Black Fountain held Geomancer up with his high arms while his lower limbs speedily reloaded the weapon. Once the box mag was in the magwell, he opened fire in long bursts to keep his team covered while they made their approach along a ring wall of boulders. As soon as his lower arms had the underslung grenade launcher loaded, he moved forward, firing shell after shell at the Anunnaki pestering his team’s right flank.
“Down!” he boomed.
They crouched just in time to dodge his spray of bullets. The ifreet on the other side of the boulder wall sprung their ambush just in time to get sprayed. One survived his volley, but Saviour’s Sword, youngest of his team, incinerated the foe with raw radiance. The big human seethed in the steam coating his pearl white armor.
Gooooood, hissed Yama.
Ayu was silent.
Black Fountain turned and aimed his machine gun at another smattering of shattered boulders. Yama’s heat pits, augmented by his skullfort’s sensors, fed him the outlines of two hulking soldiers; Anunnaki. He fired a rain of grenades, releasing his brothers and sisters from their anguish.
“Get down!” shouted Mastodon, the third heavy of the team. Black Fountain ducked, as did Saviour’s Sword. Incendiaries flew overhead, coating the ground behind them with their diabolical gels.
Another squad of ifreet came over the rock wall and opened fire with flachette guns. Ursa went down, howling in pain as the shot overwhelmed her. Mastodon, monstrous among his own kind, smashed a boulder into the heads of three ifreet and crushed another’s head with his own. Saviour’s Sword joined him, and the two young titans cleared the field without firing a shot. Steam hissed on their armor in the cold dawn air.
“Fountain, regroup,” Vala said over the comms.
Black Fountain signaled his team and they fell back to their mobile camp. Vala and the other colonels were inside a prefab container looking over a map, pointing and shouting furiously. As he entered their polymer tent, Black Fountain roared.
“Ah,” said Ramses, “now the arguing can really begin.”
“No,” said Vala. “We’re done bickering. Fountain, report.”
“They keep sending troops to the tower.”
Ba Barrigan pounded his fist onto the table, causing the map to flicker. “See! We’re wasting our time with their camps. We need to pull all troops to guard the tower.”
“Uh huh,” said Ramses. “We’ll have an easier time defending it when the enemy is able to set up their artillery.”
“They’re not going to fire those guns, Ramses.”
“Ba, how do you know that?”
“They’re trying to take the tower, not destroy it.”
Ramses shook his head. “Always you look only one step ahead, Ba. Whatever that tower is, they don’t want us getting control. They will destroy it before that happens.”
“Can they?” asked Vala.
Ba Barrigan thrust his arms towards Vala open palmed.
“Maybe not,” Ramses admitted. “But it makes no difference what they shoot their guns at. We need to stop them from setting them up.”
“I agree,” said Vala. “I’m sorry, Ba, but we need to keep them from setting up artillery.”
Black Fountain looked at Vala, his friend. Her swept back skullfort with its engraved seraphim pattern of wings was badly scuffed. “The Archeus,” he said over his boisterous colleagues.
“What about them?” asked Vala.
“Where are they now?”
Vala tapped on her vam and the map zoomed to the feed from their northern drone patrols.
“What are they doing?” Ramses exclaimed.
“They’re moving on the tower,” said Vala.
They spread out as they marched, gaining speed with each step they took towards the obelisk.
“They are more dangerous than the artillery,” said Black Fountain.
“Send the human armored divisions to...”
“Coward,” Black Fountain hissed.
“... take our places on the northern front,” continued Ba Barrigan, “and we will move to halt the Archeus.”
Black Fountain lurched forward. “No!”
“Fountain,” said Vala.
He calmed a little. “They go to the tower. We will fight them there while the humans hold the line.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Vala nodded. “Tell all northern troops to lay low while the Archeus pass, then resume their assault. We here will meet the Archeus at the obelisk. All other forces will maintain their present maneuvers.”
Black Fountain grinned. Later he thumped his chest and grunted loudly, glad for the bravery of his fellow colonels. He slapped Ba Barrigan on the back. The tall, skinny man was confused, but Black Fountain merely laughed.
They rode in the humans’ armored trucks from the perimeter back to the obelisk. There they gathered to form a plan. It was a vain gesture, so Black Fountain only partially listened, noting the three colonels who would be on his fireteam. Three Archeus were on this world, and they would take them on in groups of four.
“Are we making a mistake?” asked Ramses.
The white sun splintered off the ice crystals high in the green noon sky. All seemed quiet, save for the distant mortars and scatter bombs. Black Fountain watched the trails of rockets shot from their jumpships with joy.
Vala’s voice spliced with the sound of pumping blood in Black Fountain’s ears. “... chance with them distracted…” she was explaining to they who needed more reason than reason made apparent. “…any more human casualties than necessary.”
“And what about Harbinger casualties?” asked Kelphus Ray, youngest of the colonels. “There are few of us and many of them. We need to manage all resources judiciously, Vala.”
Why do they ask and talk and pine for answers and why does she coddle them? Black Fountain snarled. Soon, Yama. Yama snapped inside his skullfort.
They felt their approach in the quaking of the air. Black fountains and Dirac seas invaded human dreams, but the vid’reda war with the now and raise fists again the here. Black Fountain welcomed the shivering on the wind. Had he the radiance of Solomon, he would have floated in the air and beamed like a star.
