ONSET: Stay of Execution

by Glynn Stewart

  But the humanoid creatures were far faster than they had any right to be. A quarter of them went down, but then the massive stone creatures were on top of the tanks, ripping the armored vehicles to pieces.

  As the infantry around them reacted as well, the surrounding buildings exploded. Preset massive claymore-style mines detonated in sequence, spraying the Army troops with entire buildings’ worth of debris.

  And the demons came behind that wave of destruction. Shadowy foot soldiers swarmed forward, with their bigger, fire-slinging brethren scattered through the ranks. Teams of toad demons hammered the front and back of the Army formation—and anti-tank rockets flared out of the rear of the demon formation into the vehicles the golems had missed.

  Half a dozen mid-court demons were leading the entire assault, and they were carrying modern weapons. Any resistance that seemed to be holding up the swarm was greeted with rockets and grenades as the demon command squad moved forward into the chaos.

  Someone on the ground had seen the inevitable before they were overrun. The sound of oncoming aircraft suddenly overwhelmed everything, even to David’s Sight, as the planes that had been hanging back charged forward.

  The first wave were low-flying turbofan planes, A-10 ground support planes. Over a hundred of the deadly aircraft led the massive formation filling the skies, missiles and cannon strafing down over the demons now overrunning the Army’s forward formation.

  For a few moments, the massacre turned around. Depleted uranium was just as effective as silver, and the Air Force had improvised enough silver-cased warheads to equip the attack force. Demons and golems alike withered under the hail of fire.

  But David remembered his first vision and knew what was coming next. He tried to close his “eyes,” to avoid Seeing, but the Sight was not so cooperative a tool.

  The first wave of planes simply…came apart. There was nothing visible from the ground. No counterfire. Nothing. Then the manticores started appearing out of the shattered buildings, sonic booms echoing across the city as their tails flung steel spikes at the closing aircraft.

  Bat demons rose from the ground behind them and the manticores smashed any planes that flew too close. The Army’s advance had gone from inexorable and seeming unstoppable to shattered in under five minutes.

  The Air Force’s contribution had been annihilated. David had barely had a chance to assess how many planes and bombers were in the second and third waves before the demons and their counterfire took them down. Hundreds of planes, at least.

  It was a massacre. The Army assault wasn’t breaking. Wasn’t routing.

  The forward elements were simply…gone.

  39

  Arthur Purcell looked at the status reports around him in horror. Over the course of a bare handful of minutes, a nerve-wrackingly easy advance had turned into a viciously effective trap.

  They’d been expecting a trap after how easy the advance had been. But they’d once again misestimated their enemy. The Army had planned for massed infantry only silver could hurt. The Air Force had planned for vast numbers of tiny and deadly targets.

  Instead, the Army had run into monsters made of stone that only their heaviest armor-penetrating weapons could threaten, and the Air Force had run into flak units superior to anything even modern armies had.

  Proper antiaircraft missiles would probably have been more dangerous, but the strange creatures the demons had fielded were deadly enough—and from what Arthur had seen, the Herald was fielding hundreds of them.

  “Sir, you need to see this,” one of the techs told him. “Three of our UAVs on the southern perimeter were just taken down by one of those spike-tail things.”

  “The southern perimeter?” Arthur asked, a new chill running down his spine. Those unmanned aerial vehicles were supposed to be covering Pierce’s retreat. If there were hostile AA units there…

  Three red dots flashed up on the map on the wall as the tech dropped it in. They weren’t even clustered together, with two of them over a mile apart.

  “Where are the rest of our UAVs?” Arthur demanded. “I want eyes on that zone! Get me satellite and aerial…”

  “Shit!” Another analyst snapped. “We just lost all four AWACS. Hypersonic projectiles from the ground.” He shook his head. “They had us dialed in the whole time. These guys are fucking with us.”

  “I’ve got satellite,” the first tech reported. “Sweeping UAVs around, but…”

  New images filled another screen. Spike-tails, as the tech had called them, were digging themselves nests across Fifth Army’s line of retreat. Demons of all stripes and the strange black-coated militia were assembling positions around them.

  “Where the hell did they come from?” Arthur demanded.

  “They were hiding when Fifth Army passed by,” Bantam said softly from behind him. “Underground, in buildings… I don’t know how, since the Army swept those buildings, but they must have been there.”

  “And now they’ve cut off Fifth Army’s retreat,” Arthur concluded. “Get me a channel to Pierce! We need to coordinate a plan.”

  A shaky-looking Army Colonel named Daniel Stone, the head of Fifth Army’s communications group, met his gaze and shook his head.

  “General Pierce is gone, sir,” Stone said slowly. “His command unit went down first. All of the forward brigade command elements are gone. I’m trying to raise any of the brigadiers, but it looks like we might be down to battalion-level commands.”

  “Damn.” Arthur hesitated for a moment. Hesitation was deadly—every second he waited was costing lives—but they needed a plan.

  “Split your people up,” he ordered. “Get every battalion commander on the horn. Hell, every company commander. I need to know what we’ve got left and where.

  “Then get me the artillery,” he continued. “If they want to be obvious and dig in, we are going to blow the fuckers to hell.”

