by J. F. Holmes
“Tell me about the orcs. They don’t seem to exactly be jumping to obey the Elves’ commands.” I thought again of the squad that had turned away. It was pretty much as close to death as I had ever come.
“Well now. Have ye seen the markings on some of the more, um, eager orc troops? The ones who are keen to whip or eat a human? It’s a white hand. They’re from one clan that’s been fighting for the Elves for centuries. Bred for cruelty they are. Now, the red arrow, well, they’re tribes that lost the Winter War, aye, jest a few of yer years ago.” More Fosters.
“OK, new to me, though I thought something was up with that. So you’re saying that the front line orcs aren’t here by choice.” I had taken out a notebook and was scribbling furiously, as well as recording. Trying to, anyway. The more often I focused on Tor’s face with my phone the more distorted the picture got. I settled keeping him slightly off screen.
“Well, some are, some aren’t. You wave a bloody sword in an orc’s, as you call them, in their faces and they’re going to go blind with battle lust. But yes, they are a defeated people, the ones of the Red Arrow. Of course, there are many clans, and some who have lost their name. Rogues you would call them. They were our allies in the wars long ago.”
“Well, that’s different,” said Clark. “They aren’t mentioned much in mythology, and our literature has turned them into pretty much the bad guys.”
“Aye, because they ARE the bad guys, too often. It just depends on what end of the sword you’re on. There’s more than enough that will slit your throat for a coin or just to feel the joy of it.” His face was grim, with a thousand yard stare that I knew far too well.
I nodded. “We had a general who once said, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.””
“He was a wise one. Did he win his war?” Tor asked.
Shaking my head, I told him about the American Civil War and General Lee. Our talk diverged into me telling him about Earth, but still being guarded. I trusted Tor, but only so far. Finally we got around to magic.
“So, basically its energy, as I understand it,” I tried to think out loud, see if he was following. I’m sure the sciences of both our societies were very different.
He scrunched his brow up and pondered. “I read a little of one of your books. This energy is what makes things happen, correct?”
“Well, in a way, all matter is energy, just in a different form ...” and I trailed off. “Yes, it’s what makes things happen,” I stated. “Let me put it this way. In all things there is an energy, like lightning. We use it to run all of our things, like this phone, the lights, and so on.”
“Aye, I understand. So some are able to use their mind to change this energy from one thing to another. Focus it, move it, use it. So what you call ‘magic’, well then, magic is having the force of will to make these things happen the way they want them to happen. Elves have mastered the use of it, though the nobility keeps close control of it. For some it’s part of them, like when ye saw me healing your mate.”
“My … what?” I spluttered.
“Yer mate. Armsman … Armswoman O'Neill. I can smell the bond between you and she has marked you.” Tor said it very matter of fact, but Clark spit out his beer and almost choked as he laughed.
I swear I was turning red. “Can we get back to this debrief?” I begged, but Tor had a huge grin on his face, big white teeth showing through his beard.
“And ye mate with Armswoman Hollis, my friend Clark. The nose knows. You humans are such interesting creatures. More like the Elves than you know.”
From the upstairs came Hollis’ voice, “Tor, mention that again and I will shave your face while you sleep.”
“I think I have a hole to dig, if you don’t mind,” said Tor. “Females are all the same, regardless of the species. Best not to cross them.”
“I HEARD THAT TOO!”
Chapter 33
It had actually been easy to get back into the City. Two checkpoints, a fake NY drivers’ Commercial Driver’s License and a story about being a trucker going to pick up my rig on the west side. Sergeant O'Neill, who I had tracked down on Day Four, sat in the drivers’ seat. Her story was that she was the shipping company rep, dropping off drivers to recover trucks.
We sat and listened to the radio as we waited for the line to inch forward. The only thing I actually trusted, though for all I know it was faked, was a BBC broadcast that came in on one of the satellite channels. I can see why the Elves let it run though. It was far better than any propaganda they could have done, since apparently, we were getting our asses kicked.
