“It’s a goddamned dragon,” John said in disbelief.
Dragon was the first thing that flashed into his head when John saw it. Everyone was stunned, watching the behemoth chasing the diminutive Corbie through the sky. It looked like someone from the 1930s had designed it; black-chromed, streamlined, segmented armor running its entire length. It didn’t have any horns or other ornamentation on it; it didn’t need it. Its chest was as wide as a semi-truck with attached trailer, from end to end. Four beefy legs, all ending in talons as big as a man. It didn’t have wings, but that didn’t make it look any smaller or diminished. Its tail lashed in huge arcs, sweeping away the tops of several buildings as casually as if they had been made of toothpicks. It leapt into the air, trying to catch Corbie in mid-dodge. John braced himself, waiting for the thing to fall back to earth, and Sera ducked back behind the shelter of the wall, anticipating debris flying in all directions when it did.
But it didn’t fall back to earth. As it reached the top of its jump, the bone-vibrating hum of Thulian propulsion units shook John so hard he felt it from his hair to the soles of his feet, and that all-too-familiar sullen orange glow traced the edges of every segment of the dragon’s armor.
“Ah, bloody Hell! Come on!” Corbie groaned. “How is that even possible?”
The thing had a relatively short neck, but it was still able to snake its head around and belch a plume of fire at the flying meta. Corbie just folded his wings and dropped right out from under the danger, then snapped them open again, and dove under the right leg before it could make a snatch at him. Once under the chest, he changed directions, coming up around the side of the torso until he was just over the backbone.
The dragon seemed to have lost sight of him for the moment, and turned its attention to nearby ground troops that had pushed further into the city than Spearhead, some of whom were trying to hit it with ECHO special-issue RPGs. The rounds impacted with the dragon’s underbelly, but the patches of burning material didn’t seem to affect it at all. Roaring with annoyance, the dragon craned its neck down, issuing a massive, roiling fireball from its mouth. The ground troops were completely lost in the flames, no time for any of them to even scream before they were consumed.
Cursing hoarsely over the comm, Corbie folded his wings and made a dive towards a building just a couple of hundred yards up the street from the spot where the CCCP team had taken shelter. The dragon was still engaged in polishing off the last of the ground troops, and didn’t spot him in the smoke from the fires it was setting. The Brit landed hard, stumbled, and got in under cover. There was movement immediately behind him, as more figures ran into the building. John heaved a sigh of relief. At least now the dragon couldn’t see him.…
“This is Earth Team. We’re all cozy in a Krieger building. Bastard seems to have lost track of us for the moment, but we can’t exactly put the kettle on yet. Some…complications in here.”
“Team Earth, shelter in place. Apaches incoming. Corbie, hand on ground please. Good, map of structure uploaded to you; follow your HUD, I found the strongest spot in the building.”
Three AH-64 Apaches in tight formation screamed overhead at that moment, their rotors beating through the air as they started a gun run on the dragon. All three opened up with their chainguns at the same time, followed by the ear-splitting shriek of Hydra 70 unguided rockets being launched. All of the rounds from the chaingun and nearly all of the rockets impacted with the main trunk of the dragon, the thwock of the 30mm rounds and the low pitched rumble of the explosives drowning out all other sound for a moment.
Nothing can take that much punishment and keep moving. John had personally seen what an Apache could do against armored transports and tanks; they were the kings of the sky on whatever battlefield they flew over, providing Close Air Support and generally ruining the day of anyone that had the misfortune to get in the gunners’ sights. And that was without the new ordinance that had been developed to handle Krieger armor. Thick black smoke and orange flame covered the body of the dragon, obscuring it from view. A cheer went through the infiltration teams and SOF around John.
