Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

Yet it had been The Order who managed to inflict the most damage upon them. Fitting, Nina figured, since it had been The Order who had inflicted the most damage on her, personally.

She carefully lay Vince on the soaked black dirt along the ridge.

“We have to move, Nina,” he reminded. “They’ll be sending reinforcements.”

Nina agreed, of course, but the job was not yet complete. The mission had to be more than about her sense of revenge; it had to mean something to the greater effort.

She produced the remote detonator. Bly had warned that they lacked enough C-4 explosives to bring down the entire complex. He had been right. Fortunately, The Order provided the rest of the needed firepower in the form of their fuel depot.

Her eyes marked the buildings infected with Voggoth’s machinery one last time through the steady drizzle of a dark morning.

Silently she whispered, “Aaawoooo,” in a wolf’s cry to her fallen friends.

The explosion started at the center of the complex as a flash, followed by the roof rising as if poked from below, then collapsing. Licks of fire danced in frosted windows. Then came the alien fuel drums. As they burst Nina heard moans of pain from the burning alien equipment.

The secondary explosions knocked out walls sending beams and planks like missiles over top her head and into the dead houses of the residential neighborhood behind. The fire spread in an eagerness to consume the pestilence of The Order’s works. The flames glowed a fierce yellow cast over the highway, the tree line, the parking lots, and the silent homes of Olathe, Kansas.

Armand’s blue Ducati-his tenth such motorcycle in the last year-joined with fifty other of his mechanized cavalry in creating a yellow dust storm rising from the flat steppes of Ukraine.

Fields of thinning yet tall grass surrounded the small road-more of a glorified path-for as far as the eye could see, except a mile to the north. There the jagged remains of a city disturbed the horizon’s otherwise even plane. The broken brick walls stood like ghosts staring through the lifeless eyes of windows hollowed by fire and collapse. Most of those fires and collapses had occurred long ago, but bursts of artillery and the crack of rifle fire signaled the return of warfare to a land whose history knew too much of invasion and battle.

Like the rest of the riders, Armand’s fashionable leather outfit and menacing black helmet and visor looked less cool covered in that chalky film, but they moved with a purpose as they flanked the southern side of Zhytomyr.

Purpose.

Armand gnawed on that word. As much as it pained him to admit it, Trevor Stone (no longer ‘the American’) had brought purpose to their consortium of enclaves.

The court of Camelot had saved the splintered and distraught tribes of Europe from the fires of Armageddon. Alexander proved himself a master at diplomacy, at building consensus, at understanding the details of survival and making a collection of diverse parties act as one. Indeed, Armand would have gladly given his life to protect that court or to act on Alexander’s commands. But Stone was a different animal.

The flock of bikers swerved-in unison-around an elephant-sized carcass of bones half-blocking the route. As he rode, radio transmissions from the battle in Zhytomyr played on Armand’s headset. Fortunately the last of the Duass outposts were squarely in the human horde’s rear view mirrors, reducing the chance of encountering that alien’s radio-attracted missiles.

“Command-requesting more artillery on those coordinates; enemy forces are preparing for another assault.”

“Roger that, request received. Stand by.”

Armand blocked out the chatter. He would be a part of the battle soon enough.

Different. Yes, that’s how he saw Trevor Stone. He failed to recognize that difference at first. He mistook it for something left over from the old world. But in the 11 days since breaking out from Murol and beginning their march east, Armand came to see that Trevor Stone was not a diplomat, not a self-important egomaniac, not a man of arrogance. He was a leader finely-tuned to this specific crisis. That exact moment in human history.

He doubted Stone would have made a good President or Premier or even King. Yet at the same time, Armand doubted any other person in all of human existence could understand the nature of their predicament with any more clarity.

“Twenty more of them coming in from the southeast sector! Damn it! They are riding those things again! Shit! Man down! Man down-”

Armand saw that difference for the first time when they found Voggoth’s armies disappeared from the battlefield. Apparently Trevor had anticipated that disappearance, but initially kept it to himself as if knowing no one in the court of Camelot would have believed it until they saw with their own eyes.

When they did, Stone’s credibility surged.

And when he said “we march” he meant it.

No waiting around for supply trains to gather, no delays in beginning their trip. Mere hours after the fall of that first Duass blockade the cavalry started out followed by a column of armor and trucks full of infantry. By the next morning the remaining forces from Murol joined the crusade and brought Danish armor, Italian horse soldiers, and German motorized infantry.

Armand sent couriers around Europe to call out all who would come, but the legion would not stop to wait. A Swiss artillery regiment met the group on the third day. Belgium troops barely found the rear echelon on day four, and a column mixed with Austrian citizen-soldiers and Hungarian regulars made contact in Prague on day five.

Armand eyed a split in the dusty path and signaled his riders to turn north. Their maneuver to the rear of the enemy neared its final stage. The motorcycles bounced over the rocky surface that one old map dared label a road.

Armand remembered how annoyed Trevor appeared on day seven when Alexander insisted they halt the advance outside of Krakow to wait for a battalion worth of hard-nosed Turkish soldiers to fly in on aging NATO cargo planes. Their numbers swelled that day, but Trevor reacted with only the slightest hint of approval.

Instead, he kept repeating that they must keep moving; that time served as their number one enemy. Armand could see part of that concern for time revolved around what might be happening in North America. The other part focused on the most important weapon in their arsenal; surprise.

After breaking out of the Duass’ choke hold on the countryside around Murol, they expected to encounter Voggoth’s great army; the army sent-according to Stone-to knock the Europeans down before The Order dealt a death blow to The Empire. That great army had vanished, possibly reappearing in North America although no lines of communication existed to confirm that suspicion.

Stone said on more than one occasion that Voggoth would not have pulled those forces from Europe had he not believed Trevor dead onboard the submarine. Yet as the days passed and the army grew in size it seemed Voggoth grew suspicious.

On Monday, June 8 ^ th — the same day, unbeknownst to Armand or Trevor, that Nina Forest set The Order’s Olathe compound alight-the Europeans crossed into Ukraine. Twice in the three days since they encountered large gatherings-‘forces’ would be too strong a word-of alien creatures blocking their way.

First came a pair of giant Goat Walkers which descended from the Carpathian mountains and intercepted the column at the airport just north of Pustomyty. Choppers and shoulder-fired AT weapons killed one of the beasts and drove off the other.