After Boris moved off, Earl muttered. “That sumbitch is hard-core.”
“So what’s up, Earl? You’ve got to be too busy right now to be checking on mild injuries.”
Earl looked around. The other Hunters were on the opposite side of the room and couldn’t hear him over the generator. “Don’t know about minor. Did you see that ear? Damn that must’ve hurt. But you’re right. We’re digging in and securing the perimeter. Cody’s team is setting up instrumentation and the elves are drawing supposedly magical squiggles on everything. I made time because I heard something troubling about that giant the Czechs brained.”
“I told Earl what you were mumbling while we dragged you in here,” Holly said.
I honestly didn’t remember saying anything. “First rule of polar bear club is you don’t talk about polar bear club.”
“Everybody on the beachhead heard that giant making noise, but it was all nonsense to us. You told me you understood what he had said, and that it was important.”
“Okay, yeah.” It was coming back. “I did. It was like he was talking to me directly.”
“You learning ancient monster languages now?” Earl asked, incredulous. “Because I’ve only known one of us who had the gift of tongues to pull that off, and he’s been gone since the Christmas Party.”
“Nothing like that. I don’t know if this is part of the whole Chosen thing, and no, there was no evil black lightning like when I see other people’s memories, but I just knew. I heard him the same as everybody else, but it’s like I could understand the meaning in my head. The giant told me they would never let us free Asag.”
“Assuming this isn’t the brain damage talking…” Holly said.
“Trip’s the one with the concussion.”
“I was thinking long-term brain damage, Captain Headbutt.”
“So it’s either telepathy or delusion.” Earl scowled. “What’s your gut tell you?”
I shrugged.
“How sure are you?”
I was an accountant at heart. When I gave an estimate I liked it to be accurate, but this magic Chosen One job didn’t seem to work like that, so I pulled a guesstimate out of my ass. “Seventy percent?”
“The us must be us Hunters obviously, but who is they ?” Holly asked. “Does the giant have friends or was he just talking the monster gangs in general?”
It made sense to me. “Nikolai said there are all sorts of factions fighting over this place. The ones down below worshiped Asag; maybe the giant didn’t. If it turns out the giant’s bunch is potential allies, it’s too bad we shot him with a tank.”
“Now that’s what I’d call a failure to communicate,” Trip muttered.
“That would be tragic, but we’re collecting PUFF on that big fella either way.” Our boss was a pragmatist.
“Don’t worry, Earl. If the MCB asks on the paperwork, I’ll tell them the giant’s last words were ‘Screw all humans. Asag the Category Five Extinction-Level Threat is my best friend.’”
“That’s the spirit, Z.”
“Hang on.” Holly was being dead serious for once, and the rest of her team knew that when she quit being flippant or sarcastic, it was probably important. “What about the part about us freeing him? We’ve been working under the assumption that he was already awake since the time break in Natchy Bottom.”
“Yeah, Asag’s reign of terror is my fault. Rub it in, why don’t you?”
“Don’t feel bad, kid. Do this long enough, you’re bound to wake up some superdemons.”
“Really, Earl?”
“No…But what do you mean, Holly? We’ve seen plenty of evidence that this bastard is active.”
“Sure, Earl, active. But if Z’s right, the giant said free. For such a supposed badass elder god that he even intimidates Great Old Ones, we keep running into his minions, or his worshippers, or things he’s set free, but in all the years since Z woke him up, he’s never once shown his face.”
“What are you getting at?”
Holly was grim. “I’m wondering if this thing beneath the island is actually a tomb, or is it a prison?”
* * *
As the sun went down for the brief and freezing night, the Bride was a hotbed of activity. It had gone from crappy boat to crowded fire base. We had spent a month moving vehicles to the island, and all of them were parked here, armed and ready. It was a lot of firepower. We were watching with flying drone cams, night-vision, thermal, and naked eyeballs. Hundreds of Hunters were dug in like ticks, using the buddy system, and sleeping in shifts.
