88 The Battle

Inside the little green box, a spring-loaded hammer slammed down upon a small crystal. That crystal protested the abuse by releasing a sharp pulse of electricity that was caught and sent screaming down a wire. That pulse didn't go very far, traveling less than fifty meters before slamming into the base of an electrical blasting cap. The cap detonated, setting off the three strands of det-cord wrapped around it. Traveling at a rate of over seven thousand meters per second, three bright little balls of purest chemical energy flashed down the cords, going their separate ways to dive into several heavy steel drums buried just beneath my opponents' feet where another set of blasting caps awaited them. They themselves detonated, touching-off the M112 blocks of C4 they were embedded in, and in turn those C4 boosters set-off the main contents of the drums, a thick slurry of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel.

When the ANFO went, the world ended.

The shock wave would have imploded the trench, burying me alive, if it hadn't been for all the shoring Deebs and Fields had braced the sides with. As it was, I felt like a ping-pong ball in a paint mixer as I was slammed mercilessly into the walls of the trench by the convulsing earth while the sky above me flashed a dazzling blue-white.

Silence, save for a ringing din within my badly abused ears. Something warm was dripping off my chin; I wiped at it dazedly, discovered it to be blood streaming from my nose. I wasted several more stunned seconds staring at the cracks that now zigzagged through the trench's surrounding timbers, then I was scrambling out of there just as quickly as I could.

When I emerged from the battered foxhole, what greeted me was devastation. What had once been a modest mountainside clearing was now a war zone. A triad of broad, shallow craters now scarred the clearing's center, the surrounding soil stripped away to bare rock. Many of the trees surrounding the clearing were down, snapped off at the base, their shattered trunks all lying pointed away from the epicenter of the blast.

As for my opponents, they weren't in much better shape. Fully two-thirds lay still on the ground, either knocked cold by the triple concussion or two badly injured to move. Some, I suspected from the amount of dark red blood splashed about the clearing, would never move again. That left the remainder, many of whom were already beginning to slowly wobble their way back to their feet, blinking their eyes dazedly as they fought to clear their ringing heads.

Not bad for a first-strike; indeed, if the charges had been topped with containers of CS the way Fields had wanted, this fight would have been over already. But no; we still needed to prove a few things to these knot-heads. Stifling an urge to cough on air laden with dust and poisonous fumes, I planted my fists on my hips and shouted: "How'd you like that, folks? You want to fight the humans, you'd better get used to it! That, and things far worse!" I paused for a second, feeling my lips skinning back from my teeth in a carnivore's grin as I felt a wave of almost tangible rage washing over me. "Enjoyed it, did you? Well, then you'll love Round Two! That is, of course, assuming you slugs can catch me!"

Scarcely had the last word left my mouth I was shifting, more swiftly than I had ever done before. The instant my forepaws thumped to the ground I was spinning, my wings snapping open as I flung myself into the air, clawing for both speed and altitude. Behind me, bellows of utter fury burst from perhaps twenty draconic throats as the remainder gave chase.

The moment I cleared the trees I swerved to the right, cutting across and down the mountain's face, building speed. Risking a glance back, I saw the six least-damaged of my foes right behind me in hot pursuit. Too close. I cursed quietly, but my team had foreseen this possibility. I swerved right again, angling through a sharp draw in the ridgeline's flank. Trees, snow, and solid rock rose up to either side of me, and I could almost feel the hot breath of my pursuers on the back of my neck as I arrowed up the narrow passage, my eyes searching. . . .

There! The instant I saw the little strip of bright orange tape dangling from a tree branch I was diving for the bottom of the draw, leveling-out only at the last moment and continuing up the passage with the trees' topmost branches painting green streaks down my belly. Behind me, I heard my pursuers bellow with joy at my foolish maneuver as they bent their wings to dive down upon me.

Those shouts of triumph abruptly turned into screams of horror as the three spans of heavy steel cable my people had labored to string across the chasm suddenly loomed out of the darkness, far too close to dodge. There were sounds behind me then, sounds of steel wire slicing through both flesh and bone, then howls of agony and despair as my pursuers fell, wings broken, tumbling helplessly into the gorge to smash into the pitiless rocks that awaited below.

Now. The nearest of my pursuers eliminated, I pulled up out of the chasm, straining for altitude while my form swelled to its maximum size. A talon reached down to tap at my clothes-hamper pattern, now slightly modified, and the little squiggle flared like a tiny star. Ahead of me, a hole in the very fabric of the universe opened, its perfectly circular edges glowing blue-black in the evening sky, its center darker than any night.

