Refuge: The Arrival: Book 2

by Doug Dandridge

  No sooner was the man out of the office then the adjutant was back.

  “The G-4 needs to see you sir,” said the young man. “Something about monstrous rats in the food supply.”

  Taylor felt very tired. One crisis control measure implemented, and the next crisis was rearing its ugly head.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The sun beat down on the road and the columns of troops trudging along it. The cavalry had already entered the long, narrow valley, swarming up on the ridgelines, looking for an ambush, while the main body rode ahead. The infantry followed behind, eating the dust of the horses. Several dozen large battlehawks flew overhead on wheeling paths, their bird’s eye view of the terrain augmenting the scouts in picking out anything that might not be as it seemed.

  Staff Sergeant Antonio Rivera watched the monitor that relayed the scene back to the hasty bunker that he occupied along with his team, and a couple of officers who were charged with detonating the weapon they hoped would clear up this local problem. The monitor switched back and forth from the dozen UAVs that were following the army on the march. In the hasty bunker were other monitors, each focusing on a single unmanned craft, with their operators perched in front controlling their actions.

  “What do you think, Sergeant?” asked the Ordnance Major that was in charge of the firing, looking back at the intelligence Master Sergeant with a Green Beret on his head.

  “I’d say at least forty thousand in this grouping,” said the Sergeant around the stem of the pipe he gripped in his mouth. “Maybe ten thousand horse, and the rest foot sloggers.”

  “Sure are a lot of those ugly bastards,” interjected the other officer in the bunker, a Captain of intelligence. The pig faces of the Orcs showed clear on one screen, carrying long spears over their shoulders. The screen exploded into static for a moment, then cleared.

  “Will they see the UAVs?” asked Rivera, looking up from his console at the Green Beret Sergeant.

  “We’re keeping them by the tree line,” answered the Major before the Master Sergeant could speak, drawing a frown from the older man. “They might see something, and wonder what it is. But hopefully that won’t happen.”

  “It probably will happen,” growled the Master Sergeant around the pipe. “Especially if we don’t want it to. But it shouldn’t make any difference. They’ve probably gotten used to our surveillance by now, and will just burn the ones they see out of the sky.”

  “Wonder why we’re not seeing any of their dragons?” asked the Captain, looking close at Rivera’s screen as a camera swept the sky and focused on a pair of the large hawks.

  “Probably saving them up for a big strike,” answered the Beret, blowing out a cloud of pungent smoke. “We’ve been taking them out in dribbles as they commit them. I’d save them up for something overwhelming. If they have them in any numbers, that is. If we haven’t already taken out most of their heavy air assets.”

  “Not from the information we’ve got from prisoners,” said the Captain, smiling. “They boasted about how the dragons of the home province could blot out the sun in their numbers. Poor saps didn’t seem to understand the need for operational security.”

  “Beautiful animals,” said the Major, gesturing toward the lean, athletic horses carrying their mail clad riders along the ridgeline. “It’s a shame to have to kill them.”

  “Better them than us,” said the Beret, pulling the pipe from his mouth and pointing at the screen.

  “You got that right,” whispered Rivera, his hands twitching as he waited for the order.

  * * *

  General Fanarasha Levitana felt the irritating itch between his eyebrows again, and he stopped his mount and glared ahead into the narrow valley that the road traversed. The scouts on the roadway and ridgeline had not indicated anything of interest, though one of the ridge scouts had seen another of the flying disks the enemy used for recon. But that had not really meant much. The Imperial force had been observed by those things for the last three days. Still, something felt wrong about the valley, and he couldn’t bring himself to think it was just his experience as an old campaigner that was making him nervous.

  “Hold up the infantry,” he yelled in his best voice, using his skills in magic to project beyond what physical lungs could accomplish. The Ellala and Grogatha footmen stopped in their tracks, looking around to see what was going on. After a moment they began to move off the road and squat or sit on the edges, taking advantage of the break that had been offered. The races stayed strictly segregated as they moved to their rest. The Ellala talked in musical voices or high pitched bursts while they drank from wine and water skins, while the Grogatha spoke in growls and drank of the sour beer they favored. The few of the other races in the column avoided both of the major constituents of the army and sought their own ease.

