by D. Rus
"Ammo!" San Sanych shouted again. Concussed, he couldn’t hear well. A former city bus driver, he was now a private in the militia.
His sixteen-year-old son was taking much too long to chamber his round. The young man’s frostbitten fingers, nails torn out, trembled. His eyes involuntarily glanced at the line of quickly approaching demons. Not many of the beasts, but damn they were strong and tenacious!
An explosion in the minefield knocked out the invisibility spell and significantly tightened the radius of the protective shield that held the squad. The ensuing volley of the ambushing group quickly suppressed the weakened dome and then helplessly sprayed single targets.
The demons’ personal shields glistened as the monsters skillfully maneuvered, brandishing their combat weapons and sparking with ricochets as their outlines blurred in the numerous activations of some mysterious skills.
All around there was a deafening roar. Drowning out their own fear, the soldiers fired in long bursts until their barrels melted. There were five hundred militia—of which only a few dozen were professional soldiers: the officers and sergeants from the nearest military base plus three tank crews sent from Belogorsk as reinforcements. Special thanks to them for having brought along three truckfuls of weapons, however antique.
The weapons had come from long-term storage. Some were new, some had once been shined by the hands of their grandfathers, but all were hermetically sealed with preservative grease. After a short briefing, the militia had hurried to get their gear and weapons ready. What had followed next was stunning in its incredibility: they had to dig trenches and foxholes around residential areas. That was just like back in '41, almost a century ago...
They were prepared—thanks to the crew of a helicopter that had caught a magic slug in its belly and was now burning out a dozen miles to the south. The men had been true to their duty. Their thermal imagers had spotted a detachment hidden under a canopy and even managed to work them over with some rockets.
The militiamen hit the dirt. Amid the clouds, a drone faintly hummed, carefully moving its electronic eyes and scanning the terrain in all available wavelengths.
After about twenty minutes, their Smerch began spewing fire. The eight-meter bodies of the rockets riddled the sky above the soldiers' heads with a deafening roar. The multiple-rocket launcher didn't have time to reload. A translucent figure with clawed wings raced from the demons' side, closely following the telltale smoke trails of the solid-fuel engines. The beast ignored the frantic shooting of the soldiers. The ghost appeared to be immune to physical damage. They could only hope that the backup group had managed to get silver, or at least blessed, ammo.
Human beings weren't the only ones to learn how to fight. The demons' generals from Diablo could think more or less on par with a human: damned be Blizzard and their investors! Having suffered a number of crushing defeats in attempted straight-line attacks in tight formations—the humans simply fused the demons with the earth using precision-guided munitions from far beyond the horizon—the monsters scattered across the vast country into thousands of hunting groups. No points for guessing what even a single creature could do in an urban environment.
The classic front line had disappeared, transforming into hotbeds of perimeter defense and quick-response teams of tanks.
To cover major population centers, there were severely limited troops. The effect of the mobilization would not be clear for a while. An armed group of people isn't an army. The core staff of the armed forces had already sustained its first losses. Their best had perished: officers, Special Forces, medical workers, and pilots, all those whose training takes countless years of peace.
And the army itself wasn't that great. We had tanks, about two thousand of them. That was rather normal: Germany had dramatically fewer. Unfortunately, our country spread "from sea to shining sea" over ten million square miles! That left one armored vehicle for every six thousand miles of territory.
The scant equipment in the armories was also starting to become a cause for concern. It had plenty of rounds for our shooters—but a full Smerch salvo cost about four hundred thousand bucks. Of course they were too costly to produce in times of peace. To do that, you’d have to cut the economic umbilical cord of the country. You’d have to store, guard, and maintain rockets. Electronics and fuel tended to degrade over time.
The next problem was the lifespan of heavy artillery and wear of the barrels. A tank can run for five hundred hours before the engine needs to be overhauled. The lifespan of a plane's turbine is calculated to the minute and the standards of mandatory maintenance were wholly draconian. The second-rate SPG "peony" had an ammo store of four shells and a duration of three hundred shots.
