Emergence (24 page)

‘Eichel, if you can assist in evacuating the civilians from this area,’ Heath said, circling a four- or five-block diamond shape south of Claiborne. ‘Meantime, my team will move north with your SWAT platoon. Hold the other platoon in reserve at the station until we have the hostiles spotted. Understand?’

‘You got it,’ Eichel said. ‘You gonna call in the army? There’s national guard here, too.’

‘We’re mobilising every available asset,’ Heath said. ‘But how many of your officers are also reservists and guardsmen?’

Eichel nodded. ‘Point taken.’

‘Yep,’ Heath said. ‘This will be over before the guard gets up on deck. As it stands, I have additional marines inbound from the
Bataan,
but their ETA is three hours at best. JSOC latest is that rangers and elements of the 82nd are en route, but that’ll be even longer; twelve to eighteen hours is their best estimate.’

Oh, man,
Dave thought.
You are going to need all of them and more before this is over. Small scouting parties lead to war bands which lead to Cohorts which form Talons and
. . .

Eichel took a deep breath. ‘We’re on our own, then.’

‘For now,’ Heath said. ‘But we’ve got your back. It won’t be like Katrina, I promise you.’

Allen came back from the street. ‘Sir, it is pure chaos out there. We could take the vehicles, but it’d probably be quicker to move up on foot.’

‘Fair enough,’ Heath said, scrutinising the map again. ‘Emma, what do you have on your feeds?’

Professor Ashbury set her tablet down on the hood of the car. A green-lit video stream from an airborne source highlighted a small party of creatures moving across an open lot. She brought the image out wide to show the surrounding roads.

‘Louisiana Avenue is jammed with refugee traffic. But Toledano looks passable on foot,’ she said.

‘Let’s move north quickly and in force,’ Heath said, wrapping up the map. ‘When we make contact, we’ll try to fix them in place. Any questions?’

Dave found Heath at his side, a hand on his elbow.

‘I need you to stick close to me, Dave. Don’t go getting any ideas about charging off. I need you to tell me, as best you can, what’s happening.’

‘I got no fucking idea what’s happening,’ he said, trying to throw off the gathering depression that wanted to envelop him. He could feel every pound of Lucille on his shoulders now. They began to ache with the effort needed to carry her.

‘But, er
. . .
Captain, if this is a scouting party, it’ll just be like an advance group. You get that, right?’ he said.

‘Yeah. Come on,’ Heath said. ‘I’m sure as soon we make contact with the enemy, everything will become crystal clear. Let’s go.’

Now,
that
was a joke, Dave knew.

They cleared the hospital with its scenes of Dark Ages horror and misery, emerging into a cool night in which the SEALs awaited them, arrayed in a large semicircle, weapons out. Two armoured personnel carriers, big eight-wheeled numbers in the white livery that made them look like ice cream trucks of the Apocalypse, stood growling and coughing diesel fumes around a crowd of police cruisers and civilian vehicles. Some of the SWAT officers worked with the regular cops to maintain some measure of control.

Allen nodded toward the traffic jam. ‘See what I mean?’

If anything, the scene outside the hospital was worse than it had been inside. The crowd was thousands strong out there. Some streamed into the hospital grounds. Many were passing through and moving on. Still others looked to have set up camp with whatever they’d carried from home or possibly looted along the way. Music pounded from dozens of cars’ sound systems. A couple of flares burned bright pink and green. Dave counted at least four separate brawls. He heard more gunfire, much closer this time, but it had no effect on the crowds.

The rear hatch of the nearest armoured car swung open, and a man in black coveralls hopped down to run over to them. He sought out Heath, introducing himself as Lieutenant Ostermann, NOPD SWAT.

‘Sorry, sir,’ Ostermann said. ‘Road net is jammed up. It’s a mile and a half from here.’

‘Fine,’ Heath said. ‘We’re good to leg it. Can you get your men disengaged?’

Ostermann nodded. ‘Definitely; we’re with you.’

Dave chewed on another energy bar and sucked a mouthful of Gatorade out of his CamelBak, trying to sift some useful advice from the trove of race memory and lore stored within his head. It was still hard to know what to look for when you didn’t know what to look for. And it didn’t help that Ashbury and Compton were deeply invested in their own distracting argument.

‘They will need us,’ she insisted.

‘They’ll have him,’ Compton shot back, jerking a thumb in Dave’s direction. ‘You know the rules. We establish a reference point as far forward as possible but
not
in the combat operating post. We stay in contact –’ He tapped a finger against his headset. ‘– but we don’t
make
contact. We
. . .’

She looked ready to slap him when Dave intervened.