I flew into the hole, my wings cringing inward to avoid the mathematically sharp edges . . . then less than a second later flew right back out at exactly the same speed, but now pointed back the way I came. Deebs' Rube Goldberg-like contraption was now draped across my form, its steel framework trailing icy vapor from its hellishly cold storage site. All about the frame, heavy-duty magnets (scavenged from speaker cabinets) grabbed onto my steely scales, while a makeshift visor (the windshield of our much-abused rental truck) settled down across my eyes. A final magnet clanked into place, closing a circuit, and the bandoliers of lead-acid gel-cells slung Pancho Villa-style across my chest grew warm as they poured power into the system.

The AN/APR-39 bolted and duct-taped to the lower-left quadrant of my visor bleeped to life, began to boot itself. Shortly thereafter it was showing me a gaggle of short, thin lines straggling toward me from the forward edge of the screen. I felt my fangs baring themselves in a savage grin. As we'd hoped, the fools had strung themselves out, the more injured of my opponents falling behind as the healthier pulled ahead in their pursuit of me, and were using Power to thrust themselves along in an effort to catch up.

Perfect. Perfect! I fumbled for a device that dangled from my chest harness by a short cable. I juggled the item, once a plastic storage tank of some sort, until my metallic talons came in contact with the correct group of metal plates bolted onto the tank's surface. Sparks flew, and somewhere back in the frame a hydraulic pump began to whine as the GAU-8 AVENGER slung under my right wing hissed to life, its drum quickly blurring up to full speed.

The first few of the lines on the APR were closing on the center of the device's little screen; I looked up from it to see two elder dragons closing fast, their tattered wings rattling and booming as they strained to reach me. I tilted my own wings downward, diving to meet them, rowing hard to add still more speed as my grip shifted on my makeshift joystick, a talon hovering over a certain contact plate, then coming down on it.

A Warthog driver once likened the sound of a GAU-8 firing to a giant chain-saw chewing through steel. He wasn't far from the mark. I was almost deafened as the front end of the Gatling gun vanished within a ball of white-hot flame. Recoil slammed against me, and only the continued, frantic flapping of my wings kept the weapon from swatting me out of the sky. From the forward edge of the muzzle blast a solid red line of tracers emerged, streaming toward my adversaries. Fighting for control, I swung my body until that line intersected my oncoming foes, and their snarls of defiance became screams of pain as manhole-sized sections of both scales and wing skin began to vanish in yellow-white flashes of light.

Seconds later, their power of flight destroyed, the two elders tumbled howling out of the sky as my eye dipped once again to the APR-39, looking for my next set of targets. There. I swung to the left slightly, accelerated to meet a group of three.

It was all-too easy. Scattered by their injuries and their own unthinking rage, the elders fell before me in ones, twos, and threes, their wings devoured by a sleet of 30mm HE shells that shredded the delicate vanes but did not penetrate their bodies deeply enough to reach anything vital. Within minutes I was watching as the last of my opponents, a green-black dragoness so battered it was a wonder she had managed to get aloft in the first place, careen face-first into a stand of mountain pine, the thick trunks snapping like toothpicks under her helplessly skidding bulk. I felt a tiny touch of pity then, but more of disgust. You fools; you actually wished to do battle with the humans?

Then the APR-39 screamed. My eye darted to it, to see a glaring yellow line and a frantically flashing warning light. Instantly I threw myself to the left, not-quite fast enough as a huge bolt of blue-green energy caromed off my shields to scar the ice and stone below in a thunderous explosion. Pain surged through me, feedback from my badly-abused shields. I blinked, looked at the APR again, then peered upward. High above me, his dark green scales hard to see against the night, soared the one dragon who had not fallen into my trap, who had actually paused to think before attacking, and who now held the high ground against me.

Ksstha.

I twisted my wings upward, labored to bring the Gatling's long barrels to bear on my high-flying adversary. The ancient warrior was readying another one of those bolts, a nimbus of pure Power gathering about his forepaws as I finally managed to lift my weapon high enough and touched the contact. The GAU-8 began to fire, but then abruptly went silent.

Empty.

Cursing my wastefulness, I quickly swung away as the APR-39 screamed again and the elder's bolt came slamming down, narrowly missing me to turn a grove of snow-covered evergreens into an ocean of furious flame. I dove, picking some speed back up. Ksstha pursued, craftily conserving his altitude as he began to prepare yet another bolt, evidently planning to stand off and pound me to pieces at his leisure. I gave a snort of bitter humor as I realized the irony of the situation.

