Hell came to Quincy, Illinois. The inferno raged around Jon Brewer’s tenuous hard point along the banks of the Mississippi River. It raged in a hurricane of metal, fire, explosions, screams, and battle cries all beneath a tumultuous front of evil black clouds.
Glowing, lethal balls poured into the hardened city, dozens more with each passing minute. No structure remained standing along the waterfront; everything reduced to wreckage. Both bridges lay in the water, denied to the attackers.
Humanity’s defenders took refuge among the blasted buildings and toppled vehicles. Many of the prepared machine gun nests and gun emplacements remained, but just as many had been rooted out and destroyed by the invader’s barrage.
Mankind returned fire with fire. Hundreds of guns-large and small; mounted and dismounted-targeted the incoming projectiles with growing accuracy. Artillery shells fired from behind the lines managed to hit Voggoth’s army as it lurked more than a mile from shore waiting for the pummeling to pave the way.
Jon used his glasses to gauge the enemy. The tree line on the western dike that had obstructed his view of the opposing force just hours before was long-gone, replaced by a smoldering pile of toppled timber and hundreds of stubborn trunks of various sizes all warped and melted by the crossfire.
“Bragg, do you copy? Jimmy, come in!”
The constant roar of explosions and flying ordnance forced Jon to scream into his radio.
A barely audible voice responded, “Copy that. Give me targets.”
An exploding ball hit the pavement of Front Street in an eruption of concrete and dirt. The resulting fallout caused Jon to duck his head for the briefest of moments; even his determination must succumb to reflex.
The spotter Eagle had long ago been swept from the air, therefore target acquisition came from more conventional means.
“On your map,” Jon consulted his own as he estimated the target area, “in the fields west of CR-346. I count three batteries. The damn things are killing us.”
Captain Jimmy Bragg was a veteran of Five Armies, having been the first to spot the approaching Roachbots before the battle and then later his Apache had been knocked down by the Chaktaw at the same time as Nina’s.
As he had during that battle eleven years ago and throughout his career in Trevor’s army, Jimmy Bragg answered Jon’s call with a military stoicism that bellied the suicide mission he undertook: “Roger that, General. We’re heading in.”
Another explosion, this time to Jon’s right. An already-overturned Humvee disintegrated into pieces of metal and rubber. He watched with detached fascination as one tire spun high into the air. Several more glowing spheres whizzed past the tire with indifference just as it reached maximum height. It seemed to pause there before deciding to accept the invitation of gravity.
At that moment a new roar rumbled across the battlefield: a trio of Apache helicopters flying ungodly low and roaring over his head like thunder incarnate. He saw the determined pilots-dead men already-grimly guiding their birds of prey out and over the river. They banked hard south, flying over a pair of capsized barges. The undercarriages of the helicopters nearly skimmed the water. Then, at the right moment, they swerved west again, rose above the riverbank, and launched Hellfire missiles. The contrails from the rockets gave the impression of warheads traveling on ropes of smoke. That smoke obscured Jon’s view of the gunships.
A moment later came a brilliant flash followed first by the sound of screeching metal rotors and then the heavy splash of a helicopter falling into the river.
Bragg’s voice ignored the casualty as he radioed, “Targets hit. All three batteries out of action. We’re pulling-“
The choppers emerged from the smoke heading east with their noses down. Flames raged from the rear of one of the helos, creeping forward to the cockpit like yellow fingers grasping prey.
An explosion to Jon’s left sent more shrapnel his direction. He ducked behind the protection of the concrete foundation out of instinct. A second later his eyes saw Bragg’s cockpit engulfed. The burning helicopter crashed into the east-side bank of the Mississippi.
Three more Spooks flew in from the west aiming for the last escaping Apache. A soldier in a forward fox hole launched a shoulder-fired Stinger. The warhead hit and destroyed one of the Spooks as it crossed the water. But the other two drones found their mark, one slamming the chopper portside and inducing a spin, the other hitting the canopy head-on. The collision sent a dead pilot’s body away from the airframe while the rest of the Apache crashed somewhere behind the front lines.
The battle did not afford Jon time for prayer. Voggoth answered with aerial thunder of his own. A flight of five of Hammerhead bombers swept down from the storm clouds and disintegrated overhead thanks to Patriot batteries. Hundreds of bomblets dropped along the waterfront.
