Before he could complete that thought another line of Spider Sentries complemented by a bunch of those muscle-bound Ogre things appeared in the distance. The former fired more of their pellet-rounds and the latter launched explosive balls with big slings, resembling some kind of mutant Olympic athletes competing for the gold.
One such explosive hit a Humvee. It relieved Rhodes to see the crew get clear before the vehicle burst. Nonetheless, their advance slowed again as small arms fire and grenades exchanged with the enemy’s weird weapons.
“Jesus Christ, these things keep coming at us piecemeal.”
A stretcher hurried by carrying a heavily-medicated middle aged woman missing an arm.
Rhodes jumped from the boulder.
“Corporal, we need to get a message to command. I got this feeling there is more going on out there than we know. If we can’t radio them, we’re going to have to send a runner.”
“INCOMING!”
The small gathering of the general and his staff swiveled around and saw the amber glow of another burning comet-thing come roaring over the highway. The flames from its burning mane fell upon the front lines sending soldiers racing for cover.
Two energy blasts met the rampaging thing in mid-flight, exploding it like a sun gone rogue. A cheer rose from the ranks. General Rhodes backtracked the path of those well-timed blasts. Behind him—moving up from the south—came an Eagle transport.
The approaching ship fired another round of energy weapons from the turret under its nose cone. The weapon smashed into the spider sentries at the front line and gave the soldiers fighting there a moment’s reprieve. Then the ship descended to the road where it came to a rest slightly tilted on rocks obstructing its starboard landing gears.
“Seems someone else had the same idea,” Rhodes mused as he hurried to the craft.
The side door open and there stood Trevor Stone who looked more like a post-Apocalyptic survivalist than an Emperor.
“General Rhodes, pull your men back. Fast.”
“Sir, we’re making some progress. Slow stuff, but progress all the same.”
“No you’re not. Voggoth is sucking you in. They burned us, General. They burned me. The only reason you’re making any progress is because they want you to keep at it until they can bring the rest of their forces to bear. We’ve already wiped out two Leviathans but they’ve got a third one out there still.”
That last sentence—the idea of three Leviathans assembled in one battle group—ended any discussion. Rhodes’ eyes grew vacant with a type of visceral fear known only to those who have seen a Leviathan in action.
“Corporal, send word to all commands. Pull back, full speed. Do it.”
The corporal moved off to summon runners.
“You can ride with me if you like, General.”
“No sir, thanks all the same. I need to make sure we get out of this.”
“I understand,” Stone said. “Fall back to Rye and then start east. We’re all headed for the Mississippi now, but it’s a mess. The Phillipan is holding them off but we’re not going to get much separation. I don’t know how long the rail lines will hold. Don’t get cut off, General.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
General William Hoth stood inside the ‘brain’ of the Phillipan. With the blast doors closed, artificial light flickered across the crescent-shaped bridge. With no view, the room felt isolated and alone. A bunker mentality, perhaps.
A round black scorch mark on the bulkhead protecting the bridge windows served as one reminder that much more existed—and threatened—from beyond that room. A second indicator came in the form of banks of flashing lights on the various duty stations around the bridge.
The technicians fielded incoming communications from weapons ports, engineering, medics, and damage control teams.
Hoth knew it all from his position, but even the advanced interfaces, displays, and intuitive controls could not keep the information deluge from overloading his attention. He allowed the bridge techs to dispatch the appropriate assistance to the various parts of the vessel while he concentrated on the tactical situation.
Besides, it served no purpose to focus on damage to any systems other than weapons. Hoth knew that sooner or later that damage would drown the ship’s ability to fight; to stay aloft. He needed to concentrate not on saving the Phillipan, but in causing as much harm to the enemy as possible.
Distant rumbles and faint tremors spoke of another strike by the storm of Spooks or from the guns of the blob-ish Chariot ships buzzing around the mighty dreadnought. Like piranha, they bit in small bites but in great number.
