Refuge: The Arrival: Book 2

by Doug Dandridge

  “What are you doing,” yelled the physicist/Mage to his partner as more of the funnels began to descend from the clouds. She turned a face that had become beautiful in its power, her eyes cold as the ice of the north, hair charged with flashes of electricity.

  “I am a Goddess,” said her booming voice, echoing through the heavens. “I am the Goddess. And the world is mine to do with as I will.”

  James felt a shiver run down his spine while he watched a trio of tornadoes touch down, moving quickly along the ground, tossing vehicles and people into the air as they ravaged through the camps of the Earth folk. He saw some dragons at the edge of the clouds, dropping low and spitting fire into other concentrations of human equipment. And he knew that his partner was once again mad. Mad with power, and no longer working for the good of the people from Earth.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Hang on LT,” said Jessica through tight lips while she banked the copter to the left, then right, with a quick flick of her hand. Her Comanche was completely out of missiles, and she was down to the last dribbles of cannon ammo. The dragon coming up behind her was not burdened by those limitations, spitting out another stream of fire that just missed the helicopter. She pushed the throttle forward and felt relief that she left the huge beast behind. The dragon veered away. They and their riders were finally learning that they could not match the speed of the human machines. But she was almost out of weapons, and it was time to go away and get more. First she wanted to use up what she had, even if it was the last fifty rounds of thirty millimeter.

  Looping the helicopter around she caught sight of a dragon that was chasing another copter, and swung her bird onto its tail, slightly above it. She positioned her pip on the back of the monster’s neck, just in front of the rider, and triggered off a long burst. A line of tracers hit the beast at the chosen point, blasting through scales and shredding the rider. The juvenile beast let out a scream and fell from the sky.

  “Let’s go get fed, Stuart,” ordered the Lieutenant from the rear. Jessica nodded and turned the helicopter away, getting her bearings to the small canyon where they were told to expect cannon ammunition and maybe a few missiles. The rest of the heavy ordinance was back in the sanctuary valley, and the Warrant Officer did not like her chances going back to the airfield. Unarmed, the only weapon she had was the body of the copter. And armored or not, she didn’t think she would do well colliding with a twenty plus ton flying dinosaur.

  Within minutes she saw the flag that marked the canyon and headed down between the high walls. Eight hundred meters in she saw the clearing and followed the directions of the soldier on the ground that waved her to a place for her copter. She gently lowered her ship to the ground while craning her neck, hoping that she would not see the shadow of a monster flying overhead.

  The rotor blades slowed overhead after she cut the engine. It seemed to take forever for them to slow to a stop. The ground crewman caught one of the rotors in a snare and pulled it into place, allowing the pilots to open their canopies and climb from the copter.

  “Only got two missiles for you ma’am,” said a Tech Sergeant while two men wheeled the hellfires up to the copter. “But we can give you a full load of cannon ammo.”

  “Anything you can give us,” she said with a tight smile as she accepted a canteen of lukewarm water.

  “How many are left?” asked Lt. Burkes, grabbing an offered canteen.

  “You’re the ninth we’ve serviced so far,” said the Tech Sergeant, frowning. “And the last as far as we know. Five were splashed by the enemy, two more too damaged to fight on.”

  “So nine of us left, with almost nothing more than close in weapons, against fifty or more flying dinosaurs,” said Burke with a tight smile. “Out fucking standing.”

  Jessica handed the canteen back to the Sergeant and took a few steps back toward the helicopter. A hellfire had been attached in the right hand bay, and she knew the other would be balanced out on the other side. She looked longingly at the bird she had been flying for the last couple of years.

  “This will probably be our last flight, Burke,” said Stuart, rubbing her hand on the fuselage of the Comanche. “Unless we learn to ride a dragon, or one of those big birds.”

  “You won’t get me on one of those things,” said the Lieutenant, crossing his arms over his chest and looking defiantly at the Warrant Officer, daring her to argue with him.

