“Oh…” He was breathing hard and probably just happy to not have fish eggs laid in him today. “I was not thinking of that.”
“I’m an accountant. Can’t help myself.”
There was a new noise ahead as somebody opened up with a minigun. I couldn’t see what they were shooting at from here, but a line of orange tracers leapt into the sky.
“Ponchik, watch for stragglers. I’m heading back to the bridge.” I closed Abomination’s bayonet so I wouldn’t slice open my survival suit, slung it, and started climbing the nearest ladder.
There was a high-pitched wailing noise as something flew past overhead. By the time I reached the bridge, another minigun on the aft end of the ship was firing into the air, tracers chasing after whatever had buzzed us.
The bridge was nonstop back and forth, controlled chaos. The Bride was about to make its final landing. There were dots and arrows all over the monitors as the various parts of our operation moved into position. Terry was giving constant updates over the thunder of guns. Mayorga saw me enter out of the corner of her eye. I’m hard to miss at six foot five, bright orange, and covered in purple fish monster blood. “Status?”
“Boarders repelled. Response teams are watching for another wave.”
“Hmmm…” Mayorga downed the last of her coffee. “Great. Now we deal with the sky squids.” She handed me her mug. “Refill.”
“What?”
“Refill.”
“No. I mean about the sky squids.”
“Kind of a misnomer it turns out. These look more like cucumbers with bat wings and tentacles, but the AA teams are driving them off. Keep that coffee coming.”
Captain resupplied with caffeine, I unslung Abomination, shrugged out of my shotgun load bearing vest, and buckled on the one filled with rifle magazines. Normally the coat rack in here would be used for mundane hats and jackets, but since it was all Hunters now it was covered in guns and dangling pouches. I grabbed Cazador. The beach was coming up fast, so I might be able to get some potshots at monsters on the ground before we got there.
As I went back onto the catwalk, the scene was surreal. A gaseous blimp of a monster was ghosting past, being rapidly chewed into pieces by the miniguns. It corkscrewed into the ocean spewing slime from a thousand fresh bullet holes. Skippy blasted past in his MI-24, blaring heavy metal from the speakers and lancing rockets into the fog. The Bride was heading toward the beach at an angle, so every gun on our starboard side was in range and indiscriminately spraying the beach. That included the two twin Oerlikons, three belt fed grenade launchers, and several fifty cals. Every place Mayorga could have a pintel mount bolted onto this thing, there was one. There was noise, smoke, and pandemonium. We were cutting down the forces of evil with superior firepower.
I’d never seen a sky squid before, and I didn’t get to see this one for long, because its ghastly mutilated corpse disappeared quickly beneath the waves. I really hoped that one had been caught on camera—not just because I wanted to get a better look at it—but because the PUFF on those things was ridiculous.
The fog was getting patchy. Every now and then there were glimpses of dark stone through the white shroud. I didn’t know if we’d hit whatever had summoned the fog, or maybe our elves were fighting back. All I knew was our improved view was giving us a target rich environment. There wasn’t much for me to do with a single precision rifle, because by the time I saw something, one of the crew served weapons was dropping heavy hate on it. I braced Cazador over the rail and started popping off rounds at anything that moved anyway.
Whenever I caught sight of a beast in the fog, I let it have it. I’d turned the scope down to its lowest setting of 5x magnification so I could have a wider field of view. Even at that, the small glimpses I got told me there was all sorts of weirdness in there. I saw various shapes and colors, insects, men with no heads, glowing bloated slugs. Nikolai hadn’t been kidding. Everything was fighting for a piece of this place. I put the reticle on whatever looked unnatural and start pulling the trigger until it disappeared again. Cazador barely moved as I fired. I made it through a whole mag that way, putting holes into several unknown creatures by the time Mayorga shouted, “Pitt!”
“You can’t need another refill already.”
“No. Check this out.”
