“Hold up,” Dan put up his free hand to stop Abe. “We should probably get William out here. He has more clout than me among ex-soldiers, and frankly, he just talks a better game than I do.”
“Fair enough,” Abe replied, turning to the armored soldiers still sifting through the rubble. “Huntman! Get Bill Finch over here.”
“Bill?” Dan raised an eyebrow at Abe. “Since when do you call him Bill?”
“Everyone calls him Bill but you, Boss,” Abe answered cheerfully. “I think he wants to keep you on the edge of your seat. He said something about it ‘making you sharp’ or something.”
“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” the woman leaning against Dan asked woozily. “It might be me hitting my head, but I feel incredibly lost right now.”
“Don’t worry about that, it’s a natural reaction to dealing with Abe.” Dan turned back to her. “We want you to put us into contact with your superior officer. Our goal was to take out Bowman because he’s an animal. We don’t necessarily want to fight each and every one of the units that used to be under his command. If your team is willing to stand down, there really isn’t any need to fight.”
“Major Sallsforth?” She blinked at Dan. “She’ll just think that you’re coercing me, if you have me tell her anything.”
“I mostly just want an introduction.” Dan smiled. “I mean, I’d appreciate it if you say whatever code phrase I’m sure you have to indicate that you’re not under duress. I certainly don’t plan on harming you, if I can help it.”
Their conversation was cut short by William approaching in his powered armor, escorted by a man that Dan assumed was Huntman. One of these days, he’d get around to learning the names and faces of every soldier working for him, but right now, it just seemed like every time he turned around there were two or three new individuals for him to make sense of.
“Wait…” The gunner stumbled over the word, her tongue thick and heavy from the head wound. “Is that General Finch? Like, the guy in charge of Indonesia? What in the hell is he doing here?”
“That’s a good question, Thrush.” William chortled as he walked in on the conversation. “I keep telling Daniel I should be the person in charge around here, but he says that ‘because he can destroy a tank with his mind,’ he gets to run the show. No respect for the wisdom that comes with age.” William shook his head theatrically.
“Thrush.” She turned back to Dan, cocking her head as she looked at him again. “Wait, are you Daniel Thrush? I saw the video of you soloing one of those gigantic lizards in Brazil! I thought you were supposed to have died in the fighting or something.”
“Still alive and still fighting,” Dan shrugged, smiling dryly. “Bowman and Ibis both hated my guts near the end, so I’m sure they’ve had plenty of choice things to say about me, but I’m still kicking and both of them are dead, so I think I’m winning on any scorecard I can think of.”
“Well,” Abe interjected as Huntman plugged an orange extension cord running from the Viceroy’s Pride into the radio he held. “Are we going to keep gabbing, or are you guys ready to make this call?”
“Do you mind introducing us, Miss…?” Dan plastered his best charming smile on his face as he addressed the woman he was stabilizing while simultaneously trying to ignore William’s sarcastic chuckling.
“Davis,” she replied, glancing suspiciously from Dan to William. “Brianna Davis. I don’t mind calling Major Stallsforth, but I really don’t have any idea if you are who you say you are. I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve verified your identities or anything like that.”
“That’s fine.” Dan smiled again as he handed her the radio’s headset. “We mostly want to explain the situation and negotiate a ceasefire. Trying to force you to lie would be the exact opposite of what we want.”
She looked at him dubiously before putting on the headset and stepping toward the radio. After fiddling with the dials for a couple of seconds, she placed a hand on the headset and began speaking.
“Riverfront actual,” Brianna’s voice was still woozy as she spoke into the microphone. “This is Stormcrow Two, Lieutenant Davis. I’ve been shot down by the forces that took out command, and they’ve indicated that they want to parley.”
Dan did his best to look polite while Brianna paused, clearly listening to something through the headset. She glanced briefly at Dan, and the hint of a smile pulled at the edges of her mouth.
“No, Riverfront,” she continued, trying to keep the humor from her voice. “I don’t think they’re elves. They have some of the science fiction tech we saw from the other warlords, including something that just blew Cooper’s bird out of the air without any warning, but they look human to me.”
She stopped speaking once again. Faintly, Dan could hear a woman’s voice in the headset, tinny and static-filled from all of the distortion.
“Nocturnal Domingo,” Brianna replied to whatever she’d been asked. “I repeat, Nocturnal Domingo. As far as I can tell, most of them are ex-military. Someone claiming to be General Finch is here along with someone claiming to be Daniel Thrush, the guy who took down that gigantic lizard in Brazil.”
Brianna stopped speaking, once again listening to the radio before turning to Dan and William. She shrugged apologetically.
“Major Stallsforth wants to know what your demands are,” she said helplessly.
“That’s my cue!” William cut in, extending his hand toward Brianna and taking the headset from her. After settling it over his ears, he began speaking.
“This is William Finch, former general in the United States Army, to whom am I speaking?” A frown began to grow on his face as he listened to Major Stallsforth’s response.
“Now, listen here, young lady!” William growled into the headset. “Lieutenant Davis is doing just fine. I just grabbed the headset from her because it didn’t make any sense for us to play telephone through her. I’ve been planning operations bigger than this since you’ve been in diapers. There’s no need for you to get snippy with me.”
