Prophet and the Blood March (Prophet of ConFree) (48 page)

"Arie, you all right?" I asked on the net.

"All set, all set," he replied. "Be careful, Prophet."

"Let them get a little closer," Doggie whispered.

Wait for the command, Willow
, I telepathed. I was twitching with tension.

Black Angel will tell me
, he replied.

"Saint Michael, grant us victory!" Bees called out.

"Kill
me
, will you?" Ice growled softly. "Surprise – I'm back from the dead! And now I'm going to kill you. All of you!"

"Calm down, calm down," the Prof urged us. "Once you fire, continue firing until there is no further movement from the target."

Saka was mumbling to himself. I knew he was praying to Saka the Invincible and to a host of dead Assidic gods.

"Hey hey, let's dance. Come here, darlin', I got something for you." It was Smiley, chanting a popular love song, poised behind that horrific chainlink tacstar.

"All right, they've been alive long enough," Scout said. "Give us the word, Doggie. Give us the word." The D's were almost on us.

"Fire," Doggie said. We fired.

The world erupted before us, and it was as if we had just given birth to a new sun. Tacstars and lightning bolts and about a million deadly little canister darts blasted the target to smithereens, lighting up the entire zone and it sounded like an asteroid had just hit the planet and that titanic noise continued and did not stop. I was firing lightning bolts with insane glee – I felt like a god. Willow was doing the same and Smiley was spraying auto tactars over the target without pause.

"Keep firing, Delta!" I could barely hear him but didn't need Doggie's urging. These were the creatures that had killed Ice and Saka. I was going to keep firing until every last one of those ugly abortions was blasted to atoms.

"Advance, Delta!" Sure, I had expected that. Rolling shock – their worst nightmare. Not only were we annihilating them with our firepower, now we were attacking, coming right at them. Run you rats, run or die! I leaped to my feet and charged forward, still firing auto lightning. I was marching right into a nuclear holocaust – it had shot up to the cavern roof and mushroom clouds were swirling around over our heads.

"We're receiving fire! Xmax and laser. No plasma so far." Even as Dolly spoke, a burst of plasma shot towards us from the holocaust. At least one Demon had a functioning plasma stream. I targeted it as the burst hit us, a swirling blast of plasma hot as a sun, but then the source ceased firing and the plasma burnt itself out.

"Canister darts!' Doggie ordered. "Take down the shielding, then xmax for the armor. Smiley, Prophet, Willow keep blasting away, don’t stop for an instant!" We continued. We were cautiously approaching the burning holocaust, still hosing it down. As we entered the target zone we found ourselves walking through a glowing junkyard of shredded Demon armor and weaponry. The bodies were being consumed by the horrific heat which turned our A-suits white hot. The continuing impact of our lightning bolts and tacstars had almost deafened me despite Honey's best efforts to protect my hearing, but I could also hear the evil buzzing and pinging of the millions of deadly darts that were bringing down the D's shielding, and the unending eruptions of xmax as Delta went after the armor on any surviving Demons.

"Keep moving, Delta! Walk right through them. Canister darts and auto x. Leave no survivors!" We didn't need any urging. There was movement ahead of us. I sprayed lightning bolts wildly and the movement ceased. Honey was warning me about something at max volume, but I couldn't hear her. X was falling down around us, a barrage of xmax. Tacstars fell just behind us, blasting white hot, the concussion almost knocking me down.

"Under fire from tacstars," Honey advised. "Darks ahead, six Darks, shielded, armored, now firing lightning." The bolts suddenly erupted all round us, shattering my ears.

"Advance, target those Darks, Smiley, Prophet, Willow, blast 'em!" Doggie ordered. Honey sorted out the targets for me. I carefully aimed and let loose with a mighty barrage of lightning. I stood there as calmly as if I were back on the range at Delta Hqs. I observed with satisfaction as my bolts impacted right on the Darks. Then Smiley's tacstars flashed to life, and Willow's lightning bolts hit them as well. Die, you bastards!

"All right, they're scattering. Delta, resume the advance toward our target! Recon attack! It's not far now!"

