The Siege Against Tolkeen

"Uzieth!" cried Lucius Mallen. "What the hell are you doing?!"

The seraph was crouched over the prone body of an Uteni arms merchant, energy pouring out from her eyes. In one of her hands she was clutching the D-Bee's right forearm. Fortunately for him, the merchant was clad in some sort of light plate armor. If not for that armor, his bone would have been snapped like a twig in the grasp of the angel.

"This scum tried to draw a gun on us," Uzieth snarled. She motioned with her head, revealing a gleaming black plasma cartridge pistol lying on the grimy floor. The seraph reached over and grabbed the gun, and then held it to the D-Bee's head. "Were you trying to kill us? Is that it? Maybe we should kill you."

"Please, no!" blubbered the merchant. "I thought you were robbers or something!"

"Shut up!" the angel snapped. "I don't want to hear your pathetic excuses. Just show us your customer list and MAYBE you won't spend the rest of your life in a jail cell!"

"You're crazy! Besides, I don't keep a list of my customers!"

"But surely you keep some records," the angel snarled fiercely. "Phone numbers of people you've set up records with. Addresses for deliveries. I want those records."

"All right. I'll give that shit to you. Just don't send me to jail, and don't hit me again." Uziel grudgingly released her grip, allowing the merchant to stand up. He dusted himself off, and then walked over to his desk. He opened up a desk, and began to reach inside.

"Pull another gun out of there and I'll rip out your spine," the angel said.

"I'm not pulling out any gun!" The merchant smiled inwardly, and then pressed a hidden button, built into the desk itself. There was a brief pause, and then there was a huge boom, and the wall next to the detectives shattered like glass. A gleaming black robot strode in from behind the rubble, its plasma cannon smoking.

"How may I serve you?" it asked, in its mechanical voice.

"Kill the intruders!"

"Whu' the fuck?" Mallen grunted as he tried to stand. He was directly at the feet of the metal monster, the protection which his magical forcefield provided had been nearly exhausted by that explosion, and his gun was holstered. This was not good. He'd never seen one of these cyborgs before, but it looked to be an advanced model.

Before Lucius had time to take another breath, the thing slammed into him with a kick that sent the Wolfen flying into a wall. The detective felt an enormous impact, heard something in his spine give way, and then collapsed into a heap, totally unconscious.

The seraph lunged at the metal monstrosity, a blade of pure flames suddenly clutched in her hands. She slashed mercilessly at the Repo-Bot, nearly breaking down its forcefield. But nearly was not quite enough. The cyborg put its plasma cartridge cannon to Uzieth's forehead, and fired. There was another deafening boom, and the angel fell backwards. The skin on her face had been blown off, revealing a densely packed musculature underneath. In between the muscles and tendons which now made up Uzieth's face, sparks of magical energy flared. Her mouth, now just a few teeth and a ragged tongue, tried desperately to talk, but produced more blood than sound.

The cyborg took aim for another shot. Its directives had been absurdedly easy to accomplish, which was as close as the robotic killer came to feeling joy.

Suddenly, there was a gun's bark, and the head of the Uteni behind the desk snapped backwards. The D-Bee arms merchant collapsed, dead on the floor. The cyborg turned, to see Pete Fransisco standing just a few feet behind him, holding a smoking TW pistol.

"That's the nifty thing 'bot being a mystic, you know?" said the detective. "When you want to, you can step between the shadows, where nobody bothers to look."

"Does not compute."

"Figures. Anyway, step the fuck away from my partners or I'm gonna blow your ass to hell, tinman." Fransisco leveled his gun at the cyborg, and smirked with false bravado.

The Repo-Bot swung one of its massive forearms around, nearly catching the mystic in the face. However, Fransisco fell backwards at the last moment, landing on the ground. He aimed up towards the cyborg's armpit, and then held the trigger down. After the first few shots, there was a shower of sparks when the force field finally gave way. But the blasts which actually were scoring against the armor weren't doing much. The cyborg prepared for another blast with its plasma cannon.

Suddenly, it was hit from behind, and thrown forward. The Repo-Bot got to its feet as quickly as possible, to see Uzieth standing before it, her face starting to grow back bit by bit. In her hands was the damnable flaming sword which she had used to great effect a few moments ago.

