Although Bear’s voice lacked its usual ground-shaking boom, he still commanded immediate action, “Get the command staff ‘cross the river to the fallback bunker. And tell General Rhodes to get his group up here or these things are going be over the Mississippi before dinner.”
The aid nodded and turned away sharply, motivated not only by his commander’s orders but also by a hardy embracement of evacuation. He shared the directions with other members of the staff and they immediately set to work disassembling equipment.
A pair of F-15s swept in flying low over the tangle of roads and rails to the south of the stadium that ran away from the river and across St. Louis. The planes actually flew beneath the shadows of downtown’s taller buildings, briefly filling the dug-in defenders there with false confidence.
The crazed, six-legged robots nicknamed ‘Roachbots’ comprised the Vanguard of Voggoth’s force. They scurried in front of the insanely-tall Leviathan to engage the forward positions of the troops sent in to fill the vacancy left by Benny Duda’s obliteration. Those forces, Ross knew, would last minutes—not hours—against the full might of The Order’s advance.
Anti-Air spooks rose to engage the fighters but the planes dropped their deadly cargo of napalm first. Flames burst to either side of the interstate, engulfing the baseball diamonds and tennis courts of a recreational park to the north as well as several commercial buildings to the south.
The heat melted the frames and singed the circuits of the mad mechanical monsters that bore the brunt of the bombing. Secondary explosions added to the inferno and streams of black smoke rose to mingle with the dark storm clouds overhead.
The F-15s banked away and skillfully weaved through downtown St. Louis, evading the anti-air creatures some of which collided with buildings and detonated.
For all the fiery destruction, the napalm offered the briefest of reprieves. In mere moments the next wave of Roachbots marched around their burning comrades and continued into the thick of downtown. Human infantry and vehicles responded with bullets and explosives. The battle for St. Louis reached its final stage.
Plumes of smoke from the fight outside of St. Louis drifted high on the eastern horizon. Nina watched from some five miles behind the action. Still, the Leviathan—so tall the storm clouds often hid its uppermost reaches—felt close. Too close.
Her ragtag band of guerrillas managed to wipe out a pair of supply vehicles and their escorts before settling into ambush positions to either side of Interstate 64.
Her force of 300 included displaced soldiers, government workers (mainly from food and agriculture) and civilians either liberated from The Order’s clutches or accidentally caught behind enemy lines.
Half that number served under the wounded corporal’s command to the north of the interstate in the buildings and on the grounds of St. John’s Mercy Medical Center. Before Armageddon the concrete, glass, and steel buildings hosted a variety of medical facilities including a well-respected children’s hospital. The campus had not re-opened since the first Armageddon, but the proximity of the structure to the highway gave it a prominent role in this second Armageddon.
In any case, the best shots among the corporal’s contingent occupied the upper levels of the tallest buildings where they could cover the interstate with sniper rifles. The less skilled positioned themselves in the parking lot and tree line along the highway with any weapons they could find.
Ironically, the southern side of the ambush utilized a nearly identical facility for cover: this one being the Missouri Baptist Medical Center, also unattended since Armageddon but its campus of modern buildings provided equally useful sniper positions. Together Nina’s two groups would form a gauntlet the Chaktaw pass as they crossed over a major highway cloverleaf on their way toward downtown.
“Hey, Nina!” Vince called from the western side of the top floor. “You need to see this.”
She gave Voggoth’s army one last glance. It might be the last time her eyes saw a Leviathan; one small consolation as she entered what, most likely, would be her final fight. She watched the walking tower take another step forward and while she could not directly see them, she knew thousands of robots and monsters marched in front of the gargantuan and into down town where her fellow soldiers fought desperately to stave the assault. She wished she could be with them, but fate dictated a different path.
“Nina!”
Vince’s voice suggested urgency but not panic. She doubted the Chaktaw had reached the ambush yet but history suggested these aliens to be a wily bunch so she prepared for any possibility.
