The Never Army

by Hodges, T. Ellery

  “Anthony?” Lincoln asked.

  No reply came.

  Lincoln retracted his weapons and reached down to grab hold of the man’s chassis. Luckily, the Wallace didn’t require him to use his own strength. He forced himself to pull the Thor over a shoulder and join the retreat.

  CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

  LEAH STEPPED ON the shoulder of a red male corpse and pulled Themysira out from the back of his skull.

  Behind her, Jonathan was yanking Excali-bar 2.0 out of a Green that he’d pinned into the street, to intercept a Red that was rampaging into battle. She turned just in time to see Excali-bar whip around, connect, and shoot the Red half-way through the lobby of the building across the street.

  She caught him looking at his hands again, as though the power he now possessed still defied his comprehension. After so many months of struggling to survive these things, it seemed as though it would require a hundred of the beasts coming at him alone for them to overwhelm him.

  Leah had not left his side since the conduit had finally been breached and they had to fall back farther into the city. As soon as the Ferox were coming in by waves, too many to keep track of all at once, he had asked her to stay close at all times.

  He didn’t say the words. That Malkier would target her. That he feared any second she was out of his sight the attack would come. The truth was that she would be far more valuable to the army if she could move freely. She was almost as hard to kill as he was, even if she wasn’t as deadly. She could have been out supporting the teams when they needed backup.

  But, he asked her to stay close and she had nodded. She had her own reasons of course. She felt it in her bones—Jonathan was going to do something stupid—probably something selfless and heroic—but seeing as he was the father of her child, she wasn’t going to stand by. She hoped her instincts were wrong just this once. After all, he was the hardest of them to kill or capture, so it made sense that he was the only one to see the whole picture.

  But she just didn’t trust that it was so simple.

  Regardless, he may think she was staying close to be where he could protect her, but she knew she was there to protect him from himself—the arrangement worked, so why argue the details.

  She saw a proximity warning in her HUD, motion detected coming around the corner, and the alarm only went off when none of their people occupied the space.

  By the time she turned the danger was already taken care of. A Green was sliding across the asphalt, limp and already dead. It came to a stop a few feet from her, a true alien steel throwing dagger lodged into its eye socket.

  She looked up through the haze of WX gas at the nearby flagpole where Mito crouched comfortably using his gleamers.

  He was probably smiling, but their helmet’s shields were always down now, so he gave a thumbs up.

  She returned a nod, pulled his knife free, careful of the molecular edge, and tossed it back up to him. He plucked it out of the air by the handle, sheathing it so gracefully the whole affair looked like he simply paused to scratch an itch under his arm.

  So, ironically, Mito had agreed to watch their backs. In fact, he had confessed that he had vowed to Heyer that he wouldn’t leave their sides in the battle to come. Of course, when Heyer had asked him, he hadn’t known it was the last time he’d see Heyer before the war actually came. Apparently, this request was one of the last things Heyer did before disappearing.

  The intersection momentarily cleared of attackers, Jonathan was listening to the chatter of the teams on the comm before coming back to join her beneath the flagpole. Mito was keeping his eyes on the surroundings and being so close he didn’t need to use the comm to be heard.

  “These waves, they keep coming in hundreds. But Malkier doesn’t commit to a full-scale invasion,” Mito said. “Why?”

  Leah nodded as his words translated in her thoughts.

  “He has the numbers. Safer to wear us down slowly?” Leah said. “We’ve lost nearly twenty since this began. He’s lost closer to a thousand. We’re still the ones who took the worst of it.”

  “It’s fear,” Jonathan said. “The last time he came thinking us easy prey, he went home wounded. He believes we have a weapon he hasn’t seen yet. That we’re waiting for him to send in a full-scale invasion before we use it.”

  “Do we?” Mito asked.

  Leah exchanged a look with Jonathan, before they both turned their helmets to look at him.

  “Right, need to know,” Mito said.

