Δv

Helen, during her training in the USAF, had been taught history. She had found most of it a snoozer - but one fact that floated from the hazy depths of her brain was that, back in the day, naval officers would help to lead their troops onto enemy ships. But in the era where getting onto an enemy ship involved jumping from one deck to another, with a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, that was easy. Any dumbass could

jump

. Modern marine protocols were nearly as three times more complex than the old breach and clear methods of the 21

st

century during the endless oil wars, as they had to take into account shifting from one inimically hostile environment to an equally hostile one, the two separated by aluminum and airlocks, and one filled with people armed with guns and close combat weapons.

It was not a pretty job.

They had specialists trained to do it for a reason.

And yet, here she was - stumbling away from a burned patch of grass and up against a tree, panting and shuddering with the aftershock of teleportation. The elven eggheads had said that there was going to be more of a shock in the transport from the fleet to the ground than there would have been normally. The differences in distance, the sheer difference in speeds, the momentum transference alone was going to put her through a ringer. Still, she was shocked at how

awful

she felt. Her stomach tried to crawl out of her throat, her fingers refused to close around anything, and her whole body felt cold and clammy and shivery.

Then she lifted her head and saw an arm, a leg, and half of a face looking out of a tree. The wood was smoothly merged with the helmet and face of some poor Russian bastard, his arm hanging limp. His eye was sightless - the one that was fully out of the tree. The other merged just as smoothly as the rest of him, the pupil bisected by a line of molded wood. He had appeared

inside

of the tree. Helen's stomach lurched and she bent forward, vomit spilling past her lips and onto the ground. She heard other sounds from the rest of the forest - vomit and coughing and spitting and groaning and cries.

She staggered over to the nearest cry and found that a US marine had landed badly. The armor's impact plating had done its best to spread the kinetic energy through his body, but it had still left him on his back, his teeth clenched. "Ow," he groaned. His nameplate said Chesterfield. Helen grabbed his hand and tugged him to his feet.

"Come on, Private, on your feet," Helen said, then tapped her com. "All US squads, check in. Elven warbands, check in."

A string of of affirmations came into her earbud - but she noticed the lack. "Where's Colonel Cune?" she asked.

"Dead," a familiar, gruff voice spoke. Gunnery Sergeant Malinowski sounded as matter of fact as NCOs throughout history during shitty, shitty days. "Orbspec says that we've still got a hostile sky."

"How many?"

"Unknown," Malinowski said. "Farrows, get the scopes online."

Sergeants - and the elven equivalents - began to order up the troops. Despite the number of corpses that she saw, pinned by trees and fused with rocks, Helen was still feeling moderately comfortable. They had gotten

most

of their troops onto the ground. It was a better percentage than some orbital drops - though no orbital drop had ever been pulled at such a scale, such a relative velocity and, of course, using

fucking

magic.

Since the Colonel was dead, Helen ended up being in the small knot of allied officers. The Chinese officer, a senior lieutenant, was looking rather grumpy - but Helen was pretty sure that was just her normal expression. The Russian held a small tablet in his hands and was frowning. "The GPS link is up - we're only going to have telemetry for the next few minutes before the last of the ships is out of range. Less if they jam us. We've landed near the San Fransisco arcology..." He nodded. "Now we just need to get to it."

"Has OrbSpec gotten an eye on the birds up there?"

"Twenty. A few railgun frigates, a drone carrier, a laser ship, some fuel and ammo tenders," the Chinese officer said, nodding. Helen frowned and glanced over her shoulder. The elven warriors who had crossed two solar systems and a dimensional barrier were forming up around Squire Fireheart, who had her longsword in her hand. She pursed her lips slightly. "They'll detect us eventually-"

"Wait," Helen said, looking over - the Chinese officer glared at her, clearly upset at being interrupted. "Orbital accuracy drops pretty fuckin' low when they don't have line of sight. We have some battle-mages down here. Why not brew up a storm to cover this area?"

"It'll slow a laser down," the Russian said.

The Chinese officer pursed her lips.

Helen sighed. "Any run at the arc is going to be a nightmare..." She shook her head. "But I think we can make two assumptions: They used most of their nukes in the fast pass. So, they won't just hit us with a citybuster."

