“All right,” said Harry. “That’s the best I can do right now. If you guys can keep an eye on the areas you work that will be cool.”
“How will we know if the danger is over?,” asked one of the detectives.
“All of the xenos will be dead,” said Harry. “I have to go. If you see anything that looks bad, call me. I will do what I can to help you.”
“I will talk to the captain and see if he will pass the word up the chain of command,” said Wozniak. “It would be great to save the city if we can.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” said Harry. “I have to do another meeting and then head back to McGill and look around.”
“Are you going to ask the gang to look around too?,” asked Wozniak.
“If I can,” said Harry. He stood. “I want as many eyes as I can rolling through the city. If I can get an early warning where an anchor was laid, I can move in and close things down before they get bad.”
“Good luck with that,” said Wozniak. “Those guys are rightly afraid of you.”
“I’m a lovable person once you get to know me,” said Harry.
“Okay,” said Wozniak.
“If you start problems with the gangs going to war, let me know,” said Harry. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Can you do that without killing someone?,” asked the detective, eyebrows raised to his forehead.
“I don’t know,” said Harry. “I think I have some non-lethal ammo in a catalogue somewhere.”
“I’ll call you if I have no other hope,” said Wozniak. “Gang Intelligence might want to use you to clear things away for their cases.”
“I can do that,” said Harry. “I’ll call if I find something.”
Harry walked out of the police station, turned right and started down the sidewalk. A few minutes later, his car rolled up on the other side of the street. He jogged across and hopped behind the wheel.
“The PDO has been notified of what we’re doing,” said Nick. “I already filed a report about the gang activity and the assault on Cat. They are putting it in the discharged weapon file.”
“Am I being court-martialed?,” asked Harry.
“Not yet,” said Nick. “So far, your success has outweighed any liabilities.”
“Let’s check McGill, then we need to look around the old spots where other
contractors caught up with any xenos on the ground,” said Harry. “Maybe that will help us out.”
“If these signs are on the ground here, are they on the ground over there?,” asked Nick. “Gates have to have two points to open up.”
“I wasn’t looking at the one with the star whale,” said Harry. “I was too busy trying to clear the door to give my bees some room to move.”
“I am accessing the view from the active bees you created on the other two planets,” said Nick. “It looks like there is something there, but I can’t see what it is.”
“We don’t have a way to get there,” said Harry. “I am saving up to buy a battleship.”
“You might want to think of ways to buy that piece by piece instead of trying to get the whole thing in one shot,” said Nick. “You’ll need a dock to put everything together.”
“Do I have to put it on land, or in some water?,” said Harry. “I have to think about the logistics.”
“I’ll look through the files and see if I can get you some suggestions when you’re ready to get started,” said Nick.
“All right,” said Harry. “There’s the school. I thought you were going to have workers going over it and fixing the place up.”
“We want to investigate things first,” said Nick. “Then we can have a crew come in and reset everything.”
“All right,” said Harry. “Let’s pull up next to the door. John isn’t here yet. I think we should look around before he gets here.”
“Where do we get started?,” asked Nick.
“Let’s start on the third floor and work our way down,” said Harry. “There might be more than one trigger involved.”
“All right,” said Nick. “I’m getting some confirmations from other planets. Some of my contractors and others did find some of those signs.”
Harry went through the broken front door. No one had secured it yet. He walked along, listening. He didn’t want to walk into an ambush. He paused at the bottom of the stairs to look up toward the third floor.
He started up the stairs. He paused when he reached the second floor. He didn’t hear anything. He started up to the third.
He paused when he reached the third floor. He looked around, frowning at the
damage. The wind had blown everything away from the bathroom. Water covered the floor. At least someone had cut the water off from somewhere outside so it didn’t head down the stairs toward the ground.
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“I don’t see anything,” said Harry. “What do you think?”
“Let’s check the bathroom,” said Nick. “I want to make sure that there isn’t a marker there.”
“Got it,” said Harry. “I wonder how we can counter a gate opening anywhere they can put down a marker.”
“I don’t know if we can,” said Nick. “This has the makings of magic. And we don’t do magic.”
“What do you guys call this quartermaster and gate stuff you do?,” asked Harry. He approached the bathroom, gun out. He couldn’t remember what the ammunition was set to from when he summoned it.
“Science,” said Nick. “My people have been able to master energy to matter to energy for longer than your people have been alive.”
“Then why do you need us?,” said Harry. He looked around the wrecked bathroom. He didn’t see any markings on the tiles, walls, or the ceiling tiles. He frowned.
Maybe they didn’t need more than one carving to open the gate. And that carving didn’t have to be in the drop zone.
That would make the job exponentially harder if that were the case.
“Let’s go down to the other room,” said Nick. “Maybe there’s something there.”
Harry went downstairs to the classroom. He checked the individual rooms on the way. Nothing moved as far as he could tell. He looked around but didn’t see the mark anywhere. He paused at the door to the gate room.
The classroom had been wrecked by the spawning of the gate. The windows were cracked. An aquarium for some kind of animal stood empty. At least it wasn’t a fish, Harry thought as he looked around. Some of the light fixtures had been broken by the xenos.
At least the incursion had happened away from the kids. They might have died if they had been present.
He knew he had been lucky at the university. Some of the students had been killed before he had interfered, but he had saved a lot of the bystanders with his bees. The flying guns had worked a miracle.
