Welcome to the war, Lieutinant," The co-pilot told me with a grin as I stepped off back ramp of the C-130 and into the rather muggy air.

The thirteenth time. That was the thirteenth time that some idiot that thought he was being clever quoted that at me since my trip started. From captains to grunts, they all loved saying it. I wasn't violent by nature, but if one more person said that to me, no matter who it was, I was going to scream - and punch them out cold. I swear it.

The location I'd been dropped off to was a rough one, with a dirt airfield and metal sided prefabricated structures. At least it had actual barracks too, even if not nearly enough for all the troops here. There was an air of the temporary here, but there were chain link fences bristling with runes and circles.

I wondered if the fences went all the way around the base; that seemed like a large expense for a temporary base. Standard procedure was that all bases in enemy territory were temporary and could be moved inside an hour if necessary. There had to be actual silver in at least some of those wards....

It seemed too hot for the hinterlands of Russia, and all I could see in the distance were gentle rolling hills covered in forest, not the snow capped mountains I expected. I guess they could be out of my visual range, but my eyes were actually very good now, when I bothered to really look. Not that they were bad before, but the ability to spot a single flower in a field from miles up was an improvement, however unexpected it had been at the time.

All in all it looked like a rather rude base, carved out in the middle of nowhere. But there was an air of permanence here. The wood I could see in the structures was old, dark and brittle looking. The fence was brand new of course, but all the metal buildings had paint which camouflaged them from the distance and the air; that paint was peeling. There was a generator in front of the air field control tower, under a metal roof; it was large and clearly old.

Heavily armed troops marched or double-times to and fro, on errands or on some Sargeant's shit list.

There, that was the supply depot, probably just one of them, come to think of it, and it was huge; a metal building with dirt and stone packed high around it, with iron spikes around the roof. It was also covered in wards from what I could see and the roof probably was too. There was no way all that could be moved inside an hour.

What base was this? Hm, my phone said I was in UTC +2... that wasn't the time zone in Russia. That was - it had to be France. What was I doing in France? I was supposed to be in Russia.

According to orders, I was supposed to report to the base's commanding officer, but no name had been given. So... my bosses had probably pulled a fast one on me. I hitched my bag up higher on my shoulder, grabbed my case, and set off. Nothing to do but to do it.

Besides, inside of five minutes the C-130 behind me would be turning around and taking off, and I didn't want to be here when that happened.

The command center wasn't really obvious, so once I stepped off the runway it was time to join in that time honored tradition of humanity, since time immemorial.

"Excuse me, private. Which way to command?"

The private looked left and right so quickly I almost missed it. Yes private, I'm talking to you, and I'm an officer, so you'd better answer.

He straightened up, saluted, and waited for me to return it before pointing left. "That way ma'am. The third road, follow it straight up then go into the small building with the flag in front of it."

"Thank you private." I dismissed him and started down the proper road; I had to dodge two jeeps, one of which was driving way too fast for a dirt road filled with other people. At least they didn't seem to care that I was a summoner.

In fact, no one was giving me a second glance; that was a little odd.

Hey, speaking of Summoners, there was one, and it was someone I recognized, if not liked or respected.

His uniform had seen better days; it was covered in both mud and blood, long since dried and ground into the fabric beyond the hope of any of the obviously recent laundering attempts to remove. He was sitting down, hunched over a large bag that had to be his; it too had seen better days. That didn't seem to be the only thing wrong, as his mutterings were clear, even from here:

"All dead... just like that, all dead."

He kept repeating it, trying to make sense of something, a haunted look in his eyes.

"Hello, Justin."

He didn't look up. "All dead... seconds, seconds was all it took."

"He can't really hear you, Ma'am."

I turned to find a chaplain walking up, 2 bottles of water in his hands. He handed one to Justin, who took it absently. "He's shipping out, likely to Paris."

I didn't want to, but I had to ask. "What happened?"

The chaplain made the sign of the cross; I was mildly shocked that it didn't repel me or something, but didn't let it show. "Something that happens all too often. He lost his support team on patrol."

And since he was clearly unstable, he would be removed from the situation and his demon bound while he received counseling, to prevent... accidents. He'd be back though; there were few enough of us to go around as it was.

"Is he a friend of yours?" The chaplain asked.

I shook my head. "We went to basic together, but he was a bit of a jerk."

He still didn't really deserve what was coming to him. I turned to Justin. "Get better, man. See you later."

