by Mel Odom
On the HUD, Simon spotted the Minion outlined in orange. Minions possessed intellect, were able to take commands as well as issue them. They weren’t as powerful or clever as the Dark Wills or other demons, but they were dangerous foes.
The Minion sat astride a Fetid Hulk. Twelve feet tall and powerfully built with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, the Fetid Hulk was an engine of destruction. The green hide glowed with lambent energy.
Seated on the Fetid Hulk’s shoulders, legs wrapped around the larger demon’s neck, the Minion urged his savage mount forward. Covered in thick gray hide, the Minion looked as if it had been squashed into a squared-off form, condensed from something somehow larger, more solid and threatening. Minions’ hands were removed at birth and the arms outfitted with organic links or technological implants that allowed the slotting of different weapons. They carried spare “hands” with them that gave them a range of attacks. The right hand worn by the Minion atop the Fetid Hulk sparked with electricity, and the left one glowed a dark violet.
The demons knew we hunted here, Simon thought desperately. They were waiting on us. He whipped his head around in time to watch Nathan go down before a charging Carnagor. The demon put its feet in the center of Nathan’s chest and knocked him down.
Frantically, the Carnagor dug its feet in and tried to overcome its forward momentum as it struggled to turn around and go back after its fallen foe.
“Nathan!” Simon shouted as he ran toward his friend.
There was no response. Nathan lay half buried in the snow and loose dirt.
Simon placed his hand onto Nathan’s helm. The suit-to-suit connection displayed Nathan’s vital signs on Simon’s HUD. SINGH, NATHAN. CONCUSSED. READY STIM?
“Administer stim,” Simon ordered.
Nathan’s suit affixed a slap-patch to the Templar’s body. Simon knew chemicals already raced through Nathan’s body, but it would be a few seconds before he would be aware enough to save himself.
The Carnagor completed its turn and ran back in Nathan’s direction. Knowing he couldn’t grab Nathan, hoist the fallen man from the ground, and get them both out of the way of the rampaging Carnagor in time, Simon set himself before the demon and hunkered behind the Blockade Shield. It was almost three feet in diameter.
“Connect shield to armor power,” Simon rasped.
“Shield connected,” the suit AI replied. “Power levels at full.”
“Anchor.” Simon stared into the Carnagor’s feverish red eyes as it closed the distance.
“Anchor not recommended at this time,” the suit AI said. “Suggest evasive maneuvers. Personal safety is at risk.”
“Anchor,” Simon ordered. “Personal safety override.” He felt the vibration as the spikes drove deeply into the ground. Just before the Carnagor reached him, Simon leaned forward to intercept the demon with the shield and hoped he hadn’t foolishly gotten himself killed. Death would be better than getting captured by the demons.
At the moment of collision, the world seemed to go away. During his training as a Templar novice, during the years of extreme sports that included base jumping, as well as nanospring skateboarding with wipeouts at over sixty miles an hour and eighty feet in height, he’d never before been hit so hard.
The Blockade Shield was designed to offer anticoncussive resistance. Whatever force it defended against, the arcane energy and nanotech was designed to re-create, meet, and negate. That worked well in theory. The Templar that had designed it had suggested that it might stop a speeding automobile.
No one had ever tested that.
No one had ever used it in a head-on competition against a Carnagor, either.
Simon flew backward at the impact. Pain wracked his body, and he was certain that his legs had ripped free of his hips. The shield had slammed against his knees, shoulder, and chest so hard it knocked the breath from his lungs in spite of the anti-impact energies and natural resistance of the armor.
Then he landed on his butt and rolled through the snow and savaged earth. Somewhere along the way he lost the shield, but he kept hold of the sword. His vision swam as he tried to focus. He had managed to deflect the Carnagor from Nathan. Behind the demon, Nathan groggily got to his feet and reached for his sword.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Danielle asked.
