General, sir. Word coming in from the workers, the enemy have been pushed back into the ruins outside Reno. We’ve taken heavy losses, but the colony survives.
Thank God for that. Send word to the mobile mutagen tanks to prepare for maximum output, and ready the Queen for transport. I want us making new troops up there as soon as possible.
Sir, orders relayed, sir.
Good job, son.
General Marchant lit a cigar and tried to remember the soldier’s name. Preston? Plissken? Something like that. Five years ago, he’d been a promising young officer ready to serve his country but he wouldn’t get a promotion now. Dead men don’t change rank.
The taste of tobacco in his mouth, the General cast his eye over the control room. Everyone else there was slightly transparent and pale, like they were made out of blue-grey vapour that mingled with Marchant’s own cigar smoke. Some old weapons test in the Cold War ensured that the souls of anyone who died at Joint Base Corman wouldn’t pass on to whatever reward — or punishment — awaited them after death. And while the General considered that blasphemous, he was both glad of the extra man-power, and well aware that destroying the ghost engine in the Workshop 4H could well destroy most of the lower 48.
Joint Base Corman was the location of the experimental and the weird, every mad idea that could have changed the world if the Cold War had gone hot. Not for this base the nuclear-powered bombers. When word leaked about something like that it got a nice project name like ORION or PLUTO and sealed away. If anyone saw something that Fort Corman was working on, they wouldn’t believe it long enough to write it up.
At least numbers on the base were remaining stable over the last two weeks or so. Maybe fifty living souls, enough that they didn’t have to feel alone and could still eat and drink and remind themselves what it was to live, along with maybe three thousand who still served even in death and three colonies of giant ants.
Sir,
another voice from another spirit, this one wearing a uniform dating from the 1950s. Word from aerial recon: part of the ruins are now encased in a silver dome? It appears impenetrable.
Do we have any visuals?
Patching video though now, sir.
The unsteady video showed what the recon team had described: a silver dome. Judging by the size of the streets and crumbling buildings, it was maybe a half-mile across. Something in the corner of the jerking video caught the General’s eye.
What’s that? Bottom corner.
The video paused. Are those… letters?
‘IT WILL FALL’,
he read. We can’t get in yet, but they can’t stay in there forever. Get everything ready, we move in the second that dome falls.
The Palisade Hotel in Reno had definitely seen better days — hard for it not to, given the scale of the war — but its faded finery clearly appealed to someone. One of the pretentious bastards who insisted they were in charge, probably. Daniel Kipling didn’t care for finery. He did care that the bar was relatively untouched, and so now wandered the hotel corridors swigging from a bottle of hilariously expensive Bordeaux, with a brace of the same in his coat pockets.
The forces of assembled wizardry had made good use of their seclusion. It’d been three months now, and while nobody had yet agreed on how to fight back or how to escape, the shielding dome had kept them safe from any attacks. Unfortunately, that had sapped a lot of the urgency from the people in charge, who had fallen back to internecine bickering rather than making any concrete plans. And so Daniel had spent much of the past three months drunk enough to dull his frustrations at their lack of progress.
He found himself in the main stateroom, a grand place that only had one wall and part of the ceiling missing. Even now, a good dozen people milled around in constant argument.
–don’t care about the Nachthexen–
–spells for humans don’t work on–
–not a fucking rocket launcher–
–was I to know swamp creatures don’t burn–
To Kipling’s eyes, maybe half of the people in the room were from the Colleges Invisible — the ostentatious outfits probably took a dozen spells to keep clean. He saw their only remaining sorcerer in animated debate with a pair of oracles over the precise meaning of a sacrificial rat’s organs, and a druid whose body was slowly being taken over by slime mold.
The entire contingent from the Order of Nightmares was too busy maintaining the shield than attending meetings. More surprising was the absence of any of the Night Witches. Then again, the Circle of Flesh could only spare a junior biomancer while the rest worked overtime in their field hospital. And only the one necromancer, an older woman in Gothic finery.
He slumped in a chair and coughed hard. Not the fake kind meant to draw attention, but a long, hacking wheeze that ended with him spitting a finger-sized blob of green mucous on the carpet next to his chair. After a good chug from the wine bottle he noticed everyone staring at him.
Finally, some peace and quiet.
Constance, the necromancer, regarded him coldly. We did not invite a gutter mystic to our council.
Her diction was clearly the result of watching too much Downton Abbey.
