"You disagree?"
Gray thought it was a stretch, but he refrained from saying so, knowing full well that his opinion didn't really matter at this point.
Lanis started to walk away.
Gray had to admit that there was a certain logic to what she was saying but something still felt wrong about it. Even for a trained Shiv Team, extemporaneously attacking a Ned was inviting disaster. Well-planned ambushes were the preferred tactic, and seldom successful.
Besides, there were the casualties to evac and who knew when the withdrawal order would come down. All things considered, to him at least, this seemed like a questionable risk.
And it was that questioning, more than anything, that made him uncomfortable.
Lanis had always taken risks engaging Neds. That was part of the job, and she did it well. Some of the guys in the 33rd called her the Widowmaker because she'd had a lot of casualties in her squad over the cycles. They claimed that she didn't care about the soldiers in her unit, which was utter rubbish, as far as Gray was concerned. You didn't hunt Neds without expecting losses and he'd witnessed the lengths to which the Chief went to protect her squadmates. He'd also seen her reaction to casualties and it was anything but callous.
She was a hard one, no doubt about it, but she cared, a lot more than she got credit for. Maybe she was driven, but Gray never considered her reckless. But now, a tiny part of him started to wonder.
To his dismay, that tiny voice somehow bypassed his common sense and went straight to his mouth.
"And that’s it?" he blurted out, regretting the words before he even finished saying them.
Lanis stopped, and though she didn't look back at him, he could tell that she sensed the implications in his tone. Gray feared that he might have crossed a line.
"We're Shiv Nine," she said, "It's what we do."
She glanced back and, to Gray's surprised relief; a slight grin creased the corner of her mouth. "You're not afraid of one little Ned, are you?"
He wasn't afraid -- at least no more than any sensible person would be at the thought of taking on a dragon. He still had concerns, but he also had faith in the Chief. That was going to have to be enough.
He took a deep breath, smiled, and shook his head.
"No, ma'am." He thoughtfully looked around. "Hell of a place to die, though."
"Then let's make sure we don't," she said, "Let's go."
As they approached the rest of the unit, Shaeffer walked up and snapped a salute.
"Situation secured, ma'am," he reported. "We had a couple of casualties, nothing too serious but my squad is down to eight.
"The wounded are prepped and as ready as we're gonna get 'em.
"EComms are still no good--just a mix of cross-chatter and a lot of distortion. Still no contact with sector command."
Lanis nodded, not really surprised. "This area's heavily disrupted," she said, "Comms are pretty much out until it blows over. We'll need to get clear of the DZ to call in the hoppers."
Shaeffer nodded. "Right. My team can take point. I recommend we head southeast. Looks to be the clearest route."
Lanis shook her head.
"Change of plans," she said, "Second squad will take care of the wounded. Your squad's with me."
"Yes ma'am," Shaeffer responded, a bit confused, "What's the plan?"
"Your squad trained at Fort Colvin, right?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Anti-dragon tactics?"
The sergeant's expression dropped slightly. "Yeah, just the primer they give you in Basic."
Lanis nodded. "It'll have to do. Load up JAMs. Your squad's got suppression duty."
She headed over to speak with the leader of second squad, leaving Shaeffer with a head full of questions.
Gray began to walk away but Shaeffer reached out and grabbed his arm.
"Is she serious?" he asked quietly.
Gray simply nodded.
Shaeffer released Gray's arm and let out a short sigh. "We didn't exactly sign up for that."
Gray patted the fellow sergeant on the shoulder and chuckled a bit. "I know the feeling, my friend.
"I hope you wore you thermal underwear," he added as he walked away.
Shaeffer couldn't tell from his tone if he was joking or not.
THREE
Redoubt Montrey
Uregard, Northern Calandra
3 Ii’Laan, 1394
Using a combination of her Vimsense and the image from her EVI's, Lanis led her team through the maze of backstreets toward her best guess at the Ned's location. The conditions made magical senses difficult to use, and, without visual confirmation, it was impossible to tell for certain where the creature might be.
