Picking her moment, Mercy teleported in behind the group and opened fire, spraying ten rounds between the white-skinned Juggernaut and The Damned. And it was more or less useless. She saw the white one flinch as the bullets burned into his flesh and, oddly, The Damned flinched even before the stream of blazing projectiles hit him. But the damage they felt was shared by them all… Then again, only one energy pulse actually penetrated The Damned’s barrier and skin, and there seemed to be no reaction at all to the intrusion.
Azazel was turning, electricity burning around his fingers. They were all reacting, however slowly, to the attack, and there were a lot more of them than there were of Mercy. She relocated herself in an instant, there and gone in less than a second.
‘Damn,’ she said aloud. ‘It’s going to be attrition at best and I don’t know how fast they can heal.’
‘Neither do I,’ Joe replied, ‘but you had an effect. They’re pulling back. The woman, Lilith, seems really annoyed about it.’
‘She was enjoying herself. Burning people alive seems to be her thing.’
‘She’s supposed to be a sadist.’
‘Point taken.’
‘Kind of pretty in a “don’t stick your dick in crazy” way.’
Mercy grinned. Something about the way her chats with Joe were going at the moment seemed like a good sign. He was making jokes. Sort-of jokes… ‘I don’t even have a dick and I can’t really disagree. They’re retreating?’
There was silence for a few seconds. ‘I wouldn’t call it retreating, but they’re showing more caution. I think they’re worried you might pick them off one by one if they’re not careful.’
‘They might be right, but I guess they’re not giving me much room for snap attacks.’
‘No. Practically none.’
~~~
‘If Millhouse had sent more men, we could be winning this,’ Mercy said. They were three hours into the fighting and things were not looking good.
‘Probably,’ Joe replied. ‘It’s turned into a pitched battle. I think they’re losing as many people as we are at this point, but their initial push depleted our forces, and the reinforcements didn’t make as much difference as they might have. I don’t think this will end well, but it will end soon.’
‘I can’t get near enough to take out The Damned.’ She had tried. She had hurt both of his Juggernaut lieutenants, but not enough and not for long. It was clear that they could not heal as fast as she could, but they could heal well enough to be fully operational a few minutes after being injured.
‘This isn’t your fault,’ Joe replied. ‘You’re one person. You might be a Titan, but you’re not an army.’
‘Still, I’m going to try again.’
~~~
Mercy appeared out of nowhere and dropped into a prone position before anyone could spot her. She was about a hundred metres from the command group of the Damned Ones, which would have been a difficult shot under most circumstances with a short-barrelled rifle, but her Annihilating Bullets appeared to have something of a non-ballistic trajectory; they went where she wanted as much as where she aimed.
She could see three of them alongside The Damned and the closest was the ebony one, who she had learned was known as Sakhr. The ivory one was Iblis, which was at least a name she had heard of. Lilith was nowhere to be seen, which was a little worrying, but…
Sighting carefully, Mercy drew a bead on Sakhr and squeezed off a burst of three rounds. The trio of energy pulses streaked toward their target, penetrating his chest. He dropped to the ground, writhing in pain, which was kind of gratifying, but he had just taken three bullets of disintegrating energy to the chest and he was still alive.
And that was when things went downhill. There was a voice from behind Mercy. She had never heard it before, but she knew who it was. ‘That’s where you’ve got to, bitch!’ Mercy rolled just as a flaming chain slammed into the ground where she had been lying. ‘Fast,’ Lilith said as she whirled her weapon around for a second strike.
The world went into slow motion and Mercy pushed to her feet. Lilith’s eyes began to widen at the speed Mercy was moving; the chain was not going to swing back for another strike in time. Mercy raised her PDW to fire because the chain was long enough that Lilith was out of range of her force blade. Mercy’s nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree, pain blossoming from a point on her back. She was hurt. Badly hurt. Azazel had hit her with his lightning and the pain continued even after the initial strike was over. Lilith’s chain was swinging around for a strike which would, if past observations were anything to go by, set Mercy on fire from head to foot. She took the only way out she could immediately see…
~~~
‘You’re injured!’ Baxter was stating the blindingly obvious considering that Mercy had just appeared in the command bunker and immediately dropped into a foetal position on the floor.
‘Give it… a few seconds,’ Mercy said through gritted teeth. It took five. The pain began to subside after four and was gone a breath later. She uncurled and climbed to her feet. ‘Azazel got me,’ she said, turning her back to the colonel. ‘How bad is it?’
‘I can’t tell through your coat.’
‘No, I mean, how bad is the coat? My skin is going to be healed now, but the coat’s new.’
‘Th-there’s a burn mark…’
‘Goddamnit!’
‘Uh, any luck? With the Damned Ones, I mean.’
‘I dropped Sakhr, but I don’t think he was dead. Maybe out of the fight for a little while. Depends how fast he heals.’ Mercy glowered at an unoffending map table. ‘Any normal human would be dead. They’re bullet sponges, damn them.’
‘Right.’ Baxter stepped closer and lowered his voice. ‘As commanding officer here, I’m ordering you to return to the city.’
