Chapter 135 – The Illusion of Choice

  “What we have discovered is that other realms have much higher concentrations of mana and thus, more people attuned to it and those who can use it. How that affects affinities or types of spell casters is still a mystery. At this point, we are unsure if there is a way to increase the population of magic users in a more regimented fashion.” – Briefing to Board of Directors at University of Michigan medical school.

  Penny turned around her laptop screen as the agents all stored their clothes in their rings before summoning their uniforms directly onto themselves. The new rings were much easier to use and more intuitive than the first generation. When they were dressed, they all leaned in.

  “This one is weird and we don’t know what to expect at all.” Penny was saying as she pulled up her monitoring program and a new window that Kurt hadn’t seen before. “We might have a two in one situation going on, we can’t be sure.”

  She maximized the new window showing a frame that was split into two sections. On one side, in a slim column, was a list of field office locations. Each location was the city it was in along with a status of “engaged”, “scheduled” or “open” in red, yellow and green letters, respectively. Below that was a sub-heading showing an alpha-numeric classification system that Kurt couldn’t immediately understand. Next to the classification was a counter, showing what Kurt presumed to be the time engaged since they all seemed to be ticking up in the familiar HH:MM:SS format.

  On the right side was a stylized picture of Earth. It was also showing various sized dots moving toward it on a black screen. The little dots would jump forward on occasion and sometimes move side to side as they progressed toward the planet in random patterns. Most of the dots just moved past in erratic patterns but several had parabolic arcs that carried them toward the Earth.

  “This is our first stage of detection and identification. It’s what we use to spot incoming rifts and how we determine who to assign them to.” Penny clicked her mouse and moved a slider, rewinding the scene. “This was what we caught half an hour ago.”

  The black field showing Earth changed its focus to show two rifts. Each had a small little ID tag that had a number and a ranking. As the scene played, the two rifts began to drift apart. “There two were confirmed to be on collision vectors and we activated the anchors in field offices to begin pulling them in separately. One was going to an office in Latvia and the other to a group in Brazil. Then this happened.”

  The two points of light, which had been slowly veering away from each other, suddenly snapped together and began spinning around themselves. The two dots then closed in an ever-tightening spiral until they made contact.

  Kurt had expected a sort of explosion or perhaps some particle effects, but either that didn’t actually happen or the display was too simple. Instead, he saw the two dots merge into one and the ID tags combined before being rewritten into one tag with a new name and rating. That dot then continued on its new path toward the planet.

  “Control panicked, called Casitor and asked for help. In turn, he told Jay who immediately assigned it to you because you are the most experienced team, and the others just got off rifts of their own. You also have Jade and her squad to call on to assist.” Penny recounted the story as she pulled up her normal screen.

  “This was two small rifts, low energy and low mass based on our early data. They would have made good training rifts for new teams based on previous trends.” Penny said. “After merging they are now a medium rift with high energy but it’s fluctuating wildly.”

  Kurt studied the display for a while but couldn’t really read any information. He was never introduced to it so didn’t have any reference points for the numbers and charts scrolling across the margins. When he looked up, he saw Val texting for a moment before sliding her phone back in her pocket.

  “I just texted Jade. She is going to make her way over with her squad, just in case.”

  “Good call.” Kurt said before returning his attention to Penny. “So how long until it attaches and we can enter the rift?”

  Penny turned her screen back around and clicked around a bit. “Should be sometime within the next two hours.”

  They all shared an awkward moment of silence before Kurt shrugged and began walking toward the basement. “Well, I’m going to get some work done. Let me know when we are ready to go.”

  *****

  Fifteen minutes later, Kurt and company were standing in the altar room, watching the portal materialize. “Thought you said two hours.” He grumbled to Penny as the monochrome disk slowly expanded from the size of a dinner plate.

  “I said ‘within’ two hours.” She said with a haughty sniff. “Perhaps if you had waited with the rest of us, it would have taken the full time.”

  “Yah, murphy’s law.” Kurt grunted.

  Jade stepped forward. “Sire, if you-“

  “Nope, it’s fine, Jade. I am just being pedantic.” He said with a sigh. He felt like he could have told Jade to handle the rift and she would have done everything within her power to clear it.

  Kristi had been staring into the forming portal and only spoke up after it had reached four feet in diameter. “Is it another cave?”