  “I’m getting the feed from the satellite and the UAVs,” McGill confirmed. “They’re being damned obvious; it’s like the bastards forgot we were here.”

  Arthur could hear the grim smile in the artillery officer’s voice. “We’ll blow a hole for Fifth Army. Do we have a plan for after that?”

  “No,” Arthur admitted. “Right now, I’m not thinking past saving the fifty thousand soldiers these assholes are trying to cut off and wipe out.”

  McGill’s answering snort was utterly without humor.

  “I hear ya,” he agreed. “First fire mission in sixty seconds; I’ll keep at least three batteries on call for if any of the battalion commanders need fire support. We are going to get them home, Purcell. You have my word on—”

  Shouting cut off McGill’s voice, followed by the General cursing.

  “Air-raid positions!” he barked. “Those guns have antiaircraft weapons. Use them!”

  “McGill?” Arthur demanded.

  “We have incoming,” the other man said grimly. “If you’ve got any antiaircraft systems to spare, we could really use them. Unless I’m misreading my radar, that dragon is in the lead.”

  Arthur turned to look at his own screens and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach again. Despite all of their losses to date, the demons had still managed to field another four or five hundred of the flying bat demons.

  The Air Force had to have killed at least that many already, but there they were—and McGill was right. The dragon was leading the way as they descended on the artillery park.

  “Good luck,” he half-whispered to the artillery commander.

  Machine-gun fire and explosions cut across the radio channel. On the display marking the status feeds from McGill’s guns in the command center, unit after unit flashed red as creatures from beyond the Seal dropped onto them and ripped chunks out of them.

  The bat demons demonstrably could conjure fire that burnt through armor—and they freely unleashed it on the artillery. The dragon swept across the park, her fire incinerating the handful of manned antiaircraft units—not before they took a
bloody toll of the incoming demons, but before they could stop the assault.

  Once the air defenses were gone, the dragon retreated. It was almost contemptuous: the only real threat to the demons was gone, so the dragon didn’t need to be there.

  Some of the guns fired. Many of them, in fact. Shells exploded across the positions the demons had blocked Fifth Army’s retreat with…but what had been supposed to be a solid wall of fire to clear a path became more of a light drizzle.

  And then the radio went silent, and Arthur had only the overhead to judge from. The organic artillery from five divisions had been concentrated into one massive battery, capable of shredding any enemy.

  Any enemy except the one that had come to them. There were almost certainly survivors. He could see vehicles fleeing from the wreckage and people on foot…but the artillery guns themselves were gone.

  His plan to rescue what was left of Fifth Army had died with them.

  “What do we do, sir?”

  Arthur swallowed hard. With McGill presumably dead, there was no question of who was in command now. It was down to him. What was left of Fifth Army was his responsibility. SOCOM and the two brigades Pierce had left with him because they didn’t have silver ammunition for them were his responsibility.

  “How much of Sigma Force and TF White do we have?” he asked, his voice steadier than he felt.

  “We’ve got four TF White strike teams and four out of five Sigma companies,” Bantam told him.

  The Task Force White strike teams were Seraphim squads thickened with Mages, mostly. That gave him about a thousand soldiers and Mages he’d risk taking against demons. The remaining brigades could provide a base of fire, but they only had silver small-arms munitions.

  Arthur stepped over to the big screen.

  “Show me Fifth Army’s positions, as best as we know them,” he ordered. The green icons flickered on the map, the ones for the remaining units of Pierce’s force now highlighted white.

  “And the demons?”

  New red icons flickered onto the screen, accompanied by as much information as they had. With the AWACS planes down and the demons demonstrating an entirely new level of accuracy at shooting down drones, he didn’t have much beyond satellite overhead.

  He shook his head.

  “How solid are these numbers?” he asked.

  “Eighty, eighty-five percent.”

  It was ugly. His people were estimating that the blocking force was over ten thousand strong, with at least two hundred golems and manticores. Plus at least a thousand mind-wiped human militia armed with heavy weapons. Plus toad demons, mid-court demons, and God alone knew what else.

  At least the bastards seemed to have finally run out of bat demons. They’d wiped out his artillery, but they didn’t have much aerial left after that. The manticores meant he wouldn’t have much luck getting the Air Force to send in whatever planes they could still get into the area, but at least he didn’t need to worry about his own airspace.

  There were another twenty to thirty thousand demons, with about the same proportion of golems, manticores and human militia, swarming Fifth Army. The Americans probably had the demons outnumbered five to four or so still, but most of Fifth Army’s heavy weapons were now wreckage.

  Looking at the map, the solution was clear. The blocking force was stretched out, positioned to block five different lines of retreat. His Seraphim could punch out any one of those five groups, but…

  “We can open a line of retreat,” Bantam said quietly. “We’ve got the Seraphim, the Mages…enough silver-armed Army and Special Forces grunts to back us up. We can extract Fifth Army.”

  “We can,” Arthur agreed, but his focus was on the city on the map. “We’d wedge Sigma Force between the demons and Fifth Army. Hold the corridor open. Extract maybe eighty percent of what’s left, maybe sixty percent of what Pierce took into the city.

