Freezing Shadows, Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Ready to Go

After talking things over with our hosts, Babydoll sent one of her blimp drones up. The one with the retrains unit and chameleon coating, not the one with the sniper rifle. We couldn’t bring all the drones out here on short notice, after all, so we picked the one that could help with surveillance, instead. Still had the two Steel Cougars and their heavy weapons, obviously.

This gave us something to do, since the Angels didn’t want to give too much away about their operations, for obvious reasons, and we weren’t keen to chat about our exploits, either. Made conversation a bit dull, once you moved past the small talk. Neither side trusted the other further than they could throw them. We had common goals for this op, but that didn’t mean we were suddenly drinking buddies.

Twilight kept an eye on Matrix security, but most of what she was doing was going through social media and missing persons reports. It was dull work, but it could give us a good read on just how many potential targets we’d be looking at when we hit the compound. Planning to take on a group of thirty went differently from planning to take on over a hundred, after all. And no one wanted to be on the shit end of that math.

Of course, the Angels weren’t sitting idle while Babydoll and Twilight did their thing. They rotated through, one of the group keeping an eye on us while the other two were out, doing their own bit of scouting. Once, when I peeked at the astral, I saw another mantis spirit flitting through, just long enough to say something to our watcher before darting off again. Didn’t look like they were starting any trouble, so I let it be, and didn’t say anything. No use rocking that boat just yet.

Looking at the drone footage, the buildings were arrayed just as we’d seen from the public data. Buildings in three groups. Two golf carts stationed at the guard post and the staff housing. Further motor pool of two cars and four passenger vans. No signs of active farming or whatever. A six-foot wall of earth and stone surrounded the compound, making a nice barrier to entry.

We did catch sight of some of the staff taking care of the grounds. Couldn’t see much of their features, because the staff all wore matching jumpsuits, with boots, gloves, and masks. They were completely anonymous. More importantly, it would be impossible to tell if any of them were no longer metahuman.

That is one thing we did catch on to during the day. DeeDee and Tiny both had signs that they were ‘other’ than metahuman. Tiny took off her jacket to do some calisthenics at one point, and I caught sight of chitin along her arms. Trolls might have thick hides, but green chitin like an exoskeleton definitely wasn’t how that typically looked. DeeDee, on the other hand, had similar patterns along her stomach and back when she walked out of the small bathroom after a shower with only a sports bra on above the waist. Didn’t see anything from Tricky, though.

Of course, they didn’t just show us that for no reason. It was a test. A subtle one, but a test all the same. It was easy to say you didn’t care about something, but being confronted with evidence could change your tune. They wanted to know if they could actually trust us, before the bullets started flying. Couldn’t blame them, honestly.

Night passed uneventfully, and the next morning Shadowgirl and I found a quiet corner so I could make sure her sex Geas was satisfied. Wanted everyone at full strength, after all. We were going to be hitting the compound that night.

Just before noon, the ‘cavalry’ arrived. Twenty more Devastation Angels, all of them bugs, from what I could see on the astral. And there were a few more of them floating around, not coming out into the material plane. More questions that I didn’t want answers to. At any rate, all of the women there in the meat were armed, and ready to rock. Which meant it was time to really start planning.

Twilight started the meeting by pulling up a live feed of the compound from Babydoll’s drone and putting it on a working tridscreen on the wall. Thing was probably the most modern device in the whole building. Go-gangs still had shows they wanted to watch, when they were bunked down for the night, after all.

“Right,” DeeDee said, “that’s the compound. At least, what’s above ground. The ants have been busy, after all. We sneaked in a couple ways, and discovered there are tunnels under the compound, connecting the buildings. You can get from any building in the compound to any other through the tunnels, but there’s bugs all in there. Problem is that there are too many exits for this hive. We need a way to try and contain them, and keep them from escaping.”

I took a breath, and said, “We have enough here for a multi-prong attack. Have some Angels take down the guard and staff buildings, and start going through the tunnels that way, while the rest of us, including my team, go straight up the road to the main area. We do it right, that’ll cause a big noise that will draw attention there, away from the tunnels. We just need to find our target, and get him out, or get proof of death, but that should also draw the attention of any bigwigs.”

“Like tossing a rock on an anthill,” one of the Angels I hadn’t been introduced to said, drawing chuckles from a few of the others.

I tried not to look too closely at her. She was more ‘obvious’ in her otherness, having mandibles on her face and bug eyes. Of course, if I didn’t know what I was looking at, I would have just thought she had gotten a particularly bad shake when hit with some wild magic surge, like one of my contacts, Foxy, had experienced. Just like how the stories of giant bugs in the area had been put down to paracritters. Like the old saying goes, if you hear hoofbeats, you start thinking horses, not zebras. When there were already rats the size of small dogs with disposition of a rabid chihuahua, one’s definition of what was or was not possible tended to be more… fluid.

