by Jan Stryvant
"Aye, we're ready!"
"Blow 'em. Everyone else, blow your sections after Samis does, but do not advance! Do not advance!"
Sean watched as four separate explosions went off, the walls crumbling in those places as they did.
"Samis, do a recon in force! Do not enter the building!"
"You think it's a trap?"
"Maybe. Something's not right!"
Sean looked down at the action watching, where the hell do you hide two hundred some odd wolves?
"We're only picking up stragglers!" One of the other dwarves called out on the radio, "One just told us that they all left hours ago!"
"Damn! They must have found out we were coming!" Samis said over the radio.
"Everyone! Pull back! Watch your flanks! Prepare for a counter-attack!"
Sean watched as everyone started pulling back, as Chad prepared for the worst, but looking around, Sean didn't see anything.
"I don't think they're here!" someone called.
"Then where the hell are they?"
"Oh, shit!" Sean swore over the radio as he got a sinking feeling in his stomach, "They're out attacking us! Check in with the other leaders!" Sean switched over to the intercom, "Take me back to our compound as fast as this thing will go!"
Roxy sighed and did the rounds again. She was a little bit pissed at Sean for making her stay behind, he'd let Daelyn go with the dwarves again, but he'd made it clear that somebody needed to be in charge here, and he didn't want it to be Maitland.
Right now, Sean's mother, Louise, was talking with Jolene about any number of things, trying to get to know her. Maitland was also out making the rounds, Ruthelma was with Louise, and Philo and his friend were nowhere to be seen. Which was just fine with Roxy, the idea of a six-foot tall rabbit wearing a fedora wasn't one that made her very comfortable.
"Ma'am, I got something on the sensors," one of the younger men said. Roxy was in their command center, one of the few places that was actually finished. The displays and monitors for all of the sensors that Sean's friend John had put in reported here, as well as at the main defense emplacements.
"Another coyote?" Roxy sighed.
"No, Ma'am! Something way bigger than that!"
Roxy sighed, and then smiled; this was as good a time as any for an impromptu drill.
"Light 'em up."
"Yes ma'am!' the young wolf said with a smile and pressed the button that would tell the gunner crew to fire on the target.
And suddenly, all hell broke loose.
"Sound the alarm! Turn on the perimeter lights! Tell everyone to fire at will!" Roxy yelled as hundreds of people outside the fence line suddenly returned fire. They'd only left fifty people behind, mostly women and those wolves who weren't combat qualified. There were enough to man the defenses, if just barely, but there had to be hundreds coming up the hill and attacking.
"Arm the mines! Arm all the mines!" she yelled and ran for the door.
"Ma'am! Where are you going! What do I do?!"
"We don't have enough people out there to fight this off! Look, use your best judgment keep an eye on ALL of the perimeter in case they try to flank us!" Roxy said and ran out to the armory to pick up something a bit better than the pistol she was wearing.
When she got there, there was a group of people who didn't know what to do and started asking questions.
Roxy spent the next minute tossing rifles and ammo belts out to everyone and then told them to follow her as she grabbed one herself and made for the direction where all the shooting was coming from. Two other machinegun nests had opened fire at this point.
"Loretta," Roxy said grabbing one of the women, "go back to the command center and tell them to use the mortars."
"What's a mortar?"
"Just go!"
Dropping flat behind one of the berms on the edge of the compound, Roxy crawled up slowly and peeking over the edge down onto the lit battle scene, she gasped, there were hundreds of them, and the way they were refusing to drop meant only one thing, lycans. Oh what she wouldn't give for silver ammo right now, but that took time to make and they hadn't even got the shop set up for that. Still enough bullets will kill anything, even a werewolf.
"Aim for the body!" Roxy growled, "Maybe if we're lucky we'll hit one of their pellets!"
Terry hit the dirt almost instantly when the first machine gun opened fire on them, half of the front line returning fire instantly before going prone. He didn't hear any screams of people dying from silver, which meant either no one had gotten hit, or better yet, the enemy didn't have silver bullets!
