by J Jordan
The pistol in Victoria’s hands was Lorna’s sidearm, Lola: a classic Stag 1911 with an extended magazine, a formed grip, and a tactical flashlight mounted under the barrel. Romney decided that the bulky weapon on Lorna’s back was the thing that went “thook-boosh,” and he was correct on this point. Tykeso would explain this was an M304 revolving grenade launcher. Gwen, to her friends. Highly effective, highly illegal.
The party charged through the hangar past various prone shapes, some still capable of gibbering and others only able to groan. One figure got up, screeched something in Andaran, and ran off in another direction. His screech fell short with the sound of falling equipment. Something big, from the sound of it.
“There’s that word again,” said Cora. “Drega.”
She looked to Victoria for guidance, but Victoria didn’t seem to hear this. She was focused on the thin line of bright light ahead.
“Fan out and dive for cover,” said Lorna. “Elfie, you and I alternate cover fire. We’ll fan out and close in on them. The rest of you hunker down. Everyone clear?”
“My name is Tykeso.”
They emerged before a patchwork fortress. The remaining infantry had formed a large barricade out of their remaining vehicles and whatever they could find lying around. And it was quite elaborate too. It had two side entrances, covered by multiple peepholes and a mounted turret on each side. It should be mentioned these turrets were the only two remaining in the compound, out of twenty. The rest was a wall of bulletproof doors and road barricades, and gun barrels poking out of every conceivable opening.
The party had an entire second to marvel at it before they were bombarded by gunfire. They scattered for cover. Lorna and Victoria found a toppled barricade to their immediate left, where Lorna supplied cover fire while Victoria watched. Tykeso dove into a bullet-spattered Humvee to the right, exchanging shots from over the hood. Romney and Cora tumbled into the same standing barricade on the far right, where they huddled in fear of their lives.
“Those are actual bullets,” observed Romney.
“They’re really shooting at us,” remarked Cora. “They’re really trying to kill us.”
“Elfie!” Lorna shouted. “Cover me.”
“It’s Tykeso.”
Tykeso reached over the hood and fired at a gun barrel poking through a Humvee window. The barrel retreated, along with several others that had just emerged. This gave Lorna enough time to cover the ground to another barrier, where she returned a burst of fire that disabled the mounted turret on the left flank. Soldiers could be heard yelling orders in Andaran as they retreated deeper into the battlements. They had an opening on the left now. And in this flurry of confusion, Tykeso managed to move from his Humvee, past Cora and Romney’s barricade, and over to a truck tipped on its side. He had a perfect fire position on the right flank.
Tykeso shifted to the rear of the truck and waited for the telltale sound of an empty magazine. Then he emerged shooting. He disabled the mounted gun with a well-aimed shot, then winged the gunner with another. The gunner hobbled away from his position, and another advanced to take his place. The new gunner immediately received a gunshot in the leg. The gunner raised his rifle to end the enemy advance, but Tykeso was already upon him. The gunner sustained a heavy punch to the jaw, and another, and then an elbow to the temple, before falling in a heap on the ground. Tykeso freed the assault rifle from the prone soldier, checked the magazine, then discarded the first. This new one had been cleaned recently.
The magazine had only six more shots left. Two more soldiers emerged from the barricade. Tykeso advanced, sending two rounds in wild directions. They didn’t connect. The two newcomers crouched to avoid fire. The left guard had crouched a little too low, and he caught Tykeso’s boot directly in the mouth. The right guard rose, locked and loaded, just in time to be grazed in the arm by a stray shot, courtesy of Tykeso. He jerked toward his right and fired out of instinct, the shot whizzing past Tykeso’s ear. He didn’t flinch.
Tykeso advanced, jumped, and delivered an expert double flying kick to the chest. The Andaran soldier tumbled to the ground, his rifle flying off into the realm of “almost-close-enough-to-reach but-not-close-enough.” He was too busy reaching for his weapon, and performing a textbook mistake in hand-to-hand fighting, to anticipate the second kick aimed for his ear. And the third was aimed for his forehead. The fourth put the guard out. Tykeso was preparing for another trade of guns when a soldier emerged from the barricade. This surprise caught him off balance. Tykeso froze.
