The creature she had slain was no animal of flesh and blood as she knew it. It seemed entirely crafted from metal and fabric and powered by magicks. She turned in mid-flight to find the two surviving hatchlings roaring up from behind, spitting fire at her. Her surprised offence soon turned to shock and even fear as a thousand burning stones tore through her wings, prompting her to loose her own fire too soon in a roar of pain. Balling up to evade the hatchlings, she dived through the clouds, looking to gain an advantage. An old master at the game of cloud cover, she was confident that the young hatchlings would grow bored and give up.
Such thoughts were proved for a falsehood when a large iron spike flared through the clouds. Her temper in check, she took a deep breath and blew her own fury back at the spike.
That should . . .
*
Dar Drakon fell through the night sky.
She fell down through the clouds, chased by a glowing hail of red-orange lightning.
She felt the cool air slip over her grievously wounded body, the cauldron within extinguished. Idly, without feeling as though it had anything to do with her, Shiggurath watched her own severed wing falling alongside her. Her belly ripped asunder, she could feel the black bile of her insides running out.
She was numb from snout to tail spikes. It was as though the hot rocks the nestlings had spat at her had severed her from all her feelings. Or maybe she was just stunned by the blow of the flying iron spike.
It had exploded right next to her.
Shiggurath had not expected that at all.
She felt lightheaded and, when she thought about it as she fell, a little melancholy. Songs would be sung of this day when dar Drakonen returned to the Above. Her name should be in those songs, but as she fell, such hopes dwindled with her slowing heartsbeat.
The hatchlings were near her now, circling in her death spiral. She caught sight of one of them.
Such power for creatures so small.
She chuckled darkly as the river below raced up to meet her.
Slain by such a tiny thing, she thought. Who would have thought it possible?
Acknowledgements
Who to thank first? Dr Who, I think. It drove me nuts as a kid that guns seemed to have no effect at all on monsters. Like, why did Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT even bother? The Dave Hooper series is an attempt, in part, to rectify that.
I’d also like to thank the producers of Reign of Fire, who annoyed me greatly with movie posters promising all sorts of dragon vs helicopter gunship awesomeness. And failed to deliver.
Less flippantly I have to thank my ur Champion publishers Cate Paterson, Tricia Narwani, Haylee Nash and the incomparable Alex Lloyd who all took up sword and shield with me on this long, strange quest.
To my wizardly agent, Russ ur Galen dar SGG, I offer tribute from the highest blood pot.
And for my armsman, SF Murphy, acknowledgement of his skill with blades and fire staff. His gurikh is second to none.
Finally, for my nestlings, Jane, Anna and Thomas . . . You are my Realm.
About John Birmingham
John Birmingham is the author of the cult classic He Died With a Falafel in His Hand; the award-winning history Leviathan; the Axis of Time series: Weapons of Choice, Designated Targets and Final Impact, and the Stalin’s Hammer: Rome ebook; and the Disappearance trilogy: Without Warning, After America and Angels of Vengeance.
Between writing books he contributes to a wide range of newspapers and magazines on topics as diverse as the future of media and national security. Before becoming a writer he began his working life as a research officer with the Defence Department’s Office of Special Clearances and Records.
You can find John at his blog, http://cheeseburgergothic.com and on Twitter @johnbirmingham. You can also buy his books at johnbirmingham.net.
Want to save the world? Join the conversation on Twitter at #TheDave.
Also by John Birmingham
The Axis of Time series
Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1
Designated Targets: World War 2.2
Final Impact: World War 2.3
Stalin’s Hammer: Rome (ebook)
The Disappearance trilogy
Without Warning
After America
Angels of Vengeance
Next in the DAVE HOOPER series from bestselling author John Birmingham
RESISTANCE
Available March 2015
Two bright geometric shapes, metallic flashes picked out in the morning sun, moving impossibly fast and straight amidst the visual clutter and chaos of forest and rock . . .
‘Is it dragons, Dave, is that what it is? Because I’m not ready for dragons . . .’
A dragon brings down the Vice President’s plane, a monster army is camped outside Omaha, and an empath demon springs an undercover operation in New York.
New Orleans was just the beginning. More and different demons are breaking through all over America, and Dave Hooper has a new enemy with more guile and guts than the celebrity superhero, who is still stumbling into his role as Champion. While his agent fields offers for movies and merchandise, Dave is tasked with ending a siege in Omaha, saving his friends and deciphering the UnderRealms’ plan to take over the earth.
As an ancient and legion evil threatens to destroy mankind, Dave has to decide what kind of man he wants to be and the nature of his role in this new world. He may not be the hero humanity deserves, but he’s the only one we’ve got.
More bestselling fiction available from John Birmingham
WITHOUT WARNING
A wave of inexplicable energy has slammed into America. And destroyed it.
What will the world do without its last Superpower?
