Chapter 19
An hour later, I was in the submerged wet dock with a dozen of the best fighters in the faction. Slicer, the smaller of Ana’s two combat golems was hidden in the shadowy recesses in the ceiling ready to pounce at the first sign of betrayal.
A medium-sized splinter vessel popped through the pressurised and shielded docking portal and came to rest at the side of the dock. The protective field dropped from around the splinter pod and General Howson along with two other soldiers calmly exited the vehicle that rocked gently from the motion of their debarkation.
Howson looked to be in his sixties with a typical military buzzcut hairstyle and full uniform. From what Regina could tell me, Howson was not National Guard, but a semi-retired lifelong Army man. It was the semi-retirement part that meant he hadn’t been in Virginia or any of the other major armed forces bases. He hadn’t been discharged but at the same time didn’t have an assignment. It meant he had survived when much of the other military brass had not for various reasons post-integration.
“General Howson, welcome aboard Marena’s Mercy.”
He nodded in response. “Captain Carter.”
I gestured behind me to a table that had been laid out in the docking bay which had a pitcher of water and some glasses. “Take a seat, and you can tell me what I can do for you.”
A flash of irritation crossed the stern man’s features. Likely insulted that I would treat with him in a docking bay and not a proper meeting facility. I certainly had those but felt little desire to expose any more of my ship than was strictly necessary. Preternatural Instinct might have alerted to me an opportunity, but Ana was correct. These people had been the enemy for the better part of the last year and couldn’t be trusted fully.
The General sat at one end with me at the other. His two soldiers assumed positions on either side of his chair and did not sit down even though extra spaces were available.
Unlike the general, his guards did not wear formal US military uniforms but the same kind of armour the rest of us were equipped with. They did have three chevrons painted in bright yellow on the shoulder plates to denote their rank.
After pouring myself a glass of water and taking a sip, I urged Howson to make his pitch. “Go on.”
“Loaded on the ships I’ve brought with me are close to sixty-thousand well-equipped and levelled Wisconsin soldiers. I am their commanding officer and hereby wish to formally surrender them and me to your forces. They are to be treated as prisoners of war under the articles of the Geneva Convention.”
I toyed with my glass for a moment before answering him. “There is no more United Nations, General Howson, and that means no more Geneva Conventions.”
“That might be the case out there, Carter, but on Earth, we are all citizens of this planet, and the standards of those conventions still apply. Without such a guarantee, there can be no surrender. I’ve been fully apprised of your capabilities and…proclivities. I came here to avoid a fight between us, but I won’t serve up my men as sheep for the slaughter. We are prepared to fight if necessary and make you pay in the blood of your people for the folly.”
This had not started well and although a part of me really wanted to re-educate the tightly wound man, it would be needlessly antagonistic. The point of bringing him aboard and not just sinking the ships from the deep was to hear the man out. Plus, the dropped comment about well-equipped soldiers was supposed to give me cause for concern. It didn’t, but I think it was supposed to.
Howson might be desperate to try negotiating with me, but old-school military men could also be set on their ways. Not to mention ruled by pride.
“Fine, I’m not actually familiar with what the conventions say but I get the gist. No mistreatment, arbitrary executions, that sort of thing. I can assure you of that much. Will even take a Framework oath to that effect.”
A light squeak of displeasure came from the rafters where Slicer was concealed, whereby Anastasia was undoubtedly watching intently. She’d probably been looking forward to walking a few of them into her dungeon and powering up.
“Provided they haven’t committed any morally reprehensible crimes, that is. I’m not offering a strings-free amnesty. This isn’t a game of Monopoly, there are no get-out-of-jail-free cards. Scum and war criminals will feed the dungeon, one way or the other.”
Howson nodded in understanding, and I felt Ana’s discontent alleviated a little with the addendum.
“That is acceptable,” Howson confirmed. “But you won’t find any criminals in the companies I’ve brought with me. We purged our ranks of that sort before setting out.”
That was an interesting statement and shed a bit of light on what might be happening. But I needed to know more and now was the best opportunity to get pump him for some more. Post oath-swearing he might clam up and refuse to cooperate once he’d got what he wanted.
“We aren’t done quite yet, General. What prompted this sudden desire to switch sides?”