He searched the bottom floor. Except for the mess John had made with the rifle, he didn’t see anything he could use.
“Maybe we’re overlooking something,” said Harry.
“We don’t know enough about how they do things,” said Nick. “The notifications from your bees are still showing grunts.”
“Maybe that’s all they have,” said Harry. “Maybe the carving acts as something else other than a gate anchor. We should get with the others and see what they can come up with. Guy loves this stuff.”
“I guess we should,” said Nick. “We should update John so he doesn’t come here.”
“We should call a meeting with everybody at John’s house, and try to set up what we know, what we guess, and what we can do about it,” said Harry. “The what we can do about it doesn’t seem that much to me.”
“I’ll the contractors know we haven’t found anything yet,” said Nick. “They should keep ready until the threat is averted.”
“The threat will never be averted until the war is over,” said Harry. “But you
can’t expect people to stay at high alert all the time. No one can do that.”
“Point taken,” said Nick. “All right. What’s the next move?”
“We call John, get our meeting together, and see what we can do,” said Harry. “Right now we know nothing, and have no way of proving anything.”
“I will consult with the other agents,” said Nick. “Maybe we can dig up something from the files.”
“It would be great if we can figure out how they are targeting Earth,” said Harry. “Maybe we could put a crimp in their plan over that.”
“If we could block the gates, that would stop them from moving the lines,” said Nick.
“Let’s call everybody and see what we can do,” said Harry. “I don’t think we’re going to find out anything else here.”
“I’ll call another agent and see if he can have his contractor sit in,” said Nick. “When do you want to have this meet?”
“Let me call John,” said Harry. “I should call Cat too in case she wants to sit this out.”
“She might want to join us to keep John from doing anything rash,” said Nick.
“Point,” said Harry. He pulled out his phone and called John while he was walking through the building to get to his car.
“I’m here, go,” said John after a few rings of his phone.
“I want to have a meeting at your house,” said Harry. “You, me, Cat, Guy, maybe Wozniak, and another contractor. I want to go over some stuff. Maybe sort out my problem.”
“I don’t think the six of us can sort out your problems,” said John.
“Har,” said Harry. “I’m glad Cat didn’t marry you for your sense of humor.”
“You’re right about that,” said John. “She married me for my epididymis.”
“Sure,” said Harry. “I’m going to call Guy. When should we drop by your house?”
“After seven,” said John. “That’s when Cat gets off at the hospital.”
“All right,” said Harry. “I’ll bring pizza.”
“No vegetables on mine,” said John.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Harry. He walked outside. “I have to go, John. I’ll
pick up Guy and come by.”
Delmar and the three others from the house raid stood in the lot beside his car. They didn’t look happy. He paused to put his phone away. His pistol was still at his waistband under his shirt.
“Garry said you wanted to talk to me,” said Delmar. “Why?”
“I want to offer you a job,” said Harry. “I need extra eyes.”
“You want to offer me a job?,” said Delmar. “You must be out your mind.”
“It’s an offer for you and the rest of your gang,” said Harry. “The detective
investigating you has said you won’t last long against the much bigger gangs with the loss of your numbers. I’m going to give you a chance to go legit before you wind up dead.”
“Why should we help you?,” asked the guy on the right. Harry put him down as Garry. He seemed the most afraid of the four.
“Because if the city is destroyed, so are you,” said Harry. “I’m not asking you to do anything but keep an eye open.”
“Are you paying?,” asked the wheel man.
“I will,” said Harry. “I’ll set up a company to write you checks. How many people can you get together?”
“Probably nobody,” said Delmar. The wheel man nodded in agreement. “You aced a lot of the homies with those robots of yours. They won’t want to put that down.”
“Okay,” said Harry. “I guess that’s the way things go.”
“Would you hire us?,” asked the wheel man.
“Sure,” said Harry. “I will get Nick to set up a company to give you the money
for the work. You’ll probably have to fill out an Eye Nine.”
“We’ll do it,” said the wheel man.
“We are?,” said Delmar. “Nobody will trust us if we do this.”
“We’re done,” said the wheel man. “No other set is going to take us. We can’t make money against the Rays, and the Locos. Our only skills are selling and shooting. We need to think about what we need to do before someone tries to shoot us just for being around. We don’t have anyone who will watch our backs. Everybody is licking their wounds.”
“What do we have to do?,” asked the fourth guy. He had been on the porch, and knew what would happen if Harry threw out some bees on them.
“I want you guys and anybody you can recruit to drive around town and look for anything strange,” said Harry. “We’re looking for possible gate points for xenos.”
“You want us to fight aliens?,” asked Delmar.
“God, no,” said Harry. “I just want you to keep an eye out and let me know if you see something strange.”
“We can do that,” said the wheel man. “Drive and call in if we see something bad.”
“We need to look for any strange drawings too,” said Harry. “Nick will call to send you the paperwork.”
“When do you want us to start?,” asked Garry.
“Right now,” said Harry. “And I want you four to come by John Stuart’s house at seven.”
“You’re kidding,” said Delmar.
“You guys are going to need to be brought up to speed,” said Harry. “This is the way we’re going to do it.”
“We’ll be there,” said the wheel man.
“Cool,” said Harry. He handed them mana scanners. “This is your equipment. It will point stuff out for you. You call to tell me and I will come do something. If I have to give you guys guns, it will be bad enough for you to use them.”