Chapter 32

Year 4, Day 3, Paris, France, Earth 29 (Codename Stalingrad)

Antaros Westriver sipped his coffee as he pretended to read the newspaper in front of him. He was tailing one of the few Kromagg's human spies they'd managed to tag. The man in question, a low level member of the French ministry of defence, was sitting a few tables over from him, tapping away at a tablet without a care in the world.

It was times like this Antaros wished they could just snatch him up and 'encourage' him to tell them everything he knew, but he agreed with Clayworth and Lord Alexander, such an approach was unlikely to be worth risking tipping off the Kromaggs that they had opposition on this world, it was bad enough Lord Alexander had told them, via high powered explosives, that they had a powerful enemy out in the multiverse.

Antaros hid a wince as the French waiter came back towards his table, with a painted on smile. The young soldier could understand him with ease, it was one of the few people implanted with translator microbes after they'd ramped up their operations in the wake of the Kromagg encounters, but he couldn't speak French. The microbes only allowed you to understand a language, and the waiter as treated him like a particularly stupid poodle as a result. Antaros was not stupid, just three years earlier he had been an illiterate Roman slave, now he spoke, and wrote, perfect English, was an officer in a pan-dimensional military, and could give profession hackers a run for their money. He was even studying the theory behind the Kromagg sliding drive in his off time.

After paying for another cup of coffee, and dismissing the waiter he returned his attention to his target, who had just been joined by a man in a dark coat with a large hat covering his head and most of his face. Antaros almost blinked at his appearance, or rather the fact that no-one was giving him a second glance, even from the other side of the cafe he could tell the man wasn't human. The hacker resisted the urge to reach up and touch the small bit of metal on his neck, guessing, correctly, that the Kromagg telepath was doing something to prevent people from noticing him.

They only had scant information on the capabilities of the Kromagg psychics, most of it from Kromagg entertainment programs and thus immediately suspect. Antaros put his coffee cup down and reached under the table and into his pants pocket to tap at his comm-unit rapidly, sending the information back to the central HQ, hoping against hope Lord Alexander was on-world, if they could capture the telepath they'd gain an intelligence goldmine. He didn't want to risk trying for a grab himself, not if the Kromagg had backup, but Lord Alexander? He could have both targets off-world and in a cell in seconds.

Antaros waited tensely as the Kromagg and human talk, their voices too soft to hear, trying desperately to keep his attention away from them, acting like the other patrons. He was just about to reach into for his comm-unit again when something happened.

A massive white and red figure faded into the centre of the crowded cafe and threw two objects up into the air.

Antaros' eyes widened and he started to swear when everything went black.

***

The first thing Antaros felt when he came back to the world was a stinging pain on his cheek, and another one the other side, the second was a spike of pain in his bed as someone shouted into his ear.

"Wakey, wakey Andy" It was Lord Alexander, and at that moment, Antaros wanted nothing more than to punch him in the jaw. Unfortunately his body refused to respond to that command.

"Asshole" Antaros grounded out, or at least that's what he intended, what really came out was more a series of grunts.

Lord Alexander laughed and helped Antaros sit up, it was then that the soldier noticed he was in the EDF (Endeavour Defence Force) headquarters, one of the ready rooms where people on call could catch a few hours sleep.

"Was it really necessary to use those damn stun grenades m'lord?" Antaros asked once the room stopped spinning.

Alexander grinned, "yep, but don't worry, you'll be fine in a little while" then became serious for a moment, "I think it was the EMP burst that made it worse than normal, but we couldn't leave any video evidence now could we?"

As much as Antaros wanted, he couldn't dispute that.

"Do we get them at least?"

Lord Alexander smiled ferally, "Oh yes, we did"

Excerpt from Alexander Harlow's Personal Journal. Year 4, Day 3, Solitude, Terra Prime

... I'm half tempted to head back to the XCOM universe to see if I can borrow Dr. Vahlen for a few days... but then again that would require I get close enough to that nutjob to actually transit her, so that idea is totally out of the question.

I guess we'll have to make do with normal interrogation techniques, hopefully it won't come to anything too nasty, I really don't like the idea of torture, but if it's my peace of mind or billions of lives, I know which one I'll chose.

Dr. Das already scanned every inch of the Kromagg officer and removed three suicide devices and four trackers. Say what you will about those sub-human bastards, but they believe hard. We're keeping him under for now, until we get a good read on his biology, especially how they manage the mind-reading, that's something I want for my own personal projects. These guys are capable of cross-breeding with humans so their genetics can't be that different.

It's not even the telepathy I'm that interested in, but that little trick with the SEP field would be very handy. If it wasn't for the mind shield Antaros wouldn't have even noticed the Kromagg was anything interesting.

That's a neat trick.