The Aegirian Templar/Left Up to the Templar: Severing the Skeins of Armageddon
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Contents |
Author's Notes
This is the second of three semi-interconnected stories featuring the Templar. They first appeared in a somewhat condensed form as a single thread in the role-playing forums on the Millennium Paladins website. After a good deal of creative revision and editing, I managed to separate the existing material into three individual storylines and expand each one into something standalone. I decided to post these stories here for two main reasons. I wanted to put this material somewhere besides the MP website, both for safety and for greater public accessibility. Secondly, it's here because I just love VirtueVerse. I love the idea, the content, and the characters, and these stories are my homage to the site. When necessary (and sometimes just for the fun of it) I've thrown in mentions to prominent characters and groups that I've come to admire during my explorations of the wiki; so if you see your name mentioned, it's just because I'm a fan.
This second story is probably my favorite out of the few CoX tales that I've so far written. It's my own take on the tried and true 'superheroic time-travel' scenario; our hero(es) must travel through time to prevent the world-conquering bad guys from actually accomplishing their world-conquering - specifically, by interfering in a critical event that functions as the linchpin in the villains' nefarious plan to turn all us normal folks into mindless slaves. But enough potential spoilers from me. Time to cut to the action.
((Author's Note 10/7/2011 - This story was begun quite awhile ago, long before the release of CoH: Freedom and the unexpected destruction of Galaxy City. Since the continued (and at the time, wholly expected) integrity of Galaxy City is integral to this tale's plot (and since it does take place in an alternate timeline) I have no plans to change it to reflect the current in-game changes.))
Preface
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
- Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell,
- Rode the six hundred.
- ~~Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
- ~~William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
"They say that our people have no present...only a past filled with horror...and a future we can only dream of."
- ~~Unnamed Terran, Freespace 2
"They fight bravely. They cannot harm our ships, but they continue to try."
- "Whether they fight or not, they know they will die anyway. So really, is this bravery? Or simple desperation?"
"Perhaps they are the same thing."
- ~~Delenn and Hedronn, Babylon 5 - Season 2: 'Points of Departure'
Chapter 1
In the Rogue Isles...
The signal was received in the middle of the night, awakening the nameless man from his lifeless sleep. It was more the activation of a waiting drone than the awakening of a sleeping human being. For that was really all that the Scourge's intermediate and lower-grade servants were - once-thinking, free-willed human beings converted into subservient, organic drones. Even those entrusted with the intellect and authority to carry out the Masters' missions and lead their fodder into battle were no less controlled from afar - they existed solely to perform the will of the Scourge; they were simply better equipped to do so.
...SLR17...
The voice was disembodied, hollow. It echoed within the confines of the Scourge Leader's head, coming from nowhere...and everywhere.
'Yes, Master.'
...The Einherjar automatons have sent one of their own to the City... ...Less than a hundred miles from Recluse's hive one of our victims is waiting...
There was the quietest clicking from the machine. The Scourge Leader's natural physiological response to the news was quickly suppressed; the only clue that he even had to the fact - one that he scarcely noticed and paid no attention to - was the momentary quickening of his heartbeat.
'What are your commands, Master? '
...You will build your power to match his... ...It will not take you long... ...For we do not share their weaknesses... ...You will subvert Recluse's power to your own advantage... ...You will use the chaos of the Isles to build your army... ...You will find the Templar and you will destroy him... ...And all those whom he may have allied with... ...For they may know something of the secret... ...As well as that which we seek to discover...
'What secrets should I extract from them before I end their existences?'
...The Einherjar fools have begun work on a new project... ...We have not yet been able to break their encryptions but we will... ...In fifteen centuries they have never been able to keep a secret from us... ...But the most efficient means of learning what we need is to extract it by force... ...The Templar we must kill... ...But his companions may be more susceptible to persuasion... ...They are to be captured and subjugated if at all possible... ...Once their interrogations are complete... ...When their wills are crushed and their minds are enslaved... ...We will know all that they know... ...And they will serve the Scourge as soldiers to the end of their lives...
'Yes, Master. It will be done as you say. The Scourge shall Enslave. The Scourge shall Rule.'
...The Scourge Shall Rule...
Tendrils snaked out from the darkness, sheathing the man in tac-armor and weaponry. The burning star emblem on his chest gleamed as light struck it, and his blood red visor glinted with an eerie inner glow. Like zombies, two men arose from tubes hidden beneath the floor, and tendrils quickly garbed them as well. Their eyes flashed to life as they were activated by their machines, and with a single forwards wave of his hand, the being designated as Scourge Leader R17 led his two hapless former mercenaries out into the Snake-ridden streets of Mercy Island.
The Scourge would Enslave. The Scourge would Rule. And Paragon City would be enslaved next.
Chapter 2
Two-hundred years later...
Another wave of Scourge thralls surged across the urban battlefield, the half-choked streets strewn with smoking corpses and shattered rubble. A searing hail of energy bolts screamed through the air towards the two huge cracked hulks of concrete on either side of what had once been a city street. Chunks of vulcanized rock flew into the air as the armored soldiers hiding behind the rubble returned fire. Their answering volley was unimpressive compared to the incessant rain of energy that continued to chip away at their cover, as their mindless foes continued their hunched, shambling advance towards them. Their fire was unerringly lethal, but every thrall they dropped was immediately trampled over by two others. With no buildings left standing for a hundred yards in any direction behind them, there was nowhere for them to withdraw to while under fire. The thralls howled in dreadful anticipation as they closed in on their trapped opponents.