The detonations traveled from north to south. One of the 14 ^ th Mechanized Infantry Brigades’ Bradley Fighting Vehicles suffered a direct hit, as did a trench full of soldiers stationed not-quite-under the raised highway that led to the remains of the Quincy Memorial Bridge. Jon saw body parts and rifles thrown out from there.
He crouched in a corner of the basement and spoke into his radio.
“Cassy! What is your status?”
General Cassy Simms took cover behind an overturned car at an intersection across from the Quincy Junior High School, nearly one mile from the river but no less a part of the action.
Several squads of her cavalry ringed the school firing bullets and lobbing grenades at the robotic Commandos held up inside; the ones who had dropped in from the sky an hour before in an attempt to create a second front or, perhaps, to silence the artillery batteries around Washington Park.
Not far from her position behind the toppled car smoldered two piles of metal that had recently been one of Voggoth’s favorite storm troops. Near that inhuman creature lay a young man no more than twenty sprawled on the pavement in a pool of red a silent Calico 960 just beyond the reach of his cold fingers.
She looked away from the body.
“Jon,” she answered the radio call above the sound of exchanging fire. “We’ve contained the airborne troops but it will be a while before we can mop them up.”
“Great,” his voice lacked the enthusiasm the word might otherwise convey. “Bragg’s flight just took out their arty batteries. I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about those damned balls again for a while.”
“That’s great-“ she stopped as an enemy round ricocheted off the road a few feet away. Cassy tried again, “That’s great. Give Jimmy a big thanks for me.”
The pause on the other end of the radio told the story.
Cassy regrouped her thoughts and transmitted, “Anyway, we’ve got this buttoned up, but, I mean, that doesn’t mean he won’t just drop more of these things in here somewhere else to try and get at Shep’s guns.”
“Say again, I missed that. Goddamn dive-bombing Spook just hit the wall here. What’d you say?”
She heard a cry for ‘medic’ from somewhere away from Jon’s radio.
“I said-oh, shit!”
One of the flying blob-like Chariots swept in from the residential neighborhood to the south. Its side gun spat a series of blasts. Cassy heard cries from her men; the gun certainly found its mark.
She grabbed her rifle and darted across the intersection yelling into the radio to her own people at the command center, “We need AA over at the school right now!” She glanced at the street sign as she ran. “That’s 14 ^ th and Main. Mobile AA stat!”
The Chariot exploded. Half-organic, half-metal pieces-few larger than a breadbox-fell on school grounds. The craft’s destruction took everyone-robotic and human-by surprise.
Cassy looked to the sky where Voggoth’s machine had hovered two seconds before. As she did, a shadow blocked out the sun, approaching from the east.
“General Brewer,” she transmitted. “The Chrysaor is here.”
And damn glad to see you, Kristy.
Two Abrams tanks pin-wheeled through the sky carried on the Leviathan’s supersonic breath like row boats on a mega tsunami. Below and around the flying tanks the strip malls, townhouses, and commercial buildings along Vandeventer Avenue changed from solid structures into grains of debris as the northward-bound gust obliterated the 10 ^ th Armored Brigade’s thrust into The Order’s flank.
The wind faded, leaving behind a handful of standing walls, wrecked vehicles, and seemingly sand-blasted roadways all covered in a dune of dirt and dust. The Leviathan stood straight and towered over the St. Louis skyline once again. Around its feet scrambled hundreds of the mutated mechanical monsters that had once been living, breathing Feranites. Voggoth’s slaves raced north into what remained of the Turner Park area to seek out and slaughter any surviving infantry while the main force resumed its eastward march around Interstate 64.
Woody “Bear” Ross observed the annihilation of his counter attack from one of the concrete vomitories of Busch Stadium. The tall buildings of down town partially obstructed his view of the carnage, but the sound of raging wind, the sight of an apocalyptic dust storm, and the radioed screams provided ample evidence of failure.
He shook his head in disgust. Fighting The Order felt like a game of rock-paper-scissors with Voggoth always knowing what to expect. Form hard points or attack with ground forces and the Leviathan made you pay. Sit back and bomb with arty or air power and the soulless armies marched forward through the destruction, undeterred by bombs and explosions; they did not fear death. Which meant it required prepared hard points or armored counter attacks to check those warped foot soldiers which, in turn, the Leviathan skillfully countered and the entire dance would start over again.