‘What? But–’
‘I’d be ordering a retreat for everyone else, but we’d lose more doing that than staying put, and our orders are to defend this place at any cost.’
‘I can–’
‘They’re basically at the door, Colonel. If you leave now, you can come back and take them down later. If you’re captured, they’ll kill you and we’ll have basically no hope.’
Mercy looked at the man for several seconds before nodding. ‘Stay alive, Colonel. I’ll be here to rescue you as soon as I’ve kicked Millhouse in the balls for letting this happen.’ She snapped off a salute and then vanished before he could reply.
He did anyway. ‘We’ll be waiting, Colonel.’
~~~
The metal door of the command bunker rang like a bell and then tore away from its hinges to crash to the ground with a huge dent in its surface. The doorway filled with the massive form of The Damned. He had to duck to step through it.
If he had been expecting gunfire as a response to his entry, there was none. The command staff had been expecting him for several minutes and knew that none of their weapons would do so much as bruise him. He smiled, which was neither a pleasant nor a comforting sight.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘you understand your situation.’ For a man who looked more monster than human, he had quite a nice, resonant baritone voice. ‘Who is in charge here?’
Baxter stepped forward, his back ramrod straight and sweat beading on his brow. ‘I’m Colonel Baxter, commanding officer.’
‘You mounted an effective defence, Colonel.’ The Damned reached out a meaty hand toward Baxter’s head. ‘Now you’ll–’ He stopped, cocking his head as though listening to something, or someone. His voice turned angry. ‘I don’t leave enemies alive when–’ Another second or two of listening. ‘Very well. Lilith, he’s yours. Don’t kill him. He’s a bargaining chip, apparently. Azazel, you’ll take the women. Same rule. None of them die, understood?’
Azazel’s smile was predatory and profoundly unpleasant. ‘Of course. Why would I want them dead?’
Lilith also smiled and Baxter shrank under that smile. ‘I’ll see to it that he stays alive no matter what,’ she said.
> New York Authority.
Silence fell. There was something specific about the sound of a city without power. It was not just that machines stopped working and electronics stopped humming; the people became subdued along with the equipment, speaking in whispers.
Except in Faith’s office. ‘Pointing fingers does absolutely no good,’ Mercy said, ‘but damn it, General, if you’d committed a more sizeable force to Indian Point, we could have won that!’
‘I had to consider the defence of the city should we fail,’ Millhouse replied. He was sweating, which was not a good look on his rather pasty complexion.
‘Well, you basically lost everyone you sent, and now you’re in a worse position to mount a defence or a counterattack. Joe, what’s your estimate on their losses?’
Joe frowned, suggesting that he was considering his answer. He knew exactly what he was going to say, but he did not like being the bearer of bad news. ‘They’re down thirty to forty percent from the force they started with. They were down to maybe forty percent of their fighting strength at the end of the battle, but they’ve managed to get a lot of their wounded back on their feet and their tanks back on their tracks. They have three battle tanks, around thirty troop transports. A lot of ground troops, though the ones with the better weapons lost more people than the ones with scrounged weapons. It seemed like they gave the better equipment to the more fanatical soldiers.’
‘The most loyal,’ Faith said. ‘Alright, the situation is as follows. They’ve cut our power. The hydroponics facilities will be okay for a couple of days. After that, we start losing crops. It also takes a lot of power to restart the reactor. I’ve no doubt they had it shut down rather than cutting the lines. If we do it within the next few hours, the batteries there will suffice, but they leak. Give it a day or two, it’ll take far longer to jump-start things. There are also the hostages to consider. I don’t want to think about what’s happening to the people they captured. I can’t stop myself, but I don’t want to think about it. We need to move fast. We’ll be committing all but a token guard force to recapturing Indian Point. When can you be ready, General?’
‘We should–’ Millhouse began. He stopped when he saw the look on his president’s face. ‘I suggest we aim to start the attack at two p.m.’
‘That gives me time,’ Mercy said. ‘I need to do some research. I’d like to change the plan a little. I think we should commit to a full attack, but you’ll mostly be acting to apply pressure, to distract them.’
‘From what?’
‘Me. I’m going to be going in and taking out The Damned. The bastard’s not going to get away this time.’
~~~
Waveguide’s offices still had power, for now. There were generators in the labs running on biofuel, but there was a limit to how long they would keep providing power to a place as hungry for it as Waveguide’s labs. It was there that Mercy found Nick.
He seemed a little surprised to see her, but he waved her to a seat as he said, ‘I thought you were out fighting a war.’
‘Did that. We lost. Hence this place being on backup generators. Now I’m getting ready to go back and take Indian Point back.’
‘I see. And I can be of some help somehow?’
‘You can tell me everything this place has on The Damned and his Anathema. Minus Ghulah since she’s dead.’
‘Hm.’ Leaning forward, Nick tapped at a laptop on his desk. ‘Yes, she was the weakest of the three Juggernauts, but killing her is still an accomplishment.’
‘I’ve hit both Iblis and Sakhr. They soak damage like sponges.’
