Department of Otherworld Rescue (DOR) - Chpt 1-3

Hey, everyone! This is maybe a bit premature as polishing the early chapters is still a work in progress, but I just couldn't wait to start sharing it with you all. Over the next few weeks, I'll be uploading advance chapters of Department of Otherworld Rescue ahead of its official launch on Royal Road. This is a modern-set LitRPG about a clandestine government agency tasked with traveling to other worlds to retrieve victims of isekai events by any means necessary. While in other worlds, these teams gain access to the local systems and are able to use them to gain levels and classes in order to stand a chance against the monsters, super-human warriors, and powerful spell casters that inhabit such worlds. Anyone who has read my military sci-fi series War Horses, or further back with Vick's Vultures knows that I love writing close-knit teams of soldiers in asymmetrical conflicts, and I wanted to bring that to the LitRPG genre in a fresh twist.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Secret military organization? Teams traveling to other worlds through a portal? It sure sounds a lot like that old TV show. We all know the one. Well, to address the elephant in the room, any similarities between Department of Otherworld Rescue and the much beloved sci-fi series, Wormhole X-treme, are completely coincidental.

Please enjoy!

Chapter 1 - Don’t Think We’re In Kansas Anymore, Sarge

In Basic the drills told Cole that he wouldn’t be fighting for his country, or his family. He’d be fighting for the man next to him. Currently the man next to him was having his chest cavity hollowed out by an albino, four-armed creature with teeth like jagged glass. Cole figured it was time to stop fighting for him and get the fuck out.

It wasn’t so much the vicious mauling, or even the blood of the rebel fighter staining the thing’s alabaster skin. Cole had seen men killed all over Syria since President Willshire name the Wagner Group a foreign terror organization and declared open season. No, it was the thirty smoking holes in the side of the creature, plus the empty M4 carbine in his hands that he’d just used to put them there. None of which had interrupted its feasting.

Cole slowly backed away, pulling another magazine from his belly pouch and swapping it for the empty as quietly as he could, as if the full mag of 5.56 hadn’t already given him away. The thing’s single-minded intent on its meal was the only reason he was still alive. His hands trembled trying to seat the new magazine. Hell, they hadn’t done that since his first firefight almost three years ago.

I guess I haven’t felt like anything was that close to killing me since then.

He got the mag seated, thumbing the bolt release and keeping his sights on the constellation of dark bullet wounds already marking the ribs and torso. The creature had most of its head thrust underneath the rebel’s ribcage, slurping at soft organs. It jerked its head out, a red mass clenched between its teeth that it started swallowing like some dog snapping at scraps. Cole bumped into an overturned table and skirted around it. Almost to the door. If he could just…

The door slammed open behind him. “Sergeant Colton, I heard gunfi—wwwhat the hell is that!?”

At the shout, the white humanoid thing twisted toward them, hissing through red-stained teeth as it lowered itself for a pounce.

“Out, Gillis! Out!”

Cole shoved his soldier back through the open door, yanking it shut behind them just as the creature leapt at them. Cole fell on the landing, but Gillis tumbled down the three steps to the dust, shouting. Cole groaned and looked straight up. Why is the sky red? It was a problem for later, when mutant cannibals or whatever was inside the apartment wasn’t trying to make him its second course. Inside the building, something heavy slammed against the door. The impact cracked the frame and started to bow the cheap aluminum outward.

Cole pushed his feet up against the base of the door, for once happy about the extra fifty pounds of gear he had to haul around the Syrian desert. “Gillis, get Brennan and the Oshkosh! Get on the 240!”

Slam.

“Brennan! Brennan! Colton found one of Saddam’s bio-weapon experiments! Get the M-ATV over here!”

The force of the impact slid Cole back several inches, and his legs were almost locked trying to reach the door. A huge chunk of the frame splintered out, bouncing off his plate carrier. Through the hole, he could hear the snuffling and scraping as the creature tried to get out. Long, clawed fingers reached through the hole, scratching at the door. On the next street over, the sound of the Oshkosh engine roared to life. Cole aimed his rifle at where he hoped the thing’s head was and fired through the door until his magazine was empty again.

The creature at least reacted, this time, shrieking in, well, probably frustration more than pain. But at least it wasn’t ignoring him.

Kinda wish it still was, thought Cole as the creature slammed the door again. The impact caused him to fumble his new magazine, which slipped out of his fingers and bounced down the steps behind him.

“Christ!” he swore. He craned his neck. The Oshkosh was sliding around the corner, with Gillis in the process of climbing up into the turret.