  “How much of Sigma Force and Task Force White would survive, Colonel?”

  Bantam winced. He didn’t answer.

  “I’d guess forty percent,” Arthur said flatly. “It could be as low as ten. We’d extract forty thousand men and women…at the price of the only supernatural force available to the United States of America.”

  He didn’t want to have to be the man to make this call.

  “We can save Fifth Army, Colonel…but in doing so, we will lose Maine.”

  40

  Major General Arthur Purcell stared at the map on the screen, hoping for some idea, some clue, some inspiration as to how he could save the Army he’d helped lead into this trap without sacrificing the only force with a chance of stealing victory from the jaws of defeat.

  And then one of the sets of red icons flickered.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  “I’ve got explosions on that zone,” one of the techs announced. “What the…”

  “Show me the overhead,” Arthur snapped.

  A new window opened on the screen, zooming in from the image from the satellite. The scene was one of several of the dug-in positions blocking Fifth Army’s retreat. Dozens of golems and manticores blockaded the only street for a mile in either direction large enough for tanks.

  Or…had.

  Now there was debris scattered across the road that had been animated demonic war golems. The manticores were simply…stopped in place, turned back to stone and metal once again.

  In the center of the manticore formation stood a single figure in a bodysuit that covered her from head to toe, magic visibly glittering around her as a swarm of shadow demons tried to rush her—and were instantly vaporized.

  Three more figures in similar bodysuits were clashing with the mid-court demons who’d led the force. Arthur’s understanding was that mid-court demons were far more powerful than most foes they’d faced so far, and the fact that the Herald had enough of them to use them as company commanders was terrifying.

  Five mid-court demons faced three attackers…and while they were clearly matches for two of the three, the third… the third tore through them like paper. Arthur had watched supernaturals fight now, and he’d never seen anything like the third figure.

  He was wrapped from head to toe like the rest but carried a heavy pistol of some kind in his left hand and a glittering green sword in the other. What that sword touched died—whether it was a demon, human militia or a fifteen-foot-high golem.

  Another half-dozen fully covered figures were opening fire on the demonic grunts. They had no heavy weapons, just assault rifles and knives—and six of them were slaughtering an entire company of demons.

  “Sir, someone is on the battalion-level channel,” Colonel Stone reported quickly.

  “Fifth Army, this is Echelon Deuce,” a firmly calm voice informed them. “We have secured 295 for the moment. Concentrate your force and move back on this position. We’ll hold the door as long as we can.”

  Arthur grabbed the radio.

  “Echelon Deuce? Who the hell is this?”

  “The people holding the door open for Fifth Army,” the speaker said reasonably. “Do you need to know more?”

  Arthur laughed.

  “No,” he admitted. “Fifth Army, you heard the man: fall back along 295.”

  Putting the radio down, he turned to Bantam.

  “Colonel?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I don’t know who Echelon Deuce is, but he’s got a dozen people trying to hold back an army. Take two companies of Seraphim and all of Task Force White. If this Echelon wants to kick the door down, we can damn well help keep it open!”

  “General Purcell,” that strangely calm voice cut in on Arthur’s main channel.

  “How the hell is this guy getting all of our radio frequencies?” the SOCOM man demanded.

  “I don’t know!” Stone replied. “These are freaking encrypted and he’s in our channels like they’re entirely unprotected!”

  “I’m glad he seems to be on our side,” Arthur muttered, then grabbed the radio again.


  “This is Purcell.”

  “Oh, good, you are talking to people,” the voice noted dryly.

  “We’re a little busy, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “That’s fair.” The stranger paused. “May I suggest you at least talk to the Canadians?” he asked.

  “The Canadians?”

  “They’ve been trying to get in touch with, oh, anyone for about eight hours,” the stranger told him. “But since your government seems to be having an extended panic attack, no one is returning their calls.

  “I suggest you talk to them and then check out this frequency.” He reeled off a series of numbers.

  “You got that?” Arthur demanded of the Colonel.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, whoever you are, you appear to have bought several divisions a chance,” Arthur said. “I’ll play for now.”

  “Of course you will, General,” the voice told him. “You’re an asshole. You’re not stupid. Now, if you’ll excuse me, these silly shadow things are about to make another attempt to overrun my position.”

  Arthur took a moment to breathe.

  “I don’t even know who this man is and I already kind of hate him,” he observed aloud. No one in the command center said anything in response.

  “Do we have any idea who we might want to talk to with the Canucks?” he continued. “Suggestions, people?”

  “There’s no combined ground command,” Stone told him. “Channels run through the Joint Chiefs. Someone should have passed on any attempt by the Canadian Forces to be in touch, shouldn’t they?”

  “Sweep the shared tactical channels we used in the Middle East,” Arthur ordered. He was suddenly realizing that he’d had no communication from the Joint Chiefs or anyone since Fifth Army had been trapped.

  “And someone see if we can talk to the Joint Chiefs,” he continued grimly. “Or…anyone.”

  The techs got to work, and from the sinking expression on Colonel Stone’s face, he could guess the answer to the second question.