“Do we have a count, yet?” One of the other Angels asked.

“Not a full count, no,” DeeDee shook her head. “However, we do have some rough ideas based on missing person reports and social media posts,” she nodded at Twilight. “Because of that, we’re looking at a probable total population of sixty to seventy people. Twenty to thirty of those are going to be normies, either getting prepped for inhabitation, or getting brainwashed to bring more vessels to the hive.

“That means forty to fifty spirits. Most of the hive is going to be workers, with a few caretakers. We have six hybrids as guards at the guard post, so they’ll be soldiers. Count on a few true form soldiers in the tunnels, too. Maybe true form workers. Then, there’s the shaman, Zaydon Olsen, and his three ‘wives’ who are almost certainly flesh forms.”

DeeDee looked over at us, and said, “For our ‘outside help’, taking a vessel as our new body can go one of three ways. True form is the ‘giant ants’ you heard stories of. Flesh form looks exactly the same as the person before. Hybrid is between the two.”

“So, you can’t tell the difference without looking on the astral. Got it,” I nodded, before bringing up a picture of Tyler with my holo gloves. “This is what our target looks like. Not going to tie anyone’s hands, but we’d appreciate it if he’s not changed that he be left alive. And if he is changed, that there’s enough recognizable that we can get the proof we need for the family.”

“But taking out the hive takes priority,” DeeDee stated.

“Naturally,” I nodded.

“Right,” she said, before looking at the group again. “There aren’t any wards that we found, but we weren’t able to scout the majority of the hive. There’s probably a warded ritual space underground.”

Another of the Angels chimed in, “How far along is the hive? Forty-plus spirits, they have to be thinking about bringing in a Queen.”

“We don’t know, which is why it is a good thing we have some extra firepower. Now, plan is to wait until after dark, so the normies in town are less likely to accidentally get curious about what is going on. There’s no connection between the compound and the outside world, so any response by the people in town is going to be very delayed. On the other hand, they’re going to see us coming, no two ways about that, so we need to be expecting a fight.”

She looked at one of the girls, a dwarf who looked more ‘normal’, like Tricky did, and said, “Rerun, have a chat with Twilight, our friendly hacker. We don’t know how extensive their internal network is, but anything helps. Also, we have an ID on the admin for their external network. Ork fleshy, formerly a shadowman out of Spokane. She went by Tizzy, before she started trying to break a scoop on the Brotherhood food kitchen there, after her brother disappeared. She’s the reason we picked up on this place. Unfortunately, the ant in her skin is going to have most of her skills, so you can expect some hostility from the moment you set off the first alarm.”

Rerun nodded, but Twilight looked my way, first. I nodded slightly, and she looked over to the dwarf nodded. “Sounds good to me. If they have this Tizzy playing guard dog in the Matrix, two on one is better odds.”

DeeDee relaxed slightly. I’d noticed that she tensed slightly when Twilight looked my way. Probably not used to having someone else run things. That was one of the difficulties in having multiple groups working together, hashing out who was in charge.

“Officially, Tizzy’s on record as the facility’s medical practitioner, but that’s probably mostly a lie. She’s definitely there mainly to provide cover in the matrix for the site, and to maintain their outward facing matrix presence. However, they might have her helping with drugging up anyone who needs to be sedated while they’re prepared as a vessel.”

She paused, and said, “Any questions?” No one spoke up, so she nodded. “Then let’s get to work, and prep what we can before we move out.”

So, that’s what we did. Went over our gear, and double-checked with the rest of our group. Two hours before nightfall, half the ‘newcomers’ left. They were the ones who were going to hit the Staff buildings, and then get into the tunnels that way. They needed to be in position so we could strike both places at once.

A half hour before nightfall, we piled into the vehicles. Berzerker would lead the way with her Beast of a vehicle. Babydoll would take control of the pop-up turret and the HMG installed in it. That would give the guards on duty something to think about, and be the signal for the attack to start.

It was a simple plan, that basically relied on shock and awe to kick things off. We all knew the plan was going to go out the window the moment the bugs started responding, but this was the best plan we had, at the moment. Sometimes, you just had to get stuck in and trust in speed and violence to overwhelm the opposition.

“We’re almost to the gate,” Berzerker called out on comms.

“Ready on the turret,” Babydoll answered through the commlink.

I took a breath to center myself, and gripped the wheel of my car a bit tighter. There was no turning back, now. “Hit it.”