But Lanis had a special knack for sensing out Neds. She knew that he was here, and she knew that he was close.
She stopped at the end of the alley and took a quick glance around. The street was littered with bodies and the burning remains of several vehicles. At first glance, it appeared like any of a number of streets in Montrey, littered with the aftermath of battle. But to the trained eye, there were differences. Lanis was certain that this was the place and something in her gut told her that, despite appearances, this party wasn't over.
She gave her team the signal to advance and they filed out into the street with weapons at the ready. Lanis followed behind, focusing on her Vimsense for any indication that the Ned might be nearby.
Gray kneeled down and inspected one of the bodies. The corpse was riddled with tiny shards of ice and covered in a thin layer of frost.
"Breath attack," he said, wiping away some of the ice to reveal the slain soldier's mundane body armor. He looked around at the large number of similar bodies and shook his head. "Poor bastards didn't have a chance."
Netherdragon breath attacks were one of the worst things an unprotected infantryman had to face. Warped by the magical aura of their home world, the netherdragons' deadly freezing breath was laced with tiny razor-sharp frozen slivers that could shred through exposed flesh like high-speed ice flachettes. Even on a battlefield full of magical threats, it was a bad way to go.
Gray stood back up. "Well, he was definitely here."
"So, where is it?" blurted out one of the Rangers, the tension getting the better of him.
Shaeffer shot the soldier a look that seemed to make him relax a bit, but it was obvious that the situation had his men a little rattled.
Lanis ignored the exchange and focused her attention northward. Her E-V's showed nothing more than the shifting currents of the Etherum but her instincts told her that something was coming.
She felt a sudden, massive draw of ambient Vim an instant before the sound of heavy cannon fire echoed through the streets, followed by a loud, screeching roar. The sound drew everyone's attention to the intersection northwest of the group’s position.
Seconds later, there was a second thunderous crash and a "Vargil" heavy crawler cartwheeled into view, spinning and tumbling along the ground until it finally came to rest partially embedded in side of a building. The team collectively stared in stunned silence until the sixty-ton vehicle suddenly exploded from internal ammunition cook-off, forcing everyone to duck for cover.
Lanis stood up and readied her EP rifle.
"There he is."
Practically on cue, the netherdragon marched into the intersection. He stopped to assess the smoking remains of the destroyed crawler, then began casually scanning for more targets.
Standing on his hind legs, he was nearly twelve mets tall at the shoulder--towering over the seemingly tiny humans in the street below. His matte black and gray scales were woven tightly over a lean, almost gaunt, frame. Bony spines projected along his neck, down his back, and nearly to the end of his tail. His leathery wings, tucked loosely behind his back, trembled with excitement.
Lanis had fought netherdragons before, and while she certainly gave them due respect, she didn't fear them. But standing here now, it took all of her well-practiced composure to subdue the feeling of dread that cl
utched at her heart. This was no ordinary Ned.
She glanced at Gray, noting by his uncomfortable expression that he was thinking the same thing that she was.
"Stalker," she muttered with a frustrated sigh.
Stalker was the CAF designation for Imperial Talons, the Shadowdragon's elite mechanically enhanced netherdragon shock troopers. Created via dark technosorcery and driven nearly insane by extreme biomagical rejection, the twisted monstrosities were feared and shunned by all living things, even their own kind. Their only purpose for existence was to destroy the enemies of their emperor or die in the attempt--a task for which they were very well equipped.
Cybernetik enhancements, magically implanted through an imperfect biomantic process known as spellwiring, poked through the stalker's skin in several places. Wires and tubing, tangled with partially exposed muscle and sinew, almost made him appear as though parts of him had been turned inside out.
