Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion (5 page)

A trio of Humvees moved to support the human soldiers, one launching a TOW missile that obliterated an enemy into a gob of goo.

Several K9s moved around the battlefield accompanied by military handlers. The dogs sniffed and barked as they searched for bouncer mines. Voggoth had draped the hidden presents in a new scent, but once the dogs managed to get a whiff of some of the expended mines they could lock on to the ones that remained hidden. And there were plenty. Every few minutes groups of sappers rushed forward amidst the crossfire to spray the hidden cushions of compressed air with a type of acid that melted away the casing and released the tightly-held contents with an ear-splitting
pop.

Rhodes peeked from behind a cluster of boulders and used his binoculars to spy the front line. He watched two of his men fall, one dying instantly the other begging for the mercy of a medic. He saw another Spider Sentry succumb to 50-caliber rounds. It appeared his men might just break through.

“Sir, look at this!”

Rhodes’ driver—who now had nothing to drive—pointed to an approaching K9. The dog dropped a small, dead creature on the side of the road in view of the General.

The K9’s handler—a thin man with tired eyes—told the General in an emotionless tone, “We’re finding bunches of these things.”

Rhodes eyed the creature while the sounds of explosions and ricocheting rounds roared around the canyon road. It resembled a two-legged green pineapple. Two protrusions similar to insect antenna rose from the top of a featureless head.

“Christ, I’ll bet a week’s pay that’s what’s jamming us. Can you get through, corporal?”

The radio man tested his set again. Static.

“No, sir. Must be more of them.”

As if he had not already had enough such signs, Rhodes saw this as yet another indicator that The Order expected his line of attack from Rye. Yet still, despite the obstacles in their way, the jammed communications, and the bouncer mines, his forward units made progress albeit with a casualty rate approaching 30%.

General Rhodes hoisted himself atop one of the boulders and used his binoculars to survey the front. He saw another Spider Sentry go down and his Humvees roll forward flanked by infantry. The path appeared clear.

Before he could complete that thought another line of Spider Sentries complemented by a bunch of those muscle-bound Ogre things appeared in the distance. The former fired more of their pellet-rounds and the latter launched explosive balls with big slings, resembling some kind of mutant Olympic athletes competing for the gold.

One such explosive hit a Humvee. It relieved Rhodes to see the crew get clear before the vehicle burst. Nonetheless, their advance slowed again as small arms fire and grenades exchanged with the enemy’s weird weapons.

“Jesus Christ, these things keep coming at us piecemeal.”

A stretcher hurried by carrying a heavily-medicated middle aged woman missing an arm.

Rhodes jumped from the boulder.

“Corporal, we need to get a message to command. I got this feeling there is more going on out there than we know. If we can’t radio them, we’re going to have to send a runner.”

“INCOMING!”

The small gathering of the general and his staff swiveled around and saw the amber glow of another burning comet-thing come roaring over the highway. The flames from its burning mane fell upon the front lines sending soldiers racing for cover.

Two energy blasts met the rampaging thing in mid-flight, exploding it like a sun gone rogue. A cheer rose from the ranks. General Rhodes backtracked the path of those well-timed blasts. Behind him—moving up from the south—came an Eagle transport.

The approaching ship fired another round of energy weapons from the turret under its nose cone. The weapon smashed into the spider sentries at the front line and gave the soldiers fighting there a moment’s reprieve. Then the ship descended to the road where it came to a rest slightly tilted on rocks obstructing its starboard landing gears.

“Seems someone else had the same idea,” Rhodes mused as he hurried to the craft.

The side door open and there stood Trevor Stone who looked more like a post-Apocalyptic survivalist than an Emperor.

“General Rhodes, pull your men back. Fast.”

“Sir, we’re making some progress. Slow stuff, but progress all the same.”

“No you’re not. Voggoth is sucking you in. They burned us, General. They burned me. The only reason you’re making any progress is because they want you to keep at it until they can bring the rest of their forces to bear. We’ve already wiped out two Leviathans but they’ve got a third one out there still.”

That last sentence—the idea of three Leviathans assembled in one battle group—ended any discussion. Rhodes’ eyes grew vacant with a type of visceral fear known only to those who have seen a Leviathan in action.

“Corporal, send word to all commands. Pull back, full speed. Do it.”

The corporal moved off to summon runners.

“You can ride with me if you like, General.”

“No sir, thanks all the same. I need to make sure we get out of this.”

“I understand,” Stone said. “Fall back to Rye and then start east. We’re all headed for the Mississippi now, but it’s a mess. The
Phillipan
is holding them off but we’re not going to get much separation. I don’t know how long the rail lines will hold. Don’t get cut off, General.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

General William Hoth stood inside the ‘brain’ of the
Phillipan
. With the blast doors closed, artificial light flickered across the crescent-shaped bridge. With no view, the room felt isolated and alone. A bunker mentality, perhaps.

A round black scorch mark on the bulkhead protecting the bridge windows served as one reminder that much more existed—and threatened—from beyond that room. A second indicator came in the form of banks of flashing lights on the various duty stations around the bridge.

The technicians fielded incoming communications from weapons ports, engineering, medics, and damage control teams.

Hoth knew it all from his position, but even the advanced interfaces, displays, and intuitive controls could not keep the information deluge from overloading his attention. He allowed the bridge techs to dispatch the appropriate assistance to the various parts of the vessel while he concentrated on the tactical situation.

Besides, it served no purpose to focus on damage to any systems other than weapons. Hoth knew that sooner or later that damage would drown the ship’s ability to fight; to stay aloft. He needed to concentrate not on saving the
Phillipan,
but in causing as much harm to the enemy as possible.