"MIDGARDIANS! TACTICAL WITHDRAWAL!"
A blue-armored form leapt into the breach, filling the gap between the rubble from side to side. Its twin swords blazed with incandescent blue energy as they whirled with superhuman speed. The deadly rain of energy was suddenly and fatally turned back on the onrushing horde, as the force-shielded blades deflected the particle bolts with uncanny precision. The monstrous advance crumbled as the front ranks piled up in sudden windrows, creating a grisly obstacle over which the snarling thralls struggled to climb. The small group of soldiers wasted no time in moving back, firing continuously at the straggling horde that their leader was even now holding back. It took only fifteen seconds for their powered armor to carry them out of the open and into the dubious shelter of a nearby shattered skyscraper.
The armored swordsman hauled back and flung his swords wide, sending a torrent of burning energy flowing down into the ranks of the Scourge horde. Black gouges and scorch marks from errant particle bolts marred the surface of his battlesuit, but his movements never flagged. With a single fluid motion, he bent his knees and catapulted himself backwards in a jumpjet-powered super-somersault, landing amongst the ranks of his troops in their new defensive position. Midgardians scrambled all throughout the rubble, throwing up impromptu sandbag barriers in breaches and setting up gatling beam turrets to cover the fields of fire along the paths of the enemy's advance. As their leader approached the emerging command post at the center of the ruin, an armored soldier with three gold stripes emblazoned on his shoulderguard strode up to him.
"Perimeter secure, General. Command post should be set up within a few minutes."
"Very good, Sergeant. I need a secure commlink to base ASAP."
Sergeant Maddox nodded. "Yessir, General. You'll have it. Meanwhile... respectfully, sir, I think we should have the medics and engineers take a look at you."
His gaze was hidden by the visor of his helmet, but he was obviously looking at the deep black scars on the surface of his commander's armor. Even the battlesuit's sophisticated defensive shielding had not succeeded in deflecting the Scourge thralls' fire, and the dual stinks of melted metal and burned flesh wafted just noticeably from each charred gash. The right leg and shoulder were particularly badly mauled, and the sergeant winced at the restrictiveness and stiffness of his general's movements.
Simon only passingly felt the pain, as adrenaline and painkillers from the suit's med systems filled his system. He limped over to a slab of fractured rebar lying on the rubble-strewn floor of the command post and let out a grunt as he slowly, painfully sat down on it, using the sword clenched in his right fist to lever himself down. For a single quick, fleeting instant, the Aegirian Templar, battle-scarred veteran of the war against the Scourge, reflected on how things had gone so badly in just over two hundred short, violent years.
Chapter 3
Sergeant Maddox made one last walk-around of the perimeter, making sure that each one of his troops was squared away and that all of their fields of fire were covered. Then he made his way back to the CP. A small group of engineers and medics were busily swarming around the general, who sat helmetless and obviously restless as he suffered through their ministrations. Maddox always found himself experiencing a strange mixture of sad sympathy, fierce pride, and unschooled awe whenever he looked at his commanding officer, even though he had seen the man without his distinctive helmet hundreds of times since he had been enrolled in the ranks of the Order's army.
General Templar's face was only slightly lined despite his nearly two and a half centuries of age, a side effect of prolonged exposure to his armored battlesuit. His once sandy brown hair and beard were almost totally shot with gray, though a few dashes of color could still be seen. There were no fewer than five separate scars on his face, though the nastiest was the one that ran from forehead to jawline and through his left eye. No one in the army really knew how or when the Templar had suffered the blow that had taken out his eye, though there were dozens of rumors at least. The small blue orb of his synthetic eye was a matter of some apprehension amongst the troops whenever he was helmetless, however; it seemed capable of looking at everything at once - yet never seemed to be looking at anything in particular. There was never any escaping its unnerving gaze - especially since it seemed to give the general the uncanny ability to see through any excuse or obfuscation right into someone's soul. Personally, Maddox doubted that it was the eye that gave the Templar such piercing sight - that was something that he had clearly earned through decades of physical and emotional sacrifice.
The sergeant moved unobtrusively but noticeably into the general's field of view - a skill he had developed to perfection over the past two decades - and saluted. With a slight grimace, the general stiffly returned the salute, then turned his half-cybernetic gaze towards his chief non-com.
"At ease, Sergeant. What's our status?"
Maddox relaxed just slightly, careful to keep his guard up under the tense circumstances. "The perimeter checks out; we're secure - for the moment. We've got our secure commlink to base set up; still no response about that air support and reinforcements we've requested."
The Templar nodded, then shifted his face into a tightly-controlled pain mask as the medics pumped more medi-gel into his suit's breaches. For a few tense moments he held his breath, then released it in a long, slow blast of air. "Damn that hurts. You'd think I'd be used to it by now."
He slowly got up off of his slab-seat, pushing himself up with his sword, which he then methodically sheathed. "A few more years of this and I won't have to worry about it, though."
He gave Maddox a morbid, mirthless smile. "Either I'll wind up with more replacement parts than actual flesh and blood limbs and organs, and I'll only feel about two-thirds of the hits I take..."
His smile disappeared then. "...Or we'll all be dead."
The Templar limped over to the comm array gear, grabbed the headset and secured it over his head. "Blue Leader to Gold Leader. We are at Status Yellow-Secure. Request tactical and strategic status updates, over."