I rushed back into the bridge. Through the windows, the beach was right in front of us. I’d been so focused on shooting things that I hadn’t realized how close we were to landing.
The captain was grinning, having the time of her life. “This was your bright idea. I thought you’d want to see it happen.”
Ten knots is faster than it sounds when you’re on a big ass ship about to crash into a big ass island. The gravel beach did not look very inviting. Explosions were ripping through the rocks, hurling shrapnel and monster bits in every direction.
“That’s kind of scary.”
“Tell me about it. My old job I’d get court martialed for this.” Mayorga picked up her microphone. “Brace for impact. Brace for impact!”
Everybody on the bridge held their breath. Mayorga crossed herself. I hadn’t known she was religious. I grabbed onto a rail. Several agonizing seconds passed.
Crunch.
“That wasn’t so b—”
CRUNCH!
That took me right off my slick rubber booties. I hit the floor. All I could hear was the hellacious grinding noise ever as the Pride of Krasnov scraped its awful flat bottom across the rocks. Everything was shaking. It felt like the ship was about to rattle itself apart. Guns swung back and forth on the coat rack. A flat screen fell off the wall. The grinding went on and on. Something big and metal broke beneath us.
Then we were stopped. We’d landed.
“Docking complete,” Conason announced.
Everybody else had been smart enough to be seated so they’d had better luck than I had. Mayorga hadn’t even spilled her coffee. I got back to my feet.
“Congratulations, gentlemen. We are now a fort.”
It was too quiet. Our gunfire had stopped so the crew could take the hit. I looked out the window. At some point it had gotten cracked. It was as if our arrival had punched a hole. It was almost like the fog had recoiled in surprise and retreated. The area immediately around us was totally clear. A hundred yards away the fog was still a solid, pulsing mass. It felt angry.
The fog started creeping slowly back toward us.
Mayorga grabbed her microphone and activated the intercom. “Get back on your guns. We’ve got company. Everyone cover your sector. You know what to do.”
I don’t know what was seen moving in the fog, but somebody lit it up with a minigun. Tracers cut a swath through the mist. There was an unholy screech as the creature fled.
“Bride has landed. Bride has landed,” Terry said into the radio. He listened as the others relayed something back. “The convoy can’t cross directly to us through the fog. They’re looping around and coming up the coast to our south. ETA ten minutes.”
“Do not fire indiscriminately toward the south. Friendlies inbound from the south. Repeat friendlies inbound from the south. You shoot our backup and I’ll kill you myself.” She let go of the button and took a deep breath. “If we can manage to link up without any blue on blue, this will have gone better than I expected.”
Terry cut in. “Milo says the ramp is jammed.”
“Damn it. I was worried that would happen. Tell him to get it unstuck as fast as he can.”
My gear bag was in the corner. Nothing was coming to kill us for a minute, so I began getting out of my ridiculous survival suit. I started wrestling my way out of the stupid neoprene. It was so obnoxiously clingy it was tempting to just cut it off with my knife.
“If you don’t need me, I’ll head to the cargo bay.”
“You really want a piece of this island, don’t you, Pitt?”
She had a point. It had once killed my father. I didn’t want to just take this place, I wanted to hurt everything on it. “I guess that
’s what I do best.”
“I thought that was bitching about team leads going over budget.”
“Love you too, Skipper.” I threw my rifle pouch vest on over my coat and slung Cazador. I’d put the rest of my stuff on when I had the chance. “Good luck.”
CHAPTER 15
The Bride had come to rest at an angle. We were tilted about ten degrees to the right. It made walking a little weird, but it was a whole lot nicer than the endless crashing and swaying. I was definitely a land mammal.
As I ran down the deck there was sporadic gunfire from my people, but most of the targets had pulled back. There were eerie noises coming from the fog, groans, moans, screeches, and a sound like hyenas laughing. There were also occasional crashes and roars, as the various things on the island blundered into each other. It sounded like they were fighting each other as much or more than they were fighting us.