But I still had a card left to play. I shifted my grip, and the Gatling went dead as power was removed from it and diverted to the device under my other wing. That device seemed to twitch as current flowed into it, and a dull, confused-sounding drone filled my ears. A small box clamped to the right side of my visor came to life, a small LED on its side glowing bright red.

I turned hard, began to climb, to lift my snout upward until the device was no longer masked by my wing. At the same time I started to line-up Ksstha's dark silhouette with a small set of crosshairs painted in white on my visor just in front of my right eye. "Hey, Ksstha!" I bellowed, that black joy soaring within me .

It was hard to maintain this nose-up attitude; already my airspeed was dropping, making me a sitting-duck for the ancient warrior's next bolt. I managed to get the crosshairs settled on Ksstha, and I knew that little box on my visor was now painting a tiny dot of infrared laser light on my adversary's breast. That tone in my ears changed then, from a puzzled buzz to a squeal of electronic glee as the little LED shifted from red to green.

"I got something for you!"

My talon came down on another contact, and the AGM-114A HELLFIRE came off its launch rail with a thunderous roar. Trailing a long, thin column of white flame, the missile clawed its way up into the sky, its lethal nose centering itself on that distant dot of laser light.

At almost that same moment, Ksstha hurled another bolt. I watched the amorphous blob of blue-green energy come; no-way I could dodge this time, not without breaking weapons lock and losing the missile. I set my teeth, then fed as much Power as I had left into my shields. It turned into a game of nerves, each of us watching an engine of destruction coming right at our face, each of us waiting for the other to blink. In the end, neither of us did.

Ksstha's bolt hit, and it hurt like hell. The blue-green plasma splashed across my shields, and I grunted from the impact as the raw energy clawed at them, working its way through at several points to lash across my wings and back, leaving jagged bands of black char in its wake. Through it all I held that attitude, feeling the first buffetings of an imminent stall, held that crosshair on Ksstha's distant form, though I did it with eyes streaming with tears of pain, guiding the missile in, guiding it. . . .

Impact.

The ATGM was designed to turn main battle tanks into flaming masses of scrap metal. It would have reduced Ksstha to a thin red mist, if both myself and a thoroughly pissed-off Deebs hadn't removed most of the weapon's warhead. But there was still the missile's frame, remaining propellant, and sheer velocity for the ancient warrior to contend with. Seconds before I pitched down into a complete stall, I saw Ksstha disappear within a huge flash of yellow, orange, and white light. Artificial thunder rolled through the sky, and as I began to fall I saw the elder dragon's limp form, torn and smoking, come tumbling out of the fireball.

I lost sight of him then, as I had to fight to arrest my own plunge toward the ground. I yanked my wings down, tilting them forward. For several long seconds my fall actually accelerated, then the wind began to flow smoothly across my vanes once again. Banking to avoid the mountain's rocky flank, I caught a fading thermal, gained altitude, turned back toward the clearing while I fumbled with my equipment. Carefully I switched the GAU-8's jerry-rigged feed chute from the empty, yellow-colored ammo drum slung on one side of my harness to the black-painted drum opposite it.

I'd worried that the elders that I'd grounded with my opening strike would have gathered their wits by now; gathered them, sorted themselves out, and would have a united front ready and waiting for me. I'd worried needlessly, for when I arrived back at the clearing it was still howling chaos there. Thinking like a human again. . . . I felt my lips curling back from my fangs, part savage anticipation, part something else, and dove. Below me, the heads of the elders that were capable of it snapped upward at my thunderous bellow, as my talons once again closed the circuit and the huge Gatling gun began its own snarl.

The PGU-14/B DU projectiles that were in that second drum could rip through the armor of a Soviet T-72 like bullets through butter. What the little tank-busters would do to a dragon did not bear thinking about. My first burst dug a narrow trench at the elders' feet, scarcely wide enough to stick a talon into. Not very impressive, not until the path of that instant trench intersected a large outcropping of granite and the rock promptly dissolved into a cloud of dust and flying stone splinters. The elders flinched away, then flinched again at my second bellow.

"Yield!"

I swung around, made another pass. This time the deadly little trench passed right through their midst, and my remaining opponents frantically leaped, limped, or crawled out of its way.

"Yield!" I thundered relentlessly, coming around for yet another pass. Before my talon could once again close the contact, however, the elders decided they'd had enough. First in ones and twos, then in groups, my opponents began to drop into postures of submission. Soon all who could were kneeling before me.

