Capítulo 49: Chapter 49: The Turn
Guardian
a Worm/Destiny Crossover
Chapter 49: The Turn
Taylor had power. She was strong, fast, and capable. A dead-eye shot with every gun she'd held and a keen, vicious dancer with a blade. The Light that twined and interwove with her soul let her reach beyond even those heights. From the void itself she could shape bow and arrow. From the heart of the storm she could call lightning. From the furious existence of the sun she could bring flame.
Irene was the word by which a city could be invaded, but not if it was spoken by her. The power inherent in giving such an order belonged to General McKnight. By his word a massive bombing run was undertaken, scorching the streets of Pittsburgh with explosive ordnance both mundane and abnormal. Parahumans flew side-by-side with squat, fat-bellied bomber planes and fighter jets howled by in flocks. All coming together to pour wrath onto the teeming hordes of the enemy.
From where Taylor stood in the heart of Heinz stadium, with the earth rumbling and grumbling beneath her feet, she couldn't say who held more power. The early afternoon sky suddenly and violently shifted to a sunset orange and heat bloomed in the air. The very sky wavered with the force of the detonations, a wall of pure sound that chased a curtain of dust and debris across the once-empty stadium. It forced her back a step, pulled her cloak out behind her and tore at its hem.
Then came the helicopters. The same unmanned aerial transports that had carried her, Lily, and Grace into the heart of Las Vegas and back out. By the dozens, in no particular formation, they flew overhead. The sound was only quiet by comparison to that which had come before.
She waited, megaphone in hand, for her cue. Her job was simple: make either Nilbog or whatever meager intelligence guided his creatures aware of her existence and location in this spot. To manipulate his hatred of her and draw the bulk of his surviving forces – some had survived, there was no doubt of that – to her. Thus, she was bait.
The trap was around her. Miles of concrete K-rails, automated and manned gun emplacements, enough ammunition to fight a small war, and a small group of volunteer soldiers to help her shoot everything she saw. In the face. General McKnight's voice came through the fitted ear radio. " Guardian. You're up. "
"Yes, sir. Insulting him now." Taylor lifted the megaphone to her lips, itself having been wired into the stadium's speakers, and began to insult Nilbog. Jamie. Who-the-fuck-ever.
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They didn't have to make sense. Taylor told herself this as she segued into another comparison of Nilbog's face and that of a festering ass boil. They just had to let him know she was here. Well, she thought, as the face of the soldiers nearest her slowly took on expressions of fascinated horror, he definitely does now. She dug up every burn, every insult, every put-down, brush-off, or cutting comment she could recall hearing, experiencing or reading, and a few she made up on the spot.
Some were good: "No matter your power, Jimmy, you're still a talentless imbecile who barely, barely, reached the low hanging fruit of murder!"
Some, less so: "And another thing! Did the whispers know how pathetic you were when they picked you? They should have!"
As the minutes, all five of them thus far, dragged on, she began to wonder if he were even listening to her. No sooner had she thought that did there come a great, terrible, cacophany. Shrieking, screeching howls by the thousand, by the tens of thousand. Every screamer, shooter, giant, or floating, skeleton thing in existence seemed to be giving voice to their creator's fury. It was fury, too. She could somehow tell. These creatures were either enraged or giving voice to Nilbog's.
Either way, a few seconds after the screaming began, the mines buried in the parking lot outside the stadium started going off. Dull, ground-rumbling thunderclaps that she could feel in her chest. She touched the radio in her ear, cueing it, "This is Guardian," she had to shout-speak over the detonations and the endless screeches. "Trap is sprung."
It took a moment for a response, and when it came, there was an oddly pinched quality to General McKnight's voice. As if he were holding back some amount of emotion. She wondered if it was concern for his soldiers or the success of his plan. "Confirmed, Guardian. Aerial footage has half the damned city coming down on you. Countdown to withdrawal has begun. Good luck and Godspeed."
"Thank you, sir." She touched the radio again, turning it off, then checked her watch. A recent gift from the quartermaster before she'd left. A one-and-a-half hour countdown had begun on it. That was how long they'd have to hold this place. Keep his eye fixed on them. The last of the mines went off. The stands began to shake as giants by the dozen began to tear their way in. She checked her rifle, one last time, before looking to the soldier standing next to her. "The general wishes us luck. Think we'll need it?"
