Chapter 16

I opened my eyes to see Mark gazing down at me. The expression on his face made me feel all soft and squooshy.

Was that a word? I was going to make it a word. Squooshy. The way you feel when someone you like looks at you like that.

“Hello handsome. What time is it.”

“Eight o’clock.”

“Right on time. What do you have to say to me?”

“Well, your instincts were right for one thing.”

“What?”

“First flight out one of the drones spotted a cloud of dust on the horizon just before it turned back. We sent another with a longer range. That was about the time I came and saw them putting you in an ambulance.”

“Yeah. Experiment with Moloch. Didn’t go quite as planned. I’m feeling much better now though.”

“Stuart told me what happened. Do you have a death wish or something?”

He was angry with me. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Besides I was no China doll.

“No more than any soldier in this war. We all do our part, and I was the best person for that particular job. Would you rather Laurel was lying in a morgue right now?”

“No, I. I’ve made you mad, but I’ve been so worried.”

“Well get used to it. We’re both on the front line, so we both know there are risks, for ourselves as much as for each other.”

“Yeah but, do you have to be so reckless?”

“Reckless? It was a controlled experiment. I was being monitored, sort of. As much as was safe for the others. I had protection which was expected to perform better, and the experiment was time limited. There was no reason to expect Moloch had that sort of strength.”

“I’m sorry this is coming out...”

“Wrong? You can bet your ass it is. Just because you have a bunch of big, butch, manly protective instincts does not mean I need them. You want some soft little baby-doll who’ll simper and faint at your whim, go right ahead and find one, but you do not go around telling me that I’m being reckless when you know damn well you’d take a calculated risk with worse odds yourself.”

“I’m. I’d better go.” He turned to leave.

“I don’t think I dismissed you, lieutenant.”

It was cruel. He was too good a soldier. His training overrode his feelings and he stood rooted to the spot.

“About face,” I said softly, climbing out of bed. Hospital nightdress and bed hair. This wasn’t really how I wanted it to be. I didn’t even know how long it had been since I’d last brushed my teeth.

I reached up and cupped his cheek, then stretched to plant a short kiss on his lips.

“Now I think there was something you were going to ask me.”

“Is that an order ma’am? Sir?”

“No. But let me know what the long range drones find.”

“Biggest hoard yet. They’ll reach the portal in a couple of days.”

“Okay. Thank you Lieutenant. You can go.”

He relaxed. “What if I don’t want to?”

I looked at his face. There was that squooshy feeling again.

“I guess I wouldn’t mind a little more company.”

“No ranks though.”

“I’m out of uniform, lieutenant.”

“Mark.”

“Mark.”

He stepped closer.

“Would you mind if I brushed my teeth before we, er...”

He broke into a smile and waved me towards my ensuite bathroom.

#

He stayed the night, sleeping in the chair next to my bed. I didn’t get much sleep. Just lay there looking at him and enjoying the squooshy feeling.

See, it’s a good word. We should all start using it.

In the morning, the doctor provided me with my uniform – freshly laundered – and a clean bill of health.

Mark drove me back to the base. We shared a few indulgent smiles but reasserted a little professionalism before we arrived at our destination. He still hadn’t asked me out, but I didn’t want him to feel any sense of coercion when he did, so I let it go for now.

We spent a lot of the drive discussing tactics for what lay ahead, so when we arrived, we went straight into action mode. He’d already ordered in a lot of ordinance, so what was needed was to deploy it. We opened up the big portal and sent troops through to do what was necessary. We put up a drone to keep an eye on what was coming which was how we spotted the advanced scouts. Manticores for the most part and looking to arrive several hours ahead of the main force.

That meant deploying slayer squad to deal with them, now equipped with automatic injecting manticore anti-venin. Any change in body chemistry and they’d get a heavy enough dose to neutralise an estimated full dose.

I wasn’t yet cleared for active duty, so stayed back and organised the defences.

Slayer squad were provided with quad bikes that ate up the distance between them and their quarry in no time. They fell into their fight while I was still in the middle of discharging my own responsibilities. All I knew was an hour later when they were heading back with a bag full of manticore stings, having left a fairly gruesome display for the army to catch up with. One of the girls had been stung and was in and out of lucidity while the anti-venin in her system fought for her sanity. I ordered an ambulance for when they made it back, but there wasn’t much else to do.

The dome remained shuttered in darkness through the whole operation so that any need to evacuate could be met by simply dropping the large portal from our side. That meant she went through as soon as they arrived back. I deployed the rest of slayer squad to hunt down the few remaining survivors of the last hoard, most of which were scattered around the edge of the portal plain.

The drone reported an increase in speed of the main force shortly before a lightning strike put it in limp mode and turned it back our way. A second drone went up, not that it was likely to tell us anything we didn’t know.

We completed our tasks an hour ahead of the hoard’s arrival and withdrew to our side of the divide. With all personnel accounted for, we opened the shutters.

Laurel was waiting for us with enough new and improved helmets for all of slayer squad, myself included. We commandeered a big enough transport for the lot of us and headed out with the double dagger portal device and a large tent.

The powers that be might not approve my going this time, but working on the idea it was easier to get forgiveness than permission, I was going anyway. I was probably still a bit wobbly for hand to hand fighting, but nobody had my experience of standing against those mental attacks.

