Kailee and Quinn whistled slowly as they looked over the railing.
“That’s a big damn hole,” Kailee said.
“How did you dig this?” Quinn asked as Admiral Cochrane clasped his hands behind his back and looked smug.
“Well, ladies,” Cochrane said, turning as he did so. He started to walk along the railing, heading towards one of the steam-powered elevators that whirred up and down the sides of the pit. In the shadows cast by the tall jungle trees that had been cultivated around the pit itself, the recesses of darkness seemed all the darker. It was as if every elevator simply vanished after a few feet, or emerged from nothingness to come to a stop at the edge. “This wasn’t the product of a single afternoon. But we had some covert assistance from Hades, Hel, Diayet...”
“How did you get help from Anubis?” Kailee asked. “And how do you know what happened to him?”
Cochrane chuckled. “I’ve got clearance. And, like Ares and Liviana, Diayet has been experimenting with her altered state.” He stepped onto an empty elevator. The cable connected to the top creaked as Kaliee and Quinn stepped aboard. The steam engine that powered the crank hissed and chuffed to life. The steam drifted into several wooden baffles that spread the steam outwards into a diffuse enough cloud that it couldn’t be spotted from above the treeline.
The elevator started to go down.
“Here,” Cochrane said, opening a small wooden cabinet on the side of the elevator. “Put these on.”
He held out a pair of outfits that looked completely alien to Kailee and Quinn. They were thick and furred and tufted with soft down, with sleeves that would completely cover their arms. The elevator was already starting to get colder as it descended into the pit.
Kailee shrugged into her jacket and drew it tight. It helped against the chill, but her fingertips and her legs started to prickle as the temperatures dropped as quickly as their elevator car. Quinn stepped to the side of the car, ignoring everything as she took hold of the railing and peered into the darkness. But they had stopped falling towards darkness.
Light was growing beneath them.
“It’s real…” Quinn whispered.
“Yes, it is, my ladies,” Cochrane said. “Your ship. The BSN Rocinante.”
He timed it perfectly.
The elevator fell fully into the dome of light created by mage lanterns. They shone on a solid expanse of gleaming metal – the same harsh black as the other creations of the Ancients. Built upon that was a scaffold of wood and bronze and crystal, creating a latticework around a half-finished wonder. It looked vaugely conical, with its forward nose fashioned from a single massive chunk of crystal that, even now, was being etched with magical runes. Glass spheres were nestled in a metallic framework along the spine of the ship, while wood was being placed into interlocking patterns to create the cone. Within that cone were decks – curved so the floor always faced outwards, towards the skin of the ship.
“We’ll be coating the wood in a thin layer of steel,” Cochrane said. “But the wood’s apparently required for the mages to do certain life-related spells. Something about their formerly living tissue makes the spells keep.” He shook his head.
“And those spheres? Are they place holders or are they the real deals?” Quinn asked.
Cochrane chuckled, swinging the door to the elevator open.
“Oh, they’re the real deal. They took almost five years of trade concessions and a deficit to the Tuatha that we’ll be paying off while my grandkids are going to the naval academy but they’re real.” Cochrane stepped forward, his shoes ringing off the metal surface they stood upon. Quinn pressed to Kailee as she stepped off the platform and onto the metal. She knew that the metal she stood upon had sustained millennia of impacts far more energetic than anything that she could do.
It didn’t stop a tiny voice in the back of her head from screaming.
“Have you tested them?” Kailee asked. “If what Quinn said is right, then without those fucking balls, this whole ship is one big wasted boondoggle.”
“Yes,” Cochrane said, then smiled as a young goblin shimmied down the scaffolding and ran towards the trio. She was slender and muscular, with grease under her fingers and brilliant red hair that exploded around her head like the sun itself.
As she skidded to a stop and gave the worlds sloppiest salute, Kailee purred quietly and grinned as she whispered in Quinn’s ear. “Dibs.”
“This is our chief engineer, Solis,” Cochrane said.
“Pleased to meet you,” Solis said, cheerfully. “You’re the captain?” She looked at Quinn. Quinn chuckled.
“No, uh, she is,” she said, pointing at Kailee. Kailee grinned, taking Solis’ hand.
“Charmed,” Kailee purred, leaning forward to kiss Solis’ knuckles.
Solis blinked, looking completely baffled. She drew her hand back slowly, her brow furrowing. “Uh. Right. Do you wanna see the ship?”
