“That sounds kind of complex, and is probably very difficult to accurately hit what you’re aiming at,” the Black Knight remarked in a reflective tone. “I don’t suppose that I really want to hear about what is required if the target is moving, do I?”
“Probably not,” the commander admitted. “Moving targets are extremely difficult to hit without at least having a third individual to drive the tank. The shells which the gun fires have a limited range, so if our target moves away from us we’re screwed unless the blast radius can incapacitate it.”
There was a slight pause in the conversation, during which time Ares contemplated the commander’s explanations. It frustrated him to be in this weakened condition and not be able to take care of matters himself. More than anything, he hated having to rely on others to accomplish a task. No matter how easy things appeared to be in his mind, his minions always seemed to find a way to screw everything up. He slowly let out his breath, but the rush of air sounded more like a growl than a sigh. The Black Knight focused his glowing eyes on the commander, who had begun to look nervous again and had taken a step backward.
“So, in your opinion, which of the two roles that you described do you feel I would be best suited for?”
“I-I mean no disrespect,” he started to stammer, “but the workings of the aiming levers can take considerable time to master. In the interest of saving time, I believe things will operate more smoothly if you assume the position of the spotter and leave the gun to me.”
Without another word, the Black Knight stepped on to the platform and snagged the binoculars with a skeletal hand. As he maneuvered himself to sight in on the desired target, he saw the commander quickly scurry to the gunner’s chair. Although Ares was far taller than the average human, the top of his head did not rise above the open hatch door. From a distance, nobody would even realize anything was different because the silhouette of the vehicle had not changed.
From his vantage point Ares couldn’t make out every detail, but it was impossible to miss the hulking red blob that he knew was the dragon. As he raised the binoculars to his face in order to determine the range calculations he would need to give to the commander he nearly lost his composure. He made an adjustment to the viewing glasses to bring what he was seeing into sharper focus, fervently hoping the human-shaped figures running away from the dragon were Germans seeking shelter. It took every ounce of restraint he could muster when the Black Knight saw that it wasn’t the case at all. Fuck! It’s the damn wizard and his friends, and it looks like they’re heading into the tower! They were going to escape his wrath yet again ... for a short while anyway. The only thing he took solace in was the fact that a couple of the humans appeared to be injured. The wizard seemed to be carrying someone in his arms, probably one of the females, and another person hobbled toward the stone spire right behind him. Wait a minute. Wasn’t there one or two more people in the sorcerer’s party? Quickly scanning the back-trail of his fleeing adversaries, Ares scoured the area in search of the missing mortals.
From below, the commander’s unbidden voice startled the Black Knight, nearly causing him to drop the binoculars. “Do you have the target in your sights yet?”
“Give me a minute,” the demon snapped.
Don’t get nasty with me, you son of a bitch! You can always do this shit by yourself! The German man didn’t dare voice his opinions, but it didn’t prevent him from cursing the entity in his mind. Instead, he remained silent and waited for the trajectory calculations.
A deep growl rumbled in the Black Knight’s throat as he returned his attention to the battlefield. He couldn’t find a single trace of the other individuals that he’d presumed to be in the wizard’s group. As annoying as that fact was, however, he shifted his focus back to the dragon. Either he had misjudged the distance of his mechanical army, or he had been inside of the tank far longer than he thought. The sun was almost completely below the horizon now, but cast just enough light to allow Ares to see the massive wave of machines closing in on the dragon. If he still intended to have the commander fire the tank’s gun at the beast, the window of opportunity was closing fast.
Chapter 14
Skarr was getting more than a little nervous. Her companions had fled toward the entrance of the stone spire behind her only moments ago, and as she rotated her head to the north in order to check the progress of the machines, she worried about the humans reaching safety in time. It was obvious that she had misjudged the speed at which the shiny swarm was traveling. Any second now, they would reach her position. Skarr had no choice other than to take to the air again, lest her adversaries latch themselves onto her body and shred her to pieces. Doing so would mean going back on her word with Edward to protect the shaman for a short time, but hopefully the wizard’s magic bubble would keep the mortal from being detected.
Quickly unfurling her massive wings, the ancient dragon rose into the air with one swift downward stroke. She had no more than left the ground when a loud thud erupted from the east. Skarr was barely twenty feet above the dusty soil when an explosion boomed a short distance from where she’d previously been. A flash of smoke and fire mushroomed up from the impact. Even though it hadn’t quite made it to her height—she had continued to ascend toward the clouds as the armament approached—Skarr could feel the heat of the blast on her belly.
Although her enemies hadn’t succeeded to this point in exterminating her existence, they had managed to divide her attention. Instead of being able to focus on one threat at a time, now she was forced to deal with multiple distractions. Deciding which of them was the most pressing was a thing she needed to figure out fast! She turned her giant head toward the tower’s entrance in time to see her companions disappear inside. A quick sigh escaped her maw when she realized there was one less dilemma for her to fret over. Before returning her attention to the metallic army, she narrowed her eyes and scanned the immediate area to her east in search of who, or what, had used the incendiary device that had nearly cooked her.
