Fusion ba-5

  Fusion

  ( Beyong Armageddon - 5 )

  Anthony Decosmo

  Anthony DeCosmo

  Fusion

  1. Offensive

  “All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you: digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.”

  — Richard Adams, Watership Down

  A pair of A-10 Thunderbolts flew through a mid-May sky; their airframes dressed gray save for colorful, predatory faces painted on their nose cones. The heavily-armored jets emitted a deep rumble as they followed Route 96 below with the tranquil waters of Lake Pueblo off their starboard wing tips.

  “Razorback, you are clear to engage.”

  “Roger that, Pueblo.”

  The landscape morphed from flat to rough to jagged. Ahead, the Wet Mountains of southern Colorado stood like castle battlements with few passages. The A-10s targeted one of those few passages in an attempt to plug the leak in The Empire’s dam of defenses.

  “Know your targets, Razorback, things are FUBAR once you’re past Wetmore.”

  “Copy that, Pueblo. Tallyho.”

  The armor-killing planes shaved altitude as the battle came in to view. Erupting ordnance sent dirt, rock, and body parts-organic and otherwise-flailing through the air in a sort of morbid dust storm of horrors. Instead of individual claps, booms, and bangs, a cacophony of destruction raged like continual thunder.

  On one side-to the east-the pilots saw a half-circle of 20 armored vehicles, some no more than melted scrap, others firing desperate volleys as they grudgingly gave ground.

  Emplacements made from concrete and sandbags held tenuous positions along the mountain ledges and to either side of 96. Short-range artillery lobbed out from those stations, as did sniper fire and mortars. Squads of fragile, bloodied infantry scurried between the cover of fallen trees, blasted buildings, and dead tanks. They did not advance; they did not retreat. Instead, the foot soldiers bolted from spot to spot in a function more of survival than tactics.

  Opposite the human defenses came an army of monsters under storm clouds spewing lightning and thunder.

  Shiny rolling balls announced Voggoth’s assault. Barely larger than a beach ball, the things sped forward at 100 miles per hour bouncing over obstacles en route to targets. Well-placed sniper shots disabled some and mortar explosions consumed others, but many found their marks. One hit a sandbag bunker. It exploded in a flash of white, burning away the protective shield and microwaving the soldiers hiding behind. Another whacked into an Abrams tank melting the machine’s gun barrel and cooking the crew.

  The crystal spheres came from a large, plate-like, coral-red platform of tubes and spikes that floated close to the ground like a hovercraft. Alongside the platform marched a protective ring of walking orbs resembling Daddy Longlegs spiders standing eight-feet tall and firing pellet guns that could shred body armor.

  Behind this artillery platform and its escort came a collection of The Order’s infantry. Hundreds of assimilated humans wearing monks robes and firing alien bullets from growths on their forearms mixed with dozens of muscle-bound, gray-skinned, tall humanoids swinging slings made from chains to launch bowling-ball-sized explosive blobs. Many of the former fell to bloody shreds from mortar and artillery strikes while the latter shrugged off the shrapnel and kept advancing through the pass, struck down only by direct hits.

  A line of carts-car-sized and rolling on a dozen tiny wheels-followed Voggoth’s army carrying ammunition that resembled slimy seeds and glowing globes. Hard shell-like roofs kept the re-supply wagons safe from all but the most precisely-aimed strikes.

  The A-10s targeted the centerpiece-the platform of tubes that launched the rolling artillery balls-and let fly a stream of Maverick air-to-surface missiles complemented by a healthy dose of rounds from their Avenger Gatling Guns…

  General Cassy Simms sat among the brush atop one of the mountain crests overlooking 96 from the north. Despite the open ground around her and an easy avenue of retreat behind, Simms felt penned in. That feeling came from the storm clouds above crackling with electricity and seemingly ready to burst.

  Humanity had come to know that when the forces of Voggoth gathered in number the atmosphere boiled. Were the storms the result of some kind of bio-electric discharge from Voggoth’s largest war machines? Did the force of The Order’s anti-life machinations clash with the world of the living in a manner similar to anti-matter and matter colliding? Did God anger at the sight of such abominations on His Earth? Or perhaps the thunderheads served Voggoth’s purpose by disrupting the air space overhead.

