Ascendance

by John Birmingham

  ‘Is that right?’ Ashbury said, looking sceptical.

  ‘I dunno,’ Dave admitted. ‘But it sounds right. These things aren’t immune to bullets, and they’re totally not immune to missiles and tanks and bombs and shit. Hell, if you don’t own a gun you could rig up a flamethrower with an aerosol can and a Bic lighter. That won’t just scare off a monster, it’ll torch them, right?’

  He looked to Karen for confirmation and she nodded, slowly.

  ‘Yes, but I wouldn’t recommend it.’

  ‘You’re missing the point, as always,’ Ashbury said. ‘Hooper, I doubt I need to explain this to Colonel Varatchevsky, but you seem determined to be obtuse. Yes, one helicopter gunship can make a dreadful mess of a tightly packed company or regiment of monsters. Assuming they don’t shoot it down with harpoon-sized arrows, or some bloody dragon doesn’t barbecue the pilot. But helicopter gunships, unlike bows and arrows, don’t grow on trees. They are complicated technologies, needing skilled operators and vast support systems just to get off the ground. So too with every weapon we might pick up to fight them, right down to the simplest handgun. They are the weapons of an advanced civilisation, Dave, and advanced civilisations are hyper-complex, interdependent and riddled with points of critical failure.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Dave. ‘Point taken. I’m not being obtuse. But I think you’re underestimating people’s resilience. You in particular, Heath. Weren’t you paying attention in Absurdistan? We bombed and shot the shit out of the beards for ten years. It might have fucked them up, but it didn’t destroy them.’

  Igor chipped in.

  ‘The reason places like Fallujah didn’t disintegrate when we kicked in the door and tore everything up was they were pretty much fucked up before we got there. The Triangle, Syria, Afghanistan, we just brought a different kind of Hell.’

  Igor lifted his stubbled chin in a gesture toward the city outside the solid stone walls of the armoury. ‘That’s not Fallujah out there. Or at least it wasn’t when the sun set. Tomorrow? You’re gonna see just how fragile civilisation really is.’

  They arrived at a cordoned-off space and were met by Colonel Gries, emerging into another space filled with computers, maps, and heavy green phones. Along the far wall, flat-screen televisions projected a series of newsfeeds. One of the screens, with a camera above it, ran a test pattern. Inside, the noise abated a notch while the heat climbed from the concentration of electronic equipment.

  ‘Make a hole!’ someone shouted outside. A moment later Chief Allen stepped inside and in less than a minute the table was set up and two extra chairs produced. Lunch trays just like the ones Dave’s sons used in school appeared, loaded with food.

  ‘B Rats,’ Allen said. ‘Ration packs. Not heated, just slopped on there. Sorry. They’ve got a truck stacked with them.’

  ‘It will do,’ Karen said. ‘And we thank you for it.’

  She took a large spoon and pitched in, swallowing without chewing. Dave had to put Lucille down before he could eat. He was feeling hungry, but not as though he might die from it, as he had felt in New Orleans on that first day or so. Again he wished he’d taken the time to do all those tests Zach had suggested. He knew his metabolism was adjusting to his changed circumstances, but he had no idea, really, of how much he had to eat and when. He would talk to Karen about it, when they had time. She seemed to have a much better understanding of this stuff.

  Once seated, he stared at chicken breasts coated in cold, gelatinous, yellow gravy. He shrugged and sucked them down like he would an oyster, clearing the tray within a minute. No sooner was it cleared than another one appeared, placed in front of him by a soldier who stood in awe of Super Dave. There was nothing really enjoyable about the meal. Steel pitchers of water were set in front of them followed by a heavier sergeant, clasping his hands together.

  ‘We’ve got orange juice concentrate,’ he said. ‘If you have time I can make some.’

  Dave spied a pot of coffee brewing across the room.

  ‘Coffee would be better,’ Karen said, reading his mind.

  The heavy-set sergeant nodded. ‘On it.’ Zach shook the man’s hand on the way out and thanked him, before unfolding another camp chair across from Dave and Karen. Igor joined them, laying his massive sniper rifle across from Lucille.