Kailee tried to not pout.
“Yes!” Quinn said, nodding.
Solis bounced excitedly. “Yeah! Okay! So, that’s where we’re going to be putting the machine guns – we, uh, haven’t mentioned those to the Americans. I have a lizardman smith topside who's working on making more slugs in their caliber. But the real treat is the fireball launchers. They’re tied right to the Blinking Star. Now, we’re not sure on their range, so they may only be usable near Purgatory.” She rubbed her palms together. “And I haven’t even started on the missiles. Rockets, really. Primitive garbage, actually. But still!”
Kailee, though, couldn’t take her eyes off Solis’ rump. Quinn saw that and smiled. But her eyes were nestled on the glass orbs. From their position they were nearly invisible, shrouded by wooden scaffolds and metallic protection. But she knew that they were the key.
Not to Purgatory.
No, they were the key to the whole damn solar system.
***
President Amanda Deinhardt had a small figurine of a golfer on her desk. It had a huge bobbly head and a massive, shit eating grin. Its pose made it look as if it had just swung hard at a ball, a ball that was now sailing across her desk, through the oval office, and out the nearest window.
She kept this figurine to remind herself, every day, of what not to do.
Golfing was hugely wasteful – requiring vast tracts of land that could only be enjoyed by a minority of people at a time. They demanded sprawling mono-cultures of grass that needed constant tending and an immense amount of water. It was a great expense for a tiny amount of people. It was everything that her administration opposed.
It also gave her a head to bang around when she wanted to smash her own forehead into the endless array of paperwork that seemed to dominate her every day. Slowly, Deinhardt reached out and flicked the bobblehead. The spring made a quiet squeaking noise.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes, Louise?” Deinhardt asked, smiling at her aide.
Louise, a shy looking black woman who did her best work as far away from cameras as possible, held a manilla envelope. “This is from our embassy in New Delhi, apparently it’s urgent.”
“Put it down, I’ll get to it after this bill,” Deinhardt said, rolling her shoulder slowly. “Also, any news on Vanderbilt and the Purgatorians?”
“Uh, according to security, they’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Good, thanks Louise,” Deinhardt said.
Louise bowed her head, then turned and scurried away before the weirdos from beyond the edge of the known universe came to visit. Deinhardt didn’t exactly blame her. But she had been around the world, shaken hands with despots and dictators, saints and philanthropists, and seen more things than she had ever expected to see when she started off her career as a senator from Texas. Hell, the fact she was here, in this office, in 2018, was enough of a head-trip some days.
She took a moment to lean back and think, her eyes settling on the bright red envelope that the Pentagon had sent her office this morning. There had been no news release, no press brief, but she knew that the moratorium on the story wouldn’t last forever. Someone would leak, eventually.
It was only a matter of time.
The door opened a few minutes later after she had managed to get the desk neatened up.
And in came the weirdos.
Liam Vanderbilt came in first. He was a bit of a revelation for Deinhardt – seeing him emerging from the portal a few months ago, she had been struck by how much Purgatory had changed him. With his shirt off and wearing that kilt, he had looked like a savage warrior from the cover of an old bodice ripper that she’d never admit to reading. Well, he cleaned up. He cleaned up good. In his suit and tie, he looked like how she rather wished more heads of state might look. His clothing was tailored well enough that it showed off his muscle without being too tight or confining, and he moved with the casual, confident grace of a warrior. But tempering that was the dorky expression of concern that seemed to be plastered on his face nearly every second of the day.
After him came Megara, his wife. She was…
It was still surreal to see a walking, breathing angel. But next to Fizit, Meg was essentially normal. But the one that gave Deinhardt the biggest heebie jeebies was Liv. She was so close to being an utterly normal person. She had pointed ears, so what? It was the same kind of costume anyone could get at a dime store for cosplaying or Halloween. But what no costume could ever replicate was the look in those electric blue eyes, or the too-fluid grace that made her every movement a kind of hypnotic poetry.
A voice echoed in Deinhardt’s mind, from her briefing after the Purgatorian party had gone through decontamination and some serendipitous testing.
Well, if our understanding of the CAT scans are accurate, the node-like structure in Livana’s brain allows her to manipulate quantum events with a certain level of intentionality. The, uh, the backscatter effect on she has on electromagnetic spectra and the way that- There had been a pause as the biologist had been forced to simplify and get to the point. Essentially, ma’am... have you ever read Watchmen? Meet Doctor Manhattan.
