A reliable source has leaked that not only are there kangaroo aliens, they are slave owners! An escaped slave is helping the DC Police find the other illegal aliens…

Serenity stepped into the suite and looked around. Compared to the suites in the Whale of a Time Inn, it was tiny; just two bedrooms and a small living/kitchen area. It was still a huge step up from the motel they’d had Ita in until the previous day. “Are you ready?”

Ita was covered by a bright blue hooded poncho. It wasn’t quite the color of a blue tarp, but it was close. It was made of cloth instead of canvas, but it was just as opaque as the tarp it reminded Serenity of. He had no idea where Janice had found it; who would ever wear such a thing?

Other than Ita, apparently. She’d been thrilled when Janice handed it to her and asked if she also had one in purple.

“I still need to cast the spell.” Ita didn’t wait for Serenity’s permission this time; she simply started casting the Shared Understanding spell. They’d already settled the fact that she’d be using it; Katya had picked up enough English to get by and Raz still had the translation bracelet, so they could use English as a common language. If Rissa and Janice weren’t present, they’d probably all use Bridge.

Once Ita was done, Serenity tapped the extra card Janice had given him against the electronic lock and ducked his head into the next-door suite; they’d been lucky to get two that were next to each other and also on the first floor near an exit. Or perhaps that was simply Janice being good at her job.

Serenity wanted to learn how the locks worked, but he was fairly confident he’d need one he could destroy - and probably several days of experimentation to figure out how to override them without already having a key. It simply wasn’t worth it when Janice could just ask for extra keys, even if it would have been good for learning about his Magitech Affinity.

“Katya? Raz?” Serenity looked around for a moment. “Oh, they’re already gone.”

When they reached the SUV, Serenity could only be glad Janice had gotten a large one with “extra cargo space”. In this case, the cargo was a pair of nonhumans; both Ita and Raz disliked the humanocentric seating in vehicles. If Serenity admitted the truth to himself, he did as well when he wasn’t in human form. There was more than one reason he’d taken to shifting to a human shape every time he got in a car.

Janice waited until everyone was situated in the SUV before she spoke. “Where are we headed? You said you were still debating.”

“Yeah. I know they’re aware of the portal location; I’m not sure if they’re aware of the house or not. I’ve been debating if we follow up with something nearby to make it look like we have limited information or hit something a long way away so it looks like happenstance.” Serenity had a location in mind for each option; he’d scouted them both, along with a lot of other locations, during the two days it took for Raz and Katya to arrive and rest.

“We have few teams, yes?” Katya’s vocabulary was excellent, but her grammar was often more appropriate for Bridge than English.

“We’re the only one,” Serenity agreed. “Politics. I think we’d have more if it were more obvious; I may be able to get some more teams, but they’d be weak; I’m not sure they’d win a fight. Maybe two or three would, but I can only use them once.”

A SWAT team would have a decent chance, probably. Serenity wasn’t entirely certain how well armed and armored they were, but it still seemed likely. He doubted there were that many SWAT teams in the city, and if they were treated like Task Force Kangaroo, they’d each only be good for one house. They’d be relatively easy to call in for many of the locations; the places he’d found Sterath were a split between long-abandoned properties and ones where the Sterath had killed the occupants.

He still wasn’t certain where the portal itself was. The replacement power supply had arrived on time, but the old one died because of how something else was connected, which wasn’t obvious until they booted up the system again and fried the new power supply. They were on the second replacement now and had supposedly fixed the root cause, but Serenity hadn’t yet heard if Rachel and Allen had made it to the two locations he’d specified as potential portal sites or not. They both had Sterath, so Serenity couldn’t eliminate either.

At least Allen wasn’t treating him like a conman anymore.

Katya grinned. “Easy choice. The far location. You have fast movement; keep them off balance and do not let them concentrate force. We are small but fast, they are big and clumsy; scatter and kill.”

It was almost exactly the same reasoning Serenity had for choosing the farther location; it wasn’t the farthest, but it wasn’t on the same transit line as the two they’d hit so far, and it wasn’t known to the Sterath soldiers they’d captured. The only downside of the plan was that it might reveal that they had Ita, but if they didn’t use her information there was no point in having it; even if the Sterath figured it out, it still ought to make it hard for them to guess where Serenity would strike next.

Serenity nodded. “Works for me. Anyone else?”

He wanted to hear if anyone else saw something he’d missed, but no one spoke up. “Take us to 1342 Sunset Court.”

1342 Sunset Court was an old, abandoned gym. It even still had some of the old workout equipment; most of it had been removed, and what was left was in terrible shape but it was still clear what it had once been.

Most of the buildings around it were in little better shape. When Serenity explored it as a sentient shadow, he saw the signs that there had once been squatters living in the gym building, but it looked like there hadn’t been any when the Sterath moved in. If there had been, he’d been unable to find the bodies.