We made it to the site of the small portal, opened our way through, then erected the tent over the site on our side. The tent kept the UV off the portal site on the our world side, so opened it automatically on the other world. We had our way home. Helmets on, we made our way cautiously down the hill until we had a good view of the plain. Creatures were pouring into it like a dam had broken somewhere. Daddy demon was there standing sixty feet tall.

Finn had a mini portal open from our side which blocked him from using the main one. We’d left a communicator for him and had receivers to it plugged in our ears.

“The captain’s not too happy about your heading off like that,” Finn said in my ear. It was open channel so all the girls could hear as well as anyone in the enemy camp who bothered to pick up the communicator.

“The captain can complain as much as he likes once this thing is over.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Wait and see for now. Hopefully he’ll talk to us in a bit.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“Then we’ll see if we can get his attention.”

“Er, I don’t think he’s going to try talking to us, Sarah.”

“What do you mean?” I couldn’t see any detail from the hill, but I had noticed the clouds building up overhead.

“The portal device here is, er… well it’s sparking. I think…”

“He’s about to hit it with one of his lightning bolts.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

“He’s building up a fuck load of energy this side. I’d suggest you shut it down.”

“But…”

“Shut it down, lieutenant.”

“Yes sir.”

A bolt of lightning as thick as the demon’s arm – and bear in mind he was sixty feet tall and no whimp – fell out of the sky and hit the portal area. Everything within fifty feet of the area – other than Daddy demon himself – was thrown violently away from the epicentre, most not surviving the event.

When the dust settled, my binoculars showed a portal open from this side giving a sizable view into the dome. The shutters were open, so not a healthy environment for anything from this side. Other than…

What looked like the mother of all plant seeds was being manhandled towards the portal on the backs of maybe four greshnicks. I activated my communicator.

“Finn? Looks like you have a sizeable hellmaw heading your way. Finn?”

All I could hear was static, then the giant demon stood and looked directly at me across the five miles separating us.

“Things work differently here, little one. Your devices function well enough while the portal is open from your side as some of the influence of your world reaches through, but not when the tables are turned.

“Electrickery has no place in this world and will not function, any more than the mystic influences of my domain only reach your world when the portals are opened from this side.

“Your ancestors knew this. They used it to steal the power you wield, just as you stole more of the same some days past. But you will not hold it for long. You have taken enough from my realm. Now it is my turn to take all from yours.”

Whether it was the distance or the helmets or both, talking to daddy dearest was a lot less painful than previous encounters of the sort. It left me clearer headed. I turned to one of the girls – Indigo – who I knew was least keen to be here.

“Go back through our portal, collapse the tent and open up a doorway from your side,” I told her.

“Won’t that...” Violet started.

“Trap us this side?” I asked. “Maybe for a while, but we’ll be able to talk to base again, and as soon as the tent’s back up, it’ll only take dropping our portal to open our way back home.”

I looked from Violet to Indigo’s retreating back and wondered how many more colours of the rainbow I had to play with. Then again Indigo and Violet were as far apart from each other in the spectrum of temperaments as it was possible to be so maybe I was overthinking it.

“Hey, shit face!” I yelled. Yeah, I know. Lacking originality, but you try coming up with clever insults when you have a couple of hundred thousand ways to die just down at the bottom of the hill. “If we stole anything, it was only to fight back against you.”

“Ah, but then most cattle do not resist when they are led to the slaughterhouse.”

“Is that how you see us? Perhaps you should think again. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of cattle killing one of the farmer’s sons and capturing the other. And who is Moloch anyway? You’re brother? Your father? Your wife?”

The demon’s roar was enough to make us wince. “Kill them all,” he yelled, “but capture her. I want her to experience the fullness of her defeat.”

A wall of monsters began climbing the hill towards us. Less than a couple of minutes away. Come on Indigo.

“Sarah?” Laurel’s voice crackled in my ear.

“Hi Laurel. Put the tent back up, would you, but keep the portal open from your side. Tell Finn he has what looks like the mother of all hellmaw’s heading his way.”

“The Dome’s gone quiet, so I’m guessing he knows.”

“I don’t suppose you have another of those demon bookification spells handy?”

“Sorry. Kind of need a book for that, and the only one we have has a demon in it already.”

“Couldn’t you scan him into an isolated computer somewhere?”

“Didn’t think of that. Sorry.”

“No worries. Turns out we need a portal open from your side to use our kit, so don’t drop it unless I say.” Memories of the lightning strike leapt to the fore. “When I tell you to drop it, do so immediately though.”

“Sure. Anything else?”

“Find out what happened to Finn and get him to call me if he can. I’m kind of worried.”

“I’m more worried about them,” Violet said pointing at the mass of monstermanity rapidly approaching.

Monstermanity? Like humanity only not? Yeah, well like I said. Stressful situation.

“Wesley, activate hillside defence.” Wesley was the name we’d chosen for the AI in charge of the weapons deployment this side. Its default voice was hopelessly posh, so the voice fit wonderfully.

“Hillside defence activated,” a plummy voice responded in my ear.

Multiple machine guns rose out of the rocks and carved swathes of destruction through the nearest of the approaching creatures, turning most into dust. The few hardier ones that remained fell quickly beneath the flashing feet of my guard.

“You’re not going to stop, are you?” Painfully stupid question, but I needed to draw his attention away from his bridgehead.

“Why should I when I so clearly have the upper hand?”

“Wesley, detonate the minefield please.”

“Yes sir, detonating the minefield.”

