Refuge: Book 5: Angels & Demons Page 3

  “Well, we made plastics from it on Earth, and I’m thinking that some of our engineers might be able to figure out how to do the same here. I would like to start a chemical industry, if we can find out what will work here. I would also like to produce Kevlar.”

  The dwarf sat up at that word, interest in his eyes. “That would be wonderful, General Taylor. While it doesn’t handle piercing as well as metal or wood, its strength in backing other composites is unbelievable. We can use all that you can provide, and I think my kingdom will buy all you can spare.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Forgemaster. I’m hoping we can make it, but there’s no guarantee we can.”

  “Put your Herr Grueber on it and I’m sure he can make it work.”

  Taylor smiled. Grueber, the former Mercedes engineer, had been a godsend. Not only was he an automotive engineer par excellence, something not really needed in and of itself on this planet, but he had the most active and knowledgeable mind the general had ever seen. He was worth more than a brigade to the efforts of the newcomers.

  “I need to get back to work,” said the dwarf, getting up from his seat. “Those lazy apprentices need constant supervision. Thank you for seeing me.”

  Taylor watched the dwarf shuffle out on his short legs. Those lazy apprentices would make any of my people look like slackers, he thought. He had never seen anyone work as hard as a dwarf. Fourteen-hour days were the norm, followed by four hours or more of drinking, then six of sleep, before they were at it again. Every damned day.

  “General,” said Captain Stacy Harris in her British accent. “The priest of Arathonia is here to ask for an audience. I think they have a complaint.”

  Of course they do, thought Taylor, placing his face in his hands.

  Chapter Two

  "We are ready for you, your Majesty."

  Mashara looked up from his desk, where he had been going over the order of battle that defined his army at this time. It was a discouraging read. Prior to the coming of the Earth people, he had over four hundred thousand Ellala soldiers alone. Add in another couple of hundred thousand Grogatha and humans, and his army was the largest for thousands of miles in any direction. He also had had over five hundred huge red dragons, and several thousands of the large battlehawks. Now he had less than a hundred thousand warriors of all kinds: Ellala, Grogatha and human. He had a mere forty dragons of fighting size, and only a couple of hundred of the battlehawks. While it was estimated that the invaders had over a hundred thousand trained troops. With several hundred dragons, and almost a thousand of the great birds. That did not include the other peoples on the frontiers of the Empire who were in revolt.

  The Army wasn't only needed to fight invaders or conquer new territories. They were needed to hold down the populace who didn't always fall in line with the religious beliefs and culture of the ruling Ellala. Many worshipers of one of the other pantheons chaffed under the forced sacrifices of the death cults. As troops were reassigned from occupation duties to front-line battle formations that still failed to stop the warriors of the alliance, those people no longer watched so closely were able to foment revolution. Several of the puppet regimes outside the empire had already overthrown their rulers and declared first independence, then war on Mashara's realm.

  "Have the letters been sent to the tribes?" he asked his secretary as he walked from his office on the heels of the priest.

  "Yes, my Lord. Along with all of the gifts."

  The Emperor nodded as he left the other Ellala behind. The Western nomads were mighty warriors, if somewhat unsophisticated. Well-armed and with enough armor to make them shock cavalry, they could be a boon when it came to raiding the supply trains of the enemy, and even overrunning some of their smaller infantry units. If he could bring fifty to a hundred thousand of them in on his side, with payments of gold and promises of more, he might be able to slow the enemy down considerably. The Grogatha tribes of the east were not quite the soldiers as the nomads, but they were hardy and savage, and when leavened by some drafts of Ogres and Trolls, they could also slow the Earthers down. If they were all slaughtered, either or both groups, it really wouldn't matter to the Emperor, since their only purpose was to absorb the attack of the enemy and bleed them before they got to his capital.

  Mashara had been so deep in thought that he hadn't even noticed that he had gotten down to the sublevel temple. A sibilant voice caught his attention, and he looked up to see the queen of the vampires, Kilesandra Lishana, standing in the shadows.

  "When are you going to launch your next attack on the humans?" he demanded before she could repeat her greeting.

  "Many of my people are afraid to attack the newcomers," said the beautiful female who had once been an Ellala, before her change thousands of years before. "Many of them are protected by their gods, and it is death to drink their substance. We cannot tell who is who until it is too late."

  The Emperor had the same problem. If he drank of the soul of one of the protected, he might as well have poured fire down his throat. His priests had come up with a solution, casting a minor harm spell on the subject. If it came back at them, they knew, and the priest was able to heal himself soon after. Only victims vetted were now sacrificed, which provided for his safety.

  "I do not care if some of your kind dies. We all die, and it is in how we serve those above us while alive that matters."

  "And Ellandra Mashara does not want to die," said the creature with a mocking smile on her face.

  Mashara grabbed the vampire by the throat and lifted her from the floor. Vampires had the strength of several humans, and the queen was twice as strong as most vampires. Mashara was a greater form of undead, even if he hadn't completed the transformation. She struggled and hissed, but could not get free.

  "Turn more to your kind if you need, but I need you to be out at night and on the attack," he growled. "Unless you want me to withdraw my protection from your kind and let them fend for themselves in the wild."

