Targeting Pack _hot_ -

Kael froze. “Nest, I have a clean lock. Say again.”

“Copy, Nest,” Kael said, and the poetry in him died a little more. “Peaseblossom inbound.” targeting pack

“Target down. Package secured,” Kael reported, his voice trembling only slightly. “Pack, form on Cicada. Bug out.” Kael froze

“Wasp, you have the point,” Kael murmured, the words forming as data packets. “Breathe on them.” “Peaseblossom inbound

“Firefly, repurpose. Do not deploy flash-bang. Detach one of your demo-limbs. Set it to minimum yield. We’re talking a firecracker, not a bomb. Cicada, you have the tethers. Hornet, prepare to scream on all EM frequencies the second I give the word.”

CRACK.

Their target: a man known as the Archivist. He wasn't a general or a politician. He was a whisper in the data-stacks, a ghost who carried the last uncorrupted copy of the continental water-grid schematics on a mem-stick the size of a child’s fingernail. He had gone to ground in the Sundered Quarter, a district of collapsed arcologies and acidic fogs where the old world had been scoured down to its rusting bones.