And nearer fast and nearer, doth the red whirlwind come,
And louder still, and still more loud,
From underneath that roiling cloud,
Is heard the trumpets' war-note proud,
The trampling and the hum.
And plainly and more plainly, now through the gloom appears,
Far to left and far to right,
In broken gleams of dark blue light,
The long array of helmets bright,
The long array of spears.
…four hundred trumpets sounded,
A peal of warlike glee.
As the great host with measured tread,
With spears advanced and ensigns spread,
Rolled slowly toward the bridge's head,
Where stood,
THE DAUNTLESS THREE
–Horatius at the Bridge, Macaulay
28 May 2053
As rotorcraft lifted off from Peace Force forward bases, Saeder-Krupp Whirlwind strike planes were already in the air. Keen-eyed air spirits, summoned and set on high by Redding's Defenders, barely had time to scream an astral warning. Tir-made wards beneath alloy armour blew spirits to smoke, as the planes howled across Shasta Dam in the dark blue twilight.
City Hall had a few minutes; the fighters furthest from the basement simply hit the deck. There weren't ten other basements in North Calfree; Redding's only air defences were the eyes of the Sixth World on Tir Tairngire's 'peaceful reoccupation of its southern border zone'. Selene and Ilsa's hope against hope that the Princes wouldn't dare what they were now very much daring, with the distain they called Proper Elvish Pride.
The pilots high above, elves in LED-lit coffins, deployed laser-guided bombs with a twitch of cyberized nerves. Blasts of flame consumed City Hall, eyeball-searing against the night; the office, the armouries, the flag, the comms and matrix room. A shower of bricks, spars, even paving stones torn from the square, splattered down like tears on every side.
The planes shot away from the rubble that had symbolised North Calfree's resistance. We don't want to make this uglier than it must be – the message was clear – but you know what steps we can take as soon as we deem them necessary.
This was not a shadowrun. Plans and daring heroics were childish things, against bombs and missiles. Against the mad, medieval lust for conquest, childish and mighty, that drove the Princes of Tir to war. Runners stayed in the shadows, or the powers they fought crushed them unfailingly – Ilsa Tresckow had never felt it like this, the certainty of death. Death she would have met with already, minutes and metres away, in the smouldering ruin reflected on her glasses as she stood still.
Death, she had faced and known before. Should have tasted a hundred times. The little lives under the bombs mattered more than her brilliance that brought ruin; more than anything else Tresckows had fought for since Waterloo and Sedan. She knew Susan was feeling this, and most certainly Hotspur was; stepping out from the Shadows into history's spotlight. Wrestling it from monstrous powers towards free metahuman beings.
She snapped orders at the Defenders with her. They leapt back to their vans, back to Shasta Dam that they'd just come down from. Back to Susan and Harry.
Nine-tenths of Redding's Defenders were in the field or dispersed through the city; a thousand-odd fighters had long been more than the fallen City Hall could hold. Hundreds of commlinks, encrypted by a novahot decker, flashed with rallying calls from Ilsa, Paladin, Selene, Arai. The vans that had been readied behind City Hall were burning, but there were Toyota Gopher pickups on every street. Escalade trucks, even Harley Scorpion bikes, were hastily commandeered by the fighters rushing up.
While another army of Reddingites poured over the rubble of City Hall – ordinary foresters, shopkeepers and SINless, defying the dangers of cluster bombs or another airstrike. Pulling out the dead and wounded, digging down to fighters trapped under the rubble – a few battered orks would soon be headed for Shasta Dam with their ears still ringing.
The night filled with thundering feet and engines. Humans, orks, dwarves, trolls and elves, with ReD on their shirts and guns rattling on their shoulders. Some still strapping Kevlar onto sweating, barrel chests, some calling to the crowds – stay safe, get off the street. Some already brawling to their squads from the doors of trucks, as Defenders thumped down in ranks with AKs between their knees; rolled out. On shift or off when the bombs fell, they'd been trained for this by the Runners who faced death every day with nothing but courage and a plan. Trained like people with homes to protect in a poisoned world of monsters.
There was fear, acid on the gut, the delay and disorder that Tir had likewise intended – but there was desperate rage. A lust for the death of foes that brought death imperviously upon them and theirs. Tir's pride, greed and power were flying towards Shasta Dam, the road to Redding's heart, and her Defenders would face it all.
-0-
Even before warplanes had shattered the taunt silence above Shasta Dam, that pressed close on the ranks crouched against sandbags – Fighter realised she didn't know the elf in a Defender's shirt behind her. The infiltrator might still have brazened it out, set his bomb and slipped away, but chill broke under Fighter's black, implacable eyes; he went for his gun. Her fingers burst his throat so swiftly, her true chummers flinched back.
Before Defenders had streamed away from the broken lights of Redding, Tir scouts in the tar-black treeline had sniped a sentry on the dam, from Hotspur's side. Before the rotorcraft appeared, the huge darkness over Lake Shasta were consumed in flame.
