Kane Gilmour - Ragnarok

Bishop stopped firing when he ran out of targets lower than his side of the capsule. He stood and clambered over the bench to the other side of the capsule. He knew there were thirty-two capsules-one for each borough of London-from his previous visit as a tourist. He glanced out past the twin BA logo on this side, and he could see only two capsules above him, before the wall of the portal engulfed the frame of the wheel. Those two capsules were completely empty. The doors to one were open. The capsule furthest from him still had its doors shut, but the dire wolves had smashed in windows on top and the inside of the capsule was painted in a dark red hue.

Bishop shuddered.

Those people had been first. That explained why the others had panicked and jumped to their deaths. More dire wolves squatted on the frame above Bishop’s capsule, unmoving. He counted thirty of them.

Make that twenty-nine. Bishop smiled as Knight continued to obliterate the stationary targets.

The rain let up as he watched for a few seconds. Something nagged at the back of Bishop’s mind as he watched the frozen beasts succumb one by one to the devastating fire from Knight’s Barrett. Then, again as if controlled by one mind, they all twitched and moved their heads. Several of them stood from their crouches, and the rest swiveled and tilted their heads, their strange tennis-ball-sized eyes roaming.

Oh shit. Bishop shattered the glass on this side of the capsule and began firing the big. 50 caliber rounds at the dire wolves again, still laying down a line of slaughter, but he wounded more than he killed.

The remaining creatures rushed his capsule as another wave of forty or so muscular, gleaming white beasts lunged out of the portal and onto the white steel trusses. Many of them climbed onto the roof above Bishop.

This was a fight he could not win.

Bishop heard a noise at the end of his capsule and turned to see two huge, eight-foot tall dire wolves. The first had dropped into the open doors, just as Bishop had done. The second had climbed into the compartment on the upright metal hinges of the open door on the right and grabbed the safety rail, squatting laterally on the wall of the capsule’s glass as if gravity didn’t affect it.

There was no time to pull the barrel of the XM312-B out of the shattered window on the side of the capsule to aim at these two, ten feet away from him on the capsule’s end. Then the thought that had been tickling his subconscious came through to the front of his mind like a Japanese bullet train.

“Knight! It’s the rain! They can’t see in the rain!”

The dire wolves, each outweighing Bishop by a few hundred pounds of muscle and menace, charged.

Midtown, New York, NY

3 November, 0830 Hrs

King was sweating profusely inside the body armor and helmet. Although the suit contained a state-of-the-art liquid cooling system, it wasn’t as comfortable as it could have been. Each time he took a step and the armor between his legs rubbed, he was reminded of the corduroy trousers his mother had gotten him at Goodwill when he was ten. He hated those things. With the sound dampener technology in the helmet activated, he couldn’t hear the noise of the armor rubbing, but he could feel the vibrations on his skin.

He knew he wasn’t sweating because he was hot, though. No, he was certain the cause of his dampened skin was the small suitcase nuclear device he wore on his back.

“How you doing, King? I’m sweating like a pig in this thing,” Deep Blue’s robust voice came through King’s helmet microphone as they rode the elevator to the 40 ^th floor of the Exxon Building.

“Thank God, I thought it was just me.” King looked at their reflections in the shiny brass elevator doors.

Deep Blue grunted a laugh. Still, King could tell the humor was forced. Neither one of them liked the current plan, but it was all they had.

“These things don’t smell too good either.”

Deep Blue ignored this latest quip, but King felt certain the man was cocooned in his own foam stench. The putrid smell wafted over King, threatening to ruin his focus.

“Remember you are not to engage any dire wolves if you can avoid it. I’ll cover you as best I can.” Deep Blue was back to business.

“I’m sure you’ll be better at it than I would be. That targeting software in your helmet is kind of like cheating,” King said, as the elevator reached the 40 ^th floor and both men felt their stomachs lurch at the abrupt stop.

“Wasn’t time to get you one,” Deep Blue said.

“Yeah, but Christmas isn’t far off,” King quipped, and then as if throwing a switch, he shut off his sense of humor and readied himself to kill anything that wasn’t human. If someone’s pet chihuahua jumped out, it was toast.

Both men raised their MP5 submachine guns and stepped to either side of the doors as they slowly opened. King smiled briefly inside his suit. Deep Blue might have been out of action in the field for years-since he had been a Ranger and subsequently served in politics-but the man was still sharp, and he and King had very quickly learned each other’s moves. They had gained an almost precognitive awareness of each other in battle-something that often took many battles for other soldiers to gain.

King moved into the lushly carpeted hallway and crouched. Water rose from the rug, surrounding his foot. Everything was saturated. “Looks like the sprinkler system went off.” He eyed the sprinkler head poking out of the ceiling above him. A single drip of water maintained a tenuous grasp. It fell and smacked against his facemask. “Let’s hope there isn’t a fire. I don’t think there’s any water left in the system.”

Deep Blue took up a position right behind King. About forty feet down the wood paneled hallway, the glowing yellow curve of the portal’s wall emerged from the wood and seared into walls, floor and ceiling, completely blocking the corridor.

The total lack of sound was eerie. King had gotten up close to one of the portals before- hell, I’ve even been though one — but the last time, according to Aleman’s theory, the portal was still ‘flickering’ into our world. This one was stable.

No fluctuations.

No lightning.

No sound. Though King couldn’t be sure if that was just because his helmet made him deaf to the outside world. It was a tactical disadvantage, but in this case, with dire wolf roars that could incapacitate a Chess Team member with crippling fear, Deep Blue had insisted. King had pointed out his previous immunity to the roar in Chicago, but Deep Blue wouldn’t be moved. Their communications between each other were voice activated as well, so unless Deep Blue or Lewis Aleman spoke in his ear, all King could hear was his own breathing. It reminded him of HALO jumping, which might have been somewhat calming if not for the nuke in his backpack.

King advanced down the hall, staying to the left, Deep Blue covered the right. The plan was simple: a few feet away from the portal wall, he would unsling the backpack, arm the heavy device it held, remove the safety remote control and pocket it, then hurl the thing through the glowing yellow wall. Keasling had a second failsafe that could shut off the device if the backpack passed harmlessly in and out of the portal and plummeted to the ground forty stories below them. The General and his men would be watching for anything to come out of the bottom of the orb. The team wouldn’t take any chances with destroying New York. The city had seen enough hell already.

King squatted a few feet from the portal and pulled the strap of his MP5 over his helmet, freeing his hands. He slid the backpack off his shoulders and then slowly stood, facing the wall of light. Then he dropped the pack on the carpet and froze.