  Dave thought he could hear Lucille cooing at the rifle, flirting with it. He gave the enchanted splitting maul a sideways look of disapproval.

  She continued to court the uncharmed sniper rifle.

  The smirk Karen gave Dave let him know she was still reading him like a comic book. He took a moment to vividly imagine giving her the finger and her smirk grew into a smile. Emmeline observed the exchange with mortified fascination.

  ‘It’s considered rude to converse in psychic whispers at the dinner table, you know.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dave, chastened.

  Colonel Gries turned to Captain Heath. ‘The comms guys here tell me we’re five by five.’

  Heath nodded. ‘Are they sure?’

  ‘They set this up in less than two hours,’ Gries said, gesturing at the contained communications cell. ‘National Command Authority should be able to get through to us.’

  ‘So long as the phone lines hold up,’ Zach said, sipping coffee from a green paper cup.

  ‘Shouldn’t they have hardened satellite comms here?’ Emmeline asked, checking over her iPad.

  ‘This is a guard unit, ma’am,’ Colonel Gries said. ‘Not SOCOM or a signal battalion.’

  Zach and Igor both pulled black objects from their gear.

  ‘Iridium provides,’ said Igor.

  Dave recognised the bulky satellite cell phone that the oil company sometimes used on the rigs.

  ‘Marvellous,’ Emmeline said. ‘How did you get hold of them?’

  ‘We’re SEALs,’ Igor answered. ‘If we need it, we get it. Kinda like Captain Gravy Train over there.’

  ‘Nothing but love for you, Iggy,’ Dave said.

  ‘I doubt that,’ Igor poker-faced him back.

  Another pair of loaded trays arrived.

  ‘The empty trays,’ Dave said to the soldier bringing the food. ‘Still have them?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Get some bread and throw it on top to sop up the gravy. In fact, if you have any more gravy, throw that on there as well.’

  ‘Oh-kay,’ the soldier said. ‘Got it.’

  Emmeline gave Heath an iPad and a stack of papers.

  ‘This hard copy, it’s the same data as the pad?’ Heath said.

  ‘Yeah. Just in case,’ she said. ‘I’ve also put an executive summary up there on our screen. They will be able to see this in Washington, do a screen-cap to supplement the download.’ She pointed to a flat-screen closest to them which displayed the same data as her iPad. Most of it made little sense to Dave. He was starting to recognise the shorthand used by the military to designate various units and bases, without yet understanding which units and bases the writing referred to.

  Karen interpreted for him.

  ‘Not far out in the Atlantic is an Amphibious Ready Group,’ she said. ‘I suspect they are trying to decide whether to reinforce Colonel Gries or attempt to evacuate him. That red line over the map on the far screen that looks like a crumpled condom is his collapsing perimeter. The red boxes with an X in them represent the known location of an enemy unit. Some of the data is minutes old. Some of it, hours.’

  ‘Hold on, sorry,’ Dave held up his hand. ‘A collapsing perimeter? That’s bad, right?’

  Zach shrugged. ‘There are some benefits to being on defence.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Igor said, contradicting him. ‘It’s bad. We don’t want to be here when it collapses completely.’

  They fell silent, leaving Dave to ponder the list again.

  The military jargon was opaque but the names of the cities meant something to him. New York, New Orleans and LA in red. Des Moines, Houston and Chicago in black. A bunch of foreign cities in red too. Some he recognised: Jakart
a, Melbourne, Lyon, Kiev. Some he didn’t. They sounded Arabic, or maybe Russian.

  As he scanned the red list of cities under attack, or which had been attacked, his heart suddenly slowed. Everything slowed. And stopped.

  ‘Hooper?’

  It was Karen. The only person who could talk to him now. They were inside the bubble again.

  ‘Hooper? What’s up?’

  He stared at the screen, unable to swallow the mouthful of cold barbecue beef he’d scooped from the latest lime green lunch tray. Dave chewed the food mindlessly. Took a sip of water. Forced it down his throat, never taking his eyes off the board. He checked the colour code again. Emmeline had provided little squares with a legend to describe their meaning.

  Red meant a location currently under attack. So the Horde or one of the other sects was back in New Orleans.

  Black meant unconfirmed reports of attacks within the last two hours.

