by M.C. O'Neill
***
“All units, please respond. All units,” the overhead comm never ceased its cackling. The relentless buzz was driving Venda Hay’cenn delirious.
“All right, you heard the order!” she shouted to her unit which was stationed deep in the Docks District. “Suit up and let’s ship out!”
“What’s going on?” Wanni Everfell hollered in confusion. He was a rookie to the civil wardens and had just received his badge two weeks prior. Although Captain Hay’cenn found him to be an eager beaver when it came to police work, he was a still little slow with his reaction time. He’d get used to it one of these days, she tried to assure herself.
“Apparently those arks just opened up again. All of them,” the captain informed him as she strapped on an ivory boot. “The comm claims that there are incoming calls from all over the city reporting these huge things that are tromping around and causing havoc.”
“Huh?” Wanni halted in the middle of the locker room as a look of vexation washed his face. “What’s the confirmation? Is this a hoax?”
“Who cares!” she barked back at him, annoyed with his greenery. “It probably has something to do with all that drama at the courthouse this morning. I don’t know. Just suit up and get ready!”
“All units, massive destruction of property reported on the edge of town incoming from the north. Reports of large vehicles or mounts of unknown properties emerging from the arks and bearing inbound toward population. All units on high alert.”
The usual blasé voice over the comm carried a harried worry to it. Whatever was coming down from the countryside had to be big, Venda figured. When she first saw the Prime Warden’s report this morning, its grim message foretold of something dreadful about the aliens and the station had been on its last nerves all day. At first, the officers would not stop discussing what the repercussions of the teen politician’s accusations would ignite. Half of the wardens on duty thought it was just sensationalism and the Aldebarans would step in to cover it up with sweet politics. The other half erred on the side of truth and feared waves of alien violence from out of those massive monoliths. According to the comm, the latter were correct. Captain Hay’cenn was amongst their lot.
“Gods, I knew this would happen,” she hissed under her breath as she adjusted her breastplate over her motherhood. “Never trusted those moth-people in the first place.”
The next blast from the comm was too final and grave for the rookie to swallow as he began to shed tears without even knowing it. “All units, we are now switching to defense forces channels. Please consider their instructions with full confidence. Good luck and gods’speed.”
“This is hardcore, Wanni,” Lauryl’la’s mother eyed the young warden square in the face. “Are you up for this?”
He didn’t give her a very confident response. “Uh, yes Captain, I-I can do this. Eh, whatever it is we’re doing.”
Not satisfied with the whelp’s answer, Venda sneered. “Okay, kid, I’m assigning you to the command coach with Hal’rinn. Just keep your pointed ears open and don’t do anything stupid. Looks like we’re in the army now.”
Blaring alarms lit the motor pool with red flashes. At the far end, Venda spotted her husband loading the command coach with containers of equipment for the mission. Ready-to-eat meals, tracking sensors and even survival gear were amongst the cache just in case the call was going to be an extended matter. Considering the dire reports that were coming in from the comm, Hal’rinn figured they were in for a long day.
“Hal, I’m taking the flitcycle,” she informed her husband as she cradled her helmet. “Wanni is riding with you.”
The warden winced at that. “Okay, just as long as he doesn’t get in the way. I have faith in that kid, but this order is way beyond our capabilities here. We aren’t a military outfit.”
Hal’rinn’s eyes looked a bit distant, his wife noticed and this sent a shiver up her spine for the first time that day. All morning she had been going through the motions and rolling with the punches, including being deputized by the ADF. Her husband’s sobering stare was like a splash of cold water at 3 a.m.
“This is bad, huh?” she relented.
“Yeah, I want to get a hold of Rylla before we deploy, but she’s been taken to the Health Circle for injuries. I just want to see her again.” His shoulders slumped so that his armor had difficulty resting on his frame.
His wife didn’t want to hear that out of him, nor did she want to see him so dejected. “She’s all right. She’s tough and so are we. We’re just going to spot the military. We won’t do any frontline engagement. We just don’t have that kind of equipment. When things get too hot, you’ll know and we’ll scramble back to HQ.”
“Venda, just hop on and be off before I change my mind and bug out to the shelters,” Hal’rinn huffed a chuckle. “I’m surprised half of us haven’t done that already.”
Although public displays of affection were against departmental conduct, the Hay’cenns embraced and kissed without care. Anything to melt away the cold wind of their worries was needed for what could have been their last assignment together.
