“Best move you ever made, limy,” Carl Bly slapped Oliver on the back.
“Yeah, well, the shit hit the fan and that’s ‘bout the end of that story, mun.”
“What about you, Captain?” Vince asked and he studied Nina close, as if hoping to peel away another layer of his mysterious leader. “What do you miss?”
Nina shook her head. For a split second the answer ‘pineapple’ came to her mind but she could not fathom why.
“I don’t know. I honestly-I honestly don’t know.”
“Captain was born for this shit,” Bly grinned. “Hell, yeah, if it weren’t for all this, she’d be bored to hell.”
A few chuckles broke out. Nina flashed a timid smile.
Fort Larned sat on flat ground five miles west of Larned, Kansas and just south of Route 156. An access road cut from 156 through a tree line then across fifty yards of grassland to the fort’s buildings which were arranged in a square shape around a large courtyard. Light woodlands brushed against the eastern and western perimeter while the south offered wide open plains and a clear field of vision for the defenders.
Nina, Vince Caesar, and the three elkhounds hid in cover to the west; Bly and Maddock to the east.
Nina spied one Spider Sentry walking on its spindly legs across the courtyard and one of the muscle-bound gray-skinned Ogres. Unlike the one guarding the convoy, this Ogre carried a giant iron mace with a spiked cube at the end.
Most of the facility’s garrison consisted of monks dressed in various shades of cloth stitched to resemble robes. Nina expected they wore lethal pellet-guns on their forearms but she saw each wielding The Order’s weapon of choice: swords, although their blades lacked any sense of style or even a true hilt; merely thin, sharp poles.
In any case, she stopped counting monks at 20 because a more important count grabbed her attention: people.
They came in a variety of shapes and sizes. Through her binoculars she saw several elderly men wearing clothes that gave them away as farmers, a teenage boy in ripped jeans, a soldier in green BDUs with his arm in a sling, a young couple with a daughter no more than eight clinging to her parents. The monks herded the group out from the barracks toward a bent flag pole at the center of the courtyard.
Nina watched one of the assimilated monks shove a middle-aged woman. She spotted a couple of young black boys try and slip around a corner only to be turned back by the Ogre.
She counted 20 human beings congregating in the middle of the place. Nina heard sobs, pleas for mercy, and moans of agony.
Her binoculars fixed on one of the two larger buildings on the north side; the Company Officers Quarters. The stately white rails along the front porch were now covered in wiry vines that grew like a cancer upon the vintage 1800s structure. The openings where doors and windows had once been now appeared more like cave entrances laced in a thick buildup of slimy green mold.
Implant incubator, she thought. And she knew the people in the courtyard would be sent inside that chamber of horrors in small groups.
The Order did not need such assembly lines; implants could worm their way into the hide of victims easily enough, but these assembly lines both improved the odds of successful implantation and allowed for faster processing of prisoners.
However, Nina found it odd that she saw only 20 people preparing for implantation. That seemed a small catch for an implant center. It struck her that Voggoth appeared most focused on destruction as part of his push east, not assimilation. This contradicted their contact with The Order during those first years. In those days The Order would kill, yes, but they preferred to capture and control, as if implanting and mutating humanity better served Voggoth.
“Do not fear, my children!”
The voice came from a woman wearing a dark robe and gliding among the hostages. “Be comforted, friends, for you will soon be one with the living God.”
Cries of ‘no’ and ‘please’ and ‘I’ll do whatever you want. just let me go!’ rang out.
Nina used binoculars to eye the speaker: a middle aged woman with a drawn face and thin long fingers. She spoke in a booming voice that made Nina think of radio preachers from the pre-war days dictating the gospel across late night air waves.
“Do not fear! Soon you will know the touch of Voggoth!”
Nina heard more voices, just below that of the missionary woman. She could not quite understand those voices-she concentrated and closed her eyes-a memory from long ago came to the front of her mind; something from a long time ago…
“I can’t hold it steady! We’re leaking hydraulic fluid!”
“Goddamn it, I knew you’d get me killed you dumb bitch!”
“Merede! Scott! Shut your ass or I swear on Mary’s name I’ll choke the hell out of you with my bare hands!”
“Scott, Sal, quiet! Nina, we gotta find somewhere to set her down. I’m thinkin’ just about anythin’ flat will do. Wait-look, to the right here-there’s a pad on that hospital roof.”
“Shep, I don’t think we can-“
“Just try, Nina. I reckon’ that and prayin’ is about all we have left.”
Helicopter blades-a gunning engine-shouts and grunts…
“You missed! Goddamn-“
“I can’t control it-power is almost-almost gone.”
“Nina! The parking garage. Aim for it!”
A horrid metallic screech. Glass splintering. A cry of pain. A scraping sound…
She tried to re-focus on the woman preaching the virtues of Voggoth to a terrified crowd of human prisoners. Instead, she felt pressure on her throat-on her wrists-and heard voices in the dark…
“She is quite strong. She will do nicely.”
“But your Excellency, she is very dangerous. She destroyed many of Voggoth’s children before we could capture her. The male would be easier to-“
“No. He is too weak and shallow-minded. This operation requires much more complex thinking capability in order for the new implant to remain hidden. As for her strength, this is an asset. They will accept her without question.”
“You desire the new procedure? The prototype? Is it not too soon?”
“Yes, the new prototype. It has passed the test on parallel battlefields with other races; it will work here, too. Humans are, in the important ways, identical to the other inferior species. Now do as I command. Then make preparations to return her to the city, somewhere near the crash site.”
“And the male-I shall prepare him for the standard drone implant.”
“No! If they count him among our number in the future, then they will suspect her. As much as it pains me to deny Voggoth another child, terminate him.”
“It will take time, Excellency, to prepare phase two of the process. The memory reconstruction alone will take several hours and-wait, your Excellency, she is conscious.”
“It matters not. She will not remember. Or rather, she will remember only that which we give to her. Proceed. Hello, my child, do not fear for you will serve Voggoth in a most special way…”
Nina’s attention returned to the historic fort, the humans inside, and most especially the missionary who preached the blasphemous word of Voggoth.
She spoke to the trio of K9s, “Odin, Mallow, Campion-decoy!” And she pointed to the north.
As Grenadiers are apt to do, they followed her orders as if they could do more than listen; as if they could read her mind. The black and gray dogs bound away from the cover of the tree line and into daylight. They curved north as they ran, barking when they reached the perimeter of the fort.
The Spider Sentry opened fire; six of the monks-with their pseudo-swords drawn-pursued as the dogs bolted north behind the historical buildings on the western perimeter, just skirting the forest as they ran.
A few hundred yards to the east, Bly and Maddock left their hiding place in the woods. Bly toted an M249 machine gun and dropped on his belly at the northeast corner of the Fort, just to the east of the implant building and opposite the side where the dogs had drawn attention.