Elite: A Hunter novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Double whammy. So should I stay close for a bit and wait on going out to the Hub?” I asked.

  He nodded. “If nothing’s happened in an hour or so, go out. If something does happen, we’ll either need several teams or one really big one. I’ve got a bad feeling about today.”

  “Yessir,” I replied, and just at that point, the others on dayshift started to trickle into the armory, as if summoned. I guess they were getting a bad feeling about today too. Then again, that was their level of experience telling them what to do; they had way more of it than I did, enough to guess by the reports what might be cooking.

  “Mark Knight wants to go Elite,” I said to Kent quietly as the others began making weapon selections with one eye on the vid-screen.

  “His inclinations and talents are better suited to Elite than solo,” Kent observed. “You encouraging him?”

  “I’m not discouraging him,” I replied. “I told him I’d help him get ready.”

  Kent just nodded—approvingly, I thought. I slowly put together my usual load-out, then went and sat down on a bench to see what was going to happen.

  Now, this was very different from any other morning. This was the first time I’d come in here when every single one of the Elites was here, and lingering. Some of them had taken seats on one of the benches, and some were just standing around with their arms crossed. All of them were watching the vid-screen, which had divided up into stuff I didn’t recognize, except that there were some windows of what looked like radar feeds, some scrolling text, some cams, some I had no idea what was being shown. I’m guessing Kent had windowed up the screen, or maybe he’d set it to reflect what they were seeing in Control. They all seemed to be waiting for something, expecting something, and at a guess I’d have to say they had completely forgotten that I didn’t know what they were waiting for. But there was a tense feeling about them. Like home, when we know a big storm is coming. Even Retro was keeping his eyes on the screen and not trying to make me laugh or asking for a date, and that was practically out of character for him.

  Then three of the windows lit up bright red. One was a cam feed, one was radar, and the last was a piece of map with a pulsing dot on it. The alert callout sounded not only in the room, but from all our Perscoms, signaling a full-team deployment. “There it is,” Kent said, as if this was exactly what he’d expected. “Portal opened up outside Bensonville. Three choppers inbound now to load us up. Joy, you’ll be with me, Hammer, Steel, and Archer. The rest of you take your usual fives. Bounce!”

  I was loaded for my usual prowl in the storm sewers, so I paused just long enough to swap my shotgun and ammo for an assault rifle and ammo. Then I bounced, following Archer on the run, down the halls to the chopper pads where the first of the three was setting down.

  The sky was a slightly odd color, and the sunlight seemed a little dimmer; that would be the effect of the ash plume that had been carried on high-altitude winds as fast as a jet. As I got to the chopper, Archer reached for me without actually looking at me, picked me up, and threw me in the door, then jumped in afterward. That was to clear the way for Hammer, Steel, and the armorer, who were all big men. I knew the layout of the smaller choppers; this one was bigger, and it carried rocket pods on the outside. There was only one door, rather than two. I got myself to the seat next to Archer and strapped in.

  Kent was the last one on and banged the side of the chopper as soon as both of his feet were inside the door. The pilot took off immediately, leaving Kent to get to his seat and strap in as best he could while the chopper made a steep bank and a shallow ascent. We would be doing the next thing to ground skimming, I reckoned, to avoid the ash in the upper air.

  These choppers were fast. Faster than the train. Faster than anything I had ever been on before. Once again, I got that weird feeling of really not belonging here. How could I, when the fastest thing I knew was a galloping horse? I decided that looking out the open door was a bad idea, since it was making me dizzy, and looked around the interior of the thing instead.

  It was incredibly noisy. The smaller choppers I’d been in had been loud, but this was unbelievable. No way we were sneaking up on anyone in these things. There were eight seats, so we could have fit everyone into two of them, but I didn’t know enough to know why we were taking three birds instead of two. Archer tapped my arm, then tapped his ear. I put in my earbuds and adjusted the little boom mic; I could use both even inside the gas mask if I needed to put it on. The noise level dropped to nothing, and I watched Kent monitoring his Perscom. Finally, he nodded and started speaking.

