Chapter 6-171: A Road to Damnation

Several things happened at the same time.

First, the Three Robins coolly shot right through the immaterial Holo in front of them, and the heads of three men who didn’t have the discipline to keep moving or stay in cover blew apart.

Second, a dozen women who had dropped their packs, led by Nihala, broke into a lightfoot sprint forwards through the grass.

Third, gunfire opened up from behind the blockade, and the men stationed there, especially the gunner on the half-trak and those in the machine gun nest, got lethal surprises when grenades floated up next to them and pins were pulled from a safe distance.

Fourth, Corporal Melissa Vance burst out of nowhere into visibility, two flaming Wingblades in her hand, and came down on the fire team on the west side of the road. Two men died instantly, and the last one turned, his hands burning yellow-green, shrieking as he faced her, and wound up with her burning foot in his face, sending him rolling along the ground. He recovered to shoot at her, his pistol snapping up to aim... only to find that she was ten feet in the air, arms spread wide, and already falling at him with both Blades.

His pistol didn’t quite make it up in time.

Fifth, Warrant Officer Sama Rantha slid forward like a snake, and actually glided right over the prone men in camouflage. Tremble’s golden edge was less than a foot long as it wafted through the backs of their necks in series, and they didn’t even get to gargle in disbelief before they died.

Sama rose to her feet, Fall flipping into her hand as she also sprinted towards the line of vehicles.

The blowing of the grenades and shrieks of the dying men there roused something in the transports. With a bellow, the doors on the backs were thrown open, and the troops within emerged.

“We have Bullhorn Ogres, two Minotaurs, and a Gorebull!” Sama sang out, and couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of her voice. “Energized Armor, by the way your bullets are bouncing! Get up and into Shard range, and duck and cover from those cannons they are hoisting!”

The roar of the oversized shotguns was indeed similar to a cannon going off, and the women behind dove for cover in the long grass as 4-gauge rounds tore the air apart above them. Autoshotgun rounds filled the air with hammering volleys, but their accuracy was shit, because the incoming fire from the squads in the distance was slamming into them. If the shots didn’t pierce the metal encasing them, it still rocked them back and forth and made them unsteady.

Shanissey popped up to the left of the massive creatures, the least of them eight feet tall, the Gorebull a towering mass of muscle, smoking horns, serpentine tail, and glowing eyes reaching eleven feet at least, and using a.50 caliber machine gun like a pistol... albeit with crappy accuracy, as the recoil still shook its aim to shit.

An Ignite came in, just a little eruption of fire magic, washed across the brutes, and promptly set all their ammunition on fire. This was particularly bad for the Gorebull, who was carrying a whole hefty satchel full of his ammo feed. They were still in mid-bray and bellow from the deadly firecracker eruptions when Shannissey’s Lightning Bolt tore through them from the side in thick crackling lines of happy amperage, just before she dove into the grass and rolled away from any reprisal.

Sama was coming in very fast and quite low, and actually had almost reached the blockade before the horned brutes surged out from their defenses. As they reeled from the double hits of their ammo exploding and making their guns useless and the lightning doing the crackle-walk all over them, she flowed right up onto the hood of the first Dracojeep and was on one of the Bullhorns there as it staggered. It started to focus on her when it realized she was right in front of its face, and slowly, grandly falling over backward, the bright light in its skull flaring and delivering it to the ultimate dark...

The minotaur standing right there bellowed, first kicking out with a hoof a Clydesdale might envy, then lifting the mass of its gun, also designed to be a very usable club, to bash at her.

She skidded backwards from both hits, and it charged after the woman who was only an eighth of its mass.

Nihala’s heavy Spear came swinging across precisely as its ankles as it passed behind the Dracojeep, and it unbalanced wildly, falling to the ground with a bellow, armor not helping its balance along.

Corporal Mindy Latocki rolled over right onto its back, put both of her pistols up under the edge of its thick metal helmet, and pulled both sets of triggers three times fast.