The effect was almost beautiful in a way. Small anti-personnel mines sprang into the air in a majestic sweeping wave of slightly delayed signals. The explosions that followed were deliberately small and ‘cold’. No real visible signs of flame, but millions of wooden shards flying in all directions at chest height. The vampires burst into dust, again in a slow wave, enveloping the massive camp in a cloud of desiccated monster, obscuring everything.

It took a while for the dust to clear. When it did, the field was a lot emptier.

So much death, or undeath, I didn’t know. Those things had been enslaved by a parasite they could do nothing about. I didn’t know how aware of themselves and their surroundings they were. My dark angel, David, had been even if he couldn’t bring his altered self to care. Now a quarter of a million souls – or whatever it was these things might possess – had been released into the void at a word from me.

I felt utterly sick, but no time to get all squeamish.

“Wesley. Drone strafing runs please.”

“Of course sir.”

All around the plain, squadrons of automatic aircraft, each no bigger than a person, took to the air, settled into loose v formations and began strafing through the clumps of remaining monsters with splinter rounds. Greshniks and krrst were atomised. The former more than the latter as the emaciated stealth hunters phased out ahead of the attack.

Which didn’t get that far. There really hadn’t been much they could do about the mines, but drones were an altogether different kettle of flying monkeys.

Hey, it’s not as if we were in Kansas anymore, is it?

The guy in charge let out an enraged bellow, which was apparently an order too. The Fyarl demons, and there were thousands of them, all utterly unfazed by the wooden bullets, added their voice to the boss man’s, their horns glowing into incandescence and throwing out beams of energy that cleared the skies in half a minute.

Okay, so that was kind of impressive.

“Rail guns Wesley,” I said. “Target the smaller demon horns.”

“Yes sir. Right away.”

Visible streaks crossed the plain, the projectiles too fast to see with the naked eye, fired from miles out near the horizon and struck with uncanny accuracy.

Except we didn’t have many and they took a while to recharge. Fyarl demons went down by the half dozen each time a fresh pulse lanced out at them. Recharge on the rail guns was half minute, so not that often..

“Make sure each rail guns has a bunch of fifty cals defending it, please Wesley.”

“Of course, sir.”

The fifty cals were each mounted on small, tracked vehicles. I had them deployed out of range of the creatures on the plain, which put the monsters out of their range too, but they were camouflaged and ready to sacrifice themselves in response to any charge on the even more remote rail gun placements. They weren’t mobile. They’d have lost too much accuracy if they hadn’t been rigidly spiked into the ground.

About the time the third salvo took its relatively unimpressive toll, I spoke up.

“This could take a while,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind waiting.”

Three thousand odd Fyarl demons at half a dozen every thirty seconds. I needed a calculator.

“We shall see if you have the time for it, shan’t we?”

The voice still wasn’t painful, for which I was grateful. I didn’t want to overtax my body’s capacity for self-repair.

He’d roared out more orders and mixed groups of monsters headed away from the portal in the general direction of the rail guns, as well as in the opposite direction. The line of fire was visible, but the speed of the projectiles made it impossible to tell which way they’d come from, so he was hedging his bets.

Multiple Fyarl demons in each group, enough that at least one or two would survive to reach the targets unless I deployed the fifty cals which would mean I’d lose them the moment they were in range.

“Wesley, how many drones do we still have active.”

“None from the first wave. One hundred and twenty as yet not committed.”

“Gattling guns?”

“Two hundred, currently waiting on the skirmishers.”

It was a lot. Lieutenant General Teal – not quite a spectral colour. Sorry, Teal had done well for us in persuading his higher ups to equip us. I had billions of pounds worth of equipment at my disposal. I’d already spent a ton of it by detonating the minefield. They wouldn’t be that happy about the losses I’d incurred so far, but I’d be forgiven a lot if I prevented a genocidal army from breaking through into rural England. The destruction of the vampires meant he wouldn’t be able to advance as quickly as he had planned, but the nasties he had left would still represent a considerable threat.

“Any chance of getting a surveillance drone through the portal?”

“Not without causing considerable destruction on the other side.”

“How about getting one near enough to see through?”

“I doubt it would survive long enough to supply useful intelligence, sir.”

“Laurel, what can you tell me?”

“I’m trying, Sarah, er captain, sir, but there’s no contact with the base whatsoever.”

“Can you order a surveillance aircraft over it? I need to know what’s happening.” As far as my binoculars could tell, what troops he hadn’t committed were arranging themselves around the portal, waiting for his signal. Whatever he had in mind, he evidently felt it would be enough.

We were hours from sunset. By rights, that hellmaw should have outgrown itself, quite possibly taking the dome and a lot of defenders with it, but could it have survived direct sunlight? Could it be something new, or maybe just big enough to survive our Sun?

What about the rest? If they were immune to the sun’s rays then they’d have gone through already.

“Get the army to bring in as many black light spots as they can. This guy’s full of different ideas, and I have a really bad feeling.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Can you talk to them though? I don’t think I’m being all that convincing.”

“Fine, patch me through.”

“Captain, we’ve been hoping for a little more intelligence.” General Teal it seemed was to be my go-between.

“Yes sir. I’ve lost contact with the dome base. I need someone to fly over it and show me what’s happening. Vampires are taken care of this side, but the tougher things are still up and staging to come through.”

“I thought they couldn’t open their portal if we had ours open.”

“So I believe sir, but he’s able to generate some sort of massive discharge, like electricity but possibly not. I told Lieutenant Finn to shut down our portal key briefly. I don’t know if he managed it in time, or if part of the communications blackout is down to our key being overloaded.”

