Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion (46 page)

Nina raised her weapon and fired.

One of the yellow balls exploded in a shower of liquid that engulfed another of its number. Both flickered dark. The rest kept coming.

Nina instinctively retreated a step, and then two, but her eyes remained fixed on the approaching targets.

She fired again.

One of fourteen disappeared.

She fired a three-round burst.

Two misses—one hit.

Louder; close enough now that she could see the tiny licks of flame-light dancing on the surface of the sun-like glowing balls.

Another—another—another dropped to her shots, but time ran out.

Nina switched to full automatic on her rifle and met the storm with a storm of her own. Quantity over quality; metal against burning acid.

Three more of the glowing projectiles exploded into mists of acid. Where every drop of spilt acid fell, puffs of smoke sizzled form the mesh-covered floor.

Nina ran toward the side of the complex. The six pursuers changed course not so much in a straight line, but sluggishly as if in battle with their own momentum.

She switched out her magazine while in the midst of a full sprint. The glowing spheres screamed their electronic hum just over her shoulder. Nina dove—straight to the floor into the soft surface of intertwined vines. The balls of acid swooped over her prone back by the nearest of margins, flew forward, and tried to turn for a second pass but another could not stifle speed fast enough and hit into a gurgling vat of fuel. Its corrosive juices splashed on the vile barrel but did not breach the container. Plumes of steam carried toward the ceiling and Nina felt sure she heard the container moan.

Nina knelt and fired at full automatic again. The barrel of her gun created flashes like fireworks bouncing off the green walls. Her shots down two more enemies. A splash from one dropped on the shoulder pads of her body armor at the same time as she rolled to her right to avoid the remaining trio of attackers: they over shot again.

Nina took to her feet and ran toward the wounded vat; one in a line of such vats along the eastern wall. She felt heat radiating from her shoulder; digging through the padding to find its way to flesh. Behind her the electronic screams grew louder yet again as the hunters sought the target.

With one hand holding her weapon, the other struggled with the smoking body armor. She pulled one arm free then reached the vats, pressing into the small space between the hideous containers and the infected wall.

The missiles altered course away from the vats, not daring to hit another of their own, and circled higher toward the rafters like dive bombers re-positioning for another attack run.

Nina used the momentary respite to remove the remains of her damaged armor taking care to not touch the noxious surface of Voggoth’s machinery. The horrid, decaying smell forced a wretch in her stomach but she remained focused on the task. No distractions could dissuade her. No horrors here could intimidate her. Nina had become a weapon unto herself.
She
played the nightmare in Voggoth’s dreams.

Nina emerged from the shadow of the vat and spied her attackers looming over head. They, in turn, descended in a glowing yellow picket line.

Nina squeezed the trigger on her M4 and again met their charge with bullets; a furious barrage of bullets. She felt the heat from her over-worked weapon; she smelled the burning metallic aroma of cartridges firing one after another after another.

Pop—splash. Pop—splash. Pop—splash.

A light rain of acid drizzled to the warehouse floor as her rifle dispatched the remaining orbs. Yet her victory felt pyrrhic as the battle computer inside her head realized the cost: she had expended the last 5.56 round in her possession..

The twin Mac-11s on her shoulders, a threesome of grenades, and her thigh-mounted Desert Eagle stood ready but nothing to feed the Colt…

A legion of Monks and a pair of muscle-bound Ogres awaited The Bishop’s orders in the dark hall outside his command chambers. The emerald-eyed fiend took great pleasure in what was to come and like all of Voggoth’s creations he understood that only pain—as acute as possible—could satiate his Master’s desires.

“’Go,” he commanded the mutated humans in robes, “go and purify her with your blades.”

The Monks drew the short pikes that passed for swords and marched south, first slow and then faster—faster—with the evil enthusiasm of a crazed mob…

Nina gazed at her rifle. It nearly glowed with heat, but even the radiation of the barrel could not match the heat of anger firing in her heart. The Bishop still waited. The creature responsible for her loss. The one who had used her as a tool against the man she loved. The root of the death and destruction delivered unto her world.

He will not escape.

At the far side of the chamber a long wide portal opened. A line of silhouettes raced into the room. She saw the flaps of their robes as they ran. Their numbers—100 strong—stretched from one side of the chamber to the other. Behind that fast-moving vanguard lumbered a pair of slower Ogres.

Trevor’s voice came to her as clearly as if he stood next to her in that darkness. The words he had said to her at the mansion; after the last meeting.

“Go after
them,
Nina.”

She would not wait. No retreat. No defense. No escape. The only thing Nina had known all her life presented the only remaining option.

Attack.

She dropped the M4 and drew her sword. Her eyes narrowed, her brow furled, and Nina
ran at them.
She ran with every ounce of speed her legs could muster. The black beret flew off and her ponytail fluttered behind.

Fifty feet…

The monks with their swords increased their speed in response to her charge. The sound of their pounding footfalls created a steady beat like an unstoppable tide rolling to shore. Their wide line condensed into a mob as they neared their target.

Thirty feet…

Nina grasped the hilt in a death-grip. The sword she had taken from a Mutant; the day she had met Denise. It hung behind her and to the side as she leaned forward in eagerness to meet her fate. She ran even faster. Her heart raced like a drum played by the devil.

Ten feet…

She saw the once-human rotting faces with splotches of red and green and flakes of skin hanging like scales. Their damned eyes locked on to her and knew only that they must hurt and wound and kill because that was all any creature of Voggoth could possibly desire. A destiny Nina once thought she shared but now she knew more. She understood more. And she would fight for it.

