Chương 172: CDM 3, Chapter 48: Performance Review

Via Nathan, McDouglas let us know that we had to pile up the bugbear bodies and burn them before we left. Cleanup had never been our responsibility before, but it went quickly enough. At 7 ft tall and roped with muscle, they were a bit heavy to drag around. We managed, though. On our way back through the woods, we were all smiles.

"Well done, guys," Megan said, beaming.

"That was tense for a moment, but everyone did a good job of keeping their heads in it. Hornby, sorry about your leg." Megan had needed to add a bit of her own Healing magic to fully close the gaping wound that the arrow left behind, but Hornby was no worse for wear now. Sore, yes, but he'd be fine in the long run.

"Voidwood fucked them up," Giago mused.

"Splintering Arrow was pretty slick too."

"Thanks," I said. We came out of the woods like that only to be greeted by a stone-faced Enforcer McDouglas. Chapman stood behind him, and her usual Poker face had a hint of pity in it. Nathan and de Saint sat to the side, looking glum. McDouglas must have given them all a preview of what we were about to experience. Great.

"No need to run tape on this one," McDouglas said.

"That's a D grade, kids."

"What?" Megan replied reflexively.

"That was a shit performance," he continued.

"You've got a four-man attack squad, and you let one of them go down. Completely unacceptable." I felt Hornby and Giago deflate at the same time I did. So much for feeling good about our hunt.

"What should we have done differently?" Megan asked.

"Not charge into a bugbear ambush." Megan looked back at us, confused.

"If you have a good excuse to hunker down and gather information, take it. We had two drones on the plant. They would have all had to bolt at once for any of them to shake our drones. Instead, you gave their scouts a heads up and let them run the show from there."

"We're supposed to be 'Rapid Response,'" Megan countered.

"And you were. You got to the problem quickly. If this were a call about some kids getting snatched, by all means, put some hustle in your step, but something like this? Don't run straight into an obvious trap, please." Megan's head fell.

"Yes, sir."

"If they had two more with spears or one more with a bow and a different position, you'd be dead. This turned into a win by pure chance. If you don't use your heads, you'll lose them. Dismissed." McDouglas went back to his SUV, slamming his door after he got in.

"I'm glad you're safe," Chapman added.

"See you for your shifts tomorrow." Chapman got in the passenger seat, and McDouglas pulled away. We heard his foot heavy on the gas pedal for the next 5 minutes, echoing through the forest.

"Sorry for letting you guys down," Megan said.

"I made a bad call. That's on me." Giago shook his head.

"I know I was gunning for a fight. Stopping to wait them out never occurred to me."

"Me neither," Hornby added.

"I was really excited to kill some bugbears," I admitted. Nathan frowned.

"The last time he was around to watch us, his whole thing was 'move faster.'""Maybe he's messing with us?" Hornby asked.

"I don't think so," I said.

"That seemed genuinely pissed to me. Was he that angry when it was going down?"

"Yep," de Saint answered.

"He didn't look for a second like he would go help you either." Nodding, I replied, "That makes sense too. It's 'sink or swim' and not 'daddy comes to save you or swim.' Whether it's on purpose or not, I don't know, but he's showing us that we're on our own out here. We have to fight like there's no backup because that's what our lives will be like for real."

"I thought you did good, Osheski," Hornby said.

"The boss gets pissed sometimes. Not always something you could have done about it." Megan nodded sheepishly.

"Thanks, guys. Drinks on me tonight." Several hours later, when we were back in Pittsburgh and showered, we met at the High Bar Pub. Beth said that she and Kwame might stop by, but when she mentioned they were on a date, I knew we wouldn't see her. That wasn't because I thought my sister was a flake, but rather I knew that Beth's eyes had always been far bigger than her stomach. She genuinely wanted to make time with us part of her night. In reality, she could only do so much.

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"Would everyone hate me if I wanted to talk about the hunt today?" Megan asked, studying the faces around the table. When she saw no one was against it, she continued.

"I'd like to gameplan this out. Walk through how the hunt could have gone if we made different choices."

"I think bugbears are like the goblins we saw," de Saint said.

"They know to look for drones, and they know what it means when they see one." Hornby cocked his head.

"What makes you certain about that?"

"They went to one building and waited for us to show up. Then they went to the rest of the tribe. I mean, were they actually doing anything in there?" Giago shook his head.

"Didn't look like it."

"So they saw the drone, waited a bit to really sell it, and then led us to the plant," Hornby said.

"Am I understanding that right?" De Saint nodded.

"They drone-proofed the plant," Nathan added.

"They boarded over some windows and holes that took serious effort to reach. I've been trying to imagine another reason why they or any human squatters would be so thorough, but can't." Giago thought.

