Chapter Two
Lord’s Cradle, Arizona. Two weeks earlier.
It all started when Sam-2 didn’t show up to chow.
Templars of the Host were posted inside every feed hall in Lord’s Cradle, watching over the Nephilim rank and file from behind smooth white visors. The platoons of the Echo PatriotRanger Company were fed in blocks of two; eight squads of nineteen men passing in and out of chow within sixty minutes. The Sams kept their eyes averted and their voices soft on the way past their Knight-Captain, Templar Finley. You could talk before chow, but only if you kept it down, and even then: a quiet advance made it easier for Alpha to do the headcount and meant they got more time for food.
Sam-Alpha marked each soldier off as they entered: himself, then Bravo, then One thru Sixteen, with Mike following up the rear. Mike smiled and winked at him, but for once, Alpha didn’t smile back. Instead, he blew his whistle, and the Sams froze as he hustled back up the line, searching over them with a scowl on his face. His corona, a dull, brassy halo of compacted NCMs, spun and separated into a ring of swirling flat blades behind his head. He used the computer to assist as he marked them off a second time, two by two. When he was done, he looked to Mike and One-Six. “Mike, Sixie… you seen Twofer?”
Mike’s stomach dropped out. Twofer was their CTO, the squad tech. Mike racked his brains for the last time he’d seen him. When he couldn’t dredge any memory up from his meat, he queried his corona, but the Net had no data. “No, Sir.”
“No, Sir.” Sixie paused, speaking just out of turn with Mike, and grimaced. They glanced at each other before Sixie spoke again. “Not since Yard, Sir.”
The sun-lines beside Alpha’s eyes deepened. He rasped his hand over the short fuzz on the back of his neck, then turned without a word. Mike watched him march to the end of the mess hall and genuflect on one knee in front of the Knight Captain, whose inscrutable face had swiveled towards them during the line hold up.
“Did you hang with him in Yard? I don’t remember seeing him.” Mike leaned forwards by Sixie’s jaw so he didn’t have to raise his voice as they shuffled along. He didn’t take his eyes off Alpha’s broad back. “He was there for the exercise.”
“I know he was.” Sixie frowned. “I’ll pass it down to Sev. He’ll know where he went. Lord knows what dumbass stunt he’s pulling. They’ll probably find him locked in the bathroom trying to suck his own cock.”
Mike choked down a nervous laugh. He nearly missed his tray on the way up to the counter, reaching for it blindly and fumbling when it didn’t come up under his fingers. He could only pray that Alpha wouldn’t be punished. He was still talking to the Knight Captain, who stood at ease with his boots firmly planted on the podium that raised him above the heads of his soldiers, hands folded behind him. There was no way Mike could hear what was being said.
They were almost at the dispensers now, the machines shuffling out Nephilim-sized plates of food as fast as they could assemble them. ‘Chicken’ and pumpkin and peas, bread, protein shakes. Sixie elbowed him as they drew up to the counter. “Sev doesn’t even remember seeing him at yard. Alpha must be sweating bullets up there.”
