SNAFU: Resurrection Page 4

  “We need a solid hit.” Quintus hefted one of the last pots, judging the distance. “Keep lobbing these and I’ll try to—”

  “No time.” Otho drew his blade and pick, nodding to the blood that was creeping toward the scaffold. He stepped from the shadows, face grim. “Stay behind me, sir.”

  Quintus opened his mouth to order Otho back, but the big man was already moving.

  Muttering a curse on all bull-headed infantrymen, Quintus snatched up another pot and ducked after Otho, a lit taper clenched in his sweaty fist as he called to Ceorix to cover them.

  The clearing was a tumult of shouting, struggling men. A few of the Germans tried to form a shield wall, but a burning troll scattered them like leaves, shrieking and snorting as it gutted a man then fell to roll in the spilled entrails like a dog in carrion.

  Arminius’s auxilia had kept their Roman arms and equipment down to the tunics and caligae, so they were slow to respond to two similarly dressed men charging into their midst.

  Otho buried his pick in the helmet of the first barbarian to bar their movement. Twisting to punch his sword into the stomach of the next auxilia, he kicked the man sprawling into his companions, then dropped a shoulder into another barbarian. A man to Quintus’s left fell, pawing at the arrow in his throat, and suddenly the way was clear.

  “Go!” The big man bellowed as the Germans closed in around him. “In Mercury’s name, go!”

  Quintus knew better than to look back. He bulled toward the scaffold, sandals churning the soft loam as he closed on the thing. Close up again it seemed less a structure and more a living thing. The hide-covered bones of its chest rose and fell with unnatural breath, its twisted shoulders hunched forward, hands outstretched as if to beckon the carnage closer. The first runnel of blood touched its base, and Quintus groaned as black tendrils crept back up the stream of red. He heard the buzz of membranous wings, the high whine as the first of the Roman bodies burst open. In a heartbeat, the air was full of swirling insects.

  Shifting the pots, he touched his taper to the wick of the first. It hissed and popped as Quintus steadied himself for a throw right into the center of the cursed structure.

  He saw the descending blade a moment before it tried to take his hand. Arminius’s sword caught the firelight, and Quintus twisted away just in time.

  Roaring like an injured lion, Otho surged from the fire-lit shadows, bulling Arminius to the ground. Although of a similar size and build, the traitor general seemed imbued with a terrible vigor, ending up on top. Teeth bared, he hammered the heavy pommel of his blade into the big man’s skull, and Otho went limp.

  Arminius stood as the first of the trolls tumbled from the scaffold, slick with shadowstuff. The traitor nodded at Quintus, ordering the beast forward.

  On reflex alone, Quintus swung the fire pot like a ball-and-chain. It struck the creature in the torso, flames spreading across its boney chest. The troll batted at the flames, which only served to spread them to its hands and chest. Burning like Vulcan’s forge, it stumbled into the traitor auxilia that were coming to save their chieftain.

  Unfortunately, Arminius didn’t need saving.

  Quintus dropped the taper to draw his own blade, bringing it up just in time to parry another blow from the traitor general.

  “You think the world is yours, Roman.” Arminius followed up his swing with a kick that sent Quintus stumbling back. “We are not your dogs to be leashed and broken.”

  Quintus snarled and lunged only to have his gladius slapped aside, Arminius’s backswing almost opening his throat. The barbarian wielded the heavy blade like a willow switch, the blows quick and powerful. It was all Quintus could do to keep the bigger man from cutting him in two. Breath rasped through his clenched teeth as he parried strike after ringing strike, his sword arm numb. Arminius’s sword slashed across him with ease. His tunic was soon soaked in blood, his limbs loose and weak.

  Darkness roiled within the scaffold. The thing seemed to balloon outward, swelling like a sea-bloated corpse as it prepared to unleash its rot upon the world.

  Quintus lunged for the scaffold, but Arminius blocked his path. The traitor general was Roman trained and had fought with the legions – he knew every trick, every ploy. Quintus was overmatched, every moment only weakened him. He fought alone, no brothers at his side.

  “You come to our home! Claim our land, our children!” Arminius shouted down at him. “We are not yours!”