"I can buy them getting wise to a RAID drone. They're not the smallest machines in the sky, and maybe they observed us sending them to watch gates or something. Drone proofing a place, though? The simpler explanation is usually the best. They were probably protecting themselves from having objects thrown inside. Bugbears don't use grenades, but it doesn't take a genius to set shit on fire and toss it through a window."

"So, replaying the hunt, when the first two went into the yellow building, we should have stayed out of sight and watched. If they know that a drone means we're coming, we could have had Kimmy and Rainy pull back while we hung out in the woods for a bit. At that point, we have two potential outcomes. They could wait us out and not move, or they could eventually head to the plant, believing we left."

"The ideal situation would be them relaxing the ambush set up and doing something that revealed their numbers inside," Giago added.

"Then we could make a move based on that intel." Hornby waved at the bartender to request another round of beers.

"One of the things I don't get about McDouglas's complaining is that bugbears can see in the dark. We don't want to wait too long to act because then the sun starts going down. Woods are shadowy as shit long before night actually shows up. I wouldn't want to wait any later than 1800 hours." Giago nodded that he agreed.

"I never want to fight bugbears in the dark."

"You're awfully quiet over there, Uncle D," Nathan teased.

"I keep thinking about what we could have done differently if they had stayed in the plant. Like Hornby said, at some point, we would have to move in. When we did, we would find the same problem with the doors. Or am I missing something?"

"I should have asked you to cover the conveyor belt," Megan replied.

"If we had you on it from the start, they might not have gotten a good shot off on Hornby. We could have positioned our archers with that potential threat in mind as well. I need to pay more attention to potential lines of sight."

"That would have helped, but that breach would have sucked no matter what," Giago argued.

"We didn't do any Diva bullshit," I said.

"We came at it like any other attack squad." Megan gestured for me to continue.

"We knew going into this that running with four people was going to be hard. The EPA flat-out told us it was stupid to do that, so maybe we should think more about how to compensate for our lack of numbers. I can't blind fire into a building, but we could have found a gap for a smoke signal or figured out a way to bust a board loose so Kimmy could get inside. Of all the scrap wood they used, at least one piece had to be weak enough for Giago's Fire to take it out."

"If we're talking about Diva bullshit," Nathan began, "we can't forget that also includes beartraps, rolling in cow shit to hide your scent, tripwire alarms, poison, and flooding."

"Deploying a bear trap would take too much time," Giago said between sips of beer.

"Rollout spike strips or caltrops would be faster. Wouldn't be something we carry on us all the time, but if we have the time to stake them out, we have the time to adjust our loadouts." Megan nodded and pulled out her phone to take the ideas down as notes. De Saint raised her hand.

"If I could add to that, we've been talking about a second Kimmy, but we could think about a ground drone. There's a chance one of those could get inside when Kimmy can't."

"I like that," Nathan said. Megan nodded that she agreed. Hornby's attention shifted to the television over the bar. Giago saw Hornby watching but didn't turn around to look for himself.

"Anything good on?"

"Nah. Just news about bugbears. Looks like they're spreading down Appalachia. West Virginia is still getting its shit kicked too."

"Stage 2 is going to be good job security," Giago mused.

"Aw shit," Hornby said. That got all of us to look. Helicopter footage showed ogres marauding down the streets of an inner city neighborhood, smashing cars beneath their feet and kicking in doors. A Stage 2 gate surged in Los Angeles. The old detection method labeled it an E gate, but the first party wiped, and the second party that went in to check on them wiped as well.

"They're just fucking shit up," Nathan observed.

"They don't look like they have any real objective." The coverage cut to a different helicopter. Wolves the size of Clydesdale horses chased crowds of people weaving through cars in deadlock traffic. An afterimage followed the beasts, like they had a ghost that couldn't quite keep up but was still attached. The ethereal white of that ghost contrasted against the tar-black bodies of the massive wolves. Death hounds. They could consume a whole person without slowing their pursuit.

In one chop, a person was gone, with the occasional arm or leg going uneaten, left behind like the crumbs of a biscuit.

"Jesus," Megan muttered.

"It's a massacre." The lower thirds on the broadcast read, "The Governor of California asks all local crawlers to help."

"We knew this would happen eventually," de Saint said.

"Even though I expected this, it's even worse than I pictured."

"Ogres with death hound pets are a shit gate to have surge," Giago mumbled.

"No one has a shot of outrunning a death hound." De Saint shook her head at the violence playing out on screen.

"And they said leveling everyone was a waste. Level 1s are totally helpless. The only thing they can do is hope they get lucky and get away." The lower thirds updated, reporting that 22 ogres and 15 death hounds were on the loose. I knew that crawlers would contain the problem eventually, but the loss of life would be significant. If any of the monsters managed to get away and breed, this one dungeon surge could still be claiming lives years from now.

"We need to get better," Megan said, her eyes locked on the footage.

"We'll get called into something like that someday. Maybe soon."

"We'll fuck them up," Giago replied.