  “Then you won’t be flying on this world,” said Stuart, her eyes looking away. “Nothing we know about flying is going to work on this world. We got a divine reprieve that allowed our stuff to work, for a little while. After that, we have to adapt to this world. I, for one, can’t wait to feel one of those big hawks between my legs. Or a dragon.”

  I wonder how you are faring, Mishanana, my friend, she thought for a moment, remembering the feeling of riding behind the fair Ellala on a gold dragon, just this morning. I hope you come through this. But how can you, outnumbered as you are.

  “Let’s get up in the air and do what we need to do,” said Burke, pulling himself up the fuselage and into his compartment.

  Jessica followed. Soon she was strapped into the cockpit, while the crew chief closed the canopy and latched it into place. The engines revved and the rotor spun up to speed. Within moments she was back in the air, heading out of the canyon in search of prey.

  * * *

  “What’s the hold up?” asked Anni, craning her neck to catch a view out the front window. “I thought we were almost there.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Dirk, looking out the side window and trying to see past all the pedestrians that were crowded to the sides. “Hey,” he yelled at one of the walkers. “You know what’s holding us up?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” said the man, his angry eyes looking over the car that was carrying the band.

  Be as angry as you want to be, thought Dirk, looking away from the man. In a few more days we will all be equal, and you will be just as safe and secure as we are. If that means anything.

  A military polizie walked down the line, talking to people when he came to them. Dirk waved at the man, and the MP flashed a short smile and walked over.

  “The musicians,” said the man, nodding his head. “I heard how your music steadied the people on the night of horror. What can I do for you?”

  “We were wondering what the hold up is,” said Reinhold. “We thought we were almost to the entrance of the valley, now we’ve been sitting here for almost two hours.”

  “Do you not hear that?” asked the MP, looking back toward the promised land.

  Dirk strained his ears, then he did hear something. Faint explosions, like a battle in the distance. In the valley that was supposed to be their sanctuary.

  “Yes,” said the MP, nodding his head. “There is a battle going on. Us against the dragons. So the valley is not a safe place to be. Now excuse me. I have to spread the word down the line.”

  “Fucking dragons,” said Karl Wilhelm after the man left. “What next? Will we be attacked by hordes of zombies?”

  If we are I for one am going to be ready, thought Dirk, getting out of the car and looking to the sky. If I’m going to be a bard, then I need to learn. I wonder if this world has ever seen an electric bard?

  * * *

  “I think he must be over here,” said Kurt, pointing up the path through the low hill country.

  Levine snorted and put the hummer back into gear, turned the wheel, and started the all-terrain vehicle up what looked like a goat path. That looked like all the other paths they had been up and down in these hills.

  “How in the hell could we lose something as big as a brontosaurus?” growled Jackie, standing up in the front passenger seat and looking out over the windscreen.

  “An Apatosaurus, my dear,” said Levine, glancing upward at the young woman. “A brontosaurus was a mistake of identification.”

  “Whatever,” snarled the young Immortal. “Fucking dinosaur of some kind. One of the big ones.
And we can’t find the fucking thing.”

  Kurt grinned while he swept the big machine gun back and forth along the path. He had already learned that Levine could be much too literal. The thing they were tracking was not any kind of dinosaur, though maybe it evolved from them some indeterminate time in the past. He was sure that the weapon he manned could have killed any dinosaur that ever lived on Earth, if he pumped enough ammunition into it. He wasn’t sure that it could do the same to one of the dragons, since they had large and very thick, scales covering their vital areas.

  “What’s that,” yelled Jackie, pointing off to the side of the hill, into a defile between a couple of the rolling mounds of earth. Something red moved there, through the green of the foliage. A head. A large head that reared up for a moment on a long neck, then went back under cover.

