked in, they made their needs known. At first, he simply introduced himself with his team callsign, and delivered food, weapons, and ammo. Sometimes, someone needed moving, and he moved them. Anyone with a particular skill, ability, training or access to specific resources was noted by higher authority and tapped for whatever they could provide as the opportunity came.

Earlier that morning, he’d received direct word from an old friend who supplied and maintained farm equipment. Through a source “believed to be reliable,” David McClellan of McClellan & Son Farm Supply supplied Minstrel with The Cooler. David’s words echoed in Ministrelli’s ears.

“ . . . the aardvarks are going to start using nanoviruses. This box has a sample of one, supposed to be a symbol of good faith.”

Once upstairs, he removed the rear casing from his comm and fitted an in-line encryption token into the exposed guts. He jacked the modified comm into what had been Jésus Salvatore’s entertainment system and waited as it accessed the secondary datastream, the one piggybacking behind the vid feed.

:: Minstrel; Authenticate 3SWCLC, Winters, Betty, :: he typed. Encryption let him send and receive signals, but the computer engineers who were organizing the resistance were professionally paranoid, and they regularly checked and rechecked ID for anyone using the backdoor network. Establishing his identity and trustworthiness had been a delicate dance. Now that they had a working relationship, providing his callsign, last posting, his CO, and his previous partner’s name were enough.

His comm sat blank for thirty seconds before a line of text appeared.

Beth :: Authenticate Donor Kebab, Brutus, Blue ::

He checked his notebook. Beth had given him a list of identification passwords and phrases, as well. In this case, she cited her favorite food, dog’s name, and favorite color. Satisfied with her response, his fingers hovered over the keyboard as he tried to summarize his situation.

:: I have precious cargo that might do well at the Roberts Institute, :: he wrote. :: It is live and perishable. ::

Having to be indirect was awkward, but there were key phrases to avoid in the name of paranoia. The Roberts Institute was one of the cutting-edge schools of medical technology at the Jefferson University. It specialized in all things nanite: muscle builders, implants, nanoviruses, and counters.

There was a lengthy pause off air. He assumed a human in the loop was consulting elsewhere before replying.

:: How large is the cargo? ::

Brad cracked the lid on the hard-sided cooler and regarded the interior.

:: I have twelve one-by-five cent vials. ::

Another long pause, then:

:: Standby, liaising with other resources ::

He waited again, comfortable that he’d been correct.

:: Secure eleven vials and advise where they’ve been cached. Get one vial to Dr. Sykora for analysis. Dr. Sykora belonged to the Freehold Science Alliance; the asset who destroyed JP1 also belonged to the FSA as well. We believe the FSA is friendly, and members can provide SME support ::

:: That’s pretty vague, any further details? ::

:: Negative. Updates as they happen. /Beth ::

Brad “Minstrel” Ministrelli was nonplussed. “Updates as they happen” euphemistically meant, “If we do hear something, we’ll get back to you, but don’t count on it.”

* * *

Minstrel spent the rest of the evening securing vials in various safe houses. Each one was a stark reminder of everyone who’d died in the strike on 3rd Army’s primary base. Once he’d sent their locations to “Beth” he found a café that offered public net access.

Finding entries on a “Doctor Sykora” was easy but did little to identify him. There had evidently been several Doctors Sykora over the last hundred plus years, dating all the way back to the first few decades of colonization. One Dr. E. Sykora had premiered using Orbital Defense systems to cut roads back when Grainne was a young, barely colonized ball of wilderness. Her texts were required reading in many disciplines, including the FMF’s “Applied Kinetics” training school, where combat engineers, blazers, and operatives learned to blow shit up on the fly. Other Sykoras had been involved in weapons design, industrial fabrication, medicinal applications of nanites, and virtual intelligence over the last hundred fifty g-years. Minstrel refined his search, sorting the research papers by date, concluded that Dr. Dominik Sykora was who he was looking for. The medical nanite research was dated June 42nd, 208 and Dr. Sykora did indeed work out of the Roberts Institute.

* * *

He hadn’t spent much time on campus, aside from attending the occasional lecture on the latest in animal behavior studies, and that was a completely different facility than the Roberts Institute. Once he’d located the primary building, he followed the directory directions down a maze of corridors until he came to the Nanomedicine Research Laboratory. Most of the door was frosted privacy glass, but a head-height porthole let him see a woman working at a desk on the far side. She looked up, and he opened the door and took a step in. There were a handful of workstations, with multiple screens each; the woman was the only person present, however.

“Excuse me, lady, I’m looking for Doctor Sykora,” Minstrel began. “Doctor Dominik Sykora, the author of the paper on nanites as a means to deal with implant rejection?”

The lady narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?” she demanded. She was slender, had fair skin, Slavic cheekbones, and her blonde hair was tightly tied into a bun. Blondes were rare on Grainne, and her exotic looks would have been more at home on Novaja Rossia or in Eastern Europe on Earth. The lady reminded him of one of the militia leaders he’d met in the Darkwood Hills, the one with the North American accent.

“I’m . . . a friend,” he said. He cursed himself inwardly; having no formal spy training, he supposed someone who knew what they were doing would have had some witty line to disarm the lady’s suspicions.

“I’m not sure I believe you, friend,” she said. Sarcasm dripped from the last word. “If you were a friend of Doctor Sykora’s, you would have known Dominik died last week in a firefight with the UN. ‘Collateral damage,’ they called it,” she spat bitterly.

“I beg your pardon, lady,” Brad apologized. “I have . . . well, I had need of the doctor’s expertise. The UN is going to hurt a lot of people, and I want to stop them,” he said. “The physicist who destroyed JP1 signed his final transmission as from the Freehold Science Alliance. Public nets suggest Doctor Sykora belonged to the same group. I had hoped that meant he was an ally.”

“Lock the door,” she said, and he did. “I was Doctor Sykora’s assistant. You have thirty seconds to convince me to help you.”

“What would you say if I told you the UN isn’t satisfied with orbital strikes, and their next major attack will be a bioweapon?”

“I would say, you’re too late,” she said harshly. “There’s already a pneumonic infection making the rounds, first signs began exhibiting a few weeks ago. It’s awful.”

