Forged by Battle (WarVerse Book 1) (18 page)

Chapter 41

The Exile

Cowboy squinted through the cracked scope into the forest. The movement between the trees had ceased, and spines no longer peppered the human forces. A lull had fallen over the battlefield. His shield had maybe minutes left before it collapsed, and the fleet ground forces would be up against the full brunt of the elven army.

"Shield's down!" Cowboy called, seeing the all-too-familiar flash, and as he shouted the trees bent aside and a horde erupted into view. The roiling mass was the stuff of nightmares; as it escaped the obscurity of shadow, violent analogs of Earth animals boiled forth. Spike-covered wolves darted with obscene speed between the column-like legs of massive bears. Horse-sized porcupines launched their spikes across the field.

Cowboy tried to identify as many as he could: a bull here, a cougar there, a moose with razor antlers beyond. Over the unnatural fear of seeing so many monsters, Cowboy’s logic told him there were no exotics among them—it was an arboreal unit.

The monsters charged the gap, with unmorphed riders sitting astride them. Cowboy squinted at the patterns on their skin to get an idea of the forms they would take, then saw a bow in the hands of the closest rider.

"Take cover!" he called as a thousand bows thrummed impossibly loud around them and arrows filled the sky. Cowboy pushed himself as close to the wall as possible while the shafts rained down. Those arrows would kill soldiers without armor just as swiftly as bullets, and Cowboy had no doubt they had some magic in them to make them more deadly. When the lethal rain ceased, Cowboy pushed himself back up on his elbows and let loose a round that caught a rider in the shoulder. The rider twirled to the ground and lay there shuddering.

The thunder of his shot drew his attention from the charge; the field was far too quiet. Too few guns were answering the roars of the elves.

The soldiers were paralyzed with fear.

"They're using a fear spell—snap out of it," Cowboy yelled and snapped off another shot. He cocked a fist and slammed it into the side of Beast's head. The larger man scowled, but as the unnatural fear was broken, the scowl transformed into a sheepish grin. His plasma cannon started blasting again, the air between the armies filling with glowing bolts as he let fly. His shots were the key. The closest soldiers quickly leveled their own desperate fire into the nightmare mass beyond.

***

Exile released a held breath as she broke through the spell that had immobilized the platoon. In Cowboy's analytical assessment, she had found resolve enough to combat the fear spell. Cowboy's punch had been the physical catalyst that allowed her to affect them all. As each of them snapped out of it, Exile used that same resolve and spread it out among the other soldiers. Freed from the paralyzing emotion, the 101st opened up on the approaching horde.

Beast's gun tracked the larger target that approached from the two corridors he could fire down. The bolts of superheated plasma splashed across an armored bear's hide, and it melted to slag. He immediately traversed to a wolf without releasing the trigger. The smaller creature darted around the incoming bolts and avoided harm. Beast’s dissatisfaction was palatable on Exile's Web, and he turned his fire on the larger morphed elves again.

The gun would overheat before long, and they all knew it. Their position would be overrun before that happened. Daredevil added his own heavy fire to the mix, traversing back and forth as he sprayed a wall of lead. Smaller beasts fell left and right, but still, they came. His smaller metal rounds simply bounced off the armored bears. Only Beast's plasma could melt their hide.

The riders continued to fire their arrows, keeping the 101
st
’s heads down and the Condemned annoyed. Those who had been struck sent waves of pain and fear though the Exile's concentration.

***

Another fireball crested the forest, splashing violently just short of the lines. Smoke billowed from the foliage it struck and further obscured the field. There was no need to aim now; they were blind through the smoke and rain.

The faster wolves darted ahead of the horde and came within meters of the buildings. Cowboy dropped a hand from his rifle to form a pistol with his fingers. He pointed as the first one disappeared in an amazingly bright flash. "Boom," he whispered, miming a shot.