While I stood in the command room, occasionally there would be a bunch of noise, muzzle flashes, and explosions from somewhere along the perimeter. Then a few seconds later somebody would get on the radio to explain what they had just vaporized. Lots of things tested us, but nothing was stupid enough to come at us head-on again since the giant had gotten capped. It must have been the cause of the fog too, because it had been clear ever since.
The command room was crowded. Earl was in the middle, and from the way he was processing everything and spitting out orders, if monster hunting hadn’t worked out for him he probably would have made a pretty good general.
Not wanting to feel left out, Krasnov had arrived in a helicopter and joined us aboard his namesake. He had brought a Russian Orthodox priest with him to bless our weaponry. I was glad to see Krasnov here. Not for his pleasant company, but because if he was physically present, that meant he truly believed the Russian government was not going to suddenly get cold feet about the operation. So in a way, Krasnov was like a big, fat, heavily mustached canary in the coal mine. If he suddenly left, that told the rest of us we needed to haul ass to the airfield.
But as long as we kept killing off all their troublesome monsters, the local officials would probably stay happy. Between the frost giant and the greater sky squid we’d killed, the Russians should be loving us right now. In extra good news, the bullet-riddled corpse of that sky squid had washed ashore. Those things were Special Class, so we didn’t even need to be in US jurisdiction to collect PUFF on them. Cha-ching!
When Krasnov saw me he came over and congratulated me on planning “most successful and glorious invasion,” which obviously, he then reminded me, could not have been accomplished without his brilliant political and logistical help. And since he’d since proven his unquestionable integrity, Krasnov had asked for his symbolic sword back, which meant that it probably was actually a family heirloom, and not just purchased at a flea market, because he wouldn’t have bothered. Frankly, I was a little surprised.
Next to the command center was the room where the smart people had set up. We didn’t really have a better name for them, but it was where all the brainy Hunters with their Mensa cards were gathered trying to figure out what was actually going on beneath Severny. We had hard science guys like Cody, occult experts like Dr. Rothman and Ben Rigby, and researchers like Lee and Paxton. And of course, Tanya, Princess of the Elves, self-declared expert on magic…which was driving Cody a bit crazy.
When I came in to brief them about what I’d heard the giant say, Tanya was helpfully telling Cody that he was “book smart just like Bill Nye the Science Guy.” Cody, who had a pile of degrees, had responded that No, he was an actual scientist , and if she continued to bug him with elven foolishness he was going to say to hell with it and retire.
None of the Academic Decathlon knew what to make of the giant’s words, and I figured roughly half of them assumed I had just been punch-drunk and imagined understanding the language. Academics loved to argue. They were still debating if Rothman’s interpretation was correct, and only a chosen individual would be able to go through the gate, or if a whole team could pass, but when it came to the giant’s cryptic warning, there was nothing in any record about Asag being imprisoned here, it was always that he was asleep or in some kind of demon stasis, just waiting for the end of the world. And they had searched everything.
Rigby thought it was just as likely that the giant was a d
isciple of Asag, and had been trying to trick us into not harming its master. It could just be an attempt to keep us away from his tomb…But you don’t make it long in this business by being incautious, and if the demon was awake but stuck, the last thing we wanted to do was set him free, so they’d take the possible warning under advisement.
Regardless, in a few hours we would be leaving for the ruins.
CHAPTER 17
“’Cause we got a great big convoy, ain’t it a beautiful sight! We’re gonna roll this big old convoy, rockin’ through the night!” Milo Anderson had a terrible singing voice. “Convoy!”
“The sun’s up. You can’t really call it all through the night,” I pointed out.
“Convoy!”
Milo was driving our truck. I was in the passenger seat. We had three more Hunters in back and another manning the turret. There were a dozen vehicles ahead of us and far more behind. There was no road between our base and the ruins, but the ground between wasn’t too rugged. It was one of the main reasons we’d picked this landing site.