Starting to surge back up, the minotaur staggered, and then collapsed back down as the Nickelback rounds punched through its thick skull and made a mess of its brain.

The Gorebull, his side a blackened mess of half-mangled armor that had still kept him alive in the face of all those bullets going off next to him, roared and charged the small knot of women, overlong arms reaching down to heave the heavy mass of the Dracojeep and everything inside it up and out of the way, denying cover to anyone behind it.

Nihala countered by stepping into the creature and planting her Spear to face it.

The two-foot horns aiming to impale her didn’t, mostly because her Spear came up right under its throat, over its gorget, and into its extended underjaw, before locking and allowing mass to do its thing. The point drove in, the Spear braced and drove its butt into the dirt, the jaw was lifted, the horns rose and missed her entirely, and over a half-ton of massive anthroid smashed into her and sent her flying, KE=MV^2.

The Gorebull was gargling, inhuman vitality keeping it going as it staggered, reached up to the Spear driven a foot into its skull, and with demonic vitality, tugged it out in a spray of crimson-black blood.

It was just starting to bellow again as Corporal Latocki ran up its chest, put her pistols right into its helm’s eyeslits as she started to push off, and pulled the triggers.

As Corporal Latocki arced beautifully over its wild flailing, Sama slid by beneath its legs, shooting up with one hand into an important part of its anatomy, plunging Tremble into the femoral artery of its left leg and pulling it out, before re-acquiring and putting a silvery bolt from Fall into the armpit of a Bullhorn Ogre flailing about at three other women who had arrived in close to cut it down.

The upraised arm wielding its club-cannon abruptly faltered, and the three combat specialists closed in instantly. A Spear, a Sword, and a Ladyglaive spun and thrust, and the ogre gurgled and collapsed, spraying blood from throat, leg, and wrist.

That left one last minotaur, who was charging out to get at the shooters behind the blockade, unaware that every Caster there was orienting on it.

A dozen Shards rose up together, and released. The minotaur’s armored shell didn’t stop the Force effects from passing right on through, and the Warcaster’s Razor that came with them drove it from its feet. A close-range shot to the neck from one of the scouts made sure it wouldn’t get up again.

The remaining Bullhorn Ogres were still visible above the cars. One’s head exploded as all three Robins shot it down from three hundred paces away, and the last one got to learn that Energized Armor doesn’t save you when the bullets are hitting your exposed parts, especially the shotgun inserted into its mouth.

-Lily, we have demonic Warlocks, Bullhorn Ogres, and Minotaurs. This is not a casual event.- Sama looked at the twisting, mismatched horns, the talons on one arm of a minotaur, spikes down the back of the Gorebull, the pincer-hand of one of the ogres, and frowned.

-Got it, Sama!- her little sister /replied grimly.

“Bring it in now, we’re moving!” Her eyes wandered over to where two of the men were burning away in puke yellow-green demonfire, souls screaming as their Pacts dragged them away, and their bodies were consumed to power it all. “Casualties, sound off! Healers, on them!”

Some of the young women had taken scattered hits from the roaring guns of the brutes, but that was the wonder and glory of Soak, as they had only the lightest of physical injuries. Most of them had a form of short-term Soak restoral, and piled onto the Disks to get into some Meditation to restore it faster.

“Listen up! We made a flashy display and have probably been seen. I don’t know what they are doing there, but since they set up a post way out here and tried to prevent any word of it from getting out, it’s plain to see they are under time constraints, and we have to move now. Find the keys to these vehicles and pile in! We are going now!”

They had further to go up the road than Lily did to the tower. Odds were there was an ambush force at the tower, ready to blow the trunk line and hard sever all communications open. By shutting down the towers that received random signals, but leaving the lines, they had cut off random people phoning in an alarm, but not really affected overall information traffic, avoiding setting off many flags. Soon enough, someone would have noticed no calls or information requests coming from Portal, but by then they would have gained enough time to do what they wanted.