“Sarge!” shouted Gillis. “Cole, get clear!”

Cole rolled himself over and pushed upright, fueled by pure adrenaline. He made it to the bottom of the steps before the door frame shattered completely behind him. Carbine clenched in a white-knuckled grip, he sprinted away from the howling horror, toward the looming M-ATV where Gillis was swinging the barrel of the M240 down.

Even with ear-pro, the thunder on the business end of the machine gun was painfully loud, like getting punched right in the ear drums. He dared not look behind him. He knew the thing was still following because Gillis was angling the gun further and further down as Cole got closer. No way he was getting that door open or getting inside before the creature was on him. Instead, Cole threw himself to the ground, rolling under the heavy vehicle that offered barely enough clearance beneath the V-hull.

Thankful that he'd been issued the newer, slimmer MSV plate carrier instead an older bulky outer tactical vest, he slid across the loose dust, kicking up a choking cloud as he scrabbled as far from the creature chasing him as possible. The pale, 4-armed monster was larger than he was. It struggled to reach him beneath the V-hull, thrusting long arms underneath and digging deep furrows in the dust with jagged claws. The M240 turret had done a number to it. Huge, bloody chunks were missing, and one of the creature’s eyes had been completely torn out. But that just seemed to have made it angrier.

What the hell shrugs off that kind of punishment? Cole thought to himself. He managed to fish out another magazine and seat it. Laying on his side, with barely enough clearance to get his carbine against his shoulder, he put the muzzle nearly within the creature’s reach and squeezed the trigger. In the strobing orange light of the full auto fire, the point-blank 5.56 rounds took out the creature’s other eye, along with nearly severing one of its four arms at the shoulder. Its black blood squirted from the stump, but even blind and dismembered, the thing kept trying to push through with single minded fury. Claws snatched at him, and blood-stained teeth gnashed.

Cole rolled the rest of the way out from under the M-ATV and jumped up on the running board, pounding his fist on the window. Private Brennan nearly jumped out of his skin at Cole’s appearance. He jerked his thumb to the rear of the vehicle.

“Back up! Right now!” shouted Cole.

Brennan threw the vehicle into reverse and hit the gas. The diesel engine roared and the vehicle lurched back, then tilted slightly. The hissing and snarling choked off into a wet gurgle. Cole hopped back down, carefully peering under the vehicle to see the creature pinned beneath the massive wheel, chest and ribs crushed by the weight. and somehow still trying to ruin the rest of Cole’s day. He circled around to the other side for a better angle and then put his muzzle against the base of the thing’s skull and pulled the trigger.

Finally, the creature went still. Dark blood pulsed from the wound, and before his eyes, the creature started to melt into the sand. A cold rush passed over Cole, like he’d stepped inside a freezer for a moment. The sheer shock of it dropped him to one knee—then it was gone, replaced once again by the stiflingly hot Syrian night and the crisp rumble of the Oshkosh engine. Only… he looked up at the sky, a deep red-wine sea of twinkling stars that felt even brighter than it had a minute ago. Were they even in Syria, still?

The doors on the M-ATV opened, and the boots of his squad hit the dust, Gillis and Brennan coming around with rifles ready.

“Damn, Sarge. That thing’s almost as pale as Lt. Hosco,” said Gillis, which was rich coming from the ginger soldier with a perpetual peeling sunburn.

“Almost as ugly, too,” said Brennan.

“Speaking of the Lieutenant,” said Cole, “Where is he? Where’s everyone?” he looked around. That amount of gunfire should have drawn the rest of the squad like the fist of an angry god. But the streets of the oil reffinery village where they were meeting their Syrian counterparts were quiet. Even the wild dogs, nighttime nuisances that they were, had gone silent. Maybe they could smell whatever the thing melting under their tire was. Dogs were smart enough to avoid a bigger predator, after all.

“No idea, Sergeant Colton,” said Brennan. “Radio is nothing but static—thought I heard some cross-chatter before the sky went weird, someone calling for Lewis Fields or something.”

Cole shook his head. “Not anyone in our brigade.”

“Hey Cole, check that out,” said Gillis, nudging the corpse with his boot. The pelvis of the mutant had dissolved enough that a boxy protrusion was sticking out of the sand by the tire. The trio leaned closer. “You lose one of your mags?”

“Yeah, but that ain’t it,” said Cole. He reached down and plucked what looked like a full magazine of .556 ammo that had been inside the creature. Only, standard AR mags didn’t typically glow in the dark and have rounds tipped in sizzling blue.”

