“You loaded up, Wolfgang?” asked Dirk, looking over at the other man who was still jacking rounds into the shotgun. At the same time he opened a box of rifle bullets without looking and pulled a half dozen out, slipping them into his shirt pocket.
“Ready,” said the man, operating the pump and loading the chamber.
“Good,” said Dirk, sliding a round into the chamber of the rifle and pushing the bolt forward. “Cause here they come.”
The girl was running fast in their direction, much faster that the creatures following her, which did not seem like they were built for speed. Dirk sighted in on the nearest one, centered the cross hairs on its chest, and squeezed the trigger. The 30-06 bucked hard into his shoulder and he yelled out as the round struck right where he had placed the sight. The creature staggered and went to the ground like a hammer struck steer.
“Run this way, Fraulein,” yelled Karl Wilhelm, waving a hand.
Dirk jacked another round into the chamber and sighted in another of the ugly ones. He squeezed the trigger and watched the creature fall onto his face. Then it was load and fire, taking out three more of the ugly creatures in rapid sequence.
He looked up in time to see Wolfgang walking out into the field with his shotgun. At fifty meters he took out one of the ugly ones, pumped the shotgun, and took out another.
“Run, Fraulein,” yelled Wolfgang, firing at another of the ugly creatures and hitting it in the chest. The creature staggered for a step and came on, its armor proof against the shotgun.
The girl had reached Wolfgang and he grabbed her hand, turning and leading her back to the car. The two remaining ugly ones were still in pursuit, and the tall and beautiful ones came running along behind them, closing the gap. One of the tall ones raised what looked like a miniature crossbow in his hand and fired. The bolt sped on and hit Wolfgang in the shoulder. The man staggered for a moment and the girl pulled him along.
Dirk aimed in on the man who had fired the bolt and squeezed off a shot, striking him in the chest. The man staggered from the hit, clenched his teeth in a growl and kept on coming. Dirk checked through the scope and saw no blood on the man’s chest. “Fucking impossible,” he said as he laid the rifle aside.
The second of the tall ones fired his hand crossbow and just missed a Wolfgang who had stumbled at the right moment. Then both of the tall ones drew swords that seemed to glow in the daylight and kept coming on a run.
“I’ve had enough of this medieval shit,” said Dirk, pulling the revolver from his holster and walking around the car. He grasped the pistol in a two handed grip and brought the pistol to bear on one of the ugly ones. The round he squeezed off hit the ugly creature in the chest and blasted through the scale mail it wore. The creature let out a choking sound and fell backwards. He shot the last ugly one through the head and the creature fell without a sound.
The two tall ones screamed out something in a language that Dirk had never heard before and ran at him waving their deadly looking blades over their heads. Dirk fired at the nearer, missed, then fired again, hitting the man in the chest. The bullet sparked off the breastplate. Dirk felt a moment of panic and moved the barrel up to aim at the man’s face. The sword came sweeping in at the same time as Dirk pulled the trigger. The man’s face turned into a smear of red and he fell back, the sword falling from his hand.
The other one yelled and thrust with his sword. Dirk knew he was dead. There was no way he could get out of the way in time. No way he could shift the pistol. I don’t want to die, he thought.
The shotgun blast surprised him as much as it did the swordsman. Maybe more so, because the swordsman’s head exploded and he couldn’t feel surprise anymore. Dirk turned open mouthed to look at the girl they had rescued, the shotgun held in a waist grip.
“Thank you, Fraulein,” he said to the woman with a bow that almost landed him on the ground because of his shaking knees.
“I couldn’t let my knight die while trying to save me,” said the woman, and her expression shifted to one of recognition. “You’re him, aren’t you?”
“Depends on who you think I am,” said Dirk with a smile, dropping the spent rounds out of his pistol and pulling other rounds out of his pocket to replace them.
“The Tarantulas, right?”
“You got it,” said Dirk with another bow. “At your service. And I’m sorry we couldn’t save your boyfriend.”
“Stephen wasn’t really a boyfriend,” said the woman with a troubled expression, looking down at the ground. “We had only gone out a couple of times, and he was a ticket out of town.” The young woman looked around for a moment, then over at the bodies lying on the ground. “Besides, I don’t think lawyers are going to be of much use in this world. Do you?”
Dirk smiled, then looked over at where the others were treating Wolfgang’s wound.
“He’ll make it,” said his brother Reinhold. “But I think we should get moving and see if we can find some others. Before more of those ugly sons of bitches show up.”
“Would you like to come with us?” said Dirk, looking back at the woman.
“Anni Goebels,” she said with a smile. “And it doesn’t look like I have anything better to do.”
So we land on another world and still run into a groupie, thought Dirk as he started the car. What a strange fucking Universe we live in.
Chapter Six
“We have reports of their arrival, my Emperor,” said the nervous officer, bowing low to his liege.
“Where are they arriving?” asked the Emperor Ellandra Mashara, looking up from the desk where he had been affixing his seal to official pronouncements. “And how many?”
