Hammer of the Witches (The Covenant Chronicles Book 2)

by Kai Wai Cheah

Eve giggled. Bob packed his other wounds with gauze. The bandages we used were impregnated with kaolin, a clay more ordinarily used in cosmetics, stopping the bleeding instantaneously.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  And my legs gave out.

  Eve caught me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just. Tired.”

  Strength bled from my limbs. Blood pounded in my head. My migraine threatened to split my skull. I gulped down a hit of ambrosia. The headache subsided, and my muscles grew stronger, but the pain was still there.

  “Can I shoot through your shield?” Keith asked.

  The equations flowed into a new form, showing me how to alter the shape of the field.

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  He hefted his RPK.

  “I can see the assholes in voidsight. Gonna shoot through the floor.”

  “Do it.”

  Shouldering his machine gun, he ripped off a long burst. More clouds and splinters went flying. He paused and fired again.

  I cracked open my aethersight. Like the ones in the Hagia Aletheia, the remaining enemies were daimons. Balls of gold and crimson light shackled into black humanoid forms with long lengths of chains.

  Except for one. That one, far below us, had just two lengths of chains, and its soul was burning as bright as a furnace.

  He had to be the hekatonkheire.

  The other daimons raised their weapons. I laid out the shield to cover the floor. The wood held—for now.

  “Fisher, Brick,” I said. “Suppress the first floor of the farmhouse. Say again, first floor. Need sniper cover on the second floor. Prioritize the flying heads and arms.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  My temples throbbed. My limbs grew weaker. It was time to go. I closed my aethersight. Eve would have hers on by now.

  “Preacher, Longsword, we’ve got to go,” I ordered. “They know we’re here, and I can’t hold the shield forever.”

  Keith fired one last burst, reloaded and joined Eve at the stairs.

  “Cowboy, hold the floor,” I said. “We’re coming back for you.”

  Bob gave me a thumbs-up. “Go get ‘em.”

  There was a single spiral running through the house. I led the way down to the second floor and turned left. Before me was a long hallway with doors on either side. A pair of giants lay on the floor. Debris was scattered everywhere. Fire raged across the floor, throwing smoke out the hole the rocket had carved into the wall. It was so bright the fusion goggles switched off. The metallic chatter of suppressed autofire floated through the night, short bursts as regular as a metronome. Downstairs, wood crumbled, and glass shattered.

  “Longsword, cover the stairs,” I whispered. “Preacher, with me.”

  I took cover on the right side of the hall. Preacher took the other.

  “Fisher, they’re just playing dead,” Eve warned.

  “Got it,” I replied.

  I shot the closer giant in the head.

  The other bellowed and got up, PKM in hand.

  And a .338 round smashed through its head.

  It fell to its knees. Preacher stitched it up from torso to head, obliterating its skull.

  “Vector emergence!” Eve warned. “Shield up!”

  Moments later, a head emerged through the smoke, staring at us. The doors flew open. Arms burst out, bearing guns and blades. The weapons fired; the blade arms flew.

  I shielded.

  The bullets stopped in mid-air. The bladed arms wobbled, and their weapons snapped. Keith screamed, firing into the mass. I returned the rounds to their senders and—

  “Luke! Your right!” Eve yelled.

  I turned, expanding the shield.

  A huge head smashed through the wall. Chunks of debris pounded me flat on my back. The floating skull grinned maliciously at me and shattered under a hail of gunfire, revealing a forest of glowing palms.

  I adjusted the shield. High-energy bolts crackled through the room, deflecting off the shield and tearing into the walls, the ceiling, the floor.

  “LONGSWORD!” I yelled.

  A blazing beam issued from behind me, searing through the floating hands. From behind them, more .338 rounds blasted the arms to bits. In the space of a few heartbeats, the arms were gone.

  “They’re coming from below!” Eve warned.

  “Bang and clear!” Keith called.

  As I dug myself out from under the rubble, Keith grabbed a flash-bang. Yanking the pin, he hurled the stun grenade downstairs.

  “Brick, Fisher! Lift fire! Lift fire!”