She moved away from the east side window and traversed the dark, cold hallway with Odin, the elkhound at her side. The dust and erosion of time had long ago supplanted the hospital’s sterile environment. Broken equipment, overturned trays covered in the black and brown decay of decade-old food, and crusty file folders of now-useless paperwork lay scattered about. A stench of mold and mildew pervaded the air.
She came to a waiting room lobby on the northwestern corner. The big windows there afforded a great view of the highway. That highway should have basked in a late-afternoon sun. Instead, the heavy cloud cover made the entire scene feel more like the tail end of dusk.
Vince sat in a wheelchair with his finger pressed against the glass pointing at something on the road below.
Nina thought she had prepared or any possibility. She was wrong.
A solitary Chaktaw—its camouflage poncho colored gray—stood at the center of the road, apparently unarmed and holding its alien hands aloft.
Odin stood on his back legs, propped his front paws against the glass and growled.
The walkie-talkie on Vince Caesar’s lap came to life with a voice from a checkpoint along the highway.
“Captain Forest, do you copy? What do you want me to do?”
The sight of the Chaktaw told Nina that she had not hidden their movements as craftily as she thought.
She grabbed the radio.
“Shit. Yeah, okay, look, I don’t see any more of them so go on up and see what he wants.”
She watched two burly fellows in assault vests over jeans and t-shirts cautiously approach the alien emissary with their weapons drawn. As she witnessed the meeting, Nina recalled a story from the Battle of Five Armies and shared it with Vince Caesar.
“I get it. Those cocky son of a bitches,” and while she spat the words, she did feel a sense of admiration for their prowess and confidence.
“What?”
She relayed the story in first person because she had participated, yet her recollections came from the memories of others.
“At Five Armies when we were down to our last hill, the Chaktaw sent an ambassador to invite Trevor to a meeting. It seems they’ve got this tradition or something that if they know they have you beat they give you the chance to surrender.”
The human sentries reached the Chaktaw. The alien produced some kind of short microphone device. Nina suspected it to be a translator. A conversation ensued.
“Surrender?”
“Listen, not like you’re thinking. They offered to kill us quickly if we’d line up and let them do it. Something about it being a sign of respect for a worthy adversary, as if letting them slit your throat real quick is better than dying in battle.”
“So you’re saying they knew we were here, is that it?”
“Looks that way to me. Shit.”
The radio sprung to life. The men from the checkpoint relayed a message from the aliens: “They say their leader—a ‘Force Commander’—wants to meet with you. Something about a message for you. They guarantee safe passage.”
“Bullshit,” Vince shot.
“No, it’s okay. They gave Trevor safe passage back then.”
“He met with them?”
“Yep. Met with their commander who laid out their great ‘deal’ to him. He basically told them to stuff it. But look, they let him go back to our lines. Big mistake for them, I guess.”
“Captain?” the voice
on the radio asked. “What do you want me to tell them?”
Nina’s brow furled. She slammed a hand into her thigh. She hated being bested. With surprise no longer on their side, she doubted they could do much more than delay the Chaktaw; not hurt them.
Then an idea percolated inside her devious mind.
“Yep. I mean, yes. Look, I’ll go and meet their leader.”
Odin dropped from his propped position against the window as if hearing her words and reacting with surprise to them.
Vince did as much as he gasped, “You can’t be serious. No way I’m lining up to be off’d. If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting.”
“You still have your KA-BAR?”
He did. She held out her hand and took the military knife from him. At the same time she removed her other weapons and handed them to Vince one at a time. Odin eyed her suspiciously, as did Vince.
“What are you planning, Nina?”
“Listen, we’re dead meat if we stick to the original ambush. I’ll get close enough to their leader, listen to his dumb-ass proposal, and then slit his throat.”
“Isn’t that against the rules of safe passage? What’s the point anyway? They’ll just kill you.”
