by Aeryn Leigh
Ready.
Aries fired.
For the hell of it, Ella played Wagner.
Chapter Fifty-Two
9/8 WAGNERIAN
ARIES DRUMMED A WAR TATTOO, a steady, rhythmic kick drum of supersonic concussion, firing depleted tungsten rounds as they traversed the city's midline, superdense warheads detonating with timers set to the industrial death metal application of 9/8-time Wagnerian. He took Ella's subconscious memory of that opera performance, the entire unabridged third act, ripped it right from the abyssal depths of her mind, and nudged Rob to unleash a performance worthy of a God's return.
His return. Trapped within the ceramic metal for eight thousand years, awaiting the child of Odin to end his sentence for the crime of gigadeath. Refusing to sublime to the higher plane of existence as some of his siblings did eons ago, because even when free, he fed on blood, on battle.
And also, for wherever there was Valkjurs, there was carnage. And from his incarceration into this prototype gunship, he became the class-name of every gunship generation since, save for the reason why.
Alternating autocannons on the gunship's aft fired up into the sky, micro-flechettes with small spiral tail fins creating trilling phases playing a melody increasing in pitch as they soared upwards then arced to the ground.
Eighty-two seconds counted down. For a sentient, artificial super-intelligence, or a God, it did not matter which - time was a toy to played with, recorded, revisited at leisure. The full-spectrum sensor suite scanned the buildings ahead of time and calculated a three-dimensional matrix based on material-densities and autocannon 40mm ammunition belts chose tungsten, Nordex HE, sabot or incendiary depending on the most optimal and efficient solution to penetrating the shelters the aliens took cover under, and put the second, third and fourth right straight through the same first hole as they travelled at 666km/h on their righteous, highway of hell.
In the lunar grandstands far, far above them, the spectators roared despite themselves and stood cheering, witness to the Queen Valkjur's return and reformation of Odin's Warriors, despite the doom it would unleash due to the renegade Korel. There was still enough time to board their ships and flee, some had, but most watched enthralled.
When you bargain with Valkjur, you stare at naked flame.
On every ninth beat, the 130mm howitzers tracked artillery harnessed to the ken-korel and landed the killing blow in time underscoring the thunder of bass. Mushrooms of fire bloomed in their wake, and the rear ramp lowered, giving the eleven angels of death a sight, mere mortals would tremble at.
The blade in Laurie's left fist seemed dagger-sized. The Sword of Hffylson lit blue. Griffin stood next to him, on his right, holding the twelve-foot greatsword taken from the ancient guardian. Blue flames licked along its edge. Beowulf on his left activated his chain sword.
"Ten seconds," said Laurie.
Sergeant-Major Rodriguez folded down his visor. "You heard the Captain. Time for payback."
They crossed the wall and hit the deck.
Three by three and then by two, they jumped, plummeting for the crater-marked fields outside the wall and the vast cadaver-filled pit of korels breeding and the crescendo reached its climax.
A white beam lanced up, and struck Amelia's Valkyrie.
IN THE TIME it took a hydrogen atom to make one rotation around a molecule of water as her weapon struck the eight-damned Matriarchal Valkjur, the Prime Korellian knew for certain three new facts.
One, she'd fired her second-last round for nought.
Secondly, her weapon had been tampered with. Her hereditary rifle-lance should have severely damaged, or at least, put it out of commission, long enough for her to reach it and deliver the death-blow before it repaired itself.
What shouldn't have happened, was that by hitting the Valkjur with the kinetic energy of a micro-star, the half-dead, emergency-systems only war-machine absorbed it and was now, for all intents and purposes, very much – awake.
The Prime Korellian stared into fire.
THE GUNSHIP’S systems went berserk. So much energy was transferred in a single instant to the Valkjur tethered beneath that the refuelling systems dumped whatever it could not use to the docked Aries. The gunship absorbed what it could and because it was a bastard redirected back to the Valkjur hoping to see the Eviscerator fire.
