"Full complement is around eight hundred, but about half that is almost always on patrol or doing escort duty. Arming the camp casuals would mean six hundred men available for the defense. Fort Rowling wasn't just some little hole in the wall either. It was our strongest Frontier post. Mortar pits, two howitzers, I don't know how many support weapons. There's even a rail line that goes out to within ten miles of the fort, a project that don't look like it's going to be completed now."

"Tell them about the dependents," one of the sergeant's men said.

"Mrs. Cortez doesn't want to hear that."

"No, go ahead-I need to know. Please, Sergeant," she implored.

The sergeant tossed away his butt. "I've seen plenty of death, but not like this. Heads stuck on the ends of sticks, babies flung against walls and left on the ground like some sparrow that hit a window, houses burned with the people handcuffed inside them . . . I'm gonna be thinking about what I saw there till the day I die now, and I thought I was a hardcase." He paused to take a gulp of air and to swallow. "Mrs. Cortez, I'm sure your husband died on the walls if he was in there-if he could have carried a gun, they would have armed him."

Mrs. Cortez let out a deep breath, blinking back tears. "Maybe he ran for Denver. Oh, I do hope so."

"We'll get you there and you can find out, ma'am," the sergeant said. Valentine met his eyes and gave the NCO a tiny bow of his head in gratitude.

"Don't make sense," Parkston said. "I mean, whenever the Reapers hit somewhere, they take prisoners. It's the whole point. If people go dying on them in the fight, they're no use for ... for food."

"I'll tell you what really doesn't make sense," the sergeant said, recovering from his memories somewhat. "The tracker's report. He said that his best guess was three two-and-a-half-ton trucks carrying about fifty men. Fifty men. Fifty Reapers couldn't have taken that fort, I don't think, not that I've ever heard of that many Reapers all together anywhere but a big city. What fifty men could wipe out six hundred in a defensive position?"

"I think you'd better take us to whoever is in command now at Fort Rowling," Duvalier said.

Valentine saw what was left of the fort up close. It had been in a good defensive location, with water for man and livestock and stands of timber nearby. The wooden parts of the walls were burned, the blockhouses and bunkers demolished. The first order of business of the troops on the scene had been to decently tend to the bodies; long rows of fresh graves stood a little distance from the fort, looking out over a gully through which a sluggish stream still flowed in this, the hottest month of the year.

After surveying the burnt ruin, Duvalier asked for a chance to speak privately with Colonel Wilson and his adjutant, Major Zwiecki, of the Denver Free Colorado Corps. They left Mrs. Cortez hunting through the personal effects of the dead, looking for evidence of her husband. The colonel obligingly gave them his time. He was as desperate for an answer as any of the Denver soldiers or what was left of the Fort Rowling garrison, now returning from the patrols and convoys that had preserved their lives.

Rather than reoccupying the fort, he had pitched his men's tents on some high ground a half-mile from the fort, so the men didn't have to spend the night among the bloodstains and burned timber. Night had fallen, and the tent was lit by electric light provided by a mobile generator.

"Gasoline we got," the major said when Valentine asked about the logistics that allowed mobile electricity. "There's a lot of shale oil in Colorado. We make it in blasting furnaces; you get the shale hot enough, and it bleeds oil. I've got a brother-in-law there. He says the refinery is really something. Up in the mountains. They call it Hell's Penthouse. The name comes from the huge slag heaps everywhere, and the furnaces that run over nine hundred degrees."

Duvalier cut in. "We're here to find out what happened-let's stick to the subject at hand."

"If you've got an answer, or even a good guess, I'd like to hear it," Colonel Wilson said as the major turned* to pour coffee.

"Colonel, have you ever heard of Reapers using guns?" Duvalier asked.

"No, but I'm ready to listen to anything. Because other than an attack by a few thousand flying Harpies who carried off their dead and never landed so's to make tracks, you have to get to really weird theories to explain this."

The major added, "The more I see of the Kurians, the more my definition of 'really weird' gets pushed further and further out."

"We work for Southern Command," Valentine broke in after a look and a nod between him and Duvalier. "We're looking into some new unit the Kurians have, a group called the Twisted Cross under somebody known as 'the General.'"

The major and the colonel exchanged looks. "That's sub-stanial," Wilson said, "and I'll tell you why. We've kept this from the troops, but there was one survivor of the Fort, a very old woman who lived there with her daughter and her daughter's family."

"Pretty tough old bird," the major added.

"She didn't see anything of the fight-they were in a basement. She heard a lot of gunfire. Some men busted into the basement, dressed in body armor with heavy black helmets. They dragged the others off, but they pulled her up into the compound and made her watch what was going on. She said when they were done, one of the men in body armor 'hissed' at her 'Tell them the General did this.' Also something about coming back. That's why we kept it from the troops."

"Hissed?" Valentine asked. "Those were her words?"

"Yes, 'hissed,' " the colonel said. "I've never been close enough to hear a Reaper, but I guess they have kind of a breathy voice."

"That big tongue doesn't leave much room for vocal cords," Valentine said. "They hiss, all right. I'd like to speak to her."

"Then you'll have to chase her to Denver," the colonel said. "She's been sent there for debriefing. I didn't want the men worried about what happens if this General comes back. I'm doing enough of that for the whole regiment.

"I don't know what could stop them. If they can do this to Fort Rowling, I don't know that any of our posts outside Denver could."

They said good-bye to Mrs. Cortez inside the Denver Corps camp. She had found a bloodstained hat belonging to her husband; a bullet had come in through the side of the wide-brimmed ranch fedora.

"At least I know it was quick," she said fatalistically.

Tags: E.E. Knight Vampire Earth Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net