Incursion

Chapter 29: Overture

I got up shortly after six o’clock in the morning. At first, I tried to sit up at normal speed, but even that benign movement sent a tearing pain spreading across my torso. Wincing, I threw off the covers to have another look at myself.

Practically all of my chest and midriff was swathed in bandages. The dressings were pure white, with no sign of blood staining through, so for now I could be assured regular movements wouldn’t get me bleeding again.

Thanks to the bandages, however, my torso felt stiff and constrained. Not so much that I couldn’t move at all, but enough that I felt like the dressings would come off given enough erratic movement. There was moderate pain from simply sitting up, which I grunted at.

Still got a job to do.

The only thing I was hooked up to now was the intravenous line and drip bag, fortunately. I lifted my arm and pinched the tape holding the line to the inside of my elbow, carefully peeling at the edge.

The sound of the medical suite’s automatic door sliding open made me stop. Since my bed was surrounded by curtains on all three sides, I couldn’t see immediately who had come in.

Light footsteps approached the curtains, and eventually the veils were drawn to reveal Christina Valentine, who was carrying something resembling a slightly large tube of plastic wrap in the crook of one arm. She clearly did not expect me to be awake, because when our eyes met, she took half a step back impulsively.

I myself was still searching for words to say when she recovered fairly quickly from her surprise at seeing me sitting up.

“Hi,” she said, looking and sounding as though she were a shy transfer student being made to introduce herself to her classmates.

I hesitated for a second before deciding to respond.

“Hi,” I said back, feeling a slight tinge of sheepishness for whatever reason.

She tentatively gave me a top-to-bottom glance. “Glad you’re up. How do you feel?”

About my physical health, or something else?

“I’ve been better,” I said curtly.

Christina nodded slowly, biting down on her lower lip awkwardly. “I’ll bet. Um—”

I watched her freeze for a few seconds and stare at me blankly as if she’d lost her entire train of thought, before briskly regaining it again with a slight widening of her eyes.

“Thought you might want to get showered. This – I mean, if you’re sure you can walk—”

She held up the roll she was carrying.

She avoided my gaze now, instead looking at the dressing protector she had with her.

“If you’re still not feeling up for doing it yourself, I can… Well, you can just sponge bath,” she continued, seeming to stumble on her words just a bit.

“I’ll have a shower,” I told her flatly.

“Right. Okay. Let’s get you disconnected first.”

She placed the roll of protector down on the end of the bed and removed the tape from the inside of my elbow gingerly. I could have done this myself, and I wanted to, but I let her do it. She was already in the process of doing so before I could stop her, anyway.

In less than five minutes, all the medical tape on the crook of my elbow and down my forearm and wrist was removed, and the needle in my vein as well, Christina pressed a cotton ball to the puncture to stop the slight bleeding, then once that was done, she picked up the dressing protector again.

“Here, can you swing your legs over this edge of the bed?” she said, sounding a little more secure of herself now. She certainly sounded more instructive, in any case. “I’ll put a dressing protector over your bandages.”

I did as she asked. She then proceeded to place one large seal over part of my bandages around the chest area, then after that placed another over my abdominal bandages.

After both of my wounds were sealed by the waterproof shield, Christina straightened up. “All done. I’ll change your dressings later.”

I gave a grunt, then carefully got to my feet. As I was getting up off the bed, Christina picked up my sweater from a nearby plastic chair and held it out to me.

“Here.”

I took it from her without a word and put it on. Then I staggered past her and headed for the door.

“Knight, King says we should probably meet this morning to discuss coordinating the Army reinforcements—”

“I know that,” I cut across her, not stopping or looking back.

“Okay. Sorry.”

I left her there and headed for the showers in the floor below.





After showering and getting dressed, I made my way over to Genel’s quarters, intending to ask for my TACPAD back. When I got there, she handed me my brace with the cracked, worn TACPAD in the dock.

“Here,” she said, handing me my wrist brace. She looked rather sombre.

“Did you do anything with this one?”

“Yes. Just to be safe.”

“Thanks.”

I reattached the brace to my right forearm.

“So,” Genel said tentatively, hovering at the doorway of her quarters.

“So, what?”

“Who was she?”

I glanced up at her. She was looking right at me with a serious intensity.

I hesitated, not wanting to get into this right now. This being someone else’s TACPAD technically, of course Genel would be curious as to why I had it.

“You should already know the answer,” I replied eventually.

My mentor’s name and callsign were easy enough to find on this pad. Genel would have seen both.

“I didn’t know you had…” she mumbled, trailing off midsentence.

“We all had to learn from someone.”

“Yeah, but she’s—”

I didn’t want to talk about her. If Genel went through the ‘IMAGES’ or ‘AUDIO LOGS’ on this TACPAD, I didn’t want to know. I supposed I could have given her crap for going through someone else’s secrets, but the bottom line was that I didn’t want to talk about my mentor. I didn’t want to know what images Genel saw, or what was in those audio files.

I didn’t have it in me to delete them. I felt doing that would be tantamount to a crime. But at the same time, I wanted nothing to do with them.

I took the battered TACPAD out of the dock and replaced it with my own that I took from my quarters after getting dressed. I pocketed the older TACPAD and took a deep breath.

That breath alone sent a painful sensation over my chest. I grumbled in silence before turning around and beckoning for Genel to follow me.

“Let’s talk about those reinforcements.”

Genel thankfully let sleeping dogs lie. She wordlessly followed – or rather, kept with my slightly slowed pace as I trudged up to the Command Room.

When we entered the room, I found it already occupied by a relative crowd. Josh was standing by the door, talking to Warrant Officer Caleb Jacobs. Meanwhile, Christina was sitting near the far end of the table, across from Chief Warrant Officer Angela King and Sergeant Ethan Reid. They too, appeared to be in mid-conversation.

As soon as I was inside, I took Genel to the side, out of earshot from the others.

I jerked my head toward the former XO. “What’s she doing here?”

Genel didn’t look past me. “Ian, we need her. She’s in a better condition than you are to lead this op.”

“Doesn’t mean you should trust her.”

“Why not?”

“Are you seriously asking me that?”

She inhaled and exhaled forcefully. “I get what you’re saying. She hurt us both. But right now, we need to work together. Besides, it’s not up to you to fire her. There’s a process for that, and you aren’t the one in charge of it.”

I glanced surreptitiously over my shoulder at Christina. She appeared to glance in our direction as if she felt Genel and I were talking about her specifically. After a second, she quickly turned back to reply to something King was saying.

“I don’t like the thought of her leading the team, even temporarily. She could compromise us, or turn on us, or—”

“Ian,” Genel said firmly and with a trace of exasperation, “Chrissy isn’t like that. She wouldn’t screw us over.”

“Tell that to the 41 CBGs.”

Genel’s eyes seemed to flare. She grabbed at the collar of my sweater and pulled me to her a little.

“Don’t talk like that. My colleagues made a choice. If it could have saved those civvies, they would have made it. They… They’re not Chrissy’s fault.”

“You’ve known her two weeks. You can’t be sure of that. You’re really going to put your faith in her based on the brief time she’s been on the team?”

Genel stared up defiantly at me, her expression clad in stalwart stubbornness. “Yeah, I am.”

“Why the hell are you siding with her, anyway? Don’t you care about what she did to our friend?” I demanded, trying to keep from raising my voice in frustration.

“Of course I care,” she told me, her voice hardening considerably. “Miyaku was like a sister to me. I loved her just as much as you did. But people can change, Ian.”

“She won’t change. People don’t change, Genel.”

She shook hear head slightly, frowning deeply at me. “You did.”

Before I could respond to that, she brushed past me roughly and headed over to join Christina, King, and Reid.

I sighed, scratched at my hair in frustration, and reluctantly walked up to the more populated end of the table.

“Hey, good to see you up, Grim Reaper.” King waved as I walked over with a slight limp. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“I doubt that, but at least you’re well enough to be standing,” she said without skipping a beat.

“I’m thinking we should go over what your team’s got first. Then I’ll put a call in to the company captain so we can coordinate.”

King nodded, starting to rise from her seat. “Sure thing. You got a map I can use?”

“Archer, can you bring it up on the overhead screen?”