Shanissey was already rocketing down the road, once again invisible, scanning for any other hidden ambushes. It was entirely likely that the road was mined at this point, and they’d have fireteams positioned along the approach.

But that was the fun thing about living on flat, wide open plains. Going off road was going to be horribly bouncy, but to people on Disks, it was irrelevant.

---------

The explosion went over a hundred feet in the air, and lifted the Dracojeep right off the ground, shredding its underside. The remains of it crashed down into the brand-new crater in the road, burning and blasted.

The Phantom Servant inside disincorporated harmlessly. The rest of the convoy basically ignored the blast, pulling off the road and going around the blast point, before getting back on the asphalt and continuing. They started taking gunfire from off to the left from the desperate cultists who couldn’t believe they were still advancing so quickly... and then a couple of fragmentation grenades were dropped on their position from above, and the incoming fire went away, especially after the Lightning Reserve follow-ups rode Sgt. Shanissey’s Grit rounds down.

Sama watched the convoy ahead and to the left of her get shot up, mines go off, rockets blast the vehicles off the road, and ambushes get sprung. The Phantom Servants driving the things just obeyed orders, having no sense of panic or self-preservation, and the teams on both sides of the road dealt with the ambushers as the rest of them forged ahead.

She was the one pulling this side of the formation, with Smith keeping up her Holo, while Scout Sergeant Jill Douglas, a Rising and Racing Winds lightfooter with big investment in her footspeed, was the anchor for the far side.

Shanissey was scouting above and ahead, occasionally becoming visible as she dropped grenades on something, or shot them in the back of the head. Occasionally a squad would drop off the rear to clean out a position they left behind, and would have to catch up as the rest bulled forwards.

It was some distance to run, but they weren’t slowing down, and Uncle Sam’s fine armored toys were basically there just to absorb the munitions these cultists had obviously stolen from the local armory.

Lily had already notified her that they’d met resistance at the tower and were expecting the defenders to blow the place, given how much of the place had been mined. The Artificers with her group were having fun disarming the mines and chucking them at the defenders, who didn’t appreciate the irony at all. But, barring any real surprises, they’d have it taken within a few minutes, and would be able to get a message out even if the cultists trapped the place.

In the end, they only needed access to the cable, even if it was the ruins of it. That’s what was so sweet about magic.

Of course, Sama had hardly been relying on just that...

---

“Sir, I can’t get through to Portal at all...” the corporal on duty frowned at the glowering faces of the Special Forces trio who were looming over her. Her fingers were dancing over the keyboard in front of her. “There’s... not a single mobile signal coming in from any of the towers in that area.” She watched a couple moving signals of cars coming up on the crossover zones, and abruptly wink out. “None of the relay towers around Portal are working, and I can’t get more than a timing-out response from the garrison there.”

“Send it up the chain and get ready to haul ass!” the grim dhatun with officer’s insignia growled. He called out, “Grik, call the hangar and get the plane ready! Mohono, roll out the team!”

“Got it, Mord,” the tall ogryn said, pulling out his phone and punching in the general alert for the team.

All of their eyes were flickering. They were two states below Portal, and even if they got into the air within twenty minutes, they’d still be hours away from whatever was going on there. However, they had set up plausible explanations for an early alarm, by ‘losing the tracking app on their little sisters’ phones.’

Within a few minutes, the scryers would realize they could not far-see anything about Portal, and the real alarms would start up, but their team would already be mobilizing. Word would be going out to Canada and any neighboring forces, too, and any mercenary independent forces in the area would be alerted and told to converge on the site...

Senpai Sama practically assured them they’d be too late, but at least they could try to contain something if they failed...

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Note: A Gorebull would specifically be a minotaur with a Fiendish bloodline. A Bullhorn Ogre would naturally be a crossbred minotaur/ogre.