The addition of Magic to the battlefield changed things considerably. Suddenly you had people teleporting, weapons that could go through armor or home in on living beings around and behind cover. This added to the complex world of long-distance fighting, drones, electronic warfare, mobility, and datasphere destruction.
There were already some indications of the issues with the new battlefield with the invasion of Rowaraoshaoh. Kondarrian battle-priests supported human troops, and non-magic active Kondarrians were armed with bolt action rifles. The large bullet size was needed to break through the Tigré’s protective shields. However, with enough firepower, the humans of Erde were victorious, though with lessons learned.
Gunpowder weapons could be enchanted, but guns that used electricity could not. There would be no magically guided laser or particle beam rifles. The two forces, Electrics, and Magic tended to cancel one another out or make the magnetic guidance pulses go haywire.
What did tend to work were small charms for shielding that could be built on top of armor or carried by individuals. These worked in short bursts and would redirect Spells into the closest ground or could deflect bullets or some directed energy bursts. But unfortunately, they often tended to malfunction.
Toninho Pires
New Strategies for the Americas
Republic of Texico
2205 ESC
Teerstadt
Reality of Edelweiss
December 19 th, 2188 ESC
The ground was shaking, and the buildings started to rattle. Althea heard the sounds of large cattle lowing in the background under the wolves’ howls and mammoths’ trumpeting. Althea and Ticualtzin looked at each other as the people in the restaurant started to panic. Then, striding to the door, Althea opened it and looked out. There was a wall of the huge Aurochs cattle running down the street, trampling anything that got in their path. The animals’ backs were lit with neon and streetlights, at least two meters high at the shoulder, and weighed at least a thousand kilograms each.
“Santa Mierda! A fucking stampede?” Ticualtzin yelled as Althea pulled her back from the door. A car was crushed in the street just beyond the sidewalk as Aurochs trampled it.
Althea held her back. Her heart had skipped a beat when Ticualtzin had almost gone out there. It was still beating fast and felt like someone had squeezed it. I am scared for her, she thought. I’m unsure what to do, but I do not want her hurt. She had never felt this way before. It was most unusual.
“I believe going out there would be fatal, ba bizi, ” Althea said instead of letting her inner turmoil out. She then searched for active data around herself but found only local camera networks easily infiltrated. Finally, tying into a camera, she saw a veritable sea of animals outside. The huge Aurochs were mixed with bison and mammoths. Interspersed in the mass were dire wolves and sabertooth tigers. In the distance, towards the oil fields, fires were starting.
“Padî,” she said somewhat loudly, and her skin changed patterning. A few humans made exclamations with the same sentiment when they looked out the windows. There was a prickling sensation she had only felt when she had first been training against the drones shaped like li chasse armors. Then, there was a loud crack-boom like thunder, and one of the nearby oil derricks burst into flames.
Althea wrinkled her nose as she smelt the ozone. That’s a plasma weapon, she thought. Again, she tried to contact the base and sensed that the interconnected networks were not functional. All she had access to now was the peer-to-peer networks that electronics around her were broadcasting. This included small electronics and people’s cyberware. She glanced towards the oil derrick and saw the wreckage of a local antennae array. They’re trying to disable the physical arrays now too. Althea’s eyes narrowed, and she sniffed the air hard. Many animals, ozone, burning, sentients of all species, and… Magic?
“I believe this may be a continuation of the attack from the other day,” she said flatly to Ticualtzin.
The other woman blinked at her in confusion. “Really? I mean, it’s weird….”
Althea pointed to the oil derrick, “Plasma weapon.” There was a brief feeling of a magnetic field gathering, and she looked to where the sense led her. Then, a crack-boom and another antennae array on a building exploded into flames. Abruptly, Althea pulled Ticualtzin back into the building, shouting to the other people, “This area is not safe. I would not venture out until order is restored.”
She leaned closer to Ticualtzin, “May I have your permission to connect to your network? I know it disturbs you when I do it without permission.” Her skin was entirely cat colored now, and her eyes were huge as the first level of combat mode activated. First , I have to contact the base. We need directions. I will forcibly construct a battle net if I have to. Not only Tiki, but all these people are in danger.
Althea looked at the people in the restaurant, most of whom had never seen a moment of battle. They’re all civilian contractors with only side arms for the occasional critter. The smells of fear and agitation were heavy on them. The same was coming from Ticualtzin, but more controlled. There was also the occasional whiff of a magic scent. She had ignored it earlier as they had been in no danger, and it was not a crime to use the art.