On the other side, Lorna emerged from cover. Her face was fixed into a mask of determination, her eyes focused into two green beams of concentration. She raised Marie to her shoulder and fired, keeping her now breakneck speed, each shot hitting soldiers who had emerged to suppress her. Another popped up beside her, ready to fire, but Marie had already swiveled to him and roared. A fifth and sixth leapt from the barricade, then thought better of it and retreated deeper into the fortification. Their retreat was a mere moment too late. Lorna was already upon them.
Lorna grabbed the closest soldier by his uniform, pivoted on her feet, and swung him bodily into the other, like a human-sized flail. The act seemed easy to her, like the way someone might swing a gallon of milk. Victoria ducked into cover and pressed herself into the cement of the barricade. The other stuff, with the running and shooting; you could explain that. But this? Now she wasn’t sure who scared her more. She raised her gaze back over, compelled by that terrible curse—curiosity. Lorna had kneed the second soldier in the stomach, flipped over his back as he reeled forward, then downed two more soldiers with Marie as they came to help. Then, with a devil’s grin on her face, she grabbed the reeling soldier by his ballistic vest, lifted him over her head, and threw him like a javelin into the first, who had recovered and nearly escaped. But not nearly fast enough.
Victoria ducked again. Now she was sure of whom to fear.
No one in the Andaran Army had ever grinned like that.
The rifle left Tykeso’s hand, twirling butt over barrel like a throwing axe. The soldier raised his gun, paused a moment to watch the spectacle unfold, then received the rifle butt first, right into his forehead. The soldier recoiled and then steadied himself, but Tykeso had already closed the gap. In one fluid motion, Tykeso planted his shoulder under the soldier’s navel and launched upward. The soldier rose off his feet, screamed, and toppled to the ground. His eyes fluttered briefly. Tykeso punched him across the jaw for good measure. Then he scooped up a new rifle, checked the magazine, and advanced into the fortress of Humvees and supply trucks.
The gunfire subsided, as the defenders retreated deeper into their fortress to escape the pincer attack from both sides. The retreat was more pronounced on the left side of the fortress, while the right side still had a few remaining guns to keep watch. Victoria took the opportunity to rush over to Cora and Romney, who had spent the time hiding behind their shared barrier and gibbering nonsensically about actual real-life gunfire. Victoria tried injecting reason into the madness.
“We need to move. Come on!”
“No,” they squealed in unison.
So, Victoria grabbed each by the collar and dragged them across the battlefield to the toppled truck. The effect was an angry mother dragging two children to the car, except the parking lot was a war zone.
“That’s better. Now, I need you to calm down before we advance.”
Their new cover did little to console the brats.
“Why did I do this? This is insane. They’re actually shooting at us. Everyone is going to die, and it’s all my fault. I can’t believe this. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Why did I agree to this? I don’t want to get shot. I’m just a historian! I want to go home!”
“Calm down, both of you! Please. I need your help.”
“Calm down?”
Cora was incredulous. Romney too.
“I don’t know if you noticed this, Vic, but they are shooting at us with actual real bull
ets.”
A few pinged off the opposite side of the truck, more to frighten them than to demonstrate Cora’s point.
An unmistakable “thook-boosh” resounded from inside the piecemeal fortress, followed by a loud “fwoom” and punctuated by screams. A thin column of black smoke rose from within. The gunfire ceased entirely, as gun barrels retreated from positions to aid their kin. Victoria peeked around the front of the truck, in time to see the last of the barrels shrink from the driver’s side window.
“They’re not shooting at us anymore. But that can only mean they are moving in on Tykeso. So we need to pick up what we can and charge in to help him.”
“I can take point,” Victoria continued, “but we need to act now. Tykeso needs us.”
Cora and Romney were frozen in place. Romney was the first to say something.