"Gold Leader to Blue Leader. We read you at Status Yellow-Secure. Good to hear from you. Tactical and strategic updates are - forthcoming. Over."
The Templar tilted his head slightly, and his right eye narrowed. "Sorry, Crusader...but what exactly does that mean?"
"It means that we've got more than thirty separate teams of varying sizes all fighting against enemy forces at least twice their size in all cases. It means we've got air and armor assets scrambling across three continents trying to keep all of our units from being completely overrun. It means we've got the few hundred surviving heroes on Earth all flying interference to try to keep the Scourge off-balance, most of them because they have no other choice, not because they particularly like us. It means that I'm personally trying to figure out some way of getting us all out of this, because I am not willing to concede defeat in this war to the Scourge after eighteen centuries of fighting."
Simon was silent for a moment. "Alright...so what it means, is that you're working on it, right?"
The Crusader chuckled - which, from him, was pretty much the equivalent of hysterical laughter. "Yes, Simon. Despite the fact that Armageddon is currently unfolding all around us, yes, I am 'working on it'. Ascendant and Imperial just checked in - they've got the enemy stonewalled on the Canadian front. Still no response from Xanatos or Coldsnap - it doesn't look like they're going to succeed in bringing in any extrasolar reinforcements in time. What's left of Arachnos is still somehow keeping the Scourge tied up off the coast - that bastard Recluse is bloody persistent, to say the least. Statesman, Sister Psyche and Citadel are manning the last War Wall - so far, the enemy haven't been able to bypass it yet."
"What about Vanguard?"
"There are a few scattered secondary elements still fighting in tangent with our forces...but for the most part, they've been wiped out. Their leadership and bases are all gone, along with the majority of their heavy units and support craft. The Traditionalists are just as badly off; we've rounded up whatever's left of them as well and put them to work where we can. The good news is that the Restructurists were stupid enough to launch a head-on assault right at the outset, and they've been defeated in detail."
"And Peregrine's status?"
"Gone. It's a crater now. The nuke eradicated the island and all of the Portal tech right off the bat. It was the only way to ensure that the Scourge wouldn't capture it and use it against us. We're not getting any reinforcements that way...but neither are they."
"We're sure that Ouroboros is gone too?"
"No, we're not...but we'd have heard something by now. I don't have the stomach for sending anyone on a suicide mission to check out a dimension that's not there anymore. Whatever the Scourge did there, they made sure that nobody'd be able to undo it. Radiation probes seem to indicate some sort of massive antimatter blast, but like I said...no way to be sure."
"So what's the plan?"
"We need to figure out what went wrong, and when...and how to do something to stop it."
Chapter 4
"I take it that you have an idea, which will no doubt lead to a theory, that will lead to a plan."
The Crusader chuckled again, despite himself. Simon Alexander Thorstengaard, the current Aegirian Templar, had always possessed an uncanny knack for making him laugh. It had taken him about a year of operating in Paragon City to start coming out of his shell; but once he did, he had loosened up quite a bit. Simon had been rather stiff and formal when he had first begun his assignment for the Order; young, untested, unsure of himself, and relatively unpracticed in his skills. It had largely been his close association with Servant 12 and his Millennium Paladins that had lead to Simon's subtle but noticeable transformation.
Of course, the Simon that the Crusader knew now - 'General Templar' as he was known to his Midgardian troops - was far different in nearly every way.
The Crusader had seen it dozens of times before, amongst the many men and women throughout the centuries who had been called upon to wear the Armor. It happened to every hero eventually, but the process was most pronounced amongst those who were blessed - and cursed - with the dubious 'gift' of longevity. The decades, even centuries of battles, struggles, defeats, wounds, hard-won victories, crushing losses, innocents slain, and friends lost left innumerable scars; each one impossible to see on the surface, each one serving to inflict more damage than the last. At over eighteen centuries of age, the Crusader bore more psychological trauma than perhaps any human being who ever lived - more than Alistair Cromwell, more than Marcus Cole, and certainly more than Simon Thorstengaard and all of the other Einherjar combined.
The Crusader knew from experience that the process was enough to utterly crush the spirits of even the strongest-willed heroes. The seeming futility of an endless war against evil, the horrible temptation to cut all ties and disappear from the world forever, all to spare oneself from the pain of watching everyone you knew and loved wither and die while you lived on, doomed to carry on the good fight...it could drive a person insane. He had seen once-valiant, upright and stalwart heroes reduced to cowering hermits...or driven into violent madness. Enough pain and grief piled onto even the strongest shoulders, and a hero would reach the breaking point...a point at which, most often, they became the one thing they had fought so long and so hard against - a supervillain. Driven by their madness and bitterness to abandon the hopeless cause for which they had bled and sacrificed for so long, they would instead use their powers to serve only themselves, often going on a brutal rampage in an attempt to make up for the years of deprivation, to collect the recompense that they felt the world owed them.
It was not something that could be resolved merely by a person's own will alone. Discipline and determination were nothing in the face of immortality's bitter realities. Something else had to be found to allow the person to move on. It had to be larger than oneself; something external. For most heroes, it was simply 'The Cause'. It transcended mere personal interests, which would only allow a person to go so far. It provided a larger, more meaningful reason to continue to not simply exist, but to continue to fight, even in the face of overwhelming odds.
