Resistance: The Gathering Storm

“The back door’s wide open, sir,” Jasper replied. “We’re good to go.”

Hale was about to acknowledge the report when he felt the ground tremble beneath his chest.

“Holy shit,” Kawecki swore. “What’s that?”

Hale thrust the glasses back into position, and watched as a phalanx of forward-leaning Steelheads emerged from the curtain of swirling snow to his left. That was bad enough, but he knew that while the heads were dangerous, something far worse would be following along on their heels. Sure enough…

The thing was a smudge at first, an amorphous mass that could barely be seen through the swirling snow. But a few moments later the Mauler came into focus. The beast stood about thirty feet tall, and each step spanned twenty feet of highway. The earth shuddered with a teeth-rattling thump as each enormous three-toed foot hit the ground. A grotesquerie such as this one could spew something akin to napalm, and launch corrosive-filled pods that exploded on contact. While a couple of well-placed rounds from a rocket launcher might bring the beast down, the lightly armed recon team wasn’t carrying that kind of firepower.

Then he saw the huge pack that was strapped to the creature’s back, and let out a sigh of relief. The pack meant it was currently being used to transport supplies.

There was no way to know what was in the packs, where the Chimera were headed, or to what end. But those were questions for Intel to wrestle with.

The vibrations increased as two additional Maulers appeared, their sloped backs covered with snow and jets of lung-warmed air shooting out of their nostrils as they followed the first behemoth south.

As they disappeared into the obscuring snow, Hale put the binoculars down and began to take notes. He was careful to jot down the time, the direction that the Chimera were traveling, and how many of each form there were. Chimera came in various forms, and Intel would want to know which ones were involved in the North American assault.

Then as the last of the stinks disappeared into the white haze, he buttoned the book into his breast pocket.

“Okay,” Hale said, just loud enough for both men to hear. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a hot shower and some of that slop they serve in the mess hall. So let’s get the hell out of here… But remember, those bastards have six eyes—so don’t break the horizon.”

Kawecki had seen lots of action, and knew Hale’s comment was directed at Jasper, who had been in a dustup or two but was relatively inexperienced, especially for a Sentinel. Most members of the elite combat organization were ex-Army or Marine Corps ground pounders with lots of special ops experience—Hale being an excellent example. And while the serum developed by the Special Research Projects Administration (SRPA) enabled Sentinels to recover from what would otherwise have been fatal wounds, the “bug juice”—as some of the men called it— couldn’t counter the effects of a direct hit from a Chimeran mortar.

So casualty rates remained high, and newbies like Jasper were increasingly common. They had plenty to learn.

Jasper was fully aware of the fact that the veterans were watching him like hawks as he elbowed his way forward and slid headfirst down the slope. Snow slipped through his open collar and chilled his skin as he brought his feet around and used them to brake. Reaching the bottom of the incline, he took cover behind a group of snow- capped rocks.

A quick look around told him that the horizon was clear, and he raised a thumb.

Kawecki descended the hill next, quickly followed by Hale. They retraced the path they had followed earlier, down into a dry ravine. Hale was on point, with Kawecki in the two-slot, and Jasper bringing up the rear. Walking drag was a tough job that required Jasper to pause from time to time, in order to eye the team’s back-trail, before running to catch up.

Though dry now, the ravine would be half-filled with runoff come spring. It led them to a half-frozen stream where running water could be seen through holes in the ice. It produced a cheerful gurgling sound which served as a suitable accompaniment to the crunch, crunch, crunch made by their boots, and the occasional crackle of broken ice.

The landing zone was still a good two miles to the south, but Hale knew it would take the pickup plane some time to get there, so he triggered his radio.

“Bravo-Six to Echo-Three… Do you read? Over.”

“This is Three,” came the immediate reply. “I read you Five-by-Five. Over.”

“We’re about forty-five minutes out,” Hale responded, “And we’re tired of walking. Over.”

“Say no more,” Echo-Three replied cheerfully. “Marilyn and I are on the way. Over.”

Hale grinned as he jumped from one sheet of ice to the next, careful to stay away from the holes. Echo- Three’s much patched VTOL bore a beautifully rendered likeness of a scantily clad Marilyn Monroe on the left side of the fuselage.

“Can’t wait to see her,” he replied sincerely. “Over.”

After that the journey to the LZ became a seemingly endless obstacle course as the three men were forced to cross and recross the partially frozen stream to avoid reaches of deeper water, large rock formations, and sections of thin ice.

As smaller tributaries flowed in from the left and right, the banks rose higher, and the stream became a river. That was a mixed blessing from Hale’s perspective, because while the thirty-foot banks allowed them to travel relatively unseen, they would make it almost impossible to escape if they were attacked.

Still, everything seemed to be going well, until Hale rounded a bend, and froze as a wall of snow and dirt exploded away from the embankment ahead. Tons of soil slumped into the river, where it formed a momentary dam, before being washed away.

Close on his heels, Kawecki came to a sudden halt. “Jeez, Lieutenant, what the hell…”

Hale shook his head, and held a finger to his lips. “Listen!” he hissed urgently.

They didn’t hear anything at first, but then came a faint rumble, a vibration beneath his boots. That was when Hale shouted, “Burrower!”

A fraction of a second later Jasper hollered, “Contact!” and began firing his carbine behind them.

But there was no time to see what he was referring to, as even more earth slid down into the river and a whirling drill head broke through the embankment, and a cylindrical machine roughly the size of a locomotive thrust up out of the ground. It lurched heavily to a stop with half its length hanging out over the river. As snow landed on the Chimeran construct it was immediately transformed into steam.

Hale had seen machines like this before, back in England, and knew they had been used to flood London. A hatch clanged open and at least a dozen heavily armed Hybrids clambered out and dropped into the shallow water below thereby blocking the humans’ escape route. Hale scanned the area for a way to retreat, but it was too late. Behind them, Jasper continued to fire bursts upstream.

“It’s an Attack Drone, sir!” he shouted. “I can’t make a dent in it.”

Were we spotted by that first drone? Hale wondered. Are the Burrower and the Attack Drone working in concert? Or was the team in the wrong place at the wrong time?

That was the problem with the Chimera—there was no way to know. Not that it mattered, because they were out of options, other than to fight back. Geysers of snow, dirt, and water shot up into the air as the drone opened fire and the Sentinels scrambled for cover behind a cluster of water-smoothed boulders.

“I’ll deal with the drone,” Hale said grimly, as he put his shotgun aside. “You take care of the Hybrids.”

As the other men nodded and turned their attention toward the still steaming Burrower, Hale readied his Bellock Automatic. The grenade launcher had been slung across his back, and qualified as the heaviest weapon they had.

The drone consisted of a central housing, sensor arrays, and a pair of weapons pods. Muzzle flashes sparkled as the machine fired and projectiles pinged off the boulders Hale was hiding behind. In order to engage the target Hale would have to expose himself momentarily. He knew from experience that there was only one way to defeat the machine—he’d have to hit its heavy-duty shield and beat it down.

Between enemy rounds Hale fired, took cover, then emerged to fire again. Most of the flaming projectiles hit