The St. Claire Square mall included a food court. Not much had changed between pre- and post-Armageddon in that respect. On that particular evening as a steady rain drummed against the skylights, Jon Brewer sat at a long table in that big room with a cup of coffee and a grilled chicken sandwich.
Well, at least it tastes like chicken.
Only a few lights shined in the place, creating spaces of dark and spaces of light illuminating aged counter tops here, marble floors there. At a distant table a trio of soldiers-two men and a woman-shared a midnight breakfast. At another table a solitary officer from an armored division paged through manuals in an attempt to solve a mechanical problem or another; probably seeking a way to make one kind of part that was available substitute for another kind of part that was not.
As for Jon Brewer, he reviewed readiness reports. Like much of his army, those reports suffered from sloppiness to a greater extent than typical just a few months ago. Another sign of his military machine-one he fostered since its inception in the ashes of Armageddon-descending into the chaos of final defeat.
Then again that analogy held true throughout ‘The Empire’ as things unraveled. In the eleven years since the invasion, humanity in North America had rebuilt itself into clusters of civilization surrounded by dangerous wilderness with that wilderness often times including major cities overrun by a new ecosystem of predators and prey: concrete jungles in a most literal sense.
Food production, industry, education, military training, and an entirely new economy-similar to but still distinct from the old world-grew into place. Man adapted.
Post-Armageddon Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Iowa may have only been populated by a few thousand settlers, but those settlers harvested enough crops to feed half of the nearly four million persons living and surviving in North America. Stocks would soon run low and starvation would become a serious concern as more and more refugees joined the larger enclaves in the east.
Upon Trevor’s return last year, he had broken the leadership of the burgeoning labor unions due to their involvement with the assassination attempt. This created difficulties in manufacturing goods and services. Shortages of clothing, machine parts, and electronics not only affected the civilian population but could be felt on the battlefield as evident by a dearth of hygiene and medical supplies.
Education? The schools had emptied either by order from local governors or due to a lack of students. Teenagers joined Jon Brewer’s army or the militias springing to life on a community by community basis. Kids as young as eight trained in firearms use in anticipation of a last stand.
Military training? The grooming of new officers came to a halt; every cadet became active-duty either on the front lines or in support roles or taking over garrison duties in far flung regions so as to free veteran troops for combating The Order.
Overall the economy stretched and broke. Continental dollars remained the official currency but Jon knew barter had come back in style. Indeed, growing numbers of people bartered for survival equipment then head for the hills or islands or the same bunkers they had occupied eleven years earlier when the monsters first arrived.
Then again-as he had witnessed on the Poplar Street Bridge-some sought a more permanent, personal end to the nightmare.
He tried to clear his mind. He needed to dice his concerns into bite-sized pieces so as not to choke on the whole.
While the distant click and clack of footsteps offered constant companionship to the darkness of midnight in the mall, a set of more determined clicks and clacks caught Brewer’s attention as they marched to his table.
He glanced away from the readiness reports and saw a slender black man. The guy walked with the type of military precision that spoke of his pre-Armageddon service.
Jon immediately recognized Carl Dunston, one of the original band of military survivors who had found the estate with Tom Prescott back in the first year.
Dunston saluted. Jon returned the courtesy with much less vigor; perhaps his own concession to the coming chaos.
“How was the flying out there tonight, Carl? Weather seems a bit iffy.”
“Not so bad, General. Just a little rain. Takes more than that to ground an Eagle.”
Dunston-an army pilot by trade-had been one of the first graduates from Trevor Stone’s personal ‘how to fly a captured alien shuttle’ course.
“What have you got there?” Jon referenced the envelope tucked under Dunston’s arm.
Carl removed the envelope, undid the clasp, and handed it to Jon. General Brewer pulled out a series of photographs-most aerial and many taken with infrared equipment-as well as a trio of pages stapled together.
“Intelligence summary, sir. Data comes from flybys this afternoon and earlier tonight.”
Jon skipped the photos and paged to the final paragraph of the typed report.
He read aloud, “In summary, Battle Damage Assessments indicate the enemy suffered substantial losses to core ground units including the elimination of one Leviathan. Furthermore, precision strikes by air combat group Dasher on secondary targets resulted in a thirty-five percent reduction in munitions production as well as a forty-five percent reduction in farming facilities. Intelligence estimates a minimum of three days will be required for the opposing force to affect repairs to munitions production and a minimum of seven days to re-constitute destroyed and damaged farms with subsequent crop yields anticipated no sooner than June 22 ^ nd.”