Deinhardt had then gone and read the book and hadn’t slept the whole night.
Liam stepped forward and held out his hand. “Madam President,” he said, grinning at her.
“Ambassador Vanderbilt,” Deinhardt said, standing and taking his hand. He squeezed her hand – not hard enough to hurt, but not gently enough that it felt like he wasn’t taking her seriously. Deinhardt smiled ever so slightly and gave him a bit of a squeeze back, before letting go and sitting down. “Take a seat, everyone. Enjoying your homecoming?”
“Yeah,” Liam said, chuckling nervously as he took a seat.
“It’s cold here,” Tethis said, her ears twitching up.
“You were in California, aren’t you?” Deinhardt asked.
“It’s still cold,” Tethis said.
Deinhardt shuddered melodramatically. “I grew up in Texas. And it gets as hot as Hades there, but at least it’s a dry heat.”
Fizit chuckled.
Liam nodded. “It has been nice getting to curl up in a blanket and not wake up swimming in sweat.” He paused. “But you didn’t call us here for a little chit chat about the weather, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” Deinhardt said, her hand going to the red envelope. She slid it across the desk. “Yesterday, a military base in Wyoming was attacked. It was a training facility, there were only a few casualties, no deaths.” She paused. “But the attackers were protected by Purgatorian magic.” She pulled out some of the photographs. They had been taken from base security cameras. Other than some blurring artifacts caused by the motion of the truck, they were clear. They showed the truck driving through the fence without leaving a hole. They showed the soldiers shooting at the men in the Guy Fawkes masks.
“Do you know who they were?” Liam asked.
“A far-left anarchist cell,” Deinhardt said. “They stole enough weaponry to outfit a platoon, and they’re immune to weapons fire and have a crystal that lets them phase through solid matter. They haven’t taken any further action, but what do we do if these fellows roll up to Main Street USA and open fire on the mayor’s office and declare themselves the first free-state of New Freedonia?”
Liam rubbed his palms along his face. “Normally, you’d send in the national guard...”
“Which is why, normally, anarchists grumble about politics on chatrooms and hand out fliers,” Deinhardt said. “Somehow, they’ve changed the rules.”
“But how?” Tethis asked, frowning as she picked up the papers. “That crystal isn’t hewn. It’s just a chunk.” She cocked her head. “I can’t see any rune working. It must be a short term enchantment, something cheap.”
“Thank heaven for small mercies,” Deinhardt said.
Liam leaned back in his seat and frowned. As his arms settled in the chair, Deinhardt found her eyes slowly drifting from his face to those broad shoulders. She could practically sit on them. She licked her lips subtly and forced her eyes back to his face as he continued to think.
“Ares can’t just be working with these guys,” he said. “But how the fu... udge...”
“You can say fuck here,” Deinhardt said, her lips quirking up at the way that Liam flushed. Swear? In-front of the President? “There’s no press, after all.”
Liam nodded, coughed, and said: “Well, how the fuck did Ares get here?”
“Through your gate?” Deinhardt asked.
“No,” Fizit said, her tail twitching. “Even if he had some kind of magical way to get through, we’d have noticed. He’d drop directly into your bunker, and your bunker has no exits save through decontamination and those machine guns.”
Deinhardt nodded, slowly.
The door to the office rattled.
“What is it?” Deinhardt asked.
The door opened and a ruffled looking aide – Jeremy – looked in. “Ma’am! It’s the Pentagon!”
***
The situation room was closed and cramped and smelled a bit like pens. Meg sat next to Liam to the right of the President, while the Secretary of State and other members of the Cabinat crammed into the left. Fizit remained standing in the back, frowning and hissing in displeasure. Liv tapped her foot on the ground next to the lizardwoman. Tethis, being the smallest, sat nearest to the front and looked deeply concerned.
The screen had a man on it. He was ill shaven and round cheeked, his brown hair flecked with silvery threads. He wore a Confederate flag armband and was standing with a confident swagger before a half a dozen terrified looking men and women in work casual clothes. One of the men was nursing a split lip and a rapidly puffing up black eye.
Several other goons - wearing black balaclavas over their faces and uniforms that weren’t quite army issue - stood near the hostages. They had rifles slung over their shoulders and stood with the confidence of men who had just won a battle.
