Most, but not all.
Roughly one in five of the Ferox carried a series of sacs strapped across their back. The sacs seemed to be made from the digestive tracts of local wildlife, their surfaces like looking down on crude oil. He thought of the Ferox who carried them as Bladder Backs, they seemed to tolerate having the sacs strapped to them about the same way most dogs make peace with being forced to wear a Halloween costume.
They weren’t the only oddity in the pit.
The Ferox had never been allowed to bring weapons into the Arena. Heyer had said that though each tribe was different, weapons were seldom used by the species. As Grant looked over the horde, he saw that some still carried the hammers and picks they had used while digging. But, he had seen some with far more vicious looking items in their hands. Things that looked like the war axes of fantasy video games. Clearly not intended for anyone of a human size to realistically wield. The heads were sharpened obsidian rock and the handles made from what he suspected to be the bones of either local creatures . . . or the remains of other Ferox.
Those that carried the weapons did have one other uniqueness. Grant only noticed it when he took a closer look through the scope. Their skin had intricate designs chiseled or cut into their flesh. The scars looked something like the tribal tattoos of humans; but each Ferox’s skin bore different symbols.
The weapon carriers handled their massive weapons with the same regard a human might a wood axe. Grant had yet to see anything on the Feroxian Plane that could conceivably be chopped down. But he had only seen a small fraction of the place.
He activated the tracking system. Looking out over the crowd, Heyer’s head lit up in Grant’s HUD as though he’d been dipped in fluorescent paint. He knelt among the Ferox as the conduit opened.
The prophet gave no sign that they were to rise. Yet, most of the Ferox stood in some semblance of unison as he stepped to the conduit. Heyer was one of those slower to stand, likely because he wasn’t plugged into whatever it was that Malkier was using to communicate his orders. Heyer had to do his best to mimic the actions of the Ferox around him.
As he made his way to the platform, Malkier made a show of standing before the opening. The Ferox all watched him with wide white eyes. Occasionally they roused in excitement and agreement. It took a while for Grant to realize what was going on. The prophet was giving a speech or a sermon . . . but neither he nor Heyer could hear it.
Grant opened a line to Heyer. The alien couldn’t respond, couldn’t risk whispering in a human tongue surrounded by thousands of Ferox.
“You know how he is communicating? Scratch your neck or something.”
Heyer slowly reached up and touched his neck. He did this with something extra though, his individual fingers wiggling a bit before his hand fell back to his side.
“That mean you have a guess but aren’t certain?” Grant asked.
Heyer deliberately scratched his neck this time.
There was nothing more to follow up on. Right now, with so much quiet amongst the horde, they couldn’t get into any more details beyond: yes, no, and maybe.
After what felt like an eternity of being deaf and watching a program with no subtitles, the prophet raised one armored hand.
Grant, begrudgingly, had to give him credit for the theatrics that followed.
It was as though he summoned thousands of bright white pulses of energy from the sky. They poured down from the clouds and coalesced into a sphere over the pit. Malkier, Heyer, and Grant were the only ones amongst the thousand present that knew the whole show was being driven by Cede, while the Ferox gazed up in wonder as though they bore witness to the power of their gods.
Finally, the prophet turned, his hand pointing toward the conduit. It basically looked like Malkier was firing celestial energies into the conduit. Once the sphere of light was depleted, he assumed that Malkier had stopped speaking as well. This assumption was mostly based on the look of the Ferox horde. If Grant had to guess, the prophet had just finished delivering the equivalent of the speech from Independence Day. The crowded horde coming to life with eager roars for battle.
This was not the sort of morale boost you wanted to see your enemy get right before a war began. Sure, maybe a part of Grant would always want to see Jonathan fail, but Earth was at stake—and he had to care. He was not that thing his shadow had become under the degradation—he didn’t want his world handed to the Ferox. He just wished there were something he could do to dampen the certainty in the heart of every Ferox rallying below.
Soon after, the first of Malkier’s scouts returned. Then it seemed as though the great march was about to begin. He could see the excitement of the horde below. Could see the difference as he looked at Heyer amongst the throng of Ferox.
“You’re doing a piss poor job of blending in,” Grant said over the comm. “The only other Ferox standing stiff-backed down there is your brother. Slouch more. Drool . . . or something.”
The alien didn’t risk a reply, but clearly his words had been heard, as the Ferox body Heyer inhabited did its best to mimic the urgency of the monsters around him. It wasn’t much of a performance, but the Ferox surrounding him weren’t paying enough attention to him to pick up on just how poorly he emulated. Grant turned his eyes back to the portal to see the first wave of soldiers entering. Their march was awkward but eager as the first lines of soldiers disappeared through the conduit.
Within a few minutes a noise came—it was sudden, like watching a disaster movie on mute then suddenly turning the volume to full blast. Had he blinked, Grant wouldn’t have been sure what he saw. A chunk of skyscraper—its top sheared clean off by the top of the conduit—slammed onto the platform. If seeing the conduit come into being was like witnessing the eye of a god open, then this was like watching a god—well, puke.