Ticualtzin looked around and then back to Althea. “Yes, I give you permission to access my implants, 2 nd Corporal d’Argus,” she said formally.
“Thank you, 1 st Corporal del Valle,” Althea said quietly and switched to combat mode two. Her senses expanded as combat hormones flooded her body. Immediately, she knew where every scent in the room had come from. All the sounds surrounding her were cataloged and pinpointed. Her right eye twitched, and her skin became altogether leopard spotted.
Turning abruptly, she stared at a cat humanoid in a local oil worker jumpsuit. “You there,” she said, eyes huge and focused on him. “Can you cast shielding spells? I will need to go outside and try to contact the base. I have a mana crystal for the focus.”
The man swallowed in terror as she stared him down. “B..basic ones,” he mumbled.
“Althea,” Ticualtzin said gently to her, making one of her ears flick. “Don’t terrify your allies.” She walked over to the man and asked more gently. “Sir, we need your help. If you can cast a sustained elemental shield on my partner, she will try to get hold of the base so we can get everyone out.”
This had more of the desired effect, Althea noted. She wasn’t used to dealing with civilians. They were too twitchy, and you never knew what would set them off. They didn’t understand the basics or urgency in combat situations. Even now, she was overhearing some of them talk about how everything would be alright. She was glad she couldn’t show her emotions at times like this. The disgusted Emojis she shared with Ticualtzin would have ruined their chances of getting help.
Ticualtzin raised an eyebrow and narrowed her eyes in response to the emojis. Then, Althea stopped sending the emoticons and began to send commands to every networked device in the area. Slaving them to her network, she began to slowly build a battle net. The older GmbH-built devices needed a little more finessing than the ones provided by Mechanon. Still, she managed to infiltrate them and subvert their commands with little trouble. However, an underlying code blocked her from the more extensive wide area network.
She was concentrating on this when she heard Ticualtzin get permission from the spellcaster. He walked timidly over to her, and she popped a small blue ice Mana crystal out of one of her pockets. She had begun carrying them during the war when she was around allied troops like Kondarrians, who often had battle priests. After taking the offered crystal, he nodded to her and began drawing lines in the air in a complex pattern with a few mumbled words. The runic symbols lit the surrounding air in blue and brown circles around the crystal before it lit up with the same colors in a swirling pattern. The lights spun faster and then shrank into the crystal itself.
He breathed a sigh of relief when the pattern finished and handed it to her. “Umm, it’s done, Ma’am,” he said nervously.
Althea nodded to him, fixing him with her eyes. “I thank you for this,” she said. She tried to smile, but the sudden scent of fear from him and his expression showed her she hadn’t got the expression right.
Turning to Ticualtzin, “I think if I get out there, I can take out a few of them with the plasma rifles and steal one to start taking out the others.”
The other woman smiled at her and nodded, “First, make sure it isn’t just an accident. Do what you do best, mia dulce .” She looked distracted for a moment, and Althea saw that she was accessing the small battle net to see where things were around themselves. “Ok, it looks like we’re surrounded by animals, but they are currently just milling about.” She frowned internally, and Althea saw it as an emoticon. “Looks like you might be right. I see several pendejos riding mammoths and some on horseback. They have… goddamnit.” Ticualtzin massaged her nose for a moment.
“They shot the camera you were looking out of, right?” Althea said quietly. Ticualtzin nodded. “Try to keep your consciousness moving, or they will see the movement.”
The smaller woman nodded and sat down at their table. “It also felt wrong, like something was watching me watch them.”
Closing her eyes, Althea sighed and said, “I feel that there is an infowarrior in the network working with this group. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to concentrate on it completely. I will make the subroutine less noticeable so he will not see what we are doing.” She looked around the room and asked the man who owned the small restaurant in Texican Spanish, “Is there a back way out? I will try to see if I can take out the people with rifles.” He nodded and beckoned her. She turned and kissed Ticualtzin on her lips, who blinked in startlement. “Combat does this to my people. Be prepared for an exciting night when I return.” Graphic images of what she wanted Ticualtzin to do to her flooded the battle net between them.
Ticualtzin blushed darkly and nodded. “Uh, sure, more than normal?” Althea nodded curtly in response, and Ticualtzin got redder. She coughed. “Try not to kill me.” Althea gave her a rare smile in response. Ticualtzin sat against the restaurant wall, expanded the augmented reality map of the area, and began highlighting areas where suspected attackers and the main groups of animals were. The camera feed showed that people who ventured out into the night were systematically attacked by dire wolves or sabertooth cats.
