by Jamel Cato
“I’m making a date.”
Zina looked away.
“What?”
“I didn’t get the chance to thank Michelle for what she did for my mom. When I went looking for her, they told me she had already left for Virginia.”
“She knows you appreciate it.”
“Did she tell you that last night? Never mind, don’t answer that.”
Loud claxons began blaring throughout the camp.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
More than a thousand tanks raced across the plain toward the base of Mount Tamalu, their heavy engines rumbling like the galaxy’s bass guitar.
General Sabovich had waited until the morning of the assault to deliver a rousing speech that finally informed the rank and file soldiers who they would be fighting.
They had shouted back Hooah and its equivalent in a dozen languages before heading out with a newfound determination to show the other side what happens to badass monsters when they meet a badass species.
* * *
Shulkog G’hat, the Oni clan leader who was overseeing the battle for the War Council, looked out at the cloud of dust darkening the horizon behind the incoming tanks. The overbite of his enormous molar fangs always made it look as though he were smiling, but the rise of his red cheek muscles left no doubt.
When the leading tank was exactly four thousand meters from the war camp, he gave the signal.
A circle of twelve electron waifs locked arms and began chanting.
An electron waif is the offspring of a thunder god and a mortal woman. They cannot summon lightning like their fathers, but a group of them working together could fill the air with static electricity.
A flock of eight Tongus took to the sky, flying at high altitudes. When they were directly above the colony of tanks, they beat their wings feverishly. Storm clouds darkened the sky.
On a ridge of Mount Tamalu, a Seti protected from the desert heat by a special composite igloo began creating balls of snow and ice the size of cars. Opposite it, five lava witches conjured plumes of fire.
A Fae physicist from Thailand activated a bank of plasma generators that projected laser light onto the approaching tanks.
Baynin nodded to Elpidio, who flipped the power circuit on the hyper funnel he had been building for months. The funnel sent the ice and fire zooming into the storm clouds.
Thousands of gigajoule lightning bolts flashed in a confined area. The bolts followed the lasers downward, pulverizing every tank it found at the other end.
* * *
There was stunned silence in the Coalition command center as they watched the main screens.
“Status,” one of Sabovich’s officers said.
After a pause, a logistics officer said, “Seven hundred and twenty-three tank units are unresponsive to lidar pings.”
“Evasive maneuvers,” Sabovich said. “Ghost pattern.”
The remaining tanks triggered their onboard smoke generators, which stymied lasers but made it extremely difficult to navigate safely.
* * *
“Kranu!” Shulkog shouted into an enchanted bullhorn.
Two thousand Orc warriors charged forward, screaming battle cries.
The tanks began firing their main guns.
Hundreds of orcs exploded into clouds of red dust.
The gunner in an Arjun Mark 2 from the Indian Defense Forces was calibrating his sights to adjust for the smoke when a huge orc landed on the front hull.
The soldier reacted quickly and began firing his tank’s coaxial gun.
The orc pirouetted in midair to avoid the fire, grabbed hold of the fume extractor to keep from flying away then used its free hand to slam down a sonic hammer. The tank’s turret caved in like a candy wrapper.
Similar displays of Orchish athletic prowess, with similar outcomes, were occurring all along the battlefront.
A Canadian tank crew discovered that Orcs were not the only threat when their hull was shoulder butted by a gargantuan minotaur. The tank flipped over five times before landing with its treads up.
The initial assault was going poorly for the humans.
Then the chain guns on an Apache attack helicopter blasted three orcs into a pile of green gumbo.
The two hundred choppers that flew in behind it obliterated the Orc lines with machine gun rounds before sending barrages of Sidewinder missiles screeching toward the war camp.
Ninety-six direct hits on the war camp provoked cheering in the Coalition command center. But the celebration faded when the large glamour that appeared to be an active war camp vanished.
Chopper pilots looked at each other in confusion, unable to hear the buzzing growing in the air over the noise of their own blades.
From the sky to the East, led by warriors from Maya’s clan, came a swarm of Giang Tien Fae over a thousand strong. The swarm fell upon the eastern flank of helicopters with devastating techniques its member clans had been using for centuries to wage aerial warfare against each other. Pyrotechnics were set off that disoriented the chopper pilots. Enchanted boomerangs jammed and sliced through rotors. Synchronized teams used their supernatural ability to stop and instantly change direction regardless of air resistance to shower fuselages with close-range automatic weapons fire.
From the sky to the West came a legion of winged Valkyries, singing their battle songs and shooting volleys of Olympus bolts, which were glowing projectiles with many of the same properties as modern missiles.
Helicopters that were not downed by the bolts jerked and spun from the weight of Valkyries clinging to their landing gear and windshields. The alluring warriors punched straight through acrylic and metal to reach the pilots inside, who were ripped from their seats and sent hurtling to the ground.
Choppers fell from the sky like snowflakes in a blizzard.
* * *
General Sabovich remained calm. They had planned for the loss of air and fire superiority.
“SpecOps status,” he said.
“Alpha and Charlie teams are two kicks out from the plateau,” a logistics officer informed him. “Bravo team is not responding to pings.”