  With a despairing cry, Quintus threw himself at barbarian general, who calmly sidestepped and brought his blade slashing down.

  There was no pain, only a terrifying coldness that spread through his arm. He fell to the ground, gasping, barely able to keep a grip on his sword, let alone the firepot.

  The insects swarmed to the scaffold, crawling inside to disappear in bursts of greasy black smoke. Quintus fumbled in the bloody earth, struggling to reach the fire pot even as Arminius raised his blade.

  An arrow pierced the darkness, and Arminius stumbled as it ricocheted off his helmet. Ceorix stalked from the swirling smoke like a wolf scenting prey, another arrow already nocked and ready.

  Quintus seized on the distraction to crawl backward toward the firepot, the bloody earth seeming to churn beneath him.

  More arrows came as fast as Ceorix could fire them, but Arminius seemed a colossus, a titan imbued with terrible might, blade glittering in the firelight as he parried the bolts with almost contemptuous ease. Darkness slipped from the cracks in the scaffold to wreath the barbarian like smoke. An arrow thudded into the traitor general’s shoulder but he seemed hardly to notice.

  At last, Quintus’s trembling fingers closed around the firepot. Feeling almost drunk, he turned toward the scaffold, fumbling at his side for flint and steel.

  Arminius closed the distance to Ceorix in three quick strides. Knocking the Gaul’s bow aside, he hammered him to the ground with a clenched fist.

  His fingers gone wooden from blood loss, Quintus awkwardly struck the flint. Sparks showered over the firepot, but the wick did not catch. The flint and steel slipped from Quintus’s numb hands. He cursed, pawing at the blood-soaked earth.

  “It’s over.” Arminius’s voice echoed unnaturally, seeming to come from all around Quintus. “You have fought hard, but you have failed.”

  Through the haze of pain, Quintus heard a distant clamor draw closer, the thud of hooves on soft soil. His questing fingers closed again on the fire striker. Hunching protectively over the fire pot, he hammered flint to steel, almost crying out as the wick finally caught.

  “I do not hate you, only what you represent.” The tip of Arminius’s blade pricked the back of Quintus’s neck. “Give in. Your legion is shattered. Your comrades have fallen.”

  “Not all.” Quintus gave a bloody smile as Lamiskos charged from the smoke. The Tarantine’s horse seemed at the point of panic, its muzzle flecked with foam, its eyes rolling white, but Lamiskos somehow kept control.

  With a shout, Lamiskos bowled into Arminius, sending him tumbling back into his men. Swinging a firepot over his head, the Tarantine wheeled his horse to put it between Quintus and the traitor auxilia.

  Quintus pushed to his feet, barely keeping his footing as he staggered toward the scaffold. It was like a fever dream. The darkness inside the scaffold had deepened, becoming an inky tunnel – no, not a tunnel, a well. Quintus saw them then, rank upon rank of trolls. Hundreds. Legions. They boiled up from the murk, pale bodies writhing as they clawed up from whatever underworld they called home.

  Dimly, he heard Arminius shouting, anger and panic warring in the general’s voice. Quintus dismissed it with a grin. Arminius didn’t matter, all that remained was Quintus’s duty – not to his Empire or his people, but to his comrades.

  Straightening his shoulders, he tossed the fire pot into the scaffold, letting the arcane gravity of the place drag it down. He saw the trolls turn to watch it fall, their eyes like stars on a moonless night.

  Quintus muttered a quick prayer t
o Jupiter as he staggered away from the scaffold. There was a moment of silence, quick as an indrawn breath, then the chest-rattling boom of the scaffold catching flame. The explosion knocked him face-first into the muck, and Quintus covered his head, expecting the end.

  Slowly, the shouting began again. A hand plucked at his arm, and Quintus turned, fist clenched.

  Otho’s bruised and bloodied face grinned back at him. The big infantryman nodded at the mighty bonfire behind them. “Fucking profound enough for you?”

  “It will have to do.” Quintus let the big man help him to his feet.

  Arminius’s shouts drifted over the roar of the flames and the howls of maddened trolls. Freed of whatever dark hold the scaffold held over them, the beasts attacked any who came within reach, stumbling through the firelit shadows, every slash of their jagged claws echoed by a scream and a spray of blood.