I popped a hatch and slid down a ladder. The engines were still running, all the lights were on, and there were Hunters scrambling everywhere, getting ready to take the beach. By the time I got to the cargo bay our 105mm howitzer was firing again. It shook the walls down here. The gun crew would have to compensate for being parked at an angle, but we’d be a lot more accurate grounded than on the waves.
Jay Boone was in charge of securing the beachhead, and was in front shouting orders. Milo Anderson was at the door controls. He had been appointed combat cargo officer, which basically meant that Milo had to figure out how to cram over a hundred Hunters and a bunch of assorted vehicles in here in the most efficient way possible, so we could get off fast enough to secure the beach long enough for the rest of the party to show up.
The vast ramp that made up the front of our ship was making a terrible hydraulic whine, but it wasn’t moving much. There were a bunch of Hunters here, all dressed in winter clothing. Many of us weren’t as armored up as we would be on a normal job, because armor gets heavy fast. We were going to be working mounted-to-dismounted in rugged, cold, unimproved terrain. Warm clothing is bulky. Winter gloves are a pain in the ass. Even though we would be riding in vehicles much of the time, everybody was carrying packs with supplies and survival equipment. Some of the Hunters looked excited, others nervous, some grim, more cracking jokes, and a few stone faced and impossible to read, but however they got their heads right, every single one of them was ready to fight.
In a previous civilian life the Bride had been used to haul vehicles up and down rivers and intercoastal waterways. But if it could fit trucks, it could fit armored vehicles.
Or in this case, a T-72M tank.
When I’d been putting this operation together, the Czech Monster Hunters had been all in. They were a relatively small outfit, but they had a lot of pride, had lost a man in Vegas, and were eager to crack some heads in payback. When they’d heard Lindemann and Krasnov were both involved, they had refused to be outdone by their larger competitors to their west and east. I believe the actual quote from their company president—after being translated into English—was those assholes may have more men but will they donate a tank?
That was hard to argue with, especially since Earl had really wanted to play with one.
The Ostrava One was forty-one tons of steel and badassitude. The 780 horsepower engine was deafening inside our metal box and the diesel fumes were threatening to choke us all. It had a bunch of exclamation points painted on the turret. I was too broad shouldered to even fit through the hatch to get inside that thing, but I was really jealous of the Hunters who were about to use it to go kick some monster’s teeth in.
There were other vehicles in line behind Ostrava One, but we’d only brought the one tank. Mayorga had vetoed that. One was bad enough. That much extra weight and we’d have ground out far earlier and would be wading ashore. The rest were Oshkosh Light Tactical Vehicles. An OLTV is basically an armored 4x4 pickup you could stick machine guns and grenade launchers on. Management must have owned stock in them or something, because he had hooked us up with a really good discount. It sure as hell beat walking.
With the help of some big Hunters with pry bars, the ramp opened a crack, enough to reveal there was a dead saughafin still stuck to it, but not enough to drive our tank through. It was opening, but slowly. Daylight flooded the bay. Freezing wind swept away the built up fumes. Milo kept impatiently mashing the big red button, as if that would make the hydraulics go any faster.
Trip and Holly joined me, still wearing their survival suits. All of the designated response team people had, because there was a good chance one of us would end up overboard, but they hadn’t been necessary. She had to shout to be heard over the noise of all the engines. “What’s the hold up? Boone’s landing party was supposed to roll out the minute we stopped moving.”
“Ramp’s stuck.” Which turned out to be a pretty unnecessary explanation once they saw Milo jumping up and down on the end of a pry bar.
“Top’s secure for now. Feints only,” Trip reported. “It moves, it gets a twenty-millimeter to the face. Big stuff is holding back.”
“You know that’ll change the second we set foot on this beach.”
“We’re getting in the middle of a monster gang war, Z. They’ll see us as a challenge.”