  Fanarasha sent a sending to the captains of his scout companies. The beaming came back clear, as the officers indicated that there was nothing waiting hidden in the woods and underbrush that sparsely populated the valley. He still couldn’t get rid of the burning sensation, as if something disastrous awaited his force in the valley. The valley that sharp eyed horsemen traversed back and forth without incident.

  * * *

  “That bastard is holding them up,” said Rivera, pointing to his screen where a gaggle of horsemen clustered around an Elf in gold chased armor. The infantry was on the side of the road and didn’t look like it was going to move.

  “He’s a canny bastard, alright,” said the Green Beret, looking over the ordnance NCO’s shoulder. “Something is spooking him. Probably just the terrain. It looks too damn good to pass up for a trap.”

  “But his scouts are already over the terrain,” complained the Major, scowling at the man who wouldn’t walk into the trap they had planned to kill him.

  “We could just go ahead and have one of the UAVs take him out,” said the Captain.

  “Maybe in a minute,” said the Major, nodding. “We don’t want them too suspicious, though. So I’m going to ask the armored cav company to give them a little bit of a push from the front and see if that doesn’t draw them into the noose.”

  Lucky Cav, thought Rivera, knowing that if was his ass he would rather let the robots poke their noses into the hornet’s nest.

  * * *

  “Just stir them up a little and get the hell back here,” said Major Antwoine McGurk, looking down at the tank commander who was also the commanding officer of B Troop, 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cav. The man nodded his head while giving a thumbs up. McGurk jumped down from the tank and moved away as the seventy ton monster moved ahead with clanking treads and whining turbines. McGurk shook his head, wishing he hadn’t had to send the men forward. Especially with a forty kiloton nuclear device primed to explode. And those vehicles would be within the blast radius of the weapon when it went off.

  “They’ll be fine, sir,” said his Squadron Sergeant Major, putting a hand on the young officer’s shoulder.

  “I know they will be, Sergeant Major,” said the officer, nodding. “Nothing better than an Abrams or Brad when radiation is flying. It’s those damned wizards that worry me, and the guys on the birds.”

  The NCO shook his head in understanding while they watched the behemoths move out from cover and down the road.

  * * *

  General Fanarasha Levitana looked up from the map he was studying as the call came in through his telepathy dweamer.

  [Some of their metal beasts are coming, milord,] called the Captain of the hawk scouts. He opened up his mind and the Ellala Lord looked down on seven of the monstrous war chariots, interspersed among a dozen of the smaller ones that he knew carried the infantry of the strangers. He could feel a thrill run through him, a slight twinge of fear, that chariots so massive and so massively armed were coming for him. But he also remembered that fireballs burned those chariots just as they did lesser cavalry.

  [Get the battlemages to the front,] sent the General, while he motioned for his own guards to fo
llow and spurred his horse forward. Several columns of cavalry followed at the signals of flag bearers that rode near the General. At the same time the infantry stood up by the sides of the road and waited for the cavalry to pass by, so they could continue their march forward.

  * * *

  “Wait till that son of a bitch is near the front and the confusion,” ordered the Major, looking over the shoulder of a UAV operator and pointing to the scene of the head Elf spurring forward with columns of cavalry following close behind. “Then take him out, at the same time the Cav is firing on his forward troops.”

  The UAV operator, a specialist five technician, nodded his head as he kept his camera pointed at the front of the column. The microphones on the UAV were picking up the sounds of the horses galloping along the road, the whinnies of the beasts, and the clash of harness and armor. They were some shouts when the infantry stood up and started to move onto the road behind the cavalry, then the crumping sounds of rounds being fired, followed by the louder crumps of those same rounds striking the ground.

