by Dirk Patton
“Fire the first trident,” the captain ordered.
“Trident away,” Nguyen replied.
The massive harpoon soared through the air, launched from a rocket-assist platform along the Ascendent’s spine. It slammed into the hound just below its right shoulder. The meter-thick cable tightened, pulling the extradimensional horror off balance.
“A fine shot, Nguyen,” Ubuntu said. “Reel it in, Commander Burley.”
The Ascendent dragged the hound through the steeple of a church. The super tank swerved, dragging the beast through burning ruins. It shrieked, its cannon discharging wildly into the air, the ground.
“All howitzer batteries, fire for effect,” Nguyen ordered.
Twenty-one 105mm cannon shells and a dozen 8-inch high-explosive penetrator rounds struck the creature around its face and forelegs. It turned, snarling, only for a double volley from the Ascendent’s massive pair of 50-inch ‘Void-Eater’ guns to strike it midsection. Its torso vaporized in a spray of acidic blood. The trident snapped off, the cable whipping through the air in the vessel’s wake.
Prow-mounted horns on the Ascendent blared a victory anthem. Her crew members cheered and stamped their feet. Back at the front, the survivors of III Army paused in their consolidation efforts to join the battle cry.
Burley shouted, “God kill confirmed!” Then, louder, her voice rising in pitch: “Breach imminent! Brace for—”
Something hard and heavy slammed onto their right flank.
Ubuntu cursed. Connected as she was, Ubuntu could feel talons made of otherworldly material raking across her ribs. Vile fluids poured through her rent armor, damaging internal systems.
“Void Crawler,” Nguyen stated, her voice calm. “Bastard is trying to gut us.”
“Get it off, Commander Burley,” Ubuntu ordered.
The Ascendent roared through an overpass. Concrete and asphalt shattered on the war machine. The cackling demon on her flank paid the debris no heed. Its mandibles dug deep into the vessel, ripping chunks away and vomiting venom into the tank’s interior.
“Fires on Decks 3 and 4,” Burley said. “Fire suppression systems are damaged. We’re open to the air in nine locations.”
“Send security teams to defend possible entry points and compartmentalize damaged sections.” Ubuntu breathed through the pain, eying a series of office buildings ahead. Most were ruined skeletons, but a few – taller than the Ascendent – looked to be mostly intact.
“Commander Burley, all ahead full through those buildings.”
“We risk tremendous damage to the structural integrity of our prow,” Burley said, even as she ceded more power to the engines.
“Then you’d best double-check your restraints,” Ubuntu said, ensuring hers were tight across her chest. “Let’s see the bastard hold on through this.”
They were going nearly 120 kilometers an hour when they hit the first building. The structure turned to a moving wall of debris, crashing into the next just moments ahead of the Ascendent. Ubuntu clutched at her arm rests, fighting through the pain of her chest being struck with sledgehammers. She spit onto the floor of the bridge, wiping away a trickle of blood from her nose.
Surviving external cameras showed the crawler digging its thousand claws into the vessel’s flanks. The Ascendent roared, not in pain, but outrage at such audacity. Perhaps showing some latent psychic connection to the warmachine’s spirit, Burley accelerated further, coaxing even more energy from the strained reactor, grinding the alien demi-god through thousands of tons of debris.
“It’s off!” Burley said, sparks flying from her console as the world shook apart. The Ascendent emerged from a titanic dust cloud, smashing abandoned homes beneath her treads. “Enemy is clear!”
“Direct all Hellfires to fire for effect,” Ubuntu said. “Fire for effect. Fire. Burn these motherfuckers and eat the ashes.”
The voice that came through her lips was inhuman: the sound of the wounded and dying in the midst of ceaseless artillery bombardment, if such noise could be turned to speech. Nguyen turned to her, hesitating, fear reflected in her eyes.
Get back, you bitch, Ubuntu snarled, shoving the Ascendent’s psychic will away from her mind. Your hour isn’t here yet.
Ubuntu met Nguyen’s gaze. “It’s me, Leesh. Launch the Hellfires.”
Nguyen nodded, relieved. “Hellfires away.”