What was left of the unshattered glass broke. Steel beams and concrete bent and crumbled, rent and tore as the giants came roaring in. Each one the size of a two-story building, skin thick and pale orange. Weeping, compound eye gleaming with purple-green flame. Easily a dozen. The turrets tracked, spun up, and spat death. The soldier grinned back. "Hell no." He hefted his own rifle as the screamers came pouring in, flooding into the K-rail maze like water. They weren't alone. Shooters, big blades, and big shooters came in behind them. There was a disturbing amount of intelligence in their motions. "We got this."
Taylor barked a laugh, aimed, and started fighting.
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Her soul – her Light sang.
Hell and pandemonium reigned all around her. A giant, eye a bloodied ruin, tore a turret from its platform, power cable sparking and popping as it stretched and tore, and crumpled it between massive fists. Another two turrets tracked to face the giant and tore it to pieces with concentrated fire. Their doing that allowed another pair of giants to begin plowing through the maze of concrete K-rails. As one, her and the soldiers turned and poured gunfire into them and the smaller creatures swarming about their feet. In the distance, a sextet of big shooters arced their cannon-arms and sent a tightly packed comet of witchlight plasma towards her position.
A voice she didn't recognize screamed, "COVERRRRRR!!!"
She threw herself backwards, arcing and spinning into a backflip as she saw the comet crash into the firing platform, a hastily constructed thing of concrete, and obliterate it. The soldiers who hadn't jumped or simply hadn't been fast enough were obliterated with it. As she rose from her crouch she saw another comet rise into the air. She followed its path and it led her to one of the remaining turrets currently spraying the flood of screamers with gunfire. Behind it, from a different place, another comet rose, this one heading towards one of the two remaining firing platforms.
Automatically, she reached for a fresh magazine. Those big shooter squads had to go. She was the only one who could do it. The soldiers were busy and, even with the best training, just weren't fast enough. Not like her. Her hand, instead of finding a blocky plastic form, slapped against an empty pocket.
The resupply wasn't far. It was actually extremely close. She could reach it and be gone in less than a minute. Half a minute. But in that time another three comets would be in the air. She dropped her rifle. Drew not her pistol, but Howl and her knife. She breathed in. The sun and the furious storm bellowed in her soul, crying out to be used. Lightning crackled along, becoming and extending the blade of her knife. Howl became wreathed in sunfire. She charged.
Up along the top of the K-rails her nimble feet danced, blades flashing, thunder cracking. Screamers dying and witchlight plasma hissing by as she ducked and wove and killed. A pair of screamers leapt into the air and dissolved into ash, a cloud of it that she charged through and left trailing behind her. Her very own comet's tail. She drew closer, vaulting over and severing a giant's reaching arm. The regard of the horde was shifting. Fixating on her. Or perhaps it had always been thus, and only now, surrounded and alone, did she feel its weight.
That was the plan, though. As she cleaved into the first squad of big shooters she could hear the rumbling steps of the giants as they turned to face her. As she killed the last of them and darted forwards, blades trailing Light behind her, she could feel them closing in. Gunfire's roar told her that the soldiers and turrets were still alive and firing. Good.
She hit the second group like a meteor. Two died before they could react, Howl piercing up through the back of a skull and her knife gouging out a throat. The rest went down quickly. Not quickly enough for her to maintain her lead on the pursuing giants. Teeth bared, she conceded the chase. Spun on her heel, cloak flaring out behind her in an arc of tattered cloth.
Four giants before her. More behind. She could see their skin spark and pock from the impact of bullets. She hoped the soldiers were good enough not to hit her. She figured the turrets probably were. Either way, she jumped. Up and into the face of the center giant, Howl buried past the hilt in its fleshy, weeping eye. It reeled back into one of its fellows as she pivoted at the waist and leaped again, pulling free her burning sword and driving both deep into the chest of another giant. She clawed her way up its body, inches ahead of its own claws gouging rents in its chest. Reaching the head, instead of jumping again, she used her knife as a fulcrum to slide around the back of the giant, opening its neck with the lightning edge as a different giant crashed into her mount.
Such glorious chaos. She used the back of the fallen giants she'd just brought down as a sprinboard, going low and fast at the next in line. It was faster than its fellows. Smarter, too. It caught her in its claws and began to squeeze. She could feel its steel-bar fingers close ever tighter. Bones would break soon. Bones would break, organs would rupture, and she would be wrung out like a wet rag.