The spirit of fire, fifteen feet high, too bright to be looked on, exploded into existence over Fighter's head. Ribbons of fire stretched out from it, hellish cracks in the black sky. Through the crackling and the sulphur, she heard chummers screaming at her side; smelt their terror.
"FIGHTER. HOTSPUR. I SEE TRECKOW COMING, I SEE THE END AT LAST, AND SUCH AN END! SOULS BLAZING WITH COURAGE WILL BURN, IN THE ULTIMATE CONFLAGRATION! YOUR PEOPLE WILL BURN LIKE GRASS, ALL THAT CAN BURN WILL BURN, BEFORE THE VENGEANCE OF TORPHET!"
"Four years. FOUR YEARS, AND YOU'RE STILL A DREKHEAD!" Fighter's fist, bloodied already, stabbed at the sky, "ALL YOU FRAGGING, TAKING MONSTERS! I will never stop fighting you!"
Since the nights when she should have died helpless in the dark, brought down by evil she had never been ready to face, Fighter had never given up. Known she never would, until she was dead – or stood here, in the fighter's destiny that six generation of Lei Kung Fu had birthed her for. To save the weak from the monsters – feudal-fascist elves, human supremacists, megacorps, monsters, rapists. For four years, for six thousand years, the enemy that defiled as it took even personhood from the conquered had been the same.
She would stand before ten thousand bridges like this – the dam that curved back, grey and towering, toward a city of sixty thousand lives – against a million foes she could never be ready to face, only willing. Right where she belonged. If she had to finally die in the dark, for nothing, for Gabriela, Hailey, Anya, Sarah, Ilsa, Harry and Susan Shuang Lei, Fighter –
Her unbloodied left hand gripped her father's scarf. Her falling eye met with Harry's. A look that travelled back four years, ten years in an instant, and to be alive had never been so sweet.
Then Hotspur was calling to all their fighters, with Sarah and Orion. A hundred and fifty-odd shaking souls, among barricades, dug-outs, machine guns, ammo belts and all grim necessities of war. All struck senseless and staring, as if by the fiery wind of Torphet's terrible appearance. As Norton stood up at Hotspur's side; as Angel sighted through infra-red and headshot the Tir sniper drawing a bead.
Golden light blazed out from the emperor's wrinkled eyes. Every Awakened on the field, or flying toward it, felt the pressure of a power, a raw concept. Kingship, older than Arthur, older than the gods that make kings; all the noble folly of the one who stands for all. The cracks spreading through mundanity, as it edged further into the world it had shaped. The voice that rose over the flames was high and broken, but still Norton's voice. Mad as he may have been, he knew his destiny.
"Face us if you dare, spirit of a candleflame! The sun will rise once more, the sun rises golden over Calfree! The glory of a free nation, the glory of her heroes – the glory of a king, my friends, a king to fight your battles! Only stand fast, and the dawn will come!"
Torphet's snarl of contempt was thunder. Firebolts rained on the barricades, scattering blast shields and searing flesh. Even Fighter knew it had all been for nothing - until a web of gold rushed out from Norton, Healing and heartening everywhere. Five out of six scorched Defenders were up and firing already into the sky; uselessly, against Torphet's power.
A single huge Flamestrike fell upon Norton, but every Colma shaman and Redding street mage, as Ilsa had drilled them, added their Healing to his own. The emperor came out scorched and swaying, but conscious, on his feet. Every sniper bullet aimed at him, with a flicker of his fateful power, flew wide.
"Did we come here to die?" Hotspur's fabled voice cut through Torphet's screams of rage. "Did we come all this way to run, without a fight, or fight with monsters and win our freedom from fear?"
Freedom for Redding. A moment snatched from the snapping jaws of battle, to recall the pride of fighters. Redding militia and Calfree mercs resolved from the fearful, formless mass that had almost broken. Gripped weapons again, looked to their leaders. Already running to their wounded, the Colma metas would have been rallied by Norton, Orion, or even Sarah's entreaties alone – all three of their legends together, with Hotspur and Fighter, raised their spirits to a fearsome peak. The people who'd been outcasts too long would not run again, even from hellfire.
Even from the terror that battered every holding heart, as the night thundered again, filling up with wave upon wave of coursing rotorcraft. The most militarised and fearsome nation on the continent was thrusting their first true assault upon Redding, and their last.
-0-
West of Redding, without Shasta Dam's defence from artillery and panzers, the towns of Weaverville and Lewiston would be taken within twenty minutes. Will Casper, with hunters from Colma and local fighters who knew the ground, had set up there to harass and delay the Tir from simply sweeping on to Redding, as long as they could. Calfree Guard on the border had firmly dug in wherever attack was least likely. It was only Shasta where they might hit the Tir hard enough to give pause. If anyone was still fighting for North Calfree, when Kali's promised Japanacorp army marched north…they'd have a chance, if they held out.
As Norton and all other casters countered Torphet, for a time – as fire from the sky burned down another merc – Defenders hauled and heaved to plug gaps blasted in barricades. A reserve of fighters still lay prone in the dam's shadow, behind the crest of the 600 ft slope down to the river. Lake Shasta's endless water churned through sluices far below, a foreboding black cauldron. Unrelieved by the furnace light hanging over the dam, Torphet's red moon of apocalyse; armed shadows seemed to scuttle through gloomy seas of blood.