“I’m no good with a gun.”
“I’ve never used one,” said Cora, as if to one-up him. “Also, I’m a conscientious objector. I don’t believe in violence. It never solves anything.”
“Me too,” said Romney. “I’ve been saying that for years.”
“All right,” said Victoria patiently, “but the Andaran Army does believe in violence. And they use it to solve many problems. If we don’t charge in there soon, then there may not even be enough Tykeso left to save.”
She let the image soak in. Romney and Cora looked to each other, and then back to Victoria. They said nothing for precious seconds. The murmur of gunfire in the distance was cut short by a terrible screech. This shook them from their stupor.
“Help Tykeso,” said Romney. “Got it.”
“All right,” said Cora, “we can do this.”
They each found a weapon on the battlefield and headed for the rightmost entrance, where they took positions and waited for several more seconds. Even Victoria was having trouble with this part.
They had nothing to worry about. Tykeso was fine. Once he met up with Lorna, at the center of the fortress, it was smooth sailing. Lorna seemed to take over all of the fighting. She was a natural at it. In fact, she seemed almost too good at it. This began to trouble Tykeso. He became less worried about the Andaran soldiers, who were quickly thinning out, and more worried about Lorna. After her first grenade from Gwen, he decided it was better to take cover and give her space to work.
He dove behind a SUV and peered over the hood. What he saw, he could not explain.
Tykeso knew many fighting styles and combat tactics, from the Modern era and the Classical era, and even a few from the Ancient era. He could not recall which famed tactician had coined the “double human shield” technique, but they had likely done so in jest. And yet, there was Lorna pushing forward, Marie propped on two shoulders interlocked in a tear-jerking pretzel style, their owners screaming for mercy. The “swan dive over cover to crouching grenade launcher stance” had to be entirely made up. Tykeso ducked for the “boosh” and, surprisingly, rose again to continue watching. He wished later that he hadn’t.
He watched the awesome display of the “rising knife throw to back flip kick” but shrank at the sight of the “disarm to hooking of the shoulder strap around the neck to shooting-dragging-knifing-maiming.” It was the terrible snap and sickening burble at the end that really got to him.
So, maybe Tykeso wasn’t okay. The enemy numbers were dwindling with each terrible display of prowess. They were circling Lorna now, ducking under nearby barriers and behind vehicles. Tykeso didn’t need to measure odds in his head, because the outcome was clear. These soldiers didn’t have a chance in any hell ever devised. They were up against a one-woman army, a perfect soldier, an instrument of death.
Tykeso debated running away, but he wasn’t sure how far he would get.
“We should have a count down,” said Cora.
“Good thinking,” added Victoria. “When we’re ready, we will count to three and then we all rush in as one.”
No one counted down. Each was busy imagining what he or she might find inside. More soldiers, most likely, and more guns. And, Romney decided, whatever remained of Tykeso and Lorna. Would they even recognize what was left?
“One,” said Victoria.
“I’m not waiting,” yelped Romney.
He ran into the fray, rifle raised to his shoulder, necktie flapping behind him like a mini cape. He charged down the pathway made by SUV and a bus, rounded a corner made by a toppled pickup truck and a van, and dove headlong into the carnage at the center of the fortress. Romney expended the three remaining bullets in his rifle, which hit the same burning vehicle in three different places, and then swung his rifle ineffectually at a ducking soldier. Then he gagged as Tykeso hooked him around the neck and pulled him behind a bullet-riddled SUV.
“Tykeso, you’re okay!”
Tykeso placed his hand over Romney’s mouth and, together, they rose to look over the hood of the SUV. Lorna was at the center of a fortification of concrete barriers, lifting a full-grown man over her head. A man roughly twice her size. Even at this distance, Romney could see the glow of carnage in her eyes. Without ceremony, she brought the soldier down over her knee. It made a bony, meaty sound. The gruesome act made Romney sick to his stomach.
Romney ducked back down. He could see several more soldiers, huddled behind an armored personnel carrier, an APC. They seemed to be debating over what to do, until they saw Romney from across the way.
