Deadline Read online

  "It's time," I told them.

  Orik came into view on the horizon and bellowed as he closed. As far as I could guess, he had one of two instructions. Either he was dead set on making it to Oakengard no matter what, or he would be pivoted to assist on the battlefield. If the keepers were able to turn him to their side then maybe the latter was enough. Therefore, not only did the Black Army need to stop the Violet Order from breaking through the line to the Godsbog, but I needed to stop the cyclops from reaching the keepers on the battlefield.

  I drew my dragonspear.

  "We ready?" asked Izzy, stepping to my side with her giant in tow.

  "Ready as we'll ever be."

  "I guess that's the only answer that's important." The pixie raised a hand and the giant gently took it between finger and thumb to lift her to his shoulder.

  I charged forward as the reserve units and the Black Army's noncombatants hurried to their posts. I stopped at the edge of a deep bog, positioned so it was between me and the titan. Countless logs and fronds had been meticulously placed over the murky surface in a hasty approximation of solid ground. It wasn't the most convincing trap I'd seen, but I was hoping it was enough to get one over on a blind behemoth.

  Besides, I was pretty worthwhile bait.

  I raised the dragonspear above my head and roared for Orik's attention. And just in case I was too measly in an expanse of battling soldiers, Izzy and her giant stood behind me hooting and hollering too.

  It worked. The cyclops faced me, disabled eye squeezed shut in ire.

  I was pretty mad myself as he stomped closer. His bloated right hand swayed over the ground in a wild gait, but his left was cupped to his belly, clutching Bandit in a terrifying prison.

  I now knew what Orik wanted with Bandit. A fraction of the Crystal Core's power was encased in the dragonstone, and Hadrian wanted what was his.

  The cyclops plodded forward in the increasingly squishy ground, each heaving step pushing five to ten feet into the mud. The Godsbog was supposed to be the place from which all the titans were born, and I'd seen Orik break free from a rocky mountain peak. It hardly took imagination to figure how he and the others could have climbed from these murky depths.

  I stood my ground with clenched teeth and waited, stomp by stomp, as the Mighty One grew closer, until his giant sandaled foot took one massive stride to converge on me. Orik lifted an outspread hand overhead and prepared to smash.

  The setup was perfect. The titan's weight came down in the center of the hidden pool. The surface debris disappeared under Orik's foot as it sank ten, twenty, forty feet to the bottom. The squick of water slurped against the cyclops' knee. His strike was redirected to the side. Instead of attacking, the giant flailed to save himself, hand barely catching the edge of solid ground and suspending his weight over the pool.

  I cursed. Another several feet and the handhold would've been insufficient. Instead of tumbling all the way to the ground, Orik had caught himself close to a kneeling position.

  Nooner rose from a hiding spot in the water. "Get 'im, boys!"

  A seemingly scattered crew of no-good Stronghold gangsters pounced into action, driving oxen forward. Ropes dragged across the scrub and lifted off the ground. Orik's back foot attempted to move forward, to steady his balance, but caught on multiple tripwires.

  Back in Stronghold, we'd tried this stunt before and failed miserably. Besides having the oxen backing us up this time, we made sure to save the ropes until after the giant's momentum was halted. Instead of dealing with a charging titan, we were merely trying to contain a dragging back foot.

  Orik's features twisted as he realized the design behind his misstep. He roared in anger. Still clutching Bandit and relying on his only free hand to support his weight, he attempted to tug his back leg free.

  The gangsters were set up single file on each rope like a collegiate tug-o-war team. Feet lifted off the ground and oxen hooves dragged through mud as the titan yanked ahead.

  "It's not gonna hold," said Izzy.

  "Drums," I called.

  I searched the ranks of goblins. General Azzyrk and his lizard were still chomping through the battlefield like a twisted game of Pac-Man. His waiting goblins in reserve were listless.

  "Drums!" I commanded.

  The pagan war drums started. On a good day, with the full horde powering the fearsome beat, the drums could be heard halfway across the Midlands. We were going for a much more modest accompaniment today. Instead of inspiring furor, the pagan beat was toned-down and mellow, the percussive equivalent of elevator music. Think of it as meditation for titans.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Chanting boggarts filled the empty space between notes.

