Chapter 060: A Charm

I half crawled to the nearest stone cover, with Leria giving the other half of the movement by pulling me with her aura enhancements.

“What the fuck is that?!” Lybaer shouted behind his cover. “Why is he dissolving?! What is happening?!”

Vasyr you crazy sicko, you didn’t tell Blades about the Glitches?

“We don’t have time for that!” I shouted back. “Any of you see from which direction the shots came?”

Those I could see shook their heads. Whoever the sniper was, he quite masterfully erased from the picture both our commander (goodbye, you seemed like a decent guy) and one of the snipers that could potentially return fire. Geralt died because of his slow reaction - he was the only target left after the rest hidden.

“What sort of weapon causes so much damage?” Simea shouted to us from behind of another rock. “Can we stop it with defenses?”

“No fucking way.” Leria barked back. “It will probably go through them and pierce us, while still having enough power to kill another person misfortune enough to stand right behind the target.”

“It’s Hekate.” Vasyr managed to shook through the shock and answered… is he answering Lybaer’s first question? “A type of heavy anti-tank rifle, made for the US Army in the Long War. Gauss gun with a three meter-long barrel and ability to fire through the thickest cover and still hit with pinpoint accuracy by a combination of supersonic bullets and access to quite precise satellite observation. But if it had it, it would pull headshot after headshot on us even through the stones, but we are still alive, so...”

God, is that another enemy straight from completely another game? I didn’t recognize it, but I do remember someone mentioning this weapon when DFI’s FPS shooter based on Long War (that I never played) came out. There were several instances of players being able to shoot a kick-ass rifle that supposedly could - when configured for maximum armor piercing - punch through three Abrams MBTs standing one behind another.

Of course, the initial velocity depended on the setting. The sniper probably set his rifle to low velocity for maximum rate of fire.

We are so screwed.

Nearby stone shattered into pieces. A roar came a second later. Dark elf slave elementalist from Lybaer’s party was a bit too close to it and was wounded by shrapnels. What’s worse, the break of the stone uncovered her for a while too long.

This time bullet was set into an almost sensible level of speed. It was still enough to behead the girl.

Lybaer screamed. Most others were too paralyzed to do anything.

Fuck, I’m too paralyzed to do something as well! If not for Leria pulling me into cover, I might have been dead instead of that Hexer.

Shit. Shit. I’m terrified beyond belief. I don’t want to die!

Another shot, this time missed. And another, that hit Vasyr’s party orcish shieldbearer, splattering him around.

Lybaer’s high elf vanguard broke and tried to flee. He actually managed to do few aura-reinforced dashes… before the bullet hit him. This thing fires bullets with speed that makes any attempts at evasion absolutely impossible.

We can’t even escape. And if we try to return fire, any person to do that is guaranteed to bite a bullet in a second.

Another shot… right at Leria’s cover. The bullet itself missed her, and rather than freezing or contemplating her wounds even for a second, she rolled away. The follow up bullet missed her by an inch.

She still fell on the ground in a fetal position, covering her ears with her hands. I could see blood coming out of them. Ruptured eardrums?

Some more resourceful people began crawling away, trying to stick behind the cover. But it was uneven, and the enemy was watchful. Vaera managed to crawl for maybe three meters, before another bullet narrowly missed him.

Or, to exact, it glanced his hand. With enough power to rip it from him. Needless to say, he screamed.

I could see Simea lying in a fetal position. Maybe few meters from me, but now she could be as well many kilometres apart. I don’t think she saw or heard anything, she looked barely conscious.

I’m probably not much better than her.

I heard a roar, but no stones around exploded. What was the enemy firing at? Is the platinum badge here already?! Oh, God, please.

Aurora [N]: Sniper eliminated.

… what?

***

Yhrezerach came to think that we might be in trouble, so he advised Firewing to send Aurora after us right after she finished the basic repairs. Just in case.