“Eww, don’t pick it up! Look at that thing!” said Brennan. “It’s glowing!”

“I’m telling you, it escaped from Saddam’s secret nuclear weapons lab,” said Gillis. “You’re gonna give us all cancer, Cole.”

Cole thought for a minute, then tapped the back of the magazine against his leg. What the hell. It couldn’t be any less useful than his green tip rounds had been. He swapped the magazine for the one in his carbine and cycled the bolt, putting the half-spent mag back into his rig. The entire carbine began to glow a soft blue, just like the tips of the ammo.

“I’m down almost ninety rounds,” said Cole. He kicked the leg of the creature “And I’m not willing to bet that this bastard was a one-off. Radiation poisoning moves a lot slower than these things. Mount up. Let’s link up with the rest of the rest of the squad. Then I’m going to get us the hell out of here, hoah?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Gillis, climbing back in to take the turret. Brennan circled back around to the driver’s seat.

Cole looked up at the vermillion sky again. But where the fuck is ‘here’?

Chapter 2 - Lewis Fields

After taking a minute to recover the magazine he’d fumbled, Cole swung up into right side seat of the M-ATV and pulled the door shut. He pulled over the radio handset while Gillis wriggled back up into the turret.

“This is Papa Four calling Papa One, engaged by hostile… wildlife. Partner force has confirmed KIA. Withdrawing to ECP.”

He let go of the transmitter, listening to the static on the receiver for a minute. Beside him, Brennan dropped his NODS in place and put the M-ATV in gear. If there were more hostiles—be they loyalists, Wagner, or Gulf-War science experiments—no sense advertising their position. Cole looked out the window and frowned. It didn’t even seem dark enough to need the night vision. The sky might have been red, sure, but it was alive with a sea of bright stars. Cole’s breath caught. The stars were wrong, too. No big dipper, no Orion, no Cassiopeia that he could see. He looked back at the others. If either of them knew any astronomy, they hadn’t spoken up.

“Back to the entry control point,” said Cole. The SDF base wasn’t very big—though the old bombed out oil town was still bigger than the two dozen Kurdish fighters really needed. Still, there should have been some activity. He hit the radio again. “Papa Four, radio check,” he called. No response. Maybe once they got clear of the structures they’d have better line of sight. But they’d come with three other vics in the convoy for Lieutenant Hosco to meet their SDF contact, and none of them were reporting in.

Cole cycled through the backup, and then the emergency channels, each with no response.

Gillis ducked his head down into the cabin. “What’s the 11-line for a wendigo attack, anyway?” he asked. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, Cole could hear the nervous edge to his voice.

“Get back up there, Gillis,” said Cole. “I want your head on a swivel.” he shook his head. “Wendigos. I thought it was Saddam’s secret bio-weapon?”

“It can’t be happening,” said Brennan beside him. “I mean, it disappeared, right? Maybe it was never real to begin with.”

Cole glanced at his private’s white knuckles on the steering wheel. He reached over and put a hand on his arm. “Brennan. I don’t know what it was. But this, us out of contact less than 50 miles from a Wagner stronghold and maybe cut off from the rest of the 82nd? That’s happening. And I need you with us if we’re going to survive, yeah?”

Brennan took a deep breath, and his hands eased on the wheel. “Yeah, Sarge.”

“Good,” said Cole. “And Gillis?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut the fuck up about wendigos and Saddam Hussein. This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

Cole shifted in his seat, looking out at the wrong-colored sky again. “It’s clearly Cthulhu.”

Brennan snorted in the drivers seat, and Cole smiled in spite of himself. He glanced at, for all he knew, the last two surviving members of the 82nd Airborne detachment. Keep them focused. Keep them present. Keep them alive. All three of them. The softly glowing carbine on his sling reminded him that there were worse things out here than Syrian loyalists and Russians.

Brennan turned the corner and the ECP came into view, where one of the other M-ATVs was pushed against a concrete barrier, driver side doors hanging open.

“Stop the vehicle,” said Cole. “Gillis, watch our six. See anything, don’t keep quiet about it.”

Cole pushed open the door and checked under his feet before dropping to the sand. He shouldered his rifle and padded toward the other vehicle, ears straining for any movement. Behind him, he could see the glow of Gillis’ NODS up on the turret as he swung the M240 to cover the town they’d come from.