“Is this it?” Minstrel asked and placed the 5cm vial of viscous coffee-colored liquid in its protective polymer sleeve on her desk.

“Are you INSANE?” the woman near-shouted, jumping to her feet. “What is WRONG with you?”

“It’s doubly-sealed, and I’m desperate,” Minstrel replied defensively, backing away. “I had hoped, with a pure sample, Dr. Sykora could analyze it to formulate a counter.” The woman seemed somewhat mollified but remained suspicious. Brad continued. “I’m sure one is possible. They aren’t going start spreading around a disease they can’t immunize against.”

The lady gingerly picked up the vial, peered through it, and weighed it in her hand as though weighing the risk.

“How can I trust you? I only met you two segs ago. You could be a UN spook.”

“There are some things you just have to take on faith, lady. It seems I have to put my faith in you, though, so let me volunteer this: I was assigned to the Jungle at Heilbrun Base. One of my teammates studied advanced veterinarian techniques here at the Roberts Institute. Before the invasion, he came here regularly for training updates and to refine the boosters . . . for our partners.”

“Okay, stranger, would this teammate of yours be from Logan?”

Brad searched his memory. “Honest answer, I don’t recall where he’s from, we joined almost eight years ago, and he doesn’t talk about his folks. And please, call me Minstrel.”

“Not good enough to convince me you’re one of the good guys. What’s your friend’s cat’s name, Minstrel?” the lady pressed.

“A panther named Shadow. He had a too-aggressive leopard named Wraith as well, but Wraith didn’t make the cut.”

“And your cat’s name?”

“I . . . don’t have one, anymore.” Brad swallowed hard but met her gaze evenly. “Their names were Elvis and Betty, but they died in the strike on Heilbrun. Now I’m just making it up as I go along.”

The woman seemed satisfied with that and nodded.

“Call me Nicki. Come with me.”

* * *

Nicki guided Minstrel through the front office to a changing area with shower cubicles.

“Clean up and get out of those . . . street clothes,” she said, with a moue of distaste for Minstrel’s rough work clothes. She pointed to a pile of sterile scrubs. “It’s a sterile lab, and you need to scrub up. Thoroughly. When you’re done, there might be something that fits you there.”

She disappeared around a corner, and Minstrel heard her turn on a shower of her own. He stripped, stepped into the shower, and took a moment to glory in the near-scalding hot water. A dispenser mounted in the stall had several strong soaps and shampoo, so he washed his hair, beard, and body from head to toe. When he exited the stall, he found scrubs that fit and dressed. Nicki was already changed and waiting for him by a sliding door.

The door activated, and he followed her into a sterilization hall that bathed them both in UV light. They reached the exit and Nicki paused, looking at a screen.

“You have implants,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Minstrel saw a display highlighting the implants he’d received upon graduating from cat school.

“Yes,” he replied. “Handlers get nasal and cochlear implants to improve our sensitivity to scent and sound. Helps us understand our cats better. Not as good as cats, but much better than a normal human.” She was nodding along as he explained. “But you knew that.”

“I did, but I’m still testing you. You passed.”

Once into the lab proper, he sat where directed, and watched as the woman slipped the vial into a receptacle. Through a viewport, he watched as the vial was taken inside the machine, and a syringe withdrew a tiny sample of the dark brown liquid. The arms moved about inside the large, boxy device, and a few segs later, Nicki scanned some preliminary results on her screen.

“Those . . . monsters” she cursed under her breath. Minstrel sat quietly, with an attentive, questioning look on his face. She turned to face him. “This isn’t the pneumonic bioweapon.” Brad was crestfallen and opened his mouth to speak when she continued. “It’s something new. Your sample contains spores that irritate the hell out of the body’s mucous membranes and skin, like poison ivy, but worse. Much, much worse. But there’s something else going on here too that is causing an error in the diagnostic. I’m going to need the rest of the evening and all day tomorrow to conduct a proper analysis. Come back tomorrow, around . . . seven divs,” she said, turning her back on Minstrel and attending to her diagnostic.

Her brusque manner was off-putting, but Minstrel wasn’t happy just walking back out the door so soon after arriving.

“Can I get you dinner? Bring it back here for you? I realize this is one helluvan imposition that I just dropped in your lap, and there isn’t much I can do to make it up to you.”

With an exasperated sigh, she pushed back from the controls.

“Fine. Combo number thirty-two at Darmawan’s. Chorizo enchiladas, four-cheese Satan pepper blend. Beans, rice, guac, pico de gallo, and their house beer. Make sure they know it’s for Nicki and not to wuss out on the heat.”

“Can do.”

* * *

There was little foot traffic on the streets. Three months in, Jefferson had been fully occupied with UN “Peacekeepers” patrolling the streets. Even in the few short blocks to Nicki’s suggested cantina, he saw three foot patrols of occupying UN troops and two airborne drones, quietly humming along fifty feet up.

Natalena Darmawan proved to be a master chef of traditional Indonesian/Mexican fusion, once they got over a . . . miscommunication. Minstrel got some heavily spiced peanut chicken satay skewers and brought back dinner. One patrol stopped him, demanding to know his business. He called himself a “research assistant” and showed them the contents of the bag. With nothing more dangerous than some Satan pepper sauce, he was “allowed” to proceed after an admonishment to get himself some “proper” ID.

The skewers were excellent, the jasmine rice fragrant, and pepper sauce tangy. Nicki, on the other hand, let her enchiladas get cold. Eventually she emerged from the sterile laboratory environment and showered again. Minstrel found a kitchenette a few doors down from her laboratory/office, and when she appeared again, dressed, she accepted her reheated plate without comment. Minstrel sipped a beer of his own as she chewed.

“So the Darmawans pass along their compliments,” he said. “They said you don’t come around as often as you used to, and the next time you did, it’d be on the house.”

Nicki froze, mid-bite. “Mm-hmm?” she answered with her mouth full.

“Yep. Food was excellent, made me wish I’d eaten there before. I suppose Jefferson, being as large as it is, I can’t have dined everywhere.” Nicki took another bite. “I’m sure you can just imagine their surprise when they asked what brought me by, and I explained how I only just learned of Doctor Sykora’s unfortunate demise.”

“Oh?”