The Chinese officer snorted. "It's always good to depend on hope when it comes to a twenty megaton warhead."

"All right, it's decided," the Russian said, looking at Helen. She grinned, then turned to Fireheart. Fireheart listened to her, her brow furrowing. Behind the elf, Helen could see the Prince emerging from the forest. She had heard him check in, but it was comforting to see him - even if it was downright surreal to see his dragon prancing around his ankles, like this was some kind of fun field trip. Helen focused her eyes on Fireheart, who was looking pissed.

"The ships can strike us from above?" the elf asked, pursing her lips. "I thought this was why the fleet would shoot them down. Why did we even have a space battle if they're still going to be above us?" She tossed her head. "Human foolishness."

"Would you

rather

there be a hundred ships, with full ammo and every nuke they had in the sky?" Helen asked, her voice sharp. "Now get the fucking mages to work, Fire."

The Prince gave her a nod. Helen grinned back at him.

The eleven battle mages gathered in a small knot under the trees. They began to incant as Helen checked over her gear. She was wearing a light exoskeleton, the same that she had qualified on in basic. It carried armor plating around her vital parts and didn't enhance strength - that took a few extra courses and a lot of hard work to learn how to use. She had seen enough hideous videos of people snapping their own bones with a strength enhancing exo. But it did negate the weight of her armor and a good chunk of her kit, which included a sidearm and the standard USAF carbine, cut down for the close quarters of a ship fight. She had two bricks of caseless ammo and some rations. Helen glanced over at OrbSpec. The three incredibly nerdy looking marines were clustered around their portable optics set - and one of them hissed, snapped his head up, then put his head to his coms.

"Everyone! Down! Down! Down!"

Helen flung herself flat - and across the woods, others did the same. Prince Qasim shoved his dragon under him as he dropped.

The first railgun slug struck before the sound did, hammering into the forest and sending up a spray of dirt and debris and chunks of tree. Whizzing fragments shot by overhead and the

craka-boom

of the supersonic projectile. It hit like a smallish artillery shell, since it lacked explosives, was relatively small, and did most of its damage through kinetic energy. That didn't matter much because a railgun frigate could fire hundreds of them every few seconds. However, the deflections caused by atmosphere and wind and imperfections in the barrel and the orbital angle of the frigate meant that while the slugs started off coming down directly overhead, within a few minutes, they were coming in at an angle, digging furrows through the forest, punching into the hillside beyond, and finally, ceasing.

Helen's ears rang and her throat was raw from screaming - screaming because there was nothing to do

but

scream and scream and scream as the world came to an end around you. She lifted her head - groaning softly, and saw that the once beautiful forest had been turned into a smoldering wreck. There were almost no fires, as the explosions had been force alone, but the dust kicked up hung like a pal. A pal that was beginning to glow like ruby red light. The railgun frigates were out of angle, but the laser frigate must have been in a higher orbit. More time.

Helen forced herself to her feet, and sprinted for where the elven mages had been. One of them was sprawled, dead on the ground with a splinter the size of an arm stuck through their head, but the others were merely stunned. Marines were getting up across the forest, despite the fact it looked like it should have been nothing but a graveyard. "Storm! Now! Now! Now!"

"But-" The mage looked dazed. "It won't be big enough."

"It doesn't need to be big, it just needs to be

here

!" Helen shouted. The ruby light was fading, the dust was clearing, and the world was beginning to get hotter and hotter. What began as a mildly comfortable warmth was turning to something sharper and more fierce as the targeting lasers and the ship adjusted themselves, bringing more and more emitters to bear on the forest. Flames caught and Helen turned so that her back faced the heat, knowing she couldn't outrun light. The eleven mage screamed their incantation - and then blessed coolness came as storm-clouds appeared from a point above their heads, spreading outwards and fanning around the forest.

"Everyone! Under the clouds!" Helen shouted into the coms. "Go! Go! Go! We have to get to the arc!"

The marines sprinted forward - and the laser light kept on the cloud, causing it to roil and twist. It tried to break apart as heat forced the molecules apart, and the magic - the magic that said

this

is a

storm

and it will rain said that it would stay in place. The rain didn't fall. Instead it boiled outwards as steam, filling the air with a hissing, sizzling sound. The laser light winked out all at once as the ship overhead hit the terminal point, where atmospheric density was too thick to make the laser effective. It would be over the horizon soon.