In a crazy coincidence (or, due to another one of Overtyrant’s gambits) she almost got to us when the sniper opened fire. So, instead of trying to go straight after us, she sneaked around to the ambush place. Sniper noticed her and almost managed to hit her… but after that happened, she easily snapped his neck.

She looked like every automata ever. Like human. Perfect mimicry, if one exclude almost supernatural level of perfection (they were made to be absolutely devoid of any blemishes or outward imperfections) and absolutely emotionless face.

Ugh. With how the early automatas were, I should be happy that she didn’t grab the Hekate rifle afterwards and shoot us all dead. Or at least some of us, since I doubt that her control circuit would allow her to kill me or my party members.

And we didn’t even lose anyone from our party! Well, with exception of Vaera who was about to bleed to death so we finished him off to be resurrected in the Hold. Being rather vocal about the need to walk all the way back. I just told him to stay there and help Firewing. The Gore Altar had it’s disadvantages.

Leria was in absolutely no condition to fight, though. She was barely conscious. Simea and Lena weren’t in much better shape. Me and Syna were the only members of our party that were still in shape to fight. And even I wasn’t precisely sure if my pants didn’t require change. It was to hard to check when in public.

The other parties were in worse condition. Lybaer actually ended up fighting with Vasyr. Both were beaten up badly. He didn’t take the newses about Glitches and the fact that Vasyr kept them a secret well.

***

“So, that’s him.” Aurora brought back the sniper. He wore body armor I didn’t recognize. My comment hung in the air (ruined by the recent massacre and worsened by infighting) for a while, before Vasyr opened his mouth.

“First gen Reaver. Atlantic Republic supersoldiers. Cloned, implanted with controlling implants. Fanatically loyal and deadly, perfect to use as cannonfodder. Elite cannonfodder. They still rebelled, even if nobody knows why.” He was silent for a while. “The first gen was still loyal to the Republic. Why would he even use a Hekate rifle?! They aren’t even from the same world!”

So, we have a local anarchocapitalist (with a much too oversexualized culture for my taste), mass produced cloned soldier… armed with an antitank rifle developed in the United States… IN SPAAACE (since everything in Long War was IN SPAAACE by definition).

… And that soldier used this gun to shoot adventurers in a fantasy world.

This is wrong on so many levels that I don’t even know where to start.

“Let’s hope we won’t run into Reaver commandoes or anything like that.” Vasyr, still shaken, added. “It’s an established in-lore fact that if you fail to kill an augmented commando within a second from him noticing you, you are dead. Even if you have many friends behind you.”

Oh yes. They could fight against twenty or thirty unaugmented combatants at once… and emerge unscathed. Thankfully, if the enemy had Augmented, he would have sent them with the sniper. He would suppress us, and then they would’ve simply picked us out like tunas from the can. Even one would be enough to kill us all.

It is nice to not be the lore guy for once (I wasn’t really into technological details about Vortex World, but I did know a bit about Long War tech and they shared a general technological base). If only we didn’t lose so many people for that…

I turned towards the rest, planning to say something motivational… only to see a futuristic humanoid warmachine maybe two meters high, emerging from the snowed woods maybe thirty meters from us.

Oh God.

“DUCK!” I screamed and fall on the ground. The others did so as well. So, when the enemy unleashed a wave of bullets from the two miniguns at once, we’ve lost nobody.

For now. Oh God, I know that design. It’s from the Long War universe. A personal suit of powered armor, though I didn’t recognize the exact model. Probably from the New North Atlantic Treaty judging from the overall colouristics and lack of religious or ideological symbolism.

It had a minigun equivalent on every arm. And it used ammunition quite liberally. It wasn’t even close to the level of destruction the Hekate rifle could cause, but there were thousands of bullets swarming us, chipping off the edge of our covers.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!” Vasyr screamed so loud that I heard him through the howling crescendo.

Fuck, I sincerely agree with him for the first time. Ugh.

I can’t even use theurgy against it, because I’m going to end up being shredded the second I show my face.