  Not even The Empire’s smartest minds or most spiritual philosophers understood why the storms came. They only knew that they came when Voggoth’s legions mustered. They did not bring rain, they did not usher in a new weather front. They merely gathered and roared as mightily as the battles that raged whenever The Order’s warriors marched.

  Simms refused to allow the storms to unnerve her. She was, after all, a professional soldier, at least in terms of the post-Armageddon world. Still, unlike the Duass, the Hivvans, or the Redcoats, the soldiers of The Order seemed different, as if death at The Order’s hands would be far worse than falling to one of the other invading forces.

  Simms shrugged those thoughts away and watched the A-10s strike. Spider Sentries disintegrated and missiles destroyed the coral-red platform. The jet engines then whined as the attackers banked away from the wall of mountain.

  As the lead elements of Voggoth’s attack shattered, General Simms turned her attention to the west. From her elevated observation point she could glimpse through the spires of the mountain tops. Back there, between the walls of rock, hovered a thick, white mist hugging reaching out from the Wet Mountain Valley. That mist stumped guidance systems, distorted heat signatures, and hid The Orders’ muster zone.

  Beneath that artificial mist Voggoth’s legions gathered for another push through the Rockies, a push thwarted several times before by weather as much as resistance. Simms knew that this time their battlefield was one of three that day, each aiming to hold off the easterly tide of The Order.

  She heard a scream. A chorus of screams. And then from that mist flew a flock of four Spooks wailing as they searched for targets, each one resembling a ball wrapped in a large spoiled sheet that fluttered like a kite or a cape.

  She radioed, “Razorback, this is Hawkeye, watch your six; Spooks closing fast.” The Spooks flew at the fleeing aircraft, their howls disappearing into the greater song of artillery firing and explosives detonating around the mountain pass.

  In desperation, the planes dropped flares and chaff despite knowing that neither radar nor heat drew Voggoth’s anti-air defenders. Nonetheless, two of the pursuers followed the decoys, exploding in mid-air harmlessly. One of the A-10s, however, did not escape. The missile-seemingly a living missile despite Voggoth’s minions lacking any real life-impacted the tail assembly and shattered the rear half of the jet.

  Cassy Simms shook her head in silent prayer for another dead comrade, then turned her eyes to the mountain pass favored by the enemy. She saw more Spider Sentries advancing from the mist in a long line, another coral-red platform preparing to shoot more rolling shells, she saw more of the monks who had once been human, and more of the lumbering gray Ogres.

  Worst of all, she heard the approach of the mightiest of Voggoth’s weapons. Or more specifically, she felt it. The mountain peak trembled, small rocks cascaded away.

  The Leviathan stood a thousand feet tall on two appendages describable only as legs. The main body appeared slug-like but facing upwards and held in place by bands of thick ten
dons. Wisps of protective mist slipped away as it rose from and left behind the valley, carefully moving through the tight confines of the pass.

  Simms stayed on her belly and slithered backward down the slope toward more protective cover. The Leviathan passed her position for the heart of the battle.

  She wiped sweat from her forehead and radioed, “Hawkeye to Command, do you copy?”

  “We copy, Hawkeye, what do you see?”

  “They’re still coming, sir,”

  General Fink listened to Simms’ report.

  “It’s a-it’s a Leviathan. Battle group Center has deployed their Leviathan.”

  Fink tried to calm the shake from Simms’ voice, “It’s okay, Cassy. That’s what we wanted, to draw it out. Good job.”

  “Copy that, Command. Good luck. Hawkeye out.”

  Fink returned the transmitter to the technician who sat at a folding table inside a timber-built barn that served as an ad hoc command center on the south side of Wetmore.

  The General walked between shuffling soldiers and climbed to the loft on a creaking wooden ladder.