She thought about what Trevor had said at the last council meeting; about the ‘rules’ to the invasion and what Trevor planned to do in regards to those rules.
“First off, screw the rules. Truth is, this is war and war doesn’t have any rules when you cut right down to it, no matter how hard we try to pretty it up. This is about doing whatever it takes to win and I don’t give a damn how many rules we break. We get the chance, slaughter every last one of them. And yeah, they probably won’t give me safe passage back after I slit their leader’s alien throat, but so what? All I’m sayin’ is that if I can take out their Force Commander, then that’ll cause confusion. Go hook up with the corporal and get ready. Give me some time then charge them.”
“Charge them? Are you kidding?”
She smiled. Actually smiled as she slipped the knife into her boot and covered it with pant leg.
“Just like Five Armies. That’s what we did then. With their leader dead and them expecting us to be waiting here, it’ll take them by surprise. Look, it sucks, but it’s the best chance we got.”
He said nothing. Not so much because he accepted the plan, but because it sounded ludicrous. Nina suspected the beaten men and women atop that third and final hill at Five Armies had shared the same expression—until Trevor led them to victory.
She pat Odin on the head and ruffled his ears, “Sorry to be saying goodbye to you again so soon. See you over the rainbow bridge, my friend.”
Odin bowed his head. Nina turned her attention to her human companion.
“Goodbye, Vince,” she set a warm hand on his shoulder and he returned the grasp. “It’s been, well, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Nina walked away, descended the stairs, and exited the hospital.
The crash of yet another Spook into the undercarriage of the Chrysaor caused only the slightest tremor on the bridge. The ‘impact’ icon flashing on Kristy Kaufman’s console drew more attention than the actual damage which—judging by the computer’s report—had been superficial. As with all the Spook impacts. Problem was, there were a lot of Spooks hitting the undercarriage. The ‘impact’ icon flashed continuously.
“Firing main batteries,” she announced more from habit than need.
This time the bridge did shudder quite noticeably. Bands of energy shot from the underside and swept the fields west of Quincy. The streams of red splashed across a building-sized Goat Walker and a cluster of hovering Shell-tanks. The tanks ruptured and disintegrated; the demonic Goat Walker fell into gory pieces. The beam dug a deep, dark trench into the ground like a jagged dagger eviscerating the landscape.
Kaufman managed the destruction from her position as the brain onboard the dreadnought. She stood in a circle of monitors, keyboards, and touch screens while wearing a virtual reality headset that fed even more information in the form of pictures and data. The crewmen on the crescent-shaped bridge served mainly a redundant role while a few handled less-important tasks outside the scope of the brain.
With her aircraft long ago stripped to serve other operations, the Chrysaor acted more as a battleship than a carrier. Still, she played that role with brutal efficiency.
“Belly Boppers re-charging. Thirty percent—firing…”
More blobs of energy. This time striking mobile artillery batteries appearing next-of-kin to cement mixer trucks. She stopped them from reaching firing position from where they would have launched more of the red, yellow, and blue balls of destruction at the human lines.
Kristy pulled her attention from data streams and ground cameras and stared across the bridge out the main viewing window. If things became too heated, a set of protective shutters would close. But for now she could see the quilt of rolling storm clouds a few dozen meters overhead. She could also see the two Leviathans, standing tall enough that when she reached them the Chrysaor would face them at what could best be described as eye-to-eye.
However, facing them would be a challenge. Voggoth’s favorite pets not only retreated from the battlefield in giant steps the further the Chrysaor advanced, but the twins separated with one backpedaling northwest in its withdrawal, the other southwest.
Kristy understood. The Leviathans retreated not only to avoid her batteries, but to draw her into a gauntlet of fire. The bottom of the vessel took a pounding with breeches to the hull in several places already and substantial damage to the superstructure throughout.
She’s a tough ship, Kristy mused. She can take it. She must take it.