  “Hmm, mine shaft maybe?” Gus offered, also leaning in to take a look at the slightly distorted surface. “See the bracing there. That looks like what I saw in old mines and tunnels.”

  “Yeah… hmm, good catch.” Kristi said as they returned to watching the portal reach its full size.

  After another few minutes, the black and white image resolved to clearly show an underground chamber. The bracing within telling them that it was not a natural formation.

  “Alright, same game plan as last time.” Kurt said while doing one last press check on his rifle. “Kristi, Val, on me.” With that he took the one step onto the altar before leaning through the static like event horizon and entering the rift.

  When he emerged, it was to a slight drop of a couple inches into a low ceiling room. He quickly scanned the room under his night vision glasses and moved out of the way of the portal, sweeping his rifle across until Kristi popped out and cut his sector of fire in half. As usual, the room was empty, not even filled with whatever detritus the rifts normally put in these entrances.

  Jade came through with her team a moment after Val entered and they all took up positions around the portal, their eyes drawn to the short hallway that terminated in a wood door. Kurt had enough time in the room to make a few assessments.

  The first thing he noticed was that the air was very dry. It was also very dusty with fine, powdery sand covering the floor. The smell in the air was an acrid sort of stench that clung to the back of his throat and was giving him instant flashbacks.

  “Oh, fuck this.” He muttered and summoned something from his ring that he didn’t think he would ever use again.

  Val saw him sling his rifle and watched him curiously. “What is that?”

  “Shemagh.” Kurt answered. He tied it around his head and around his face, cutting the amount of dust he was breathing by a significant margin.

  “What is it for?” Val was doing her adorable little head tilt as she watched him.

  One of the werewolves on Jade’s squad answered as he summoned a nearly identical scrap of cloth. “More like what isn’t it for. Our lord is using his to cut the dust that we are all b-” He was cut off by a few dull booms that shook even more dust loose. “Shit.”

  “Yeah, shit.” Kurt said. He hadn’t been on the receiving end of artillery before, but he had been close enough to the impact site to recognize it. “Alright folks, get something over your faces, I have a couple spares if you need it.” He summoned a few more of the large squares of fabric and passed them around.

  After he showed Val and Kristi how to tie them so they would stay, he made a mental note to get actual respirators. The shemagh was great but wasn’t good against anything more than dust and wouldn’t do a thing for airborne hazards. It would be just his luck that this rift would be filled with magical asbestos or something similarly hazardous.

  When everyone was ready, Val led the way down the hall and pressed her ear against the door, listening before casting an illusion and opening it. She poked her head out and Kurt saw her shoulders twist as she looked around. She came back in a moment later and turned around to face the rest of the team.

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  “We are in a… trench? I don’t really know how to describe it.” Her voice was slightly muffled by the Shemagh but Kurt could tell she sounded confused.

  “Did you see anything else?” He asked.

  Val shook her head. “No, just the wall across from us.”

  “Alright, lead us out then.”

  Val turned back around and pushed through the door. It caught a little as it opened but she forced it past the obstruction, and it hung open on the sand that had impeded it. Kurt slapped a homing talisman on the frame and followed her out. In quick order they all pushed out into the trench and could get a good look at what they were working with.

  The door had opened into the middle of a trench line that extended several yards in each direction before turning away. Kurt noted that it was nearly nine feet to the parapet with a wide bottom floor almost six feet from wall to wall. That width varied a little as there was an extra two or so feet on either side for a firing step.

  Cold wind whipped and howled above them, casting a steady stream of sand over the top lip and down on their heads. It was slowly filling in the bottom of the trench, piling in the edges and corners. It looked like there had once been mud on the ground but it was rapidly drying and being covered in sand. The sky above them was dark but also there was a strange mixed light that seemed to pulse and flicker.

  There was a sort of yellow-orange glow that reminded him of fire light that would build and fall between the gusts of wind. Mixed in with that fire light, though much more consistent, was a dual color glow that emanated from opposite sides of the sky. One was a bright purple that bordered on pink. It was opposed by a reddish glow that Kurt almost mistook for more firelight, but it was too consistent.

  “What in the actual fuck is going on here?” He wondered aloud.

  Val tapped his arm and pointed at the firing step. “Want to take a look? I can cover you with an illusion.”

