Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion (64 page)

Kristy decided the Leviathan could wait. Her fingers interacted with the touch screen in rapid succession, accessing the forward defenses menu category Anti-Air, sub-menu ‘missile defenses.’

Select: Launch bay Bow – 4

Ordnance select: AMRAAM (quantity remaining: 4).

Ordnance loading standby—loading complete.

Arm warhead: Yes – No.

Caution: Warhead ARMED.

Input target acquisition source.

Target acquired from radar lock. Confirm target: Yes – No.

Launch: Yes – No.

The Chariots ceased merging and hung in the air as if catching their collective breath.

Launch.

The missile shot away from a tube embedded in the bow of the dreadnought.

The blob of Chariots rotated, fast. Faster. Spinning like a warped top while still hovering in the sky. A glowing halo of energy formed around mass.

The missile closed.

Kristy did not wait; she loaded air-to-air AMRAAMs into the other three forward launch bays and hurried to fire. She moved a moment too slow.

The Chariots exploded. Not in shrapnel; at least not entirely. More important, they exploded with energy: a ring of crackling blue power that slammed into and coated the dreadnought like a rogue wave sweeping across the deck of a boat. As the wall of energy moved from bow to stern, flashes and bolts of blue and green sparked from the deck plates and warned of more sinister chain reactions within.

The blast enveloped and then passed the bridge and tower section. Electronic work stations flickered; some shot sparks. Video screens filled with dead air before stabilizing; the hair on the back of Kristy’s neck stood straight. The room felt electrically charged.

Then it was gone. The work stations returned to normal operation. Monitors showed what they meant to show. With the exception of several blown but easily replaceable fuses, the
Chrysaor
felt—felt…

Kristy could not immediately identify her feeling of uneasiness. The Chariots were gone. Ahead of the ship waited the Leviathan, its grotesque skyscraper-sized body stood still like a morbid statue.

Captain Kaufman checked the main batteries.

Fifty percent.

What?

Forty-five percent.

Warning lights flashed across her screens in succession. One stood out above the rest: “DANGER: Gravity Generator Magnetic Field Compromised”.

A frantic voice from the engineering section—located at the bottom rear of the ship—yelled into her earpiece confirming the words on her display: “The grav generators are off-line! Jesus-shit they just cut out!”

Everyone on the bridge—everyone throughout the ship—felt it in their bellies like riders on a rollercoaster cresting that first big drop. The entire craft started to fall. Kristy’s stomach lurched toward her throat.

“Emergency boosters!”

She swerved around in the command module, located the set of controls every dreadnought commander feared to need, and quickly flicked a series of toggles. A hundred small round plates fell away from the ship’s undercarriage and row upon row of rocket engines burst to life with fire and smoke.

The thrust of the emergency engines sounded a like a line of explosions from beneath the mighty ship. That feeling of descending slowed but did not end. The altimeter ticked under 1,000 feet and continued. The back-up rockets were never meant to keep the incredible weight of the ship aloft; they were meant as a supplement to the grav generators in the case of emergency.

Main Forward Battery Energy Level: 30%.

Kristy—in an act driven as much by spite as anything else—punched the ‘fire’ button. Red strands of power shot out from the bow, across the sky, and into the front of the hideous beast.

The Chaktaw convoy stood ready to move. Nina saw the small army waiting in rows across the eight lanes of Interstate 64 including Lizards the size of elephants serving as pack animals, motorized tricycles with huge wheels, some kind of missile trucks toward the rear of the formation, and hundreds of infantry huddled in groups conversing, snacking, and checking gear.

She sensed unease in the air. Maybe even confusion among their ranks. Maybe the same feeling of oppression her people felt when under The Order’s unnatural storm clouds.

The alien soldiers eyed her with a mixture of suspicion and awe. They stared through in a way that made her feel they regarded her more as a strange curiosity than a reviled enemy. Perhaps they did not consider her worthy of their contempt; an over confidence she planned to make them pay for. Indeed, her escort gave her only a quick look for weapons and hence her knife remained hidden. She did not know if their lack of a thorough search indicated laziness or if they took it for granted that she would act honorably and respect the truce.

A cluster of homes on wooded lots sat just off the highway to the south. Her Chaktaw escort led her through the surprised formation of fighters to one lone tent seemingly made of canvass or something very much like it assembled in a driveway next to the remains of a collapsed duplex.

The tent appeared hastily constructed for their meeting. Perhaps some kind of tradition among the aliens, she did not know but she
did
care: killing the Chaktaw leader would be a lot easier out of view from the rest of their army. It might even give her a chance to take several more with her before they realized their mistake in inviting the wolf into their hen house.

Her escort pulled a drawstring and motioned her inside the tent. A small oval table made of what resembled plastic sat in the center of the chamber. A solitary glowing orb hung on a rope or string from the ceiling creating a cone of light over the center but left the outer rim of the interior in shadows.

The escort withdrew, closing the flap.

Two Chaktaw remained inside: One at the table who studied Nina in a curious manner. His eyes widened, then shrunk to slits; the corners of his mouth changed between something like a frown to something like a grin, but not a friendly one. His whiskers twitched and his hands tugged at a plain brown tunic. He plainly did not know what to make of her. Either he was confused to find her group so far behind the wrong side of the battle line or her audacity at daring to challenge his advance annoyed him. Whatever the case, she held his complete attention.

The second Chaktaw remained in one of the dark corners of the tent sitting on a chair. Nina could not make out this one’s features but pegged him or her for a bodyguard but if that bodyguard held a weapon it was not obvious to Nina.

