Beyond Apocalypse Page 6

  First he would annihilate the oncoming armada. Afterwards, he would contact Anguhr. To leave this campaign now would be even more suspicious than directly contacting another General. He had always loved his shadowed mother, the Dark Urge. But he understood there was an element of suspicion in all her actions. Her methods of war being only one indicator of an inefficient if all-powerful mind. And so he would act within protocols as closely as he could until he had a better perspective and strategic outlook. Tanuhr’s hammerhead extensions undulated. He was a master of timely annihilation, but did not wish to hasten his own death.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Heat, shockwave, and radiation assaulted the target planet. Another melted crater appeared in the already pitted city that spanned a continent. The simple, fission warheads were not from Hell. It was the native militia attempting to eradicate a mass of invading demons. Sadly for the saurian creatures fighting for their world, the demons were swift to flight. The horde’s strike leaders could smell the plutonium from a distance. They arranged their demon units in tactically useless zones to lure the enemy into launching. Fast and mobile, the demons then quickly fled to turn and watch the flash and rising clouds punch through the emerald sky. Dodging the release of fission energy had become a game for demons. For the planet’s inhabitance, Armageddon had become reality.

  Soon enough, scorched earth would become scorched planet. The once proud civilization called itself the Ohnk-hriss. The name rose from two ancient syllables called through vanished forests that marked the location of the lead hunter and direction of the prey, or, simply: here and ahead. Now, the planet and all its species headed towards doom.

  The demon Almok sneered. His sensibilities were offended. Other intellects might shudder to think what depths of behavior might offend a demon. However, Almok cared nothing of depravity. However, nor was he offended by carnage. He was a warrior demon, and thus the latter was his business. The former was a waste of time by weaker creatures. No creatures, strong or pathetic attacked him or hid under the field of rubble he stalked. And so his mind was partially distracted by wider observations of structures, materials, and even weather. Such was the dread infliction of intellect. Greater awareness had been granted to him by his General, Lord Ursuhr, the Mighty. All demons were recording instruments. Arming some with a near-independent mind created differential sensors at the point of the horde penetrating the enemy. Ursuhr had directly selected Almok. The General’s fist was larger than Almok’s head. And so Almok endured his unwanted, higher state in silence. He wished to live, and was now even more aware of the risks to his life. If his heightened mind strayed to the concept of irony, he would become more annoyed. But still stay silent.

  Almok was again part of a massive planetary invasion. This he enjoyed. The fact that the only remnants of enemy forces near him were spatters on his thorny hide, he did not. He was there to pull the trigger and kill what charged or lay in front of him. That’s what he appreciated the most. Nevertheless, his dreaded intellect gave him certain insights. At least insights in the context of demon thoughts. It was the city that made him sneer. Not that it burned, but how it was built. Across the stars, allegedly intelligent creatures insisted on building fixed positions as if war was not the natural state. It made no sense. Cities were never dug in. Never built as proper fortifications. This failure of reason was on so many cities on so many worlds. The rising towers invited bombardments.

  He observed such foolishness across far different styles of mind: insectine hives, metallic collectives, or soft little species that erroneously thought themselves individual entities. All had no sense of how to build structures to endure a battle. Perhaps it was realization that everything always fell to the might of Lord Ursuhr. Perhaps fighting poorly and building fragile battlements was the facile, alien way of paying tribute the Dark Urge.

  All praise the Dark Urge. Almok chanted mentally, and sneered anew.

  A gust blew fallout across Almok and his rifle. Almok didn’t blink and his muzzle stayed upright and ready. There were footsteps near him. The familiar rasp of claws against pavement told him who closed in. He turned to see three members of his squad. Demons always moved across all forms of battlefield with the muzzles of their stout, metal rifles forward. They all lowered their weapons. Almok did not need intellect to recognize the rare demon expression of confusion.

  “Almok, come.” A demon spoke and stepped forth. “You must see something.”

  “Scan it. Kill it!” Almok barked at the speaking demon. But its act of assertion marked it. Almok could name other demons for reference. He gave recognition to this one as Kwal. Almok’s thoughts would be transferred to the horde’s registry, as would the name and identity of Kwal.

