by J. F. Holmes
It would be a full court press now, their honor was involved, which was fine by me. My entire point had been to get the bad guy to commit his entire force, to cram as many troops into the attack as possible. To that end, we had barricaded the streets and alleys around our position. They were going to get in but going past was gonna take some time. Beside me sat Sergeant Rivera behind the 40mm. He had dismissed the rest of his team and was down to about two dozen grenades.
Kowalski came up and said, “Traps are all set, and the heavy weapons are in the basement, except for your Ma Deuce there.” He cracked a smile and said, “Can I get a hand receipt for them?” And he held out a green notebook with all the serial numbers on it.
“Ha, very funny,” I said, exhausted and mixing MRE instant coffee into cocoa powder.
He held the notebook out and said, “No offense, sir, but please just scribble your name on here and then print it. Please?”
I grabbed it and scrawled something illegible across it, then added, ‘Niedermeyer, Curtis, 3rd LT, UNSC’ in block letters and handed it back to him.
“Thank you, Lt. .. Niedermeyer. Always have to cover my ass. It’s a Marine Corps thing.” Then he closed the notebook, slipped it into his cargo pocket and saluted. “I’ll be seeing you around, Major Kincaid.”
“Maybe you will and maybe you won’t. Now get the hell out of here and keep that snot nosed Wells out of trouble.” He nodded and took off.
I turned to Rivera and said, “Got your mask?”
“I’m National Guard, sir, I learned the reason for a mask when we did civil disturbance training and I got a shitload of CS in my face,” he replied, slapping the mask carrier on his leg. “Never go anywhere without it.”
“Yeah, well, be careful. This shit is no joke.” I said nothing else, just focused my binos on the east tower. As I did, I said a prayer to St. Jude, for surely our cause was lost. Then I added one to the old gods, just in case, the ones my people had left behind. I don’t know who heard, but I saw the flags sway slightly, first the stars and stripes, then the green and gold. They lifted and then flapped idly in a light breeze. Not the usually westerly one, but across from east. A goddamned miracle. Then I lowered my binos to the roadbed and they were coming. Rank upon rank of orcs in the front, then Elves behind, all mixed into a mad rush. Both lanes filled to the brim, and I noticed with satisfaction that the orcs seemed not as numerous as before. The pedestrian walkway down the middle was filled with archers. I swear to God, it was a frigging shooting gallery. It was almost like the barrel of the machine gun was lined up to fire straight down the line. The plan, though, didn’t work like that. What I was counting on was for those who came under fire to push forward to get out from under the deadly rain. Ideally mortars would be the best thing, but we had none. I looked over at Rivera, and he nodded back at me, face pale as a ghost. He was scared shitless, and so was I, but we had to hold fast.
“Are you ready?” I asked as the first ranks made their way onto the off ramps. They were being cautious, seeing the hundreds of bodies of their comrades bloating in the sun, and took no notice of the tanker truck parked halfway up the ramp.
“Yessir!’ he said, closed his eyes, saying a small prayer, and then pulled on his mask, clearing it and making sure it had a very tight fit.
I sighted down the barrel of the .50 and opened up on the archers. I could give a shit about the swordsmen, I wanted to kill as many of the ranged weapons as we could. Magic or no, you don’t train an archer overnight. All we were doing was buying time, but if I could make things easier for those who came after us, so much the better. I fired until waves of heat rose off the barrel, and then stopped. The FDNY chemical protection mask was sitting next to me and I slipped it on, pulling the straps tight. While I did Rivera opened up, sending half a dozen grenades towards the rear of the formation. The rounds exploded in the middle of the elven swordsmen, blowing great holes in their ranks. They started to surge forward, pressing on their comrades in front who had been stopped by barriers we had built before the end of the off ramps. The crowd grew denser and denser, more and more packed, and the magic users were in the back, using whips to drive their troops forward.
