A few moments later, we had everyone pulled out of the burning ship and lowered to the lumpy grass. Ali had fired a few more times at another incoming drone, actually missing a shot and muttering what I thought was a curse under her breath, which she refused to repeat. Once we were all on the ground, we moved as a group to follow the trail of the mirror armored bodyguard.

We picked our way around a number of trash and scrap piles towards another thin line of trees that partially screened a big rusty pole barn. I spotted the soldier up ahead, crouching in the brush and long grass in the treeline’s footprint. As we approached, I saw Katie sit up and look around, running her hands through her hair and straightening her outfit.

I was at the front of the line, and she scowled at me as we approached. “We have to make it north of Trade Route 40 to meet the quick reaction force that’s coming for us. The bastards at central are refusing to send air assets farther south until the ground forces are in place.”

“I’m still all up in her comm lines, she's tried threatening, bullying, and pulling every string she can reach. I’ve been trying to break into the bodyguard's power suit as well, but it has better tech and he has it clamped down pretty tight.”

The soldier grimaced and he and Tevin exchanged looks again, seeming to come to some kind of agreement before the graying bodyguard spoke up. “I’ll take point with the servant. Miss Roderegious, Consul, please keep your guests in line and stay close.”

“My uncle lives out this way, we could get a truck or something from his place.” Kaylee added as the bodyguard turned towards the treeline.

Before he could reply, Ali broke in from beside me. “I stay with the consul.”

The soldier turned back around with his ever present frown, and before he could speak I cut him off. “She’s not a servant either.”

His frown upgraded to an almost comical level. “We are in an active combat zone and I have seniority, you will follow orders according to Edic 17, and I will get your fancy asses out of this alive if I have to carry you on my back.” His eyes flicked over to Tevin and he continued. “I’m not up to speed on how you fit into this, but we have to pull together on this, ranger. Understood?”

Tevin looked over at me then calmly back to the soldier. “Ex-ranger. I’ve been released to the private sector, G-man.”

Before the salt and pepper bodyguard could reply and escalate, Katie spoke up, her voice clear and commanding. “Boys! Now is not the time, we must act. Captain Jorn, take point, the consul and his assistant can follow up. We sweep the building and see if we can find working transport. Now let's move, we can argue about it later.”

The Captain bristled and looked like he was about to insist, but after locking eyes with Katie for a moment, he restrained himself and turned to push his way into the scrubby bushes between us and the polebarn. I looked over at Ali, whose face was set in a neutral mask, and gave her a nod. She stepped forward to follow the man and I trailed along behind her, placing my hand on her shoulder in a reversal of roles.

As we picked our way along the trail created by the heavy footsteps of the power armored soldier, I patted my pockets and finally realized I had lost my pistol somewhere in the chaotic evacuation from the residency tower and cursed my clumsy actions. I should have buckled on the holster and worn the dang thing instead of carrying it in my hand like I had.

We quickly caught up to the captain, who had crouched inside of a leafy bush and waited for us just on the edge of the treeline. When we stopped behind him, he gave us an angry glance over his shoulder before closing his visor and continuing into the open yard toward the sliding door of the polebarn.

I took in the landscape over Ali’s shoulder as Jorn moved forward, and realized this was some kind of small compound. There were a couple of other smaller buildings clustered on the far side of the rusty red building, the closest of which looked like a worn down old wooden two-story house. The home had boarded up windows and peeling paint, and a sagging patch in the shingled roof that was covered with a fraying and sunbleached tarp.

We moved into the clearing to follow Jorn and as I was looking over the house, the side door burst open and a gunshot rang through the open air as a white-bearded and hunched old man fired a round from an old shotgun into the air from the doorway. “Hold it right there, trespassers!”

Ali and I froze as he leveled the shotgun at us, and I spared a glance over to the mirror armored soldier, only to be surprised when he was nowhere in sight.

“I been hearin’ all sorts of booms and bangs over yonder, but I aint takin’ in no strays.” He jerked his head in the direction away from the barn and continued. “The property line is that’a way, and unless you want a bit of ventilation, I reckon you head on by.”

Ali had her rifle sort of aimed in his direction, but had the barrel pointed more towards the ground, and while I couldn’t see her face I sensed that she was hesitant to fire on the old man.

“Captain a-hole activated some kind of active cloaking. Those mirror shelled suits definitely have some outside tech built into them. Luckily for us, he also activated a comm channel to get permission to blast the guy from Katie, and I wormed my way into his onboard relay.” Max whispered into my ear, and a bright blue outline of the armored guard popped into my field of view.