On the right of Shasta Dam, along the lakeside, the village of elvish exiles showed rifles in every window. No option of surrender for them, and no will to flee their pitiful homes again. Hailey was there, with two more Redding deckers, and two more Tir infiltrators – already geeked with her drone and Elorn's shotgun. Her mobile matrix warfare centre was a Bulldog full of cyberdecks and wireless intrusion electronics, parked behind Ilsa's best illusions and a stone wall.
Apart from that, a bare fifty Defenders entrenched on the dam's south end, and shore patrols already yelling into comms that more rotors were crossing Lake Shasta. To hit Shasta Dam from both ends, or cut off reinforcements, or sweep on to Redding itself. Paladin and Selene would hold the city with all the fighters and weapons they couldn't spare, against a phantom attack – it was like chess, Ilsa had said, with no major pieces and half the pawns.
"…on my way!" She was now calling to Susan and Harry via commlink, in a speeding van, "A hundred more fighters within twenty minutes, another two hundred within the hour – three separate routes, in case of further airstrikes. Hailey and I will deal with comms and command, you can focus on the fighting! Kali told me that she's kicking every corporate ass she can; she'll have a major force with us in 72 hours!"
"Good for her, but even we can't hold that long!"
"We cannot hold Shasta Dam – noble last stands are for incompetents! I have a plan to get us away, but you must hit the Tir hard to buy that chance! We will shore up the south, you must hold the north with everyone you have. Nothing you have can harm Torphet, now – insanity, even for Lofwyr to let him grow to such power! Norton must hold him off, and I swear I will banish him again! Susan–!"
"Yeah, not dying before you get here, Wiz! Can't be outnumbered and surrounded without both of us!"
Fighter and Hotspur grinned, above their sinking, writhing heats. At three massive, double-rotor Ares Dragon transports, thundering towards them over the forest, flanked by two Boeing Black Merlin gunships – like Harry, made in Seattle. Two more waves of rotorcraft behind, three hundred crack airborne troops. Thousands more stood ready to be shuttled in, and three more flights of rotors already, sweeping around to the left. Three hundred more elves, headed for deployment on the slope above the riverbank. A knight's leap over the ridge and all the entrenchments before Shasta Dam to hit the Defenders in the flank.
As Ilsa had foreseen. The ridge concealed a flanking defence line, down the slope to the river; Defenders slid and scrambled down to set their guns on sandbags and blast shields. The night attack she had also foreseen; the Peace Force troops had nightsights, smartlinks, Aim spells. Runners, mercs and corpsec had equal kit – heavy weapons from the Japanacorps, Kali's contacts, the long war they'd fought to fund and arm Redding – but some militia still had no more than a gun, vest and commlink.
Still, they dug down, pressed AK receiver plates to cheeks in a grim steel kiss. Some had trained harder and longer than Tir's fresh, young troops – some had been ready since '37 for the invaders they'd known would be back. All of them were resolved to fight through hellfire for Redding. Fighter and Hotspur needed every man, woman and meta of them, as much as they needed Ilsa. Keenly as Fighter missed her fireballs - as Norton sent Haste spells through their limbs – she felt her chummer's chill in the plans she'd made. In the face of towering, immediate death, war like nothing they'd faced together – Susan and Harry felt the fire of Ilsa's spirit join with their own.
Trenches hadn't won a war since 1918, Ilsa had said, and not even then. The barricades wrecked by Torphet had been raised as much for discipline as defence; a real army would smash any defence their could throw up, unless they changed the story. Keenly as Hotspur's heart thrummed with glorious adrenalin, his old addiction, he could have wished no one – not Fighter, Sarah, Orion, Angel, Elorn, Bob Reeder, Rick Moran, a half-dozen Redding adepts – stood ready to follow him in his maddest, audacious leap. To seize the flower of life for Redding, from bloodied steel jaws.
-0-
The twin belly-mounted Vindicators on the Ares Dragons gave the drop-zone a short, sharp going over; a battle-roar to shake the foe, if Torphet hadn't yet broken them. Most of the elves felt actually more discomforted by their fiery ally than the opposing rabble of militia, particularly the battlemages. Still, they rappelled down in order with practised precision, hitting the forest floor five hundred metres from enemy lines. The first wave made ready for the rush to combat rifle-range.
Fifty light-armoured, fleet-footed shadows, within moments, would be firing from every thick-trunked redwood; dropping prone between every tree to aim their shots. As fifty more sprinted under cover of fire, for the gullies and broken ground from one to two hundred metres from the forest edge. Two hundred metres or less from the enemy; hard cover for deploying LMGs and grenade launchers. Scouring the entrenchments and the slope of any foes too makkanagee to run, as elvish warriors made ready for one swift assault and beautiful victory.