  “Engaging target now,” said the spec five, triggering his joystick, as the flash of a nearby round struck the ground on the opposite ridge line.

  * * *

  Fanarasha cursed under his breath when the rounds from the mechanical beasts came in. There was the rush of projectiles on an almost flat trajectory, as well as the whistle of objects falling from the sky. What they had in common was the explosion of dirt, grass, horse and Ellala that showered into the air where they hit. The battlemages were just starting to erect inertial fields that were bouncing incoming projectiles into the air. They couldn’t do much about the high angle bombs though. The whistle was not enough to give an exact location, until they hit the ground with a gout of earth and flame.

  The Ellala Lord rode through the milling cavalry, getting to a place where he could see the mechanical monsters that were attacking. One was burning, sitting where it had been struck by a mage’s fireball, while the others were maneuvering quickly across the ground, presenting moving targets.

  We’ll see about that, thought the Ellala, bringing his arm back while he whispered the words to a fireball spell. The heat built quickly in his hand, bringing a subliminal amount of pain, before he flung his arm forward and released the growing ball of heat and light, sending it unerringly toward one of the beasts. That was when the small projectiles started to strike his armor, and he turned his head to the side to see one of the small flying objects, flame sparking from the tube to its front. Fanarasha flung an arm over his face as something stung his ear. He could feel the impacts on his forearm as the fine chain deflected the objects.

  While the Ellala Lord was bringing another spell into his memory, to strike at the offending object in the sky, the small air launched missile struck his helmet. The shaped charge blasted through the enchanted protection and sent a jet of heat and molten metal through the skull and into the brain it protected. Flesh, blood and the vapor that remained of each blew out the back of the skull and coated the inside of the helmet, and the life left the Ellala Lord before he registered his death.

  * * *

  Staff Sergeant Paul Morgan would have cursed under his breath. But as a devout follower of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, that was forbidden him. So he prayed instead as the engine in his tank lurched, and the machine guns jammed repeatedly. The last cannon round had also sounded a little strange as it left the tank, without the zip and recoil that an armor piercing discarding sabot normally produced.

  “Dammit,” cursed the gunner, Pat Traffalgar, as the round went short. The gunner was the only profane man on the tank, the driver and loader both being good Christians, though of a different denomination than the Commander. Morgan cut off a rejoinder to the gunner, figuring he had already talked to the man about his mouth, and knowing that there was no regulation against cursing in the heat of battle, much as he disliked it himself.

  Morgan looked up from the Commander’s machine gun that he had just cleared and felt his eyes widen as he saw the growing ball of fire heading straight toward his turret. The tanks started backing up before he could call a command to the gunner, and the vehicle was veering to the left, but the fireball was curving around as if to follow them. The Sergeant mumbled another prayer as he cringed, thinking of his death in the agony of fire as his tank brewed up. Then the fireball fell apart in midair, flames falling down onto the ground as most of the ball just evaporated. The NCO didn’t know that the wizard that had thrown the ball had just died, and without a presence in the world to manifest it, the projectile of fire had lost its energy.

  Just as he was thanking God for his deliverance the nearest tank, a hundred meters to his left, went up in a whoosh of flame. The Commander climbed out and fell, a mass of writhing fire, just before the ammunition began to cook off in the turret. Morgan prayed for the souls of the crew as he leveled his fifty caliber and sent a stream of bullets and tracers toward the Elves who were closest to his tank. Some fell from their saddles, while others put up shields that deflected the large rounds into the sky. And another fireball flew out of the Elvish mass, heading straight for his tank.

  “My God, you are my sword and my shield,” the tank commander prayed out loud while his tank continued to back up. The cannon spat a sabot round at the fireball, but the explosion was again under strength, and the silver bullet fell to the ground under the fireball and bounced back into the air behind it.

