The Siege Against Tolkeen

"This is bad," said Possman, anxiously looking through his macrobinoculars. "This is very bad." He paused for a moment to adjust the video transmission device on the binoculars. "You getting my transmission, boss?"

"Sure am," replied Perrin. He and half a dozen assorted members of the HFA were gathered at their headquarters, staring at a laptop computer screen. The fuzzy, black and white images were hard to make out, but they could be amplified and studied later. "Tell us what you're looking at, Possman," the pilot said into the headset microphone he was wearing.

The CS Ranger looked back out the window of his parked van. He thanked the heavens for the van's tinted windows, which hid him from the searching eyes of the guardsmen. "To begin with," he said. "It looks like they're beefing up the security at the pyramid. I can see two barbed wire fences being built, with a nice dead-zone in between. They've already finished a concrete wall, 'bout maybe 10 feet tall, right around the pyramid's base. There's guard towers on that wall every 15 yards or so, but they're unmanned right now."

"That stuff we can make out clearly," said Perrin. "What about the guards? We can't get such a great picture of them at the moment."

"They ain't from around here," Possman said. "It looks to me like most of them are brodkil and gargoyles. They've all got heavy duty bionics, and are packing rail guns and plasma axes, the likes of which I've never seen."

"Atlantean?"

"Or European. Either way, it means that the dragon's taking security seriously, if he went to the expense to import D-Bee mercs from those far-off places. These guys must be real expensive. I can see a couple of medium-sized combat robots patrolling behind the concrete wall and some things that look like dragon dogs running around between the fences. Most of the guards are patrolling outside the first fence, but I can see some of them on the wall."

"Is there a gate?"

"Yeah, there's some gates. But they're not in a straight row. You'd have to get in the first gate, run 50 or 60 yards to the second gate, and then run back 50 or 60 yards to the third one. Gives the guards in the towers and on the walls plenty of time to draw a bead."

"Any air defenses? Maybe we can nail these sons of bitches from the sky."

"Looks like the best bet to me. I don't see any anti-air guns. Doesn't mean that they aren't there, though. Those air elementals that friggin' wrecked our flyboys are probably patrolling the skies somewhere."

Perrin shuddered for a moment. "Those fuckers'll be hard to kill," he finally said. "But we can do it. If we strike hard and fast, we can kill them. Anything else?"

Possman did another cursory scan with his macrobinoculars. He was about to say that there was nothing else, when he saw something else. It was a D-Bee, floating above the concrete wall. Most of the thing's body was concealed under billowing black and red robes. The only things which could be seen were half a dozen yellow spines protruding from its shoulders, and its gaunt, jaundiced, noseless face. He looked at the monster, and the monster looked right back at him. "I'm getting out of here, boss," Possman said, putting the macrobinoculars down.

"Wait a minute!" said Perrin. Suddenly, there was the sound of wind rushing. Possman screamed, his cry accompanying a demon's howl of rage. There were the sounds of a struggle, and suddenly all of the sounds save the demon's heavy breathing ceased. Suddenly, the monster picked up the macrobinoculars. It looked into the device, smiled, and then crushed the binoculars in its bare hands. Static filled the computer screen.

Meanwhile in the bowels of the grand pyramid, a heated argument was progressing. Shaard sat imperiously in his mammoth throne, grinning as only a dragon can, while three of his human lackeys cursed at him. "I don't trust these mercenary scums!" cried out one of them, an old woman. "They'd betray us in a moment for more money!"

"Not likely," laughed the dragon. "The Coalition States will never deal with gargoyles. And who else would have both the money and the inclination to bribe them into betraying us?"

"That's another point I wanted to make!" barked the old woman. "I can't believe the enormous expense of transporting these...these rabble....from Europe, and feeding them, and paying their salaries! The treasury's nearly bankrupt, and the war won't be over for months, providing your pyramid works! The interest alone from the loans which we've taken out drive the debt up ten million credits every week!"

"I am displeased to hear that," said the dragon. "Who negotiated those loans? That person should be ashamed of himself."

"You know damned well that I, as the Treasurer, have to secure these loans! And they were the only terms that the bankers would accept! I did the best I could. It's your expenditures which are the problem, not..."

"It's your inefficiency that's the problem here!" replied the dragon. "Get out of my sight. I am the lord of Tolkeen, and I will not hear your treacherous mumblings. Tell the bankers that the interest owed to them is reduced by half, whether they agree or not!"

Suddenly, a gurgoyle dressed in freshly shined body armor walked in. "An enemy spy has just been apprehended," he said, standing at attention. "Lord Krann wanted to know whether or not you wished to attend the interrogation."

"I most certainly do!" replied Shaard happily. "You see?" he asked the sorcerors. "The mercenaries have proven their worth already!"

On an abandoned, rubble-strewn street in Tolkeen, the corpses of twenty unfortunate cultists lay, orange blankets draped over their lifeless bodies. They had put up quite a struggle, but had been unarmed and unarmored. Their battle against an augmented, combat-ready foe had been an exercise in futility.

"What a waste," said Pete Fransisco, looking down at the bodies. "Who were these guys?"

"The Church of the Skull and the Pentagram," said his Wolfen partner, Lucius Mallen. "A benign death cult. They thought that death was some sort of cosmic re-alignment, and for their sakes I hope they were right. They practiced a little necromancy, but had a registered license for it. Their skeletons, which also got trashed, had been scanned and bar-coded at the Department of Magic Registration. Totally legal organization."

"Looks like the psycho didn't appreciate them, legal or not," said the mystic, looking under one of the blankets at a skeleton. "Hey, look at this," he said, pointing to the thing's fractured skull. "Looks to me like the thing's been head-butted."

"So?" asked the Wolfen.

"So, all registered skeletons have a 3-D computer model of their skulls on file at the DMR. We compare these fractures to the computer model, and we've got ourselves a picture of the psycho's forehead and maybe some of his face. Have somebody take this in to the crime lab for re-scanning. And let's check under the fingernails of the cultists. Maybe somebody scratched the killer before he scratched them."

"Shouldn't we wait until Uziel shows up?"

"No, I'd like to get this done without her. That seraph gives me the willies."

"Is that because she won't touch your willy?"

"Least mine ain't covered in hair," said Fransisco, looking over the hands of a corpse.

Next Chapter

By David Haendler.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 David Haendler. All Rights Reserved.