The three days following the Odyssey massacre were not lived. They were endured.
Humanity, which had been united for a fleeting 48 hours in awe and then a further two hours in joy, was now bound by a single, paralyzing emotion: shellshock. The static that had replaced Colonel Griffin's final, brutalized image was a psychic wound. It played on every channel, a constant, hissing reminder.
The world was bamboozled. It was the only word. Even the most hardened, dense government structures, designed to absorb the unthinkable, were shattered. Annihilation was one thing. A solar flare, a nuclear war, a meteor—these were concepts, however terrifying, that humanity had models for.
There was no model for elves.
There was no diplomatic cable to send to a creature from a fantasy novel. There was no psychological profile for a being that looked like a wood nymph and killed like a sociopath. Religions were silent, their ancient books offering no solace or explanation for this. Science was a joke. The greatest minds at GDI, NATO, and the UN weren't debating countermeasures. They were sitting in hollow, stunned silence, re-watching the 124 minutes of the LEIB broadcast, particularly the last 30 seconds, on a continuous, morbid loop.
How do you wage war against a fairy tale?
General McCaffrey, in a dark, secure video conference, summed it up to the hollow-eyed faces of the GDI command. "We have spent 60 years and 100 trillion dollars planning for a war with men. We built missiles to hit silos, jets to shoot jets, and tanks to kill tanks. Gentlemen... we are now, officially, in a war against... elves. I don't know what to tell my men to shoot at. And I don't know what to tell the public to be afraid of. We... are in the dark."
And then, on the third day, the enemy, in its infinite, unknowable cruelty, turned on the lights.
DECEMBER 26, 2011. 10:17 AM (ISRAEL STANDARD TIME)
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL
The anchor for Israel's Channel 12 News, Yonit Levi, was in the middle of a somber report about the global day of mourning. Her face was grim. "World leaders remain in seclusion, and here in Jerusalem, a silent vigil was held at the Western W—"
She was cut off. Her professional demeanor broke, her eyes widening as she listened to her earpiece.
"Yonit, I... I apologize," she stammered, live on air. "We are getting... we are getting... reports. Unconfirmed. Of a... a significant atmospheric disturbance over the Old City. We are going live to our reporter on the ground, Talit Cohen. Talit? What are you seeing?"
The feed switched. The image was shaky, the sound a howl of wind and a rising murmur of panicked voices. The reporter, Talit Cohen, a young woman in a press vest, was holding her microphone in a white-knuckled grip. She was near the Jaffa Gate, pointing her cameraman up.
"Yonit, I... I don't know what I'm looking at!" she shouted over the growing din. "The sky! Look at the sky!"
The camera panned up. Above the ancient, golden-hued stones of the Old City, above the sacred ground of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the sky was... tearing.
It looked like a heat haze at first, a shimmer. But it was growing, darkening, congealing. It wasn't blue. It was a deep, sickly, throbbing violet. A murmur in the crowd of confused tourists and locals turned into a wave of screams as the shimmer tore open, revealing a perfect, circular hole of churning, non-light. It was a portal. A screaming, violet wound in the fabric of the heavens.
"It's... it's a hole!" Talit cried. "People are running! The Mishteret... the police are trying to..."
From the hole, they came.
They were not elves. They were not beautiful.
The first to emerge were creatures of pure, reptilian malice. They had long, serpentine necks, leathery wings that snapped in the air, and the heads of crocodiles. They were small, perhaps the size of a large horse, but they moved with a horrifying, darting speed. Wyverns. And on their backs were riders.
The riders were humanoid, but thick, brutal. They were encased in jagged, overlapping plates of what looked like black, unpolished iron. Their helmets were horned, their visors thin, vertical slits.
"Oh my God..." Talit whispered, her voice cracking. "Elohim! Elohim!"
The lead wyvern rider raised a gauntleted fist. He pointed down at the plaza. The wyvern's throat swelled, and it breathed.
It was not a puff of flame. It was a torrent. A focused, liquid jet of fire, like a military flamethrower, washed over the plaza. It struck a police car, which detonated instantly. It struck a row of vendor stalls, which vanished in a whoosh of white-hot fire. It struck a group of Mishteret Yisrael officers, their light-blue shirts instantly blackened, their bodies falling as burning, screaming torches.
The illusion of civilization, already thin, evaporated. The plaza became a pandemonium of animal panic.
Talit's cameraman, a hero, kept filming as she pulled him back. "Run! Assaf, run! We have to..."
The feed was chaotic, a blur of screaming faces, ancient stone, and fire from the sky. We saw a lone police officer, his face a mask of terror, unholstering his IWI Jericho 941 pistol. He fired—pop, pop, pop—the 9mm rounds useless against the scaled hide of the diving beast. The wyvern snapped him up in its jaws, its teeth crunching through his vest, and flung his body against the wall of the Tower of David.
The news anchor, Yonit, was just screaming in the studio.
But the police weren't routed. The footage, now from a different, more stable news camera, found a new squad. A Yasam team—the Special Patrol Unit—spilled from an armored van. They were not armed with pistols. They were professionals.
"Esh! Esh! (Fire! Fire!)" a sergeant yelled, bringing his M4 carbine to his shoulder. He and his team opened up. The sharp, distinct crack-crack-crack of 5.56mm rifles echoed off the ancient stones.
