“Landline connections are down,” he announced. “Something seriously weird is going on with cellphone and radio transmissions, too—we can talk to the satellites directly above us, so we’re still getting overhead, but no long-range transmissions are going more than a hundred miles south.”
“I am very, very sick of finding out the demons can do things we didn’t anticipate,” Arthur replied. “Start moving vehicles we can spare to try and see if we can relay out. Is it a range limitation or a hard barrier? We need to know, Colonel Stone.”
“Yes, sir.” The Colonel turned back to his men, one of whom handed him a headset.
“Sir, listen to this,” Stone said, passing the set over to Arthur.
“…Maritimes Provisional Command, calling all US military stations. Repeat, this is Canadian Forces Maritimes Provisional Command, calling any and all US military stations.”
It was a recording, but…
“Provisional Command, this is Major General Arthur Purcell, acting commanding officer US Fifth Army.”
The recording got halfway through another repeat, then cut off.
“General Purcell, this is Major O’Conner, Canadian Forces. Can you hold for the General?”
“I have a hell of a headache on my hands, so be quick.”
“I’m on,” a different voice replied. “Is that quick enough, General? What’s your status? We were in discussions with the Joint Chiefs to cross the border and reinforce you when communications went down.”
“How wide is the outage?” Arthur asked grimly.
“From what I can get, total,” the other man replied. “All North American land communications are down. Radio and cellphone are being heavily degraded. If you’re waiting on help, Major General, you may be screwed.”
“Then we’re screwed,” Arthur replied. “Our status is that Fifth Army has been encircled by enemy forces including unexpected heavy armor and antiaircraft units. We may have a breakout, but we still stand to take significant casualties.”
“Damn.” The Canadian paused for several moments. “Well, this is Brigadier-General Ian Cole. Technically, all I command is a single regiment’s worth of tanks, but I’ve been able to rustle up a few things and acquired some friends who call themselves Joint Tank Force Hercules.”
Cole paused.
“So, I’ve got about sixty trained Special Forces supernaturals and five or six thousand angry Newfies with tanks. May I have permission to cross the border and reinforce you?”
“Yes,” Arthur said instantly. “If you can move on Portland from the north and stop them from advancing on the other cities…”
“We’re a few hours away still. I wasn’t prepared to take tanks across the US border without permission,” Cole said dryly. “But I think I can put those tanks between the evacuation and the demons before things go critical.”
“We’ll owe you if you do, Brigadier.”
“Won’t be the first time, Major General. We’re on our way!”
41
“Echelon Two, I don’t recall authorizing you to intervene?”
Riley’s voice was sardonic. Michael O’Brien was quite certain that no one in Black Echelon would have expected Reginald to do anything different.
“It seemed…appropriate,” the vampire replied. “Hold one.”
Gunfire echoed over the radio channel, followed by a gurgling, hissing sound Michael recognized as a demon disintegrating.
“Now, my understanding is that our own favorite asshole is deploying the best drug addicts in the country to assist me, but I could use a little more support,” Reginald continued. “Unless I miss my guess, if we start pulling Fifth Army out through this hole, the Herald is going to throw everything at us.”
“That’s exactly the kind of distraction we need,” Michael pointed out. “If we use some of our people to hit the north end of the city, make them watch over their shoulder for the Canadians, that should clear a hole to hit the Herald himself.”
“Are you volunteering, Echelon Three?” Riley asked.
“I’ll backstop the fangs, but I suspect hitting them from the north could use more Mages,” Michael said calmly. “If Echelon Support drops with Echelon One, that’ll be enough to make them think there’s an army coming.”
Echelon Support had more numbers than magical power, but they were at least all armed with silver-loaded weaponry, and half of them had Seraphim Wings. Backed up by the three Elfin Lords in Echelon One, they might as well be an army.
“Then we send Four and Five straight at the Herald,” he concluded. “We know it’s going to come down to Charles against Serena and David against the Herald,” Michael noted grimly. “Let’s pull everything else away from the core thrust of the mission and clear the damn path.”
The channel was silent.
“White?” Riley finally asked. “You’re the one who can See the future and the one we’re counting on to chop the lily-white bastard in half.”
“The fewer hostiles there are between Memoria and the Herald, the sooner I’ll get to him,” the younger Commander replied. “With Echelon Four backing us and Charles to keep the dragon off of us…I think we can do it.”
The fact that it was White’s girlfriend leading Echelon Four probably wasn’t a factor. If for no other reason, Michael reflected, than because leading the “core thrust” was probably the most dangerous place for any of them to be.
“Then let’s make it happen,” Riley barked. “Echelon Support, Echelon One, redirect to the north. Head for I-95; let’s make them think we’re holding a road for the Canucks.
“The rest of you… you know what you need to do.”
“Who the hell is on this channel?” a new voice demanded. “Wait, I know that voice. Riley?”
“Who gave you this channel, Purcell?” the Elfin Lord replied. “You can consider us volunteers. We’re here to save the day since you dismantled the only real hope the US had here.”
There was a silent pause.
“Yeah, fair enough. All of you can consider yourself officially drafted to the United States Special Operations Command.” Purcell paused, then chuckled.