All of the cheering died when the dragon surged through the smoke from the explosives, roaring straight at the oncoming helos. They tried to break off, but it was too late. The middle chopper was torn to pieces as the dragon’s massive jaws closed around it, a fireball and an explosion enveloping the head for a moment. The Apache on the left, still firing its chaingun at the behemoth’s head, had its tail rotor sheared off by a lazy swipe of one of the dragon’s claws, sending it spinning to the ground to a crash landing, coming apart and exploding after rolling on the ground. The third Apache was able to swing around the dragon, climbing as fast as it could to get away from the danger. Seemingly as an afterthought, the dragon turned its massive head, opening its jaws. From something imbedded there, it fired the largest Thulian energy cannon beam that John had ever seen; the helo disappeared in the rush of blue energy, as if it had never been.
The dragon roared into the silence, and its head swiveled downwards as it looked for more victims.
John felt Sera’s eyes on him, and turned his head slightly. Her eyes were blazing gold again, and there was sheer fury in her gaze. The music washed over him; nothing subtle or fading about it this time. It sounded as angry as Sera looked. He knew what she was thinking, because he had been thinking the exact same thing. Let’s kill that big bastard.
They nodded to each other simultaneously; she spread her wings and launched straight upwards, already blazing in fire. John swung his rifle’s sling off of his shoulders and back, leaving the gun leaning against cover. Without a word, he vaulted over the barrier; he could vaguely hear shouting and cursing behind him, but he wasn’t focusing on that. His enhancements already keyed up, he moved with blinding speed. The Krieger troops in front of him were momentarily caught off guard, but quickly recovered; blasts from their energy cannons split the air around him, impacting with the ground and buildings but never touching him. As he sprinted past their positions, he took the time to turn at the waist and blast four with plasma as a parting gift, never stopping his forward motion. He looked up, seeing that Sera was directly above him. With a final kick off of the ground, he launched himself into the air; his fires blazed a second later from his lower legs and feet, rocketing him upward.
“All troops, all troops, hold your fire on the dragon! Dammit, you two, what the hell do you think you’re doing? If three Apaches couldn’t dent that thing, then—”
“Find us weaknesses, little sister.” There was fury in Sera’s voice, something he had never heard in it before. “And while you do, we shall prevent it from touching those below.”
Vix cursed in more languages than John had time to count, because at that moment…he had his hands full. In his right he manifested his own fire-sword, collecting and building up his fires in the other hand. The air around them was filled with energy blasts, both from ground troopers and the missile defense turrets. Sera was pulling aerial maneuvers that looked impossible, and certainly defied, if not broke, several laws of physics. As she flew and dodged and evaded, she was manifesting fire-spears, aiming them at the thing’s “eyes.”
She was also leading it away from where Spearhead had dug in, and towards the center of the Thulian City. Good. Anything that gets wrecked or dead in there is less we have to deal with later. While the dragon was focusing on Sera, John did his best to probe its defenses; he fired blast after blast of fire and plasma, trying to hit it in the joints or the spots between its segmented armor plates. Nothing penetrated, all of the fire simply splashing against its hide harmlessly. He didn’t have time to hold still and charge up a truly powerful blast; between the energy turrets and the dragon, it was everything he and Sera could do to keep mobile and not be shot or swatted from the sky. The dragon snapped its jaws, narrowly missing Sera. She spun and whirled just out of its reach, continuously throwing fiery spears at it.
“Where the neck meets the shoulders!” Vix ra
sped.
John saw his chance; he knew through their connection that Sera would keep it distracted and off balance. Putting a burst of speed on, he dove for the dragon’s back where the neck connected with the main trunk of its body, while Sera arrowed up, then came down literally on its head. She clung there with arms and legs, wings tightly folded, and as she did, she washed the head over with fire that cascaded and dripped from her body, temporarily blinding it. Gripping his sword in both hands, John killed his speed at the last second, spinning the sword in his grip so that it was point down. As he landed, he thrust the sword down with all of his enhanced might, hitting the dragon right between two of its armor plates. Sawing and prying the sword back and forth and sending up a shower of sparks, he saw that a small opening had formed. He withdrew his sword, turning it back in his hands so that he was gripping it normally, and then began slashing at the breach in the robotic beast’s armor. He could sense something deep within the dragon. A…presence? It was the mind of something, strange and alien, hooked directly into the beast with wires; it was visceral body horror, and John mentally recoiled from it. John knew that Sera sensed it as well; it was an abomination, the evil fusion of flesh and Krieger technology. Pain and hatred and insanity emanated from it in staggering waves.