  The vampire gave the only head shake she could with an iron grip on her throat. Mashara lowered her to the ground.

  "Good. Then we understand each other. And admit it, it really doesn't matter if some newly turned babies die, while every one of the protected they detect with their lives is one your elders don't have to deal with."

  He turned away and entered the temple chamber, where a score of humans and elves had been lined up in chains, one of their number lying flat on the altar. The priests were already praying, and several stood ready with their knives. The sacrifices stared at the emperor as if he was a snake entering their midst. He smiled as he tasted their fear, feeling the hunger within him that would soon be sated.

  ** *

  "Keep those wagons moving," shouted the train master, a cavalry captain who had been detailed to move these supplies from the valley to the front. He had over two hundred supply wagons in the train, with a drover on each. There was a cook wagon and several that carried the tents and other supplies for the train. In addition, there were fifty cavalrymen that provided all the security for the train.

  The captain sat his horse at the side of the road and watched the large wagons roll by, each pulled by teams of four horses, mules or oxen. He had started out with over three hundred wagons, but the ones no longer with him had supplied his people and horses with the provisions they had needed to reach this point. It was a game of diminishing returns. Every kilometer they advanced meant a lower percentage of supplies that made it to the troops doing the fighting. There were farms along the way, supply points where the produce of each region was gathered. Those were limited, since they couldn't take everything the people needed to survive, and harvests had already come in in most of those areas, so there were no more provisions flowing in for the moment.

  "Sir," yelled out one of his troopers, riding hard his way. "Sir. I spotted a couple of reds flying over the road to the south."

  The captain felt his face flush. As far as he was concerned, this was the worst possible th
ing that could happen this far behind the lines. He had no air defense, air support, or even a mage that could battle the dragons. They had a weapon that could destroy his train if they found them.

  "Get these wagons under the trees," he yelled out, thankful that they weren't crossing an open area or a grassland. Of course, it was easier for the friendly airpower to find and fix the enemy in those open spaces as well, but he didn’t like the idea of luring the enemy into an attack that could still kill his unit. The drovers quickly reined their beasts under the cover of the trees, jumping off and trying their best to quiet their beasts.

  Moments later the dragons flew over, one screeching as its rider made it follow a path it probably didn't want to follow. The captain breathed a sigh of relief after they passed, waiting for ten minutes before he ordered his train back on the road.

  An hour later they had to cross an open area from which columns of smoke were rising. He rode into the open area to scout and saw over fifty wagons burning in the road, many with teams of animals that had been burned to death. There were no people, which with the small number of wagons let him know that this train had not been totally destroyed. Still, the loss of fifty wagons and their livestock was something that would hurt the army, if only in a minor way. The losses added up, and if this went on, soon the forces at the front might find themselves tightening their belts.

  * * *

  "And what the hell is this thing?" asked General Zachary Taylor, the overall commander of the Alliance Army, walking up on Earnst Grueber. His curiosity was piqued by the object, which looked very familiar.

  "What does it look like?" asked Grueber, holding up the small object in his hand.

  "What it looks like is a flintlock pistol," said the general. "But I know that gunpowder doesn't work here, so I can't figure out how it does what it looks like it does."

  The former Mercedes engineer handed the general the hand weapon. Taylor turned it around in his hand. It was the general size and configuration of the flintlocks and wheellocks he had examined in the past. Lighter than the sidearm he had carried on Earth, but longer. It had an enlarged midsection with a screw on cap where the powder would normally go.

  "It uses steam, like the cannon?" asked Taylor, not seeing how else it could work.

  "Got it on the first try, general," said the smiling engineer, holding out his hand for the pistol. "Let me demonstrate, then you can have a go at it."

  Grueber unscrewed the top section and filled the reservoir with water from a small bottle he carried on a strap, then seated a tiny glowing gem in the hole. He screwed the top section back down so that only a portion of the gem was visible.

  "It's now water tight, with the bullet and wadding already in the barrel. I'll be aiming at that piece of old armor about thirty meters away."

  The engineer extended the pistol, cocked the hammer, and squeezed the trigger, just as he might have done with an Earth made weapon. The weapon went off with a banging hiss, and the clang of the bullet hitting the armor sounded. There was steam in the air, a lot of it, making it hard to see the target now, but Grueber led the way around until they were standing in front of the old breastplate that now boasted a twelve millimeter hole through its center.

  Taylor had felt a thrill of excitement as the pistol had fired, which had turned to exaltation as it pierced the armor. He wasn’t sure how much use the small weapon would be, but he hoped they would find a use for it.

  "Of course this wasn't highly enchanted armor, but it was some of the thickest I could find."

  "Impressive," said Taylor as he watched the engineer recharge the weapon. They went back to the firing line, which by now was clear of steam, and Taylor took the weapon.

  He went through the same procedure to fire, and was surprised by the force of the recoil. He hit the target, not dead center like the engineer, but at least any hit on the chest region was a victory.

  "Can you make rifles like this?” asked Taylor, an idea coming to mind.