Jon allowed the hint of a smile to tug at the corner of his lips.
“At this time, enemy resources are focused on re-constituting air defenses in preparation for additional aerial incursions. Reconnaissance indicates an increase in AA batteries by a magnitude of three compared to pre-strike levels.”
“Jesus,” Dunston muttered. “We won’t be able to get near them again with that kind of flak.” The pilot thought about that for a moment and conceded, “Then again, we only got a handful of planes left, anyway.”
Jon pulled his eyes away from the report and agreed with the caveat, “True, but Voggoth doesn’t know that. Point is, with his farms beat up this bad that means every defensive Spook he builds is one less Sentry or Chariot or other ground weapon he can use to hit us on the Mississippi.”
The general continued reading and found that, like most intelligence reports these days, this one had offered the good news first as if apologizing in advance for the bad.
“Auxiliary enemy forces are now moving to the muster zone at Excelsior Springs to compensate for reduced farming capacity and lost core units. These auxiliary units are typically employed for mop-up or terror operations and hence have a lower offensive capability. However, observations suggest the entirety of such auxiliary forces west of the Mississippi are redeploying to Excelsior Springs. An estimate of numerical strength at this time would prove inaccurate but military planners should expect the enemy force to be similar to pre-Operation Baseplate numbers within 7 to 14 days.”
Jon let the report drop.
Dunston asked, “What do you think all that will end up meaning, General?”
Jon eased in his chair and relaxed with the feeling of a death row inmate earning a stay of execution albeit at the expense of a final, hopeless appeal. The day of reckoning would still come, but Operation Baseplate purchased more of the valuable commodity known as time.
“It means we bought ourselves a week. Maybe two. The Geryons have stopped moving south and the Centurians have stopped marching north. Wherever the Chaktaw are, they’ve stopped marching too, I’ll bet. They won’t hit us until Voggoth hits us.”
“But what does that mean for us?”
“More time to prepare,” although Jon knew that also meant more time for his demoralized army to disintegrate from fighting machine to rabble. “It also means we’re going to face more of the little guys like Roachbots, Mutants, and monsters and less of Voggoth’s heavy stuff when he does come knocking on the Mississippi.”
Jon knew those words sounded encouraging, as long as Dunston had not really examined the Intel photos. The volume of Wraiths, Mutants, mutated Feranites, and Roachbots leaving their raiding territories to join the main army was alarming, to say the least. Once they assembled they would become an army nearly as numerous as the units they replaced, albeit not quite as well-honed for large-scale battle. Yet as long as the Leviathans figured into the equation Jon guessed that made little difference.
“Do we have a fighting chance now, sir?”
Jon thought not about the unstoppable onslaught destined to smash into the Mississippi, but about Trevor and his son somewhere on the other side of the world and answered, “Yes.”
Like a Frisbee, the device spun through the dark corridors of the Sysco complex. On top of the spinning disk rested a box of wires and veins sporting two eye-like lights surveying the space below.
The Bishop saw what the flying drone saw via a display set in a wall of green paste and supported by metallic ribs that bent gently with the domed shape of the chamber. That display more resembled the warped mirrors of a fun house than a video screen but the picture came through clear enough, causing a flicker of light through the wide round room.
The surveillance drone relayed images of Voggoth’s slaughtered children: a monk in a corner near an open door; two of his expert Commandos reduced to sparking heaps behind an overturned desk in a supervisor’s office-turned-ambush point.
But no sign of their attacker.
The body of a young man who had been turned into a Missionary hovered at the Bishop’s side and listened as his master extrapolated from the trail of bodies, “She is moving toward the fuel depot. Toward me.”
“I shall send our forces to intercept.”
“Which forces are those?”
The Missionary man glanced toward the skin-like door leading away from the Bishop’s refuge. Outside, in a wide corridor and surrounding office-space, waited some 100 monks and a pair of the brutish Ogres.