  “Roger, lifting fire.”

  Light and sound blasted away. I got up and joined the duo as they stormed down the stairs into the living room, arriving just in time to see a giant in my arc of fire. I pumped a three-round burst into its throat, riding the recoil up into its head.

  Keith raced to dominate the far corner of the room. Scanning, I saw three giants on the floor. Keith fired insurance shots into the other two.

  “Clear!” he called.

  “Clear!” I agreed. “See any more of them?”

  Keith spun around. “They’re all dead or in pieces. There’s–”

  “The ceiling’s gonna collapse!” Eve shouted. “Move!”

  She kicked open a nearby door. We dived through. Behind us, timber groaned and gave way. The ceiling caved in, burying the living room in rubble.

  “That’s just great,” Keith muttered.

  “Cowboy, Fisher. You okay?” I asked.

  “Fisher. Cowboy. I’m… good. Did… the floor… give way?”

  “The ceiling of the first floor fell in. But we’re all good.”

  I looked around. We were in the kitchen. At the far end, past the cooking area, there was a stairwell that led down to the cellar. Forming up, we recharged our weapons and headed to the stairs.

  “Preacher, what’s downstairs?” I whispered.

  “Two Tangos,” Keith reported. “One man, one giant. Hold. I’m seeing a whole buncha… INCOMING!”

  Heads and hands swarmed up the stairs. The hands were glowing with power, ready to loose a barrage of particle beams. Keith went rock-and-roll, but there were too many of them to gun down at once. I brought up the shield—

  And blacked out.

  “LUKE!”

  I woke up face-down on the floor. Thunder and lightning roared above me. I couldn’t feel my limbs. My insides felt like they had been turned into cotton. I couldn’t move. I had to move. Must. Get. UP.

  I propped myself up on my left forearm. Extended my AK with my right. Aimed.

  White out.

  I blinked. My vision cleared. The hekatonkheire’s heads and hands were gone. The far wall was pitted with massive holes. I sipped at my aetherium and forced myself up. A pair of hands grabbed my shoulder.

  “Here, I got you.”

  Eve. She was glowing.

  “Eve, what the…?”

  She cocked her head. “He helped.”

  Sol Invictus. Hedging his bets, no doubt.

  I got unsteadily to my feet. Keith was slumped against a counter, his armor and invisibility cloak smoking.

  “Preacher, are you okay?”

  He moaned. Feeling around with his hand, he propped himself up. “I’m… I’m good.”

  “No,” Eve said. “You caught a few particle beams. You’re not–”

  “I’m fine.”

  He was not fine. I saw small smoking holes where the beams had bored through his belly and right arm. He released his PRK, reached around his body and drew his pistol.

  “We’re close to the end,” he said. “Let’s finish this.”

  “You’re wounded,” Eve said.

  “I can fight. Let’s go!”

  We formed up again. Keith took the rear, but he didn’t complain. I grabbed a flash-bang, pulled the pin with trembling hands and hurled it down the stairs.

  The grenade detonated in a storm of light and sound. I followed behind, charging down the steps.

  A man cowered in the
far corner. That had to be Brandt. Where was—

  Four hands swooped out from under me, grabbing my arms and elbows, and pulled me forward.

  I tripped.

  The hekatonkheir stepped out from under the stairs and swung his arm toward me. I caught the blow on the AK. The weapon broke. Now I fell the other way, crashing against the guardrail.

  The giant’s spare hands released me, and he grabbed my arm with his true hands. Wheeling around, he lifted me into the air and slammed me against the ground. Loud cracks rippled through me.

  He kicked me, his foot lifting me up and hurtling me across the room. I slammed into something—someone?—and hit the floor.

  I lay there, stunned. But for my backpack and armor, the blows could have killed me. As it was, my lungs felt like a heavyweight boxer had worked them over. Error messages flashed across my visor. There was a warm, heavy weight beneath me. A man lying motionless on the floor.

  The hekatonkheir picked up Eve and tossed her over the guardrail. Keith raised his pistol. The giant swatted it out of his hands and threw him down the stairs.