“Indeed. You can imagine my surprise then when Natalena put a scattergun in my face and asked if ordering combo thirty-two with chorizo for ‘Nicki’ was some kind of a sick joke. Now, I’ve had a gun in my face a couple of times, but this was the first time a forty kilo Indonesian lady had me dead to rights for ordering dinner.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“It seemed to me we were perhaps having a failure to communicate, and I explained that I had met his lovely assistant Nicki, and she had given me the order. Natalena explained that Doctor Dominika Sykora was a slender blonde, a hundred seventy cee-em tall, and a brilliant researcher down at the Uni just like her father. You must think me an idiot.”

“Of course not, I . . . well . . . I had to be careful,” she finished lamely.

“Do you actually know Mike Pieters?” he demanded. “Or were you just fishing for intel?”

“No, I do, he and I did pre-med together. We were flatmates,” she protested. When Minstrel cocked an eyebrow, she looked away. “And, yes, we dated. For a long time. I was shocked when he went into the FMF instead of private practice. He could have written his own ticket. I guess it was never about the money, for him.”

“No, it wasn’t. For Mike, it’s about taking his gift and doing something amazing with it. Our cats are smarter, faster, stronger, and tougher than they’ve ever been. The implants he designed help them heal from injuries that would otherwise kill them. Their median reaction times are up to three percent faster since he got to work, and there are even a few that are beginning to show signs of genuine sapience. What have you done for the resistance lately?”

Nicki shook her head and appeared to choose her next words carefully.

“I am a patriot, Brad, and I’m sorry I deceived you. I do have friends and colleagues who have been disappeared by the UN. I’d call it paranoia, but it isn’t paranoia when they’re really after you. I will do everything I can to help.”

“Not unreasonable,” Minstrel acknowledged. “Thank you.”

“From my preliminary workup tonight, the UN has something very new, very different, and very crafty. I’ll think about it tonight, and I’ll get back at it in the morning. I assume you have somewhere to sleep?”

“I’ll figure something out. Seems ridiculous to fly a hundred and fifty klicks home but my truck bed is comfortable. I’ll meet you here at . . . three divs?”

“See you then.”

* * *

It was oh-dark-thirty when gloved hands dragged Minstrel, still in his sleeping bag, from the tent he’d erected in the bed of the airtruck. Bleary from sleep, his hands instinctively clutched for the sidearm that no longer rode his hip until his shoulders and head cleared the edge of the truck, and his torso fell to the ground. Air whooshed from his lungs on impact, and he gasped for breath.

He clawed his head out of the sleeping bag and was blinded by a pair of flashlights aiming down at him. The quiet hum of stunners cooled his initial, violent impulses.

“Who are you?” a gruff voice with an aardvark accent demanded. “Why are you out past curfew?”

Minstrel tried to sit up, but an electric jab from one of the stun batons laid him out flat. He collected his thoughts and coughed out an answer.

“Bradley Sukarno. Visiting from out of town,” he wheezed. “I didn’t know about any curfew.”

“Who are you visiting?” the same voice demanded. “They should have told you about the curfew.”

“I arrived late,” he lied. “After Iodown, didn’t want to disturb anyone. Can I please get up?”

“No,” the second voice said. This one was higher pitched but still stern. Probably female. “We’re taking you to lockup for the night, you vagrants and transients are more than likely terrorists. Roll onto your front and stick your arms out like a T. Do it now.”

Shit.

Still inside the sleeping bag, he feigned having more difficulty rolling onto his front than was necessary until he kicked himself free of the bag completely. Shutting his eyes against the lights, he focused on what he could hear instead. There were only two of them, he was sure of that, and they were both to his right.

Amateurs.

He heard the low hum of a security personnel car nearby, but otherwise, the park he’d stopped at was quiet. How bad had things gotten that the UN had security personnel assuming policing duties and rousting “vagrants” from public parks?

Spreading his arms out to his sides as ordered, he waited for the instant the first binder clicked on, before jerking his arm in to his side, pulling the UN troop down and close. Minstrel heard the hollow thunk as the UN trooper’s head collided with the rear bumper of the air truck, and then the second UN troop reflexively triggered her stunner. The actinic lightning struck her ally, crackling as the stunner blast lit the air. He jerked rigid and Minstrel surged to his feet, shoving the disoriented one towards the second with the binder still latched to his wrist. The two UN troops fell in a heap, and Minstrel was on them in a second.

The UN still liked to believe it was a “liberating” force, and as such, did its utmost to limit the equipment their troops carried. “Non” lethal and “less” lethal were standard issue, but only if applied properly. He dug a telescoping baton free from the stunned man’s belt and flicked it to extend it before whipping it around to crash into the back of his exposed neck below his helmet. The crunch was muted, and the male officer collapsed on top of his partner, pinning her in place. Snapping the baton around in a figure eight, he brought it down backhanded across the windpipe of the female. Her arm was trapped, extended, and Minstrel dropped a knee over her upper arm, preventing her from reaching the parrot mic that sat on her shoulder. Not that she would be able to speak with a crushed trachea, but getting any kind of a signal out with the comm would be enough to summon backup.

“This isn’t your world,” he hissed and watched the light fade from her eyes. He rolled her partner over and confirmed he was out too. He stripped their vests and belts of valuable gear and removed the one binder with the dead woman’s key. Minstrel dragged the bodies back to their patrol car. Lifting the overweight dead guy was a pain, but Minstrel got him into the driver’s seat and then heaved his partner into position next to him. He cast about hurriedly in the rear of the vehicle, spying a large foil evidence bag, useful for isolating electronics from any outside signal, and slammed the trunk shut. With the bodies in place, he popped the pole for his tent and threw his sleeping bag into the front seat. He’d need to be gone soon; if they’d followed procedure, they would have called in their location and what they were checking before rousting him. He scanned his truck—no identifying marks, no vehicle ID or number plate, just a plain silver airtruck with an open bed. He rummaged in the civilian rucksack, where he kept his field kit, and pulled out a firestarter.

