Walter managed to get the last interposed defender squad to take itself out using creative illusions. Walter, though, was running on fumes, not having yet built up the stamina for repeated mental assaults. Down he went. Vicki and Leo – War’s real body hidden in plain sight – heisted Walter off the ground where he had fallen. Walter babbled about sandstorms. War-as-Leo ignored the foo.
Militarily, the choice of the attackers to go for subdual while Phoenix’s defenders got their rocks off and killed sucked big time. However, War had let Portland enjoice her into this FUBAR; the fact they subdued instead of killed strengthened all aspects of their shared Mission, which War felt already. Less than a half dozen of Phoenix’s defenders had died, likely all but two from friendly fire. Those two, both non-Supported, had been stupid enough to walk themselves into the attackers’ suppression fire.
The other thing upping the botherance factor was the damned toys, but so far the toys had proven their worth. Some of her people carried more weight in the damned innovation-of-the-day, the Inventor-created enchantments, than in mundane weaponry. They would pay for their success later when other Territorials copied them, a worry for another day. She hadn’t been the one who came up with the bright idea of weaponizing his recent set of enchantments. Portland had.
Portland, slowly, became awesomely dangerous.
“Only three left,” Noxious Nanna said, over the enchanted communicators. Noxious Nanna wasn’t War’s favorite person, a Portland Supported who, through Portland’s Support, had become a living computer and communication center. With Noxious Nanna and her partner, Major Ralph, involved, though, none of the Gods or Telepaths had to put any effort into communication or battlefield coordination. “Two minutes until the killer magician’s squad reaches you, Alt,” Major Ralph said. “They’re coming from your left, so take cover behind the near corner of the repair building.”
Alt’s crew of Telepaths and Mindbound Supported shooters boogied and grabbed cover behind piles of tires and spent car batteries ready for the recycler. That left them exposed to Phoenix, or would if Phoenix ever moved from his position in his it-shouldn’t-be-there basement lair below the Toyota dealership he called home.
War’s projection three, now herding the remains of two attack squads of Supported and one attack squad of martial artists, put her full effort into defending two martial artists who leapt into one of the three remaining squads of Supported defenders. Bodies flew, bullets bounced, Supported blasts dissipated…and another Phoenix squad went down.
By now Phoenix, ex-Marine that he was, had to know he had been canoodled.
“Only two left,” Noxious Nanna said. “And there goes another.” The fallen Phoenix group hadn’t been attacked by a squad with one of War’s projections, which meant the attacking squad must be one of Boise’s all-amulet special squads, their main hidden strength. Boise had set up his all-amulet squads to be invisible to any form of detection. They didn’t have much divine firepower, but Boise’s enchanted anti-Supported handcuffs could do a job on a Supported defender. Body contact amplified everything.
That left the killer magician’s group. War set up a new round of defenses, all guesses as to their effectiveness. The killer magician’s tricks were so different nothing had stopped him yet.
Fog in the city of Phoenix? Yes, quite unnatural. Quite thick, too. War watched the pea soup roll toward them and finally over them. She immediately started to work on thwarting the trick and found, to her surprise, that it was not merely a new trick but….
Alt held up his arms, thumbs up, one in back of him and one in front, and War dragged her thoughts out of the analysis gutter.
As far as War knew, there wasn’t anything mobile that was fucking Alt-proof. If only he had any smidgen of real offense or defense, they would be set for world conquest. As it was…
The squad members shot or reached out with their minds. The enemies moved, and Alt swiveled his thumbs to follow them. As he did, lightning blasted into him and he dropped.
Fucking annoying. War, using her Leo-body as an anchor, transported her projection forward into the killer magician’s squad. Simultaneously she started to fly nine of her other projections toward Alt’s group.
The killer magician turned out to be a small Central Asian fellow, in his forties. A Shaman, wielding one of the obscure but known varieties of supernatural. What made War think his magic new was the power level, which contradicted her knowledge of Shamans. According to Researcher, a practical God and a recent recruit to the cause, Shamans used a different branch of supernatural, one far weaker than Grade One Supported and Lorenzi-style magicians. The same branch of weak-ass magic Epharis of the Indigo used, for what that was worth.