The Crusader had long since made peace with the fact that he would only meet his end in battle, and that he would have to see many friends, comrades, and loyal subordinates meet their ends before he met his. Despite this, he was still a leader, and still a human being. As such, he had one thing available to him in addition to his superhuman immortal determination, and that was the need for payback. Some people might call it vengeance, and he couldn't honestly deny that was part of it. Personally, all he knew was that after eighteen centuries of fighting an insidious enemy, he had no small number of scores to settle. There were enemies still out there that needed killing, and he wasn't about to let them win until he was sure that they were all dead.
"I think I've figured out a way for us to fix this thing. If we can pull it off, we might even be able to stop this whole damned war from even happening. You comfortable with the idea of erasing an entire timeline and replacing it with another one?"
There was the slightest of pauses. "Yes, sir. Absolutely. What do we do?"
Chapter 5
Simon listened intently to Crusader's proposed plan and never interrupted once. When his commander was finished, he paused for a moment and then said, "You do know that what you're planning is suicide, right?"
There was a scoff. "Of course I do. Its no different than what we're facing right now anyway. At least with this we can all go out with a bang. And hell, we might even win."
"I don't disagree. I just wanted to make sure that nobody has any illusions about our odds of survival. We all have to be together on this a hundred percent, or we'll have absolutely no chance."
"Don't worry, Simon. I've gone over all of this with all of the others already. I wanted to make sure that you'd have all the support you need going in to this, since you're the one who's going to be spearheading it. Living through hell on earth is the best - or worst - way to make people feel ok about having absolutely nothing to lose."
There wasn't really much that Simon could say to that. The entire Order - what remained of it, anyway - was going to launch a single massive, desperate attack against Paragon City...all to buy him the time that he needed to hopefully pull off a miracle. He tried to push to the back of his mind the fact that if he succeeded, he would essentially be signing the death warrants of all of them.
It is a good day to die...
Even over a radio commlink and separated by five hundred miles, the Crusader still retained his ability to read the Templar's thoughts. "Everybody's aboard for this, Simon. Nobody has any illusions about what this is...or what this means. If we fall, we fall together, as brothers...as an Order. If all of us have to die so that you can get through, then that's better than having to fight an agonizing planetary holding action for the next few months only so we can slowly lose. Better to go out fighting than spend eternity as their thralls."
Simon didn't want to think about that. At all. "As much as I hate to admit it...you've got a point. Just promise me one thing."
"Anything."
Steel filled Simon's voice, making it harder and sharper than the two impervium katanas that he had wielded in battle for two-hundred years. "You had all better make those bastards pay for every goddamn millimeter of ground that's between you, me, and them."
A feral, predatory grin spread over the Crusader's face. "Piece of cake. I've had eighteen hundred years to practice. When this day is done, we'll have Ragnarok kicked off good and proper, like the Einherjar were meant to do."
"All right then. Don't start the end of the world without me. I still have a chopper to catch."
The Crusader chuckled and broke the connection. Simon rose off of his slab-seat and stood up straight, squaring his shoulders and leveling his gaze in a posture that exuded authority and unwavering command. "MIDGARDIANS - WE ARE LEAVING! PACK IT UP, LET'S GO! LIGHTS ARE UP FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, STANDING ROOM ONLY."
Sergeant Maddox ran up to him amidst the chaos as armored troopers scrambled to break down and assemble their weapons and gear. "Sir - sir! Are we really moving out?"
General Templar was already striding towards what was left of the building's roof. "Yes, Sergeant! Yes, we are really moving out. The Crusader's orders were clear, and if we are going to have any chance of living longer than tomorrow, then we are ALL going to have to be SHARPER than my SWORDS!"
Simon wanted to be able to stop, to slow down, to give Maddox time. He wanted to be able to explain to Maddox exactly what was going to happen. He wished that there was something, anything that he could say to all of them about what they were headed into that wouldn't sound like fatalism. He wanted to be able to do something other than stalk angrily up to where the transport would soon be arriving to ferry all of them to their doom. But he couldn't. All he could do was curtly bark orders and bellow about what was certain to be the biggest, most terrible, and final battle of their lives. There were too many thoughts, too many emotions, rampaging through his head - not to mention painkillers through his bloodstream - for him to be cool, calm, and focused. He didn't want to think about what they had to do...and especially not where they had to go to do it.
After nearly twenty years, it was time for him to to go back to Paragon City.
Chapter 6
It took almost half an hour for the old, battered Sleipnir transport to arrive and collect Simon and his troops from the ruins of Constitution City. Anger burned in Simon's gut as the helojet slowly rose over the collapsed buildings and shattered streets of what had once been a thriving metropolis. More than two-hundred years earlier, this had been the home of one of his closest friends, a man named Michael Carpenter. Now it was nothing more than a graveyard, a smashed mausoleum for the thousands of soldiers and civilians who had died there during the ferocious Scourge attack. Firesword Park lay burning below them, the forty-foot statue of Constitution City's favorite son and only true native hero lying crumbled and broken on the blackened green. The small Crimson Firesword Heritage Museum was equally devastated, its treasure trove of artifacts looted and plundered by the Scourge field commanders as they had swept through, killing and burning as they went. Simon ground his teeth in refreshed, impotent rage at his inability to protect his friend's legacy from his hated enemies; the thought of the brilliant red Firesword Armor being disassembled and broken down was too much to take.
"Please tell me we're going to do something to make the bastards pay for this, General."