  Kurt nodded and stepped up onto the platform made of either stone or very hard packed dirt. “Do it.” He said and felt the tingle of an illusion settle over him as he slowly poked his head over the top and looked around.

  Just as he did, there was a flash of light to his left and the familiar ‘crump’ of an explosion. He thought he heard something else mixed in but the way the wind passing through his helmet dampened the sound. Still, he got a good idea of what it was as a wave of shining black forms began skittering around where a geyser of dirt had been launched into the air.

  Scorpions, dozens of them, flooded in every direction. Many of their number were covered in luminescent blood that glowed under the strange purple light that hovered over that side of the rift. Most of them quickly went to ground again but a fair number of the dog sized creatures rushed a group of new figures.

  A line of humanoid shapes popped up from a shell crater and threw a brace of grenades before leveling long rifles at them. Kurt couldn’t quite tell what they were as they wore strange cloaks that covered and obscured their forms. They fired in a slow volley like cadence, taking carefully aimed shots as their enemy closed in.

  Between the gunfire and grenades, only a couple of the scorpions made it to the shell crater but those few caused havoc amongst the squad of humanoid soldiers. Tails flashed, their barbed, stinger tips striking out as their foes tried to parry with their rifles. As the stingers were batted aside, their pincers snapped forward and grabbed ankles, hobbling the humanoid figures as the barbed tails descended once again.

  He watched the brawl and cycled through his glasses settings, switching between night vision and thermal overlay. Kurt could faintly hear high pitched shrieks and guttural shouts over the wind as the fight devolved into a frantic melee that was obscured by the sand carried on gusts of wind. He ducked back into his trench and turned to face the others.

  “Y’all are gonna hate this. There appear to be two sides.” He had to raise his voice as another explosion went off and the wind seemed to pick up in response. “We got some sort of humanoid armed with slow firing guns but supported by artillery. They are fighting scorpions the size of golden retrievers. Good news is they both show hot on thermal so they will be easy to see with our glasses.”

  “Is there a hidden option three with us having to pick flowers in a sunny meadow?” Sierra asked, trying to lighten the mood. Kurt couldn’t blame her, he saw the looks behind their glasses and face coverings and knew that neither option was appealing.

  Val stepped forward. “We don’t actually have a choice. As much as I hate skittering bugs, we need to deal with the humanoid threat first.”

  “Agreed.” Kurt instantly backed her opinion. He hadn’t been trying to say they had a choice of what to deal with first but that was the logical next question. “Just a guess here, but I think the rifts colliding didn’t make one big cohesive rift. It seems like they are competing to see-” Another explosion in the distance. “See which comes out on top and consumes the other.”

  “So which side is which?” Jade asked as he hopped down off the firing step.

  “Red side is humanoid and purple is the scorpions.” Kurt answered and they began to make their way along the trench under the cover of another illusion.

  Val stopped them before they made it to the first corner in the trench works. “I can’t hold the illusions. Its hard enough while standing still but the sand is giving me too much feedback to account for.”

  Kurt thought for a moment before making a decision. “Alright, Kristi and I will take point, no illusion. Val, you go behind us and Jade’s squad runs trailing element.”

  They rearranged quickly to put Kurt and Kristi at the front of the formation, each of them staying to the far sides of the trench without stepping up. They turned the corner to find a short run of trench line that quickly turned right again. He called a halt as they took a quick look around the bend.

  After the second turn, the trench ran straight for quite a ways. Unfortunately, this section was occupied by the cloaked humanoid figures. They stood a little taller than Kurt and the others, coming in around the low six-foot range. They wore long trousers that could be seen under their brown and grey half cloaks and their faces were covered by head scarves. Each of them held a very long rifle that looked more like a spear with the socket bayonet attached. All four of them seemed to be waiting for something as they stood just below the firing step, near a ladder that led up and over the top.

  There were only four of them in the trench, but this particular stretch had a couple offshoots before the far end where it curved out of sight. Kurt thought one of the offshoots led toward what he was calling no-mans land while the other two went in the opposite direction.

  Kurt and Kristi swapped places so he could inform the ream what he saw while she kept an eye on the enemy. It also helped that she would likely fill the trench with an endless stream of bullets if there was a problem.

  He had just turned to begin his explanation when there was a series of shots that echoed through the trench. The sound was muted by the corner and the wind but it was still enough to make him look back to Kristi where she stood with her machinegun leveled.