Unless...
Blink.
Hell and pandemonium reigned, and her Light and her soul sang in revelry.
Amidst the death, Taylor danced.
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Until she didn't.
Until the turrets ran dry and the horde kept coming and the soldiers were in her ear, screaming, screaming at her to FALL BAAACK! Until her knife broke on the spine of a screamer and her sword's edge began to run dull from carving through such toughened flesh. Until the fury of the storm began to wane and the flame of the sun began to set.
She ran. Back the way she had come, dancing along the K-rails. No blades in hand, not this time. No Light singing through her. Just her pistol, solid and loud, cracking flatly and fast as she ran. Spent brass rained down behind her as she ran, reloading on the move and shooting more. She reached the evacuation point; a pre-designated, fifteen foot square of turf.
There were so few soldiers left, and none without injury. The luckiest among them sported burns from witchlight plasma and cuts from screamer claws, and the unluckiest would not be leaving at all. Their bodies would remain, their sacrifice remembered. And, if Taylor had any say in the matter, their vengeance carved into the teeming horde of the enemy.
"TEN SECONDS!!" a woman screamed. Blood wept from a cut above her eye. "HOLD THEM HERE! EVERYTHING YOU GOT!"
Time slowed.
Ten. The soldiers formed a circle, guns facing out. The woman stood at the center, holding a briefcase-sized piece of technology in her hand. It glowed, growing brighter by the second. Taylor stood the circle. She had grenades in her hands. The horde came on, screamers leading in a tide of expendable, screeching flesh. Primed, the grenades flew. The guns of the soldiers made a phoomf sound, and more followed. Explosions shook the air and rained viscera down upon them.
Nine. A soldier pulled a remote from their pocket, pressed the button. The explosives embedded in the K-rails – what few were left – went off. The earth beneath their feet shook. Giants fell. Some got back up.
Eight. Gunfire began to pour out. Nobody aiming anymore, it was impossible to miss. Taylor used her free hand to fan the hammer of her pistol. For a few moments, it seemed that the horde would be pushed back. The first wave of screamers died, as did the second and third. Bodies began to pile up, a barricade of the dead.
Seven. Someone was screaming. Scratch that. Everyone was screaming. Taylor, the device, the soldiers, and of course, the screamers. The gunfire continued unabated. Behind the wall of corpses a group of big blades were approaching. Behind them, big shooters.
Six. The first witchlight plasma shot took the soldier standing next to Taylor in the chest. He went down, chest sizzling, and was pulled back into the shrinking circle.
Five. The first big blade pushed through the wall of the dead. Taylor mustered her last scrap of Light and shot it in the face. The empowered bullet tore its head off and it fell backwards into its fellows.
Four. The light from the device was growing. The woman holding it screamed "My hands!"
Three. As one, the remaining soldiers and Taylor took a step back. The guns ran dry. The call went out. FIX BAYONETS . She drew her sword.
Two. The enemy reached them. The big blade in front of her reared back, blade-arm lifting to come down with momentous force when –
One. There was a flare of light.
They were gone.
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They reappeared outside the medical tent. Of the soldiers who volunteered, sixteen in number, seven remained. The woman dropped the device and cradled her scorched hands, staring at them in shock as medics and healer parahumans rushed forward.
"Taylor!" Someone barreled into her, knocking her back a step. She dropped her sword as she found her arms full of Lisa. It only occurred to her that she'd called Taylor by name instead of by Guardian much later, after everything was all over. "Thank fucking God you're all right!"
It took her a moment to find her voice. "I'm fine, baby." Her arms went around Lisa's shaking body. "Filthy and tired, but fine. How'd the mission go?"
Still trembling, Lisa pulled away. Green eyes lined red shone with unshed tears just now beginning to spill. She shook her head. Her voice thick, she said, "It went wrong. It went so, so wrong. General McKnight called for a full retreat. He said – he said..."
"What? What did he say?"
Lisa inhaled, quick and sharp. "He said the city was declared a loss. They're...they're sending in Eidolon." She pointed, Taylor turned, and hanging in the air above the Containment Wall was a figure everyone on Earth would recognize. The figure spread their arms. "He's going to destroy the city. We lost."
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