  “Objective is Bensonville, population twenty-three thousand and some change. Portals formed on the west side and began discharging what looks like a takeover assault. We know of a Gog and a Magog for sure, the usual hordes of foot troops, Harpies, a flock of Wyverns. Given what happened the last couple days, we should expect something new, or maybe some of those Nagas. We’ll have support from artillery, some foot troops, and army Mages.”

  I got a sinking feeling when he said that. Was one of those Mages Ace?

  “Our goal is to keep them out of the town. If they get in, we clean them out. Shiloh, your chopper will drop your team in the east, near the Wyverns, where the army Mages are. My team will work with the artillery. Tank, I want your team to street-sweep; get any Cits in the open to safety, then join up with Shiloh’s team. The situation is very fluid, so as usual, we’ll be making it up as we go along.”

  Someone in one of the other two choppers laughed and said, “So what else is new? I assume we leave the big baddaboom to the artillery?”

  “That’s what they’re here for, and our good luck they’re in the neighborhood.” Kent pointed at me, then at Hammer and Steel, indicating I was to stay with them. I nodded. He mimed pumping a shotgun and raised an eyebrow. I pulled up the AR enough for him to see I’d swapped out my original weapon, and he nodded with satisfaction.

  My gut was all clenched up. This wasn’t the first full-team deployment I’d been on, but it was the first time I’d be going up against an Othersider assault on an entire town, and it was the first time it was so far from Apex. I wanted badly to be on the ground with my Hounds all around me. I was acutely aware that the metal shell that was hurtling toward the enemy was extremely fragile in its own way and was a very big target. The whole chopper vibrated, bucked, and tilted as the pilot ran a random evasive course to keep the Othersiders from targeting us.

  Kent suddenly clapped one hand to the side of his head and frowned. Then his voice rang through my ears. “New deployment. We’re facing three Folk Mages. Mei, you stay on the Wyverns. Tank, I want your team with me and Archer on the Folk Mages. Hammer, you and Steel and Joy handle the Gog and Magog with support from the artillery; they’ll tear the town apart otherwise. Then you head into town to clean up. Heads up, people, we’re about to hit the landing zones. Team HSJ will drop first. Get to the door and get ready.”

  Was this normal? I’d never been in on an “Incident” before. Did the Othersiders just open Portals at random and pour minions in without any sort of tactics or planning?

  Hammer popped his harness; his brother did the same a second later. I unclipped mine, grabbed the cargo net draping the interior of the chopper, and got in line behind Steel. We were wrenched back and forth for a few seconds, and I hung on for dear life, the rope of the net digging into my fingers, and I dearly wished for Hammer’s mass as I got thrown around like a rag doll. Then the chopper slowed and stopped, hovering about three feet off the ground, and we three jumped out and down into a grain field. The chopper banked and sped off as soon as we were clear, blasting us with the backwash of its rotors and making us squint and shade our eyes against debris.

  Like the fields nearer Apex, this one was planted in strips of different grains. I was too busy looking for the Gog and Magog to try to identify what was in them; all I could see was waving bands of greens and green-golds spreading out in front of me, the grain stalks rippling in the wind. But once I turn
ed around and looked behind me, there was the town, in the middle of the field; it was a bigger town than back home, with a couple of three-story-tall buildings, a lot of two-story ones, and tons of houses. Wind generators of all sizes were everywhere, and the roofs were covered in solar panels. The railroad went through it, and right on the edge of town, at the railroad tracks, there were the Gog and Magog, side by side, methodically tearing apart grain silos.

  I was grateful that was all they were doing; they eat people, and they are always hungry. If I’d had time to think, I’d have been scared. But the situation wasn’t giving me any time to think.