  “It resists our weapons.” Kwal said. “And we cannot take its impression. It is—it is weird! We bid you look at it!”

  Almok thought to bark Scan it. Kill it! a second time, but sighed and thrust his head in the direction the other three demons had approached. Almok followed them on the ground through the shattered city. Another squad flew in the opposite direction through smoke rising from a tower cut into a jagged half. Almok ground his sharp teeth as he heard an exchange of fire. He wished he was there. The sharp staccato ended. Almok caught whiffs of the propellants from saurian projectiles and the mephitic signature of demon rifles. Then a new sound demanded more attention than the scents. An echo of mechanized mass rolled through the canyons of shattered towers. The four demons turned from a roadway flanked by burning buildings onto a wider avenue among smashed ones awaiting the flames’ advance. The sound’s maker came into view. Almok’s desire for a fight was answered.

  A heavy yet sleek machine ripped away pavement as it sped down the avenue on tracks. Its egg-shaped hull appeared at odds with the vehicle’s mass and belligerent purpose. The armored egg had its wide end sliced away and replaced with a wider dome mounted on a backward lean. A concave impression rested near the angled dome's upper edge. Inside it, a thick cap acted as the buttress of a long, narrow tube universally recognized as a main gun. Perpetual fire had tinted its muzzle break soot-black. Two larger, oval masses were looped by metal tracks and flanked the hull. A concave area was recessed into the forward sections of both flanking ovals near the main gun. In each of these rested a sphere armed with two, smaller guns with venting down their length. They also bore the scars of heat from constant use. The hulk lurched as its crew found itself in the open against the enemy. The machine then only moved its guns toward the demons.

  For a fraction of a blink, two styles of reptilian eyes locked. Serpent versus saurian. Serpent eyes stared down the sights of the heavy demon rifles. Saurian eyes glared through electronic sights inside the Ohnk-hriss fighting vehicle. Both aimed to annihilate the other. In the next fraction of time, the demons opened fire.

  Loud reports and bright red flashes followed the demon’s volley. The saurian guns also fired. The side-mounted gun turrets streamed high velocity rounds straight into demons. Hell’s bullets did greater damage. Only a few rounds bounced off the rounded armor. Most punched through the alien steel and straight through the machine. The Ohnk-hriss fire jostled the demons but ricocheted off their hides. Almok’s gun was knocked off target.

  The saurians fired their main gun. The demon next to Kwal vanished. The shell continued into the wreck of steel and glass behind them. It detonated. The surviving structure collapsed towards the street as the demons advanced with renewed fire. Dust, smoke and shards flew passed the remaining three demons as they moved towards the tank. Almok took to the air over the cloud of debris and continued to fire. The Ohnk-hriss blasted one more errant round from the main gun before they stopped firing. Almok landed and the surviving three demons regrouped and stopped shooting. Their rifle’s magazines began to generate new rounds. A piece of the dome around the main gun fell away as the demons took position around the machine. None barked orders. Each demon knew how to respond to each other’s motions from imbued tactics.

  Flames began to rise
inside the hull made visible by the armor’s many perforations. A small explosion followed. The three demons resumed their trek to the anomaly. Explosions continued inside the hull as they walked away. Almok was glad Kwal had survived. He didn’t want to have to name a new demon.

  They came to a hole among small mountains of smoldering debris and remains of shattered buildings. Between them was a small, fresh crater made from a grenade recently thrown by Kwal. The demons glimpsed remnants of an underground site through the crater. Almok hoped something large and vicious lurked inside. He reconsidered the thought, but decided he liked the idea and smiled. Although they were far from a bomb crater, firestorms drew in the stenches of burned flesh, heavy isotopes, and seared metals. They didn’t penetrate the colder and darker site the demons entered through the hole. The horde’s opening salvos and the tremors from the saurians’ desperate counterstrikes had shattered the underground complex. There was nothing alive, and surprisingly no bodies. Almok decided the site was of no military importance, or the enemy had fled in fear. Almok wondered if demons or something else caused the fear. It was still worth exploring.