“Or you making a bad call and giving him an opportunity to open his side. I thought they couldn’t open a portal in sunlight.”

“I believe the way portals work from this side is very different from ours. They automatically open in the dark, but it looks like they can be forced in the light. I’m not sure how yet.

“Right now, he’s lining what’s left of his army up to come through. He had what looked like a massively oversized hellmaw, but what that’s been able to do I don’t know. Same for what he’s planning next. If he’s got troops ready to go through, he must have something in mind to mask the sunlight, which is why we need dark light spots down there now.”

“Tell me what you’re doing, captain.”

“Using railguns to take out his Fyarl demons. He has thousands of them and the fire rate is limiting how fast I can deal with them. They have a highly effective form of attack against anything within a hundred yards, which means drones and fifty cal min-tanks wouldn’t get off more than a shot. I’ve missiles as a last resort, but I can’t afford to use them too close to the portal.”

“Sounds like you’re making a balls up of it. My fault for giving a seventeen-year-old girl command.”

“With respect sir, I’d be grateful for a few ideas right now, but I suspect I could come up with decent argument against pretty much any conventional tactics you might care to suggest. Besides that, I am the only commander on this side, and I am waging a war unlike anything anyone’s ever seen.

“You’ll excuse me, sir, but you didn’t strike me as much of a butt coverer. I hope you don’t prove me wrong at this stage.

“My assessment, he has a plan to block out sunlight on our side, after which he has tens of thousands of assorted shit show to send through. Enough to establish a bridgehead. After which, who knows how quickly he could replace the quarter-million vampires I just toasted.”

“Did you say...”

“A quarter of a million, yes sir, about that. Now, can I have my spotter and my dark lights?”

“Can she support her claim?” A muffled voice that was more poshness than intelligence, probably fighting its way through an oversized walrus moustache. So much for the army chain of command being better structured in the modern world.

“Wesley, can you please transmit video of the minefield going off. Follow it with the Fyarl demon’s attack on our drones.”

“Transmission underway sir.”

It was barely a minute’s worth of video in total. It was followed by a minute’s silence.

“Well, she has my support.” Apparently, walrus moustache guy wasn’t too proud to change his mind.

“The spotter’s in the air, Sarah,” General Teal said. “Expect your intelligence in a couple of minutes and dark light spotlight on site in an hour.”

“Thank you, sir. Could I ask you to listen to Laurel from here on. She comes across as nervous and unsure, but she’s a lot cleverer than me and more likely to pull a rabbit out of the hat when you need one.”

“Alright, captain. Anything more we can do for you?”

“Just don’t second guess me, sir. You know the old saying about the battle plan often being the first casualty.”

“Understood. We’ll be standing by for updates.” Which meant I’d bloody well better supply them.

“Laurel, patch through the spotter plane as soon as it’s in range.”

“Sure. That would be about now. Oh shit.”

Oh shit indeed. The dome was a wreck. Still a few twisted pieces of metal, but not a single pane of glass remaining. The hellmaw filled it and spilled out twice it’s diameter in all directions. It was still moving but slower than the one in the college had been, and it looked like it was beginning to smoke.

“That looks like something new,” I said.

“Er, I’d say. If that much mass turns into... The whole town will be covered in smog. There’s no wind today, so...”

“Emergency broadcast. Everyone in Summer vale, remain indoors, doors and windows locked. Toxic chemical cloud release or whatever sounds believable. People and animals outside will become insanely violent or something of that nature.”

“On it, on it. You just do what you can from your side.”

Sure, but what? That was the thing, when I couldn’t solve my own problems, I had more of a tendency to have a go at other people’s. More so since becoming Sarah, and very much like my mum did.

I tried to focus on the matter in hand. The majority of the Fyarl demons were gathering around the portal, which meant either they were a part of the vanguard or they were there to stop any more strafing attacks from the drones. The latter seemed most likely.

The groups approaching the rail guns were down to less than half strength with regard to Fyarl demons.

“Wesley, can we have a couple of warthogs on each of the skirmish groups?” Warthogs were smaller versions of the American A10 Thunderbolts. The full-sized versions carried tank busting canons. Our scaled down drones were armed with fifty calibre machine guns. Not quite as many rounds per minute as the Gatling guns, but nearly as destructive.

“Yes sir.”

“Standard drones to follow once the Fyarl demons have been taken out.”

“See how it works with one group first, sir?”

“No, hit them all at once. Don’t give them a chance to figure out what we’re doing.”

“Yes sir.”

It worked, more or less. Four of the groups lost their demon defence after two passes. Two of them needed a third pass which gave the surviving demon time to charge up and take at least one warthog out of the air.

One group, the surviving drone took out the last threat. The other group took out both drones before the nearest railgun took out the remaining Fyarl.

Which meant I could turn the rail guns on the concentration of demon horns near the portal. They were so closely packed I think I took out more than twenty with the first salvo.

Meanwhile, waves of ordinary drone fighters strafed the remaining skirmishers with splinter rounds. The manticores proved tougher than the wooden rounds, but they where no match for the warthogs.

“Fancy getting involved?” I asked the girls. Nothing eroded moral like inaction on the battlefield.

“What did you have in mind?” Caridad asked.

That was the thing. We were two dozen against tens of thousands. Suicidal odds even with the best of tactics, and I was coming up horribly dry when it came to those.

If you’re stuck, talk the problem through.

