Kyle nodded. "Babies," he said.
The trooper blinked, and then covered Kyle passing quickly through the door. There were a series of offices here, little more than partitions and desks. Empty, except for the presence of two Eagle troopers at the far end of the long room.
"Anything?" Woodhouse shouted.
"Six roach babies rushed us," Kyle called back as he advanced.
High-velocity gunfire erupted from the floor above, and Kyle guessed that Malley's group had found a stair or some other access. Together, he, Woodhouse, and the other troopers who had converged on the area from the front and back scoured the rooms, finding nothing.
Then came the excited shout of one of the troopers. "A passage!"
Kyle turned from the desk he was examining and saw that a portion of panelboard wall had swung inward. Two troopers moved to cover it. One of them dropped into position alongside the door, but then the trooper was spinning suddenly, his body armor tearing as a huge clawed leg lashed out through the passageway. Even before the man's body hit the floor, the enormous roach spirit, bigger and even more loathsome than the first one Kyle had seen, had somehow made it through the narrow opening and into the room.
The troopers, numbering a dozen at least, opened up on the thing. Surprised by the ferocity of the assault, it staggered back on its spiny, jointed legs, mouth parts working furiously but wildly as it gave a long, ear-splitting screech. Then the thing began to fade, attempting to flee into astral space.
Kyle called to mind the formula for a quick and dirty spell of raw physical power and performed it. Power arced from his body, crossed the distance between him and the bug spirit in astral space, and then exploded back into the physical world through the spirit's still-manifest form. The spirit all but exploded as the spell discharged, chunks and smears of its rapidly dissolving ectoplasmic form blowing across the room.
The trooper who'd been struck was injured, but not seriously. Another trooper pulled him clear as the team medic rushed up.
"It went down fast," said Woodhouse. "Maybe they're not that tough."
Kyle looked at him. "There were, what, fourteen of us?" Woodhouse nodded reluctantly. "Good point." Troopers moved through the passage, one of them suddenly calling out, "Stairs down!"
Malley came up alongside Woodhouse and Kyle. "Assume we've got only hostiles," he said. "These things are too fraggin' fast. I don't want us caught with our pants down.”
Kyle thought for an instant of his sister-in-law and the apparent humans cowering in the front room, but nodded slowly.
Malley stepped forward and pulled a grenade from his pocket, one of the stun loads. "Fire in the hole!" he shouted, tossing it down the stairs. The grenade's confined explosion, stun round or not, shook the whole building, and echoed under them for some distance.
Kyle moved up alongside Malley, who was peering into the dim, now smoke-and-debris filled stairway.
"Grenades won't affect the spirits," Kyle said, hoping the officer remembered his limited training. Only directed attacks, those that carried the immediate force of living will behind them, were effective against spirits. Intentless things like explosives were useless against them, while hand-to-hand and armed weapons and spells were the most effective. Gunfire fell somewhere in the middle, effective due to its sheer destructive power.
Malley nodded. "I know. But they're bugs. It might still confuse them." He turned to the troopers immediately around him. "Down we go."
Each one reached up and pulled light-magnifying and thermal-sensing goggles over his eyes and followed Malley down the stairs.
"Why the frag did he do that?" Kyle asked Woodhouse, who'd just come up. "He could have taken out the stairway!”
Woodhouse shrugged. "He's a good tactical commander, but in the field he's a little crazy. Unfortunately, he's well connected."
Kyle smiled. "You must be too to talk like that." The other mage only shrugged as gunfire and screams erupted from below. Rushing forward, Kyle activated one of the spells locked into the focus on his left wrist. A barely visible blue-silver field opened around him a few centimeters from his body. At the same time a similar magical field had erected itself around Woodhouse. Kyle's own was a barrier spell designed to repel magic and living energy. It was useless against bullets and the like, but those weren't his biggest concern.
Magical power lanced from Woodhouse's outstretched hand as they peered down into the large space at the bottom of me stairs, seeing more insect spirits than troopers. The sight of so many writhing insect spirits was grisly, the screams and shrieks deafening, the stink of the roaches all but unbearable. And so tightly packed was the combat that neither Kyle nor Woodhouse could use a spell with an effect radius and not catch troopers. Kyle glanced over his shoulder and checked that mere was wood paneling behind him. The natural wood barrier would prevent the spirits from slipping past him astrally, so his back was protected.
With Woodhouse still on the stair, Kyle's only recourse was to use magic against the bugs. Writhed in black and red flame from Woodhouse's spell, one roach spirit was already staggering away, apparently dragging its huge brown shell. Kyle released another bolt of magic of the same type that he'd used upstairs, and the spirit disintegrated in a splatter of greenish blood. Woodhouse rushed forward to stand over the trooper the spirit had been tearing into, his submachine gun opening up at something Kyle couldn't see.
He jumped over the remaining steps and came down in a crouch, twisting to look at the room. It was long, probably the length of the entire series of stores along the street, and wide open with only the occasional support column. Dozens of roach spirits of varying sizes were everywhere, rushing the besieged troopers, striking as they passed, then disappearing back into astral space, only to reappear elsewhere and attack again.
The racket was deafening, the sickening sound of roach legs skittering madly across the floor, the shouts and screams of the troopers, and always accompanied by that now unmistakable, disgusting smell.
There were other things in the room too, large, swollen shapes sitting on the floor at the far end of the basement. Kyle saw perhaps a score of them, with the two largest roach spirits standing guard over them, only their long antennae moving as they calmly observed the carnage their fellows were creating. A bundle seemed to move, to shudder, and one of the big roaches turned slightly, its long, thin feelers twitching in idle interest.
Another roach thing flashed by Kyle, barely centimeters from his head, but he twisted away in time. The troopers were holding their own, covering each other enough that the insect spirits couldn't swarm all over them, but they were taking plenty of punishment all the same. Unless they withdrew, it would be only a matter of time. And if the roach spirits pursued them there wouldn't be much hope.
Woodhouse's magic flashed again as a spinning disk of energy that sliced the legs clean off a leaping roach. It twisted in the air, and landed hard against one of its brethren, knocking them both down.
The insects and troopers were still too tightly packed for Kyle to risk a powerful area spell. He was thinking fast, trying to come up with something that might lure the insects into clusters that could be blasted. Perhaps an attack against whatever the large roaches were guarding? It was probably suicide, and he didn't know if Woodhouse had a spell powerful enough to deal with the spirits en masse. He also didn't know if the roach spirits, considering the size of the two guardians, would consider him a threat.
Linda Hayward's words suddenly filled his head. A threat. Kyle thought he knew one that might be enough to distract the roaches.
He pictured Hay ward in his mind, not clad in her green and black biker learner, but as she claimed she truly was. Two meters of deadly, insect-devouring mantid spirit.