The IED's explosion caused a lull in the arrows, giving Snowball a chance to peek over his wall. The riders were standing up on their mounts and launching themselves into the air. He yanked up his optics to take a closer look. The first elf he saw was spasming and shifting in midair as its arms contorted and reformed into wings. Legs bent and twisted, forming claws, and feathers burst out of its skin. The changes happened before he struck the ground.

Snowball pulled back from the binoculars to witness the flock of monstrous birds take flight over their position and disappear into the storm clouds above.

"Shit, they're airborne!" yelled Killswitch, dropping one from the sky with a well-placed round as he spoke. "Daredevil, shift fire, they're the bigger threat now. Beast, you keep taking out those bears. None of the one-oh-one’s guns are getting through."

"Sure thing," Beast replied, his fingers never releasing the trigger. Daredevil pulled his weapon off the tripod and braced the butt of it against the floor beneath him. His shots would not be accurate, but with enough lead in the air, the birds might think twice before swooping down their lines.

"Blackout, stay with Locksmith, those coms are priority!" Killswitch called over the chaos that swelled as the screams of the airborne mixed with the roars of the ground forces. "We need to start falling back inside the building, or we'll get surrounded."

Snowball moved first, swinging off his perch with one hand as he gripped his weapon close with the other. Releasing himself, he dropped the seven or so feet to the ground below and rolled to reduce the impact. Coming up in a crouch, he snapped off potshots at the fliers in order to cover Daredevil’s egress. The gunner’s move was not nearly so graceful; he cleared the weapon, dropping it unceremoniously to the concrete below before gripping the ledge with both hands and swinging himself down. Once down, Snowball fired off the last of his clip as Daredevil rushed to load and resume firing.

With the gun team down from their position, Killswitch started moving other members of the platoon further into the biodome, where the tight space would at least provide some cover to fight from while they were overrun. Widget went first, followed by Cowboy. They ran back between shattered work stations and massive broken machines before turning and planting themselves behind the best cover. Other 101st soldiers had flooded into the building from the back, no doubt hoping the Condemned would protect them. They seemed heartened to have the elite team fighting beside them. Regardless of their lack of powered armor, the mere fact that they were Special Forces fostered hope in the beleaguered troops' hearts.

With the rest of the team on the move, Locksmith grabbed the mess of wires and metal that had once been a radio and hoofed it towards the others. Blackout followed slowly behind him, popping off shots as he moved. Exile could sense an inordinate amount of determination stemming from Blackout, concentrated as he was on protecting Locksmith.

Beast stayed on his weapon until the entire team had moved, and when he realized he was alone, he shrugged and continued firing.

"Beast, move," Killswitch yelled out, already realizing the gunner would ignore the order. "He's not going to leave that gun. We need to make sure he can fall back when they take the wall."

The first of the monsters had already reached the 101st building. The sounds of close in-fighting, grunts and screams, and metal clashing against rock-hard claws and teeth grew louder in the absence of gunfire.

As the elf warriors reached the Condemned, Blackout threw back his head and let loose a roar to match theirs. Dropping his rifle, he reached behind his back and pulled a staff from the mesh of his web gear. He held it with both hands, forward and across his body, and thumbed a trigger near the bottom. Two metals spurs erupted from the top, deploying smaller and smaller slices until they formed the double blades of a battle axe. He swung the weapon in an arc, challenging the nearest elf.

A wolf that had made it through the team's fire turned and leapt over the wall into the compound. Two more bounds brought it within range of the platoon. Blackout swung his axe in a wide arc low to the ground, and on the upswing caught the creature across its flank. The blade tore through the fur, muscle, and bone with its micrometer-thick edge, coating Blackout in gore. He continued the swing, and with a twist of the blade, lifted the wolf and used the weapon’s momentum to throw it towards the other shapeshifters.

"Fix bayonets!" Killswitch called as he too dropped his rifle and reached for the two K–bars he kept strapped to his back. Beside him, Cowboy pulled the hatchet from his own web gear, then touched a gauntlet on his wrist. The mechanism within the gauntlet whirred and a round shield extended. A moment later, it thrummed with power as the force field lay over it.