A flight of missiles burst from sixty vertical launch platforms near the Ascendent’s stern. They arched briefly through the air before screaming toward the shrieking void crawler. The thermobaric weapons blistered its alien form. The abomination caught fire. Strips of smoking flesh peeled from its body. It shuddered, curling up on itself like a dying insect, and lay still.
“God kill confirmed!” Burley declared.
Nguyen thumped her small fist into her tactical console, shouting, “burn, you bastard!”
The Ascendent howled her victory anthem again, but Burley’s voice cut quickly through the noise. “Captain, we’ve got three squid swarms heading this way. Estimate 1,200 enemy infantry in the open.”
“What’s our armor integrity?” Ubuntu asked.
“Compromised. If they get past the Bushmaster cannons, we will be boarded.”
“That’s a big if,” Nguyen said, updating firing plans for the sponson guns. She pointed to a pulsing icon on her display, growing closer to them by the second. “Last target is inbound. We’ll need to use the sleds.”
“That is absolutely out of the question,” Burley said. “We’ll kill our own crew and cause additional and unnecessary damage to the Ascendent.”
“Irrelevant,” Nguyen replied, her voice sharp. “Our mission is to cover III Corps’ retreat.”
“III Corps is made of men,” Burley insisted. “But the Ascendent…”
“Is made by men, for men. Our mission is paramount. Should she be lost, others can be built to replace her.”
“There is only one Ascendent,” Burley said stiffly. “And the loss of this vessel is too high a price.”
“I’m the judge of that, Commander,” Ubuntu said, the slightest raise of her voice signal to her subordinates that she would brook no argument. “As it stands, I’ve no intention of surrendering the Ascendent or the battlefield to the enemy.”
A warning klaxxon sounded on their comscreens. The tides of the Otherworld rippled out of a yet-invisible dispersion point.
Burley’s shouted warning was entirely unnecessary. The hair on the back of Ubuntu’s neck stood up. Weird, alien whispers filled the net. Impossible glyphs flashed across the comscreen, then disappeared.
Ubuntu switched her radio channel to address every human unit that could hear her. Her throat was dry; she swallowed, trying to still the twisting knot of terror and anticipation in her gut.
“All elements, this is the Andrada Ascendent. A MIDNIGHT-Level event is occurring. Break.” She hesitated, then added, “Use of atomics on the battlefield is imminent. Break. All units are advised to withdraw. Godspeed, and Contre Noctem”
“Contre Noctem,” the two commanders muttered. Nguyen genuflected.
The shrieking klaxxon grew louder. The Ascendent’s psychic growling grew with it. Two of the dispersion points collided. The breach appeared as a brilliant sphere of light on the battlefield. Ruins near it began levitating strangely, the tides of gravity warped by such aberrant, otherworldly power.
The breach swelled in an obscene parody of birth, and a true Voidborn god tore its way out of the madness of the Otherworld. Even at a distance Ubuntu could see how it towered over the Ascendent, supported on bulging tentacles and vaguely simian legs. Psychic assimilation devices of bone and sinew, their method a mystery to even the most brilliant minds of PSICOM, spun wildly as they soaked up the energy from the breach.
The name of the god was written with glittering alien runes on each of its titanium scales. The squid infantry advancing on the Ascendent took up that name as a battle cry, even as the deity itself roared the name into the mind of eve
ry living being within twenty square kilometers.
UZHAIOGACH!
Nguyen whistled. “That’s a big fish.”
“Captain Nguyen, hold sled fire for my signal,” Ubuntu said. “All other systems are yours.”
“Yes ma’am. All howitzers batteries, fire for effect!”
Four kilometers of ruins lay between the Ascendent and Uzhaiogach. Every one of her guns covered that distance in a heartbeat.
“Rocket pods 1-20, fire for effect!”
200 Hydra 70 rockets screamed from their launch pods. The demon roared, recoiling from the heat and pressure of the multiple blast waves.
“Mortar batteries, bracketing fire from the following coordinates! Exhaust all ammunition!”
The 120mm mortars fired at high angle, raining down burning white phosphorus as close as 200 meters away. The flames spread quickly, punishing the advancing enemy infantry and creating a field of fire that Uzhaiogach would have to cross.