‘He’s right, Prof. You don’t want to be getting snuggly with these things.’

‘I followed your advice,’ she said defiantly, quickly drawing a pistol from a concealed carry holster at the small of her back. ‘See?’

‘What I see,’ said Dave, ‘is someone who is gonna get bitten in two. Listen to Professor Compton, would you? He’s a professor and he has a neckbeard. You don’t so he wins this round. Establish whatever it is you’re establishing as far back from the Hunn as you can. And be ready to get the hell out of there, too.’

‘Dave. These men haven’t had a chance to study this problem at all. Five minutes. That’s all the time we had to brief them back on the rig. And what you said on the flight in. Shoot here, here, and here,’ she said, summarising the advice and pointing at her face, neck, and lower abdomen.

‘I’ll go with them,’ Dave said. ‘Whatever they need to know, I probably know already. But you don’t. Unless one of these things wants to explain the role of plumbing in the social hierarchies of the Grande Horde,’ he said, winking at Compton.

Heath cut the argument short by returning from his conference with Ostermann.

‘Got a contact report from the local PD that’s been verified by our Cobras,’ Heath said. ‘We’re moving north to Magnolia Street.’

Heath looked to Dave then.

‘Problems?’

Dave shook his head.

‘I dunno, Heath. You know your own business. Your plan sounded all plausible and shit before. But you don’t have a lot of guys, even with the marines and the SWAT dudes. You gonna be able to deal?’

‘What will the Hunn do when they find out they’re surrounded?’ Heath asked.

He knew the answer to that without even having to reach for it.

‘They attack. Everywhere. All at once,’ he said, leaning against Lucille as if she were a gentleman’s walking stick. ‘They don’t like being hemmed in. Drives them nuts.’

Heath thought it over.

‘Actually, that is sort of what we would do; not so different from us, then. But we’d probe for a weakness and then concentrate. Let’s at least go measure their strength,’ he said. ‘If it’s a company of sword-wielding orcs, no problem. A battalion or more, well, I got some air support en route or on station.’

‘Those choppers you had,’ said Dave. ‘Those big fucking Gatling guns could be handy. Leather armour ain’t gonna help when those things open up.’

‘They’re refuelling,’ Heath said. ‘They’ll be back. But I have Cobras and more assets inbound.’

He turned to the professors.

‘If the two of you would set up here at Touro, I think that would be best,’ he said. ‘Any insights you can glean from the video feeds would be welcome. You can come up when NOPD has the resources to get you closer. Requisition a command truck or one of those armoured units if you have to. But get everything shipshape here first, because we’ll fall back in this direction if we have to. If we don’t have an engagement first.’

Neither of the academics looked happy, but for different reasons, Dave thought.

More gunfire erupted nearby, this time eliciting screams and drawing the attention of a couple of SEALs. Ostermann joined them after briefing his own people.

‘We need to get going,’ he said. ‘T-Qube Suarez’s crew just rolled on Magnolia.’

‘Who? What?’

‘T-Qube. Local notable. That’s his turf down that way,’ Ostermann explained. ‘Patrol says they’re rolling in force.’

‘Gangsters?’ Heath asked.

‘New Orleans’ finest.’

‘Great,’ said the navy officer. ‘That won’t complicate things at all.’

He keyed his throat mike and sent orders out to both SEALs and marines on the command net.

Ashbury looked fit to be tied. Dave reached out to her, but she turned and stomped away, refusing to talk to anyone. He shrugged it off.

‘Sure you don’t want to come with us, Prof?’ he asked Compton. ‘You might get lucky. Catch one of these things taking a dump.’

23

A
vanguard of Sliveen insisted on the honour of the First, as they always did. Pathfinders, they had forged past the thresh, confident about what they would find on the surface: prey. A pair of Hunn with their leashes of Fangr followed to provide support should the unexpected magicks of the prey prove difficult.

Thinkings and feelings, a slithering knotted mess of them, fought for the thresh’s attention as it led the main body of the Queen’s Vengeance through the honeycombed maze of tunnels and warrens back to the point where the barrier between the realms had come apart. It felt pride that the queen should have entrusted it to lead the warriors Above. Well, not that it was leading, of course.

The BattleMaster Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn would lead the Dread Company of two augmented talons with the thresh to guide him. But one could not take from the thresh the fact that it took the field at the head of the Vengeance. So yes, pride was appropriate. And some fear, as it was surrounded and carried along by those very same warriors, any one of which could cleave the thresh in two with a single slash of talon or blade. Fear, too, that the passage Above might have collapsed, leaving it to look foolish as it scratched and skittered about in an increasingly desperate search for the breach. The warriors almost certainly would strike it down if it had misled them.