The sound came from everywhere, but Black Fountain followed Yuma’s fearful eyes to the tower. It glowed green like the sky, and the beam shooting from its spire turned red.
The quake preceded the sound, it an echo from the dark below. Black Fountain caught his teammates and kept them on their feet until he too was shaken. The Archeus were bow running at frightful speeds in a circle around the tower. Black Fountain held himself steady in a hands-and-feet couch, watching their movements with all three heads. Each knight ran at a different orbit; one near, one far, the smallest in between.
That one is the weapon. Yama marked him with his target painter, the one function of his skullfort Black Fountain gave him autonomous discretion over.
The knights picked up speed, kicking up clouds of dirt and grass.
“All teams, concentrate fire on the nearest knight,” Vala commanded.
Black Fountain followed the command, using Yama as a spotter, but he kept Ayu on the knight in the middle.
Another quake, stronger, and only the Archeus were on their feet, having only gained more speed.
Then Vala’s wisdom paid off. By reserving only they twelve to stand against the enemy’s commanders, their force had the numbers to keep the enemy regulars at bay. Black Fountain saw some enemy stragglers coming near, only to be picked off from behind by human snipers when the quake sent them sprawling.
“Fountain,” she said on a private channel, “I’d hoped to draw in reinforcements once we’d engaged the Archeus. I didn’t expect this. We need another plan.”
In his hands-and-feet crouch, he looked in around and upward while Ayu stayed fixed on a point where the middle knight continued to pass. Along the tower was a winding stair that seemed to climb all the way to its zenith. Other than that, there were no outstanding details; no windows, no doors, no grippable surfaces.
He stood as they resumed their assault on the nearest knight. For every shot that landed, two missed, but still they wore it down. It dropped to one knee and moved like it was panting. This one had a crest of horns rising from its back; clawed metal bones that beamed like a crown. Black Fountain launched every projectile Geomancer had. The knight’s body rocked from the blasts, and the last two grenades took one of the bones off the crown.
“Fountain, bring it down!” commanded Vala.
Black Fountain roared and his teammates followed him. He leapt on top the knight’s back and blasted at its armor with white hot beams while the others fired their weapons. The others spent their rounds one by one, then closed in. The Archeus stood and let out a sickening, mechanical whine while it rose to its feet. It lurched forward, then back, then spun, the emitted waves of heat and its own dark photons. The Harbingers clung to it and blasted it with raw energy until it heaved and buckled, and its finely segmented limbs went limp. Its essence began to seep into the air as its shell gave way to its relentless opponents.
“On me!” shouted Vala. They went to her coordinates on the other side of the obelisk. The other two teams had engaged the far knight. It was wielding discs of orange light that spewed liquid heat as they spun. There was a pile of armor and a broken harness on the ground by its feet.
“Ramses,” said Ba Brannigan.
It was indeed Ramses’ armor, but he was visible around the knight as a vengeful, vacuous cloud. Vala was doing her best to keep him tethered with her own radiance while the others all fought.
Ayu yelped. The smaller knight was on the other side of the obelisk dancing in a widening circle.
“Vala, I’m pursuing the third,” he announced. He ordered his team to help Ramses and ran for the dancing knight. When he was in line of sight, seeing the beast in natural vision and not the outline painted by Yama’s skullfort, the knight had already begun its charge. Black Fountain veered towards it to intercept. Between them the air was on fire, and they met with the clap of a thunderhead. When Black Fountain came to, the Archeus had already climbed to rings of the spiraling stair. He shook off his concussions, then stood and ran, taking the massive stairs three at a time when he reached the tower.
The Archeus was fast, blasting energy from its feet to vault itself up the stair. Black Fountain did the same, gliding on the wind and landing with his claws as if he were a snake and the obelisk a tree. He pushed with everything he was made of, and when he was halfway up the tower he began to gain on the knight. But the obelisk was tall, and he was beginning to feel tired when the top was in view.
He slowed when he reached the zenith, its blast burning bright. The Archeus was standing in the center of whorl of steaming cloud, arms volant, its torso open to reveal and pronged apparatus. Black Fountain mustered a surge of strength and rushed the knight. After nine paces he felt a shock and stopped. He stood in a field of pure black; the Archeus stood upon nothing. He began to walk, carefully, cautious of the emptiness beneath him. A cloudy shape like a closed eye opening formed above and beyond the Archeus.
Black Fountain charged. The Archeus dodged. He whirled about and caught one of the prongs emerging from the knight’s split torso. The knight was taller than him, but not by much. Once he had a hold of the prong with one hand, he grabbed it with a second, then pulled the archeus down and took hold of the other prong with his other two hands. The knight jerked back and fought to wrench itself free. One prong yanked out of his hands, but before the knight could free the other, he channeled a series of radiant bolts at the knight’s exposed inner shell.
The Archeus buckled and fell, closing its torso as much as it could for the prongs to remain extended. Black Fountain took off his gauntlets and his skullforts and from all four hands and all three mouths summoned a horrible black flame. The Archeus let out a screeching, keening, howling wail and snapped its torso shut, reeling from Black Fountain’s radiance. The Harbinger lunged, caught his foe under its lanky, finely segmented arms, heaved it off its feet and ran. Even as they fell it wrestled to be free, so he clutched at it with his legs, his arms and his jaws. It only stopped squirming when they hit the ground. Black Fountain’s eyes all went dark, and the last thing he saw was his own blood pooling around the crumpled wreck of his opponent.