“No,” the Bishop read the Missionary’s intention. “We transferred the bulk of the garrison to Excelsior Springs. They are all that remains to guard this sanctuary,” by that, the Bishop most certainly meant himself. “You will go, personally, and use the tools with which Voggoth has blessed you. Intercept her at the entrance to the depot.”
The Missionary man hesitated.
The Bishop glared in disdain for what remained of the human instinct for self-preservation inside Voggoth’s vessel. The Missionary relented and retreated from the room.
At one time the warehouse housed frozen foods in a freezer hundreds of feet long and thirty yards wide. In those days a massive cooling system maintained a frigid temperature to keep everything from chicken tenders sticks to ice cream bars in stasis while waiting to be shipped across the Midwest to restaurants and cafeterias.
That time had long past, but The Order found new use for the gigantic freezer, albeit with a temperature much warmer and humid than before.
Growths of dark green and brown covered the concrete floor in something akin to a shaggy carpet and continued up the tall walls on either side in a kind of otherworldly ivy. A handful of luminous bulbs sprouted from buds mixed in with the ivy creating starlight specks from the upper reaches of the terraformed walls.
The young Missionary man walked along the wide, open, and dimly lit warehouse aware the enemy might lurk in one shadow or another. And while he did not fear death, he did fear the wrath of Voggoth. Of course fear was an emotion useless to the machinations of The Order except when utilized as a weapon. Inside the converts to Voggoth’s legions, that remaining trace of humanity served as a detestable obstacle to purity.
Along the walls of the frozen foods section of Sysco-Olathe stood a dozen vats twenty feet high constructed by Voggoth’s engineers. The bloated containers pulsed and gurgled with the occasional hiss of a what might be considered steam.
Thick hoses traveled from the top of each vat into the ceiling high overhead, then across that roof where they met at a solitary sphere. From there fuel traveled topside for collection by passing Chariots.
Chunks of charcoal gelatin surrounded the base of each vat, spilling out on the otherwise flat and vacant center of the huge chamber.
The Missionary man passed the array with his eyes darting from side to side, waiting for the predator to pounce.
She did not. Instead, Voggoth’s convert reached the southern opening of the gigantic freezer. A particularly thick membrane dotted with tiny purple and red veins withdrew and he stepped into a wide passage running east to west in front of the bulkhead.
The thing that had once been human pulled two small balls from the pockets of his black jacket and dropped them to the floor. The balls expanded as if filling with gas until reaching the size of a beach ball. Then the spindly legs of Spider Sentries poked out from the spheres, followed by the sharp pointed nose of their jagged skewers and the rows of barrels across their ungodly faces.
The Missionary-flanked by the Spider Sentries-stood and waited. His eyes ran east up the hall. Doors lined the corridor there, some open and leading to dark passages; others closed tight, all tainted by the spread of sickly ivy.
His eyes ran west to a t-section where a garage door stood shut and corridors led off to other parts of the complex. No movement there, either.
A noise grabbed his attention; a sliding noise. Something scurried along the concrete floor directly for his feet.
The Missionary jumped back a step, bumping into the heavy membrane protecting access to the depot. His eyes darted to the floor in front of him where he saw some kind of backpack; something thrown across the floor at his position.
The Missionary reacted faster than the Spider Sentries. In a moment’s time he re-traced the flight of the backpack to one of the dark doorways to the east. His new eyes-accustomed to the dim lighting of Voggoth’s den-saw the silhouette of the enemy stooped low by one of those doors.
He raised his arm to command the sentries to assault.
The detpack at his feet exploded.
A volcano of concrete erupted form the floor and radiated outward turning the Missionary into a blob of gore and ripping the legs off the Spider Sentries. Their ball-shaped heads flew away and shredded apart in layers like peeled onions. Their charred remains came to rest dozens of feet away from the blast zone.
Most important to Nina, the explosion tore a hole in the bulkhead.
With her Colt M4 pointed ahead, she hurried across the hall, stepped carefully around the blob of gore on the floor, and moved into the vast darkness of the old freezer chamber.
There she met the constant, rhythmic glug and hiss of the vats converting raw nutrients into fuel. A whining noise drew her attention from the vats lining the chamber to something overhead. There she saw two eye-like lights fixed to a spinning disk.
She took aim with her rifle and fired. The drone zigzagged to avoid the shots and circled high into the darkened rafters.
