Stormblade 4 C37: Hellfire (2)

37 - Hellfire (2)

I’d been here before.

As the light faded, I shut my eyes against what was coming and tucked my face into my arm. The helicopter was well south of the barrage zone. We were even south of the Carlsbad Caverns, just in case any stray blasts came our way. But even so, the shockwaves rocked the helicopter.

The pilot’s voice came through the static as the chopper spiraled for a moment, then leveled out. “Not to worry. We are still flying. Holding ten thousand feet over the target. Engage on Command’s mark, or in ten minutes.”

I relaxed into my seat, forcing myself into a pseudo-meditative state. The helicopter shook and wobbled in the roiling air, and even Jessie would have struggled to fully meditate here, but I did my best. We couldn’t interfere with what was happening north of us. The helicopter was high enough to avoid detection, but that wouldn’t last for long once we started our assault run. There was nothing to do but breathe and wait.

And think.

I was close to S-Rank. If I’d pushed it with the God of Thunder, he might’ve shown me the way to get there. And I could have used that strength. The monsters waiting for us in the caverns and whatever was beyond them would be worse than anything I’d fought. The S-Rankers had never even entered the portal, and they were stronger than me. But outside of their Paragon core method for reaching S-Rank—which, according to Eugene, had the side effect of stalling their growth—I didn’t have a way to break through the A-Rank bottleneck.

Eugene was going to help me get to S-Rank. If I played it right, it’d be the second to last time he helped me, and I’d do the actual ascension without him. The less the God of Thunder knew about my capabilities, the better. He hadn’t ripped into my system to see my skills in a long time. Maybe he couldn’t anymore. Either way, I needed that secrecy.

But I also needed S-Rank. If I could reach it during this assault, so much the better. I just had to—

“Something’s not right,” a voice said over the radio. I opened my eyes.

The five of us—Sarah, Terrel, Bernard, Hugo, and I—sat in the back of the helicopter. The door was wide open, and hot wind ripped through the cabin. The sixth member of the team and voice in my headset was Nathan Anders, and he flew under his own power.

“What do you mean?” Sarah asked.

The radio was silent for a moment as a wave of static washed over whatever the Phoenix Reborn said. “Repeat that,” Sarah demanded once the explosion-induced fuzz calmed down.

“I said it looks like some kind of trap. I can’t see what’s going on down there. Too many clouds in the air. Angelo shouldn’t be winning, though.”

“You’re sure he’s winning?”

“Absolutely, Sarah. He’s shoving the portal monsters around. Can’t you feel it?” Anders said. “That doesn’t track with what we know about…wait. The explosions cut off. Not all the way off—he’s still blasting, but they’re controlled, focused blasts now. He’s fighting something one-on-one.”

“How low are you, Nathan?” Sarah asked. “We can’t compromise the mission here.”

“Six thousand feet. I’m in the fallout, though. They can’t see me, I promise.”

I waited as Nathan Anders relayed the monster attacking Angelo Lawrence—every blow, every explosion, every time the S-Ranker lost vision on the assailant, only for them to appear behind Angelo and miss a killing blow by inches. Then his voice shifted. “Sarah! Monsters are surging across the desert. Five or six times as many as we saw before Angelo got pinned down. S-Rankers, too.”

The helicopter rolled as it turned, and I stared out of the open side as a massive wall of fog rippled across the desert. It looked exactly like the steam wall that had cut off Phoenix during the siege, and I queued my mic. “We have to go, now! They’re going to cut the area off!”

The pilot didn’t wait for an order from Sarah, Myers, or anyone else at Command. He cut the engine’s power to almost nothing and aimed the chopper’s nose right at the target—a wind-blasted, sun-rotten building that had once been a visitor’s center. Wind ripped into the cabin as the helicopter all but free-fell toward its target.

Then, at the last second, the pilot pulled up. The turbine and rotor whined, then screamed, as power poured into it. “Brace!” he yelled loudly enough that we didn’t need our headsets to hear it.

We hit hard. The helicopter’s landing gear crumpled, and it tilted sideways—but not far enough for the blades to touch the ground. “Everyone out!” Sarah shouted.

Ten seconds later, the helicopter took off, angling south, toward the growing fog wall. I watched it go until Terrel’s massive hand closed over my shoulder. “He’ll skirt around and head for the Fortress. Let’s get moving.”

I pulled my headset off, leaving it in the dirt outside the old visitor’s center, and fell in with the S-Rankers. The assault on the Carlsbad portal break was on, and there was no going back.

◄▼►

We were six of the most powerful delvers in Phoenix.

At least three of us had consistently beaten S-Rank monsters solo.

We had an almost perfect six-delver team composition for fighting.

But, as we set up to dive into the abandoned elevator shaft inside the Carlsbad Caverns visitor’s center, every one of us moved as quietly as possible, and no one talked. This wasn’t a B-Rank portal stomp, or even an A-Rank where we’d have to work. The Carlsbad portal was probably the most dangerous portal in North America. We’d all seen what the monsters inside could do. The less fighting we had to do, and the longer we could move quietly, the better.

The plan was simple. Do not engage—and if we had to, engage as aggressively and decisively as possible. Nathan would go first. There was a blockage halfway down, and he was our key to removing it without sending it tumbling down into the caverns below and tipping off the monsters below. After him would be me. I was the fastest in the group—at least, when I was fully buffed. And I would be fully buffed.

Then everyone else would come down.

The Phoenix Reborn didn’t bother with the portal metal climbing claws or rappelling equipment we’d set up outside of the elevator. He threw himself in, transforming into his flaming bird form and diving like a rock. It was seven hundred fifty feet down, and the elevator was wedged almost four hundred feet in. After almost two minutes, smoke started pouring from the shaft like a volcano erupting. Then sparks and embers joined it. “Bernard, you’re up,” Sarah said.

