Ragnarok

SIXTY-THREE

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

4 November, 0300 Hrs

The enormous hangar doors disguised to look like shaded rock from the exterior split down the middle, revealing a chaotic battle that looked to King like Hell on Earth. Hidden motors concealed in the walls churned as the doors retracted on wheels set into a track in the floor of the huge space. A gust of wind blew a swirl of snow into the incredible scene before him.

The room was gigantic, and it held a sparkling energy portal one-hundred feet high. The glowing orb threw lightning and disgorged dire wolves as if they were jumping off a truck on the other side. A huge metal cage held the portal in place like an eight-digit hand holding a ball. In front of the sphere, a pile of dire wolf bodies impeded the newly arriving monsters like a barricade of sandbags. Beck’s MP5 spat bullets at the creatures. Queen stood off to the side, covered in white fluid, like liquid marshmallow, firing a handgun at any of the beasts that got close.

Rook and some woman King didn’t know ran toward him as he stepped into the gunsmoke clouding the air. Black Six was off to the side of the hangar doors, where he had operated the controls to let them in.

“Get down!” King leveled an FN-SCAR rifle and fired. Rook and the woman dove to the side, hitting the floor and rolling away. As the dire wolves clambered over the pile of dead, King’s shots riddled their bodies until they slipped down the front of the pile or added to the top of it. A river of white blood seeped from the carrion heap, sliding across the concrete floor as slow moving rivulets.

King wore the black and gray impact armor, but no helmet. He was armed to the teeth with rifles, handguns on both hips and a bandolier of grenades across his chest. Deep Blue stood to King’s left, wearing his battered black impact armor and his futuristic black helmet that made him look like he was ready to ride a motorcycle in a Japanese Shoei commercial. The man took up firing right alongside him.

To King’s right stood Matt Carrack, wearing an arctic white version of the impact armor, with one of the matching white padded helmets. The five security soldiers armed in the white impact suits, carried rifles, heavy machine guns and even a few grenade launchers. Even Reggie, White Eight, their weapons expert, was suited up in one of the armored suits, but like King, without a helmet. Instead, he wore huge red and black ear muffs King had seen him use on the firing range back at Endgame headquarters.

They all opened fire and the sound was deafening in the echoing chamber.

Beck ran around the field of fire and up to the group. Her face showed that she understood what the absence of Knight and Bishop meant. Reggie supplied her with weapons and ammunition.

Reggie quickly supplied Queen, Rook and the woman with him, with a new MP5 and three extra magazines each. No words were exchanged. Just action. But even if they had tried to speak, the sound of ceaseless gunfire would have drowned out their voices.

Dire wolves continued to flow from the portal, but were met by a wall of projectiles that was impossible to pass through. And each new corpse slowed the advance of those just arriving. The floor was so cluttered with dead that King doubted the creatures could get up to speed, even without the bullets. The perfect bottleneck.

Rook staggered back against the wall, using it to prop himself up. He fired his newly acquired MP5 one handed, his other arm hanging limp at his shoulder.

Queen stayed close to the new arrivals, squatting to the floor and taking up a classic kneeling firing stance. The White security team members began to fan out to the sides, to catch any stray dire wolves that escaped the main fusillade of bullets blasting at the center front of the portal. One of the men was armed with a grenade launcher attachment under his FN-SCAR rifle and fired several shots inside the center of the portal.

The onslaught of dire wolves increased until the rate of fire wasn’t enough and more of them slipped past the bullets, several coming through the portal already airborne, as though flung from the other side. Their sleek muscular white bodies leapt and hopped to the sides of the fray. They got close enough to two of the White team members to attack. The first one leapt onto White Four, throwing him to the ground and tearing at the man’s armored suit. King knew it was Four by his size-short and stocky, the new White Four was a nice guy, but everyone had kept their distance. The last several White security team members had been killed in action when GenY, Richard Ridley’s former security force, attacked the New Hampshire base. King blasted the creature on top of Four with a concentrated burst and it fell to the side, but the man didn’t get up.

Another dire wolf ripped into the man with the grenade launcher, and the weapon skittered across the slick concrete, stopping near where the portal ate into the floor. The man pulled his sidearm and fired several shots, but the dire wolf hacked and clawed at him until one of his armored arms came loose with a pop. The creature flung the arm and it landed with a thump and a wet splat in front of Queen’s kneeling stance. She adjusted her aim and unloaded until the magazine went dry. The creature shook as she perforated its long body with 9 mm slugs. She reloaded and moved the sights of her weapon back to the oncoming wave of white muscled bodies, before the dead beast hit the floor.

The woman King didn’t know hung back, firing her weapon at any target that stood still long enough for her to see it. She’s a pretty good shot, whoever she is. Deep Blue and the others took positions around the room, a few lying down, a few standing and others kneeling like Queen.

One of the White security members set up a tripod, and Reggie loaded an M2 with its chain-fed. 50 caliber death. The gun overpowered the sound of all the other weapons in the room. The metallic booming of the M2 sent the oversized bullets across the room, ripping into the dire wolf hordes as they emerged.

Blood sprayed.

Limbs severed.

Rook ducked to the floor near the man dealing death with the big machine gun. He picked up a rifle from a pile near the man. It was an M-16-the standard US infantry rifle-but this one had the M203 grenade launcher attachment on the underside of its barrel. “Fuckin-A!”

Rook targeted a huge metal strut that supported the portal. It had a section that had lots of electrical cables and more than the normal amount of the metal receptor plates that ran up its length. The 40 mm grenade shot out of the launcher tube and arced through the room, smashing into the concrete base of the metal upright, just as Rook fired another grenade at a second upright.

The first metal arm sheared off completely and fell inward, swallowed by the glowing ball of light. The other strut’s base exploded into fragments and the strut fell backward. Each explosion dwarfed the M2’s din and filled the air with a ball of orange flame and a column of dark smoke. The detonations startled everyone and the shooting paused, as the metal support struts collapsed. Even the dire wolves paused and cocked their alien heads, looking upward at the damage.

“I told you I’d break that fucker.” Rook said. “I-”

The sphere of energy, no longer fully contained by the metal cage, bulged suddenly forward and upward, like a water balloon that had been squeezed hard on one side. When it hit the ceiling of the massive lab room, it ate right through, as though it had encountered nothing but more air. The front portion of the roof collapsed toward the team. Great chunks of stone and strips of steel crumbled from the ceiling, now open to the sky.

Rook watched the debris falling toward them. “Aww, shit.”