Genel nodded back from her seat beside Christina’s. “I’ll do you one better. HQ managed to get our link to the real-time satellite feed back up yesterday.”

Genel went through her TACPAD to set up our sat view feed on the screen above this end of the table while I took the seat beside Reid, across from Genel. Josh and Jacobs came over and sat down as well; Josh plopped down beside Genel, while Jacobs sat to his other side.

While Genel was working to bring up the feed, I met Josh’s eyes.

“All right, Goliath?” I asked him by way of greeting.

Josh made a show of turning his neck very slightly and stiffly so I could see the dressing taped to the back of his neck, near the base of his nape.

“It’s a chore to look at things that aren’t straight ahead, but I’m good, boss.”

“No other complications?”

“Yeah. I’ve had to adjust how I sleep on my bed.”

“Good to hear.”

He half-snorted and half-chuckled. A moment later, the overhead screen lit up to show a high-resolution image of the city of Calgary. King rose from her seat and stood beneath the screen. Genel passed on her TACPAD to the chief warrant officer.

“Here,” the tech specialist said as she handed her pad to the CSOR team leader. “Just drag and zoom like you normally would. Double tap to mark locations. Double tap, then hold and drag to draw overlays.”

King gave the TACPAD a quick inspection, muttering something about “cool phone”, before panning the feed to the east of the city and zooming in to the countryside between the town of Chestermere and Calgary’s eastern city limits.

“Right, so me and the guys did some recon yesterday on the best routes we can have our strike force move along. If we’re looking to put a dent – or if we’re being that optimistic, eliminate – the opposition, we have to hit the US Army quickly before they can respond effectively or pull together. For that reason, we need to attack their most secure stronghold first. That means the downtown area.”

King marked the downtown core with a red dot, close to the left edge of the screen.

“Kind of ballsy,” Josh commented, looking up at the screen, then at King. “Attacking the heart of their operations straight away.”

“It’s not without risks, naturally,” King replied, “but this is our best chance at gaining a foothold here. Attacking anywhere else first, like the outlying outposts or the detainment camps, might work to get to the prisoners sooner, but getting there sooner won’t matter if they get caught in the crossfire. And if we start off slow and small, that’ll give the enemy time to prepare even more for us, or seek us out and pick us off. The actual attack’s gotta be hard and fast. No room for subtleties here. We’ve got to remember: even though we’re being reinforced, we’re still on the lighter side of the scales in terms of numbers. We’ll need an update on final troop numbers, but I can’t imagine we’ll get more than a hundred and fifty infantry, plus maybe a few vehicles.

“From a defensive standpoint, taking downtown also makes more sense for us. In general, the core is easier to defend against retaliatory forces that might come after we’ve rooted out the ones that are already occupying the area.”

“The same is true for the enemy already hunkered down there,” Genel said. “We’ll be fighting an uphill battle trying to retake downtown.”

“Right. That’s why we’ve got to do some prep work before the day of the big push. To take a leaf out of your successful book, I propose setting some explosive charges at several points in the downtown core. At worst, they’ll confuse and scatter the enemy forces enough to give our side more of an edge. At best, we can reduce their numbers before the main assault. Possible cherry on top. Even getting… I’d say several dozen hostiles caught in the blasts would be a big plus for us.”

King paused to zoom in a bit more, enough to see the entirety of the downtown area. Since we were using a real-time satellite feed that actually updates rather than a still feed, the image changed constantly. From this level of zoom, I saw tiny dots along different streets shifting: foot soldiers and some vehicles on patrol, surely. Having this type of feed again would give us invaluable foresight that would allow us to make emergency revisions.

Right now, I noticed a lot of shifting shapes from Sixth to Ninth Avenue, and from Fifth Street to Macleod Trail. This roughly placed the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Centre Street in the heart of the enemy’s most guarded sectors.

“We need to pinpoint key points to hit first,” King continued, looking straight at the TACPAD’s screen. “Unfortunately, the downtown core has largely been a dark zone to us all this time. We haven’t been there yet, so figuring out where to cause a ruckus is going to take some work. And if what I’m being told is right, they’ll be on higher alert than usual because—”

“—I breached their ranks recently,” I said. I could feel Christina’s gaze on me, but I ignored her. “Security’s bound to be tighter now than it was before yesterday.”

“Exactly,” King agreed. “Planting charges is going to be a challenge.”

“Everything is at this point,” I replied. “Only way we have a shot at sabotage prep is at night. No way we can get in there without anyone taking an interest during the day.”

“It’s still going to be hard as hell to pull this off, but it’s our best chance. Our only chance,” King went on, then looked over us Shadows. “You guys have C4, right?”

“Goliath?” I looked over to our weapons expert and demolitionist.

He nodded right away. “Sure, we’ve got enough, But individually, they’re not really going to produce a large enough distraction. Or crippling effect.”

Jacobs, the CSOR sniper, cleared his throat and chimed in. “True. But we’ll be hitting several different sites all at once. Besides, as long as we’ve got enough of it, I can jury-rig C4s to create ones with greater blast potential.”

“You know how to fiddle with plastic explosives?” Josh asked him.

Jacobs smiled a little. “Just give me enough of it and I can put something together in a couple hours.”

Josh chuckled. “When in doubt, make a bigger boom. All right, all right. If it’s a large splash we need at least, we can arrange that. What do you think, boss?”

I shot Josh a quick nod. “Do it. Goliath, you work with Jacobs to get us some super bombs. Make… six. That should be enough. If we space them out across downtown properly, we’ll daze the enemy forces and give O Company enough of an element of surprise.”

“Aye, Reaper,” Jacobs said as he gave me an informal two-finger salute. “Leave it to us.”

“So, where do we plant them?” Christina piped up, her eyes glued to the overhead feed.

I glanced toward Genel. “Archer, any ideas?”

Genel studied the feed for a moment. “Not at the moment. We’re practically blind about the downtown area. You don’t have any intel, do you?”

“No. I wasn’t there for very long, and I wasn’t there to do recon.”

“Give me a few hours to watch this feed. I can make some informed guesses about possible hot spots. Better than nothing.”

“All right, do it. Six charges, six targets. We’ll run them all on RF detonators that we can trigger via TACPAD. We’ll set them off before our reinforcements push into the core.”

“Roger that,” Genel said crisply.

“Before we talk routes and consolidation, we need to know just how much backup we’re getting,” Reid argued from beside me. He glanced my way. “We got a line on the company’s CO?”

“Knight,” Genel said, “the chairman gave us the frequency to Captain Arellano while you were away. It’s on your TACPAD’s directory.”

“Thanks. I’ll get him on the line.”

I went through my TACPAD’s frequency list until I found an entry for an ‘O. Arellano – O Com’ near the bottom of my short list. I initiated a call to the contact and switched output from my earpiece to the pad’s loudspeaker so everyone at the table could follow the conversation.

I placed my TACPAD in front of me on the table and waited a few seconds for the call to go through. A clicking noise came not long after, followed by a split second’s worth of background noise before a silvery male voice spoke over it.

“Third Battalion, O Company, Royal Canadian Regiment. Captain Oscar Arellano speaking. Who is this?”

“Captain Arellano, this is callsign ‘Knight’,” I spoke in a carrying volume, leaning toward my TACPAD a bit. “CSIS should have informed you of contacts in Calgary.”

“Affirmative. Good to hear from you, Knight,” Arellano replied. “I was hoping to touch base with you soon.”

“Likewise, Captain. I’m going over attack plans with my team here in the city. I’d like to go over your troop strength and approach to and into the city.”

“Roger, we can do that.”

I glanced around at the others watching either me or my pad intently, then asked, “What is your current location, Captain?”

“We’re currently at Shaunavon, Saskatchewan. We’re going to be moving again in an hour here. We’ve been staying away from both major highways and larger population centres as much as we can. In addition to major cities, a number of larger towns are also being occupied by enemy forces.”

King fiddled with Genel’s TACPAD to find the town of Shaunavon on the Canadian map. The overhead feed zoomed out from Calgary until part of both Alberta and Saskatchewan were on screen.

“Could you tell us what your current approach to Calgary looks like?” I asked Arellano. “We’ll make a note on our end and advise as needed.”

