by Kai O'Connal
“Whaddya got?”
“They’re keeping tight, staying together. They’re not chasing anyone who moves away. They’re after something, not someone.”
“The tower?”
Elijah checked the destination of the rumbling spirits, but the path ahead wasn’t easy to make out with all the land crumbling and heaving.
“Maybe,” he replied. “Tough to say. Maybe the camp.”
“Why would they care about the camp?”
Two small explosions went off in rapid succession. Elijah couldn’t be sure, but he thought one was a generator, and the other was a snowmobile. Spirits descended on both pieces of machinery after they exploded, twisting the metal and plastic beyond usability.
Then he understood.
“Have you gotten in contact with anyone else?”
“Just raised Tango on the comm. She’s working on her group. I saw Cao a few seconds ago, but now I lost her. Haven’t seen or heard from Kyrie.”
“Find her, fast. We’re going to have to move. I have to switch channels, I’ll contact you in five.”
He switched his comm to the channel Danvers and the Azzies were using.
Nothing. Not even static.
“Danvers, do you read? Danvers, are you out there?”
Still nothing.
Elijah glanced at the battlefield underneath him. The pattern he had discerned was holding—the spirits and the forces behind them were targeting the camp, destroying tents and generators, and anything that used power.
Anything that could be used to keep them alive.
There was one safe spot, at least for now. A spot not being targeted, and with a thick layer or armor to keep him safe.
He pointed to the tower. “Take me there,” he said, and the spirit immediately darted forward. Elijah was very grateful he could not feel the wind against his face.
He summoned another spirit as he descended, a simple being with a simple job. Check on the main base.
Every second, a new way to die reared up in front of Pineapple. And every second he said, “Not now, bitch,” and stayed alive.
Spirits blasted icy needles in his face. Dark-visored men on snowmobiles peppered the ground with bullets. The earth shook and heaved, holes opening up and attempting to swallow the troll. And every dive, every roll threatened to rip his clothing, letting the cold into one of his vital pockets of heat, sending him into a fatal downward temperature spiral.
But he avoided them all. He blasted the shooters off their snowmobiles with grenades shot from his launcher. Any spirit foolish enough to materialize near him got a large fist punched into its icy head. And the loose boulders shaking out of the ground just gave him something to throw at people who annoyed him.
It was entirely delightful.
He wanted to move faster, though. The spirits had the speed of the wind, and there was no way he could outpace a snowmobile, especially on this icy surface. He’d been close to jumping on one of his own vehicles, but a missile from the invaders blew it up right in front of him. All the other vehicles he came across were broken hulks.
So he decided to get one he knew was functional.
Two spirits were coming his way, a misty creature of snow and air darting around in front of a lumbering pile of rocks. The rockpile had the remains of a tent in one of the things that looked like maybe an arm. An Azzie trooper got too close to it, and a glancing blow from its other arm sent him flying backward twenty meters.
Pineapple decided the rockpile needed some softening up. He let loose one grenade, then two, then three, the dull thoomps of their launch followed by glorious, splintered explosions and all-too-brief waves of heat.
The grenades didn’t stop the rockpile, but it at least seemed annoyed. The air spirit in front of it howled toward Pineapple, all icy teeth and freezing breath.
Pineapple was really glad Elijah wasn’t here to banish these things so he could take care of them his way. This wasn’t the first air spirit he’d faced. He knew how they liked to work. He just needed to find the right piece of ground.
Ahead and to the left, there was a sudden slope down. Perfect. He veered in that direction.
The spirit darted this way and that, but Pineapple could tell they were mere feints, just attempts to set up what the spirit wanted to do. Pineapple took a few swipes at it, and let himself get a little off balance, because he knew that’s what the spirit would be looking for.
Sure enough, the spirit dashed forward, broadening its form, looking to wrap him up.
That was when Pineapple fell.
He let his left foot go out from under him, and slid down the short slope. The spirit was already trying to collapse on him when suddenly the troll wasn’t there. The spirit was now a ball holding nothing.
Pineapple’s had already gotten his feet back under him, his knees bending into a crouch. He exploded upward, and as he jumped, he punched both arms above his head into the concentrated mass of the spirit.
His fists hit it’s outer edge, and he felt some resistance, but he pushed through with all his strength. There was a sharp crack, and a howl, and the spirit flew apart, snow and ice flying into dust and then into nothing.
One down. The rockpile would be a different story, as there was no way in hell he could just punch it apart. That was okay, though—he had a whole different surprise planned for that one.
He lobbed another grenade at the rockpile to make sure it was still paying attention, and then he sprayed a burst of about twenty rounds to the right of the pile. The enemy snowmobiles heading in that direction either stopped or veered to their left to avoid the bullets. Pineapple started running toward the rockpile. As he approached, he could have sworn the vacant spots serving as a poor imitation of eyes glowed a dim red in anticipation of the charge.
Pineapple had done the move he was planning at least a dozen times before. He just hoped he could still pull it off in the snow. His feet pounded down, crunching into the ice as he gathered speed. He felt the ground shake as the rockpile lumbered forward, arms ready to swing.
