Florida, New American Republic, November-December 2036
“You’ll be mostly on your own, Captain.”
“I understand, Sir. Your brother made it clear that support from him will be limited to things in Miami,” Captain Butcher said.
“Just wanted to make sure you knew to be cautious. You’re far from home and there won’t be any reinforcements or emergency support. Eron can’t stay home for too long. He said that he’s been hearing about something weird popping up somewhere in Egypt. I need to get back so he can check it out,” Rayna said.
“Are you sure you don’t need an escort, Sir?”
“No, thanks. Cal will keep my presence hidden. It’ll be a quick exchange. Just one more drop off.”
“We’ve got this, sir. Your cousin’s presence will be a big help.”
“True.”
Captain Butcher watched their unofficial leader, figurehead and all around inspiration disappear into the night sky.
She headed to the building she had claimed as a command center.
It had been some kind of community center for the long-empty reservation.
Rangers hustled about the place clearing it of monsters and cleaning it up.
There had been way too many scattered human bones.
The thought that they had likely been there for over a decade was sobering.
She would never truly get used to the state of the world.
Given the choice she wouldn’t have undertaken this operation, this Quest.
They had just started to recover from a brutal year’s long war with the undead in San Diego and sending 500 rangers to the opposite coast was beyond risky. It was a quarter of their numbers on paper, but closer to half of their effective numbers when accounting for rangers still in recovery. Some of whom would never truly get all the way back.
Still… the cause was just and her leaders had decided. It was simply duty that she had volunteered to lead since she was the objectively best woman for the job.
“Captain Butcher!” a messenger ran up to her.
Ranger Sweet Teats was assigned to the squads taking the northern sector of the reservation.
“North is clear! Securing buildings and a perimeter. Sigilists beginning concealment.”
“Very good. My complements to their quick and quiet work.”
“Sir!” the tall, thin man saluted and hurried off to return the message.
She was met by Lt. Muttley at the command center. Several squads ringed the largest building on the reservation.
The squat, brawny, bulldog-like man saluted as soon as he saw her approach.
“Status?”
“Captain, she kicked everyone expect Groundpound out. Said our mages mana signatures would muddy things up for the wards or something like that,” Lt. Muttley said.
Captain Butcher frowned. “Groundpound?”
“Er… Rayna’s cousin, Sir… respectfully.”
“She’s not a ranger.”
“Honorary, then… it just ain’t right to be calling someone by their real name in a scrap. Never know when a witch might be around… er… not counting our witches, of course.”
“Right, but I’d suggest you ask her instead of just giving her one. I’ve heard that she’s got a temper,” Captain Butcher said. She regarded the community center. There was a pronounced yellow-gold glow emanating from the building. The arcane symbols painted on the walls seemed to pulse as if the building concealed a beating heart. “Can’t be helped,” she muttered.
“Sir?”
She looked up to the night sky. “A little bit of light goes a long way in the dark.”
“I wouldn’t be too worried, Captain,” Lt. Muttley said. “You can see Miami lit up from all the way here. That means anyone in the city isn’t going to be seeing much else even if they were looking in this direction. Besides, we’ve got eyes in the sky and if there are any eyes out there then we can scoop them right up and shut them up. Not to mention that we’ve got miles of swamp between us and them.”
She nodded. “I’m going to make a circuit, counterclockwise from here. Send for me after she finishes in there. I’d like to speak to her.”
“Understood, Sir. Do you want an escort?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
She headed up the dirt path.
Rangers had roughly hacked through overgrown grass and weeds.
There had been a lot of snakes hidden, but the girl had spared them from having to hunt every single one with a ward that had driven all the unwanted animals out into areas where it was easier to deal with them.
Unfortunately, some slipped through the girl’s magic.
A low rattling sound was the only warning she got.
It was enough.
She drew her saber with a whisper and a brief, silvery flash in the moonlight.
The snake’s head went flying away from the rest of its body.
A quick flash of her light to make sure that it only had one head… and body.
Satisfied that was the case she listened for any other signs of danger.
There was only the rustling of the tall grass in the breeze.
Captain Butcher continued up the path but kept her sword in hand.
A few days later the Ranger Captain sat in her temporary office in her temporary command center.
“You should dust,” the athletic-looking woman said as she ran a finger across the surface of a bookshelf. “I see a spider… I see many spiders. Could be venomous? Poisonous? What’s the difference?”