“No longer will we bow to the tyrant whims of a false president, who took power in an illegal coup!” the man raved. “We, of the Liberation Army of Jesus Christ, have been blessed by He Who Lives Again, to retake the world in his name and his justice and his light!” Spittle flew from his lips and he laughed, spreading his arms. The movement drew attention to the dozens of ragged holes in his outfits. “See the blessing he has bestowed upon me!”
The video hit pause.
“That is ‘General’ Bartholomew Brown,” General Sung said, using the biggest air-quotes that Liam had ever seen in his life. “Dishonorably discharged from the Coast Guard for smuggling cocaine over the border and belonging to several neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate websites. He fell in with a militia movement called the Liberation Army of Jesus Christ two years ago. It seems he’s running the joint now.”
“Confederate?” Meg’s brow furrowed. Then she hissed. “Oh. Right. Those assholes.” Liam nodded to her, making a subtle gesture to stay quiet.
“This is bad,” Liv said, bluntly.
Everyone turned to look at her.
Liv pointed at the man. “I can see it, on the camera. He’s been blessed by Ares. He might even be a Chosen.”
“A Chosen?” the secretary of state asked. “That’s like a priest?”
“A Chosen is to a priest as a priest is to a guy who goes to temple every holy day,” Liv said, crossing her arms over her chest again. “They’re given extended life, some characteristics of the god, and a direct line to their powers. So, a Chosen of Bast looks like a cat. A Chosen of Ares gets warlike and good at stabbing people.” She paused. “Or at least, they used to, before Ares went nuts.”
The secretary of state shook his head slowly.
General Sung frowned and clasped his hands before him. “The point is that this entire militia has moved into a Louisiana township and taken it over. They’ve killed a few cops, captured the rest. A few have even switched sides.” He shook his head. “The whole town has been cut off the grid, but people are going to notice and soon. Then we’ll have an international news story on our hands.”
“What are our options? Tethis? Liv?” Deinhardt asked.
Tethis frowned. “I’m thinking.”
“Send me in and I kick their asses so hard they’ll be breathing out of their spines,” Liv said, grinning.
General Sung smiled. It seemed he liked the way Liv thought.
“I think that if I burn through a big chunk of my arcane energy,” Tethis said. “I can augment some bullets to have similar fields as the nulification collars used to take the powers of the gods in the first place. That should be enough to cut through their barriers.”
“I’d prefer that,” General Sung said, despite his earlier eagerness. “This is an American issue, and we should give law enforcement and the National Guard the tools to handle it.”
Liv frowned, but she didn’t grumble too much.
“Get to work,” President Deinhardt said, standing up. “Get Tethis to a laboratory, an armory, whatever she needs. I want you to get our best people on this – but make sure you follow the letter of the law. I don’t care if it’s SWAT or the FBI or the ATF who take these guys down. I want it done by the book.” She adjusted the collar of her shirt. “Mack, start getting ready for a press conference. There’s no way we can deal with this before the news story breaks, so we better break it ourselves. Vanderbilt.” She looked at him. “We’re going to need you on cameras, with your wife.”
Liam blinked and stood. “Of course. Uh, why?”
The President smiled at him.
Not for the first time, Liam was struck by how effortlessly the older woman straddled the line between approachable and distant. She had the gravitas of a leader, but the easy attitude of someone who... well, damn the cliché, of someone he could share a beer with.
It doesn’t hurt… his brain started. But Liam took that thought and he drowned it in a river. Despite his best efforts though, his eyes flicked from the President’s face to her body. She was not as ‘in shape’ as most women in Purgatory. She was soft. Curved. As horrible as it made him feel to admit it, she was MILFY in the purest sense of the word. Her breasts strained against her suit and her hips looked soft enough for him to sink his fingers in. Liam’s cheeks flushed and he realized that she had laid out her plans and he had completely missed it.
“Got it,” he said.
As they walked out of the room – hurrying to their various jobs – Meg whispered in his ear: “She said that you’ll keep people calm. And I’ll prove that it’s real.”
“Thanks,” Liam whispered.
Meg’s grin was wicked.
Liam groaned inwardly. He already dreaded what she planned.
