Endworlds - Nicholas Read [40]
Castle turned toward him, fully attentive again. “Right, now all you have to do is concentrate on dealing with the situation at hand. And you’d better stay sharp or you’ll end up like Rosen. You’ll be my Openzed. Stay on my left at all times, and if things get hairy, go to the center.”
Before Eastwood could ask what an Openzed was, Lion spread his fingers wide and the entire group snapped in unison to a Z-formation. Eastwood scrambled to take his position next to Castle. Lion stood in the hub as Captain, and diagonally to his front and rear were Hummer and Tucker in their Bouncer roles on each corner of the formation. At the open ends stood Jax and Vector as Toymaster and dual Sniffers, and in the center of the Z next to Eastwood was Castle as the Doorman.
Standard Longcoat deployments saw Sniffers find and track the Inter-D they were sent to intercept as it phased in and out of corporeal resonance. Bouncers hefted heavy artillery of their own and used sheer brute force to contain an Inter-D, if ever called for. It was the Doorman’s role to disrupt an Inter-D’s harmonics, push it to its own dimension, then seal the breach. Sizing up each situation on its merits and calling out deployment strategy was the Captain’s role. Backing up each squad, the Toymaster’s coat maintained an open quantum link with their base should they need to pull new gear out, and it fed equipment to each coat within its wireless radius when the Captain ordered it.
Although each Longcoat youth might have preferred some of these roles more than others (indeed a hulk like Hummer seemed better suited as a Bouncer than team members half his size—which was most of them), all Longcoats cross-trained to serve in any capacity as missions required.
A few finger gestures from Lion sent each crewmember scurrying over the first pungent creosote-soaked fence, the smell a mixture of tar and damp wood. They nimbly crossed the first back garden, dodging children’s cycles and outdoor furniture, then vaulted into the adjoining yard. At the third fence line, Lion motioned everyone to halt and forked his fingers at eye level, pulling them sharply down to his chin. Eastwood followed the others in enabling his visor and immediately saw through the now transparent fence before them, to espy their target in the next garden.
The sight allowed him to relax a little. Not everything that tumbled through a seam was an intimidating presence.
Tottering forward on four legs, the creature was advancing with an unsteady wobble. Recalling the wild swaying of the far larger and more menacing selagote, Eastwood was not surprised: evidently slipping through a seam from one dimension into another resulted in, among other things, a loss of balance. This intruder looked like a large greyhound, and even when the Longcoats clambered over the final fence, it didn’t look up.
Covered in black, glistening, leathery skin, the being had a long tail that dragged on the ground. Dripping like the rest of its body with a thin mucus, this appendage had collected a mass of dead leaves and broken tree branches that further inhibited its progress.
The head was oval and almost smooth, with two small dark eyes, an unthreatening slit of a mouth, and what appeared to be constantly twisting, turning, spoon-like ears. To Eastwood it looked more like a drunk shaved poodle than a major threat.
Lion plainly found it somewhat less cute, snapping his visor back into its housing and pressing a command stud that filled everyone’s pockets through thin air with new toys from Jax’s store.
“Weapons! Fire at will.” He’d seen this type before and knew better than to try and herd it back through the seam.
As his companions drew forth their newly materialized pistols, Eastwood hesitated. The creature evinced no hostility. It had not even noticed them. Yet Lion showed no hesitation in giving the command to shoot. Acutely conscious of his lack of knowledge where