That left the fight to the ‘scissors’ of air power which Voggoth blunted with the ‘rock’ of his throw-away Spooks. In the early days of The Order’s invasion air power and Dreadnoughts often stymied or slowed the enemy’s advance. But, attrition finally whittled The Empire’s air force to a handful of combat-capable assets and the Dreadnoughts-one by one-had been overwhelmed. Only the Chrysaor remained and she fought at Quincy; where she would, no doubt, eventually be overwhelmed.
Ross did not know what to do. His artillery batteries stood ready across the river and would soon send another salvo toward the enemy, but the robots and Ghouls of Voggoth’s group would gladly suffer casualties in exchange for infesting St. Louis and then fording the Mississippi. If he kept his soldiers in place around downtown they could halt the advance, but the Leviathan would simply step in and blow it flat.
The Leviathan. That was the key. But he lacked the means to bring it down and it stayed clear of the main fighting until called upon to blast through well-defended positions or-as had just occurred-decapitate an offensive.
Ross growled and raised his radio to do the only thing he could.
“Send them in,” he transmitted.
Captain Carl Dunston’s radioed a reply, “Fast-movers inbound. ETA thirty seconds.”
Ross turned to one of his aids; a man whose wide, frightened eyes contrasted with his snappy green BDU’s that seemed the paragon of military professionalism.
Although Bear’s voice lacked its usual ground-shaking boom, he still commanded immediate action, “Get the command staff ‘cross the river to the fallback bunker. And tell General Rhodes to get his group up here or these things are going be over the Mississippi before dinner.”
The aid nodded and turned away sharply, motivated not only by his commander’s orders but also by a hardy embracement of evacuation. He shared the directions with other members of the staff and they immediately set to work disassembling equipment.
A pair of F-15s swept in flying low over the tangle of roads and rails to the south of the stadium that ran away from the river and across St. Louis. The planes actually flew beneath the shadows of downtown’s taller buildings, briefly filling the dug-in defenders there with false confidence.
The crazed, six-legged robots nicknamed ‘Roachbots’ comprised the Vanguard of Voggoth’s force. They scurried in front of the insanely-tall Leviathan to engage the forward positions of the troops sent in to fill the vacancy left by Benny Duda’s obliteration. Those forces, Ross knew, would last minutes-not hours-against the full might of The Order’s advance.
Anti-Air spooks rose to engage the fighters but the planes dropped their deadly cargo of napalm first. Flames burst to either side of the interstate, engulfing the baseball diamonds and tennis courts of a recreational park to the north as well as several commercial buildings to the south.
The heat melted the frames and singed the circuits of the mad mechanical monsters that bore the brunt of the bombing. Secondary explosions added to the inferno and streams of black smoke rose to mingle with the dark storm clouds overhead.
The F-15s banked away and skillfully weaved through downtown St. Louis, evading the anti-air creatures some of which collided with buildings and detonated.
For all the fiery destruction, the napalm offered the briefest of reprieves. In mere moments the next wave of Roachbots marched around their burning comrades and continued into the thick of downtown. Human infantry and vehicles responded with bullets and explosives. The battle for St. Louis reached its final stage.
Plumes of smoke from the fight outside of St. Louis drifted high on the eastern horizon. Nina watched from some five miles behind the action. Still, the Leviathan-so tall the storm clouds often hid its uppermost reaches-felt close. Too close.
Her ragtag band of guerrillas managed to wipe out a pair of supply vehicles and their escorts before settling into ambush positions to either side of Interstate 64.
Her force of 300 included displaced soldiers, government workers (mainly from food and agriculture) and civilians either liberated from The Order’s clutches or accidentally caught behind enemy lines.
Half that number served under the wounded corporal’s command to the north of the interstate in the buildings and on the grounds of St. John’s Mercy Medical Center. Before Armageddon the concrete, glass, and steel buildings hosted a variety of medical facilities including a well-respected children’s hospital. The campus had not re-opened since the first Armageddon, but the proximity of the structure to the highway gave it a prominent role in this second Armageddon.
In any case, the best shots among the corporal’s contingent occupied the upper levels of the tallest buildings where they could cover the interstate with sniper rifles. The less skilled positioned themselves in the parking lot and tree line along the highway with any weapons they could find.
Ironically, the southern side of the ambush utilized a nearly identical facility for cover: this one being the Missouri Baptist Medical Center, also unattended since Armageddon but its campus of modern buildings provided equally useful sniper positions. Together Nina’s two groups would form a gauntlet the Chaktaw pass as they crossed over a major highway cloverleaf on their way toward downtown.
