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Chapter 34
The Pointy End of the Stick
The night came cold and dry to Hill Tango, with the moon bright and full and lighting the desert world a pale, pristine silver. Stars flickered in the clear sky, raging celestial fires diminished by distance and time to pinpoint gems.“Gonna kill you one of these days, you don’t quit,” said Hudson, indicating the cigarette Aston was smoking in the chill darkness.
“I suppose something has to,” responded the Sergeant. “Of course that army out there might do the trick a good deal sooner than the cigarettes, I expect.”
Hudson followed Aston’s gaze out beyond the artillery batteries and revetments of Hill Tango to the plains beyond Papoose Lake. The moon was just bright enough to make out the dark mass of thousands upon thousands of infantry and hundreds of vehicles making their way slowly and deliberately towards Firebase Majestic.
“Man, we’re always the pointy end of the stick,” said Hudson.
“Funny how it seems to work out like that,” said Aston. He glanced at the tritium dial of his watch. “We ought to be hearing a rather nice ‘bang’ shortly.”
“And then?”
“And then we have a go at Colonel Pike’s brainchild. We block their retreat, bottle them up between the mines and the artillery box, and give them only one way out — through our nice little gap here.”
“Then we kill them,” said Hudson.
“Then we kill them, yes.”
“Nice night for it.”
“That it is.”
The tip of Aston’s cigarette flared orange and he released the smoke into the night air, into the hilltop wind that carried it out into the dark, out toward a vast and implacable enemy.
In the distance, a mine exploded, the sound echoing among the surrounding hills.
Big Macho had begun.
* * *
“Oh my God,” said Elisa Summers over the radio as they angled up the face of the final ridgeline before reaching the Crossover Zone. Beyond lay the Valley of the Dead (as Lillith had taken to calling it) with its tens upon tens of thousands of demon corpses. But the valley wasn’t yet in view, so Buffy knew that her daughter was referring to something else.
“What is it?” asked Buffy as she slowed to a stop at the crest of the ridge.
“Behind us. Look.”
Buffy looked back at what had caught her daughter’s attention. Angel pulled his Patrol Vehicle alongside them.
“They’ve joined,” said Elisa.
In the distance, the Dark Mind was gone. In its place was the Elemental Abstract, but changed. From within the oily, black, rotating tendrils of the Abstract came pulsing, fetid green and putrescent purple light. Above the mile-high pillar of darkness, a roiling layer of heavy, swollen clouds was gathering, swirling slowly over the Abstract as if the creature were imparting some sort of cyclonic force to the surrounding air.
The five adventurers looked on in silence for a few moments, then Buffy said, “C’mon. We’re almost home free. Another couple of hundred yards, and fifteen more minutes until Willow opens the wormhole, and we’re gone.”
“Something’s going on with that thing,” said Xander.
“Something bad,” Angel added.
It didn’t take long for Buffy to realize what they were talking about. At the base of the Abstract, a shadow had begun to spread outward in a circle. The shadow gathered solidity and depth and became a low wall, like a black sandstorm cascading across the landscape.
“What the Hell?” asked Spike.
The shadow surged over the terrain like a dark wave, engulfing everything in its path and gathering force and momentum as it traveled. As it approached the Valley of the Dead, Buffy could hear a low rumble, the bone-deep sound of an avalanche. The wave spilled into the valley below them and flowed along it like a torrent, over the bones of the dead demons and through the twists and turns of the ravine.
And it continued on, into the distance, leaving in its wake a low layer of black fog clinging to the alley floor. Amid the fog, something stirred.
“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this,” said Buffy.
“You mean that, ‘So this is it, we’re all going to die’ feeling?” asked Xander.
“That would be the feeling, yeah,” said Buffy, nodding.
Something began to rise through the fog. A lot of something.
In the Valley of the Dead, the dead had decided to rise.
The clatter of a quarter million skeletal demons rising almost in unison resonated loudly and chilly off the stone walls of the ravine like a sharp, dry clap of thunder. For several moments, all was unnaturally quiet, as if Hell itself had been silenced in expectation of what was to come. The undead legions stretched from one end of the valley to the other, their bleached bones and carapaces gleaming white or glossy black or dull rust in the strange, non-directional light of Hell.
The second largest demon army Buffy had ever seen turned as one to face its quarry.
“I hate Mondays,” said Spike.
The demons started toward them.
* * *
“You just about done over there, Mac?” asked Buffy Echo Fox as she removed a two-foot long, stainless steel cylinder from her pack.
