“In position on the Demesnes Soft Tower.  Location of the Nine?”

Demesnes Soft Tower. That’s an interesting name. “Demesnes” sounds weird and also like it belongs to some Greek historical/legendary figure, and I’m not 100% sure if “Soft” connects with that (making it the tower of a company called Demesnes Soft) or with “Tower” (making it a “soft tower”, which sounds like a horrible idea).

Hmm… Looks like “demesne” (pronounced “di-MAYN” because French) is a word referring to the personal land property of a British lord of the manor. Still no clue why it’d be used in this context, but I suppose “Demesnes Soft” isn’t a half bad name for a software company.

“Lord and Tillman,” Trickster answered me.

I like Lord Street. It’s the one street that shows up frequently enough to be a decent frame of reference without a full map of downtown with street names.

If Lord Street hadn’t been one of the two here, I probably would’ve thought they were talking about buildings because I don’t regularly talk about intersections in this way.

I found the intersection.  Once I had the right general area, it wasn’t hard to spot them.

Well, at least I would’ve been corrected quickly.

Crawler was conspicuous.

Hah, yeah, I’d imagine. 😛

I was already sitting side-saddle on Bentley, with Bitch ahead of me.

Oh, they’re on the same squad, neat.

My burned legs didn’t afford me much grip with my calves, so we’d taken a loop of the chain that surrounded Bentley and wound it under and over my lap and around my waist to secure me in place, connecting it with a carabiner in case I needed to get off fast.

Seatbelt safety, kids!

I put one arm around Bitch for further support, and scooted forward to make room for Sundancer.

Bitch, Skitter and Sundancer. Man, that combination is such a throwback to Hive. Good times.

Anyone else on the squad, or is it just these three?

“Go,” Bitch hissed the words the second Sundancer was in position.

Yeah, just these three.

Bentley lunged forward, leaping to the next rooftop and landing with enough force that I wasn’t sure I could have stayed seated if I’d been riding normally.

And this is why seatbelts are important. All of Worm to this point has been leading up to this PSA.

“Hey,” Sundancer said from beside me, “Ten or so seconds until we lose them behind that building over there.”

Better move.

A quick check confirmed she was right.  The direction their group was traveling would take them out of sight.  I picked up the walkie-talkie, “Moving forward.  You guys have eyes on them?”

“Moving forward.” made me think of chess, and by extension shogi. I suppose that only makes sense given how those games are inspired by war tactics.

“Yeah,” Grue reported.  That would be our second squad.

Oh yeah, by the way, I like that Sundancer is in Taylor’s squad.

Although it does increase my suspicion that we’ll be seeing more of her reluctance to kill on purpose.

I suspect each squad has at least one or two of the heavy-hitters.

More specifically, I’m going to guess that Ballistic is with Grue, even if there are more squads than just these two, just because they feel kind of similar, like they’ve got almost the same… energy? I don’t fully know what I mean by any of that, but they do.

“Yep,” Trickster said, from the third.

Ah, yeah, makes sense he’d get to lead one.

By the way, are they all equipped with the sort of equipment Lisa suggested getting them at the meeting early in the Arc, so she and Oliver can monitor things from behind the scenes? That would be neat, though I suppose they haven’t had much time to actually get that stuff set up yet.

I so wanted to jump in and save those people.  But it would be suicide.

Of course she wants to.

But yeah, if you want to succeed and survive here, you’ll have to take those losses. I’m sorry.

Our priority was stopping the Nine.

Yeah, focus on that. It’ll save more people in the long run.

Part one of the plan was simple.  Up until the point we engaged, we stayed as far away as we could while maintaining a visual and some ability to act.

This should be fine, but don’t explain too far ahead, you’ll jinx yourself. And maybe make me look silly for explaining the reason behind the Unspoken Plan Guarantee in the intro post.

We knew Cherish’s power was more effective as she was closer to her targets.  If there was any element of surprise to be had, we’d have it by striking from a distance.

Makes sense!