  Arminius beat at a passing troll with the flat of his blade, exhorting the creature to strike down the Romans, to drive the invaders back across the Rhine. It turned on him with a wide-mouthed snarl, its answering swipe gouging deep furrows in the barbarian's shoulder. Grimly, Quintus hoped the beast would finish the job, but it turned away to bury its gore-streaked maw in the throat of a staggering barbarian, dragging the man off into the forest.

  Tears cut silver lines down the Arminius’ cheeks, his lips twisted in an expression partway between fury and sorrow. He pressed towards the burning scaffold, but was dragged away by his warriors, raving like a man possessed.

  “Care for a ride, sir.” Lamiskos cantered up. The Tarantine had earned another cut for his trouble, his arm held close to his chest, but his smile seemed genuine enough.

  “I think he needs it more.” Otho nodded at Ceorix, lying face-up in the bloody muck.

  The Gaul opened one blood-crusted eye, regarding them with barely concealed irritation. “Jupiter’s balls, for a moment I thought I was finally free of you lot.”

  “Stubborn as we are?” Quintus snorted. “We’d find you in the underworld.”

  Most of the trolls had disappeared into the woods or lay in burning heaps upon the blackened earth. Those few barbarians who continued to fight seemed primarily concerned with escaping the clearing. When Quintus turned to look for Arminius, he found the traitor general fled. It was too much to hope they could cut the head from the snake, but they had dealt the German coalition a staggering blow this day.

  The heat of the fire like a burning hand at their back, they loaded the Gaul onto the snorting horse then shambled toward Maxentius and the others. Quintus felt his wild elation echoed by the grins of his companions. One day, he wouldn’t make it out alive, but that hardly mattered.

  Although Quintus might die, he would never fight alone.

  The Deicide Machine

  Justin Coates

  The Chicago front was in the process of collapsing when the Andrada Ascendent arrived. The Montgomery-class super tank rolled over a field of corpses, crushing them to dust beneath her gargantuan frame. The ragged survivors of III Army Corps, barely half of the 250,000 that had marched to war a month ago, cheered for the magnificent war machine. She was 10,000 tonnes of steel and murderous intent, her 85-meter tall frame instantly attracting the bulk of enemy small arms fire. The alien weapons glanced harmlessly off her scorched armor as she crossed over the trenches and into the ruins of the city.

  Her captain, PSICOM officer Mercy Ubuntu, watched tactical data flow across her comscreen from the handful of surveillance drones still airborne. The situation was worse than her superiors knew. III Army Corps had held the enemy back, but at an unspeakably high cost. Chicago was reduced to a smoldering ruin, cloaked in a vast cloud of ash and dust.

  The city was lost, but III Corps might be able to withdraw if the Ascendent could cover their retreat.

  It’s up to us, Ubuntu thought, before addressing her gunnery officer. “Commander Nguyen. Ensure the Voidborn know we are here.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am. All conventional platforms, fire for effect.”

  The Ascendent woke, and the earth shook. 120mm mortar platforms along her spine hurled white phosphorus rounds at enemy positions. Sponson-mounted 25mm Bushmaster cannons filled the air with depleted uranium rounds. Nearby battalions fell back to safety, dragging their dead and wounded by the furious light of her howitzer and missile batteries.

  Her artillery batteries ruptured gibbering N’nogug bio-tanks as they slithered among the ruins, reducing them to stinking black smears on the war-struck earth. Unprepared for the sheer violence and rapidity of the armored assault, two entire companies of squid-like Voidborn clones were caught in the open and fell in their hundreds to the Ascendent’s scything broadsides. Her rockets punched through hive-bunkers and armored reefs, incinerating dug-in enemy artillery in titanic eruptions of smoke and fire. Her main guns, two massive 50-inch Void Eater cannons, each hurled 7-ton psychoreactive shells that vaporized enemy bio-armor reinforcements nearly twenty kilometers away.

  “Enemy advance is stalling,” Commander Burley said. The navigation officer turned to look back at her captain. “We’ve blunted the assault across five kilometers.”

  “My regards to the weapon crews,” Ubuntu replied.