  Machines lay strewn among the debris. Power transmission had been cut. Nothing was active. The Ohnk-hriss had taken the circular shape of their ears and made it the pattern for reception and input on their technology. Almok had never seen so many things with disks and loops fallen into piles and strewn among rubble. Almok recognized the communications rings that hugged the outer ridge of saurian ears, and the small, mock hemispheres of their planet. The machines plotted coordinates and interfaced with more powerful calculation devices.

  A set of communication screens sat righted. Its user must have survived and made a last transmission before fleeing. One screen held a static image of the receiving individual. These saurians were fused with technology and used two rectangular display screens. The first screen sat at an angle above the larger, second one so both sets of their eyes could take in separate fields of information. Almok had enough trouble dealing with one brain. He might welcome being smashed by Ursuhr’s boot if offered a second, artificial one. Even the synthesis of Ohnk-hriss brains was inadequate against the demonic invasion. Although, Almok wondered, what could prevail?

  The three demons reached a metal tunnel on the other side of the ruins. Its length that once extended from it lay collapsed among the other ruins and debris. Its surviving length continued into bedrock. One flap of their wings carried the demons into the steel tube. The tunnels were built by this planet’s scaly skinned inhabitance for slinking beneath their cities. They proved easy pathways for demons, providing they kept the claws of their wing joints folded down.

  The planet’s gravity was plus one of ship normal. Almok noted an increase to near plus two as they neared a portal cut into the tunnel side. The entrance was wider than most made for the Ohnk-hriss. The tunnel wall showed the extension had been cut quickly and left rough. Some crushed rock littered the floor from the new chamber beyond. The project was done in haste. As Kwal and the other demon turned to enter, Almok noticed they bared teeth. Demons did so to intimidate enemies, to ready their jaws for use in self defense, and personal reassurance. Almok curled back his own lips as he entered. He was disappointed to see only a machine.

  Almok reconsidered his disappointment and allowed his curiosity to rise. As Kwal had said, it was weird. The machine held an ethereal aura noticeable to a creature born from such energies. Its combination of physical and arcane radiations cast it in white and effected local gravity. Its surface looked like stone, but smelled as metal. Yet, like a thing cut from stone, it felt solid to passive demons senses. Obviously its workings were not simply mechanical. Its shape was a smooth square with smaller rectangle slabs like steps at its narrow ends. It extended into the crude chamber as long as the three demons standing wing joint to wing joint, but only one demon wide. It was as tall as their weapons’ belts. Compared to a single Ohnk-hriss soldier, it would be massive.

  Almok thought the white thing looked old. It smelled old. Older than the rock cut away to make its chamber. The odd machine’s housing was a single casting. Perhaps it was grown in a mold. Its narrow ends were sheared from something akin to a buckle cut from a grenade belt. It was likely a module detached from a larger structure. But that structure would be massive. It would be a thing not built for the scale of demons, but for giants. Giants such as Generals. And if it was living metal, it was like alloys cast from the skin of the Dark Urge. She gave that boon to her warriors, such as ammunition grown inside demon rifles. This machines size, shape, and energies suggested Hell. But this, as all alien worlds, was an enemy planet. This could not be from Hell. Yet Almok had no other reference for a power old enough for the origin of an ancient machine. Almok’s life as a thinking creature was new. He had struggled to find a context and understand the curious white thing. Curiosity became confusion and then frustration. Almok shook his head, violently.

  Kwal and the other demon leaned back from Almok and the machine. They instinctively aimed their rifles at the machine as they considered the state of their angry leader. Perhaps it attacked him inside with radiation or parasite infiltration. It was strong if it did that to a recognized demon.

  Almok regained focus. He wiped away froth from his lower lip and shrugged to his companions. He considered what tactics might involve this strange object. Why did the Ohnk-hriss place it here? He noted that none of their missiles had struck this site, despite demon presence. Therefore this machine was valuable to them. Yet, it was abandoned and not well hidden. Perhaps it was meant to be found by demons. Almok wondered if he was part of a trap set in motion. He realized that if he could understand the machine then he might halt the trap.