“Almost,” said the former Dark Hunter, scanning the information spilling across the wormhole generator’s status displays. “Having a bit of trouble getting the communications protocol established for the download. I’ll find it. It just takes time.”
Echo Fox slid aside a panel on the cylinder, revealing several switches and a numeric keypad.
“What’s that?” asked Willow, nodding toward the device.
Echo Fox smiled. “It’s a little toy from twenty-ninety-six, Reality Four Four Bravo Charlie. This, dear Willow, is a Berlioz Manifold Implosion Munition.”
“And in a language all of us speak, namely English, that would be what exactly?” asked the vampire Cordelia.
“A Berlioz Manifold Implosion Munition briefly collapses a small region of spacetime. It’s a hell of a lot cleaner than a nuclear munition — no problems with fallout and contamination and such.”
“Isn’t that a little bit of overkill?” asked Cordelia.
Faith looked over and said, “Babe, ain’t no such thing as ‘overkill’ in this biz.”
“We’ve got people outside,” warned Willow.
“Then radio them and tell them to get beyond a hundred yards from the perimeter of the complex, and fast,” said Echo Fox.
Willow nodded and contacted the Dark Angels, then said to Echo Fox, “Okay, they’re clearing out.”
“And so are we,” said Echo Fox.
“Shh, everyone quiet,” hissed Cordelia Niner Bravo.
Something metal groaned beneath the flooring.
“I’ve got a very ‘Aliens’ feeling about this,” said Cordelia’s vampire double.
Faith tracked the muzzle of her machine gun across the floor and said, “Oh, this is bad. This is real bad.”
Something — several things — skittered beneath the tiles, the pipes and conduits pinging and rattling with their passage.
“Umm … Mac? You almost finished?” asked Willow tentatively.
“Got it! Crossover event in fifteen!” shouted Mac just as the first Phase Parasite erupted from the floor with lightning speed and a shriek that sounded like a passenger train making an emergency stop.
“Everyone watch your fire! Don’t hit anything human or electronic!” Buffy Echo Fox yelled as she punched a red button on the Berlioz Munition and started the countdown.
Faith and Cordelia Niner Bravo directed carefully placed three-round bursts of enchanted silver bullets at the metamorphosing, reflective black mass of the Phase Parasite, sending globules splattering against walls and floor.
A second Parasite tore through the floor behind them, and Cordelia Niner Bravo was a fraction of a second too slow. As she turned to meet the new threat, the creature extruded a spike, impaling her. Her answering volley of point-blank machine gun fire obliterated the Parasite and the spike retreated, but the damage was done.
“Son of a bitch,” she hissed, blood running from between her fingers as she tried to staunch the flow of blood.
The wormhole flared to life and cohered.
“Let’s go!” shouted Mac. “Somebody give Niner Bravo a hand over there.”
“Got it covered, boss,” said Faith, moving support the injured woman.
Beneath the floor, fresh sounds of activity could be heard.
“Faith, you go across first, get Cordy to the infirmary. We’ll provide cover,” said Mac.
As Faith and Cordelia Niner Bravo crossed the event horizon and disappeared, Mac said, “And we’re out of here, everyone.”
Mac followed the last of them across just as three more Parasites tore into the room, and just seconds before the status displays of the Berlioz Munition flashed red and the M-7 research complex ceased to exist.
* * *
Aston peered through the green haze of the light amplification binoculars and into the distance of the Papoose Lake flats. Looking like an untold multitude of shimmering black specks swirling in a jade sea, the half-million strong army of darkness approached the sandbags and entrenchments and revetments of Firebase Majestic.
Aston hoped they wouldn’t get that far.
“Now?” asked the Lieutenant nominally in charge of the hill’s batteries. It had been made clear by Pike, however, that it was Aston who was calling the shots.
Aston lowered the binoculars and said very calmly, “Let them have it as you please, Lieutenant Masterson. Let them have it, indeed.”
It was impossible to describe the sound and feel and sight of a massive artillery barrage to anyone who had never experienced such a thing, thought Aston.
Across the southern face of Hill Tango bright, yards-long muzzle flashes erupted from the line of Howitzer barrels, their heavy shells roaring down the rifling and arcing downward toward their targets in the valley below. Even through Aston’s hearing protectors the overlapping reports were stunningly loud and continuous, like thunder rolling on and on just overhead. The concussions were an almost tangible, solid thing, hammering against his chest, pounding through the ground beneath his feet, causing loose stones to skitter and jump across the top of the hill. In the valley, the once placid desert floor turned into a churning expanse of geysering sand and billowing dust.
An awesome and splendid spectacle, thought Aston.