“Hey, Nina!” Vince called from the western side of the top floor. “You need to see this.”
She gave Voggoth’s army one last glance. It might be the last time her eyes saw a Leviathan; one small consolation as she entered what, most likely, would be her final fight. She watched the walking tower take another step forward and while she could not directly see them, she knew thousands of robots and monsters marched in front of the gargantuan and into down town where her fellow soldiers fought desperately to stave the assault. She wished she could be with them, but fate dictated a different path.
“Nina!”
Vince’s voice suggested urgency but not panic. She doubted the Chaktaw had reached the ambush yet but history suggested these aliens to be a wily bunch so she prepared for any possibility.
She moved away from the east side window and traversed the dark, cold hallway with Odin, the elkhound at her side. The dust and erosion of time had long ago supplanted the hospital’s sterile environment. Broken equipment, overturned trays covered in the black and brown decay of decade-old food, and crusty file folders of now-useless paperwork lay scattered about. A stench of mold and mildew pervaded the air.
She came to a waiting room lobby on the northwestern corner. The big windows there afforded a great view of the highway. That highway should have basked in a late-afternoon sun. Instead, the heavy cloud cover made the entire scene feel more like the tail end of dusk.
Vince sat in a wheelchair with his finger pressed against the glass pointing at something on the road below.
Nina thought she had prepared or any possibility. She was wrong.
A solitary Chaktaw-its camouflage poncho colored gray-stood at the center of the road, apparently unarmed and holding its alien hands aloft.
Odin stood on his back legs, propped his front paws against the glass and growled.
The walkie-talkie on Vince Caesar’s lap came to life with a voice from a checkpoint along the highway.
“Captain Forest, do you copy? What do you want me to do?”
The sight of the Chaktaw told Nina that she had not hidden their movements as craftily as she thought.
She grabbed the radio.
“Shit. Yeah, okay, look, I don’t see any more of them so go on up and see what he wants.”
She watched two burly fellows in assault vests over jeans and t-shirts cautiously approach the alien emissary with their weapons drawn. As she witnessed the meeting, Nina recalled a story from the Battle of Five Armies and shared it with Vince Caesar.
“I get it. Those cocky son of a bitches,” and while she spat the words, she did feel a sense of admiration for their prowess and confidence.
“What?”
She relayed the story in first person because she had participated, yet her recollections came from the memories of others.
“At Five Armies when we were down to our last hill, the Chaktaw sent an ambassador to invite Trevor to a meeting. It seems they’ve got this tradition or something that if they know they have you beat they give you the chance to surrender.”
The human sentries reached the Chaktaw. The alien produced some kind of short microphone device. Nina suspected it to be a translator. A conversation ensued.
“Surrender?”
“Listen, not like you’re thinking. They offered to kill us quickly if we’d line up and let them do it. Something about it being a sign of respect for a worthy adversary, as if letting them slit your throat real quick is better than dying in battle.”
“So you’re saying they knew we were here, is that it?”
“Looks that way to me. Shit.”
The radio sprung to life. The men from the checkpoint relayed a message from the aliens: “They say their leader-a ‘Force Commander’-wants to meet with you. Something about a message for you. They guarantee safe passage.”
“Bullshit,” Vince shot.
“No, it’s okay. They gave Trevor safe passage back then.”
“He met with them?”
“Yep. Met with their commander who laid out their great ‘deal’ to him. He basically told them to stuff it. But look, they let him go back to our lines. Big mistake for them, I guess.”
“Captain?” the voice on the radio asked. “What do you want me to tell them?”
Nina’s brow furled. She slammed a hand into her thigh. She hated being bested. With surprise no longer on their side, she doubted they could do much more than delay the Chaktaw; not hurt them.
Then an idea percolated inside her devious mind.
“Yep. I mean, yes. Look, I’ll go and meet their leader.”
Odin dropped from his propped position against the window as if hearing her words and reacting with surprise to them.
Vince did as much as he gasped, “You can’t be serious. No way I’m lining up to be off’d. If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting.”
“You still have your KA-BAR?”
He did. She held out her hand and took the military knife from him. At the same time she removed her other weapons and handed them to Vince one at a time. Odin eyed her suspiciously, as did Vince.
“What are you planning, Nina?”
“Listen, we’re dead meat if we stick to the original ambush. I’ll get close enough to their leader, listen to his dumb-ass proposal, and then slit his throat.”