One of his Midgardians had moved over to stand by him next to the transport's portside hatch, gazing down at the devastation below. Simon recognized the voice, glanced over, and immediately recognized the name inscribed on the chestplate of the man's battle armor: CARPENTER.
This was his old friend's great-great grandson, a Lance Corporal in the Order's Midgardian infantry corps. Johnathan Carpenter had served in General Templar's unit ever since he had been recruited into the Midgardian program nearly ten years earlier. Simon had always suspected that the young man had wanted to take up the mantle of the Crimson Firesword himself - bring the name out of retirement - but events had played out differently. With the open war against the Scourge entering its second century and the governments and paramilitary organizations of the world slowly crumbling beneath their onslaught, the scramble to recruit every able-bodied man had trumped all other considerations. Those individuals not gifted with genetic, scientific, or magical superpowers had essentially been all but drafted into the ranks of either the Midgardians or Vanguard - there were no more 'technology heroes' anymore, just power-armored infantry troopers.
Simon's eyes never left the scorched-earth urban landscape below. "Yes, Corporal, we are going to do something. I personally have my reservations about it, but its the best - no, the only option we have left to us."
"I'm not quite sure I like the sound of that, General. It sounds...ominous."
Simon turned to face him then. "You all need to let me worry about that, Corporal. I'd like to be able to tell you exactly what's going to happen, but I can't - knowing would only upset you, assuming you could even understand it - and if you didn't, then trying to wrap your brains around it would only serve to distract you, and I need you all to be focused for this fight."
Carpenter seemed unsatisfied with that, and was clearly still discomfited. "If you say so, General. I'll follow your and Sergeant Maddox's lead, as always...but, is this fight really going to be as crucial as you say it will be?"
Simon nodded, returning his gaze to the hatch window. "Corporal, I can honestly tell you that this will be the most important fight you have ever had in your life. In all likelihood, this engagement will almost certainly decide the fate of this war."
Before Carpenter could respond, the transport pilot's voice crackled over the intercom. "All hands be advised, we are entering Paragon City airspace. ETA ten minutes."
Simon knew that all over the world, the few remaining military assets left to the Einherjar and their allies were rapidly redeploying from one battle zone to the next, trying desperately to keep the Scourge occupied and off-balance. At the moment, every unit that could be spared on the North American continent was being redirected to Paragon City. Since the city was one of the key targets of the Scourge offensive, it would not take them long at all to respond to the reinforcements. The Order and the world's few remaining superheroes had been fighting a bitter defensive action amidst the city's War Walls for months now, but currently only one of the great barriers was still functioning. The defensive line ran from Steel Canyon down past Perez Park and along the edge of Skyway City and Faultline. Everything to the east of that line had been overrun by Scourge forces and was systematically being looted and destroyed. Atlas Park, once the administrative center and most prominent gathering place for hundreds of the city's heroes, had already been razed to the ground, with not a single building left standing; the same had been done to majestic Founder's Falls and glamorous Talos Island. The bulk of the Scourge forces in the city were divided between Siren's Call and Skyway City, trying to simultaneously demolish the vast overhead infrastructure of Skyway whilst massing for repeated assaults on Steel Canyon. The financial district was where the bulk of the city's wealth was located, and Vanguard was working desperately to move it all out of the city before the neighborhood fell under Scourge control.
As he stared through the armored hatchway, Simon saw other Sleipnir transports slowly converging on their own course. Sleek, fast Gungnir gunships and Valkyrie fighters flew alongside them, and as if on cue, a pair of the heavily armored jets took up formation around General Templar's own transport. As impressive as the array of firepower around them was, Simon knew that the Order could not maintain air superiority over Paragon City for long; once on the ground there, he would have to act quickly in order to ensure that he reached his objective in time.
Alarms blared suddenly in the crew compartment and the occupants were bathed in red light from the warning beacons. One of the escort fighter pilots barked over the comm, "Enemy aircraft coming in, two o'clock high!"
Valkyries and Gungnirs peeled off in a scream of jet exhaust to intercept the hostile craft even as Simon slammed his fist against the bulkhead. "Dammit! How in the hell did they get over here so fast?!"
He punched the compartment's comm panel and sent a signal to all of the nearby transports. "This is General Templar to all transports. All transports, stay on course. Take evasive action as necessary, but get to the drop zone ASAP. We need boots on the ground."
Simon reached up and grabbed a hand loop as the transport lurched into a sudden evasive maneuver. With his free hand, he motioned for several troopers to man the transport's point defense gunnery stations. While each transport's defensive weapons could be run by computerized AI subroutines, combat procedures dictated that each station be manned during an engagement, for purposes of manual override and emergency control. Over the command tactical battlenet, Simon caught snatches of chatter from the various aircraft currently engaging the enemy.
"Stay loose, staggered formation - "
"Keep on him! Don't lose him - "
"Target acquired, locking on - "
"Bandit down! Good hit, Alpha Three - "
"He's on me tight, I can't shake him - "
"Hold on, Delta Six, I'm on him - "
"I'M HIT, I'M HIT! ENGINE TWO'S ON FIRE, WE'RE GOING DOWN -
"MAYDAY, MAYDAY - "
"GODDAMN BASTARDS! THAT'S IT, LET 'EM HAVE IT!"
Each transmission was punctuated with roars and screams and the sounds of missile and cannon fire. The city sky all around the transports was filled with fire, as fighter craft darted and charged and banked wildly in desperate, close-quarters aerial combat. The transport lurched again, nearly throwing Simon off his feet, and the deafening sound of autocannon and pulse laser fire filled the crew compartment as his gunners opened up on the Scourge fliers that were now coming dangerously close.
