Days of Future Past - Part 2: Present Tense

by John Van Stry

  I was surprised at how quiet they were, when they finally arrived at our ambush. The APC was moving slowly, either so as to not outrun the horses, or to conserve fuel, I wasn't sure which.

  I pulled the ring on the rocket and extended the tube, then just started to track the APC as it drew near. We were about a hundred feet up the hillside from the dirt road; the plan was for me to hit it broadside, where if I remembered correctly the armor was thinner. Thinner than the front at least.

  Heather would then start picking riders out of their saddles and I'd grab my railgun and shoot anyone coming out of the APC.

  I got a good look at the APC as it drew closer, it looked old, it had rust marks on it and a lot of scrapes and scratches. One of the four tires on this side were missing, another was flat. Going slow may have been their only option.

  The moment it was right in front of me I pulled the trigger and closed my eyes as the rocket lanced out in a bright flash that I could see through my closed eyelids. I heard it hit and detonate, there was a loud "Wump" sort of noise and a small shock wave blew by as I dropped the tube and bent over to assume the firing position I'd set up for my rifle.

  The hatches on top of the APC were all open now and someone's head popped up, then their body as they tried to climb out. They collapsed when I shot them, half in the APC, half out. Smoke was starting to billow out of the hatches, I couldn't hear the engine running and it wasn't moving anymore.

  Another figure tried to climb out, only this one was screaming something, though it stopped as soon as I shot it.

  The next one however, didn't stop. It didn't even seem to be effected. Then it clambered on top of the APC and spread out its arms and started to faintly glow.

  "I think that's the wizard," I said.

  "No shit," Heather said from her position on my left. I looked over at her. She was trading shots with the last four of the riders, who had managed to scramble behind some rocks and were returning fire. Three of the horses were also down, the rest were quickly galloping back the way they had came. Minus their riders of course.

  I looked back at the APC, the figure on top was clearly a man, a fairly old looking one with long grey frizzled hair, which was smoking, and a long grey beard which I think might have been smoking as well. Even though he was sort of glowing now, I couldn't make out his eyes, but I could make out enough to see that he looked very angry, and he was looking directly at me.

  He raised his arms, started to chant something as he waved them in a pattern and then brought them down.

  A lightning bolt came out of his hands. It blasted about halfway towards us, then split in half, arced back towards the APC and hit it.

  He screamed and jumped in the air, then landed in front of the APC and thrashed a brief moment before jumping to his feet and deflecting the follow on attack that Sarah had sent his way, which was a jet of water that soaked him down and wet the ground around him.

  I heard a bullet whiz by, so I turned my attention to helping Heather as Sarah and the other mage started to duke it out in earnest.

  "Shoot the rocks," I told Heather.

  "What, are you crazy?"

  "I married you, didn't I?" I snickered and aimed at one of the smaller rocks that one of the riders was hiding behind. Hitting it made a loud noise and a spark, but a quarter of the rock cracked off.

  "What the hell?" Heather said and shot the same rock, splitting it in two.

  "If these guns will punch through a dragon's scales, what's a rock going to do?" I said as she shot the now exposed rider, he looked like an orc from here, in the head.

  I started in on the next rock, and she would take the occasional shot at it, but was more interested in trying to pick one off when they popped up to return fire.

  When I split a large chuck off the side, the enemy behind it grabbed one of the others behind the biggest rock and literally threw him ten feet to our left as he dove behind the heavier cover.

  Heather killed the one in the air before he even hit the ground.

  The two of us started to concentrate on the center of the remaining bolder, stitching up and down the centerline with our shots. Slowly trying to split it.

  Suddenly they both dashed out, I guess they decided to make a break for it before they lost their cover, we both shot the one closer to us at the same time, then Heather picked off the last one before he'd gotten a third of the way towards us.

  I scanned the APC again, smoke was still coming out of the hatches, but in the dark I couldn't tell if it was less or more than before.

  Sarah and the bad guy were still slugging it out, but they weren't really tossing spells at each anymore, so much as raw power. I could see that Sarah was starting to look tired, but the evil wizard looked exhausted.

  He wasn't giving up however.

  Heather started to take slow measured shots at him, right in front of his eyes. Each one you could see was deflected off of some kind of shield, but she kept at it, so I joined in, doing it as well, but aiming closer to his waist.

  When she skipped a beat and then fired off rhythm, I saw him blink and stumble for a moment. Sarah took immediate advantage of it and threw two spells in quick succession, one a lightning bolt, the other a fireball, then went right back to the raw power attack.

  He stumbled again, and suddenly I saw something flicker around his feet, so I shot at them and was rewarded with part of his foot being blown off as he fell to his knees and screamed.

  Heather's next shot to his eyes encountered no resistance, blowing off the back of his head as he pitched forward, face first, onto the dirt, dead.

  I got up and moved over to Sarah, who was swaying slowly on her feet, she had stood up after we'd finished off the others, and I put my arms around her and hugged her.

  "You okay, Hon?"

  "Yeah," she mumbled, "set me down, please?"

  "Okay," I helped her down into a sitting position, where she closed her eyes and slowly keeled over, sound asleep.

  "Let's make sure they're all dead," Heather said, grabbing her gauss rifle and moving down the slope.

  I grabbed mine and followed her carefully, keeping an eye out as she put a bullet in each of the enemies' heads. They were a varied group, some orcs, some of those fey I'd seen at the dragon isle, even a human. Once that was done, we checked the wizard, just to be sure, and then I shined a flashlight down inside the APC. It looked like a charnel house inside.

  "I'm surprised anybody survived that," I said to Heather.

  "They were probably behind the wizard when the rocket hit and were protected by his shield."

  "Good point," I said. "Now what?"

  "My favorite pastime," Heather grinned. "We loot the bodies."

  "Makes sense," I said and we spent the next twenty or so minutes doing just that, though neither of us wanted to go inside the APC.

  We found some gold and silver on the guards and a lot of very fancy jewelry on the dead mage, all of which we grabbed for Sarah to look over. Then I picked Sarah up, took her back to the tent and put her to sleep while Heather and I traded off guard duty.

  When morning came, we packed up our gear and started to head north. The buzzards were already starting to circle, and we didn't want to be here when someone got around to investigating, as most of the people who might come to take a look were unlikely to be friendly.

  "So, now what?" Sarah yawned; she was still a bit drained from her fight last night.

  "I'll tell you as soon as I figure it out," I replied. "You know, I was pretty impressed by you last night. You took on one of the enemy's heavy hitters and won. I had no idea you were so powerful."

  Sarah smiled at me, "If he was rested and not so tired, I do not know that it would have gone the same way."

  Heather spoke up, "You were tired too, Hon. You did a couple of big spells earlier in the day. You need to acknowledge the plain truth that you're turning into a powerful mage."

  "Well, I have been doing a lot more these last few months than I usually do in a year.
So you may have a point there."

  "So magic gets better with use?" I asked.

  "You progress more quickly to your potential, the more you do and the more challenged you are when doing," Sarah explained.

  I heard the soft sound of Heather's gun firing and I turned and saw a coyote ducking behind some rocks.

  "What are you doing?" I asked trying to figure out just what the hell she was up to.

  "Teaching someone some manners, I think we've earned a day off, don't you?"

  I sighed and shook my head, "You know that was probably just a regular coyote, don't you?"

  Heather gave a shrug and then grinned, "Why take chances?"

  End of Part Two - Present Tense

  Continued in Part Three - Future Tense

  Afterword

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