The male at the table raised a small microphone device. His lips moved and spoke in his native tongue but the device broadcast synthesized English. The disconnect between the movement of his mouth and the words from the speaker reminded Nina of a poorly dubbed Godzilla movie.

“I am Force Command Jaff.”

Nina replied, “My name is Captain Nina Forest,” but the tactical computer inside her warrior’s mind busied itself with a plan: stoop fast, pull the blade, reach over and cut his throat, then deal with the Chaktaw bodyguard or aid or whatever he or she was in the corner. The commotion would summon her escort and a sentry or two. If she were fast and lucky she could get hold of one of their rifles. That would make the killing and sowing of confusion all the easier.

“You are either very foolish or very brave to attempt to block our advance.”

“Yeah, well, whatever.”

Jaff struggled to understand her reply as it played through the translator.

“Yes,” Jaff worked to find the right words from his dialect for translation to her language. “I must tell you that your position has changed. This is why I have asked you here.”

Nina spoke harshly as cover for her actions: her fingers tugged at her pant leg, trying to raise the cuff enough so that she would not have to struggle to free the blade when she lunged for it.

“Look, I know what this is all about. I fought you guys before. And I’ll tell you what Trevor Stone told the last Force Commander who messed with my people. I’ll tell you to stick your offer of mass execution in whatever orifice passes for an asshole on you
things.
We’re going to fight you and before this day is over, you’re going to wish you never came to Earth.”

Nina felt the pant leg rise above the hilt of the KA-BAR. She summoned her courage and prepared to strike.

Jaff—clearly a look of disappointment on his face—answered, “You are a very strange and dangerous creature, Captain Nina Forest.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

The Leviathan wobbled and a noise like a howl coming from some unseen source reverberated through the air. Sprays of sickening fluids squirted in small waterfalls from the cuts in its flesh.

Energy levels in the forward batteries drained to zero and blast from the
Chrysaor
faded after cutting a deep gash across the front of the walking skyscraper. A host of squirming things hurried to seal the breach but green and yellow streams still poured from the monster.

Kristy realized that her ship could no longer muster enough power for the boppers to knock down the Leviathan.

An alarm sounded on her console. The altimeter ticked off feet in bunches. Another display indicated two emergency boosters ran out of rocket fuel. More would join them in seconds.

The Leviathan loomed outside the bridge window. It had no face, but she imagined a grin there. Voggoth’s grin.

Captain Kristy Kaufman stood straight in her command module. She raised a hand to the bobby pins holding her hair in a tight, proper bun and pulled them free.

In the years since the invasion, she had sacrificed much but she refused to sacrifice her appearance. Perfectly manicured nails, matching outfits, and just enough makeup to capture the right highlights of her features.

None of it came from vanity. Instead, it was her personal resistance to the forces of Armageddon. They could turn her from a white collar worker into a soldier; they could take away her Lexus and Caribbean vacations. They ended her dreams of white picket fences and big families. But they never stole her dignity. And she would face the end with that dignity intact.

She tossed aside the virtual reality goggles and stepped out from behind the monitors, computers, and keyboards. Some orders were best spoken directly to the crew.

Kristy raised a fist and growled her final command.

“Helm—RAMMING SPEED!”

They followed without question. The helmsmen ignited the hydrogen engines and a jolt kicked the magnificent flying city in the rear end. The battleship continued to fall slowly from the sky as one by one the emergency boosters faded. But most of the momentum went forward.

Kristy held a safety rail tight and enjoyed the show through the bridge windows. The Leviathan discerned the move too late. The bow hit it midsection and pushed. The gargantuan tumbled over and the
Chrysaor
fell on top of it like a heavy weight wrestler working for a pin.

The stern rose higher and the bow dipped lower becoming a mile-long dagger. Kristy watched SteelPlus gouge into the beast’s skin. The front end of the dreadnought bent and crumbled in a wave of destruction rolling across the flight deck toward the tower. Crewmen lost their footing as the angle increased; two flew from their stations and slammed into the forward wall. Papers, equipment, and chairs flew around the crescent-shaped room. Kristy held tight.

Sprays of Leviathan-gore jettisoned into the air and coated the bridge windows. The crumbling front end raced toward the bridge. Bursts of yellow and orange and black joined the carnival of carnage as sub systems, fuel tanks, ammo caches, and batteries erupted.

Kristy let out one last holler in either victory or terror. The tower of the Dreadnought collapsed; the roaring engines tore the tail end apart as the ship lost all structural integrity.

The crushed and eviscerated Leviathan lay beneath the burning
Chrysaor,
and together they made a funeral pyre fit for a God.

26. Storm of Eternity

Jon surveyed the battlefield.

To his right looking north along Front Street he saw eight vehicles burning and the scattered remains of three more across both the paved road and the grass of Bicentennial Park. The columns of black, oily smoke stretched into the sky and mingled with the thunderheads spawned by Voggoth’s army. The greasy smell of ignited fuel, the burning odor of expended ammunition, and the putrid stench of death swirled together and hung across the scene so heavy Jon thought he might suffocate.

Several squads remained intact across the waterfront and a pair of Vietnam-era APCs rumbled into position along the railroad tracks where they disembarked about 15 newcomers—most in Internal Security police uniforms—who searched for cover in the shadow of the toppled cable-stayed bridge.

A field adjacent to the basement of the destroyed building where Jon’s bunker lay had been filled with foxholes, trenches, and armored vehicles at the start of the battle. Now he saw bodies, blasted sandbags, and an overturned LAV. Smoke from the fires and explosions settled over the lot like a fog. Through that fog he saw signs of movement: a gun barrel here, a helmet there, but he could not accurately gauge how many men remained in those positions.