Serpens Cauda - Chapter Three

“Is everything OK back there?” Oxford’s steely voice came through clear as crystal in the comm. In Rhodes’ arms AM was just coming to, her usually fiery expression one of complete fatigue.

    “Yeah I think so. Our little magic user’s all tuckered out after that show though.”

    “I’m... I’m fine. I just need a few minutes,” she managed to say in defense, placing her hand on her forehead in a futile gesture to calm her raging headache. “Give me a sit-rep Oxford.” Her voice was weak, but colour was already returning to her greyed face.

    Up in the shattered flight deck, Oxford and Carla were surveying the wreckage. Cooled blood - mostly that of the cockpit-breaching aberration - was sprayed across the front, while specs of glass and chunks of hardware had come loose, leaving exposed wiring and cracked screens.

    “Looks like we’re some kind of ruined city. Brought us down in a park or something similar. Pretty big clear area, made for a surprisingly good runway. Ship’s in bad shape though. We’ve got some serious structural damage. Engine four is completely out. One through three aren’t in good shape either, probably clogged with monster parts.”

    “What about our communication systems?”

    “Short range radio is working fine, but our long range is out. They must’ve hit the radar - and even if they didn’t, that storm’s got some serious electrical screening that would make getting through a pain.”

    “No hostiles in the area?”

    “Not that I can see. I think you dealt with most of them.”

    “Yeah, well don’t count on it. All I did was stun them.”

    “Well we’re not reading anything at the moment.”

    Not one for laying down on the job - not least in Rhodes’ arms - AM was struggling to her feet.

    “Maybe you should take some rest AM,” he suggested. He’d seen her use her ‘talents’ a few times before, usually in less spectacular fashion. He didn’t know how it worked - only the anti-mages knew that - but it was clear that even the simplest of magics took incredible amounts of effort and energy.

    “No, no I’ll be fine. We’ve got work to do,” was her stoic reply. Then, to Oxford: “Ok, here’s what we’re going to do,” she ordered, still faintly out of breath. “You and Carla start fixing up the ship. Engines first. I want to get out of here ASAP if needed. Me and Rhodes’ will establish a perimeter and scout out what we’re dealing with. If those things come back I want to be prepared.”

    “What were they? Any ideas?” Rhodes asked.

    “I’ve seen mages summon all sorts of things. If they can imagine it, they can make it generally. Little gargoyle-dragon things aren’t exactly original, so whoever summoned them is probably a maverick - but is probably close by.”

    “Going to Rasalhague?”

    “Could be. We need information. We don’t even know where we are.”

    “Not so, AM,” Oxford piped in through the comm. “While we don’t have a satellite location, I can pull up our trajectory from the computer log to give us a good estimate.”

    “Ok, do that. But I want this thing mobile as a priority.”

    Her energy was swiftly returning, already pulling out the containers full of their equipment. While the hull had been ravaged in the attack, the hold was intact - and with it the gear.

    “Suit up Rhodes. I’ll grab the beacons.”

    Minutes later and the cargo door creaked open. With the Clocktower half embedded in the soil they had to stoop to get out. Once outside they could see the damage.

    “Holy shit...” Rhodes muttered, “I thought she was tougher than that.” The hull was gashed and gouged. Holes littered the surface, components hanging off by their wires. Spattered in blood with chunks of claw and scale wedge into the flight surfaces, it looked like they had flown through an abattoir. The four engines still smoked, the exhausts red hot and glowing.

    They had dug a trail as they landed. Warm churned earth stretched a hundred metres or so behind them, though it was hard to distinguish from the surroundings. A wide open area of mud, soil, rubble and hardy, brown grass. At the perimeter were structures - or the ruins of them. A mix of crumbled townhouses, municipal buildings, worn theatres and collapse halls. Their broken facades were scorched and scarred, but suggested a former glory. Though nothing remained intact and nothing breached three stories, it was clear they had landed at the focus of this former city.

    The sky above still hung low with stormy clouds, casting the ruins in an oppressive and dreary monotone colour. Save for the smouldering of the Clocktower there was no sound. No movement either, bar the tumult of silent lightning above. No sound often meant no life.

    “Let’s go. Five-hundred metre radius should be good enough. We’ll start at that fountain over there.” She led, carrying half of the dozen beacons on her back, with her machete tucked into her belt and her desert eagle on the opposite side. Rhodes followed behind, holding his rifle with his six beacons slung across his shoulder.

