Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

  He squinted into the glare of the sun, trying to see what remained of the rock formation after the barrage of missiles they’d thrown at it. That same sun was now high enough in the sky to be reflecting on the dust particles raised from the attack, along with smoke from the explosions.

  Too much of both still obscured what remained of the craggy tower from view.

  Deifilius could see it in his headset.

  In the view through the scanners, he saw half the tower shaved off in the blast. Another piece fell off while he watched, crumbling down onto the valley floor on top of the cave complex on three sides.

  It annoyed him that the tallest part of the rock remained pointing up to the sky. A part of him wanted to aim for that, even though it had no strategic value really.

  They needed to focus on breaching the cave complex itself.

  From what his tech and sonar people were telling him, the damage looked a lot worse out here than it appeared to have been underground.

  Deifilius felt the silver strands urging him to get inside that complex, to do it quickly.

  They wanted it breached. They wanted blood to paint the walls, for the last of the Bridge’s resistance to be crushed. They wanted her forces gutted. They wanted the Bridge dead, the rest of the Four dead, her followers to abandon that door or be killed at its feet.

  They feared they’d given them too much time to prepare.

  They feared the gap had been too long while their seers searched for them behind the shield over this cursed rock.

  They knew the Sword would strike back.

  The dogs and sycophants who were loyal to him and his whore wife would strike back.

  “Gregorio?” he repeated. “Status report. Do we have a breach?”

  Gregorio’s voice rose in his headset, slightly blurred from the motion of the armored vehicle he was riding in, some eight or nine Humvees to the west.

  “Sir, the diggers have started hitting the harder stone where we mapped most of the infrared readings and the larger cave compartments. That will slow them down––”

  “What about the stingers? Have they found a way in?”

  “Yes.” Gregorio’s voice rose, growing more cheerful. “They’ve identified two ventilation shafts, one on the far northern end of the complex. A second one to the east has some kind of grate up front, making it harder to breach, but they should be through it soon. We damaged a few others with our assault, but that could be the good news in the end. It’s possible some segments could be low on oxygen in a few hours, depending on how many shafts exist into the complex overall. Quite a few of them appear to be fairly well hidden––”

  “Are there stingers inside already?” Deifilius frowned, scanning the data in his headset, looking for indications of the breach. “You said the northern shaft could be breached now, did you not? I haven’t heard any further explosions on the sonar. Will we get confirmation of hits up here?”

  “We should, yes, sir,” Gregorio confirmed. “They’re still a ways out from the main complex being used by the traitor scum. It might be a little longer before they find targets.”

  “Keep me informed on the progress of the diggers,” Deifilius said. “I want to know when they think they’re getting close.”

  “We’re hoping they will be by the time we reach them,” Gregorio said.

  “Good.”

  Even so, Deifilius felt the pressure of the silver strands worsen from above, pushing on him, infusing him with a near-manic energy, with purpose, with focus, but also with anxiety. They vibrated his skin, translating that pressure to move into a tension bordering on fear.

  They wanted him to move faster.

  They needed him to move faster.

  The Bridge could not be allowed to open the doors first.

  He was still staring at the view of Ship Rock through the dust clouds and smoke, when an explosion hit to his right, blowing debris, glass, shrapnel and metal into the bullet- and shock-proof window of the Humvee.

  Tires screeched. Armored vehicles veered to avoid the exploding car.

  Shrapnel hit into his armored vehicle with a deafening CRACK.

  Deifilius ducked in reflex, but the windows and armored doors held. Chatter and yells filled his headset. Trucks and cars continued to swerve, avoiding the flaming truck.

  Deifilius yanked himself back up to the window from where he’d leaned back hard in the seat, cursing. More armored vehicles swerved, slamming into one another, including the one directly to Deifilius’s right.

  His driver wrenched the wheel, accelerating to get around him.

  Then another explosion flared from the same direction.

  That time, Deifilius saw it. A flash of white.