Nina tried to track its movements, but a more immediate concern grabbed her attention: a chorus of electronic hums from the far side of the chamber. She watched as pinpricks of yellow formed over there like a cloud of angry gnats. That cloud turned into a storm streaming across the open space at her, fast and then faster; loud and then louder.
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.
“This is who you are, Captain Forest,” the Bishop’s voice spoke from alongside the monitors. “Rather impressive, actually.”
The Nina on the mountainside pulled a small device just as Trevor turned to address her. After an electrical flash Trevor Stone doubled-over onto the grass and rocks of the mountain top clearing.
The image jumped. The camera now much closer; the Chariot had landed. Two monks moved from the craft toward Nina as she directed them at Trevor, who writhed in pain on the ground, unable to defend himself.
Again the video jumped, starting from the beginning in a continual loop of her sin.
“Such an accomplished soldier. Why you even used his affection for you as a weapon. You used it to isolate him. To deliver him unto Voggoth. I say again, impressive.”
The remaining video screen offered a darker image from a monitoring device mounted in the corner of a dimly lit chamber. She saw Trevor there, naked and bound by tentacle-like manacles. She saw herself approach him. And while no sound played, she could see by the anger in her eyes that she berated Trevor; scolded him. Taunted him, even. Much like the Bishop taunted her now.
“You are the greatest warrior of your people, Nina,” the words hissed from the Bishop’s mouth like a snake offering an apple. “Yet you served in his shadow. You won more victories than any other human, but never recognized. Your efforts go unappreciated.”
The image of Stone naked and weak taunted by Nina Forest looped as well. The screens continued to play over and over again. Her hand gripped the hilt of her short sword nearly to the point of crushing the metal. Her eyes left the fun-house-like screens and focused on the shadow of the fake-man standing along the wall.
“Voggoth has taken note of your abilities. There is no reason for you to perish alongside the rest of your species. It would be a shame for a creature of your talents to be thrown away.”
Nina did not speak. She listened. Certainly the Bishop knew she had come to kill, but it did not seem as if he spoke to save his existence. As slickly as he delivered his lines, the words felt rehearsed. A speech made to more than one group, no doubt.
She wondered how often the Bishop-or Voggoth itself-spoke such words. While the looping images tried to raise doubt and regret in her heart, the monster flattered her in an effort to turn Nina away from her kind.
Divide and conquer; but this time on a micro scale.
“Come, join with Voggoth. I promise the majority of your personality will remain intact but without doubt or regret or fear. With these weaknesses removed, you can be the greatest warrior the universe has known.”
Nina raised her sword.
The Bishop stepped forward. The light washed across him reflecting the crimson, squirming robe.
“I see. You may be under the misguided notion that my destruction will somehow benefit your people on the battlefield. This is not so. The army of Voggoth is replete with redundancy. It relies on no one piece. I offer for the last time a chance for you to survive and become something greater than your species could know; something immortal.”
Nina held steady. Her eyes ignored the looping images and focused entirely on her prey.
“Very well then.”
The Bishop held his arms aloft as if praying to something above. His head shook. Whatever lurked beneath the robe pushed against the cloth.
Nina had no intention of waiting. She lunged forward.
The Bishop’s skull opened like a blooming tulip. A thick appendage shot out from the sprout that had once been a neck. At the end of the four-foot-long tentacle hovered a shiny point of steel.
Nina plunged her sword toward its mid-section, but before her blade struck the robe tore open and a series of limbs unfolded like a fist of crab legs stretching. Behind those tendrils dwelled something hideous. Nina glimpsed it-only a glimpse-before a blast of air in the form of a raucous scream knocked her backwards, rolling away from the monster.
The real face of the Bishop lived there, in what might have once been the chest of a man: a jagged orifice like a broken sore lined with blood-red gums and metal shark’s-teeth; a trio of slits-eyes-around the circumference.
The six smaller tendrils grew foot-long blades of steel. The apparition walked on legs that bulged into stumps where feet should be. It lumbered toward her. The maw huffed and puffed as if catching its breath; each exhale sent a cloud of muck into the air so pungent in smell that it served as a weapon.
Nina gagged and stood, her sword ready; her resolve strong despite the hideous beast she confronted.
The Bishop’s stinger launched as if spring-loaded. Nina side stepped and sliced, eliciting a howl from the round mouth. The other six appendages attacked in a series of lunges, thrusts, and hacks.
