Fireteam Delta J. Halpin (top 10 books of all time TXT) 📖

meet was worrying her. Servants had told her, briefly, about the many-faced horror she’d seen coming in. They’d spoken of the same feeling of absolute terror she’d experienced seeing it for the first time. And they’d told her to avoid it, at any cost.

Rhodes had called her to that same courtyard.

She didn’t waste time wringing her hands over the inevitable. Instead, she moved quickly. She’d promised the others she’d be safe, and she doubted she’d be able to do that if she angered Rhodes.

As she arrived, she found Rhodes screaming at an elf who was kneeling down, gun in his hand.

“About fucking time.” Rhodes shot a look in Asle’s direction. “You tell this son of a bitch he shoots, or I take his hand off.”

Asle hesitated, surprised more than anything. The man in front of her had his gun aimed forward. There was nothing that could serve as a target nearby, just the hulking monstrosity itself.

She paused, following the barrel of the gun up to the base of the tar-black creature in front of her.

She didn’t dare look at it directly.

The man must have felt exactly what she had, because he couldn’t do much more than stare at the gun in his hands. She told him to shoot, but after a long moment, he stayed frozen in place.

Rhodes just watched the man with a look of open disgust.

“What did you tell him?” Rhodes asked.

“To shoot.”

“No . . . tell him exactly as I told you. He shoots, or I will remove his hand,” Rhodes explained, slowly.

Alse did as she was told. The man tensed, but after another brief pause, he got up the courage to look at the creature in front of them.

Bang!

Asle saw black blood run into the dirt of the courtyard.

“About fucking time.” Rhodes studied the elf at his side. His eyes had returned to the ground. “Tell him he can go.”

As she spoke, the man took no time before he bowed to Rhodes and left.

“Christ’s sake.” Rhodes just watched the man leave.

Asle kept her eyes on the shadow of the creature, expecting it to move at any moment.

“It’s dead,” Rhodes explained. “It’s not going anywhere.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I killed it.” Rhodes looked up at the creature.

Asle realized he was looking directly at it, and it didn’t seem to bother him at all.

“I swear, I’m doing you people a favor.” Rhodes turned to look at Asle. He must have seen something on her face, because he continued. “You think I like torturing these bastards? You know how many men I’ve lost because they didn’t have the balls to pull the trigger when they needed to?”

Rhodes began walking to the exit. “I’m getting them ready for the real enemy. Our one, true adversary.” Rhodes smiled. “But don’t you worry your pretty little head over that. We got business elsewhere.”

“Where?”

Rhodes smiled. “We’re going to do your friend Summers a favor.”

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Bang!

Summers watched as the shot slammed into a stone wall, nearly three feet from the target his recruit was aiming at. The man, whose name had been something so long and incomprehensible to Summers he’d subsequently been nicknamed “Pat,” held the rifle as if it could jump free of his grip and kill him at any moment.

The fact it could didn’t help Summers in breaking the bad habit.

Thankfully, translating wasn’t as much of a problem as he thought it was going to be. Nowak and Cortez had been paired with soldiers who had at least some understanding of English through their exposure to Rhodes; between that, and what they’d gleaned from the books they’d gotten on the road, he was confident they’d manage. Summers, though, had been given the bare recruits that Rhodes either found in the refugees or in the city itself.

And what they had in absolute, unfiltered enthusiasm, they made up for with an equal amount of cluelessness. Summers had spent most of the day ensuring nobody killed themselves.

He pulled Pat’s elbow in. Apparently, he was connected politically in a way that Summers couldn’t understand, so he was trying to be nice.

“Again, don’t flinch.”

“Sorry, sir. Thank you, sir.” Pat spoke quickly, but Summers had heard him repeat the phrase so often that at this point, it wasn’t hard to translate.

Seeing the absolute panic in the kid’s eyes, Summers thought for a moment. “The gun”—he indicated the M4 in the kid’s hands—“can sense weakness. Show it you’re strong.”

The boy inclined his head to Summers.

He’d found that treating the weapons in the most mystical fashion he could yielded the best results.

Most of the other recruits watched intently as the boy fired again, this time at least grazing the target. Summers then corrected the position of Pat’s finger. The recruits each looked as though he was speaking some kind of gospel.

Through all of this, Summers had begun to see Rhodes’s angle in recruiting refugees rather than actual, trained soldiers for these “squads.” Guards would have a place in the city, families, and connections with the higher-ups. The refugees, however, would answer and have loyalty only to the man who got them and their families to safety. That is to say, to Rhodes. He’d have a loyal army, outfitted with superior weapons and, if Summers and his friends were successful, superior training.

The report of another shot caught Summers’ attention, and he saw the most promising of his recruits taking aim.

His name was Orvar, one of the many recruits from nearby towns. The target he’d sighted rustled slightly at the impact of the shot. It wasn’t a bull’s-eye, but the fact the kid could hit something in the same zip code as it put him at the head of the entire class.

“Good work.” Summers patted Orvar on the shoulder. He bowed deeply in response.

At least there was