Mage Hunters Box Set

by Andrew C Piazza

  “Kel’s not crazy.”

  “No, she’s not. She gets unhinged since the prison, but she’s not a Vive Job. So this fight is going to be more conventional, but more focused. More tactical.”

  “Let’s take it step by step, Cass,” Dread said. “We get into the lobby of the building. Then what?”

  “We’ll have to locate the Intron Code device. Kel will almost certainly be there. Mickey, any idea where the machine is?”

  “I never had anything to do with that,” Mickey said. “I didn’t even know it existed. Any of that stuff.”

  “There must’ve been some areas that were restricted to the rest of the employees working there. They would want to keep the circle small.”

  “There were some floors you couldn’t get access to,” Mickey said. “Not unless you had a special keycard. The elevator wouldn’t stop on those floors without it.”

  “Which floors?”

  “The… fourteenth through the sixteenth, I think.”

  “You think?” Shifty asked.

  “I told you, I didn’t go on those floors or really, give them a second thought. I just went to my cubicle and did my thing every day. The only reason I even know about it is Kevin, this one guy in my department, started talking about it one day and…”

  “We get the idea,” Cass said. “That sounds like a good place to start. The fourteenth floor.”

  “Okay, but if access is restricted from the elevators, how do we get to them?” Shifty asked.

  “There’s two stairwells,” Dread said.

  “That would be a disaster,” Cass said. “Kel will be able to focus all her troops into a tight area to bottle us up, then send another group up behind us. It’ll be all close quarters, which will favor her ghouls and conjurations over our firepower.”

  “Not to mention I won’t be able to heal anybody who gets hurt, if I’ve got some hell hound biting me in the ass the whole time,” Jolly said.

  “Exactly. We can’t get stuck in the stairwells, or we’re done,” Cass said.

  “So, what, then?” Dread said. “Fight everything in the building, right there in the lobby? That’s not much better. Have to defend two sides at once, not to mention the front entrance, and we’ll run out of ammo eventually.”

  “I don’t know yet,” Cass said. “I’ll think of something.”

  “Well, think fast, because we’re about sixty seconds out.”

  “All right,” Cass said, raising her voice so everyone could hear. “Remember to keep your safeties on while inside the vehicle. We don’t want any accidental discharges bouncing all around. There’s firing ports on the sides that you can shoot your weapons through if we run into something in the parking lot.”

  “I can show them,” Lysette said.

  “What do you think we’ll find in the parking lot?” Mickey said. “Something bad?”

  “We’re about to find out,” Dread said, then added a second later, “Ohhhhh fuck.”

  “What? What is it?” Mickey said.

  Cass shifted around so that she could get a look through the front viewing ports. As soon as she saw what was out there, she whistled lowly.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I was wondering when we were going to run into a golem.”

  Shifty

  Sometimes, Cass is the queen of understatement.

  I squeezed my way in next to her so that I could see what she was looking at, and it was like everywhere my eyes looked, there was more golem to see.

  “That’s not a golem,” I said. “That’s the golem.”

  The fucking thing was twice the size of an elephant. Maybe bigger. Back at the prison, we’d had to fight a few golems; some bigger, some smaller. This one was like all of them put together. I don’t even want to think how many bodies Kel had fused together to create it, the legs alone looked like they were made of a dozen or more bodies each.

  “Maybe it won’t notice us,” Dread said.

  Yeah, hardy har har, Dread. We were in a giant armored vehicle covered in spotlights pointed in every direction. You could probably see us from space.

  “Seriously,” I said, “how are we supposed to get past that thing?”

  “There’s two machineguns and a cannon on this vehicle,” Dread said. “Use ‘em.”

  “Well,” I said, “we didn’t steal ourselves a tank for nothing.”

  Of course, Dread had to correct me and say “Light armored vehicle.” Sometimes, I wonder about his priorities.

  “I’m on the cannon and the co-ax,” Cass said. “Shifty, get up on the rooftop machinegun.”

