Dan blinked away the haze of mana as he forcibly distanced himself from the pleasure of the kill. The male and female soldier stood by Ellie, eyes vacant as they shuddered through the mana influx. Near the tree, the male soldier pulled himself to his feet. His eyes flicked down to his vomit-soiled shirt, and with a sigh, he picked up a handful of brush from the forest floor and tried to rub the vile stain out.
They sat in silence for a second before Dan spoke up.
“This is Jennifer Finch.” He hooked his thumb at the glassy-eyed woman. “And that is Ellie Rivers and Samantha Weathers. I’m Daniel Thrush. I’m presuming that I’m your magic theory instructor, unless something truly bizarre has happened.”
“It’s been a night for strange things, but yes, I was one of your magic students.” The man strode forward and offered a hand to Dan. “The name’s Abraham Steil.”
Dan looked at the vomit-covered hand and made a face before slowly extending his own.
“Shit, sorry,” Abraham switched to a clean limb and grasped Dan’s hand in a firm but off-center handshake. “I guess that I’m still not over the mana rush. You guys weren’t kidding about those; they pack a hell of a kick.”
“I’ve done worse under the influence,” Dan replied, a flicker of discomfort flitting across his face. “I’m surprised you recovered so quickly. After bringing down something that big, I’d expect anyone that isn’t meditating to be out of commission for at least a full minute.”
“Who said I wasn’t mediating?” Abraham quirked an eyebrow, his hand still trying to wipe the bile from his fatigues. “Our counselors recommended meditating at least once a week to all of us. According to them, the powers that we’re going to be channeling are highly addictive. I didn’t really feel it fighting the little guys with the stone weapons, but against that snake? Hoo boy. I can see how someone could get a little too used to that.”
“Bowman said that meditation wouldn’t be part of your training?” Dan asked, perplexed.
“I’m sure he did,” Abraham snorted. “The Colonel fucking hated you and that Ibis guy. Said you were undermining the country, and that he didn’t want you having your hooks any deeper into us than necessary. First thing he did was set us up with support staff to monitor our mental states and make sure we didn’t fall apart. They read your reports and had us doing guided meditation within the week.”
“The Colonel had a closed-door meeting with some of the shrinks, and there was a bunch of shouting,” the soldier continued, “he came out all red in the face and told us that he couldn’t legally order us not to meditate, but that ‘he wouldn’t be doing it,’ right before he told us that no one was allowed to mention meditation to you Thoth guys. First time I’ve had a commanding officer flat out ban even talking with a team we were working with.”
“Hell,” Abraham gave up trying to rub the vomit from his shirt in disgust. “The couple times he caught someone talking with your team, he took away privileges. It led to a fair amount of animosity in our contingent. Nothing serious, but pretty much no one was happy about the situation.”
“I thought all of you guys hated me,” Dan responded in surprise. “I got more dirty looks than a cop outside a frat party.”
“Hated? Nah.” Abraham turned his back on Dan and began walking over to the two other soldiers. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think any of us really respected you. I mean, we had some reports on the stuff you did. Sounded impressive and all. It’s just that, after one or two lessons, it was painfully obvious that you didn’t know the first thing about leading a unit. None of us wanted to be under your command when shit hit the fan, because we figured you’d freeze up and get all of us killed.”
“Pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong on that front.” Abraham shook the male soldier’s shoulder, causing the man to blink and turn to him with unfocused eyes. “The fact that you made it this far and you’re still alive implies that at minimum, your basic instincts aren’t awful.”
“I’ve got about five people with me out of almost sixty candidates.” Dan smiled bitterly. “I’m not sure that’s a great success rate.”
“I saw what you were working with.” Abraham snorted and nodded at Ellie as he picked up a branch and poked the female soldier with it. “For one, unless you saw someone die, there’s a chance that they made it out. Secondly, well. You weren’t set up for success, were you? None of us have any sort of really powerful magic, but at least our group has had training. When the attack came, we knew to bunch up into teams and scatter.”
The female soldier lashed out, snapping the branch with her hand before blinking rapidly. A second later, her eyes focused on Abraham.
“Sergeant,” she said, looking at the snapped stick in his hand. “Why are you covered in shit, and why were you poking me with a stick?”
“And this charming individual is Corporal Rose Pulvermacher.” Abarahm ignored the woman glowering at him before turning to the other soldier. “Still sidelined by the mana rush, we have Corporal William Ritter. He goes by Bill, but you can call him Wild Bill if you really want to piss him off.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Dan saw Jennifer coming to. He was a little worried about the fact that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were still glassy, but at least she was sensible to her surroundings. Around the same time, Sam walked up. Dan suppressed the anger that welled up inside of him. She was his friend, but God could she cross the line sometimes.
“So,” Dan turned to Abraham, “Mr. Steil, we just found out that the Thoth Foundation programmed a kill switch as well as mind altering properties into the nanites we were all injected with. Dr. Weathers was going to help us turn those off.”
“Just call me Abe.” He waved off Dan’s formality. “We already knew about that. Why do you think Bowman was so pissed off with you guys? We got a second injection of something that hurt a hell of a lot more to turn it off. Part of the reason why you were probably getting dirty looks around the compound.”
“Am I really the only fucking person who didn’t know about this?” Dan glanced at Sam, who nodded uncomfortably while Abe chuckled.