“... and the provisional French government has signed a peace treaty with the invading forces. The signatory is identified as Lady Azra of House Trelain, from the government press release. It is unclear if French army forces are still fighting, but UAV footage shows alien troops marching through Paris in parade formation. In Ireland King Charles has said that resistance will continue until the last man, but forces have retreated to Wales and London is still burning fiercely, a week into the fighting.”
“Damn French,” I said but kept listening.
“... reports of refugee camps in Libya being torched by dragons have been confirmed, with casualties in the thousands. The Mayor of New York has declared Manhattan and the surrounding areas a free city and requested a cessation of hostilities.”
“THAT COCKSU-” and O'Neill launched into an expletive laden tirade against the Mayor in particular and politicians in general. I left her vent but then shushed her when we approached the checkpoint before the Queens Midtown tunnel. I rolled up and let the window down, marveling at how fast things had changed less than a week since the invasion started. Again, humans working with orcs, and the Elves standing by with their thumbs up their asses. This time we just had to go with it, and our cover story was good. Digging deep into my youth I put on my best Long Island accent and told the human what we were there for. He tapped something into a tablet and then started giving me shit. “So you say that your truck got left on the West Side Highway. What was it carrying?”
I looked at the weasel and thought hard. What the hell would a truck driving down the West Side be carrying? Clothes? Not worth much anymore. Food? Spoiled by now. “Well, I don’t really want to say. Might be that my bosses would be upset if the Elves,” and I nodded at the shiny armored figure about twenty meters away, “got first crack at it, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know what you mean.” He was a pasty faced white guy, kinda chunky, one of those career civil servants that just get paler and paler and turn more and more into an amorphous blob sitting at their desk.
O'Neill saved me by leaning over and saying, “Good quality liquor, stuff you can’t just magic up, and let’s just say our business is a ‘Family’ business. You know, construction, union stuff, garbage hauling, providing safety to small businesses, loans, that kinda stuff. Elves or no Elves, they might be pretty upset that someone stopped us from recovering their property, Mister …” and she leaned even more forward to read the badge around his neck. “Mister Wallace. Mister Kevin Wallace, NYC Bureau of Buildings. Noted.” When she said it there was a very implied threat in her voice, but she also held out her hand, palm down.
Mister Wallace thought for only a split second then reached over to shake her hand and I saw a wink of gold in the morning sunlight. While she did she had to reach across me, and I was very conscious of how clean she smelled. Damn me if she didn’t take her time to move back, either. Mission, Kincaid, Mission. The flunky waved us forward and the car behind us, carrying a couple of businessmen in suits, rolled up. I watched in the rear view as Wallace made a motion and three orcs tore the doors off, then proceeded to cut the men down with their swords. One made a run for back towards Queens. An Elf waited to make a long shot and then skewered him through the shoulders. I barely saw that as we headed underground but it made my blood boil.
The tunnel was lit by more of the weird glow stuff, not the n
ormal electric lights, and I swear to God we passed one of those scorpions sitting up on the walkways and there was an Elf riding on top of the damned thing. “Just keep driving,” said O'Neill, though her voice was shaky. When we exited out onto West 38th street she was pale in the summer sunlight.
“You OK? I asked.
She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Yeah. Even Wonder Woman can get PTSD, you know? See you tonight.”
I pulled over and dropped her off, watching her head down one of the alleys that ran between many of the buildings in New York. She was dressed in jeans and hoodie despite the heat, and probably armed to the teeth. It was good to watch her walk away. Stay on mission, Kincaid. My job today was reconnaissance.
There was a little traffic, some delivery trucks, no cop cars, very few pedestrians. Quite a few of the store fronts were shattered and glass was everywhere. I was on the West Side, a bit off the axis of advance that the Elves had taken to move south, so this was probably more caused by looting and panic. What I did see pissed me off to no end. Three work parties with orc overseers, whips in their hands, lashing chained humans who were cleaning up bodies and debris. They ignored me as I drove by, perhaps thinking that anyone in a car in Manhattan must be OK. More likely they just didn’t give a crap. Many of the prisoners wore the remains of military or police uniforms and they moved like they were in some kind of a coma.
