Finally there was Chug. He had rushed the Krieger troopers headlong, bellowing at them. Several energy blasts had impacted directly with his squat, rocky body, one blast even catching him full in the face. His pace never slowed; the actinic energy only left his stony exterior slightly smoking on the surface. He crashed into the troopers, knocking them down like bowling pins. He had kept them off balance, knocking each one down as they attempted to get up. The VDV soon saw the opportunity that the CCCP’er was creating; the chaingun and coaxial gun opened up, targeting the joints of the Kriegers. The gunners didn’t have to check their fire too much; any stray rounds that happened to hit Chug simply ricocheted off or splattered against his hide. Soon, all but one of the troopers was immobilized, their joints destroyed, and blood and other fluids oozing from the mutilated metal. The final one was able to snap a blast off; it took a single VDV soldier directly in the chest, killing him instantly. Chug plodded up behind the remaining Krieger, gripping its helmet with both hands.
“Bad mans!” Mineral tears were streaming down his face as he grunted once, pulling with all of his strength. The Krieger flailed its arms for a moment, and then stopped moving altogether when the helmet—head still inside—came free. With a wordless, angry shout, Chug threw the gory trophy; it imbedded, faceplate facing outward, in the side of a building, like a twisted piece of modern sculpture. Chug sniffled, wiping some of the tears away with the back of his hand. “Bad mans don’t hurt Chug’s friends.”
Upyr started forward to go to Chug’s side, apparently to comfort him…but immediately staggered backwards a step. Natalya’s head snapped up in the direction that Thea was looking, and understood why her comrade had been so taken aback.
It was another dragon. This one was longer and thinner than the one she had seen Murdock and Sera engaging. It didn’t have arms or legs, only a sleek and continuous snake-like body after the massive head. It was flying through the air like the other dragon, baleful Thulian-orange light showing past its segmented armor as it twisted and turned in the air. Its head turned, focusing on Chug; he was easily one hundred meters away from the rest of the team. Everyone began shouting to him at once, telling him to run, but he only looked confused, still sniffling in the middle of the street. The dragon surged forward, the trunk of its body filling the wide street as it barreled towards Chug. When it was within twenty meters of the short metahuman, it loosed an ear-splitting shriek; only then did Chug turn…just in time to disappear within the gaping maw of the dragon.
Natalya screamed with inexpressible fury and anguish. For the first time in this entire war, she felt herself frozen, unable to move, riveted in place by a needle of emotional agony. She wanted to charge the unnatural construction, to pummel it to pieces, and yet, she could not move. It was not only pain that held her in vice-like jaws. It was guilt.
She had thought that she could never hurt as much as when Petrograd, one of her oldest, dearest friends, had sacrificed himself to save them all from Sarin gas in the Invasion. But no. This was worse, so much worse. Poor, innocent, devoted Chug—
And it was her fault. She should never have brought him on this mission. She should have ordered him to stay with the rest of them. Or left him to guard Soviette. This was her fault, another comrade, gone senselessly, and it was her fault. Boryets was right. Her recklessness was what had killed them all, every friend that had ever depended upon her.
The BMP began firing all of its weapons a moment later, focusing on the head of the dragon. Nearly all of the VDV opened up with their individual weapons as well; AK-74s and Pecheneg machine-guns filled the air with a storm of lead, all of which was completely ineffective against the armored hide of the dragon.
“…air support en route, Commissar. Jets will distract the dragon while your force retreats.” Gamayun’s voice was quiet; with her ability, she would have seen what had happened to Chug better than if she had been there herself. Natalya wished that her Overwatch rig was like any other comm device, right then; that way she could tear it off and smash it beneath her boot. Instead she simply acknowledged the message, and was about to issue the order for everyone to retreat—
—until the dragon roared again, focusing on her contingent. It had coiled upon itself, like a rattlesnake, ready to spring forward and attack. Natalya watched as it began to uncoil, using that stored energy to launch itself at her and her comrades…but the dragon hesitated at the last moment. Its “face” was mechanical, and betrayed no emotion other than the feral hatred that had been etched into its features by its creators to strike terror into the hearts of its enemies. But its body language was a different matter. There was apprehension there. What is the damnable beast waiting for? Does it toy with us? The dragon looked as if it was going to start its attack again, when it paused…and then reared up, an unmistakable shriek of agony issuing from its head. The dragon thrashed back and forth, destroying entire buildings in its pain and sending showers of rubble flying through the air.
