I awoke, disoriented, with a screech echoing in my head. I remembered dinner, and then one of Issi’s nonsense games then… bed? It was foggy, and the ringing wasn’t helping.

  “Nyx, what the hell is that wailing!” I hissed, placing a hand on my head in a futile attempt to soothe my aching brain.

  It’s an emergency alert, triggered by your forces taking serious losses in a relatively short period.

  “I don’t remember setting something like that up,” I said, trying to shake off the exhaustion. “Define serious losses.”

  Ten percent, within a day.

  That woke me up. “What? How? Did I really lose that many bears to the assaults earlier?”

  I pulled up my augs and silenced the alarm and flicked through the command channels. Airdrie and Chestermere’s defensive lines were completely fine, the cleanup crew was slowly sweeping through the incursion zone, and Okotoks… I blinked and switched over to the command channel.

  [Bandit! What the fuck is happening in Okotoks? Bandit?] I asked, receiving nothing but static in response.

  [Deadbeat, what happened to Bandit? Deadbeat, please respond!] I broadcast frantically through the connection as I rolled out of bed. I practically sprinted towards the bathroom as I awaited a response, the silence ringing in my ears.

  [Bob…]

  [Yeah, boss?] came the immediate response.

  [What the fuck is happening out there?] I screeched. [What happened to Bandit and Deadbeat?]

  [The connection to the troops in Okotoks got a little spotty around an hour ago, so they went to check. I haven’t heard from them since.] Bob explained. [Why?]

  [Because, I’m getting an alert that we’re taking massive losses right now! Didn’t you notice?] I growled.

  Bob was quiet for a moment before replying [Nope!] far too cheerily.

  [Only you can ignore a massive ringing in your head,] I muttered. [Gather Dusty, Heavy, and whatever bears we have in reserve. We need to investigate. Now.]

  [Okie dokie]

  Rolling my eyes at the bear’s casualness, I cut the connection. Grabbing my armor out of the machine, I made my way back to the garage as quickly as I could. The cavernous space, normally packed full of bears, was practically empty. I pretty much had to field my entire force to keep both the incursion and the hives under control, but I wasn’t quite out of troops.

  I hadn’t fielded any of the Rabbits because, well, they weren’t exactly great line troops. Excellent flankers, great as emergency response security, but between their increased speed and use of close-range submachine guns, they required a lot more oversight than the average bear, so they’d been sitting on standby.

  It's not like I had a ton of them either, just five squads. Normally they’d barely be enough to make a difference, but right now I’d take what I could get.

  “Bob, get in the Kodiak,” I shouted as I made my way across the cavernous space. Even though the big bear was much closer to the transport, his plodding stride meant he barely made it inside before I did.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Dusty must have sensed my impatience, because the vehicle began to lift off before I even shut the door. Throwing my armor on one of the side benches, I took a moment to catch my breath and scan the command frequencies again. It was strange, even though I couldn’t connect to my bears in Okotoks, I was still receiving intermittent, heavily degraded signals from them. It wasn’t enough to determine their status, right now I couldn’t use them for much more than glorified GPS pin, but it was enough to let me know some of them were still within the town.

  “Nyx! How many points do I have?” I shouted as I began pulling on my armor.

  “After the town defenses? Just over sixty-one thousand,” Nyx’s avatar announced. “Do you have something you’d like to buy?”

  “I’m getting some signals from Okotoks, but there’s major interference. I need to find out what the fuck happened. Can I get something to cut through the noise?”

  The bear shook its head. “You could purchase a stronger signal transmitter and maybe send a message into the town, but you’d need to improve all the bear’s internal transmitters if you wanted to get a signal back.”

  “So I can yell at my troops to do better, but i can’t get an update to know what the fuck they’re doing wrong? Not exactly helpful,” I growled. “Any idea what could be interfering with the signal to that extent?”

  “A strong ECM could do it, although it would either take a ton of emitters or one exceptionally powerful source to disrupt your communications,” Nyx explained.