“Continue on with whatever the hell you were doing, though if someone could spare a moment to brief me, I’d appreciate it!”
Black Echelon Three’s Pendragon helicopter swept along the river, sensors and eyes peeled as they charged toward where Echelon Two had managed to make themselves a target.
“Echelon forces, this is Fifth Army Command,” a new voice inserted himself onto their channel. “We’ve lost communications to most of the country—everything within a certain distance of the portal appears to be cut off from the rest of the world—but we have limited satellite overhead.
“There appears to be a new force specifically deploying against the holding position,” he continued. “Unless our videos are way off, they have gone into Long Creek.”
“Demons don’t need to breathe,” Michael replied. “Do you have coordinates for their entry point?”
The Army officer on the other end reeled them off, and Michael pulled up a digital map on a tablet. He missed his ONSET augmented-reality wargear fiercely for a moment—but the main value of that gear had been that it could show him what Charles had worked out.
And Charles was currently carrying the tip of the spear into the heart of enemy territory.
“If they entered there and they’re trying to flank Echelon Two, they’re going to come up…here,” he muttered. “Senegal,” he barked to the pilot. “Flipping you a waypoint. Drop us halfway between that point and Two, then prep for an airstrike.
“We’re going to have some very wet friends crawling out of the river, and I think we owe them a very warm welcome!”
“What are you going to do?” the officer on the radio asked.
“I’m going to stick myself and a dozen friends between the demons and your Army and cover the ground with demon guts,” Michael told him. “Any support you can provide would be appreciated, but right now, we n
eed to extract Fifth Army.”
“I’m Colonel Stone; I’m running General Purcell’s communications,” the officer introduced himself. “We’re trying to get in touch with anyone we can, but there seems to be a hard barrier we can’t transmit across. Air Force units inside that area have…already been committed.”
Which meant destroyed.
“Our only real hope at this point is that there’s supposed to be three carrier groups steaming north,” Stone continued. “That’s at least three carriers and half a dozen missile destroyers. If they realize there’s a hard barrier and cross it, we’ll have at least some support.”
“I’m not turning down carriers,” Michael agreed. “What about artillery?”
The radio was silent.
“You wouldn’t know, of course,” Stone said quietly. “The demons hit the artillery position we’d set up just over an hour ago. Our entire artillery force has been wiped out.”
Michael winced.
“That’s one more debt we need to take out of the Herald’s skin,” he promised. “We’ll see it done.”
At another time, the natural park and mud flats between the highway and the creek might have been eye-catching. High tide and recent rain had filled the area with water, however, and it was a muddy, swampy mess that sucked at Michael O’Brien’s boots as he and his people dropped out of the helicopter.
“Sweeping for our hostiles, but it looks like they’re being clever,” Senegal reported. “Keep your own eyes open.”
“Always,” Michael replied dryly. “Watch your own back. They may have lost most of their flying demons taking down the Air Force, but that doesn’t mean they have nothing to come after you with.”
“Wilco.”
The Pendragon lifted away, sweeping back over the creek as Michael led his people back into the trees. He had a grab-bag mix of shapeshifters and Empowered, all perfectly capable of fighting demons hand to hand but none with the power to wipe out entire companies.
They’d brought heavy machine guns for that, and they set them up at the edge of the trees. Michael kept his own rifle to hand as he watched for the enemy he knew had to be coming. They could hide only so well in the creek, though magic could make up many shortfalls, given almost anything to work with.
“There!” Senegal suddenly barked, and the Pendragon visibly jinked in the air, twisting to point its nose towards a specific section of river.
The mud and water seemed to ripple—and then the illusion broke as the first air-to-ground missiles slammed home in the middle of it. Mud, silver and ichor exploded in a dozen directions as Senegal walked his missile pods across the emergence point for the demon assault.
There were a lot fewer demons than Michael had been expecting. None of the swarms of disciplined but weak shadow demons he’d expected. No golems or manticores. Just…toad demons emerging from the mud like they were born there, and a swarm of the taller, more powerful, large shadow demons with their fireballs.
And a group of what looked like humans at a distance but had just walked out of a hail of silver and high explosives. A full dozen mid-court demons led the charge across the mud.
No wonder they hadn’t brought more minions. A dozen demons of that strength could take on an entire battalion of regular troops—even with silver ammo.
“Take them down!” Michael snapped. He suited actions to words, lifting his M4 and opening fire.
The first of the dark-skinned monsters went down in a hail of silver, collapsing into ichor from injuries he had been unprepared for.
Behind him, the Pendragon swept back around, the last of the missiles and the machine guns ripping through the shadow and toad demons. The dozen major demons were the only real remaining threat…but they were enough.
The second demon Michael fired at flashed into black mist as the bullets reached him, shifting around the silver rounds before they could hurt him. Suddenly, instead of a dozen “people” charging up the hill, there was a shifting, roiling fog of black shadow.
Silver bullets slashed through the fog, but the demons knew what was coming now, and they boiled up the hill toward the Echelon team.
And then the second set of weapons that Michael’s people carried opened fire. Three of his Empowered produced heavy double-barrelled shotguns, pointing them down at the swarm and pulling the triggers.