The killer magician’s power came from Phoenix amplification. A solveable problem.
The killer magician’s squad, which also included three Grade One Supported, attacked War’s projection. War bounced attacks and sent a Grade Two Supported member of the killer magician’s squad into an epileptic seizure, taking him out of the melee. Before she could do anything else, War’s projection popped. She hadn’t expected any other outcome.
She relayed the information to Alt and transported another two of her projections over into the killer magician’s squad. War hated exposing this far-too-revealing trick but her instant squad-level tactical read showed the killer magician too big a threat to ignore. She had to break cover or risk fouling the final assault on Phoenix.
Besides, her projections were disposable.
As she transported her projections in, another round of lightning splayed into Alt’s group, catching Nicole and her Leo body full on. Nicole winked out of War’s mind, dead, but not irretrievably so, not with a Portland projection available to stabilize her. War let her real Leo body fall to the ground, feigning unconsciousness.
Both of War’s projections leapt at the killer magician and exploded suicide bomber style. Instead of screws and nails, her projections’ innards contained a simple willpower-based Supported-strip that soaked everything nearby.
The fog vanished, as did the killer magician’s Supported defenses against Telepaths. As did her projections.
Which allowed Alt and the crew to take down the Phoenix squad and allowed War time to recover her equilibrium. Losing three projections in less than four seconds more than just disoriented her. She had one of her projections puke, a wordless
message of exhaustion.
War couldn’t answer yet.
Carrying War’s projection like groceries, the others rushed forward into the Toyota showroom. Portland’s willpower opened the entrance to Phoenix’s underground lair and they descended, carefully.
Only Phoenix remained. However, without any warning, Portland and War’s projections vanished, and the Supported bodyguards screamed in agony as their Supported capabilities vanished and their amulets and the like did the slouch to Bethlehem.
War recentered herself in Leo and tried to focus her mind, far too many fucking projections lost in far too fucking little time. Phoenix, the bastard, had set up his lair as a trap, with the same anti-Supported and anti-projection trick War used on the killer magician. If his version worked the way War’s did, the reason why Phoenix had sent away his last defenders became obvious: the large-area versions of the anti-Supported power-strippers were all immobile.
Phoenix surrounded himself with a willpower force field to stop the bullets and returned fire with hot willpower attacks at the Telepaths.
War felt the push of ‘group pattern four’ stab pain into her mind and hoped Phoenix felt the same. The telepathic push didn’t take over Phoenix’s mind or drop him, but the God did have to stop his willpower attacks to keep his body in one piece. The anti-projection and anti-Supported field didn’t vanish, as War had expected. Which meant…
Nobody had ever before seen direct worshipper-backed tricks. When War hypothesized Dubuque’s innovation might involve worshipper-enhanced willpower, both Portland and Boise said they didn’t think such a thing was possible. If Phoenix and Dubuque mastered this form of support, they were in bad, bad trouble. They needed to take Dubuque down fast.
First, they needed to win this battle, which threatened to go south at any moment. War had been certain she had it won…
“Okay, folks, make sure when you shoot the force field it’s not dead on,” Phil said. With the Telepaths hard at work, Phil took over the lead. Leo shot, watching the force field with divine capabilities Leo shouldn’t have. If Phoenix had any brains, he would alter the force field’s shape to bounce their bullets back at them. Luckily for them, the worshipper-addled Phoenix no longer thought like a Marine in a hot situation. “Five to ten minutes max before we wear this sucker out. War, if you can hear my voice, have some of our people coming up get down here to help us shoot down this damned force field. Tell them to bring more ammo.”
War relayed Phil’s comments through her projections, but didn’t answer since War’s projections weren’t supposedly able to mind-talk with Mindbound. Another of Boise’s special squads, this one a mixed group of Supported, Mindbound and Indigo crazies, grabbed ammo and boogied down into Phoenix’s lair. The Supported among them apparently didn’t care about their tricks getting knocked off, as Boise had this Indigo-flavored group set up for analysis, not conflict. War recognized Abe Cox leading the group, along with his wife Tylee, his brother Richard and his sister-in-law Kara Minor. The fourth Indigo member was a woman War didn’t recognize.
