“We’ve got the other two smaller ones after us,” said Burke over the intercom.
Stuart looked at her dash viewer that was set to the rear view camera. She juked the copter back and forth to avoid the fireballs that had been sent her way, then pushed the throttle up to max as she headed away. The dragons seemed to be straining to keep up, but couldn’t do half of the over two hundred knots that the copter was capable of. They dropped behind until they were dots in the viewer.
The pilot turned the copter in an arching full speed turn and headed back toward the monsters. At extreme range she let loose a pair of Hellfires as her copilot painted them. The dragons attempted to hit the missiles with fireballs. One caught the rear of one missile and the weapon veered off as metal vented from the heat. The second missile hit the gut area of one of the monsters and exploded, sending the tungsten carbide AP penetrator through scales and muscle and into the intestines of the creature. The beast flipped over on its back with a strangled bellow and fell the long ways to the ground, its pilot trying to disengage his straps and get off. He didn’t succeed, as the wind of passage kept him from getting free, and the dragon crushed him between its weight and the tops of the trees that it hit.
Jessica turned the copter into the remaining of the chasing monsters and sent a line of thirty millimeter into the chest area, working up through the throat and into the face. That monster too folded over, though the rider unstrapped himself and fell from it. The dragon accelerated downward into the trees. The rider didn’t, slowing down until he was almost floating in the air in his descent. The Warrant Officer thought for a moment about blasting the rider out of the sky. It would be fitting revenge for the bastards attacking helpless civilians on the ground. She shook her head and thought of herself floating from the sky with a parachute, and some complete bastard firing at her as she drifted down. It wasn’t how she had been taught. And it wasn’t something she needed to start doing.
“Big bastard is running away,” said Burkes.
She rotated her machine and followed the flight of the giant. It was low to the trees and flapping for all it was worth.
“What do you want to do, LT?”
“It’s your bird. But I suggest we get back to where we left the other copters. They might be ready to join us. Or they might need our help. Either way, it would be a good idea to go back.”
“You got anything on the radio from them?”
“I can’t get through,” said the officer. “That might not mean much. This thing hasn’t been the most reliable since we got to wherever this is. But I would still feel better getting back to the flight.”
“OK, Burkes,” she agreed, turning the chopper on her side and heading back the way she had come. Or her best guess of it. “Let’s go home. Or at least to the little part of home we brought here with us.”
* * *
Callander Melisardra had been a dragon rider for over a thousand years. He had been on Great Talon for over five hundred, as the leader of a group of flyers. He had been as surprised as any of his younger charges when the aliens had appeared on the ground. One second he had been looking at the valley’s open areas between the continent spanning forest. The next the air had shimmered, there had been the reflection of some monstrous wall of flame and heat, and then the alien people had been in the valley.
There had been dozens of wheeled, horseless wagons that had rolled clumsily on the sward, some falling over. Some of the wagons had been very large, the size of the siege wagons that the army used to carry catapults and other equipment. And there had been hundreds of humans who had appeared outside of vehicles, as if they had been walking wherever they had come from. They all milled about, looking confused, until a few of them had spotted the circling dragons. Then many of them had fled into the woods, and the Dragon Lord had decided to act.
It had not been his intention to kill all of the humans. They had much better uses to his people alive, at least for the time being. The stronger could make good slaves for the fields or the arena. Some of the women could make more slaves. While the older and weaker would be sacrificed to the Gods, killed where their energies might be of some use. And the Emperor had ordered that they be taken alive. It was always a good idea to obey imperial commands, if one wanted to keep their skin and soul intact. So he had attacked out of the sky, hoping that in spreading terror he might force the invaders to panic and confusion.
And then that thing had come. It was like nothing he had ever seen. Smaller than a dragon but larger than a hawk, it was faster and more maneuverable than either. And it packed weaponry like he had never seen. Three of his dragons killed, along with two of the riders. He could still feel the surviving rider through his spell of connection. And it had nearly killed Great Talon as well. If not for sheer luck in the fireball hitting that incoming hell weapon, and the luck of the other hitting a wing membrane, his magnificent beast would have been killed as well. Which would have been a tragedy in his mind, for the two thousand year old monster to have gone down in such a death.
The leaders have to know of this, he thought, as he looked behind once more to make sure that the war machine had not followed him. Not that he could have done much if it had, except to die with his mount.
* * *
“I cannot believe what we just saw,” said the Conyastaya warrior, looking up into the sky from the tree top.
“The Goddess said that the strangers were mighty,” said the Priestess Leinora Glassandora, shading her eyes from the sun. “But I never imagined a machine that could kill three dragons and chase the largest of the flight away in terror.”
“But what is it called?” asked another of the warriors who was part of the escort of the Priestess to the place she had been told to go. “I have never heard of the like.”
The ground started to shake beneath them, and one of the men pointed to the wagon trail that led to the clearing. Another machine moved down the road, something so massive they couldn’t believe it could move along the ground. A couple of smaller machines moved behind it, then another of the big machines.