A gamut of emotions went through me as I circled, staring down at the bowing elders, not one of them joy. Finally I came in to land. A touch upon the clothes-hamper pattern banished Deebs' gear back to its storage site, but I kept my size as high as it would go as I stalked up to the elders, sternly gazed out over them, then filled my lungs.

"Whose head is held highest here?"

I asked the question once, twice, then finally thrice. Each time I was answered by silence. "Then it is mine own head that is held highest here," I declared, and no-one disagreed. I turned, eyes searching. "Ahnkar, stand forth!"I bellowed.

There was a pause, then once again the banded dragon worked his way to the fore, though he was far more the worse for wear than he had been just a short while before. His left wing dragged in the dirt, blood streamed from myriad flesh wounds, and he moved with a deep limp. He stopped before me, then looked at me silently, his eyes filled with shock, pain, and despair.

"Say it," I hissed.

Ahnkar bowed his head for a long moment, then spoke, the words heavy as lead. "I am known as Ahnkar. I am the Eldest of clan Gessett, and I am the Eldest of the Council." Slowly, he assumed the posture of submission, exposing his throat. "On behalf of both myself, my clan, and the members of the Council, I doth yield to thee, Lord Hasai."

I stared at his throat for the longest time, my fangs aching. Seemingly without my willing it, I saw my right foreleg lift free of the ground, my talons reaching out. The elder, seeing death reaching for him, gave a tired, hopeless sigh, closed his eyes, and waited.

If he had fought, begged, or tried to run I would have killed him instantly. But that simple, quiet sigh stopped me. I stood there, frozen, for the longest time, my talons just touching his waiting throat, a hundred voices and a thousand memories thundering in my head. Behind me, I could hear both Lady Dithra and Stefan re-enter what was left of the clearing, then move to stand behind me. Neither said anything; neither of them could, for it was no longer their place. Still, I could sense Dithra's anguish.

"You cost me five children, Ahnkar," I gritted out at last. "Five children, a mate, and more pain than any just universe would ever withstand. I should kill you, dragon; the spirits of my lost children and my own heart demand it , but I gave my word--" --to the ghost of a long-dead dream. I stood there, remembering, for just a moment, then abruptly my lips curled back in a wide carnivore's grin. "Besides," I hissed "I am not that merciful."

The talons of my right hand lifted from the banded dragon's throat, swung back, and slashed. Ahnkar went tumbling to the ground, blood gushing from the five long, deep cuts that now decorated the left side of his face. "You will serve me," I snarled down at his writhing form. "You, your clan, your Council, all will serve both me and my Line from this point on. Beyond life, beyond time, to the very edges of honor, you will serve both me and mine. Hear me!" I suddenly bellowed to all those who crouched before us "Lord Ahnkar is hereby stripped of his positions as Eldest and member of the Council. Lord Trassahn will take his place as member, and Lady Dithra will resume her rightful place as Eldest of the Council, not by the greater strength of the clans, not by the greater strength of the Council, but because I will it! Those who would object, face me now!"

Silence, broken only by the groans of the wounded. I dragged a cold, cruel gaze across the mob, then returned it to Ahnkar, who was slowly working his way back to his feet. "Your precious war dies here, dragon; your sick dream of flinging us into hopeless battle against the humans ends now--"

Then Ksstha was there. There wasn't much left of him; his wings were crumpled ruin, blood poured from gaping wounds that should have been fatal, and at least one leg was broken, yet there he was, charging at me from out of nowhere, his gleaming fangs silently arrowing for my throat.

There was no time. Before I could react, his shoulder had smashed into mine, toppling me, his teeth closing on the soft scales just beneath my own jaws and clamping down. I rolled, bringing my hind legs up to rake great bloody furrows in Ksstha's underbelly, but the ancient warrior made no move to protect himself. Flashes of both gray-green and green-black scales told me that Dithra and Stefan were trying to pull him off of me, and after a moment of stunned horror as he watched the few remaining shards of his honor crumble to dust, even Ahnkar piled in. All four of us did hideous damage to Ksstha, but Death's Hunter made no sound, no effort to protect himself as he threw his life away, concentrating on nothing but forever tightening his grip on my throat with his splintering fangs.

I couldn't breathe; the terrible pressure on my windpipe was too great, and the arteries that fed my brain were being squeezed shut. My blows became weak, random things, hardly hurting Ksstha at all. My vision narrowed down into a black, roaring tunnel. I felt one of the scales protecting my throat fail, and Ksstha's fangs digging onto the meat beneath.

I'm coming, baby . . . . I'm coming. . . . I'm . . . .