The world went white. The gunship barely managed to raise blast shielding around the open ramp before every living creature in the hold went blind. It all happened in silence. The visors on the falling power armour compensated and the free-falling warriors witnessed a miniature white sun of pure electromagnetic energy formed then collapsed and the faster than sound shockwave radiated out in a perfect sphere. The swarming aliens below were stunned, disorientated.
"Amelia," screamed Ella through the intercoms.
No response. The gunship banked hard, Ella fighting with the it to return manual control, yet Aries proceeded with the programmed flight plan.
The jet packs on the power armour activated.
"I'm okay," said Amelia, awe in her voice. "Keep going."
The assault team landed hard, auto-gyros whirring as knee joints bent to mitigate the shock, icons flashing in Laurie's readout indicating gunship mine release.
"Roger that," said Laurie. "Fellas," he said, "time for brain surgery."
Five twirling dervishes of death started their dance, their partners still dazed. The blinded daemons were easy prey as the team got used to the suit's capabilities, and the five hacked, sliced and chopped, finally on equal terms for the first time. They fought in a wedge formation 250 metres from the base of the wall, line abreast, cleaving their way towards a breeding pit the daemons used to create more offspring. Pits like this existed throughout the city according to the gunships sensors, in basements of myriad buildings, but Laurie was curious as to why there was a single pit on the outside of the wall. Griffin hefted his twelve-foot sword as easily as a child swinging his stick and exorcised his own pent-up demons.
Crude, shallow craters had been excavated about four-hundred metres in diameter, three metres deep, filled with the corpses of Inquisition citizens. Tens upon tens of thousands of fledgling daemons feasted, the creatures about the same size as the one Amelia had found. The growth was in direct proportion to the amount they ate. On the other side of the stone works, a wooden ballista flung a constant stream of dead humans into the pit, the feeding trough, for that what it was.
The Inquisition Gate of God still stood. Curious, thought Laurie, his new ability to battle and receive clear intelligence at the same time. What was also curious that any aliens approaching the wall were destroyed by other aliens lining the wall, yet free to advance towards the Republic defences. Why is that? He ruminated on that question is he sidestepped a bigger ken-korel, the daemons all around becoming less visually concussed, and with his blue sword sliced the enemy from the third shoulder to its thorax.
The fighting became harder. Resistance grew with every closing metre to the edge of the pit.
"Laurie, said Mick, gutting a daemon with his chain sword, "this has been fun mate, but we better not hang around too long. The bastards are starting to wake up."
"Where's your sense of adventure?" said Beowulf. He crushed the skull of one daemon with his right foot, before catching another charging directly for him in midair and ripped it in twain with his power fists, showering him in green ichor.
"The Sergeant is correct," said Rodriguez. "Humbled as I am with this God-gifted weaponry, we would be fools to tardy."
"Well then," said Laurie, as they reached the edge of the pit, "Better get to the rendezvous point. Let's see how fast these suits run." Inside the suit, Laurie's left hand touched a sensor pad within the glove and the grenade blister popped out on the armour's left upper thigh. He picked up the munition, the same size as a house brick and flicked it over his shoulder.
Together they sprinted for the First and Last's trenches, cutting down those in their way. Daemons tried to grasp the
grenade as it tumbled through the charnel layers but the frictionless shielding resisted efforts to pick it up, sinking centimetre by centimetre down wards. The grenade detected that safe minimum distance had been reached by its creators. The thermobaric-tactical micro-nuke exploded turning every living thing in a four-hundred-metre radius to superhot ash.
WOLFGANG JERKED AWAKE, as something tugged on his right boot. Haplo. "It's been an hour," he said. "I know you said to wake me after half-an-hour, but shoot me. You look like Russian winter."
There was still a fair degree of light poking through gaps in the Tiger II's drive wheels, in their trench under the tank. Dirt piled in front of the tank, and oilskins covered the rear. Wolfgang yawned. As far as trenches under tanks were, this one wasn't so bad. There was no snow, or metres of stone bed mixed with sand, or mud. It was fertile soil, nice and friable, prefect for wine growing. Wolfgang realised in the bare half minute he'd been awake, he hadn’t even noticed the incoming artillery shells.
