intact eardrum left back there?”
“Not a one. Not a one. But tell your men, the Gray Lady is coming.”
Chapter Fifty Seven
DIMO(N) Headquarters, Crystal City, Virginia
For the fourth time in the last half-hour, a gentle beeping filled the monitoring room. With some irritation, Technical Sergeant James Nevaquaya put aside the draft response procedure he’d been reading and glanced up at the grid of monitors. Code: ! 2-network Anomaly Detected! ! VERIZON node 21633: 28% dropped frames: Detroit, MI! VERIZON node 21638: 12% dropped frames: Detroit Metro, MI (4.8 km)! SPRINT node 45-3C: 15% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (2.5 km)?? Detailed capture triggered on 36 nodes.
One monitor was showing a map of the anomaly site – freeways snaking through a dense grid of streets, north of Detroit. Nevaquaya’s hand went to the mouse as he tried to bring up the spectrum display. The prototype was barely functional, a cobbled together mess of mostly civilian technology, but for now that novelty and importance of the task was keeping frustration at bay. The spectrum analyzer was still hobbled by the cell site’s receiver limitations, but it was clearly showing a broadband hump peaking in the low gigahertz.
The gentle beeping was abruptly replaced by an insistent two-tone warble. The text scrolling onto the status display snapped Nevaquaya’s mind to intense alertness. Code: ! Multi-network Anomaly Confirmed!
! VERIZON node 21633: 34% dropped frames: Detroit, MI! VERIZON node 21638: 25% dropped frames: Detroit Metro, MI (4.8 km)! VERIZON node 21629: 17% dropped frames : Detroit, MI (6.5 km)! VERIZON node 21635: 14% dropped frames: Warren, MI (9.3 km)! SPRINT node 45-3C: 31% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (2.5 km)! CDMA2000 down! SPRINT node 45-3A: 20% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (3.9 km)! SPRINT node 44-8D: 16% dropped frames: Warren, MI (8.7 km)! CINGULAR node MA335: 26% dropped frames: Detroit, MI (3.9 km)
W-CDMA down! CINGULAR node MA334: 22% dropped frames: Detroit Metro, MI (5.2 km)! ALLTEL node 4775: software failure: Southfield, MI (11.2 km)! T-MOBILE node MA5XA: W-CDMA resetting: Detroit, MI (6.3 km)?? Composite spectrum display enabled.? Detailed capture triggered on 92 nodes.!!*** POSSIBLE PORTAL OPENING – heuristic match 0.82****!
Within seconds an office chair rolled through the door from the adjoining office, carrying Graeme Wilson with it. The civilian contractor took in the situation on the monitors almost instantly.
“0.82? That’s the highest yet. What do you make of the spectrum?”
“The general spike structure sure looks like the recordings. I’ll call NORAD – can you get any more resolution out of those sites?”
Wilson had already begun typing, his fingers a chattering blur. Console windows popped up and streams of incomprehensible commands flashed past. Meanwhile Nevaquaya had gone straight for the first entry in the speed dial.
“…big one, at four two degrees twenty three minutes north, eighty three degrees four minutes west. Confidence is moderate.”
Nevaquaya watched the civilian work while the duty officer at NORAD checked the radar picture. The contrast between the usual procurement process, even the usual R amp;D process and what was going on here was incredible, things were happening in days that had taken years just a few months earlier. The monitoring system was crude and buggy as yet, but getting even that operational in under four days was amazing. America had apparently rediscovered engineers who thrived on doing the impossible. Then Nevaquaya thought again, no not rediscovered, just set free from the demands of reaching some unattainable ideal of perfection.
The spectrum display flicked and restructured itself, crisper and with fewer gaps. Secondary windows began to fill up with phase analysis of signal components. “There, how about that?”
Nevaquaya stared at the screen for three seconds before speaking directly into the phone.
“Confirmed, we’ve got more data here too, confidence is now high, repeat, confidence high for portal opening over northern Detroit.”