  They looked fundamentally alike: giants, about three stories tall, with sallow skin that was smeared with filth. They were clothed…sort of…in crude mud-colored tunics with ragged hems. Both were bald. They looked like a chunky caricature of a human, with thick arms, thick legs, and a torso with no discernable waist or chest.

  The way to tell the Gog from the Magog is that the Gog has one eye, the Magog has two. Everyone back home assumed that Gogs and Magogs were mated pairs; you certainly never saw one without the other. It seemed about as reasonable an idea as any other you could have about them, and truth to tell, I really just did not want to imagine how something like that could mate and give birth. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they just budded off a new little monster whenever they felt like it.

  The artillery didn’t dare fire on them because they were right on the edge of town. The Bensonville Cits were almost certainly cowering in the cellars of those houses nearby, and the army would need someone close enough to paint the giants with lasers to guarantee every shell and rocket was a direct hit.

  I was about to ask Hammer what the plan was when a Portal opened up right in front of us, no more than twenty yards away, and a horde of Nagas began pouring out.

  Hammer cursed and jumped back, and I shot my Shields up and made a grab for my assault rifle.

  But the Nagas ignored us completely; instead, they slithered at high speed toward the town, moving low to the ground as the Portal closed behind them. A moment later, they were a hundred yards away and all but invisible in the grain. Hammer made a split-second decision. “Kent,” I heard over the radio, “change of plans. Snake-men heading for town. Joy, get the giants to chase you and get them away from the buildings so the artillery can take them out. We already know the Nagas know how to open doors; if we don’t stop those snakes from getting into town and into the shelters, there’s going to be a slaughter.”

  He and Steel called up their Hounds with the emergency summons and pelted after the rapidly vanishing Nagas, leaving me…

  …alone…

  Oh god…I summoned my Hounds the same way, ignoring the burning in my hands and the sudden drain of power, in order to bring them in as fast as possible. I knew Hammer was right, totally right: those Nagas could open or just plain hack down doors, smash in windows, and go where anything human-size could go. But at the same time, those giants had to be pulled away from the town too—and even if the pack and I could probably have caught up with the Nagas and dealt with them on our own, I didn’t think that Hammer and Steel could handle both of the giants at once. Sure, they could smash one, but while they were doing that, the other one could squash them like a pair of bugs.

  A plan…I needed a plan.

  As soon as the Hounds were all across, I reached blindly for Dusana and swung myself up on his back as he skidded to a halt beside me. A vague plan sprang up in my head, and I just hoped it was going to work. Bya, take the rest of the Alebrijes pack and give the Magog hot feet. That should get its attention. Get it to chase you to the north. Myrrdhin, you and I will take the rest after the Gog. Go!

  Bya didn’t argue with me—he and the others bamphed themselves across the intervening space, and a moment later, I thought I saw a flicker of flame somewhere below the Magog. I definitely heard a roar of outrage and pain, and the giant lumbered angrily northward. Gogs and Magogs were hard to damage. Their skin was thick and tough, and bullets generally just bounced off unless they were armor-piercing or specially coated. But the fire of my Alebrijes Hounds definitely stung that Magog. It was mad, and it was going after what had hurt it. Its partner didn’t seem to have noticed; the Gog was still feeling around inside the silo, its one eye squinched up, and its nasty gray tongue sticking out of the corner of its mouth.

  Bamph to the Gog? Dusana asked.

  Yes! I said. Shield and go! A moment later, there was a gut-writhing flash of disorientation, and then we were standing within thirty feet of the Gog, its ugly butt looming up above us. I didn’t want to get any closer. I didn’t want to chance seeing what was under that filthy tunic. Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai were with us; Hold and Strike were somewhere behind us, but if my idea worked, we’d be packed up again soon enough.

  I’d never been this close to one of the giants before. My gut was all in a knot. And oh god, it stank! Like…concentrated rotted meat and socks someone had worn for a hundred years and the armpits of a nasty, greasy octogenarian mountain man who hadn’t bathed since the day he was born. Gagging on the stench, too busy gagging to feel scared, I pulled my assault rifle around and gave it a burst in the back of the knee. I had armor-piercing bullets in there. It was going to feel it, even if it felt like a flea bite. That was okay: flea bites are annoying and they hurt, and that was the point.

