The blob of Chariots rotated, fast. Faster. Spinning like a warped top while still hovering in the sky. A glowing halo of energy formed around mass.
The missile closed.
Kristy did not wait; she loaded air-to-air AMRAAMs into the other three forward launch bays and hurried to fire. She moved a moment too slow.
The Chariots exploded. Not in shrapnel; at least not entirely. More important, they exploded with energy: a ring of crackling blue power that slammed into and coated the dreadnought like a rogue wave sweeping across the deck of a boat. As the wall of energy moved from bow to stern, flashes and bolts of blue and green sparked from the deck plates and warned of more sinister chain reactions within.
The blast enveloped and then passed the bridge and tower section. Electronic work stations flickered; some shot sparks. Video screens filled with dead air before stabilizing; the hair on the back of Kristy’s neck stood straight. The room felt electrically charged.
Then it was gone. The work stations returned to normal operation. Monitors showed what they meant to show. With the exception of several blown but easily replaceable fuses, the Chrysaor felt—felt…
Kristy could not immediately identify her feeling of uneasiness. The Chariots were gone. Ahead of the ship waited the Leviathan, its grotesque skyscraper-sized body stood still like a morbid statue.
Captain Kaufman checked the main batteries.
Fifty percent.
What?
Forty-five percent.
Warning lights flashed across her screens in succession. One stood out above the rest: “DANGER: Gravity Generator Magnetic Field Compromised”.
A frantic voice from the engineering section—located at the bottom rear of the ship—yelled into her earpiece confirming the words on her display: “The grav generators are off-line! Jesus-shit they just cut out!”
Everyone on the bridge—everyone throughout the ship—felt it in their bellies like riders on a rollercoaster cresting that first big drop. The entire craft started to fall. Kristy’s stomach lurched toward her throat.
“Emergency boosters!”
She swerved around in the command module, located the set of controls every dreadnought commander feared to need, and quickly flicked a series of toggles. A hundred small round plates fell away from the ship’s undercarriage and row upon row of rocket engines burst to life with fire and smoke.
The thrust of the emergency engines sounded a like a line of explosions from beneath the mighty ship. That feeling of descending slowed but did not end. The altimeter ticked under 1,000 feet and continued. The back-up rockets were never meant to keep the incredible weight of the ship aloft; they were meant as a supplement to the grav generators in the case of emergency.
Main Forward Battery Energy Level: 30%.
Kristy—in an act driven as much by spite as anything else—punched the ‘fire’ button. Red strands of power shot out from the bow, across the sky, and into the front of the hideous beast.
The Chaktaw convoy stood ready to move. Nina saw the small army waiting in rows across the eight lanes of Interstate 64 including Lizards the size of elephants serving as pack animals, motorized tricycles with huge wheels, some kind of missile trucks toward the rear of the formation, and hundreds of infantry huddled in groups conversing, snacking, and checking gear.
She sensed unease in the air. Maybe even confusion among their ranks. Maybe the same feeling of oppression her people felt when under The Order’s unnatural storm clouds.
The alien soldiers eyed her with a mixture of suspicion and awe. They stared through in a way that made her feel they regarded her more as a strange curiosity than a reviled enemy. Perhaps they did not consider her worthy of their contempt; an over confidence she planned to make them pay for. Indeed, her escort gave her only a quick look for weapons and hence her knife remained hidden. She did not know if their lack of a thorough search indicated laziness or if they took it for granted that she would act honorably and respect the truce.
A cluster of homes on wooded lots sat just off the highway to the south. Her Chaktaw escort led her through the surprised formation of fighters to one lone tent seemingly made of canvass or something very much like it assembled in a driveway next to the remains of a collapsed duplex.
The tent appeared hastily constructed for their meeting. Perhaps some kind of tradition among the aliens, she did not know but she did care: killing the Chaktaw leader would be a lot easier out of view from the rest of their army. It might even give her a chance to take several more with her before they realized their mistake in inviting the wolf into their hen house.