“Well, you know what armament we have, variety, amount range and limitation. We haven’t used all of it yet and there are some things I hope we won’t have to resort to.

“We also know what we’re up against, which is a lot better than when the opposition first turned up, and it’s getting better by the half minute.”

A volley of railgun fire helped make my point.

“We’ve seen what they can do and we have a sense of their limitations too. I’m guessing daddy demon’s lightning bolt trick either drains him too much or doesn’t work so well over range, otherwise he’d have melted our rail guns already. Same goes for the Fyarl demons.

“The thing is, in that sort of concentration, they can melt almost everything we have before we even touch them, and what we can use against them is too slow to prevent them from carrying out their plan, so we need to up our game.

“Firstly, what are they trying to do and how do they plan to achieve it? Mostly a no brainer. They want to get enough of their army onto our world to form a bridgehead, then to start taking it over.

“To achieve that, they needed to shut down our link from the other side and open their own despite the UV levels. Job done. Big bad’s lightning thingy either shorted our key or forced us to shut it down ahead of lots of nasty damage. Now they have theirs open we can’t block them again without closing theirs first.

“We have a short reprieve before they block the sunlight on our side and can start sending stuff through. More stuff actually, because the hellmaw they sent through already wrecked the dome.

“We need to achieve three things as far as I see. First, we don’t know how bad things are back at the dome, or what’s left of it. We can’t assume, so some of us are going to have to go back through our hole in reality and make sure we have a portal key ready to use, preferably the big one since we’ll be able to fire through it more easily and the lightning thing is less likely to take it out.

“Second, we need to take the portal down this side. Things work differently here. I believe portals open naturally when there’s no UV light on our side, but it’s kind of obvious that can be overridden. We need to figure out how they’re doing that and stop it, which means finding a way of getting in there and hunting about without being seen.

“Lastly, we need to try and distract them. Delay them if we can, certainly stop them noticing what else we’re trying to do. Laurel, have you been listening in?”

“Yeah. I, er, think I might be able to help a bit.”

“That would be great. We need every advantage we can get right now. First, I need you to let a group of the girls through our portal so they can go sort out our portal key, then you can come through and tell us what you have, as long as there’s still someone to look after things on your side.”

“Oz is here, and Stuart and Jen are coming. They left the base before things turned nasty. I should be able to join you in about fifteen minutes, if, if you could send a couple of, you know, bad ass bodyguards to guide me back to you.”

“Done. Okay group allocations. I think half of us should head back to the other side. Remember, your priority is sifting through the rubble for our large portal key and finding a way to get it working again. Maybe take Jen with you since she built it. This is not a cushy option. If we don’t manage to shut this thing down, you will be on the front line facing that lot as they come through. Volunteers?”

Pretty much every hand went up, though some were a little hesitant. I picked out a dozen from the most eager.

“Second is infiltration and investigation. That’s only going to work if we keep numbers small. A lot of risk, because if you’re caught there won’t be much any of us can do to help, but I need two of you.”

Vi and Caridad glanced at each other and nodded.

“Great. Team one and team two head back to our portal. Team one go through and head back to the dome with Jen. You two, wait for Laurel and bring her back.

“The rest of us need to start looking through our inventory and brainstorming how we can make better use of it.”

I looked up as another salvo of rail guns shots flashed across the battlefield. They hit a barrier which flared briefly in different places. None of the shots seemed to make it through.

“Damn. Wesley, concentrate railgun fire so two shots hit the same spot on the shield. Smallest time delay you can manage. First shot to damage the shield, second to take out a target. If that doesn’t work, try grouping three shots.”

“I understand.”

“Why don’t we try softening the shield with a warthog?” one of the girls suggested.

“Good idea. Wesley, scratch previous instructions. Rail guns in groups of one, two and a three. Two and three group to fire as previously indicated. Solo gun to have a warthog fly in and hit the shield ahead of its aim point.”

“Understood.”

“Why...?”

“No guarantees any of it will work. This time round we have half the targets and we see how effective each method is.”

Thirty seconds passed. We watched as the next shots flew out. The double and triple shots took out their targets. The shield weakening shots ricocheting off and the target shot making it through. The solo shot also took out its target, but at the loss of a warthog which fell to a nearby pair of Fyarl demons.

“Wesley, go back to individual targets, but random delay up to two seconds after charged and ready.”

“Understood.”

“A hunch,” I said to the sidelong glances the others were giving me.

Thirty seconds later the shield flared into existence then faded as six shots took out six targets.

“Lots of energy needed to keep up a shield all the time. If they can predict when we’re going to fire, why waste it? Wesley, set delays up to six seconds, get the railguns firing out of synch and roughly evenly spaced, somewhere between four and eight seconds apart. Keep a randomness to the firing.”

The shots turned more erratic and settled to a roughly slow continuous fire. Target demons started falling again. They adapt to us, we adapt to them.

We didn’t have much time to discuss additional tactics before Lauren appeared between her two guides. She had a book in her hands.

“I thought that was full.”

“It was, but I mentioned your idea of scanning it into an isolated computer to Stuart and he liked it enough to suggest it up the chain of command. It was why they weren’t on site when the dome fell. Busy uploading our second captive demon to a virtual playground.”

“Does that means...?”

“It means we can try. I noticed last time I was here, my magic’s stronger this side of the portal. I have a theory that magic only really works on our world when there’s a portal open from here, hence such things as the witching hour, magic done in the dead of night and so on.”

“Sounds great. Maybe you can write a book about it when this is over. In the meantime, you said you had some ideas of how you could help?”