His arms, upper legs, and torso were clad in the Talons' distinctive black and gold armor, which was heavily imbued with a complex array of defensive wards. Around his waist were several thick leather belts that dangled with battle trophies--weapons, scraps of armor, and bones representing victims from an unknown number of different worlds, including this one. Beside the macabre collection hung a long scabbard containing the Stalker's signature weapon--a three met long double-edged blade of alchemical steel, serrated on the trailing edge and enhanced with powerful draconic runes.
His long neck twisted around slowly as he scanned the surroundings. Netherdragon eyesight was weak in daylight, being far better suited to the dim environment of their homeworld. To compensate, their Vimsense was incredibly acute, allowing them to hear the auras of living beings in a way similar to Eth-Hounds. It was practically impossible to hide from a Netherdragon without the use of complicated inversion magic to mask one's aura. Spread out in the open street, Lanis's team had no chance of avoiding detection.
The stalker turned to face the humans and let out a hiss that crackled like breaking ice and sent wisps of super chilled mist swirling from his nostrils.
Slowly and deliberately, he drew his weapon from its scabbard. The jagged runes along the blade pulsed with a dull red-orange glow as though the weapon itself hungered for blood. Then, uttering a low growl, the Stalker advanced at a measured pace, each gigantic step sending a shudder through the ground as he approached.
Lanis knew that it was too late to retreat. Stalkers were utterly relentless. Any attempt to escape would merely lead him right to the hoppers. She had to kill him here, or at least keep his attention diverted from the overall battle for as long as she could.
Without hesitation, she signaled her unit to engage. The members of her team, per their training, reacted instantly, spreading out in a practiced and planned assault formation.
Awed by the terrifying sight before them, the Rangers hesitated, unsure of what to do.
"Shaeffer!" Lanis yelled at the stupifed sergeant, "Suppression fire, now!"
The order seemed to snap him out of the trance. With a quick nod, he turned around and rallied his squad. They moved forward, laying down a steady crossfire as they spread out, darting from cover to cover in their best attempt to confuse the creature. The dragon’s defensive wards rippled visibly under the hail of antimagic rounds, lighting him up in a dazzling display of sparks.
Almost immediately, explosions began erupting all around the area as the Stalker unleashed a volley of magical attacks. Debris rained down from multiple blasts while magical flames licked at the heels of the constantly displacing soldiers. It was as though an entire two-block radius had suddenly just transformed into hell itself.
Lanis sprinted along the left side of the street, bounding over small obstacles and weaving around the larger ones as she rapidly closed the range. As she ran, she began folding a spellbreaker techniq into her Booster, drawing purely on ambient Vim to power it, and making no effort to conceal her channeling. She counted on the dragon sensing the buildup of magical energy, hoping that it might draw its attention away from the rest of her unit, allowing them to prepare for the next stage of the attack.
The techniq’s harmonics raised in pitch as she channeled increasingly more Vim into the matrix, all the while hoping that the local etheric distortion didn’t cause the techniq to fail before she could release it.
Behind her, Gray did his best go keep up, bellowing orders as he ran.
“Cable team, get your arses in position!” he yelled as he jumped and slid across the hood of a wrecked vehicle, barely slowing his pace.
“Wait for the Chief to drop his barriers, then give him hell!
"Abes, get that ATR in position!”
Abes had already broken off from the rest of the group and taken cover behind a large pile of broken concrete near the side of the street. He leveled the ATR in a firing position that gave him a clear view of the target roughly eighty mets up the street. He pulled back the heavy bolt of the rifle and let it loose with a loud clunk, loading a deadly twenty millimet SCAM round into the breech.
Solid-Core-Anti-Magic rounds could punch through a light armored vehicle like a hot knife through lard, but they still couldn't pierce dragon wards without a little help. All Abes needed was for the Chief to weaken those wards for a second and he could put a hole the size of a melon through any part of that monster that he wanted.
“ATR ready,” he reported as he lined up his sights on the massive target and tried to relax into a comfortable firing position.