Dead simple to make, the paper muffin-cup firestarter held a fifty-fifty mix of sawdust and candle wax. He lit the paper and carefully placed it low in the cab of the patrol car. Greasy polymer smoke was drifting from the windows as he pulled the air truck away. He listened to the UN comm as someone tried to check on the two troops. There was dead air for a few seconds, and they checked again. After the third status check failed, they sent a drone to check on them. A seg later, panicked voices came over the comm as the drone showed the car, fully engulfed. Brad checked his map and confirmed he was already six klicks from the scene. He pulled the battery from the enemy comm, sealed the device away inside the foil evidence bag, and tossed it on the seat next to him. With any luck, it would be some time before they realized the dead officers’ gear was missing, and the foil would spoof any passive transponders or external instructions. Their encryption protocols would be beneficial to the resistance, so he retrieved his own comm and coded an old friend who lived in the south end of town.

* * *

“Hey, handsome,” she greeted him at the door. “Anasazi” was a statuesque amazon of a woman with a thick mane of raven hair that hung to her hourglass waist. Even at 1.5 divs, she looked like she’d stepped out of a beautician’s, and Minstrel leaned in to peck her on the cheek. “You’re gonna tickle me with that beard,” she complained, but the smile didn’t leave her face. “I’ve missed you!”

“I hate it,” he admitted. “But it does help with their facial recognition systems.”

“You look . . . rugged,” she enthused. “Very manly, I approve. How goes? Have you been in town long? Can I pour you a drink?”

“It goes, no, and yes,” he said. “Very yes.” She brought him inside. Seconds later, she presented him with a frosty beer bulb, and he sprawled on the couch.

“I’m sorry to crash your place this late,” he began, but she shushed him.

“The UN doesn’t sleep, so neither do we. This doesn’t sound like a social call.”

With a sigh, he brought her up to speed on everything he’d been doing since they last saw each other. Anasazi, real name Siobhan Ceallaigh, had been an FMF Rec Spec. After Anasazi’s four-year hitch was over, she turned professional escort and quadrupled her pay. The sex industry crashed to a halt under the UN occupation, but it seemed she knew everyone who was anyone, and very quickly found herself a full-time spy. She choked on her drink when Minstrel related his misadventure identifying Nicki.

“Dammit Brad, you should have called me. I could have arranged a proper intro and saved everyone the trouble. A lady doesn’t kiss and tell, but for you, I make an exception. Nicki was a client of mine, a while back,” she admitted. “It’s been a while, but I know her well.”

“She seems intense.”

“She’s brilliant, and sometimes that comes with a social cost. For a while, it seemed I was her only social contact. She’s dedicated to her research. She managed to blend work with play when her man, Doctor Endah Taliin, came along, that’s about when we stopped seeing each other. But Endah was killed by the UN a week ago, and she’s retreated into her shell again. I’m not surprised she came across as cold. She’s a brilliant researcher but wanted nothing to do with the resistance and seemed to think the UN would just leave her alone. It’s awful that that’s what it took to get her to notice what was going on everywhere else, but at this point, it’s easier to find people who’ve lost someone than someone who hasn’t.”

After continuing his story and telling her about his rude awakening, he turned over the equipment he’d looted.

“You continue to impress, Bradley Ministrelli. What are your plans for the rest of the night?”

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to put my tent back up in the truck out front, roll out my bag, and rack out.”

Siobhan looked hurt. “I certainly do mind. Why on earth would you sleep in your truck when there’s a perfectly warm bed here?”

“I didn’t—I wasn’t—I didn’t want to presume,” he stammered.

“You are a bundle of nerves and have been flying solo for months, mister. You need a shower, a massage, and you need to get spread. For that matter, so do I. Strip.

* * *

Brad woke in the morning to Iolight streaming through the windows. The heavenly scent of bacon sizzling on a griddle wafted through the air, and he blearily made his way out of Siobhan’s bedroom and down to her kitchen. She was dressed, made-up, and looked like she’d just stepped out of the spa.

“Half a div of scorching sex, bacon for breakfast, being served up by the smartest, savviest, sexiest superspy I’ve ever met. Marry me,” he proposed, with a mischievous grin on his face.

Siobhan smiled and pecked him on the cheek. “Ask me again when the war’s over, handsome. Plates are there.” She indicated as she lifted the bacon off the grill.

“Where did this come from? Last I heard the UN was clamping down on proper meat, they want everything converted over to vat-grown abominations instead.”

“I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. We’ll head out as soon as we’re fed.”

“We?”

“Of course. It’s been ages since I saw Nicki in person, and with a proper introduction, her fears should be allayed somewhat.”

* * *

“Good morning, Doctor Sykora,” Siobhan greeted her as she strode into the lab office. The doctor seemed a bundle of nerves and jumped when she heard her name.

“Good . . . morning?” she asked, more than said, as she turned to see the speaker. “Siobhan!” she cried and hugged the taller woman fiercely. “How are you?”

“Very well, thanks! May I introduce my dear friend Bradley?” she said with a grin on her face. Puzzled, Nicki turned as Brad entered with a sheepish grin on his face.

“Your dear . . . friend . . . ” Nicki repeated, looking back and forth between the two of them. “You two . . . ?”

“Yes.” Anasazi nodded. “I’ve already given him shit for not coming to me first. Let’s catch up inside, shall we?”

* * *

The morning passed slowly for Minstrel. Nicki continued her examination of the sample he’d supplied and ran a variety of tests he didn’t understand. He lacked sufficient expertise to be of any value in the lab and was relegated to running errands, picking up equipment and supplies from elsewhere in the lab facility, and keeping Nicki and Siobhan fed. Anywhere he went off campus, uniformed UN troops occupied street corners, guarded checkpoints, and harassed Freeholders. Larger armed drones and light gunbird vertols buzzed overhead. The hostility on the street was palpable, and Brad actually ducked into a cocoa shop when someone skeeted a hexrotor out of the air with a shotgun. He sheltered there for half a div more while the UN overreacted outside and emerged to find most of the checkpoints had added troops in power armor on-site to intimidate the civilians into sullen compliance.

* * *

Feminine laughter greeted him from around the corner as he returned with hot jambalaya for three.

“So then he says, all serious-like, ‘I’m looking for Doctor Sykora from the Freehold Science Alliance.’ And he has no idea that the FSA was a varsity social group for all us freaks and geeks.” Minstrel felt his cheeks flush, but he rounded the corner anyways. Tears of laughter were streaming down Siobhan’s face, and when she saw Brad, Nicki tried to stifle her own laughter. Brad smiled, and she let out another chuckle. “But I suppose you know now.”