She stepped back, left, then right, and countered with a sweep of her blade that cut through the spongy flesh. One of the limbs fell to the ground.
The Bishop staggered a step in retreat. The red eyes narrowed. The stinger darted forward just brushing her shoulder as she leapt away. The three nearest alien blades all stabbed at her; each hitting the floor one after another as she rolled off and collided with the wall of the dome.
Its stinger struck again. She held her sword with the support of both hands and stooped. The blade deflected the attack and the sharp point of the stinger imbedded in the chamber wall. Before the creature could free its primary weapon, Nina hacked it off at the halfway point.
The pain from the blow caused the Bishop to abandon another wave of thrusts by the five remaining smaller limbs. Instead, it made a deranged weeping noise and wobbled backwards.
Nina went on the offensive. The face of the Bishop screamed again. The gust of wind came out like cannon-fire. She stumbled off her feet and back into the chamber wall just below the lost stinger.
With regained the initiative, the beast wobbled forward in a bull-like charge. All five of its remaining weapons came down around her. Instead of retreating-instead of dodging-Nina moved forward, directly at the maw of the thing.
Alien blades crashed into the floor creating a cage of arms. Her face hovered inches away from the massive, smelly orifice; too close to raise the sword with any real force. Strands of slimy saliva dribbled from the gaping mouth. The odor caused a ripple of nausea from her stomach to her throat. The monster opened wide; the jagged jaws poised to bite.
The smell-the noise-the trapped feeling inside the cage of talons… Nina’s internal battle computer forged past the horror and acted on instinct. Before the beast could strike, she stuck the one remaining grenade on her utility belt directly into the mouth.
The Bishop reacted as if choking and hobbled in retreat, pulling free its legs and ignoring her while struggling to dislodge the small object jammed in what mimicked a throat.
Nina jumped up, bound two big steps, and dove to the floor covering her head.
The monster flailed its arms and hacked as if trying to scream out the obstruction. The detonation of the grenade ended its struggle. The five remaining legs scattered around the room; a blob of pink and red gore splashed into the ceiling; tiny fragments of bone and flesh sprayed across the dome.
The rain fell in a steady dribble, the only sound filling the space around the massive Sysco warehouse. Off, to the east, the first fingers of sun tried desperately to cut through the gloom as dawn approached.
Nina supported much of Vince’s weight as they limped away from the complex. She knew that when they finished here her first order of business would be finding motorized ground transportation because Vince would not be walking under his own power any time soon.
They reached the berm near the old housing development, the place from where Nina and Carl had spied the Bishop’s arrival last night.
Not only did dawn usher in a new day, but also a new dynamic in Nina’s life. The assault on the complex decimated the Dark Wolves. For years the four of them survived seemingly hopeless battles against Duass infantry, missions into the heart of the Hivvan Republic, an ambush by humans from another dimension, and too many other operations to count.
Yet it had been The Order who managed to inflict the most damage upon them. Fitting, Nina figured, since it had been The Order who had inflicted the most damage on her, personally.
She carefully lay Vince on the soaked black dirt along the ridge.
“We have to move, Nina,” he reminded. “They’ll be sending reinforcements.”
Nina agreed, of course, but the job was not yet complete. The mission had to be more than about her sense of revenge; it had to mean something to the greater effort.
She produced the remote detonator. Bly had warned that they lacked enough C-4 explosives to bring down the entire complex. He had been right. Fortunately, The Order provided the rest of the needed firepower in the form of their fuel depot.
Her eyes marked the buildings infected with Voggoth’s machinery one last time through the steady drizzle of a dark morning.
Silently she whispered, “Aaawoooo,” in a wolf’s cry to her fallen friends.
The explosion started at the center of the complex as a flash, followed by the roof rising as if poked from below, then collapsing. Licks of fire danced in frosted windows. Then came the alien fuel drums. As they burst Nina heard moans of pain from the burning alien equipment.
The secondary explosions knocked out walls sending beams and planks like missiles over top her head and into the dead houses of the residential neighborhood behind. The fire spread in an eagerness to consume the pestilence of The Order’s works. The flames glowed a fierce yellow cast over the highway, the tree line, the parking lots, and the silent homes of Olathe, Kansas.