“Should we warn the people in glade?” asked one of the warriors, his face tense and worried as he looked at his Priestess.
“No need,” said Leinora, gesturing toward the glade where a couple of smaller vehicles were moving, occupied by men who looked much like those in the big vehicles below. And the people were running toward the vehicles and cheering them. “These are warriors of these people, and are here to protect them. Much as the flying machine did.”
The Priestess started to climb down from the tree, her trio of protectors joining her. The relief on the escort commander’s face was apparent as he and the other five men who had stayed on the ground saw her drop to the turf.
“We still have a long ways to go today,” said the Priestess, looking over her picked men. “The Gimikran villagers will be worried if we don’t make it there before dark.”
And with that the party was off like deer, running swiftly through the forest that was their home, making less noise than a breeze through the trees.
Chapter Seven
“Dammit, get me Corps and get them now,” yelled Major General Zachary Taylor, looking over his glasses at the Master Sergeant who was in charge of making sure the U S 3rd Armored Division’s radio net was working. “And don’t tell me about EMP. Everything we have is shielded up the ass.”
“It’s not that, sir,” said the Master Sergeant, throwing up his hands. “We can’t find anything wrong with the equipment. But I can say that it’s not working quite up to spec. We can get through just fine to a unit, then lose contact for an hour. Then they come back just fine. And no one has done anything to cause either the lost contacts or the regained.”
“You think it might be the Russians jamming us?” asked Colonel James Harris, the G2 Intelligence Officer.
“I don’t think they’re in this game anymore,” said Colonel Walter Delgado, commanding officer of the third brigade, U S 3rd Armored Division, walking in
to the newly erected tent. “Unless they started wearing chain mail armor and shooting arrows at my combat vehicles.”
“What’s that, Walt?” asked Taylor, looking up at the small, slender Cuban-American as the Colonel threw a hasty salute his way.
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t have seen it myself,” said the Colonel, plopping down in a chair and nodding to the HQ orderly for a coffee. “I thought the reports I was getting from my company commanders to be pure bullshit. Even if I couldn’t explain where the German countryside had gone right after that nuclear flash.”
“You were talking about chain mail and arrows,” said Harris, raising an eyebrow at the other Colonel.
“They came at my headquarters,” said the brigade commander, nodding his thanks to the Orderly Sergeant as he accepted a cup of black coffee. “A couple hundred of the sons of bitches. Riding horses. All armored up in shining chain mail and helmets. About half of them carried lances, while the other half had composite bows strung and ready. I thought at first that we had stumbled into a Society for Creative Anachronism reenactment. I mean, who the hell rides around in all of that stuff when World War Three is going down?”
“What did they turn out to be?” asked Taylor with a smile, knowing that this would have to turn out to be one of those improbables that everyone would laugh at.
“As far as I could tell they were Elves,” said the brigade commander with a seriously straight face.
“They were what?” asked the General, almost dropping his coffee.
“They had pointy ears and seemed to be pretty damned handsome for men,” said the Colonel. “Not that I’m attracted to men. But you know what I mean. And they weren’t playing the part. We had enough dead to examine to tell that the ears and facial features were real.”
“Wait a second,” yelped Harris, his eyes wide. “Bodies? You mean you killed some of these freaks on horseback?”
“When they opened fire with those bows we had to,” said Delgado, shrugging.
“Did anyone get hurt from your HQ personnel?” asked the General, rubbing his forehead as he thought about the implications of U S Soldiers killing a bunch of civilians.
“They killed over a dozen men before we knew they were serious,” said the Colonel, grimacing. “We didn’t know what to think of them as they were riding toward us. Our perimeter guards tried to warn them off, and they shot them full of arrows. Damned things went right through their body armor, ballistic plates and all. Some of the perimeter people opened up then and there and knocked a couple of them from their saddles. But what really shocked me were the ones that bounced the rounds off of their armor and kept on coming. The fancier ones that had to be nobles or such.”
“Wait a minute,” said Colonel Harris, his eyes growing even wider. “Their chain mail bounced rounds from a military rifle off them. That’s flippen impossible. You know it is.”
“I would have thought so too,” said the Colonel, his voice rising at the implications of the G2’s tone. “And their arrows sunk into the steel hulls on my armored HQ vehicles. Bounced off the tungsten stuff though.”
“What did you do?” asked the General, wondering if this officer, one of the leaders of his three armored fists, had gone over the edge.
“We opened up with the vehicle mounts,” said the Colonel, looking around the tent at the faces looking at him. “Fifties and twenty mil went through that armor alright. We blasted most of them off of their horses. About a dozen rode away.”
“Did you take any prisoners?” asked Harris, trying to hide his disbelief.
Colonel Walter Delgado laughed uproariously for a moment, to the stares of his fellow officers. He looked around, especially at the glare of his CO, and pulled himself together.
“We couldn’t get near to the ones throwing the balls of fire at us,” he said in a now sober voice. “But we did capture some of the lesser Elves. Disarmed them and thought we had them. But they walked out of captivity.”
“Walked out of captivity?” exclaimed the General, shaking his head in disbelief. “How in the hell did they do that?”