  They all looked away in unison as Rourke’s voice came over the comms. Everyone in the Army was likely doing the same. Rourke was their man closest to the conduit, keeping an eye on what the enemy was doing. The man had a talent for staying hidden. At this point, had it not been for the minimap showing his location, even Jonathan wouldn’t know where he’d set up surveillance.

  “Wave coming in, shorter interval than the last few. Looks . . . looks to be larger numbers than we’ve seen yet.”

  Leah turned to look up at Mito. “Feel better?”

  By the evening, The Never Army had lost nearly a hundred soldiers. The Feroxian waves coming in growing larger and larger at each interval, and they were running out of ways to deal with their numbers.

  Jonathan knelt, looking through the green haze that covered Seattle from a building that had lost most of its exterior. For the last few minutes, the noise had been less.

  His eyes were closed. His lost soldiers weighing heavy on him as he tried to recover some strength.

  He was far more tired than the rest of his men. Any who had collected more than one portal stone tied to their gate could break one. This let them recover themselves—in a manner of speaking. They returned to their original entry point in The Never without the accumulated injuries to their bodies or gear.

  While their bodies did not return tired and battered, none had slept for over forty-eight hours. Hours where their minds had been through more violence and stress than in their entire lives.

  Mito had resisted breaking a stone even when Jonathan ordered him to do so. The man only relented when Jonathan and Leah both promised they would await his return at his point of entry. By then, The Never Army had a solid grasp on reentry mechanics. Soldiers returned to The Never in a window of twelve to fifteen minutes. Luckily, the same safety protocols that governed the Feroxian gateways applied to them.

  When Mito had entered The Never, he’d been on the thirtieth floor of a building that was no longer there. Jonathan and Leah followed him to where his duct tape square had been placed to find it under a mountain of rubble. When Mito returned, he was standing on a safe surface atop the building’s remains.

  While grateful that his men could use the conduit’s mechanics to recover their strength, Jonathan and Leah got no such favors. It was no surprise that neither had felt a stone come across the conduit’s threshold.

  Jonathan had no way of knowing exactly what the prophet had planned for Leah. But there was no doubt in his mind that if the Ferox Army couldn’t bring the prophet his head, Malkier would come for it himself.

  He would force Jonathan to go through him to get home and he would take every precaution to ensure such a victory was impossible.

  Jonathan took a deep breath as Rourke’s voice came over the comms to report another incoming.

  “Break’s over,” he said to Leah.

  Her helmet was down, and she didn’t let herself show it, but he knew she was feeling the same weariness seeping into her.

  She slipped her rattan onto her back and held out a hand. “Sleep when we’re dead and all that.”

  He nodded.

  They were in the thick of it. The streets lined with rubble and debris. The Ferox that surrounded them cautious, having watched what a single swing of their weapons could do.

  The She-rox waited for their opening while the males lumbered in when the fancy overtook them. Of course, it might as well have been their strategy, as when each of the males came in to take their attention, the females found
their moment and went for it.

  Jonathan felt his armor tear across his back. The She-rox who had landed the lucky blow was surprised when the plate inside his suit was exposed to air. Fire burst forth from his back.

  Jonathan ignored it; this wasn’t the first plate he’d lost to air exposure. Meanwhile the She-rox nearly leapt back in surprise—most likely thinking the fire was some sort of weapon. She didn’t live long enough to learn otherwise. Mito had already been coming in to intercept her, and was only a moment late when he landed on her and drove two katar daggers into the back of her neck.

  Jonathan growled, having grown tired of allowing the beasts to come to him. He whirled into a spin, twirling Excali-bar around him in what was mostly a distraction that forced the beasts back as he freed Doomsday from his chest. A moment later, he thrust Excali-bar into one of their number and jumped in the air, allowing Doomsday to whirl around him.

  The speed at which he maneuvered the chain confused and confounded them. Suddenly, the Ferox found themselves being struck from unexpected angles as he whipped the chain back and forth through their numbers. The spiked tip’s molecular edge finding no resistance as it penetrated their exterior armor.