“Er yeah.” She muttered something in ancient something or other and Caridad and Violet vanished. “It should last a couple of hours. Longer if you stay inside each other’s bubble. Can’t do much to suppress the noise though.”

“This is great,” Vi’s disembodied voice said. “We’ll be back soon.”

“Wait, weapons.”

“Laurel brought some things through. We’re good.”

The disappeared. Well, I mean… you know what I mean.

“What else?”

“If you can bring some of the drones down, I can equip them with shields.”

“Like the one they were using against the railguns?”

“Like one that would protect against Fyarl demons. At least for a bit.”

“Brilliant. They’ll need a flat place to land, so let’s get off the hill. Anything else?”

I led them all downhill.

“I can mask us. Not quite as effective as invisibility, but it’ll cover us all. Then muffle our sound. That last one doesn’t move so only when we’re ready to set up the Circle of Kayless.”

“I remember what happened to you last time you cast that. What happens to the rest of your spells when you fall unconscious.”

“Er, I have no idea. I’m hoping not to do so this time round.”

“I’ll hold you to that. What happens if we don’t complete the ritual and bind him?”

“Again, I don’t know. I’d never seen a spell like this before we cast it last time.”

“Yeah, I guess we’re all working in the dark. Come on, let’s fuck some shit up.”

“I love it when you talk dirty,” Laurel gave me a nervous grin. “Let me set up the masking spell first.”

#

It was like walking about under a bubble. Everything outside was shimmery and became more indistinct with distance. I gave Wesley coordinates for a landing point and we reached it as the first of the warthogs came in to land.

Laurel’s shields turned out to be small sachets of ingredients which tucked away neatly inside an access port. A few words in Latin or something else I had no hope of recognising, let alone understanding, and they were ready for the air. I instructed Wesley to hold them off until we were in position, then led us closer to the fray.

We were going to need some distraction to get within the required mile, so I called in an air strike. Shielded warthogs came in and cleared an area of Fyarl demons, followed by unshielded drones with splinter guns. It left us with a few stragglers to deal with, mainly krrst, but since we’d all been equipped with UV flashlights, they’d become a lot easier to pin and kill. One or two manticores as well, but they couldn’t work out what was happening with the masking field and either stood about looking confused long enough for us to dispatch them, or they bounded off in search of something they could understand.

We settled in a clear space three quarters of a mile from the portal and Laurel cast her silence spell. It muffled sound inside the bubble a little, but we could still make ourselves understood if we spoke slowly.

Laurel formed her seven-pointed star and set about chanting with six slayers. That left me with four others to defend a very busy perimeter. The drones continued to attack and continued to take losses, while the rail guns continued to fire and take their toll. It all helped to keep our patch clear.

The sixty foot Moloch demon – for want of a better name – reared up as soon as Laurel started the Circle of Kayless. It was evident he could sense something was happening, but he couldn’t see what.

I ordered smoke grenades to be fired into the middle of the crowd around the portal. It’s what I’d had in mind to protect Caridad and Vi, so hopefully it would help them. Not so much in their observations, but I was hoping they’d spotted something by now and were heading in for a closer look. The smoke wouldn’t last long in any case. I just really hoped long enough.

The enormous demon let out bellow of pain as Laurel’s magic took hold. Fyarl demons all around us let out similar bellows in sympathy and shot their beams of energy in random directions. One or two landed close to us, prompting me to prioritise a few targets for the warthogs.

Flakes of demon floated down to fill the pages of the book. The smoke was clearing so I ordered in more smoke grenades. Not soon enough though. Multiple red, glowing eyes appeared in the sky above us, staring down at the Circle of chanting girls.

“Laurel!” I yelled.

She looked up, her eyes that creepy complete blackness and dark veins stretched across her face.

She slammed the book closed and yelled, “Run!”

We were all on our feet and running, but what are your chances of outrunning a sixty-foot monster?

“Wesley, hit the big guy with everything.”

“Everything sir?”

Built in safety protocol. “Everything that’s not going tear the portal wider.” Then to the rest of the group I yelled, “Scatter!”

We spread in all directions just seconds before a foot twice as long as any of us were tall – well, maybe not Shannon, but she was like freakishly tall for a girl – slammed down where we’d been standing.

Rail guns shots fired off in close succession and the giant foot, along with the leg it was attached to, staggered back. Warthog and splinter drone guns roared at it, the splinter guns aiming at the dozens of eyes in its head. He batted several of them from the sky, but he didn’t seem to be thinking clearly. One of his lightning bolts would have taken care of us all.

Of course he may not have had another lightning bolt in him.

“Run to the hills,” I yelled. Unhelpfully, a bunch of Iron Maiden lyrics ran through my mind. None of them seemed particularly inspiring for the circumstance, so I kept them to myself.

The giant demon turned away from us. Either he thought we were no longer a threat, or he had more important things to do, or maybe he was just happy to delegate our demise to the significant chunk of his army he now had chasing us.

“Over here!” Laurel called. I ran and popped into her masking bubble. “Is that all of us?” Not Shannon. Surely she should have been the first here. She appeared from the direction of the hill.

“We are now,” I said.

More oddly creepy words from my friend’s mouth and the bubble over us solidified into something rock-like.

Things charged around us, past us, over us. Bigger things made our hiding place ring like a bell when their feet land on it, but they didn’t break through, nor did they stop moving past. It took a few minutes but something approaching peace returned.