Her eyes returned to the monitors. She spotted a rolling tube-like machine. A glowing spear—something like a rocket or missile—raised on its back in preparation to fire. She tapped a sequence of buttons and two missiles of her own sped away from the Chrysaor on plumes of smoke. They hit the enemy vehicle before its payload could fire. The vehicle exploded into two parts; the glowing missile fell apart in a storm of sparks.
The Captain’s eyes swept the ground below through the cameras linked to her work station. The Chrysaor’s ‘belly boppers’ had slaughtered thousands of Voggoth’s forces ranging from simple monks to more complex battle wagons. Wrecks of the coral-like hovering platforms that launched the rolling artillery shells lay scattered across the fields. The charred remains of a hundred Ogres blew in the air like volcanic ash carried on the wind. None of the enemy’s flying-ball machines remained in action; they could do no more damage to the defenders of Quincy.
Yet, so many more remained. She saw formations of Robotic Commandos and uncountable numbers of Spider Sentries and more of the Shell-Tanks and rows of walking gun turrets and to either side of the army spun the whirlwinds of the Wraiths.
Kristy fired again. The stream of energy sprayed across the field and through the middle of a half-collapsed industrial structure. The line of fire cut apart a vehicle resembling a locomotive capable of firing surface-to-surface projectiles and slaughtered a number of heavy duty Spider Sentries hiding in the ruined building.
A trio of Spooks made it over the bow and sped across the inactive runway toward the raised tower section at the rear of the ship. Gatling guns made quick work of them.
“Okay,” she said as much to herself as the bridge crew. “It’s time to get one of those Leviathans. Increasing speed—charging boppers…”
Instead of drifting calmly over the fields full of monstrosities, the dreadnought moved at a brisk clip, quickly closing the distance to the walking skyscraper to the northwest. Bolts of lightning from a cluster of small gray clouds struck to either side of the Leviathan as if anticipating the dramatic showdown.
The beast halted its retreat on the farmland outside of Maywood, Missouri; 14 miles west of Quincy. The Chrysaor slowed to a crawl and closed for the kill.
Kristy wanted full power to her weapons; anything less would
waste valuable time slicing and dicing while the bulk of the army continued to march on the Mississippi.
“Boppers at thirty percent and charging…”
A blip on the radar screen. Then another. And another.
“Boppers at forty percent…”
She accessed one of the telescopic cameras and zoomed for a closer look. Just as the profile on the radar screen suggested, the blips belonged to a group of Chariots: the blob-like machines that served multiple roles in Voggoth’s army ranging from attack fighters to transports to bombers. They could certainly inflict damage on the Chrysaor, but nothing to be overly concerned about.
“Boppers at sixty percent…”
The flying blobs approached from the west and flew around the Leviathan, just below the handful of storm clouds that had followed the giant’s retreat from the front. The things flew in tight formation and slowed to nearly a stop in the airspace between the battling behemoths.
“Boppers at seventy percent, stand by to fire…”
Kristy expected the ships to use their rapid-fire guns or perhaps launch some kind of missile. What they actually did fell under the heading of ‘unexpected.’
The Chariots crashed together, one after another.
No, that description did not exactly fit. That’s what they appeared to do to Kristy’s eye. They did not exactly crash. They flew into each other one at a time, their blob-ish forms attached like droplets splashing together except they stayed stuck together. One by one the Chariots merged, creating one large blob from a series of smaller ones.
“What the hell?”
Kristy decided the Leviathan could wait. Her fingers interacted with the touch screen in rapid succession, accessing the forward defenses menu category Anti-Air, sub-menu ‘missile defenses.’
Select: Launch bay Bow – 4
Ordnance select: AMRAAM (quantity remaining: 4).
Ordnance loading standby—loading complete.
Arm warhead: Yes – No.
Caution: Warhead ARMED.
Input target acquisition source.
Beyond Armageddon: Book 05 - Fusion Page 46