  Eve moaned. Keith’s limbs twitched. The giant unhurriedly descended the stairs, looking at Eve, at Keith, at me. He looked at Keith again and walked to him.

  The hekatonkheir was unarmed. In such close quarters and with my shield, a PKM would be more of a liability than an asset. Besides, with its powers and enormous strength, it didn’t need a weapon.

  I flexed my hands. They were fine. I rotated my ankles. They responded. I tried to sit back up. Pain shot through my muscles, my body felt sluggish and weak, but I could still move.

  I was still in the fight.

  The giant lifted a massive foot, ready to stomp on Keith’s face.

  “Hey!” I called.

  It looked at me, frowning.

  Wobbling, I got up to my feet.

  “Over here, asshole.”

  It charged.

  I activated Hakem’s charagma. Gravity bent, pulling it off to my right. It tried to fight it, but I piled on the gees and sent it flying. It crashed against the wall with a massive BOOM.

  Growling, it pressed itself off the stone, fighting the gees. I went with the flow, working with its energy, spiraling the creature into the corner. It turned at the last moment, its back colliding with the wall. As I closed in, it roared at me, struggling to get up. Power gathered in its hands. I redoubled the gees, forcing its palms to the floor. Then, I added g-forces to its head, turning it and its body back around.

  I drew my CZ 52. Took one more step. Released the gravity field and switched to my other charagma and shielded.

  With a thunderous roar, it pushed itself off the floor and spun around, fists swinging. High-energy beams streaked through the air.

  But I wasn’t where it had been expecting me.

  Beams caught the edge of my shield and deflected harmlessly into the floor. The giant held its fire, realizing I wasn’t in front of it. It whipped its head around.

  I lunged in.

  Grabbed its enormous right elbow with my left hand. Kicked its knee and pulled it into me. Brought the muzzle of the pistol to its temple.

  Fired.

  The bullet pierced its helmeted head and penetrated what passed for its brain. White flame streaked out the other side of its skull. It shuddered, suddenly still. I fired again and again and again, shooting to slide lock.

  The giant collapsed.

  I ejected the magazine. Reloaded. Scanned.

  Keith groaned, pushing himself off the floor. The other man in the room was lying face down, apparently unconscious. Kneeling over him, Eve grabbed an autosyringe from a thigh pouch and jabbed him in the neck.

  “Target sedated,” she reported.

  As the sedative took effect, I grabbed a pair of plasticuffs and secured Brandt’s hands behind his back. I patted him down. Clean.

  “Is it… is it over?” Keith asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s over.”

  7. The Traitor

  We couldn’t stick around for long. Just long enough to load up the bodies and hardware we could recover, sweep the farmhouse for intelligence material, carry the casualties and captive aboard and report the situation to O’Connor. The signals specialist aboard the Kalypso didn’t report any incoming police, but better safe than sorry. Besides, NISA could take care of the rest.

  We laid Alex’s body to rest inside the starboard cabin. There was a neat hole in between his eyes. The helmet visor wasn’t bulletproof. The underside of the visor was blotted out in blood and bone chips. We freed him from his suit, poured out the helmet into a bucket and zipped him inside a bodybag.

  We didn’t let Eve near the corpse. She didn’t need to see that.

  Bob was in a terrible state. Somewhere along the line, his lower left arm had separated from the rest of his body. He wasn’t bleeding any more, but his fight had only just begun. We iced the detached limb in the faint hope that it could be reattached, ran an IV into his good arm and kept him strapped to a bed in the cargo hold next to Keith.

  Keith was no longer fit to fight. Right after we moved Brandt and Bob aboard the airship, Keith collapsed. He had finger-sized holes burned clean through his right arm, his left foot, his abdomen and his chest. His intestines and left lung had been perforated. And we didn’t know how much radiation damage he had taken.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” I said.

  “What for?” Pete asked.

  I gestured at the wounded and the dead. “All this. Should have hit the silo first, taken out the snipers. If I had…”

  “Not your fault,” Pete said. “The silo wasn’t your original target.”