  The ball of flames grew closer, traveling a hundred meters every second, growing wider as the crackling of flames grew to the ear. Morgan fired the fifty cal at it while he raised his voice in prayer, hoping that the pain would not be too great, and that the doors to paradise would open for him soon after the burning started. At the last second the tank commander flung his arms out and yelled, “you are my shield, oh Lord,” before the flames washed over him and the turret of his vehicle.

  Morgan could feel the heat, but not the pain that he knew had to accompany it. And then the heat started to fade. The Sergeant opened his eyes slowly, still sure he would see his flesh on fire. There was fire in the air, but it was fading into nothingness, and the heat with it. And his clothes were not even singed, nor was the paint on the turret of the tank.

  “Thank you Lord,” called out the Mormon Sergeant, while the ball of flame faded completely out of existence. “You have been my shield, and I am thankful.”

  Now a pair of fireballs flew his way, the Elves reacting to the lack of immolation of his vehicle with more of the means to incinerate him. Morgan felt nervous watching the fireballs come his way, mouthing prayers of supplication to his God, steadying himself in the surety that his God would again protect him. These fireballs snuffed out as they reached within ten meters of the hull of the tank, disappearing as if they were sinking into water with the hiss of air.

  “Driver, forward,” called Morgan over the intercom, as he watched one of the scout tracs go up in flame. “We’ll shield the rest as they fall back.”

  The tank moved forward, slewing across the front of the troop, and the gun fired, this time with full force, sending a silver bullet into the Elvish cavalry. Another fireball came out, to disappear before it struck. A bolt of lightning flared, to be swallowed up by the air near the tank, as Staff Sergeant Morgan took the shield of the Lord into combat.

  * * *

  “They sure stirred up the hornet’s nest,” said the Major, as they watched the Elvish cavalry come forward, columns of infantry closing up behind. Another screen showed the surviving tanks and APCs of the cavalry troop, moving back, while magical attacks on one of their number faded away before hitting the vehicle.

  “Wonder what’s up with that one,” said the Captain, pointing at the tank just as a spray of fast moving lights came in at different angles toward the Commander, fading away before they passed the ten meter mark from him. The Commander banged away with the ma deuce machine gun, and the turret swung to the side and added its coax to the mix.

  “Whate
ver it is, that Commander’s using it to his advantage,” said Rivera, looking at his screen as it cycled to the scene of the tank. “Wish I had whatever it is.”

  “Get ready to set that munition off, Sergeant,” said the Major, turning his key in the firing mechanism. The Captain pushed his key at the same time into another device wired into the setup, but far enough away that a single man couldn’t turn both at once. “Wait until the armored cav is out of the entrance to the valley. That should put the majority of the infantry in the kill zone.”

  Rivera nodded as his hand hovered over the large button that would complete the circuit, sending firing instructions over the radio into the buried forty kiloton demolition charge. The screen stayed on the armored cav as they fell back before the Elves and their ugly servants, fixed on the action that would determine the shot.

  Minutes stretched by as the cav moved back, followed by the enemy, and the infantry packed the valley behind the Elf cavalry. Another tank had gone up from magical attack, but the miraculously shielded tank had interfered with the magic enough to ensure that the rest of the troop made it back safely. Only the shielded tank was still on the edge of the blast zone, and hopefully, being a heavy armored fighting vehicle, it would survive just fine.

  “Light her up,” ordered the Major, putting his hand on Rivera’s shoulder. The Sergeant flinched just a bit at the unasked for touch, then forced his mind to concentrate on the matter at hand. Making sure all the dials on the radio detonator looked to be measuring the proper frequency, Rivera pushed the large red button on the center of the console. His shoulders tensed for the earth shattering blast that was sure to follow. And waited, while nothing happened.

  “What’s happening, Sergeant,” yelled the Major in a shrill voice.

  Rivera pushed the button again, then again, as nothing continued to be the Major activity of the buried bomb. The Sergeant frowned as he looked at the oscilloscope that showed the signal was going out. Pulling a screwdriver from his jacket pocket, he started loosening the screws of the transmitter assembly, looking to see if the leads were all connected to the antenna assembly.