On the whole, full-scale modern war is infinitely expensive and couldn't last for long.
Whether or not the demons experienced personnel problems, no one knew. These creatures of hell had already spread over large areas of sparsely-populated territory, wrapped themselves in a fog of war, and continued their expansion, not hesitating to launch hundreds of supply raids. One such raid fell on the unfortunate Zavitinsk.
Foreseeing where the beasts would emerge was pretty simple. A squad of Hunters had been zigzagging from village to village, mopping up houses and leaving nothing but bloody pentagrams and traces of obscure rituals in their wake. They’d only come across a few human bodies, but a couple of times drones had managed to transmit images of portal arcs and lines of prisoners pouring into them.
"Ammo!" San Sanych yelled again, hurrying to weaken the protective cocoon of a massive demon holding two swords in his spiky claws.
This is what the tactical strategy sent from the Analytics Headquarters had recommended. Shoot and shoot until the soapy film of the force field freezes and goes out. The energy of an ordinary demon's cocoon was approximately fifty thousand joules. In other words, all it took was one magazine from an AK-47, followed by another to target the demons’ vulnerable points—head, chest, large joints—and the beast could be crossed off.
Dozens of smoldering carcasses lying in the snow ploughed up with explosions quite clearly illustrated that it was possible. Still, it was taking its toll on the five hundred militiamen. Their firing abated.
A "T-90A" pecked the ground with its cannon and filled the sky with a strange, purple smoke.
Its unfortunate brother-in-arms was spewing green foam, silenced by a particularly nasty spell.
For some reason, their third tank had opened up with friendly fire, mowing down the right flank of the militia.
A Chimera happily screeched at the positions of the mortar platoon. The machine gunners were enveloped in a suffocating fog. The blurred silhouettes of the demons flashed amongst the first line of the trenches.
"Ammo!" the man growled again, aggressively aiming at the bright figure of a creature in silver armor.
The rustling of the tight bayonet sheath as he drew it out was so dissonant with the surrounding noises that it made him glance at his son.
The young man’s black pupils were dilated to the entire width of the irises. Saliva was dripping from the corner of his twisted mouth. His blade was already drawn and in his hands.
"He's under their control!" the father's heart skipped a beat. The Xeroxed manuals mentioned those abilities of the alien creatures.
However, his tried and true reflexes, honed in fights, did not let him down. He seized the boy’s thin wrist and intentionally struck him in the temple. It doesn't take much for a kid. Let him sleep...
His son's body went limp. The knife fell from his hands. The father gritted his teeth in frustration. He took out the next bullet—made from zinc—and drove it into the barrel. Managing to catch the demon with the flashing shield, he planted the heavy bullet directly under the slit in his winged helmet.
Kinetic energy: thirty thousand joules. It could have stopped a light tank, and it was certainly enough for the injured demon. The beast's head burst, splattering bluish viscera on the pure white snow.
"Take that, you son of
a bitch!" San Sanych grinned, lips black from the gunpowder smoke.
For a moment, he let himself look back.
The militiamen had had it hard. The demons were already in the trenches with them. The surviving soldiers slowly backed away. Hardly a quarter of their guns still worked against the enemy. However, these husbands, fathers, and sons had completed their objective.
San Sanych could clearly see the endless convoy of assorted vehicles crawling out of the city and hitting the highway to Belogorsk. Buses, cars, and trucks. Women, children, the elderly.
The militia had been asked to hold out a little longer, if only for half an hour. They had stood their ground for twice as long.
San Sanych smiled once again, kissed his anti-tank rifle, and repeated the order,
"Ammo!"
The rays of the setting sun basked amid the carved gold of Tanya's Shrine. The bells of the Elven garden faintly rang out a mournful melody, creating a darkened mood and bestowing random, short-lived buffs. The velvety grass trustingly poked my palms and whispered something soothing in the psy-range, competing for my attention with the purring Tommy dozing in my lap. A young mellorn tree brought its thin branches over our heads, carefully covering us with its healing shade.