“Well, fuck.” Dan flopped himself down onto the jungle floor. “I need to look into quitting. God, I don’t think I’m actually allowed to quit. I’m pretty sure the ‘exclusivity’ part of my employment contract was a bit ridiculous when it listed the awful things the Thoth Foundation could do to me if I breached my contract.”
“I think most of that is just in there to scare you, Dan,” Sam interjected quietly. “I’m pretty sure that a Court wouldn’t let him charge you two million dollars a year for the license to the ‘medical improvements’ he made to your body.”
“Pretty sure?” Dan raised an eyebrow.
“That’s what I thought when I signed it.” She shrugged uncomfortably. “Maybe both of us need to talk to lawyers. I think we’re allowed to do that.”
“Fine,” Dan frowned, “I need to look into renegotiating my contract. I knew Henry was watching what I was doing; he almost had to for us to make the program work, but mind control and a killswitch are a bit too far.”
“Good for you.” Abe gave him a thumbs up. “I’m sure the eccentric and megalomaniacal billionaire that tried to create an army of slave super soldiers will hear the voice of reason when you explain to him calmly that he hurt your feelings.”
Despite himself, Dan chuckled. The rest of the soldiers and Jennifer joined in. Only Sam and Ellie refrained, pensive looks on their faces for very different reasons.
“Screw you, too.” Dan rolled his eyes at Abe, still chuckling. “Now that we have a whole lot of dead snake and some time to kill, do you have any ideas? I’ve mostly been focusing on keeping the rest of my team alive, and I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“Right now, my plan is to carry out the original mission.” Abe sat down next to him. “Stay hidden in the jungle. Survive. Engage the enemy via asymmetrical warfare and report back anything we can via satellite phone. Try to link up with the rest of the army once the counterattack happens. Other than that? Eat roasted snake.”
“Do you have any idea when the counterattack will happen?” Dan asked, staring up into the canopy.
“It depends upon how bad the encircling forces were hit.” Abe leaned back next to Dan. “If they routed all of them, it might take a while. If there are still intact forces nearby, they’ll probably make a push as soon as reinforcements show up. This entire debacle has shown that the elves were hiding their cards all along. Hopefully for us, this won’t turn into a repeat of the Siberia landing. I could do without getting nuked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you see some pretty significant mobilization from the United States and some of Brazil’s neighbors in the coming weeks. At a minimum, we should expect a response soon.”
After everyone was fit to travel, Dan and Jennifer went and picked up the remaining members of the Squad. Really, it was just Raoul and a wood mage named Dietrich, but soon both of them had joined Sam, Ellie, and the soldiers around the corpse of the snake. One by one, they altered their Systems to prevent remote interference.
The next morning, Abe’s prediction came true. They were woken up by one explosion after another coming from the edge of the rainforest as cruise missiles rained down on anything alien out in the open. Then the drone of airplane engines filled the morning air. High in the sky, a quartet of dots crawled through the stratosphere
“Looks like B-52s,” Bill mumbled, squinting to make the planes out through the canopy. “Biggest thing we have in range. It’s pretty clear the United States wants to make a statement.”
Several streaks of light launched up into the air ineffectually from deep in the jungle. Whatever the spells were they didn’t have anywhere the range needed to hit the planes. Even if they did, none of the spells had the ability to home in on the planes. Guided munitions fell from the sky in droves, targeting probable installations deeper in the jungle. Hopefully, they were hitting something important.
An hour or so later, Rose pulled a bulky but robust satellite phone from a rucksack that had been tucked unobtrusively in some underbrush next to a tree. Abe talked into the phone for about five minutes before he hung up and powered it down to preserve its battery. He walked over next to Dan as he tried to eat some of the gamey snake meat.
“You look bored, Daniel.” Abe smiled, nodding at the greasy meat. “Do you maybe want to help out on a mission for your good old Uncle Sam?”
Dan swallowed the meat in his mouth and turned to Abe. “Sure,” he replied with a shrug. “We came here to fight elves, so we might as well actually fight them. I’m pretty eager to get them back for the surprise attack. Plus, I’ve already had enough of fighting monsters and camping. It got old after the first year.”
“Per command, the world is now convinced that we face an existential threat,” Abe said grimly. “They’re ready to hurry almost everything over here as fast as they can to stamp the elves out. No more half measures, no more worrying about cost. The only problem is that we have shit for intelligence. Command doesn’t know where the enemy is, what they’re armed with.”
“Hell,” Abe snorted, “who they’re armed with. They want us to grab an elf, and they want us to persuade him to talk.
‘By persuade, do you mean-‘ Dan began, making eye contact with Abe.
‘Persuade can mean a lot of things,’ Abe replied with a dark smile. ‘I sure as hell would have had a problem with those orders before I saw them turn half of the camp into those… things. Now? Last I checked, none of the aliens landed in Switzerland to sign the Geneva Conventions. If you’re going to pull a stunt like that, the rules of war don’t apply to you. If you’re squeamish, we can handle it.’ There was a hint of challenge in the other man’s eyes.
‘Unless someone here has mind magic,’ Dan’s voice was grim, ‘we have to get answers from them somehow. It’s not like they wouldn’t do it to us in a second if the tables were turned.’