Nina jumped. She jumped like an Olympic hurdler, passing over the first enemy swings, landed behind the vanguard and in the midst of the mob, and she kept running, swinging as she moved with the momentum of her charge behind the arc of the blade. No consideration for defense. No blocks. No attempt to parry. Nothing but attack—attack—attack.

A head rolled free; a robe fell limp; an arm holding an alien rapier flew through the air. And still Nina darted through the sea of attackers, dropping her shoulders and swinging; leaping forward and thrusting. Everything in the blade. Nothing but
attack!

Their counter-thrusts hit air as if trying to puncture a ghost. Enemy swords clanged against enemy swords where she had stood just a blink ago. Nina refused to stop, instead sweeping onward like a farmer’s scythe reaping harvest.

The bodies dropped around her in a line of dominoes knocked asunder. Yet more moved in with the Bishop’s orders of purification dictating tactics.

She felt the tip of one sword rip across her shoulder. Before a single drop of blood came from the laceration she had slain three more.

No fencer’s skill; Nina moved as a butcher.

A wide swath—a slit chest, a cut throat, a skull torn in half, a shoulder chopped into mush. Her sword did not falter; did not get caught in the gore. The strength of her muscle and the power of her rage made each swing unstoppable.

The entire upper half of an enemy body fell away from the bottom; the blade drove through a rib cage without pause; her weapon eviscerated a monk who dared block her path…

That sea of robes—still four score strong—spread in the slightest; took pause in the face of this demon of slaughter.

Directly in her path one of the monks discarded his blade and against the desires of his master raised his forearm and took aim with the alien gun mounted there.

Nina threw her sword. It hit the mutated man square in the chest. The body fell straight backwards to the floor.

Before the sound of the
thump
carried to her ears, Nina pulled the Mac-11s from their dual shoulder harnesses and, holding the guns sideways, waved her arms to either side in a slow arc dealing deadly bullets into the mob. She kept her eyes forward; she did not aim with anything other than instinct, yet not a single bullet missed.

She spied the Ogres lining up for their run at her through the gauntlet of robed monks. Her battle computer saw it all so clearly. So precisely. So
easy.

Her guns clicked dry at
exactly
the same moment. Piles of dead monks rose on her flanks but the balance of the force did not hesitate; they climbed over their fallen brethren and poured in toward their unarmed victim like Moses’ parted Red Sea collapsing onto Pharaoh.

Nina ran forward again as the blades thrust toward her person. As she did, her arms worked in fast unison to her utility belt. One—then a second grenade—sans pins—dropped to the moss-covered floor.

While the mob closed in from the sides, one of the Ogres met her at the dead body pierced by her thrown sword.

Captain Nina Forest acted in a flash of lightning. While the clumsy brute raised its arms in attempt to pound her from above, she drew the sword from the fallen monk like Arthur pulling Excalibur from the rock and slashed across the creature’s kneecaps. She felt the bone there—or what passed for bone—crunch and the flesh gape open.

The monster stumbled to a knee.

The monks swarmed in.

She balanced her left hand on the shoulder of the half-collapsed beast and swung over as if she were a gymnast working the vault. As she landed, the grenades exploded. The shrapnel bore into the face and chest of the wounded Ogre; its body served Nina as an unwilling shield. A shotgun blast of an explosion hammered the horde of Monks. Bodies flew. Blood rained. Limbs tumbled through the air

The second Ogre confronted Nina.

Her sword plunged up where a crotch should be, driving in nearly to the hilt.

The Ogre fell forward; it’s face directly in front of her.

The Desert Eagle appeared in her hand. The Ogre’s alien eyes gazed at the big black barrel. From point blank range she pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. Each powerful round tore away a chunk of monster-skull. The dead creature dropped over and hit the floor with a heavy tremor.

Nina turned around. A handful of monks remained to face her. A handful of bullets remained in the Desert Eagle. She found a match for each.

The last gunshot echoed through the chamber, replaced by the steady gurgle and throb of the fuel tanks and feint moans from the mortally wounded.

Nina let the hand gun fall and then struggled to retriever her sword from the body of the second Ogre. It took some doing, but the blade came free.

Her eyes—still determined; still alive with anger—turned north again.

Next.

The walls wore a thick coating of green growth that took on the texture of not-quite-dry spackle. Wires—that could easily be mistaken for vines or perhaps even veins—hung loose over the musty corridor. A pair of glowing orbs drooped from the ceiling on twisting ropes casting the hall in a pale light.

No opposition greeted Nina. The last of The Order’s minions lay dead or dying (whatever that might mean to such abominations) behind her in the fuel depot. Only the buzzing sound of the Frisbee-thing with the glowing eyes followed her, and she had determined it presented no threat other than broadcasting her position. She decided that no longer mattered.

She knew the Bishop would not run. She knew he would wait for her with, no doubt, a surprise or two. Admittedly, as she entered the dome-shaped chamber that served as the Bishop’s final refuge, the nature of that surprise managed to take her off-guard.

Three images played on rectangular screens lining the curved wall on the far side of the dome-shaped room. The video in the center came from the surveillance drone showing Nina’s backside as she passed through the open sheath at the chamber entrance.

The one to the left presented video taken from an aircraft; most likely one of The Order’s Chariots. The scene depicted a mixed eastern forest covered in a blend of turning autumn leaves as well as stalwart evergreens. In a clearing atop one mountain she saw two people.

The man wore shoulder-length hair and pointed toward the shipboard camera. Nina recognized him: Trevor Stone.

Behind Trevor stood Nina Forest, evident immediately by her telltale ponytail and tactical gear. She fumbled for something in a bag as the craft circled the clearing in an obvious attempt to land.