Without OrbSpec to tell them, Helen did a quick guess based on a gut instinct - the ship had been overhead for

so

long, and that meant it had to be

so

high up, which meant...

"We have between fifty to ninety two minutes. Less if they apply some angular momentum," she muttered, then said into the com-net. "All right everyone, lets get a leg on. Move, move, move!" She pointed - and the marines broke out with the casual, mile eating lope of exoskeleton equipped troops. They looked grim and determined - and then blinked as the elves bounded out past them. The elves didn't run as humans ran. They leaped over rough terrain, landed on the small rises in the earth, darted past trees, and then scrambled over rather than around any obstruction in their way. Their glittering armor positively glowed under the light of the sun, now that they were out and away from the magical stormcloud.

Helen tapped her com, snarling. "Gunny, get those idiots back here so they don't get fucking

fried

on the next orbital pass."

"You heard Lord Winsom!" Gunnery Sergeant Malinowski bellowed at the top of his lungs. Helen was snapped

right

back to her hideous months at boot camp and started to stiffen up - and the elves, for a moment, lost their grace as they stumbled and turned back to look at him, wide eyed. "Get the fuck under cover - those lasers are coming back!"

The run to the San Fran arc was easily the longest, shittiest hour and a half of Helen's life. She had worked out on the

Enterprise

and, before that, when she had been posted to the

Eisenhower

, one of their non-centrifuge ships, she had worked out in the gym centrifuge. And while she could jog the same distance in a gym, jogging it through the broken terrain of the crumbling suburbs around the arco, while under the constant knowledge that any second now, an orbital fleet of undead ships was going to clear the horizon, come into firing range, and lash you with railguns and lasers, was...

It was

less

than fun.

But the worst part was, as she came closer to the arc, she started to hope they'd make it before the slinging orbit brought the frigates back in. She bounded forward.

And the ground leaped up, smacking her ankles and sending her sprawling next to a house that had been half overrun by moss and greens. An ancient, rusted hulk of a car flipped into the air and smashed into the ground as the rest of the railgun slugs started to pepper the area. Qasim, the prince, dropped to the ground next to her, holding his dragon grimly against his chest. He looked at her with a kind of intent, unreadable expression - placid, almost. He looked for all the world like he was under orbital bombardment every single day of his life. But then the dust pal and the explosions became louder, fiercer, and Helen felt hideously certain that one would land right on her and blow her and the prophesied hero into red ruin.

And then...

The explosions continued - roaring and exploding. But the shaking and the quaking stopped. The dust drifted to the ground, no longer stirred by the slugs as they hammered home. Helen lifted her head and Qasim looked up, while his dragon stuck his head out from under the muscular uyghur's chest. The railgun slugs were impacting into the air about twenty feet above their head, sending out rippling impacts on a shield of nearly invisible, blue-white energy. The shield cupped over the entire bombardment area, save for the very very edge, where slugs came only ocassionally. And striding down the street, her eyes focused, her palms moving in a slow, twisting pattern, was Annabelle Herman DuPont, the Dark Queen of Stark.

Helen whistled, slowly.

The Captain's niece was

hot

.

Annabelle had been altered from the earlier broadcasts that Helen had seen her in. Her skin was now a pale blue-white, while her floated about her head as if she was underwater. In the drifting movements, the chalk white hair revealed and concealed her ears intermittently, showing that they came to sharp points. Her eyes were blood red and her lips were full, giving her face a haughty, aristocratic vibe. She was clothed in a flowing dress, tattered around the hem and flickering around her feet, showing that she was not actually

walking

down the street.

She was floating. Her arms spread wider as the railgun impacts sped up - surpassing even the constant drumfire of before. Then, all at once, they stopped. The angle hadn't changed, not enough for them to have decided to stop firing. No.

They were out of ammo.

Annie came to a stop beside Qasim and Helen and Helen stood, then grinned slightly. "Lt. Helen Trevor. I know your...uncle?" She held out her hand, as if she met otherworldly banshees with enough raw magical power to stop a railgun bombardment every day in her life. It was the same way she had brazened her way through her adventures on Arcadia.

