Königstiger: Odin's Warriors - Book 3

by Aeryn Leigh

  SEVEN HUNDRED AND forty-three thousand punched through the 2.5 km distance.

  THE QUEEN VALKJUR HAD ENOUGH. So the child was not yet blooded. She could not fire or attack. Directly, that was. But pruning trees. Making a clear path for the Hrothgar’s retreat. This was not worthy. Energy thrummed through her systems. But indirectly… so be it. With a single rune-thought, she released an energy blast down into the earth, and to the nearby tectonic plate boundary.

  What she didn’t expect however, was the child to start singing.

  THE KÖNIGSTIGER HADN'T MISSED a beat. The Opel truck supplying them with shells matched their pace, as they drove forward. The turret was rotated 160° clockwise, and Hans was getting good at picking out the slight slightly darker grey shapes amongst the sea of other grey shapes charging for them. The tank recoiled with the last shot, Hans scoring another direct hit, the spent shell casing was passed to Wolfgang, who lifted up and threw it across to the truck.

  The ground shook. He looked around. Another shock. The men running alongside to his right wobbled. And then nothing. Was it his imagination? Battle fatigue?

  The tank lost contact with the ground. His stomach lurched, like when you were driving fast up a hill and careened over the rise. The tank hit, a bone jarring crunch. Waves flowed across the ground, waves without water. Smaller vehicles were flung halfway into the air, men like dolls on a trampoline. Blood filled his mouth, from where he'd bitten his tongue. The wave subsided. All gunfire stopped.

  In the screaming and the shouting, of terrified men, Wolfgang slowly and deliberately turned his head to the left, wishing it wouldn't be true.

  It was. Wolfgang looked through the binoculars at the far away super volcano, as the earthquake raced through the enemy creatures, breaking them apart like no amount of their weaponry could, and disappear over the horizon.

  Forty heartbeats later, the earthquake reached the mountain.

  ABOARD THE ARIES, they watched the earth ripple like stones dropped in a pond. Alarms blared. "Oh no," said Andrew. A three-dimensional graphic of the super volcano appeared, thirty-six kilometres away from their current position, and the land slide exposing the north-eastern flank. Andrew smashed the emergency broadcast system with a single thought. Take cover!

  THREE CUBIC KILOMETRES OF ROCKS, earth, trees, and debris slid down the mountain, at hundreds of kilometres per hour, an avalanche that went kilometres downhill, to the bottom of the slope. It exposed the molten magma, dormant for so long, to considerable lower pressure, and 4.3 seconds later, exploded. The chain of cataclysmic explosions tore through the rear sections of the landside, hurtling volcanic rock eastward, a near supersonic lateral detonation equivalent to twenty-eight megatons of TNT.

  The pyroclastic flow of ultra-hot volcanic gases, pumice and ash created new lava, overtaking the moving avalanche in a spreading, concentric shape.

  Everything within a fourteen-kilometre radius of the volcano was rendered into dust. Mega tsunamis formed on the east ocean side of the volcano. The Emperor's hunting grounds, holy forests, private retreats, and torture gardens were obliterated, and the outer city suburbs along the coast ceased to be.

  Beyond this radius, the pyroclastic blast expanded to over thirty kilometres from the super volcano, squashing most things flat, chopping tree trunks off at the base. It all depended on the typography.

  The blast struck the rear Korellian swarm, twenty-eight kilometres from the volcano, just as it was ending back at the vent. Hundreds of thousands of ken-korel were immolated in an instant, temperatures still exceeding 420°C and the telepathic death songs surfed the mixture of lava, gas, and debris outwards just below the speed of sound and with each kilometre radiating out the temperature decreased. The blast blew over the northernmost great wall, sparing the daemons on the sheltered side and immediate death but instead condemned them to a slow, lingering death of asphyxiation.

  By the time it reached the middle of the Korellians, the Prime Korellian and whatever ken-korels sentient enough were borrowing into the ground, some making it in time, but most did not, as with their numbers collapsing so followed their intelligence. Weaponised ken-korels tried digging in, without removing the attached gun platforms, and suffered great damage.

