Harry drove out of the lot, calling Wozniak and telling him about the meeting. The detective assured him that he would be there.

“Go to Eastland Mall,” said Harry. “We’ll have to talk to Guy in person. He doesn’t have a phone.”

“The contractor has confirmed he will be there,” said Nick. “And his agent will be there by proxy.”

“All right,” said Nick. “If Guy isn’t at the Mall, we’ll have to swing by his house.”

“Did he serve with you?,” asked Nick.

“Yep,” said Harry. “He hated being infantry. He wanted to fly helis, but he couldn’t get his MOS changed.”

“What about you?,” said Nick.

“Infantry was okay,” said Harry.

“You have an odd habit of not answering questions,” said Nick.

“You didn’t answer my question about needing contractors,” said Harry.

“Are we playing the game?,” asked Nick.

“We have time,” said Harry. “Ready?”

“Yes,” said Nick. “Why don’t you talk about your history?”

“Because I don’t want to,” said Harry. “Why do you guys need contractors?”

“Population,” said Nick. “Why did you leave the Marines?”

“Because I wanted to,” said Harry. “Why did you become an agent?”

“All of my people are agents,” said Nick. “Do you know how long we have been fighting the enemy?”

“I think you said thousands of years,” said Harry. “How did the war start?”

“Encounter in space,” said Nick. “Why bees?”

“I always liked Ant Man,” said Harry. “How many contractors do you work with?”

“A few million,” said Nick. “Are we trying to go into space?”

“Eventually,” said Harry. “Have you ever been to the Mall?”

“Not to this one,” said Nick. “What do you think you want to do?”

“I want to secure the city, and the planet,” said Harry. “Any suggestions?”

“Not at the moment,” said Nick. “Do you know where the closest enemy stronghold is?”

“Nope,” said Harry. “Do you?”

“Yes,” said Nick. “You do understand how much a light year is?”

“Yes,” said Harry. “How many light years away is that stronghold?”

“Eight billion,” said Nick. “They are on the other side of the galaxy from Earth. Do you want an image?”

“Not yet,” said Harry. “Why did you pick me as a contractor?”

“You were there,” said Nick. “Do you regret your choice?”

“No,” said Harry. “How close was I to dying before you contracted me?”

“Pretty close,” said Nick. “I only saw the one hound but it turned when I appeared to talk to you.”

“Point for me,” said Harry. “Let’s park and see if Guy is on the job.”

“Prying information out of you like that is stupid,” said Nick. “You can just have a conversation.”

“I’m a man of action,” said Harry. “Talking is for the weak.”

“No, you talk all the time,” said Nick. “But you don’t answer questions. I wonder about that behavior.”

“I don’t like answering questions,” said Harry. He found a space and directed the car into it. He got out and started for the mall. “There’s nothing unusual about that.”

“The extremes you take it is,” said Nick. “It makes a simple exchange hard.”

“I’m not here to make your life easy,” said Harry.

“That’s directly opposite of what you should be doing,” said Nick. “Savvy?”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “But I don’t care.”

He pushed into the Super Fitness Wall Works and looked around. People were everywhere, trying to climb fake rock walls, running obstacle courses, and swinging around on ropes from the rafters. He wondered if the preponderance of mats on the floor actually prevented people from getting hurt.

“Let’s try the office, or locker rooms,” said Harry. He walked around the outside edge of the room to avoid getting in the way. He knew he wasn’t going to do any of this unless he had to.

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“What are these people doing?,” asked Nick.

“They are exercising and trying to develop a skill set that might not be useful outside of this room,” said Harry. “There’s Guy.”

He waved a hand to get his friend’s attention. The friend smiled when he saw the contractor approaching.

“What’s going on?,” Guy asked. He was taller than Harry, leaner, with red hair, and several tattoos from his service days on his arms. “I didn’t think you like exercise.”

“I don’t,” said Harry. “I want you to come by John’s place after seven. I need to talk about some stuff.”

“Stuff?,” said Guy. “What kind of stuff?”

“It’s mostly work related,” said Harry. “I need some fresh perspectives to show me what I’m doing wrong.”

“How many problems can you get into as a security guard?,” said Guy.

“I switched jobs,” said Harry. “It was a lateral move, but this new job has some

problems going on with it.”

“All right,” said Guy. “This reminds me of when you burned that house down.”

“You’re the one that threw the willy pete,” said Harry. “I just shot the guy.”

“If you say so,” said Guy. He shrugged.

“I have no problem shooting you,” said Harry. “I still need you to come by. I’m going to call for pizza.”

“I’ll bring the beer,” said Guy.

“No beer,” said Harry. “Bring sodas.”

“Really?,” said Guy.

“Kids are going to be there, and I don’t want to tempt them,” said Harry. “Bring

the soda. I don’t know how long a talk this will be, so I need you to be sharp.”

“All right,” said Guy. “How serious is it?”

“You remember that time we had to break out of Barsalom and Kowalski got shot?,” said Harry.

“Sure,” said Guy.

“It’s a lot more serious than that,” said Harry. “I might need some backup down the way too. I have a kit I can give you if I need to pass you a gun.”