As firebolts lit up the dusk, the first elves picked out the flash of a lone swordblade. Looming horns of trolls, dark hair flying back like a banner. Shadows, already among the trees, faster than horses could have crossed such rooted, rocky ground. A dozen figures, charging an army – of a bare hundred, drop-winded, half-deployed elves. Struggling to grasp what manner of battle they had come to, even as order set them rushing to it.
Black Merlins poured down death from whirling Vindicators. Rifle fire lashed and bit through trunks, but this enemy moved like no kind of unit. Twelve lone warriors, runners. Leaping, diving or sprinting from rock to bullet shaken tree, with Ki-boosted or Alpha-wired speed and one single, terrible heart.
Elves fell from the charging mass of green cloaks, as fire blazed from the shadows – and from the barricades, even as Defenders fell to Steyr AUG rifles. No mass fusillade, more likely to hit their own comrades in the back, but patient, trained shots. Among the chattering barrage of Shiawase Nemesis safe-target LMGs; the least the four directors could do, apart from SAM missiles. Whistling up from the slope, to detonate on chaff-shields, or swerve away from the targeting-shielded rotors, but forcing breaks in their fire as the machines lurched away.
"IN THE NAME OF OUR GREAT MOTHER! LET THE CIRCLE REMAIN UNBROKEN!" Norton's scream was agonised; manadrain ripped through his frail body and spirit-ridden soul with Torphet's flames, as he still threw out Haste and still more Healing, "IN THE FIERY SPIRIT OF DRAGONSLAYERS! DELIVER US FROM EVIL!
Fast as Fighter, Orion and Sarah ran, Hotspur dashed ahead of them all. Bullets whispered past, struck at trees on his right and left – his nerves sung a crescendo of fear and deathx, but he was where he belonged. No way but this, to lead his omaes through death. No better cause than the woman sprinting to his side, the unbreakable smile carved on her lovely and terrible lips. The hearts of all the chummers charging at his side.
Bullets punched at Sarah's crag-like body, and Reeder's. The trolls thundered on. Laird Maxwell went down under a burst of bullets, and Wil Withers, on either side of Rick – all Redding fighters since Tomas' old militia. Firing full auto from the hip, Rick was screaming his brother's name over the storm of 7.62s. Elorn was only screaming FRAG, FRAG, swearing never to volunteer again, even if Hailey smiled at him like that, as his Colt Cobra SMG cut down another pale, blonde elf.
Close enough now to see the flashes of lustrous hair and masks like metal skulls beneath hoods, as Tir's soldiers rushed for the cover of the broken ground between them. They were staking their lives on a footrace, against elves – one more Flamestrike burst on Hotspur's Ki-shield, and then he poured all the Ki he had into legs and lungs.
More Flamestrikes broke before Orion, Sarah, Fighter – Tir's line was studded with battlemages. A Fireball exploded among them, staggering Reeder and obliterating another. Then a wall of flame, in their path - but a Redding street mage behind had read Dr Tresckow's thesis, blew the fire out. Then Hotspur was endzone dive-and-skidding against a boulder, chummers thumping down about him. As the Tir heavy weapon teams poured into the hollows and defiles - that Ilsa had been quite sure they would use, since her first survey of the battlefield.
Hard cover against bullets, but rocky hollows were a deathtrap for grenades. As Tir grenades would wipe out Hotspur's little band, in another instant, before they could locate so many foes in the burning, breathless dark. Without the infra-red cameras set up weeks ago in the branches, watching the hollows, watched by Hailey and her Redding deckers. Peace Force deckers, ranks of dancing fingers and diving brains behind the lines, had only just broken her firewalls to brick the Nemesis LMGs.
"NOW!"
Fast as their deckers shouted locations in their ears, the Defenders slung grenades and more grenades. The Tir digging into the hollows, already snatching up their own bombs, were shredded and scorched to red ruin. A bare couple of grenades flew the other way; Fighter spun on her hands and kicked both back hard, onto the broken, moaning remains of Tir's first assault.
Yet more bombs, launched from Ares Antiochs behind the ridge, threw out fire and shrapnel. Their indirect fire at range, even with Hailey's spotting, burst behind as well as before Hotspur's happy few.
"Frag, this time we're really going to die!" Elorn shouted over the deafening blast-echo. Reeder laughed like a troll-sized drain, still slapping medkits on his wounds; his body red with blood as it was black with burns. On his back behind a rock, with a born killer's fierce chill, Angel was picking off mages and healers already through his Colt M-23's smartlink. He'd been in slightly worse spots than this from Seattle to Amazonia. He'd volunteered without much thought of how his Gabriela might feel, except when he came home to her.
Hunters firing from the lakeside village, down from windows into the gullies, were deadly accurate but few. It had taken all three together, every death they could devise, to ensure that the first Peace Force assault was annihilated. Nothing like Kung Fu, or a heroic Shadowrun – Fighter knew, as she slung another HE incendiary – simply fragging as many fraggers as you could, and as fast. She saw one Tir, an officer with a monoedged sword, stagger covered in blood from the smoke and stink. Orion loomed from the dark and punched the elf's face back into the brain, still firing his rifle one-handed. Susan caught sight of Sarah's ashen face, but she was firing her Semopal too.