Thanks to the highlighted outline, I watched the soldier crush footprints into the trimmed grass of the yard as he crept closer to the old man who was still standing in his doorway. I was surprised he missed the towering guard in his shiny suit before he cloaked himself, maybe it was more difficult to see from a distance in the outdoor environment, or he had activated his stealth as soon as I’d looked away from him?

“Katie’s order came back, he has permission to shoot the guy, but only as a last resort. Captain Uptight is going to try to disarm him as long as he keeps talking.” Max updated me.

Not wanting to see the old man killed for sticking up for himself, I raised my hands and stood up behind Ali. “We’ll be on our way, sir. The city's a mess.” I paused for a moment, and decided to take a bit of a gamble.

“Our group is mostly women, do you have an old vehicle we can buy? We can pay well.” I asked, hoping that might make him see us as less of a threat.

I figured if he was the kind of guy to take advantage of a group like ours, he would have shot first and asked questions later. If I was right, he probably leaned towards the chivalrous school of thought that women were to be protected and coddled, and might help us with the right motivation.

His bearded face was difficult to read from across the 80 feet or so between us, and he hesitated for a few seconds, spitting to the side before shouting back an answer. “I reckon I don’t need roped into whatever you city folk have going on. You just be on your way now.”

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I grimaced and looked back behind me, making sure my hands were still raised. I saw that Rin was just behind me, with Kaylee and her friends crouched in the middle of the treeline, tending to Andy between them while Tevin was facing backwards and aiming his rifle towards the still smoking city.

I turned back to the old man and saw that Captain Jorn was much closer to him, and would be within reach in a moment. I yelled out again, hoping I could talk the man into some kind of deal. It didn’t feel right, stealing from what was probably a poor old man, but our circumstances were dire enough that I was not going to try stopping the soldier if he refused.

“Please, what would it take? I’ll give you ten thousand credits for a beat up old truck as long as it still drives.” I offered.

The man raised his rifle to his shoulder. “Look here, city boy, I don’t want nothin’ from you. I asked you politely to leave my property. So get on now, or you’ll end up in the burn pile.” He spat off to the side again, and events shifted into high gear.

His dark tobacco-laced spit splashed against the faceplate of Captain Jorn, who was just about to make his move. To the Captain's credit, he barely flinched, and after a split second of hesitation caused by the spittle coating his helmet, he surged forward to grab at the old man’s gun.

In the split second that the Captain gave him, the grizzled old man fired off once in my general direction, and as he fell back into the doorway he blasted Captain Jorn’s tobacco coated face with a third round. I threw myself to the ground, hearing the buckshot rip into the plantlife off to one side.

I hit the dirt, flattening a small shrub and catching a mouthful of grass as all hell broke loose. Ali opened up with her rifle and more shots rang out, a distinct mix of calibers from unseen shooters in the upper windows of the rundown house.

I heard Ali grunt, and then she dove down right on top of me as bullets whizzed and zipped through the brush around us. One of the girls still in the treeline started screaming bloody murder, and the gunfire continued as I tried to crawl out from under Ali.

“Stay down, sir!” She tried to convince me, but I couldn't just lay there. I slithered forward on elbows and knees, moving down the treeline and trying to put the polebarn in between myself and the house. She stayed on my back, laying down flat against me to shield me with her body, but was light enough that she didn’t slow me down at all.

The gunfire continued for a solid 5 seconds, before a larger explosion sounded and blew the front of the house apart, causing the whole thing to ponderously collapse and crash down into the yard in a slow and dusty, somehow quieter, burst of violence.

As the dust settled and I finally managed to roll Ali off of my back, I heard Tevin yelling out. “Who’s injured? Nick, Rin, where are you? What the hell happened?”

“I’m here, I’m fine.” I called back as I rose to my feet. I turned a circle and pushed some leafy branches out of my way as I moved into the clear space. When I stepped out of the bushes, I looked around and saw that the yard was now filled with the splintered wreck of the house, mixed with jumbled furniture and sections of still mostly complete flooring and walls. It looked kind of like the aftermath pictures I had seen from the rare tornadoes that occasionally blew in from the west.

Tevin was standing just inside of the cleared yard in front of the polebarn at the foot of the wreckage, looking around in every direction. He stopped and smiled in relief when he saw me step out of the brush. “Damn good to see you. I thought those dirt-rakers took you out.”