Without any outward sign of coordination, Landon and a colonel in the American delegation turned the dials on special transmitters inside their pockets.
“Reconnaissance Team Eight has located the war camp!” a logistics officer shouted.
“Confirmation methods?” Sabovich asked.
“Target was confirmed with infrared and physical touch. The drone feed is coming up on Screen Three now.”
A high definition feed from the camera on a tiny drone that was hovering over the real War Camp began streaming on one of the command center’s large main screens.
“Send the new coordinates to all units,” Sabovich said.
* * *
“Do you smell that?” Tu’Lok asked twenty minutes later.
“Can’t miss it,” Xavier said.
Tu’Lok turned and shouted, “They’re here!” in more than forty different languages.
A flare was launched into the air above the war camp.
The War Council’s ground forces surged forward to meet the Coalition infantry units that its magical spotters had detected the moment they had departed from Kiryat Shmona.
Thanks to early warnings from its drones, the mounted guns atop the Coalition’s armored personnel carriers began roaring even before the first enemy combatants appeared over the ridge.
They did not realize their guns were having no effect until thousands of Kevlar-armored Sasquatch warriors crested the peak completely unharmed. The War Council soldiers all seemed to be encased in translucent purple bubbles that deflected incoming projectiles. Worse still, these magical barriers allowed outgoing bullets to pass unimpeded, as became apparent when the Sasquatch began returning fire.
The front ranks of the Coalition forces were pelted with a wave of suppressing fire.
Mercifully, the War Council troops who sprinted through evenly spaced gaps in the Sasquatch lines did
not have the same impenetrable shielding. Less mercifully, they possessed an assortment of supernatural capabilities that more than offset the Coalition’s great numerical advantage.
Shattered human bodies and technology were tossed about the battlefield. Inhuman roars and squawks rang in the air.
Xavier’s anubis slashed down more than four dozen enemy soldiers with its khopesh as burning tattoos on his abdomen made bullets bounce harmlessly off his skin.
Nearby, Isabella and her gypsy priestesses laid waste to scores of enemies with searing bolts of plasma sent springing from their palms by battle spells.
Dao-Ming shocked opponents with a wicked inversion spell that caused an enemy’s internal organs to appear on the outside of their bodies while his apprentice made vehicles burst into flames with glancing blows from his wizard’s staff.
From the corner of his eye, Xavier glimpsed a soldier lining up a shot on Isabella’s back. He flung his spear across the field and pierced the attacker through the neck.
This left an opportunity for an American Army Ranger to dive on his back and stab his shoulder with a camo blade. The pair toppled to the ground as the soldier furiously stabbed at the same spot.
Xavier growled and flailed his claws wildly behind himself.
Then the weight pressing into his back was gone.
He spun over to find Riva the Diva straddling his torso and holding the ranger’s decapitated head in her left hand. Sajala winked at him then leapt away, the shells of her bandolier glinting in the sunlight.
About two miles away, on another section of the battlefield, twenty-five thousand fresh Coalition troops stormed into the fray, threatening to overrun the War Council’s eastern flank.
On the Command plateau, Shulkog gave a hand signal to a woman with mahogany skin and thick dreadlocks tipped with shark bones.
The woman sashayed over to a ledge. With her left hand, she raised a red, black and green flag high into the air. Her right hand cupped over her mouth, modulating the inaudible sound waves she was shouting into the pond of water that had been pumped into a sealed crevasse two hundred yards below the plateau.
Mermaids of a dozen different ethnicities emerged from the water and began singing siren songs at the top of their gills.
On a flat peak with a direct line of sight to the Command plateau, twenty sea women saw the waving flag and began singing their own siren songs into enchanted microphones that cascaded their voices over the entire battlefield.
Every human male, along with a fair number of supernatural males who had lost the special ear plugs the War Council had provided them, became battle ineffective. Most fell to their knees with their hands covering their ears. Soldiers hailing from certain Scandinavian countries simply froze in place, staring blankly in the direction of the mermaids as their sailing ancestors had done in generations past.
* * *
General Sabovich gave an order to his senior logistics officer.
“Go for the ACUs!” the officer shouted to the row of communications officers. “Repeat, go for the ACUs!”
Landon and the colonel turned the dials on their transmitters another thirty degrees.
* * *
Zina was singing noticeably louder than the other sea women on the peak. This was partially due to her natural gifts and partially the result of the boost her voice had been given by the morsel Xavier had blended into her sports drink back in Manhattan. The morsel contained freeze-dried biological material from Buela Freeman, the sea woman of Bermuda Triangle fame, which he had obtained in a trade with Jacob Kraken.
Sixteen large holes twisted open in the ground of the plain beneath Zina’s peak.
Autonomous Combat Units emerged from the openings, retracting their diamond drills and extracting their ranged weapons in a complex maneuvering of the multifunctional rings circling their hulls.
Like nearly every other form of magic, siren songs had no effect on ACUs. The war machines launched Patriot missiles at the sea women and lobbed precisely arched depth charges into the Mermaid pond.