    Long disused, the ornate fountain was chipped and eroded, with dark green stains lining the dried bowl. Faceless cherubs stood with holes where their mouths should have been, where life-giving water had once flowed. They towered up over head height before ending abruptly - something had shearn the stone in two, leaving a clean cut, the severed top toppled to the side, half crumbled into the bowl and half onto the dry earth.

    Having clambered atop it, AM set the first beacon - a little black blob of electronics, sensors and cameras set on a tripod. Once a full perimeter was formed they would talk to each other and the Clocktower, monitoring the area and altering the automatic defenses of the ship to intrusion. Though with the majority of the ship’s weapons eating dirt, they acted as alarms only.

    “This place ain’t so bad,” Rhodes said as they walked on through the barren park, passing into the dusty, rubble filled streets. “Must have been nice before it got torched.”

    “Yeah, maybe,” AM replied quietly, setting up the next beacon over the awning of a cinema.

    “You OK?” He asked. AM was not usually buoyant and talkative, but rarely did she seem so contemplative.

    “Yeah, I’m fine. Just, you know, thanks for back there,” she finally said, almost bashfully, though Rhodes knew it was a matter of hubris. All anti-mages were the same: proud, infallible, self righteous. For a common soldier like him to have rescued one was shameful.

    “S’alright,” his boots crunched on the shards of glass that littered the road, “just doing my job.” He said nothing more until their next few beacons were down. His relationship with AM was not a good one; they rarely made conversation, the two often at odds when they did. Silence and professionalism was their touchstone. Yet after walking for many minutes in quiet he couldn’t let his inner thoughts go unheard much longer.

    “About what I said back at base, I went overboard. Sorry for that.” He too was a proud man, one who loathed apologising.

    AM looked at him with a smile that told him she understood - from one arrogant soul to another. “It’s OK. I’ve had worse. Besides it was a stressful morning for all of us.”

    “You’re telling me.” By now they had set up half their circle. In the distance near the front of the park was a belltower, half collapsed but still the tallest structure in the vicinity. They resolved to finish their loop there. The base grew out from what was probably the town hall. The front of the building was grand but dilapidated. Settings for rotating doors lay empty, the metal door frames having been plundered. Almost every scrap of metal in the city had been torn away and removed; without industry, simple goods like that had become unobtainable through peaceful means. It was all part of the fiery and violent death-spasm society underwent last generation.

    A scuppered marble floor lay in pieces at their feet, their steps echoing about the vast, empty atrium. Scattered about the room, as in much of the city, were the bones of the unburied. It was not uncommon - billions had been wiped from the planet in a span of decades. There were so many dead and none alive to bury them. Fortunately, however, the ravaging fire (both magical and nuclear) had done a reasonable job of cremating a good percentage of them.

    “Maybe there’s some record of what happened here,” AM spoke softly, almost reverently in the unlikely ossuary. They were searching for a way up to the tower, but amongst the collapsed beams and toppled walls it wasn’t simple.

    “Same as what happened everywhere else I suppose,” Rhodes answered bleakly. “You don’t need to be a historian to see that.”

    “I meant specifically. This place must have had a heritage. People would have lived here for generations. Sad to think they all died so needlessly.” The dust that hung in the air was part mortar part ash. It rasped her throat and sooted her clothes like the last vestiges of the dead grasping out for a touch of the living.

    “What’s done is done. No reason to dwell on it,” came Rhodes’ confident reply. “Too late to do anything for them, but we can still do our bit to keep our home from this mess.”

    She nodded in agreement with his sentiment. He was always pragmatic, never one to ponder or philosophise. She liked that - it was one of his redeeming features.

    “What was that you did, back in the hold?” He could not help but ask a few minutes later, still searching for a way to the tower.

    “Nothing complicated. A little trick to clear an area,” she replied modestly. Though under no oath of secrecy, speaking about her unique form of magic was often distasteful, if only because it highlighted the contradiction inherent in her role.

    “That’s all? Got us out of trouble. Was damn risky though”

    “I didn’t intend to fall out the back, you know. It took more effort than I thought it would. I was unprepared,” she said with a hint of self loathing.

    “So those things are magical.” He said finally, not wanting to pursue her use of magic further, knowing it to be a point of contention.

    “Not entirely. They weren’t purely conjured, something about them was real. I’d take far too much effort to pull that many creatures out of energy alone. I suspect they’ve been bred somehow.” It was speculation based on what she had seen and felt with her special intuition, yet she said nothing more on the matter. As Carla would have said, they hadn’t enough evidence to start drawing conclusions.