“Direct me if you can. I will try to get a connection to HQ for more instructions and take out as many of these assailants as possible,” Althea said flatly. “If I can find the beastmaster, I will also take him out. That should calm the animals and have them running away from sentients like they are used to.”
The restaurant owner spoke to Althea and Tiualtzin in accented GmbH German, “I have an old rifle if you need it.”
Althea shook her head. “Sir, please use it to defend this position if they change tactics. I think it is an infrastructure attack, but let us not underestimate the enemy.” Her thoughts went to Ticualtzin and the civilians around her. She had felt in her stomach like something was falling into an undefined space.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
He nodded, “I was in the Consortium Forces when I was younger. I will make sure usted novia is safe.”
Althea smiled at him gently as his words made the sinking feeling in her stomach go away, and he blinked in surprise.
Her face returned to neutral, “Show me the back way out.”
###
Mao Ning enjoyed the feeling of power as he rode a horse and fired the occasional bolt of plasma from the rifle he had been given. He had to space the firings a few minutes apart from when he used his Magic, or the fragile gun would break from being too near the magical discharge. Zhang Lon had been a prime example a few days ago in the canyon north of the small Storm League base. He had used his air powers to try and focus the lightning-looking discharge from the plasma rifle for more accuracy. The only thing that happened was that the magnetic tunnel used to guide the super-heated plasma to the target had dissipated. A rather large explosion formed in front of the rifle muzzle, blowing up Zhang Lon and the rifle itself.
They had to run off rather quickly to avoid detection. Then had come the botched attack on the Jīmó woman. Seeing it was just a test for Song Wuying’s brother was understandable. He had never been a proper soldier like Mao Ning had. The animals had gotten a hit on the bitch, but hadn’t been able to destroy her. If he had been chosen, he would have immobilized her in mud and then used rock spires to skewer her from all sides.
Maybe that or encase her in rock and let her suffocate? he thought. I still have a chance. They were saying she was in the city. He raised up a rock wall with a gesture of his left hand, guiding the Aurochs into the more populated areas. If they slowed down, he shot a pellet at one of the lagger’s backsides to get them moving and in a panic again.
The Magic here in this Reality was more pure and untouched than in many other places he had been, including his own home. It was weak, sure, but the rocks and earth listened to him readily, like before the invasion by the damned humans.
The town had been teaming with the damn lesser beings earlier in the day, even the cursed animal people. At night the electric lights in many colors blotted out the stars and the clouds with their sickly glow. These had been replaced by the orange fires, and black smoke of burning oil rigs as the Aurochs trampled cars and people and knocked over the derriks which promptly caught fire.
He laughed heartily and paused, holding back his Magic, when he saw another bunch of metal, plastic sticks, and dishes on top of a roof, an antenna. His commander said that the lesser beings used them to communicate with their machines and were a priority to take out. He lifted the large black rifle with its myriad electronics. He knew on a base level how wrong it felt as he used the optical sights to point to the antenna array and pulled the trigger.
A lightning crack split the night, and the roof exploded. Sure it felt nasty to his spirit to use the weapon, but it was mighty. “Like a cursed weapon a magician gives you,” he muttered. “Infinite power, just give up a little of your soul.” He felt the energy of his Magic returning after a moment or two. Sliding the rifle into a custom holster on his horse with a metallic click, he lifted his right hand to raise a wall of earth. This funneled the Aurochs into his desired direction and kept people from interfering. Not that he didn’t mind killing them to make them stay away, they were lesser beings anyway.
There was some odd buzzing in the air over all the sounds of Aurochs stomping the ground and the odd explosions over the boomtown’s two- or three-story skyline.
“Do you hear that?” Hou Xuiying’s voice came through on their gem earring communication devices. “It kinda sounds like a buzzing.” Mao Ning had heard the sounds but had dismissed them outright as unimportant. The Storm League’s military forces were being crippled by their hired infowarrior, and these maintenance slaves were not used to having to fight for anything.
A few shots directed at him or one of the others rang out here and there. These were absorbed by the elemental shields they had anchored on standard-issue mana crystals on their belts. Then when the shooter was detected they were torn apart by wolves or the large saber toothed lions.
He brought his right wrist bracelet to his mouth, answering Xuiying, “What are they? I can’t imagine they’re threats.” He peered out in the night at the darkened buildings and starry sky and thought he saw something small moving around where the noises were coming from. Another shot lit up the night over where Zhen Qui was to his left, and he saw dozens of tiny dots in the sky. They were of all different shapes but were obviously mechanical.