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Knowing my luck, it would probably turn out to be invulnerable to it. Though we are still alive, so I guess that I have some luck after all!

Miniguns went silent for a second. Did it run out of amm…

Oh fuck.

It fired missiles. Several, hard to count from my position. Programmed to detonate above our heads and scatter shrapnels around. Thankfully, they weren’t as deadly as the Hekate rifle bullet, and we were paranoid enough to cover ourselves in defensive magic from above, to avoid getting wounded by bits of rocks flying around.

We survived. Without wounds, but the missiles packed a punch. If we get hit directly… well, my party members might survive, but the rest? Unlikely.

Sudden explosion… but away from us. A howl of miniguns, but without the rain of stone fragments. I decided to take a look, and…

Oh God, thank you. The cavalry arrived.

Melvar’s group finally got here. He was a low elf Mechanist, accompanied into this battle by a personally assembled warmachine. Human size while humanoid as well, but was much thinner.

Looks like the most of the newcomers were already forced to duck behind cover by the first rain of bullets. The machine didn’t do so. Looks like we were in for a rare occasion to see technological marvel face its technomagical equivalent.

The powered armor turned towards new enemy and began firing its minigun. No visible damage, bullets simply bounced off it. Looks like someone invested a lot of money in the outer armour. What was it? At least some plates defending most important parts of the body were slightly silverish…

Hey, is that mithril?! Just how much money does he have?!

The newcomer seemed to have weaponry optimized towards close quarter combat - including a shield and a sword - but he also had some different weaponry. An arm rose from behind his head, with a short, black tube.

A loud bang. Lots of colours. The Glitch was shaken by impact, his left arm torn off at the very beginning. A lot of internal damage, judging from electrical discharges and tears in armor.

Shit, it must have been a relic of the Mechanics, torn from one of their still active warmachines from a team of elite adventurers. Probably single-use and saved for a special occasion. Melvar doesn’t fuck around.

The Glitch went all out. A missile salvo (it had to be the last one, it can’t carry infinite amount of rockets). Melvar’s machine leaped aside, so fast that it avoided most of the rockets. The rest were either slashed apart when it came too close (IT CAN SLICE ROCKETS APART WITH A SWORD OMG) or shot down by some techmaturgy that I failed to even notice. Two connected.

It didn’t even scratch the mithril plates, but the rest… I think it got blinded at least partially.

Local warmachine finally decided that it was enough, and charged. The Glitch suffered some damage to the motors in its left leg when it got hit by Mechanic’s tube. It couldn’t get away quick enough and got engaged in close combat.

Good, good! Long War had its own share of close combat, even for powered armors, but unlike the locals, it wasn’t specialized in it. If it kept away, it might have chipped away Melvar’s machine’s abilities by damaging every unarmored part of its outer shell, like sensors. Or maybe fire another missile salvo from point blank distance.

I had no idea what the sword was made off, but its first attack sliced off the other arm of the Glitch.

In few more moves, the techmaturgy marvel sliced the technological one into pieces. Looks like we’re done here.

I rose from behind the stones. I could see others do the same.

Well, they were pretty evenly matched, but the local machine had a trump card of the single use tube it used to blow away significant part of the Glitch’s weaponry. If not for it…

Suddenly a MOTHERFUCKING TANK emerged from behind the curve of road leading to the fort.

This isn’t happening.

Its crew (if there was any) immediately proved itself hostile by oneshoting Melvar’s damaged machine. I wasn’t sure if it hit the mithril plate and pierced it, or it found a weakspot. Whatever it was (and whatever ammo it used) the effect was quite… explosive.

We all dropped behind the stone cover. For the third time in this battle. Is it even battle? If two enemies showed up at the same time, they would murder us already. Why isn’t the enemy using any sensible tactics?! Why I am crazy enough to complain?!

I looked towards Vasyr.