The shells loaded into those guns were one-shot rounds—literally. The modified Dragon’s Breath rounds utterly destroyed the weapons they were fired from, but they covered the hill in silver-laced magnesium flame.
The ichor-laden fog burnt away, taking many of the demons with it. The remnants collapsed back into five figures. Four mid-court demons, with their red-black skin and white horns, conjured shields of their own fire to cover their advance up the hill.
The fifth figure was different. Despite having just walked through a hail of fire and silver, he looked like an utterly ordinary businessman who’d just stepped out of a board meeting.
Except for the eyes.
Where he should have had eyes, he had spheres of green flame that riveted themselves to Michael as the overwhelming sense of power warned him that he was, once again, in the presence of a greater demon.
One he knew.
“Ah, Commander O’Brien,” Ekhmez greeted him. “I had so hoped to meet again.”
Previous painful experience told Michael that his rifle was useless against Ekhmez. He tossed the weapon aside as he stepped down the hill, intentionally placing himself between the greater demon and his people.
“You lot just don’t stay dead, do you?” he asked conversationally, mentally cataloging what he had that could hurt the demon. The enchanted mage-bladed knife at his belt could do it. It was also possible that his own claws and teeth in werewolf form could, though their last encounter had demonstrated Ekhmez was stronger and faster than he was.
“Oh, sometimes we do,” the demon said cheerfully. A wall of black fire had now formed behind him, keeping his lessers safe from Michael’s people. “I mean, I, personally, want to skin your David White alive and wear him as a coat, but you are so very unloved among my people.
“We didn’t realize that nukes could kill us until you trapped Ahlosa at the bottom of that test shaft,” he noted. “Ahlosa is the only Servant of the High Court to ever die a true final death. No one was expecting it, and, well, my Masters will be very pleased to see you die for it.”
A spark of green fire flashed down from Ekhmez’s eyes to stretch out and form a looping stream he wrapped around his hands.
“They’d prefer painfully, but I hope they’ll settle for ripping you into tiny pieces. Shall we, Commander?”
Michael drew his mageblade and leapt across the intervening distance. The knife flashed toward the demon—only to be wrapped in green flame and yanked aside. His leap suddenly twisted sideways, Michael had no chance to dodge the inhumanly fast fist that closed through the space.
Ribs cracked and he flew to the side, hissing in pain as he focused healing warmth through his bones.
“Really, Commander? That’s all you’ve got? No wonder it took an army to kill Ahlosa, though I must wonder how you survived.”
“Luck and teamwork,” Michael gasped, making a gesture to his people. Heavy machine guns opened fire again, massive silver-tipped bullets smashing into the demon and the mud around him.
They…bounced. Fifty-caliber full-metal-jacket bullets, tipped and cored with silver to punch through supernatural defenses, hit the demon’s stylish business suit and bounced.
Ekhmez laughed.
“Silver, Commander? Did you really think it would take that little to stop me?”
“No,” Michael admitted. “I was hoping, though. Senegal! Blue on Blue!”
He sprang at the demon, changing shape as he did so. Several hundred kilos of enraged wolf slammed into Ekhmez, rolling with the demon to present him, held in place, as an easy target as the Pendragon came sweeping back around.
Like any smart pilot with an ongoing b
attle, Senegal had held back one missile to cover an extraction if needed. That missile flashed out now, heading directly toward the temporarily pinned demon. Holding on with all of his limbs, Michael couldn’t even close his eyes.
He just hoped it would be quick.
There was an impact and he was slammed back into the mud. He was still alive!
So was Ekhmez. Hundred-plus-pound silver-laced warhead or not, the demon was still alive, tearing himself out of Michael’s grip and stumbling away. His torso was now cratered and burnt, the ichor that had made up his stylish suit reforming to try and cover the damage…and failing as the silver ground into his artificial body restrained him.
“That. Hurt,” he hissed. The green loop of flame sputtered and flickered, but it extended now as Ekhmez advanced again. He was still fast. Still strong…but was he slower than he had been? He’d taken almost the entire blast, shielding Michael from the weapon the werewolf had expected to kill them both.
Even a greater demon couldn’t take that and keep fighting.
Snarling, the wolf charged again—and the demon came to meet him. Both of them shifted forms, flickering through claws and shields and moving entire limbs to avoid hits.
Ekhmez still had the edge. The loop of green fire ended up wrapped around Michael’s throat, and they were suddenly amidst Echelon Three. His people scattered backward, dropping weapons that they couldn’t bring with them.
“Now watch your hero die!” the greater demon hissed, and Michael shifted back into human form to try and escape.
A forearm like an iron bar smashed him back to the ground, and the fire looped back around his throat as his head hit something metal. One of the weapons his people had abandoned…far too close to him to be by accident.
There was one more Dragon’s Breath-loaded shotgun and it was right by his hands. His fingers locked around it as Ekhmez’s flame pulled him up.
“Any last words?” the demon taunted him.
“Yeah,” Michael coughed. One arm slammed against Ekhmez’s torso, pushing the demon back enough for him to bring the shotgun between them. “Dodge this.”
Stay of Execution Page 25