Nomad's Force

by Craig Martelle

  Char worked her way through the chaos as Terry sat up, grimacing as he arched his back to make it easier for the nanocytes to sew up his wound.

  Terry stayed where he was as he gave his nanos time to work. “Nice shooting…” Terry didn’t know the man’s name.

  “Brad, sir,” he said.

  “Nice shooting, Private,” Terry replied with a smile.

  His comm device buzzed. “Merrit here. Shonna and I both report mission accomplished. Four down with no injuries! Ready for pickup.”

  “Mission accomplished here, too. I wish we could say the same regarding injuries, but we can’t. We’ll be on our way shortly.”

  “That’s seven for us and seven for them. I don’t like the tradeoff,” Char said as she helped Terry to his feet.

  Terry keyed in Akio.

  “Terry-san, I have good news and bad news,” Akio said.

  “Bad news first, please, Akio-sama,” Terry requested.

  “Eve has isolated the master signal and the directive to go back underground has been given, we believe. If we have not finished the Forsaken by now, they will be out of sight. The attacks did not unfold quickly enough. I’m sorry, Terry-san, that we were only able to provide five pods. With twenty, we may have been able to accomplish our goal.”

  “I guess we’re going home then,” Terry replied softly, then reconsidered. “What’s the good news?”

  “The master signal. Mister Smith is in Paris. We should all go there immediately,” Akio suggested.

  “Send the signal from your pod, Akio-sama, dissect Paris and we will blockade it, converge on it, and smear its guts around the inside of the sewers to keep the rats away,” Terry declared.

  He started to run, grimacing with the pain in his back. “To the pod! We need to leave yesterday,” Terry yelled. He had every intention of driving the pod to the maximum extent of its abilities.

  Scotland

  “But Glasgow,” Marcie tried to argue.

  “They will be gone, Marcie-san,” Akio said. “We have bigger fish to fry,” Akio said proudly, using one of the expressions he’d learned from the youth during their stay at his compound in Japan.

  “I understand, Akio-sama. Domo,” Marcie said, allowing Eve to remotely fly the pod to a destination best suited to a coordinated attack on Paris.

  Akio clicked off. Marcie looked around the pod as the warriors waited for the word. In every military from the beginning of time, warriors always waited on the word. The word guided their actions. The word led them astray. The word brought them back home. The word was gold, for he who had the word had the power.

  “We’re going to Paris,” Marcie said. The warriors were relieved because the word had been shared. It meant very little—Glasgow, Paris, just names of places they had not yet been—but the word brought them comfort and in their relief, they napped, until the next battle was ready to be fought.

  South America

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” Terry yelled. They picked up Merrit and his team in the south first to have a shorter route to Paris. To Terry, Shonna seemed to be dragging her feet, so he encouraged her with more yelling and hand motions.

  The team hurried aboard, all smiles until they saw the bodies. They sobered quickly under the deadly reality of the war. They had an easier time by catching the forsaken in a house that the warriors burned to the ground. The old, dry wood created an inferno from which the Forsaken could not escape. They never fired a shot.

  Merrit had suckered his into following him into an ambush. The FDG’s silver bullets took care of business.

  Before the team was settled, the pod’s ramp closed and the ship accelerated toward the northern hemisphere.

  South Africa

  The team didn’t know what to make of it. Joseph was walking hand in hand with another Forsaken. They were laughing and talking as if they were on a date. They were waiting for pickup.

  The team had been left behind as Sue and Timmons’s teams had eliminated the Forsaken in Port Elizabeth and Durban quickly. They recovered and raced to the outskirts of Johannesburg where they found three more and systematically eliminated them, too.

  As the Forsaken became further removed from their ancestors, they became weaker and weaker.

  Sue and Timmons almost felt guilty.

  Almost, but not enough to take pity on them. They eliminated them just like they would a rabid skunk.

  When the ramp dropped, so did Sue and Timmons’s jaws.