I spared a glance at Mannequin, changing the focus of my binoculars to the man in white.  Again, he’d replaced his parts.  His form resembled what I’d seen the first time I’d encountered him.

I wonder what new tricks he might have this time, if any.

Last time he added the gas, in part in order to take out the bugs and prevent Taylor from attacking melee. Then that blew up in his face, literally, so he’s probably abandoned that tactic, but chances are he’s tried to come up with another way to do the same thing or otherwise prevent the bugs from being effective. He’s probably also tried to reinforce his casing more if he had the materials to, in order to protect against doggos.

Cherish, Mannequin and Shatterbird were in the middle of the group, Crawler behind them, trailing behind with languid, casually effective movements that resembled those of a cat.

First the curled up sleep, now this… I guess the Nine have two cats on the team.

At the very back of the group, trailing even behind Crawler, was a hulk of a man who I took to be Hatchet Face.

Well, not exactly Hatchet Face anymore.

He looked like he was rotting alive, and there were grafts of flesh and mechanical replacement parts filling in the gaps.

Hey, Taylor, take a look at his back at some point. You might see something familiar.

The majority of my attention was on Cherish.  Through the lenses of the binoculars, I focused on her face.  I watched the movements of her eyes, her facial expressions, and the tension in her hands.

I’m just imagining her eyes turning to stare right at Taylor for a second.

Nothing she’d done thus far had indicated she was aware of us. Her attention seemed more focused on the handful people Jack had cut down.  As they walked, she looked down at each of the wounded and dying with the detached interest one might have for a car accident by the side of the highway.

…I suppose you’d get numb to it after a while. Hell, I don’t particularly care about these civilians at this point.

She hadn’t opened her mouth since we’d caught up with their group.

Best to keep that shut lest she accidentally say something that lets on what she’s doing with Imp. Whatever that may be.

Incidentally, I forgot to say earlier, I think Imp might show up at some point during this chapter and let the Undertravelers know about the deal at an inopportune time. That may be the complication near the end.

The strategy was mine, but Grue was more comfortable than I was as a battlefield commander.  I was okay with him taking charge here.  Preferred it.

Yeah, that’s fair.

Taylor’s a tactician, a good leader of an army, but she’s not a commander.

I raised my binoculars.  Seven members of the Nine were strolling down the street.  Jack, Bonesaw and Siberian were at the head of the group, and Jack was using his knife to try to cut down anyone he saw who didn’t get under cover fast enough.

Just doing some casual roadside murder on their walk, no big deal.

It was almost an idle amusement, rather than some mission or task he’d undertaken.  Most escaped, and he didn’t go to any particular effort to chase them down, as though he were conserving his strength.

It’s probably like a car game for him. You know, the kind children play to alleviate boredom during long car rides, except instead of “punch buggy”, it’s “cut human”.

“We set up and act the second they stop moving,” Grue’s voice sounded through the walkie-talkie.  “Be ready to move the instant Cherish alerts them.

Hm, looks like we’re getting a little bit of the early work, but already we might have a problem. They’re assuming Cherish will alert the other Nine, but that’s far from guaranteed right now.

We don’t actually know how things went for Imp after we left her yet, but it’s a little worrying that she seemingly didn’t show up to tell the others about Cherish’s deal yet. But she has her reasons to be avoiding Grue right now, and she is probably not aware of this plan of attack yet. Hell, for all I know, she might be in the midst of the Nine still.

We maintain unbroken line of sight over the Nine and between our squads.  Notify us and change position if you lose sight of ’em.  Everyone knows what they’re doing?”

Sounds good. These guys are slippery. The only issue is that it might make it easy for Jack to mow them down, if they leave the line of sight too unbroken.

Also worth noting here, they’re apparently divided into squads. I’m sure there’s a lot of thought put into who’s together in each squad, based on what they’re supposed to be doing in the larger plan.

Various assents could be heard through the walkie-talkies.

“Maybe I should ask if anyone’s unsure about what they’re doing?” he asked.

Yes, that might actually be much better.

There was no response.

“Good.  Hold positions.”

I guess Taylor explained her plan well.