Touchstone 1 - Stray

reached the top and someone cursed, my interface only telling me “(Profanity) (profanity).”
    “Mane, that’s in your normal range,” Haral said, unflurried, but with just a hint of tightness in his voice. “Ignore the swoops and pull them back here.”
    One of the girls from Tenth Squad stepped through the gate. Another turned to a trio of blacksuited figures lying unmoving on the platform just above the one next to the gate. Zan, jogging up, glanced through the gate as she returned me to my feet, and said: “Ice seems safest.”
    Haral nodded, eyes narrowed as he watched over Mane’s shoulder. I could see what seemed like a pair of pearly pterodactyls, but less awkward-looking. Swoops.
    “Lenton, enhance and stop them before they follow,” Zan said, adding a hand gesture to tell her squad to spread across the nearest three platforms. Me she had stand just to the right of the gate entrance.
    Lenton, who seemed to have left his temper behind today, brushed a hand against my shoulder and stepped through immediately, slipping past Mane as she returned. She had three limp Setari hovering behind her, and everyone moved back so she could bring them through, Haral catching her by the shoulder as she looked likely to fall over herself.
    The nanosuits are good protection, really resistant to piercing and cutting, and automatically self-repairing, but they’re not invulnerable. And they left the faces bare. Of the three Setari Mane brought back, two had gaping rents down their fronts, slick and wet, and the third looked like something with a wide, small-toothed mouth had tried to bite off his head, and not quite succeeded. I recognised Dahlen from Seventh, but not the other two.
    “Kantan, enhance and start,” Haral said.
    Kantan was a tall, fairly dark guy. He touched me on my back, stepped around the cluster of people trying to do something about the injured, and walked resolutely out into the knee-high mist. Lenton had made two massive balls of ice with swoops in the centre, which fell to the ground and stayed still. He paused a moment, looking around, then stepped back through, staggering as he came but managing to stay upright. He was sweating, but said steadily enough: “Another cluster of swoops to the left, approaching fast, and what looks like a stilt in the far distance behind the Pillar.”
    “Darm, enhance and take care of the swoops,” Haral said. “And tell Kantan to come back in before he collapses. Namara, will you go after?”
    Zan nodded as a curvy Setari went through the gate and turned left. Kantan was a Wind talent – I could see the stirring agitation he was causing in the mist thickly covering the ground. Like Ketzaren he needed time to set up anything really strong, but managed to start up a twisting spiral, sucking the mist toward it, before he returned obediently and stood shuddering and shaking his head. “That will draw for a while,” he said, as Zan touched my arm. “But more was flowing from the Pillar.”
    “Rest,” Haral said, watching Zan step through. “You may be able to strengthen it later, and it’s at least pulling some of it away from this gate. Drysen, prepare to enhance. Status on injuries?”
    “Dahlen and Roth will keep,” said Nels, the Setari who had been doing most of the medicking. She’d somehow made most of the wounded’s uniforms move aside, and was busy spraying what I guess was liquid bandages everywhere. “Ammas is critical and getting worse.”
    “Quane, Sherun, get him back to base,” Haral said. “Drysen, go through. Tens, Charn, get ready to take some of these.”
    The difficulty was not the weight of the Setari, but distance and numbers. I’d already learned from testing that picking up multiple small objects is harder than one big one. Zan, the strongest of the telekinetics, had gathered eight fallen at once, and started feeding them quickly through the gate into the waiting arms of the two Haral had ordered forward. Others stepped up to ferry them further away from the crowded entrance, and then Zan came through, stumbling. “Darm’s down,” she said, voice slurred. “Drysen’s fetching her. One swoop of that cluster still coming, no more in sight.”
    “Kiste, take care of it and come straight back in,” Haral said. “Mane, how’s recovery?”
    Mane, the first of the telekinetics who had gone through, was sitting two platforms up, looking green, but she stood up when he spoke and came back down to the gate. “Doesn’t