The road was straight, at least. All along the sides were buildings, probably administration buildings, though that one almost had to be a mess hall. and in the center, a building so small that if you didn't know, you'd pass it by on your hunt for an important building, a jumped up closet really. Only the flag marked it as possibly more.

I opened the door and ran smack into two soldiers in full gear, behind a warded plexiglass blast shield.

"Name and business?"

well that was abrupt. They didn't even salute. "Lieutinant Maeve Numens, reporting to the commander on scene."

A slot in the wall opened. "Identification please."

Really? I pulled out my license and military I.D. - slowly, since thing one over there was actually resting his hand on his sidearm. What he thought his sidearm would do if I actually was the demon they suspected I was, was anyone guess.

Funny really, they both had the look of veterans.

"Alright, checks out. Sorry lieutenant." They both saluted, and a door hidden in the wall popped open. So the real entrance wasn't the door behind them after all....

I returned the salute and retrieved my cards. "Down the stairs and to the right ma'am."

"Thank you, corporal."

The hidden door opened into a very brightly lit concrete hallway leading down, complete with concrete staircase. at the end of that, I could see what looked and sounded like a war room down a hall straight ahead. The left hall was quiet, as was the right. I couldn't see any more guards, but I had no doubt they were watching.

I headed right, and found myself staring at bland looking office doors; the one for a Chaplain Earnest Griswold, which was an amazing name for an army Chaplain, a few with no nameplate, then one for a Colonel O'Connel: I didn't see anyon else in the hall that outranked them, so this had to be the command on site.

Again, no visible guards, though I could spot the tell-tale glint of recessed mirrors from here; cameras could be spoofed with preparation, but oddly enough mirrors were harder. I knocked.

"Enter, Lieutenant."

I did so, and saluted as crisply as I could. The Colonel, a small, whip thin man that still managed to look both muscular and intimidating despite the hint of a paunch and the gray in his buzz cut hair, stood and returned it.

"At ease."

I pulled the small booklet of a file I'd been given on the plane ride over out of my bag, supposedly mine and full of my exploits; I hadn't bothered to check,. It was merely a formality anyway, since he no doubt had a copy e-mailed to him before I even left the America. His was likely more complete than mine, too.

The Colonel took it without so much as a glance, and slapped it down on his desk.

"Do you know why you're here, Lieutinant?"

I settled into parade rest, keeping my bag slung. I had my suspicions, but suspicions weren't concrete knowledge. "No, sir."

"Lieutinant, you're here because some people who outrank me want to try and keep you alive. Somehow, that means you're now my problem and that this is the safest place for you. How that works, command has not seen fit to tell me. You're not in the Urals because that posting was meant to throw off the... hounds that might track you."

So my own files from home might not be as secure as I hoped. A reasonable precaution, I suppose.

"So, welcome to Ardenne outpost number three. How fresh are you?"

Unusual wording. "I slept about four hours on the plane, sir."

"Good. Grab some food from the mess, I'll send your support team to you. Get to know them fast, because you'll be running patrols starting o-five-hundred tomorrow. Dismissed."

I heard him sigh as I left - a sound I could only describe as forlorn.

This place seemed kind of by the book or tight in some ways, and yet lax in others. Or maybe the good Colonel just needed a vacation. I could sympathize.

The good Corporals didn't even pay attention to me on the way out, and no one was waiting for me. The C-130 was gone, and so was Justin. No one even looked at me twice - but that may be becauseI wasn't wearing my robes. No one wore robes on the front, it was too easy to pick out the summoner that way. There were other ways to pick us out, but the other ways required thought and observation.

It was actually kind of nice.

I'd guessed right on the mess hall, even though it looked more like a gymnasium with a dirt floor and tables than anything else. The ceiling was reinforced with large wooden beams, something which I approved of, since flying demons could carry large rocks, and the most important thing, the buffet table, spanned the entirety of one side.

One of the things the world's military did well, was provide food for the troops. Most of the meat was heavily salted or dried, but still good, and most of the vegetables were canned but still good. The fruit however, was fresh and in season. I took some grapes to go with my ham and beef jerky, and snagged some carrots that looked to be fresh from a local victory garden, grabbed a coke, (they had coke!) and sat down.

The place was full even though it wasn't a meal time, which implied to me that people could come in and grab something whenever they were free. It didn't take long before I was interrupted, but it wasn't by my new team.

"Snow. What the hell are you doing here?!?"

I looked up and pulled the jerky from my mouth as Cassius sat down, a little more scarred and much more dirty than the last time we spoke.

"Got reassigned Cassius, I have to admit I didn't expect to see you here."

It was a small world.

