forward crouched over his weapon sight as the barrel swung through the full range of his fire sector.
“Annie,” Hendricks said coolly, “can you identify the noise?”
“Negative,” Annie responded instantly, her tone changing to match the hard professionalism of the team. “Stevens could be right; the sound profile matches the file I have of cicadas by sixty-eight percent.”
Sixty-eight percent, Hendricks thought, that’s a hell of a margin for error if whatever is making that bloody noise isn’t cicadas.
Racking his brains for everything he knew about the bugs as he stalked forward sweeping his own sector at the lead, he summarized that he didn’t know much. Swarms? That didn’t sound good, but he was certain they weren’t harmful to humans at least.
“Annie?” he said as he called a silent halt near the gateway with a raised fist. “Does the sound profile match anything which could be harmful to us? Or …” He paused, thinking of another way to say what was on his mind and failing. “Or carnivorous?”
“Calculating,” Annie said in their earpieces, no doubt part of her self-written stress-reduction protocols by keeping the people informed of the steps.
“Other known forms of insect are known for creating a similar sound, however nothing on file matches the criteria for risk, other than some form of poisonous beetles or ants,” she reported.
“Great,” Nathalie grumbled, louder than she intended. For a woman who had faced off with dozens of armed terrorists and held under such pressure as scoring headshots on suicide bombers before they could flip a switch, she still felt her spine crawl uncomfortably at the thought of bugs.
“Executive decision,” Hendricks snapped professionally, “nobody goes outside until we know what it or they are. Annie, can you get closer with the drone to record footage?”
“Negative, lighting is insufficient and night-vision cannot discern a single body of the mass,” she answered, making Hendricks imagine a cool controller watching drone feed imagery and reporting to the ground team via radio. Only she wasn’t doing that, because she wasn’t even a she and there was no control room.
Hendricks thought for a moment. “Annie, how close are they to the top of the walls?”
“They are less than halfway, and do not seem capable of scaling the surface.”
Hendricks looked up at the top of the wall and dropped his rifle on its sling before his earpiece hummed once more.
“Hendricks,” Annie said in an authoritative tone, “recommend you do not scale the wall for a closer look.”
He opened his mouth to respond, to ask if she could read his thoughts, before another sound penetrated the din which surrounded their compound; another drone had been launched and was hovering near them with the camera focused on the team.
Hendricks closed his mouth and picked up his weapon again before turning to his team and taking a knee. They crowded in and followed suit.
“Recommendations?” he asked.
Before anyone could answer, Annie spoke to all of them via their earpieces. “Recommend you do nothing; stay down, stay quiet and do not provoke the swarm.”
“Then what?” Weber asked. “We hide every night without knowing what the hell they are?”
“Negative,” Annie said, her voice bordering dangerously on the sensation of being ‘disappointed.’ “Consolidate and reinforce during daylight and set a trap for a test subject. Information suggests that the swarm is nocturnally active only.”
“I can do that,” Stevens said, looking at Geiger and Weber who both nodded in agreement.
“Okay,” Hendricks said, taking charge again and realizing that the computer had effectively decided for them, “Magda and Dieter take the north point and patrol ten o’clock to two o’clock, Stevens and Kurt take the south east, two o’clock to six, Nathalie and Jones, six to ten, understood?” he asked as he looked at each pair in turn to receive confirmation of his simple orders to divide their enclosed circle into three patrol zones. It seemed that Annie understood also.
“I have activated the inward-facing LEDs on top of the relevant pods to indicate fields of responsibility,” she announced helpfully, “they are not visible from outside of the compound.”
Hendricks had to admit that was actually really a good idea, as one of the hardest things he had ever found with teaching inexperienced personnel with firearms was what he called the LOE: their limit of exploitation. Referred to by many other terms—your sector, your arc of fire, your area of responsibility—it simply meant the place where your gun was supposed to be active so as to not interfere with others. In this case, dividing a one-hundred-and-twenty-degree arc inside of an unlit