“To the BMP! Take cover!” Natalya was too far away, but she could at least make sure that her comrades were safe. They were too spread out, and there was far too much debris falling to earth, some of it already crashing to the ground and exploding; someone was bound to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
Not if I can be helping it.
She kicked off of the roof on a plume of her meta energy, flying into the air. She judged that even with her fists fully charged with energy, she wouldn’t be able to break some of the bigger pieces without being crushed herself. For those, she focused on redirecting them, pushing them out of the way with a meta-powered shove. The smaller pieces she was able to pulverize, discharging the energy from her fists in devastating blows. It was like trying to swat rain as it fell, however; there was so much rubble flying through the air, and she couldn’t keep up. A soccer ball-sized chunk of stone clipped her in the shoulder, spinning her like a top and breaking her concentration; even with the ECHO nanoweave stiffening and absorbing some of the kinetic energy, Natalya felt as if her entire shoulder was on fire. The next chunk caught her square in the back, knocking the wind out of her and causing the edges of her vision to go black. She fought for consciousness, seeing the ground rushing up to meet her. Falling, falling! At the last moment she was able to release her meta-energy from the bottom of her feet, breaking her fall. She still landed hard, knocking her head against the cobble street; a cool, silent darkness engulfed her, and she stopped thinking.
She didn’t know how long she had been out; she came to sputtering for breath, fighting with her spasming diaphragm to force air into her lungs. She felt hands loop under her arms, dragging her forward. She struggled for a moment, until she saw that the uniforms attached to those arms were in covered in VDV pattern camo. Two of the airborne soldiers were carrying her to the back of the BMP; there, Thea was waiting, her gloves off and her face glowing. Several of the soldiers already in the BMP, as well as Rusalka, were looking noticeably paler. As soon as she reached them, Thea pressed her hands to Natalya’s face; immediately she felt more clear-headed, and her breathing more under control. Standing under her own power, she rushed to the side of the BMP, looking down the street. The dragon was still out there, and still thrashing.
The dragon spasmed a final time, shrieking futilely into the air before it collapsed to the ground, like a long rope dropped from a height. Its head fell to the east, crushing a row of buildings; the tail doing the same in the west. It rolled along towards the BMP; Natalya thought that it would actually reach them, crushing the APC like the buildings, when it skidded to a halt, throwing up cobbles and blocks of stone. The middle of the seemingly dead dragon lay draped in the street. Could it be the firebombs, Murdock and Sera? What brought it down? Slowly, the rest of her team and the VDV dismounted from the back of the BMP. Everyone kept their weapons trained on the body of the dragon, wary about what new horror might visit them. There was a…thumping noise, coming from the section in front of them. Natalya charged her fists; whatever happened, sh
e would be ready for it.
Or so she thought. A section of the armored plates, orange light no longer shining between them, started to shake and bulge outwards. With a final thunderous crash, the plates split outwards, a cloud of smoke pouring from the hole. Everyone trained their weapons on the opening…and a short, craggy figure stepped out, looking anxious. He had a handful of sputtering machinery in his right hand, a black and viscous liquid seeping from the ends of torn cables.
Within moments, he had spotted the Commissar and his comrades, and with a bellow of joy, he began lumbering towards them. Upyr gave a choked cry and ran past Saviour, to fling her arms about the rocky creature’s neck.
It was Chug. For all of his terrible strength, he was always gentle with those that he cared for. Even the smallest of creatures had nothing to fear from him; he could cradle his pet squirrels with a gentleness that was in direct opposition to his brawn, and his comrades knew his embraces were as safe as a child’s. He patted Thea’s back comfortingly, as if he understood that they had all been devastated when the dragon “ate” him. Maybe he did. He seemed to understand, even sense, emotions at a deeply instinctive level. It was a mistake to deem him as simple; he might not grasp complicated situations, but his ability to cut through complications to the heart of a matter was profound.