Cassius shrugged and began working on his own food. "Yah, I was further East, but my team got sent here to replace another one. But enough of that, how are things back in the states, and what are you doing here at least a month before your scheduled rotation?"

Cassius had an extra bar on his uniform. He caught on to what I was thinking before I could salute. "Don't bother, keep eating. If anyone asks, you went through the song and dance."

"If you say so."

"We don't tend to stand on formality out here," Cassius said around a mouthful of asparagus. He choked down a huge bite and continued. "Besides we both know you'd be outranking me by now if you'd shipped with us."

I didn't know that at all, but maybe things might have been different if I had... no, can't think that way; it was probably a delusion anyway.

"Whatever, sir."

Oh, that annoyed him. I was saved from his wrath, as well as having to apologize, by the arrival of several soldiers, each looking like varying degrees of 'I've traveled a hundred miles of bad road'. The worst looked just slightly better than Cassius, the best just slightly worse than me.

More were filing in... an even dozen around us.

"Sir, Ma'am... support team fourteen reporting as ordered. You are lieutenant Maeve Numens, are you not ma'am?"

Oh, that was a crisp salute from the obviously weary Sargeant, mirrored by his team. Since Cassius showed no signs of caring, I got up to return it. "I am Sargeant, and you are? At ease, pull up a chair, and introduce yourselves. Get some food if you need, I hear the jerky is exquisite."

"Don't mind me Sargeant," Cassius ground out past some mashed potatoes. "Pretend I'm not here. Oh, and her name is Snow, not Maeve. Get it right."

From the looks of things, the good Sargeant had heard that from Cassius before. "There are words for people like you, Lieutinant Cassius."

He grinned at me, showing off his need for a toothbrush; disgusting.

One look proved the blood was in the water already.

"Right, I'm Sargeant Clay, 'the golem' Tomlin, going right to left I present: private Yusef 'Musad' Heiman, corporal Clint 'Black' Miller, private Tyler 'Perry' Mason, private Eliot 'E.T.' Wilbourne, corporal Jace 'Dod' Burrows, private Caleb 'Rigger' Rigos, then our resident eye candy - private Myla 'Lewd' Lewko, private Savanna 'Eve' Van Eden, corporal Gretchen 'Olympic' Schuster, and last and certainly least, Rosa 'Thorn' Fabron; all together, we're support team fourteen."

Fire team fourteen - there was no thirteen, for obvious reasons, so this would be thirteen if not for the superstition. Some of them were close to each other, tightly knit... and others were placing themselves slightly farther away from the proceedings. Replacements, not new; remnants of another team rolled into this one?

It was just as obvious that I was a replacement for whatever summoner they had just lost. Or both of them had lost, if I was right.

"Pleased to meet you all. As you've been told, I'm Lieutinant Snow, your new commanding officer, emphasis on new. I've no idea what to expect out there, so how about you brief me; what's France like, this time of year?"

My new support team all shared a look, the stereotypical 'oh crap she's totally new' look, which had to be largely for my benefit, since they had to already know that from their own briefing about me, whenever that had been.

The good Sargeant, who looked like a bald professional wrestler or body builder, a veritable bronzed god or statue (some people made it too easy to figure out where their nicknames come from) took up my thrown gauntlet.

"Not good. The weather is very nice, but the demons tend to become thick as fleas this time of year. Winters they usually lay off, or most of them vanish at least, but now isn't really a good time to learn the ropes."

Well that was interesting, I didn't know that the attacks or activity was seasonal.

"Yeah, what command was thinking, sending someone like you here now...." Corporal Gretchen 'Olympic' Schuster (if I had the names right) spit out, almost jumping to her feet.

She was a tall woman, and except for having hair, she was an almost perfect counterpart to Sargeant Golem. They could have been twins, except Gretchen had a faint accent which it took me a moment to place. She was German, or German descent, since there wasn't really a German nation anymore.

Time to nip that in the bud. "It's true I'm new, but I'm not some stateside theorist. I worked with the police, and I've actually fought a demon or two and lived. I also have a few tricks up my sleeve that can only add to the chance of survival for me and any team I'm a part of. Where I'm weak is in tactics and overall strategy for the army in the field, and as far as I'm aware of, nothing else."

"Sit down, corporal." Golem said with deceptive softness. His eyes were hard enough that I wouldn't want him looking at me that way. The good corporal sat back down - but she clearly hadn't let anything go just yet.

Cassius decided to weigh in. "Snow is the best of her class. She scored better than me, even. She was widely considered too valuable to lose, back in the states. No idea why she's here now, but there's nothing in her jacket that smells."

