Franco hits my back with stunning force, knocking me down. He lands on top of me, and someone lands on top of him, totally immobilising me for a second. Fire up enhancement and stand, shedding Franco and Luis like leaves. Luis? What the fuck is he doing here?
Movement. Jameson and Gutierrez flick out and launch sun grenades. Light flares, revealing a large, empty room. Looks like a warehouse. Overhead cranes, metal shelving. Dirt and the smell of decay. Couple of very panicked rats running for safety.
Hong, eyes ticking from side to side like metronomes, sweeping for threats. “Maps don't match at all. I don't think this is Seattle, boss.” No shit. Dig through my implant data. Building plans match up. We are in Perth. In the fourth of the hotspots Don Brent's contacts reported. Look around. “Hit recall, people.” Hands hit recall buttons, almost as one. Nothing happens. We are stuck here. The detector beeps. We are not alone.
* * *
Wickham triggers his wide band communicator as the flankers launch sun grenades, turning this section of town from night to daylight and sending demons scurrying to hide from the light.
“Fall back through the wormhole, by the numbers.” The closest member of Protection squad takes a step back and is half way through the wormhole when it collapses with a dismal pop, slicing him neatly in half and spilling blood and internal organs over the tarred roof.
“Dispatch!” he almost shrieks. A crackling silence on all his communication bands. All his communications are cut off completely. Jammed. Mapping still works, could really do with Luis right now. Threat icons popping up all over the place, the sun grenades keeping them back, for the moment. Already used twenty seven. Most of his squad carry five each. Luis can read a cramped map like large print, would be at least able to co-ordinate a defence.. Rage boils up. His people are going to die, all for nothing.
“Damn you Luis, why did you have to ...”
“Luis here.” Voice tense and shaky, but a voice on the channel! “Report.” That steadies him a little bit.
“In target zone, cut off from dispatch, no communications apart from this link to you and surrounded by several hundred demons. Where the fuck are you!”
* * *
Check detector. Either a lot of little demons here, or a couple of truly massive ones. My luck has never been that good. It is going to be the big ones. The ones who are not cowed by light or belief. The ones who are nasty, fast and fucking hurt.
Click as Luis over-rides my comms system. “surrounded by several hundred demons. Where the fuck are you?” Wickham's voice.
“Perth. Wickham, we got serious problems here too. We have been suckered. Fill you in later.” Call up the maps for the Seattle target. “I need you to get all your people into a safe zone.”
“If you have an idea, spill it boss. We have already used about twenty percent of our sun grenades.”
Check for threats. Coming closer, but none close enough yet. “Get down one level to the food court. There is a large room there, with only one entrance. No windows. Co-ordinates C-12-3 on your map. We'll be there as soon as possible, and will be sending extra ammo through as soon as you are there.”
“How ...”
“No time. Do it now.” Detector is going nuts. “We are going to have our own problems in a second. And hold on!”
Seraphina suddenly bolts across the room to the furthest wall. We all follow without question, skidding to a stop and desperately trying not to hit each other as the floor in the center of the room expands upwards and outwards with a dull crackle of breaking rebar and concrete.
Holy fuck, this thing is huge. Bronze coloured, at least six metres tall, and with a physique that would put any athlete to shame. All topped by a blank, featureless head. No eyes, no nose, no ears. It sneezes, the smooth egg of its head splitting open to reveal a mouth with a frightening number of very sharp teeth. A further crackle as its two brothers rise up beside it, expanding the hole in the floor further, and releasing the sound of smaller demons running around their feet. Dozens of them.
Problems indeed.
* * *
Gesture team leaders to gather around and give them co-ordinates and the route. Sun grenades giving time to shake down into a new moving order. “We are going in fast. Flame throwers, form a perimeter. Burn anything that gets within four meters without being banished. The rest of you, concentrate on clearing our way. One man at a time with the sun grenades, they have to last. Do not stop for anything, we don't have time. Peters, you, five of your strongest and two of your flame throwers are back door. Keep tight up on the rest of us.”
“What about the burned demons?” Shinero, one of the squad leaders, asks. Most small demons are scared of fire, and burn rather easily. The problem is, they don't die from their burns. Most of them don't heal either. They have to be banished or killed to put them out of their agony. And when they are in agony they attack anything in sight in a furious rage.
Don't stop to banish the burned ones.” Several of them look ill at the prospect and all look uneasy. For men and women who's power comes from their faith, the central tenet of which is “cause no suffering”, the thought of leaving thinking beings in agony is a serious moral problem.
“We were set up. This whole thing must be a trap to kill us all and seriously weaken Demon Central. Weigh the lives of fifteen billion human beings against the short agony of a few demons. If their agony is that important to your faith then banish them. But don't fall behind. Because saving as many Operatives as possible to fight the next demons to come along is the pivot of my faith. And we don't leave until this nest is history. I will not risk all of you for one person. Got it?” Wickham glares at them, looking quite demonic himself. They nod, some hesitantly, some firmly. “Then lets get to where we have some resupply and reinforcements coming in! MOVE IT!”
* * *
“Hijo de la chingada. We are going to die, aren't we.” Luis does not sound the slightest bit scared, just interested. Without thinking he pulls the pistol Margareta gave him and works the action to put one in the spout. One hundred and fifty rounds. Margareta's special hand loaded rounds.
Hong grasps his shoulder gently. “No, paisan, they are. Every last one of them. Then the ones that arranged this.”
“Yes. They are. They will pay for us, and for our friends.” Luis triggers the communicator I asked Enrique to give him. There had been no time to implant it, so Enrique had fashioned it into a medallion.
“Don Brent, we will be needing your wormhole after all. Please focus it on C-12-3 Seattle map, and send through as much flame thrower fuel, ammunition and sun grenades as you can spare when I give the word.”
“Do you need us to pull you out?”
“Strike team are in Perth, the rest of the team is in Seattle.” Gasp of shock from the receiver. A shape races across the floor and he almost blows it away before recognising it as Gutierrez' cat. “It was a trap. The others need help first, they are heavily outnumbered. But they won't leave such an infestation to disperse.”
“You need anything?” Brent sounds tense even through the link. Some of the smaller demons wiggling out of the hole. The massive ones still trapped by their bulk and slowly struggling to get out. Hear Gutierrez mutter to Cat that there are at least fifty smaller demons in the hole trying to get out.
“Yes. Patching through my video feed to you, can you patch it on to Luigi. And tell Sergei now, and preferably alive.” Draw a bead on an imp and, to his pleased surprise, blow its head in half. The well remembered passes trigger hypnotically implanted thought patterns and it is banished as if it had never been. So, the faith is still there, maybe a touch stronger than before. Franco frowns at him. “Body shots please, you are less likely to miss.”
“Ah, I had wondered where James had gone.” Brent back on the line. “Message passed and confirmed. Video feed clear and being retransmitted. What are those big ones?”
“We don't know. None of us have ever seen them before. Ever.”
* * *
Luigi has seen them. Once. Not in a book, but in a painting. It had taken months of steady research to match the painting to a description, found in the diary of a madman. A Greater Demon. Unbanishable, except by its summoner. Unstoppable. Invulnerable. Slowly he taps out his code. Buzz and connect to Luis.
“Cat, now.” Click of the connection. Hear sporadic gunfire, synchronising with the video feed on the screen.
“Cat, they are Greater Demons. Retreat now, there is nothing you can do against them. Nothing works on them, all books are in agreement on that.”
“I am tempted to, but we are stuck here until either we get past them and their horde, or they are all dead. Find something that works. Fast.”
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