“This has been . . . a learning experience, and a rude awakening,” Brad allowed. “I am not trained for this, but I am learning quickly. How did the rest of this morning go?” The lighthearted atmosphere suddenly chilled, and Nicki looked downcast.

“Frustrating. Frightening.”

“How so?” Brad asked.

“It violates every moral code of the field.” She scowled, jaw tight. “I’ve got a full workup on what it is and what it does. The superficial irritation isn’t a virus, it’s an allergen—urushiol. It causes contact dermatitis like some earth plants. It might itself be lethal for sensitive individuals. That’s just barely the beginning,” Nicki said. Her skin had gone pale, and there was a sheen on her forehead, as though it stressed her just to speak her findings aloud.

“The bad part is, they’ve embedded a virus within it. The irritant will last six, maybe eight weeks once a person contracts the condition. It’s been designed to be more robust than the natural stuff and can be deployed via crop duster, in a spray, or for that matter, they could airburst it from artillery shells.

“The virus, however, is hidden within the allergen like a nightmarish matryoshka doll and will take effect as the spores’ effects wear off. The immune response attacks the RNA shells and releases the virions. That’s a hemorrhagic plague that will disintegrate the infected person’s blood vessels from inside out. A week or two later, organs begin to fail, massive subdermal hematomas, and you die. Maybe your lung’s alveoli and capillaries go first, and you drown. Maybe your eyes rupture, and they can’t stop bleeding. Maybe your aorta blows. Doesn’t matter; the point is that it’s fucking monstrous. Ebola was stamped out on Earth centuries ago, but this looks like a highly weaponized version of it. None of our standard counters will touch it.”

Brad considered the problem and concluded it was time to lay his cards on the table.

“There is a group of hackers, electronics intel specialists, geeks and/or Black Ops troops running a secondary net behind the scenes. I don’t know who they are, but I trust the FMF troop who put me in contact with them. I report in, receive instructions or requests for materiel, transmit and receive data. Each time I do, I run the risk that the UN figures out how we’re getting the messages around. They’re clearly . . . fallible, since they didn’t know the significance of the FSA, they just knew that Dr. Meacham was a friendly who’d made the ultimate sacrifice. They hoped that because you and he both belonged to the same . . . social group,” Minstrel grimaced, while Nicki smiled, “that meant you were a friendly too. When they gave me your name, I didn’t get so much as a first initial. So there are gaps in their intel, but they are connected to friendlies of all sorts, all over Grainne. Hell, maybe the halo too, I don’t know. Maybe we give them a copy of the data, see what they can shake loose?”

Siobhan was nodding, and eventually, Nicki did too.

“I don’t like admitting defeat,” she said. “But you may be right.”

* * *

Siobhan had a safehouse not too far from campus, and the trio left the lab together. She activated a map overlay on her civilianized comm and showed it to Minstrel.

“You’re not the only one with geek friends. There’s . . . fifty thousand? Nope, sixty thousand now, of us residents tracking UN checkpoints. When they establish a temporary control point, a user pins it on the map. If you live anywhere within a half-kay radius of the CP, you get a notification on the coordinates. When they tear the CP down, users can mark it clear. Once multiple sources confirm it’s gone, we remove it from the overlay. But the overlay naturally interfaces with the navigation side and plots a route around them.”

Brad shook his head. He could have used an overlay like that a long time ago. Evidently Siobhan and he moved in different intel circles, because he’d never heard of the overlay. They’d have to start sharing best practices, starting with this link. He could think of a bunch of other active partisans who would appreciate something like that as well.

They arrived safely, and Minstrel logged in with the entertainment vid again. After exchanging bona fides with Beth, Minstrel summarized their problem and asked for help.

Beth took her time replying, but eventually, the reply came:

Send the analysis for distribution. Reports from CRD indicate the allergen, local nickname “the runnies,” has gone live. Secondary tasking, use all available assets to produce standard multi-use medical nanos in bulk and prep to distribute to known militia groups.

The clock was ticking.

* * *

Beth’s report took the matter from “urgent” to “critical,” and the trio concluded “all available assets” included begging help from mutual friend Sergeant Michael “Specter” Pieters, who was out near Delph’ . . . somewhere. He was a fully qualified veterinarian and nano expert who could fabricate and program them in bulk. If worst came to worst, some models in Nicki’s simulator suggested a course of medical nanos could delay but not stop the virus, potentially buying them time. Minstrel was pleased to learn Anasazi was already tied into the rest of the Jefferson handler team through Amber Riggs. The veterans and volunteers who supplied the missile teams connected with the leopard handlers, the handlers provided much-needed pathfinding and wilderness survival expertise in the Dragontooth Mountains and hunted vertols from the safety of the wilds.

Minstrel’s comm’s range was limited when not connected to the standard network, so they followed the hills and slopes of the range up to the peaks, flying barely above the treetops until the ocean disappeared over the horizon to the east. From here, they’d get the best possible coverage and the broadest possible broadcast. “Specter, this is Minstrel, over,” Brad sent for the fourth time.

“Minstrel, this is Frosty,” a familiar voice replied, and Brad sighed in relief. Rick Winters was the team’s senior sergeant who ran with two leopard brothers, Ronny and Buck. After exchanging another authentication, “Frosty” sent him the handler team’s most up-to-date encryption key so his comm would communicate with Pieters and directed them to his AO. Thirty kilometers on, Brad broadcast again.

“Minstrel? This is Specter. Is that you buzzing around overhead?” Pieters asked. “I’m with Fritz and Riggs. Magnus is hurt, and we’re trying to extract on foot. Your timing couldn’t be better. Stand by.”

“Blow an LZ, and we’ll pick you up,” Brad replied. Pieters replied in the affirmative, and Brad circled until he heard detonations and saw trees topple. He swiftly dropped the air truck below the massive treetops and came to a gentle rest, perched precariously across a pair of parallel pillar trunks. Three handlers emerged from the treeline carrying a stricken leopard on a rough nuggetwood stretcher. They already had IVs running and the shirts that made up the stretcher fabric were darkly stained.