  Petricia looked skeptically inside and started to pull back. Joseph told the others to go ahead. They boarded quickly, not wanting to cool their heels any longer than necessary. They were on the downhill slide from an adrenaline rush.

  The warriors figured they’d get some sleep. They weren’t the only ones. The pod looked like a morgue ship, with bodies arrayed wildly inside, but they were only sleeping.

  “We need to go,” Joseph pleaded. “I can’t leave you here.”

  “Stay here with me,” she begged.

  “That won’t work. They need me. They need us. We can be a part of something bigger than ourselves. I know that’s not quite our way, is it?” Joseph laughed softly. “It feels good. Please come with me.”

  “If it doesn’t work, will you bring me back here?”

  “The pod isn’t at my command, but I think it will be no problem. We don’t hold people against their will.”

  “I’ll try it,” she conceded. Sue and Timmons were both waving at Joseph to climb on board.

  “We have to go! Mister Smith in Paris. Now stop fucking around!” Timmons yelled.

  “That’s an angry one. Is that a Werewolf?”

  “An angry Werewolf, yes.” Joseph helped Petricia into the pod, standing because there were no seats left. Sue looked at the warriors and shook her head, ready to give them a kick to open the seats. Joseph said it was okay.

  The pod departed before the ramp had fully closed.

  Flying in a pod toward San Francisco

  Ted and Andrew didn’t make it to San Francisco. They diverted somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic, heading over the North Pole on their way to Paris. Ted accepted the report, but was unhappy that Eve took control of the pod. He needed something to do.

  He stared sullenly at the screen.

  These pods were modernized and they could barely feel the acceleration. Ted wanted to know how it worked. He couldn’t figure it out with his extensive understanding of physics.

  He accessed the comm system and called Eve.

  “Ted. I would be happy to answer your question, but do you think this is the right time? You are traveling to a high-stress, high-risk situation. I think you should probably focus on that.”

  “That will take two seconds. Until we land, I have nothing but time. Please explain how the inertial dampeners work. I have to know.”

  “Please watch your screen. I will display the math first, then we’ll walk through the physics…” Eve continued and Ted was riveted.

  Andrew saw it all as a distraction. He needed to concentrate because Paris sounded like a challenge. That Eve said so. He had no idea who she was, but she sounded like she knew what she was talking about.

  The warriors were stretched out, sleeping like a pile of puppies. Even Andrew had someone’s head on his thigh. He couldn’t move without waking up four of them. He wanted a cup of tea, but decided he’d wait.

  Andrew closed his eyes, but all he could hear was Ted and Eve. When they finally stopped, he drifted off, only to be roughly shaken an instant later.

  “We’re here.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Paris

  Terry looked at the screen, studying it intently. The city had been divided into five sectors. The pods were to deliver the teams to spread out, covering the roadways and rivers in a circle, three hundred and sixty degrees around the city.

  Char’s pack and those who could sense others within the etheric dimension were arrayed with their teams.

  Akio had expected that the Forsaken w
ould have disappeared by the time the FDG arrived, but they had not. In the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower, there were six Forsaken and a small army of humans.

  “How in the hell did they build that and we not notice?” Terry asked Akio over the comm device.

  “I wish I could answer that, Terry-san. But that doesn’t matter for the here and now. You’ve been waiting for this for a long time, let us fight this battle and not the last one.”

  “Wise words, Akio-sama,” Terry replied, continuing to study the screen. “You and I, Char and Yuko go in to the tower. We converge the entirety of the Force on the human minions, and the four of us will deal with the Forsaken.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Terry-san.”

  Terry gave the orders and the pods delivered the FDG, nearly one hundred and fifty warriors, to what used to be the Avenue de Breteuil. The teams gathered. Terry looked at his children. Kimber and Ramses seemed untouched, but Kaeden and Marcie were covered in blood.