The demon regarded them for a moment. Ubuntu could taste its thoughts: brackish and alien, possessed of unfathomable purpose. Its mere presence drove the Ascendent into blind fury. The ghost in the machine struck at Ubuntu as though she were an enemy. For a terrifying moment Ubuntu thought she would be lost, her mind soaked into the vessel’s pulsing reactor heart, but her own stubborn refusal to cede control to a damn vehicle kept her conscious.
“Not yet,” she hissed through clenched teeth, heedless of the concerned looks both Nguyen and Burley gave her. “Not bloody yet.”
The demon god boomed with laughter. Its slime-covered tentacles pushed it faster toward the Ascendent.
“Noospheric spike detected!” Burley shouted. “Brace for impact!”
The demon’s psychic attack hit the tank hard enough to push it sideways on its tracks. Sparks flew from the bridge’s command screens.
The Ascendent screamed, and Ubuntu screamed with her. An invisible spear pierced through her ribs, its cold touch profaning her organs. She could feel cancerous tumors sprouting inside her lungs and liver, sprouting in stigmatic sympathy with the tank’s injuries.
“Major hull breaches on the second, third, and fourth decks,” Burley said. Blood oozed from a wound on her forehead. Nguyen was silent, her head lolling on her chest. “Enemy dismounts are boarding on the fourth. We’ve lost all sponson guns on our starboard side. Locomotion failing. Reactor close to critical.”
“Prepping remaining Trident missiles,” Ubuntu said, taking over Nguyen’s responsibilities. “Once they’ve fired, the bridge is yours.” Then, though the words were her own, the voice was once again that of the Ascendent. “Don’t let that bastard get away from us.”
Burley gave a crisp salute. Her eyes shone with near-cultic fervor. “Contre Noctem. It has been my honor, and privilege, to serve You.”
Ubuntu opened her third eye and turned to behold the Ascendent. It was a column of atomic fire, a towering psychic whirlwind that was at once familiar and more alien than even the Voidborn.
Is it time? The god demanded.
Ubuntu nodded. “Yes. It is time.”
There was no hesitation. The Ascendent took Ubuntu, bringing her into the heart of the tempest until She and her were one.
Burley’s voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away.
“Tridents away. Happy hunting, Captain.”
The metal goddess drove her talons into the demon. Three of them failed to penetrate, but a fourth stuck in a gap between its armored scales. Burley accelerated at a tight angle, yanking it toward them.
Squid clones crawled over and inside her. Security teams with shotguns and riot shields battled next to ammunition chambers and fuel supplies, making the enemy bleed for each step.
Integral systems failed. Coolant lines evaporated. Locomotion systems shuddered and threatened to go dark forever.
Together, Ubuntu and the Ascendent held on. The strain was tearing her apart, but she forced her atomic heart to stay online, to continue working with what limited power it had.
The part of her that was still Ubuntu shouted: Come on! We aren’t finished yet!
They turned. Uzhaiogach came on. They collided like mobile mountain ranges, two gods of war desperate to consume the other. The buildings between them were reduced to dust and ashen embers.
Its mantis limbs hacked deep into her spine. She pummeled it with her howitzers and remaining 25mm Bushmaster cannons. Her Void-Eater cannons blasted meters-thick chunks of armored plating from its eldritch form. It seized the yawning barrels in its jaws, chewing through the explosion of the gun’s magazine.
Uzhaiogach swung her around. She dug in, her treads roaring, then pushed back. The demon slithered backward, prevented from disengaging by the trident embedded in its torso. The phosphorus firestorm scorched alien and human god alike.
I will devour you, the Ascendent seethed. And shit you out my exhaust pipes.
They roared from the flames and into the frigid waters of Lake Michigan. The sky overhead broke with forks of green lightning. Downed alien craft drifted in the cursed waves battering the shore.
The trident snapped free. Uzhaiogach broke away, lumbering down the rocky beach. It sucked in energy from the noosphere, preparing itself for another brutal psychic attack. Bleeding from one hundred thousand wounds, the Ascendent pivoted, feeling the fusion reactor in her heart beginning to flicker.
