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Pellwell was taking the steps up from the gardens two at a time.
"Valentine," she called.
Her usual composure had deteriorated into twitchy agitation. The ratbit on her shoulder had its head buried in her hair.
"Yes, Pellwell?"
"It's the guys," she said, referring to her intelligent menagerie. "They say something bad's coming. They can hear it."
Valentine switched to his "hard" ears, concentrating on the night air. All he heard were the sounds of musical instruments and dishes being washed up and stacked. Someone was making love rather frantically in the woods above the artillery lot above them.
"I don't hear anything."
"You wouldn't. They can hear outside our range."
Valentine didn't wait for her to elaborate. He dashed for the door to headquarters.
"This is Valentine," he shouted, loud and clear at the com center. "Full alert. No drill."
The dispirited corporal stood up so fast his plate of congealing beef and french fries hit the ground.
"Kill the lights," Valentine ran to Operations, the siren sounding.
"Kill the lights," he repeated, but the men in the operations room had anticipated him. The lights died in the headquarters, dim red battery-operated hand LEDs flickering on at the hallway outlets. Cheap Kurian Zone junk used in their cities during the routine power brownouts, but they worked admirably for a couple of hours.
Now he heard them too. Engines, in the sky. There was a deeper thumping sound, lower and farther to the south. Helicopters.
Air raid.
Valentine had seen this horror before.
The electricity might have died, but the fires were still burning bright out at the barbecue.
Explosions ripped up the barbecue pits as rockets struck. Valentine heard engines roar overhead, caught a quick glimpse of flashing red and green at the wing tips of the propeller craft.
Following the rocket attack, a pair of biplanes, probably converted crop dusters, came in low. They lifted their noses and slowed as they pancaked through the air. Two figures dropped from each plane, off the wings, where they'd been riding like stunting barnstormers.
They hit the ground and rolled, then came up on long legs.
Reapers!
Valentine sidestepped to his woodpile behind headquarters, grabbed the axe he used to split wholes into halves and halves into quarters. The familiar feel of the polished hickory calmed him. With death running loose on the lawn, a piece of sharpened avativism comforted.
He remembered the night on Big Rock Hill when Reapers fell from the sky. They'd been wild ones, deadly to whoever was nearest to where they landed, but vulnerable to skilled hunters once they'd fed on their victim.
But these Reapers moved with purpose. Before, they mindlessly fell on the nearest beating heart. These struck with hands and feet, breaking and ripping without stopping to feed.
The former Quisling troops, who'd had fear of the Reapers put into them along with their mother's milk, fell into absolute panic. Valentine ran forward.
"Get guns, knives, anything!" he called, keeping some fleeing men off the steps up to headquarters with the handle of the axe. "Swarm 'em! Douse them with gasoline! Anything!"
Valentine had flashbacks to the night the Twisted Cross came for the Eagle Brand in Nebraska. But these avatars didn't fight like professional soldiers were operating them. They put weapons to their shoulders, strange contraptions that reminded Valentine of small I-beams with a handle and shoulder pad welded to the bottom. Atop the back of the device was a V-shaped rack filled with tubes the size of a household conduit pipe.
One turned his in the direction of Valentine, still trying to reach the action and turn the panicked men back into soldiers.
Even the Reaper with the weapon, pound-for-pound one of the strongest creatures on earth, braced itself as it aimed at the vehicle shop.
"Rockets! Down, down!" Valentine shouted, flinging himself forward.
