Gathering of the Titans: The Tol Chronicles Book 2 (24 page)

Some had grown armor plating; some sported chemical or pyrotechnic projectile weapons. Others had unusual strength or extreme resistance to magical damage. A few were even able to levitate or cling to walls like a climbing reptile. The sentient deepdrakes were not affected by the energy surge, except inasmuch as they lost any control over their feral brethren. Even Phaeon seemed negatively impacted and took refuge in the dark material plane.

Eventually the mutated deepdrakes could not be contained in the lower reaches any longer and began to spill out into the inhabited areas, bringing destruction and chaos with them. The combat was often one-on-one now, with the more aggressive monsters pushing harder and faster than the others. The civil guard was called out, but as a newly-formed unit with little actual combat experience they were minimally effective. Finally the ruling council felt it necessary to ask the government of Tragacanth for formal assistance.

“High priority diplomatic dispatch from the titans, Your Majesty,” explained Boogla, holding a sheaf of parchment in her hands. “It seems they are being overrun by deepdrakes. Mutated ones, at that. They request mobilization of the regional security forces.”

“Is it really so bad that thirty thousand plus titans can’t handle it?” Aspet scratched his chin. “Those must be some vicious deepdrakes.”

“They are formally requesting assistance, Your Majesty. What are your orders?”

“What does my Consort and Magineer Liaison think?”

“I think that if we don’t send them some troops, we’ll be risking both another meltdown in Hellehoell and a definite cooling of the relations between us and the ruling caste of the titans.”

“Very well, I do so order it. Muster the 3rd Civil Defense Brigade in Fenurian and then march them to Hellehoell, there to be temporarily under the directive advisement of the titan Ruling Council for the duration of the crisis. Tell Colonel Goile to be respectful but exercise his tactical control firmly and at all times. We will help the titans in their time of need, but we will not meld with them.”

“By your command, Majesty.”

“I have another command.”

Boogla giggled. “Let me transmit this directive first. I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Affairs of State should not be delayed. Hurry back.”

Colonel Tun Goile was a career soldier who had served in a variety of capacities in the Tragacanthan military, both on land and at sea. He had been in his current command, the 3rd Civil Defense Brigade, for only a few months. Previously he had served as the executive officer to the commander of Ft. Ullglava and as Northeast Commodore in the Tragacanthan Coastal Patrol. He could trace his ancestry in unbroken line back to the first settlers of Esmia, four thousand years ago. His family had been proud members of the esteemed Society of Firsters since its inception more than a millennium prior.

His social pretensions made Goile a bit of a prima donna, but he kept it under control most of the time. The only time it manifested itself was when he was forced to deal as an equal with persons he felt were clearly beneath him in the social hierarchy. As commander those situations were mercifully rare.

He had, in the course of his military career, encountered myriad enemies, from pirates on the high seas to insane militants who wanted to impose Scarya Law—a bizarre set of edicts that basically took away all rights from people who refused to acknowledge publically that the Supreme Being was an enormous nocturnal three-legged marsupial named
Tata
—in the Paradiddle Islands. As a result, he felt fairly confident that this latest menace would prove no great challenge.

The entire brigade was currently staffed at 3,200 soldiers, but of course it wasn’t going to require that amount of strength for this simple suppression action. As far as he could tell they were talking about wildlife control, more than anything else. He was a little insulted that he’d been called out by the king to serve as what amounted to an animal exterminator, but orders were orders.

When the first wave, his command pram and seven drays full of soldiers from the 16th Regiment, 3rd Brigade, pulled up to Hellehoell, Col. Goile was gritting his teeth in preparation for being placed under ‘directive advisement.’ He hated oversight by non- soldiers; they invariably did not understand military objectives and wanted things to run in ways contrary to the stated mission. He was pleasantly surprised, then, when the ruling council leader came out to meet him and turned full control of the situation over to him. The titan was plainly frightened and just wanted the problem solved by the most expeditious means possible.

