The Siege Against Tolkeen

At precisely midnight, the winter solstice occurred. The ley lines of Tolkeen flared up for a moment, shining with a bright and beautiful light. But then, the excess mystical energy was sucked up towards the great pyramid. Crackling bolts of pure power began flowing over the massive structure like water flowing over a stone. The CS soldiers fighting their way towards Tolkeen, seeing that the ley lines were being drained dry, redoubled their efforts. It was clear to even the lowliest grunt that the leaders of Tolkeen were up to nothing good.

The Coalition forces had a far easier time that night than one might have expected. For as the ley lines withered and shrank, so did the area's ambient PPE base. Mystical cannons that would have once torn apart tanks found themselves barely capable of taking out grunts in body armor. The techno-wizard rifles and sidearms of the soldiers became worth little more than ancient muskets against the incoming horde. Faced with such handicapped foes, the Dead Boys easily cut a bloody path towards the gates of Tolkeen.

At 5 AM in front of the Human Freedom Alliance's beer hall, Lucius Mallen found himself huddling in an alleyway, clutching a Naruni plasma cartridge rifle to his chest. His men were set up all around the building, waiting for his signal. Any minute now, as soon as he felt ready to begin, he would perform the biggest police action of his career, one of the biggest in Tolkeen's history. It didn't particularly feel grand, though. Mallen knew that what he was doing was right, he hated bigots with a passion, and the world would be far better off with this particular bunch of skinheads in prison. But still, he had never pictured himself like this. When he joined the force, he had thought that detectives go about solving mysteries and unraveling conspiracies all day, like the ones he saw in old Earth movies. He hadn't seen any detectives leading strikes against terrorist cells in those films. This seemed like a duty that somebody else should be doing.

Mallen forced himself to remember why he was here. He was here for the dozens of innocent victims of the serial killer. He was here for Uziel, killed in the line of duty. He was here for his partner Pete Fransisco, who would most likely never be able to cast spells again due to his wounds. Suddenly, it all seemed right.

"Attack!" he shouted into his headset, as he leapt up to his feet. Dozens of policemen jumped out of their hiding places and charged into the building, going in through every door and window they could find. The enemy must be left with no escape route. Mallen himself kicked down a side door and strode inside the dark, stinking beer hall, his rifle ready.

Inside, half a dozen kids were lying around loading Naruni plasma cartridges into clips and calibrating broken laser rifles. The oldest of them couldn't have been more than twenty. They weren't children, though. Their eyes said that. Looking into those eyes, Mallen saw hate, xenophobia, and cynicism. It was eerie, to see people so young with so much anger inside them. A couple of the kids reached for nearby handguns. Mallen pulled the trigger, and watched the little monsters fly apart. The stink of blood and plasma began to fill the air, overwhelming the old odor of weak, pissy beer.

"What the hell?" barked Perrin, waking up as the door to his room was kicked down. A couple of police officers barged in, both of them carrying plasma rifles.

"Hands up!" screamed one of the officers. "You're under arrest!"

"Go to hell!" replied Perrin. Before either one of the Tolkeen policemen could react, he scooped up a hand grenade from his nightstand, pulling the pin and tossing it in one fluid motion. There was an explosion and a flash of steel, and the cops were blown apart. The leader of the HFA stepped over the crater, and looked out of his room at the battle that was unfolding.

Lots of the less experienced members of the organization had been sitting around in the front rooms, sleeping or getting weapons ready for today's battle. The police were tearing through them like a machine gun burst blasting through a box of Kleenex. Most of the more experienced veterans, who had been planning to take place in the raid against Shaard, were getting pinned down. Energy blasts were flying all over the place, and every few seconds some poor slob would scream out as a plasma slug found its mark. The HFA boys were better trained, but they were also half-asleep, surprised, and out of armor. This was turning into a massacre.

Perrin scooped up one of the fallen men's plasma cartridge rifle, and began spraying the SWAT team with bursts of white-hot death. "Get the hell to the basement!" he screamed to his men. "Use the escape route! We've got to abandon our base here! I'll hold these bastards off!"

The veterans of the Human Freedom Association scrambled for the basement, as the cops scrambled for cover from Perrin's relentless barrage. As the CS pilot ducked back inside the doorway to reload, he did a quick mental count of whom he had seen. He needed to know which of his men were still alive. He had seen Donald Hartman, Reiser, and Possman running down into the basement. Sonja and Rick Freedom had been sleeping at their apartments. He hadn't seen Nick Thompson, though. So far, so good. Most of his elite team was still alive, although entirely too many of the other HFA troops were gone. And they were going to lose the safehouse where lots of their weaponry was stored. This couldn't have come at a worse time.