Dan could hear her response from where he stood. William might not have been the best choice for negotiations after all. The old man had a bit of a temper on him.
“And look where that got you,” William cut into whatever diatribe the major was spewing heatedly. “Stuck working for a psychopath who tried to undermine the United States itself. Before you lecture me on duty, I’d like to ask you to guess how many times I called down here to try and get Bowman to intervene when the Thoth Foundation was besieging Washington DC? Instead of honoring his oath to the government, he set up a tinpot dictatorship through force of arms and harbored an enemy to our entire race.
“Of course, I mean the fucking elf!” he shouted back at her almost immediately after finishing his previous speech. “Look, we just want to set things right again. Put competent civilians back in charge of the country then round up the rest of the armed forces to kick these fucking aliens off the planet.”
“OH,” he responded after a momentary pause. “You want to talk to someone else who’ll be more respectful to your feelings. Frankly, I’m surprised someone whose skin is as thin as yours even survived a month in the service. Fine, talk to Dan. He’ll sort you out.”
William ripped off the headset and slapped it into Dan’s chest, winking at him.
“Bad cop is done,” he whispered, stepping away from Dan. “Good cop is up.”
Dan glanced at William, bemused, before he slipped the headset over his ears. Immediately, he was assaulted by the voice of a screaming woman.
“Excuse me?” Dan asked. “Is this Major Stallsforth?”
“AND WHO THE HELL WOULD- wait.” Her tone calmed dramatically midway through the sentence. “Is that asshole gone? Please tell me he’s not running the show over there.”
“No ma’am,” Dan replied, “that’d be me. Look, we’re just trying to get in touch with all of the nearby units and let them know that our goal is to get them to join up with us. Bowman was a menace, so we eliminated him before he had a chance to go to ground. Right now, we don’t want to fight anyone else, but if you intrude on our section of the city, we’ll respond with force. Again, we’d prefer to avoid fighting, but I suspect that if it comes to it, things won’t turn out all that well for anyone trying to attack us.”
“What’s this Lieutenant Davis said about you shooting down Lieutenant Cooper?” Major Stallsforth’s voice was noticeably calmer, albeit still belligerent. “He was on a scouting mission, and you blew him out of the air without any warning. That doesn’t sound like the most neighborly of actions.”
“Scouting?” Dan snorted. “As soon as he saw my men, he started shooting us with rockets. I shot him down to protect my own men. I didn’t particularly want to do it, but I don’t really know what else I was supposed to do.”
“Lieutenant Cooper wasn’t supposed to shoot unless fired upon,” the major replied suspiciously.
Dan rolled his eyes, noting Brianna stage whispering the words “he’s a gigantic asshole” at him.
“Nevertheless, he did,” Dan answered. “Look, I want to put my cards on the table. The entire New Orleans Army is on their way over with a whole lot more drones. We’re just here as an alpha strike to prevent Bowman from organizing any sort of resistance or executing hostages. If you can get your troops to back off, we’re more than happy to sit here on top of a pile of rubble playing cards until the cavalry arrives.”
“Shit,” the major spat the word out. “Is the Army of New Orleans going to be the people attacking us? What the hell is going on?”
“Bowman was making moves toward breaking the truce, and we had some pretty good intelligence on him.” Dan responded, staring off toward the sun as it began to crest over the horizon. “It sounded like he wasn’t really doing anything other than stockpiling weaponry and making life hell for the locals. Right now, the Southeast is divided. No one leader has enough troops to actually make a play toward any of the corporate warlords that started this entire mess. At some point, we’re all going to have to unite under one banner, and it seemed to make sense we ensure that it wasn’t Bowman’s.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” she asked hesitantly. “He has the families of a lot of my senior officers held hostage, and I’ve watched him torture more than a couple of them to death for fairly small problems. I’m not saying that we will stand down or consider joining up with you, but we’d need proof that Bowman was gone before we make any move at all.”
“Look,” Dan replied. “We had a guy watching the tower. Unless he sneaked out without his motorcade in the dead of the night, he was in there. We dropped the entire building and then bombed the rubble flat enough to land a spaceship on it. I can’t confirm he’s dead, mostly because we dropped enough ordinance on him that there likely isn’t anything left. Ultimately, it’s going to come down to trust. Talk to your noncoms and anyone who knows how to cast spells; they’ll be able to vouch for me. By the end of the day, we’ll have enough troops around here to assert control. Even if Bowman did somehow miraculously survive, he won’t be able to do anything.”
There was a pause from the receiver. Dan heard some muffled whispering, but he couldn’t quite make anything out. Finally, the major returned.
“Do you mind if we just hold tight for a little bit?” Her voice was much calmer, almost congenial. “Most of my unit would be happy to jump ship, so long as Bowman’s actually dead, but we’ll need some sort of reassurance first. If he doesn’t respond to your attack in the next four hours, he’s either dead or in a coma. I’ll talk to the other units in the area and tell them to lay off. In the meantime, we’ll be talking to the special units. If they really do vouch for you, that’ll certainly mean something. We’ll talk in four hours and make our decision then, same frequency.”
“Good enough for me,” Dan replied as he took off the headset. He watched the sun peek above the skyline. A short break would be nice after all.