  It stopped feeling around in the silo, turned, and looked down at me. It couldn’t furrow its unibrow, of course, but it managed to look annoyed and puzzled anyway. The head was like a huge boulder, with a smaller blob of a boulder for a nose. The teeth were the only things about it that looked clean. It snarled, showing them.

  Now that I had its attention and it was facing me, I fired off the spell I’d been preparing. This was a levin bolt, which I expected to sting it at the very best. I wasn’t really trying for much damage; the amount of energy I would have to put into a spell that would hurt it would probably drop me to my knees. But I’d piggybacked the skunk stink on top of the levin bolt, and my target was that little divot in the lip just under his nose.

  It hit, square on target, right where I wanted to put it.

  First came the sting. Then the stink.

  The giant let out a roar of utter outrage, its eyes reddening and watering immediately. You wouldn’t think something that smelled that bad would be that severely affected by another stench, but it was pretty clear I’d achieved my objective and then some. I had all of its attention, and it wanted me, not just for my manna, but for payback.

  The Gog picked up its foot to stomp us flat, then drove the foot down so hard that the ground shook, and the foot left a crater in the dirt.

  Of course, we weren’t there to be stomped on. Dusana had taken off the second the giant started to bellow, running without any real direction except away. I hung on for dear life as Dusana dodged and wove erratically, avoiding the pod-size clods of torn-up earth and pieces of grain silo the Gog started to lob at us.

  It continued throwing things at us as we got farther away. Then it started to chase us. Dusana took off in a straight line, due south. I hung on; Dusana had helpfully sprouted a bunch of spikes I could cling to and brace my legs on.

  I managed to get my arm up so I could see my Perscom. “Location,” I panted. “Nearest army unit.” Lucky. The Perscom was smart enough to figure out what I wanted.

  The Perscom obliged, showing that we weren’t quite going in the right direction. I corrected Dusana so we were headed straight for them. Hammer wanted me to get the giants placed where the artillery could take them out without endangering the town? Best way to do that was to bring them to the artillery. “Contact nearest army unit,” I ordered. “Hunter Joyeaux calling command. Come in command.”

  “Command, roger. Go ahead, Hunter.”

  “I’m bringing you someone to play with,” I said, just barely managing not to squeak it. I didn’t look back. The Gog bellowed behind us, and it sounded as close as that Drakken had been days ago.

  At lea
st it didn’t have a Drakken’s triple mouth with all those teeth.

  “Roger that, Hunter. Sighting in. Firing when clear.”

  “No!” I yelped. “No, don’t wait for us to get clear! Fire when you’ve got a lock on with all weapons, and give me a three-second countdown!”

  They hesitated, probably thinking we were too close for safety. Well, we were, but that didn’t matter. Not if our Shields held. “Roger that, Hunter. Commencing countdown. Three. Two.”

  Dusana bamphed about fifty feet ahead on two, and we both dropped to the ground, hardening up our Shields.

  “One.”

  Just like the moment when the train crew had let loose with the Hellfire missile at the Folk Mage, the world disintegrated around us. For a few seconds, we were literally at ground zero of a little apocalypse. I think they must have had at least one missile launcher of some kind, with something not unlike a Hellfire, because the light was so bright I saw it even through closed eyelids and my face buried in Dusana’s neck. I’d hardened my Shield against everything, including air. We only needed what was in our lungs, and we surely did not need to get turned into crispy chicken. I felt power being sucked out of me as the Shields countered what had hit them.

  But our Shields held, and in the next moment, it was dark, and there was…stuff…pattering down on them. I went to purely physical Shields just to keep ourselves from getting buried in debris.

  And in the next moment I knew just what a big mistake that was.