  “That’s the damned thing,” exclaimed Kurt, swinging the barrel of the fifty caliber that way and looking into the telescopic sight. The head reappeared, looking his direction, and he pushed the trigger, sending a long burst its way and bringing the tracer stream, like the water of a hose, onto the monster. Some of the rounds struck the neck and the side of the creature’s jaw. The head ducked back down, then came up with the mouth gaping open.

  “Get us moving,” yelled Jackie, and then the gout of flame erupted from the mouth, tracking on their hummer.

  Levine shoved the gear lever forward and pushed the accelerator into the floor. Too much. The rear tires dug into the soft soil of the trail and spun in place.

  Jackie was the first to bail, just before the flame reached the hummer. She vaulted over the windscreen, hit heels on the hood, and jumped into the air. Kurt fell over backwards, away from the machine gun that stopped firing when his hand left the grips. He rolled from the hummer and landed on his back in the dirt. The stream of flame struck the hummer on the back section of the vehicle. The gas tank wooshed into flame, then exploded, sending the hummer into the air with Levine still at the wheel. The vehicle landed upside down twenty meters up the path, flame shooting through the passenger compartment and engulfing the entire vehicle.

  Kurt felt the dread come over him as he picked himself out of the dirt, seeing the back of the upside down vehicle wreathed in flames. Fire was one way we can be killed, he thought, scrambling to his feet. Nothing had come out of the vehicle that he could see, except for Jackie, who was picking herself up from the scrub that had broken her fall. The oldest and wisest of us, dead in an instant. And Kurt wondered what his chances were on this world. And those of the two younger immortals it was now his task to protect.

  A loud roaring and the heavy thumping of feet on the ground pulled his attention away from the hummer. The twenty-five ton beast was walking up the hill, pushing small trees and bushes out of its path. And its angry eyes were focused squarely on the big German.

  * * *

  “You have to stop this,” yelled James Drake, fighting to be heard over the roar of the winds that were swirling around the hilltop.

  Katherine Heidle turned eyes the color of a glacier onto him. Eyes that seemed to suck the heat out of his soul. Around them a dozen tornadoes raged through the valley, throwing trees and soil into the air. On the periphery a dragon was caught in the winds and dragged into a twister, to be broken and tossed out a moment later.

  If she was directing the storms to actually damage the monsters we might be getting somewhere, thought the scientist. But the action had been accidental. The woman was mad with power, and was unleashing destructive forces wherever they would fall.

  “I don’t have to stop anything, insect,” roared Katherine, waving her arms at the sky. “I can do as I please, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

  Bolts of lightning arched from the black clouds to the ground with the crack of superheated air. One of the bolts struck within fifty meters of the hilltop, and James felt his hair stand on end as his feet and legs tingled with the residual static of the bolt.

  “I am a Goddess,” she roared, her voice booming across the valley like thunder. “The world is my plaything, to do with as I wish.”

  James pushed through the wind, reaching for the woman, hoping to grab her and to shake some sense into her. A gust of hurricane strength wind grabbed him and picked him up from the ground, slamming him into the earth twenty meters away. James felt the breath pushed from his lungs as he grunted. His back hurt, and he took a moment to make sure everything was still working in his body. He struggled back to his feet, turning his eyes on the woman, who was now floating into the air.

  “Katherine, stop,” he yelled, throwing a small ball of fire in her direction, hoping to draw her back to reality. The ball fluttered through the air, fighting the winds with the will of its wielder behind it. The ball splashed a couple meters in front of the woman’s face. She turned toward him, and raised a hand to the heavens.

  The bolt came down in an instant, striking Drake. His back arched and his body went numb, shaking with the charge that was surging through his nervous system. The world began to turn red, then black, as consciousness fled. The ground came up hard as his limp body fell to the earth.

  I have to stop her, he thought as he fought to regain awareness. I have to stop her, if it’s the last thing I do. He felt the energy at the edge of his awareness. The heat of the planet beneath him. The heat of the sun on the other side of the clouds. And he pulled that heat into him, feeling the energy that fed him and revived him. I have to stop her, he thought again, as he felt the energy of the planet feeding his limbs and core with the will to win.