  He heard the distress call over his comm.

  “Please, whoever is out there, there’s only three of us left. They’re not letting up. We can’t outrun them.”

  With a glance at Mito and Leah, they all dropped out of combat. Leah grabbed Mito by the arm as they rocketed toward the location of the distress call. The thinning crowd of Ferox that had been trying to overwhelm them were slow to react, and even slower to give chase as the gleamers allowed the three to move through the city without losing as much speed.

  But that was when the next call for help came over the comms. “Memorial Stadium. We’ve got more than we can handle coming here.”

  They came to a stop on a rooftop. Looking at one another to make a call.

  “The runners are closer,” Jonathan said. “We help them, then the stadium.”

  She nodded.

  All three were still for a moment as their HUD laid out the most efficient course for them to take.

  Then it happened. Another call came in. They all recognized the voice.

  “She-rox, pack of em, got cut off from the team,” Bodhi said.

  His location was already pulling up on their maps, he’d been on his way to help those at the Stadium.

  “Think my leg is broken. I can’t get away . . . I can’t get away.”

  Jonathan saw Leah shiver. He could see her already inching away from him toward Bodhi’s distress signal.

  “Jonathan—I can’t let him—”

  “Mito, go with her!” Jonathan said. “Don’t argue. We move like lightning and we rendezvous at the stadium.”

  He hesitated for a moment as Leah’s back turned to them; she was already leaping off the roof as Mito cursed and dove after her.

  Jonathan shivered for a moment as their backs disappeared, then sprinted in the opposite direction.

  Leah slammed Themyscira through the Red’s back. The rattan’s blunt spiked tip erupted out of the monster’s chest. The Ferox spasmed in shock. Its roar of agony reduced to a choked gurgle. He tried, impotently, to turn on her, but Themyscira may as well have been a steering wheel.

  She lifted the creature up and over, its feet leaving the street with another choked roar, before she launched it down the hill. Themyscira slipped free with a meaty wet ‘thip’ before it shot away and crashed down the hill.

  The fight was over before Mito even caught up to her. She felt guilty for not waiting for the man. But, had she left Bodhi waiting a few seconds longer she’d have been too late.

  She turned back to Bodhi, still lying in a small crater on the street. He looked unconscious but still alive. Five dead She-rox lay nearby. Bodhi was hard to overwhelm; he was smart enough to run when the odds were stacked against him, and barring maybe Sam, he was the fastest runner in their army. They must have set a trap for him. The She-rox were smart though, they must have picked up on his tactics and made a point of hobbling him to keep him from running.

  “Appreciate the assist,” his voice a weak whisper behind the helmet.

  He couldn’t stand.

  “Do you have a stone, Bodhi?”

  He pointed to the side of the street. “I tried. The Red knocked me into the road before I could get my glove off. I can feel it under that car.”

  She stood, walked to the side of the street, grabbed the car by the frame, and flipped it over. The red glowing stone wasn’t hard to find in a pile of leaves.

  “Backup, Memorial Stadium, please, we don’t have much time left.”

  She ripped his glove off for him and dropped the stone in his hand. “You got this? I got to get to them.”

  He nodded. She backed away as he crushed the stone in his palm. “Catch ya on the flip, sister.”

  He disappeared. She hesitated for a moment.

  “No,” she shook her head. “That . . . that isn’t. I’m overthinking . . . he didn’t mean...”

  She shook her head and sheathed Themyscira. No time for this she yelled in her mind as she turned to run.

  Glancing at her HUD she could see Mito was still moving. His dot was nearing hers, but she knew he could see her dot as well and would adjust course to meet her. A moment later and she was disappearing into the trees of Denny Park as her map updated to the fastest path to intercept with the Stadium’s distress call.