Bernard nodded. The tower shield slammed into place, and a translucent blue barrier filled in the spaces around it, sealing the burning embers in the shaft. He opened a small gap for smoke to vent into the building’s old heating system, and we waited, eyes peeled for any fires. The last thing we needed was a real column of smoke giving away our position.

It took almost a minute more for the Phoenix Reborn to emerge. “Path’s clear. It’ll be hot, but it’s clear, and if you’re careful, it’ll be silent. I piled the rubble from my cut on top of the elevator and fused it to the wall.”

“Great. Go.” Sarah pointed at me, and I clipped onto the rope and dropped like a rock.

Four hundred feet down, my feet hit something solid, and I lit up Nimbus Edge. “First drop is clear,” I muttered, and slid into the narrow hole Anders had cut.

From here on, I was inside Carlsbad Caverns—in the portal break’s territory.

◄▼►

I touched the ground lightly, feet already in a fighting stance, and lit up Nimbus Edge. My eyes were A-Rank, just like the rest of my body, and just that little bit of light was enough to see—at least a little. I crept out of the elevator shaft and into the cave they called the Lunch Room.

The briefing said that it had once been a full-on restaurant and picnic space, seven hundred fifty feet underground. That was a long time ago, though. Before the Portal Blitz, and before the Carlsbad portal.

And before Angelo Lawrence.

The signs of his fight were everywhere. To the north, a narrow passage led to the shattered wreckage of a portal metal plug—the checkpoint the Fortress had been built to maintain. It was mostly melted. So were the rocks around it; the limestone on the north side of the Lunch Room had turned into a black, smooth obsidian. So had most of the cavern floor, and the ceiling had dripped molten rock into puddles that dried smooth and glassy.

One thing stuck out about the Lunch Room, though. It was empty. That shouldn’t have been possible. The sheer number of monsters Anders had seen would need to move through here and up the main exit to reach the surface. But not only was there no sign of monsters, there was also no sign that any had even been here recently.

Something was wrong.

Behind me, the rest of the team descended the elevator shaft. One by one, they hit the ground, then looked around. I didn’t need to see their faces to know what they were thinking, but Hugo Martinez said it first. “These motherfuckers have a different way out,” he muttered once everyone had made it down.

“I agree,” I said. “What do we do about it?”

Sarah shook her head slowly. “We don’t do anything about it. The Phoenix team should be entering the Fortress, so even when the Texans and West Coasters get pushed back, they’ll have a defensible position. Our job isn’t to help them. It’s to let them help us. We move south, cut for the Hall of Giants, and take it from there.”

“Got it.” I started moving, feet carefully stepping around the crunchy pools of melted and solidified limestone, and pushed into the cave. The rest of the team followed; we’d practiced moving quietly in B-Rank portals, and we all knew what our jobs were.

So when, after a hundred feet or so, an arrow whipped so close to my face that its fletching left a thin cut on my ear, I didn’t react to the Falcon’s Eye’s shot except to rush forward. Thunderbolt stance. Three thrusts into the A-Ranked automaton’s chest. Roll right to clear the space.

Terrel Young’s hammer ripped through the air, the tearing sound it made drowned out by the sudden impact of portal metal on brass. Armor crumpled. Nimbus Edge punched into the monster’s silk body. It cut into the strings moving it, and the automaton crumpled. Another hammer blow finished it off, and a moment later, Anders muttered, “Clear. Just the one.”

“A sentinel?” Sarah Cullman asked.

“Probably. Let’s keep pushing.” I continued creeping forward, ready to jump into battle again.

But there were no more battles. The entire rest of the lunch room was empty. The picnic tables and cafeteria set-up had both been leveled and melted by years of fighting, and everywhere I went, the only signs of monsters were occasional puddles of brass.

“It’s kind of horrifying, isn’t it?” Terrel asked quietly. Then he chuckled. “It was worse being there to watch him do this.”

I nodded. Then I ducked around a corner and immediately pulled back. “Found them.”

After a moment, I poked my head around the corner again.

There were three massive limestone domes. All three reached for the ceiling, but only the tallest touched it; the other two were nearly identical, with scorch marks covering their northern faces and tan-white southern sides. The remnants of a walkway led around them—and unlike the rest of the cavern, it had been repaired with brass, silk, and portal metal.

And moving across it were portal monsters. A-Rank legionaires, centurions, and silkstormers. B-Rank automatons by the dozen. And S-Rank Brass Titans, each the equal of the monster I’d destroyed to end the siege. That, more than anything, sobered me. This wasn’t a simple portal. Just reaching it was going to be all but impossible.

I watched as the parade of monsters pushed into a dark, empty tunnel. That hadn’t been in the briefings; as far as the GC knew, there were only two ways out of Carlsbad Caverns, and one was the blocked elevator shaft. If that was wrong…

No. We couldn’t think about what that meant for the surface team. I waved everyone back, then cleared my throat. “We’ve got a blockage up ahead. The portal break found a different way out, and that’s good for us. The bad news is that it means the monsters are moving along our expected route and our backup path.”

“So we can’t cut into the Painted Grotto?” Sarah asked.

I shook my head. “They’re leaving from that area. We need a different way around—and it has to be quiet.”

“Does it?” Bernard asked. “We expected to be fighting already. What did the monsters look like? Any ebbs and flows? Weak groups we could push through without being directly detected?”

“No. There were weaker monsters, but they’re too close. We’d tip off a group of the stronger ones.”

We debated our options for a minute, but gradually, the only choice became obvious. We needed to reach the Bottomless Pit. The monsters were in our way.

And the only way in was through them.