The UEV command coach was a modified utility model that functioned as a mobile communications laboratory and equipment dump. Hal’rinn was responsible for coordinating the civil wardens and monitoring their progress during each mission through the comm. It held a compliment of four civil wardens plus all of the equipment needed for each job. As Lauryl’la’s father summoned the coach to life, he knew that the sense of security the armored vehicle provided was false. The ADF had put them in way over their heads. In the back of his mind, he knew he was going to lose some good wardens that day.
Banks of monitors sang reports before his senses as the bulky coach rumbled out of the motor pool. The size of those things the Aldebarans were riding was gigantic; bigger than any animal he had ever heard of, except, perhaps, some of the largest of the extinct dinosaurs. One direct stomp from one of their feet would crush the UEV with ease.
“Queen Wasp, this is Command, we have you on scanners. Please switch to military flow for instructions,” he buzzed to his wife.
“Copy,” her voice confirmed. “En route to north quarter. ETA two minutes.”
Venda Hay’cenn soared in a triangular formation with her squad. The day looked so cold and bleak despite it being smack in the middle of summer. How appropriate for such a terrible attack. It always seemed like nothing bad ever happened under a clear blue sky. “Vespa One, Vespa Two, prepare for engagement; casters at the ready. Units Three, Four, Five, and Six hang back until we see what’s the damage.”
Damage was an understatement, she moaned to herself as she saw the first glimpse of the behemoth. At least seven stories, perhaps eight, of swirling colored meat bobbed and smashed through the streets of her home city. For the ADF to send them out for this kind of work was ludicrous, and she cursed to herself when she saw the horrible match she and her crew were forced to meet.
“Recall those orders. This is just way out of our scope.” She signaled a retreat with a swirling arm. “No-go!”
“What’s the scene, Queen Wasp?” her husband asked of her callsign. “The scanners indicate the dimensions of that thing. They’re huge!”
“Command, this is a job for a laandbaarg at least!” she barked in frustration. “We just have handcasters!”
“Copy,” her husband wiped his eyes in the green light of the cab’s dashboard. “Just fly around the area a few times and give the ADF enemy positions. I don’t need you guys getting hurt. You aren’t equipped to go toe-to-toe with those things. Maintain silent running. Don’t attract their attention.”
With haste, Venda halted the wail of her flitcycle’s sirens. “Silent running, proceed with silent running!” she ordered her squad through her comm.
“Queen Wasp, this is Treetop Actual,” a posh, elderly voice cracked through her channel. The tones and squelches of the military flow were so different from those of the civil wardens. “Provide us wit
h enemy positions.”
“Copy, Actual,” she banked her cycle over a water tower. “We have one of their beasts on Fifth and North Cell. Thing’s just scooping up elves. With, get this, seven heads!”
“Copy, Queen Wasp, what’s the air look like?”
“Negative,” she buzzed as she scanned the sky around her squad. “Negative for bogies.”
“That’s a copy, Queen Wasp,” the pause over the comm made the warden nervous. “Prepare for elements of the 134th Air Guard inbound; full wing. ETA five minutes to your position.”
The news from the army’s command ran bolts of courage through her form. Venda revved her flitcycle with speedy joy upon hearing that an actual military force was sweeping in to give the thrashing beast down below what-for. “Squad, we have the 134th inbound in five! Whoo-hoo!”
Swerving a quick pass around the hulking doom, Venda could see that the thing was being steered by one of the Aldebarans sitting in a strange gondola. Slapping her handcaster, she was tempted to take a shot at the fleshy alien pilot, but recalled her urge as she didn’t want to draw the attention of his terrible steed.
“Queen Wasp, scanners indicate unknowns inbound on our three,” Vespa One informed with a tone of youthful worry through his crackles. “They aren’t ADF.”
“Copy, One,” she confirmed the report in her sights on her own screen. It appeared to be twelve elements bearing down from the north, right out of one of the pyramids. “Maintain one thousand and keep quiet. We need to paint the location for the Air Guard. Just follow that thing and stay up high.”
Despite their valiant effort to remain furtive, the demons matched the squad’s altitude. For a slight moment, their unholy flight disappeared behind the immense obelisk of the city’s primary manaspring. The structure dwarfed anything else constructed by elfdom as its point scratched the sky by almost a half-mile. The winged fiends sprayed out from behind the spiraling power core within seconds and bore down on Venda’s flight.