His use of the term ‘dirt-raker’ caused me to frown. I’d asked him about it the first time I’d heard him use it and learned that it was an intentionally derogatory and dehumanizing term. The shepherds used words like that to make it easier for the soldiers to justify the violence their jobs called for. Pretty much anyone who lived outside of the main Linked cities that dominated the importance of the nation was a ‘dirt-raker’ to them. Their deaths were minimized, justified, and necessary for the security of the nation from behind the veil of mental preparation the soldiers went through.

It suddenly dawned on me that Nubranagin was no longer one of those cities. The Link had been destroyed and was not replaceable. The ship was like a router that every system in the city was centered around and connected to. While it was probably possible to buy something to replace some of its functions, I doubted anything would be as capable as the intact ship, and would probably cost an absolute fortune. I wondered if it would be worth it to the council when it would be much easier and cheaper to just amputate the city and let it fall from importance.

“You sure you’re okay?” Tevin asked when I took too long to reply. He kicked a board out of his way and walked up to me while Ali fought her way out of the bushes behind me.

Something shifted within the rubble of the house, drawing all of our attention back to the wreckage. A big section of wall shook, knocking over a half of a bookshelf and some clothing, and Captain Jorn pushed his way out of the debris. His faceplate was now cracked and missing a section giving a view of a bloodied forehead and blackened eye through the broken visor.

Ali and Tevin had both tensed up, and lowered the weapons they had raised when they realized who it was. After a grunt and a heave to free himself from the pile, the injured soldier yelled out. “Are the VIPs safe?”

Tevin nodded and I looked around, spotting Katie as she pulled her heels off and carried them out from the treeline with the rest of the group. “Yeah, I think we’re good.” I said.

“Kaylee’s injured.” Raschel interjected, pointing to a long wooden splinter sticking out from the girl's collarbone, a bloody stain slowly growing in her increasingly tattered blouse.

“That's too damn bad” Captain Jorn replied as he stomped his way out of the debris.

I turned to Ali, giving her a questioning look and quietly asking. “Still have that medkit?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Yes, it’s in my pack, but its use is limited and that injury is not life threatening. The medical supplies are for you, not… her.” She answered scornfully. “I do not trust them, sir.”

I chewed on my thoughts for a moment, wanting to help but also sort of agreeing with Ali. Something about the group was not sitting right with me, especially Kaylee after the whole thing with her contact card. I’d been caught up in so much lately that it had seemed like a small and meaningless drama at the time, thinking that if she was living in the tower she must have been heavily vetted and important in some way. Yet now, with her turning up in the midst of everything, the strange action seemed much more important even if I couldn't put my finger on why.

Tevin moved to her and looked over the wound, speaking quietly and kneeling down. I was about to join him to get a closer look when Katie started issuing orders.

“We need to check that barn, we need a vehicle, we’ll quickly be overrun on foot and be forced to fight again.”

“I’ll check the barn.” I said, glancing at Ali and getting a nod of agreement.

“We should make sure the hostiles are dead, Tevin’s grenade might have only stunned them and they could be hiding in the rubble.” Rin added, finally starting to regain some color after being allowed to sit within the treeline for a minute.

“That's what happened, a grenade?” Katie asked, looking at Tevin.

He shrugged as he prepared a bandage and wound treatment kit for Kaylee. “I saw multiple shooters in the house, and how rickety it was. I hit it with a 40 mil thermobaric, lobbed it right into the doorway over the old man once Jorn was clear. He has to be mush, but anyone in the upper floors might have lived through the collapse.”

I’d stopped next to the barn’s door to listen to his explanation, Ali still hovering close to me as we moved to look for a working vehicle. He finished speaking and reached up to pull the splinter from Kaylee’s chest now that the kit was ready, but instead his head snapped upwards towards the sky and he dropped the kit and reached for his rifle.

“Drone!” He shouted, drawing everyone's attention.

“Dangit, I was hoping no one would notice. I took that one over and am using it to keep watch, see if you can get them to not shoot it!”

I sighed and rubbed a dirty hand over my face, whispering to Max. ‘I can’t just tell them not to shoot it. Make it look like it got hit and keep it out of sight or something. You should have said something sooner and been more careful.”

“Careful? You’re one to talk, you didn’t even let me sniff through that Kaylee girl’s info and now you’re second guessing me after it’s too late.”

Tevin, Jorn, and Ali both aimed their guns to the sky and started blasting off shots at a little speck in the sky.

I reached over and bumped Ali’s rifle, forcing her to miss her next shot, and when she looked at me with both confusion and frustration I mumbled a lame. “I’ll explain later, don’t shoot that one.”