We had plotted a course that was a balance of speed and safety. Our planners had picked out every ravine and dangerous terrain feature on the way and marked them on the map. Depressions make great ambush spots. Narrow paths are easy to block. Our lead vehicle was being driven by a Hunter who had been a Finnish rally car champ. We could radio coordinates back to our howitzer for fire support. Every truck had a winch and a tow bar. If something broke down, we’d drag it out immediately. If a vehicle couldn’t be unstuck in seconds, we’d abandon it, and every Hunter riding in it would pile into other vehicles. We weren’t stopping for anything.
Monster Hunters take our convoying very seriously.
Two helicopters were overhead. Skippy was having the time of his life continually blowing stuff up. He was positively giddy by orc standards. There weren’t any pesky human laws to hold him back here like there were in the US, and he really loved shooting rocket pods at every weird critter that looked at us funny.
The downside of this much hardware was the absurd fuel consumption. I’d run the numbers in advance. This operation was a massive resource suck, but as long as we had a clear shot back to the harbor and the airfield, we could keep up our siege of the City of Monsters. Our fort boat would be receiving gas, ammo, food, and drinking water daily. Until the Russian government became unhappy with our presence, we had a reliable supply line. The stuff coming into port was legitimate contract shipping funded by Management, but we also had backup supply chains from shady do-not-worry-is-good-deal Krasnov contacts if necessary. The day that lifeline was cut, it was time to get the hell out. Hopefully ahead of the army units they would surely be sending to arrest us.
Krasnov was feeling pretty optimistic that his government would be pleased with our results. I wasn’t nearly as optimistic as our mob boss. Right now this was still a mutually beneficial business arrangement, but I had zero faith that would continue indefinitely. Too many times I had seen some bureaucrat from my own ham-fisted government suddenly change their mind and pull the rug out from under Hunters. I had even less faith in somebody else’s government not being assholes. I’m patriotic like that.
“This is Harbinger. We are five minutes out. Keep your heads on a swivel.”
I pretended to speak into an imaginary CB radio. “Breaker one nine, good buddy, this here is Rubber Duck. We’re clean from here to Taco Town.”
“Ten four, Pig Pen!” That made Milo’s day. “I knew you appreciated classic movies, Z. Okay, everybody sing along! Convoy!”
The Hunters in the back of our vehicle shared confused looks. None of them were from the US and their English wasn’t that good, so the odds of them being fans of obscure 1970s movies was pretty slim, but damn it, when Milo wants a sing-along, that enthusiasm is contagious. “Que es ‘Convoy’?”
“Only the greatest trucking movie theme song ever. Okay. I’ll teach you guys the words. I’ve had this thing memorized since I got a bootleg VHS tape when I was a little kid. Everybody now!” Milo immediately launched into song.
Things like Milo’s goofy singing while heading into a radioactive war zone may seem unprofessional, but we were driving across a place that just oozed evil. You could feel the oppressive weight dragging down your soul. We spent our days dealing with dead victims and the things that mutilated them, so Hunters tended to be a flippant bunch. The darker your job, the better refined your sense of humor needed to be or you were destined to burn out, and Milo had been doing this job for a long time.
“This is Truck Four. Contact right. Rocky ridge at three o’clock. Lost visual.”
“This is Truck Twelve. Contact left. Movement in the ravine we just passed.”
Sadly, singing time was over. “Here we go.”
Milo gave me a grim nod and gripped the wheel tight. We were going forty miles an hour in armored boxes. We should be safe. Monsters tended to lack in the ranged-weapon category, but you never know, things could surprise you. The trade-off was that the ride sucked; as a big dude I was cramped and getting tired of banging my knees and head with every bump.
I kept scanning for threats. The landscape here was black with white snow stripes. The wind and weather had long since scrubbed all the small stuff, so the vehicles ahead of us weren’t kicking up any obscuring dust. The convoy was passing through a valley filled with shale, dirty snow, and icy streams. More calls came in. There was movement all around us.
Suddenly, the whole valley rose up.
I hadn’t seen them because their bodies were as black as the rock they’d been lying on. Eyes glowing jade, each creature was only about the size of a baboon, but there were hundreds of them.
“What the—”
Long spindly arms flashed as they hurled rocks in rapid-fire succession. They had no problem hitting a moving target. Projectiles clanged off our armor with shocking force. They were putting dents in the plates. Against flesh, one of those would hit like a bullet.