He must be exhausted.
"Who found the gramophone player?" said Wolfgang. There was just enough room to sit upright without your head smashing into hardened steel plate. He undid his water canteen and took a swig.
"What gramophone?" said Haplo. "It went down on the Mustavo."
"Well somebody's playing -"
A string of thunder rolled over them. Unnatural like. Thunder wasn't steady as a metronome, and while it could be musical, joyous to one's ears, they verdammt didn't keep an upbeat tempo.
Hans, always inside the tank, banged the steel floor with an iron rod. The signal to get your arse up there on the double.
Wolfgang clambered up out of the trench, shoving aside the oilskins and using the modified exhaust shields as handholds climbed up after Haplo onto the Königstiger.
"Ficken hell," said Haplo. He pointed at the enemy lines. The music got louder and louder, yes definitely it was music, and the German army cheered. Wagner's Ring cycle. Homesick, adrift, lost in a faraway land, cut off from loved ones and families, from everything they knew, the familiar sound brought many a soldier to tears. From over the horizon the thunder rolled, the light show accompanying it reflected off the low clouds all its glory.
The shelling stopped.
"The Valkyries come," shouted Haplo, "the Valkyries come!"
The Seventh Division and the 501st stood in mute stupefaction as the symphony of destruction came ever closer. Throughout the German forces, hope rekindled. They were saved. The Luftwaffe was coming for them.
The men and women of the Republic stared at the off worlders momentarily in puzzlement, before all eyes again turned forward.
With a triumphant crash, the symphony ended. A bolt of white. Like lightning, on the horizon. Then in a terrible flash, the third sun came out. Six kilometres away, it seared the retinas, and twenty-thousand souls flinched.
Wolfgang closed his eyes, but as with everybody else, a fraction too late. He couldn't see. He couldn't see. The ground trembled, the shock wave hit. Scores of soldiers fell from vantage points, hands rubbing at eyes as wind blew them backward.
From pure habit, Wolfgang was holding onto the cupola with his left hand as the wind struck, and his reflexes saved Haplo tumbling off the tank. Wolfgang blinked rapidly, trying to get vision, but all was a blur.
His ears worked fine. High pitched screaming. Getting louder. Getting way louder and louder. Turbines. Jet engines? The volume increased.
He yelled down into the turret. "Can anyone see? Can anyone see?"
No one could. "That's just terrific," thought Wolfgang. Blinded by unknown combatants, and about to go deaf too. "Go," he shouted to Haplo, "get in, I'll follow you."
Any tanker worth their salt could get in and out their tank blindfolded. Wolfgang drilled on it especially. He felt Haplo moved past, access the rear hatch and wiggle in. Wolfgang got his butt up onto the cupola, swung his legs down then eased himself in.
Second by second, his sight got better. Much better. As did the others. He looked through the eye slot, something big and black and grey blurry came their way. A bomber. A jet powered bomber. It was huge. How could it even fly, it was that big? It separated in two. The lower piece was falling towards the ground. It hit. Hard. Another shock-wave. This time, from the ground. Seventy tonnes of metal jumped a fraction of a centimetre from the impact.
Wolfgang rubbed his eyes. It was not possible. He stood up in the turret, mouth wide open, at the four-story high Valkyrie at the front, radiating power. Tumultuous winds blew from the rear buffeting him and all the nearby men. Wolfgang turned his head from one incredulous sight to the other. The flying, jet warship hovered in mid-air, magically, impossibly to his left.
A voice boomed, causing another round of flinching. "Do not fire. Do not fire." Once in English, once in German. A female's voice. The ship spun on its horizontal axis, bristling with weaponry, oozing danger. "By the authority of General Marietta Versetti, Commander of the Republic, we hereby offer aid." The strong, clear command was repeated in German. Storm clouds swept in rapidly from the east, dark and black. Lightning storms crackled through the upper atmosphere. In the distance, just over the horizon, a great explosion and a slowly expanding mushroom cloud reached for the heavens.