Sitting cross-legged, I slowly, layer by layer, freed my mind of unnecessary thoughts.
The shrine was the only place where no one disturbed me. Here, for reasons unknown, communications channels didn't work, including high-priority and emergency. Was it the Universe playing strange games with mortals or the will of the gods, wanting the girl to finally get some peace and quiet?
This was a place of reflection and recollection.
With relief, I cast off the burdensome weight of being the leader of the Alliance and turned to the task ahead.
Primary objectives: intelligence and survival. Where did the portal lead? And what was this mysterious Alpha Zone? Would it lead us straight into the dungeons of the Pentagon? Did the Earth know about Asmodeus' breach? Did magic work there and, if so, to what extent?
The list of questions was not small—and answering them without dying in the process was key. Curiosity, as we know, killed the cat.
Secondary objectives: establish contact with reality and escape the pressure of AlterWorld's physics. Here we’d have to play it by ear. I had a deep respect for the Motherland and as genuine a longing for its native birch as any other man, but I wanted to avoid exposing myself to the powers that be. We had only just gotten off the hook and tasted real independence—so we didn’t need any Big Brother watching over us, thank you very much.
No, we weren’t going to leave our friends and family out in the cold. Orcus had already submitted to me an infinitely long list of the clan members' relatives. Over time, we were going to try and get them all out. If not everyone, then at least quite a few. People were our most valuable resource.
And as for me escaping the soul-wrenching laws of AlterWorld's reality...
Forced onto me by the will of hundreds of thousands of believers, the Feudal Lord and the Dark Lord had struck a temporary alliance and were now voicing their combined protest, refusing to take back seat. Hello, schizophrenia.
I needed to disappear from the spotlight for a while, letting the gazes that fell upon me dissipate and easing the pressures of other people's thoughts. Then I'd think of something. I'd hide behind the back of the Fallen One, inventing a magic thought-blocker or gaining experience in the PR Department.
I felt as though soon all the well-known players and NPCs would either fall into the shadows or turn out to be the meat grinders of people's aspirations. And then AlterWorld would shine with fairy-tale characters—great villains wearing black and stubborn heroes wearing white, beautiful princesses and valiant knights, dark evil and all-forgiving good.
It was interesting to think how the dictators of the past had lived under the pressure of the hatred of hundreds of millions. Was it possible that the Earth was so stiff and static that even such a force couldn't crush even a single tyrant? It seemed that reality was indeed poor on magic; that only demons would have true freedom as they were fueled precisely by human passions, vices, and, of course, souls. There was a whole lot of that junk on old Mother Earth.
Sighing, I made a note in my journal to add another hundred vials of mana to my kit. The extra twenty pounds wouldn't send me into overload while the reserve of ninety thousand units of magic energy could turn out to be critical. And even if I didn’t go on my own, you could never have enough mana!
Yeah yeah, my strong desire to go solo had met with the unshakable wall of our friends, "Don't go out alone!" It’s the king’s entourage that makes him—and controls him...
I reasoned that the boys had been right. A connection with Earth was priceless. With so much at stake, our individual lives and desires didn’t even enter the equation. History is one ruthless teacher. If you want to take Berlin, you'd better write off ten divisions from the registry. You want to prevent flanking fire from an enemy at an unknown altitude? Give the order to attack, so that later the same night you could write off the decimated battalion and fill in three hundred ‘killed in action’ notices.
Yes, in a carefully selected group my potential survival rate grew tenfold, as did our chances to come back with some valuable intel. But what would happen if not only me, but the clan's elite died in the raid as well? Fuck their elite status! I wasn’t risking my friends’ lives.
Snowie was a born damage dealer, capable of generating three-quarters the damage of an entire group of five players. What was going to happen if the former game NPC died in reality on Earth?
