Trevor allowed himself a sigh of relief. The ark-riding soldiers had turned the tide. Jorgie had fulfilled the time loop first begun eleven years ago and now complete. But in the end, what had he accomplished? A battle won. But the war lost.

  Trevor’s sigh of relief morphed into a heavy pang in his heart. He had made the journey across the ocean, fought all the way from France to the Ural Mountains, banished Voggoth from Earth, and forced a confrontation with the powers of Armageddon. All that he could possibly have hoped for. Yet victory eluded his grasp.

  A swarm of motorcycles worked around the bodies and drove to Trevor with a Renault Sherpa amidst the formation, squishing and crunching over the dead as it approached. The group halted as their headlights fell upon Trevor Stone.

  Alexander bound from the vehicle with a smile from ear to ear. Armand jumped from his Ducati with an equally pleased expression.

  “You did it, Trevor!” Alexander celebrated. “We have won the battle.”

  Armand joined in, “It was you or JB who sent the Russians, yes?”

  Trevor nodded his head, slowly.

  “I could not believe it,” Alexander admitted. “I was ready to pull our forces away. We were being defeated. They just kept coming. And then the soldiers came. It made all the difference, Trevor. We won the day.”

  The two stood there, beaming, with their chests heaving in and out with both excitement and exhaustion. Trevor, however, did not return their enthusiasm. He stood still, his head bowed.

  Their smiles faded.

  Alexander: “Where is your son?”

  “He is gone.”

  “I am sorry, Trevor,” Alexander consoled.

  Armand, meanwhile, sensed more awry.

  “Trevor, tell us, what happened? What did you accomplish?”

  He raised his head.

  “I accomplished nothing,” he told them. “They wouldn’t listen.”

  25. Armageddon

  Hell came to Quincy, Illinois. The inferno raged around Jon Brewer’s tenuous hard point along the banks of the Mississippi River. It raged in a hurricane of metal, fire, explosions, screams, and battle cries all beneath a tumultuous front of evil black clouds.

  Glowing, lethal balls poured into the hardened city, dozens more with each passing minute. No structure remained standing along the waterfront; everything reduced to wreckage. Both bridges lay in the water, denied to the attackers.

  Humanity’s defenders took refuge among the blasted buildings and toppled vehicles. Many of the prepared machine gun nests and gun emplacements remained, but just as many had been rooted out and destroyed by the invader’s barrage.

  Mankind returned fire with fire. Hundreds of guns-large and small; mounted and dismounted-targeted the incoming projectiles with growing accuracy. Artillery shells fired from behind the lines managed to hit Voggoth’s army as it lurked more than a mile from shore waiting for the pummeling to pave the way.

  Jon used his glasses to gauge the enemy. The tree line on the western dike that had obstructed his view of the opposing force just hours before was long-gone, replaced by a smoldering pile of toppled timber and hundreds of stubborn trunks of various sizes all warped and melted by the crossfire.

  “Bragg, do you copy? Jimmy, come in!”

  The constant roar of explosions and flying ordnance forced Jon to scream into his radio.

  A barely audible voice responded, “Copy that. Give me targets.”

  An exploding ball hit the pavement of Front Street in an eruption of concrete and dirt. The resulting fallout caused Jon to duck his head for the briefest of moments; even his determination must succumb to reflex.

  The spotter Eagle had long ago been swept from the air, therefore target acquisition came from more conventional means.

  “On your map,” Jon consulted his own as he estimated the target area, “in the fields west of CR-346. I count three batteries. The damn things are killing us.”

  Captain Jimmy Bragg was a veteran of Five Armies, having been the first to spot the approaching Roachbots before the battle and then later his Apache had been knocked down by the Chaktaw at the same time as Nina’s.

  As he had during that battle eleven years ago and throughout his career in Trevor’s army, Jimmy Bragg answered Jon’s call with a military stoicism that bellied the suicide mission he undertook: “Roger that, General. We’re heading in.”

  Another explosion, this time to Jon’s right. An already-overturned Humvee disintegrated into pieces of metal and rubber. He watched with detached fascination as one tire spun high into the air. Several more glowing spheres whizzed past the tire with indifference just as it reached maximum height. It seemed to pause there before deciding to accept the invitation of gravity.

  At that moment a new roar rumbled across the battlefield: a trio of Apache helicopters flying ungodly low and roaring over his head like thunder incarnate. He saw the determined pilots-dead men already-grimly guiding their birds of prey out and over the river. They banked hard south, flying over a pair of capsized barges. The undercarriages of the helicopters nearly skimmed the water. Then, at the right moment, they swerved west again, rose above the riverbank, and launched Hellfire missiles. The contrails from the rockets gave the impression of warheads traveling on ropes of smoke. That smoke obscured Jon’s view of the gunships.