Pieters hopped into the bed of the airtruck with his patient, and Amber Riggs and her cat Sheerah joined them. A liquid black shadow flowed out of the trees behind him, and Shadow jumped over the tailgate to join his partner just before Pieters dropped the truck’s rear door. Two handlers and three cats made for a crowded interior, but it made sense—Amber wouldn’t leave either of her two cats behind, while Mike was the best veterinarian they had. With the interior sealed away from the outside wind, Minstrel popped the rear window, and Riggs leaned in. Her face was taut and dirty from weeks of rough living, with leaves and twigs in decorating her mud-caked mane of dirty blonde hair. Both handlers had lost a lot of weight.

“Where are we going?” she shouted over the turbines.

“I know a place!” Nicki shouted back. “Sit tight!”

* * *

Minstrel’s airtruck touched down on the outskirts of Fall Creek, and Dr. Sykora led the way into a large log cabin. She brushed cobwebs out of her face, a good sign that indicated the cabin hadn’t been disturbed. Minstrel, Riggs, and Pieters carried their stricken patient inside the cabin, and downstairs. Pieters did a double-take when he realized his old ladyfriend had held the front door, and introductions were rapidly made as Pieters hung IV bags from the basement’s rafters. The cabin had a stainless-steel game table in the basement, some surgically sharp game-dressing tools, a well-stocked medical kit, and plenty of disinfectant. Surgery was a long, tense affair, but handlers spent a good deal of time in cat school learning to be the veterinarian version of a blazer combat medic. With Mike operating, Brad and Amber assisting, and Nicki programming nanos on the fly, they stabilized the wounded leopard and left him to rest.

“What happened?” Brad asked when they’d cleaned up. “And whose place is this?”

“It’s . . . mine, I guess?” Nicki answered. “It was Endah’s. He loved to come out here and get away from the city life, he found it peaceful. Sometimes he hunted, and the fishing here was excellent. We obviously haven’t been out here since the invasion. Now he’s gone, I suppose it’s mine, more or less. I’m the closest thing to next-of-kin he had even though we never made it official.”

“Well we appreciate you letting us crash,” Mike replied. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Likewise, but I wish it wasn’t under these circumstances,” Nicki replied. “What happened to your cat?”

“There’s some kind of off-planet smuggling op,” Amber replied. “We haven’t had a single resupply since February that didn’t come by way of airdrop. Ammunition, consumables, field rats, shoulder-launched anti-air missiles, the works.”

“Only this time, we got sloppy,” Pieters spat in disgust. “We had a rule—one missile per launch site, to do otherwise exposes us. Well, this time we had more than we could carry away and launched three from the drop site in a hurry. We downed two, but the third swept around, pinpointed us, and we had to leg it. The next wave was an Avatar incendiary strike and a sweep by a Special Unit in that fucking clamshell armor.”

Riggs stroked the wounded leopard’s fur and looked sadly at her cat’s wounds. He was dopey, conscious but sedated. “Magnus didn’t understand you can’t fight powered armor with teeth and claws. The UN was . . . a tad miffed. We got one of the suits, but it was a close thing, and then we ran. Another mistake like that will cost.”

Pieters shook himself out of a reverie. He was running on a mixture of adrenaline and stress, but Brad could read the puzzlement on his face as he took in Brad, Siobhan, and Nicki in this cabin basement. “Now, what in the Goddess’s name is so important you had to pluck me and mine out of the field?”

* * *

Beth: Assets have cracked your earlier conundrum RE precious cargo counter. We are distributing this widely, and full details have been published on the nets, in the Halo, and word will reach other systems in fifteen days. Make best use of it you can; getting results was . . . costly.

The message was etched into his retinas. Beth was, as usual, being understated. He worried what “costly” meant, but he assumed it meant casualties. The infodump itself meant nothing to him, so he handed it over to the doctors immediately.

“Goddess . . . ” Pieters cursed quietly.

“You see it too?” Nicki asked soberly.

“What am I missing?” he asked, clearly out of his depth.

“The good news is, we can fab a cure now,” Mike said. “Whoever your source is, they were thorough. Anyone who’s been given this nano can have blood drawn to start a culture within thirty divs for anyone with the right blood type.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“It’s going to be a slow process. The first reports of the runnies came out three weeks ago, meaning we’ve got four or five left before the blood plague does its thing and starts killing us in job lots,” Nicki continued with a grimace. “We should stick ourselves with the first set of counters, so we can draw blood and get secondary cultures going at the same time. Let’s get to work.”

* * *

In addition to being experts on the subject, Doctors Pieters and Sykora were decent instructors and had spent a morning teaching Minstrel and Anasazi the finer points of processing basic medical nanos. Riggs had elected to remain at the cabin, caring for Magnus and the other leopards, and besides, they wouldn’t have hidden on campus very well. That then freed both the experts up to make the vastly more complex counter to the runnies. For seven and a half divs a day, they sourced supplies and cranked out nanos that had been, until the UN’s occupation, produced on an industrial scale and distributed as widely as possible. They had to avoid being conspicuous at all costs.

It was Yewday, and Mike had agreed to remain with Nicki in the lab as Ministrelli and Siobhan got out, stretched their legs, and grabbed lunch for all five. When they returned to campus, Minstrel spotted a large cargo hauler emblazoned with a logo.

McClellan & Son Farm Supply

“That isn’t right,” he whispered. “Hold on.”

When they neared the truck, Minstrel greeted the man, extending his hand.

“You John’s new help? How’s he doing these days?”

“Oh, ye know,” the man replied, giving him a quick limp-wristed handshake. His Scottish brogue was so thick it was nearly impenetrable. “Doin’ his best tae keep on keepin’ on, what with the UN and all.”

“No doubt. Give him my regards, would you? Tell him Brad Steele says hi?”

“Aye, will do, have a good ’un.”

When they had some distance, Ceallaigh lowered her voice.

“What was that all about?”

“John McClellan died three and a half years ago, on Mtali,” Brad replied. “His brother sourced the original sample of the allergen. If they rumbled David somehow, they might know we have the sample. If they know we have the sample, they might be looking at labs that could analyze it. Did you see how he shook hands? No way he’s Freehold.”

“Dammit.”

“Keep your head on a swivel. Methinks shit just got real.”

