As I got nearer to the ground, I looked around at the city sprawled below us. Buildings upon buildings stretched in every direction. Cairo was huge. And the streets were packed with Kresh.
"We'll have to go south on top of the buildings," I said over coms, "Too many of em in the streets."
"Roger," Paige said.
"Be ready when I kill the Farrara'Ti," I said, "Don't wait for me, I'll be right behind you."
I landed on the roof of our target along with a hundred and nine Mages.
"You know what happens when we kill one of em. I'll be movin fast as I come back out of the building. You guys need to be moving already. And we'll need to make a lot of noise, so feel free to blast the shit out of em."
They started moving quietly to the south end of the building.
Rostov motioned for Daphne to precede him, "Perhaps you may lose your clothes again and I would not wish to miss this."
"Never goin on a date again," she muttered as she went by him.
"Do not say such things," Rostov said, "Perhaps you should have been with a Russian who would have gladly removed his clothing and fought, naked, beside such a woman. It would have been glorious!"
"Bloody crazed Russians," Stone said as he walked by me.
"Russians are all crazy, Lad," Lennox Flynn said, "Tis a proven fact, that."
I chuckled as my friends headed to the south. With a little searching, I found the access to the building. I focused on a thought of empty space and projected it. This was a trick Gorvelis had told me about while I was on Cerres. The key is to keep your mind clear. Which is much harder than you may think.
I opened the door and began a quiet descent down to the bottom floor of either an apartment building or a hotel. I could feel the presence of the Farrara'Ti below me.
My rage was trying to beat down the walls but this was no place for that. Slowly I descended until I was at the last floor. I eased through the door into a lobby. He was waiting for me.
Rash'Tor'Ri, he said into my mind, I feel you.
Not for long, I thought back at him.
He was moving. Like Kil'Sin'Deres, he moved like lightning. I dodged to the side but not fast enough. Pain exploded in my right side as his claws ripped my side open.
His body slammed into the wall behind me, because his Soul was gripped in my left hand. I felt their Source and the beast inside me howled.
Blood flowed down my left side but everything seemed to move right so I Pulled power to the spot and the blood flow slowed.
A roar filled the air throughout the city as the Kresh realized what had happened.
"Damn," I muttered, "gotta move."
My side wasn't healed but there were crashes as the Kresh slammed into the side of the building in their rush to get to me.
I ran up the stairs with crunches, crashes, and roars following behind me.
"They sound pissed," Kharl said over coms.
"They are," I grunted as my side ached, "On my way back up."
I reached the roof to find some of the Mages waiting on me, Kharl and my ten squad leaders.
"Paige took the rest ahead and started raising Hell," Kharl said, "We're your escort."
"By all means," I said, "Let's get the Hell outta here, then."
We ran south as the top of the building erupted in Kresh.
"Son of a bitch!" Prada said, "That’s a lot of Kresh."
"Tis a fact," Flynn said.
I Kept Pulling to the wound in my side and, after a few minutes, stopped lagging behind.
"You're hurt," Kharl said, "Why didn't ya say somethin?"
"That bastard was fast," I said, "And I've got it healed, mostly."
As we leaped to the next building, we all launched discs down into the horde.
They launched fireballs back that missed us.
"Demon Mages," I said.
"Really? Ya think?" Prada asked.
"Smart ass."
She laughed.
I felt a large Pull from ahead of us.
"Paige or Gregor," I said, "They got a shitload of Kresh following em."
I could see the dark Souls ahead of us where our other group were located. We were almost caught up when I saw them go to the ground. There was a huge train yard ahead and we had to cross it.
"Get ready for juggernauts," I said.
As we left the edge of the last building, we spread out and opened portals on the juggernaut armor. I slammed into the packed Kresh in front of me and blood arced upwards. We broke through to the open space where Paige and the rest were running across the train yard.
Then I saw past them.
"Oh shit," I said as Kresh poured into the yard from all directions.
They were moving at full speed and hit our juggernauts with a huge crunch. A Mage with juggernaut shields can do a god awful amount of damage, but it requires being able to move. There were so many Kresh we actually ground to a halt and they kept coming.
Chapter 36
I'd never seen anything like this. They piled higher and higher. In moments, only the strongest of us were even still moving.
"We have to close ranks," I said on coms.
I saw Adaya's shield collapse. She was about forty feet to my right and I could hear the thoughts in her mind as the dead Kresh fell in on top of her.
Don't do it, Adaya, I am coming! I said into her mind as she was screaming.
I Pulled and dropped my shield in the right side. My Soullance fired and I burned a hole in the dead Kresh. I followed at Mage speed so the bodies couldn't collapse in the hole I bored.
Then I felt her hands grab my leg and blew a hole around us and slammed a shield out. I was Pulling and reinforcing the shield.
We have to move to the others, I said into her mind as she was calming her panic.
"Follow, close, Adaya," I said on coms.
Kharl was the next one to the right, but his shield was holding. Lennox was the furthest away but his shield suddenly went super bright.
Flynn!