“Of course. Command’s keeping us informed of known enemy fields of movement, so as you can understand, the situation is fluid. Right now, we’re going north to Gull Lake, then keep going west on the Trans-Canada Highway until we reach Dunmore. From there, we’ll use Alberta 3 and then 519 until Granum. From Granum, we’re pushing straight north via Alberta 2 to south Calgary.”

“King, you got all that?” I glanced at the chief warrant officer.

“Give me just… one… sec. There.”

King finished plotting the course of Arellano’s forces. A blue overlay stretched from Shaunavon to south Calgary, the line keeping in a westerly direction until Granum before taking a sharp, northerly turn toward Calgary. The distance indicator on the bottom of the screen showed ‘588 km’.

“Appreciate it, Captain,” I addressed the company leader again. “We’ve got your approach mapped out.”

“Copy, Knight. Command informed me ahead of time that when we got close to the city, we’d be relying on you to coordinate us,” Arellano said.

“That’s the plan, Captain. We’re going to do that. All right, Julietts. How do you suggest we tackle the assault?”

I looked to King and her team for ideas. Large scale coordination and open warfare such as this were more up their alley than ours.

King glanced at both Jacobs and Reid, who gave her small nods. “The boys and I discussed this a bit. It would be best to hit downtown on at least two fronts. West and east.”

She directed her gaze to my TACPAD laying on the table. “Captain Arellano, this is Chief Warrant Officer Angela King with the Canadian Special Operations Regiment. How many soldiers do you have? Mechanized support?”

“Copy, King. I’ve got one hundred and fifty-two personnel in total. Two sniper teams and a demo squad. For vehicles, we have a dozen Humvees, three Coyotes, two Kodiaks, two TAPVs, and three CH one forty-sixes. We’re mostly equipped for land engagements.”

A dozen utility vehicles, seven light armoured fighting vehicles, plus three small choppers for air support. Still not nominal in terms of backup with respect to the projected several hundred enemy forces here, but it was admittedly better than what I was expecting, which was only half a dozen vehicles at most. I would have liked to trade half those Humvees for two or three more Kodiaks or even a couple Black Hawks, but this was what we got. We had to make it work.

“Hmm, we can work with that,” King mused aloud, then looked at me. “Grim Reaper, I suggest splitting the captain’s forces just south of Calgary. Half will head to the east of the city, while the other half will push in from the west.”

“Show us on the feed what you’ve got in mind,” I told her.

King zoomed in until all of Calgary was taking up the screen again. I watched in silence as she marked two spots: Springbank Road to the west of the West Springs neighbourhood, and 17th Avenue to the east of Applewood Park. She then drew overlays leading from both points, both lines pushing into the heart of the city. The western strike force would take Bow Trail Southwest to get to western downtown, while the eastern strike force would carve a path to eastern downtown via 17th Avenue and then 9th Avenue.

“This is what we came up with,” she said, glancing up from Genel’s TACPAD. “Obviously, we still need to review it to assess resistance along these routes, but if we’re looking to hit hard and especially fast, this would be the best way to go about it. We clear out the other blocks on either side, then collectively push further inward until we get to their command centre.”

“Can you zoom in on the downtown core, King?” Genel asked, her expression indicating she was absorbed in this strategizing.

“Sure thing.”

King obliged, doing so and unknowingly placing the Hyatt Regency Hotel roughly in the center of the overhead screen.

I pointed up at the feed. “That should be our focus. The Hyatt on Centre Street. We got intel that the leader of the occupation forces is there. A lieutenant-colonel. Baker, his name was. We take him out, US Army forces’ morale will drop. Everything after that will be a cakewalk by comparison.”

King consulted the TACPAD, nodded, and placed a red dot on top of the hotel. The two blue lines adjusted to meet at the dot.

“Knight, King,” came Captain Arellano’s voice from my TACPAD, “I’m afraid I can’t see what you’re discussing.”

“We’ll send you details shortly, once we’ve checked the routes further, Captain,” King replied. “But the general idea is to split your forces at De Winton. Have half stand by at Calaway Park with the other half at Chestermere. We’ll give you the signal to move in. Anyway, we’ve still got to weigh the risks against the benefits, but that’s how it’ll go unless we come up with something better.”

“Understood,” the captain replied. “Once the plan is finalized, let me know so we can coordinate and adjust.”

“We’ll let you know by tonight,” I promised.

“Roger that. Is there anything else? My men and I need to start prepping for the final push to the city.”

I looked to King first, then the rest of Shadow and the Julietts. When no one else spoke, I turned back to my TACPAD.

“That’s all for now, Captain Arellano. I’ll be in touch when we’ve got a more detailed plan. Thank you for helping us.”

The captain gave a short humming sound, then answered, “That’s fine. And you don’t need to thank me yet. Let’s get Calgary back in Canadian military control first.”

“Roger, Captain. Can’t happen soon enough,” King said in agreement. “We’ll talk soon.”

“All right, safe travels, Captain. Knight, signing off.”

“Arellano copies. Out.”

The link ceased with a tiny beep. I took my TACPAD and placed it back in my wrist brace.

“Okay, we don’t have a lot of time for planning, so let’s compartmentalize. Goliath, Jacobs,” I said, gesturing to the two men across the table from me. They looked at me readily.

“I need you two working on our bombs right now.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Josh replied promptly, standing up. He gestured toward Caleb Jacobs, who rose to his feet after him. “Armory’s this way, man. Follow me.”

The two of them left the Command Room.

“Archer, I need you to ID six sites to hit with our explosives. Preferably ones with significant enemy presence – distracted and confused enemies are good, dead enemies are better,” I said now to Genel.

She gave me a nod. “Got it.”

“Where are we at with monitoring enemy radio channels using that radio chip I brought?”

“Got a listening app set up on my TACPAD and the command console. I’m going to switch it on and keep my ear on it.”

“No,” I said, then gestured to myself. “Focus on ID-ing those sites. Send me the app with the chip’s specs. I’ll keep my ears on it for us while you’re busy.”

“Sure.”

King stepped closer to me. “What about me and Reid?”

“Help Archer with those sites, then once we’ve got six we can take out, map out an infiltration route for three parties. We’ll need to split into two’s and plant two bombs per pair. We don’t want to be in there longer than necessary – downtown’s going to be on high alert after yesterday. Get some new gear if you have to. Check out our armory and grab whatever you want.”

Reid got up from his seat. “I’ll get our gear prepped for a covert infiltration, ma’am. Leave it to me.”

“All right, Sergeant. Go ahead,” King told him.

“I’ll grab some breakfast and check back in with you in two hours,” I said to King and Genel, carefully getting up from my chair. I silently cursed at how even that movement forced me to be deliberate in order to avoid feeling pain from my wounds. I decided to take some more painkillers to relieve the pain for a while.

“Okay,” Genel said. King nodded to me without a word.

With that, I strode toward the door, limping slightly and trying to ignore the stabbing and tearing sensations in my stomach.

As I exited from the Command Room and began making my way to the elevators, I heard the door I just walked through swing open and the light thud of footsteps followed me briskly.

“Knight, wait.”

I kept walking toward the T-junction.

The sound of boots hastened to catch up with me. The short, pink-haired woman rounded on me and stood in my way. Despite her natural tenacity, she regarded me with a somewhat uncomfortable, awkward expression.

“Wait. I need to talk to you.”

I fought the urge to sigh in her face.

“I’ve talked plenty. I don’t have anything else to say to you,” I told her brusquely, then tried to walk around her.

Christina threw out her arms to further block my path. I glared at her, willing her to move without me saying anything more.

Though she looked mildly perturbed by how I was looking at her, she did not budge.

“Get out of my way,” I said. Though I still felt a considerable amount of anger toward her, now I was just as tired of her as I was vexed.

She puffed out her chest a little, taking in a deep breath before speaking in a more assertive manner. “Let me do this last operation for you.”

“Come again?”

“I’ll take over for you.”

“You’ve got some nerve to say that to me after all that’s happened.”

She shook her head vigorously, her hair sweeping across her forehead. That usual stubbornness I had gotten accustomed – but not accepting – to seeing in and on her steadily leaked back.

“Not permanently. Just this one this one last time. Once Calgary is free, I’ll step down. I’ll… I’ll tell HQ about who I really am. About what I did. But for now, it’s better me than you.”

I tried again to move past her, but she stepped sideways to bar my escape.