Her escort pulled a drawstring and motioned her inside the tent. A small oval table made of what resembled plastic sat in the center of the chamber. A solitary glowing orb hung on a rope or string from the ceiling creating a cone of light over the center but left the outer rim of the interior in shadows.
The escort withdrew, closing the flap.
Two Chaktaw remained inside: One at the table who studied Nina in a curious manner. His eyes widened, then shrunk to slits; the corners of his mouth changed between something like a frown to something like a grin, but not a friendly one. His whiskers twitched and his hands tugged at a plain brown tunic. He plainly did not know what to make of her. Either he was confused to find her group so far behind the wrong side of the battle line or her audacity at daring to challenge his advance annoyed him. Whatever the case, she held his complete attention.
The second Chaktaw remained in one of the dark corners of the tent sitting on a chair. Nina could not make out this one’s features but pegged him or her for a bodyguard but if that bodyguard held a weapon it was not obvious to Nina.
The male at the table raised a small microphone device. His lips moved and spoke in his native tongue but the device broadcast synthesized English. The disconnect between the movement of his mouth and the words from the speaker reminded Nina of a poorly dubbed Godzilla movie.
“I am Force Command Jaff.”
Nina replied, “My name is Captain Nina Forest,” but the tactical computer inside her warrior’s mind busied itself with a plan: stoop fast, pull the blade, reach over and cut his throat, then deal with the Chaktaw bodyguard or aid or whatever he or she was in the corner. The commotion would summon her escort and a sentry or two. If she were fast and lucky she could get hold of one of their rifles. That would make the killing and sowing of confusion all the easier.
“You are either very foolish or very brave to attempt to block our advance.”
“Yeah, well, whatever.”
Jaff struggled to understand her reply as it played through the translator.
“Yes,” Jaff worked to find the right words from his dialect for translation to her language. “I must tell you that your position has changed. This is why I have asked you here.”
Nina spoke harshly as cover for her actions: her fingers tugged at her pant leg, trying to raise the cuff enough so that she would not have to struggle to free the blade when she lunged for it.
“Look, I know what this is all about. I fought you guys before. And I’ll tell you what Trevor Stone told the last Force Commander who messed with my people. I’ll tell you to stick your offer of mass execution in whatever orifice passes for an asshole on you things. We’re going to fight you and before this day is over, you’re going to wish you never came to Earth.”
Nina felt the pant leg rise above the hilt of the KA-BAR. She summoned her courage and prepared to strike.
Jaff—clearly a look of disappointment on his face—answered, “You are a very strange and dangerous creature, Captain Nina Forest.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
The Leviathan wobbled and a noise like a howl coming from some unseen source reverberated through the air. Sprays of sickening fluids squirted in small waterfalls from the cuts in its flesh.
Energy levels in the forward batteries drained to zero and blast from the Chrysaor faded after cutting a deep gash across the front of the walki
ng skyscraper. A host of squirming things hurried to seal the breach but green and yellow streams still poured from the monster.
Kristy realized that her ship could no longer muster enough power for the boppers to knock down the Leviathan.
An alarm sounded on her console. The altimeter ticked off feet in bunches. Another display indicated two emergency boosters ran out of rocket fuel. More would join them in seconds.
The Leviathan loomed outside the bridge window. It had no face, but she imagined a grin there. Voggoth’s grin.
Captain Kristy Kaufman stood straight in her command module. She raised a hand to the bobby pins holding her hair in a tight, proper bun and pulled them free.
In the years since the invasion, she had sacrificed much but she refused to sacrifice her appearance. Perfectly manicured nails, matching outfits, and just enough makeup to capture the right highlights of her features.
None of it came from vanity. Instead, it was her personal resistance to the forces of Armageddon. They could turn her from a white collar worker into a soldier; they could take away her Lexus and Caribbean vacations. They ended her dreams of white picket fences and big families. But they never stole her dignity. And she would face the end with that dignity intact.