Serenity had Janice drive them around the block a few times to see the area. The next building was on the far side of a parking lot, which was bad enough, but there was absolutely no cover around the gym. Serenity could understand why the Sterath had picked it; there wasn’t any way for someone more substantial than shadows to approach unseen without a good Path Skill.

Rissa and Ita definitely didn’t have such a skill. Katya and Raz might, but for this it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to try to prevent the Sterath from escaping if that was their choice; the words of cowards wouldn’t be taken nearly seriously enough in the limited time Serenity was going to allow before they struck the next location.

The third time they approached the building, Serenity had Janice pull into the parking lot to let them out. He turned to Rissa before he hopped out of the vehicle. “Are you certain you won’t stay behind?”

She nodded back with a determined expression. “Not a chance. Not after what they did to Ita.”

There was no point in mentioning that it was entirely possible that none of these Sterath had even met Ita. It was extremely likely that if they had, they’d have treated her the same way as the other Kaelitha.

There was also no point in mentioning that as slavery went, Ita had actually had a very gentle time. She hadn’t been abused more than was necessary to make her work, and as long as she did what she was told, she was simply left alone. That didn’t mean it was a good time; it simply meant that it could have been worse.

Rissa was fierce in her beliefs. It was one of the things Serenity loved about her, even if it was seriously inconvenient right now.

Serenity couldn’t help digging a little as he shook his head. He hadn’t expected her to give in, but he’d had to try. “Fine. But at least stay in the back? You’re the most fragile of all of us and you have the worst armor.”

“Ita doesn’t have armor.” Rissa had a half-smile on her face and was almost sticking her tongue out at him. She had to be teasing, but he still had to answer.

Serenity couldn’t help but smile. “Ita’s armor is always on her. You know that.”

Rissa moved her hand up to cover the figurine Ita had made, then “connected”, earlier that morning. It was a very rough figurine of Katya, with some of her hair serving as the anchor for Ita’s connection. Ita couldn’t heal,but she could make something that would transfer magic; Rissa could heal, but not at any range better than touch.

Ita couldn’t turn it into a permanent item; it was really a joint spell, just one that they were casting at different times. The efficiency of Rissa’s healing would degrade the longer it had been since Ita cast the carrier spell and the farther she was from Katya, but it would still work for about an hour. After that, Ita would have to recast the spell.

Rissa only had one figurine. The carrier spell was fairly expensive in terms of mana, but the real limitation was Rissa’s healing. She was far better at healing humans than anything else, and Katya was the only other human. It worked out well since Katya and Serenity would be in front and Serenity had his own healing, but it did mean that she had to stay with the other two.

Ita carried her own figurines of Serenity and Katya; she had a set of spells that she could cast on them through the figures depending on how the fight went. She also had a collection of darts; they weren’t proper weapons but literally darts from a game. Ita had modified them so that each one had a ‘connection’ she could trigger to something else she had on hand. It was a poor version of the equipment she’d once had, but it was a start.

Serenity leaned over and pulled Rissa into a hug. She sighed and leaned into him for a moment before standing up straight, telling him she was ready to go.

Serenity led the group up to the gym’s entrance. The entire front of the building was glassed-in; Serenity assumed it was to show off the gym equipment and people working out back when it was actually in use.

The glass was filthy, but Serenity could still see the shadows of movement through the grime. “They know we’re here.”

“Of course. We are here to break down their front door, punch the minotaur in the nose and he will follow you without thinking.”

Katya’s analogy was surprisingly apt, even if it wasn’t exactly a normal Earth phrase. Minotaurs did tend to be easy to enrage. The only odd thing about the analogy was that minotaurs were known to Earth mythology.

Serenity knocked on the door. They already knew he was there, so it wasn’t like it gave anything away and it seemed polite - even if it did get him an odd look from Katya and a laugh from Rissa. Rissa’s laugh made the minor embarrassment completely worthwhile.

Serenity grinned and tugged on the door. To his surprise, it opened; the door wasn’t locked. He supposed that explained why the glass wasn’t boarded up or broken.

Serenity looked around the room as he led the way in. There were Sterath in the shadows of some of the equipment, but not as many as he’d seen when he scouted the building the previous day. They were probably hidden in the showers and back rooms; Serenity hadn’t been able to explore everything in the time he’d allowed for each site, but he still had a decent general idea of the layout.

Once everyone was in the gym, they followed the plan. Serenity and Katya moved forward, leaving Raz and Ita to cover Rissa. Serenity counted the Sterath in the room; there were seven. He couldn’t read their carapace marks with Eyeless Sight, but none of them were acting like they knew what to do. Their leader was probably in the back.