Not my problem right now. The team had jobs to do today, including securing a safe house in Manhattan. The apartment was out because I didn’t want to be lugging equipment up and down thirtysomething flights of stairs and it had no escape route. No, something low rise south of Canal Street, with sympathetic neighbors. That meant Chinatown. If we had the money, I’m sure they could stay bought, and we could get most weapons that we needed. That was Hollis’ job, though. Mine was gathering information, so I parked the car down an alley around 50th Street and locked it, then hid the keys in the front grill. If I got caught and stripped of all my possessions, at least I’d have a vehicle if I need to E & E.
Heading east, I marveled at how quiet it was. No traffic, no horns. It reminded me of 9-11, after everyone who could have fled out of the city, and it was creepy as hell. Not a lot of people lived on the south side of Central Park anyways, except for the very rich, and screw them. I hope they were starving in their high ceiling multimillion dollar apartments, but then again, they somehow always came out on top.
The only real danger I had was passing one of the slave gangs. I had dirtied my face and wore a Consolidated Edison uniform shirt, carrying a hard hat under my arm and a tool bag over my shoulder. In the tool bag was a multimeter, a whole bunch of heavy electric wiring and connectors, wire cutters, strippers, screwdrivers and whatever other electrical stuff I could scrounge. Around my neck was a lanyard with a ConEd ID card reading ‘Zdzisław Moździerski, Line Tech III’, which I had spent time memorizing on the ride in. If I got stopped it was a lot harder for a witness to remember such a complicated name and it would come out something something “ski”. I walked past like I had somewhere to be, a harried and pissed off look on my face and a clipboard under my arm. Nine times out of ten that will get you where you want to go. This was one time.
“Hey you!” shouted a human wearing coveralls and an armband with what I had come to recognize as the family colors of House Tavor, or whatever the hell they called themselves. He stood, unchained and not actually doing anything, the one Elf there was rooting around through the remains of a jewelry store, looking at watches
“Whaddayawant?” I said as the man approached me. One of the orcs glanced over then looked away and proceeded to start whipping one of the slaves, laughing as he did so. It wasn’t punishment, it was fun, and I had a hard time resisting the urge to draw my Glock and start blasting. “I got shit to do!” I continued in my most exasperated voice.
“Who are you and where are you going?” asked the turncoat in an obnoxious, demanding tone. This was a black guy with a Caribbean accent. Old and careworn but puffed up with new self-importance. Well screw him.
I gave him my name and showed him my badge and the work order we had printed up. This was so screwed up; five days into an invasion and three days after intense combat and I was standing in the middle of Manhattan arguing with some dude who had flipped sides faster than a pancake. “I gotta take care of this cell tower on top of the Cartega Building. Look, if you want to call it in, go ahead, but I dunno who you’re gonna talk to. They just told us to get to work on this this morning, it’s all a fuckin mess. I’ll go home in a heartbeat, but my boss was freaking out about someone from House Tavan, whatever the hell that is, losing his shit and threatening to kill everyone. I walked all the way over here from Penn after getting on a train this morning because one of them guys,” and I pointed to the Elf, “came to Whitestone and told us all to get back to work. And he had fucking sword and everything. I mean, shit, I don’t care who I work for as long as I get paid, I’m a fuckin union guy.” I went on like this, bitching about everything until he just shoved the clipboard back at me and told me to move out. That I did, cursing, waiting to get an arrow through the back of my skull as I walked away.