“I was really hoping not to,” Simon replied as he stared at the charging Carnagor. He tried to move his feet, then discovered the spikes had yanked chunks of stone from the earth. He recalled the spikes and the stone dropped away. He pushed himself to his feet and turned profile as the Carnagor bore down on him. There was no time to get away.
Slightly before his left palm made contact with the Carnagor’s head, Simon leaped and tucked himself into a forward roll across the demon’s massive shoulders. Simon slammed his boot soles against the Carnagor’s spine.
“Anchor,” Simon ordered again.
Immediately, the spikes shot down from his boots and sank deeply into the Carnagor’s body. At least one of them severed the demon’s spine. The Carnagor’s steps suddenly lacked power and went wobbly. But it lashed its huge head around and flashed its tusks.
Reversing his sword, Simon took a two-handed grip on it and rammed it through the Carnagor’s neck at the base of the demon’s skull. At that point the Carnagor became a pile of dead meat that was only just then realizing it.
Simon retracted the anchoring spikes and leaped from the demon’s back. Landing, Simon plunged into a four-foot snowdrift and had to fight his way free. The suit AI located his shield and he made straightaway for it.
“Thanks for the save, mate,” Nathan said as he joined him.
Simon nodded, then swept the grounds with his gaze. “Retreat,” he broadcast over the comm. “To the west.”
“The cliffs are that way, Simon,” Danielle protested.
Simon saw her in the distance as she employed both the Molten Edge swords to disembowel a Ravager and then take the head from a second.
“The demons lie in all other directions,” Simon said. “We don’t have a choice. Do it now.”
The Templar hunting party broke away from the demons and ran. Their amplified strength and speed gave them a slight edge on the demons, but—over the short distance they had to cover to the cliffs—that edge wasn’t going to be enough.
Simon ran, but he kept the Minion on the Fetid Hulk’s shoulders marked on his HUD.
EIGHT
T he street was a war zone. Carnage erupted around Leah constantly. She kept her pistols up and fired continuously. As Pittsfield had said, there was no lack of targets.
After a few moments, they reached what was left of Satchel Team Three. Over a dozen blood zombies rooted among the remains of the six men and women. The foul creatures looked like blood-covered shambling mockeries of human beings.
Horrified, Leah realized that at least a handful of the abominations had been created from men and women who had died in this battle. Some demon somewhere was lifting them up from the gates of death and setting them on their comrades.
Pittsfield cursed and stepped out to fire the Grizzly Rifle. When the energy bursts struck the blood zombies, the creatures flew to pieces. Three of them disintigrated before the attention of the others riveted on Pittsfield. More blood zombies appeared from behind overturned vehicles and clumps of mortar and stone from nearby buildings.
“Run!” Leah added her own weapons fire to Pittsfield’s. “There are too many of them!”
“One of the satchel charges didn’t explode,” Pittsfield said. He made no move to withdraw.
One of the blood zombies leaped to the top of a broken mass of building wall from a nearby structure. Its maw opened as it prepared to leap down onto Leah and her companions.
Reacting instinctively, Leah leveled the Thermal Bolter and put a rocket into the blood zombie’s open mouth. The creature exploded into gobbets of charred flesh, and the smoky stink filled the air. Not even Leah’s mask completely filtered out the smell.
&n
bsp; Pittsfield barely held his own. The blood zombies massed on him and drove him back. The Grizzly Rifle was too long to employ effectively in such close quarters. Leah stepped behind and to one side of the man and opened fire with the SRAC. The blood zombies wilted under sustained fire, but they didn’t stop coming.
“We’ve got to pull back,” Leah said.
“No one has penetrated the dome,” Pittsfield growled. “There’s a satchel charge just lying there.”
Leah saw the case that held the explosives. Two craters and blast markings showed where the others had exploded and only rearranged the wreckage along the street.
“If that bloody dome isn’t blown,” Pittsfield continued as he butt-stroked a blood zombie and shattered its head. He left the rest unsaid.