“Isn’t that against the rules of safe passage? What’s the point anyway? They’ll just kill you.”
She thought about what Trevor had said at the last council meeting; about the ‘rules’ to the invasion and what Trevor planned to do in regards to those rules.
“First off, screw the rules. Truth is, this is war and war doesn’t have any rules when you cut right down to it, no matter how hard we try to pretty it up. This is about doing whatever it takes to win and I don’t give a damn how many rules we break. We get the chance, slaughter every last one of them. And yeah, they probably won’t give me safe passage back after I slit their leader’s alien throat, but so what? All I’m sayin’ is that if I can take out their Force Commander, then that’ll cause confusion. Go hook up with the corporal and get ready. Give me some time then charge them.”
“Charge them? Are you kidding?”
She smiled. Actually smiled as she slipped the knife into her boot and covered it with pant leg.
“Just like Five Armies. That’s what we did then. With their leader dead and them expecting us to be waiting here, it’ll take them by surprise. Look, it sucks, but it’s the best chance we got.”
He said nothing. Not so much because he accepted the plan, but because it sounded ludicrous. Nina suspected the beaten men and women atop that third and final hill at Five Armies had shared the same expression-until Trevor led them to victory.
She pat Odin on the head and ruffled his ears, “Sorry to be saying goodbye to you again so soon. See you over the rainbow bridge, my friend.”
Odin bowed his head. Nina turned her attention to her human companion.
“Goodbye, Vince,” she set a warm hand on his shoulder and he returned the grasp. “It’s been, well, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Nina walked away, descended the stairs, and exited the hospital.
The crash of yet another Spook into the undercarriage of the Chrysaor caused only the slightest tremor on the bridge. The ‘impact’ icon flashing on Kristy Kaufman’s console drew more attention than the actual damage which-judging by the computer’s report-had been superficial. As with all the Spook impacts. Problem was, there were a lot of Spooks hitting the undercarriage. The ‘impact’ icon flashed continuously.
“Firing main batteries,” she announced more from habit than need.
This time the bridge did shudder quite noticeably. Bands of energy shot from the underside and swept the fields west of Quincy. The streams of red splashed across a building-sized Goat Walker and a cluster of hovering Shell-tanks. The tanks ruptured and disintegrated; the demonic Goat Walker fell into gory pieces. The beam dug a deep, dark trench into the ground like a jagged dagger eviscerating the landscape.
Kaufman managed the destruction from her position as the brain onboard the dreadnought. She stood in a circle of monitors, keyboards, and touch screens while wearing a virtual reality headset that fed even more information in the form of pictures and data. The crewmen on the crescent-shaped bridge served mainly a redundant role while a few handled less-important tasks outside the scope of the brain.
With her aircraft long ago stripped to serve other operations, the Chrysaor acted more as a battleship than a carrier. Still, she played that role with brutal efficiency.
“Belly Boppers re-charging. Thirty percent-firing…”
More blobs of energy. This time striking mobile artillery batteries appearing next-of-kin to cement mixer trucks. She stopped them from reaching firing position from where they would have launched more of the red, yellow, and blue balls of destruction at the human lines.
Kristy pulled her attention from data streams and ground cameras and stared across the bridge out the main viewing window. If things became too heated, a set of protective shutters would close. But for now she could see the quilt of rolling storm clouds a few dozen meters overhead. She could also see the two Leviathans, standing tall enough that when she reached them the Chrysaor would face them at what could best be described as eye-to-eye.
However, facing them would be a challenge. Voggoth’s favorite pets not only retreated from the battlefield in giant steps the further the Chrysaor advanced, but the twins separated with one backpedaling northwest in its withdrawal, the other southwest.
Kristy understood. The Leviathans retreated not only to avoid her batteries, but to draw her into a gauntlet of fire. The bottom of the vessel took a pounding with breeches to the hull in several places already and substantial damage to the superstructure throughout.
She’s a tough ship, Kristy mused. She can take it. She must take it.
Her eyes returned to the monitors. She spotted a rolling tube-like machine. A glowing spear-something like a rocket or missile-raised on its back in preparation to fire. She tapped a sequence of buttons and two missiles of her own sped away from the Chrysaor on plumes of smoke. They hit the enemy vehicle before its payload could fire. The vehicle exploded into two parts; the glowing missile fell apart in a storm of sparks.