“Twelve bogies at three inbound and locked onto our position!” Vespa One cried in horror. “They’re fast! They see us!”
“Prepare to engage,” Venda shook her head in despair. “Casters at the ready.”
For months, the Aldebarans were never seen without a polite smile drawn across their faces, especially if on the manascreen. These specimens were of a different temperament as they exuded nothing but rage and hate. What were once construed by the general public of Atlantis as genial and gracious were now displaying their true colors to the besieged wardens.
After Venda shot forth a screaming bolt at the fiend nearest to her, the target dodged it with a slight yaw and no effort at that. It carried a large squirming ball cast of the same swirling colors as the foul thing that was tearing up the city below.
Pulling back in an adept hover, the demon threw the thing in Venda’s direction. Expecting to be hit by the colorful boulder with a full force, Lauryl’la’s mother became confused as there was no impact when she reopened her terrified eyes. “What are these things?” she blasted to no one in particular.
Six-inch-tall beasts were crawling all over her cycle like giant bugs. They too, bore the same moth wings as a typical fiend, but were much uglier and less charming. Skittering, mewling noises oozed from their tiny mouths in between the bites they delivered to the cycle and Venda’s armor.
“Get these things off me!” she batted at two of them while attempting to steer her cycle with only her legs.
One of the imps that crawled up her back tore her helmet off her head and threw the materiel out into the afternoon. Venda’s thick auburn hair flew around her eyes in the high winds of the lower atmosphere. “Gods! I can’t see!”
As she brushed the lush locks from her face, another imp was chewing on the drive relay of her cycle which allowed the manaball to power her steering. In desperation, she tried to kick the tiny thing off of it, but it would only fly right back to its grisly job as it yattered with its incessant squeals.
Looking back at her flight, she could see that her crew too was beleaguered with the little gremlins. Vespa Three’s manaball was blinking in protest as his imp was chewing away at the main leads to his cycle. Once the little beast was successful, Vespa Three would be certain to fall to his death.
Her handlebars wouldn’t respond to her push. The goofy demonette had severed its link to the power. Venda Hay’cenn was one thousand feet in the air and could no longer steer her cycle.
Cold fear was replaced by sheer dread as she heard the chattering laughter below her cycle’s saddle. These imps were going for her manaball as well. It would only be a short matter of time before she would be splattered on the streets below. No matter how hard she kicked at the beasts, they would always return within split seconds.
“Get off of me!” she cried like a little elfling, but the imps would not listen to her feeble protests. As she saw the streets down below, she resigned herself in silence to her terrible fate. Falling - what a horrible way to die.
At 1:54 p.m., Venda Hay’cenn’s cycle at last lost its link to the manaball, turning her vehicle into flightless junk. As her helmet had been torn from her person seconds earlier, not one of her crew or her husband could hear her shrieks of terror. Although she was a brave police captain who had solved many morbid cases with great success for the City of Corosa over the years, the hopeless knowledge of her assured doom was too much for her nerves to bear. At 1:55 p.m., Lauryl’la Hay’cenn was rendered motherless and Hal’rinn Hay’cenn a widower.
At 1:56 p.m., the Atlantis Air Guard arrived at their positions as promised with a full complement of heavy combat limmers. The valiant rescue mission was as worthless as Venda’s cycle, as even their heaviest of casters did nothing to stop the flying fiends. By 2:03 p.m. that afternoon, many of those limmerjocks met Venda as they too fell to their demise. At 2:05 p.m., Treetop Actual recalled the mission, thus saving the lives of his remaining squadron and millions of brens worth of military equipment.
In the Shelters Down Below
That afternoon of terrors sent the elves of Corosa underground. Many of the unfortunate ones were devoured by the behemoths or tangled by a demon’s netting before they could reach safety. At the sound of the banging klaxons, elves from all walks of life needed to drop everything or enter into the ranks of the enslaved. The majority of the citizens could not believe that they were actually hearing the warning alarms upon the sounding of their initial blasts as many of them were too wrapped up in the drama of Venn’lith’s broadcast from earlier that morning. For many more, it was the simple factor that their reaction time was much too slow.
Corosa City’s defense alert network was delayed as well since it took multitudes of incoming complaints of “giant monsters” from the outlying rural areas for the municipality to respond with the citywide alarm. Too many civil wardens on call at that time brushed those pleas off as conspiracies or pranks. By the time the official warnings were loosed upon the community, almost two thousand elves had found their way into the bellies of the helldragons.