He had barely had enough time to raise his left arm and manifest his shield before something smacked into it at high speed, sparking and lighting up the night around him. He felt the heat and spatter of the bits of metal and pebbles that ablated off his shield onto his arm. His horse shied from the feeling and sounds. It bucked, making him grab the reins to try and control the animal.
“Attack!” yelled Zhen Qui, her voice high and panicked. Others soon joined her. “It’s some sort of aerial attack!” “I had a truck start up and run over my horse!” The rest was general screaming before one calm voice made them all quiet.
“Silence on the channel,” Song Wuying, their commander, said. “The Jǐnyīwèi does not act like prattling school girls.” A pause gave Mao Ning a moment to check around himself and get the horse under control. “Report status.”
“Earth Four, good,” he looked at the tiny broken metal device on the ground near him. “Looks like a seeing eye golem impacted my shield.”
“Fire Two, good,” he heard Zhen Qui. “I think three of those also impacted my shield as well.
“Metal One, my horse is dead, and I have a broken leg,” he heard Chang Min say. “An unmanned truck turned on and rammed me. My shield shattered, but the truck was destroyed. I’m trying to recharge ….” His voice suddenly cut out.
Immediately Song Wuying’s voice cut in. “Who is closest to Metal One?”
With a start, Mao Ning remembered it was him. “Earth Four, He’s to my right.”
“Check on him to make sure he wasn’t trampled by a cow or if one of the locals got him,” Song said disdainfully.
Swallowing, Mao Ning asked, “Could it be the Jīmó? I thought it was still in the hospital back at the base?”
A grunt in reply. “It should still be there. We’ll take care of the base after the ‘festival.’” A pause. “But if you run across it, immediately inform us. We must hunt it down as our duty to all True People.”
###
Althea looked at the blonde man she grasped in her right hand around the neck as effortlessly as a child would hold a kitten by its scruff. He was shaped like a human, but his smell was off. He had a spicy cinnabar undercurrent to the general flat smell she associated with Sidhe magic. He also smelt of a horse, cow, and other things like the wilderness areas around here. This was totally unlike the rank, feral smell that humans had. She’d gotten used to the scent of humans over the years, a familiar and friendly smell to her nose.
He tried to move, flailing his arms about. Althea shook him twice, like a disobedient animal. This made him stop moving temporarily as she tilted her ears towards the earring in his right ear. The distinctive sounds of the Sidhe language were pouring out of the communication stone. Orders to check on him and some words about herself using the pejorative that Sidhe used for her kind: Jīmó - Metal Demons.
Althea colored darker in displeasure. She sent a mental thought to Ticualtzin, Tiki, this is worse than I had thought. She looked at the plasma rifle in her other hand that the man had been carrying. It was a NewHomian Army model 75, produced out of Europe. It wasn’t the best, but it could still flash-fry her if someone got a bead on her position.
Ticualtzin replied a bit hesitantly over the unfamiliar battle net. ‘ Thea, what’s wrong? Umm, I didn’t hurt a civvie with my drone strike? Did you find the beastmaster?
Not yet, no. No civvies have been killed by you. This one is not dead yet, but I’m confident this man is a Sidhe, and these are some remnants of their military. Several complex emojis flitted through the space they shared before they came to a decision.
‘Thea, can you take out as many of these Sidhe as you can without hurting civilians or anyone on our side? I will try to contact the base and tell them what’s happening. Then an involuntary thought from Ticualtzin intruded while they were communicating: FUCKING SIDHE RUINED MY DATE!!! There was a pause as the human woman regained control of her thoughts. Then a happy, embarrassed emoji appeared to try to cover up the thought. Please ignore that and kill as many of these bastards as possible, but leave a few alive for interrogation.
Althea returned a curt nodding emoji while her hand twitched and snapped the neck of the man she was holding without a thought. A moment ago, he was a person. Now that her designation of them had changed, the man had become merely a target. I’m sorry, she thought to the dead man. I can’t leave an enemy at my back.
He dropped bonelessly to the ground as she retrieved the communication gem from his body and attached it to her ear. The small piercing wound sealed almost immediately, the nanites stitching flesh around the hole. The rifle went on its strap around her shoulder. She leaped up to the nearby single-story roof in a powerful bound and ran to the next roof in a low crouch, her sword coming free of its sheath with a quick, practiced motion. Avoiding the animals up here would be easier, and she could get the drop on the attackers.
The battle net showed her that one person was approaching her last position through the myriad eyes of drones and cameras. The tiny peer-to-peer mesh network she and Ticualtzin had running as a temporary Network was just barely functional because of the Mechanese programming underlying everything that the Megacorps or Storm League produced. She could see about ten people on horses here and there, but Althea wasn’t sure they were the Sidhe she was looking for.