“Are you serious?,” asked Guy.

“Pretty much,” said Harry. “The job I signed on for is much bigger than I thought it would be. Now I am trying to figure where the edges are and how to shrink them into something useful.”

“I know that feeling,” said Guy. “I’ll be there.”

“Thanks,” said Harry. “I have to get some things done before I show up. I’ll see you there.”

“All right,” said Guy. “I’ll be there, and sharp.”

“Thanks, Guy,” Harry said. He turned and started back for the door.

“Kowalski?,” asked Nick.

“One of our guys when we were deployed,” said Harry. He stepped outside. “We got pinned down. The squad got pinned down. Kowalski took one in the chest when we broke out. We couldn’t keep him alive for a medevac.”

“I assume there was an investigation,” said Nick.

“There wasn’t anything to investigate,” said Harry. “We were ordered to search for material in the area, and were surrounded and shot at by the people who lived there. We shot some of them too. We all got purple hearts. Kowalski got Arlington. That’s just the way it is.”

“So you lost a member of your squad for faulty information,” said Nick.

“It happens,” said Harry. “Intelligence gathering isn’t a perfect sweep all the time. Sometimes not enough is gathered, and sometimes too much is.”

“Where are we going next?,” asked Nick.

“We’re going to look around in the tunnels under the university,” said Harry.

“Nothing showed up on the scanner, but I want to look around for anything that might have been left behind.”

“Do you think they put another carving down there?,” asked Nick.

“I don’t know,” said Harry. “We don’t really know how things operate. Just looking around is something we can do to kill time and make sure nothing is there as far as a search goes. And I have a hive down there that will go active as soon as a xeno shows up.”

“So if we go down and the hive is active, then we know one of the enemy was in the area,” said Nick. “I like that.”

“And I am armed just enough to buy time for more of the bees to be made,” said Harry.

“All right,” said Nick. “I don’t have any reports of any missing students. It looks

like they escaped after our encounter and went to where they merged and made the marker.”

“That’s good,” said Harry. “Those things caused a lot of havoc crossing through the campus like they did. There were dead and dying everywhere.”

“Nothing you could have done about that,” said Nick. “It was sheer luck you weren’t killed when you came out of the tunnels and changed the tide.”

“How much did I really change it?,” asked Harry. He got behind the wheel of his car.

“Some of the people you saved would have been dead,” said Nick. “The footage caught showed that to the review board.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Harry.

“A board was convened while you were asleep in your bath,” said Nick. “A few

agents that operate here and some others from other places sat down and went over everything. They think you did an adequate job mostly.”

“The two words that stand out are adequate and mostly,” said Harry. “Go to Wu U.”

“The agents from the front lines were unimpressed even though it was your first hour on the job,” said Nick. “They feel like you should have been able to call an orbital strike on the university and kill all of the enemy.”

“That would have killed everyone on campus, including me,” said Harry.

“It’s an acceptable loss,” said Nick.

“Acceptable for whom?,” said Harry. “How was I supposed to do that with the small amount of points I had? I barely had enough to create my first hive.”

“They are being pressed so much, they don’t care about that,” said Nick. “Most of our resources are going to keeping the front lines viable and stopping the enemy there. The rest go to contractors dealing with behind the lines actions.”

“So my bees fighting on that one planet might be helping out in a tangential way other than giving me more resources to use here on Earth,” said Harry.

“Most of the cultures we deal with aren’t prepared to let artificial intelligence run wild like that,” said Nick. “In your case, it was a bold move that has paid off.”

“The problem is they won’t attack anything with a different signature,” said Harry. “If they encounter a xeno that is different from the rest, they might not attack unless something happens.”

“So if there are brains behind this,” said Nick. “They could pose as victims so the bees won’t attack.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that,” said Harry. “The other possibility is they attack anything that isn’t Terran, and I don’t have an answer to that either.”

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that for a while,” said Nick. “None of our forces are anywhere near the coordinates I looked at from your receiver.”

“If they were smart, they would just nuke the bees from orbit and take out the hives,” said Harry. “Otherwise, they will always have a net to deal with as the hives keep trying to expand.”

“I don’t know if they will do that,” said Nick. “I haven’t seen them try anything other than living creatures.”

“That seems weird to me,” said Harry. “I would expect some kind of energy control, some kind of electricity, even crude types of computers.”

“Our forces have only dealt with grunts who don’t seem capable of using tools,” said Nick.

“So the brains are not taking the field,” said Harry. “And the field is full of cannibal berserkers.”

“I don’t like to admit it, but that’s what it looks like,” said Nick.

“It’s okay,” said Harry. “All we need to do is find out where their central command is and cut it off. Then we can work on clearing out the planets full of their grunts. I hope we aren’t dealing with a Berserker-slash-Dalek situation here.”

“I don’t get the reference,” said Nick.

“They are machine menaces that turned on their creators and killed them,” said Harry. “We could be looking at a species that created these things and turned them loose to kill everyone else.”

“Like your bees,” said Nick.

“My bees are too lovable to do anything like that,” said Harry. “There’s the school. Let’s find a parking spot and look around.”