  Almok sighed. The breath was cut between his serrated teeth. To consider the machine more deeply meant he would have to think more, and set free other lore bound in his already smoldering brain. Almok growled and bared his teeth. However, in service to his dread Lord Ursuhr and the harsher presence of the Dark Urge, he would do it.

  “I shall have to think more,” he hissed.

  “Think?” Kwal asked.

  “Yes,” Almok snorted. “Don’t try it too often. It makes you—” Almok halted. He wished to warn his fellow demons of the dangers in being fully self-aware, and worse, thinking about it and other things. Yet demons took pride in enduring pain and hardship. They could endure open space, enemy weapons fire to the face, and worse. They could endure a lot. Describing the curse of thinking as a hardship would make it appear enviable. But thought allowed him to find a way to make demons wary of his curse: “It makes fighting less fun.”

  Kwal and the other demon replied with widened eyes, growls, and nods. Almok had found a way to make demons afraid.

  Almok focused. Stored and coded information unfurled inside his brain, at least for now. For the moment, Almok became an advanced engineer. His mind felt hijacked but he did not resist. He considered what could generate the wide range of energies, possible power sources, and past designs of various reactors. The strange machine considered no better than a hulking weapon became a sophisticated device with a series of integrated systems to produce a range of effects with a likely purpose. A theory was formed.

  “It is a generator!” Almok snapped. “A phase engine.”

  “This is a weapon?” Kwal asked.

  “Yes. A cowardly, defensive one. But a weapon of importance. If there are others, it may impact the battle. Summon our Field Master. Kalak will speak to Lord Ursuhr. He must know of this find!”

  “We will be descended into the heart of the Dark Urge for certain!” Kwal shouted.

  “Yes.” Almok smiled, but then snorted. “For now I must stand guard. Go!”

  Kwal and the other demon ran from the crude chamber.

  Almok felt as though his mind cleared as the greater knowledge faded. Once again, aggression ruled over reason. He thought he was alone. A voice dispelled that theory.

  “I thought they would never leave.”

&n
bsp; CHAPTER SEVEN

  The maul was traditionally more tool than weapon. Anything forged in Hell had more dimensions than could be seen. Although, a blunt mass stuck to a handle was simple to understand. When swung by a giant monster such as General Ursuhr, the vagaries and specifics of his weapon were lost in the vast destruction he caused. His maul was as lethal a war hammer against a planet as an impacting asteroid. That was how he chose to think of it. His maul now sat at rest in front of his throne. Its massive head had deformed the deck plate where he first set it down taking command of his ship. That served as its resting site when the General was not swinging it in combat. Its widest, striking face was a flat square with sharp corners. The sides tapered only slightly to the opposing face, and not to a cutting edge but a narrowed crushing surface. It was the crueler of the two, because it took more blows to smash an enemy with that side. Ursuhr thought that it might not be as wide as Anguhr’s axe, but it was certainly heavier. At least he hoped so. Its massive head was nearly a quarter of the weapons length. The metal handle was long for two massive hands to grip. The weapon was well forged. So was its owner.

  Ursuhr the Mighty was the most massive of Hell’s Generals. He was also the strongest. Or so he believed. All of Ursuhr’s skin held the color of quenched steel. His body was the Hell-standard giant with the tweak of elongated arms like a gorilla. A thick set of heavy shoulders and massive chest supported the neck and head of a hairless bear. Ursuhr’s face was cast in a perpetual snarl. His eyes were solid black and almost always locked in glower. In the history of evolution, convergent on worlds far separated, it was biologically implausible for a bear to have shark’s teeth. However, Hell’s monsters owed nothing to evolution and followed no logic. They brought its standard of madness to battles across the galaxy. Grey armor only clad Ursuhr's lower abdomen and upper legs. Boots of mail and leather sheathed his calves and clawed feet because he loved the sound they made when crushing something beneath their soles.