I had shifted my attention off the archers and arrows suddenly whipped in through our cover, finding the firing slits. One tore across my shoulder, opening a deep slice in the muscle. Another wacked against the ceramic plate in my chest rig and I grunted under the impact. Next to me I heard a yell and turned to see Rivera with a feathered shaft sticking out of the right side of his armpit, just under his armor. He looked down at it in amazement then snapped it off, threw it aside and launched another string of grenades towards the back of the crowd. I joined him with another long burst at the archers, hammering them down. Below and all around us was the roar of thousands of orcs and Elves, crowded down on the road, unable to reach up to us. I’m sure they were spilling over the barricade, but it was too late. It was time. Reaching over I tapped Rivera on the shoulder. He looked at me, his eyes wild and bloody in his mask. Ripping it off he spat out a wad of blood. “I got this, Major,” he coughed. “Take off.”
“Nope. Just do what we planned.” He nodded and shifted the grenade launcher around, sighting at the tanker truck. I kept firing at the rear, driving more of them forward into our position as 40mm grenades impacted, blowing holes in the stainless steel. I muscled the .50 caliber around and emptied the last belt of ammo, further holing the leaking tanker truck. The truck body caught fire, but not before hundreds of gallons of Methyl Isocyanate, an industrial chemical, had vaporized and spread out into the air. The enemy nearest the truck, a packed mass of elven swordsmen, started choking and twitching, screaming as their nerve synapses were short circuited. Others in a spreading ring started falling, overwhelmed by the vapor. It was a poor man’s nerve gas, an organo-phosphate that was the base of industrial insecticides.
Yeah, it was time to go, but I had to watch. I turned to Sergeant Rivera but he was slumped over the MK-19, eyes closed, another arrow through his neck. Dammit, but he had stayed by his post. Turning back to the firing slit, I watched the chemical waft over the packed ranks of warriors, the gentle breeze carrying it back towards the magic users, leaving coughing, twitching and collapsing figures in its wake. How I wished it were VX or Sarin. The horde broke and ran back towards Manhattan. All except one, Lord Tavan. Their leader stood at the apex of the bridge and the fleeing warriors parted around him like a rock in a stream as I watched him through the binoculars. He saw me. I know he did, and I felt his glare, an almost physical heat, so I gave him the finger. Raising his staff, he screamed something in some untranslatable language and brought it down on the road beneath his feet, winding up in a kneeling position. Then he looked up at me and grinned.
It started as a small wave, a distortion in the matrix of reality that rolled towards me. The road shivered like a hard hit tuning fork and as the wave rolled forward it seemed to gather strength. I dropped the binoculars as it hit the eastern tower and the vibration grew, becoming a sound, and I ran faster than I ever had in my life towards the back of the building. It was a sound, now, gritting my bones and making the walls shake around me and the floor vibrate under my feet. I took the stairs in two jumps, pain shooting through my ankle as I rolled it, dove through the open doorway and crawled underneath the pumper truck, wrapping my hands around my head.
Then everything turned to black.
Chapter 28
From the war journals of Lord Thar Tavan, Head of House Tavor, Commander of the Third Legion.
I found her after the power of the Way subsided. Walking across the thrice damned bridge, cursing to the gods, the dead around me.
The human Kincaid lied. Her face was peaceful, young even; as I remembered her from the centuries before. What had I driven her too? This was perhaps even more painful than if he had disfigured her. I cannot write; the grief is more than I can bear.
The bridge swayed, the supports and steel cabling damaged by the massive spell he had unleashed. High above
the two flags snapped in the breeze but Tavan ignored them. He only had eyes for the huge mass of brown fur that lay on the far side of the bridge. She would be there, if anywhere.
He stepped around the dead until there were too many to avoid, and then he walked across their bodies. Many were faces he knew, knights of his house and their liegemen, lying still with faces contorted by poison or armor rent by explosives, and his rage grew as he walked. They would pay, a dozen for each of his troops that lay there. The humans had no honor, fighting with weapons that required no skill, merely the will to poison.
Ellarissa lay there up against her friend, a bit of his pelt grasped firmly in her hand. He knelt and called her name, closed his eyes and searched for her spirit. A glimpse, far far away, too far. She was a small figure walking up a ridge, surrounded by hundreds of others, the ridge that marked the divide between this world and the next, the ridge with the unknown on the other side. He screamed her name in his mind, a soul tearing agony in his chest. She turned, slightly, to look at him across the vast distance, a sad, bitter smile on her face. Then she looked away and continued forward, to never look at life again. Tavan watched her go, his child.