“What are they doing over there?”
“Hiding,” said Tykeso. “Like we are.”
“Ty, one of them is coming over here.”
“It’s okay. We’ve got a ceasefire going.”
The soldier dashed for their SUV. She jumped over a barricade, then dove away from Marie’s signature three-round burst. She tumbled into cover with them, where she lay against the front wheel and panted. It was the soldier with the megaphone from before.
“We surrender,” she managed, in between gulps of breath. “You win. Please take your drega mala and leave.”
“We accept,” said Tykeso, “but we’re not sure if we can get her out right now.”
“Please, just take her away,” the megaphoner sobbed. “We don’t care where you go or what you do after this. Just get her away from here. Make her leave.”
“Hang on,” said Tykeso. “What was that word you just used? Drega?”
She didn’t answer, only continued sobbing and muttering about cuerpos.
“We need a way for her to accept the surrender,” said Tykeso. “I don’t believe she wants to stop. Any ideas? Romney?”
Romney knew what to do. He stepped out from behind the Humvee and walked toward Lorna, sidling over the barricades with a misplaced bravado. Lorna was holding a soldier up by his throat when she finally noticed him approach. Her war face gained a silly grin, the effect almost like a clown in a horror movie. And in her eyes, the war raged on.
“Hey, babe, just finishing up over here.”
“No need,” said Romney. “You’re done. The enemy has surrendered. Great work, by the way. We should move along now. There’s more important matters to attend to.”
Lorna looked back up at her prey. Judging from the anguish in his face, she had tightened her grip.
“What about your friends?”
“Everyone is a-okay,” said Romney. “No injuries, aside from mental scarring. But that’s not important right now. We’re ready to go.”
"We need to clear a path for the exfil. Resistance is still heavy in this area.”
The soldier in her hands whimpered in between gasps for breath. Her grip tightened once more and his eyes bulged. Romney felt the panic in his stomach begin to writhe.
“No, no. It’s all clear. That’s what I’m saying. Everybody surrendered. There’s no resistance here, or anywhere on the base. We’re free to go.”
Lorna’s smile dissolved. The war in her eyes was already fading by degrees. But somehow, the effect was still terrifying. Like desolation or boredom. Romney could only imagine what she would do if she was bored.<
br />
“What did you say?”
“Surrendered. They surrendered. They’re done fighting and they want us to leave. Please let go of that man.”
She did. The soldier took a moment on the concrete to gather his breath, and to thank the Goddess Katresa, before he scurried to the APC, where his comrades awaited him. They were still watching from behind cover. Lorna’s arms were crossed over her armored vest.
“When did this happen?”
“Not long ago,” said Romney. “Maybe a couple of minutes. They won’t shoot us or get in our way. They just want us to leave. As soon as possible. Now is preferable.”
Romney shivered. Lorna’s gaze had somehow taken all of the warmth out of the Andaran sun. Her eyes flicked over to the APC, just as several heads ducked back into cover. This was followed by a chorus of whimpers. She shook her head slowly.
“Cowards.”
Romney shrugged. Somehow, he knew she wouldn’t like the news.
“Well, they surrendered. No helping that, I guess. But now they’re going to let us go. And we’re ready to go. So, let’s go.”
Lorna didn’t move from her spot. She continued to stand in her crossed-arm pose.
“What’s up?”
“What are the terms of their surrender?”
“Well, they’re letting us leave. And they aren’t going to stop us. And they promise not to follow us wherever we go. Those are pretty good terms, in my opinion.”
And yet, Romney knew they weren’t good enough for Lorna even as he spoke. She had just wiped out three-fourths of their forces in an hour, almost entirely by herself. Many believe this estimation to be off by quite it bit. Records would show it was more like nineteen-twentieths. Lorna stood firm, continuing to glare through the armored personnel carrier at the poor souls on the other side. They might call for reinforcements soon, thought Romney. And he didn’t want to be responsible for what would happen to them.