Wiping misted blood from his eyes, Gabriel stepped into the courtyard, Sam
pressing against him from behind. He could feel the unnatural heat of her body against his as he stared at the spectacle before him.
It was like walking into a slaughterhouse. The ground was slick with blood and other things Gabriel would just as soon not try to identify. Screams, howls, and wordless warcries mixed with the bestial shrieks and guttural roars of the mutants pouring over the wall. Everywhere Gabriel looked men were hacking at deformed beasts. Blood flew into the air, falling back down like rain. Unlucky soldiers, overwhelmed by the numbers of the mutant hoard screamed as they were torn apart. Some screams cut off abruptly with death, but too many went on for far too long.
The robotic guards steadily fired their weapons into the melee, blasting everything around them to pieces in bright flashes of light. They seemed unable to distinguish soldiers from mutants, and blasted at each with equal ferocity.
Staring at the carnage and the overwhelming tide of death that continued to pour over the wall, Gabriel prayed that sending Sam would cause the paradox to hit, or there was going to be nothing left of the Imperial Soldiers. Unable to believe what he was seeing, he gazed around, trying to make sense in the sheer destruction of life and unholy violence.
“Gabriel,” Kari was shaking his arm. “Snap out of it!”
Shaking his head, Gabriel focused on her and nodded. Taking a few seconds to
reload his pistols, he searched past all of the violence for the crackling lightning that made up the frame of the Gate.
Driving the blade of her spear into the ground, Kari bit down on both of her
thumbs, causing blood to well out of them. Deftly she drew a symbol on each of her palms and slammed them together. Black lightning began to crackle and snake between her fingers. Pulling her hands apart with obvious enormous effort, she looked at the lightning crackling between them. A ball of swirling fire began to form between her hands, mixing with the lightning. Pulling her hands further apart, she pushed them up over her head as the ball of swirling fire and lightning began growing until it was about the size of a Volkswagen. Gabriel’s hair stood on end from the electricity in the air, and sparks began to fly from his pistols and belt buckle. Heaving, as though throwing a huge weight, she tossed the roiling mass of fire and lightning forward. It screamed through the mutants, destroying everything it touched, clearing a path for them to the Gate, and burning a furrow in the stone paving.
Slumping against her spear for a second, Kari breathed hard, as though she’d
sprinted a mile. She did not rest for long. As the massive fireball exploded large against the side of the Control Tower, shooting lances of lightning in every direction, she straightened and yanked her spear free.
“I’d just like you to know,” Gabriel said. “That was the absolute coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
“Come on,” Kari breathed, looking more than a little exhausted and frayed around the edges. “That space won’t stay cleared forever.”
With a slice of her spear that decapitated a nearly human looking figure, Kari stumbled to a run along the smoking furrow her fireball had melted into the paving, holding her tails up well clear of the ground, in a way that flashed her panties.
Following, Gabriel aimed and fired at anything that even looked like it might step into the cleared path. Right on his heels, Sam grasped his coat as if afraid of being lost in a crowd.
Growing hotter with every step, the heat of the burnt stone radiated through the soles of Gabriel’s boots as he dashed along the blackened furrow. It became
uncomfortable long before they reached the Gate, and painful not much after that.
Gritting his teeth against what would likely result in severe blistering at the least, he ran as though the devil’s hound was nipping at his heels
Reaching the end, Gabriel spun around just in time to blow a hole in a huge,
hulking mass that lumbered toward Sam. Looking down at the gaping wound in its chest, the huge creature came to a stop before falling over dead on the melted furrow where his flesh began to sizzle with a horrible odor.
Holstering one pistol, Gabriel pulled Sam close to him. He kissed her briefly, then nodded to the odd shimmering within the frame of the Gate.
“Good luck,” he said. “Remember what I told you about what you need to do.
Both of you. It’s very important. And remember, you’re going back into my past, so don’t tell me anything about what’s happening back here. Got it?”
Turning to face the Gate, Sam gave an annoyed nod. Visibly steeling herself, she hefted her pistol and stepped forward. Mister Mittens stood at attention on her shoulders as she took a deep breath and dashed through the shimmering light, disappearing as though plunging into the surface of a pool.
“Now what,” Kari shouted to be heard over the sounds of the battle.
“Now we wait for her to get back,” Gabriel shouted back as he redrew his pistol and began firing at anything that got too close to him.
He was really feeling the blood he’d lost now. It was making him dizzy and
lightheaded, and he felt as though he could eat an entire cow, but the thought of eating made his stomach churn uncomfortably. He began missing a few shots as his muscles trembled with adrenaline and hunger.
Leaning heavily on her spear, Kari’s eyes scanned the melee with rising concern.
Gabriel realized that she was searching for her brothers and pointed them out to her. The twins were back to back, their blades like windmills of death, flashing red in the light of the sun as it began to peek around the edge of Altima above. Anything that approached them died. There was a waist high pile of bodies around them, and yet more and more mutants clambered over it to meet their ends. Gabriel felt vomit rising, but couldn’t spare the time to puke. He fired his pistols one after the other, reloading when his shells were spent. Finally there were nothing but clicks when he pulled the triggers and his ammunition was completely gone.
Holstering the pistols, Gabriel pulled out his shotgun and began blowing
basketball-sized holes in anything that even appeared to be moving in his direction. Allie had picked up a spear from the hands of a fallen soldier and was jabbing it at anything that got in her reach. Kari killed anything that came near her, but between kills she sagged against her spear breathing hard and looking haggard and drained.
Reloading the shotgun, Gabriel looked up at the sky. The sun was about a quarter of the way out from behind the planet. Had it really only been that long? When he’d stepped through the Gate the sun was just finishing its eclipse. It felt like years rather than mere hours.
“Come on,” Gabriel growled. “Why isn’t she back yet? Why isn’t anything
happening?”
“I calculated her Gate Jump back to this time before I received the software and hardware upgrades that the Northern Sage gave to me,” Allie explained, her voice perfectly audible in his ear over the din of battle. “I may have missed by an hour or two, give or take.”
“I don’t think we’re going to hold out more than a few minutes,” Gabriel said
heavily, “much less an hour or two!”
“Before my upgrade, time travel had a great portion of guesswork in it,” Allie shrugged uncomfortably. “I am sorry I could not send her back to the exact time she left.