  The term “co-ax” referred to the machinegun that was mounted co-axially to, or in the same line as, the cannon. That meant it was stuck next to and pointed the same way as the cannon. I didn’t know that at the time; I had to look up what co-ax meant later.

  The point is, Cass would be operating both of those weapon systems from her position in the gunner’s seat in the turret. I would be using the machinegun that was on top of the turret, on one of those mounts called a “pintle mount” that can turn in any direction.

  Okay. I had to look up “pintle mount” later too. Whatever. I was never military.

  When I popped open the hatch on the top of the roof and stuck myself out where the machine-gun was mounted, I was able to get a much better look at the golem that was guarding the parking lot. I wished that I hadn’t.

  It looked vaguely like a crab, if a crab had six legs instead of eight, and instead of two claws, it had four giant stabby looking spear-like tentacles. Like all golems, there were heads scattered across every part of it, the heads of the poor bastards Kel had killed and fused together to create that monstrosity. Their faces were twisted in pain and their mouths constantly howled and screamed. When it took a step with those long, gargantuan legs, you could hear it; if we hadn’t been in an armored vehicle, we probably would’ve felt the ground shake with each step.

  Like I said, we’d encountered golems before, in the fight at the prison. Dread had been the one to figure out that the only way to stop them was to shoot the heads on the individual bodies making them up. Hit the head, and that body… and therefore, that little piece of the golem… died with it. Kill enough of the individual units, and the golem can’t use an arm or a leg or whatever you just shot the shit out of.

  This one, unfortunately, looked like it may have been made out of hundreds of people. Great.

  It looked we were going to be testing a new theory on how to stop a golem. Good luck trying to score head shots on a moving target from a vehicle that was driving like crazy around that moving target. So hopefully, we would get lucky with the machineguns, or maybe Cass’s cannon would do something other than make a loud and impressive noise.

  I pushed all that out of my thoughts and got the machinegun ready. I’d never actually fired one of these before… a belt-fed military weapon like this… but I knew enough to know that you got the party started by pulling back the charging handle on the side and then using the trigger like any other gun.

  Dread hit the gas hard to get us moving as the golem lumbered its heavy body around to face us. We started to move obliquely to it, keeping some distance, which I heartily encouraged. I had no idea what those four stabby tentacles could do to an armored vehicle, but I didn’t want to find out.

  I heard Cass’s voice over my radio. “Mickey, get up there with Shifty and spot for him.”

  “Right!”

  A second later, she stuck her little helmeted head up next to me at about waist height, and started looking all around.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her.

  “Spotting.”

  “Do you even know what that means?”

  She shrugged. “I figured you would know. Cass? What does spotting mean?”

  “Look around and tell Shifty where the most dangerous stuff is,” Cass said.

  “You mean other than the giant monster made of dead bodies?”

  “Other threats may show up, Mickey. Shifty is going to
be focused on the golem, so watch his back. There’s a spotlight you can twist around manually. Point it at what Shifty should see.”

  Then, the turret began to turn underneath me… well, more like all around me. At my position, the turret was waist-high, with some ballistic shields sticking higher up to protect my torso from gunfire.

  Anyway, the turret started to turn with a low mechanical whine, startling me a bit, and then I heard the co-ax machinegun start to spit out bursts of gunfire at the mega-golem. Cass was directing her fire at the legs of the creature, which seemed like as good of an idea as any, so I told Mickey to point the spotlight at the big monstrosity and lined my sights up on it.

  Just as I was about to pull the trigger, the vehicle pulled into a hard turn around the golem. With as fast as we were moving, as hard as the turn was, and the fact that I was completely unprepared for it, I went flying into the side of the turret, hard.

  “God damn it, Dread!” I said over the radio. “You suck at driving this thing! Keep it steady!”

  “Quit being a pussy,” he said. “I have to keep us moving around this bastard or it’ll hit us with those… things.”

  I braced my feet a little more effectively in case Dread decided to pull another NASCAR move with our light armored vehicle and got back on the machinegun. This time I didn’t wait for the perfect shot, I cut loose with a burst as soon as the weapon was pointed at the mega-golem stomping around the parking lot chasing after us.