  A moment later came a brilliant flash followed first by the sound of screeching metal rotors and then the heavy splash of a helicopter falling into the river.

  Bragg’s voice ignored the casualty as he radioed, “Targets hit. All three batteries out of action. We’re pulling-“

  The choppers emerged from the smoke heading east with their noses down. Flames raged from the rear of one of the helos, creeping forward to the cockpit like yellow fingers grasping prey.

  An explosion to Jon’s left sent more shrapnel his direction. He ducked behind the protection of the concrete foundation out of instinct. A second later his eyes saw Bragg’s cockpit engulfed. The burning helicopter crashed into the east-side bank of the Mississippi.

  Three more Spooks flew in from the west aiming for the last escaping Apache. A soldier in a forward fox hole launched a shoulder-fired Stinger. The warhead hit and destroyed one of the Spooks as it crossed the water. But the other two drones found their mark, one slamming the chopper portside and inducing a spin, the other hitting the canopy head-on. The collision sent a dead pilot’s body away from the airframe while the rest of the Apache crashed somewhere behind the front lines.

  The battle did not afford Jon time for prayer. Voggoth answered with aerial thunder of his own. A flight of five of Hammerhead bombers swept down from the storm clouds and disintegrated overhead thanks to Patriot batteries. Hundreds of bomblets dropped along the waterfront.

  The detonations traveled from north to south. One of the 14 ^ th Mechanized Infantry Brigades’ Bradley Fighting Vehicles suffered a direct hit, as did a trench full of soldiers stationed not-quite-under the raised highway that led to the remains of the Quincy Memorial Bridge. Jon saw body parts and rifles thrown out from there.

  He crouched in a corner of the basement and spoke into his radio.

  “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.

  The F-15s banked away and skillfully weaved through downtown St. Louis, evading the anti-air creatures some of which collided with buildings and detonated.

  For all the fiery destruction, the napalm offered the briefest of reprieves. In mere moments the next wave of Roachbots marched around their burning comrades and continued into the thick of downtown. Human infantry and vehicles responded with bullets and explosives. The battle for St. Louis reached its final stage.

  Plumes of smoke from the fight outside of St. Louis drifted high on the eastern horizon. Nina watched from some five miles behind the action. Still, the Leviathan-so tall the storm clouds often hid its uppermost reaches-felt close. Too close.

  Her ragtag band of guerrillas managed to wipe out a pair of supply vehicles and their escorts before settling into ambush positions to either side of Interstate 64.

  Her force of 300 included displaced soldiers, government workers (mainly from food and agriculture) and civilians either liberated from The Order’s clutches or accidentally caught behind enemy lines.

  Half that number served under the wounded corporal’s command to the north of the interstate in the buildings and on the grounds of St. John’s Mercy Medical Center. Before Armageddon the concrete, glass, and steel buildings hosted a variety of medical facilities including a well-respected children’s hospital. The campus had not re-opened since the first Armageddon, but the proximity of the structure to the highway gave it a prominent role in this second Armageddon.

  In any case, the best shots among the corporal’s contingent occupied the upper levels of the tallest buildings where they could cover the interstate with sniper rifles. The less skilled positioned themselves in the parking lot and tree line along the highway with any weapons they could find.

  Ironically, the southern side of the ambush utilized a nearly identical facility for cover: this one being the Missouri Baptist Medical Center, also unattended since Armageddon but its campus of modern buildings provided equally useful sniper positions. Together Nina’s two groups would form a gauntlet the Chaktaw pass as they crossed over a major highway cloverleaf on their way toward downtown.

  “Hey, Nina!” Vince called from the western side of the top floor. “You need to see this.”

  She gave Voggoth’s army one last glance. It might be the last time her eyes saw a Leviathan; one small consolation as she entered what, most likely, would be her final fight. She watched the walking tower take another step forward and while she could not directly see them, she knew thousands of robots and monsters marched in front of the gargantuan and into down town where her fellow soldiers fought desperately to stave the assault. She wished she could be with them, but fate dictated a different path.

  “Nina!”

  Vince’s voice suggested urgency but not panic. She doubted the Chaktaw had reached the ambush yet but history suggested these aliens to be a wily bunch so she prepared for any possibility.

  She moved away from the east side window and traversed the dark, cold hallway with Odin, the elkhound at her side. The dust and erosion of time had long ago supplanted the hospital’s sterile environment. Broken equipment, overturned trays covered in the black and brown decay of decade-old food, and crusty file folders of now-useless paperwork lay scattered about. A stench of mold and mildew pervaded the air.