***
Tethis set her third crystal down on the table next to the boxes of ammunition and hoped that this would work. Being on Earth had given her time to see how the Ancients’ magic worked without Purgatory’s innate nature to distract or corrupt the results. It had been illuminating. The crystals provided power but how? She was starting to piece together a theory. It all had to do with the Endless Mine and the discoveries that Dr. Cole had found there.
The Endless Mine had used concentrated swarms of incredibly tiny automaton to accomplish all of their wonders – nanomachines, Dr. Cole had called them. And every time Tethis cast a spell on Earth, her crystals didn’t just grow dimmer, they also grew fractionally lighter. She had measured them on Liam’s mother’s cooking scale and found that after two days of casting minor cantrips, one crystal had lost almost half a gram. Where had that gram gone? Well…
She rubbed her palms together.
“What are you going to do?” The technician that the Pentagon had gotten to help her with Earth technology spoke up.
Tethis smiled at him. “Well, the god’s magic is based off a biological node inside of a mutant human’s brain. That node is what gives them their power. A Chosen has a tiny fraction of that power and emits it to their surrounding people – sharing the blessing. But the Ancients had constructed collars that cancel that energy out.” She smiled. “Ancient technology - or magic, or whatever you want to call it - uses nanomachines. These crystals.” She touched each one. “Are chunks of nanomachines and their crystal batteries. So, what I’m going to do is create a spell that tells the nanomachines to etch the same signal emitters that the collars used on the tip of every single bullet.” She tapped the casings. “If this works, then your men will be able to retake the town.”
“And if it doesn’t?” the technician asked his eyes wide as saucers.
Tethis frowned.
“Well, I guess Liv gets to have fun.”
The technician frowned. “That’s not going to play well on international news. Or national news. Or local news. Or... any news at all.”
“Why not?” Tethis asked. “These people are traitors, aren’t they?”
“They’re American citizens,” the technician said. Tethis swung the ammo box shut with a clunk and tinkle – the last noise provided by a free hanging metal buckle. She puzzled at it for a few seconds before snapping it into the notch and tightening the ammo case shut. She made a happy noise, nodding.
“I like that design. Also, they seem to be most emphatically interested in not being American citizens,” Tethis said. “If my old liege lord had had a town rise up against him like that, well...” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have been pretty.”
“Who was he?”
“Sobek,” Tethis said, as the technician took the ammo case.
“Who's that?”
Tethis turned to face him, looking appalled. “Liam said Earthers didn’t know the Pesedjeti much, but seriously?”
“The who?” The technician was looking like a child who had forgotten to bring his textbook to class.
Tethis clicked her tongue, looking cross. “I’ll need to have a word with your President.”
***
Coyo slumped back in the seat of his borrowed 1967 Ford Mustang and flicked listlessly at the dashboard. The busted AC refused to magically fix itself and help banish the hideous humidity that pressed to his face like a muffling pillow. He fanned himself and shook his head.
“So, what now, Sun?” he asked.
Sun was sitting in the passenger seat, twirling a metal toothpick around his fingers. His fingers matched any tricky con-man or circus sideshow act. He was able to send the toothpick twirling around his fingers, on the tip of his pinkie, rolling along his palm. He even launched it lazily through the air with the flick of his wrist, catching it in the other hand with a meaty whump. Coyo flinched.
“Jesus fuckmothering Christ, you know that scares the shit out of me, right?”
Sun grinned at Coyo. “I haven’t fucked up once. And I would like to point out that this is your country. You should be the one coming up w ith ideas.”
Coyo sighed.
The trip across the country to Washington DC had started off swimmingly. Coyo had enthusiastically borrowed several cars – ditching them when they ran out of gas and using his friend Mr. Brick to get into any that didn’t have their keys in them. He had found an abandoned felt tipped pen with half its reservoir and a mud encrusted yellow papered notebook in the first car, and he was down to the last three pages and almost no ink. But it had been worth it. He had left notes in each car, with directions as to where he had borrowed it.
They’d get home.
Eventually.
And it wasn’t traveling with Sun. He had picked Sun up in the Dallas International Airport. Though getting Sun off the plane and into the car had proved a bit tricky, since Sun had been tucked in among the luggage. The car he had ‘borrowed’ for that bit of the trip had been returned with a few extra bullet holes from a few Texan cops.
No, things had started going south the instant he got to the Gulf.
