Chapter 7
The attack wasn’t directed against the Notre Dame campus just so the former UoM students would get a kick out of it.
The campus location put it in the heart of South Bend, and with the building’s protections during the early months, it became the natural centre for the town’s administration. The Outlaw Nation hadn’t held the place long enough to change that, and that meant they would almost certainly have set up shop in the location the previous tenants occupied.
Provided those facilities weren’t too badly damaged.
Which was unlikely given that the few people who stayed behind in South Bend were in no position to put up much of a fight. We were gambling that the interior had avoided serious damage. Early indications were that the suburban parts of the city had suffered most from the ill-disciplined rampage of the invaders.
Of course, the Nation knew we were coming, indiscriminate shelling tended to have that effect. It didn’t take long before our advance was met with a hastily constructed response. There was a large parking lot and a golf course between the primary buildings of the campus and the river where we’d been disgorged. The Storm’s soldiers swept across most of that open ground rapidly and met little resistance until we were almost past it. The transition point back into cover was where several thousand Outlaw Nation gang members emerged to meet us in open combat.
They had us outnumbered two to one, but I was confident we still held the advantage. Not least because of the cover fire from the ships.
Hellstrike missiles screamed overhead and set fire to dozens of campus buildings, including the stadium. Our charging horde was initially peppered with small arms fire, most of it intercepted by shields, magical barriers, or simply tanked by people like me whom it barely affected any longer.
To be fair to the Nation gangers, most of them seemed to have moved past reliance on old-world weaponry. Most folks had figured out that it had been downgraded from the ‘not as effective as it used to be’ to the ‘virtually useless’ category. High calibre rounds could still pack a punch, but a lot of my crew had advanced to the stage where they could walk off a direct hit or two from the barrel of an M2 if they were wearing armour.
The answering response of fire darts, lightning bolts, and other magical spells from casters like Jackson disrupted the Nation’s front line putting them on the backfoot and then we were amongst them before they could reform.
Ripper ploughed through a group of ten and sent half of them screaming in agony as they were bounced out of the way by its armoured body and were shredded in the process. Slicer jumped on those survivors and quickly started to despatch them with clinical efficiency.
The other half had the misfortune of being trampled to death as the bigger golem stampeded over them. Ana only slowed their advance long enough in order to wrap the tip of her whip around whichever poor bastard caught her eye.
In the time between leaping from the ship and slamming into the front lines, Ana had installed a cage behind Fang Mei’s seat made from what looked like wicker. It couldn’t possibly be wicker, because that wouldn’t be strong enough for the roughhousing treatment it received. But we had a lot of funky materials passing through our market these days, she must have picked something up from there after I’d filled her in on the plan.
The poor bugger that was rapidly being drained of Hit Points was hauled up by the throat and passed back to Fang Mei who stuffed him into the makeshift cage.
“How about you leave some for the rest of us, yeah,” I bellowed up to the diminutive spitfire.
A whooping holler of maniacal joy was the only response I received.
Perhaps I should have phrased it as an order and not a question.
Regardless, Ana did seem to rein in her murderous instincts and pull Ripper and Slicer up a tad. Or it could have been that the Outlaw Nation warriors in our vicinity were already thoroughly broken by her rampage and sapped the fun out of it for her. Either way, it allowed the rest of us a chance to catch up.
My swords sang as they parted the air and a few heads from the bodies they used to be attached to. There was little point trying to capture many of these guys. Most of them looked like riffraff sent out by their betters to slow us down. Their commander might have believed numbers alone would be enough to seize victory.
A major tactical mistake if that had been what they were banking on.
The Outlaw Nation forces first ground to a halt when they met resistance, then buckled in the face of our ferocious response, only to show their backs and finish in full retreat.
Keep pushing forward! Show no quarter!
My message was pushed out to the full raid party using Clarion’s Call.
“Except us,” I reminded Doc, Jackson, and the other fighters in our wedge of the battlefront. “…but only if you come across a likely candidate.”
A few of the enemy we’d overrun were a bit tougher than their brethren and were left incapacitated, not dead, by our onslaught. Those few survivors were quickly cuffed or collared. They’d be picked up on the way back.
Smoke and heat billowed across the battlefield and the whizzing scream of Hellfire missiles were replaced by the piteous caterwauling of mortally wounded gangers. The ships had ceased the bombardment of the campus buildings now that we’d reached them. There was no need to risk hitting our people.
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Most of the L or Z-shaped halls in front of us had been levelled by the combined sacking and bombardment.
The lion’s share of our troops continued deeper with my blessing, towards the stadium and other facilities around there. But my team angled to the left and made directly for the building with a very noticeable golden dome. Although the dome had been damaged in the dual assaults, it could be easily spotted and was a convenient landmark.
As the Notre Dame main campus building, it had the greatest degree of shielding, and I suspected most of the damage was due to internal factors.
The building was a magnificent piece of modern Gothic architecture. A riot of turrets, gables, and many sunken arched windows, with a few classical columns framing the porch of the main entrance and it was topped off by the oversized dome itself.
It would be a shame to smash the place into rubble, but needs must. The building could always be rebuilt at a later date.
Anastasia led the way on Ripper.
The golem charged up the flight of stone steps to the elevated entrance and ploughed through the barriers that had been hastily erected. The Outlaw Nation had done the hard work of breaking down the shield-reinforced doorway the day before and they’d not had the chance to repair it properly.
