Travnicek was on top of his tower, enjoying the show. Fog and spoofing didn’t seem to affect his perceptions much.
Modular Man stood with Travnicek. Waiting for orders.
The android’s radar detected more shells arcing toward the Rox, saw a discontinuity appear, a strange little gap in the world that gave off radio emissions rather than let them pass.
So far Bloat hadn’t been so busy that his abilities were in danger of being swamped.
So far…
Pulse zipped overhead, burning a few shells that the Outcast missed. So far the job hadn’t required a dangerous amount of energy.
So far…
But despite all efforts a few shells got through. The ramparts shook; battlements crumbled; a few people died or bled.
Still, no damage was critical. So far, despite the trickle of injured to the hospital tunnels, the Rox was perfectly secure.
So far…
Travnicek’s neck organs shifted, as if scenting a new breeze. “I think we’re being painted with a laser,” he said. “The fog’s diffusing it, but there’ll be missiles any second.”
His neck organs gave a little twitch, and then Travnicek flung himself on the floor. Modular Man thought that was a good idea and imitated it.
Hellfires shrieked overhead, slammed into battlements. The android could hear screams.
“More coming,” said Travnicek.
The air cracked as Pulse lasered through it. Missiles detonated in his wake. Several still hit the outer wall. A mortar bomb, unnoticed in the tension, dropped into the middle bailey and briefly turned the fog red.
“More coming,” said Travnicek.
The attackers turned out to be a flight of helicopters firing full loads of sixteen missiles each. One of the outer towers took a pair of missiles that punched through the stonework and sprayed white-hot superheated metal through the interior. Another three slammed harmlessly into the wall of the inner bailey, and one hit the Crystal Keep itself, turning one of the upper rooms into an inferno.
Travnicek rose, walked toward the hole in the floor. “Chubs and Pulse are getting tired. Life gets dangerous from this point on.” He turned to Modular Man. “Go to the slug. Find out what he wants and do it.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was all he could say.
Bloat was going to turn him into a shooter again.
The tunnel was hotter. Sweat ran down Ray’s forehead and into his eyes, making them sting. There was a distinct smell of sulfur to the musty-tasting air. Where the hell, Ray wondered, was the tunnel taking them?
He stopped in front of a huge open archway that looked like it’d been taken from some old church. It was backlit in dramatic fashion by a lurid, ruddy glow that cast flickering shadows on the leering gargoyles clinging to the niches within the archway’s elaborate fluting. Ray watched the carved stone figures for a long time before he was convinced that they were only carved stone figures, and even then moved quickly through the arch lest one of them suddenly pounce on him.
Clinging to the shadows, Ray found himself at the edge of a large platform jutting over an abyss that went way, way down like a knife wound in the flesh of the earth. Running in the wound was a river of molten lava, red and shining and damn hot. All around the side of the canyon was a stone ledge. It wound off north and south into darkness. It looked rather narrow and crumbly.
Running east, spanning the chasm, was a narrow stone bridge that arched high over the glowing river. There was a man standing in front of the bridge, wooden staff in hand. He was an old joker, with a seamed and wrinkled face and a wild mane of crazed white hair. He had two pairs of skinny, veined arms and he was wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed I SAW THE BIG BLOAT MOAT. Hanging over the T-shirt was a big, shiny gold medallion like the ones Wayne Newton wore in Vegas. Ray watched the old man closely. He didn’t move much, except to pick his nose and then wipe the booger on his tattered cloak. That convinced Ray that the geezer wasn’t one of Bloat’s apparitions. He was real.
Ray withdrew to where the others were hidden in shadow.
Battle looked at him impatiently. “He doesn’t appear to be much of a threat, but there’s no way to sneak up on him now that Black Shadow is gone and Ackroyd turned out to be an imposter.” He spared Nemo a bitter glance. “If he’s not a construct, then Bloat can detect us through his mind. It’s time for a diversion.” Battle turned to Danny. “Tell your sisters to go.”
“Go,” Danny whispered urgently. Somewhere off in the fog, a church bell was tolling the hour.
Tom pushed off with his mind. The shell lifted and slid silently out of the ferry slip where they’d lain concealed. Not that they needed much concealment. Not in this fog. The Staten Island Ferry could have been twenty feet in front of him, coming dead on. and Tom wouldn’t have had a clue.
The Turtle moved out low and fast, like a stone skimming across the waves. A bare foot below him rolled the cold green waters of New York Bay. On his rear screens, Battery Park and the ferry terminal vanished in the fog. Then his cameras showed nothing but the strange, cold, gray-green fog that had swallowed them… and Danny, stretched out on her stomach atop his shell.
She was still pissed. “Go” was the first word she’d spoken to him since they left Ebbets Field an hour ago. Nothing Tom said got past her icy silence.
Somewhere off in this too-dark morning, the rest of the assault force was moving in simultaneously. Back at Ebbets Field, Zappa or von Herzenhagen had given the order to the pregnant Danny, and her sisters had all whispered “Go.”
Punk Danny had whispered it to Detroit Steel and the Reflector, in Liberty Park over in Jersey. Now they were charging the Jersey Gate, while a detachment of heavy armor provided supporting fire.
Starlet Danny had whispered it to Mistral and Cyclone in the old fort on Governor’s Island, and watched their capes fill out like parachutes as they summoned the winds, and flew.
Corporal Danny had whispered it to the elephant perched atop the Stock Exchange. And Radha had leapt off the roof, flapped huge gray ears, and began to climb, spiraling up above the fog, above Bloat’s Wall of fear.
“Danny,” Tom said. The volume on his speakers was turned way down, but in the eerie silence of the fog the word rang.
“Not now,” Danny said, her voice soft but urgent. She had traded her baseball cap for a helmet and infrared goggles that made her look like some strange species of insect. The Army had welded brackets on top of the shell. A net of canvas webbing strapped Danny in place, for safety during violent maneuvering. But just in case, she was wearing a parachute. Her hands were tight around the stock of her M-16.
Tom sighed, turned. His screens were empty. There was nothing to see but Danny’s face. The wall of fog receded before them and closed in behind. It was like being in a small gray-green room. Without the water sliding by beneath them, even the sense of motion would be lost.
The Rox was out here somewhere. Tom checked the compass, consulted a harbor map. He veered off toward the southwest. “Hurry,” Danny urged him. “Steel and Snot just hit the Jersey Gate. They’re under fire.”
Tom pushed harder, driving silently into the fog.
“Radha’s still climbing,” Danny whispered. The elephant made a slow, cumbersome flyer, and they had to reach two thousand feet, to come in over Bloat’s Wall of fear. “Mistral and Cyc are circling, whipping up the tornado. C’mon.”
The fog seemed darker in front of them, as if hinting at some looming presence just out of sight. Then the gray-green curtain tore, and there it was.