“I can’t trust you with Josh and Genel,” I said squarely to her. “This is a big move, and I want it done right.”

“I’ll get it done.”

“Move.”

“Knight, please.”

Her voice took a pleading turn. I stared impatiently at her until she eventually stared back with heavy determination.

“I…” She fumbled for a moment, but managed to go on. “I don’t want to see you hurt more or killed. Please let me do this.”

‘I don’t want

anyone else to die

to see you hurt more or killed’?

I gnashed my teeth and forced my way through her, pushing her to the side with my body as I continued on to the elevators.

This time, Christina called for me but did not follow.





A full day of planning later, we had settled on the particulars for both the prep work for the all-or-nothing downtown attack and the assault itself.

Thanks to Genel’s analysis of several hours’ worth of satellite feed, we had identified six enemy outposts within the downtown area that we could attack: the Eau Claire Market, the Shaw Communications building, the Diabetes Hypertension & Cholesterol Centre, Sacred Heart Church, the Calgary Board of Education complex, and the TransAlta Corporation. These locations all had considerable enemy presence at and around each, so it would make sense to strike at them. They were all spaced out fairly distantly from the Hyatt Regency Hotel as well, meaning that enemy forces close to the hotel would be reduced and divided to respond to the explosions we’d set off, at least for a little while. Captain Arellano’s forces would need to capitalize on this temporary confusion to gain as much of a foothold on the area surrounding the hotel.

Since the hotel was far closer to the eastern edge of downtown, we conferred again with the captain to have sixty percent of O Company respond to the bomb sites themselves. They would need to occupy the enemy forces at each location and keep them from falling back to defend the Hyatt. Since the diversionary teams would be roughly numbered at only fifteen or so soldiers per site, Arellano would give them the bulk of his available vehicles for support. This sixty percent of the company would approach from the west of the city, standing by at Calaway Park for our green light, just as King said.

The remaining forty percent would move in from the east of the city, and would be tasked with engaging opposition immediately around the hotel. We predicted that as much as half of the downtown forces would stay within the Hyatt’s vicinity, so we would have roughly sixty men focus on this point. Most friendly land vehicles would be unavailable here, but Arellano proposed keeping one of the armoured cars, a TAPV, with this force. This forty percent of O Company would be reinforced by any available diversionary teams that manage to complete their primary objective of suppressing opposition at their respective sites.

With most of the enemy forces focused on the Canadian Army, the joint Shadow-CSOR team would move in on the hotel to execute a kill objective on Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Baker. We wouldn’t have time to approach on land with how much chaos there would be throughout the downtown core, so we would be flying in using the one UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter we had housed in the vehicle hangar after O Company begins its attack. Josh would stay with the bird and provide air support to nearby friendly forces, while the rest of Shadow and Juliett breach the Hyatt and neutralize Baker.

The attack would begin at 1000 hours on January thirteenth, the day after tomorrow. That meant we had to plant the explosive charges at the six locations by tomorrow evening. Staying subtle would be impossible during the day, which meant the evening before the assault was our only window.

I dismissed Shadow and King’s team by nine-thirty that evening, having gone through the plan ad nauseam. Josh’s and Jacobs’ beefed up C4 charges were completed in the afternoon, so until the following evening’s stealth operation, there was nothing to do but wait and get ready.

Everyone filed out of the Command Room one by one, each person in varying levels of fatigue. Genel and Jacobs looked the most tired of everyone. The two of them left to retire for the evening first, though not before the former could express her displeasure with my decision to be directly involved in tomorrow’s operation, as well as the major one the day after.

After protestations regarding my physical health that were unfortunately echoed by Christina and earnest, and by everyone else at the table in less outspoken ways, I managed to convince everyone – most, anyway – that I could still do my job if I loaded up on pain pills for the time being, and treaded carefully. Genel left the Command Room first, looking exhausted more because of arguing with me than anything else.

Everyone else left without saying much. Josh asked me with a dead serious expression if this was what I really wanted to do. I simply nodded, to which he merely closed his eyes in reluctant resignation, gripped my shoulder, and left the room after Sergeant Reid.

The last to leave was Christina, who lingered at the door after a moment to give me those infuriating looks of concern. I glared back at her, but said nothing. Eventually, she stepped out of the room as well.

I don’t need your pity. Or your concern. You’re the last person I want those from.

For a moment, I forgot that I wasn’t the only one left in the Command Room.

“So.”

I glanced over my shoulder at King, who was leaning against the wall next to one of the servers.

“You’re seriously set on pushing yourself even further like that,” she commented with a straight but somehow probing expression.

“If you’re going to try convincing me to stay put like everyone else did, then don’t bother.”

“Oh, I’m not going to.”

I turned around to face her fully, watching a small smile form on her face. She stroked her shoulder length reddish brown hair playfully away from her face, then looked straight at me. Her eyes glinted, resembling a fortunately different kind of blue.

“We’ve been cooped up in this bunker all day,” she said casually. “Mind coming with me to get some fresh air? I can’t exactly step outside for any without your permission.”

I eyed her fairly innocent expression with some suspicion. She looked as if she had some mischievous ulterior motive lurking beneath that smile. Besides, no one tried to look innocent unless they were hiding something.

I booted up my TACPAD and navigated to the specific panel controls for Haven’s bulkhead doors. Then I removed my pad from my brace and held it out to King.

“Here. Just tap on the green icon,” I said.

King pushed off the wall and thrust her hands onto her hips, pouting emphatically.

“Hey! You’re seriously telling me to go outside by myself? What if I get attacked in the dark? I’m a young woman, you know!”

I had to consciously hold back yet another sigh. I instantaneously thought of at least five different responses to what she said before settling on the least offensive one.

“Well, thank god your livelihood doesn’t depend on your ability to defend yourself.”

King’s pout remained plastered to her face. I stared back at her without blinking.

After a brief standoff, she was the one to sigh. “Ugh. Look, I want to talk to you, all right?”

“We talked plenty today.”

“Not about that stuff. Jeez.”

“So talk.”

“Not here. In private.”

“There’s no one else here.”

King made a ‘tsk’ noise and finally walked over until she was practically in my face.

“Come on. Please? There really are things I want to talk to you about, but I don’t want to do it here where the room is probably bugged.”

The Command Room wasn’t tapped; none of the rooms within Haven were. Either she was messing with me, or she seriously bought into some spy myths.

Either way, this was getting exhausting.

“Fine, come on.” I replaced my TACPAD in my brace and took the lead out of the room. King trotted along behind me.

The two of us remained quiet until we were at the mouth of the vehicle ramp in B1. I opened the ramp up with my TACPAD.

As the bulkhead doors groaned and eased open, I pulled on my windbreaker while King donned her watch cap.

“I thought underground bunkers like these didn’t exist in Canada,” she said over the noise of the bulkhead doors parting open. “Are there are a lot more in the country?”

“I don’t know,” I said simply.

“Eh? You don’t?”

I carefully weighed my response before replying, “Information is compartmentalized where I work. I don’t know everything about my employers. Or other coworkers.”

“Oh, is that so? I guess it makes sense, since you can’t ask for more spooks to back you up.”

“No, I can’t. Shadow Team typically works with minimal supervision and support.”

“Hmm. I see, I see.”

The doors finished opening fully. King and I leisurely ascended the ramp and eventually reached the outside. We took several paces farther from the mouth of the ramp, our boots crunching the ankle-high layer of snow beneath us.

I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket, my gaze unconsciously lifting to the dark sky.

There were no stars tonight. Just an empty, bluish-black sky.

“So, what did you want to talk about out here?”

I waited for King to answer. When she did not do so immediately, I glanced to my right at her.

King seemed to be imitating me, looking up at the inky sky too. After a couple of seconds, she spoke without directing her eyes elsewhere yet.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for two years now. Until recently, I thought I would never get the chance to run it by you. Didn’t think we’d meet again, you see.”

“What is it?”

King did not answer right away. She took some more time to gaze up at the sky before eventually looking at me with a neutral expression.

“Why’d you save us back then?”

I contemplated the answer, probably just as much as she was now.

King turned her body entirely in my direction. “You told me, back then… that your objective was to kill Alfred Imlay. Was that a lie?”

“Does it matter? I’m obliged to tell lies.”