Pushing up further, Cole stopped when he caught sight of a dark splotch on one of the windows, and several deep gouges in the side of the door that looked like… claw marks. Wendigos. God damn it, Gillis.

“Lieutenant Hosco,” whispered Cole, edging closer. He reached out with his non-firing hand and swung the M-ATV door open, looking inside, and then immediately looking away.

If it was his lieutenant in the front seat, there wasn’t enough left of him to identify—and Cole wasn’t about to go digging in what was left to see if he could find dog tags. He took back what he’d believed about having seen worse. And the back seat wasn’t any better. Whatever had gotten to this vehicle had gotten to them fast. There was a faint smell of sulphur and carbon over the copper tang. Cole spotted a sidearm on the deck. So, at least one of them had gotten a few rounds off in the cramped cabin. A few spots of dark blood on the inside of the door showed where they’d hit their assailant, but Cole knew first hand how little a handful of small arms rounds did to… whatever these things were.

He backed up from the cabin. There was nothing he or anyone could do for these soldiers.

“Sergeant!” called Gillis. “Brennan got someone on the radio!”

“Thank Christ,” said Cole. “Who?”

“I think it’s that Lewis Fields guy. He’s saying that—”

A blood-stained white giant dropped from the overhang, landing heavy in the dust between Cole and the M-ATV. It was bigger than the one they’d already killed. Broader, too. Its chest was the size of an oven, and its jaws swung open sideways like an insect’s mandibles as it howled.

“Shit!” shouted Gillis, swinging the 240 down. But Cole was faster, bringing his carbine up and firing as the creature started to charge. Blinding, blue bolts erupted from the muzzle of his M4, streaking toward the new monster and striking it in the chest. Arcs of electricity crawled up and down its body, and it locked up and toppled over. Cole jumped out of the way as its momentum carried it right past him. The M-ATV’s engine revved and his soldiers brought the vehicle up. Cole wasted no time scrambling back into the side seat.

The strange rounds he’d pulled out of the first monster’s corpse had not only worked, but somehow stunned the creature, or tazed it or something. But tazed wasn’t dead, and the little voice in the back of Cole’s mind didn’t think it was permanent, either. He turned to his driver. “Brennan, fuck ‘im up.”

Brennan glanced over and then gunned the engine. Cole braced an arm against the inside frame as his the kid swerved to the side just enough to run the heavy tires over the tango before angling around the other vehicle. Brennan grinned beneath his NODS as he sped out of the ECP.

“Got him, Sergeant Colton.”

Cole pictured the looming hellish creature, all thick corded muscle where the other had been spindly. “I think this one is going to need a bit more,” he admitted. He was proven right a few moments later when Gillis opened up with the turret gun.

“Holy shit, look,” said Brennan. Cole craned his neck and gawked at the edge of the oil village, where it looked like some sci-fi orbital laser had neatly chopped the outermost row of structures right in half, exposing their interiors.

Well I guess that explains how that thing got inside the kitchen.

The radio crackled, and Cole grabbed the handset. “Break, break, this is Papa 4 east ECP, returning to base, hostiles in pursuit.”

“Papa 4… hold on… Sergeant Colton? Please verify,” said an unfamiliar voice.

Cole hesitated, finger just off the transmitter. Broadcasting names over the radio was…

As if the other voice had read his mind, “Son, there’s no one else listening in. No BDOC, no loyalists, no rebels, just us hens clucking. Who have you got with you?”

The M-ATV jerked, and the road got rough. No, scratch that, the road ended. Brennan fought beside him to keep the vehicle under control through the high speed transition. They’d driven in on an old highway. It couldn’t just disappear. After a brief pause in fire, the M240 continued to rattle off short bursts.

To hell with radio procedures. Cole needed answers. “This is Sergeant Colton 82nd Airborne, I have with me Private Brennan and Specialist Gillis, and there’s a fucking wendigo on our ass! Now who the hell are you? Are you this Lewis Fields guy?”

Above, the fire cut off.

“Reloading!” shouted Gillis.

“No, listen. You’re caught in a Lewis Field crossover event. You’re not in Syria anymore. You look at the sky?”

“Yeah, it’s all wrong.”

“You’re driving east, yeah? See three bright stars, near the horizon?”

Cole leaned forward in his seat, peering through the dust bombarding the windshield. Off to the right a bit, there was a trio of stars, the brightest in that area by far. “Yeah, I see ‘em.”

“Drive toward ‘em. We see your muzzle flashes. Tell your gunner to watch his four o’clock high.”

Cole pointed out the stars on the right to Brennan.