The blood zombie went down into a fetal position and started rocking. Leah knew from observation that the creatures sometimes regenerated. She kicked the blood zombie back and pumped a dozen explosive rounds into the corpse that scattered pieces in all directions.
If it comes back from that, she thought fiercely, it’s at least going to take a while longer. She looked at the satchel charge. “I’ll retrieve the explosives.”
Pittsfield slung his Grizzly Rifle over his shoulder and drew a HARP pistol and an Eruptor. The HARP pistol was a Harmonic Resonance Projection weapon that used electronic and sonic generators to produce a beam capable of rapidly changing sonic waves. The technology had first been developed for mining because the field was controllable, and it disintegrated nonorganic matter such as rocks, metal, and glass.
The HARP technology also destroyed organic matter that no longer generated natural body rhythms. The hearts of the blood zombies were stilled, and blood no longer pumped through the veins and arteries. They registered as inorganic things to the HARP.
When Pittsfield fired the HARP pistol, the weapon emitted a wide cone of destruction. The blood zombies in the beam’s path stopped moving, then shook and shivered to pieces. A second later, the parts of them—and sometimes whole blood zombies—broke apart into atoms and disappeared in the sudden blue-white arc of light that filled the immediate vicinity.
The blood zombies outside the destruction stumbled back. Evidently they felt some of the fallout of the HARP blast because they were too dead to know fear.
Leah also noted that two of the dead members of the satchel team had been hit as well. Only parts of their bodies remained where they’d fallen.
Pittsfield cursed.
Leah knew the man hadn’t intended to do further injury to those that had fallen. They didn’t feel it, she told herself. And they can’t be resurrected and turned against us now.
“I’ve got the satchel,” she said, and darted forward. She holstered the SRAC and kept the Thermal Bolter out so she could use it. Bending down, she caught up the satchel charge by its handle and kept moving forward. There was no time to think now.
A Darkspawn scout group appeared around the corner of a building and quickly knelt to take aim at her. She pointed the Thermal Bolter and fired a trio of rounds.
Only one of the rockets struck the group. The other two hammered the street and the building wall. Flames engulfed the entire area and clung to the Darkspawn that survived the initial explosion.
Leah ran, banishing all thoughts of survival or death. She concentrated on the effort it took to avoid her enemies and keep moving forward. The firefight had been so fierce that a smoky haze had mixed with the natural fog streaming in from the River Thames. The Isle of Dogs was barely visible out in the middle of the river.
“This is Blue Scout,” Leah said as she leaped over the headless body of a Fetid Hulk. A dead man dressed in black lay twisted and broken in the demon’s huge hands. Acid burns from the Fetid Hulk’s throat sac had eaten away the protective suit and charred the flesh beneath.
“Reading you five by five, Blue Scout,” Commander Hargrove replied.
“Blue Scout is now designated Satchel Team Three.” Confronted by a horde of Darkspawn, Leah ducked into a nearby alley as energy bolts and rounds cut through the space where she’d been.
“Understood,” Hargrove replied.
On the field generated by the datastream detailing the battle, Leah watched her designation change from BLUE SCOUT to SATCHEL TEAM THREE.
“Good hunting, Satchel Team Three,” Hargrove told her.
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”
The alley was a dead end. A twenty-foot wall blocked the way. On the map she had, the alley had been shown as unblocked. She cursed, knowing that the intel they’d had on the op was sloppy. She didn’t completely blame the agents who’d done the recon. Keeping up with the demons and their machinations was almost impossible.
“Up, Leah.”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Wickersham there.
“I’ve got your six,” he told her. Smoking ruin showed on his left shoulder where a Darkspawn shooter had winged him. Blood ran over the black material.
“You’re injured,” Leah said.
“We’re going to be dead if you don’t hurry.”
Behind him, Darkspawn entered the alley.
Leah slung the satchel charge over one shoulder and holstered the Thermal Bolter. She pressed a button on her left control wristband. The suits they wore weren’t as automated as those of the Templar. Many things remained manually operated.
