Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

“Cassy! What is your status?”

General Cassy Simms took cover behind an overturned car at an intersection across from the Quincy Junior High School, nearly one mile from the river but no less a part of the action.

Several squads of her cavalry ringed the school firing bullets and lobbing grenades at the robotic Commandos held up inside; the ones who had dropped in from the sky an hour before in an attempt to create a second front or, perhaps, to silence the artillery batteries around Washington Park.

Not far from her position behind the toppled car smoldered two piles of metal that had recently been one of Voggoth’s favorite storm troops. Near that inhuman creature lay a young man no more than twenty sprawled on the pavement in a pool of red a silent Calico 960 just beyond the reach of his cold fingers.

She looked away from the body.

“Jon,” she answered the radio call above the sound of exchanging fire. “We’ve contained the airborne troops but it will be a while before we can mop them up.”

“Great,” his voice lacked the enthusiasm the word might otherwise convey. “Bragg’s flight just took out their arty batteries. I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about those damned balls again for a while.”

“That’s great-“ she stopped as an enemy round ricocheted off the road a few feet away. Cassy tried again, “That’s great. Give Jimmy a big thanks for me.”

The pause on the other end of the radio told the story.

Cassy regrouped her thoughts and transmitted, “Anyway, we’ve got this buttoned up, but, I mean, that doesn’t mean he won’t just drop more of these things in here somewhere else to try and get at Shep’s guns.”

“Say again, I missed that. Goddamn dive-bombing Spook just hit the wall here. What’d you say?”

She heard a cry for ‘medic’ from somewhere away from Jon’s radio.

“I said-oh, shit!”

One of the flying blob-like Chariots swept in from the residential neighborhood to the south. Its side gun spat a series of blasts. Cassy heard cries from her men; the gun certainly found its mark.

She grabbed her rifle and darted across the intersection yelling into the radio to her own people at the command center, “We need AA over at the school right now!” She glanced at the street sign as she ran. “That’s 14 ^ th and Main. Mobile AA stat!”

The Chariot exploded. Half-organic, half-metal pieces-few larger than a breadbox-fell on school grounds. The craft’s destruction took everyone-robotic and human-by surprise.

Cassy looked to the sky where Voggoth’s machine had hovered two seconds before. As she did, a shadow blocked out the sun, approaching from the east.

“General Brewer,” she transmitted. “The Chrysaor is here.”

And damn glad to see you, Kristy.

Two Abrams tanks pin-wheeled through the sky carried on the Leviathan’s supersonic breath like row boats on a mega tsunami. Below and around the flying tanks the strip malls, townhouses, and commercial buildings along Vandeventer Avenue changed from solid structures into grains of debris as the northward-bound gust obliterated the 10 ^ th Armored Brigade’s thrust into The Order’s flank.

The wind faded, leaving behind a handful of standing walls, wrecked vehicles, and seemingly sand-blasted roadways all covered in a dune of dirt and dust. The Leviathan stood straight and towered over the St. Louis skyline once again. Around its feet scrambled hundreds of the mutated mechanical monsters that had once been living, breathing Feranites. Voggoth’s slaves raced north into what remained of the Turner Park area to seek out and slaughter any surviving infantry while the main force resumed its eastward march around Interstate 64.

Woody “Bear” Ross observed the annihilation of his counter attack from one of the concrete vomitories of Busch Stadium. The tall buildings of down town partially obstructed his view of the carnage, but the sound of raging wind, the sight of an apocalyptic dust storm, and the radioed screams provided ample evidence of failure.

He shook his head in disgust. Fighting The Order felt like a game of rock-paper-scissors with Voggoth always knowing what to expect. Form hard points or attack with ground forces and the Leviathan made you pay. Sit back and bomb with arty or air power and the soulless armies marched forward through the destruction, undeterred by bombs and explosions; they did not fear death. Which meant it required prepared hard points or armored counter attacks to check those warped foot soldiers which, in turn, the Leviathan skillfully countered and the entire dance would start over again.

That left the fight to the ‘scissors’ of air power which Voggoth blunted with the ‘rock’ of his throw-away Spooks. In the early days of The Order’s invasion air power and Dreadnoughts often stymied or slowed the enemy’s advance. But, attrition finally whittled The Empire’s air force to a handful of combat-capable assets and the Dreadnoughts-one by one-had been overwhelmed. Only the Chrysaor remained and she fought at Quincy; where she would, no doubt, eventually be overwhelmed.

Ross did not know what to do. His artillery batteries stood ready across the river and would soon send another salvo toward the enemy, but the robots and Ghouls of Voggoth’s group would gladly suffer casualties in exchange for infesting St. Louis and then fording the Mississippi. If he kept his soldiers in place around downtown they could halt the advance, but the Leviathan would simply step in and blow it flat.

The Leviathan. That was the key. But he lacked the means to bring it down and it stayed clear of the main fighting until called upon to blast through well-defended positions or-as had just occurred-decapitate an offensive.

Ross growled and raised his radio to do the only thing he could.

“Send them in,” he transmitted.

Captain Carl Dunston’s radioed a reply, “Fast-movers inbound. ETA thirty seconds.”

Ross turned to one of his aids; a man whose wide, frightened eyes contrasted with his snappy green BDU’s that seemed the paragon of military professionalism.

Although Bear’s voice lacked its usual ground-shaking boom, he still commanded immediate action, “Get the command staff ‘cross the river to the fallback bunker. And tell General Rhodes to get his group up here or these things are going be over the Mississippi before dinner.”

The aid nodded and turned away sharply, motivated not only by his commander’s orders but also by a hardy embracement of evacuation. He shared the directions with other members of the staff and they immediately set to work disassembling equipment.

A pair of F-15s swept in flying low over the tangle of roads and rails to the south of the stadium that ran away from the river and across St. Louis. The planes actually flew beneath the shadows of downtown’s taller buildings, briefly filling the dug-in defenders there with false confidence.

The crazed, six-legged robots nicknamed ‘Roachbots’ comprised the Vanguard of Voggoth’s force. They scurried in front of the insanely-tall Leviathan to engage the forward positions of the troops sent in to fill the vacancy left by Benny Duda’s obliteration. Those forces, Ross knew, would last minutes-not hours-against the full might of The Order’s advance.

Anti-Air spooks rose to engage the fighters but the planes dropped their deadly cargo of napalm first. Flames burst to either side of the interstate, engulfing the baseball diamonds and tennis courts of a recreational park to the north as well as several commercial buildings to the south.

The heat melted the frames and singed the circuits of the mad mechanical monsters that bore the brunt of the bombing. Secondary explosions added to the inferno and streams of black smoke rose to mingle with the dark storm clouds overhead.