Chapter 34
If you’re going to use a disguise, then roll with it. I was supposed to be fixing a cell tower, so up a set of stairs I went. I already had a key to the apartment building that we had wacked the Chinese four days ago, so I went there. Right up the stairwell to the roof, fifty six floors up, and my ass was dragging by the time I got there. Still, it was a beautiful day, without all the pollution that usually hazed out the view. I had a hell of a view of Central Park and Midtown Manhattan but I wasn’t there to play tourist. Checking around for any close by dragon I pulled an urban pattern poncho out of my bag and slung it over me, being careful not to silhouette myself against the skyline. Then I put a powerful spotting scope in a small tripod and sighted in.
For a moment I didn’t actually know what I was looking at. The portal was still there with troops and supplies moving through it. Smaller ports had lines of humans moving into them, naked and chained, and there were holding pens distributed throughout the Great Lawn. The rest … looked like some kind of fantasyland. The buildings on the east side were slowly being tied together by a spidery glittering web of gossamer crystal. I learned later that they chose the eastern buildings so they could conduct worship as the sun set, something to do with their ancestors “going West,” whatever that meant. Swooping bridges between rooftops, glossy sheets of light that ran down the face of the buildings, well, I had to hand it to them, it was pretty beautiful. Then I got down to the serious business of making a military assessment.
There were far more tents but they seemed less occupied. That made sense: fighting was still going on to the west. At that moment there was a flash that lit up the daytime sky, brief, like a lightbulb burning out, far far to the north, a spark that seemed to appear behind the horizon. At my vantage point, six hundred feet up in the air, I could see maybe thirty miles, most of the edge obscured by the Hudson Highlands. This was much further, maybe up around Albany, and the bang reached me after a second light flickered to the west. Then another farther east. What I didn’t know was that an elven army had just been obliterated by a nuke as it advanced up Interstate 87 just outside Lake George. That only worked once, though. To my west they stopped it with some kind of shield up by the Delaware water gap. The flash to the east wasn’t a nuke, well, not really. It was the USS America, trying to re embark the remains of a Marine Expeditionary Unit out of New London. The entire ship went up in one huge fireball, leaving the Marines to fight a last ditch stand as sailors rushed to get one of the last Virginia class subs up to steam and out to sea. Yeah, even the Elves still sing of that one, and that sub, the USS North Dakota, later played a vital role in the rest of the war.
None of that mattered to me right now. No one was going to nuke New York City, and I had an insurgency to start. I refocused my scope on an area where they seemed to be doing construction
on something, putting pre-assembled parts together. It looked like nothing more than the hull of a ship, but how the hell they would get it from Central Park down to the harbor was beyond me. There were two more in various stages, one just the skeleton, or whatever it was called, the other a long keel. Judging by the size of the minuscule figures next to it, I figured each of them was about two hundred meters long. There was one more a bit further on, full decked with weird hatches along the hull. It had three already stepped masts, which was pretty a pretty frigging stupid thing to do. I mean, even if they used magic or slave labor to drag the thing down to, say, the piers on the West Side, there were a million power and other cables stretched between buildings. Then the weird hatches opened, lowering ramps to the ground, and dragons began to file in. Well, at least that made sense. I imagined that the creatures got tired and like an Abrams tank, might be better transported to a battlefield than flying there.
I watched for half an hour, until the ramps were brought up and then sealed tight against the hull. As I wondered why the hell they would load the ship before it even got to the water a shitload of what I assume were Elves started running up and down the rigging and Lord Tavan’s colors broke out from the masthead. I could see the shithead himself standing on the quarterdeck. Then NO FUCKING SHIT sails appeared from nowhere and a non-existent wind arose, lifting the ship up into the air.
OK, so I lost it right then. Hysterical laughter, all the stress of the last four days, the sheer impossibility of the situation got to me right then and there. Delta operators might be the best in the business, and I had seen some really weird shit on the day when I had pulled a cross ops mission with JTF 13, but this … well, I’m human. I took my eye of the scope and laughed so hard my stomach hurt. Elves flying a ship across the skies of New York City. What next, Willy Wonka and his Oompa Loompas marching through Madison Square Garden? That one sent me off in a further burst of laughing.