Dan’s relief was palpable when the walkie talkie chirped at them. Jennifer and him had only been stuck in the tree for a couple of days, but the environment was beyond rank. The Imperial troops only came by firing spells into the canopy once or twice more, but both of them were reluctant to leave their hiding spot. If there were any Lythals in the patrols, Dan knew that they would be detected the minute they touched the jungle floor, due to their delightful aroma.
Lythals or no, the two of them could be identified by anyone downwind, a fact that the cramped quarters of the hollowed out tree made readily apparent.
“This is Thrush, over,” he said quietly into the walkie talkie, Jennifer stirring and making eye contact with him across the cramped space of their impromptu tree fort.
“Thrush,” Abe’s voice acknowledged with a slight crackle of static. “We heard back from the Coalition. The attack is scheduled tomorrow at sunrise. Can you tell me what the situation looks like on your end, over?”
“Not really, actually,” Dan chuckled. “Jennifer and I are camped in a tree with a near-constant stream of enemy forces moving below us. They seem to have some idea of where we are, but they haven’t been able to pinpoint us exactly. The minute we climb down from here, they will be on our trail, over.”
“Well that sounds like a lot of fun.” Abe’s voice was heavy with forced cheer. “I had something like that happen to me in Afghanistan. It was only a couple days before they could get a chopper in, but it was stressful as all hell. The best thing you can do is stay put and stay alive, over.”
“You sound a lot like Jennifer, over.” Dan made eye contact with the smirking woman while he smiled.
“Listen to her,” Abe laughed. “She’s a smart girl.”
The soldier trailed off. Dan waited in silence for him to finish his thought. Jennifer frowned slightly as the seconds dragged on.
“Over,” Abe finally said, his voice strained.
“Abe,” Dan’s voice was inquisitive. “You wanted to say something there. What was it? You can’t leave me hanging like that, over.”
“Look,” Abe whispered hastily through the walkie talkie, “you didn’t hear this from me, and I don’t know how much I can actually tell you, but I owe you one.”
There was a brief pause from Abe, and then a low chuckle through the walkie talkie.
“Hell,” he continued, “I’m pretty sure I owe you two. You saved all of our asses when we captured that elf, and from what you’re saying, it sounds like you’ve pre-saved thousands of lives in the upcoming assault.”
“The initial assault on the marine camp wasn’t as bad as we thought at first, Dan.” Abe sighed into the walkie talkie. “A lot of people died, but a lot more just ran away from the forest. It took a couple hours, but the Brazilian air force and some American long-range bombers pounded the elves pretty hard. Once our troops had a day to catch their breath, they pushed the elves almost entirely back into the forest. A lot of people that we thought were dead are here, and not all of them are friendly with you. It sounds like Colonel Bowman is going to be leading the initial assault.”
Dan chewed his lip as he mulled over Abe’s words. It was true that Bowman didn’t like him. As best he could tell, the Colonel thought of him as some sort of traitor, in league with Ibis to undermine America. Still, the man should have enough professionalism to put those feelings aside for the sake of the mission.
“He really doesn’t like you, Dan,” Abe’s voice darkened. “I’ve only heard rumors, but it sounds like he blames you for the surprise attack. He’s ranting about how you must be some sort of traitor. Only a couple squads like ours stayed in the forest, and every one of them was ordered to try and grab an elf. We were the only team that succeeded. The rest didn’t report in and are presumed missing. Rather than praise you, he’s trying to make it sound like a conspiracy, over.”
“How would that even work?” Dan asked incredulously. “For some reason, I decided to succeed where the rest of his squads had failed just to spite Bowman, over?”
“Apparently he’s been telling people that the elves grabbed you when you were off planet and made you one of them,” the other man answered grimly. “That you’ve been tipping them off to our actions, and your ‘successes’ have been pre-arranged to lull us into a false sense of security.”
“Fuck,” Dan replied, Jennifer nodding at him. “Has anything else come down regarding me? Anything from Ibis? If I’m just going to catch a bullet in the back, I’m not sure that it makes sense for me to be part of the attack, over.”
Abe snorted unhappily. ”There haven’t been any official orders. Hell, this is just rumors from some of the other Starshield troops that showed up to the staging area, but they didn’t see you out there fighting the Tellask. I did. I know you aren’t pulling anything, and this all doesn’t sit right with me. Just… watch yourself, Dan. The Colonel is out for blood, and you shouldn’t give him an excuse, over.”
Dan put the walkie talkie down and leaned back against the interior of the tree. This was exactly what he needed. After hiding in a cramped hole, reeking of waste and body odor, an army officer looking for an excuse to mess with him was exactly the capstone his week needed.
“I wanted to bring this up under better circumstances.” Jennifer looked at him with concern as she chewed on her upper lip. “Look. My Dad is General Finch, Colonel Bowman’s commanding officer. Me speaking up for you on my own won’t be enough to get you out of trouble.”
Jennifer broke eye contact, wrapping her arms around her knees as she brought them to her chest. “We haven’t seen eye to eye in a while. He’s a relic, and more than a little bit of a stubborn asshole, but he’s my Dad. If I let him know that you’ve saved my life multiple times, he’ll at least hear you out. As far as I can tell, you’re as much a victim of Ibis as anyone else, and yet you’re still here helping out. So long as you don’t do anything idiotic in the attack, there shouldn’t be anything Bowman can do to you.”
“Finch.” Dan slapped the side of his head with his palm. “Of course.”