  A trail of pale smoke and a black-tipped projectile screeched through the air, too fast for his eyes to follow. It slammed into a vehicle ahead of his in barely a blink. Fire and black smoke erupted without warning, obscuring his view of the desert sky, then blanking out their view through the windshield altogether as they were engulfed in the smoke.

  His driver slammed on the brakes, jerking the wheel to the right to get around it.

  The trucks next to them swerved to accommodate, and again, metal screeched on metal as the lines slammed into one another, trying to reconfigure around the new hole.

  Deifilius flipped his goggles down.

  Turning and leaning down to get the right angle, he scanned the ridge from which the shots seemed to come. He saw the flash as a third missile was released, shooting down off the ridge like a bullet.

  He saw the impact before he heard the scream of its flight.

  The missile slammed into another heavy truck filled with weapons and men to his left, causing it to crash into the vehicle in front of it. The burning, smoke-belching truck caught on the back grill of the other truck, causing both to careen off-course.

  Again he saw vehicles swerving and slamming on their brakes to avoid hitting them.

  A few couldn’t get out of the way in time and slammed into one or the other of the two trucks, which were still bouncing along the desert floor, the drivers fighting to regain control, and to disconnect their vehicles. Smoke and dark orange and red flames streamed out the truck in back, even as men from the truck in front tried to pry its grill off their bumper.

  Deifilius’s headset exploded with more ID’s back and forth when he touched the button to hook him back into the military channel.

  “…up on the ridge!” Gregorio was shouting. “Engage with the telekinetics! Now!”

  “They’ve got some kind of shield, sir!” another shouted back. “Franc says his telekinetics are having trouble getting through. They can’t even be sure if that’s the exact location the missiles are coming from. Some kind of illusion shield is––”

  Another explosion rocked the line of vehicles.

  That time the missile seemed to come from Deifilius’s left.

  He leaned down, looking past his driver through the window there.

  The ridge up there had a line of shadowed vehicles, as well. Deifilius saw another flash of light, right before a second missile shot out of a tube, flying straight towards the middle lines.

  He noticed his driver had slowed down.

  “No!” Deifilius grabbed his arm, glaring at his red, sweaty face, his jaw hard. “No! Go faster! We’re boxed in here!”

  He looked at the eight soldiers in the back of his Humvee and scowled in spite of himself, seeing them all sitting there, pale-faced as they listened to the chatter on the headset, looking at virtual screens of what was unfolding outside.

  Deifilius’s attention soon returned to the leadership team on his channel.

  “How did they get up to that ridge so fast?” a new voice asked in his headset.

  Losing patience, Deifilius broke in angrily.

  “We need the seers to crack the shield they’re using. Now!” he snapped. “We’ve got more telekinetics than they could possibly have! If they can’t go after the actual people or the weapons, have th
em take down the cliffs. Rock by damned rock, if they have to––”

  “Affirmative,” Gregorio said, his voice grim. “You heard brother Dei. Have telekinetics go after the cliffs while the regular seers keep working on the shielding. Try to bring them down from below––”

  Another missile slammed into their lines, causing more vehicles to swerve and smash into one another. Deifilius saw a Komatsu LAV flip to his right, after it got slammed from the side by a much larger Huron APC. A Cougar tried to swerve around it and T-boned the side of another Humvee, half-driving over it before coming to a stop nearly on top.

  Its wheels spun as it fought to back up.

  The line of armored cars and trucks flowed around them, swerving to avoid hitting into them again, but Deifilius saw four more collisions from that missile alone.

  “We need to spread out!” Deifilius said, switching to a private channel with Gregorio. “We’re doing more damage to one another than they are to us. Shouldn’t we spread out the lines? Maybe even have some of ours find a way up that ridge?”

  “Affirmative. I was working on getting our outer lines to change routes. They were looking for detours through some of the smaller ravines and canyons around the rock formations, but I’ve lost contact. There’s something wrong with the radios––”

  Two more missiles hit into their lines, one from either side of the canyon.

