Fflloooooopp!
Another man, then another next to him, exploded skyward as a camouflaged packet of highly pressurized gas exploded from the ground beneath. One of the men screamed. The other-like most-could not because the force from the gas expulsion shattered his spinal cord or brain instantaneously.
“Get the dogs up! Get em’ up now!”
One of Rhodes staffers inside the car frantically called forward the K9 bomb sniffers, but Rhodes knew that if this breed of mines could be easily sniffed they would have been sniffed when the recon teams had gone through before dawn. Voggoth had changed the scent. That meant planning. That meant The Order had anticipated this move. That meant-
Something flickered ahead. Shadows and light danced on the walls of rock surrounding the road. More screams. Fire.
Two amber comets of flame roared a dozen feet overhead the army, each ball of fire dripping burning fuel that fell on the people below like napalm. Shouts of ‘Incoming!’ stated the blatantly obvious while men and women scrambled for cover.
Rhodes watched the pair of flying comets of fire come closer and closer. He could see two dark spots on the burning round balls that might be eyes and a shadowy maw smiling or screaming, all surrounded by a mane of golden yellow inferno.
“General! Take cover!”
The command Humvee quickly emptied as two grunts, a radio technician, the driver and the General hurried for a depression in the dead grass between the cracked pavement of the road and the rising wall of rock.
Swoosh!
An anti-tank missile intercepted one of the weapons, exploding it in a howl. The dying creature’s remains showered fire and destruction onto the fleeing soldiers below.
The remaining ball of fire streaked past Rhodes. Its wake killed a dozen men within the General’s view and caught his Humvee on fire. It burned for ten seconds before the fuel tank exploded.
“Get me a goddamn radio!”
The radio technician who served in Rhodes’ entourage panicked, “I’ve got nothin’ but static, sir! I think the damn things are jamming us!”
The General barked an order but no one seemed capable of complying. “We’ve got to let command know-they were waiting for us. Sonofabitches were waiting for us!”
Cassy Simms remained at her observation post, first confirming the destruction of the Leviathan then reporting on remaining enemy strength. She hoped the armored reinforcements from Wetmore and Rhodes’ strike up from Rye would come soon because the flow of forces from beneath the mist continued at an alarming rate; more than anticipated.
Ogres and Spider Sentries by the hundreds, thousands of converted humans, and three more of the rolling artillery platforms all covered by the low-flying blob-like ships known as Chariots. It added up to much more than she would have expected from one Battle group.
An incoming transmission asked, “Hawkeye, this is command, any news from Rhodes?”
Simms found it surprising that Fink would ask her about Rhodes, let alone use the General’s name on-air.
“No, Command, negative.”
“Let us know, Hawkeye. We’re having some comm problems.”
Just minutes ago, she had cheered as the volley of rockets blew the Leviathan into pieces. Now a feeling built in the pit of her stomach-an ache. And the thunderstorms above, they grew fiercer.
The ground shook. Small rocks cascaded away from her position.
She turned her attention west again, glimpsing through the mountains to the valley where the mist swirled. The valley where Voggoth had grown and nurtured his army.
A massive shadow rose, parting and pushing the mist aside. Taller-taller-taller until the top tickled the clouds.
A Leviathan.
And then another, a few giant paces behind. Two Leviathans like twin towers rising from hiding spots beneath the mist. They had no faces, no mouths other than the massive maw that served to suck in then expel air. Yet to Cassy Simms those faceless monsters appeared to smile.
“C-command, c-command this is Hawkeye-“
She stopped her transmission when more came from the mist. A screaming flock of Spooks rising together so fast and so tightly packed that for a moment it seemed as if a curtain rose.
Counter-battery fire.
Trevor did not need the binoculars to understand what unfolded on the battlefield. The Leviathans were plain to see, walking one after another through the mountain pass toward his defenses, toward the reserve armor they had committed to the fight before realizing that fight had already been lost. Now those tanks and APCs would be sacrificial lambs.
He had trouble considering it fully because the chorus of a sky filled with screaming Spooks bore into his mind. It almost sounded like a laugh. Voggoth’s laugh. The flock nearly blocked out the sun as it sped eastward in search of Ross’ line of artillery.
“Sir…?”
Casey Fink’s incomplete question asked so much.
Why didn’t this work?
How could you lead us into disaster like this?
What are we to do now?
Are you really the same Trevor Stone?
No, he was not the same Trevor Stone as prior to his phony assassination; prior to suffering a lifetime of torments in a matter of weeks while under the power of The Order. Before that time he had suspected that mankind’s defeat would lead to the end of the human race. Much to his regret, while imprisoned by The Order’s torture machine, Trevor learned that a worse fate awaited his species: If Voggoth triumphed, they would be twisted and mutated into that monster’s minions.
Trevor had witnessed the Feranites warped from a race who shared a special bond with nature into the exact opposite; a species of mechanical slaves far removed from all things natural. It seemed Voggoth valued both destruction and irony.
Bits of organic machines and streaks of flaming aviation fuel fell from the sky and burned among the remains of Wetmore. Trevor heard the roar of jet fighters and the hollers of The Order’s ‘Spooks’ colliding in the airspace above.
He cast his eyes upward through one of the many holes in the barn roof and sure enough contrails and starbursts of smoke filled what remained of the blue sky as the storm came over the mountains.
“Brilliant, you know,” he said aloud in a detached musing.
“Sir?”
“It’s brilliant, the way Voggoth fights up there. Reminds me of Hitler during World War II. The Nazis didn’t have much of a Navy to stand up to the British, so they built U-Boats by the bushel. Cheap U-Boats. Not to take control of the seas, but to deny England from having total control of those seas. Voggoth deploys hundreds of these things that probably cost him the same as pennies to make. Sure, we wipe them out by the handful, but it just takes one to knock down an F-15. He goes out and grows more tomorrow, we can’t replace an F-15 for months, if ever.”
Fink stood silent in a mixture of shock and confusion.
Trevor returned his attention to the disintegrating front lines. On some level he had been certain that victory would come today, that all the defeats of the past year were minor events. That he needed only a combination of the right terrain, a good plan, and a little luck.
All those stars had aligned, but yet he lost. Voggoth had out maneuvered him. Voggoth had out-thought him. And now Voggoth would out-fight him.
“Sir, shall I give the order to withdraw?”
“We can’t withdraw, Casey,” Trevor spoke plainly. “Our forces are engaged. We have no reserves to fight a delaying action. Our boys are either going to die fighting or get shot in the back running. Voggoth won’t allow an orderly retreat.”
And for that, Trevor felt compelled to tip his hat toward the sinister mind of Voggoth. That devil had conceived and hatched a plan to draw Trevor’s forces into the open and force a climactic battle. Certainly Jon Brewer’s units mustering on the Mississippi would provide some small challenge, but without the men who would be slaughtered here, today, then the Mississippi would prove little more than a speed bump.