He opened his eyes and looked again at the two bodies, the bear and the girl, small, crumpled, seeming asleep like they did after a hard day’s play when she was a young. No tears appeared on his face but none of his retainers dared to look at him. Slowly he stood, exhausted, and collected himself. That she would proceed him into the next world was something he had never contemplated. Her father picked up her body and lifted it gently, holding her up. The bear he could do nothing about, his strength was almost gone.
Gradually as he held her and exerted his will she moved, becoming surrounded by a dancing white light that lifted her out of his arms. The corpse twirled about in the air, her garments changing from armor to simple robes and her pale hair whipping about. Slowly she settled, one hand uplifted, and she was a simple elf maiden again, no longer a warrior. The body, now hard as stone, settled to the ground and stood amidst the fallen dead. Tavan expended the last of his power and called forth a small stone butterfly, placing it on her still finger. Then he started walking up the bridge as sunlight cleared the last building and lit the brilliant white marble of what was once his daughter.
Chapter 29
US Army Special Forces (Delta) - Team Gulf Three
Waking up was a bitch, and I’m not sure I even wanted to. Everything fucking hurt. It was dark, my mouth was dry and tasted of dust and I had pissed myself while I was unconscious. Rather than move before I had any idea what was going on, I focused on my surroundings before I even opened my eyes.
No sounds. Not traffic, not gunfire, not footsteps. Far, far off in the distance a very high altitude jet. The quiet was actually unsettling. I DID hear, eventually, the screech of brakes on a train. Found out later that it was the Elves using the LIRR to move their troops around, out into Long Island. I smelled motor oil and brick dust, and then slowly opened my eyes.
I was on my side and I could barely see, six inches in front of my face, a flattened truck tire. There was an opening in the debris behind the tire, maybe three inches wide, that I only noticed when a light swept past. Not electric, not torch light, a dancing crystal blueness that flickered unevenly, so probably the enemy doing some of their magic shit. I looked at my watch, unbuttoning the cover and saw that it was 02:25 in the morning, the next day. About twenty one hours since the last fight on the bridge, and I wondered if I had been out more from exhaustion than any injury. I turned my head slowly and looked around and realized that I was still underneath the pumper truck. It was completely surrounded by rubble and brick, with all four tires flattened. I didn’t have much room to move so I took inventory of what I had on me. My camelback was punctured but I managed to squeeze a mouthful of water out, which felt like the best whiskey I had ever tasted. Then I felt hungry as hell, so I dug in my cargo pocket slowly as I could and pulled a smashed Snickers bar out. I managed to quietly open it and shove it in my mouth. Never frigging underestimate the importance of food in combat.
I lay there as the sun rose, trying to figure a way out of this problem. There were people moving around outside, I could see them occasionally block out the light. Very quietly and cautiously I moved some brick fragments out of the way and took a look from as far back as I could. Fuck me, those were hobnailed boots. Heavy duty leather things with an occasional fine pair of suede Elf shoes. I had my .45 in a leg holster and a couple of magazines and I was pretty sure I would last about point zero two seconds. This was one knife fight I didn’t want to bring a gun too. Still, it was getting pretty hot under the pumper and the dust was choking. The air was pretty hazy with smoke, too.
Then I felt a vibration or something underneath me, through the pavement. At first I thought it was something big going by, but then I felt a poke in the knee, like the pavement was moving. I scooted over as a piece of metal jammed up from under the pavement. Then a couple more pokes until a hole appeared. Then a gnarled fist poked out, hammering the pavement aside until finally a metal cap on top of a pair of bushy eyebrows. A little further and the lined, dirty face of Tor Ironhand appeared. He held a comical finger to his lips in a shushing motion, and I whispered, “No shit!”
He disappeared and I crawled over to the hole. A light shone up and blinded me, then moved over to the side. Ten feet down was the face of Master Sergeant Clark wearing a respirator and wholly Mother of God the smell. “The sewer? Really?” I hissed.