Incoming data told Hoth that only a handful of The Empire’s jet planes remained in the local air space, most of those fighting for their own survival and not capable of giving his vessel any sort of cover. But that same data told Hoth that The Order had given full priority to that airspace, and not the ground below.
Images from cameras mounted on the superstructure showed a growing line of separation between the retreating tanks, APCs, and trucks of the human army and the slithering, rolling, and hovering machines of destruction from Voggoth’s realm. Indeed, the toppled bodies of the two dead Leviathans created a barrier of sorts at the mouth of the mountain pass.
As he surveyed the ground below he spotted one of the coral-like platforms maneuver through that barrier. Hoth tapped a touch screen and a missile shot from the Phillipan’s undercarriage, twisted, turned, and then slammed into the artillery platform. The blast knocked the vehicle sideways and birthed a fire in its belly.
The radar warned of another wave of Spooks. It seemed The Order had prepared well for this battle.
An order from one of the bridge crew to a damage control team caught Hoth’s attention as a copy of the message flashed across his screen. He quickly pushed the ‘countermand’ icon.
“Sir! We need that team in engineering: main thrusters are off-line!”
Hoth re-routed the damage control party with a series of inputs that fed a broadcast to the computerized announcement system. Somewhere far below on one of the lower levels that small team of mechanics and engineers received new instructions to forget engineering and move toward the bow; toward the energy pools and firing mechanisms that fed the ‘bopper’ guns.
The general never felt compelled to explain any of his orders. Nonetheless, he felt it important—and fair to his crew—to paint a clear picture of the situation.
He spoke from the ‘brain’ module loud enough for all to hear, “We don’t need engines anymore. We need weapons and the anti-grav generators. All maintenance teams and services are to be held ready until they’re needed for those two systems. Our boys on the ground are counting on us to hold the line for a while. We’re not going anywhere.”
His crew did not gasp. The helmsman did not panic. The weapons officers and technicians remained focused on their consoles. A shake passed through the bridge as if to punctuate the point yet they took it in stride.
That pleased William Hoth, who had spent his entire life—both pre-and post-Armageddon—following orders and fighting. It seemed no small measure of his discipline and his focus had rubbed off on those who followed him.
No one saw, but for the briefest of moments a very warm and genuine smile of pride for his people flashed on the general’s face. While it would be the last battle of his military career, he also knew it would be the finest.
The Phillipan held a while longer.
Onboard Eagle One as it flew away from the battle, General Casey and Trevor monitored radio messages from the front.
Rhodes had managed to break off his attack and appeared destined to escape with nearly half of his force intact. Getting them from Rye to the Mississippi would prove a greater trick.
The main forces around Wetmore faired even better, in terms of their retreat. Hoth succeeded in blocking the onslaught by making a massive choke point in the Rockies formed in part by a wall of dead invaders. The remaining Leviathan had retreated west
in order to avoid the Phillipan’s main batteries. Nonetheless, the day remained a defeat; just not the final defeat.
The video feed offered a telescopic look at the burning dreadnought. Even on the grainy image Trevor saw the deformed engine baffles, scorch marks along the sides, and flakes of bulkhead peeling away from the constant burst of explosions across the vessel. No doubt several infernos burned unchecked within the hull of the great ship.
“She’s still afloat, sir,” Casey said. Trevor thought he detected a hint of hope in the general’s voice. “We’ve disengaged, sir.”
“For now, yes,” Trevor answered. “But The Order is going to break through before this day is done. And then it’s going to become a race east. With the shape we’re in it might take a week to get behind the lines at the Mississippi. I’ll bet Voggoth won’t let us go quietly, either. He’ll be harassing us all the way trying to keep us from re-forming defense lines.”
“How much time do you think we have?”
Trevor answered, “That depends on Hoth.”
Late that afternoon, a Spook-guided missile, three times normal size, knocked out the Phillipan’s top side main batteries. A storm of ground-based anti-air fire managed to penetrate the hull and rupture several important power nodes a short while later.