Two full Talon of Hunn and their attendant Fangr escorted the thresh, with the Queen’s Choice of Grymm to represent her personal will. The thresh tried to think just how many they might number in total, but the thinking of a number increased by another number and then another was beyond it.

The thresh could see that there were many more warriors hurrying toward the breach. A formidable force indeed. Not a legion of course. Or a regiment. But neither were they as few as a simple cohort. And with the royal warrant to search out and fall upon the men of this village to exact Her Majesty’s vengeance for the killing of a nest mate, they had, the thresh was sure, a sufficiency of talon and tooth and blade.

The warriors hunched over as the tunnel roof dipped lower, but the thresh, being considerably smaller, was able to remain erect while Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn was all but doubled over. The thresh could see the subtle trail left by the scouting party of Sliveen and Hunn.

Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn held up one clawed fist.

‘Hold and prepare. We await the clawhold. We have not long to wait.’

The thresh tested the breach in the barrier and found it to still be there. It could sense the passage of the Sliveen and the Hunn through the opening. They were too distant for it to sense their thinkings, but they had found the breach with no trouble at all.

Just before they had reached the small, dank alcove where the thresh had earlier followed the minion through the rent in the barrier, a difficult and worrying thinking had arisen in the small mind of the creature. So much seemed different from what little it knew about men even as it retained some dim recall of Her Majesty’s far greater knowledge and memories of them. The queen knew of men as feedstock. None had ever slain a daemon of the UnderRealms in open combat.

But the thresh had seen its companion destroyed before its very eyes. And the realms had been separated for so long. Was it possible that men had been gifted by their gods with new and powerful magicks? After all, the same gods had chosen to interfere with the natural order of things when they banished thresh and all the other clans and sects to the UnderRealms. Was the outrage done to its nest mate beyond even the thinking of She of the Horde
. . .
The thresh banished the thinking before it formed. That way lay the blood pot.

Still, it was worrying indeed and the thresh felt a great strain inside its skull when it tried to think of such things. Time passed without notice to the thresh as it struggled to control its dangerous ponderings.

*

It was all taking too long.

Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn grew impatient. Glory was within reach Above, and surely his scouts would not linger beyond the time necessary to bring back a simple report of what lay ahead. The dominants gripped their spears and blades tightly, snarling and grunting as they waited for orders. They had been waiting for quite some time, in fact.

‘Bring me the thresh.’

Hunn and attendant Fangr stood aside as one of the queen’s own Lieutenants Grymm motioned the creature forward. The thresh cowered at the side of Scaroth, sensing the black mood falling across the commander’s mind, as he saw the great taloned fists cracking and flexing with frustration.

‘We wait no longer. You will lead, little one.’

The lieutenant pointed at the scummy, sulphurous pond. The thresh showed its fang tracks, and without so much as a grunt of warning it pitched forward.

*

Praise be to the Sky Lords, it seemed even darker than it had been the last time the thresh had emerged in this realm. The Above was unpleasantly cold.

With traces of the bloodwine still coursing through its veins, the thresh had no trouble staying submerged in the frigid waters of the flooded tunnel while it waited for the warriors to follow it through. One of Her Majesty’s Lieutenants Grymm appeared first, shaking its snout vigorously as it pushed up through the mud. The thresh could not be certain, but it suspected that the Grymm was more than a little disoriented at the transition. It snarled, and the thresh hurried to abase its thoughts before the superior daemon.

The rent in the barrier was not large, and it took about as long for all of the members of the Dread Company to pass through as it might to pluck the spines from an urmin. As more of the host passed through, however, the tear appeared to grow wider so that the last revengers were able to pass through as a group rather than singly. That bore thinking about, the thresh decided. But later.

The tunnels under the village were not large, and all the Hunn were forced to stoop over. The shorter, thicker Lieutenants Grymm, too. Only the thresh and the Fangr could stand upright.

As the last of the warriors fought their way up through the mud, BattleMaster Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn cast a single thought into the mind of the thresh.

‘Lead on.’

Following the scent of the minion it had tracked on its last visit, the thresh pointed a talon up at the ceiling above, which was dripping with mud and wet where the sky above it could be seen through a crack. A great hammering noise could be heard, along with the wails of the creatureless chariots. The scent of slain calflings reached them all.

*

Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn took a whiff of the air from Above, rage boiling from his thinkings. A light played over the hole to the Above that caused some of the host to scatter.

‘Deprived of the first kill. There will be a reckoning.’ Enraged, Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn roared. ‘Forward!’