All doubt was erased when she saw a woman raise her hand and destroy two of her drones with firebolts. Then, in her ear, she heard the woman report the destruction. Pausing on the roof she was on, Althea changed direction. Digging her boots into the roof’s gravel, she leaped to the next one, covering it in a few strides before jumping at the woman on her horse. Her sword hit the redhead in her upper chest as she raised her left arm to react to the attack. The Sidhe’s body held onto the horse as it responded to the smell of blood by bucking and running. A gout of flame lit the area where they were, and she heard yelling on the communication gem.
Twisting her body, Althea grabbed a passing Aurochs by a horn and used it as a handhold to flip herself out of the road towards a nearby metal awning. Feeling her toe claws go through her boots to sink into the material, they gave her muscles leverage to pull her up. She righted herself, pushed heavily with her legs, and used the momentum to carry her to the next roof. Then she grunted in pain as her earlier wound on her stomach pulled in the wrong direction. Finding her footing with minimal flailing, she kept running to a third roof as her mind searched the battlespace around her for the next target.
There was a blur, and she flattened herself to the roof as a huge earthen fist barely missed her from a blind spot in her battle net. Then, she heard the caster calling over the stolen communication gem, “This is Earth Four. I’ve got her in my sight. She’s killed Metal One and Fire Two already. I’m engaging.”
Sheathing her sword, Althea switched to the more easily handled 10mm pistol. Leopard crawling backward rapidly, she popped up to see the man and his horse amid cattle streaming past. He had a small earthen wall that moved, making a safe island zone around himself. Clever Sidhe, she thought as she rapid fired the pistol three times to test his shields. It had twenty shots, and she only had two reloads. The plasma rifle’s capacity was unknown as it only showed the charge left after each shot. She didn’t want it going out on her mid-fight, and it was no good this close in.
The bullets sparked and hit cattle around the Sidhe, bouncing off his shield. It snapped into existence just milliseconds before her shots would have connected. A semi-circular shield of translucent white Jade floated a few feet ahead of him and his horse. Not great if attacked by multiple targets, but it would do if he was just up against one.
She sent a mental signal to the peer-to-peer network. Changing the positioning of the drones to cover her blind spots, she rolled and made a leap for another roof as spikes of stone shot out from the man to pierce and destroy where she just was. She felt a splatter against her back while hearing a gunshot ring out from his direction. The camera drones showed him firing a gun that glowed green for a moment. The bullet had actually arced and homed in on her. The only thing that had saved her was the shield that had popped into existence around here. Fucking elf-shot! I owe that Union Mage my life now, she thought in relief. Elf shot would bypass her sub-cutaneous armor.
“Die! Metal Demon bitch!” she heard him screaming in the Sidhe language.
Combat Mode Three Engaged showed across her vision, and she felt her muscles bunch up as more short-term combat hormones kicked in. Time seemed to slow down fractionally, but she knew her reflexes and reactions were speeding up. The leap to the next roof turned into a somersault that set her feet first against the wall, her body compressing, then leaping back towards the Sidhe that called himself Earth Four. Her pistol fired six times at the same spot as the shield popped up to protect him.
The transluscent shield took the first two shots, then the third cracked it, the next three shattered the shield, and she was upon him. Her left hand tore his throat out, while her right hand with the pistol fired into his chest three times more. She saw surprise war with hatred on his face as she moved past him to slam against the small stone wall that was now crumbling as he died. Althea felt wetness in the front of her belly as she was getting up, slightly dazed from hitting the wall. My wound reopened. I might have to strike at a distance, she thought dispassionately.
The horse began to panic as it felt its rider die. The man raised his hand and tried to summon one last spell at her, but it fell apart as the light in his eyes went out. Quickly moving forward, Althea grabbed this man’s plasma rifle as a spare. Suddenly, two squat, bulky wolves rounded the crumbling wall with muzzles flecked with bloody foam. They snarled and rushed at Althea from both sides, their maws full of razor-sharp teeth. Jumping back towards the sidewalk in front of the building behind her, she landed on her feet lightly. She looked at the dire wolves before shooting the one on her right. It fell, sliding in the mud to be trampled to mush by cattle. The one on her left went down with another shot and a yelp.
“Ah, the beastmaster’s minions appear,” Althea said both over the network and out loud.
Oh crap! Ticualtzin said into the network. ‘Thea, It looks like a bunch of predators are headed your way, as well as a few riders on Mammoths.
“Well, this night just got more interesting,” Althea said quietly as she observed the composite map in the battle net.