"You will die, abomination!" she spat.

As the Repo-Bot realized that its objectives would not be easy to fufill after all, it felt the closest that it could ever get to frustration.

"Oh, hell," growled Hans Reiser, hiding behind a crate of rail gun ammunition. It had been a hell of a job to crawl back here without attracting the attention of the Tolkeen special ops, and now they were searching through the cargo compartment. Hans toyed with the thought of climbing into a nearby Jager and fighting off the invaders, but knew that the NGR shipped its war machines with their weapon systems disconnected. Connected guns were prone to going off in extreme turbulence, or upon crash landings. While it was by no means hard to reconnect the weapons (it was just a matter of plugging a few wires back in) it would take precious time which Hans didn't have at the moment. He'd have to improvise.

A dwarf toting a bizarre-looking hellfire rifle came around the side of the box where the German was hiding. Hans noted with pleasure the plasma grenades hanging off of the stocky D-Bee's utility belt, and decided on a plan of action.

"Hoi!" cried the dwarf, raising his rifle to fire.

"Give me that, you little shit!" Hans said in American, grabbing the dwarf's rifle and wrestling it away from him. He then reached down, and pulled the pins off of nearly half a dozen grenades. He then shoved the dwarf over the crate and ducked back down into cover. Hans grabbed up the fallen rifle, knowing that he would have to use it in a moment.

"Help!" yelled the dwarf to his comrades, trying frantically to pull his utility belt off. His stubby fingers were stumbling over the buckle mechanism. If not for stress or short fingers, the D-Bee would have made it. But since he was cursed by both, he instead burst into crimson flames, taking out most of his fellow soldiers and a neaby suit of power armor with him.

Hans leapt back to his feet. The cargo compartment was full of fire and thick black smoke. There were at least four enemy commandoes left alive, waiting for him behind crates and suits of armor and in the cover of smoke. Hans heard footsteps to his side, and reflexively turned and fired. His gun bucked in his hands, and suddenly a human holding a vibro-sword was dead on the floor beside him, nearly cut in two by the intense flames which had burst out from the rifle.

"Make that three," chuckled Hans in Euro.

Nine minutes later, Hans was in the cockpit of the cargo jet, feeling quite unnerved. The hellfire cannon had given out just as he had been about to shoot the pilot and co-pilot. He had wound up breaking the pilot's neck, and using the man's vibro-knife to dispatch the survivor. Messy business, that. Now he was in command of a badly damaged ship which he couldn't fly very well, surrounded by enemy vessels and gargoyles. The agent picked up the transmitter, hoping that none of the pilots around him really knew how the man he just killed had sounded.

"Ah, we've had a little scuffle onboard the ship," he announced. "One of the damn Germans took out a few of our boys with a grenade. But we got him. The systems are reporting that we're having trouble with the wiring on the weapons systems due to that little blast. But it's really nothing to worry about I don't...what th'...oh no!! Get out of here the ship's going cra--!" Hans took momentary pride in his acting ability as the enemy fighters began to veer away. Then, he put the autopilot on, and leapt over into a gunner's compartment. Fortunately, this ship had been armed with a full complement of missiles. Hans chuckled again, and began to exercise his trigger finger.

When most of their fighters were gone, the gargoyles realized that they had been had, and began to swarm the Mosquito. They managed to do some damage, Hans gave them that. But the combination of heavy laser fire and the fact that many of the gargoyles died when they stupidly got in front of the ship quickly whittled away their numbers.

Hans took control of the ship and veered away from Tolkeen. He was still in trouble, though. The Mosquito was far too damaged to make it into Coalition territory, and it was suicide to try to land in Tolkeen. More enemy fliers would soon be here, and were probably already on their way. Hans picked up the radio again, and put it back on the CS frequency.

"Mayday, mayday! This is an NGR transport ship, in Tolkeen airspace. The Tolkeen air forces are trying to shoot me down, and I've already sustained heavy damage! I need airfield clearance, within 400 miles of uh... I'm over Grand Alamar right now. Help!"

"Uh, boss?" asked one of the techies at the beer hall, handing his radio headset over to Jack Perrin. "We got something here that I think you should take a listen to."

Next Chapter

By David Haendler.

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