She tossed aside the virtual reality goggles and stepped out from behind the monitors, computers, and keyboards. Some orders were best spoken directly to the crew.
Kristy raised a fist and growled her final command.
“Helm—RAMMING SPEED!”
They followed without question. The helmsmen ignited the hydrogen engines and a jolt kicked the magnificent flying city in the rear end. The battleship continued to fall slowly from the sky as one by one the emergency boosters faded. But most of the momentum went forward.
Kristy held a safety rail tight and enjoyed the show through the bridge windows. The Leviathan discerned the move too late. The bow hit it midsection and pushed. The gargantuan tumbled over and the Chrysaor fell on top of it like a heavy weight wrestler working for a pin.
The stern rose higher and the bow dipped lower becoming a mile-long dagger. Kristy watched SteelPlus gouge into the beast’s skin. The front end of the dreadnought bent and crumbled in a wave of destruction rolling across the flight deck toward the tower. Crewmen lost their footing as the angle increased; two flew from their stations and slammed into the forward wall. Papers, equipment, and chairs flew around the crescent-shaped room. Kristy held tight.
Sprays of Leviathan-gore jettisoned into the air and coated the bridge windows. The crumbling front end raced toward the bridge. Bursts of yellow and orange and black joined the carnival of carnage as sub systems, fuel tanks, ammo caches, and batteries erupted.
Kristy let out one last holler in either victory or terror. The tower of the Dreadnought collapsed; the roaring engines tore the tail end apart as the ship lost all structural integrity.
The crushed and eviscerated Leviathan lay beneath the burning Chrysaor, and together they made a funeral pyre fit for a God.
26. Storm of Eternity
Jon surveyed the battlefield.
To his right looking north along Front Street he saw eight vehicles burning and the scattered remains of three more across both the paved road and the grass of Bicentennial Park. The columns of black, oily smoke stretched into the sky and mingled with the thunderheads spawned by Voggoth’s army. The greasy smell of ignited fuel, the burning odor of expended ammunition, and the putrid stench of death swirled together and hung across the scene so heavy Jon thought he might suffocate.
Several squads remained intact across the waterfront and a pair of Vietnam-era APCs rumbled into position along the railroad tracks where they disembarked about 15 newcomers—most in Internal Security police uniforms—who searched for cover in the shadow of the toppled cable-stayed bridge.
A field adjacent to the basement of the destroyed building where Jon’s bunker lay had been filled with foxholes, trenches, and armored vehicles at the start of the battle. Now he saw bodies, blasted sandbags, and an overturned LAV. Smoke from the fires and explosions settled over the lot like a fog. Through that fog he saw signs of movement: a gun barrel here, a helmet there, but he could not accurately gauge how many men remained in those positions.
To his left—to the south—a similar sight. The heart of the truss-style Memorial Bridge lay in the Mississippi, leaving a raised highway and on-ramp leading to nothing. Beneath that a substantial number of soldiers still fought from inside the remains of an industrial building as well as from trenches dug in the riverbank. A badly-scarred but still-functional Abrams tank stood defiantly in the open on Main Street and a pair of matching Humvees held their ground within the shell of a destroyed cistern along the river.
Still holding, Jon thought, but the real battle hasn’t even started yet.
The Order’s weapons for that ‘real’ battle assembled on the far bank with a massive cloud of smoke from the destroyed Chrysaor floating behind like the back curtain of a stage.
They resembled frogs. Big mechanical frogs; each the size of a house with spiked treads instead of feet. Armored plating, cameras for eyes, and mist-spitting tubes along their back ensured they would not be mistaken for Earthly creatures, but the frog analogy held in Jon Brewer’s mind.
They lined up among the flattened woodlands of the western side of the Mississippi; about two dozen of them. White mist attempted to hide their activities but humanity’s defenders saw the intent: the time had come for Voggoth’s army to cross the river.