“It does to me.”

I stared motionlessly at her for a few seconds before humouring her. “No, that was the truth.”

“So… why’d you let him get away?”

“I intercepted your transmissions. You were asking for backup from your superiors, weren’t you?”

King’s expression shifted to slight gloominess. “Oh, you did, huh. Did you know there would be someone else after Imlay that day?”

“Let’s say I did, for the sake of conversation. You weren’t going to get any backup, were you?”

She nodded, looking almost like a child caught in a lie. “… Yeah. It was a covert op. We were supposed to do it all by ourselves. But I messed up, and… well, you know.”

She huffed her shoulders before she fixed me with a more determined look.

“You still haven’t answered my question, Grim Reaper,” she persisted.

“Do I really need a reason?”

“Sure, you do.” She tilted her head almost imperceptibly, a few of her hair strands tipping to the side of her forehead. “Despite how you look, I don’t get an ‘insubordinate ass’ vibe from you, now that I actually have the time to look at you. So? Why’d you go against orders?”

I silently grumbled at her tenacious questioning. Was she trying to antagonize me?

After enduring her scrutinizing gaze for an uncomfortable ten seconds, I relented.

“Prioritization.”

She only looked more confused. “Huh?”

I looked away from her. “Unless there’s some circumstance that dictates a target is open for elimination only for a limited time, I don’t see the need to hustle needlessly. I could always track and find Imlay again later. But there’s no saving someone once they’re gone.”

“That’s… it?” I couldn’t tell if King was amazed, or disappointed. “But you told me your orders were just to kill Imlay.”

“I did. What’s your problem with what I did?”

“Sorry, Grim Reaper. I’m just… Uh. You’re not much of a soldier, are you?”

I glanced back at her. “That’s not my job title.”

She smiled again, wistful. “You have a habit of disobeying orders, then? Was I wrong about you just now?”

“No, I don’t have that habit. But as many people have died from following orders as those who disobeyed them.”

She certainly seemed surprised at that. I watched her expression of bewilderment eventually morph to one of reluctant concession.

“Well… I suppose that’s true. But… heh. You wouldn’t last long in the military, much less Special Forces. That’s for damn sure.”

“I told you, I’m not a soldier.”

King blinked a couple times, then her shoulders sagged.

“Well… that doesn’t really answer my original question, but okay.”

“King, mind answering a question of mine?”

She perked up a bit. “Yeah? Sure, go on.”

I studied her hopeful expression for a moment before asking her:

“Why are you asking me all this?”

King appeared uncertain how to answer at first, then she broke out into a playful smile and chuckled in a carefree way.

“Ah. That’s fair. Well, full discretion? I want to get to know the man who saved me and my team that day. Why he went out his way for a stranger like me. And… what it is that keeps him going. Because one day, I feel I might need it too.”

“Isn’t your pay enough of an incentive?”

She shrugged. “When you’ve got fifty or so bad guys closing in and you’re nearly out of luck and rounds, that’s not enough. Not even close.”

I nodded slightly. “Right. You asked for help, so I gave you some.”

She continued to study me silently, forcing me to add something else to fill the discomforting quiet of being observed:

“Because if not me, then who else would?”

She took a step closer to me such that she was practically underneath my nose. I almost took one back because of how close she was.

“Hmm. Okay. Well,” she said softly, just above a whisper. “what keeps you going, Grim Reaper?”

For a split second, I couldn’t think of an answer, After that, I was tempted to give a humorous answer with questionable relevance to the question. I managed to hold back from saying anything stupid at the last moment, though.

After mulling it over a few seconds more, I told her: “You don’t want what keeps me going.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Hmm. Why not?”

I could have answered that, but I kept my mouth closed this time. It would invite even more questions and take up too much time.

She drilled her turquoise eyes through mine in silence before a tiny smirk sprouted at her lips.

“All right,” she said quietly, “I get it. Spooks gotta have some secrets, right?”

“Are we done here?”

“Mmm. Almost.” She lifted one corner of her lips higher, looking almost devilish. “I never got to thank you for what you did for us back then.”

It was my turn to squint at her. “But you did. A few times.”

It was so quick that for the next moment or two it took me a while to realize that she’d nimbly stood on her toes to each up and peck me gently between my cheek and chin. By the time I fully came to accept what had happened, King had stepped outside of my personal space, still bearing that mischievous smirk and holding her arms behind her back.

“Not like that, I didn’t,” she said.

I opened my mouth before I realized I didn’t exactly have anything to say yet.

She put her hands in her pants pockets, slowly backing toward the open vehicle ramp behind us.

“You know, death’s not so scary all of a sudden.” She chuckled discreetly as if she was proud of that bad joke.

“What did you—” I began to say, but she was already on her way back down to the hangar.

“Well, goodnight, Grim Reaper. Let’s do our best tomorrow, yeah?” she said conclusively, cutting me off. She was already nearly halfway down the ramp.

She turned around and walked back deeper into Haven before I could say anything else.

When she was out of sight, I shook my head wearily and sighed. I directed my gaze back up at the starless sky, momentarily contemplating whether I should change the teams for tomorrow’s op.

After that, I allowed myself to think more about that op two years ago.

I silently decided it was indeed better that I didn’t tell King that I didn’t intercept her comms signal.

I was provided with it beforehand.

The details of that op were classified, anyhow.

I couldn’t tell her that she and her team were never meant to kill Imlay. That they were diversions for someone else to use.

Or that none of them were meant to survive.





“All teams, report in.”

“Team 3, Goliath reporting. Reid and I are standing by.”

“Archer, Team 2. Me and Jacobs just got here.”

I brought my infrared goggles down over my eyes. “Roger that. King and I are also in position. We all have our targets. Remember, this is the enemy’s most secure territory. Avoid detection at all costs. Just plant the charges and exfil ASAP.”

“Got it, boss.”

“Understood, Knight.”

I breathed out a puff of warmth, the brisk winter evening breeze sweeping it away. The winter chill stung my cheeks enough that the pain rivaled that of my injuries from earlier today, which were being kept suppressed thanks to another round of pain meds.

My eyes tracked the two US Army Humvees trundling at a leisurely pace to the east on 17th Avenue, easily seen from up here on the roof of the Anderson Estates building. The enemy’s outer cordon seemed to run along this street, because for the last five blocks south of here, King and I hadn’t encountered any foot or vehicle patrols. As far as I could see, 17th Avenue was lit up the same as it and other downtown streets would be on normal evenings. There were still pockets of darkness along the street, but not as many as I would have liked. Intersections in general were going to illuminate us and alert anyone looking.

“All right, everyone, let’s get this over with. Good luck, and stay alert. This is the lions’ den,” I said over the comms, rising from my crouch.

“Talk later. Goliath out.”

“Be careful, Knight. Archer out.”

King stood up as well to my right, checking her Sig Sauer MPX. I did the same for my FN P90. I had traded range and firepower for decreased weight and CQB utility. Being as mobile as possible was going to be important here.

I made sure my weapon’s suppressor was attached securely, then pulled up my mask to protect the lower half of my face from the bitter wind. “Ready?”

King nodded, putting on her own pair of night vision goggles. “Let’s do this.”

The two of us descended the H-shaped building we had been using briefly to take a break, having walked all the way here from Elbow Park School, about two and a half kilometres to the south. We had opted to keep our vehicle far from the downtown area in favour of stealth.

King and I made our way down to street level via the fire escape, then proceeded northwest two blocks until we came to the Mount Royal Shopping Mall on 8th Street, where we were forced to stop a moment because of a group of ten infantrymen with two Humvees guarding the street just beside the London Drugs store less than a hundred metres to the north.

I crouched down behind a park bench near the intersection of 8th Street and 16th Avenue, making use of the goggles’ zoom function to scout the area without leaving the cover of relative darkness.

“This street looks like a bust,” King said from beside me. She looked to the west, then the east along 16th Avenue. “What do you think? Should we go west, or east?”

I ducked my head back down and pulled up the GPS on my TACPAD. I zoomed in in on our current location and studied the buildings directly across the street from Tomkins Park.

“We can keep off the streets if we cut through Uptown Liquor over there,” I answered, pointing northeast toward the building beside the mall. “The back alleys will get us to 15th Avenue. Looks like from there, we’ll be able to cut through blocks while minimizing our time on sidewalks.”