Microscopic hooks shifted out of the pads of her gloves, elbows, and knees. More sprouted from the toes of her reinforced boots. When she reached the alley wall, she threw herself onto it and slammed her palms, elbows, knees, and boot toes against the stone and mortar. The hooks dug into the stone and provided her enough purchase to slither up the wall quick as a lizard. The climbing was a practiced maneuver, and she’d spent weeks perfecting it.
Wickersham followed her in the same fashion.
Near the top, Leah paused, gathered herself, and launched herself toward the wall’s edge. She caught hold of it and hauled herself up. A heartbeat later, Wickersham landed beside her. Energy bolts crashed against the wall and sizzled through the air around them.
Leah ran along the wall toward the building in the direction of O2. She threw herself against it and slithered up another two stories to reach the roof, then hauled herself over.
Wickersham came over as well, but he landed awkwardly and went facedown. He loosed a muffled yelp of pain, then a curse. He rolled into a sitting position and pushed himself to his feet.
“They’re climbing,” Wickersham said.
Leah reached into her pack and took out a HARP grenade. When she had it, she slammed the grenade against the rooftop to activate the timer. The grenade pulsed blue as it started its countdown.
Using the overhead recon available through the bot-supplied images, Leah shoved the grenade over the rooftop’s edge and dropped it into the mass of Darkspawn Troopers forming a flesh-and-blood ladder to scale the building wall. It was two stories, but the demons had plenty of bodies.
The grenade landed in the writhing mass. A few of the Darkspawn recognized the threat and tried to bail from the top of the wall. It was wasted effort, though. The grenade went off, and the blue-white glare filled the alley.
Leah glanced over the side and saw that the largest knot of demons had disappeared. Arms, legs, heads, and torsos littered the ground to mark the radius of the blast. A large section of the wall had disintegrated as well.
And so had a huge piece of the building.
The rooftop shuddered and shifted with a groan.
Realizing the danger, Leah grabbed Wickersham’s armor harness and yanked him into motion. “The support columns on this side of the building are gone,” she shouted.
Both of them ran, barely managing to stay ahead of the building’s collapse as the rooftop dropped. The destruction gathered force and intensity, sounding like a wave crashing in their wake.
When they reached the rooftop’s edge, a forty-foot span opened over the street below. The four-story drop to the street level was managea
ble, but the demons held the area. If they dropped into the street, Leah knew they wouldn’t last a moment.
“The other side,” she gasped, and launched herself into the air with all the power of her augmented suit. “It’s the only chance.” She took flight like a human missile.
Wickersham was only a split second behind her. He flailed awkwardly through the air high above the street fighting. Some of the Darkspawn below saw them and recognized them for what they were. Bullets, beams, and arcane forces tracked Leah and Wickersham across the street.
Leah knew she couldn’t hope to catch the building’s rooftop. She angled her descent toward the windows because she didn’t think her suit’s armor would manage the collision with the building.
“The windows,” she yelled to Wickersham. She didn’t know if he heard her or tried to respond. In the next instant she smashed through the glass. Glittering shards arced through the air and caught the gleam of fires and weapons discharges.
Empty clothing racks covered the shop’s floor. Everything worth taking had been taken years ago. Leah gasped as the impact drove the wind from her lungs. Then she lie on the floor, tucked into a fetal position, hands wrapped over her head and knees tucked in to protect her stomach.
When she was sure—and surprised—that she was still alive, Leah pushed herself to her feet and stared back out the shattered window. Darkspawn Troopers ran toward the store.
Behind them, the collapsing building fell into the street. Tons of stone, mortar, and glass slammed over the massed Darkspawn. What had only seconds ago been a mistake now became a savage blow struck against the demons.
Leah dived back down as stray bits of stone and mortar crashed through other windows in the shop. The suit’s audio receptors struggled to keep up and finally failed out during the crescendo. She got her breath back as debris pelted her. After making sure she still had the satchel, she unlimbered the Thermal Bolter.