Just then Ted, one of the wolves from the front line went by. Or rather Ted's head did. Whatever they were being shot at with, apparently it had decapitated Ted.
Terry hugged the ground a little closer.
Yeah, no silver was good, but there were other things that could kill you just as dead.
When the lights came up, Terry started to move to his right, slapping Bryce on the leg as he did so, whether or not Cara did, well that was her business. But the last thing Terry wanted right now was to be in the line of fire of that big ass machine gun with no cover. Especially when somebody's hand went flying by next.
Getting up and running in a crouch, Terry found a spot with some cover, a small rise to hide behind, so he did. Bryce and Cara both landed next to him.
"What the hell is that thing?" Cara asked, as Terry looked over the rise with his gun and started shooting at one of the lights.
"Fifty cal," Bryce said. "A couple of hits from that, and you're probably good as dead."
"Covering fire!" someone, it sounded like Jones, called out and the three of them started to return fire towards the sound of the machine gun, which was firing in controlled one second bursts.
There was a scream, and then the firing stopped. Cara started to get up, but Terry grabbed her belt and yanked her down.
"What are you doing? They're dead?"
A moment later the machine gun opened up again for a good ten seconds, when it stopped, someone yelled out: "Ha ha! Fooled ya!"
"Damn, that's sick," Cara said.
"No, that's sneaky," Bryce corrected her. "Now, we got a good position here, let's just stay here and let the heroes go first."
Suddenly a bunch of small arms fire started to rain down on all of them, Terry yelped as he got hit in the arm and slid back down to give his body a minute to heal the wound.
Cara nodded wide-eyed as Terry tried to staunch the blood flow.
"Yeah, let's wait here."
For the next ten minutes, all they did was exchange fire, and then suddenly Terry heard the sounds of something thudding in the distance. Like when they'd shoot those big fireworks off for the fourth of July.
"Incoming!" Someone yelled off in the distance, and then suddenly there were large explosions all around them.
"Forward!" Someone called out, "If we stay here, we die here!"
Terry was up over the rise and firing as he ran, the shells landing off to his left, but they were starting to track his way.
Five times he got shot, until one of the shells landed behind him and the shockwave from it knocked him flat to the ground, leaving him deaf and dizzy. Bryce was screaming next to him, and when Terry looked he could see his friend was dying from silver poisoning, his body armor shredded.
"I thought you said there were no silver bullets?" Cara gasped spitting out blood and a bullet.
"Must have hit his pellet," Terry said, blinking and shaking his head, things were all in a kind of soft fuzzy focus. "His chest plate is all shot up."
"What the hell is that?" Cara said and pointed.
Rolling over onto his back, Terry saw a dark shape up in the air in the distance and it was getting closer.
"I donno, a dragon?" Terry said and blinked again as things started to clear up. Looking around, there were several dead bodies around him; the shell must have torn them up. Most of the others had already passed by him, going through the wire fence and steadily
moving forward, but the all the gunfire was slowing them down, as you had to wait to heal before you could move on once you'd been hit enough times.
Just then there was a loud roar and a bright flash of fire came flowing down the hill.
"Holy shit! They do have a dragon!" Cara yelled, and Terry was suddenly afraid that she just might be right.
Sean was cursing loudly as his home came into sight. There was a firefight going on there alright, a massive one too from the looks of things, someone had even brought out one of the flamethrowers. There were a large number of troops coming up the hill from the northwest, and there was a hell of a lot more of them than he would have expected from just the Vestibulum compound.
"Look at 'em all!" The helicopter pilot called over the headset.
"Everyone!" Sean called out, "Lock and load! Silver if you got it! Open the side doors and we'll light 'em up as we make a pass!"
Sean turned to the pilot, "See that spot right there?"
The man sighted down Sean's arm, "You mean where they're about to overrun the compound?"
"Yeah, take us right over that,"
"Ummm... they might see us!"