Emboldened by this development, Goile took charge and began to deploy reconnaissance units to assess the tactical situation. He sent Selpla and her team back to Goblinopolis on the next carriage for their own protection, despite Selpla’s protestations. “This is no place for civilians,” he said to her, “This is a war zone.”

The titans reported that only the uppermost level was safe; below that the mutated deepdrakes were running rampant. The descriptions he was getting of the size and capabilities of the deepdrakes were difficult to take seriously, so he sent photographic units in as part of the recon effort.

The first recon unit was ambushed and barely made it out sans casualties. They got only blurry pictures of fearsome creatures that were much larger and more vicious than the deepdrakes in Goile’s cryptozoology reference manual. The colonel realized quickly that he was dealing with a more significant foe that he’d anticipated. He pulled the recon units back and ordered the fire teams to assemble.

Once he had four full strike teams and a reserve in place, Goile ordered them inserted but to advance no further than one kilometer without further orders. There would be two center units and one on each flank; the reserve would remain at center rear unless needed. They were equipped with high-power disruptor rifles, flame- throwers, and stunglobe launchers. The center units were under the command of Lieutenants Jawata and Soturi, both outstanding young officers only recently graduated from the Royal Military Academy. The expeditionary fire team force itself was commanded by Captain Diqlosse, who preferred to lead from the rear. “I can get a broader view of the battle front from there,” he was fond of explaining. The argument would be more convincing were he not usually behind a huge heavily-armored rolling pavise.

The deepdrakes were on the move as the fire teams inserted. They appeared intent on making it to the surface, in contrast to their non-mutated brethren who preferred underground lairs. They were huge—even larger than the sentient companions to Phaeon Timeskin—and their teeth and claws seemed made of some hardened metal rather than enamel and keratin. The creatures were, in addition, fearless and insanely aggressive.

The first contact came when strike team center right was attacked by a pair of deepdrakes that appeared suddenly over a small rise in the footpath. The monsters were on them in a heartbeat, slashing and biting with great effect. Four soldiers were mutilated almost immediately, before anyone could squeeze off a shot. The disruptors offered little deterrent. Flame throwers were somewhat more effective, but the collateral damage in terms of ‘friendly fire’ was unacceptably high at close quarters. The stunglobes were equally impractical here. They set their disruptors on full power and concentrated on first disabling the creatures, then finishing them off with bayonets.

Once the first two deepdrakes were finally dead, Captain Diqlosse gave the order to collect casualties and withdraw. They had suffered three fatalities and four wounded. The kill ratio was unacceptably low; they needed to change tactics. Colonel Goile did not take the encounter well. He lined his troops up and dressed them down for ten fist-palming minutes, pointing to the sheet- covered litters where the casualties lay with a rage-quivering finger.

The regroup effort was abbreviated, however, because the deepdrakes finally made it to the surface and began to spill out over the countryside. Goile was under strict orders to contain them to titan lands. He sent an entire regiment after the escapees and planted another at the entrance to prevent any further monsters from exiting alive.

Fifteen hundred soldiers seems like a lot of firepower, but when two hundred five meter long flesh-rending monstrosities suddenly bubble up out of a huge hole in the ground, that perception is fluid. Not only were the mutant deepdrakes huge and well-armed, they were deceptively quick. Worse, they could tear a soldier completely in half with one bite. Goile lost a dozen troops before he could devise an effective counter-attack.

He assigned squads of five to each monster. Two aimed for the eyes, two went for the hind legs to limit mobility, and the last concentrated on severing or severely damaging the spinal cord. Once the beast was down, all five charged with elongated electrified leaf-tip bayonets and stabbed until it stopped moving. It was lethal, blood-soaking work.

At first the deepdrakes were emerging from the city entrance as singles or pairs; they were not too terribly difficult to dispatch like this. After the first twenty or so had been taken out, there was a sudden surge as they began to escape in larger, more difficult to handle groups of four and five. Groile and Diqlosse adopted hammer and anvil tactics to trap and slaughter them, but occasionally one dodged the columns and had to be hunted down individually.