I heard him in his mind and felt the burning pain, "Get dem out, me boy."
The ground shook as he Pulled too much. His last action was to Pull everything he could and a huge hole was blasted in the bodies.
It freed the rest of our party and we closed the distance before the Kresh could fill the gap. I slammed a shield out and reinforced it with a Pull. I was probably the only one who could do that for any length of time. That's what had gotten Flynn.
His shields weren't strong enough to hold and he'd been Pulling to keep them strong enough.
"Paige is about a hundred feet that way," I said, pointing, "As I clear a path, we need to move together."
"Do it, Son," Kharl said.
"Goodbye, my friend," I muttered and looked back to where Flynn had been.
I opened the end toward where I could see the others. I Pulled and the Soullance spit fire again. We closed the distance and I opened a hole in her shield that we all squeezed through.
She was Pulling to support the shield and I could see the power in her was past dangerous. I ran to her and touched her shoulder. The excess power in her was enormous but I took it and launched it upwards through a hole I opened in her shield.
I stopped when it was safe for her to continue.
"I'm pretty sure," she said, "we're still in Cairo."
"Lovely city," I said, "Thinkin about buying a vacation home here."
"Just so you all know," I said, "If we don't make it out of this, we didn't do this for real estate. There were about ten thousand prisoners in the northwest corner of the city."
"That sounds ominous," Kharl said, "Isn't this the part where you make some shit up?"
I felt a massive Pull and looked up.
"Holy shit!" I said, "Shields! Now! Everyone!"
"What the Hell?!" Prada exclaimed.
We all felt the Pull that was happening to our east.
"The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end," I muttered.
"You quotin the b
ible now?" Kharl asked as he slammed his shield against the inside of Paige's.
Everyone was looking at me as if I was crazy. I was laughing as the whole world began to shake around us.
***
"Advance all troops toward Cairo," Dietrich said, "That's the advice I would give."
"You're in charge, Dietrich," Lyrica said, "I'm just the weapon. You know what I need. Make it happen."
"Yes Ma'am," he said and started spouting the orders to move the troops toward Cairo.
Lyrica watched the plane circling above Cairo. Time to move, she thought.
She headed down from the building she was perched atop. The Mages and Mageguards were ready and the regular troops had already moved out.
"Let's go," she said.
She jogged toward Cairo and they followed. I wish we could've just dropped the sky on them, she thought. She had a bad feeling about this.
They reached a factory, outside of Cairo. She climbed the wall with the rest right behind her.
Then she felt the Pulls. Her sight opened and she looked, intently toward the city. She watched two groups of Souls running south. But she also saw all of those dark Souls closing from all directions.
"Dear God," she said, "Supports, link up!"
"How many, Ma'am?"
"Everyone!"
"Prepare for Omega."
She turned to find one of the Egyptians.
"We will not participate in an attack within our city..."
"You'll do what needs to be done or my company will pull the contracts with your government. You'll not receive another weapon nor a replacement piece for the ones you have. Your contract states that in a situation where Omega is deemed necessary, your troops will participate. You break your contract and you're on your own."
"But..."
He looked into her eyes as the fire began to flow across her body.
"They will be ready," he said.
She turned back to see piles of Kresh higher than buildings.
"Omega! I repeat, Omega!"
The world erupted in fire.
Omega hadn't been tried be either her or Colin, yet. It was a theoretical action to use when there wasn't enough power in an Alpha.
An Alpha used the power of the Mages around the Soullord. The strongest Alpha either had used was several hundred Mages.
What launched into the night sky was the fire from thirty two thousand Source weapons.
The streams of four hundred Mages and six hundred Mageguards thrummed as Lyrica reached to the sky and seized that power.
She moved it to a point above the Kresh that covered the bright Souls below. Then she dropped that massive maelstrom down on top of the gigantic pile of Kresh.
***
I laughed. The world shook. The Kresh burned. Everyone looked at me like I was insane. It was, swiftly, becoming a beautiful day.
When the power hit our shields, everyone staggered with the force of that Maelstrom.
I laughed harder and pulled the excess power from any of them who had built up too much. Then I added it to the shield.
Then it was over and the power dispersed.
We looked up into the night sky and lowered our shields. The air stank of burnt flesh and blood, but it was air. Under the pile we had been swiftly running out of air.
The Source can keep you going without food. It can sustain you without water, but even the Source can't replace air.
Lennox Flynn had saved us all when he Mage bombed. The time it would have taken to free all of the squad would have had us outside of Paige's shield. Paige would have overloaded and that's something no one wants to see. The man had literally saved us all.
We climbed over the charred remains of so many Kresh, there was really no describing. The others had quit their mad dash to kill us and scattered in all directions. The Souls I could see were filled with terror.
Adaya looked back down into that hole where we had been and her whole body shook. She had been close to doing what Lennox had done.
When we all come out of that darkness there were twenty one of our dead left behind.
"I should have told them about the prisoners," I said, "They shouldn't have died thinkin it was about real estate."
"Why didn't you?" Paige asked.