Coyo had always hated the American South. It had nothing to do with the people. It was the weather. The beastly, hideous weather that made him feel like he hadn’t shaved and hadn’t changed clothes. He felt like he could stand to peel himself out of his own skin and throw himself into an ice box pretty much the instant he crossed from the plains and deserts of Texas to the increasingly marshy Louisiana. And as the muggy temperatures got worse, it got harder and harder to find cars to borrow. He’d had to use Mr. Brick more and more often, and the cars themselves tended to have less gas.
And now this.
“There’s a limit to what I can do, Sun,” Coyo said, frowning. “We could try calling Triple A, but there’s a fifty fifty shot if we can get that to work.”
“If the tow-truck’s driver is a lady, bump that to a ninety percent,” Sun said, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Only ninety?” Coyo asked, his brow furrowing. This ended up providing a perfect channel for sweat to slip along his forehead and right into his eyes. He started to swear in several languages – primarily Crow and Spanish – batting at his face.
Sun snickered. “They might be a lesbian!”
“That...” Coyo paused, cocking his head. “You hear that?”
And that was when the first army truck roared by, filling the cabin with dust and grit and thrown rocks. Coyo coughed and Sun swore.
“Fuck you, Mr. Brick!” He glared at the long shattered window.
“Mr. Brick does his best!” Coyo shot back.
Another camouflaged truck roared by, and another spray of grit and dust filled the cabin. The two men scrambled out, Coyo taking the driver’s side door and Sun swinging himself out through the passenger window without opening it. He yelped and hopped back across the hood of the car as a third truck roared down the road. The soldiers in the back looked at them with the casual interest of people with a serious boredom problem. The next car was an open topped hummer with a man in the passenger seat whose entire personage said, ‘I’m in charge.’ He looked tough as nails, with significantly fancier symbols on his shoulders and chest compared to most of the other soldiers. Behind him, in the back seat, was a weedy looking fellow with an ATF hat on. The third person, looking as effortlessly bored as the soldiers in the truck, was a woman. She wore a button up white shirt and had a suit jacket that she had slung over her shoulder. The hummer slowed down on seeing Coyo and Sun.
“Hello there,” Sun said, grinning at the lady. She looked at him – her coppery hair sparkling in the sunlight that had managed to get past the trees that lined the road. Her expression should have sent Sun’s smile running for cover. Instead, he simply brushed some dirt off his shoulder and tucked his toothpick behind his ear, where it glinted like a poorly aimed ear-piercing.
“This is an active emergency response scene,” the ATF guy said. “You got car trouble?”
“It broke down!” Coyo said, nodding.
“Why is the window broken?” the girl asked, jerking her chin at the passenger side window.
“It’s not broken,” Coyo said, quickly.
“I can see the glass shards,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
“Uh-”
“We don’t have time for this,” the military guy growled. “Get back behind the picket line.”
“They might have seen something,” the ATF guy whispered. Coyo’s ears perked up at that.
“I doubt it,” the copper haired girl said. “We’re still two miles off. And if they saw anything, they’d be in bigger trouble than a busted carburetor.”
“Is that’s what’s wrong with it?” Coyo asked.
“I’m using it as an example,” she said. “Let's drive.”
“That’s the best idea you’ve had all day, Agent Oleander.” The army guy hit the gas. As he drove, he pulled out his walkie talkie and started muttering into it.
Coyo looked at Sun as the dust cloud faded.
“She was hot,” Sun said.
“Let's get away from the car before the cops get here,” Coyo said at the same time.
Sun snorted. “I don’t think they’re sending cops back here to check on us.”
“They’re all cops in the end,” Coyo said. He looked at the marshy forest surrounding them and sighed. “Uuuuugh, I hate this shit.” He started off the road. Sun pulled his needle out from behind his ear and started to twirl it. He followed after Coyo.
Whistling cheerfully.
***
Simone was starting to feel like a ping-pong ball. Bounced across the country, flown from time zone to time zone, she was ready for several crisis to happen in a row in the same location. Not several hours away by plane and not in a different part of the world. If apocalyptic armies could just show up in Central Standard Time a leisurely walk from where she currently was, that would be just fine. But while she was wishing for that, she might have wished that Liam was on this assignment.
But, unlike on Purgatory, high ranking ambassadors didn’t get sent into dangerous situations where their asses could get shot off.