***
Lanis slid to a stop, leaning back just in time to avoid an enormous chunk of flying concrete as it tumbled by and shattered through the first-floor windows of a nearby building. Mumbling a short adage about luck, she turned her attention back to the Stalker looming some forty mets away.
Shaeffer's team was pulling back as the Stalker advanced, laying down harassing fire, which was doing little, if any, damage. One of the Rangers waited a bit too long before attempting to displace to a better position. The Stalker didn’t even slow his stride as he swung his massive sword in a low, backhanded arc, catching the fleeing soldier from behind. The force of the impact sent the limp body wheeling through the air over ten mets until it slammed into a wall with a sickening, wet crunch. The dragon ignored the twitching body as he marched by, turning his attention to the cluster of men that were peppering him with their feeble anti-magic projectiles.
As Lanis watched the one-sided engagement playing out, she suddenly heard the distinctive harmonics of magical channeling.
“Shaeffer, pull out!” she screamed, “He’s channeling!”
She might have been able to save one, maybe two, if she could channel a barrier ward in time. But to do so she would have to drop the spellbreaker she'd been folding, losing her opportunity to drop the dragon’s wards before he could reinforce them. In desperation, she fired a full burst from her EP rifle, hoping to distract the beast, but the shots spattered feebly across his barriers to little effect. Lanis watched in fury and horror, knowing that she could do nothing to prevent what was coming.
Two of the Rangers suddenly fell down screaming as their bodies erupted in flames, seemingly from within. Another made an attempt to run away, but after only a few strides, he collapsed in the snow. The three men thrashed on the ground in a desperate but futile attempt to douse the jets of magical flame that spewed from every gap in their now-useless body armor. After an agonizing few seconds they finally lay still, the remains of their charred bodies emitting wisps of ash and smoke that dissipated on the cold wind.
The sight of a magical attack against which they had no defense shattered the resolve of the remaining Rangers and they broke into full retreat. The dragon followed and began channeling another offensive spell, intending to finish off the survivors.
Lanis forced herself to look away from the bodies and concentrated her anger at the Stalker. The spellbreaker techniq she’d been folding had reached the limit of her booster’s capacity and the ‘stones were begi
nning to discord. She waited a few more seconds, trusting her instincts to warn her the instant before the ‘stones would give out.
“Come on,” she growled, and stepped out into the open.
The dragon stopped his pursuit of the Rangers and glanced around suspiciously. It seemed that he'd either just sensed her channeling or, more likely, finally decided that it was a threat. He turned, and with a sinister snort, charged directly toward her.
Exercising cycles of composure training, Lanis resisted the instinct to run and triggered the final segment of her techniq, completing the matrix. The amplified spellbreaker attacked the Stalker's protective wards, burrowing in and severing the complex magical threads of the magical matrices. She could see the barriers weaken slightly as several layers of wards dissipated under the assault.
But it wasn’t enough.
The barriers held and the Ned continued toward her with his massive sword raised, intent on keeping her from getting another chance.
“Shards!” Lanis cried in disbelief as she dove aside, narrowly avoiding the dragon’s massive sword as it carved a met-deep trough in the street just behind her.
She was at a bit of a loss. She’d folded the spellbreaker almost to the limit of her booster, easily enough to break a stalker's typical wards. Instead, the techniq had barely made a dent.
She dodged toward the side of the street, trying to present a difficult target while her mind raced frantically for options. She sensed the dragon behind her beginning to channel. She began to channel a barrier techniq, pulled out her EP rifle, and prepared to make a stand.
Suddenly, Gray stepped out from cover ahead of her, beckoning her in his direction.
“Keep going!” he yelled as he leveled his rifle at the approaching Stalker and fired off several short bursts.
As she bolted past him, Lanis saw the rest of her unit emerge from behind the piles of rubble, adding to the covering fire. She skidded to a stop and dove behind a large slab of upturned concrete, then whirled around to assess the effect of her team's ambush.
Big Girls Don't Cry: Shadowdragon War Diaries Vol. 1 Page 4