"You bastards!" Perrin yelled, rolling back into the doorway. He pulled down the trigger, and felt the familiar kick of the rifle. A few more of the SWAT cops fell before the gunfire. They were keeping their distance, and that was good. That would buy him some time.

Upstairs, Nick Thompson slapped an E-Clip into his laser pistol. He was a heavy sleeper, and by the time that he was awake, the battle was already well underway. He'd be damned if he'd miss this fight. The former mage slammed open the door to the room where he had been sleeping, and strode out into the hall. Arrayed before him was a scene of carnage. The dead were strewn all over the floors, the walls were covered with blood, and Tolkeen police were all over the place. Thompson's heart sunk into his belly as he realized that Jack Perrin was the only one holding them at bay. Then he saw the sights of a sniper pointing directly at his boss. It was too late to stop the man from getting off a shot, and far too late to warn Perrin. Thompson did the only thing he could think of. He dived for it.

"NO!" screamed Jack, as the plasma cartridge hit Nick in the guts. There was a cracking noise, and the thick, pungent scent of burning flesh. Nick Thompson fell, his entrails spilling out of him.

"What the hell?!" snarled Rick Freedom, as he stood outside the HFA meeting place. There was a war going on inside! The building had literally been shot to bits, with enormous holes blasted into the walls. Fires were burning in several places, and the sound of the gunfire was deafening. Freedom had spent years with this as his headquarters. He would not be robbed of his past, his men, and his destiny by Tolkeen's pathetic defenders. If defeating them meant losing whatever semblance of control he maintained over his mind, so be it. The Crazy's MOM implants began clicking and whirring as insanity fell over him like a comforting blanket. He pulled his vibro-sabers, and leapt into the burning building.

The lunatic cut a swathe of destruction through the Tolkeenites. They hadn't expected an attack from behind, especially not from a super-powered god of war like Freedom. The cops, already hurt and scared after the pitched gun battle, broke and began to flee. Only a few of them stayed in the burning building, and one of them was Mallen. The Crazy leapt towards the Wolfen detective, shrieking a war cry and raising his blades.

Mallen raised his gun and fired. It blew a massive hole into Rick Freedom, knocking the Crazy backwards into a wall. The fearsome warrior collapsed into a bloody mass, twitching and smoking. Lucius Mallen turned towards where Jack Perrin had stood, only to see that Perrin and Thompson were both gone. Furthermore, a nearby door, had been shut behind them. Big chunks of Naruni plastique wired to the door made it clear that attempting to follow would be a lethal mistake.

The detective sighed, and looked around the battlefield. The dead and wounded littered the filthy floors, and his superior sense of smell, never much of a blessing, was now driving him mad by presenting him with the vivid stench of death. He had badly disrupted the plans of these monsters, whatever those were, and that at least was good. But he had to wonder if it had been worth the terrible price they paid. He barked out a command to his men to bring everyone who was wounded outside, and then walked off to give the fire department a call.

"What are we gonna do, Jack?" asked Possman, as the CS Ranger tried to put a bandage on the bloody stump that had been one HFA member's hand. "Our plans've been shot to hell, we've lost most of our guys and our guns, and the bad guys'll probably be coming down those stairs in a few minutes. I hate to say this, but I think we've lost."

"No," replied Perrin coldly, shaking his head. "I will not permit our enemies to blow up everyone back home just because I didn't have the sense to put on enough perimeter guards. I will not let everyone down just because we weren't prepared for that. We're going to go over to that pyramid, and we're going to burn it down and then stomp on its ashes. By the end of the day, I'm going to be making a bathtub out of Shaard's skull, and a new belt out of his hide."

"Are you allright, man? I don't think I've ever seen you like this before."

"The stakes have never been this high before. Let's get everyone over to the garage and get ready to roll. We've got to pick up everyone who isn't dead, visit our other arms caches, and then be on our way."

The alien intelligence paused to look over the city of Tolkeen, while hovering a few hundred feet in the air. It was truly a beautiful city. All of its protection magics were gone now, and its elemental defenders hovering in the air looked anemic from lack of energy. There were planes circling in the sky, but these flimsy inventions of man were nothing compared to the magical forces which Tolkeen had once enjoyed. Those precious energies were now concentrated in the pyramid, which pulsed and glowed with an unwholesome light. The crystals orbiting around the structure were screaming, at a pitch that none but gods could hear. They, the fragments of a monster god, were terrified beyond words.

"You will be free," said the alien intelligence. "Be calm, for help has arrived." The alien intelligence then unsheathed his sword and flew towards the pyramid, on an unholy mission of mercy.

Next Chapter

By David Haendler.

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