  Deifilius cursed as his driver swerved, trying to avoid the truck in front of them that got hit. Smoke erupted from another Huron even as the gunner fell down, gripping the gun and his harness to try and stay on board.

  Deifilius’s vehicle hit into it on the right side with a hollow boom, right outside his window. The hard organic didn’t fold, but he jerked back on his seat, reacting as if it had.

  “Why aren’t we shooting back?” Deifilius snapped. “Where are our missiles?”

  “Working on that now, sir. We were hoping the telekinetics could take it––”

  Another flash and whistle as a missile shot down from the side of the ridge to Deifilius’s left. He saw it impact their lines in another explosion of fire and black smoke.

  That time, flashes on their side fired back with heavy booms that lit up the side of the cliffs and the upper ridge. Explosions of red dust and powder filled the air as they impacted, bringing down part of it in an avalanche of red rocks and shale.

  Deifilius couldn’t tell if they’d hit anything, though.

  Flipping down his goggles, he scanned the cliffs, but the readings he got were strange.

  He saw the people up there clearly, and the line of missile launchers and guns, but the image flickered strangely, jerking and twisting when he tried to zoom in.

  His driver was hunched over the wheel now, gripping it with gloved hands, his face grim, dusted with red powder that must have come in through the air conditioning vents.

  As they passed another burning jeep and the smoke began to dissipate, Deifilius let out a startled gasp, making the sign of the cross in reflex.

  Giant masked creatures loomed out of the red dust, blotting out the sun.

  They filled the valley ahead of them; the nearest must have stood two hundred feet tall.

  Deifilius let out a shriek, gripping the dashboard.

  Lights shot out of the nearest of the beings, a towering giant with white wings.

  The wings had black tips, matching the dark mask it wore, shaped like a raptor’s head with a hooked golden beak. The beak moved like it was real, snapping in the air as a second surge of energy left its eyeless mask-holes. Light shone from those holes instead of eyes, but the feathers looked real, like they belonged to some long-lost dinosaur.

  Before Deifilius could take a breath, a bolt of blue-white energy shot from its light-filled eyes, enveloping another long, armored truck in blue and green flames.

  A second bolt left the mouth of a creature with a furred head like a white wolf.

  That one hit right in the middle of their lines, sending more vehicles screeching and veering to avoid the bolt, even as trucks closer to the front swerved to avoid the creatures whose masked faces blocked the sun.

  The giant wings of the first one hung from its shoulders, hands attached to the ends of those wings with eagle-like claws. It beat the air with white and black feathers, snapping its beak. Dust flew up from the red-rock floor, blinding their windshield.

  “God in Heaven!” his driver screamed.

  Everything went white and red, blinding them.

  He jerked the wheel sideways in reflex, trying to go around one of the massive feet when it started to descend on them through the clouds of dust.

  Through his headset, Deifilius heard Gregorio’s voice.

  “Where are the telekinetics with that cliff?” he barked. “Can we get one or two to look at these damned… whatever the hell they are? They’re directly between us and the target––”

  More voices rose on the line, all of them speaking excitedly in different languages.

  Deifilius had to strain to hear when another explosion rocked their lines, throwing a jeep up in the air only a few rows to their left.

  He missed the first part of what one of Gregorio’s lieutenants said.

  “…some kind of illusion, sir. They appear to be modeled after indigenous spirits, local to the area. Arturo called them ‘Kachinas.’ He said they symbolize––”

  “I’m not looking for a fucking history lesson, Miguel!” Gregorio broke in furiously. “And of course they’re goddamned illusions! Why the hell are they able to shoot at us? Are we reacting to illusions for that, too?”

  “No. No, sir,” the other said, his voice a shout. “The seer team says the bolts are real. The illusions are being powered by live telekinetics. At least two, from what Isha can tell. We should assume Syrimne is leading them, or else––”

  “No shit he is leading them!” Gregorio cursed in Italian in another string of words. “Why aren’t the shields holding? Don’t we have a whole damned squadron of seers working on this? Where are they with knocking out those missiles?”