  The shockwave past the front ranks of the Korellians, slowing, cooling, over the two-kilometre gap between them and the Alliance which was frantically taking cover. Soldiers flung themselves under still moving tanks. Others ran to stationary vehicles only to find so many German and Republic already seeking shelter that there was no shelter. Armoured vehicles closed hatches and visors, as men banged on the outside to let them in. The half minute from the blast happening until the time it struck them, tales of bravery and tales of cowardice occurred one and all.

  Griffin lifted up a broken down Hanomag onto its side, floor pan facing the explosion, yelling through his megaphone speakers to those in immediate vicinity to take cover. The other warriors acquitted themselves also. Aries landed, nose forward, the ramp open, and provided refuge.

  Pyroclastic gases smashed into the Alliance and the very fringe of their perimeter, their clothing singed, hair shrivelled, and those without their eyelids shut found their eyes welded open. Flying debris, now with dead daemon fragments, scattershot Republic and German soldiers. Daemon spikes punctured leather and thin metal armour.

  And then the blast ended.

  Laurie stood up, and let go of the wagon cart he tipped over, protecting the two horses and a dozen soldiers on its western side. Reports from the Aries flooded in. Massive casualties. He looked up at the ash column rising from the volcano, now 75 km wide and half that wide, a mushroom cloud attracting lightning and doomsday clouds of thunder.

  The wind was heading south-west. Not that it made much difference. If they didn't get to the transport ships in time, and set sail east immediately, abrasive ash from the fallout would kill every human alive.

  In that moment, he thought, well, that was one way to end a battle. He turned around, ready to help the wounded. The proximity display pulsated. He spun around, and swore.

  One way or the other, Laurie would end this, now.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  FRESH MEAT

  THOUSANDS OF GERMANS and Republics lay dead, and the great majority of the Korellian swarm burned to a crisp. Thousands more of their own forces were injured, and the combined might of the Alliance sagged under the blow.

  Snowflakes of ash began floating to the ground, a Christmas scene of desolation.

  Marietta ran up the corridor of the gunship into the cockpit.

  "Status," she demanded.

  "All forces have sustained severe losses. We are down to half combat strength," reported Andrew. "Same for the Germans."

  Marietta looked at the titanic mushroom cloud occupying the entire forward windows. "The General? The others?"

  "The Valkjurs are okay. Your mother was on the eastern flank." The section hardest hit.

  Marietta spun, and raced back down to the transport bay. Horses, dogs, and humans made a chaotic mess. German signal corps relayed messages of panic and confusion. The Republic's communication legionnaires dispatched runner after runner. She stopped one. "The General? Is she alive?"

  The woman shrugged, covered in blood and ash. "Sorry General, I don't know." Marietta jogged over to the far wall, untethered her warcharger, and went searching for a mother.

  Ash blanketed the ground. Marietta urged the mare on, whispering calming words, as the air grew harder to breathe. The ash fell, turning Republic and Germans into the same dull, grey forms. She galloped to the eastern section, to where the forces bore the brunt of the cataclysmic explosion. Artillery pieces were upside down, dead horses and human bodies lay in contorted, twisted positions from the radiant heat. And they were the lucky ones. The survivors moaned, lungs burned dry, skin hanging off in sheets.

  "General!" she screamed. "Mama!" She looked around, trying to find it. There. The Legion's war banner, the gold and red fabric in tatters. Ne
xt to it, her mother's warcharger, dead on the ground, a sapling imbedded in its chest. A hand punched up through still steaming mud. Major Brutowsky slowly stood up, reached down, and slung the unconscious general over his shoulder.

  "Marietta," said Major Brutowsky. "I need your help."

  THE PRIME KORELLIAN AND KEN-KOREL, what was left of it, also rose from their burrows, the near boiling mud plopping on to the ash-covered, debris strewn ground. She willed her triple heart to a controlled, steady pace. Was it not Sun-Tzu Korel, the immortal military tactician, who said no battle plan survives contact with the enemy?

  So. What were her new objectives? Their forces were greatly diminished. The Hrothgar's would have taken a severe hit themselves. The Korellians could withstand harsh environmental conditions more than the unnatural two-legged Hrothgar's. But even the Korellians couldn't breathe super abrasive volcanic particles of ash indefinitely. Therefore, her objectives remained the same, even if the conditions had not. First, she must reach the metal – correct that – barbaric in their simplicity metal ships, located over the horizon. Take and hold the ships. Then swing around to the industrial port, and restock lost resources.