Personally, I estimated my chances of resurrection as pretty high. But Snowie... I have my doubts. However, we didn't have anyone else of comparable power, ready to hack his way into a formation of demons—and win.
Bomba was ignoring her ambiguous situation and was ready to go to the ends of the world for her little albino. Even if they were the ends of another world. That week of separation hadn’t been wasted, and the brow of the former-old lady was adorned by streaks of gray. Her argument was, "What if a troll's pregnancy is like an elephant's and I'm out of commission for two years? Get the hell outta here! I'm with you. If we die, we die together."
I understood. She was one of the alliance's best tanks, able to take on Nagafen for forty seconds without healing. She would pull her weight. By the way, had any of you ever helped a troll give birth after their contractions started on a reconnaissance mission?! Battle is not a place for our loved ones or those bearing a child.
Zena was a well-refined healer, able to pull seventy thousand hits in a single meditation. She was unwilling to leave her friend and dearly held onto a long list of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other nephews and nieces who would have to be tracked down and dragged by the ears to relocate to AlterWorld.
Oh. They were going to love the sight of the tiny, green-skinned goblin in gilded artifact armor.
But I myself wasn’t human anymore. Given the fact that the Earthlings might not be glad to see us, we would have to actively use stealth and deceptive gadgets like pendants of illusion, which endowed its wearer with a new appearance. Only enchanters could fight and cast under the illusion. All we could do was smile and pretend to be a group of giants in the company of dwarves. It was a rather mediocre disguise, but what did you want? A toy firework would never grow into a war missile.
Then there was the last piece of the puzzle: Dan. A rogue filled to the brim with secrets. He's a tip-toe-er who's indispensable when it comes to intelligence and useless when it comes to high-level combat. A staff officer who grabs at his knife and doesn't listen to any arguments. The voices of his wife and children were calling him from Earth. Not even a mithril chain could hold this counterintelligence agent back.
I understood and quietly accepted. Let there be an intelligence agent who, moreover, has connections with the army and Special Forces. I needed this very argument both for business and in order to sort out the re
st of my "vested acquaintances." Many were eager for the raid, convinced of their indispensability on Earth.
Even Katya, whom I had saved, had at some point snuck into my office, ensconced herself in the easy chair and asked, "When do we leave?" In response to my raised eyebrow, the girl confidently shook her dead communicator and said that all it would take was one call to summon the cavalry in the face of some private army which would come running to the rescue, rattling their armor and slicing through the air with their chopper blades.
I had to disappoint the girl. We had no diplomatic mission and no group of contactees. Intelligence behind enemy lines, that was our objective. Or, in the most unfortunate circumstance, active reconnaissance. It also had its advantages—to detect and assess the potential strength of the enemy, his firepower, let a little blood, and bring back a prisoner to interrogate. Because they all talk, provided the interrogation methods are right.
Having received the go-ahead, Dan immediately calmed down and began tackling the problem of kitting himself out properly so as to not to be a burden and to increase the chances of rescuing his family. I had no doubts that the Veterans' storage—common, officer's, and special—were going to be rifled through in their entirety so that Dan would end up wearing all the best they had to offer, doubling his combat potential.
The whole clan was helping to kit us out for our journey, surrendering their own unique artifacts with no regret. I didn't know how or who managed to bypass the pledge of secrecy, but basically everyone knew about our group's objectives. People walked in one by one, full of hope, handing over crumpled pieces of paper with phone numbers and addresses of friends, girlfriends, and distant relatives. They were also eager to help in any way. People handed in rare combat scrolls that had been saved from the battle of the First Temple. They would remove the only artifact earrings in the whole cluster and hand them over to us. With a farewell kiss, they parted with a unique dagger or sword, literally forcing it down on us.
Practically everyone had something still left to do back on Mother Earth. From the truly important—concerning the families that had been torn between the two worlds—to the selfish or just plain amusing, like secret requests to bring their favorite CDs, the tapes of the latest soccer championship, and their favorite books that had never been finished.