"He...mentioned you once in one of his letters," Annie said, her voice shockingly normal. She took Helen's hand and squeezed - her hand felt cool, but solid. "You were the one with the shark and-"

"No! Not me!" Helen yelped.

"Wait, there was a

shark

?" The dragon asked, springing up onto his shoulder.

"It was two years ago and

didn't

happen," Helen snapped at the dragon - causing Annie to giggle, her hand covering her mouth.

"Weren't you an ensign?" Annie asked as the marines started to emerge from the rubble and the smoke. They looked more stunned that the bombardment had ended than at the sight of Annie - and once again, Helen was struck by how many of them had made it. She could still hear the screams of the wounded, but she could also hear the incantation of the elven war mages. Healing was happening. She focused, instead, on Annie, scowling at her.

"I got promoted," she said, her voice severe. "If the end of the world and becoming an elven noble won't get you fucking promoted in the United States AstroForce, what the

fuck

will?"

Annie shook her head. "So..." She looked at her. "Where is this chosen one."

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" The dragon waved his scaled paw, then flapped into the air. He circled around Qasim's head. "This is the Glorious Prince of Heaven, the one who was foretold to kill the Dark Lord and bring peace and justice to the world and also, to give me candy, specifically, those

super

awesome sour ones, and also, he's really good in bed." He landed on Qasim's head. Helen could hear the Gunny chuckling - and when she shot him a glance, he was shaking his head, and when their eyes met, he mouthed the word 'nephew.' Helen wondered just how insane Malinowski's Christmas leave got.

"Well," Annie said, her voice wry. "Lets head inside before they decide to start bombing us again. The arcology has a shield spell that can stand up to nuclear warheads. But, uh, I hope I won't have to test that." She chewed her lower lip. "Oh! Also, what was your name, oh Glorious Prince of Heaven?"

She held her hand out to Qasim. Qasim took it. "Jianhong Qasim," he said, his voice so serious and so grim that Annie flinched as he shook her hand.

"Auuuhhh!" Annie clutched at her wrist. "Dying! Ack." She paused, then blushed. "Sorry, just...trying to...lighten. Come on!" She clapped her hands, turning and floating through the now heavily cratered suburb. Helen giggled and shot Qasim. But then, from the rubble, Squire Fireheart stepped up to her side. She put her hands on her hips, then shook her head.

"So far?" she asked. "I have to say, the way you Starkers do war

sucks

." She spat. "And meeting the Dark Lord is a huge disappointment."

"Welcome to Stark," Helen said, then slapped her back.

***

Hua sat on Qasim's shoulder as Annie laid her hands on the table in the middle of the room and a glowing map of the world - projected in the classic, eurocentric style that left the Mediterranean shrunk, China twisted, and Africa reduced to the equal of North America. While Hua oohed at the map - different from the piecemeal maps of the Arcadian world that he was used too - Qasim kept his gaze on the ghost that leaned against the wall at the other side of the room. He was a thin, short man with European features and a guarded, haunted look.

Qasim had expected to feel something more when he was in the presence of the undead. The monsters that he had, apparently, been born to fight. But the only thing he felt was the tiny aches and bruises from repeatedly being knocked around by artillery, the throbbing of his feet from the long run from the forest to the arcology, and the now unfamiliar press of Stark's gravity on his bones. He pursed his lips as Annie pointed down at Europe.

"Heydrich has made attacks here, here, here, here and here - he's claiming all the factories that we, that, that..." She hesitated. "That Dale and I were fitting out for automated production. Those he cannot control, he blows up, forcing the locals to go to him for support." She ducked her head forward, her eyes closing. "We were trying to go soft, to not...to not hurt people unless we had too. But I am already getting reports that he's been shuffling his forces around. The ghosts that like to hurt people are on the front lines. The ones that would prefer not, he's making them handle logistics. Fortunately, his power conduits are easily tracked magically, even if they're not strong enough to serve as a teleportation foci." The map flared with a red light on Berlin.

"And your undead?" Helen asked.

"I freed them," Annie said.