“I got it, Sarge,” he said, angling the vehicle. The ground under them had transitioned to rough stone and scrub brush—terrain that hadn’t been within a dozen miles of the oil village. Not in Syria anymore…

Cole leaned back. “Gillis, four o’clock high!” he shouted up.

“High? What am I looking for—oh hell!”

the turret swung around and started thundering. Off to the vehicle’s rear right quarter, winged forms started to fall to the ground, thrashing where their bat-like wings were shredded by the heavy rounds. Cole leaned over to the window. He could see more swarming creatures in the air, and more pale figures loping across the ground on two legs or bounding on four. Definitely not Syria. Syria has way fewer monsters.

“Sarge, dead ahead!” shouted Brennan. Cole’s attention snapped back to the front where another figure was up ahead, silhouetted by 3 glowing orbs and sprinting towards them like an Olympic marathon runner.

Chapter 3 - Nothing to Bragg About

“Keep going,” said Cole. At least this thing wasn’t monstrous, four-armed, and eating his allies. In fact, it seemed to be human—or at least the next best thing. It had a massive pack seated high on its back, with a metallic feed chute connected to what looked like an M60 right out of a Vietnam flick—somehow making it look as light as a .22 as he carried it in one hand, muzzle straight up. Cole had never seen anything like it, but it was better than the stuff sprinting at them from behind.

“You should be seeing my guy here any second,” said not Lewis Fields.

“Good copy, I think we’ve got him,” said Cole. He reached back and slapped Gillis on the leg. “Gillis, friendly incoming, twelve o’clock. Don’t frag ‘em.”

His gunner shifted as he glanced at the front of the vehicle. “What the hell, is that a Terminator?”

“I never seen Arnold move like that,” said Cole. As the figure drew closer, Cole worried they would plow right into him, but at the last second their new arrival jumped, putting a dent in the engine cowling with a massive steel boot, and then bounding across the roof, prompting a string of cusses from Gillis as the machine gun fire cut off. The guy landed behind the M-ATV, kicking up a cloud of dust from the impact.

“Brennan, stop this thing,” said Cole. “Let’s back him up.”

Before the vehicle had even ground to a halt, Cole was pushing the door open and jumping down. Behind the Oshkosh, the gunner had his M60 held at hip level with the three light orbs weaving behind his massive pack. Beyond him, at least a dozen of the white creatures that had killed the rest of the convoy. He set his steel-clad feet and began to fire.

Cole had expected the slow, cyclic chunk chunk chunk like an M240 like he’d fired from the side of a Blackhawk. He knew there were a few differences in the firing rate of the older M60, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to sound like a strafing run from an A-10 Warthog. A solid stream of tracers burst from the muzzle of the machine gun, which sprayed a fountain of brass and belt links out of the ejection port. Dust, blood, and alabaster body parts erupted from their pursuit as the M60 cut into them. Cole didn’t know if these rounds were special, or if it was sheer volume of fire that blasted the creatures apart. But he did spot a pair of them on their flank.

“Contact left!” he shouted, raising his M4. Gillis swung the M240 around and started hammering the horrors taking the scenic route. Cole squeezed off several shots of his own, striking the things with the blue bolts that seemed to lock up their muscles and cause them to tumble across the ground. Here, with some distance, he could breathe and place individual shots instead of spraying his entire magazine.

“Sarge, up high!” said Brennan, coming around the front. He lifted his own muzzle to shoot at a trio of the smaller, winged versions. Cole lifted his own gun to add his fire, knocking one out of the sky with a bright, blue blast of electricity. The creature thrashed in the dust, until one of the glowing orbs flitted over and blasted it with what sounded like a 12-gauge buckshot round before moving to the other paralyzed monsters.

Cole spotted another of the monsters flanking on the right side, seemingly unnoticed by the machine gunner still spraying down the main pack. He sprinted behind the M-ATV, tapping the new arrival on the shoulder.

“Crossing!” he shouted as he passed.

“Roger,” was the only response from inside the thick, full-face helmet. Clear of the gunner, Cole put more of his special monster bullets down range at the approaching horrors. Electricity arced all across the bodies of the ones he hit, slowing them down as their legs gave out and they began to drag themselves across the desert on their claws. The gunner turned and hosed each of them down, amped up M60 shredding them into black-blooded pulp before letting his gun go silent.

Cole panted, looking across the horizon back toward the oil village. The absence of the deafening whine of that gun now made the night feel almost unnaturally quiet. And he couldn’t see any more of the monsters coming. The machine gunner must have agreed, because he lowered his muzzle and turned to face Cole.

