Heroes Collide

Anna

The schematics of the territory her troops had explored appeared on the screen in front of Anna Bianca-Perez. "Okay, so Cason said he encountered the raiders..." She moved her finger to point at the coordinates she had been given. "Here?"

An otter tech in a wheelchair turned from his monitor. "A little to your left, general."

Anna moved her finger a smidge to the left. "Here?" She looked back at the otter.

The otter looked at the coordinates he had written down, then back up at Anna. "Go a little down..."

Anna did as he said. "Okay. Here then." She turned to the three techs behind her. "Okay, Alex. Put a ping on that area and then pull up the other logged locations we have seen Elena and her raiders."

Alex turned back to his monitor and typed out some commands as several more tiny blips popped up around the screen. "There are eight others. All of them are within a hundred miles of each other." Alex clicked his mouth a few times and lines connected the locations.

The other two techs, Robby Creighton and Lance Summers turned from their monitors and went over to the screen. The orange fox, Lance, picked up her mobile screen and doodled something on the screen then looked up at the bigger screen as a huge circle appeared. "After looking at the coordinates Cason gave us, we've been able to narrow it down..."

Anna breathed out a sigh of relief... but then looked up at the circle. "Oh..."

The blonde human, Robby, nodded. "Given what we know about them, and the coordinates we were only able to eliminate everything outside a one hundred fifty mile radius of the first attack."

"And there is no way to know if these measurements are even accurate!" Alex rolled up to sit next to Anna. "We really should use that idea Robby and Kolby have been pitching for the last few months."

Anna turned to the otter. "We can't risk it. There are too many things that could go wrong."

Robby clenched his fists. "If we can set a trap for them, we can plant a tracker on one of there vehicles, stop all of the raids on our shipments, and possibly even capture a few raiders. We'd be closer to finding their base, and it would let other communities be braver about trading in this area! All we'd have to do is let one of them get away."

"And if one part of this plan goes wrong! We have a firefight and risk our lives?" Anna crossed her arms. "Supplies are not as important as safety. The raiders have never hurt anyone. They are just trying to stay alive like the rest of us. What if Kolby and Robin were thrown into a fight like that?"

"That's not fair!" Robby yelled at her.

"Excuse me?" Anna turned on Robby with a glare. Robby winced and Anna put her hands behind her back. "That is what I thought." She put a gentle hand on Robby's shoulder, and her other hand on Lance's. "It's not a bad plan, I just think we need to focus more on finding the base and capturing them without any collateral damage."

The three techs traded glances and nodded.

"Okay." Anna smiled and turned to leave her office. "Go ahead and keep looking for ways to narrow it down." She walked out of the room and looked at her wrist communicator. She scrolled on the screen until she found her to-do tab. She like everyone else in her community had a list of things she needed to do. And to be honest, her commute through the base gave her quite a workout.

She walked out into the large central hub and started checking up on her tasks. The outside garden was in pretty good shape, the crew just needed a little help fixing up the autonomous watering system. After she patched up the small leak in the hose, she gathered a portion of the produce and proceeded to what used to be a food court.

Every week she had to collect the produce grown and bring it to their captive chef. The term captive chef was both figurative and literal, as he liked the title, but was also a literal captive. Jackson Malerdeen was a chef who they had found alone in a town by himself a year after everyone started showing up. He had begged for one of them to put a bullet through his skull because he didn't want to hurt anyone else.

And while he insisted he wasn't to be trusted, he never told anyone why. People seemed to genuinely like him. And his cooking was better than what they had before. There were some weird things about the cheetah, but they didn't really strike Anna as evil.

Of course, the sound she heard as she walked up to the kitchen, definitely tipped her off that something was wrong. She peeked into the door and saw him tearing at his cuffs and cursing. She walked in and set the produce down. "Jackson?"

The cheetah turned to glare at her, a tinge of red in his eyes. "Someone stole my f****** cheese!" He gripped his fur on his head and let out an anxious groan. "I need it for my enchilada soup..."

Anna put a hand on his arms but drew it back as he jerked it away. "Your cheese?"

"I can't find it!" Jackson growled and banged his head on the counter. "I am going to explode."

Anna grabbed his arm again. "Jackson, sweetie... We reorganized the cooler last week. Did you check there?"

Jackson looked at her blankly. "Reorganized the cooler?"

Anna gently took his paw and lead him to the wall to direct his attention to a laminated chart on the wall. "See? We divided into different sections." She led him into the fridge and showed him where his cheese was... Just as a small dog boy was about to snatch it.

"Rusty!" Anna crossed her arms. "Have you been stealing Jackson's cheese?"

Rusty hid the cheese behind his back. "No ma'am!"

Jackson twitched a little beside her and clenched his fists, then unclenched them. "Rusty, I need that for my enchilada soup."

Rusty slowly took the cheese out from behind his back. "Sorry, Mr. Jackson..."

Jackson took a deep breath and knelt to the pup's level. "Can I have it?"

Rusty nodded and handed the cheese over. "Can I help make the soup, Mr. Jackson?"

Jackson looked up at Anna looking visibly calmer. "Is that okay?" He looked down at his paws, which were still visibly shaking. "I can call in someone to keep an eye on us." As he said that several armed guards came into the kitchen. "Maybe one of these big guys?"

The head guard, a timber wolf named Epsilon walked up to Anna after giving a cautious smile to Jackson. "You know we have to watch you anyway, especially if you are planning to use your knives." He turned to Anna, "We may have a problem at the border..."

Anna crossed her arms. "Show me..."

They left two of the guards with Jackson and Rusty and headed down to the security tower. Epsilon pulled up a security feed up on his wrist monitor. "There is a giant anomaly near the gate."

Anna took a close look at the image which to her kind of looked a little bit like a swirly blue orb hovering above the ground. "Is that what I think that is?

"What do you think it is?" Epsilon took a close look at the monitor, then his eyes flicked up at Anna and she nodded. "I am going to get a security team out there."

The portal expanded and suddenly sparked. "Oh boy... This could get messy."