  It was difficult to stay professional with the Ascendent grumbling violence in her mind. The product of a union between strange science and even stranger sorceries, the Ascendent was described as ‘semi-sentient’ in PSICOM training manuals.

  Ubuntu knew better. There was nothing ‘semi’ about it, and the Ascendent found no satisfaction in killing mortals (alien as they were). It hungered for worthier prey.

  “Incoming plasma barrages detected,” Burley said. “Deploying countermeasures.”

  Multiple jets of superheated gas struck the prow of the land cruiser. Electromagnetic pulse defenses dispersed the worst of it, but Ubuntu could physically feel an outer layer of armor strip away through her connection to the tank.

  The Ascendent rocked sideways, but her hundreds of crew members were well trained. Loading teams kept up with her voracious demand for ammunition. Command and signal units, located on her uppermost decks, swiftly abandoned damaged stations for redundant platforms deeper inside the vessel, even as security teams escorted welders and mechanics to repair internal damage. Burley’s superlative helmsman skills kept the assault moving forward, and that mattered most of all.

  “I want those plasma cannons gone, Commander Nguyen,” Ubuntu said, effortlessly overseeing both the battlefield and the Ascendent’s interior operations.

  “Working on it,” Nguyen replied, her fingers dancing across her comscreen.

  “Commander Burley, inform Phantom 6 to continue a fighting withdrawal from the city limits. We will cover their retreat.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Burley said, hastily firing off the messages via comscreen. “Be advised: I’m picking up dispersion rates above .6 in multiple locations.”

  “How many are stable enough for a breach?”

  “Over a dozen.”

  “Plot coordinates for those closest to us. We will strike them as they deploy from the noosphere.”

  The Ascendent’s atomic heart rumbled with barely-restrained impatience as Burley charged the nearest dispersion point. Ubuntu took a breath to center herself, then opened her invisible third eye to the swirling hell of the Otherworld. She could see the thin spots between realms as pulsing lights on the battlefield. Some were brighter than others, and from these she knew the dreadful deities of the Voidborn might emerge. These alien gods were titans in their own right, hideous constructs of flesh, machine, and insatiable hunger.

  There was already a god on the battlefield, however. The Ascendent lurked just behind her, speaking in furious, bloody whispers that Ubuntu knew better than to heed.

  Those deific whispers caught the attention of beings lurking on the other side of reality. Entities made of fanged nightmares turned their baleful gaze toward her. One of them, older and hungrier than its kindred, snarled in a language that made
Ubuntu nauseous.

  The Ascendent howled in response. Ubuntu closed her third eye, shivering from the awful rage bound up in the war machine’s heart.

  “Dispersion spikes in three locations,” Burley said. “We’re at .75 and climbing.”

  “That got their attention,” Nguyen said. “Permission to prep tactical sleds.”

  “Granted, but hold for my signal,” Ubuntu said. “I don’t want to destroy any more of this city than we have to.”

  They rumbled through the barren New City district. Voidborn small arms fire all but ceased, though the Ascendent herself continued to punish any enemy ground forces with the temerity to occupy her battlespace. The tank’s restless spirit made its impatience known through groaning treads and spiking reactor heat output. A whisper, one Ubuntu knew only she could hear, hissed across the net.

  Is it time?

  Burley called out a warning. “Dispersion rate of 1 detected! Breach initiating!”

  A portal between dimensions opened six hundred meters to their west and stayed open just long enough to spit out a spindly-limbed void hound. The alien demon gibbered through a hundred fanged proboscises. Particle cannons, crudely sutured to its rigid exoskeleton, flashed a vivid blue through the dust clouds.

  “Concentrate howitzer fire on the target,” Ubuntu ordered. “Commander Burley, bring us close enough for the tridents.”

  Plasma bombardments hammered down around them. The comscreens stuttered in and out. Messages between maintenance crews flew back and forth across the net with a renewed sense of urgency.

  “I want that enemy artillery dealt with, Nguyen!”

  The void hound trumpeted and charged. Its cannon struck their armored prow. Ubuntu grit her teeth. Despite no visible wounds, she felt as though a hot iron was scalding her flesh. An auto-generated report revealed damage to the tank’s superstructure on her uppermost levels.