The older man’s face grew ruddy with anger and his fist slammed on the table and knocked over one of the empty glasses. “We are not switching sides. We remain loyal to the people of Wisconsin.”
I deftly caught the glass when it rolled off the side of the table and placed it back in the centre calmly, unruffled by his outburst. “Understood, but that doesn’t enlighten me as to your motives. You want me to accept the surrender of sixty-thousand mouths that I will need to feed, clothe, house, and guard. You must admit it does seem a little bit…off. What exactly are you running from General Howson?”
Howson looked like he’d bitten into a lemon when I phrased my query as running. My diplomacy skills were definitely rusty, I’d grown used to using threats and ultimatums.
“Hudson Reed,” he answered when he managed to untwist his lips. “Or whatever entity is controlling the giant now. It was Hudson who ordered this armada to set sail with no hope of success at the end. Only death. Since his uncle disappeared, he has systematically removed the old advisors and replaced them with the worst of the worst. He even sent an opportunist scumbag called Deeks to kill me, despite the loyalty I’d demonstrated. No more. That was the last straw and proved without a shadow of a doubt that Hudson is no Reed. Not anymore.”
This was further confirmation that what Willy Reed had inferred was indeed true. The fragment had taken control of his nephew. I’d been 99% sure that was the case, but it never hurt to add a little more certainty.
“Why not overthrow him then? Why set out on a fool’s mission and then surrender to me.”
“Damned Framework oaths!” Howson spat angrily. “I still couldn’t actively disobey Hudson’s orders as the recognised Governor. The office I’d sworn my loyalty to. He commanded us to set out for Stormblade Harbour and so we have. The only wiggle room I have is that he didn’t dictate how the campaign should be executed or forbid surrender when the cause seems hopeless.”
This was something else I was intimately familiar with. Defiance could always be enacted in the details. Adhering to the letter and not the spirit of the oath. If this was a bluff, it was an expertly crafted one. Even without the prompting of my skill, I would be tempted to believe the general.
“And I can only do that much because of the information we extracted. Deeks’ attempt on my life failed obviously. The fool was not half as subtle or circumspect as he believed and we were ready, though the traitorous bastard managed to escape.
“My men captured one of his kill squad alive. The coward talked, virtually without prompting. Hudson spends his days feeding citizens to the dungeon for some reason. It’s sickening. They’ve seen him hooked up to the controls as if he were mainlining a drug from the experience. He is half out of his mind at times, that’s when he mutters and reveals that some kind of impostor has made a puppet of the new Governor.”
It felt like the blood drained from my face and my stomach dropped as the words left Howson’s mouth.
“He’s doing what?”
“Pardon?”
“The bit about the dungeon. Tell me more about what Hudson is doing in the dungeon?”
“He sits inside a dungeon with a bad reputation all day. The scum he has empowered rounds up citizens on trumped-up charges and forces them to enter the dungeon without adequate gear. According to Deeks’ subordinate, they have been feeding hundreds, maybe thousands, by now, of people to it. None of them have survived that we’ve heard. What he hopes to ga…”
Howson was interrupted as it was my turn to slam a fist into the table in frustration.
This was bad, very bad, and it had been going on for over a week already.
I should have foreseen this possibility. Instead of using his elevated position to travel to every corrupted dungeon and draining it of energy within the Wisconsin faction’s territory, the fragment had set up shop inside a conveniently placed corrupted core and was feeding it all the souls needed to fuel the creation of a new God-body for Ashli. The fragment simply sat back and absorbed all that poisoned soul energy.
We could no longer sit back and hope to starve the bastard out. If we delay any longer, everything could be over before the end of the week.
“Your surrender is accepted, General. Get back to your ship and tell them to slow down and separate. I want a good half mile between each ship. We need to prepare somewhere for your troops to be processed and then bring the transports in one at a time. Be warned, any hint of funny business and we won’t hesitate to sink every last ship…The fate of the world depends on this.”
The last sentence was muttered too low to be heard by anyone except for Ana.
Howson wouldn’t understand the reference and I didn’t want him thinking he had some leverage over me.
“The oath…” Howson reminded me with a perplexed expression. Understandable, given the sudden shift in my mood.
“Yes, you’ll get the guarantees you need.”