  Trevor Stone stood up there dressed in simple green BDU pants, a black top, and a baseball cap jammed over shoulder-length hair. The Emperor had cast away the ornate trappings of his position much in the same way he had cast away the bulk of the bureaucracy after his return to power. Things had simplified on that day ten months ago. After much blood, that is.

  Stone’s eyes fixed tight to the lenses of powerful field glasses as he stared out the hayloft door. From there he saw the flashes and blasts of battle raging two miles away.

  “Simms just eyeballed their Leviathan,” Fink relayed with none of the jokes, Looney Tunes references, or Mel Blanc inspired voices that served as his calling card. Times had changed. Trevor Stone had changed.

  “Our guns ready?”

  “Yes.”

  He considered reminding Trevor that Woody “Bear” Ross commanded those guns, but that would serve only to re-emphasize the point that Ross now commanded a mobile artillery unit instead of serving as the Excalibur’s first officer. That, in turn, would conjure unpleasant images of The Empire’s flagship full of holes, burning, and limping away from the battlefield last year, barely reaching the Pittsburgh shipyards where she remained out of action.

  Fink strolled closer to a portable table on which rested several maps and papers. Those maps and papers showed the positions and plans of Trevor Stone’s last chance at defending the Rocky Mountain passes. If Voggoth broke through this time, then it would become a race to the Mississippi, the next and essentially last great barrier between the advancing hordes and the population centers of the East.

  Trevor had spoken confidently about this plan, all while dispatching General Jon Brewer east to build a defensive line along the Mississippi.

  Stone interrupted Fink’s thoughts, “Any news from Kaufman?”

  Casey Fink answered, “She’s engaged a small advanced force outside of Cimarron. So far her boppers and the infantry there are holding the line.”

  Stone let the glasses drop, pinched his nose, and joined Fink at the folding table.

  As he had done ever since his return, Trevor spoke in a tone that lacked any real emotion but felt heavy with concentration: “You did a hell of a job helping Rhodes transfer 3 ^ rd Mech down to Rye last night.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Fink acknowledged as he thought about the troops of both his Third Corp and General Rhodes’ 2 ^ nd Corp who squared off against one of a trio of forces punching through the Rockies that day.

  General Rhodes’ 3 ^ rd Mechanized Division had been pulled from the main lines during the night and moved south into a new position, hopefully without The Order’s spies catching wind. That new position could be used to slice into the heart of Voggoth’s main force if the primary stages of the plan failed to turn the tide.

  Fink touched the map at Cimarron, New Mexico, one of the other two places where Voggoth tried to push through the Rockies. If all went according to plan, Kristy Kaufman’s Chrysaor and a handful of troops would hold the line in New Mexico against The Order’s Battle group South while Trevor dealt a crushing defeat to Voggoth’s Battle group Center.

  But little had gone according to plan since Voggoth’s invasion from the Pacific Ocean, starting with the loss of California last summer, The Order’s breakout into Nevada and Arizona during the Fall, and fighting through the Rockies between blizzards all winter long.

  Trevor added his finger to the map as well, this time touching the evacuated city of Denver far to the north where the northernmost flank of the fight prepared to play out.

  “Hoth should be in position by now,” Trevor said.

  The Phillipan resembled a massive flying rectangle with a flat-top flight deck in front of a tower-like structure covering the rear third of the gigantic ship. Anti-gravity generators kept the steel beast afloat while thrust came from a series of engine baffles to aft.

  With Denver off his port side, General William Hoth’s Dreadnought drifted over and between the Rocky Mountains. His target-the battering ram of Voggoth’s Battle group North-stood as tall as a skyscraper stretching up from the protective mist shrouding The Order’s mustering forces, like a dorsal fin exposing a shark. A few scattered gray clouds-surprisingly few for a force estimated so large-swirled overhead, spoiling an otherwise blue sky.

  Hoth occupied the command module onboard the crescent-shaped bridge of his battleship. From there he accessed computer screens, monitors, and communications to gather information and control every ship function. Whoever stood in that module became the “Brain” of an Imperial Dreadnought.

  The heavy-set General with the stoic voice relayed his work to the crew, “Proceeding to firing range. Charging the belly boppers to eighty percent.”