As the day wore on, the seemingly never-ending stream of mutated deepdrakes finally began to thin out. The soldiers were wearing down by now as well, as the area within a hundred meters of the entrance was waist-high in gore and mutilated bodies from both sides of the conflict. They were so closely intermingled that in places it was impossible to tell whose remains you were looking at. According to the recon sergeant, only three of the monstrosities had escaped into the countryside.

Col. Goile ordered five strike teams with two all-terrain prams each to fan out and eliminate the escapees. Failure was not an option. They had highly-trained predator avians with them to act as aerial scouts. For several hours they combed the area in ever- widening circles, searching for the fugitive deepdrakes. When one was found, all forces in that sector—usually two strike teams— converged on it. Even with two fully-equipped combat units the battles were quite bloody, protracted, and casualty-laden.

When at last the final mutant drake lay twitching in its death- throes on the blood-saturated ground, the strike teams conveyed their wounded and deceased back to Col. Goile’s field headquarters. The hardened battle veteran shook his head in dismay at the extensive casualty list. They had accomplished their mission, but at a terrible price. Worse, they had no guarantee that there weren’t more deepdrakes waiting far down in the labyrinthine spaces beneath Hellehoell.

When what was left of the 3rd Brigade mustered in front of the entrance to the titan cities, Tartag and a small delegation came out to express their sincere gratitude to Col. Goile for the sacrifices his people had made on behalf of the titans. Goile wasn’t having any of it. He just turned his back on the titan emissary and drove away. Tartag restrained his impulse toward anger, reminding himself that Goile had just lost dozens of troops and was in no mood to be sociable, or even, apparently, to exhibit basic courtesy. The colonel no doubt blamed the titans for releasing the monsters in the first place, and perhaps he had a point there. Tartag decided therefore not to lodge an official complaint against Goile’s behavior.

Goile attended each and every memorial service for his fallen troops; he had done so for his entire career as an officer. He was angry at the titans, as Tartag had guessed. He regarded them as foreigners who had moved into Tragacanth uninvited and irresponsibly released a terrible plague that his soldiers had died to stamp out. There were several dozen sets of grieving relatives and friends because the titans had been careless, in his view. Colonel Goile was the consummate professional soldier: an officer who followed orders to the letter.

But he did not forget, nor did he forgive.

in which an ancient being relocates while Tol receives a secret mission

Phaeon was sorely troubled by the reports of deepdrakes taking on new forms and turning feral. They were of his making, after all, and he had not intended for them to mutate. Biology, he concluded, was easy; it was magic which added that layer of uncertainty and difficulty to creation. He dispatched the sentients to round up as many as possible and drive them into the lower caves where they could be contained. There he would root out and destroy any mutants.

In the end perhaps three hundred total mutants escaped the roundup and spilled out onto the surface, but the sentient deepdrakes managed to corral and imprison several thousand of their mutated brethren far below. After Phaeon had eliminated them—or in the case of drakes whose mutation process had stalled, reversed it and brought them back to their original condition— there were fewer than a hundred wild deepdrakes remaining, not counting the handful of sentients, who were not affected by the runaway mutations.

Phaeon was saddened by this development, but he decided not to create any further creatures here. He had not taken into account the potential for disastrous unforeseen consequences on a planet embedded in the dark energetic continuum. Perhaps he would do well simply to move on to another world, one far from magic entanglements. He sighed and looked around him.

“Come, Fontaric. Gather your brethren. It is time we migrated to a new home.”

“Shall I assemble also the wild drakes?”

“We shall leave them here to live or die in this, their native world, and create a new race when we are settled on the next.”

“Will they survive without us?”

“Yes. I have given them the skill and the means to do so. While they will no longer regenerate, there is abundant food for them in the lower caves, as there exist multiple colonies of the rodents on which they thrive scattered all around the perimeter of their lair. I have seen to it that the members of these prey colonies are fecund and well-supplied with fodder for at least the next few centums.”