  And somehow, regain the initiative.

  MUCH SMALLER AFTER-SHOCKS continued all across the island and beneath ocean floors for hundreds of miles around. As whole sections of the island shook and trembled, fissures split open.

  In five centuries of the Inquisition Empire, not a year went by without purges, crusades, and witch hunts. As since the fertile lands and seas of Elysium, rich and fertile, produced abundant food necessary to sustain burgeoning populations, competing empires and alliances fell one by one to the Inquisition. Mass graves, square miles of them, lay buried under golden wheat fields. The majority, centuries old, with nothing but skulls and worm polished bones. Except for a few. Especially the last one. Two years ago, the pirate freeholds and become a hindrance, rather than an asset to be used. And like any asset past their use by date, they were ruthlessly exterminated. Inquisition crusades set out to subjugate the pirate freeholds, for so long able to plunder and pillage under letters of Inquisition Marque, transformed overnight into examples of devil sorcery by one decree.

  The Inquisition's First, Second and Fourth fleets departed, slave barges in tow. All pirates, men, women, and children were captured, chained, and brought back to the Inquisition mainland for labour in the open cut mines, save the youngest children, which were diverted to the Marine re-education camps. As mineral ores were expended, and human flesh grew frail, all labourers were summarily executed in the holes they'd dug.

  When the central north-eastern pit ore veins ran out, so did the Emperor's patience, and over fourteen thousand bludgeoned corpses, killed by new Marine recruits, by their own children, formed mass graves. Topsoil was carted in, laid over stone rubble, and so a new wheat field was born.

  Such a wheat field lay on the north-eastern astern coast. Small crevices ran from the rocky shore deep underground, letting molecules of decaying flesh waft out into open air, a tantalising sent for wild Korel washing-up on the shore. And like in the Emperor's stronghold, in the absence of light, wild Korellians feasted and multiplied.

  The earthquake ripped the ground in twain. The pyroclastic blast twelve seconds later swept harmlessly overhead. Tens of thousands of Korellians rose up from the chasm, and molecules sniffers tasted the heady aroma of fresh meat. The swarm of wild Korellians charged towards it.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  THE SPACE BETWEEN

  THE DAY DRAGGED ON FOREVER. General Marietta Versetti assumed control of the First and Last, and held Elysium's quickest conference with the Seventh division, Major Wolfgang listening in via FM radio, as the 501st held the line against the decimated yet attacking daemons.

  Engines struggled with the ash, clogging filters. Troops started panting. Andrew consulted the Nordic data cores and the technology which created their custom fitting pilot suits, and quickly created nano-filament face masks, and adjustable filter shrouds to go over engine intakes. Only with these combat modifications and filtration masks did the Alliance re-establish any operational capability whatsoever.

  Piers Hahndorf gunned his Kettenkrad and the trailer full of filters around each quadrant of the battlefield, the mechanics of the 7th and 501st fighting time and the enemy. Surviving gun crews covered exposed gun breeches with their bodies or spare rags between firing, slogging away at the enemy now under two thousand metres away in the rain of ash, as if it was personal.

  It felt personal, in the narrowing space between life and death.

  LAURIE TAPPED the side of his helmet with his power fists. "Are you getting this Aries?"

  Impossibly, a separate, huge swarm of daemons had erupted from the very ground and were attacking both them and the fucking daemon swarm so much blood had been spilled against. Those aliens now fought a war on two fronts.

  Jesus Christ, they might just get out of this yet.

  BEOWULF, Magnus, and Rodriguez, wove through the forest, alongside the dirt road, clearing a path. Trucks, halftracks, towed rickety wagons full of the wounded. Pak-gun mounted trucks and all tanks that still could chopped into the tree line daemons barely five-hundred metres away.

  The coastal gunfort came into view. Now to secure it. One last stand.

  OF THE FIVE TRANSPORTS, two were out at sea. The SS Akira, heavily beached, and the two ships behind her, grounded in the shallow surf, had fallen to aliens crawling up anchor chains. Sailors jumped overboard, some forward, some aft, and the ones who jumped into ten-feet deep surf, felt clawed hands at their feet, dragging them under. The battalion up on the coastal defences never stood a chance, even as they died well.