He understood that he had made as big a breach in the thing’s armor as he could in the little time he and Sera had before it would shake her off. He felt Sera’s assent, and as he blasted off the thing’s back, knew she had leapt from the head and was half-running, half-flying down the neck. The trick now was for him to keep it occupied. He could feel its malice; it knew he had hurt it, and it wanted to hurt him in return. He put as much speed into his flying as he could, twisting and turning through the sky, narrowly dodging energy cannons from the dragon as well as from the ground. He was glad that he had brought goggles this time; the wind would have been blinding otherwise, as he could feel the skin on his face being dragged back from the force. He had no idea how Sera ever managed to see while flying.
Sera reached the spot where he had made the breach in the dragon’s armor. Manifesting another spear, she slammed it down through the hole, then clung to it while the dragon bucked and rolled…John felt its pain through her senses. Felt how Sera had hurt it, a creature that never expected to be hurt. How could it be? It was invincible! The surprise and shock were almost as great as the pain, and the wrath it felt at such a betrayal was even greater.
She withdrew the spear a little, then slammed it down again, somehow lengthening it as she did so until the point burst through the dragon’s chest, transfixing the entire cybernetic beast with a needle of fire. The dragon roared and twisted and rolled; she used the pain she caused it to goad it further away from the allied forces, twisting and pulling her spear to direct it. It had never felt this much agony, ever, in its entire lifetime, and all it could do now was mindlessly try to escape. It twisted and rolled through the air, clawing fruitlessly at its own back, unable to reach her because of its construction, sending shards of its own armor falling to the ground.
Beloved, he heard in his mind. And then, communication that went deeper than words, intermingled with the music. He understood, he saw what they needed to do, and exactly when. And at precisely the right moment when she needed to act, Sera gathered all the fire that was within her, and funneled it into her spear. And when every bit of energy that she could muster had passed into the weapon—
—she released it.
Muffled explosions began to rock the dragon from inside. The armor containing its mechanisms bulged and gave way; flames and black, oily smoke shooting out in long streams as the armor split. The entire dragon spasmed, its limbs curved in agony with each explosion.
And the sense of presence from within, ended, cut off abruptly in a mental shriek of unbearable agony. What had been connected to that living mind, however, was still functioning. The head thrashed around, shooting gouts of flame, and the mouth and eye energy cannons fired simultaneously; wherever the mouth cannon’s beam struck, even the sturdiest looking Krieger buildings were reduced to rubble. It was still dangerous, even without the malevolent presence buried deep within it. John, pausing in the air ahead of the oncoming dragon, focused all of his energy into his sword, tapping his deepest reserves. The fire sword went from orange, to yellow, to blinding white. When he didn’t think he could hold it any longer, John took the sword in both hands, raising it above his head and behind his back before throwing it as hard as he could at the dragon. He and Sera both knew what would happen; she took to the sky, springing from its back, letting the air catch in her wings before turning sharply and flying in the opposite direction. John rocketed straight upwards, climbing as fast as he could. The sword, which looked like a new miniature sun flying through the air, impacted the dragon’s head dead center, lodging there; a split second later, the head detonated in a blinding flash as an expanding sphere of superheated plasma completely engulfed the dragon’s head and shoulders. The explosion was deafening as the air displaced, sounding as if God himself had split the sky in a hundred pieces. Chancing a look down, John saw that the upper body of the dragon was a smoking ruin; the rest of the body rolled downward until it hit the streets, destroying dozens of buildings and carving a huge furrow in the ground before it exploded, less brilliantly than John’s sword, but still with a massive fireball.
John could feel his energy flagging; glancing down and to the right, he could immediately tell that Sera was spent as well. There was no sign of the Robo-Eagles that had been overhead. Knocked for a loop? Knocked out of the sky? His question was answered moments later; several jets had been diverted, and with their improved munitions had turned all but one of the Robo-Eagles to slag.