For the jihadists, Allah has performed a miracle. For the US and its allies, Armageddon has arrived. Australasia, far from the noxious waste darkening Europe’s skies, beckons as a possible oasis.
Who and what will fill the void?
AFTER AMERICA
‘Our world went to hell on March 14, 2003.’
Four years after an inexplicable wave of energy decimated the American mainland, and then just as inexplicably disappeared a year later, US President James Kipper is no closer to explaining the catastrophe to the traumatised survivors.
In a decaying New York City, an assassination attempt on the President prompts the suspicion that the looters overrunning Manhattan may be more organised and sinister than previously thought.
Working on a farm in Texas to earn his citizenship, Miguel Pieraro believes in the promise of the New America. That is until tragedy cuts through his family.
In the English countryside, Echelon agent Caitlin Monroe must once again fight for her life, a sharp reminder that her nemesis is active again.
Then out of the smoking ruin of the Middle East comes an enemy that will be Kipper’s toughest challenge yet. The battle for the Wild East is just beginning, but does this New America, and its gun-shy President, have the strength of will to destroy the past in order to save the future?
ANGELS OF VENGEANCE
Jed Culver, President Kipper’s sword and shield, knows that what is right and what is best are rarely the same thing.
To some, Mad Jackson Blackstone, rogue governor of the Republic of Texas, is slowly but surely destroying the United States.
In New York, Caitlin Monroe’s one shot at vengeance may lie buried beneath the rubble of the city, but she has to be certain.
Unknown killers hunt Lady Julianne Balwyn in the anarchic, violent freeport of Darwin.
Sofia Pieraro is all alone in the empty heart of a haunted land, revenge her only reason to keep moving.
After many years the long trail of the dead will bring them all together.
The final battle for America and the new world will not be fought with
armies, but in the quiet and the dark, by individuals, driven towards vengeance and annihilation.
WEAPONS OF CHOICE: WORLD WAR 2.1
A near-future military experiment thrusts a multinational armada back to 1942, right into the middle of the U.S. naval task force speeding toward Midway Atoll—and what was to be the most spectacular Allied triumph of World War II.
The 21st-century sailors are a shocking spectre for these veterans of Pearl Harbor—men who have never seen a helicopter or a nuclear weapon, and who have never encountered an African American colonel or a female Australian submarine commander. But they respect the armada’s awesome firepower, and what it may mean to the War.
Initial jubilation is quickly doused by a shocking realisation—other ships may have made the trip—and may be in the hands of the Japanese. What happens next is anybody’s guess . . . and everybody’s nightmare.
DESIGNATED TARGETS: WORLD WAR 2.2
The nightmare of the Transition has pitched a whole world into chaos, as the great powers of 1942 scramble to build the weapons of tomorrow.
But the military crisis is only one part of a ruptured history.
Awareness of the future is sweeping the globe, and many of the people of 1942 are split between desire for the freedoms their descendants enjoy, and fear of the society which awaits them. Then Japan invades Australia, foreign agents begin a campaign of terror in the USA, and Germany prepares for an all-out attack on Britain.
The 21st-century forces must resort to the most extreme measures yet and face a future rife with possibilities – all of them apocalyptic.
FINAL IMPACT: WORLD WAR 2.3
As history reaches a tipping point, the forces unleashed by the Transition threaten to destroy the world. Hitler and Tojo race towards an atom bomb. Stalin plots to tear down the future and rebuild it in his image. And the Allies begin their Great Crusade with weapons and knowledge from the next century. What price will Kolhammer and his people pay for disrupting their past?
STALIN’S HAMMER: ROME (ebook)
Ten years have passed since Admiral Kolhammer’s 21st century battlefleet was dragged into a wormhole and thrown across oceans of time, emerging with disastrous consequences and shattering the history of the Second World War.
Hitler and the Nazis have fallen, Kolhammer sits in the White House, but Stalin rules half of Europe and Asia. The great Soviet engines of state power turn and burn to ‘set history right’. Not just of the war, but of all future time.
In Rome with his lover Julia Duffy, an older, mellower Prince Harry is drawn into Stalin’s plans when a simple game of spies goes horribly wrong. Underneath the eternal city, former Spetsnaz officer Pavel Ivanov fights a running battle with the NKVD’s executioner-in-chief as Stalin’s minions fight to preserve the secret of a weapon that could destroy the West with one, fearsome blow.
In Stalin’s Hammer: Rome, the first of a series of serialised novellas, John Birmingham returns to the world he destroyed along with the US Fleet at Midway in the Axis of Time series.
First published 2015 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © John Birmingham 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available
from the National Library of Australia
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
EPUB format: 9781743518212
Typeset by Post Pre-press Group
Cover design by XOU Creative
The characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Dave vs. the Monsters 1: Emergence Page 34