We marched down Track 932, invisible to our foes, blasting anything that moved. There was plenty of traffic on that route, mostly Darks and Demons on foot and sometimes workers in biosuits who were trying to escape, possibly because the caverns were losing pressure quickly. We killed everyone we came across, as quickly as we could. We left a grisly trail of corpses. Pretty soon armed and unarmed probes and tacstar missiles and lots of auto-x was following us along the road. Only the Darks could see us, and only if they were close enough, but we didn't let them get close enough before we killed them. So our cloaking was working just fine and the enemy only knew that something evil was coming at them along Track 932, even though they were not certain exactly what it was, or where it was.

Δ

"Darks. Look at that," Doggie said. We were scattered along the road, hidden in the deepest dark, but totally alert. It was momentarily quiet. A still, sinister pause. A few far-off spotlights flickered and faded. "Demons too! A whole swarm of them. They're at the crossroads. Looks like they're digging in." The Dark troopers and their Demon slaves were rushing around frantically, I noted from the eyemote view on my faceplate. Their camfaxed cloaks flapped behind them as they rushed to and fro.

"That's our fortress," Scout said. The Darks were setting up outside a large multi-storied building that certainly had a terrific view of the surroundings. That was our target – take and hold! I saw some Darks entering the main door.

"Airtank!" Arie said. Oh no! The airtank floated over the enemy troopers like a guardian shark, leisurely drifting around the building, apparently in no hurry.

"That's so stupid!" I said in astonishment. "Why would anybody have an airtank way down here? What the hell are they afraid of?"

"Don't give it a thought, Prophet," Smiley said. "My chainlink was specifically designed to bust airtanks. I can erase that bucket of bolts in an instant, no sweat at all."

"They’re setting up to stop us. They're waiting for us," Doggie said. "They heavily outnumber us, and they're heavily armed. Look at all those portable tacstar launchers. Eyemote, enemy count please."

"I count forty-two Darks and twenty-four Demons. Likely it's a combined task force – probably five Dark squads and four Demon squads, with portable artillery and an airtank."

"Attacking head-on will be suicide," Doggie said. "Can't do it."

"So what do we do?" I asked.

"Prof, private please," Doggie said.

They talked for awhile on private, then Doggie returned to the squad net.

"Safeties on," he said. We complied. "All right, here's what we do. We're going for a little walk. I want total silence. No shooting, even if we're fired on. The Prof and I have decided to give our cloaking a little field test. Single column. Maintain your distance. Follow me."

We headed away from the intersection, fading into the massive industrial park that was all around us, walking in pitch darkness past mountains of military supplies with no time to inspect them. Dolly had sketched out a projected path for us. I followed it on my tacmap to see where it led. At first it meandered roughly northwest past scores of huge industrial buildings that were now deserted and silent. Then our path looped around to head west and southwest, then almost directly south, then a sharp turn to head east – and intersect with Track 932. There Dolly's path stopped. Track 932! I followed 932 northeast on the map to the intersection, trembling in excitement. There it was! We were going to hit them from the rear! They were all set up to block us as we headed along 932 out of the northeast. But we'd be attacking them in the rear, from the southwest. Excellent!

It wasn't easy getting there. We proceeded into the dark very carefully. It was nice not having anyone actively trying to kill us, so we were highly motivated to watch our steps. Once we spotted a small group of Darks ahead so we had to make a wide circle around them. Once we came across some biosuited humans who were desperately trying to get a little minecar operating. They never noticed us.

"It's a walk in the park, kiddies," Scout said confidently. "Enjoy it!" There was some sporadic firing off in the distance, but nothing major.

"Looks like they lost us," Arie said.

Blackie was cloaked too so he was just as invisible as the rest of us. He padded along beside Doggie, evidently enjoying the walk.

"Alert! Demons!" They were coming right at us, trotting along the narrow walkway between two rows of building blocks that we had been using as an avenue of approach.

"Against the walls! No movement!" Doggie ordered. There was no place else to go.

It looked like a whole squad of Demons in armor, shielding activated, glowing green in the dark, hauling plasma battle weapons.

"D's safeties are off," Dolly informed us calmly. I went to one knee with my Battlestorm pointed right at the D's. The rest of Delta was strung out along the walkway, frozen against the walls. Honey showed them to me as outlines, but to the Demons they would be invisible – with luck. Willow was wrapped in lizard camfax like some kind of bizarre surprise birthday present – to be opened at your peril.