The building lost any resemblance to its original shape as it clapped down on the platform. But that was hardly the end of it. The angle and momentum through the conduit brought a mass of wreckage pouring through. It was like a giant sewage pipe spewing piles of cement and metal girders. Grant lost visibility long before the sound of wreckage pouring through ended.
The tower beneath him rumbled and swayed as the valley below became shrouded in a canopy of grey dust. Even the tech Mr. Clean had built into his helmet’s visor couldn’t penetrate this much particulate in the air.
Well, Grant thought. I don’t know why I ever worried that Jonathan wouldn’t find a way to steal a guy’s thunder.
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
FROM THE THIRD floor of Rainier Tower, Beo had watched as The Columbia Center smashed into the conduit. Seattle shook as he anxiously followed a single long crack spreading across the window in front of him.
By the time the ground settled, Beo found himself in complete darkness, but the glass held.
As far as visibility went, their side of the conduit would suffer more than the Feroxian Plane. It was the middle of the night and every artificial light in the world was out, and now the dust rushing up from the fallen skyscraper blotted out any natural light from the sky.
The trade was still in their favor.
They would have to fight in this eventually, but his helmet was equipped to switch between night vision, infrared, and thermal to ensure he was never blind.
For the time being, Malkier’s forces had a bottleneck of wreckage between them and their one point of entry. Organizing the Ferox to make a way through would take time. By then, the dust would settle in the city and if they were lucky the sun would be up before the next wave marched through.
For now, as long as that glass held, and the air inside the building remained relatively clear—Beo simply activated his helmet’s head lamp while retracting the shield over his chest implant. The two were enough to push darkness away. He turned to head for the stairs through a line of empty office cubicles, in no hurry knowing the next few hours should be quiet ones.
Like everyone else he had his orders. Some had immediate parts to play, but for no
w his next priority was to get to higher ground and wait for visibility to improve. Each man was assigned to teams, and unless the Ferox made it through that debris faster than they estimated, he was to meet up with his team once the conditions improved.
There was a chance that a few of the Ferox had survived the building’s collapse, but even those lucky enough to have made it clear would be shell-shocked and lost in the choking cloud outside. At least, that had all sounded like a safe bet until he heard the glass shattering behind him. He rounded, and his head lamp caught one of the She-rox rising from a crouch just inside the window. In fact, she was standing in the middle of the duct tape square where he had entered The Never.
The dust from outside swept in around her as she stood. Most males were a solid seven feet or taller when they stood straight. The She-rox was a bit taller than the average man—its limbs smaller and sinewy—less bubbled with musculature.
“Gotta’ straggler. Rainier Towah third’ floor’,” Beo said over the comms. “Anyone close, bes’ be quick if ya wanna a piec—”
The shattering of a second window cut him off. Suddenly, a second set of white eyes stared at him. He planted his feet while his hand reached back over his shoulder for his hammer. “Correction . . . stragglers.”
“Rainier Tower. Sixteenth Floor—backup en route.”
“Rainier Tower. Thirty-second Floor—backup en route.”
As his hand drew close to the handle of his weapon, the airtight seal began to part itself. From behind, it would have looked like a separate sheath made from the same material that held his armor together was being unzipped by a ghost. The material finished parting to reveal an alien steel hammer.
The head was near as thick as an elephant’s foot. Its shape had as much in common with a battle maul as it did a hammer as each end was covered in blunted spikes.
Two words were written across the head’s flat surface.
“My pleasure ta introduce ya’ll to, da’ Juggernaut,” Beo said.
Just as he was itching to pull the hammer free, the She-rox standing in the duct tape paused. Took her eyes off the glow of his device to see his hand tighten on the handle. Tilting her lizard head such that those rubber dread locks were tossed over one shoulder, she reached for what had been hidden underneath, freed it, and threw it forward. An oily black pouch slapped the floor between them, green gas erupting.
At the edge of Beo’s HUD, a small alarm began to flash: WX gas detected.
Beo only laughed, as he pulled The Juggernaut free. “Oh, no you did not just throw that green shit at me.”
There had not been enough true alien steel left to equip the entire army once all the crucial equipment they required had been forged. Still, there was enough left, that in the end Mr. Clean forged some exceptions.
Jonathan’s and Leah’s weapons were True Steel, as were Mito’s blades and several others, depending on how much metal had to be sacrificed from what little they had left. Beo had never expected to find Mr. Clean presenting him with The Juggernaut. The sheer size of the sort of weapon he liked to carry meant it would require enough steel to make five or six less costly items. It was a waste of resources. But, since everyone agreed the sheer sight of Beo smashing Ferox was a morale boost they might all need before this ended, Mr. Clean offered a solution that he had used for most of the heavier metal weapons.
He forged as many weapons as he could using True Steel, but for items like The Juggernaut he filled the head with the Earth-based version. Any gas would have to get past the near invincible exterior to melt the weapon.
Now, what that meant for the two Ferox staring in confusion as his hammer ignored the gas spreading through the room was—he wasn’t going to let them out alive so they could tell Malkier that the gas hadn’t seemed to work.