It appeared he had “cut to the heart of the matter” this time, as well.
Natalya walked towards them, slowly, fighting to get her emotions under control. Relief and elation were the two uppermost, but there were plenty of others churning her insides and making her feel light-headed and just a little sick. Rusalka was on the comm already, calling off the airstrikes.
“Chug found this. Bad monster not know Chug is tuff.” He held up his hand. The box he had was black, with cables and wires covering it. Through the narrowest slit at the front, Natalya could see what appeared to be a human brain—or rather, a brain, since whether it was human or not was not apparent—with wires running through it, floating in an amber liquid.
“Borzhe moi,” one of the VDV soldiers said. “He ripped the damn thing’s brain out.” The assembled troopers began to cheer, crowding around Chug and patting him on the shoulder. Chug, initially apprehensive, smiled, beaming with pride.
“You did very well, Chuggy,” Thea said, wiping away her tears with the back of her hands. “You are bolshoi geroi. Comrade Untermensch will be to giving you medal.”
Chug rumbled uncertainly. “Instead of medal…Chug have cookies…?”
“I will bake you many, many cookies,” Thea promised. Chug’s smile broadened at that.
More figures stumbled through the opening that Chug had created in the dragon; after a moment of confusion and fear that it was Kriegers, everyone relaxed upon recognizing that the uniforms were that of other coalition forces. One man, an American army captain, stepped forward, shaking his head to clear it.
“Sumbitch must’ve been some sort of way for them to capture prisoners. Swallowed up my entire platoon; soon as we were in it, it put us in some sort of stasis. We could see and hear, but couldn’t move. Scared the bejeesus outta me.” He looked over at Chug. “If it weren’t for your rocky buddy there…I don’t want to think about what the Kriegers would have done with us. The stasis field didn’t even hardly affect him; just seemed to have pissed him off.” The captain turned to face Natalya. “We owe y’all one, ma’am. How can we help?”
Saviour straightened. Mere minutes ago, she might have arrogantly told the Amerikanski that she had no need of him or his men. An hour ago, she would have done so with a sneer. Now…
“We are needing to rendezvous with Spearhead, and the rest of my CCCP in Red Team,” she said. “And I do not think we can be getting there alone. Your assistance would be welcome and appreciated.”
Do not kick gift horse, Natalya Shostakovaya, she told herself. You cannot being to afford such stupidity, ever again.
Red Team: Ultima Thule
Spearhead Group, and consequently Red Team, were in trouble again. John knew that the advance had stalled; his HUD hookup through Overwatch gave him a pretty decent battlefield awareness, and the situation was rapidly deteriorating. Every time they made a push, the Kriegers pushed back just as hard. Sometimes harder; without the ECHO broadcasters that were being brought up from the rear, he knew that the line would have folded. Even with all of the artillery, the air strikes, the guided missiles, and every available fire-chucker like him, they just couldn’t hit enough targets fast enough. The Kriegers were flooding this area of the city with troopers, Robo-Eagles and Wolves, and Death Spheres; at one point he saw a squadron streaking away from the city; he came to the sickening realization that they were on a heading that would lead directly to the staging area. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment, other than report it on the comm; he had his hands full as it was.
Sera touched his arm to get his attention, and looked at him, her face furrowed with anxiety, her blue eyes flickering with gold. “They are going to target the broadcasters,” she said, her voice trembling with fear and exhaustion. Their fight with the cyborg dragon had taken nearly everything out of them, for a time. That had been followed by some of the most intense fighting that John had ever seen, and they hadn’t had a chance to truly recover.
“I know. When those are toast, our combat effectiveness is goin’ to get cut by a whole bunch. We gotta protect those as much as we can, otherwise we’re gonna get steamrolled.” John leaned around the barrier they were using for cover, firing off a blast of plasma. “This can’t last forever, though. We need somethin’ to start drivin’ for the center of the city again.”