King followed my gesture with her gaze. “Okay, your lead. Let’s – wait, patrol coming this way. Stay down.”

The two of us flattened ourselves against the back of the bench as half of the group further up 8th Street split from the rest. Three foot soldiers and one Humvee with a manned turret gradually pushed past us less than twenty metres away. The group passed us and headed west on 17th Avenue.

When the soldiers and the LUV were in mid-turn at the intersection, I got up and walked around King. “Come on, before the rest decide to come this way.”

“Right behind you.”

We crossed 16th Avenue quickly so as not to stay within the orange glow of the streetlamps, then forced our way into the liquor store. The door was locked, but being wooden without any electronic locks meant that we needed to shoot only the chain holding the door handles together.

From there, we cut through back alleys and parking lots behind buildings, staying away from the streets. We trudged through snow that sometimes reached nearly up to our knees, accumulated that much because of no one was around to clear it out after the recent snowstorm. The howling of the frigid wound compressed in the relatively narrower spaces between buildings filled my ears whenever a gale happened to sweep through. Once or twice, it was strong enough to knock me to one knee and nearly shove my face into the snow. I frequently checked over my shoulder to see how King was faring; she kept up with me for the most part, though I could tell that she too was fighting against the wind. We had to communicate over an audio channel via our earpieces to avoid having to shout over the gusts.

Worse than simply getting buffeted by the wind was the cold. Before we left Haven tonight, we prepared for venturing out into an evening with ambient temperatures nearing thirty degrees Celsius below zero, with wind chill that made it feel well below even that. We had all bundled up in anticipation of that, but it was one thing to walk outside for five or ten minutes, and quite another to walk for an hour while remaining alert and vigilant, lest we get caught and killed. My hands, though protected by insulated gloves, had gotten cold well before King and I took a break. My toes were much the same. It was equally taxing on the body and mind to simply keep walking.

Eventually, we managed to reach our first target: the Calgary Board of Education complex on 8th Street. A practically block-wide institution, it used to house coordinators, counsellors, and teachers dedicated to the improvement of the educational system for students from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Now, it resembled little of its original purpose.

The place was buzzing with activity. From our vantage point behind an abandoned plumber’s van in the parking lot beside Hedkandi Salon across 13th Avenue, I could see at least thirty hostiles either standing guard outside on the sidewalk, or the courtyard in the middle of the complex’s buildings. The east wing had several floors with lit windows, and every few seconds I saw one or two soldiers walk past them inside. A Humvee drove by, its mounted gun manned by a soldier panning it over alleys and parking lots as it passed.

I pressed a button on the outside of my goggles to disable the built-in binoculars function and ducked back down as the Humvee patrolling 13th Avenue approached for another pass. King glanced at me as she sat on the ground with her back against the van’s frame.

“How’s it look to you? Looks damn near impregnable to me. Got any ideas where to set the charge?” she asked, letting go of her MPX for a moment to repeatedly curl and uncurl her gloved fingers to stave off the cold.

“Security’s a bit lighter to the left, in front of that book store. I’ll go first. I’ll wait for a gap in their defenses to open up, then I’ll slip through.”

She took a peek out from cover after the Humvee made its latest pass, then looked back down at me, the lower half of her face seeming refreshingly collected and devoid of overt concern.

“Got you. You know where you’re going to plant that bomb?”

“The book store. It looks like they’re using it as a lounge, at least. Even if it’s not the barracks, we can at least cripple the building with the detonation. Doesn’t seem like I can get inside without being spotted, though, so I’ll plant my charge somewhere outside. Like… underneath the front steps. Anyway, creating widespread confusion is our primary goal with this. If it takes some hostiles with it, all the better. But we can’t be too ambitious.”

“Roger that. I’ll back you up if things get hot.”

I shook my head. “No. If I get in trouble in there, you withdraw and head to the other location to plant yours. Five bombs can still work.”

She gave me a slightly sheepish smile, the wind sweeping her hair across her lips. “Oi, I was just being supportive and stuff. I know you’ll pull this off. You’re the Grim Reaper, yeah?”

I had half a mind to remind her even I could bleed, but I felt somewhat thankful she wasn’t dousing me with anxieties and concern. Instead, I merely nodded.

“Okay. You stay put. I’ll hopefully not be too long.”

“Watch your back.”

Checking again to make sure the Humvee patrolling the street ahead was still on its way west, I rose from cover and crept over to the next car parked closer to 13th Avenue.

Stopping to make note of the guards by the east wing of the complex watching over the street I wanted to cross, I waited behind cover of an RV parked by the curb. There were about six soldiers standing at the garden path in front of the east wing, just over thirty metres away across the street. They were looking this way.

The guards remained where they were, watching my general direction as the Humvee came back east on its patrol. I stayed behind the RV, feeling the rumble of the military engine creep close by, just on the other side of my cover. I willed the patrolling vehicle and the guards in the garden to move along to allow me even five seconds’ worth of a chance to slip by. Most hostiles at this site were at the relatively more sheltered courtyard between the book store and the east wing, or within either building itself, visible to me through the windows.

If I could just cross this street, duck beneath the steps leading up to the book store’s front door… I could set the bomb beneath the steps, out of sight. I was carrying a Frankenstein’d chunk of C4 that was actually three regular blocks of the explosive put together into one. It wouldn’t be enough to damage the northern or eastern sections of this block, but it could demolish or at least irreparably damage the book store.

It took almost eight minutes of waiting before the half dozen soldiers all moved toward the courtyard, completely turning their backs toward me. Seizing this chance, I got up and broke into a sprint across 13th Avenue, thankful for the medicine keeping the pain I surely would have felt from moving like this away.

I stuck to the narrow strip of relative darkness between the two nearest streetlamps casting light from the other side of the street, managing to get to the snowy lawn in front of the older west wing, the Foothills Educational Materials building. I continued moving until I smacked my shoulder against the building’s southern stone wall and ducked beneath the window, out of sight of the soldiers just inside.

I hugged the wall, keeping low, and proceeded a few metres to the right until I was at the short tunnel beneath the building’s front steps, out of sight of the guards and the merciless bite of the wind.

I breathed a sigh of relief once I was hidden from view of the street I just crossed. I crouched and removed my backpack, zipping it open. With delicate care, I reached inside with both hands and took the bomb out.

Merely touching it caused the foil wrapping covering the whole device to crinkle. Josh and Jacobs had wrapped all the bombs generously in aluminum foil to keep the components of the bomb – such as the timer and batteries – from freezing and being rendered useless. The bomb itself weight about two kilograms, roughly triple the weight of a standard M112 demolition block. It also took up more than half the room in my backpack’s main compartment, which accounted for my decision to carry a lighter weapon.

I set the mummified explosive down against the stone base of the front steps I was beneath, then spent the next couple of minutes scooping up powders of snow from the mouth of the tunnel to bury the foil in it. Foil was naturally shiny, so I had to keep it hidden as much as possible from the enemy. The bomb was guaranteed to stay quiet until detonation, but all the same I didn’t want it being found prematurely and disarmed before we could set it off tomorrow.

I had just finished covering up the charge as best as I could with a mound of snow when an abrupt screeching reached my ears. It seemed to be coming from a vehicle stopping in the direction of 13th Avenue.

I picked my P90 back up and stayed crouched beneath the arched tunnel just as the front door right over my head creaked open. The sound of two men’s voices immediately followed. At first, their words were too faint to be comprehensible, but as they presumably stepped outside and stopped right above me, their conversation became audible enough.

“—you on that armed escort tomorrow at 0330, Sergeant,” said a rather authoritative voice.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” replied a younger, more energetic voice. “To whom should I report, sir? And where?”

“Warrant Officer Frank Billings will be in charge. You’re going to be picking up a mercenary specialist from CFB Calgary, then heading to the Calgary Stampede to get the prisoners, then escorting all of them to the airport where the merc will take the prisoners off our hands.”

“Sir, yes, sir. I’ll report to Warrant Officer Billings tomorrow at oh-six-hundred.”

“It’s a simple security detail job for our Northstar contact en route to the airport. Make sure they get on the VTOLs out of the city.”

“Understood, sir.” The younger soldier’s voice seemed to trail off, then come back. “Permission to ask a question, Lieutenant?”