An orange glow of fire burning across the flight deck complimented the orange glow of twilight as the sun set to the west. The flames from the giant air ship lit the landscape around Wetmore in a surreal amber glow.
By this point all smart munitions had been exhausted, leaving anti-air shells and handfuls of gravity bombs in the dreadnought’s arsenal. The Order sensed the weakness and made one last push through the pass.
It took two more hours to finish the job completely. Chunks of hull the size of buildings fell from the ship; gaping holes grew in the superstructure; and eventually the tower collapsed upon itself rupturing the bridge and tilting the entire burning ship on its axis.
Then the grav-generators failed one by one. The front third of the vessel split and fell to Earth where it crushed more than a hundred enemy troops. The rear section crumbled as the structural stress became too much even for the SteelPlus spine of the ship.
Eventually all power—even the self-contained back up units on the generators themselves—failed. The pieces fell and joined the mountain of debris between the pass through the Rockies and what remained of Wetmore, Colorado.
The Order’s soldiers—including the remaining, giant Leviathan—marched tentatively from the cover of the mountains and into the open. No enemy forces remained to oppose them.
The race for the Mississippi began.
2. Something Blue
Nina stared across the tiny bar into a wide mirror mounted above rows of liquor bottles. She saw a mystery there. A mystery hiding behind her blue eyes.
The clink and clang of glassware, the shuffle of dress shoes, and the gentle chatter of a few dozen guests filled the small reception hall. Many of those guests dressed in black military tunics, a few wore BDUs of various shades, a handful sported suits and ties and skirts and dresses.
For one of the few times in her life, Nina belonged to that last group. Years after finding the mysterious black dress hanging in her closet she finally found an occasion to wear it.
No, that was not quite right. Judging by a decade-old videotape provided by Ashley, she had worn this dress once before, at a New Year’s Eve party held that first year after the invasion; during that year she could not remember.
Nonetheless, unlike that forgotten party where she—or some version of herself—had snuggled close to Trevor Stone and professed her love for him, this tie she kept her curly blond hair bound in a tight ponytail. She wore the dress, it seemed, but did not yet understand it.
The rear door opened, disturbing her bout of introspection, and in walked Jerry Shepherd wearing a cowboy hat atop his general’s uniform. Rough white stubble adorned his cheeks and his eyes had never appeared older.
Shep paused a step inside the door to stoop and pat the head of Odin, Nina’s aging black and gray Norwegian elkhound who inspected each new arrival with his acute canine senses.
Nina moved away from the bar and intercepted her mentor. The clinging of glassware, the shuffle of shoes, and the gentle chatter continued uninterrupted as the guests milled about waiting for the next set of songs to play.
“Shep, hey,” Nina greeted. She loved him as a daughter loved a father, but many daughters come to know, with time, that their fathers are not always honest. The videotape sent to Nina last summer had not revealed the whole truth of her missing year, but it had revealed many lies.
“Nina, my God you look terrific,” he inspected her first then glanced around at the low-ceilinged rectangular room. “I reckon I missed the whole shindig?”
“Sh—sh—Shep! Woohoo!”
The boisterous voice came from Denise who shuffled across the vacant dance floor wearing a short white bridal dress with a glass of red wine balanced precariously in one hand.
“Why now here is quite the sight,” Shep removed his hat and planted a quick peck on the newlywed’s cheek. “Lookit you. Congratulations honey. Where’s Jake? I owe him a handshake.”
Denise slurred, “He’s over—well he’s over there somewhere. Anyway, Shep, I’m sooo glad you came for the reception.”
All three of the participants in the conversation knew that statement to be a lie but it sounded much better than the truth. General Shepherd had not traveled to Annapolis for the wedding, he just happened to be there that weekend because his 1st Corps—particularly the 1st Mechanized Division—had been pulled from the lines due to casualties and a lack of combat readiness. Or put another way, they had suffered quite a beating while fighting Voggoth.