  The two waved off Terry’s question about what happened. Marcie winked at Terry and it comforted him.

  “You four lead this group against the humans. Platoons on line. Max firepower to the front, watch out for booby traps. This Forsaken is a tricky one.”

  “We know that,” Kae said. The others nodded.

  “Form your platoons,” Terry ordered.

  It took longer than Terry wanted, but Akio confirmed that the Forsaken remained in the vicinity of the tower.

  The platoons marched in step, in formation on their way to the Champ de Mars. Once there, they could only maintain three platoons wide, so they adjusted, putting one platoon behind the others and in reserve. Ramses wasn’t on the front line, but his job was most important—to identify when to commit his platoon and where.

  He who commits his reserve last, wins—an adage from Napoleonic times.

  Terry looked at the enemy positions as if he were a commanding general, moving pieces around a table. He called the pack and brought them in, far more tightly around the tower. They ran or lumbered, whatever they were capable of, to get into position.

  TH had decided that the need for them in the main battle outweighed the risk of someone escaping. If they didn’t win the initial fight, it didn’t matter if they prevented an escape.

  “Mister Smith—do you know who he is?” Terry asked as the FDG cautiously moved forward.

  “I have no factual information, but I believe that he is from the first female Japanese Vampire. I wanted to think he was Chinese, but I am not convinced of that.”

  “Well, Akio-sama, we’ll just have to cut him open to find out, won’t we?” Terry smiled, nodded, and pointed in the direction he wanted Akio and Yuko to go.

  The two moved quickly without appearing to hurry. Terry and Char ran around the far end of the formation.

  “Charge!” Terry yelled.

  The human minions had various clubs and makeshift swords. They were no match for the trained warriors of the Force de Guerre. Hand-to-hand combat would result in the fewest human casualties.

  Terry and Char slowed to a fast walk. Terry studied the open ground before him, looking up the tower, down and sideways. Char did the same thing.

  They expected a trap to appear. They couldn’t believe that Mister Smith would establish a vulnerable position that was ill-defended by poorly-armed conscripts.

  “HOLD!” Terry bellowed. The formation stumbled and slid to a halt.

  “What do you see?” Char asked.

  “Explosives. On a line to the front. Wires, barely make them out in the grass to the far side. If they are manually fired…” Terry didn’t finish his thought. “Wait here.”

  TH turned and bolted into the heavy growth. He plowed through, avoiding as much as he could but willing to trade stealth for speed. The minions started moving forward as they were “encouraged” by a Forsaken at the tower’s base.

  Some of them produced bows and blowguns.

  “Shoot them!” Char ordered. Kim, Kae, and Marcie repeated the order.

  Char had meant the minions with bows and blowguns. The platoons didn’t get that nuance. Ten seconds of withering fire later, and the human defenders were no more. Moaning and cries of pain said they weren’t all dead, but they were no longer a factor.

  “Dammit,” Char cursed. That wasn’t what she wanted, and it wasn’t what TH wanted.

  But it provided a diversion that TH hadn’t asked for, but needed. He ran to the wires with his knife in hand, ripped them from the turf, and cut them.

  He checked around for more, but found none. He didn’t trust that it would be that easy.

  Someone fired from the tower and the round impacted the ground next to TH. He started running toward the tower.

  Char didn’t hesitate. She ran straight for Terry, over top of where they knew the explosives were buried.

  Terry fired his .45 at the Forsaken, but he was out of range. The old M1911A1 was good, but not at that range.

  But the Forsaken had rifles. Terry accelerated to the base of the tower where he was protected by the girders and steel between him and the enemy above.

  Akio and Yuko were scaling the outside of the tower. Terry looked at the leg he stood near and decided that if Akio and Yuko were going up, he didn’t need to.

  It also looked to be way the hell up there. He could see lights and activity about a third of the way toward the top.

  “What the hell are you doing up there?” Terry asked the figures on the tower. Char zigzagged her way to where Terry was leaning. She looked upward.