They could have swept on to wipe out the whole first wave, if not for the curtains of lead the rotorcraft were setting down with more troops. As the second wave of Dragons started drekking out elves, missiles flew from the Black Merlins. Orion and Fighter dived from a blast that scattered them in earth, and bits of another chummer. Another missile was wrenched away; shot over all the defenders to waterspout on Lake Shasta. It was all Hailey could do, as two more missiles struck the lakeside village. Houses erupted into a shower of burning woodchips. Elorn made a strangled, horrible noise.
If Tir's riggers had been reminded why they weren't simply bombing Shasta Dam clean, they had even surer means of dealing with infantry. Hanging above like steel spirits of war, both Merlins swung around. Belly-mounted Vindicators swept cones of hot lead along Hotspur's ragged line, pinned in a three-way crossfire. A tree trunk half-severed by heavy, streaming bullets cracked and crashed down. Harry couldn't see the face of the chummer forced from cover, mashed to paste between Tir's Vindicators and unceasing rifles. That would be him, Susan, within seconds, unless–
Two more SAMs flew in, and one struck home; no missile defence was unbreakable at two hundred metres. The first Black Merlin went down, in gouts of smoke and a blue-edged ball of flame. A barrage of unguided RPGs saw the second Merlin pull back, too late; smoking from the rotor, it crashed down hard through the trees.
From the heart of flames and dying groans, from a throat so dry it was black, Hotspur raised a single cheer. The greater cheer rose above the roar of bullets, from Redding's Defenders – even while Torphet, single-minded as flame itself, dropped another eye-scouring pillar of plasma on Norton. Within the light of afterimage, in a great circle of blasted ground, the mad emperor still stood. His shining eyes were only on his people; life and inspiration still flashed from his hands.
He was singing something about tyrants brought to shame; now of rockets and bombs bursting in air. Land of the unfree, home of the Corps; since Redmond's Barrens, the UCAS anthem had been pure drek to Hotspur. As dying on a battlefield for freedom and justice should have been for a Shadowrunner – but the world had turned upside down and he was where he belonged. Something more novahot than he'd ever even dreamed.
"…SAY, DOES OUR STAR-SPANGLED BANNER YET WAVE? O'er the land of the FRRREEEE…!"
The old California state song had never caught on; bleeding and firing, Defenders roared the old words. It was madness, but the battle they had come to was mad; there might be shame later, but they might be a later for Redding, their families and their chummers. Pinned down under fire in their forward position, with no grenades, scant ammo, and flame spreading rapidly round them through the underbrush, Hotspur's party still answered their cheers.
As noble Peace Force officers damned their shaken troops for the scum of elfkind, before vicious training and vicious pride steeled elvish hearts to pour again through the trees.
-0-
As the Tir's summoned spirits poured water, to push back the brush fire, shuttling rotorcraft maintained a prudent distance. Hailey was superlatively glad for that – they had two Onotari Ballista with about four more missiles each, and little more to stop the Tir freely hosing down Shasta Dam from above. Nothing but two Panther assault cannons – like, nothing – to hold off the panzers and APCs of the main force already rolling for the Dam, behind this mere preliminary assault.
Last stands were even totally dumb in the trids. A smidge of time to hit the Tir hard, pull back, live and fight and love another day. The village had been a great big target; the Redding elves had held their fire, killed two Tir each, then rushed from the houses before the missiles hit. Joining their spouses, children and neighbours, firing on Tir's flank from hides and foxholes scattered through the forest. Elorn's dad was out there, fervently working his old rifle from '37; they'd have had to kill him to keep him back.
As for Hailey, the blasts had rattled the Bulldog like a dicebox, but she was alive. The one missile she'd barely managed to see off – she was not Anya – had almost blown the lip off the dam, but she was alive. Ordinary IC had blindsided and booted her – she was dumpshocked, but alive.
Susan was still kicking. Orion was obviously fine. Elorn had survived that dumb, crazy charge he should never have gone to – to impress her? No, to impress on the world that elves weren't only fascists or gigolos; they could fight like men. So, he had to fight, but he could not die; not until she'd done the tango with him again, and again, as many times as they ever wanted…
No. It wasn't good people in love who had to survive. The two Redding deckers beside Hailey in the Bulldog - young small-town tech-heads with dreams of datasteals and exposes – were already dead. For months, they'd both tirelessly fought to keep Redding's story on the Net, guns and funds rolling in, against all Tir's inference. In combat, milspec black IC had got them within minutes, while Hailey strained every nerve to counter the missiles. All the other deckers, with the comms and matrix kit to support her, had been at City Hall.
Hailey put her face in her hands. Her little shoulders heaved hugely, several times, then she was terribly still. The two elves crammed in the Bulldog with her and the bodies – Defenders on datajack watching detail, who'd hadn't known how fast they'd have to be – were still in a similar state when her head rose.