"If we had needed to Alpha right on top of it," I said, "I didn't want that to be on the conscience of anyone but me."
"That's a lot to take on yourself, Son," Kharl said.
"At least we pulled em far enough out, they didn't get hit," I said, looking north. I had been afraid to look that direction but I finally worked up the nerve. The bright Souls of humans still shone where they had been.
"What say we go set em free?" I said.
"Let's do that," Adaya said.
We set off toward the warehouses the Kresh had used to hold the prisoners.
Chapter 37
We walked out of Cairo with three quarters of the Mages that had gone in. We also walked out with eleven thousand four hundred and eighty two freed Egyptians.
I saw Lyrica's Soul flood with sorrow as she saw who was missing from our ranks. She had become friends with Lennox while she spent two years in Scotland.
She met me with an embrace.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
"Me too," she whispered, "Now we put on a brave face and save the crying for later."
"Agreed," I said.
We turned and walked toward the Allied base beside the canal.
"They scattered in every direction after that," Lyrica said, "They thought it was Rash'Tor'Ri that had done it to them."
"It was," I said, "We are Rash'Tor'Ri. They don't quite understand that yet."
I looked back toward Cairo with a fire burning in my Soul that just would not stop.
"They will," she said with that same fire burning inside her Soul.
***
"We need to set up patrols to go out and hunt em down," I said.
"I think Ekene Dakarai should head up that operation," Paige said from behind me, "It is his territory. We'll give any support he needs."
We stood in an office looking at the map on the wall. There were pins in it marking forces that were moving through Cairo and the surrounding area.
"That sounds like a plan," I said, "Dakarai is a good choice. Besides, you two are gonna be busy with the politics. We just blew up a large chunk of Cairo."
"This war took a toll on the whole Delta," Gregor said, "It will take some time for Egypt to recover. They fared much better than Kenya. They had time to evacuate the majority of their people from the area, Kenya had no warning and not enough forces to hold them. Ethiopia and Sudan fared better because they were moving much faster, for some reason."
"Yes, I wonder what that was," Paige said.
"I have no idea," I said.
Gregor chuckled, "I'll see you two later, I have to go see some of those politicians, now."
"I'd rather be on patrol," I said.
"Wouldn't we all," he said.
"I have to go, too," Paige said, "I'll send Dakarai to you, Colin."
"Thanks," I said, "I've got a lot of paperwork to do now. I'd rather be on patrol than this, too."
"True," she said.
As they left the room, I walked to the desk to confront one of the hardest tasks I had ever done. The list of casualties was much larger than any I had had before.
Estimated, nearly fifty million civilian deaths in Africa and Europe. The number was hard to wrap my head around. I had expected a large death toll when the Kresh came back but the numbers were hard to take.
Do I have the right to decide not to close the gates permanently? Where do I draw the line? There are billions of humans on the other worlds and they are enslaved by the Kresh. I must let millions die to save the billions. I understand the logic, but I have a difficult time being that calculating.
The toll in civilians was horrible and the toll in soldiers was staggering. It seems that we missed one hell of a battle while we were chasing Kresh thro
ugh Africa. The sheer numbers of the dead sent a chill down my spine.
It was estimated thirty eight thousand Soulguards died at the Battle of the Delta. Soldiers from the various countries numbered close to two million and the deaths were over thirty percent.
Warships in both the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez had been firing non-stop into the Kresh. Bombers from all over the world had been dropping ordinance on them. And still they took out a third of the forces facing them and had nearly four million Kresh in Cairo when we killed the Farrara'Ti.
I knew a lot of Soulguards and I knew I would be seeing a lot of familiar names in the lists I was staring at.
My run through Africa had begun with seventy three Mages and three hundred and ninety Mageguards. I had lost ninety eight Mageguards and twelve Mages. Then I lost another twenty one Mages in Cairo. These were my, personal, losses.
I knew the next few days were going to be rough. I was about to write each one of their next of kin. A generic letter wouldn't do. I must remember all of them. I must always remember those that gave their lives for me. Never become uncaring of those losses. When I don't care is when the Monster has truly taken over.
I started with Jimmy Sandoval. He had been in Tennessee when I was posted there as Mage Captain. He was a card player and had been obsessed with an old song from Kenny Rogers, The Gambler.
I wrote the letter to his son, James Sandoval II. He was a grandfather, himself, and he had known of the Soulguard for his entire life.
Hour after hour, I wrote to children, grandchildren, brothers, and sisters. There were many who had no families and I marked them as well. I will remember, even if no one else will.
I came down to Lennox Flynn. He had a daughter who was a Mage in Argentina. I wrote her of her father's heroic sacrifice.
As he had exploded, he had raised a shield up around him that reached about four feet. It kept the blast from killing those around him yet still destroyed enough Kresh to break them all free.
He was a good man and I had known him from the day he presided over my trial when Gavin Price had tried to tie me from the Source and failed. Price had died and the Council had tried to charge me.
Bloodlord (Soulguard Book 3) Page 17