  Blue meant an attack which had been beaten off. There were names from all over the world in blue. Omaha headed the list. Some had an asterisk next to them but he didn’t know what that meant. His eyes kept returning to the red list. It was long; much longer than he’d expected. Not because of all the foreign place names. There were only nine of them that he could see on the big screen. All major cities, although he guessed there’d be plenty of minor attacks overseas that weren’t catalogued for US commanders or headlining on Emmeline’s home page.

  No, most of the red list appeared to be made up of American place names. Emmeline, or whoever she’d detailed to do the job, had added the state in brackets after each.

  Sacramento, Portland and Seattle on the west coast were joined by Little Rock, Memphis and Jefferson City in flyover country. Down in Texas the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex struggled while San Antonio had a reminder to remember the Alamo. From Detroit to Muncy, and back to Tuscon in Arizona, up to Colorado Springs where weed prices were skyrocketing, and eastward to Kansas City, Missouri, all under attack.

  There wasn’t enough space on the screen to include every location under attack, confirmed or not. A line at the bottom of the red and black lists instructed him to ‘See Annexe 3. More follows’.

  Next to the screen, a pair of soldiers had been busying themselves with butcher paper, copying the information in neat black text.

  ‘Hooper? What is it?’

  ‘It’s my kids,’ he said, before adding, ‘and Annie,’ as an afterthought. He pointed at the last name on the red list before the instruction in block capitals to go check out annexe 3.

  Camden Harbor. ME.

  His finger had a blob of congealed gravy on it. He wiped it off on his filthy coveralls.

  ‘That’s where they are. At her dad’s place.’

  His voice sounded flat in his own ears.

  ‘Her father,’ Karen said. ‘Does he hunt? Will he have weapons and ammunition? Does he have any military service?’

  Dave shook his head. He wanted to vomit up the pre-packaged ration meat he’d just scoffed down. He’d known the orcs were crawling up out of the ground all over. He’d known Annie and the boys were as vulnerable as anyone. Why was it he had to see the name of their town on this whiteboard before he’d finally accepted what that meant.

  ‘Old Pat’s a fisherman,’ he said. His voice caught and rasped in his throat. ‘Retired. He might have his duck hunting shotgun, but he wasn’t a mad shooter, and Annie didn’t like having the boys anywhere near guns. One of the few things we all agreed on.’

  Karen spoke between mouthfuls of beef and noodles.

  ‘It’s a confirmed attack. Ashbury or Heath will have details.’

  Heat flickered at his temples, the first sparks of anger.

  ‘They didn’t tell me.’

  ‘They probably didn’t know.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘If they wanted to hide it from you, they wouldn’t have left it on the board,’ she said, the voice of reason. ‘It’s just too much information, Hooper. Ashbury is trying to do her job and Compton’s now, as well as not jumping you. It’s a . . .’

  She trailed off, seeming to lose her thoughts as she took in all of the information on the whiteboard.

  ‘What?’ Dave asked, his anxiety and guilt starting to mount toward a point where it would tip him into action.

  Karen held up a hand, focusing on a couple of place names that had to be Russian.

  ‘But,’ she said, when she was ready, ‘the way she’s formatted this, the fact that Camden Harbor made it on to the board probably means the attack was reported and confirmed recently. Earlier confirmed attacks are in the annexed material.’ She turned around, looking for something; finding it in Emmeline’s hand. The sheaf of briefing papers.

  Three long strides carried her across the room. She carefully removed the documents.

  ‘I’ll bet paper cuts at light speed would sting,’ she said.

  She took only a moment to scan the index, quickly finding what she wanted.

  ‘Here. A confirmed report of a platoon-sized force besieging the town centre. No contact since confirmation. Where are your kids?’

  ‘A mile or two out of town,’ Dave said, very close to warping out of the room, the armoury and New York.

  Karen appeared to think it over, but not for long.

  ‘It could be a random attack. We don’t know if this is the Horde or some other sect. This report doesn’t even give us the clan. But it could be a trap too,’ she said, still sounding as though she was weighing up options for an evening out. Dinner, or a movie, or an ambush.

  ‘Why a trap?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Because of the Threshrend. Compt’n. Did he know where your family was?’