She charged the enemy, hurling her remaining rockets and howitzer rounds. She slammed into its crustacean torso as its main weapon fired. It scoured her back, peeling off her mortar platforms and drone landing pads, but did not pierce her heart.
She did not notice the pain. Her momentum was unrelenting. She rammed Uzhaiogach, piercing it on her armored prow. The god machine forced the demon back into the ruins, through the flames, through a kilometer of pitched battlefield.
She was screaming by the time she shoved Uzhaiogach into the rusted remains of a toppled skyscraper. Dozens of massive structural beams burst through its chest. The Ascendent hurled herself into reverse, her treads shredding on razor-sharp debris. For a moment she was stuck, battered by the howling demon’s claws and teeth, her cannons and missile systems reduced to sparking wrecks.
Burley came through in the end.
They limped away, fires spreading on multiple decks, smoke pouring from the wounds in her armor.
I am the memory of the great Andrada.
Squid infantry poured through her hallways and corridors. Security teams fought to give loading crews and engineers time to complete their tasks before being overrun by alien horrors. Uzhaiogach pulled itself free, emerging from the rubble of the collapsing skyscraper with hellfire in its crushing claws.
I am a child of the all mighty Behemoth.
She activated her recoilless sleds at last. The devices hurled twin M-422 bombs at Uzhaiogach. The projectiles opened seconds before impact, revealing dozens of fin-steered devices that aimed right for the alien’s heart.
The ensuing detonation formed a nuclear fireball nearly 60 meters wide. A newborn sun kissed the earth, sucking in fountains of irradiated ash and spewing it into the air. The blast-wave formed a toxic cyclone that pummeled the Ascendent and her foe.
Uzhaiogach burned.
The elemental fury of sundered atoms torched its otherworldly frame. Its accumulated psychic energy ran out of control, mutating and warping its flesh in great heaving loops. Its compound eyes burst. It screamed, and collapsed under the weight of its own mutation, rapidly dissolving into stinking, purple flames.
Ubuntu and the Ascendent were one, and then they were two again. Ubuntu gasped, her fingers curled from the agony of her wounds. A thousand warning sirens sounded from multiple systems throughout the Ascendent.
Burley held an emergency oxygen mask to Ubuntu’s face. Nguyen was still in her chair, barely conscious, clutching a pistol and staring at the door leading out of the bridge.
“God kill confirmed,” Burley said. “Ironside 6 is reporting a full withdrawal. III Corps lives to fi
ght another day.”
Ubuntu’s cracked lips opened.
“Boarders?”
Screams, shotgun blasts, and the gibbering of Voidborn clones on the other side of the bridge’s blast doors answered her question. Ubuntu got to her feet, waving away Burley’s protest. She reached out her hand; after a moment of hesitation, Burley armed her with a stout pump-action shotgun. Ubuntu racked the chamber.
“Get us off this battlefield, Commander.”
Wincing, Ubuntu leaned against Nguyen’s chair for support. The Ascendent whispered through the rumble of the engines and the ceaseless work of the surviving crew members. A voice that was once bellicose and challenging now seemed almost grateful, ready to lend its strength for the battle to come.
The door to the bridge shook. Burley shouted orders across the net. Slowly, torturously, the god of steel and fire turned away from the irradiated remains of its foe.
Ubuntu aimed her shotgun at the door and whispered, “The honor is mine, my friend.”
Stains
Daniel Finley
He hated it. The black tar. It coated everything. Burrowed into the nooks and crannies of his gun, rooted underneath his fingernails. Even contoured the creases in his skin. Except it wasn’t tar; it was something else.
Mattock scrubbed the Fostech Origin SBV until near perfection and moved on to the machete. Black sticky liquid spattered the blade. A solvent was the only thing that could remove it, and yet, it never did. Years of tar matted the outdoor wooden table he sat at. In fact, the entire way station carried the stain of the black woods. Small and squat, the structure stood half a mile away, but the forest left its mark in the form of a tar trail trampled into the green grass. This black path led mercenaries to fame, fortune, or the end of their lives. This way station stood as the last reprieve before they left the rational world behind.