“Go on, Hodgins,” said the more mature voice.

“Are the mercs abandoning us?”

I practically held my breath so as not to miss or mistake a single word coming from right above me.

“They’re not,” the superior officer answered. “because they’re not supporting us in an official capacity in the first place. This callsign… what was it? ‘Hornet’, I think it was, had a directive separate from ours. Look, all you need to know is that this operative is leaving Calgary tomorrow, with those prisoners you’ll be taking with you. Just assist in transporting and securing them until they’re all in the air. Understood?”

“Affirmative. Understood, Lieutenant.”

“Good. You’re dismissed. That Humvee’s for you, Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I listened as the door above me creaked again, this time shut. At the same time, the sound of heavy boots came down the steps and gradually melted in the distance as they headed in the direction of the street. Seconds later, the supposed Humvee that just came rumbled louder and then seemed to move away, its engine’s noises fading as it got farther from me. It sounded like it was heading west along 13th Avenue.

I took a moment to digest what I’d just overheard.

Hornet. Theo Rhodes.

He was pulling out of the city for some reason. Tomorrow morning.

Don’t let him get away.

I scrunched my eyes behind my goggles and shook my head as if to shake off some lingering dream.

No, he’s not the priority. There’s no time to kill him and assist the Royal Canadian Regiment at the same time.

Prioritization.

No. Go tonight, kill him before he takes off.

Can’t be done. There’s not enough time.

He’s as close to you as he’s ever going to get.

Stop it. Stop. Enough.

Grim Reaper?

Hey?

You copy?

It took me a while to realize one of the voices wasn’t coming from inside my head, but rather from the device in my ear.

“Reaper, it’s King. You copy? How’s it going over there? Not trying to rush you or anything, but you’ve been silent for nearly… fifteen mikes now. You good? Hello?”

I tapped my earpiece. “Yeah, I’m good. Just finished setting the charge. Just give me a bit more to arm it and check the connection.”

I brought up ‘COMMS’ on my TACPAD and selected the contact listed as ‘C4-3’ from the list. I held my finger down on the contact name to bring up a popup menu. Three options came up: ‘Arm’, ‘Deactivate’, and ‘Detonate’.

I tapped on the first option, then the TACPAD automatically started a connection check. I waited ten seconds before I was met with one final notification:

‘Connection Status: EXCELLENT’

I exited ‘COMMS’ and stood up.

“The charge is primed,” I told King. “Let’s move to the next site.”

“Roger that. Guess I’m up. I’ll wait for you.”

I left the underside of the front steps and carefully retraced my steps back to King’s position.





I swiveled the office chair I was sitting in forty degrees left, then right, then back over and over.

I turned my gaze toward the bottom right corner of the PC monitor in front of me. It was now five past midnight on January 13th.

Nearly five hours since everyone left for the downtown area to prepare for the assault happening later today. I had been in the Command Room for about two of those five hours now – I’d walked all of Haven’s rooms and halls earlier this evening after not being able to sleep in my quarters. Even booted from Shadow, I couldn’t rest knowing the people I worked with were probably still in the thick of it, behind enemy lines. As tense and nerve-wracking as that probably was for them, I wished I could have come along. It didn’t feel right being safe here while everyone else was working hard and risking their lives.

I picked up the headset connected to the PC in front of me for the sixth time tonight, then hesitated again.

I shouldn’t bother them. If I distract any one of them, I could put them at even greater risk.

But I worried all the same. This wasn’t right. Why should I, even after everything I’d done to people I cared about, be sitting it out in a warm bed, away from danger? Why does everyone else have to pick up my slack? If anything, I should’ve been the one planting all six bombs all by myself.

Absolutely not. You’re no longer with us. You don’t have any right to go, nor duty to.

That was what Knight told me when I begged him again at the final meeting to go in his stead.

I knew and understood he was the leader, but a part of me still felt angry at him for making me sit this one out. It was as if sense had begun leaking out of his head recently. He was clearly in no shape to be out there. If it were up to me, he would be confined to a hospital bed for at least one week to give his wounds time to heal a little. Any high-impact hit to his front torso had increased potential to reopen his wounds at this point. If he got shot in the vest, it wouldn’t matter if the armour stopped the bullet – the kinetic energy alone would dislodge the stitches I put in him two nights ago.

I was in far better shape days ago than I was now, but I was still far better for the job than Knight was. My injuries weren’t fatal, regardless of how serious they appeared. Sure, I looked like I’d cut myself everywhere with a knife, but when it came down to facts, my wounds were superficial. Skin deep. I wasn’t going to bleed out from them.

… Damn him.

As soon as I thought that, self-disgust bubbled up to the surface again.

I have no right to criticize him. He’s here because of me. I did this to him.

I slammed the headset back down on the desk. As the dull clack of the plastic rebounded off the steel surface, something popped up on the monitor in my peripheral vision.

I directed my gaze at the screen, wondering if my tantrum had accidentally hit a key on the keyboard. A small popup window had showed up right above the digital clock on the lower right corner of the desktop screen. It was rectangular, with a black background similar to a command prompt. In white, Terminal-type font, were three words housed within the box:

‘INCOMING TRANSMISSION INTERCEPTED’

Instantly forgetting my situation with Shadow Team, I grabbed the mouse and clicked on the maximize icon. I also snapped the headset quickly over my ears. I recalled hearing Genel talk about how she had recently devised a way to tap into a frequency known to be associated with Northstar yesterday at one of the meetings. If she and everyone else was too busy to tune in to this, then I had an obligation to do it and relay the information later.

The window enlarged to take up about three-fourths of the center of the desktop. A sound wave spanning the length of the maximized window showed up, this time black and fluctuating against a white background.

At the same time, a voice I didn’t recognize started speaking, already in midsentence:

“—one. Repeat, this is Artemis One. Hornet, please respond, over.”

A second voice – one that I did recognize – responded after a brief delay. Even warped slightly by the communications software, there was no mistaking that unpleasant smoothness to the tone, like silk against skin. All voices had some degree of roughness or… asymmetry to them, if I had to describe it in a word. But not this one. This one seemed effortlessly soft and unpleasantly pleasant.

“I read you, Artemis One. This is Hornet. What’s your status?”

“Lifting off from base now, Hornet.” In the background, presumably on Artemis’ end, I could hear the chopping of rotors nearly drowning out any other background noise. The frequency of the rapidly repeating sound led me to believe there was more than one aircraft nearby.

“ETA is... 0430 hours. Got a storm system brewing in Idaho, so we’ll need to go around it,” Artemis One said.

“Roger that, Artemis One,” Rhodes’ discomforting voice replied. I shuddered a bit just listening to him – it was as though I felt pins and needles just hearing him talk, but that wasn’t quite right. Rather than painful pricks or pinches, it was more like formication. Like dozens of tiny insects were crawling all over my skin. “How much space do we have?”

“Three V-22 Ospreys, as you requested. There’ll be enough for your sixty passengers.”

“Good. Be advised, Artemis, we’ll be traveling to Calgary YYC in an armed, multi-vehicle convoy provided by the US Army. Our ETA to the rendezvous point is 0500. Keep the Ospreys ready for dustoff.”

“Understood, will relay to the boys.”

“Much obliged. No anti-air defenses in the city, so you don’t have to worry once you’re in Calgary airspace. We’ll be loading the prisoners fast and leaving right away. Copy?”

“Roger that. See you soon.”

“Excellent. Hornet out.”

The audio wave flattened to a single straight, black line and silence filled my ears.

I took off the headset and placed it on top of the desk.

Rhodes was leaving the city? Why?

Even more important was that he was taking sixty prisoners with him. Sixty for whatever purpose whoever was commanding him had planned. I didn’t even know what exactly Northstar was planning to do with all these prisoners, but I doubted whatever it was, was anything good.

I recalled my first operation as a Shadow Team member, the first time I partnered up with Knight. The South Health Campus reconnaissance. It felt like a lifetime ago now.

I remembered the children the most. The youngest ones who were being loaded onto the backs of those transport trucks. They were just kids. Some as young as four or five, even.

Then I remembered one specific child. The one girl I talked to and helped off the back of a truck after the SHC raid. Her name was Marlene.