Captain Butcher didn’t quite catch every single the word through the woman’s accented English. It would’ve been more efficient for the woman to speak in her first language and let the universal translation system take care of it. Though, she’d never voice that opinion. For one, the woman was Rayna’s cousin. And she was the physically strongest person in their contingent by a wide margin. Strong enough to bend steel like it was foam and throw cars over buildings.
“I have no idea,” she answered honestly.
“They aren’t dangerous,” the young woman that looked like a girl said from the chair on the other side of Captain Butcher’s desk. “The wards will keep any living creature that poses a danger to a normal human outside.”
“You’re looking much better today, Lilah,” Captain Butcher said.
“Pushed it too hard,” Madalena said.
“Ay, stop it, Maddy! I’m not a kid anymore,” Lilah said.
“Yeah, well, I had to carry you around for a day, so…” Madalena shrugged.
“And you won’t need to push yourself as hard again. I promise you that,” Captain Butcher said. “We can handle it from here.”
“No worries, Captain. It’s always harder to do the wards the first time than it is to maintain them,” Lilah said.
“Which, other mages can do so now, right?”
“Yeah, Lilah shouldn’t need to lift a finger moving forward,” Madalena said.
“Don’t listen to her, I intend to inspect the wards daily and make sure they’re working as they’re supposed to.”
“Speaking of… I want an escort for her,” Madalena said.
“Of course, that’s in-line with my thoughts. Two squads—”
“Three—”
“One—”
Madalena and Lilah cut-in.
“Three it is,” Captain Butcher said. “Madalena, can I factor you into strategic and tactical considerations?”
“My priority is Lilah’s safety. However, if something particularly horrible shows up then I will be happy to lend my strength.”
“Thank you. Now, I have a few questions about your wards.”
The conversation was quick, perfunctory.
They had already gone over expectations beforehand and the captain was satisfied to learn that it had gone as Lilah had promised.
The wards did push dangerous creatures away.
Though, their main function was to conceal their presence from prying eyes, magical, technological and a blend of the two. Scrying spells would show nothing. Drones and camera’s would likewise find themselves blind whenever they turned toward the reservation.
What they wouldn’t do was hide their presence from physical eyes. A person could simply walk up and look.
They were counting on being surrounded by dangerous wilderness for that.
Furthermore, they expected the Freedom Championships to put in a lot of work toward keeping their presence hidden until it was too late for the slaver kingdom. All their attention would be turned inward to all the exciting events.
All the rangers needed to do was wait and look for the opportunities that Cal had told them about while not losing their edge to boredom.
“This is boring,” Curious said. She sat with her muddy boots propped up on the mess table while twirling a leaf-bladed knife by the ring at the end of its handle. “I should’ve stayed home.”
“Jesus-fucking-Christ, get your boots off the table,” Oatmilk slapped her boots off the table. He wiped the mud off as best as he could before dropping his MRE tray and sitting down to eat.
“Getting tired of your blasphemy, Oats,” Curious spun her knife faster as she leaned to stare at Oatmilk’s face.
“I’ve actually read the Bible,” Oatmilk scoffed as he pointedly kept his eyes on his meal.
“There’s a library in this place, Curious… I saw a Bible there, you could go take a look. Finally get genuine religion,” Sketchy Panda looked up from a thick book to peer at the others. The ranger was either lucky or unlucky to get that name. He had been a new recruit a few years back and as chance would have it he had taken a good hit to the face right before naming day which left him with an ugly, purple mask around both eyes. The sergeant had thought he also looked ‘sketchy’ and hence a new name for the rest of his life.
It could’ve been worse, Sketchy Panda knew, he could’ve ended up like Wet Dreams over to his left.
“There for the grace of God…” he muttered.
“What’s that?” Wet Dreams said.
“This book,” Sketchy Panda said. “It’s interesting, serendipitous even, that I found it in a reservation of all places.”
“Uh oh… Professor Panda’s getting ready to put his glasses on. Time for another boring lesson, yawn.” Curious yawned for effect.
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“Well, you all know the history of this place, right?” Sketchy Panda said.
“Panda, we were all like four when the spires showed up… well, except for Oatmilk, he’s old,” Curious said.
“I forgot everything I learned in school and the old country’s education system was atrocious,” Oatmilk said.
“Not bad enough that you don’t know them big words,” Wet Dreams chuckled.
“I learned to actually read after I joined the rangers,” Oatmilk said. “Anyways, no, I don’t really know the history of this place. Though, I think, Panda’s about to make me feel bad about that unfortunate fact.”