  “There’s a problem with some of the seers, sir. Not the telekinetics, the conventional ones. Isha thinks the Sword’s people have found some way to hack their collars, sir. A percentage of the seers are non-responsive. They’ve gone into a kind of trance. We’ve got the one team that’s coordinating with us and they seem to be immune so far, but it’s causing chaos in terms of how they normally operate as a unit––”

  “What about the cliffs?” Gregorio snapped. “As far as I can tell, we did more with our missiles than the telekinetics managed in the last three minutes.”

  “Yes, sir. Apparently most of those are rock too, sir, and they haven’t found any gas deposits. There’s also some question of illusions there, too. It’s possible the missiles hitting our lines aren’t actually coming from where we think they are––”

  “Goddamn it!” Gregorio cut in. “Shoot at the cliffs. Shoot at them! Hit them with conventional weapons if the seers are worthless! We’ll at least know if they’re illusions or not. Hit them with a full array of missiles!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Another line of lightning-like fire left the dark eyeholes of the mask of the winged god. He raised up a beaded and painted moccasin-like boot to stomp it down on the red earth, raising clouds of dust and flipping another jeep with a gunner in back.

  Missiles erupted from their own camp, slamming into the cliffs on both sides of the canyon with a series of thundering booms. Deifilius adjusted his goggles, wincing from the ringing in his ears as more of the rock erupted in a thunderclap of sound. The sound grew louder, echoing across the cliffs as part of one rock wall slid down into the valley below.

  So much dust was in the air now, his driver was navigating purely from instruments.

  More blue-white flames left the kachina gods, that time from one with a flat disc for a face, broken into geometrical shapes colored with blue, red, orange, yellow, and white.

  Deifilius could only st
are up, watching in disbelief as another long armored truck in front of him was hit squarely in the engine, right before it burst into smoke and flipped partway to its side. It rolled off to the side on two wheels before it slammed into another truck next to it, bringing both of them to a smoking stop when it lost its battle with gravity.

  Above him, the eagle god flapped its wings, raising a wind storm that erased them all from view, filling the cab of the truck with red dust and making Deifilius cough even as it obliterated their visibility.

  “Gods above,” Deifilius muttered, kissing his cross. “Help us.”

  JON STARED UP, his jaw dropping in awe.

  A giant eagle kachina with white, black-tipped feathers swung around in a massive arc, beating its wings, raising a near tornado of red dust and rocks as it stomped on the valley floor. It appeared almost to be dancing as it screamed into the sky, blue-white lightning erupting from its mask-hole eyes.

  Even knowing it was being generated by Maygar, Cass, a number of Native American tribal elders and probably Revik, it was hard not to be afraid of it.

  It looked like the wrath of the Earth spirits from these lands.

  It looked like the worst nightmare of anyone who ever spilled blood here, whoever stole from the people who guarded these lands, or who kidnapped their children.

  The Eagle God was flanked by four more Kachinas, one with the face of a white wolf, another with a disc-like face Jon guessed to be some kind of sun god.

  The last two he recognized only vaguely. One evoked a massive black bird––Jon guessed a raven or a crow. It also had long, curved wings, only its were black and the claws at the ends of those wings were black and ragged.

  The very last Kachina wore a mask made of red earth clay. The shapes of its mud-like head were strangely rounded so its face looked like it was made up of odd-shaped gourds.

  Instead of shooting lightning bolts like the others, the mud-headed man pulled handfuls of read earth off the ground and the cliffs and threw them at the line of approaching vehicles.

  Jon watched one of those handfuls of rock, sandstone and earth explode into a row of speeding armored trucks. One was crushed at once by a large boulder. Others crashed into one another, trying to avoid the projectiles, veering off-course and slamming on their breaks.