The Demons jogged past us, crackling green force fields, dirty dark armor, dark green faceplates, black plasma battle rifles. Filthy beasts – I could almost smell them. Their A-suits were full of slimy little parasite worms that attached themselves to the D's, and the symbiosis was so strong that the D's would perish without the worms and the worms would die without the D's. I knew all about these creatures. I had worked with them closely, me and the Prof.

They passed us by, continuing their mad march into the dark. I felt no fear for them – only hatred, and contempt.

"All right, boys and girls, that was fun, no? Let's resume our walk," the Prof said.

Δ

Once we reached Track 932 again, we had to proceed with even more caution. The Darks had left Demon sentries scattered in pairs along the route, maybe to act as a rear guard or maybe just as a routine precaution. Lucky for us the Demons could not defeat our cloaking so we were able to creep our way around their positions without incident and proceed to the next sentry post. We did that several times before we came into sight of the target again – a ghostly tall building plunged in darkness, right at that strategic crossroads, surrounded with Darks and Demons that glowed green in my darksight. The airtank was parked and motionless. We took attack positions along both sides of the road.

"Smiley, you will take out the airtank first with chainlink tacstar, then hose down the troops," Doggie said. "Prophet and Willow, you will fire auto lightning at all Darks and Demons. You will continue firing until there is no further movement. The rest of you, fire canister to penetrate the enemy shielding, then xmax and laser to penetrate their armor. If it's Darks, remember what Prophet said about keeping the focus steady. Hold fire until I give the word. I'll first fire ECP to counter the Demon's ability to launch plasma. Then I'll order you all to open up. Once things look right I'll order an advance – be ready for that. And once you start moving, keep moving. They may or may not be able to see you, but they'll see where the fire is coming from. Our objective is to seize and hold that building, but first we have to kill everybody who’s there. Any questions? Good!"

"Alert! Dark squad approaching on foot!" Damn it! They were coming from the southwest, from our rear, trotting along the road headed for the intersection where the Darks were setting up. And we were between them and their destination. Darks! If they got much closer they could detect us!

"Starburst!" Doggie ordered. "Get away from the road, out of the detection radius, your tacmods will guide you. Set up there and be prepped to return to our attack positions after they pass. Now!" We starburst, as carefully as possible, taking care not to disturb anything. I settled down just out of range and watched the Darks jogging past, lightning rifles at port arms, camfax capes flapping behind them. Hopefully, they would all be dead shortly. And I realized that we, also, might be dead in the same action. But I was dead already, I reminded myself. So it didn't matter, did it?

Δ

As the Dark squad neared the intersection, we re-formed behind them and Doggie fired a couple of ECP rounds. Those were soundless so the Demons were unaware that the plasma function on their battle rifle weapons was now non-functional. I had a good position in a ditch by the side of the road. I raised the Battlestorm's stock to my shoulder. A warm wave flowed through my body. All right, all right, be still, heart. We're all set. This is for Delta, for Honeyhair, for everyone I love.

"Fire," Doggie ordered. I touched the trigger with a lover's gentle caress.

The shock of our initial barrage ripped a searing hole in reality and blasted to atoms most everything that was within the target area. Smiley's chainlink tacstars disintegrated the airtank to sparkling fragments in a microfrac, producing a thunderous burst of crackling hissing tracers and as the blinding micronukes whipped towards the cavern roof, Willow and I sprayed the entire area with auto lightning and the bolts burst and cracked and pulsed and shredded everything in a horrific dancing electric blue sphere that gave no sign of ever ending. Then the xmax hit – hundreds of x bursts, auto-x to end the world, deafening and final, and a faint buzz that you could feel more than hear, like a million crazed killer bees, canister darts flying in with the x to take down Dark and Demon shielding. And then laser tracks suddenly appeared, winking and slicing through the shocking light show, just in case anything was still left alive. The squad of marching Darks disappeared, blown all to hell from behind. The target area was erupting like a super-volcano and we couldn't see a thing but we did not stop firing. I did not believe anyone could still be alive over there but we were going to ensure it.