Another contingent of troops from the rear came to reinforce Spearhead Group; leading them was none other than Red Saviour, her Red Team 2 and a mixed force of VDV and American soldiers behind her. Almost immediately they started lending their firepower to the battle; welcome as they were, it seemed like just another drop in the bucket. The Kriegers weren’t simply rushing headlong into combat anymore; they were using cover, the personal and directional shields that the trooper armor could generate, and air support in the form of the Death Spheres and Robo-Eagles. At least there aren’t any more of those damned dragons.
But that was only one blessing amid the mayhem. And the Kriegers knew this city; the best that the allied forces had were the maps Vickie was generating, and only those lucky enough to be wired into Overwatch Two—and Command and Control—had the benefit of those.
To answer the reinforcements for the allies, the Kriegers sent some of their own. The ground troops began advancing, first throwing a volley of grenades to soften up the defensive positions; an ECHO telekinetic was able to deflect the majority of the grenades, but enough got through. Anyone caught in the blasts didn’t have a chance to scream before they simply ceased to exist as anything more than a cloud of ash. Then the shielded Kriegers started trudging forward; the shields prevented them from firing and slowed them down, but essentially made them invulnerable to any conventional weapons—fired from in front of them, at least. A massed group of more trooper armor and unarmored Thulians followed behind the shield wall, throwing grenades and taking potshots around the sides of the wall.
“Fire units; execute.”
That was John’s signal. He and the other fire-chuckers ramped up and let loose with a blast of fire at the same moment, washing the entire street in front of them with flames. The unarmored Thulians were taken out, not as neatly and cleanly as their own people had been evaporated by the energy grenades. These Kriegers screamed, some of them for quite some time. The armored troopers continued to march forward, undeterred. The Kriegers were also trying something new. John—and Sera as well—got a sense of it before it happened. Robo-Eagles swarmed over the rooftops behind the Krieger lines; each of them were carrying a Krieger, energy shields up from the arm cannons. But these Kriegers were also strapped with…something. The forces of Spearhead group fired at the Kriegers and Eagles, but the shields kept them largely protected.
It wasn’t until the first trooper dropped straight from the claws of an eagle behind the Spearhead lines that John knew what they had been hooked up with. The trooper hit the ground next to one of the forward most ECHO broadcaster units; its shields dropped, and it began firing at the surrounding soldiers. It was only able to kill a few before it was taken out…but as soon as the dead Krieger fell to the ground, an explosion like those generated by Thulian grenades, but much larger, enveloped the immediate area. The generator, two squads of soldiers, and part of a building were completely gone when the blast subsided. And the line of Kriegers surged forward, their armor no longer weakened.
“Goddamn suicide troopers,” John cursed, spitting on the ground. “They’re goin’ for the broadcasters.”
“Focus all fire on the Eagles carrying troopers! We must be defending the ECHO broadcasters!” Molotok was doing his best to rally those around him, but it seemed to be too little, too late.
The entire force shifted their fire upwards, attempting to take out the troopers or their eagles. The Apaches and “zoomies” weren’t able to get close enough to engage the suicide troopers; they were currently committed in a gigantic “furball”—aerial dogfight—above the city, doing their best to survive.
Sera had manifested a spear and was weighing it in her hand, then John felt her eyes on him again. He shut off his fires for a moment, and turned to her. “If we combine our powers—” she said, tentatively.
John nodded, knowing through their connection what her intent was. He grasped her spear in both hands while she still held it. Concentrating for a moment, he wreathed his hands in flame, funneling his own fires into the spear. When he didn’t think he could bear it for another moment, he let go, stepping back from her.
She didn’t hesitate for an instant; in the blink of an eye, she was throwing the incandescent spear as hard as she could. It flashed across the distance between them and the airborne Kriegers like a comet. And then it struck. The spear pierced straight through the energy shield of one of the lead troopers; it seemed to slow as it pushed through the shield, until it had gone completely through and lodged in the chest of the trooper. Then there was the detonation; the suicide trooper’s payload went off in a dazzling explosion of actinic energy, the sphere expanding and swallowing several of the other Eagles.
Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 58