"I am sorry, my lady," This elf was audibly no born Reddingite; a Tir exile, "We have lost the matrix war, it would be no use if you remained…we must trust the fighters."
"They've got, like, more rotorcraft than we've got missiles. If I can't take out their rotors, we've got no chance – Anya could barely do it, but I guess I've got to. You guys can go. Take care of Luis and Fern…slot and run if you want. If the black IC gets me too, it gets me, but there's no reason you should get geeked just for being elves."
Her words hot as metal, her back straight as folded wire; a teenager hardened by hard experience, but still ready to dream impossibilities. The Tir elf in the Defender shirt managed a soulless smile and gripped his homely Remington rifle.
"My lady, Tir's 'Peace Force' killed my father and my sister, for their protest that the Rite of Progression does not promote the capable, only the connected. They died because the Princes of our promised land will kill elves rather than share a scrap of their power, or admit to a single mistake. Our village…had many such stories. Not even you have more reason to hate and fight those morkhans to the end."
"Still don't hate them," Hailey murmured in her mind – slipped back into the matrix, as the elves departed with the bodies, "What's the point? They just absolutely need to be fought. Shamed. Until they admit they made a mistake. How about that…Anya?"
"Chip truth, Girl Genius. Now, let's fight these fraggers - not 'Daisy Chewers', not even these fraggers. I hate metaracist drek more than I hate killing, but I'm always ready to fight for my chummers and make Dad proud!"
"…that's, like, really why you left him?"
"Yeah. Why'd I never tell him?"
"…fragging good reason. Anyway, I think I'm, like, ready for certain death now."
Hailey stood alone in the blue gloom of cyberspace. Except for perhaps the most powerful combat ESP in the matrix; the program she had desperately hoped never to have to load. The backups Anya had left didn't have her will, but they had her skill. Her memories, if not her metahumanity. The one she'd booted up, moments ago, believed it had always been Anya - as far as a knowbot could believe. It would do what it was told, like any program. For the cold, horrible slot who would defile her best friend's metahumanity, to save her chummers.
It was totally just as well she was probably getting geeked tonight – she'd understood for a while that it happened to Runners. Hailey stared up at the wall of shifting paths and tunnels that served the Peace Force for matrix architecture. Here, shining with eldritch light; there, flesh-coloured and shuddering. Or stinking with hair and black; the designers evidently recalled that elves and fairies had been rural cosmic horrors before Tolkien. A violet eye opened in the wall, before Hailey could move, then many more eyes; a massive host of harpy and hellhound-shaped IC swarmed out again. Hailey wondered just how many Peace Force deckers she was facing behind the monsters. Ranked up as their tapping fingers flew on like marching feet.
"WELCOME TO YOUR NIGHTMARE! TIR TAIRNGIRE WILL DESTROY YOU!"
She couldn't be here. They must have heard about her inescapable blunder; now she was angry. She raised her avatar's hand; datablasts duly shot out from the huge figure of the digital ork beside her. Fighting with her fear and aggression for chill, she slipped into the maze away from the second waves. 'Anya' floated behind - but Hailey was the last decker. They had one chance, against towering milspec defences, and everyone would die like Luis and Fern if she failed. Hailey knew she'd need to move as cautious and gradual toward the rotorcraft control switch as there was need for desperate haste.
-0-
The third airborne attack, across Lake Shasta to hit the dam from the south, had been held barely back by fifty Defenders – forewarned, and well-armed with Stoner-Ares MMGs. Peace Force troops had fallen along the lakeside, green cloaks stained red, as their comrades' calmly smart-aimed fire had picked off Redding men and orks through their barricades.
Superior in arms and numbers as the Tir elves were, their southern attack could not be so swiftly supported or reinforced by rotorcraft as the north bank. The Redding shore patrols dashed up piecemeal, firing through the trees into the swarm of dark, spindly figures leaping from the shore to the forest. Until a shoulder-fired missile blasted against the treetrunks – away from the cover of Shasta Dam, the patrols were dead meat. While the barricades on the dam vanished under a barrage of Fireballs.
A handful of scorched and half-crazed orks, with nowhere to run, were briefly holding off more than eighty elves prepared for assault. Before reinforcements, the first wave from Redding, flew up the freeway in their crazy fleet of trucks and pickups. As Tir's rotorcraft roared back over the lake, bringing more elves to the grinder. Missiles flew from the Black Merlins; even at extreme range, a truckful of militia became a black crater.
More vehicles madly swerved from the blasts and floored it for the dam. Screeched up around the south end like a new barricade. All of Arai's mercs that weren't fighting already on the north bank poured out, deploying their own magic and heavy weapons. As Takahashi dropped down to Heal an ork with terrible burns, Arai and a few militia rushed across Shasta Dam. To where nearly six hundred Peace Force troopers had now been dropped before less than a hundred and forty surviving Defenders.
Still pinned down in the forest between their chummers and the Tir, Harry's party knew they had little time for making a chance to fall back. Even less time, before Ilsa's firm voice came over the comms; their left flank was about to get wiped out.