Somehow, the enemy had managed to get several of their attack craft through the defensive cordon of Valkyries and Gungnirs, and were now in prime position to launch an attack on the vulnerable transports. The Sleipnirs were in a well-structured defensive formation, but the sudden evasive actions had created some significant gaps, and Simon watched in horror as the transport directly behind them was hit repeatedly by pulse cannon fire. Two of its starboard engines shattered and burst into flame, and it plummeted towards the ground as it went into a violent counter-clockwise spin. The transport dropped out of sight, but Simon had no time to wonder as to its fate. "All transports, close up, close up! Fighter wings, we need cover back here!"
Simon didn't hear the frenzied replies of the beleaguered fighter pilots and transport crews. Through the port viewport he caught a glimpse of a red and blue streak, followed soon after by one of maroon and gold, and then another, this one white and blue. Each fast-moving streak smashed into a Scourge fighter, and three separate explosions sent each enemy craft crashing to the ground below. A wave of fire from the tightening formation of transports sent seven other burning enemy fighters hurtling into the ground, and in that same instant, Statesman, The Imperial, and Ascendant punched another three Scourge ships out of the sky. The three heroes charged from one target to the next like angry hornets, smashing through fuel tanks, tearing off wings and tailfins, pulverizing cockpits, or simply grabbing entire craft, stopping them dead in the sky and then hurling them nose-first into the concrete jungle below.
Marcus Cole's voice sounded clearly in Templar's helmet radio. "Get your transports out of here and to the drop zone, General - we'll keep these mindless freaks off your backside."
Despite being over two-hundred years old and a battle-hardened veteran, Simon still got a kick out of getting to fight alongside the greatest hero of them all, and he grinned. "Roger that, Statesman; appreciate the backup. I'll see the three of you on the ground in Galaxy City."
With not a second left to lose, the Order transports dumped fuel into their afterburners, sending them charging forwards through the sky towards Paragon City.
Chapter 7
The transports eased themselves towards the ground all around Freedom Court, pausing for a few dangerous moments to hover as the hatches slid open and platoons of Midgardians and Vanguard troopers leapt from their confines, then hauling themselves back skyward as they made their escape. Officers and sergeants of both armies were busily moving their troops into position all around the central structure, which in the 21st century had served as the headquarters of Freedom Corps. As if on cue, the three heroes that had saved the air cavalry group from destruction dropped down from the sky directly in front of the man commanding the now-deployed ground force.
Statesman took a few steps forwards and addressed Simon directly. "General, good to see you all safely on the ground. I'm sorry about that ship."
Templar nodded slowly. "As am I, Marcus. I'm just glad the three of you showed up when you did. If not for you, the losses might have been much worse. Thanks to you, Eric, and Alistair, the bulk of our forces should be able to reinforce your position long enough for us to do what we need to do."
Statesman's masked face took on a dubious tone. "I know that the Crusader has been doing this for a long time, but are you really sure about this? I have to admit, I was skeptical when he told me about his plan. How can we be sure that what you're looking for is still there? For that matter, how can we be sure that its still functional?"
Templar stood firm. "I can't be certain, Statesman; but we have to try. It's the only chance we've got left, and it's also the best."
The veteran hero shook his head. "It just seems far too overly optimistic to me - like its too good to be true. I've never believed in quick fixes or magic bullets."
Simon chuckled. "Says the man who spent years searching for a mythical magical power source to cure him from terminal illness, then saved the world from Arachnos dozens of times using nothing but his super-strength and his fists."
Statesman smirked in spite of himself. "Points taken, Templar, but remember - I had plenty of people to help me with the legwork back in those days. I may have been good tactically, but working out what the bad guys are doing and what to do about it is alot easier when you've got smart people leading you through it."
Simon chuckled again. "Tell me about it."
His tone became serious again. "Don't get me wrong - I have my doubts as well. This is a long shot any way we look at it. But the alternative is not one that I'm willing to take. All the simulations project that the Scourge will dominate the planet within a matter of months. They've already brought overwhelming force to bear against the most heavily defended regions of the planet, and what's left of our forces are already spread far too thin to effectively oppose them. We can't ride out this wave and we can't break it. Our only option is to prevent the earthquake that caused it in the first place."
Statesman nodded. "Alright. According to your information, the objective is located inside this structure here?"
He pointed with one gloved finger at the small, tattered map of Galaxy City that he held in his gloved hand, indicating a skyscraper in the central part of the zone, in the midst of Equinox.
Simon nodded. "That's it. The eastern of the two skyscrapers behind the old Arena is home to the secondary corporate headquarters of Tannan Industries. When the company moved its main HQ to Steel Canyon, they retained this building as its corporate support center. The object we're looking for is on the uppermost floor, in what the blueprints say is the Secondary Utility Storage Area."
The heroes Ascendant and The Imperial had wandered over, and the older man, obviously overhearing the last part of the conversation, looked at Templar with one eyebrow raised. "What the blueprints say is the Secondary Utility Storage Area?"
Simon nodded again, then touched a hidden sub-cutaneous control on the wrist of his left suit gauntlet. A 3-D holographic projection of the skyscraper's layout sprang to life above his hand. "When they renovated the building following the Steel Canyon move, only the lower levels were worked on. The upper three stories were left untouched, and the blueprints were modified to reflect all of the changes. The only thing that stayed the same was this stairwell here."