He pressed mute, then another button that began sounding the incident alarm in the other offices. Finally he turned to Graeme. “The spikes match. NOARD is seeing radar interference at that location. Looks like the demons are going for Detroit, with a big one too by the look of it. Fighters are on the way, they’ll be contacting national guard units next.” Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside as more DIMO(N) staff converged on the monitoring room. Both men stared at the screens, where the error rates and signal strengths were climbing inexorably. Both knew that their warning was better than nothing, but also that it left precious few minutes to intercept the demon targeteer. If friendly forces couldn’t stop it in time, the heart of a great American city would die in ash and fire.
Over Interstate 75, Detroit, Michigan
Megaaeraholrakni’s arm and wing muscles already ached from the exertion – she had done very little flying these last few centuries – but the demon was so enraged that she barely noticed. How could Euryale have been so incompetent? It could not have been her own fault, she had concentrated firmly on the great glass towers that stood haughtily above the human sprawl. Yet the portal had opened half a league to the north, instead of half a league to the south, almost completely the wrong direction. ‘More likely that half-witted naga.’ she thought, as she painfully climbed through 500 feet. ‘though surely Yulupki isn’t stupid enough to try sabotaging the Count’s scheme?’
Below her streams of tiny iron boxes raced back and forth, traveling along two wide black strips set in a shallow trench. The trench cut through the human city, snaking gently and occasionally joining up with other trenches in curious curling structures reminiscent of spilled entrails. Many more of the iron boxes stood motionless on parade grounds dotted between the buildings. ‘Perhaps they worship them’ Megaaeraholrakni thought; she could think of no other reason to go to such extreme efforts for the chariot’s sake.
The gorgon could sense the nascent portal ahead; indeed it would be hard for her to miss it, given how much psychic energy it was leaking. Belial had exhorted the naga to put every effort into this attack and they were obviously giving it everything they had. It could be that this focus on power accounted for their lousy aim. She was drawing near now and the air itself seemed to crackle with power. The portal mouth was bobbing high in the air over a dark L-shaped castle, or more precisely over the bone white chariot-filled parade ground behind it.
Megaaeraholrakni began a slow sweeping turn, oblivious to the attention she was beginning to draw on the ground below. She reached out with her mind, the psychic force radiating down from her wings to caress the extra-dimensional nexus at the heart of the portal. Crude ‘dragging’ was for novices, one merely had to induce a desire to move in a particular direction and the portal would do the work (or rather, the teams of naga powering it would be forced to do the work, but it was all the same to the gorgon). But mere seconds after the portal had begun to move it began to oscillate wildly, shedding energy that arced to the ground as lighting. Megaaeraholrakni had no choice to use every ounce of strength she possessed to wrestle the portal back into submission. Flying directly above it, buffeted by the thermals created by the arcing, it seemed to her that she was riding an untamed beast, ready to throw lighting back at her at any moment. The gorgon’s confidence in her own ability was supreme however, and perhaps not unwarranted, as she soon had the unborn portal simmering in a semblance of submission. Grimly she set off towards the great gleaming towers, a corner of her mind already devising a way to gain revenge on whoever was responsible for this mess.
Tanner Firearm Supplies, Northern Detroit
“Thanks for keeping these aside for me Erwin. I know they’re hard to come by right now, what with the Brits adopting them as standard and grabbing the whole production run.”
“Hey no problem Danny. Wouldn’t want to see a friend short of firepower if one of those monsters makes an appearance.” The shopkeeper insisted on shaking the customer’s hand. The man then scooped up the box of. 338 Lapua from the counter and made his way out of the store.
Daniel Wright had stowed the ammo in the under-seat safe and was about to start his pickup’s engine when a glint in the sky caught his eye. He considered himself something of an aircraft buff and took a closer look, trying to the identify the type. It was bronze colored, the silhouette changing as he watched… something clicked into place as he realized that it was not a plane, but a creature. A creature that looked just like the grainy news footage from England. At first it had looked like it was circling over the AA amp;M building. Now it was definitely heading for downtown; the shop was built just off the I-75 and the demon was flying roughly parallel to the highway.