I assumed he meant my file; the powers that be had let Cassius see my file? How many people actually had access to my file? The demons (Lucifer) would probably know where I actually was before the day was out - it seemed everyone else did, along with everything else about me.

No wait, don't panic. He's probably seen the sanitized version of my file.

"Well, The short of it is, there are some people looking for me back in the states, and our boss decided I would be safer here."

Implying the terrorists were the ones to be feared would cover the redacted areas of my file nicely, without putting anyone in more danger than they already were. I'd just have to be careful.

There were more than a few looks of disbelief. "I have a few tricks which make me relatively safe when fighting demons. Humans are trickier."

"Must be quite the trick." Myla the lewd one muttered. She was small and well formed, but lacking in any bulk professional soldiers seemed to develop, managing to look soft despite the grungy uniform.

"You'll find out. I can't really show off here without landing in a brig somewhere, but you'll all find out tomorrow."

It was kind of fun to play the wise all knowing senior - I could see why Karen liked to now.

The good Sargeant caught on immediately, settling back with a shrug. I decided to be truthful.

"I will need some help staying alive and learning the ropes though, so any advice would be helpful."

"Well, demons and the fallen aside, the ardennes is barely wild. So it's like camping out, most of the time. Well, except we don't light fires or make smores." E.T. Wilbourne said. He looked like he was all of fifteen years old, all thin and wiry with light brown hair that seemed as if it couldn't touch his face.

That made sense, fire would be smelled from miles away. But wait. "The fallen? They are this far away from Germany?"

The fallen was one name used for the remains of the German people actually left in Germany. former nazis, now they were the crushed slaves of demons; one of many of the rumors surrounding them was that they were in fact nazis who simply hadn't been allowed to die, and were still fighting the bad fight.

I doubted that, but there was no mistaking the fact that they existed.

"Sometimes we get to snag a deer or wild boar, that's always a little fun." Right, the guy named after a country singer, thin and tall with a texan accent to match, liked shooting game. Color me surprised.

"Yeah, but most of us prefer boring," Savanna added with a smile that showed off teeth to rival mine. She was a bit shorter than Gretchen, thin but with a lean build that suggested a runner; her dark black hair was down to her neck, and her skin reminded me of coffee.

I probably needed more coffee. Or more sleep; I could really go either way.

Again, the good Sargeant caught on. "Yeah, it looks like one of your extra special skills isn't handling jet-lag. Come on, I'll show you to where you can sack out. Well, if you're done, that is."

I was, that was part of the problem; with a full stomach, exhaustion was kicking in.

"Sure Sargeant. For the rest of you, I've heard it straight from the base boss himself; we're moving out tomorrow, so get everything in order."

The Sargeant should probably give that order, but it wouldn't do to let them forget I was at least supposed to be in charge. Even if they hated me for it. Having the person best capable of keeping everyone alive making the decisions was for the best; it wasn't as if they had a pocket demon.

They all stood and saluted; taking a cue from Cassius I waved it off. "I'm not big on formality either. Do what you need to do."

They dispersed, and the Sargeant led the way out. The sun hit me pretty hard when I stepped out; I hoped my sunscreen supply would hold up; the last thing I wanted was to burn on top of everything else.

The place I was led to was a small, modest looking wood house on the outskirts of the base, near the fence. It looked perfectly normal and non-descript. Just a house for officers or something, completely mundane.

At least, on the outside.

From the inside it had more in common with my apartment back home - at least in wards and other protections. The place itself was converted into a kind of barracks. A barracks for Summoners, if I had to guess. It could use a good carpenter or twelve, too.

The good Sargeant walked right in like the owned the place, and the wards didn't argue the point. He pointed to a bed that was more a jumped up cot than anything else at the far wall - I could see my trunk sitting by the foot of it.

The entire house was apparently empty; I couldn't sense or hear any sign of life.

"That's your bunk. I'll be awake by o-three-hundred, probably. If you are up, look me up then, and we'll go over planning the op."

"Thanks Sargeant. Have a good day."

I tossed my bag down and bounced on the mattress as the door shut. Hm, the bed was tougher than it looked.

I pulled my boots off, then grabbed the small personal ward I made on the plane ride over. Hanging it up made me feel safer. Not from demons, but from my fellow summoners; I worked with cops, I knew how this hazing thing worked.

Now that I was safe, I could sleep. Eventually. Whenever I could actually fall asleep, after being told I was now responsible for at least a dozen lives for six months.