***
Texas, ruins of Fort Worth
“Pull back! Fallback you mangy laggards!” Brock bellowed over the cries and screams of combat. Hundreds of mercenaries had followed the initial ‘advice’ to retreat and flowed past Captain Deathstare’s position, heading for their respective ships. All except for the one company that Brock had just screamed at.
“Lyra, what are those idiots doing?” he barked to his side in a quieter voice. Although quieter was something of a relative term in the heated crucible of warfare.
“Gondal has always been an ornery bastard,” the halfling woman answered while she reloaded a crossbow that any neutral observer would consider far too big for her. Lyra hauled back the string with ease and practised efficiency and slotted in a special bolt with a bulbous end packed with explosives. “He’s tired of spending hours digging trenches and abandoning them to the Lamers without more of a fight.”
“That’s the blasted plan. Stubborn idiot.”
Lyra raised the heavy crossbow and angled it upwards before squeezing the trigger and sending the awkward bolt lofting into the air. “Takes one to know one,” she muttered.
The comment drew one of the infamous stares from Brock but before he could retort a squadron of gleaming white and gold Lamer chariots trundled into view travelling at incredible speeds intent on crashing through their defensive line. Lyra’s bolt fell from the heavens ahead of the incoming chariots and an altitude trigger was tripped and the bulbous end split apart and dispersed the payload in front of the approaching enemy.
The sequence of explosions didn’t harm the chariots, but it hadn’t been meant to. Instead, it tore up the terrain ahead of them and gouged ruddy great holes out of the earth. The chariots, travelling at extreme velocity, didn’t have the time to slow appreciably or redirect their noses. The ruts they ran into were deep and numerous enough that many of them were flipped end-over-end or sent careening onto their sides.
Not all of them, though. Several of the chariots were bumped and clattered but passed beyond the disruption and kept going.
“I don’t have another of those babies,” Lyra warned Brock. “They’re on their own now.”This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
He smiled wide as a wing-shaped shadow flitted over his head. “Not quite.”
Raven descended from the skies like a rocket and barrelled into the side of one of the chariots that had kept coming, using her momentum and an ability to bash the eagle-shaped war wagon into the side of one of its fellows and derail the pair. Simultaneously, the angry warrior-woman produced a spear and lodged it into the wheel of a third surviving chariot and brought that one down too. That left only two of the armoured vehicles still operational and that was a manageable fight for Gondal and the lads still in the trenches.
“I do like a client that gets her hands dirty,” Brock said as Raven tore open the door to one of the damaged chariots and started to stab the pilot within. He nudged Lyra, who had hopped up onto the wreckage of a car to be level with him, with his elbow.
“We’re still in full retreat, you drooling lump of an idiot. Another one. What’s there to be so happy about?
“It’s a defeat, not a disaster. We knew going in that we would be outmatched. We’ve hurt them today, that’s as good as we could have hoped for. To this point, we’ve just been killing the poor conscripted bastards. Today we got a few of the Lamers themselves. We’re finally bleeding them.”
“There’s nobody in those chariots except for the pilots, and they ain’t particularly good ones. Experienced charioteers would have anticipated rough terrain,” Lyra pointed out. “If we bled them, it’s no more than a pinprick.”
“You’ve got to start somewhere. Come on, let’s make for the Nasty Bitch. Gondal has finally got the message.”
The mercenary company that had stubbornly remained in their trenches had poured out to face off against the two isolated chariots. Once they’d been disabled and the pilots slain, they had not returned to the earthworks but were running to where their ship waited for them.
Raven soared above watching everything. Frustrated at the retreat she also concluded the same as Captain Deathstare. Glastos’ strategy was finally bearing fruit. The constant raiding, fortification feints, and other needling tactics had drawn out the true enemy for the first time.
Rile them up and piss them off, the young mercenary advised. That’s when they’ll overcommit and make mistakes. Patience and aggravation in equal measure.
Tomorrow would be another day, and they would launch another lightning strike from another direction. Neverending, never tiring, never ceasing, the relentless pursuit of justice would not be denied.
Chapter 20
“Augustus Snook is dead.”
The pronouncement came from Claudia as she entered the Command Hub. It was the first thing she said, presaging even a greeting. She came up to me after and kissed me on the cheek before taking a seat amongst the council of my most trusted advisers.