  “Bravo team was out in the open. My plan, my responsibility. Should have remembered that.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Ricky said. “You guys were taking heat from two enemy strongpoints at once. How could you not shoot back?”

  “I…”

  “Brother, we knew the risks going in,” Pete said. “With the stunt you pulled with the daimons, all of us thought the snipers would be too distracted to see us coming. And just in case, I popped smoke to screen our advance. The sniper saw through it anyway. Nailed Alex right in the face. This ain’t because you screwed up. These bad guys were a cut above what we’re used to. Things like this happen.”

  I sighed. I felt like I should say something. I wasn’t sure what.

  Eve rested her hand on my shoulder. “Hey. No one’s blaming you. You completed the mission and brought everyone else home. That’s what counts.”

  I nodded. “All we can do is drive on.”

  She squeezed. “Go get some rest. You need it.”

  Dark bruises covered my front and back. Sharp pain shot through my left side every time I moved and breathed. Annoying, but probably not life threatening.

  “I still have work to do,” I replied.

  We moved Brandt to the port cargo hold and strip-searched him. Pete personally probed his cavities, ensuring he wasn’t hiding an L-pill or an escape kit. Dumping the busted armor in the starboard hold, I joined Eve to watch the prisoner.

  I sat with her in silence, occasionally pacing the floor. We were too wired to sleep, but we couldn’t think of anything to say to each other about anything other than what we had to do next. That was fine with me.

  Dawn broke when we landed at Zurich Airport. We rolled into a private hangar, where a NISA private jet awaited. After I had reported in, O’Connor worked his magic overnight and arranged for an Agency-affiliated medical team to assess and evacuate the casualties.

  The four-man team boarded the airship and inspected us inside the cargo hold. Three of them rushed to Keith and Bob while the last looked me over.

  The doctor shot me up with a syringe filled with medical nanomachines. After waiting for a few minutes for them to circulate throughout my body, he consulted his slate.

  “In addition to the bruises, you’ve fractured three ribs on the left side of the body,” the doctor pronounced. “Nothing
complicated. No significant internal injuries. You’re extremely lucky you haven’t developed a pneumothorax.”

  The giant’s kick was so powerful it fractured my armor plates. I didn’t want to know what it would do to an unprotected human.

  “Do I need to be hospitalized?” I asked.

  “No, but you still need an X-ray. I’m not comfortable relying on medical nano alone to diagnose broken bones. I want you to get one as soon as you can. Come with us, and we’ll get you to a proper hospital.”

  “I still have work to do, Doc.”

  Shaking his head, he sighed. “You will avoid strenuous exercise for six to eight weeks. I am going to prescribe painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs. Use them only if necessary. When you sleep, lie on your back or on your right. Never on your left. Do not, under any circumstances, perform any exercises that require you to use your torso.”

  “Understood. Could I use medical ambrosia?”

  “Only under medical supervision. And that comes after your X-ray.” He frowned. “You know, you really should fly out with us to the hospital.”

  “I still have work to do,” I repeated.

  He shook his head. “Go easy on your body. Save the macho heroics for when you’ve fully recovered.”

  “Got it.”

  The medical team carried Bob out on a stretcher. Keith insisted on walking. At the ramp, he motioned Eve and me aside.

  “That EM shield you two put up at the farm,” he said. “How did you do it?”

  “It’s… complicated.” I said.

  He snorted. “Complicated doesn’t cut it. What you did is the holy grail of military psionics. It’d make all guns useless in warfare. People have been trying to do that for centuries.”

  “We looked up exotic physics for inspiration,” Eve said. “Gravitoelectromagnetics, quantum field theory, Dirac sea manipulation, that sort of thing.”

  The words flowed off her tongue so naturally, I wondered if she had studied them. I didn’t know how to describe what I had done. The knowledge Sol Invictus imparted to me had remained, but I still had neither the words nor the numbers to describe how someone else could do what I did.

  Keith looked at her wryly and then at me.

  “Is that why you two disappeared all the time? You were testing exotic magic?”