“TP-120 Typhoon. Ninth generation Universal Battle Tank developed by Koroner-Versulius Engineering for Ecumenical Union’s army to replace outdated TP-107 Tempests and Pzw. 17C Löwe UBT designs. 34 000 constructed, and used by pretty much member state of the Holy League.” He was obviously shocked and answered purely automatically.

“Yes, that told me EVERYTHING I needed.” Right now my only hope is that Simea is too shocked to remember what happens, otherwise she is going to pester me forever about being on a receiving end of loredump. “How do we kill that thing?” This shook him off.

“Are you fucking insane?” He looked at me like I just admitted to worshiping Pentagram. “This is an Universal Battle Tank. It’s 90mm cannon has about the same firepower as Hekate Rifle but can fire short bursts of armor-piercing or explosive rounds. The gun can be elevated high enough to fire on a parabola effectively making it a mobile light artillery unit. It can fire cable or radar guided anti-tank and anti-air missiles through its barrel. Plus a grenade launcher, two 20mm machine guns and a freaking laser that can shot down rounds coming from afar. It can literally do anything short of taking down satelites and brewing coffee. We have to run!”

“Yes, because running on foot from an omnicidal tank that can chose which part of you it will hit from five kilometres, while being able to use guided missiles on the distance closer than twenty kilometres or something like that, is a great fucking idea.” I gave every bit of sarcasm I could muster into this. “Stay here and cry, we are going to improvise. Syna, you are going to be essential.” And let’s hope that the Typhoon will focus on our ‘cavalry’ long enough for us to finish preparations for my improvised plan.

***

Surprisingly, it worked like a charm.

It was a simple plan. Get Aurora to fetch us the Hekate rifle. Deploy it. Give it to Syna and fire at the tank while it’s distracted by Melvar’s group. HIs warmachine probably made it see them as a greater threat.

It was made slightly harder by the fact that half of this things programming used late Koine Greek. The rest was in fucking Sumerian cuneiform writing.

WHY. Just WHY. I think I’m running out of the brainpower needed to process the weird stuff happening around us.

I knew few words (historical education ftw) in Greek. Sumerian cuneiform--uhh no. But it was enough to more or less figure the thing out.

Thankfully, the rounds that the Reaver had on him were described in english.

I had no fucking clue how the Long War’s rounds will fare against Vortex World armor. So let’s go for subcaliber anti-armor round.

The second Syna fired… well, we were a bit too close for that. Reaver at least had a soundproof helmet. I think I was stunned for a second. My ears were in pain. But the round pierced the side armor a bit above the track. All lights shut down and it stopped firing and moving.

“Load HEAT.” Syna raised her head and looked at me questioningly. “High Explosive Anti-Tank. Ugh, this one.”

I couldn’t hear myself, but since she could read my lips... I handed her the round. The tank stopped murdering people, but let’s be sure. We might only damage its power source or something. HEAT are more damaging, but if subcalibre went so well…

I mean, the Hekate was made to snipe tanks from a kilometer or two. An ultimate descendant of old anti-tank guns, so prevalent in WW2. We just fired it against a tank’s side armor from FIFTY FUCKING METERS. It was almost overkill. It was a miracle that the subcalibre didn’t go through one side and out the other..

The tank’s turret began rotating slowly towards us. Oh fuck, they are still alive? We must have knocked out its power source after all. Or just caused a power shortage somehow. They are moving the turret manually, hoping to hit us before we send another bullet.

Syna calmly pushed the round into the barrel. Took aim. Fired.

I went deaf again. This time the hole was much bigger. Five seconds later the ammunition stored in the Typhoon exploded violently, and the turret was sent flying.

Holy shit. They must have heard that back in Ambryxis.

Now I’m totally fucking deaf. And probably for a while.

***

Rather than waiting for my hearing to return, we (me and Syna) immediately moved over to salvage whatever remained of Melvar’s group. The rest weren’t in shape for doing anything or, like Vasyr and Vhera, rather vocally disagreed and decided to retreat from the place just in case something new showed up.