Not that I think they’d even tried.
The barrier was primarily heavy, with old tables and a few benches. Weighty, but no match for a rhino-sized golem with momentum on its side.
There were two smaller, single-door, ways in and out either side of the main entrance. I quickly pointed them out. “Jackson, take your squad to the right. Doc, lead the others to the left. We’ll hit them from three sides and pincer as many as possible before they get smart and run.”
Slicer had crawled over what remained of the heavy wooden barrier and his entry was accompanied by screams of horror which emanated from within. “Crynn, Nazz, stay with me, we’re following Ana through the main entrance.”
The pair nodded their understanding, and I took off, vaulting the steps three at a time. Inside, it was carnage already. Ripper hadn’t halted when it passed the threshold and had kept running deeper down the corridor and made a mess of whatever defences the gang members had tried to put together. Bloodied warriors lay strewn about on the floor desperately attempting to tend their wounds.
Fang Mei had leapt from the back of the golem, her daggers in hand, and was busy finishing off targets. Slicer was doing the same on the other side of the main corridor.
“Keep a few of them alive,” I barked out.
Anastasia twisted around in her seat and stuck her tongue out at me while simultaneously hauling on her whip that was wrapped around the neck of a likely candidate. Visually acknowledging that she hadn’t forgotten the plan. To be fair, there had probably been two dozen gangsters defending the entrance. We didn’t need them all.
“Torin,” Crynn cried out in warning.
A door to our right had banged open and a bunch of angry Outlaw Nation fighters poured out attacking our flank. A couple of bullets bounced off my armour, the Hit Point loss was negligible and then we struck back.
A bolt from Nazz’s enormous crossbow punched through the gut of an oncoming attacker and sent him flying backwards with such force that the bolt passed through his flesh and pierced the hip of the taller man behind him.
The pair fell sideways and were out of the fight.
Crynn’s cutlass scythed through the gun-wielding outstretched arm of a guy wearing sunglasses indoors. The douche dropped to his knees wailing, his remaining hand cradling the blood-pumping stump. His sunnies clattered to the floor when my blade cut into the top of his head and knocked them free.
This fight went on for longer than I expected. None of them were especially dangerous opponents, there were simply a lot of them. Ana and Fang Mei had pushed further forward and were in the midst of filling up Ana’s cage basket. I could see that it was almost full. Add them to the handful of prisoners who had been left on the battlefield ready for pick up and we should have more than enough prisoners.
We must have killed close to twenty when I saw a creeper vine reach out and throttle a fighter who was still in the room on the other side of the door. That’s when the penny dropped. There had been so many coming at us here because these guys were fleeing from the advance of Jackson’s squad, hoping the main exit was still clear. When they saw it was only three of us, they must have figured that made for better odds than twenty-five.
“All clear over there,” I asked Piper after pulling my sword from the heart of the last standing gangster in the hallway.
“Aye, Captain,” she replied.
Jackson appeared behind Piper right after she spoke. There was blood on his green mantle, but he looked determined and otherwise unharmed.
“Jackson, round your people up. It’s time to leave. Crynn, Nazz, find Doc in the other wing and tell him the same.”
“We’ve only swept this floor; don’t you want us to clear out the upper floors first?” Jackson queried.
“No need. This was supposed to be a lightning strike. We have what we came for. Time to withdraw before we get bogged down.”
“Understood. See you outside.”
Crynn and Nazz ran off in the opposite direction and I spent a few moments looting the bodies of the dead before walking down the corridor and kicking a few pieces of wreckage out of the way.
“Ripper can do that,” Anastasia called out and grabbed my attention,
She’d managed to turn the big golem around within the confines of the building. Despite its size, the creature was surprisingly flexible. The not-wicker basket had taken a bit of damage, though. Fortunately, none of its occupants were in any physical condition to take advantage of that.
While making the golems from the Marena’s Mercy’s cimmeric crystal might have had a few disadvantages their inherent link to the ship wasn’t all bad. Anastasia could dump the excess health she drained from her victims into the ship through the golems because of the link. Essentially, this massively expanded her repository. What’s more, she could call upon that repository whenever it was needed. A fact aptly demonstrated when Fang Mei trotted up with a semi-serious wound on her shoulder. Ana reached down without needing to be asked and topped up her Hit Points.
The wound started to knit itself back together
“Thanks,” the cambion woman muttered.
“Need any?” Ana asked, the question directed at me.
I’d lost about one thousand Hit Points during the battle, under ten percent of my total, hardly enough to be concerned with. It was almost crazy to think that amount of damage would have left me at death’s door when all this started.
How things changed and evolved.
“Join me outside,” I said with a nod. “We can do it there.”
On the porch area, I stepped to the side and let Ripper pass. Anastasia ruffled my black hair cheekily and used the opportunity to restore me to full health.
Elsewhere the battle continued unabated. Many of the buildings which had still been standing were on fire once more. You could hear that the concentration of the activity was over by the stadium which was about a quarter of a mile from the main building.
The stadium still stood. Defiant in the face of the rampant destruction that had laid waste to almost everywhere else.
The Wolverines had their chance, and it was time to call it a day.
Back to the ships. I’m ordering a full immediate withdrawal. Anybody still on the Notre Dame campus in ten minutes will be left behind and believe me you don’t want that.