  She’d grown rather adept at memorizing routes through the city at a quick glance from hours of training in the projection chamber. Emerging out of the trees at the other end of the park she shot into the air to land on the nearest low rise. Clearing the rooftop in a flash, she hurdled across, over the street and crashed through an east facing window on the adjacent building.

  More empty condos—one of those things no one considers before they fight a superpowered guerilla war in an evacuated city is just how many empty living room windows you’ll be destroying before the day is out. She didn’t slow down for minor obstacles, was quicker to run through doors rather than stop to open them. When she emerged into a hallway she turned north. Shot through another window and onto the next rooftop.

  The routes the HUD displayed weren’t always perfect—didn’t update in real time along with the destruction caused by the war. Sometimes this was an obstacle, other times it made things easier. This time was the latter, instead of the building that her HUD expected, there was only a pile of rubble where a building had been standing earlier that day. Leah dropped to the street, sprinted up the pile and launched off the peak to clear an entire block.

  This long shot through the air took her past the massive eyesore known as the Experience Music Project. The entire surface was made up of thousands of panels of stainless steel in shades of purple, silver and gold. She’d always thought of the EMP as an answer to the question: How cool would it be to walk into a giant metal amoeba? Ironically, it remained mostly unscathed by the battle raging through the city.

  “Memorial Stadium, I’m almost to your—”

  Her course through the air changed in an instant. She felt herself buckled at the waist as some unseen thing crashed into her at the stomach. She’d barely realized she had been hit before her backside tore through the building’s exterior. Hit straight on by—nothing—but a nothing that had the weight of a wrecking ball behind it.

  CHAPTER NINETY-NINE

  THREE MEN FLED across the rooftops on Capitol Hill, a swarm of She-rox trailing them two buildings back. Command had fallen to Emilio when their team leader was lost in an ambush. He and the two men with him were all that remained of the original twenty-five.

  “We’re out numbered and being pursued,” Emilio yelled into the comm as they ran. “We can’t shake them. Anyone close, we need backup.”

  This wasn’t his first distress call. He hadn’t gotten a reply yet. His HUD showed no one in the immediate area with a large enough force to help them. He was beg
inning to feel it in his bones.

  No one was coming.

  Singh, the fastest of the three, stopped abruptly out in front. He pointed to the surrounding buildings. “They’re . . . they’re . . . tiring us out.”

  Emilio came to a stop beside him, his hope fading as he saw what Singh saw for himself. The She-rox behind them weren’t trying to run them down—not really. They were just keeping pace, keeping them on the run and distracted as the rest of the pack sprinted across the rooftop that flanked them to get ahead. It was already too late, they were already at the center of a tightening fist.

  “We’re surrounded,” Emilio said into the comm before he turned to the others. “If anyone is out there, we don’t have much time left.”

  Emilio turned to watch the She-rox on their rear halt their pursuit on the nearest rooftop. The beasts pacing, watching the three of them with a hunger. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said they looked proud of themselves, having run the last of his team straight into a trap.

  Singh sighed, hiding his fear of their fate. “Clear of gas.”

  Emilio saw what he meant now. His HUD no longer displaying the warning for WX gas. This pack of She-rox had chased them far enough from the conduit that their weapons were safe to use.

  “Good, finally gonna let the dogs out,” Emilio said.

  He pulled Cujo and Cerberus from across his back. A matching set of axes that could only be described as gnarly. Half-moons, molecular edged heads with a long blunt spike out the back for balance. Despite being forged of alien steel, they looked like they had been wrapped in barbed wire up to where his hand gripped each hilt.

  Singh smiled, nodding as he pulled two shuang gou’s from his own back. He then looked to the last of their trio.

  Doyle had always been the quietest in their squad, even when it had been thirty strong. He didn’t have much to say now either, but simply reached onto his back and pulled his weapon.

  He called it the Warf. In the month or so they had trained together, Emilio had always frowned at the thing. Unsure of how well it would serve Doyle when the time came for real, or why he’d chosen such an awkward looking weapon.