He pointed to a steep, narrow staircase that wound its way up from the secondary maintenance area, halfway up, to the highest floor of the office block. "This stairway starts in a tiny compartment tucked behind the auxiliary equipment room. It's always locked. It leads up to an equally tiny compartment just beneath the SUS area. It leads to a ladder and a hatchway that's welded shut."
Ascendant's face registered confusion. "Why put in an accessway that leads to nowhere?"
"For appearance's sake, so that no one would get the idea that there's something hidden in the building. It's secluded and secured so that few people would ever find it, and those who did couldn't access it. The only reason it was left on the blueprints was so that if anyone checked, they'd find it there and assume that it was simply an unused element of the original building design. If anyone asked about it, they'd simply be told that it led to the SUS area, which as far as anyone knew was not in use, and therefore was simply kept locked."
"So...what's really up there then?"
Wordlessly, Simon deactivated the hologram and looked past the three other heroes, his gaze coming to rest upon the smoke-shrouded spire of the old Tannan Industries tower rising in the distance. "The Upper Room. It's a super-group base - the secret headquarters of the Millennium Paladins."
Chapter 8
Simon hadn't been to the Upper Room in nearly a hundred years. The last time he had walked its dusty halls, he had done it to celebrate the life of the man who had built them. Most of his old groupmates had shown up to speak their piece at Mykal's funeral, many of them people that Simon hadn't seen in years. Given how dangerous their chosen calling was, he had been fairly surprised at just how well-preserved most of them had been. Most of Servant-12's Millennium Paladins had been younger than him, and barring a few empty chairs, he had seen alot of familiar faces. Some of the attendees were people who had actually known Servant a bit better than Simon had, given that they had been part of the M.P.'s closer to the time of their leader's passing. It was a testament to Mykal's dedication and leadership that the Paladins had endured for so long, particularly in light of how rough the group's road had been over the years.
Of course, Mykal Tannan's death by natural causes at the ripe old age of one-hundred and twelve had inevitably meant the death of the Paladins as a fighting force. As was so often the case with groups conceived, founded, and operated by one individual, there had been no one with exactly the same qualities needed to keep the M.P.'s going. Anyone else would have been unable to keep everything exactly the same - but that hadn't really mattered in the end. As much as the former Paladins might've wanted to keep the group alive, they were too loyal to its ideals to risk changing them - even if that meant leaving it to die a quiet death beside its creator.
Templar and a select few others (from 'the old days'), having put away some resources over the years, had arranged to keep the Upper Room preserved for over a century. Unfortunately, Tannan Industries had also eventually folded without Mykal's leadership. Its assets were bought, sold, and traded several times by a number of international corporations, and the M.P. 'old guard' had lost their ability to freely visit the old H.Q. Only Templar, with his unusual longevity and perennial connections, had been able to maintain the trickle of funding needed to keep the Upper Room semi-functional, as well as keep it hidden. Eventually, as his old friends had passed away or disappeared, he had become the only person still living to know of the base's existence and be able to access it; he was the only living, remaining member of the Millennium Paladins in the world.
Then the Scourge War had erupted, consuming the planet in the first act of that final play called Armageddon. Templar's focus had shifted from nostalgic remembrances of old friends to having to bury scores of new ones week after week. There had been no more training regimens, no research projects, no reports to file, and certainly no old shrines to look after. There had only been an unending nightmare, a hellish war that raged interminably on. Simon hadn't known that the old Tannan Industries headquarters or the Upper Room had survived the destruction until now.
A flood of emotions swept through him as he stared up at its haze-shrouded silhouette, none of them useful. He fought the wave back down, trying urgently to keep his thoughts clear. He had a mission to complete, and he couldn't do that by wasting time wallowing in the past.
He keyed his helmet comm. "Sergeant, get the men ready to move out."
Chapter 9
Troops fell in all around Simon as he continued to stare at the skyscraper's weathered and soot-coated facade. The distant sounds of helojet engines mingled with the equally distant echoes of war - crashing, rumbling, weapons fire, and explosions. He was aware of the fact that the active warzone was little more than a mile away, and the Scourge could break through the line at any moment, but he wasn't yet able to move himself forwards in the face of what was ahead. This was a place he had never expected to enter again, and he was about to enter it for the purpose of kicking off what essentially amounted to mass suicide. It was alot for any human being - even a battle-hardened, broad-horizoned two-hundred and twenty-ish one - to come to grips with, especially on a dangerously short timetable such as he faced.
The deafeningly-close roar of jet turbines shook him back into the present, as a dozen other Sleipnirs touched down in close proximity and quick succession. Each transport's set of double hatches slid open, each cabin emptying two dozen Midgardians, a Mjolnir, and an Einherjar onto the Galaxy City streets before touching back off again. The armored soldiers and their heavy assault mechs all bore the same dark green camouflage color scheme on their suits and exoskeletons, but their commanding officers were anything but identical. Each Einherjar's armor was unique, running the spectrum from green, blue, and red to gray, silver, and gold. Some had visors on their helmets, others scopes; some of the suits' armor plating was smooth and curved, others' sharp and angular. Each wielded a variety of different melee weapons; some dual-wielding, while others carried shields.