Doc had already dropped his weapon and was working on the 101st wounded who were using the building as cover. Widget stood over him with his rifle quivering. He fired sporadically, but his rounds hit their mark. Snowball pulled out a dagger from his gear and twisted the handle, extending the blade by a meter. He took up a fighting stance beside Daredevil, who continued to engage the fliers when they attempted to come inside the holes that spread across the top of the dome. None had made it inside so far, but Daredevil only had so much ammo.

Two more wolves crested the wall with a massive bull just behind them. The muscles of its shoulders seemed impossibly large, and its horns gleamed black. The bull snorted, then lowered its head and charged, smashing through anything in its path. Simultaneously, the two wolves sprung out to the sides. Cowboy knelt down and lifted his shield up, catching the one that pounced at him. As the wolf connected with him, Cowboy grunted and pushed it to the ground. He slammed his hatchet into its skull.

The second wolf dove for Killswitch, who slashed out with his knives as he rolled to the side. The wolf's razor claws cut a deep wound in his arm that immediately gushed warm blood down his skin and over his blade. Before he could turn to slash again, Snowball cut the head from the monster with his sword.

Blackout stood completely still as the bull charged at him. He tightened his grip on the axe, and at the last second, slammed it forward into the beast's head. The axe glanced off the magically enhanced skull and slid onto the horn, which sparked against the blade. The beast's advance was unhindered, and Blackout was caught by the bull’s horns and tossed to the side. As the bull thundered past, he rolled to his feet and squared off again, ignoring the bleed seeping from the wound in his stomach.

"Let’s go, bitch," Blackout growled.

The bull thundered to a stop and turned, tossing its head. It pounded the ground with its front hoof, sending dirt flying, then charged again. The bull bucked its head, and Blackout was catapulted again by the horns. He came slamming down as his axe clattered to the ground a foot away. As soon as his breath returned, he let loose a stream of curses and grabbed for the weapon. He roared once more and swung at the bull's retreating back.

Killswitch regained his footing and glanced back to see a massive bull crash to the ground with an axe embedded between its now broken horns. Blackout was standing beside it, blood-soaked, panting, and smiling. Killswitch shook his head and Exile heard a single word at the forefront of his thoughts:
berserker
.

The rage that stormed through Blackout’s mind shocked Exile. Any confusion she’d had about him disappeared as Killswitch thought that word. She didn't know what
berserker
meant, but it was clear that Blackout was no normal human.

"How are those..." Killswitch started to ask, but Locksmith shot him a vicious glare. He looked away as the rhythmic sound of the blaster cannon ended. Beast was holding a grotesque cougar by its neck, his knife embedded in its eye. With a quick jerk of the blade and a shove of his boot, he pushed the creature off, then with a last look at his cannon, turned and bolted for the rest of the team. Steeling himself, Killswitch sprinted to meet Beast halfway.

Before he could reach him, he was thrown to the ground by a sonic blast from one of the armored bears. The beast closed its massive jaws to end its roar and thundered towards the two of them.

Beast looked down at himself; his melee weapons had been stripped away during the fight with the cougar, and only his knife remained. He set his jaw and turned towards the bear, while Killswitch gripped his Ka-Bars tightly. The bear’s head erupted in offal and tissue, and the explosion was followed by a sharp crack.

"That's Trigger's gun!" Killswitch called, his heart pounding from the close call. His scout team had to be close, relatively speaking, for their sniper to engage the targets. A quick glance at the patchwork dome above him led Killswitch to believe Trigger was set up in a tree somewhere outside the compound.

***

Exile picked up more lights on the fringes of her Web as soon as she recognized the rail gun. The rest of her platoon was moving through the treeline to the right of the battle, bringing with them the only gnome tech that was still operational.
Will that be enough?
she wondered.