"Considering you're going to be ten feet over them as we go by, yeah, I think that's a fair bet!" Sean growled.
"I don't think I can do that," the pilot looked at him a little shakily.
"Look," Sean growled, "You can either die here because I ripped your fucking head off, or you can risk dying down there, where you just might not get shot, as we go by!"
The pilot looked at Sean and grimaced, "Here we go everyone!" And pushing over he gunned it and brought them down low enough that Sean was starting to worry if they'd hit the ground before they even got there.
Everyone in the back opened fire as they passed over the troops, and from the sounds of the screams, apparently all of the troops in the back had at least some silver ammo and were using it.
Unfortunately, they'd lost their element of surprise and the attackers farther down the hill all opened up as one on the helicopter.
"I lost my tail rotor! Shit! I'm losing the engine!" The pilot said as all the windows on the left side of the helicopter started to star and then shatter from the bullet impacts.
"We're going in!" The pilot screamed as the ground came up rather fast and then with a loud tearing of metal they smashed into it.
'WAKE UP!'
Sean opened his eyes and groaned, something was on fire, and his body hurt, everywhere. Looking down he was still buckled into the seat, so undoing the seat belts he gasped and then taking a deep breath he shifted into his hybrid form, doing his best not to scream as he did so.
The pilot was unconscious, but appeared to be alive and healing.
Grabbing the fire bottle off of the bulkhead, Sean looked around for the source of the fire and realized it was outside the helicopter, which was now on its side. Using the fire extinguisher, he smashed out the window and then sprayed it over some of the flames. After the ones closest to him went out he tossed it out onto the ground outside and looked into the back. There were bodies everywhere, both inside and outside of the helicopter, but most of them seemed to be healing.
"Alright everybody, get your shit together, grab your weapons, we got people to kill!" Sean growled at them, as he pulled himself out of the seat. He could feel the bones in his legs healing as he crawled out of it and into the back with the rest of them. Reaching into the front seat he undid the pilot's seatbelt straps and pulled him into the back, then grabbed his rifle, which all of the plastics were now broken or cracked on. He'd just have to see if it still worked when he got out.
As soon as he stuck his head out, he started drawing fire, calling up his framework, Sean tossed a fireball back at the people shooting at him to get their heads down, then crawled out of the helicopter to try and find some cover.
Two of the others in the back joined him, and they started to exchange fire. Within a minute he had most of the squad with him.
"What now?" Jon, the squad leader asked.
"We attack, that's what!" Sean growled.
"Are you crazy! There's hundreds of them!"
"Yeah, and my family is up there, along with a lot of women and non-combatants!"
"Damn," Jon growled. "Right behind ya'." Jon turned to the rest of the squad who were still pulling themselves together.
"You heard the man! Let's go!"
As soon as Sean stood up he was shot a dozen times, but they were using silver and after that the shield had firmed up enough to start turning the bullets aside, the small boost of power that the shield passed onto him helped with the healing, but his body was still recovering from the crash and there was no way he could take much more of this punishment.
They got about a dozen yards, before they were pinned down, the fire was getting just too heavy, and there were way too many of them. Not all of the bullets were silver, so enough were getting through that Sean was in a seriously bad way. His mana was almost completely spent, he was depending on the small amount he was getting from the shield now for his healing.
One of the machine guns fell silent suddenly, and not long after that a second one went quiet as well. Whether it was from a lack of ammunition or their being taken, Sean couldn't tell. But the attackers started to surge forward again, so standing up and bearing the brunt of their fire Sean fired into their leading ranks the others in the squad doing the same until he had to drop back into cover, his ammo exhausted.
"I'm out of ammo," Sean said, panting and in considerable pain now. He was bleeding from at least a half dozen wounds.
"I'm dry too," Jon said looking around, "Who's still loaded?"
Three hands motioned.
"Well unless you're going to pull a rabbit out of your hat, Sean, I think we better get the hell out of here before we're overrun. They don't look friendly and we're out of this fight.