She was among the ones taken from the rec centre when it was attacked. What if she was one of the sixty being shipped out to Nevada? She was only a little girl…

Finally, I remembered Sarah Mason and Olivia Munn. Two girls I met during my incarceration nearly three weeks ago now. Survivors. I did what I could to keep them alive, but in the end I’d left them. When I got them back, I promised them they’d be safe. And yet, the attack on the rec centre practically turned my promise into a blatant lie.

I pulled the keyboard to me, closing the now dead popup window. I booted up ‘COMMS’ on the PC and keyed in ‘014’ in the search bar. I double clicked on the one search result and waited for the call to connect. I threw the headset back over my head.

Her voice came through a moment later. “Chrissy?”

“Genel, I just listened tot an intercepted transmission from Northst—” I began rapidly, but Genel interjected with proportionate speed.

“I caught it too. Sounds like this Hornet guy is evacuating.”

“We can’t let him leave. He’s taking more prisoners with him. He’s gotta be stopped.”

Instead of Genel’s sympathetic voice replying to me, a different, colder one spoke next.

“Valentine, get off this channel now.”

Valentine. It wasn’t ‘Christina’, or ‘Angel’, or even ‘Miss Valentine’. It was just ‘Valentine’. Even though I knew I deserved the disassociation, his address of me still hurt.

“Knight,” I protested into the headset’s mic, “I’m sorry for using comms when I’m not—”

“I said, get off this channel now.”

“I will, but what about—”

“We’ll discuss it when we get back.”

“Umm, oka—”

A click from the other end told me he’d hung up on me just now. Admittedly stung by his abrasiveness, I sat there in silence for a few seconds. Eventually, Genel’s softer voice returned.

“Chrissy, we’re all on our way back to Haven now. Got all six bombs planted, no problems. I gotta hang up. See you in a bit, okay?”

“…sure. See you.”

“Bye.”

A second click popped in my ears before I was surrounded by relative silence again.





Roughly twenty minutes later, the Command Room door swung inward and both Shadow and Angela’s team filed in. I got up from my swivel chair to meet them halfway down the long table.

Knight brushed past me without a single sign of noticing I was there, but Genel came to me right away. She had a Kleenex wipe pressed against her nose.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking her over to search for any injuries. “Are you okay?”

She blew hard into the Kleenex, producing a wet noise. “Yeah… it’s just damn cold outside. We were at it for a few hours.”

Josh came up to us, as well. “Yeah, I think I may have to amputate a toe due to frostbite, Chrissy.”

“What?” I demanded incredulously, glancing up at him before snapping my gaze down to his boots. “Are you serious? We gotta get you to the medi—”

He thumped me genially on the shoulder, nearly threatening to push me over. “I’m joking.”

“What? Damn it, Josh!” I cursed at him, to which he shot me a peace sign.

“Ho. So your name is Josh, eh?” Angela said, approaching us from behind the two Shadow members.

Josh shrugged his shoulders and held his arms out to his sides in a carefree gesture. “Haaah. Well, guess that cat’s out of the bag.”

I brought a hand over my mouth. “Shit.”

“Ah, whatever, don’t sweat it, Chrissy,” Josh said to me. His expression of amusement shifted to seriousness. “I’m more concerned about why you were left here. What exactly is the deal with you and Knight?”

“Well, that’s… it’s a long story.”

“Settle down,” Knight said sharply to everyone in the room. “Let’s make this quick. We need to be well rested for the assault in a few hours. Archer, what did we get from that intercepted transmission?”

Genel looked past my shoulder at the team leader, who was standing at the end of the table. “Apparently, some VTOLs are en route to the city to pick up a Northstar merc and the last batch of prisoners. I don’t know where the Ospreys are from, but it’s safe to assume it’s not within Alberta.”

I turned around to face Knight. “The pilot said ‘base’. Most likely, he meant their HQ in Nevada. Northstar headquarters – about a hundred kilometres north of Reno, near Pyramid Lake.”

“Wait, how do you know where—” Sergeant Reid began to ask. I was prepared to answer him, but Knight cut me off.

“Given what he said about needing to go around storm systems in Idaho, I’m inclined to think this is likely,” he said, folding his arms over his chest.

“He also said his ETA would be at 0430 hours,” Genel added, “That’s just over three hours from now. RV point is at Calgary International Airport. Supposedly they’re transporting sixty prisoners there with an armed convoy.”

“We’ve got to intercept them,” I said, taking a step toward Knight, who remained largely unmoved by this deliberation. “Rho— I mean, Hornet, can’t be allowed to escape.”

I kept my eyes on Knight. His seemed to focus on a spot beyond me, but never on me. For a moment, he did not speak. After some pondering, he glanced at Angela, who was standing right behind me.

“King.”

“Yeah?”

“Feasibility?”

“If by that you mean ‘of a rescue operation slash HVT elimination’, then I’d have to answer ‘low’.”

I whirled around to gape at Angela, who promptly directed her eyes at me. She appeared solemn.

“This is new intel. We can’t move on this on such short notice. The convoy’s bound to be heavily guarded. We’ll be outnumbered for sure. We don’t even know what route the convoy will be taking to Calgary YYC,” she explained as if to apologize to me.

“Well, no, but—” I protested again, but Knight interrupted me a second time.

“We have our plans. We need to stick with them.”

I spun to face him again. “Hornet could be our last link to whoever’s pulling his strings. Northstar is clearly an enemy we—”

“—don’t fully understand,” Knight said in a hard, dismissive voice. “They are not our priority. Our orders are to eliminate the invaders here in Calgary. By that, I mean the ones who’ve got however many civilians in detainment. Our mission is to liberate Calgary from those who are staying here. If Hornet wants to run, let him.”

I took another step toward Knight, clenching my fists at my sides.

“We can’t just abandon those prisoners, Knight!” I said, practically pleading now. “We have to do something!”

A hand perched lightly but firmly over my shoulder from behind. “Chrissy—” Genel addressed me in a placating tone.

I glanced at her over my shoulder. She looked truly remorseful, but that was exactly what I didn’t want to see on anyone’s face right now. I had hoped she would understand, at least, but…

“We can’t act on this. It’s too close a deadline, and we’d need a plan. By the time we come up with one, Hornet will be long gone,” she said to me.

I shook my head slightly at her in disbelief. “No. No, you’re not seriously telling me to just give up.”

Josh spoke up, his tone respectfully sombre. “No one’s saying that. But there are limits to what we can do on so little time.”

Feeling betrayed and alone, I glanced over my other shoulder at Angela, silently pleading her to see my side. She averted her eyes uncomfortably for a few seconds before resolving to meet mine again.

“I’m sorry, Angel.” She bowed her head a little. “We can’t jeopardize the assault’s success over this. I know how you feel about it, but there’s nothing we can do at this point.”

I turned back to Knight, whom I knew had the final say in this. If anyone here could appeal for a different approach, it was him.

“Knight, we can’t leave them,” I told him, my voice croaking. “Not again. Not after the rec centre. Please. We need to get them out.”

He kept silent a while. His eyes never once met mine, such that when he eventually spoke, even though I knew he was replying to me, I still felt largely ignored.

“Sixty civilians on those birds, versus the tens or hundreds of thousands who are still here. There’s no math here.”

I glared at him, feeling something hot rising from the pit of my gut. My fingernails dug painfully into my palms.

You’re a heartless bastard.

I shook off Genel’s hand and squeezed past Jacobs or Reid or whoever it was and retreated toward the Command Room door.

“Chrissy, wait,” I heard Genel call behind me before Knight said something to stop her. I wasn’t sure what exactly he said.

I didn’t want to listen anymore. Not to a man who would willingly let people suffer their fate when he had the power to help them.

I jammed my fists against my eyelids and inhaled sharply, then put some more distance between me and the Command Room.

My petulant state had me unconsciously moving toward the elevators and bound for my quarters. I wanted to shut myself inside, away from everyone here. But just as the elevator doors opened to admit me and take me to B3, I randomly glanced back in the direction of the T-junction to my left.

The elevator doors stayed open a few seconds, waiting impatiently for me to walk in. After I had stayed still for that duration, the doors slid shut.

I turned and headed toward the T-junction, then took a turn. Not toward the Command Room, where no one else would help me, but toward the armory.