  Let me tell you something. I’d never shot a belt-fed machinegun before. I’m a cop; I was never military like Dread or Lysette, and while we used some pretty serious firepower on the Wreck Squads, I never had the opportunity to shoot something as big as the M240 that was mounted on top of our vehicle.

  Everybody thinks that because I’m a Defense mage, that I don’t like guns, but that’s not true. I love me some firepower. I just don’t get to use the big guns as much as I’d like, seeing as how I’m usually focusing on preventing my friends from getting blown up or their heads bitten off or otherwise dying horribly. When I do get the opportunity to shoot, I want the biggest and baddest weapon I can get my grubby little hands on.

  Cass liked those little P90 submachineguns, so we usually used those, but I myself preferred to use something a little bigger, like an M4 carbine that the military uses. I was actually a little jealous of Dread’s big giant F-shok, until I picked it up one time and felt how heavy it was, and then I decided, fuck that. Let that overgrown Marine haul that ridiculous business around, not me.

  Anyway, the point is, as soon as I pulled the trigger on the belt-fed machinegun on top of our vehicle, I was in love. If you’ve never fired something like that before, let me tell you, I heartily endorse it.

  The whole thing is heavy, so as you swing it around on its mount, it just plain feels like serious business. When you pull the trigger on it, it spits out lead in a rapid, loud barking sound, brrrrp, and even as heavy as the weapon is, you can feel the concussion of the recoil. The cartridge that the weapon fires is much, much bigger than what the P90 fires, and you can feel the difference in how the gun vibrates. It’s like the difference between tapping with a tack hammer and smashing something with a sledgehammer.

  Despite the severity of the situation… big giant golem chasing us around the parking lot, city full of monsters… I couldn’t contain my excitement.

  “This is awesome!” I shouted, blazing away with the machinegun into the golem. “I never get to shoot guns like this! How come I never to shoot guns like this? From now on, I want to shoot guns like this, all the time!”

  Mickey pulled on my sleeve. “Can I try it?”

  “No.”

  “Shifty!”

  “You’re supposed to be spotting,” I said, waving her off so that I could go back to shooting my new favorite gun. “So spot.”

  “Jerk. I should leave you up here and go back in the tank.”

  “Light armored vehicle,” I said, thinking that one’s for you, Dread.

  “Whatever.”

  “Shifty, stick to short bursts,” Dread said. “Six rounds at a time. If you shoot too fast, you’ll heat up the barrel to red-hot and it will start to jam.”

  Okay. Important safety tip. I had no idea that could happen. I started firing in shorter bursts, giving myself a few seconds between each one. Every few rounds that I fired was a tracer… a burning bullet that lights the way to the target like a laser blast from a movie. It was much easier to watch where the tracers went to correct my fire rather than try to use the sights on the gun, especially as dark as it was.

  For all that, though, it didn’t seem like my hail of bullets was having much effect. I was hitting the damn thing, I was sure of that, but it seemed like the bullets were just punching into the mass of the creature and not having any real effect. Golems don’t feel pain and they also don’t bleed out, so like I said before, you have to hit the heads, or you don’t do diddly.

  Unless, of course, you have a cannon.

  Remember how I described the feeling of the recoil of the machinegun, and how it felt heavier and more satisfying than the little guns I usually get to shoot? Well, dial that up to eleven, because when that cannon started going off underneath me, I could feel it literally shaking my balls. And I liked it.

  Dread said it was actually called a chain gun, not a cannon. Whatever. It was fantastic, whatever it was. It was smaller than a tank cannon, but it shot sort of like a machinegun, in rapid fire bursts rather than one big go at a time like a regular cannon.

  Thump thump thump, like that, about as fast as you can actually say the words. Cass fired it in short, three round bursts, thump thump thump, and every time she scored a hit, the night lit up with a small flash. That gun wasn’t shooting solid bullets, it was shooting cannon rounds that exploded when they hit.