Ten meters away from the pile, Pineapple tucked his launcher to his chest and dove into a somersault. He had plenty of layers on, but he could still feel shards of ice poking into him, making his roll less than graceful. He finished a full rotation and saw the pile leaning forward, raised arms ready to swing at its crouched prey.
But Pineapple was already heading up. He used the momentum of his roll and a quick leg extension to turn the somersault into a jump, flying almost straight up into the air. The rockpile couldn’t adjust and swung low. Pineapple’s right leg landed on the pile’s right arm, then he leaped again. Hs left foot landed cleanly on the rockpile’s head, and he leaped again. Abruptly he was nearly four meters in the air, behind the rockpile, and falling fast.
He landed in a crouch and rolled, collecting a pile of bruises he’d feel into next week. But he was where he wanted to be. The rockpile, enraged at the chance of losing its prey, pivoted and lashed backward with a rock-studded arm. The fact that it was leaning forward meant it had some upswing on the blow. The fact that a snowmobile had veered left to avoid Pineapple meant the driver suddenly found himself in a bad spot.
Pineapple was low and rolling, but the snowmobile driver couldn’t duck far enough or fast enough. The rockpile’s arm caught him in the shoulder and head, sending him sprawling. The snowmobile read that its driver had been thrown, so its engine cut out. It continued on for a few more meters, and stopped.
The rockpile was off balance, but was attempting to lumber back toward Pineapple. He had mere seconds. He fired a message to Eyetooth.
Then he had to act on faith. He dashed forward, leaped, and landed cleanly on the snowmobile’s seat. The vehicle shuddered under his weight, but held.
He grabbed the throttle, but got nothing. The engine coughed and sputtered without giving the vehicle forward motion. He heard a crunching thump, then another. He looked back and saw the rockpil
e, fully engaged on him and only a step away. Its left arm was swinging. And its eyes were definitely glowing red.
Pineapple thought about sending another message, but knew it wouldn’t do anything. Either it was going to happen, or it wasn’t. He closed his eyes, and hit the throttle.
The snowmobile’s engine revved up and he surged forward.
There was a rush of air, then a heavy crunch and a very local tremor. It was the arm of the rockpile, and it had just missed him.
Pineapple made a sound somewhere between a scream and a laugh as he sped forward. The rockpile was no concern now, because it would never catch him. Of course, it could start throwing things at him, but he was too happy to think about that.
He was mobile. He could cover more ground, which meant he could cause more havoc. He unslung his rifle, held it with one hand, and got ready to make it rain lead as he darted ahead.
Elijah made it to the exterior of the tower at the same time his spirit returned from the base camp. Its report came telepathically.
Under attack, it sent. Small force, plenty of firepower. All sorts of buildings are burning.
And the people? Elijah asked.
Retreating, trying to get somewhere safe. You meat creatures and your sensitivity to temperature—makes you so vulnerable.
Elijah though about telling the spirit to keep the editorials to itself, but just dismissed it instead. He had no time to waste on an argument. The attack wouldn’t be coming here immediately—chasing people away seemed to be the top priority—but he figured they wouldn’t stay away for long. One way or another, it was all about this. So he needed to know what this was.
He went back inside and faced the same sight as before; the continent of Antarctica in all its ice-free glory. He wanted to stare at it in detail, to see if he could make out plant life or even animals, to explore if this projection came with any sort of zoom function, but that would not tell him what he needed to know. So he pushed through the real and went right to the astral.
And what an aura this thing had! It was alive, or at least doing a passable imitation of life. The colors swirled and changed every second, and many of them were tints Elijah could not name. They moved even more than the water and clouds, and if there was any sort of pattern to the movement, Elijah could not find it. This was magic he had never seen—different, older maybe, than anything he’d run into on the other continents of the world. He wanted to understand, but it was like trying to read a language where not only did you not know the words, but the very letters themselves were completely foreign and strange.
The movement was so fast that it was hypnotic, and Elijah caught himself actually leaning toward the swirling aura. He didn’t know what would happen if his aura came in contact with the otherworldly glow in front of him, but he didn’t think it would be wise to find out just yet.
He leaned back to make sure he wasn’t overwhelmed, then stepped back again. Then he hit the wall of the tower, the cold of the stone penetrating right through his suit. He wasn’t going to get any more separation between the object and himself, so he’d mostly have to rely on his will to keep him from reaching out to it.
That worried him.
The wall behind him shook from some distant explosion, and a piece of the ceiling fell through the hovering map. But it never hit the floor. It was gone.
Elijah’s eyes widened at that, and he was suddenly quite glad he’d resisted the temptation to touch the map. He figured he had maybe five more minutes to study it, so whatever he was going to learn, he needed to learn it fast.
He faced the map and let his eyes unfocus. He couldn’t try to analyze this—it was too fast moving, too vivid, too foreign to his experience. Instead of trying to impose his understanding on it, he had to let it talk to him. To let it teach him its language.
But he couldn’t. There was nothing there, no pattern. Only randomness. It was wild, primal. Full of life in one of the most lifeless places on Earth.