“Thousands so far my liege,” answered the officer, looking at the parchment on which a communications mage had written the transcript. “From just outside of A’atapona to the mountains of the far lands to the east.”
“And our people are capturing them?” asked the Emperor, coming to his feet and shoving the paperwork aside. He thought of the many souls that he could use to extend his life. They had to be confused and helpless refugees, without magic or other powers, if the seer was to be believed. His soldiers, mages and priests should have no trouble taking them into captivity.
“There have been some setbacks, my Lord,” said the young officer, his fair face blanching as he delivered the bad news.
“What kind of setbacks?”
“They seem to have brought war machines with them,” said the Ellala male with a strained voice. “Machines of types we have never seen, with mighty weapons. And many of the newcomers are trained and disciplined soldiers.”
“Which means?” roared the Emperor. The officer took a step back from the raging monarch, his eyes darting nervously about.
“They have defeated the levies in many places,” said the officer, his words coming hoarse from his dry mouth. “But we have been able to defeat them and capture many of the humans in other places. Places where there have not been so many of their soldiers.”
“Get the commanders of the Imperial Legions,” ordered the half lich, in his anger his illusion falling slightly. The officer became even paler and moved another step back. “I want them here within the hour. We will send the might of our armies at the largest concentrations of the invader’s forces, and see if they can stand before our magic and might. Now go from my sight.”
The officer nodded, hit his left fist to his chest in hurried salute, and turned quickly, trying not to run as he left the presence of his frightening ruler.
They might have brought mechanical tricks from their own world, thought the Emperor, looking at the map of Empire affixed to the wall of the chamber. The seer had told him as much, but they did not possess magic, and their gods, who had to still dwell in their old world, would not be able to help them here. He would crush them, then take them captive. That he might use their spiritual energies in his plans for immortality. And no mechanical tricks would keep him from his goal.
* * *
Warrant O
fficer One Jessica Stuart banked her Comanche gunship over the virgin forest, wondering again where she was. She didn’t recognize the terrain below. There were none of the endless villages of the German countryside, no autobahns, no urban centers. What there were was a collection of small farming villages with buildings of an unfamiliar design. They sort of looked like what she thought medieval European farming villages would have looked like. There were no vehicles but those pulled by horses, and the people were either on foot, in wagons or riding those equines. Castles adorned a few of the hills, looking very similar to castles she had seen in Germany, but with enough differences that she knew they were not German.
She saw some lines of mounted men wearing shining armor, which was a clear indication that she was not in Twenty-first Century Deutschland. A few had fired arrows at her chopper, that had fallen back to earth well clear of her ship. And once someone had thrown what looked like a ball of light at her that had streaked past her cockpit in a near miss. She had pulled away from those people and stayed well above the ground from then on.
“What the fuck is going on?” asked her copilot/electronics warfare officer, Second Lieutenant Burkes. “Where in the hell are we?”
“I don’t know, Frankie,” said Jessica, looking down on a field in which a couple of Leopard tanks and four Marder APCs were parked. She waggled the helicopter at the waving men in field gray uniforms. “We’re not alone, though. Wonder what division those Krauts are from.”
She pitched the helicopter over another ridge and looked down into the valley below. There were a bunch of people in civilian garb gathered by the stream in the middle of the valley. They motioned at the helicopter. She dropped lower and she could see people waving at her. A couple of Mercedes Jeeps came rolling down to the river and some German soldiers got out as people ran over to them.
“We’re definitely not alone,” she repeated. “Wherever we are.”
“I’ve got someone from division on the radio,” said Burkes. “They’re asking where we are.”
“Don’t know what to tell them,” said the Warrant Officer. “Unless they want to triangulate on our position.”
She thought back for a moment on the total terror of less than an hour ago. Her flight of gunships had been taking off from the aviation field of the U S 1st Armored Division moments after the alert had come through. She had just reached two thousand feet and was heading toward Poland when the weapon targeting the airfield went off with a bright flash.
Her ship was shielded from EMP, so except for a few sparks there were no system malfunctions. But the ship was tossed in the blast wave as the cockpit heated up from the nuclear fire. She started to scream and she knew that death had found her. And then the heat was gone and she was looking out on a pristine scene of snowcapped mountains in the distance.
Her ship was in good condition, not completely torn up from being so close to a blast. She had to wrestle it out of a spin for a few moments and then she was fine. One of the ships was not so lucky. It had spun close to the ground and smacked down, its rotor blade hitting the ground and shattering. At least the two crew climbed out. And the other two birds had sustained some superficial damage and set down next to the crash. Captain Jerkovich, the flight leader, had ordered her on a recon, while he saw to the repairs to the two mostly intact Comanche’s.
So here she was, on who knew what world, flashing through the sky. Looking over the landscape and the people and all the interesting sights.
“What the hell is that?” called out the officer.
She flashed a glance to the right and saw a quartet of objects low in the sky. She couldn’t tell how big they were, having no scale to compare them, but thought that they were probably big. One was much larger than the others, its wings flapping heavily through the air. And they were turning above something like a flock of vultures. As she watched a gout of flame came from the front end of one of the flying monsters, followed by bright flares from the other three.