  Boom.

  "N'yeh neh."

  Boom.

  "N'yeh neh."

  Goblin shamans cast charms. Boggarts shook rattles and staked burning sticks of incense into the mud. Drummers swayed and bobbed their heads.

  Boom.

  "N'yeh neh."

  Boom.

  "N'yeh neh."

  Meanwhile, the gangsters were losing their battle with the back foot. Wildkins swarmed forward to help them. I spun to the battlefield and yelled for Azzyrk to fall back. The general's sharp nose snapped my way. He nodded and recalled the unit of shamans.

  I bit down and leaned forward, checking the titan for signs of pacification. His grip on Bandit loosened. The bongo was wide-eyed with fear, so terrorized that she hadn't even noticed me yet.

  "Just hold on a few more seconds, girl," I whispered.

  Orik perked at the pagan drum beat, but he didn't seem content. His massive features twisted into a scowl.

  "It's not gonna hold," said Izzy again. She leapt onto the ground beside me. "Go help them, Skoal."

  The frost giant grunted and dashed around the deep pool. On the other side, gangsters and wildkins struggled to remain on the ground. Orik groaned and turned his head from side to side. He was fighting it.

  "Screw it." I hurried in the frost giant's tracks. If the titan managed to stand up, this was game over.

  Orik had been leaning sideways, standing on one leg in a deep pool and propped on one arm. His back leg was in an awkward position and didn't have a lot of leverage to fight the crowd. As more people piled their efforts together, he yanked hard and showed he was still a titan. Ropes snapped. Gangsters plunged into the bog. Orik was about to break free when Skoal gave a great big heave.

  It was funny calling something twenty feet tall a giant and then seeing it beside something ten times its height. Izzy's legendary summon was barely larger than a cyclops foot. Still, he was a scrapper. He had Orik's ankle in a bear hug and wouldn't let go. The gangsters and wildkins hurried to reset the lost ropes.

  Izzy and I were almost on them when Orik finally pulled backward and centered his mass over his submerged leg. This allowed him to lift his free hand from the ground, twist around, and prove that hairy, overweight titans could be limber too. The cyclops bellowed and shoved his hand down, uprooting the frost giant from his leg and crushing him into soft earth.

  "That bastard!" cried Izzy. "No one messes with Skoal like that!" She pointed her winter staff ahead and widened into a spellcaster stance.

  Jets of ice erupted forward and clamped onto the titan's hand. The wet ground between his fingers froze.

  "Hurt him not!" cried Havlat nearby.

  "Don't worry," snapped Izzy. "It's just a little ice breaker."

  As she hardened the titan's fist to the ground, I charged ahead. Everyone had come together to pull off an impossible plan. We had almost succeeded, but Orik was no longer off-balance and in danger of falling. The frost giant was dead, the gangsters and wildkins half scattered. As soon as the Mighty One got through the ice distraction, there was nothing left to keep him down.

  Nothing but me.

  I vaulted into the air and landed on the titan's frozen hand. Spider boots pattered on rocky flesh as I turned and sprinted up his arm. I stuffed the dragon
spear in my inventory and equipped the tiger claws. The cyclops was twisted around and lowered. With his knee at sea level, I raced up past his loin cloth and toward his large belly.

  The muscles under my feet flexed. The entire surface jerked as Orik broke free.

  Agility Check...

  Pass!

  I didn't fall, but it was a close thing. I thanked Hadrian for his spider boots as I charged up Orik's now-free arm. As a bit of extra insurance, I pulled the assassin needle out and fit the blade between my teeth. On the unsteady surface, the +8 to agility was immediately appreciated.

  Orik reacted to my presence with absolute fury. He twisted back around to face me, brought his back leg forward to a knee, and straightened his back. The sudden twirl and elevation increase were dizzying. Agility checks flew past my notification window as I continued to charge up his arm.