She studied the area as fast as she could, and in doing so noticed there was more than one problem arising from the east. The secondary issue that she’d distractedly discovered a short while ago could potentially be the most devastating, that of the enormous gathering of humans. Although the large contingent didn’t move in the same manner as her companions had, their movements seemed almost methodical, like the confident swagger of a fighter who knows he’s about to win. From what Skarr could guess, it would probably take the congregation until well after dark to reach the tower. Hopefully it would give her enough time to take care of the more immediate dangers first.
As she homed in on the foreign machines littering the battlefield below, Skarr noted that only one of them appeared to be moving. Was this strange metallic object the source of the explosion that had nearly seared her scales? She was determined to find out. At the very least, it was easier for her to focus on one target and eliminate the possible distraction it could cause. Hoping that she wasn’t making a huge mistake, Skarr flew toward the machine. As she approached, she realized that the top section of the object was rotating. A slender tube extended from it, slowly rising like a finger to point at her. There was a strange symbol on the side of the machine that bore a resemblance to a treasure hunter’s mark. She would have chuckled at the irony if it weren’t for the fact that she was fighting for the very survival of herself and her friends. X marks the spot, she thought as she soared toward the vehicle with her gigantic, clawed talons extended in its direction.
The force of impact when her feet struck the target should have made the metal crumple. Her weight alone should have smashed it flat, but all she had managed to do was scratch its exterior. It didn’t matter though. The next phase of her plan would surely destroy the armored vehicle. As the tube continued to rise toward her body, Skarr used one mighty claw to force it down and pin the gun against the hull of the tank. The strength of her grip bent the barrel and rendered it useless. She then took a moment to secure th
e machine in the grasp of all four of her talons, after which she beat the air with her enormous wings and lifted it into the sky.
Skarr continued to ascend, despite the heavy burden she clutched, until she was a few hundred feet from the ground. She craned her neck toward the stone spire to acquire her next target and saw that the mechanical army of the Black Knight was nearly to the outer walls of the tower. There was no time to lose! If she didn’t set her plan in motion within the next thirty seconds or so, the metallic drones would reach the structure! The flesh of her wings hadn’t fully healed yet, and as she turned to dive toward the massive column of machines Skarr grimaced in agony. The added weight of the tank put tremendous pressure on the webbing of her appendages and she could already begin to feel her previous wounds starting to open up again. If she didn’t jettison the burden soon, she would likely plummet to the ground and be reduced to bloody bits.
As the front edge of the mechanical assault regiment came into clear view, Skarr tucked her wings tightly to her body and allowed herself to drop from the sky like a rock. The ground rushed toward her with blinding speed. With the boosted momentum of the free-fall, she released her grip on the tank. Unfurling her wings at the same instant, she managed to stay airborne as the armored vehicle slammed into the front ranks of the army. There was no spectacular fireball, but the resulting impact created a good-sized crater. The small, bug-like drones which had been at the leading edge of the column appeared to have been crushed beneath the tank from what she could tell, but the raised dust from the crash shrouded the machines and made it difficult to be certain.
Hoping to annihilate the remaining enemies, Skarr hovered in the air above the crater and belched a long stream of flame from her maw. The dust cloud turned black as her fiery breath blazed a path northward, the sandy grains melting in the molten exhalation and forming tiny, glassy beads which fell to the ground like rain. They bounced from the metallic bodies of her foes, the resulting sound being similar to a barrage of gunfire. Skarr maintained her position and waited, wanting to make sure her adversaries had been destroyed before turning her attention elsewhere. For a few seconds, the only noise she could hear was the beating of her wings. It was almost as if she’d gone deaf from the cacophony of battle. A brief moment passed as she began to consider other ways to help Edward and his friends, but her thoughts were interrupted by a venomous voice from below that shook the very air around her with more hate than she’d ever felt in her entire existence.
“When I get out of this contraption, you will pray for death,” the Black Knight seethed. The German commander was fortunate, for a split second anyway, to have been rendered unconscious when the tank fell from the sky. The close proximity to the demon and the sheer volume of Ares’ voice caused the man’s head to explode, splattering the interior of the vehicle with blood and brain matter.
Chapter 15
George gazed through the ocular device of the troll-like machine he inhabited. It was similar to a human eye, but had benefits that no mortal could hope for. At least, probably not for another hundred or more years on Earth. Even though he was hampered by his spiritual form, he had still managed to find a way to manipulate the mechanism. Unlike the eyeballs he’d been born with, the optics that the sentinel was equipped with could be magnified and zoomed in on objects well beyond the limits of normal human eyesight. As such, scanning the plains to the south for his adversaries was far easier. Although, even after he’d spotted his foes, it didn’t make the machine move any faster to catch them. The lumbering gait of the giant metal creature only went so fast. The Black Knight had probably designed it this way to ensure the enormous creature didn’t destroy the smaller machines that blazed a path for it by crushing their tiny bodies under its feet.