The Tir attacking along the riverbank, with less cover before them than the ill-fated head-on assault, had dug in at four-hundred metres. The titanic grey wall looming above the Defenders, with Shasta Lake straining behind it, absolutely barred missiles. The elves had simply got to work with rifles and Fireballs, quickly and carefully as they had been trained. For what they had been told and believed in – the destiny of their people. Above gut-deep fury that tech goronits should defy the Land of Promise and dare to kill elves, their comrades.
Slow and sure, even as grenade launcher blasts and summoned fire spirits augmented the counter fire, Defenders were falling faster than the Tir. It takes more discipline to stand unshaken by bombardment than charge into death – exactly what the left flank, all metas from Norton's Army, were preparing to do. Even as Arai sprinted down the dam, screaming at them to stop – the desperate metas weren't in any state for listening to a Jap. Even Orion, now, couldn't have made the few retaining doubts abandon their chummers who had none.
"The Tir will be readying their own assault." Orion's voice was almost calm as ever, and entirely sure, "I will break cover first; as they fire on me, fall back to our lines. I will catch their attack on the flank and see what may be done about their supporting rotorcraft. Is that amenable, Hotspur?"
Hotspur shouted YES, over the gunfire falling on every side of their rocks and scraps of cover. Fighter and Sarah shouted; to save their friends, they were coming too. Sarah also felt like getting away from the heaps of bodies; Fighter was impatient to get within Kung-Fu range. Harry hesitated, but didn't see how he could run after his wife and leave his men.
"…don't die, love. You can't die either, chummer, not until we get Anya back!"
"It is the same for us all, Hotspur. We must not die, yet we must fight." Angel nodded as Orion spoke, headshotting another elf with a light rocket launcher.
Leaping up like a panther, into a hunched-down killzone-run stance, Orion ran like the soldier and shadowrunner he had been and the master adept he was. To save his people, his family – the unyielded, passionate ideal strengthened by every hard year he had lived. Recrossing the same ground he had survived minutes ago – kicking off from a thick redwood, he shot away from the air torn up by bullets.
Fighter and Sarah went for it a second later, while the Tir were wasting bullets on Orion, as Hotspur fell back with the others. Fighter monkey-leapt and Ki-kicked between trees, above head height, Wuxia style. Sarah ran with adept speed and tanked the few bullets that bit through her dermal deposits.
As they ran, however – as Norton's Army charged over their barricade, with a cacophonic battle cry - as the Tir fired and advanced under cover of their rotorcraft – a horned head rose up from the river beneath Shasta Dam. Eyes flicked open, stood out like black hellfire against the night. Shavarus and his warband rose from the river like trapdoor demon kings. In a single line, charging at the right flank of the elves, as Orion, Fighter and Sarah rushed on their left.
-0-
"KILL THEM ALL!"
Water-breathing magic, spells to keep powder dry – the huge, scarred shotgun, Shavarus' companion of many years, blew another elf to pieces. A Fireball rose from his off claw and engulfed a rotorcraft; half of the huge Ares Dragon exploded in mid-air.
Roaring with triumph above the flames, another troll mage slung a Fireball skywards. Too low force to breach Tir wards; nose-mounted guns made mash of his huge body.
Dropping low to pour fire into the stupid, savage winegs along the riverbank, the Black Merlin was placed well for Orion's leap. From the ridge of the slope, slamming into the side of the madly lurching machine. With no windshield, no pilot but a distant rigger, he punched the armour to open a hole and rammed his last grenade in. Dropped to the ground and rolled, as another rotor exploded over his craggy head. The second Black Merlin still hovered and fired, until the last of a four-SAM barrage wiped it out.
The old adept came up in a fighting stance, among dirty-faced angels; beautiful, incredibly young-looking elves, seeking furiously to kill him. Flicking a dozen rifle-butts and combat knives away, Orion mourned in silence for every young elvish life his fists destroyed. The world was filled with lies that brought death and waste. Killing, all the old ork had ever truly done – yet he had known peace, and love. One day, the world would have no lies left. Only the truth, at last…
Beating a rapid path through the elves, as Shavarus was, Orion soon faced the troll whose dreams had once not been so distant from his own. His eyes merely showed furious bloodlust now, in the thick of combat – but it was the same blood on their fists and feet. They had fought each other once, even when every metahuman ought to stand together…but they were fighting together, now.
"Shavarus." A wry smile cracked Orion's weathered face, "Brother."
The troll's eyes flew wide, as if at an incomprehensible insult. The Flamestrike rushed from his claws.
Orion's Ki-shield was up, and he was ready, an adept to the end – but the troll's power broke through his shield, as it had in Colma. He was too close, he had done too much, to dodge fast enough. With Torphet's firebolts raining down on all, there was no Healing in that instant to be spared.
A chance, needless death, after all the old ork had lived and fought through? Or the fated end, perhaps, of the ork who'd never known how to stop, fighting or feeling. His last thoughts were of the future his unkillable Anya would see, before a second Flamestrike wiped that last spark from smouldering meat and ashes.