  ‘No idea,’ Dave admitted.

  ‘Well if he did, the Horde do. And these guys aren’t tactically illiterate. Or at least, this particular Thresher isn’t. They know you’re not going to get much support, if any, should you decide to strike out on your own for this place.’

  She held up Emmeline’s briefing paper.

  ‘US military and emergency services are going to be focused on New York and LA. And anywhere else our little friends pop up in force. Those Qwm we might have come across earlier? They could well lay claim to this territory in the Above. If I was Compt’n or Guyuk, I’d let them have it, for a little while. The Qwm pour in forces, and get chewed up in the meat grinder over the next few days. It’s a win-win for Threshy and Guyuk. They could even convince a few idiots to submit to them if they swept in and helped clear out the other sects. Anyway, bottom line, you’re on your own if you go off the reservation.’

  ‘You wouldn’t come with me?’ he asked.

  She didn’t answer immediately. He knew that when she did she would answer as either Karen Warat, or Colonel Karin Varatchevsky.

  23

  The crushing weight of the queen’s presence, which Compt’n ur Threshrend recalled from his last audience with her, his only audience, was infinitely worse here in the Sanctum Royal. As superior as his intellect might be now, he had no idea how a being so boundless, so powerful, had crammed Herself into the tiny chamber where she had received him in his former guise as a simple empath nestling. At that time, he had been hardly mature enough to string two coherent thinkings together.

  Thoughts, Threshy, they’re called thoughts. Only podunk daemonum fools call them thinkings.

  He struggled to get his own thinkings under control lest they betray him and he find himself half gutted and tossed onto the fangs of the sacrifice stones they’d passed walking across the first inner court.

  For once, Thresh-Trev’r, that half-forgotten and long-ignored soul who had led him out of the wastelands of ignorance and unknowing, came through.

  Eat the pudding eat the pudding eat the pudding eat the pudding, burbled Thresh-Trev’r. A line from the calfling Trevor’s favourite TV show, and now a Zen koan to refocus the mind of Compt’n ur Threshrend away from distraction and disaster.

  Eat the motherfucking pudding, Threshy told himself. And
nothing else. He tried to keep his mind otherwise blank. A tabula fucking rasa. Because this bitch was going to . . .

  ‘Superiorae?’

  Her voice was as a quiet as a blade tip slipping into a vein, but the thunder of it filled all existence. Guyuk kneeled beside him, his neck ritually exposed for the killing stroke. Threshy had gone for the full abasement package, snout in the dirt, ass up high, ready for a kicking by the Captain Grymm.

  ‘Y-yes, Majesty.’

  He could feel nothing of Guyuk’s thoughts or feelings, nothing of the captain’s. In all the worlds there was only She of the Horde and He of Threshy.

  ‘Be at ease, little one,’ She soothed. ‘You have served us well.’

  ‘Oh sweet fuck!’ he gasped. ‘Thank you thank you thank you.’

  ‘You may rise. You may both rise.’

  Guyuk rose smoothly to his feet without a sideways glance, the great muscles of his elephantine thighs bunching as they pushed him up. Threshy was a little more ungainly as he struggled to his hind-claws, grunting with the effort. He was really gonna have to stop eating fat people. Panting with a little exertion and a lot of latent panic, he risked a glance in the direction of the throne.

  The audience chamber was vast, receding into echoes and darkness. Here and there, individual paving flags of Drakon-stone gave off an eldritch glow to help navigate through the enormous hall. But otherwise all was darkness. The throne glimmered, barely perceptible in the dim, red light. The faint glow caught on jewels and polished bones, on edged metal and fang-toothed spearhead, and it seemed as immeasurably large as the room itself. It was less a seat than a platform upon which the grotesque –

  No! Not the grotesque! The really, really pretty, and, er, smoking hot, yeah, that’s right the smokin’ hot . . .

  – form of the Low Queen rested. And moved.

  Eat the pudding eat the pudding eat the pudding.

  Threshy dropped his eyes as soon as they beheld a hint of her true appearance. Part of him, the part which saw these things through human eyes, had expected an enormous Hunn with boobs. Or the bitch from the boss battle in Aliens.