* * *

Brad and Siobhan kept their eyes wide as they strode purposefully onto the university grounds. Parked cars and trucks, ordinarily innocuous, now seemed suspicious. There were more drones overhead, and groups of students now looked more like undercover UN troops. Brad looked up as a wing of Sentinels flew by, high overhead, then realized he was exposing his face to any drones looking down at him and tucked his chin again. He couldn’t tell where his survival instinct ended and paranoia began; blood hammered in his ears, and he recognized his body was getting ready to fight whether he wanted it to or not.

The airtruck he’d arrived in was parked on the far side of campus, and a detour would delay them, unacceptably so. They passed another nondescript aircar where a pale Caucasian man sat with another with darkly tanned skin and wavy black hair. The former stood out, especially, as any long-term exposure to Iolight would have imbued him with a permanent tan.

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, third time will be too late.

Siobhan saw them too and pulled out her comm. “I’m calling them,” she said.

* * *

Mike Pieters fumbled his phone as it buzzed.

“Yes?”

“Get out.” Ceallaigh’s voice on the comm was harsh but urgent.

“What?” Pieters asked.

“Get out. Get everything we have, and get out, now. They’re coming.”

“We can’t just . . . ” Mike argued, but Nicki grabbed the comm from his ear.

“If we leave now, we lose a third of our counter-nanos.”

“You don’t leave now, we lose it all. We’ve got spooks and surveillance teams all over campus. Take the north exit, then west, we’re coming to you.”

The UV sterilization chamber slowed their exit from the lab, and the pair emerged already peeling their scrubs off and tossing them into the recycler. Nicki poked her head out the door and quickly ducked back in.

“Shit. Director Kaur is coming this way with four more. No uniforms.”

Nicki considered her options for just a moment and grabbed Mike’s comm again.

:: Too late, incoming, :: she typed. She glanced around the lab for something she could use as a weapon.

The comm beeped in reply.

:: Stall them ::

Nicki took a deep breath and guided Mike towards the showers. “I recall, once upon a time, you had a thing for getting hot and wet and soapy. They’re coming, but we have to buy them time.”

Mike resisted at first, unsure whether she meant what she’d said, but as the words registered, he followed his former ladyfriend into the showers, where they got the water running.

The door opened. “Doctor Sykora?” a feminine voice called out. Nicki looked at her old boyfriend, who just nodded in understanding.

“Doctor Sykora?” the voice called again, but they didn’t acknowledge.

“Check the shower,” a male voice ordered. Nicki mouthed the words “Trust me” and Mike nodded. She pressed herself up against Pieters under the stream of water and gave him a deep kiss as she wrapped her arms around him. She was warm, and slippery, and her lips were soft; Mike regretted that their careers had taken them different directions. It had been a long time since he’d held her like this, and he suddenly found himself missing her a great deal. All too quickly, they were interrupted.

“Oh!” the female voice started, and Nicki jumped back, “surprised” by the woman. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry to, well, to interrupt,” she apologized, and Nicki did her best to feign indignation.

“Can I help you, Director?” she enunciated, hands on her bare hips.

“I beg your pardon, and yours,” Director Kaur apologized to both. “But there are some men here from the UN, and they need a word. They’re quite insistent.”

“Let us rinse off the soap and dry, and we’ll be out in a moment,” Nicki said, and Kaur nodded and turned away. Pieters delayed another thirty seconds before shutting the water off, and the two emerged while toweling off. Nicki took her time drying off, giving the UN aardvarks an eyeful, knowing how repressed they were when it came to nudity and sex. As anticipated, the shock value caused a few wide eyes, appreciative stares, and then one soldier cuffed another other upside the back of his head.

“Eyes front, you. You know what the cultural brief said.”

“But, Sarge,” the younger man complained, and received a poke to his chest.

“And no rank!”

Pieters filed all that intel away for later and dressed quickly. He knew how twitchy her nudity was making the men, and every second that passed meant the other three were closer. They paid him almost no mind, but the aardvarks from Earth couldn’t take their eyes off Dominika.

“Now then,” Nicki said as she pulled on her top. “What do you want?”

One of the men stepped forward and flashed a badge. “I am Captain Nicholas Devers of the 12th Military Police Company. You two are under arrest, the charge is conspiracy to commit terrorism. Place your hands behind your back.”

“Excuse me?” Director Kaur protested. “You said nothing about arresting—”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” the MP snapped. “Now, get out of the way or be arrested for obstruction.”

Kaur backed away as two of the men with Devers reached under their jackets to remove binders.

* * *

“You ready?” Minstrel asked as they turned the hallway corner, and Dr. Sykora’s office/lab door came into sight.

“Just fuck ’em up, I can handle it,” Anasazi declared. Minstrel reached into the bag from Darmawan’s, withdrew a bulb, and popped off the cap.

“Honey! We brought lunch!” he called as he backed through the doorway. The first UN goon he saw opened his mouth to object, but Minstrel already had the bulb held out extended, and he squeezed, spraying Satan pepper sauce into the closest target’s eyes and mouth. A second thug’s eyes widened as the attack registered, then he too was coated in sticky, red, fiery salsa.

Minstrel dropped the bulb and leaped at the third, the one who seemed to be in charge, as Pieters went low, slamming into a fourth from behind in a low rugby tackle. They crashed to the floor, and Pieters grabbed a stickyweb gun on the MP’s belt and fired three times at near-contact range, pinning the UN troop’s head to the floor.

Minstrel and the captain went down in a heap, but the UN officer was overweight and outmassed Brad by forty kilos. From beneath his bulk, Brad grabbed the captain’s too-long hair with his left hand, cranked his head back, and slammed the heel of his right through the captain’s jaw, breaking his neck and ending the fight. He leveraged the body off himself and rolled to his feet.

Siobhan webbed one of the goons suffering from pepper spray, and Nicki decked him with a vicious elbow to the base of his neck. Minstrel dodged aside as the last hostile finally cleared his own less-lethal sidearm and lifted it to fire, but Siobhan took three steps forward and kicked upwards between his legs like she was punting a football. The sudden, unexpected impact crumpled him to the ground where he keened in agony. Pieters webbed him in the face, muffling his screams and ensuring he would suffocate, then did the same for the other UN troops as well. Stickywebs were only “less” lethal, after all.