The Captain’s eyes swept the ground below through the cameras linked to her work station. The Chrysaor’s ‘belly boppers’ had slaughtered thousands of Voggoth’s forces ranging from simple monks to more complex battle wagons. Wrecks of the coral-like hovering platforms that launched the rolling artillery shells lay scattered across the fields. The charred remains of a hundred Ogres blew in the air like volcanic ash carried on the wind. None of the enemy’s flying-ball machines remained in action; they could do no more damage to the defenders of Quincy.
Yet, so many more remained. She saw formations of Robotic Commandos and uncountable numbers of Spider Sentries and more of the Shell-Tanks and rows of walking gun turrets and to either side of the army spun the whirlwinds of the Wraiths.
Kristy fired again. The stream of energy sprayed across the field and through the middle of a half-collapsed industrial structure. The line of fire cut apart a vehicle resembling a locomotive capable of firing surface-to-surface projectiles and slaughtered a number of heavy duty Spider Sentries hiding in the ruined building.
A trio of Spooks made it over the bow and sped across the inactive runway toward the raised tower section at the rear of the ship. Gatling guns made quick work of them.
“Okay,” she said as much to herself as the bridge crew. “It’s time to get one of those Leviathans. Increasing speed-charging boppers…”
Instead of drifting calmly over the fields full of monstrosities, the dreadnought moved at a brisk clip, quickly closing the distance to the walking skyscraper to the northwest. Bolts of lightning from a cluster of small gray clouds struck to either side of the Leviathan as if anticipating the dramatic showdown.
The beast halted its retreat on the farmland outside of Maywood, Missouri; 14 miles west of Quincy. The C hrysaor slowed to a crawl and closed for the kill.
Kristy wanted full power to her weapons; anything less would waste valuable time slicing and dicing while the bulk of the army continued to march on the Mississippi.
“Boppers at thirty percent and charging…”
A blip on the radar screen. Then another. And another.
“Boppers at forty percent…”
She accessed one of the telescopic cameras and zoomed for a closer look. Just as the profile on the radar screen suggested, the blips belonged to a group of Chariots: the blob-like machines that served multiple roles in Voggoth’s army ranging from attack fighters to transports to bombers. They could certainly inflict damage on the Chrysaor, but nothing to be overly concerned about.
“Boppers at sixty percent…”
The flying blobs approached from the west and flew around the Leviathan, just below the handful of storm clouds that had followed the giant’s retreat from the front. The things flew in tight formation and slowed to nearly a stop in the airspace between the battling behemoths.
“Boppers at seventy percent, stand by to fire…”
Kristy expected the ships to use their rapid-fire guns or perhaps launch some kind of missile. What they actually did fell under the heading of ‘unexpected.’
The Chariots crashed together, one after another.
No, that description did not exactly fit. That’s what they appeared to do to Kristy’s eye. They did not exactly crash. They flew into each other one at a time, their blob-ish forms attached like droplets splashing together except they stayed stuck together. One by one the Chariots merged, creating one large blob from a series of smaller ones.
“What the hell?”
Kristy decided the Leviathan could wait. Her fingers interacted with the touch screen in rapid succession, accessing the forward defenses menu category Anti-Air, sub-menu ‘missile defenses.’
Select: Launch bay Bow — 4
Ordnance select: AMRAAM (quantity remaining: 4).
Ordnance loading standby-loading complete.
Arm warhead: Yes — No.
Caution: Warhead ARMED.
Input target acquisition source.
Target acquired from radar lock. Confirm target: Yes — No.
Launch: Yes — No.
The Chariots ceased merging and hung in the air as if catching their collective breath.
Launch.
The missile shot away from a tube embedded in the bow of the dreadnought.
The blob of Chariots rotated, fast. Faster. Spinning like a warped top while still hovering in the sky. A glowing halo of energy formed around mass.
The missile closed.
Kristy did not wait; she loaded air-to-air AMRAAMs into the other three forward launch bays and hurried to fire. She moved a moment too slow.
The Chariots exploded. Not in shrapnel; at least not entirely. More important, they exploded with energy: a ring of crackling blue power that slammed into and coated the dreadnought like a rogue wave sweeping across the deck of a boat. As the wall of energy moved from bow to stern, flashes and bolts of blue and green sparked from the deck plates and warned of more sinister chain reactions within.