“There be dragons here,” she said while she turned the chopper toward the far off creatures.
“Are you out of your mind?” asked Burkes, his voice cracking over the com. “You’re not going to get close to those things?”
“They have to be attacking something,” answered Jessica as she pushed the throttle forward. “And there are a lot of German civilians and military about. And maybe some Americans as well. We have to go see what they're attacking and help out if it’s someone we need to care about.”
“OK,” said the officer in a firm voice. “I agree. But I have to admit it scares the hell out of me to go hunting dragons in the air.”
“Me too, sir,” said the Warrant Officer, cutting a little to the side as she headed toward the creatures. “But I didn’t train on this thing to hold back in fear when the shit hit the fan. Plus, what are we worrying about. We survived a damned nuke for Christ’s sake. What’s a bit of dragon fire?”
“Which target you going after first?” asked the Lieutenant, working the targeting systems. “My dad always told me to go after the biggest bastard first.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Stuart, pulling the chopper up a bit so she could get a look into the valley. “Let’s make sure these things are going after people first though. They might be making an attack on a herd of sheep, just to satisfy their hunger.”
“I doubt it,” said the officer, looking at the scene on the camera on high mag. “That looks like civilians trying to get away. Along with a couple of burning cars.”
“Crap,” said the Warrant Officer, turning her attention from the valley ahead to the flying monsters. They were much closer now, and she got a sense of scale as one of the smaller ones dipped into the valley and let loose a ball of flame. The minivan it targeted went up in a blast, and she estimated that the creature must have weighed at least fifteen tons. About the size of a medium dinosaur. Which made the big one it was now twisting around weigh between thirty and forty tons.
“How could something that big fly?” she asked, disbelief in her voice.
“Painting it with the laser,” said Burkes. “You’re clear to fire.”
One of the dragons started drifting their way as she lined up the copter on the largest one. They must have noticed us, she thought, and she wondered what they made of her. She could see that the beasts were of a deep red hue, with large horns sprouting from their long snouted heads. And she could make out the figures of riders on the backs of a couple of the beasts.
“They’re under intelligent control,” she yelled into the intercom as she hit the firing button, rippling off a pair of Hellfire missiles that sped unerringly toward the largest monster. The missiles were fire and forget, following the laser beam reflecting from the scales of the giant. But she still had to allow her copilot to keep the beam on the target, so she maneuvered out of reach to allow him to keep the target painted.
The Warrant Officer cursed under her breath as the missiles closed on the target. The giant beast coughed up a ball of fire that struck one of the missiles dead center. The weapon exploded in the hellish flames, scattering pieces across the sky. A few bits of shrapnel might have hit the chest of the beast, but they didn’t penetrate the thick scales if they did.
The second missile struck the monster, in a manner. The missile drove through the leathery membrane of the right wing, putting a sixty centimeter diameter hole into the wing that didn’t affect the monster in any noticeable manner. The beast continued to flap on, and it belched another fireball, this one aimed at the helicopter. Stuart hit the throttle and banked the Comanche, easily avoiding the, to her perception, slow moving ball of heat.
“Well,” she said over the intercom as she brought the copter back onto a level and headed toward one of the smaller beasts that was flying away from her, putting her ship on a parallel course. “I know better than to take them head on, at least.”
“What if this is just some kind of crazy hallucination?” asked Burkes as he checked his status board. “I mean, you’ve got
to be kidding me. Multiton dragons flying through the air and breathing fire.”
“I’m sure the nuclear blast was real,” said Jessica, banking her copter and arming her chain gun. The smaller red, rider on its back peering down, was lining up to make another attack on the ground. She could make out several burning cars and a flaming bus down there, with a scattering of burning bodies around them. “This might be a hallucination. But it’s affecting both of us if it is. Or it might be Hell, and then we’re really in trouble. But I seem to have a multi-million dollar gunship under me. And I’m capable of fighting it. So I’m just going to do what the Army trained me to do and fight these fucking things that are threatening people I’m supposed to protect. Anything else that you would suggest, sir?”
“Not a thing,” said Burkes, as she juked the copter into line with the beast that was heading straight for a line of cars stuck in the field.
Did only people in vehicles come here?, she thought. There were a lot of cars in the open area. That didn’t mean that pedestrians weren’t carried here as well, but she couldn’t prove it.
Making sure the sighting pip on her helmet was centered on the man on the dragon’s back, she triggered the thirty millimeter cannon and sent a line of tracers into the beast. As she pulled the helicopter around the beast she kept the pip on it, allowing the gun to move in the nose turret. The man exploded on the back of the creature when the first rounds struck. The beast let out a tremendous roar as the high explosive armor piercing rounds stitched from the saddle to the shoulder and up its neck. The roar cut off as rounds hit the back of its skull in a flurry of small bright explosions. The wings folded up and the animal dropped heavily from the air like a sack of flesh and bones. It hit in the midst of a group of ancient oaks in the forest bordering the clearing, cracking branches and bones on impact.
Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 Page 8