“Very dramatic,” Fang Mei teased lightly.
“You all looked so serious; I felt we needed to get things started with some good news for once. The zombified plants worked like a charm, they killed him and his top men at about the same time the shield came down here. What remains of the Chicago host has already started to disintegrate without his Kingpin control to keep everyone in line. They are either deserting or turning on one another in an effort to be the next gang chief.”
Anastasia beamed with pride at the effectiveness of her ability to defuse the situation. This was good news, but in the grand scheme of things what had been left of the rabble from Chicago was pretty far down on the list of priorities.
“But there is a significant number of them still within our borders, yes?” Doyle pressed.
Claudia nodded and her smile faded a little to admit it. “Unfortunately, that is correct. While their fragmenting nixes the threat to our major population centre, it will be more difficult to keep track of where the smaller groups have dispersed to. Warnings have been sent to all the community leaders in Michigan to keep a watchful eye on their borders lest opportunists seek to strike. This will likely be an irritation for the foreseeable future.”
“There is nothing we can do about that right now,” I point out firmly. “The smaller settlements are basically on their own until the current crisis is resolved. Those with combat classes who have not joined our military will have to step up.” The standing garrisons in most of the outlying settlements were already in the process of being stripped bare for the coming fight against the fragment. “What news of our people sailing up the East Coast.”
Susan clicked on the hub table and brought up a meteorological map covering Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. “The hurricane has abated somewhat and shifted northwards closer to the border between Quebec and Newfoundland. It’s opened a window of opportunity, and the grounded ships have set sail. If the storm switches direction again, they will have to find a port for shelter. Assuming that doesn’t happen or something else unforeseen, the best-case scenario is forty-eight hours before the ships reach Lake Michigan.”
Two days.
Two days was too long to wait. According to Howson, the fragment had been steadily feeding people to a corrupted dungeon non-stop for more than a week. Every hour that passed might be the one where it reached its goal. We couldn’t wait two more days. We had to be on the move as soon as possible. Plan B was looking more likely at this juncture.
Susan wasn’t quite finished. “Work is underway fixing up the least damaged mercenary vessels, but the bastards installed lockout protocols on the controls. Even with Nazz’s assistance, it will take at least a week to crack.”
<That’s standard operating procedure. You’ve got similar fail safes on your ships.>
Crynn nodded along. “If we couldn’t capture a vessel before they initiated the lockdown, we would have to tow them to the temporary harbour for cracking later.”
I reached forward and tapped the hub to shift the map to one of Wisconsin centred on the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge. “The lack of usable ships isn’t the problem. We could speed up emptying the Wisconsin transport vessels and use those if push came to shove. It’s the soldiers on the ships who are needed to help tackle the bigger problem which is the dungeon’s location. Whether by intention or not, the dungeon that the fragment picked to hole up in is forty miles from the shoreline. And there aren’t any connecting rivers that we can navigate through. Nothing that wouldn’t be more effort than its worth.”
“We’re facing a lengthy trip overland through hostile territory and for that, we need serious firepower. The depletion of the Wisconsin army is helpful, but that won’t help against the mobs roaming the countryside, if anything it means there will be more of the damn things to get in the way.
“Our best people have just been through one hell of a fight, and we’ve lost a lot of veterans. Good people. There are many more who ought to be in recovery for the next few weeks and won’t get that time because we need to march, and I can’t afford to leave them behind to recover. This is rapidly becoming a perfect storm of trouble.”
LT leaned over the hub table and jabbed his finger at a large body of water twenty miles north of the refuge. “How about here, Lake Winnebago? We can land at Fond du Lac on the southern edge of the lake, cut out half the distance. We could even follow route 41 south half the way, the Wisconsin lot has probably cleared it for their own transportation needs.”
“I considered it, but the problem is that to get to the lake we need to go through Green Bay first. General Howson had confirmed that Reed fortified the city up the wazoo in preparation for a naval assault by us. Marena’s Mercy could break through, for sure, but Storm Raider is in no condition to take that kind of punishment again. And the Wisconsin transport vessels we’ve just come into wouldn’t survive the trip.”
“Okay, how about we leave the others behind and use it to land a surgical strike force?”