The blast enveloped and then passed the bridge and tower section. Electronic work stations flickered; some shot sparks. Video screens filled with dead air before stabilizing; the hair on the back of Kristy’s neck stood straight. The room felt electrically charged.
Then it was gone. The work stations returned to normal operation. Monitors showed what they meant to show. With the exception of several blown but easily replaceable fuses, the Chrysaor felt-felt…
Kristy could not immediately identify her feeling of uneasiness. The Chariots were gone. Ahead of the ship waited the Leviathan, its grotesque skyscraper-sized body stood still like a morbid statue.
Captain Kaufman checked the main batteries.
Fifty percent.
What?
Forty-five percent.
Warning lights flashed across her screens in succession. One stood out above the rest: “DANGER: Gravity Generator Magnetic Field Compromised”.
A frantic voice from the engineering section-located at the bottom rear of the ship-yelled into her earpiece confirming the words on her display: “The grav generators are off-line! Jesus-shit they just cut out!”
Everyone on the bridge-everyone throughout the ship-felt it in their bellies like riders on a rollercoaster cresting that first big drop. The entire craft started to fall. Kristy’s stomach lurched toward her throat.
“Emergency boosters!”
She swerved around in the command module, located the set of controls every dreadnought commander feared to need, and quickly flicked a series of toggles. A hundred small round plates fell away from the ship’s undercarriage and row upon row of rocket engines burst to life with fire and smoke.
The thrust of the emergency engines sounded a like a line of explosions from beneath the mighty ship. That feeling of descending slowed but did not end. The altimeter ticked under 1,000 feet and continued. The back-up rockets were never meant to keep the incredible weight of the ship aloft; they were meant as a supplement to the grav generators in the case of emergency.
Main Forward Battery Energy Level: 30 %.
Kristy-in an act driven as much by spite as anything else-punched the ‘fire’ button. Red strands of power shot out from the bow, across the sky, and into the front of the hideous beast.
The Chaktaw convoy stood ready to move. Nina saw the small army waiting in rows across the eight lanes of Interstate 64 including Lizards the size of elephants serving as pack animals, motorized tricycles with huge wheels, some kind of missile trucks toward the rear of the formation, and hundreds of infantry huddled in groups conversing, snacking, and checking gear.
She sensed unease in the air. Maybe even confusion among their ranks. Maybe the same feeling of oppression her people felt when under The Order’s unnatural storm clouds.
The alien soldiers eyed her with a mixture of suspicion and awe. They stared through in a way that made her feel they regarded her more as a strange curiosity than a reviled enemy. Perhaps they did not consider her worthy of their contempt; an over confidence she planned to make them pay for. Indeed, her escort gave her only a quick look for weapons and hence her knife remained hidden. She did not know if their lack of a thorough search indicated laziness or if they took it for granted that she would act honorably and respect the truce.
A cluster of homes on wooded lots sat just off the highway to the south. Her Chaktaw escort led her through the surprised formation of fighters to one lone tent seemingly made of canvass or something very much like it assembled in a driveway next to the remains of a collapsed duplex.
The tent appeared hastily constructed for their meeting. Perhaps some kind of tradition among the aliens, she did not know but she did care: killing the Chaktaw leader would be a lot easier out of view from the rest of their army. It might even give her a chance to take several more with her before they realized their mistake in inviting the wolf into their hen house.
Her escort pulled a drawstring and motioned her inside the tent. A small oval table made of what resembled plastic sat in the center of the chamber. A solitary glowing orb hung on a rope or string from the ceiling creating a cone of light over the center but left the outer rim of the interior in shadows.
The escort withdrew, closing the flap.
Two Chaktaw remained inside: One at the table who studied Nina in a curious manner. His eyes widened, then shrunk to slits; the corners of his mouth changed between something like a frown to something like a grin, but not a friendly one. His whiskers twitched and his hands tugged at a plain brown tunic. He plainly did not know what to make of her. Either he was confused to find her group so far behind the wrong side of the battle line or her audacity at daring to challenge his advance annoyed him. Whatever the case, she held his complete attention.
The second Chaktaw remained in one of the dark corners of the tent sitting on a chair. Nina could not make out this one’s features but pegged him or her for a bodyguard but if that bodyguard held a weapon it was not obvious to Nina.
The male at the table raised a small microphone device. His lips moved and spoke in his native tongue but the device broadcast synthesized English. The disconnect between the movement of his mouth and the words from the speaker reminded Nina of a poorly dubbed Godzilla movie.