“They should, because we are,” Holly said. She dropped her gear bag and started stripping out of her suit, and Holly really didn’t care who was watching. Trip and I politely turned around, noticed one of the foreign Hunters ogling her, and we both shook our heads in warning, like Dude, you do not know who you are messing with. Holly might take the staring as a compliment, or she might hit him with a brick. Flip a coin. He wisely went back to doing whatever it was he’d been doing before the hot blonde had started wrestling her way out of skin tight neoprene.
Trip hadn’t had a chance to get out of his ridiculous survival suit yet either. His was yellow. “This new look might not be working for me, but at least it was warm,” he began struggling out of the ridiculous get up and into something less clumsy and more bullet proof.
“You look like militant Sponge Bob.”
Milo had started beating the ramp with a wrench. The Czech standing in the commander’s hatch offered to just drive through it with their tank. It would have been comical if we weren’t trying to launch an attack.
“I just heard about your dad. I’m sorry. I wish you would’ve told me.”
I knew I hadn’t really processed it yet, but Auhangamea Pitt hadn’t raised me to be the introspective emotionally stable type anyway. I’d grieve when the fighting was done. “He’d want me focused on the job.”
“God gave him a mission, just like us. He fought the good fight and now he’s in a better place. You can’t ask for much more than that.”
And Trip was so damned sincere about it, that actually meant something. My eyes began to water. I blamed it on the diesel fumes. “Thanks.”
He finished tying his boots and stood up. “You ready for this?”
“Hell yeah.”
With a triumphant shout from Milo as the ramp went crashing down.
It was time to hit the beach.
* * *
As predicted, the lull didn’t last.
Ostrava One rumbled out first, clanking down the metal ramp and shaking the entire ship. It drove the ramp deep into the ground. The saughafin corpse that had been stuck beneath the ramp popped like a grape. The tank sank into the gravel as it moved slowly and carefully forward. The ground had more give than expected, but it wasn’t soft enough to stop us. A Hunter was standing up in the hatch, manning the gigantic machine gun mounted on top and scanning for threats. The tank got far enough out that there was plenty of room for the OLTVs to pull out behind it, and stopped.
The Hunters moved out as the gun crews kept watch above us. I walked down the ramp paralleling an armored truck. The Bride had traveled a surprising distance up the beach, but the surf was still licking the ramp. Hunters who were fanning to the side were splashing through shockingly cold water. Trip was probably regretting d
itching his Sponge Bob suit.
A Van Helsing Hunter who had been a Royal Marine was at the base of the ramp, directing traffic. Boone was ten feet past him, telling everyone where to go. Since we’d not been able to predict exactly where we’d land, he was having to improvise on the fly based on the terrain, which here consisted of nothing but beach and a lot of rocks.
Something weird was going on. The temperature was already freezing cold, but it was dropping fast. An unnatural chill swept over us. I’d felt something similar before, usually around vampires, but this was different, and worse. The salt water tossed by the waves froze solid before it landed. I didn’t have a thermometer handy, but the air on the beach had gone from twenty above to twenty below in the last two minutes.
“What the hell?” Holly managed to gasp through chattering teeth. “Freezing magic bullshit!”
There was a noise in the fog, a belligerent roar, so loud it drowned out the tank’s engine. The hair on my neck stood up. That awful sound flipped an ancient, primal switch in my brain, warning me to run or get eaten. Even the hardest Monster Hunters seized up when they heard it. Whatever made that sound was pure terror.
“Where were they hiding something that big?” Boone shouted. Then he went back to giving directions. “Screw it! Keep moving!” The Hunters snapped out of it and pushed on. Boone waved the truck I was next to toward the right. He saw us. “You three post up on that boulder pile.”
“Got it.” The Oshkosh was headed that direction anyway. If we were going somewhere it might as well be in the shadow of an armored vehicle until we got there.
“Get up there and—” The roar came again, much closer this time. Boone grimaced as it shorted out his hearing protection.