Tom Dowd - Burning Bright

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you…"

The old woman looked away at the bodies scattered around the large room. "Or did you come back for them?" she asked, her attention drifting.

Kyle glanced at Seeks-the-Moon, who seemed equally perplexed, and then turned back. The woman had grown very still, except for her mouth, which was moving slightly. Kyle leaned down closer, and she said as she died, "No, you came to take all of us."

Kyle stood up slowly and looked back at Seeks-the-Moon, but neither said anything. There was a moan from the man Kyle had speared. He moved, and Kyle grabbed him, lifting him up and flipping him onto one of the cots. Kyle shifted his senses into astral space and studied the man.

His aura was wrong, twisted, laced with dark streaks, and with his astral senses Kyle could almost smell a stench coming from him. The man, clutching his leg in pain, hissed up at Kyle.

"The bus was going to the main hive," Kyle said. "Where is it?”

The man spat, a glob of blood and greenish fluid that Kyle turned slightly to avoid.

Kyle smacked the side of the man's shattered knee with an open palm, and the man choked back a howl of pain.

"Here's the chip truth-I know what you are, and I know that the spirit that used to inhabit that body is dead. That means I don't have the slightest pang of guilt about doing whatever I need to do to you to make you talk."

The man only sneered. Kyle could see, though, that sweat had broken out across his face. He couldn't tell if it was from pain or fear.

"It's a simple spell really," Kyle said as a small swirl of black and red energy appeared floating above his now outstretched hand. "As the energy covers you, it'll feel like thousands of tiny red-hot needles jabbing into your body. Nothing immediately serious… But now imagine if that energy covered your own body and I could make it hurt more and more until all you had was the pain. No body, no mind, just the pain."

The man shrank back as Kyle spoke and the swirl of energy began to drift toward him.

"Then," Kyle went on, "it'll use any opening it can to get inside your body…"

"Cermak and Racine," the man hissed suddenly, holding out his hand to ward off the slowly approaching spell. "The power plant!"

Kyle nodded and stood, confident from the man's expression and attitude that he spoke the truth. "Good." Kyle unslung his Ares combat rifle and aimed it at the man. "I'd have hated to create a spell like that on the fly."

He fired a burst of three bullets, deciding the creature's death was worth the waste.

They approached the vicinity of Cermak and Racine carefully. Kyle didn't know the area, except by mentally following the path of both streets from where he knew them to where they had to intersect The neighborhood, southwest of the devastated Noose and northwest of the rebuilt downtown Core, was fairly rundown. In the years following the destruction of the IBM Building, it had gone from being an ethnic enclave to the only sanctuary for many displaced by the disaster.

Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon walked cautiously down Cermak from Ashland looking for signs of the insect hive. It was hard to miss. About three-quarters of a kilometer east of Ashland the two could clearly make out the tall exhaust stack of the power plant where the insect-spirit-inhabited man had told them it would be. It was mostly dark, except for some slowly blinking lights on the tower and around the plant building itself.

They stayed on the opposite side of the street, trying to act casual and avoid detection. As they got closer, and could see the site better, they began to make out some additional smaller buildings and power distribution towers to the right of the main plant building, which stood about six or seven stories high just behind the towering hundred-and-fifty-meter smokestack. There was activity around the building; a few cars sat scattered in the wide-open grassed and rail-tracked area that fronted the building. A dozen meters or so from the only large warehouse doors that Kyle could see, a row of three Chicago Transit Authority buses were lined up, their motors running but lights out. As he and Seeks-the-Moon watched, the large doors were closing, hiding a set of bus taillights inside. There seemed to be guards, but they were milling around the line of buses almost nonchalantly-Kyle guessed that they were relying on spirits in astral space that he could not see.

"Anything?" Kyle asked Seeks-the-Moon, who's own astral senses were always active.

"This is the hive."

"You're sure?"

"There is no question. The air reeks of it."

"Can you see any spirit guards?"

"No."

"No?"

The spirit scowled. "That's what I said. The men and women standing around the bus all seem to be like those we killed at the warehouse, but I see no true form spirits." Seeks-the-Moon told him. “They are here, though."

"In the building?"

"In the main building, and in the smaller ones. Maybe underneath them too. It feels as if there are many hives and nests here. But they're all quiet."

"Any idea why?"

"Perhaps the time is near and the queens are distracted."

"So no one's telling them to do anything."

The spirit nodded. "I'm only guessing."

"Let's turn at the next street and look for Knight Errant," Kyle said. "They can't be too far."

The two turned north at the rubble of what looked like it had once been the site of a restaurant or cafe that had later become home to a group of particularly incompetent bomb-makers. They also passed a row of rundown and apparently abandoned houses. There was, in fact, almost no sign of life.

"Do you think they were smart enough to take the people who lived in the area first?" Seeks-the-Moon said.

"I don't know if they were smart enough," Kyle replied. "but they are certainly savage enough."

Seeks-the-Moon started to speak, then stopped and gestured up the street with his head. "There," he said quietly. "A large truck and a moment ago a group of people near it."

"Knight Errant."

"Most likely."

Instead of turning east again as they'd intended, Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon continued along the street toward the shapes the spirit had seen. As they got within half a block they could see someone walking toward them. It was the ork trooper, Douglas. He nodded as they stopped a few feet from each other.

"You can't shake us that easily," Kyle said.

Douglas smiled. "No, Captain Ravenheart said she thought you'd show up before kickoff. She's over here." He gestured toward what seemed to Kyle just another deteriorated building, this one a walkup with a long front stair.

"Kickoff?"

Douglas' face clouded and he looked away as he escorted them up the steps. "We've found the hive," he said quietly.

Kyle nodded and said, "I understand," as Douglas pushed open the battered front door and made way for them to enter. Inside, another trooper stood, weapon ready, covering me front door. The building had once held apartments, and Douglas directed them toward the partially open door of one just beyond the lobby.

Inside, Ravenheart and two other troopers were studying a small display Kyle recognized as a remote control deck, undoubtedly for the drone. Sergeant Vathoss stood nearby and frowned slightly as Kyle and Seeks-the-Moon entered.

"Glad you could make it," Ravenheart said. "Sorry we had to cut and run on you like that, but when the bus bolted I was afraid we'd lose it."

Kyle nodded and shrugged. "No harm done. Like I told Douglas-you can't shake us that easily."

For no reason Kyle could guess, Ravenheart glanced at Seeks-the-Moon. "I suspect you're right."

"What's the plan?"

She turned back to the remote control deck. "Well once we get the reprogramming done, which shouldn't be much longer,"-she stressed the words for the benefit of the other two troopers working the display-"we're going to set it on autopilot, get it airborne, give us some time to get clear, and thread it like a needle through one of those windows over there. After that, we cut power, it loses altitude, drops as far as it can, and…" She let her voice trail off. "Well, then it explodes."