Distant rumbles and faint tremors spoke of another strike by the storm of Spooks or from the guns of the blob-ish Chariot ships buzzing around the mighty dreadnought. Like piranha, they bit in small bites but in great number.

Incoming data told Hoth that only a handful of The Empire’s jet planes remained in the local air space, most of those fighting for their own survival and not capable of giving his vessel any sort of cover. But that same data told Hoth that The Order had given full priority to that airspace, and not the ground below.

Images from cameras mounted on the superstructure showed a growing line of separation between the retreating tanks, APCs, and trucks of the human army and the slithering, rolling, and hovering machines of destruction from Voggoth’s realm. Indeed, the toppled bodies of the two dead Leviathans created a barrier of sorts at the mouth of the mountain pass.

As he surveyed the ground below he spotted one of the coral-like platforms maneuver through that barrier. Hoth tapped a touch screen and a missile shot from the
Phillipan’s
undercarriage, twisted, turned, and then slammed into the artillery platform. The blast knocked the vehicle sideways and birthed a fire in its belly.

The radar warned of another wave of Spooks. It seemed The Order had prepared well for this battle.

An order from one of the bridge crew to a damage control team caught Hoth’s attention as a copy of the message flashed across his screen. He quickly pushed the ‘countermand’ icon.

“Sir! We need that team in engineering: main thrusters are off-line!”

Hoth re-routed the damage control party with a series of inputs that fed a broadcast to the computerized announcement system. Somewhere far below on one of the lower levels that small team of mechanics and engineers received new instructions to forget engineering and move toward the bow; toward the energy pools and firing mechanisms that fed the ‘bopper’ guns.

The general never felt compelled to explain any of his orders. Nonetheless, he felt it important—and fair to his crew—to paint a clear picture of the situation.

He spoke from the ‘brain’ module loud enough for all to hear, “We don’t need engines anymore. We need weapons and the anti-grav generators. All maintenance teams and services are to be held ready until they’re needed for those two systems. Our boys on the ground are counting on us to hold the line for a while. We’re not going anywhere.”

His crew did not gasp. The helmsman did not panic. The weapons officers and technicians remained focused on their consoles. A shake passed through the bridge as if to punctuate the point yet they took it in stride.

That pleased William Hoth, who had spent his entire life—both pre-and post-Armageddon—following orders and fighting. It seemed no small measure of his discipline and his focus had rubbed off on those who followed him.

No one saw, but for the briefest of moments a very warm and genuine smile of pride for his people flashed on the general’s face. While it would be the last battle of his military career, he also knew it would be the finest.

The
Phillipan
held a while longer.

Onboard Eagle One as it flew away from the battle, General Casey and Trevor monitored radio messages from the front.

Rhodes had managed to break off his attack and appeared destined to escape with nearly half of his force intact. Getting them from Rye to the Mississippi would prove a greater trick.

The main forces around Wetmore faired even better, in terms of their retreat. Hoth succeeded in blocking the onslaught by making a massive choke point in the Rockies formed in part by a wall of dead invaders. The remaining Leviathan had retreated west in order to avoid the
Phillipan’s
main batteries. Nonetheless, the day remained a defeat; just not the
final defeat.

The video feed offered a telescopic look at the burning dreadnought. Even on the grainy image Trevor saw the deformed engine baffles, scorch marks along the sides, and flakes of bulkhead peeling away from the constant burst of explosions across the vessel. No doubt several infernos burned unchecked within the hull of the great ship.

“She’s still afloat, sir,” Casey said. Trevor thought he detected a hint of hope in the general’s voice. “We’ve disengaged, sir.”

“For now, yes,” Trevor answered. “But The Order is going to break through before this day is done. And then it’s going to become a race east. With the shape we’re in it might take a week to get behind the lines at the Mississippi. I’ll bet Voggoth won’t let us go quietly, either. He’ll be harassing us all the way trying to keep us from re-forming defense lines.”

“How much time do you think we have?”

Trevor answered, “That depends on Hoth.”

Late that afternoon, a Spook-guided missile, three times normal size, knocked out the
Phillipan’s
top side main batteries. A storm of ground-based anti-air fire managed to penetrate the hull and rupture several important power nodes a short while later.

An orange glow of fire burning across the flight deck complimented the orange glow of twilight as the sun set to the west. The flames from the giant air ship lit the landscape around Wetmore in a surreal amber glow.

By this point all smart munitions had been exhausted, leaving anti-air shells and handfuls of gravity bombs in the dreadnought’s arsenal. The Order sensed the weakness and made one last push through the pass.

It took two more hours to finish the job completely. Chunks of hull the size of buildings fell from the ship; gaping holes grew in the superstructure; and eventually the tower collapsed upon itself rupturing the bridge and tilting the entire burning ship on its axis.

Then the grav-generators failed one by one. The front third of the vessel split and fell to Earth where it crushed more than a hundred enemy troops. The rear section crumbled as the structural stress became too much even for the SteelPlus spine of the ship.

Eventually all power—even the self-contained back up units on the generators themselves—failed. The pieces fell and joined the mountain of debris between the pass through the Rockies and what remained of Wetmore, Colorado.

The Order’s soldiers—including the remaining, giant Leviathan—marched tentatively from the cover of the mountains and into the open. No enemy forces remained to oppose them.

The race for the Mississippi began.

2. Something Blue

Nina stared across the tiny bar into a wide mirror mounted above rows of liquor bottles. She saw a mystery there. A mystery hiding behind her blue eyes.