"I strongly suggest," said the voice, just in German, "that you do not fire towards our friends running towards us. The Captain, let us say, has quite a temper."
Wolfgang dragged his eyeballs back around to the long, deep, and wide cratered plains. He raised his binoculars as the suns reached the horizon and saw a group of five figures running at impossible speed across the open, killing ground. Long shadows stretched out in front of them, ten long forked prongs of doom. Wolfgang focused again. They were not figures. Five armoured knights, heading in a beeline straight for them.
Wolfgang carefully picked up his headset.
"Major, are you there? Repeat, Commander, are you there?" Corporal Becker tried again.
He keyed the throat mike. "Affirmative."
"General Marietta Versetti is the General's daughter, Major. They just communicated with each other and accepted each other's codewords. These things are friendly, repeat friendly, sir."
With friends like these, who needs enemies. "Very well, Corporal. Message understood." He reached down and selected the army communication general frequency. "All battalion commanders and squad leaders acknowledge, they are from the Republic. Stand down." He keyed off the mike as the running knights entered optimal machine-gun range, put down his headset, climbed out and off the tank, and stood in front of the Königstiger, standing straight.
The armoured knights jumped clear over the first trench, and slowed to a jog past and across the secondary line, troops staring open mouthed from their passage, before coming to a stop, line abreast, directly in front of the dug in 501st.
Directly in front of him.
They had to be over two and a half metres tall, absolute giants, shoulders a metre wide, the grey plate armour covered in different paint and war patterns, furs and pelts, antlers and bones, holding all forms of melee weapons, including a ridiculously-sized great sword.
All were splattered in glowing green blood. The centre figure took an armoured step forward, reached behind its back, then held in view the decapitated head of the greater daemons. He tossed it at Wolfgang's feet. "You can stick that where the sun doesn't shine." Wolfgang didn't understand a word but understood the sentiment exactly.
The figures cockpit hatch cracked its seal, and opened. Wolfgang looked at the pilot, a Caucasian male in his early 40s, features hard as granite.
"Welcome to Elysium, mate," the man said.
Chapter Fifty-Three
FEAR CONTROL
SIX DAYS PASSED. Six full sun rotations, since Odin's Warriors arrived. The pulsating, vibrating white Valkyrie had stepped carefully around vehicles, trenches, bunkers, and gun emplacements on its way over the hill, like a parent walking through a child's toy littered bedroom. It reached the makeshift airfield, kneeled up
on one knee, mammoth gun held in both hands, and had not moved since.
Enough room to land the gunship at the top of the hill was hastily done, and landed, facing front.
The artillery restarted at dawn, after the first night of peace since the battle began. It was too good to be true. The artillery fire until that point, sporadic, seemingly without any objective bar haphazard firing, became a directed, concentrated barrage that first new morning. The point defence systems on the gunship activated, and Rob was faced with a dilemma. Aries could extend a near 100 percent protective radius of just under three km, and provide near total coverage, or completely cover their entire defences and eliminate 60-70 percent of incoming shells.
When confronted with the choice, General Sarah Versetti immediately chose the latter. Sensors indicated two thousand plus artillery pieces within the walled city, the sum total of the Inquisition's arsenal on the island. The stream of shells never stopped that morning, that afternoon, through that night or the days after.
It wasn't the only dilemma. Arguments soon broke out as to how best to use the new titanic weaponry amongst both German and Republic commanders, that just sat there, seemingly doing nothing. Every man, woman and their dog became an armchair general. It wasn't helped by those who'd found and operated the new war machines, for they didn't fully understand the Nordic capabilities themselves.
The request by Flight Sergeant Bloomsbury, to use the hallowed corpses of the honoured dead in conjunction with basic mineral resources, gathered via the creation of a miniature mining operation for the crude ore buried under the hill, ostensibly to make new ammunition, unleashed a shit storm. Those born in the Republic, on Elysium, did not have a problem with that, but the men from Germany did.