  Now on his opposite side, I vaulted off the wild arm. My boots touched down on the side of his belly, momentum following into a wall run. I was basically traversing across the spare tire of a cyclops. But his belly was massive and my skill was running out. As I rounded the center of his gut, I fixed on the cupped hand protectively pressed to it. The grip of my footfalls slowly lost purchase with each step, and I began to slip. Orik's free hand moved to snatch me from the sky.

  I triggered a midair dash and rocketed forward. Titan fingers closed behind me and I stretched forward, reaching. Bandit turned and locked eyes on me. She peeked out above Orik's thumb, and I grabbed onto her horn.

  The titan's grip failed as a fully formed chestnut dragon burst free.

  Bandit veered into a steep dive to avoid clutching mitts. I pulled myself over her neck and settled into the saddle, laughing and patting her scales. Orik raged as we flew from his grasp and sped around his back.

  "I hope the witches and goblins don't mind," I said, "but you need to stay down."

  Bandit released a jolt of light from her mouth. The focused beam blasted the backside of Orik's knee, just above the water surface. With most of his weight on this leg, the titan buckled, falling sideways and dropping his knee to the bottom of the pool. The side of the belly I had run along smashed into the spongy bank. Although he caught himself on an elbow, Orik the Mighty was, for the first time, practically lying down.

  General Azzyrk rushed forward with chanting shamans. The gangsters and wildkins worked at the ropes. Crowlat, Havlat, and Somlat moved close, enchanting the moss itself to grow over the titan's forearm. Orik's face and eye were clenched tight, but the drum beat hit him with renewed vigor.

  Boom.

  "N'yeh neh."

  Boom.

  "N'yeh neh."

  The warden of the Blackwood drew forth chains from the ground. They snaked around the titan's leg. Muscles flexed, but the panic was easing, the movements slowing. The tension fled Orik's face. A single eyebrow rose, and he opened his empty eye.

  Something close to a sigh and a groan and the low rumble of thunder escaped Orik's lips, and his face eased.

  Bandit landed on the ground momentarily while I lifted Izzy to the seat behind me.

  "Holy shit," she said. "That worked."

  "You ever consider trying the clean-and-sober challenge yourself?" I asked.

  "Hell no."

  We immediately took to the sky and did a few laps around the pacification effort. If the pagans were upset at my single use of Bandit's breath weapon, they didn't show it. Goblins, boggarts, wildkins, and yes, even humans worked together to Gulliver a titan. A wide circle formed as the participants continued their song. Catchy but not very in depth, it was just a repetition of the same beat and words over and over. I figured I couldn't complain so long as "n'yeh neh" didn't mean "kill all humans."

  With Orik pacified, we returned our attention to the battlefield. The lack of healers was taking its toll on the Violet Order, but the fighting remained fierce. Strong magic and buffed stats made for a scrappy enemy. I zeroed in on the keepers, a fighting force in the center of the scrum. While the wooden weapons kept them at bay, the rock guards were hearty brawlers even without their stun ability. Their grouping remained surprisingly stout.

  Bandit burst over them like some kind of sci-fi death satellite from above. Beams of light strafed their ranks. Quartz boulders exploded. Purple energy fizzled into the sky. As the ground itself rocked, the backbone of the Violet Order crumbled.

  We did several more passes against organized clusters: cavalry, priests, whatever. We had just subdued a giant—a bunch of stragglers weren't going to stand against a dragon. The fearsome attacks completely broke whatever morale the enemy had left. Those not under the spell of Hadrian's purple plague broke rank as the army was routed.

  The bulk of the opponent was, unfortunately, not so free-willed. The assimilated victims of the plague couldn't choose whether to fight or run. They would fight to the last man and woman.

  Black Army

  578 / 965

  Violet Order

  423 /1040

  The battle was all but technically over. The field was won. Orik was soothed by the sounds of his subjects and secured on the ground. The remaining scraps of the Violet Order were so intermingled I couldn't risk dragon breath.

  But then, we had somewhere else to be anyway. The Black Army could take it from here.

  We soared over the battlefield, in awe of the stunning scene of destruction and unity, cooperation and bitter war. I turned my head to Izzy.