1st Mech alone had suffered nearly seventy-percent casualties. A fighting force once numbering 10,000 men, three brigades, and numerous support units had been cut to ribbons by The Order’s hordes. Their vacation had come as a result of combat ineffectiveness.
“Can’t stick around for long, though,” he shot Nina a glance that served as a message.
Denise, of course, did not need to hear whatever grim message Shep brought. Perhaps she sensed what was to come and moved away to greet other partygoers.
Shep watched her go.
Nina put words in his mouth, “I know, I know, she’s too young to be getting married.”
“She’s eighteen, right?”
“Seventeen. But listen, the way things are going we don’t really have a lot of time to wait. I’m just saying, I want her to be happy; to have what I never had.”
What I lost.
Shep replaced the cowboy hat on his head. “I’m figurin’ that seventeen these days isn’t quite what it used to be. Besides…” he narrowed his eyes and watched Denise wiggle between tables, “after all she’s been through, she deserves at least one day like this.”
Nina whispered, “It’s bad news, isn’t it?”
Shep breathed deep and then answered in a slow exhale, “The Phillipan and Hoth are gone. The Order broke through at Wetmore the day before yesterday. Whole damn front is collapsing.”
Nina cast her eyes toward the floor in both sorrow and a soldier’s prayer. She had worked often under the command of General William Hoth. She had respected him; liked him. Now—like General Prescott last summer—Hoth’s experience and cunning were lost and the war grew that much more hopeless.
At that moment she felt silly—guilty—for wearing a party dress.
She muttered, “There wasn’t anything specific on the news.”
“Yeah, well, I figure Trevor is tellin’ the news boys not to panic. Probably not a bad idea; it’s bad enough as it is.”
Nina shook her head slowly in disgust. It had not been that long ago when The Empire appeared unstoppable. With a fleet of dreadnoughts, a capable even if somewhat rough around the edges military, and a streamlined bureaucracy that avoided the missteps and poor communication of the pre-Armageddon government.<
br />
Then Evan Godfrey and his political hacks had taken over. The Emperor himself had been thought assassinated. And a grand ‘peace treaty’ left them vulnerable.
As bad as things appeared to be, it could have been worse. While investigating Trevor’s apparent assassination Nina unknowingly led Jon Brewer and a dreadnought to a hidden base of The Order’s floating off the east coast. There they had found the beginnings of a second invasion force; one that certainly would have hit the east coast simultaneously with the western invasion. The war would have been over in days.
“What happens now?”
General Shepherd told her, “Everything out West is lost. We’re retreating toward the Mississippi. It’s not pretty, Nina. The Order is nipping at our heels trying to get us before we can get behind the defenses Brewer is building. And it’s slow going, too. We’re stopping, fighting rearguard, then going again. But it seems ol’ Hoth slowed them down enough. From what Jon says, it looks like Voggoth is going to have to set up camp and do some farming before he can hit the Mississippi.”
Nina knew the slang term ‘farming’. It described how The Order replenished their ranks. Most of Voggoth’s war machines straddled a blurry line between creature and machine. While they were not alive by any reasonable measure, they still needed to ‘grow’.
Nina asked the obvious question, “When are you guys shipping out ?”
“Some of my advanced teams are boarding trains already. I’m expectin’ to bug out in a couple of days. You too, I’d guess.”
Nina’s eyes fixed on him with a determined stare. She answered, “Good,” because that was her way: she wanted to fight.
Shepherd’s attention diverted as he spied the groom across the empty dance floor. Jake, a young man with black hair and a Middle Eastern complexion, wore the gray pants and white shirt of a cadet, but soon those clothes would be turned in for soldier’s BDUs. A lot sooner than should be expected, but with the enemy closing in the luxury of academies, parades, and graduation ceremonies could no longer be afforded.
Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion Page 4