Hours had passed since he’d witnessed the troublesome party climbing to the back of the dragon they traveled with. They had risen into the sky shortly thereafter and headed swiftly to the south. George had lost sight of them for a while when they were airborne, but as the army of machines sped across the dusty soil he caught a glimpse of a red blob in the distance. What appeared to be a massive tower of some sort stretched toward the clouds, and possibly even into the billowing underbelly of the heavens, somewhere in close proximity to the crimson anomaly.
If he could have issued a command to make the regiment of machines move faster, he would have. They were already traveling at top speed, but with his target in sight once more, nothing seemed quick enough to satisfy George. From what he could tell, it appeared that the mechanical swarm would reach the distant tower before the sun sank below the horizon. It would have to suffice. He knew that his adversaries would see the army coming, and after witnessing how the dragon had dealt with the machines in the not so distant past he could only hope that the beast had been injured sufficiently to no longer provide the same level of menace.
***
Although his calculations had nearly been dead on about the army’s arrival at the spire, an unexpected development had begun to unfold as they closed in on the dragon. Before they’d gotten close enough to attack, the enormous beast had sprung into the air. The creature hadn’t seemed to regard the machines for more than a minute when it turned away and flew off in another direction. George hesitated, unsure whether to issue commands to the army to give pursuit. After all, the dragon could be leading them into a trap. If what he’d read in books back on Earth had any merit, the mythical beasts were rumored to be highly intelligent.
As George attempted to anticipate the creature’s next move, he began to communicate with the other machines by manipulating the troll-like construct to issue a series of beeps and clicks. Almost immediately, the swarm of metallic monstrosities started to slow. He quickly fiddled with the controls inside of the giant and brought it to a stop. For a brief moment he zoomed the optic device of the machine to study the dragon and try to determine if it was attempting to trick them somehow. After a few seconds, George realized that his assumption had been correct. The enormous beast was high in the sky, but flying in the direction of the army rapidly. As the creature quickly neared, it looked as if it had folded its wings in and was dive-bombing the column of machines like a fighter pilot. When it was within a couple hundred feet, George noticed that the beast appeared to be carrying something. However, by then it was too late to issue any tactical commands to the rest of the army.
Unable to react in time, the front ranks of the regiment were crushed by what looked to be a Nazi tank. Dust billowed from the crater that the impact had caused, making it hard to discern how many casualties the army of machines had suffered. The remaining, larger mechanical beasts needed no instructions when their existence was threatened. They charged forward to meet the enemy, instinctively trying to use the cloud of debris as camouflage. The only problem was, the murky disturbance also provided cover for the dragon. George barely managed to back away from the outer shell of the troll-like sentinel he was hiding within before the ancient beast scorched the area with its fiery breath. If he’d still been human, he would have been cooked inside the machine. The flames spewed by the dragon were so hot that the metal shell of the troll began to melt. The internal wiring started to pop, fizzle, and catch fire.
In theory, the destruction of the mechanical regiment was a blessing for George. He’d discovered long ago that he could infiltrate and use the bodies of machines in his present, spirit form, but he had never really figured out how to exit one of the mechanisms without the metal exterior suffering damage. It was almost like the concept of a genie in a bottle. Once inside a machine, he couldn’t get out unless someone let him out. As the outer shell of the troll-like monstrosity began to melt, George seized the opportunity to escape when the first hole developed. He allowed his form to drift above the devastated army and realized that the timing of his departure from the machine couldn’t have been better. He wasn’t sure if he could have been trapped within a chunk of molten metal, but at least he didn’t have to find out.
He glided over the wre
ckage like a general surveying his troops’ readiness for battle, thankful that even in death his survival instinct was razor sharp. The dragon had dispatched the Black Knight’s regiment of hideous creations as if they were no more significant than a child’s toy soldiers. Nothing was left except a long, charred line of earth filled with a substance similar to lava. Blackened flecks of ash rose into the sky, forced upward by the intense heat. The nearby beating of the dragon’s wings stirred the air as the ancient creature squinted its large golden eyes to study the scorched area for signs of survivors.
With the enormous crimson beast temporarily preoccupied, George began to move away, searching for a new way to finish what he started. As he got closer to the tower, he noticed an anomaly on the ground just beyond the fiery trail. For a few seconds, he felt like he’d encountered something similar in the past. The sensation made him initially hesitant to approach, but that was before he realized the dragon had turned its gaze on him. Can that thing actually see me, or is it just coincidence that it’s looking in my direction? He darted to his left a short distance to test the situation and sure enough, those huge golden eyes narrowed and followed him like a hawk tracking prey. Fuck! How the hell can something see a spirit? As he began to panic, it dawned on him. During the battle, the sun had gone below the horizon. The sky was darkening by the minute, causing the glow of his spiritual form to become visible!
Desolace Omnibus Edition Page 99