“Right, well, you see the history of this world is all about civilizations rising and falling, right? Whenever civilizations meet, one always kills the other and takes their shit, basically.”
“That sounds like a gross oversimplification,” Curious said.
“I’m trying to dumb it down to your level.”
Curious grabbed a piece of corn from Oatmilk’s tray and flicked it as Sketchy Panda.
“Use your own corn!” Oatmilk snapped.
“If I did that then I’d have to wait a couple of hours,” Curious said.
“That’s what your book’s talking about then?” Wet Dreams said.
“Look, it always comes down to three things to determine who wins and who loses. Guns, germs and steel,” Sketchy Panda said.
“That sounds like a gross over— ow! Goddamn you, Oatmilk!”
The much older man had flicked the younger woman’s ear.
“I just got a new piercing, asshole!”
“Should mind your surroundings then,” Oatmilk shrugged.
“You can’t ever read the room right, Curious,” Wet Dreams nodded.
“Look, smart guy over there talking about guns, germs and steel, well, how does he explain the facts that guns and steel weren’t always around. There was something called the Bronze Age and guns were invented, like, two hundred years ago by the cowboys to kill the Native Americans.”
Sketchy Panda sighed. “How can you be so right and yet so wrong in the same sentence.”
“Yeah, Curious, even I know guns go way back. It was the Chinese that invented them.”
“Everyone knows muskets aren’t real guns. That single shot shit don’t count as proper guns,” Curious said flatly.
“It’s not necessarily literal, right. Guns and steel just means being technologically ahead. A civilization beats another by being technologically ahead and having better diseases. That’s what happened to the natives of old America. Europeans had better tech and better diseases.”
“Smallpox, I remember that much,” Oatmilk said. He leaned forward toward Wet Dreams conspiratorially. “Their white ancestors,” he gestured toward the other two rangers, “put the disease on blankets and gave them to the Native Americans, I remember that too. Then they enslaved our ancestors,” he shook his head. “Terrible, shameful.”
“They taught that at the academy,” Curious nodded.
“Oh, that’s good then, we barely learned about it back in the old days,” Oatmilk said. “Shit, I was from Tulsa and I didn’t know about the Tulsa Massacre until I was an adult.”
“Learned about that too,” Curious said, “I think? I slept a lot,” she shrugged, “didn’t seem that important.”
“That’s were you’re wrong,” Sketchy Panda intoned. “You see, when people are ignorant of history they repeat the mistakes. Hence, slavery being a thing again. Although, arguably you could say that it never left. Just changed slightly or happened in secret and in different places. But, that’s getting into too many details. Point is, clash of civilizations. We’re living it right now. We’re on the right side of history. And it’s important to have knowledge because there’ll be plenty more and it’s not only going to be different human civilizations, but also inhuman civilizations from other worlds… possibly, probably.”
“Don’t get too ahead of yourselves, children,” Oatmilk said. “Fight the enemies in front of you. Don’t waste bandwidth on enemies you don’t even know exist.”
“You people did my country dirty.”
A man dropped a tray next to Oatmilk and took a seat.
Curious, Wet Dreams and Sketchy Panda scrambled to stand and salute.
“On behalf of my colonizer ancestors, I apologize, Sgt. Spiritwalker,” Sketchy Panda said stiffly.
Oatmilk hadn’t risen and had only thrown out a haphazard salute.
He broke out in laughter echoed by the sergeant.
“Thanks, Ranger, but I’m only kidding. Well, not really, because you snakes did sneak in there and snatch our land out from under us after he had already sent the Spanish packing. Killed a few hundred thousand of our people too, but hey you brought us crony capitalism, corruption and freedom or something like that, so…” Spiritwalker shrugged.
“They didn’t teach that in school,” Oatmilk chuckled.
“Didn’t teach it in my school either, but that’s cause you people controlled those too. Just always going on about freedom and liberation,” Spiritwalker chuckled. “You had to do your own research to get the full picture. So, Sketchy Panda, good for you. But remember you can’t believe everything you read. Every author comes with their own biases.”
“Hey, Sergeant, how come Oatmilk doesn’t have to get up and salute,” Curious frowned.
“Literal seniority trumps technical seniority for me, Ranger,” Spiritwalker said.
“Copy that,” Curious saluted.
“At ease everyone,” Spiritwalker said. “Just here to eat and see how things are going.”
