“We have the points,” Caldwell said in the dark. Jessica heard him and nodded.

“Good. Do you want to do it or should I?” Caldwell chuckled lightly.

“I’ll handle it. If anything starts coming at this position, we’ll need you to stop them.” Jessica grunted her agreement before pulling up her spell list. Caldwell kneeled down and made his screen visible to her, showing her what he was doing. He selected the pre-agreed upon ‘support’ and lights began filling the room.

Jessica on the other hand was looking for a very specific spell she had encountered and learned while she had been a glorified cop back stateside. It was one she had seen an elderly man on another suppression team use for scouting. There you are, she thought. She grinned as she selected the spell and began casting. It wasn’t very complex, or cost a lot of mana but it did require some concentration. After a few minutes the lights behind ehrt died down, and the lights in front of her solidified. Half a dozen butterflies made of light floated in the area around her.

“Go” she whispered in the same fashion she had seen the elderly native alaskan do. The giant butterflies took off in various directions, staying low to the ground so as to stay out of sight as best they could. “That should give us some idea of where everyone is.”

“Good thinking.” Caldwell said. “This is specialist Devos. Devos, this is Lt. Brown.”

“Nice to meet you ma’am. Who do you want me to get on the horn Lieutenant?” The young man asked as he lifted a satchel radio in one hand for emphasis.

“The general please. It's time we start utilizing our home turf advantage.” Several minutes went by as the specialist did his best to raise the general on the radio.

“Got one of the generals aids sir. Looks like the invaders and him are in some kind of conference watching the duals so he can't speak directly with us. But the aid said he could pass on a message.”

“Good enough. Tell him we need him to start pumping EU’s into the fight.” Another exchange between the aid and the communications specialist.

“The aid says he can ask, but that will alert the enemy to what we’re up to sir.”

“Do it. I’m hoping we can out spend these bastards.” Jessica thought so. It had been her and Max’s idea. After hearing the exchange between the General and the invading armies leader, EU’s seemed rather hard to come by for most factions. Earth and other technologically advanced factions however, seemed to have a bit of an advantage there, at least if what Jessica had learned from working out in the civilian towns was right. A few thousand EU’s was nothing to sneeze at, but neither was it an undue burden for the much smaller, much less efficient civilian grade generators. The massive fortress generators, well, Jessica hoped, produced more than enough to win this thing.

A few seconds later Jessica watched as the victory point counter started slowly ticking up from a few dozen into the low triple digits. “What's the conversion rate between EU’s and VP’s?” Jessica asked the comms specialist.

“Unknown, only the general has that info and the aid doesn’t want to broach it directly. But the electrical grid seems to be holding steady according to him.”

“Then I wonder, Caldwell, if we can afford another fire team or two?” A figure covered in mud slid through the opening in front of Jessica and she nearly screamed. Peep puffed out an angry cloud of warning at the figure, and several rifles trained on the man in less then a heartbeat. Jessica’s wand was brought right under his chin and imbued with power before she realized it was Max.

“Stand down, holy crap ya’ll are jumpy.”

“Damn it devil dog you nearly got yourself killed half a dozen different ways.” Calwell hissed. Jessica could tell he wanted to shout. She lowered her want, and absorbed the mana back into her pool.

“My bad. I was just out there, what we need is something loud, flashy, and mean that will get and keep those bozo’s attention. And, some extra explosives. I have an idea. . .”