The tent set up by the National Guard was a half mile away from the edge of Blackberry, the township that the LAJC had taken over. There was always an uncomfortable feeling that came whenever the military – or something military adjacent - was used to do something even close to ‘policing’ duty in the United States. It called to mind the endless rounds of photos that had dominated Twitter and the news media of cops in APCs, toting assault rifles, and the endless rounds of riots that had shaken city after city. Over several years of increasing violence and militarization, the tide had swung. Simone had watched it all from the slightly uncomfortable sidelines of someone in a high profile military position, unable to share her two cents lest she bring down a tidal wave of bad PR down on her and the armed forces. In the space between her ears, she had breathed a sigh of relief as public opinion turned against heavily armed police response..
End result?
The ATF, FBI and Louisiana National Guard were each helping with this little shindig and none of them were bringing out the heavy weaponry. The national guard were busy keeping civilians away from the township, while the FBI and the ATF set up the observation posts and prepped their response units. Simone was the only military person in the planning tent – everyone else was either Critical Incident Response Group, the FBI version of SWAT, or Special Response Teams from the ATF.
“Now, here’s what we know,” the ATF commander said, pointing down at the map. “The perps have rounded up the entire town’s population and jammed them into the school’s gymnasium. From our drone observations, they appear to be...” He paused. “Singing.”
“Singing?” the FBI’s CIRG commander asked. Simone liked her on general principles – in a room with a serious case of testosterone poisoning, having another girl in there was nice. Then Simone’s opinion went up a few notches as the CIRG commander looked at her and said: “Any idea on why that might be? You’re the expert on this so called magic.”
“If I had to hazard a guess?” Simone asked. “They’re being told to pray to Ares or they get shot.”
“Would that even work?” the ATF commander asked, his mustache twitching as he pursed his lips.
Simone shrugged slightly. “I dunno. For most of human history, praying and not praying didn’t seem to do much one way or the other. But I’ve seen what these ‘gods’ can do. If that power comes from prayer, maybe having two thousand people singing about what a great guy he is giving Ares a few extra spell slots or something.”
The CIRG commander smirked.
The ATF guy looked faintly confused.
Another point for the FBI.
Shaking his head, the ATF commander went back to the map. “Still, this makes our job a bit easier. The school is near the edge of the town, right next to this forest.” He tapped it. “We just need to get the ensure that the bad guys don’t start killing hostages. According to the drone, they’re not even trying to hide. There’s four on the roof, two at the doors, and two more at the front.” He pointed. “The rest are distributed through the town, looting for food, gathering the cars up. The cars are being either retrofitted into cargo transport or turned into technicals.”
As he spoke, he pushed some pictures forward. The LAJC had spent years stockpiling weaponry. Seeing their heavier guns attached to pintles on the backs of formerly civilian pickup trucks gave Simone a shiver. It was something she was used to seeing in some war-torn Middle East shithole. Not the United States.
“Sounds like our wanna-be Napoleon is going to try and start expanding his empire,” the FBI girl said.
“Yeah,” the ATF commander said, shaking his head. “The technicals are the thing that has me worried. Four of them look ready to roll. Also, there’s the immunity to bullets thing. We’re only going to learn if that...” Simone could see his face scrunch up. It looked like he had bitten into a lemon. She could almost feel him trying to say the rest of his sentence. But his entire body rebelled at saying the phrase ‘goblin’s magical enchantment.’ Instead, he continued after the pause with: “...if the special treatment works right about when the bad guys start massacring us without impunity.”
Simone shrugged. “Well, let's lead with the assumption they won’t,” she said. “Ares has limited power. Either he’s projecting from Purgatory, which has to be fucking expensive considering it’s in orbit around goddamned Pluto.” She thrust her hand up towards the roof of the tent. “Or he’s somehow gotten his ass to Earth and is running off whatever converts he has now. That means he’ll need to conserve energy.” She grinned. “The two biggest killers in a modern fight are explosives and bullets. Maybe they’re immune to those but not, say, gas or flash or batons.”
The FBI commander nodded slightly. “That’s in keeping with our normal tactics anyway, if snipers can’t or won’t work.”
The ATF commander stroked his mustache. “We’ve got a start of a plan...”
“I suggest we also hit them at night,” the FBI commander said. “They don’t have any NVG – at least, not according to the purchasing records we’ve dredged up. And even if they do, they’ll be Cold War antiques or civilian models. That’s another edge.”