“What did we achieve?” I asked.

Laurel opened the book to show it more than half filled with demon script

“I doubt he’d have fit in here. I can’t say for sure, but I think he has to be diminished by this. I think.”

She waved a hand and the shell covering us disappeared.

A glance up the hill saw most of the army rushing upwards, past our earlier rallying point, past our portal. A longer look back at the large portal showed the giant demon, still full height if I was any judge, but with enormous strips of flesh missing from his arms, his legs, his body, even his face.

“That’s got to hurt,” I said.

“Yes, but more than that. I think it will have shredded his mind too.”

“So how come he’s still...”

“Oh, it’s still him. Just a lot stoopider and less powerful. I hope.”

The fact that he’d sent so much of his army away attested to that. Most of the Fyarl demons were behind us up the hill. I delegated keeping an eye on them to a couple of my group and turned my attention back to the big portal.

“Now all we need is...”

“Hi guys.” Vi’s voice sounding out of nowhere had several of us jumping out of our skins. Yeah, me included.

Laurel waved a hand and she and Caridad swam back into visibility.

“Awe, that was fun,” Vi said. “I think we found what you’re looking for. Kind of like a lamprey or a leach. There are dozens of them latched onto the portal, which is kinda weird because how do you latch onto a hole in space? Anyway, they don’t go through, just sort of pulse, like they’re sucking something out of it.”

“Sounds like they suck UV like the hellmaws do,” Laurel suggested. “Probably drop off when they’ve taken in as much as they can, you know like leaches after they’ve had their fill of blood. I wish we knew more about them.”

“Your wish is my command,” Caridad said, dropping something like a cross between a fish and a snake at Laurel’s feet. It was about a foot and a half long with a round mouth filled with teeth that seemed to fade into nothing.

“How did...?”

“It fell off while we were watching. Everyone else was looking for you at the time, and there was a ton of smoke about, so I kind of took it.”

“I should get this back to the lab,” Laurel said eagerly.

“Or we could just experiment a bit here.” I shone my UV flashlight on it, causing it to writhe and scream and, after several seconds, to explode.

“Well, that wasn’t very nice,” Laurel complained, her face covered in fish goo.

“Sorry, but we know how to kill them now. Wesley, do we have any UV lasers or spotlights or anything?”

“Unfortunately not. It was felt such devices would be likely to damage the portal.”

“Stuart, I need you to get hold of a crate of UV lasers, preferably mini-tank mountable with precision sights.”

“Er, alright, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Any news from the dome?”

“They found the key, but it’s damaged. Jen’s trying to fix it. There have been a number of casualties there. In fact almost everyone was either injured or killed when the portal was, was disrupted.”

My heart fell into my stomach. I didn’t dare ask.

“Lieutenant Finn is among the injured. Quite, er, bad I think, but the doctors are confident he’ll recover.”

“Thanks for that. Would it help Jen if I got her a fresh Fyarl horn?”

“I’m sure it would, but...”

“Well, I’m guessing it’ll take a while to sort out the lasers, and we need something to keep us from getting bored.”

“I was going to say it’s the prism that was damaged more than the horn. The army is fabricating another one, but if you could get another horn or maybe two, it would most likely make our portal stronger and less susceptible to enemy overload.”

“Okay. We’ll talk again in half an hour.”

#

Seven minutes to catch up with the mindless mass of monsteranity – there’s that word again – chasing us over the hill. Two minutes to isolate a Fyarl demon that was lagging a little behind the herd. Six minutes to lure it into our trap where a Vi and Caridad had set up power winches embedded into the rocky ground. A minute’s gymnastics to get me up on its back. Another minute to grab a cable from each winch and loop it onto the demon’s horns, then three minutes more with me straining with all my strength and the two winches almost burning out their clutches before the horns both gave way. Six more minutes to grab our prizes and make it back to the portal.

“You’re early,” Stuart said. “The lasers aren’t here yet.”

“So, drop the portal and I can pass you these,” I replied.

The time it took to do that and re-open the portal from his end was long enough for the lasers to arrive. He started passing them through to the rest of slayer squad.

“Jen has the new prism. It’ll take her ten minutes to fix this when she gets the horns, w-which I’ve just sent on their way.”

“How are things at the portal?”

“The smog’s getting thicker. The army have set up quite a few dark light spots which are trained on the portal from close range. They’re keeping anything from coming through for now, but they don’t look they’ll hold out for long.”

“How long?”

“Nobody’s sure. No more than half an hour.”

“We should get a move on then.” The rest of the girls, Vi and Caridad included, had been busily mounting the lasers on the mini tanks Wesley had sent our way. There were twenty of them to match the number of lasers in the crate.

We climbed on a tank each and rode them down to the base of the hill. They rolled a little slower than we could run, but it felt best to conserve our strength, so we stayed on them, looking ahead for threats.

At about a mile distance, a group of greshnicks spotted us approaching – quite a dust cloud from twenty mini tanks – and broke away from the main group

I ordered Wesley to start lasing the lamprey things as soon they were in range, then led eight of my dozen slayers to meet the threat, leaving the remaining four to protect Laurel. She was a friend for one thing, but her magic was a seriously valuable asset. I didn’t need to tell her; she was already looking for ways to use her skills.

The laser shots were next best thing to invisible. As with the dark light spots, they had a visible component close to the upper edge of visibility. The beams showed up in the dust laden air, lasting for several seconds at a time. Several separate shots lanced overhead before the greshnicks closed the gap on us.