‘It’s the sheer mass. They have thick skins, but your bullets should penetrate easily enough. They both have good barriers too. You should catch them by surprise, if possible. And stay out of their reach. If they hit you, you’ll feel it. Briefly.’
‘I got that part. Do they have any weak points? I need to shoot them somewhere they’ll really feel it.’
‘Titans are, at least on a basic level, human. Most of them. Some are… Well, that doesn’t apply here, even to The Damned. Shoot them in the head with that pistol of yours. Repeatedly, if necessary. Now, Azazel and Lilith have weaker barriers, so if you get past them, you should be able to take them down easily enough. Dajjal–’
‘Who?’
‘Dajjal is… more of a thinker than a fighter. He would be little distinguishable from a common soldier on a battlefield. However, he has quite a powerful barrier which functions all the time and in all directions. Aim for his head again. Whatever gets through will do more damage. He’s the one who came up with the demonic names, by the way. He was a Muslim before the Wave.’
‘He came up with those names? That’s another reason to kill him then.’
‘Hm. Then we come to The Damned. Even without the added protection of his Anathema, he’s formidable. He’ll soak injury even more than Iblis and Sakhr and he’s very strong. Again, if he gets close, you’re done for. Remember that he has considerable reach.’
Mercy grinned. ‘Yeah, I figured that out myself. It’s like you’ve been studying them to kill them.’
Nick shrugged. ‘The information here is very good. Thankfully, none of them are powerful enough that you need to worry about them getting up again after they die.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The most powerful Titans have been known to survive being killed.’ Nick frowned. ‘But not always. The exact circumstances are unclear. Anyway, I’m quite sure that does not apply to The Damned. Shoot him in the head, a lot, and he should go down and stay down. And then the world will be a better place.’
Mercy got to her feet and started for the door of Nick’s office. ‘Amen to that.’
Indian Point.
When it came down to it, the Damned Ones were not the kind of people you wanted defending somewhere. It took all the personal power The Damned had to keep his troops in the trenches rather than rushing out to attack the force which was approaching from the south. In truth, he did not want to be standing in a bunker, listening to events happening outside and, if the battle took more than an hour or so, it was likely he would leave to crush the attackers.
For now, however, he remained in command, the great general. Damiano Gronichi had never been the smartest of men, but he was not stupid, despite the way he looked. His IQ was actually above average. His grasp of strategy was far from expert level, but he was able to direct troops reasonably well. It was just that he was used to directing them to raid settlements, not to hold a position against mechanised infantry.
He had his Anathema out in the field, doing what they did best. Well, all of them aside from Dajjal who was assisting in the bunker. The man was not that much use in a fight and having him here gave The Damned some additional protection. That was what Dajjal had said anyway. It was a relatively persuasive argument; Dajjal was more of a thinker than a fighter. He made a perfectly good adjutant.
Or he did until Mercy appeared in the command bunker, looked around before anyone had even grasped the fact that she was there, and fired three rounds from her revolver into Dajjal’s skull. It probably only needed the first, but the other two melted the rear of his head into nothing before Mercy vanished again.
No one, not even the great general, had done a thing to stop her.
~~~
She found Baxter in his quarters, naked, bruised, burned, generally abused, and chained to a radiator. Lilith, it seemed, really was a sadist, but she had kept her toy alive.
‘Colonel?’ Mercy asked. She reached for the chain, concentrating, and it turned into a string of metal filings on the thin carpet. ‘Colonel? Colonel Baxter, can you hear me? Kennedy?’
Baxter’s eyes flickered open and he frowned. ‘You’re not… her.’
‘It’s Mercy, Kennedy. I said I’d be back for you.’
‘R-right.’ His voice sounded thick, possibly because he seemed to have been hit in the mouth repeatedly. ‘You need… women’s barracks. Azazel…’ He drifted off again and, this time, Mer
cy decided not to wake him.
Instead, she scooped him up into her arms and focused on getting them to what passed for a hospital in the NYA. And then she would be back to check the women’s barracks.
~~~
You could tell where Azazel was from the flares of lightning. He had a modus operandi which involved blasting someone with a lightning bolt and, should they survive, following that up with some sort of cage attack. His weakened victims would be wrapped in a cage of electricity from which they had little chance of escape and which quite often resulted in them dying of a heart attack. That was what he was doing when Mercy found him, until she cut off his outstretched right arm anyway.
He let out a shriek of pain and dropped to his knees, clutching the stump of his arm as it spewed blood from severed blood vessels. His eyes were rolling back in his head, but Mercy did not give him time to fall unconscious. Her force blade swung again, bisecting his neck.
‘That’s for the girls in the barracks, you bastard,’ she said, the words accelerated since she was not bothering to slow her speech. It was not like he was going to hear them anyway.
~~~
‘He’s pulled his remaining Anathema back to the bunker,’ Joe reported. ‘I heard him issue the order after you killed Azazel. I’ve seen Iblis and Sakhr heading back. Lilith seems to be taking her own sweet time about it.’
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