  Ahead waited the Leviathan, unfazed by the approaching war machine.

  Hoth delegated one duty to his XO. “Contact Command, tell them we’ve spotted Battle group North’s Leviathan. We will engage the target in less than two minutes”

  “Good,” Trevor said in reaction to the message from the Phillipan. “They’ve shown most of their cards so far.”

  “Kaufman has yet to engage Battle group South’s Leviathan.”

  “She will,” Stone answered. “Voggoth is getting greedy, trying to punch through three spots at once. Trying to spread us too thin so we can’t stop him.” Trevor returned to the view of the battlefield from the hayloft. Even from a few miles away he could see the lumbering giant coming through the mountain pass. “But if we can beat him decisively here, we can roll him back on the other two fronts.”

  While Stone spoke confidently, Fink knew that the opposite of that scenario also held true. If Voggoth broke through at Wetmore, then the sparse number of ground troops in Denver to the north and Cimarron, New Mexico to the South would make the line untenable.

  Stone grew transfixed by the far away cloud of battle and the gargantuan beast, its lower half invisible behind a horizon of rooftops and foothills. It appeared to Fink that the sight mesmerized Stone. As if maybe he saw more there than what met the eye.

  Trevor spoke in a steady, quiet voice, “I used to think mankind was so good at making war that it was scary. Then I see Voggoth’s beasts, and I realize we don’t know shit.”

  Fink offered a meek, “Yes, sir,” although he did not think Trevor heard because the Leviathan’s battle cry began; a sound that whined and built like an air raid siren. Fink gasped, “Oh shit, it’s gonna fire. Shit, shit, and it’s not in position yet. It’s not out of the pass all the way.”

  Trevor spoke again, still hypnotized by the battle and the insane walking skyscraper.

  “You know the difference between us and Voggoth?”

  Fink stepped to Stone’s shoulder. The sound of the Leviathan grew louder still as the gigantic creature sucked in air. Fink knew the barn lay beyond the immediate blast zone but not completely out of danger.

  Trevor appeared unconcerned. Or, at least, distracte
d by his thoughts.

  “The difference is that when we make our smart bombs and build our jet planes we use words like ‘area of affect’ and ‘yield’ and ‘operational radius.’ All so sterile. So-so detached.”

  Fink watched the Leviathan stoop, as if trying to get a better look at the tiny little creatures daring to block its path. As it bent, the massive hole that lived at the top of the giant swung down like the barrel of God’s gun taking aim.

  “But Voggoth’s gunsmiths use words like ‘pain’ and ‘terror’ and ‘suffering’. You’ve got to hand it to them, they’ve boiled war to its essence. You have to admire their honesty.”

  There came no noise from the blast of wind exhaled by the mighty Leviathan because that wind moved faster than sound. From the top of the loft Fink and Stone watched a storm of dirt and dust blow away tanks, artillery, and pieces of what used to be soldiers.

  That supersonic blast of air twisted out of the mountain passage, through the center of the defensive line, and across the jagged land between the battlefield and the command center. The sound caught up to and overtook the slowing gust, reaching their ears in a beastly howl.

  Fink shoved Trevor to the hay-covered floor. The lethal blast of wind dissipated fast but still hit the barn with hurricane force. Chunks of roof tore away, the map table flipped and rolled; the barn doors exploded in toppling gear and sending the staff diving for cover.

  It passed.

  Something metal and squeaky swayed back and forth at the rear of the barn. Static broadcast from radios. A cloud of hay, dust, and papers floated about. Soldiers emerged from under chairs and tables with soft groans and sharp cusses. The barn grew brighter with half the roof blown away.

  Fink had fallen atop Stone in order to protect him from debris, but Trevor quickly broke free and returned to his view of the battle.

  A wide swatch of smashed, toppled, and otherwise obliterated landscape lay between the south side of Wetmore and the battlefield, as if an F5 tornado had roared through. That battlefield had been cut in half-a north side and a south side-nothing between. Nothing where the Leviathan’s weapon had struck.