Simon knew them all, the fifteen other leaders of the Order each named after a different Norse god of the Aesir or Vanir: Odin, Thor, Tyr, Balder, Freyr, Forseti, Hermiod, Heimdall, Frigg, Njord, Skaadi, Freyja, Uller, Sif, and Lytir. It had been hundreds of years since all four full Circles had been active at once, and over a millennia since they had all fought together as a single unit. A century earlier, a miraculous discovery of alien technology had enabled the Einherjar to reactivate the suits that had fallen dormant in the interceding sixteen-hundred years. After their users had been slain without ensuring the availability of a viable replacement, the suits' unique control systems had quickly decayed and lost function without a compatible human mind to interface with. The Balder, Njord, and Uller-Aspect armors had been little more than hallway decorations for centuries at the time of Simon's recruitment, and his own armor had been on the brink of obsolescence when he had first taken it up. It had been Simon's exceptional work in Paragon City that had finally opened the way to restoring the defunct armors, and had come just in time to prevent the Skaadi-Aspect armor from suffering that fate.
It was unbelievable to think that the Einherjar had been fighting the Scourge since the sixth century A.D., and yet they had only developed the technology to build their Order into what it was a few hundred years ago. While the armor they wore had enhanced their minds as well as their bodies, they still had to wait for Western civilization to develop the knowledge and understanding and industrial capacity needed to build the tools that were required. The Order had helped kick off the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution, but they had still been centuries in the making. Simon could only imagine how frustrating it must have been, having the notion of reverse-engineering the original Sixteen armors into something that could be mass-produced for ordinary humans, only to realize that the technology to do it would not be developed for hundreds of years. The Scourge, on the other hand, had apparently arrived on Earth with their core technological advantage - the ability to turn ordinary humans into enslaved, cybernetic husks - already in their possession, giving them the ability to infiltrate, subvert, corrupt, and control the primitive, Dark Age European society with ease. And yet, once the great technological innovations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had been realized, the Einherjar had not only adopted the new technologies immediately, they had been able to refine them into far superior versions that the rest of the world would not come close to duplicating until the aftermath of the Rikti War. They had even been able to harness the power of molecular nanotechnology to devise the ultimate defensive implement against the Scourge, creating - for all intents and purposes - a vaccine against the Scourge cyber-enslavement technology.
As incredible as the anti-Scourge nanotech had been, however, it had also gotten the Order (and the world) to where it was today. Faced with the obsolescence of their most potent technology, the Scourge had shifted tactics, striking openly against corporations and governments in order to secure resources for a devastating new avenue of study. The current numberless horde of nightmarishly-mutated Scourge Thralls had been the result. Strong, fast, innumerable, and difficult to kill, these mindless, genetically-engineered killing machines had swarmed over every force sent to oppose them with sheer numbers and savage ferocity. The Scourge's devastating ability to infiltrate and subvert had given them access to the most vital regions of the world, undermining individual governments' ability to resist and sapping the major military organizations of their combat power. With such a large percentage of the world's superheroes at least fractionally integrated into Vanguard's command structure, their lack of initial intelligence (due largely in part to their rivalry with the much older Order) had prevented most of Earth's heroes from fighting the Scourge on anything more than a local level.
By the time the multi-national defense forces realized what was happening, it was too late - the Scourge had gained too many footholds to be thrown back. They had timed their assaults perfectly, using the still-constant threat of Praetorian incursions and Rikti Restructurist raids to their advantage, waiting until significant numbers of heroes and the bulk of Vanguard's QRF were pre-occupied dealing with the invaders. In spite of everything, the Order still fell prey to the Scourge's greatest advantage - the ability to remain hidden and strike without warning - and could do little more than react to reports of Scourge attack. Despite the size, technology, and combat capability of their paramilitary forces, the Order alone could not stop the sheer weight of the enemy's offensive. Individual forces were swiftly annihilated as they were surrounded and subjected to brutal wave attacks. In many cases, the Scourge forces suffered horrific losses as they threw their forces into the teeth of better-trained and equipped opponents. Such bloodbaths meant absolutely nothing to the Scourge, however, who simply sent their completely expendable thralls charging headlong into battle with no more than a second thought. Slowly but surely, one by one, the forces of the Rikti, Crey, Nemesis, Arachnos, Malta Group, NATO, and even Vanguard were smashed, beaten, and mercilessly destroyed.
Now, it seemed, that even the extra-planar regions had been overrun and taken out of commission. DJ Zero had initially opened up his domain for use as a transit hub and emergency triage center, but the constant traffic in and out had apparently generated some sort of opening that the Scourge had been able to exploit. Eventually even his ability to keep his own realm secure had been compromised, forcing him to shut down all the gateways completely simply to keep the enemy out. The forces in the Shadow Shard had been eradicated with little effort, the various disconnected islands reduced to nothing by a volley of antimatter-enhanced nuclear warheads.
In spite of all of the power and resources under the control of the Menders of Ouroboros, even they had been unable to repel the endless waves of Scourge thralls. For whatever reason, the ability to manipulate time had not allowed the Menders to stay ahead of the Scourge assault, and now it seemed as though the entire dimension had been wiped from existence in a storm of antimatter fire. The Order didn't know how the Scourge had managed to outflank even the supposedly all-seeing Menders, but it was too late to figure it out now. Simon simply hoped that the scattered pieces of Ouroboros' technology that remained intact on Earth were still functioning, or his mission would fail before it had even begun.
He and his entire Order were strolling into their very own Ragnarok - the question now was whether or not the world would be remade after it was over.