“Light ’em up.”
The convoy didn’t even slow down as every turret fired. Miniguns cut a swath through the obsidian monkeys. Fifty-cals blew them into pieces. And then they all disappeared in expanding clouds of shrapnel produced by our belt-fed 40mm grenade launchers. A few seconds later, there was nothing but a field of mangled corpses and we were speeding away.
“What the hell were those?”
“I’ve got no idea. Never seen them before. This island is weird.” Then, because Milo was a polite host, he tried to translate that for our guests. “La isla es no bueno.” His Spanish was about as good as his singing.
If this was a regular mission, we would have stopped to make sure they were dead and collected the bodies for PUFF. The curious part of me wanted to examine one of those obsidian monkeys to see what they were. The accountant part of me was sad to leave perfectly good PUFF money on the ground. Only the practical part of me was glad we were focused on the big picture. I wanted to win, rescue our guys, and head home. Hey, who knows? Maybe after we murdered Asag, these little guys would still be here…Though realistically, knowing how evil this place was, something would have scavenged their bones or animated the corpses by then.
“This is Harbinger. The ruins are in sight. Air cover sees some hostiles on the ground. Skippy is clearing us a path.”
From the background sound our orc pilot’s musical selection today was provided by Sabaton. “Skippy charge!”
MHI’s Hind roared past, too low for comfort, but Skippy didn’t give a crap. The Hind raced to the head of the convoy and then bolted upwards at a steep angle. He climbed rapidly for several seconds, leveled out, and then dropped like a rock. Nose down, guns blazing.
Nikolai Petrov may have had a squadron of MiGs, but we had a Skippy.
There was a long chain of explosions ahead of us. Something the size of a yak caught on fire and tried to run across a field. I watched the six-legged fireball in morbid amusement until one of the orc door gunners walked a line of tracers across it. The mystery
creature lay down and burned. If PETA saw that they would be pissed. The Hind kept turning and shooting. Skippy owned the sky and dispensed vengeance like a wrathful god.
“Savage.”
The song “The Last Stand” came over all our radios again.
“What best in life, Harb Anger? Skippy crush. Drive enemy! Hear lame things from their womens!” Skippy had almost gotten the Conan quote right. I was so proud of him.
“Skip is going to be super sad when we get back home and the MCB won’t allow him to use that kind of ordnance on every job,” Milo said with a little bit of awe in his voice.
We were almost there.
I felt an involuntary shiver run down my spine. I looked to Milo. He’d felt it too and gone a little gray. I looked to the back. All of the Hunters had been jovial and charged up a minute ago, but that had been replaced with a creeping fear. We were all feeling it one way or another. It was almost as if we had just driven across an invisible line and our subconscious minds were trying to warn us that we really didn’t belong here.
We had entered the borders of the ancient city.
Earl was a lead-from-the-front kind of commander, so was riding in the lead vehicle in order to have the best view. Once he confirmed that our aerial recon was accurate, Earl declared we would be sticking to the original plan. There was a flat area between the remains of the pyramid and the obelisks that was relatively free of debris. That spot would give us a good view of most of the ruins. It was time to circle the wagons.
“From convoy to wagon train. Come on, Milo, you’ve got to know the words to some wagon-train-related song.”
Milo just grunted something in the negative and concentrated on driving. You know a place is really putting out the negative waves when it’s enough to shake Milo off his game.
Our truck blasted past the ruined base of an obelisk. The silver had been scorched black by nuclear fire. The alien carvings were too ruined to discern. I was thankful for that small mercy. It was hard to tell now, weathered by time, then blown to pieces by man, but the city must have been impressive once. The base of the pyramid was a jumbled, jagged mess. The blocks that had made up the upper levels had been hurled hundreds of yards by Tsar Bomba. It was hard to even comprehend such a powerfully destructive force. The remainder of the structure had collapsed in on itself, leaving what appeared to be nothing but a misshapen hill.
Monster Hunter Siege (Monster Hunters International Book 6) Page 25
