Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

A pair of A-10 Thunderbolts flew through a mid-May sky; their airframes dressed gray save for colorful, predatory faces painted on their nose cones. The heavily-armored jets emitted a deep rumble as they followed Route 96 below with the tranquil waters of Lake Pueblo off their starboard wing tips.

“Razorback, you are clear to engage.”

“Roger that, Pueblo.”

The landscape morphed from flat to rough to jagged. Ahead, the Wet Mountains of southern Colorado stood like castle battlements with few passages. The A-10s targeted one of those few passages in an attempt to plug the leak in The Empire’s dam of defenses.

“Know your targets, Razorback, things are FUBAR once you’re past Wetmore.”

“Copy that, Pueblo. Tallyho.”

The armor-killing planes shaved altitude as the battle came in to view. Erupting ordnance sent dirt, rock, and body parts-organic and otherwise-flailing through the air in a sort of morbid dust storm of horrors. Instead of individual claps, booms, and bangs, a cacophony of destruction raged like continual thunder.

On one side-to the east-the pilots saw a half-circle of 20 armored vehicles, some no more than melted scrap, others firing desperate volleys as they grudgingly gave ground.

Emplacements made from concrete and sandbags held tenuous positions along the mountain ledges and to either side of 96. Short-range artillery lobbed out from those stations, as did sniper fire and mortars. Squads of fragile, bloodied infantry scurried between the cover of fallen trees, blasted buildings, and dead tanks. They did not advance; they did not retreat. Instead, the foot soldiers bolted from spot to spot in a function more of survival than tactics.

Opposite the human defenses came an army of monsters under storm clouds spewing lightning and thunder.

Shiny rolling balls announced Voggoth’s assault. Barely larger than a beach ball, the things sped forward at 100 miles per hour bouncing over obstacles en route to targets. Well-placed sniper shots disabled some and mortar explosions consumed others, but many found their marks. One hit a sandbag bunker. It exploded in a flash of white, burning away the protective shield and microwaving the soldiers hiding behind. Another whacked into an Abrams tank melting the machine’s gun barrel and cooking the crew.

The crystal spheres came from a large, plate-like, coral-red platform of tubes and spikes that floated close to the ground like a hovercraft. Alongside the platform marched a protective ring of walking orbs resembling Daddy Longlegs spiders standing eight-feet tall and firing pellet guns that could shred body armor.

Behind this artillery platform and its escort came a collection of The Order’s infantry. Hundreds of assimilated humans wearing monks robes and firing alien bullets from growths on their forearms mixed with dozens of muscle-bound, gray-skinned, tall humanoids swinging slings made from chains to launch bowling-ball-sized explosive blobs. Many of the former fell to bloody shreds from mortar and artillery strikes while the latter shrugged off the shrapnel and kept advancing through the pass, struck down only by direct hits.

A line of carts-car-sized and rolling on a dozen tiny wheels-followed Voggoth’s army carrying ammunition that resembled slimy seeds and glowing globes. Hard shell-like roofs kept the re-supply wagons safe from all but the most precisely-aimed strikes.

The A-10s targeted the centerpiece-the platform of tubes that launched the rolling artillery balls-and let fly a stream of Maverick air-to-surface missiles complemented by a healthy dose of rounds from their Avenger Gatling Guns…

General Cassy Simms sat among the brush atop one of the mountain crests overlooking 96 from the north. Despite the open ground around her and an easy avenue of retreat behind, Simms felt penned in. That feeling came from the storm clouds above crackling with electricity and seemingly ready to burst.

Humanity had come to know that when the forces of Voggoth gathered in number the atmosphere boiled. Were the storms the result of some kind of bio-electric discharge from Voggoth’s largest war machines? Did the force of The Order’s anti-life machinations clash with the world of the living in a manner similar to anti-matter and matter colliding? Did God anger at the sight of such abominations on His Earth? Or perhaps the thunderheads served Voggoth’s purpose by disrupting the air space overhead.

Not even The Empire’s smartest minds or most spiritual philosophers understood why the storms came. They only knew that they came when Voggoth’s legions mustered. They did not bring rain, they did not usher in a new weather front. They merely gathered and roared as mightily as the battles that raged whenever The Order’s warriors marched.

Simms refused to allow the storms to unnerve her. She was, after all, a professional soldier, at least in terms of the post-Armageddon world. Still, unlike the Duass, the Hivvans, or the Redcoats, the soldiers of The Order seemed different, as if death at The Order’s hands would be far worse than falling to one of the other invading forces.

Simms shrugged those thoughts away and watched the A-10s strike. Spider Sentries disintegrated and missiles destroyed the coral-red platform. The jet engines then whined as the attackers banked away from the wall of mountain.

As the lead elements of Voggoth’s attack shattered, General Simms turned her attention to the west. From her elevated observation point she could glimpse through the spires of the mountain tops. Back there, between the walls of rock, hovered a thick, white mist hugging reaching out from the Wet Mountain Valley. That mist stumped guidance systems, distorted heat signatures, and hid The Orders’ muster zone.

Beneath that artificial mist Voggoth’s legions gathered for another push through the Rockies, a push thwarted several times before by weather as much as resistance. Simms knew that this time their battlefield was one of three that day, each aiming to hold off the easterly tide of The Order.

She heard a scream. A chorus of screams. And then from that mist flew a flock of four Spooks wailing as they searched for targets, each one resembling a ball wrapped in a large spoiled sheet that fluttered like a kite or a cape.

She radioed, “Razorback, this is Hawkeye, watch your six; Spooks closing fast.” The Spooks flew at the fleeing aircraft, their howls disappearing into the greater song of artillery firing and explosives detonating around the mountain pass.

In desperation, the planes dropped flares and chaff despite knowing that neither radar nor heat drew Voggoth’s anti-air defenders. Nonetheless, two of the pursuers followed the decoys, exploding in mid-air harmlessly. One of the A-10s, however, did not escape. The missile-seemingly a living missile despite Voggoth’s minions lacking any real life-impacted the tail assembly and shattered the rear half of the jet.

Cassy Simms shook her head in silent prayer for another dead comrade, then turned her eyes to the mountain pass favored by the enemy. She saw more Spider Sentries advancing from the mist in a long line, another coral-red platform preparing to shoot more rolling shells, she saw more of the monks who had once been human, and more of the lumbering gray Ogres.

Worst of all, she heard the approach of the mightiest of Voggoth’s weapons. Or more specifically, she felt it. The mountain peak trembled, small rocks cascaded away.