“We need to leave. Now,” Minstrel panted.

Nicki shook her head in the negative. “We’ll lose a third of the counter if we go.” If the dead and dying UN troops leaking and thrashing on her office floor bothered her, she made no show of it. Director Kaur, on the other hand, stood in the corner with tears streaming from her eyes.

“What have you done?” she stammered. The foursome all looked at her, forgotten in the melee, then Pieters pointed the webgun at her.

“Turn around,” he ordered, “and put your hands on the wall.” Kaur complied, and Mike shot her in both hands, pinning them in place with the last of the stickyweb. “This way, they don’t blame you,” he said by way of apology. “Maybe. There will be more coming.”

* * *

Siobhan’s checkpoint app proved a lifesaver. She watched in real time as the plainclothes spooks’ uniformed backup raced to the scene, but they reached the airtruck and slipped away before the UN could close the net. This part of the city was too hot for Siobhan or Nicki to remain. DNA sniffers would go over the lab and then any random checkpoint became a lethal liability.

After reclaiming their gear and their stash of counter-nano, Siobhan posted Nicki’s analysis of the runnies, and the cure, to every anonymous forum she knew. The UN would try to deny their use of bioweapons, of course, but the information wasn’t for their benefit. They fled west and outside Fall Creek, Pieters reunited with his anxious panther. They disappeared back into the forest with Riggs, to go back to the hunt. It hurt, to let his colleagues go back to their hunt while he was errand boy, messenger, and general go-between, but intellectually he knew he was now a force-multiplier, not a trigger-puller. Through his work, everyone else became that much more effective, and there was some satisfaction to be found in that.

“Where will you go?” Brad asked. “You can’t stay here anymore, not after that.”

“I have family in Taniville,” Siobhan answered. “Barring a flight to Caledonia, it’s the safest place for us to disappear.” It was also at the far end of the continent, a ten-thousand-kilometer trip, and Brad winced.

“You could stay with me, stay on the move. Goddess knows you’re better at this spy shit than I am.”

“You know I’d love to,” she replied. “But the last I heard, Tani hasn’t been able to organize itself in the slightest. I’ll look up some old friends from First Army and keep doing what I’m doing. I’ll be careful, you just promise to do the same, you understand? And when this is all over, you can propose to me again. It’ll give you something to look forward to.”

Brad smiled sheepishly, kissed her deeply, and shook hands with Nicki before the women departed. He took a deep breath and got back in the battered air truck to start making his rounds.

* * *

His first stop was at the farm in Darkwood Hills, with the blonde woman who’d resembled Nicki—except, she didn’t resemble Nicki anymore. Her skin was patchy and raw, scabs wept pus, and she moved as if every joint was inflamed. So did everyone else, for that matter.

“I’ve got something you want,” he said and handed over the first case. “Twelve doses of counter-nano to the runnies.”

One of the men objected. “Only twelve? There’s forty people around here.”

“All I can spare, friend,” Brad apologized. He hurt for them—they were obviously suffering. There had been a handful of children running around the last time he’d been here, but they were conspicuous in their absence. “I have other people to supply. But if you draw blood in three days, anyone compatible can use it as a starter culture. These doses will take effect immediately, symptoms will heal naturally in a week, overnight with a reconstructor nano, and I have eighty doses of that you can have. The cultured version takes about two days to work fully, then another week for natural healing.”

The man who had objected, a woman Minstrel took to be his wife, and another couple began unloading. Minstrel caught a moment to ask the blonde woman about the children, and she teared up.

“This isn’t our first go with their bioweapons,” she spat. Her North American accent had been obvious the first day he’d met her, and he wondered how she’d come to be hiding out here, of all places. “The last one gave everyone pneumonia, and Riga choked to death in her sleep. That’s her father, Dak.”

Minstrel nodded. “Just make sure everyone gets the counter, lady. Everyone. It’s lethal if untreated.” He spared her the horrific details, so long as she was clear on the consequences.

“Thank you,” the blonde woman said quietly. “I don’t know how you came up with this, but you’ve already proven yourself the strongest link in our chain of command, I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Minstrel went to the bereaved father and embraced the man, briefly.

“Dak, I’m sorry about Riga. If I could have done anything about it, believe me . . . ”

The haunted farmer stepped back and looked upon him with reddened, gummy eyes and weeping sores. Minstrel had seen that look before. It was a simmering cauldron of rage and hate, and he’d seen it staring back at him in every mirror after they’d bombed Heilbrun. He’d raised his kittens from birth to be his sidekicks, battle partners, and his kids. The day they’d died, he would have killed every man, woman and child on Earth, if he’d been offered the chance. Dak, apparently, was a stronger man than he, because the man’s features softened after a moment, nodded, and he turned away.

“If any of you need relief, to come off the line for a while and get your hearts and heads sorted out, even for a day or three, say the word,” Brad told the blonde woman. “I’m tied in to a lot of people, people with safehouses and resources and help. I can make that happen. Better to trade distance for time than flame out and lose everything. Everyone.”

“That’s the last thing Dak would want.” She stared at her host’s retreating form as he disappeared back into the farmhouse. “He’d see it as defeat.”

“Understood,” Minstrel replied, “but the offer stands. Some wounds, a nano can’t heal.”

The blonde thought about that for a moment. “I think we’re a bit—” The blonde abruptly hacked and coughed, spitting out a wad of bloody phlegm, “past that point.”

“You may be right. The others look to you. Veteran?”

“Active, Third Mob logistics. I was on one of the last flights out before they hit the base.” She extended her arm, and Minstrel shook it Freehold style. “I’m Kendra, but my old recruit instructor called me Icebitch.”

“Who was that, if I may ask?”

“Senior Sergeant Joe Carpender,” she answered, and Minstrel gave her an incredulous look.

“Very pleased to meet you then, Kendra. Joe was my section commander before he lateraled to Mirror Lake; I know what he was like, so if he was your RI, you have my respect. My friends call me Brad, and I’m sorry I couldn’t get the nanos here any sooner.”

“Thank you, Brad. I know we look like hell right now but give us a week’s relief from these fucking spores and we’ll be back in the fight.” Kendra looked to the farmhouse where Dak’s remaining family waited inside. “They ain’t seen nothin’, yet. We’re just getting started.”


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