“The fragment is not to be underestimated and has gathered considerable strength to defend itself. Willy Reed has done an admirable job of building his faction up and Howson’s pseudo-defection only included a fifth of their available troops. The fragment has twice as many arrayed around the refuge. We will need more than one ship’s worth of fighters, even if they are the best the Shattered Storm has to offer.”
“What about the gate you stole? Couldn’t we use the strike team to get close and then establish the gate to bring the rest through?”
This suggestion came from Susan and there were a few head nods from the others gathered around.
On the face of things, that did sound like a plausible idea. However, there were a few details which made it very risky that I didn’t want to get into at this time.
Primarily, the Dread Scourge.
Quixbix hadn’t been able to confirm anything yet, but it was hard to believe that Titus hadn’t sent a force to Earth. Floating out in the plexus waiting to make planetfall the moment he sensed the fragment had been defeated. He knew who I represented, who my backer was.
Well, he knew about the Shattered Goddess. Whether he had an inkling about the sorcerer was another question entirely and not one I would likely get an answer to in the near future, if ever.
Regardless, the last thing we needed was Scourge attack vessels pouring through a gate behind us after the conclusion of a tough campaign against the fragment.
However, there were a few other reasons that made it impractical. “I’ve had to rule that one out. Establishing the gate in enemy territory would be time-consuming and too easy for the fragment to stymie. There is too much that could go wrong to risk it, but I have a related idea. We’ll use Pandaemonium instead.”
I turned to Piper, the young dryad. It had been difficult to pry her away from Jackson’s bedside, but after him, she had the most knowledge of the mapped-out area beneath the surface. Her presence at the summit was necessary. “What’s the closest waypoint we’ve already secured? One we could use as a staging area today.”
The short young woman leaned over the table and examined the map, pursed her lips and pointed to a spot on the edge of Lake Michigan equidistant between Green Bay and Manitowoc. There wasn’t anything there. Which made it a viable candidate for a secret incursion location. The major problem is that it was at least eighty miles away from our ultimate destination, double the distance than if we just rocked up to the closest coastal point to the dungeon. “I’m sorry, by design, we’ve not been clearing the Pandaemonium tunnels that we suspect link to the Wisconsin mainland. Not until we were ready to go after them. We didn’t want to make it easy for them to move around, should they discover any of the waypoint’s entries for themselves.”
It was much as I expected and why nobody else had suggested using the subterranean network earlier.
“But the distances between waypoints in Pandaemonium are truncated, correct?” Crynn pressed, her interest growing. Where she came from, any discovered waypoints were sealed up and ignored. She’d found it most fascinating that we had ventured down into the network.
“Theoretically,” Piper answered. “The issue is that Pandaemonium is a warren. There will be a short path, one that will transform eighty miles into three or four, but you have to find it amongst the other interconnecting tunnels, habitats, and dead ends. And that’s assuming there is even a waypoint near enough to this refuge to make it worth your while.”
“There is,” I told the table with confidence.
“How can you be so sure?” Fang Mei asked. “I’ve reviewed the maps Jackson has produced and apart from remoteness, there appears to be no rhyme nor reason to their placement.”
I shared a look with Claudia who had taken a seat next to me on the left. One with the Ship, my fifth-tier dungeon corsair ability had manifested in unusual ways with her Princess of Pandaemonium class.
Details on the differences were few and far between. I was the only Dual Dungeon Corsair Lord in existence and Claudia the only Princess of Pandaemonium. My character sheet only listed how the ability worked with Anastasia and Marena’s Mercy. How it interacted with my second bonded dungeon that was not a ship had been a bit of a learning curve, one that had been so steep little progress had been made until recently.
The simplest element was that Claudia no longer needed to be present to use a dungeon shard and seize control of a waypoint, thus bringing it into her network of control. I could do that for her now. That was a logical deduction based on the extra influence I received over ship functions and something we had figured out quickly.
Further discoveries had eluded us. That was until Preternatural Insight seemingly reactivated and cast off its dormancy.
The first thing I did after learning about what the fragment had been up to was activate my dungeon sense. It was something I’d not done for a while. It hadn’t been needed. The first thing I noticed was that the range had expanded greatly. At level one, the range had been a hundred miles, with each level the range had grown by two more miles and gave me an effective range of about 170. And because of where we’d met Howson, we didn’t have to sail far to put the refuge in range.