    They found the staircase up. It creaked and groaned as they carried themselves up it. Missing steps meant making bold leaps across from one to another - one vacant section so large the two had to fashion a makeshift bridge with fallen beams. It was a struggle, but after fifteen minutes of effort they had traversed the five vertical floors, and from the hollowed out belltower could view their surroundings.

    “So much destruction...” AM sighed. Stretched for miles around were grey, silent ruins, with nothing stirring in them but the ghosts of the past. The city centre was focused more or less on the park and their landing site, with the buildings there the most dilapidated and damaged. Further out were the suburbs, street after street of homes. There was little to be gained from destroying those, but it was clear they had been raided and pillaged for food, materials - whatever the survivors of the mage wars needed. Yet further off in the distance something caught AM’s eye.

    “Pass me your binoculars.” Rhodes did as she asked, following her line of view to a strange structure at the edge of the town.

    “What is that? Looks new, intact.” He said, taking his rifle and looking through the zoom scope to get a better look.

    “Some sort of fortification. A citadel.”

    “Maybe where our beastmaster is holed up.”

    “Looks that way. Plenty of those creatures about it, as if it’s some sort of hive. Pretty typical for a mage to make such a bold statement about where he’s living.”

    “I think we should take that as an invitation. Blast down the doors and get some payback.”

    AM didn’t look so enthused with the idea. “I think we’ve got some business on our hands already. More are coming.”

    About the glinting stone structure rising high above the surrounding wastes were flocks of the grotesque beings. Like locusts they swayed back and forth, a blot of wings and bodies in the air. Yet it was clear when seen magnified that the beasts were travelling inwards to the city.

    “Crap. We’re not going to be up before they get here. Think you can do you little trick again?” Rhodes asked.

    “No,” came the quick reply. Whatever the reasons, AM was quite clear such an act would be out of the question. “No, we’re going to have to hunker down.”

    She flicked the channel on her comm, sending out to the Clocktower. “Oxford, Carla, heads up.”

    A moment of silence followed as those down on the ground adjusted their own devices. Oxford was the first to respond.

    “We hear you AM. What’s the problem?”

    “We’ve got another swarm of those things inbound. I’d say twenty minutes ETA. I would be optimistic to hope the repairs are close to done, wouldn’t I?”

    “That you would. We’ve only just finished surveying and cataloguing the damage I’m afraid. Systems needed stabilising, engines -”

    “OK, if we’re not airborne then what about our weapons systems.”

    “As I was saying before you interrupted me, with our engines offline all our non-vital systems are offline with them.”

    Rhodes could not help but butt in, incredulous. “Our weapons are ‘non-vital’? So we’re defenseless.”

    “We have our small arms, as well as some turrets and other equipment we could use. I see the perimeter is set up, that can be rigged for combat too remember.”

    “No.” Said AM decisively, cutting into the speculation. “We’re not going to hold off that many with rifles and pistols alone. We’ve got some camo-netting. We’ll pull that over the Clocktower and tidy up the surroundings as best we can. Shut down all radiation emitters and go into stealth operations.”

    A chuckle came from Carla over the radio. “So we’re hiding now?”

    “Yes, Carla, unless you’d like to have your limbs ripped off by a horde of magically engineered freaks.”

    Silence followed.

    “Fine, I’ll pull out the netting. How far are you guys out?” Finally came her response.

    “About ten minutes. Getting down from this tower will take most of the time. We’ll be down ASAP.”

    She stood and started making her way to the worn staircase; Rhodes remained laying.

    “Come on, we’ve got to get going.”

    “I’ll stay up here. Too good a position to give up incase things turn ugly.”

    AM thought about chastising him, but they didn’t need him hiding with them in the ship when he could just as easily hide up here - or provide the firepower if needed.

    “Fine. Keep your head down though. No heroics. If I need you to start shooting I’ll ask for it, got it?”

“Got it boss.” He gave her a little, almost jovial salute, picking up his rifle and carrying it around the single heavy bell that hung tenuously from its iron chassis. AM jumped into the stairwell, dancing down the rotten planks and stone ledges with feline grace, while above Rhodes set his bipod and rifle sights upon the field in which the Clocktower rested. Through them, he saw Carla pulling out the box of netting, working hurriedly, casting her eyes now and then to the horizon, where against the backdrop of a stormy sky, the first sign of the enemy appeared.