In addition to the frog-things, the twin whirlwinds that had spent most of the battle dancing on The Order’s flank swept in to the river bank. As the swirling clouds of white and gray approached, the winds slowed and collapsed in toward a central point like a fog machine in reverse. From those dying winds materialized a host of demonic creatures.
Jon recognized their gray cloaks and skeletal faces with empty black eyes and elongated jaws: the Wraiths. Each of the two fading windstorms spawned hundreds of the foot soldiers as well as a pair of giants, each one eight-stories tall with skinny bodies and slack-jawed maniac faces. Their extremely long arms dragged on the ground and ended with big fists attached to rubbery wrists.
The Order’s assault did not go unchallenged.
Jon radioed, “Mortar teams open up, damn it! We need anti-armor up here!” Then on another frequency, “Shep, get ready.”
“Roger that, Jon, we’re ready to roll,” came the radioed reply.
The remaining mortar teams in the field to the north opened fire. Explosions tore across the western river bank. One of the frog-things blew into two pieces; a squad of Wraiths flew into the air and broke apart into grains of dust.
“Cassy, what’s your status?”
She radioed back, “I’ve left a few units at the school and am moving into position with the rest of my riders. Just give us the go and we’re there.”
He admired her enthusiasm.
Tendrils of white mist spread across the western dike in an attempt to cover the approach. The giants—all four of them—strode in big steps to the riverbank and added their unique form of artillery to the fight.
Their arms raised high above their savage heads.
A Javelin anti-tank missile hit one of the creatures in the chest, eliciting a roar of anguish and knocking it backwards before it could complete its strike.
The other three, however, were not stopped. Their fists hit the ground. Three focused earthquakes sped from the opposite bank and caused the water of the Mississippi to boil; a huge whirlpool sprung to life in the center of the river sucking down the overturned barges.
The tremor reached the east shore. What remained of the pavement of Front Street cracked and shook. Three huge sink holes opened to a hiss of steam and a geyser of water.
Soldiers—both career professionals and post-Armageddon civilian recruits—along the river retreated in panic; a few fell into the holes, most found new places to hide among the bombed-out, burned houses and shops of Qui
ncy.
Two machine gun teams and a squad of irregulars joined the general in his foundation-bunker. Jon could not blame his men for retreating but Voggoth’s first intent—to clear a bridgehead—proved successful.
The protective shield of mist hung like a thin veil over the far side of the Mississippi, yet Jon could still see the creatures busy at work. The frog-things reached the water’s edge. Their mouths—if that is what they could be called—opened as if the things needed to vomit. A flap—what Jon’s eyes saw as a tongue—stretched overtop the water all the way to the east bank where it dug into the ground and root-like protrusions cemented the seal. An instant latter that tongue—the bridge—solidified into a material resembling hardened rubber.
“Shep! Cassy! Better get up here!”
More than 20 of the insta-bridges spanned the Mississippi from the warehouses and docks a quarter mile south of Jon’s position to Riverfront Park opposite Quisippi Island north of the now-destroyed Memorial bridge. The Wraiths came first across the bridges and the giants waded the waters taking pains to avoid the spinning whirlpool. Jon suspected the rest of Voggoth’s army lined up to follow the vanguard across.
“Get those guns going, boys,” he told the men around him who in turn used the edge of the concrete slab as leverage for their M249 machine guns. The rest of the soldiers—some in army-reg BDUs others in street clothes—added to the fight with carbines and hunting rifles.
Jon thought he might go deaf from the roar of the guns but they sounded sweet music nonetheless. The first pack of Wraiths to set foot on Bicentennial Park were ground into dust instantly. More followed.
A runner jumped into the open foundation carrying cartridges of ammo for the heavy guns. As the soldiers accepted the fresh bullets, Jon patted one of the heavy gunners on the shoulder and motioned down the destroyed block.
“Get your ass a hundred yards south,” the soldier saw where one of the bridgeheads faced only small arms fire. “We got more than just one bridge here!”
Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion Page 47