Phoenix began to pray.
“Phoenix, if you surrender, you won’t be harmed,” Phil called out. “Surrender and you’ll be brought before Portland, Boise, Montreal and Akron, to gain the true freedom you secretly crave. You don’t have to fight to the bitter end.”
“I’ll never surrender, you inhuman monsters,” Phoenix said.
Persona stepped out of Alt’s body as an Alt duplicate. “Keep shooting. Phoenix has summoned the Angelic Host. We need to disrupt this if we can.”
Shit. War really needed to be there where she could do something, but unless she blew cover on her Leo body she couldn’t. They had to drop Phoenix’s anti-projection field!
Half panicked herself, War saw the Angelic Host with her Leo eyes, twelve human-form translucent beings, hovering around Phoenix. This wasn’t the entire Host, but more of them were here than she had ever thought, in her wildest dreams, to see again.
“The Host offered Phoenix a way out of the fight. He refused them,” Persona said. “Crap. The Host just said ‘humanity must learn Territorial Gods cannot be defeated by such mayhem’. And ‘By this method, despite the cost, total invulnerability to attacks of this nature can be gained’.” She paused. “Phoenix refused again. The Host is adamant: ‘all must, repeat must, learn this. Without hope of total victory, these insane wars will stop.’ I don’t like this interference or the implications.”
War didn’t, either. The Host strongly implied they didn’t consider worship the premier moral issue that Portland and her allies did. This would weaken Portland’s cause. Bad, very bad.
“Any ideas?” Phil said.
“Stop shooting,” Persona said. “Phoenix, surrender to us. What the Host offers has a cost. You won’t have to pay if you surrender.”
Leo didn’t react, but War did. She now knew exactly what the Host proposed.
Fucking Angels!
“Don’t examine them too closely,” the scruffy young unknown Indigo woman said. From her looks, she had to be Epharis’s estranged daughter, Diana. “Don’t attack them either! Those Angels and their magic are far too dangerous!” She spoke with the assurance of experience, alluding to something in the Indigo’s past War had never managed to pry out of Jan, Lara or Epharis.
Nicole’s mind voice shut down. The Host had knocked her out.
“The Host attacked her for simply trying to communicate,” Diana said. “We need to avoid the Host in all ways: communication, aiming weapons at them, anything the least bit hostile.”
The Angelic Host may not be Portland’s enemies, but they damned were the Telepaths’ enemies. War didn’t know how she knew that, but she did. Something she picked up from Diana, most likely. Shit fuck dammit! If Portland’s Telepaths gave up the conflict and vanished, Portland’s best non-fatal tricks would go with them.
“Cease fire,” Phil said. The room quieted. “Dammit!”
Phoenix’s force field expanded back to its earlier size and strength.
Outside the fight, a willpower pattern sprang up around Portland’s Supported, and they politely requested assistance from War’s, Boise’s and Portland’s projections.
Phoenix shivered and twitched, horrified, as the bulk of Portland and Boise’s army of Supported, along with two Portland projections, nine Boise projections and five War projections flooded into Phoenix’s basement lair. His force field began to fray as the Supported and the projections attacked his force field with willpower.
“You must surrender, old friend,” one of Boise’s projections called out. “We can’t help you otherwise. Phoenix, please! We aren’t your enemies. I give you my solemn divine word we won’t harm…”
“Damn you all to hell!” Phoenix said, screaming, tears running down his divine face. “I won’t rest until I rip your lives from you and your souls burn in Perdition for eternity!” As he spoke, War felt the Angelic Host recoil in terror and vanish. What had scared them off? The attackers? Phoenix’s divine curse? War couldn’t decide.
The attackers never reached Phoenix. Instead, Phoenix evaporated.
99 Gods: Betrayer Page 27