“Just get the fuck down here, fast as you can,” he said in a muffled voice. He didn’t have to tell me twice. I shucked off my plate carrier, stuffed my extra ammo in my pockets and crawled into the hole. Hell no I didn’t like it; it was barely wide enough for my shoulders. Thankfully it angled slightly, enough to allow me to crawl rather than fall. It was, though, perfectly round. Damn those dwarves did good work.
“Hey, Tor, when this is all over, you might want to get a job with the cit-” and then I slipped and fell into a six foot high sewer main. When I stood up I was covered in shit, piss and toilet paper, and I immediately started gagging and throwing up. Clark emptied a canteen across my face, handed me some wet wipes and then a mask, which I slipped on gratefully. Then we started splashing our way east.
I was glad that Tor was with us; his sense of direction underground was nothing short of a miracle. He led us unerringly for more than a dozen blocks; sometimes we had to squeeze through smaller pipes but we made it. Eventually we came to a hole that they had dug to break into the pipes and that led us to a basement.
“Are we safe here? I gotta get this shit off me.” I meant that literally. “Scratch that, give me a sitrep first.”
Clark sat down and started shedding the hazmat suit he was wearing, revealing civilian clothes underneath. “Well, the City is done. The Mayor announced a surrender and cessation of hostilities at midnight. All PD, Guard and Reservists are to cease fighting but they can keep their small arms for stability and law enforcement, and they’re to report to the nearest local precinct house.”
“That’s stupid,” I said, pulling my boots off and washing them down at a sink in the corner. I didn’t know whose house this was but the basement was tricked out as a small apartment. The lights were off but I had done plenty of work in the dark.
“Not really. Most of the Elves’ troop strength is still north and west, fighting the Regular Army now. Second string is out patrolling, and the cops have been decimated. There’s a shitload of refugees moving all over the place and if the cops can be employed keeping civilians safe, more the better. Imagine how many people will die if the war just keeps raging. As much as I hate the shithead, guy does have a duty to his citizens.”
“And that’s why you have a Masters in Sociology and I’m just a basket weaver,” I answered, stripping my uniform off. I’d wash it and put it on wet if I had too, but I wanted to clean out all the cuts and abrasions I had gotten as fast as possible. Dipping a wound in raw sewage was a gre
at way to die of raging infection. “What else?”
“Well, the Elves have seized all the power generation, so they control the lights and utilities. Big ass fight up at Indian Point nuke plant, from what I hear, but they’ve got it. There’s a 10th Mountain brigade at West Point still holding out, but they’re going to get outflanked soon enough. From what I can tell, every piece of armor in the Northeast, and that ain’t much, is setting up a Main Line of Resistance along the I-84 corridor. Of course, they have the bad guys from Boston at their backs, so that isn’t going to hold long. Most of our resources are going towards the fight for DC.”
I didn’t ask him how he knew, just took it at face value that what he was telling me was true, or else he wouldn’t have said it. “Any good news?”
He nodded, headlamp dancing around the room. “Allies, well, Hollis is at the safe house. There’s two captains from the 69th who survived, the rest of their leadership was wiped out, but they said they were going to fight in the suburbs, plus they’re staff weenies. Zivcovic and about half his boys got out. The Rabbi is dead, and his people took off for upstate.”
“Damn, he was a good man. Go on.” So many of them were lost, because the good men stood and fought.
“Internet is still up. I don’t think our new Lords and Masters know what it is, or if they do, they’re discounting it.”
“Mistake number two,” I said.
“Uh huh. I got a message from JSOC about three hours ago,” he said, and his voice was hard. “ILLIAD, followed by CYCLOPS.”
“Jesus Christ!” I muttered out loud. “Not ODYSSEY?
“Why do you pray to your deity, Kincaid?” asked Tor, who had just finished filling in the hole that led to the sewer. “What do these cryptic messages mean?”
“Well, the first one means that our leadership expects us to lose the war. The second is a message for all military personnel to initiate what we call ‘asymmetric’ warfare. Odyssey would have meant for us to leave the city and find our way back to our base.”