  “I thought I bought ECM shielding for all my bears,” I hissed.

  “You did, which keeps them from shutting down and helps them penetrate low-level ECM signals, but they’ll still suffer against stronger signals.”

  “And that’s the only thing that could be disrupting the signal?” I asked.

  “Well, no. They could also be torn apart, trapped in a location that has radio shielding, infected by a computer virus… there are tons of other things that could cause degradation of the signal. At this level, with the Antithesis that have been spotted on earth up to this point, ECM is just the most likely cause,” the little panda bear explained.

  “Wait…” I said, turning towards them. “Are you telling me that the antithesis have the ability to infect computer networks?”

  “It’s not common, but it has been known to happen when facing complex enough models,” Nyx admitted.

  “Fuck… Remind me about that later. I’ll want to put safeguards in place before I run into an antithesis that can take my army and turn it against me,” I muttered.

  “Noted. Do you still want to talk about buying a transmitter?”

  “No… well, maybe. We’ll put a pin in that for now and evaluate once we get to the town. No point in investing before we know what’s causing the issue,” I said. “How will I be able to tell if it’s ECM or not?”

  “It’ll be apparent once you get close,” Nyx replied. “All your connections should start degrading.”

  “All my connections… Shit! Dusty, put us down!” I yelled unnecessarily, since I’d already unconsciously sent the command.

  Bob tilted his head to the side as the Kodiak began its descent. “What’s the problem, Boss?”

  “Both Bandit and Deadbeat are in there. If you and I go in after them, the entire control network will go down. I need someone to stay behind to manage the troops,” I growled.

  Bob stared at me, wide-eyed. “Not me! I’m not built for that!”

  “Well, who would you suggest? Heavy? You think he’ll be any better?” I hissed.

  “Dusty’s trustworthy, you let him drive!” Bob insisted.

  I turned to find the little tan bear turned around in the driverseat, looking at me, wide-eyed. My eyes flicked between my three remaining squadmates. “Fine,” I finally sighed.

  I stepped up next to dusty and held out my hand. “Nyx, Serum.”

  “You sure?” my AI asked.

  “That I want to leave Dusty to maintain the defenses? No, but Bob’s proved repeatedly that he’s not great at multitasking. I could upgrade Heavy, but since he’s a different model, I don’t know which side of the spectrum he’ll fall on. Command bear, or bear of action,” I shook my head. “I can’t take any chances.”

  Nyx nodded. “One upgrade coming up.”

  When the syringe dropped into my hand, I hesitated for a second, just a second, and then injected Dusty in the arm. I don’t know why I didn’t stab him in the head like the other. Maybe it was the fact that he felt a little more aware than the others had.

  Dusty didn’t spasm; he just closed his eyes and sat there calmly for a minute before opening them again.

  “Good Morning chief, I hear you need someone to maintain your troops,” he said in a smooth, suave voice. “I’m here, ready and willing to take command.”

  “You’re very calm right now,” I observed. “The others were slightly more… animated after their upgrades.”

  The little bear took off his tank commander’s helmet, set it aside, and shrugged. “I don’t see much reason to get excited. I’m just here to do the job to the best of my ability.”

  I looked him up and down, then nodded. “Good. I’ll leave this Kodiak with you, since you’re normally the one that takes care of it anyway. Bob, Heavy and I will commandeer one of the other transports.”

  “Understood,” Dusty said, snapping a crisp military salute.

  Unsure what to do, I saluted back before standing up straight and silently ordering the rest of the bears to disembark the transport.

  One of the other IFVs had landed right outside, so I’d planned to just jump from one vehicle to the other, but the instant I stepped outside, I stopped. The air was thick with smoke, and when I turned towards Okotoks I could see a glow on the horizon. It wasn’t the cold white of street and building lights, but flickering orange. I narrowed my eyes and immediately turned to get on the new transport.

  “The situation in Okotoks is worse than I thought. We need to get there now,” I growled. “No more fucking around!”

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