  "You ever see anything as crazy as this?"

  Her arms around my waist squeezed and she leaned into my back. "You take a girl on the best dates."

  "Just wait till you've had dessert," I told her. "We're going to Oakengard, baby."

  Tad Lonnerman figured it was as good as it was gonna get. In the absence of voices outside the server room and the distraction the power outage had caused, he chanced opening the door a crack. The InLink operatives were spread out, with a few checking the window on the far wall to see if the police were starting a raid.

  Tad jumped out of the room, softly closed the door, and hopped away. A few soldiers approached from the way he'd come.

  "Don't worry," said Case. "Big Bertha's never let me down." He lovingly patted a bright-red metal bar in his hands. It was a battering ram.

  "Shit."

  Tad rushed away in the opposite direction, just barely rounding the corner before being spotted. With another group of soldiers ahead, he had no choice but to push forward under the cover of a cubicle farm.

  He wasn't getting to his rear exit now. If Tad could sneak past the InLink patrols, he would reach another stairwell ahead. It was more central and wouldn't be so inconspicuous, but it was the best route he had.

  Fortunately, the studio had gone dark. The dim emergency lighting left the room with plenty of shadows. The alerted soldiers marched down the aisles with their weapons pointed forward. Tad imagined predictable forty-five-degree cones of awareness attached to those rifles, just like countless AIs he'd programmed. It would be tough with a bum leg, but he could pull it off.

  The game developer stayed low and darted from cubicle to cubicle, peeking out briefly to get a feel for each mercenary's facing and rhythm. When the time was right, he leapt behind his next piece of cover.

  In the center of the room, he experienced a close call when his crutch scraped the foot of an Aeron chair. One operative doubled back. Tad's hiding place under the desk was especially dark. The soldier's boots stepped within inches of him and continued past.

  Tad waited a beat before pushing onward. He turned a corner and almost ran into a mercenary's back. He froze, knowing he couldn't backtrack as another operative filed into the perpendicular row.

  Step by step, Tad matched the soldier's march, sticking behind him. Just a little more and he'd be able to—

  "We found the server room!" called Case.

  A few guards, including the one Tad was drafting, immediately spun around. The soldier blinked for a befuddled moment, rifle lowered to his side.

  "Who
the—?"

  Tad clocked him in the temple with the butt of his pistol. The soldier dropped to the floor like a rock.

  "Holy shit," Tad whispered.

  The other soldiers hadn't noticed and were converging on the distant server room. Tad rushed ahead now, breaking out into the open as the floored guard groaned. Unlike a video game, downed opponents wouldn't wait for him to clear the area before waking. Tad hopped ahead on the crutch and reached the door to the stairwell. He slipped inside and shut the door as someone called out.

  Down the steps then. Two at a time. Three. Tad slid with his stomach on the handrail, turning at the midway point where the stairs doubled back just as a soldier opened the door above.

  "Who's in here?"

  Tad clenched his jaw and slid the rest of the way down. It was tough juggling a crutch and a gun, and he almost lost grip on one and then the other. As he caught them, he sped toward the floor too fast. The steel frame rang out as he crashed to the floor. Boot steps pounded down the stairs above him. The soldier rounded the corner and raised his rifle. Tad, lying on his back, braced the pistol with both arms and emptied it. His fingers kept squeezing the trigger after expending the two bullets. One had punched right into the soldier's forehead. He collapsed backward.

  Tad's ears were still ringing as he climbed to his feet and barged into the thirty-ninth floor. This new stairwell wasn't as far as the other was, but he could only move so fast with a broken leg. Tad dropped the empty pistol and barreled forward, using both arms to propel off the crutch. As he reached the end of the corridor, the door behind him banged open.

  "There he is!"

  2120 Dungeon Siege

  By the time Oakengard was in sight, the midday sun was beginning to sag. I'd been watching my notification window along the way. With the largest battle Haven had ever seen still ongoing, the text flew by so fast it was like trying to read a Matrix screensaver. I learned to spot what was important: the XP, of course.