  IT WAS MIDDLE AFTERNOON, and no sunlight shone. Lightning streaked from one horizon to the other, and also to the ground, setting patches of forest on fire.

  Aries rejoined the sky, systems overloaded. Ella flew the gunship by remote control, still fighting within Painkiller. The 501st, covering the rear, entered the forest. The King Tigers rolled along in single file, squads of panzergrenadiers sitting on the sides of both the 501st tanks and the long string of Seventh Division tanks and mechanised vehicles up and down the column. Machine-gun crews used their comrades’ shoulders as gun platforms, the stream of brass tinkling into ash and dirt. And behind Wolfgang's Königstiger, the Valkjurs of Laurie and Griffin matched pace, swinging blue flaming swords.

  HANS FIRED the last eighty-eight shell. "That's it Mouse," he said.

  THE TRIO SWEPT through the beachhead, enemy resistance much lighter, cleaving and smiting with axes and chainswords. Behind them, trundling along, engine hunting for air, even with the special filter, a battered StuG III towing a horse cart clattered into the gunfort.

  JUST LIKE THE slow-moving stream of molten lava reaching flat, open ground, so did the alliance of Elysium and Earth. Both armies packed like headless sardines into the half mile beachhead. The gunship's autocannons alone fired. Nine days of non-stop fighting expended the Alliance's last round minutes ago.

  Only small arms remained in play, if it came to that.

  IN THE MIDDLE of the burning forest, daemons tore apart daemons.

  UNDER THE PROTECTIVE umbrella of the gunship, the evacuation plan commenced.

  Amelia piloted the Queen Valkjur into the shallow ocean surf, and awaited the signal. Terrified and bored, simultaneously, she recounted to herself the favourite her favourite scenes from The Scarlet Kiss.

  She reached the third quote, and stopped. She tried not to cry. Had she helped cause the volcano?

  Griffin came through the comms. "Hey there not-so baby girl. You doin' OK?"

  "Kinda."

  "Feel like some Scarlett Kiss?"

  "You're fighting," she said, dejectedly.

  "Girl, I've read that damn book so many times I dream it in my sleep." He leapt into the air, did a sideways somersault with the gleaming greatsword of doom, obliterating an entire row of wild daemons, landing on his metal feet. "Tell you
what. We'll all take it in turns, our favourite bits."

  Amelia brightened up, and told the Valkjur voice to be quiet, it being miffed about the standards of modern literature. "This story was the best," she said. "Tragedy, metaphors, big words, it has it all."

  Ella piped in, slicing three daemons apart as she spoke. "I'll start. It was a cold rain, cold as his broken heart…”

  THREE VALKJURS BOARDED the SS Akira first, the Nordic sensors priceless with their tactical information. Quickly, efficiently, in tandem, they searched and destroyed every daemon aboard.

  Merchant seaman re-crewed the abandoned cargo ships. Ash fell like snow, already half a foot deep, clogging tank wheels solid. Visibility dropped in the gloom. The two transports in deep waters moved towards the shore, just aft of the beached vessels. Cranes swung around as humanity and machinery filled the serpentine path down the beach onto the jetties.

  "You sure you can do this," said Laurie, down on the east shore, waist deep in the ocean, killing wild Korel skittering along the rocks and shallow waters.

  "Can do," said Amelia. Kneeling in the surf, Amelia Gruder picked up the first mechanised unit, the 40 ton Ausf G Panzer IV, and deftly placed it on the awaiting transports.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  VALE FAIRHOLM

  NINE-HUNDRED MILES west on the beaches of Fairholm, Snorri and his Vikings formed a protective ring around the last evacuees. Abe, James and Daniel fired the last rounds of the 0.303 Browning machine-guns taken from Hades Express, mounted on the longship barge, into the swarm’s right flank. Vikings stopped the waist high spiky creatures with their lives.

  The last barge cast off from the river mouth. Snorri blew the great horn, and three hundred Vikings retreated into the surf, firing blunderbusses, muskets, and MP 40s and black powder pistols, cutting, chopping, and slicing with swords and battle axes and hatchets, denying the enemy access to the last families escaping, leaving as many Vikings behind, green and red blood soaking into the sand.