Cowards. Ok, not like I have enough courage to try and fight anything, but we should at least check the wounded before fleeing. At least Lybaer joined us.

Melvar’s group was a mess, to say the least. They had less dead than I thought, though. For some reason the Typhoon didn’t use its Gauss cannon to shatter the cover like the Reaver did, nor it used its grenade launcher or anti-tank guided missiles, but he still fired several explosive rounds set to explode above them,

I’m beginning to think that the Glitches absurd behaviour is an inherent part of them. They simply don’t make sense. Firstly it was that theurgy-vulnerable Glitch that charged into the Dungeon filled with theurgy magic. Then a sniper that actually seemed to be the smartest of them (hence the slaughter), even if he was using a supersonic anti-tank rifle to snipe people from 50-60 meters (what an overkill). Then the powered armour that kept firing instead of charging at us while it could certainly navigate through the rocks and fill us with holes at close range.

And finally a tank that used only a small part of its versatile set of armaments and managed to ‘merely’ heavily wound one platinum badge, kill two and wound seven gold badges, and finally disembowel the witch-hunter optio accompanying Melvar’s group. While it could have driven closer and annihilated them together with their cover or have fired a guided missile and wiped them in one fell swoop.

Seriously, Glitches are insane. They just stood there, firing at us, giving us enough time to listen to Vasyr ramblings. No tactical thinking. Actually, almost no thinking at all.

I had some knowledge in first aid from Earth. Did a bit towards medical skills in here, plus Firewing equipped me rather generously. I think I saved few lives, with Syna as my assistant.

I had a moment of doubt about saving those people. Their deaths would be a liability to Ambryxis and, most likely, they weren’t nice people to begin with. Not in that damnable place. But… I didn’t know that for sure. Besides, being on the good side of Gods was an important thing in our situation, and as far as I knew neither Inri nor Overtyrant looked favourably on people letting other people die like that. Overtyrant might have reconsidered if I knew they were mass murderers, rapists or didn’t clean their dog’s poop while on the walk in the city, but since I had no proof for any of that…

Melvar wasn’t in the best shape. Lost his right feet and enough blood to lose consciousness. With both witch-hunters dead, there was nobody to make decisions.

Aurora returned from the recon.

“The way to village is clear. No signs of enemy activity apart from tank tracks and the powered armor footprints. There is a high probability that all enemies are dead.”

Well, thank you God for all those little blessings you give us. Two more months of shit like that and my guardian angel is going to retire with a disability pension. Just like ten of his predecessors.

“We’ll move the wounded there.” Staying in -45C after losing a lot of blood decidedly wasn’t the best idea. “You’ll help us.”

***

We lost one more gold badge on the way. I’m not even sure what happened, but his heart suddenly stopped. I even tried to do CPR, but to no avail.

The fort was… well, they didn’t make it. I think that the sniper Aurora killed had few colleagues. But the group garrisoned at the fort managed to kill or wound them enough for them to bleed out in the meantime. Four Augmented. One from the Chinese Empire, two from Novaya Rossiya and one from People’s Republic of America.

Mystery intensifies. Makes you wonder if people imprisoned in Vortex World and Long War are suffering from ‘Glitches’ in the myriad forms of local daemons.

There were still more than enough attackers to wipe out everything alive after the Typhoon and Hekate rifle bombarded the fort’s walls and main building. A big part of it collapsed. Then the powered armour and Augments went in, cleaned the place while suffering 80% casualties due to the absolute lack of the ability to fight alone (I think they entered the place separately, judging from the signs of fighting).

Aurora found three living people imprisoned in a mostly collapsed room. Her hearing was quite extraordinary. It took us three days to finally free them. They were heavily dehydrated. No answers to our mysteries, though we at least had a living witnesses to show to the tribune.

The other adventurers seemed to have survived the worst. Though I’m beginning to think that our expedition is in need for reinforcements. Especially if they are more Glitches running around.