“I am Force Command Jaff.”
Nina replied, “My name is Captain Nina Forest,” but the tactical computer inside her warrior’s mind busied itself with a plan: stoop fast, pull the blade, reach over and cut his throat, then deal with the Chaktaw bodyguard or aid or whatever he or she was in the corner. The commotion would summon her escort and a sentry or two. If she were fast and lucky she could get hold of one of their rifles. That would make the killing and sowing of confusion all the easier.
“You are either very foolish or very brave to attempt to block our advance.”
“Yeah, well, whatever.”
Jaff struggled to understand her reply as it played through the translator.
“Yes,” Jaff worked to find the right words from his dialect for translation to her language. “I must tell you that your position has changed. This is why I have asked you here.”
Nina spoke harshly as cover for her actions: her fingers tugged at her pant leg, trying to raise the cuff enough so that she would not have to struggle to free the blade when she lunged for it.
“Look, I know what this is all about. I fought you guys before. And I’ll tell you what Trevor Stone told the last Force Commander who messed with my people. I’ll tell you to stick your offer of mass execution in whatever orifice passes for an asshole on you things. We’re going to fight you and before this day is over, you’re going to wish you never came to Earth.”
Nina felt the pant leg rise above the hilt of the KA-BAR. She summoned her courage and prepared to strike.
Jaff-clearly a look of disappointment on his face-answered, “You are a very strange and dangerous creature, Captain Nina Forest.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
The Leviathan wobbled and a noise like a howl coming from some unseen source reverberated through the air. Sprays of sickening fluids squirted in small waterfalls from the cuts in its flesh.
Energy levels in the forward batteries drained to zero and blast from the Chrysaor faded after cutting a deep gash across the front of the walking skyscraper. A host of squirming things hurried to seal the breach but green and yellow streams still poured from the monster.
Kristy realized that her ship could no longer muster enough power for the boppers to knock down the Leviathan.
An alarm sounded on her console. The altimeter ticked off feet in bunches. Another display indicated two emergency boosters ran out of rocket fuel. More would join them in seconds.
The Leviathan loomed outside the bridge window. It had no face, but she imagined a grin there. Voggoth’s grin.
Captain Kristy Kaufman stood straight in her command module. She raised a hand to the bobby pins holding her hair in a tight, proper bun and pulled them free.
In the years since the invasion, she had sacrificed much but she refused to sacrifice her appearance. Perfectly manicured nails, matching outfits, and just enough makeup to capture the right highlights of her features.
None of it came from vanity. Instead, it was her personal resistance to the forces of Armageddon. They could turn her from a white collar worker into a soldier; they could take away her Lexus and Caribbean vacations. They ended her dreams of white picket fences and big families. But they never stole her dignity. And she would face the end with that dignity intact.
She tossed aside the virtual reality goggles and stepped out from behind the monitors, computers, and keyboards. Some orders were best spoken directly to the crew.
Kristy raised a fist and growled her final command.
“Helm-RAMMING SPEED!”
They followed without question. The helmsmen ignited the hydrogen engines and a jolt kicked the magnificent flying city in the rear end. The battleship continued to fall slowly from the sky as one by one the emergency boosters faded. But most of the momentum went forward.
Kristy held a safety rail tight and enjoyed the show through the bridge windows. The Leviathan discerned the move too late. The bow hit it midsection and pushed. The gargantuan tumbled over and the Chrysaor fell on top of it like a heavy weight wrestler working for a pin.
The stern rose higher and the bow dipped lower becoming a mile-long dagger. Kristy watched SteelPlus gouge into the beast’s skin. The front end of the dreadnought bent and crumbled in a wave of destruction rolling across the flight deck toward the tower. Crewmen lost their footing as the angle increased; two flew from their stations and slammed into the forward wall. Papers, equipment, and chairs flew around the crescent-shaped room. Kristy held tight.
Sprays of Leviathan-gore jettisoned into the air and coated the bridge windows. The crumbling front end raced toward the bridge. Bursts of yellow and orange and black joined the carnival of carnage as sub systems, fuel tanks, ammo caches, and batteries erupted.
Kristy let out one last holler in either victory or terror. The tower of the Dreadnought collapsed; the roaring engines tore the tail end apart as the ship lost all structural integrity.
The crushed and eviscerated Leviathan lay beneath the burning Chrysaor, and together they made a funeral pyre fit for a God.