And just like that, he had it. The answer, or at least a possible one. He knew what he was looking at, and he knew what had happened to the piece of ceiling.
Most of all, he knew why the people above were attacking. Unfortunately, he had no idea what he should do about it.
CHAPTER FORTY
Stupid dog, Cao thought as her feet crunched in the snow. Stupid, slow dog!
She’d lost three vehicles. Three! True, two of them had only became hers when she’d hacked into them, but still, they’d been hers, and they had been crushed by the spirits flying all over the place. She had lost all three, forcefully pushed out of them in a way that wrung out her brain like a wet rag in the hands of a vengeful troll washerwoman, before she figured it out. All she had to do was go back to the mantra that had guided her through so much of her life.
Small is good.
No more snowmobiles, no more anything that could pick her up or transport her in any way. Small aerial drones were better. Especially ones with plenty of onboard ammo.
She had three under her control now, which kept her from diving into any one of them. Plus, there was plenty going on around her physical self right now, so pulling her consciousness from her body was a good way to get perforated.
She didn’t stay in one place any longer than three minutes. In the first minute, she’d scope out the area, looking for a spot that could serve as cover. In the third minute, she’d check the position of the attackers and find the best path to her next position.
The second minute was where she did her damage.
Cao had a lot of friends who hated fighting spirits, preferring to take on flesh-and-blood opponents. Cao didn’t mind spirits at all. It was like going against an autopiloted drone, really—both spirits and drones were governed by the instructions they were given. Figure out the instructions and you can predict what they’ll do, which puts you one step ahead of your opponents.
The first part of their instructions were clear—destroy any vehicles that could carry anyone. That was useful, but she needed more.
She skidded into a slide that unfortunately turned into a rough tumble, so she hit the rock she was running toward instead of landing gracefully behind it. The impact didn’t feel too hard, but she immediately checked her suit. Any rip or tear out here was definitely not good.
Bullets and rocks whizzed overhead as Cao found she was pretty much intact. That much was right. Then she scanned the landscape.
The south was no good—that was where the spirits were rampaging. She’d just come from the west, and didn’t want to go back there. It had seemed like the rampaging horde had been drawing a bead on the spot she had just fled.
That left east and north. A quick look showed desolate, icy waste to the east, and more of the same to the north. Big surprise. A more detailed scan, though, revealed a spot to the east where a large chunk of earth had been ripped off, leaving a hole about a half-meter deep. That would be fine cover—she just had to make sure she could get out of it before she dove in.
Now that she had a destination, it was time to do some damage. She had three AROs up, showing her the views of the drones she was controlling. They were hovering above the spirits, possibly a little too close for comfort, but the spirits had their instructions. Instructions that left the smaller drones ignored.
Now it was time to see if the spirits had any responsibility to defend the humans behind them.
She spread her three drones out so they could strafe the ground without interfering with each other. Once they were about fifteen meters apart, she opened fire,
The beautiful thing about airborne drones was how quickly they could shift targets. A mere three degrees rotation could make a difference of dozens of meters in where the bullets landed.
Cao was about to make good use of that knowledge.
The first rounds she fired stopped a squad of six attackers in their tracks. Their feet scrambled to gain traction on the icy ground, the spikes on their soles dug in as the squad wheeled to their right to avoid becoming sitti
ng ducks.
But Cao was ahead of them. One drone had moved a touch to its right, another to its left, while the third kept fire on the original spot. She was ready for them no matter which way they went, so moving to their right put the squad right in the path of a few rounds cutting through the icy sky. Two of them caught bullets. One of them went down.
Then the ARO with the view of that drone filled with swirling white, then went black. Simple orange words appeared in the window:
But Cao had more information. When the soldiers were threatened, the spirits would respond.
She moved a little faster while her drones split up in the sky. They had a new purpose—not to kill or even wound, just to harass. To push the players where they needed to go to keep a path open for her.
She’d hated this cold wasteland the moment she’d set foot on it, hated seeing the blank white and grey each time she looked out a window. But now, abruptly, it was beautiful. Sun dodged in and out of clouds, occasionally making kicked-up clouds of ice dust glitter. Red and yellow explosions were reflected in a thousand facets wedged in unexpected locations. Her senses had become attuned to the land; she saw a patch of smooth ice where her foot would slide, and loose sections where she might be able to dig in a little. Or maybe it wasn’t sight, because she knew where to move on instinct.
She ran forward fifteen meters, then took three leaping strides to her right. One of her drones laid down fire thirty meters away, and she stretched out into a dive that carried her across a slick patch while a half-dozen bullets flew over her. The ground dropped, letting her change her slide into a forward somersault. Then she was back on her feet, the second drone tracing a line of fire that she ran parallel to for a while.
And it kept on and on like that. Her drones were far too fast and agile to be knocked out of the sky. At one point, someone somewhere was foolish enough to try and fight fire with fire, sending a drone her way to knock down her friends. She opened a new ARO, swiped here, stabbed there, and soon she had another drone under her control.