  "I was really planning for these to be issued to the cavalry, sir," said Grueber, giving the general a questioning look. "To give them an emergency sidearm in melee combat. They would be much better in many ways than the hand crossbows the elves use. But I can't see a rifle version being better than the archers we already have."

  "You can train riflemen much faster than archers," said Taylor, turning the pistol over in his hand, looking at all the details. "And I know we have a lot of the Ellala and Conyastoya archers to fill out our armies. I would like to have some long range firepower in the hands of our own people. People I can trust. In any respect, they might make good sniper rifles. But definitely concentrate on the pistols for now."

  Taylor looked off into space for a moment, thinking. "What else do you have on the drawing board?"

  * * *

  Sergeant Dieter Klausman cursed under his breath as the sweat rolled down his face. It was a hot day, six degrees warmer than it would be in Germany at this time of year, if he had gotten the correlation correct. And even after a year of training and deployment as a Legionnaire, one of the protected in fact, he still wasn't enamored with marching. On Earth he would have been riding in a Marder III armored fighting vehicle, and only having to walk short distances to scout or assault. Here he was carrying over forty kilos of arms and armor, along with a small pack of rations. At least the tools and tentage were being carried in the company wagons, or he would have been burdened by that as well.

  "Going ta have to go to confession now, aren't you, buddy," said Sergeant James Bubbuh Whitaker, marching in the rank behind the German. "You need to convert to Baptist. I say a goddamn cussword, and I can ask God to forgive me without going through the middle man."

  Dieter glanced back at the large man with dark brown skin and frizzy hair under his helmet. Bubbuh was also sweating heavily, though he seemed to take it more in stride than did any of the Germans

  "It's just so damned hot," growled Dieter.

  "Hot?" barked Bubbuh with a laugh. "Why, back in Tuscaloosa, it would be up over a hundred on a day like this. That's…uh…what? Thirty-eight by your wacky thermometer."

  Bubbuh was a smart man, an educated man, despite his what seemed to the German as a barbarous accent. He had played football at Alabama, not the game they played in Europe, but a much more violent game of collisions. He had enlisted in the Army after a couple of semesters of too much goofing off and partying, and had gone into the infantry. Where he found out he had a talent for linguistics. He spoke German, French and Czech, and now had a good grasp on the local dialects of Ellala and Conyastoya. Dieter wasn't sure why the man hadn't accepted the commission he had been offered, but he would not be able to duck promotion to platoon sergeant forever.

  "How in the hell could you take that heat?"

  "Heck, we used to run sprints in football practice, in full pads."

  Dieter didn't know what pads were. He imagined they were something similar to what they were carrying at the moment. All of the men in the company wore banded Lorica armor over their torsos, with shoulder pads and arm guards. All had helms, though most were swinging on their backs attached to the chinstraps that were currently around their necks. All had skirts of metal reinforced leather, greaves, and local copies of the NATO combat boots all had come to this world with, though these were reinforced with steel tops and soles. Wrist guards completed the body armor, but not the entire kit. They had large oblong shields on their left arms, short stabbing swords and daggers in belt sheaths, and carried a short spear slanted over their right shoulders. And pouch hanging from their back contained two short javelins, while a canteen and ration bag on the back of their belts completed the kit.

  All of the men in the company were Christians, the Protected as they were called on this world. Muslims, Jews, Hindus and some other Earth faiths were also Protected, warded by the deity of Earth against the magics and terrors of the night on this world. Every week a few of them gave up their faith and converted to one of the local religions, lured by the
power of magic to make their lives easier. Dieter would rather go through the hardships of not having magic than risk having his soul ripped away by one of the demonic creatures that inhabited the planet.

  "Almost time for a break," said Dieter, looking at his watch, one of the few mechanical ones brought over and still working.

  "My belly is telling me almost time for lunch, my brother," said Bubbuh.

  "Fall out," yelled the platoon sergeant some moments later, attesting to the accuracy of watch and gut. The men moved off the dusty road and fell down where they could. Soon the mess attendants were moving from wagons to men, bringing pots of simmering food to ladle out into mess kits.

  A column of dwarven ax men marched by, their short legs rapidly stepping at a similar speed to the humans. The stout warriors never seemed to tire, and would march on through the day, only stopping when it was time to set up camp. In fact, they would already have the camp partially set by the time the humans got there. The dwarves smiled and laughed as they passed the humans.

  "Damned Neanderthals," said Bubbuh with a laugh. "Shoulda gone extinct."

  "What mean you? Like the cavemen?"

  "Exactly," said Bubbuh, nodding his head. "That's what the scientists are saying. Those are the Neanderthals that came here before they went extinct on Earth. Them and the Orcs. And then they evolved, or the Gods changed them? Hell, it could be the same thing here."

  "But the Orcs look nothing like the dwarves."

  "Evolution," said the bigger man with a smug expression.

  "I thought Baptists were fundamentalists and didn't believe in evolution."

  "Some don't," agreed the black man. "But even among Baptists there are a lot of people who found problems in the bible. My daddy was one of them, and he taught me that the universe was a whole lot stranger than a lot of the ministers thought." He looked around for a moment at the trees, swarming with birds, many of which were extinct on Earth. "And a lot stranger than he thought."