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.
To his left-to the south-a similar sight. The heart of the truss-style Memorial Bridge lay in the Mississippi, leaving a raised highway and on-ramp leading to nothing. Beneath that a substantial number of soldiers still fought from inside the remains of an industrial building as well as from trenches dug in the riverbank. A badly-scarred but still-functional Abrams tank stood defiantly in the open on Main Street and a pair of matching Humvees held their ground within the shell of a destroyed cistern along the river.
Still holding, Jon thought, but the real battle hasn’t even started yet.
The Order’s weapons for that ‘real’ battle assembled on the far bank with a massive cloud of smoke from the destroyed Chrysaor floating behind like the back curtain of a stage.
They resembled frogs. Big mechanical frogs; each the size of a house with spiked treads instead of feet. Armored plating, cameras for eyes, and mist-spitting tubes along their back ensured they would not be mistaken for Earthly creatures, but the frog analogy held in Jon Brewer’s mind.
They lined up among the flattened woodlands of the western side of the Mississippi; about two dozen of them. White mist attempted to hide their activities but humanity’s defenders saw the intent: the time had come for