  The one shooting at her had disappeared.

  “Do we let Akio and Yuko take care of it?”

  “Looks like it,” Terry repeated. “I’m not sure how I feel about that. I want to kill Mister Smith, but that’s my ego. I want him dead, and that’s for the good of Mother Earth, so I’ll settle for having him dead and live with the fact that I didn’t do it.”

  They leaned back and waited.

  Char tapped Terry on the shoulder. Akio and Yuko stood there, looking at him. Terry pointed upwards and then pointed at them.

  Akio looked where Terry was pointing, and then back at Terry.

  “You can look, Terry-san, but we’re not up there,” Akio said.

  “I saw you…”

  “There are traps to prevent what we were trying to do and then there are more traps. We need another plan.”

  “How can he sit up there, immune to it all? They hide underground,” Terry stated, wrestling with the paradigm shift.

  “I don’t think he counted on you killing his minions. He’s upset about that, if it’s worth anything. Their minds were gone. You would not have been able to save any of them.”

  Terry listened and could still hear moaning from the few survivors. He was surprised that he had tuned it out, but they were in the open. To save them would have meant exposing himself to gunfire. That was just another trap.

  “He’s counting on my moral compass and embrace of history,” Terry suggested. “It’s the Eiffel Tower! What the brilliant Mister Smith doesn’t understand is that we make history every day.”

  Akio and Yuko waited patiently for the rest of Terry’s plan.

  “I’m blowing it up.”

  ***

  Kim nodded as she listened to her new orders from the colonel. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  She ran along the line of warriors who had taken a knee, rifles aimed forward, as relaxed as they could be.

  She briefed Kae, Marcie, and Ramses. The four of them passed the word and waited for the order to start firing. With a shout from under the tower, they began shooting, slowly and methodically. Rounds impacted the tower along its entire height, with the majority of rounds aimed at the platform where the activity was taking place.

  Terry, Akio, Yuko, and Char ran to the trench where the explosives had been hastily buried. They dug with metal beams and their hands, furiously removing the dirt and exposing the treasure beneath.

  Akio and Yuko were first to remove the packets, which look
ed like C4 but packed within large plastic bags. They pulled the detonators and set them aside. Terry looked behind him and saw Char, in Werewolf form, digging as a dog would.

  Terry was last to pull a stack of packets from the ground, throwing them aside as he dug a furrow in the trench.

  Akio and Yuko ran along the trench and pulled wiring, removing a huge bundle.

  Char had changed back into human form and had her explosives stacked with Akio’s and Yuko’s. She waited with the small mound while the others worked. Her eyes were closed as she used her senses to feel where the enemy was. Five left. Akio and Yuko must have killed one.

  She looked underground and as far as her senses could reach, but she found nothing else.

  “What are you playing at?” she asked the ubiquitous Mister Smith.

  Terry finally joined her, throwing his small mountain of packets onto the pile.

  “Careful!” Char cautioned.

  Terry shook his head. “It’s C4, stable in this form. It needs a detonator and we need a power source.”

  Akio and Yuko deposited a bundle of cabling with dangling detonators next to the explosives.

  Terry signaled for them to stay as he ran beneath the tower from leg to leg, looking for the cabling that had led to the explosives. He didn’t find anything, which meant that it was either remotely detonated or manually detonated, but not from the tower.

  He activated his comm device. “Kim. Pick up the pace of fire, focus on the platform with the Forsaken.”

  Almost immediately the gunfire increased in intensity.

  Terry ran to the end of the trench and followed the disturbed earth. He dug and found the cable. It led to the tower. He returned, tracking it underneath. The years had deposited earth on the concrete below, so the cable hadn’t been buried deeply.

  He’d assumed that it was pulled up the outside, but he’d assumed incorrectly. It was bundled into the stairway that led up to the first viewing platform, and it went up the opposite side from which the explosives were planted.