Not that getting closer had been necessary. The moment I accessed the sense ability, Preternatural Insight pinged. Claudia’s space-warping aspect had boosted the sense’s range, albeit in a somewhat eclectic manner. It was now nearer one thousand miles, but it did have a few blind spots in that circle if there weren’t any waypoints nearby to travel through.
New York City was one such blind zone.
More importantly, the sense didn’t just locate dungeons anymore, but waypoints as well. Which is why I knew there was a waypoint in the marsh just south of the refuge and within two miles of the dungeon. Better yet the waypoint exit was between the dungeon and the town of Horicon which is where most of the fragment’s forces were stationed. We’d be able to pour out inside the enemies encircled territory.
“Quixbix.”
<On it.>
With my spyglass inserted into the Command hub, the imp could directly feed the data I’d gathered via my ability onto the map.
The network of waypoints flickered into life as yellow dots on the display. After a quick explanation as to how I got the information, a plan started to form.
“There is still an issue,” Piper pointed out. “We might know where the waypoint is on the surface, but unless you have another trick up your sleeve, that doesn’t get us much closer to finding it from the Pandaemonium side. We already knew what direction it should be in, but without a map of that part of the network we are still looking at days if not weeks of search and destroy reconnaissance.”
Claudia answered her. “If Torin can get in from the surface and claim the waypoint with a shard, then I will know the most direct route through the tunnels. Not that it matters, once the shard is in place, I can create a direct link between two waypoints, and the troops can march through.”
“Doesn’t that put us solidly back at square one, though,” Trisha exclaimed in exasperation. “We can’t get to the waypoint without an army and if we send the army, then we don’t need the waypoint.”
“Only if I go over land,” I pointed out.
“What other option is there?”
“Aerially.”
With the word spoken all eyes swivelled to Fang Mei. Our resident flyer. Or she would be. Self-consciously her proto-leathery wings extended from the slots in her shoulder blades and flapped a couple of times. It was a cute nervous habit of hers. “I know most of the flight mechanics are magically based in the Darkwyrlds, but my wings are still too underdeveloped. I can just about manage a glide. There is no way I could carry Torin that kind of distance, not by tomorrow.”
Doyle cut in. “Perhaps there is a potion that can enhance the wing’s growth rate?”
Susan shook her head, but the fairy, Quinn, answered. “Not on Earth, well, nothing that wouldn’t run the risk of causing serious harm to Fang Mei in the process.”
“Fang Mei isn’t the only winged individual we know of. And this one’s wings are fully developed, and she has already demonstrated the ability to fly great distances in short timeframes and is strong enough to carry another person.”
Trisha’s eyes met mine. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“Raven will never do it.”
“Weren’t you just telling me the other day that the two of you bonded in Dallas? Kind of.”
“She flew me a few hundred feet, not halfway across a state. And that was only out of some sense of obligation. Raven had promised to ensure my safety before everything went to shit with her Dad.”
“But you have her contact details, though.”
“Which she rarely answers.”
“Rarely, not never.”
“Torin, she hates you.”
“And that’s why she’ll do it. Dropping me alone in the middle of enemy territory with no way of escape if everything goes wrong. How better to ensure the demise of the frenemy she can’t stop thinking lusty thoughts about.”
“I’m not sure that’s the case. The lust part, that is. The hate that wafts off her aura when you’re around feels very real. But you’re probably right, leaving you alone surrounded by enemies might appeal to her.” Trisha had already switched from objecting to calculating. “She’s embroiled in a guerilla campaign against the Lamers, it will take more than a chance to soothe personal animosity to pry her loose. That crusade is too important to her.”
“I figured as much. You can promise her assistance with that fight…after the fragment’s dealt with. The Lamers will be a problem for everybody, and it just so happens I have a plan on how to deal with that anyway.”
“Is it a stupid and crazy plan?” Anastasia piped up.
“Bloody Nora, why would you say that?”
“All your plans are stupid and crazy.”
I looked around the table for some support and didn’t get any. “Not all of them,” I grumbled.
“Just the ones you don’t tell us about,” Claudia chuckled, took my hand and squeezed fondly.
That was a good point to call an end to the meeting. Troops had to be readied and moved to the staging point. If all went well, we’d be marching to war again with the sunrise.