“Now, why you doing that? We ain’t your squad, young man,” Oatmilk said. “Last I checked, you ain’t got no squad. You freelance.”
“Nothing’s changed on that account. Just making sure that we aren’t losing our edge. I know how boredom can dull away at things. It’s been three weeks of sitting around and doing nothing,” Spiritwalker said.
“I’m really bored, Sir,” Curious said.
The sergeant listened to complaints while he finished his lunch. He left them with a promise to see if he could find them something to do besides sitting around.
Oatmilk had remained silent. He was a veteran.
The other three were relatively new to being rangers. They had seen a little bit of action at the tail end of the undead war and this was the first time they had been away from their home for an extended length of time.
They’d learn a valuable lesson that one never voiced their boredom. One never asked for something to do.
Case in point, a ranger that should’ve known better was stuck in a tree blind staring out into the darkness and straining his ears. All he could pick up was the sound of insects and the heartbeat of the ranger sharing the blind with him.
Ambrose cursed himself.
This was what he got after days of pestering Rai about being bored.
“Stupid Sgt. Spiritwalker,” he muttered.
“Quiet, Creepy Chipmunk!” the woman next to him hissed.
Well, night duty wasn’t all bad if you could be shoulder to shoulder with someone like Ranger Spicy.
It was definitely better than patrolling in all the mud with all the insects and snakes in the grass.
Although, he could do with topping up his supply of shrunken heads.
“Say, Spicy, what’re you doing after we get off shift?”
“Going to sleep.”
“What about after? We’ve got the day off.”
Another advantage of the overnight shift.
“Gonna check out the movie room. It’s just a room with an old TV and a DVD player, but I heard one of the techs got it working.”
“Great, I can—”
“By myself.”
“Got it,” Ambrose sighed.
He let silence descend. Not that he had a choice since Spicy apparently wasn’t interested in talking to relieve they’re boredom. So, all he heard was the sound of the wind rustling the grass, branches and leaves mingling in with random insects and random animals and maybe monsters out in the distance.
“Shit! Got a hit on my danger sense, but it’s gone,” Spicy whispered. “Use those super senses of yours.”
Night vision taken from the shrunken head of an owl pierced the darkness.
Hearing from the shrunken head of a bat picked up the minutes vibrations of sound in the air.
Smell from—
Ambrose gagged.
“What is it?” Spicy said.
“You don’t smell that?”
“No…”
“Jesusmaryosep… I can taste it. Came out of nowhere. Like a skunk that died in a bag full of skunks that also died in a bag full of skunks. You can’t see it, but there are tears in my eyes… where the fuck did this come from? And what the hell could be making this smell.”
“Where’s it coming from?”
“We’re downwind so,” he waved a hand vaguely toward the dark wilderness in front of them, “out there somewhere.”
“Estimated distance?”
“I don’t know. I need to turn this off,” he shut down his enhanced sense of smell, “much better,” he sighed.
“I’m sending this back.” Spicy took out her powerful flashlight and making sure to hide the beam with the tree trunk and her body sent back the message through good old Morse code. She repeated it two more times before stowing her light and putting her night vision optics on as she scanned the distance with her assault rifle.
“Don’t bother. You’ll just drain your batteries. I’ll let you know if you need it.”
“Not taking that chance,” Spicy slowly swept her weapon back and forth. “Say, Creepy Chipmunk, how’d you get that name anyways?”
Ambrose sighed. “It was 13th squad, well, the old 13th squad. Sergeants Mouthy, Hardhat and Aims couldn’t decide between Creeper and Chipmunk, so as a compromise…”
“Well, shit. Those heads in those pouches on your belt. You were that Filipino headhunter that was with them during the Fog Quest? They taught that in ranger academy.”
“I heard,” Ambrose said flatly.
“You sound salty.”
“They could’ve mentioned me by name. I did help out a lot.”
“Old 13th Squad is legendary. That’s why I volunteered for this Quest. All of them did and it was a chance to get to work under Captain Butcher for the first time.”
“That was the last Quest for them, you know? I mean, as a team. Lost Chains and Catscratch to the aswangs and then Smores and Two-toes to the fog later on.”
“Why’d you join up? Moving all the way from there to here?”
“I didn’t have much there. All my family and friends were dead. Just me and Rai were left, er… that’s Spiritwalker. I thought it’d be a good chance to start over somewhere new without those memories, which was naive of my younger self. Turned out I still have sad memories. Plus, 13th Squad died to help out my people, so, I figure part of it is trying to pay that back.”