  Thump thump thump, and big, gory chunks flew out of the mass of the creature as the cannon rounds punched into it. We continued our tight circle around the parking lot, staying out of the creature’s range, and Cass kept blasting away at it, thump thump thump, but she was missing more than she was hitting.

  “Slow down, Dread,” she said. “I can’t move the turret that fast.”

  “Can’t,” he said. “Wait for the next pass, and make them count.”

  The cannon went silent as the turret slid around me with that low whine, unable to keep up with the movement of the vehicle around the golem. I could spin my machinegun around no problem, though, and I started laying back into the golem with short bursts. One of the legs on the creature seemed to stumble. Maybe I’d hit a few heads on it to take part of it out; it was hard to tell, as dark as it was.

  Just as I was getting the hang of how much I had to lead the target in order to hit the golem right where I wanted to, a bright flash of light blinded me and a crash of thunder filled my ears. I felt a twinge of electricity jolt through my body; it felt like I’d touched an electrical fence.

  “Whoa!” I shouted, squinting my eyes against the purple spots that were filling my vision from the sudden flash. “What was that?”

  “Up there!” Mickey said, pushing the spotlight to shine about halfway up the building.

  I saw him them, after blinking away the last of the purple spots. Caleb.

  “What was that?” Jolly said over the radio. “I feel like I just got shocked.”

  “Caleb’s shooting lightning bolts at us from halfway up the building,” I said.

  “Can he do that?” Jolly said.

  “Well, yes, obviously he can, he just did.”

  “Doesn’t seem fair.”

  “How are we still in one piece, Shifty?” Dread said. “After a lightning strike?”

  “The vehicle’s warded, so it took a lot of the energy out of the blast. Hang on.”

  I rattled off a couple of bursts at Caleb. The bullets smashed the windows and walls around him close enough to make him duck inside the cover of the building. I probably kept shooting at him longer than I had to.

  Wha
t can I say? I loved that gun.

  “Keep him suppressed, Shifty,” Cass said.

  “What about the golem?” I said.

  “I’m on that,” she said, and the cannon started thumping out its slow rhythm again.

  “Hit the legs,” Dread said. “If it can’t move, it can’t come after us.”

  I found myself wondering dully about how Dread was really kind of a savant at figuring out how to kill golems, when Mickey pulled on my sleeve and said, “Uh oh.”

  “Mickey, don’t just say ‘uh oh’, call out what you see and which direction it is,” I said, then I turned to look at what she was talking about, and said, “Uh oh.”

  “Guys, what’s ‘uh oh’?” Cass said.

  ‘Uh oh’ was an absolute tsunami of ghouls running towards the parking lot from every direction. There were so many that it was pointless to try to count them. They weren’t even individual ghouls as far as my eyes were concerned; it was more like a moving wall of undead bodies pushing its way towards us from all sides.

  “There’s a bunch of ghouls rushing towards the parking lot,” I said.

  “How many?”

  “Ummm, all of them, looks like.”

  “I see them,” Dread said. “Must be hundreds of them.”

  “They can’t tip the vehicle over, can they?” I asked.

  “Doubt it, but they could jam up the wheels with their bodies and strand us in the parking lot while that golem pounds us to dust or Caleb fries us.”

  His answer was not inspiring.

  “We can’t stay out here, Cass,” I said. “Every damn ghoul in the city is about to pile down on top of us.”

  “We can’t just walk in there, either. That mob will follow us in,” she said.

  “I know what to do,” Dread said.

  He didn’t actually follow up on that right away, so I felt the need to say, “Well, don’t hold us in suspense, Dread.”

  “I’m making one more pass around the golem. You’ve got to take out the legs, Cass. Shifty, keep Caleb off our ass.”

  I had to fight the urge to ask more questions, like hey, Dread, how about you tell us exactly what you’re planning?… you know, details like that. When there’s a ton of violence jumping off in every direction, though, you have to stick to your job and trust that your friends are holding down their end of things, or else you’ll end up running around like a chicken with its head cut off, getting nothing done at all.