“Thank you.” He smiled. “Really. Despite everything else going wrong on this stupid trip, I’ve enjoyed getting to know you. As for Bowman, thank you for the offer. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
“By the way,” she smiled, a sly levity returning to her face, “You know, Dan, this isn’t how I envisioned it. Two heroes, preparing for the battle to reclaim their planet. All of that could be straight from a TV show. That said, no one warned me that we’d both be sweaty and literally covered in our own shit as we made those preparations. Just not as cinematic, I guess.”
“If I had a pillow, I would throw it at you,” Dan replied evenly as he adjusted his back against the tree and closed his eyes.
Climbing down the tree in the dark the next morning was incredibly painful. Even with the System preventing his muscles from atrophying too much, Dan’s body ached as he stretched it for the first time in days. Briefly, he wished for a water attunement stone. Even if he couldn’t do much with water mana, being able to drench himself would be a blessing. As things stood, even partially noseblind from his days stuck in close quarters, he wasn’t anywhere near happy with his state of hygiene.
He carefully reached down to cut out another handhold with the enchanted blade before reaching down with his free hand. Meanwhile, with the help of her force magic, Jennifer practically walked down the tree. It must help to have incredibly sharp magic knives built into her hands, feet, and if need be, torso. Finally, he reached the jungle floor and glanced grumpily at where Jennifer cheerfully did some light calisthenics. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Dan joined her. The last thing he needed was a cramp during conflict.
Together, they slipped through the jungle toward the landing site. About a half day later, skirting patrols from either side, Dan and Jennifer were within sight of the enemy base. The crystals embedded in the base of the towers glowed a light blue in the moonlight, illuminating the fairly numerous Imperial troops at their base. Apparently, the Tellask had learned their lesson from Jennifer and Dan’s raid and large numbers of infantry protected the towers from foreign interference.
Concern tingled in the back of Dan’s mind. His changes to the runescripting shouldn’t have been noticeable to anyone but an expert, and the elves had no reason to test the enchantments. The sabotage should have gone unnoticed, chalked up to nothing more than a failed infiltration attempt.
As low as the chance was, discovery would be disastrous. Dan could just imagine a beam of energy tearing through charging infantry and melting the jungle soil to glass while another tower fired pulses of gravity magic, crushing tanks like old tin cans.
His morbid thoughts were interrupted as artillery shells began to land. The only warning was a slight whistling, and then a brilliant bloom of fire erupted from a patch of empty air ten feet from the side of one of the towers. A half second later, a series of explosions lit up the pre-dawn as more rounds hit the enemy camp.
Dan frowned. Each of the towers had a spellshield, and one powerful enough to stop heavy fire. From the enemy base, a solitary bell began clanging, only to soon be joined by two more. More shells whistled through the air as the Imperial troops frantically tried to bunch in close to the towers to take advantage of their shields.
No one moved from the woods as the second volley either impacted fruitlessly on the spellshields or blew giant furrows in the dirt around the towers. From the South, Dan heard the sound of helicopter rotors. Rather than turn around, he kept his eyes trained on the towers. The crystals on the tops of the towers rotated slightly, aiming a previously-unnoticed concave section covered in runes at the horizon behind Dan. Then they pulsed with mana. The mana forges beneath them surged in response, generating enough energy that their light rivaled the explosions from the artillery.
Dan held his breath as the chains of runes on the side of the towers lit up, smoothly transferring the energy from the forges up to the focusing crystals atop the towers. Silently, he found himself mouthing a brief prayer. If his sabotage didn’t work, the oncoming helicopters were already dead.
The first tower exploded in a gout of blue flame, consuming the crowd of Imperial soldiers clustered around its base. For a second, it lit up like a cobalt sun as the energy of the mana forge ran wild due to Dan’s sabotage, and then it was gone, an azure mushroom cloud in its wake. Then the second and the third seemed to explode at the same time. For a second, the spellshield encompassing the massive fortifications of the landing site itself glowed, only for the third nearest them to fade away.
As the sun peeked over the horizon, its light shone upon a trio of massive craters burning with an unearthly blue light. The few remaining Imperials were those blown clear of the towers when they exploded. Their keening was almost immediately drowned out as a quintet of gunships stormed over the treeline in a rush of wind.
Rockets rained down on the landing sites walls, blowing massive holes into them. Occasionally, a massive crossbow bolt would fly back at the helicopters from guard stations positioned across the wall only for the helicopters to rip the emplacements apart with 30mm fire in retaliation. Even when a crossbow bolt hit a helicopter and exploded, it just rocked the helicopter. Without heavier spells or full-on ballistas, the helicopters were staying in the air.
The artillery switched targets, and explosions erupted from the fortified city. Occasionally, a shell would be fired too far and would glance off the top of the spellshield dome around the landing site. Still, as gouts of smoke began to rise from the interior of the city, it was clear that bringing down the three towers had taken out the quadrant of the shield facing them.
The treeline to either side of Dan and Jennifer erupted in a cheer and soldiers began sprinting across the open ground toward the Tellask base. Dan looked over at Jennifer and shrugged. Almost as one, they joined the rest of the infantry in running across the pitted and uneven field. Adjusting his mana expenditure, he kept his armor rune, spellshield, and spatial shield on full. Jennifer and him might not be the absolute first people into the landing site, but he wanted to be ready for any trap he might be unlucky enough to run into.
Already, through the holes in the city walls, he could see human Imperials riding what appeared to be gigantic six-legged bears rushing toward the opening. Whatever they were, the 30mm cannon on an Apache was more than enough to deal with them as a handful of the bears were almost bisected by a swooping gunship.
From deeper in the city, a pair of wyverns threw themselves into the air with a reptilian screech. Even from a distance, Dan could make out the elven forms standing on their backs, hair streaming in the wind as they raced toward the coalition forces. Surprise had bought them a foothold in the enemy landing site, now it was time to see if they had the strength of arms to keep it.