“Yeah, I get that. I can only hope that when it’s my time to go out I do it like them, like real rangers,” Spicy said.
“How about not going out at all? Make the other guy go out and live to tell stories to your grand kids or something like that. If you wanted kids, I mean, that’s cool if you don’t.”
“Nah. No kids for me. I’m going to die like I’ve lived. With a weapon in my hand and an enemy at my feet.”
“Um… cool…”
The rest of the night shift passed without incident.
Ambrose occasionally enhanced his sense of smell only to find that the foul odor had vanished and never returned.
It wouldn’t be until about two weeks later at the same time that the Freedom Championships began that he’d find out what had made the smell.
As it turned out, the rangers had a bit of a heads up courtesy of ranger Four-toes, a young man with a passing fascination with the fringe pseudoscience of cryptozoology.
“I got into some crypto once. Had a couple of bitcoin, got in when it was, like, 10K, was about to sell when the spires showed up,” Sgt. Brighteyes said.
“Always knew you were a privileged son of a bitch,” Lt. Muttley said.
“Literally, my mom’s family basically owned the town,” Sgt. Brighteyes shrugged. “All that money didn’t save them from the monsters.”
“My bad.”
“Don’t worry about it L.T., we’re all survivors here.”
“Okay, enough of that,” Captain Butcher said flatly. “Four-toes, you were saying?”
“Yes, Sir. It’s sort of a hobby I had from when I was kid. You know, all those weird creatures, like bigfoot, mothman and dogmen.
“Those are real. They’ve got a couple of them up north. Pretty sure they’re in the city for the championship bullshit,” Sgt. Brighteyes said.
“Shrewed tells a story about a giant bigfoot out in the desert fighting a T-Rex,” Lt. Muttley shrugged.
“Damn shame we are going to miss out on him kicking slaver ass in the arena,” Sgt. Brighteyes said. “Hell, I was gonna get in on that but I lost the trials,” he shook his head.
“Yeah, it’s just like that. What’s the point of reading about all that stuff when they’re actually real now,” Four-toes sighed. “So, I pretty much gave it up. But, well, I got injured really bad in San Diego and so I had a lot of downtime, so I kinda got back into it. Looked through all my old books, notes and shit, er, stuff.”
“And?” Captain Butcher said.
The young man lacked his late older sister’s succinctness.
They did have the same eyes and nose.
She could see echoes of Two-toes nervously standing in front of her.
“Well, Sir, this area, the swamps, I mean, they were known for something called a skunk ape. It was kinda like a bigfoot or an ape, but all the stories agreed that it smelled terrible,” Four-toes said.
“Like a skunks in a bag, that’s in a bag of other skunks,” Sgt. Brighteyes said. “That’s what rangers Spicy and Creepy Chipmunk said about the first night they caught the scent.”
“Just Creepy Chipmunk,” Lt. Muttley corrected. “Spicy said she didn’t smell anything.”
“Could Creepy Chipmunk be wrong?” Sgt. Brighteyes said.
“That man doesn’t make mistakes when it comes to his class,” Lt. Muttley said. “And now other people are catching the scents. Sir,” he turned to Captain Butcher, “I think we have to assume we’re dealing with skunk apes or something close. It feels like they’ve been probing our perimeter the last couple of weeks.”
“Scouts haven’t detected anything,” Captain Butcher said.
“These skunk apes have magical powers in your stories?” Sgt. Brighteyes said.
“Not that I remember,” Four-toes said.
“These ones might,” Sgt. Brighteyes nodded.
“I guess,” Four-toes shrugged.
“Let’s up the alert level,” Captain Butcher said. “Pull in the scouts, I don’t want anyone isolated out there and get a rotation going with the air corps. I want eyes up there at all times.”
“Sir, we risk them getting spotted by the slavers,” Lt. Muttley said.
“Damn shame the same magic that’s hiding us from their scrying is preventing us from scrying for these smelly apes,” Sgt. Brighteyes said.
“We still prioritizing quiet, Sir?” Lt. Muttley said.
“Just so,” Captain Butcher said. “Dismissed.”
The timing was unfortunate.
She had received an unwelcome messenger in her quarters the previous night.
A message from Cal.
There was an incoming slaver kingdom convoy coming from the north scheduled to cross the old state boundary in roughly two weeks time.
He had strongly suggested the rangers make sure that convoy never made it to Miami.
These damned, stinky apes could throw a kink into their plans.