“Sergeant Colton, 82nd?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Cole gasped.

“Seen Lieutenant Hosco, Sergeant Evans, Redding, or Jefferson?”

Cole shook his head. “Confirmed KIA.”

The gunner lifted his face mask to spit on the ground, revealing a human underneath, after all—albeit one that was at least 6’3” and had a neck like a tree stump. The three floating lights winked out. “Damn. The rest of your convoy is accounted for. Let’s get the hell out of here.” He held out his hand. “First, let me see that magazine.”

Reluctantly, Cole dropped the magazine with the odd, glowing rounds. He placed it into the gunner’s waiting hand, who kept it extended, eyebrow raised. Sighing, Cole cycled his bolt and put the chambered round next to the magazine.

Satisfied, the gunner loaded the last round back in. But the round seemed to lose its luster in his grip. “Pulled this out of one of the demons, yeah?”

“Is that what they were?”

The gunner nodded, stowing the magazine in one of his own pouches. “Not like, Lucifer’s minions demons or—you know what? Not my job to explain it. But if you pulled loot, they’re going to want to interview to you back at the Department.”

He looked left and right, as if someone might be watching them, then reached into his rig and pulled out a ruggedized phone.

“Hold this for a second.”

Cole took the device, and it lit up as he touched a metal plate on its rear face. He managed to catch a few words

<LF Attunement Detected, analyzing

Level 1

No primary class detected

No secondary class detected

Enhancement metrics:>

And then a list of numbers before the gunner snatched it back and looked at it. “Heh. Thought so. They’ll definitely want to interview you.”

Cole noticed the gunner hadn’t asked for any of his other ammo, so he loaded a new magazine into his carbine while the gunner stowed his device and moved up to the M-ATV. He jumped up on the running board. No way would he have fit in the cabin.

“82nd is out of Bragg, right?” he asked.

“That’s right,” said Cole.

The gunner spit on the ground, again. “Fuck that place.”

“You know, another day I’d agree with you,” said Cole, pulling open his own door. He looked back out over the desert. “Presently, I feel there’s finally a worse place.”

The gunner tapped the pouch on his chest with the device and laughed. “Colton, give it a year and this won’t make your top ten.”

“Sure,” said Cole, not really understanding. “Didn’t catch your name.”

The gunner dropped his face mask again. “I don’t get chummy with the rescues. Come find me if they make you a Kicker.” He held out his hand, where one of the floating lights appeared and drifted out in front of the M-ATV. “Follow that light.”

Cole sighed, closing the door and relaying the instruction to his driver. He was just glad this nightmare seemed to be almost over, and somehow he’d gotten both his guys through. Back at the FOB, he had another soldier in his fireteam and the rest of his platoon. If the gunner had said the rest of the convoy was accounted for, he had to assume the rest of his squad and the everyone else was, too.

He settled back into the seat, listening to the engine and the sand grinding beneath the wheels. They continued driving for about an hour before they spotted the lights of a small makeshift FOB, so fresh it only had makeshift barriers instead of Hesco walls. Half a dozen armed soldiers—or at least armed personnel, since none of them wore uniforms or carried what could be considered approved kit—patrolled the barriers. Cole spotted one with a Carl Gustav over his shoulder, another with a drum-fed shotgun, and another that had a huge war hammer strapped to her back.

“Who the hell are these guys, Sarge?” asked Brennan.

“Search me. Mercs, maybe,” said Cole. They certainly weren’t any US Armed Forces, and none of the European Coalition troops were ‘officially’ in this particular corner of the country. Not to mention none of them wore any kind of unit patch, rank insignia, or name tapes. None of them had standard issue weapons or armor. And those floating lights the machine gunner had? Some sort of advanced drone, maybe? Skunkworks tech.

The standoffish gunner shouted something as they pulled up, and Gillis leaned down. “They’re saying keep driving forward, real slow. Don’t stop when we see the event.”

“What event?” asked Brennan. But no sooner had he spoke then a spark twenty feet in front of the hood started to bloom, expanding to reveal a wide, swirling disc of red… something. Energy, maybe. Cole leaned forward, squinting at it.

“That qualifies,” said Cole.

“What do you think is on the other side, Sarge?”

“Not here,” said Cole. The Oshkosh rocked as the gunner jumped off the side rail and jogged ahead of them, disappearing through the disc. “But hell, at this point, I’d even take Bragg.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”