“Some kind of magic I would guess,” said the Colonel, his face threatening to break out in another laughing spell. “Some of my guards fell asleep. Others swore that they saw nothing. Maybe heard something but couldn’t tell what it was. But all of the prisoners got away. I couldn’t even see punishing the men involved. Two of them were my best NCOs.”
“And you have proof of this nonsense?” said the General, wondering whether he needed to relieve his most experienced brigade commander on the spot.
“Right outside in my command track,” said the Colonel, jumping up from his seat and leading the way out of the tent.
The bright light of the too white sun again struck Taylor on the face, reminding him that he was indeed somewhere that was beyond his experience. The lightness of his step, the feel of greater strength, all intensified that feeling. But he wasn’t sure if he wanted to believe in mythological beings and magic. What next?, he thought. Gods and demons and things that went bump in the night.
The General blinked his eyes at the command track, a newer version of the venerable old M551. It had a layer of better tungsten carbide armor under the aluminum layer, and a thin layer of light alloy steel over the top. And there were long, thin objects sticking out of that armor. The officer walked up to the track and reached a hand out to grasp one of the wooden shafts that sprouted from the hard armor of the vehicle. He pulled hard, but the shaft was held tight. Twisting his wrist he snapped it off, but the head of the arrow remained buried in the hull.
“I think those are magic as well,” said Colonel Delgado, pulling at another arrow. “The heads burned right into the armor, but the tungsten carbide layer stopped them dead. But still, to cut through steel and aluminum alloys. A 7.62mm round wouldn’t scratch that surface, and I’ve seen them go through a telephone pole at a thousand meters.”
“That’s damned scary,” said Harris, nodding at the broken shaft in the General’s hand. “If we really are somewhere other than Earth our ammo is limited. We won’t be resupplied. And we have hostiles with some kind of unknown advanced weaponry that they can probably manufacture in large quantities.”
“Not unknown advanced weaponry,” said Delgado, walking to the back of the carrier and gesturing for the other officers to follow.
“Magic,” he said, pointing at the piled chain mail and helmets on the deck of the APC. He reached down, picked up a glittering suit of mail that was shining slightly with its own light. He tossed the chain mail to the General and reached down for a helmet.
“Damn,” said the General, catching the suit of light mail in one hand. “This feels as light as cloth. But it sure does feel like metal in my hands.”
“That’s one of the suits that deflected 5.56mm,” said the Colonel, tossing a helmet to Colonel Harris. “See that hole in the helmet. That’s from a .50 caliber round. 7.62mm bounced off without leaving a scratch.”
“But you still were able to take them out?” asked the G2, looking over his shoulder as if expecting to see a horde of mounted Elves to appear.
“Yeah,” agreed the brigade commander. “With heavy caliber weapons. And again I have to stress, I don’t have unlimited ammo.”
“The division train came across with us,” said Major General Taylor. “Wherever this is. So we have about three full fuel reloads for all of our vehicles, as well as four combat ammo reloads. And I don’t think the entire division made it across. At least we haven’t been able to contact the other brigade HQ’s. Or any other maneuver battalions besides Cavalry and Artillery. Maybe a couple of detached maneuver companies, but that’s it.”
“We’ll still run out,” said the Colonel, shaking his head. “And we’ve still got nothing to resupply us when we do. So we may need to carve out some space, fortify it, and hold on until we can adapt to whatever game they have going here.”
“Master Sergeant,” yelled the General, looking back at the HQ ten
t. The portly communications Sergeant ran from the tent, his eyes showing his alarm at being summoned.
“Get on the horn to whomever you can raise,” ordered the General, pointing at the NCO. “Tell them to gather and keep all of the armor and weapons they come across from the natives. Order them, and I’ll repeat this, order them to not go out of their way to kill the natives. But if they do, gather as much of their stuff as they can.”
The Master Sergeant nodded, scribbling on a notepad, then turned and ran back into the tent.
“Maybe we can use some of their own stuff against them when it comes to that,” said the General to the gathered officers. “Maybe we can show them some surprises that might catch them off guard. But I don’t intend to be helpless against these people. They have not, so far, shown much in the way of friendliness or helpfulness. Now, Colonel Delgado. Tell me about this magic they threw at you. We need to be able to figure out how to counter it as well.”
* * *
“This air smells so clean,” said Kurt, starting the pump that would inflate his flat tire. “That in itself tells me we aren’t in Europe anymore.”
“You have that right, my friend,” said Ismael Levine, laying out his equipment on the ground next to Kurt’s panoply. “As if dragons and virgin forests weren’t enough.
“What do you think the, Angel, meant?” asked Kurt, getting up from his squat and walking over to stand by the other man, looking down on his equipment.
“About the prophecy, you mean?” asked Levine. Kurt nodded and looked his friend in the face. “Remember when I talked about thoughts of about having a destiny,” continued the ancient Jew. “I think this may be our destiny. To come to this world and save these people from their oppressors. And maybe save the human race at the same time.”
Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 Page 9