20062002
5)The Enemy of my Enemy could still be my Enemy

The plateau formed a "natural" border, a physical deterrence to the demons. Earthquakes shook the city when the hellgates opened, creating a new landscape that made the city unrecognizable in some places. I prefer that to finding an area that is "normal." Subconsciously I believe I'm safer in a house or man-made building, which has led to some ugly encounters in the past. I'm lucky to be alive; the suits were not nearly as refined in those days.

Dahvid and I move along tentatively, weapons at the ready down a street with asphalt torn to shreds and stone and brick from collapsed buildings strewn across our path. Regardless of how finely-tuned the suit scanners are, we get surprised all the time. I was once again wielding my Nodachi, holding it off to my right side and pointing back. Dahvid has switched his rifle to full-auto for the close quarters, aiming from the hip.

"Are you picking anything up?" I whisper to Dahvid, unable to trust the suit's sound dampener. We keep moving forward to where the last scouts reported activity. Our HUDs displayed a minimap based on the scout helmets' smart cards. The last activity was on our current position.

"No... not exactly. Every now and then I get a spike on the Geiger counter. You see that?"

I bring up my Geiger meter and spectrometer and note the random spikes to the immediate North West of our position, about twenty feet away. It isn’t a demon signature… but it doesn’t have any spectromic signature at all. I look around with every light filter built into the suit but read no movement or heat signature except from the small fires that still run rampant throughout the city.

“Maybe it’s a downed suit…?” I say, looking for any explanation that isn’t a new kind of demon.

“We don’t have reports of anyone downed in this sector, not that weren’t reclaimed…”

Just like that, the readings stopped.

“We’ve got harpies to deal with, we’ll look around on the way back. Probably…” I knew we probably won’t have a chance to check on the way back. We often were sprinting for our lives if we were going back to base.

We keep walking northward down the street, and I notice how even more of the buildings were destroyed now than the last time we were here, and almost all the doors were blocked off or collapsed in. The demons don’t seem to like when we duck into buildings for cover or retreat. They are often too big or unwieldy to maneuver indoors. Occasionally, I step around a dresser or bathtub that is sitting in the middle of the street. We would sometimes come out for salvage runs when we found something really useful.

The street made a sharp left-hand turn, where the building on the corner was toppled into the “elbow” providing excellent cover. Dahvid walked silently up to the edge of the building and scoped around it with his rifle. I primed my boot thrusters and scaled the wall with my trajectory computer.

“Two harpies to the right- three to the left, I can’t see past there. I’ve got a clear shot to the right. Go. Now!”

His suit transmitted the information to mine nearly instantaneously, and as he began to fire *Buzzuzzuzzuzzuzz* I leap over him and the wall to land in the middle of three surprised harpies. A harpy is a mix between a human female and a bat, about four feet tall. On fire.

I slice the first of a pair clear in half with a baseball bat style swing. The second of the pair loses a leg as it leaps into the air with a scream like that of a strangling hawk. The third, stunned up until this moment, lets out a nails-on-chalkboard fire breathing scream as it leaps at my face. I can feel the heat even through the suit, but manage to duck the razor sharp talons. As it passes over my back, I bring Dawn in a full arc from underneath my body into an overhead cleave that sees the removal of one of the creature’s wings and drives it to the ground. I quickly “put out” its head like a cigarette, with an over sized boot. Dahvid fires at the one that got away, but fails to hit it with his weapon in automatic mode. By the time he switches it to single-shot, the beast has descended into the buildings.

“That’s not going to be good,” I say, wishing I’d managed to kill it.

“Damn, we gotta get outta here. Dammit…” he says as he fires a few rounds into his already downed foes out of frustration.

“There should have been more harpies here, though. What happened to the rest of them?” I say, knowing he has as little of an idea as I do. As we search the area for clues we find several freshly perforated and mangled harpy corpses. “This doesn’t make any-”

Before I finish what I am saying, we hear a guttural laughing from around the next turn in the city streets. We watch as five minions appear from around the bend about 70 feet away. They are speaking in demonic as they approach. Three of the minions have the biggest stalkers I’ve ever seen attached by a large metal leash to their shoulders, like they are walking their dogs. Minions are humanoid in shape- the text in our briefings read: “…hulking, brutish creatures with a disturbing mouthful of razor-sharp teeth for a head.... Minions employ demon-crafted weaponry that attaches directly to the ends of their arms, replacing their hands in some cases…”

We had fought one at a time before, but these odds did not look good. The one-legged harpy flies close by them, approximating a laugh, seeming gleeful at our imminent demise. The minion closest the harpy suddenly cut it from the sky. That explained the other corpses. Bigger demons do whatever they want.

“We can’t take all five, can we? Or run? ” I ask, knowing he’s a better strategist.

“Maybe. But not with the stalkers. They’d be on us in a second.”

I take out my tempest rifle, and begin the words of a fireshield spell. Dahvid switches over to his cluster rifle and chants an accuracy mantra. We take what cover we can and wait as they walk into optimal range.

“It’s been fun, huh?”

“As fun as hell,” he says with a chuckle, even now.

The Geiger counter was reading at full.