Good hunting, fellas.
Still dodging through the sky to avoid the energy turrets and the odd trooper arm cannon, John and Sera made their way back to the sky overhead of the Spearhead group. In concert they both dove for the ground, landing next to each other among the other infiltrators and soldiers. Both of them were completely out of breath, and Sera sagged to her knees, wings drooping to either side; John knew that it would be a good while before either of them could do anything like that again.
There was absolute silence all around them, save for the occasional weapons fire exchange between an element of the allied forces and the Kriegers. John moved closer to Sera, helping her to stand. They both glanced around, reading the expressions of their comrades. Some were visibly frightened, others still awestruck.
“I…didn’t know you could do that,” Vickie said in their ears, sounded three parts awed and one part terrified.
“Neither did we, Vic. An’ I don’t think we’ll be able to pull a stunt like that anytime in the near future. Damn near took everythin’ out of us.”
Sera sagged even further, looking—and to John’s senses, feeling—as if she very much needed to lie down. Her breathing was labored, and her hair hung about her face in tangled, sweat-soaked strands. John felt as if he had run seven marathons back to back while humping a three hundred pound ruck on his back; nevertheless he did his best to send some of his strength to her through their connection.
Molotok had sprinted over to them, keeping low so as not to present a target for the Kriegers down the street. He stopped short of them, his face neutral and appraising both of them. After several very long moments, he spoke slowly. “Next time…do not be doing that without orders. Is that understood, tovarischii?”
“Y’got it, boss.” John looked around, then retrieved his rifle from the ground, shrugging the sling back over his shoulder.
Wordlessly, Soviet Bear came to their side, and silently offered them his precious flask. From the odor emanating from it, it had obviously been refilled, somehow. John took it, uncapped the flask and took a swig, grimacing as he swallowed and handed it back to Bear.
“Much obliged. Now,” he said, checking the chamber of his rifle to make sure that a round was chambered before looking back at the rest of the team. “
Shall we get to kickin’ some more ass?”
Earth Team: Ultima Thule
Corbie was damned glad that little witch had fixed him up with her fancy gear, the internal everything, the HUD, all of that. He’d have been going crazy, otherwise. Earth Team, comprised of himself and several metas from the ECHO Europe contingent, had been the first to suffer a casualty. Initially, the team had attempted to fly straight to their target, staying low over the rooftops. It had worked for a few blocks; Corbie had been on point, while the rest of the team followed with jetpacks; Earth Team had been able to get further, faster than the other teams because of it. Corbie’s hope had been that, since the element of surprise had ruined the prospect of a stealthy entrance and approach to their target, that by making a mad dash for it that they would be able to catch the Kriegers with their knickers down.
It hadn’t been a bad plan. It just didn’t work, is all.
The team’s fire specialty—a younger lad the name of Fernand, Corbie couldn’t remember his callsign for the life of him—had been right behind Corbie in the flying formation. Things were going well; it looked like the team was going to be able to slip past the Kriegers before they knew what was going on.
The energy blast came from below them on the street. Corbie knew that it had been meant for him, but the shooter hadn’t led him enough with his aim. The blast had clipped Fernand in the shoulder, with part of it carrying through to the jetpack, destroying both. The meta dropped like a stone, bouncing off the corner of a building before he landed, hard, on the street below. Corbie had immediately pulled up, calling the rest of the team to circle around. But the air had already started to fill with more Thulian energy cannon blasts. Fernand had landed right in the center of a Krieger platoon. Several had begun to advance on him, barking orders. Corbie knew that they had to get to him, somehow, and also knew that it was hopeless. He saw Fernand look up at him and give him a little salute, and felt pierced by his gaze. Bloody hell…he knows. He knows we can’t get to him. Everything inside of Corbie screamed against that thought, willing reality to change to something less horrible. It was his fault, his plan, that had caused this.
Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 55