  “They are firing over the parapet” She told him through the implant.

  “Don’t worry. They are shooting bugs according to Kristi.” Kurt relayed before diving into his description. He was interrupted again by more gunshots, but it wasn’t the slow, muted firing of the humanoids.

  “Contact.” Kristi yelled as she pulled the trigger and held it down.

  Kurt ducked around her, coming out low and using the firing step that extended past the corner as cover. He saw half a dozen of the cloaked creature flopping around on the ground as more came from the far end of the trench and one of the side passages. They stopped, firing their pump action rifles back at them.

  Flipping his selector to full, Kurt fired several bursts until his magazine was spent. He had dropped a few but they had ducked back into cover as Kristi cut loose with another burst. “Frags!” he yelled before prepping a grenade and side-arm throwing it around the corner.

  He nearly backed up into Jade as she replaced him, throwing her own grenade while Connor went right after her. They all ducked back in time to avoid any of the blast and fragmentation before Kristi once again took up a firing position. When she didn’t fire, Kurt made a split-second decision.

  “Push into the next trench.” He shouted and leveled his rifle, fresh magazine already inserted. He pushed past Kristi and she began pacing him, their sectors of fire crossing to cover the opposite wall of the trench as they approached the first junction. Val and one of the werewolves were between them, adding their rifles to the mix and covering the far end of the trench. They ignored the bits of bodies strewn around, only firing a couple times to put down a few that still moved before they stepped over them.

  As they approached the first branch, Kristi paused while Kurt began to pie the corner. “Bunker. Frags!” he called back to the others while he stayed posted on the door. Connor stepped forward with Val and they both prepped grenades and bounced them through the open doorway. They all shuffled back out of direct line of sight of the door while they waited.

  BOOM-BOOM. Dual explosions sent a gout of dust and smoke rolling out of the bunker as Kurt rushed in. Kristi lifted her gun enough for him to slip under before following him inside and they both cleared the small room. “Short room, Short room!” he called as he realized how small the space was and halted the others before they piled in.

  There was a little thermal bloom in the bunker from where the grenades had detonated but that was the only heat source in the little ten by fifteen-foot room. He quickly turned around and they pushed back out into the trench coming up behind Jade’s squad as they pushed further down.

  The second opening was the one going toward no-mans land and that proved to be another trench that ran forward another twenty yards. It was empty for the time being, so they posted two wolves there and moved on to the third opening which was another trench that was occupied.

  Gus and Jade put down the three rift monsters that were already half dead from the first grenades before they posted up two more on that opening while they finished the section they were in. The very end of the trench was another turn that lead to a dead end and another ladder.

  With the first section of trench secured, Kurt met up with Jade as they began to get a look at what they were fighting. He flipped over one of the more intact bodies and stared down into the face that was covered by some sort of fabric that looked like a gunny sack. The body of the being was slim, having slightly longer than normal arms that ended in four fingered hands.

  Kurt jerked the mask off the creature to reveal a rather strange face. It was like someone had taken a frog and covered it in fine hairs that looked like dolls hair as it poked out in clumps from between semi-hard bony plates. “Well, that’s ugly.” Kristi commented dryly.

  “Yeah and what’s up with these guns? It’s like someone turned a musket into a pump action.” Val said from where she had uncovered one of the strange rifles that hadn’t been blasted apart.

  If Kurt were to compare it to anything it would be the black powder guns from the mid to late 1800’s. The kind where nations were converting their muskets into single shot breach loaders. The weird part was that they had pump handles on the fore ends and seemed to feed from the rear via a tube in the stock. The strange action, combined with the two-foot-long triangle bayonet, made for an awkward weapon.

  “Looks like big bore black powder rounds.” He said while holding up one of the cartridges he had pulled from the pouch on the dead monster. “Like in the range of fifty or sixty caliber.”

  They took what they thought might be valuable and did a second sweep of the bunker, finding nothing of value in the oddly empty room. Then they reconvened back at the path leading further from the fight with the scorpions.

  “Like Val said, let’s see what we can do about that indirect fire. For now, don’t break the core if you can help it. I don’t know what will happen if one side is taken out while the other is still active.” Kurt outlined the plan as they once more got into their formation, this time with Jade’s team actively covering their rearward vector. The two teams pushed deeper into the trench line, their progress being made to the sound of artillery and gunfire.