Hex Value Targets: An Action Packed Urban Fantasy Thriller (Faerie Protective Services Inc Book 19) by McKinney Robert

Author:McKinney, Robert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McKinney Can't Press
Published: 2023-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

The smell of coffee, burnt and black, filled the throne room as the first reports from the hunter killer teams came in over the radio.

“Haymaker Actual, this is Haymaker Red-One.” buzzed the voice of Lieutenant Kim over the radio. Even over the airwaves, I could pick out the rumble of engines and muffled shouts of enemies assaulting her tank destroyer’s armored shell. “Confirm first shot kill on Lord Shaliim. Fighting our way to extract.”

“Haymaker Actual, Haymaker Orange-Twelve, here.” called in another voice, this one belonging to a Sergeant Pleasant. “We’ve got resistance from the locals, but eyes on the target. Pushing through.”

“Haymaker Actual, this is - ah fuck!” broke in the voice of Corporal Follows Swift, one of the few soldiers who’d taken my offer of immortality. “Sorry, that was a close one. Haymaker Actual, this is Haymaker Yellow-Two. Charges planted on the tower, detonating in three, two, one. Good kill. Confirm, good kill.”

From the safety of the throne room, I listened as my people excelled in the merciless, efficient art of war. Staff officers began filling charts of kill to casualty ratios, and no small number of relieved smiles began to spread across the room as more and more reports of successful surprise attacks rolled in.

A calloused, dark skinned hand appeared from the edges of my peripheral vision. When I turned to follow the motion, I found my dad, a short man of Somali descent and with the name of Ibrahim Flint waving to get my attention.

As the name would suggest, the older man was my dad. After I’d taken the Erlking’s lands, he’d moved into the Iron Keep. I think he’d done it partly to stay close to me and partly in an attempt to reconnect with my mother.

I think she’d picked up on the latter, because she was nowhere to be seen - as was often the case when dad was around.

For once, he didn’t seem to mind. Not that dad had my attention, he wasted little time in launching his hands into a flurry of sign language.

“What’s all this?” he signed my way.

“Preemptive strikes.” I signed back as I split my attention between him and the radio reports.

My father snorted.

“In my experience, those have a habit of biting you in the ass.” he signed, unimpressed with the activity around us.

“Fair enough.” I signed. “But I’d rather lose a few chunks from my cheeks than deal with whatever these elves originally had planned for me.”

“That sounds like something your mother would say.” replied my father.

An awkward, cramped silence followed in the wake of my dad’s mention of my mom.

My jaw clenched a little at that comment, but I didn’t have a response to offer him at the time. When my mother had abandoned me, she’d abandoned my father as well. That had been bad enough for me, a half-orc.

As a mortal, my dad wasn’t so lucky. It turns out that people who encounter magic tend to forget the event if there isn’t a steady supply of the arcane to keep the memories from fading.

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