While the She-rox approached with caution, a fight of two on one appeared to leave them confident that they remained the predator and he the prey. They moved like wolves—lionesses. Each keeping step as they circled around him, just outside his reach. With a snarl, the first had made a jump toward him—a feint really—as when Beo moved to engage, she’d been quick to retreat just as the other raced in for his exposed back. He knew the game; they wanted to force him to keep spinning to keep an eye on both at the same time.
Luckily, his HUD was quick to realize the nature of the situation as well. Beo saw a map at the corner of his vision showing them as two dots circling him. At the same time, a smaller window gave him the equivalent of a rear-view camera. All that tech might have kept him from worrying, but these damn things were faster than their male counterparts—and they had a clear instinct for teamwork. Now, perhaps the males of the species had this too, he’d never fought two at once, but nothing he’d seen from the way they engaged gave him much fear that was the case.
He forced himself to stand still, not to react to their feints until one truly committed to an attack. As he did so, the circle tightened around him. He stopped turning as one passed outside his vision, trusting the HUD to replace his eyes as she got behind him. Still he heard the claws gripping the floor as she prepared to pounce. He exploded forward, launching himself at the She-rox in front. The sudden move caught her by surprise. Indecision kept her from dodging just long enough that Beo nearly flattened her into a pancake before she got clear. Unfortunately for the She-rox, as she tried to jump past him he let one hand free of the hammer to grab hold of her. She’d nearly slipped by, but at the last instant his fingers tightened around the thick rubbery strands that ran off her head.
The little dragon chirped in surprise as he pulled and spun, using her like a baseball bat to swat her friend out of the air as she lunged into the fight from behind. The rear attacker crashed through a series of cubicles, only coming to a stop when she broke through another exterior window and dug her claws into the frame before the rest of her body flew out over the street.
The first didn’t fare as well. Beo never let go. He swatted her into a cement pillar, and then the floor, before bringing his foot down on her back.
Worried about the second getting an easy shot at him, he looked up just in time to see her caught completely off guard when the backup Beo had called for finally showed up.
Beo didn’t know the man’s name—there were nearly four hundred names in The Never Army now and most only knew the folks in their squad by sight once they’d put their armor on. Whoever this was, he hadn’t bothered using the building’s staircase. From his sheer velocity, Beo knew the man must have broken a window somewhere on the upper stories and used the gleamers to make his way down the side of the building, only to disengage them and drop into free fall when he noticed the She-rox clinging to the edge of the window.
All Beo saw was the man deliver a thirty story drop kick before the two disappeared into the fog outside. Still, he thought he heard a loud crunch on the pavement a moment later. As with all things, these She-rox may have been quick and agile, natural hunters, but that speed came at a cost. Their armor wasn’t as thick. Beo quickly discovered this for himself as he finished off the one struggling under his boot. He brought The Juggernaut down with a splat that nearly drove the She-rox’s head through the floor.
Still, after seeing how they engaged him, he was already worried about what they would be dealing with when someone got into it with a larger pack.
By the time the second man who answered his call for backup burst out of the staircase to find his services would not be needed, Beo was already opening a channel to the other team commanders.
“Ya’ll, I gotta’ bad feelin ‘bou dis.”
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
WITH A FINAL grunt of effort Malkier pushed free of the wreckage that had come through the conduit to pile over him. In the light, he saw the full extent of it. Half a skyscraper’s worth of Earth debris had just been violently spewed on to the Feroxian Plane.
While being buried in an avalanche of cement and steel was an annoyance for him, his frontline could not come out unscathed. As he climbed to th
e nearest high point on top of the wreckage, he saw the pit was a dust bowl. Some of the Ferox who had been caught in the avalanche were managing to dig themselves free. Far more were still buried beneath. Those that hadn’t been killed by the building or were too injured to pull themselves out would soon suffocate beneath his feet.
Then, he saw the state of the conduit’s opening. The debris reached up to the apex of the conduit. Clearing it would delay them for hours, longer if they searched for survivors.
He heard a growl of anger rumble up in him as he breathed.
Inside his helmet, he opened a channel to his people. It had taken some work from Cede, but he had tapped into the very same channels that allowed the portal stone to translate between species. Every Ferox who had consumed a portal stone for the war of the Promised Land could hear him in their minds.
“Dig,” the prophet said.
Hours later, his Ferox were organized and sifting through the wreckage for survivors as they dug the way clear. They were efficient, having so recently brought this very pit into existence; the Ferox were well acquainted with moving rock out of the pit. The Earth wreckage was hauled out and dumped onto the same rock that now ringed the pit.
Some survivors were found, though few in good shape. The dead could not be carried off to the lava fields for their bodies to be returned to the Feroxian Plane. Malkier hadn’t thought so many casualties on this side of the conduit a realistic probability. As it was, the portal stones ingested by his people had to be recovered before the corpses could be put to rest in the lava pits.
Malkier had returned to his opening on the ridge that looked over the pit. He surveyed the progress, gave orders through his link to their minds. The only thing hampering them was that the link only went one way. He could command them, but they could not speak to him through the same means.
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