Another twenty minutes of hashing out ideas – most of which came down to which teams to put where, where to deploy their vehicles, and how to get at the hostages as safely as possible – and Simone walked out of the tent with the FBI commander. The redhead was shaking her head slightly.
“This still feels like it’s going to be Waco all over again,” she said.
“At least there’s been a rain recently,” Simone said, shading her eyes as she looked up at the sky, which was still peppered with wispy clouds. “The buildings are still wet.”
But the name ‘Waco’ echoed in her head. That had been a class A clusterfuck. And Waco had, by comparison, been dirt simple. If this went wrong, there were nearly two thousand people crammed into a few school buildings, surrounded by lunatics with fully automatic rifles, who were all immune to bullets and more than willing to start massacring people if they thought it would please their new Sky Daddy. Simone shook her head.
At least all the civilians from other towns were being kept at a safe distance.
***
“How long did it take?” Sun asked, lowering his binoculars as evening dusted the sky in purples and gold. “Like, a month? A month and a half? And they’re already fucking it up.”
Coyo grunted. He was sitting with his back to a tree, trying to be as ‘bushy’ as he possibly could. The thick undergrowth that shrouded them felt all too thin compared to the high powered hunting rifles carried by the Dodekatheon worshipers on the roof of what had once been Blackberry’s high school. The men were dressed in rough hunter’s garb and military hand-me-downs which ended up making them look like people dressing up for a post-apocalyptic LARP. But their guns were definitely real.
“You know I can’t dodge bullets right, Sun?” Coyo hissed.
“Don’t worry. I can handle that,” Sun said, scowling. “But seriously. Fuck the Greeks. Fuck the Greeks. If I had known I’d ever have to deal with them again, I’d have stayed under that fucking mountain.” He paused. “Okay, maybe not.”
“If you’re going to say the pussy’s worth it...” Coyo muttered.
Sun scoffed. “Nah. That idiot monk would have gotten himself eaten at least ten times without me.” A fraction of a second later, he grinned. “But the pussy was sweeeeeet.”
“Shh!” Coyo lifted his hand. “Do you hear that?”
Sun frowned and stopped twirling his toothpick. Coyo stood and looked left. Then right.
“Sup?”
Coyo and Sun both had to clench their jaws to not scream out in shock. Both had seen a great many bizarre things in their long, varied lives. But neither of them had ever seen a blue haired elven woman, floating near the branch above their heads. She soared down with a faint woosh and landed before Coyo and Sun. She was lean and muscled. Her breasts were small and perky and clearly bra-less considering the way they bounced fetchingly as her feet touched the ground. She wore thick combat boots and form fitting jeans.
She also had a sword strapped to her back and a pistol holstered at her kidney.
Coyo leaped to divert disaster. He clapped his hand over Sun’s mouth and hissed: “She has a sword, dude!”
Sun shot him a look that said: What are you talking about, that makes her hotter!
The elf frowned, then grabbed both of them, slinging them over her shoulder. She leaped up into the air with a rush of air, branches slapping at Coyo’s head. The elf gritted her teeth as she flew up, making for the thickest, leafiest branches of a nearby tree, then set the two of them down. Sun whistled softly as she held up her hand for silence. Looking down, Coyo could see figures moving through the forest.
They were armed with hunting rifles and modified AR-15s. Their heads were covered with hoods and beat up goggles that cast greenish glows on their faces. Their bodies were strapped with bulletproof vests and covered in sticks and leaves, to make them look like slumping, shifting bushes. As they flowed past the trees, silent and intent, the elf sighed.
“And that’s why they should have taken me,” she said, shaking her head.
“Who are you?” Sun whispered.
“Who are you?” the elf shot back, glaring at Sun. “Also, are you morbidly obese or something?” She scowled. “I nearly dropped you.”
Sun grinned, then plucked his toothpick from behind his ear. He started to twirl it – and as he twirled it, it lengthened. The tooth pick swelled to chopstick size, then baton size, then staff sized. The two edges were capped with golden rings, covered with Chinese lettering. The entire staff was made of a kind of iron which drank in light like the event horizon of a black hole, and the tree creaked in alarming ways as he swung it about. Finished, Sun set the staff down on the edge of his foot, rather than risking the weight on the branch.
“The name’s Sun Wukong, Miss Arwen.” Sun grinned. “This poor hangdog fellow is Coyote.”
He smirked. “We’re kind of gods. No biggie, though.”