One on one was good odds with greshnicks. They weren’t bright enough to prioritise their actions, so focused on us as immediate threats. I had my experience, and the girls had the benefit of it in their training, so we put them down in less than a minute.

By the time we’d finished, the boss had noticed the effect the lasers were having on his lampreys and roared out a command that sent a bunch of manticores and krrst our way.

The manticores were considerably faster than the krrst, and a lot more dangerous. We had antidote dispensers equipped by the time they reached us, plus an odd shimmering covering our skin. No real idea where that came from.

“Once you’ve beaten yours, help whoever’s closest.” They didn’t really need telling, but I couldn’t help sticking my oar in.

The laser shots continued, several seconds each time. The manticores took all our attention for quite a while. I wasn’t the first to defeat mine, and very gratefully received assistance from Bao.

With my manticore down, I caught sight of a shimmer in the air and grabbed for my UV flashlight. Too slow though. A krrst appeared behind the Chinese Slayer. I expected to see its clawed finger sticking out of the girl’s abdomen, but it didn’t. Something had prevented…

Her expression opened in shock as she caught sight of something behind me, as I felt something pressing against my back.

I spun and lashed out with the blade of a heel decapitating the krrst behind before it had a chance to slip back into its alternate dimension.

I shone my flashlight where Bao’s most recent attacker had stood, locking it back into our dimension. She took the hint and spun around, putting her own heel into its heart.

“Krrst,” I yelled as loudly as it’s possible to yell a word without vowels. Bao and I began shining our flashlights about, looking for targets. There was one manticore still standing with four slayers taking it down. The hadn’t spotted the krrst closing in on them, so Bao and I charged in to take them down. Several more attacks from the stealthy buggers failed to land home before something twigged. I looked over at Laurel who offered me a supportive smile and a thumbs up. Some sort of dimensional shield spell. So very useful under these circumstances.

Something changed around the portal. A sort of surge as the waiting monsters began to run through. Like a blockage in an hourglass had been removed, and the sands begun to flow.

“Wesley?”

“About fifty more, sir.” It would have been better if his voice hadn’t been so fucking calm.

The laser shots on average took three to five seconds. Fifty targets meaning a total of two hundred seconds total, divided between twenty lasers meant...

“Tell them to standby, Stuart, the portal’s about to come down.”

It did. With the same abruptness it had started, the flow of viciousness halted. The great ruler roared his frustration. He would have more lampreys, I was certain, but... sparkles.

“We’ve done it everybody,” I yelled. “The next move is his and will most likely involve a lot of electricity.”

Above us, clouds were swirling into existence in a humongous billowing swirl of darkness.

“Time to get out of here?” Laurel asked.

“Oh yeah.”

“I may do my own thing. I mean, I can’t run like you.” She held her hands out to her sides and rose a few feet before streaking off towards the hills.

Which left me playing catch-up. The others were already yards ahead. I followed across the uneven ground. Using the balls of my feet meant that the heels weren’t a problem for now. Short skirt and tights clad legs meant they had as much freedom of movement as they needed. The worst of it was the absence of a sports bra. My upper body assets had settled on a health size which I’d become used to in the dance. Their natural frequency set my rhythm in the fight but here, where I wanted maximum speed, they did their best to unbalance me.

They didn’t manage it, quite. I made it to the rise just as a flare of atomic brilliance cast intense shadows in front of me, followed shortly afterwards by a shockwave that knocked me on my upper body assets.

They might have cushioned the landing had they not been such a sensitive part of my body.

Vi helped me to my feet. “I thought he said electrickery didn’t work here.”

I looked back at the mushroom cloud billowing thousands of feet into the air behind me. “I’m not sure that’s what that was,” I said.

“You don’t think...?”

“No. If he could do that, he’d definitely be able tear a hole in the fabric between worlds.”

“Do you think any of his army survived that?”

“Not this side of the hill, or this side of the portal.” The dust at ground level was clearing, being drawn upwards, to reveal a solitary gigantic figure. I put a finger to my in-ear communicator. “Anybody on the other side want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Jen replied. “We just had a rush of about a couple of hundred horrors come through just before you told us the portal was about to drop.

“We managed to get ours up and had a prime view of what he did next. Are you guys alright?”

“We managed to get outside the blast radius in time. A few minor bruises, but that’s all.”

“Well, the new portal key held up to the surge, so we’re okay too.”

“What about your invaders?”

“We have a battalion of soldiers here, Sarah. There have been quite a few new casualties, but mostly on the side of the invaders. Your girls are doing you proud. It feels like it’s over.”

“Not yet.”

Daddy Demon, or whatever was left of him after the partial Kayless ritual, stood roaring into the sky. A steady rumble rose from the other side of the hill. Laurel eased back to the ground in our midst.

“Hold on,” she said and cast that spell that formed a rock-like shell over us.

We felt as much as heard the returning forces. They’d spread out in their fruitless search for us, so it took nearly an hour to pass us. When Laurel dropped our protection, the plain looked just as covered with bad guys as ever.

They were keeping a distance from the portal though, since those closest seemed to be falling down dead.

“Jen?”

“I think I mentioned, we have a lot of army guys here. It seems they can’t resist the opportunity for a little target practice.

“Time to come back, Sarah. He’s done his best to breach the portal on his side and failed. However else it looks right now, we have the upper hand.”

I wasn’t about to argue. I was dog tired. We made our way back through the small portal and fell asleep on the short journey back to the dome.