No, but since there’s more of us as any three of your mobs put together, someone ought to hear how you’re planning to lose the war.
We are not losing the war!
Snapped a red-headed man in beautiful green robes.
You could have fooled me. A fine fucking magocracy this is. Ten years after taking power, ten years after finally stepping out of the shadows, and all we’ve managed to do is turn the country into the set of a Mad Max movie. gulp Now we’ve got what, Las Vegas' shittier cousin? Well done.
This is why we didn’t want you here,
continued the man. Daniel couldn’t remember the names of the robed men if he tried, and he had more important things to consider — like how much wine was left. You’re a pessimist. We encountered some resistance from mundane forces, but we hold much of the east of the country, and we’re not the only expeditionary force trying to bring peace and civilisation to the rest. So what if we’re facing some difficulty from the mundane military?
Quite,
said another man. When they see that the bone gates can bring all the power, food, and water they need, the mundane will welcome us with open arms and tell their generals to stop fighting.
Yes, but glug they’re not just fucking mundane, are they? Somehow the U.S. Army’s got their hands on a bunch of b-movie shit!
He tossed the empty bottle to one side and drew another with practiced ease.
They have unconventional weapons but we can still ensure victory. We just need time to plan, and to win the hearts and minds of the masses.
Time we don’t have.
Typical of your class to not grasp the situation,
Constance cut in. The Order of Nightmares hasn’t just erected a shield. This area is at a confluence of ley-lines. Time within the dome passes while the outside world is slowed. I believe it’s only been three days on the outside.
A fucking time-stop? Well… that’s something, I guess.
Indeed,
another of the men was speaking now. And while the mundane forces do have the element of surprise and a range of options we were not aware of, we can use this opportunity to rest, re-arm, and even bring in reinforcements. The bone gates can bring in supplies even through the dome. Though we are running out of acceptable sacrifices.
We’ve lost so many good people on this march, and you only thought of doing this now?!
There were no closer ley-lines that could empower the spells we need.
One moment, gentlemen. I believe that’s my cue,
Constance whispered words of power, and everyone else in the room winced as though hearing powerful feedback.
In their ritual sanctum, skeletal hands wielding sharp knives slit the throats of the Order of Nightmares.
The dome fell.
Eyes wide in shock, the only thing to pass through Kipling’s mind was the mandible of a giant ant.
The sudden fall of the dome proved all the chance General Marchant needed. Ghostly troops had sprayed the land with mutagens much faster than living people could, as they did not need the safety precautions. Ants quickly grew to massive size and fell under the telepathic thrall of the nearby Queen. Flying saucers retrofitted from the vessel crashed at Roswell dropped blobs of protoplasmic goo that assimilated everything around them. The unaging radioactive bodies of giant women and men, victims of experiments who yet retained their patriotism, moved in to spread both violence and radiation sickness among the enemy. Swamp monsters, vampires, and Things from Outer Space descended on what had been the wizard stronghold.
The battle was over in less than thirty minutes. Only one of the collected mystics survived.
General Marchand sat in Briefing Room 3 of Joint Base Corman, and Constance sat across from him.
Tell me, why did you do it?
General, you are asking me why a necromancer would side with the many denizens of a haunted military base over wizards who see sacrifice as a means to an end?
Even so. The war–
Causes great pain and suffering to those who die in it, and I would rather not prolong it more than it should. I won’t lie and say I didn’t think we were right, but it has gone on for too long. I remained only long enough to gather what intelligence I could, and to bring down this group.
What’s your end goal? Are you wanting to what, claim asylum until someone in D.C. waves their wand and wipes us out?
I don’t think that could happen. The war has ravaged the country, but you’ve done far more for people on this side than you may believe. We only have three more expeditionary forces on this side of the Mississippi, everything else is shoring up control back east. I think that this is an opportunity to end the war, to let people get back to peace. Two states, the west and the east.
Why are you suddenly on my side, though?
A necromancer cannot help but reflect the spirits around them, and I am sick and tired of wallowing in pain and anger. I’ve seen all your forces, and I’ve seen how you treat them. They are not just weapons, but people. Your giants chose to become so, and chose to keep fighting. With an end to hostilities, what kind of a world could we create?
A country of the living and the dead, of fifty-foot men and creatures from the black lagoons, teenage werewolves and carnivorous tomatoes.
The General looked thoughtful. Oh brave new world, that has such people in it.