-0-
Forgiveness was senseless – cowardice. The poison that kept trolls labouring in slums, instead of crushing the world underfoot. The world. The entirely corrupt Sixth World. Everything in it that had wronged him since he'd been reborn, because he was a troll. It was a comparatively little crime – no crime at all – a just, logical imperative! – to pay hate for hate and blood for blood. On all his foes – his hatred demanded nothing less. It didn't matter that his last followers were dying; it didn't matter that he bled from his wounds. He would not die, he would be the stamping foot and not the face beneath, because he was alive. He was not weak.
War against the world, through slums and Shadows, had already been the truth of life for the trolls that followed Shavarus. On one side, hacking and blasting with inspired passion through the ranks of elves, until brought down by weight of lead. On the other, slashing and trampling over bodies of orks and dwarves, as Norton's Army fell back in horror.
Chaos reigned. A troll with a Remington rifle even pounded to the top of the bank, aiming at Hotspur's party as they fell back from the Tir. Angel, still firing on the elves, rolled and spun his rifle round; shot the troll through the eye. Before an incredibly beautiful Tir battlemage, gold hair pouring from her hood, cast the Flamestrike that burnt Angel down.
Shavarus – stood lost for a moment, in the heart of madness, as if seeking someone to applaud what he'd done. Not that it mattered – he would have happily come to this battle alone. The only end of division was in death – the weak, false ork at his feet would never contradict his convictions with argument again. It felt pleasant, for a moment – then he desperately needed to kill something else.
His eyes settled on the troll girl with long dark hair, staring at him with pitiful horror. Sarah – the only person he could remember that he'd loved. Killing her would most likely be very pleasant.
Then a howl of vengeful fury broke on his ears, through the din, as Fighter punched down another troll in her path. Leapt, flew; drove her combat boot through the troll's cheek, as fire fizzled in both his claws.
Sarah looked at Fighter's face and turned away. Shavarus had betrayed her trust, but that was nothing among all his crimes; nothing she meant to spend a further minute of her life considering. She charged on down the slope instead, at the three trolls still laying viciously into the Colma metas with axe and sword. Throwing her arm round a troll neck, she snapped it with a punch like a 300lb rabbit.
"DREKHEADS! FRAGGERS! WHHHYYYY?"
There were tears in her eyes – as in Fighter's, where Susan's grief warred with incandescent rage. Monsters, from Redmond of her childhood to Hong Kong, had filled her world with corruption and killing. Killed her Shifu, best, strongest, wisest, best-deserving! Anya's dad. Hurt Sarah, hurt Harry with what he'd done to her. She needed to kill this troll, with all her strength, right now.
Ducking under the swiping shotgun, kicking up to send it flying, she threw punches too fast at the troll's massive arms for magic to be worked. Her fists crunched through chitin, flesh and blood, spraying over the lupine snarl locked on her face. Straight punch to the jaw, then a spinning kick – that Shavarus caught on his palm. She slammed into the bloody ground at his feet.
All the old terror rushed out of the darkness – there was never any escape. With a sob like a scream, Fighter sprang away from the gout of flames. She was Fighter, Susan Shuang Lei – she could not be weak, she could not lose to this troll she had to kill! Scissoring insteps into the huge pit of the stomach above her, the back of the knee, with bone crunching force.
Shavarus slumped down. There was pain, but there was always pain – at the end, there was a smile on his lips.
"Ah…at last. I can let go of my hate…"
Through the vengeful, howling hate in her ears, Fighter heard nothing. She leapt, her foot swung up above her head; came down like an axe and shattered the troll's skull like a grenade.
"FRAGGING TROG!"
Then she dropped down, scrabbling for a medkit. Though Pain Resistance, she now felt her leg was twisted; Shavarus might have broken it and geeked her, if he'd feared her fury less. Her eyes flickered over the slope like a wounded tiger, in the shifting firelight of Torphet's fury.
Sarah, struggling with the last troll, until a multi-winged nature spirit flew from Norton and tore it apart. The bodies of Norton's Army, her chummers from Colma. Smashed and scattered by heavy bullets from rotorcraft Vindicators. Orion's body, lost among them. The scattered dead of Tir – between her, Sarah, Orion and Shavarus, they'd geeked a good few. More elves falling back headlong – on the next wave of Ares Dragons, thundering over her head. Fresh troops already dropping down, an endless flood of trained killers in green. The hue of ruin and corruption that Susan had always hated.
Too many monsters to kill? She'd never know unless she tried. Spinning away from a rotocraft's burst, Fighter vanished into the dark. Flew out to shatter a lone sniper's spine, then leapt back as shots pursued her.
Somewhere, Harry was calling her name. She had to save her love who had saved her - even as he bled out onto that Redmond truck park in Redmond, that night – she had to kill every elf she could, of the fresh thousand now stalking toward Shasta Dam, over nearly two hundred elvish bodies. Where less than a hundred Defenders now crouched among burning, shattered barricades, some staring and shaking in a helpless state, as Torphet's demonic roar drowned out Norton's unceasing chant.
"…gods save the king, gods help the king, gods help us all, gods save the king…"