  * * *

  Lt. Colonel Jason Alexander could feel the fear building in his gut while he lifted his F22 Raptor off of the runway. It was the constant tension of continuous combat operations as the world destroyed itself around him. Another day over the nuclear battlefield of Germany. And his squadron of the most advanced fighters the world had ever seen was down to a little over half strength, losing a fighter or two every day. When would his day come? And why hadn’t he heard anything from home, three days after the short strategic weapons exchange between the Russians and Americans that had silenced the news from the States.

  The other eight birds lifted off behind him, then formed up as they turned over Central Germany and headed toward Poland on superglide, cruising easily through the sound barrier. That was another moment of tension for the Colonel. His fighters might be nearly invisible on radar, but they could be seen and they could be heard, especially when they broke the sound barrier. And though his planes had been downing the Russians at a three to one rate, they were still losing aircraft and were still losing pilots. He didn’t want to be the next one to be racked up in the statistical analysis of the air war.

  He didn’t see the missile coming in that targeted his airfield. He didn’t know why the Russians had waited to strike the airfield at such a late date. He did see the flash in his rear viewer, and heard the panic in the voices over the radio net as the rest of his squadron reacted. The shielding worked on all of the craft, and none lost power. They braced for the blast wave that they knew was going to overtake them, and possibly swat them from the sky.

  Before the blast could arrive the air in front of the fighters shimmered, like a mirror that was being bent by outside forces. Alexander, who like most fighter pilots was not prone to motion sickness of any kind, felt nauseated. He gulped down the beginnings of vomit and steadied his stomach, closing his eyes for a second. When he opened them he looked out on a scene of madness.

  The sky over Germany had been mostly clear, with a scattering of dust and smoke in the atmosphere from war damage. Now the sky was dark with thick clouds. To the north he could see what looked like funnel clouds rampaging across the open valley that his squadron was flying over. Ahead were jagged mountains. There were many dots in the sky to the south. The only thing that looked the same was the fires burning on the ground, sending thick smoke into the air. But this did not look like any Germany he had remembered.

  “What’s going on here
, Werewolf leader?” came the voice of Major Franklin over the squadron com.

  “You have as good an idea as I do, Werewolf Two,” replied the Colonel, craning his neck and looking over the ground. There were some vehicles down there, and they looked like Abrams and Brads, as far as he could tell. But the mountains? “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, despite all those twisters over there.”

  “Why don’t we check out those fires to the north,” suggested Franklin, bringing his bird up level with the leader.

  Alexander nodded while his eyes searched that area. Whatever was over there must be big, for them to even see them as dots from miles away. The Colonel went to active radar, grunting as the returns showed that they were indeed large objects, but with a silhouette like nothing he had ever seen before.

  “The rest of you circle here,” he ordered over the squadron circuit, “while me and Two check it out.”

  The Colonel listened to the choruses of acknowledgements from scared pilots while he turned his jet to the north and watched his second in command slide into wingman slot. He then rocketed forward, bringing his airspeed up to six hundred knots, weapons hot and ready.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “What the hell is that?” exclaimed one of the staff officers, searching the sky with his glasses.

  What now? thought General Taylor, looking in the direction the officer was pointing his glasses, bringing his own binoculars up to his face. Whatever it was, it was moving fast. A lot faster than the dragons, or even the helicopters that were just now fighting outside the valley. They looked like…

  “Jet fighters,” he exclaimed, his mouth dropping open in disbelief. “Where the hell did they come from?”

  “From where everything else that we’re familiar with came from,” said Cliff Jackson, coming up to the General’s side, his left arm swathed in bandages covering his burns. “Earth.”

  “How’d they come to be here now?” asked Taylor, looking over at his Sergeant Major. “Never mind. I don’t really need to know that right now.