Explosions rocked the mountain.
Female Coalition soldiers rallied behind the protection of the ACUs, preparing for a push toward the Command plateau.
Two of the ACUs were suddenly pulled back beneath the surface by gigantic grootslangs that had tunneled up through the ground behind them.
“Countermeasures,” Sabovich ordered.
The ACUs rammed conductive spikes into the ground and sent half a gigajoule of electrical current shooting through them.
Every grootslang fell limply back into their tunnels, electrocuted.
* * *
Zina coughed up rock dust and crawled over the mutilated bodies of the dead sea women splayed all around her. The battle vest Isabella had given her had protected her vital organs, but blood was dripping from her forehead and she was pretty sure her right leg was broken.
Debris puffed above her head as the ACUs and coalition soldiers continued lacing the peak with weapons fire.
She dragged herself behind a boulder and cried as the deafening sounds of battle pounded her ears from every direction.
Xavier was running toward Zina’s peak as fast as his anubis could move.
He feared he would never make it there in time when Vinicus galloped up beside him and held out a hand.
Xavier grabbed hold of the hand and was lifted onto the creature’s back.
“Hold tight, my liege,” Vinicus said before the centaur rocketed forward at hypersonic speed.
Anyone looking in their direction saw only a bright blaze of light zip by. From Xavier’s perspective, the whole world seemed to be moving in slow motion. It was eerie to ride directly past the ACUs and Coalition troops without any of them reacting.
Vinicus headed up the incline toward the peak, passing dozens of enemy soldiers who almost seemed frozen as they made the climb at normal speed.
At the top, Vinicus slowed and turned to the side, which allowed Xavier to leap onto the backs of the two soldiers approaching the boulder that was shielding Zina.
He tossed the soldiers over the ledge. Then he raced around the curve of the boulder and slashed the trigger arm of the soldier preparing to fire on Zina. The shot went wild. Zina screamed. Xavier slammed the shooter’s head against the rock, fracturing the soldier’s skull.
He dove toward Zina.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Flint Hill, Virginia
“You look like crap,” Michelle said to Nick as the two of them rode an elevator. “And I mean that in the best possible way.”
“I’m unfriending you on Facebook,” he quipped.
He was happy he could maintain his sense of humor in his fatigued mental state. He had been up for nearly seventy-two hours searching for the location of the secure bunker they were descending toward. It was a contribution he felt compelled to make after his uselessness in Florida.
“And I wish I could say the same to you,” he went on. “But as usual, you look like Jessica Alba’s better-looking sister.”
“It’s my magic,” she said. “If you could see past it, you would know that I’ve basically been in a car nonstop for a week. You know, when I wasn’t breaking my nails in a gunfight.”
“Well if those guys upstairs were with you, I believe the gunfight part.”
Zildan and a crack team of Baynin’s Sasquatch warriors had helped them fight their way into a heavily guarded facility in Northern Virginia that was disguised to look like just another data center. Only people who had ever been in the DSO’s personnel database could enter the facility’s elevator, so the warriors had been forced to remain behind.
“Geez,” Michelle said. “How far down are we going? Is the last stop Hell?”
“About a thousand meters if the plans I found are believable.”
“Why wouldn’t they be believable?”
“Because I can’t wrap my head around the idea that I obtained them by hacking D-O-D systems. Me, a guy who keeps passwords on sticky notes an
d is afraid to update his MacBook.”
“Actually,” Proto said from Michelle’s pocket, “I did the hacking. But you were quite helpful with the meatspace parts if it makes you feel any better.”
Nick leapt away from her, making the elevator car rock. “Who the hell was that?”
Michelle reached into her pocket and pulled out the AI, which had reduced its physical size by going into compact mode.
“Nick, meet Proto. Proto, meet Nick.”
“Hello Nicholas,” Proto said as it increased its mass like a freakish Rubik’s cube. “Grand to meet you. Speaking of your MacBook, I love your photo library, especially the scintillating images in the folder you cleverly mislabeled old term papers”.
Nick blushed.
“Hardly the time,” Michelle said.
“Did you forget to tell me something while we were making plans to risk my life getting you into this building?” Nick asked.
“We all thought it would be safer not to tell you about Proto until we actually made it here.”
“We?”
“Baynin, Xavier, Zildan, Proto himself and me. Basically everybody who knows what we’re up to.”
“You’ve been working with Baynin the whole time?”
“No, we actually just met a little over a month ago.”
“And Proto is...”
“The new iPhone coming out next fall,” Proto said.
“A prototype of the AI constructs that operate the ACUs,” Michelle said.
“You’re DeepBrain Mark IV?” Nick asked, remembering that term from the plans.
“In the flesh,” Proto said. “Although technically I don’t have flesh.”
The elevator slowed and then came to a stop.
“There are twelve armed guards outside that door,” Proto said.
“What?” Nick and Michelle asked in unison.
The doors opened onto a slim corridor with twelve black-clad figures prone on the floor next to automatic rifles.
“Thankfully I was able to incapacitate them with the gas nozzles that are part of this facility’s anti-intrusion system,” Proto said.