"Dammit! It's my family!" Sean snarled, angrily.
"Well our dying isn't going to save them, now is it?" Jon yelled at him. "We're out of ammo, we're out of magic, we're out of the fight! It's time to go!"
Sean looked at them, and growled as another silver bullet hit him, the shield starting to grow again in response.
Sean blinked, silver bullets. They were using silver bullets. What the hell was he worried about? He had all the fucking power in the world, and they were shooting it right at him. Reaching into the tag as he had so many times before, he turned off the encryption, redirected the power and called up all of his framework spells.
"Jon, take the men and run."
"What the hell are you going to do?"
"Some serious magical shit," Sean growled and stood up.
It hurt, it hurt a lot, and his shield quickly grew out to the limit and turned hot. Swearing loudly, Sean started pumping healing spells into his own body, and then started to fire off fireballs left and right as he started to slowly move forward.
The shield hardened to its limit, and it stopped most of the bullets from hitting him, but it couldn't stop all, there were just too many and he could feel the tag starting to get hot, the scent of burning fur was filling his nose as the excess power was starting to heat his body up as well. He could tell were the limits of the shield was now, from the burning smoldering scrub brush in a ring around him, everything was getting painfully hot.
Reaching down into the tag again, he killed the limiter on the shield and then gasped in pain as it surged out twenty more feet in an instant, engulfing several of the enemy and consuming all of their silver, loading him down with enough excess energy that Sean was able to start firing off the cramping spell at anyone he saw. But even with the heavy draw of that spell, he was still pulling in power almost faster than he could use it and the shield was slowly expanding even more.
"What the hell?" He swore and more and three more soldiers became engulfed in the effect, falling to the ground in pain as their pellets and ammo were suddenly changed.
'There must be silver in the hill below us, the shi
eld is eating it!'
Sean swore and started to stalk forward towards the soldiers who were all staring at him with wide eyes now, and starting to back away as they fired. Sean was so full of energy now that there was actual static starting to spark around his mane that had completely fluffed out and he was panting from the heat. He continued to fire off every spell he could think of to try and bleed off the energy, but the shield was still growing, it was out to forty feet, and every soldier it engulfed fell to the ground screaming as their ammo was converted, some of it even started to cook off.
'Their pellets, you're destroying their pellets!'
"Holy shit!" Sean swore out loud, and he started to charge the attackers, who saw their comrades falling, screaming, as the lion with the burning white light on his chest and the static dancing around his head came after them, the shield growing faster and engulfing more and more. Several dozen had fallen now, the rest were fleeing from him as fast as they could run as Sean stumbled after them, the rest of the forces veering around him as they avoided him to continue their attack on the compound.
'The tag's overloading, you're overloading! You need to turn it off, or you're going to die, Sean!'
"Shut up! I need you to do your mystical shit!"
For the first time ever, Sean heard his lion swear, though he didn't recognize the language, he just knew it was pretty bad.
Charging into the middle of them, the shield blew out to sixty feet in an instant from all the silver it had just engulfed, Sean's fur had started to smolder and his clothes were beginning to catch fire.
Tipping back his head, Sean roared and then cried out loudly.
"I've taken your pellets! You are free now! Free!"
The silver tag started to deform, as it burned past the fur and started to melt the skin underneath, sending a lance of excruciating pain into his body. Sean desperately grabbed at the power and started to try and shed it, no longer paying attention to the events playing out around him. There was no place to ground it, and there was so much of it coming in! He reached down into the tag again to turn off the power tap, but before he could stop the spell the tag finally started to melt and as it finally deformed enough for the tag to lose all integrity and the spell instantly collapsed. All of the energy that had been coursing through the spell when it failed suddenly exploded from tag on his chest in a bright blinding flash with enough force to knock him back a dozen yards while burning a hole in his chest. Flying through the air with his clothing, mane, and fur all on fire, Sean fell to the ground, unconscious.