"L'rosh! L'rosh! (For the head!)" another officer screamed, bracing against a wall. "Tir, tir, tir! (Shoot!)"
They were missing. The wyverns were too fast, their movements too alien. The bullets were spanging off the jagged black armor of the riders, who seemed to shrug off the impacts. The officers were stressed, terrified, their training failing against an enemy that shouldn't exist.
"This is hopeless!" the sergeant yelled into his radio, ducking as a wyvern's shadow passed over him. "This is Yasam-1! We are under attack! Hostiles... hostiles are not human! They are airborne! They are breathing fire! We need Tzahal! (IDF) We need air support! Code Aleph! I repeat, Code Aleph, Jerusalem is under attack!"
The military response was, for the first time in three days, not bamboozled. It was immediate. It was violent.
HATZOR AIRBASE, 20 KILOMETERS WEST OF JERUSALEM
The scramble alarm wasn't a horn; it was a digital shriek that cut through the entire base. Pilots from 101 "First Fighter" Squadron were sprinting across the tarmac, ripping off their G-suit covers as they ran.
Major Eitan "Raptor" Cohen, a 28-year-old veteran, vaulted into the cockpit of his F-16I Sufa. His ground chief was already strapping him in, his face pale.
"What is it?" Eitan yelled over the whine of the auxiliary power unit. "A Syrian MiG? A drone?"
"Sir, just... just look!" the ground chief screamed, pointing east. Even from 20km away, they could see the pillar of black smoke rising from Jerusalem. "Control says... God, sir, they say 'dragons.' They're saying dragons!"
Eitan's blood ran cold. He'd seen the Odyssey feed. "You're kidding me."
"No, sir! Code Aleph! Go! Go!"
In less than three minutes, four F-16s were screaming down the runway, their afterburners kicking in with a deafening roar. In the cockpit, Eitan's wingman, "Raptor-2," came over the comms, his voice tight with disbelief.
"Raptor-1, lead, what are we even... are we cleared for weapons-hot over the city?"
"Lead just said 'neutralize unknown threats.' That's all I know," Eitan replied, his eyes scanning the sky. "Keep your head on a swivel. If it's not one of ours, it's hostile."
They were over Jerusalem in less than 60 seconds.
"Raptor-1, visual!" Eitan's voice was pure, shocked adrenaline. "I... I see them. Below me, ten o'clock. They're... shit, they're exactly what he said. They look like... small dragons. Ten... no, twelve of them. They're engaging ground targets."
"Tower, this is Raptor-1," he barked, his training taking over. "I have visual on twelve unknown airborne hostiles, confirming... biologicals. They are slow-moving, looks like 80 knots. Requesting immediate engagement, guns only. I do not want to use a missile over the Old City."
The reply from the GDI-linked command was instant, cold, and clear. "Raptor-1, you are weapons-hot. Annihilate them. All of them."
"Raptor-2, you take the south cluster. I'm rolling in on the north. Guns, guns, guns."
Eitan banked his Sufa hard, the 9-G turn pushing him deep into his seat. His HUD (Heads-Up Display) struggled to lock onto the low-heat, slow-moving targets. He bypassed it, switching to manual gunnery.
The lead wyvern rider, deep in its fire-breathing run, looked up. Its beast saw the F-16, a 33,000-pound metal spear, screaming down at it at 400 knots.
The wyvern did something impossible. It breathed fire at the jet.
"Whoa!" Raptor-2 yelled as the fireball dissipated a hundred meters in front of his cockpit. "He shot fire at me! Eitan, he shot fire!"
Eitan was ice. His thumb moved to the red trigger on his joystick. "Don't care. Firing."
He squeezed.
The M61 Vulcan cannon, a 20mm, six-barreled gatling gun mounted in the F-16's port wing, erupted. The sound was not a 'bang.' It was a terrifying BRRRRRRRRRRRT, a sound like a giant tearing a mountain in half, as it spat out 100 high-explosive incendiary rounds per second.
The stream of 20mm shells, each the size of a large banana, struck the lead wyvern.
It did not die. It detonated.
The high-explosive rounds turned the biological creature and its iron-clad rider into a fine red mist, a crimson firework against the blue sky.
"Splash one!" Eitan yelled, pulling up hard. "Target... target completely disintegrated. All wings, engage at will!"
The sky over Jerusalem turned into a one-sided slaughter. The fantasy creatures, so terrifying to the men on the ground, were a joke to a 21st-century air-superiority fighter. They were slow, unarmored, and had no countermeasures.
Raptor-2 lined up on another. BRRRRRT. The wyvern's wing was torn off, and it and its rider tumbled, screaming, to crash into the Temple Mount.
BRRRRT. Another. BRRRRT. Another.
In ninety seconds, the sky was clear.
"Raptor-1 to Tower. All airborne hostiles are... neutralized. The sky is clear. But... we have hostiles on the ground. Lots of them. They're all over the Old City."
The ground warriors, who had descended from the portal while their air cover was being vaporized, were a different problem. They were massive, eight-foot-tall brutes, their skin a sickly green-grey. Orcs. They were armed with crude, massive axes and swords, and they were charging the Yasam police line.
The 5.56mm rounds from the M4s were staggering them, but not stopping them. One brute, arrows stuck in its thick hide like porcupine quills (from where, no one knew), charged the police barricade. It swung its axe, cleaving an officer's carbine—and the arm holding it—in two.
"Back! Get back!" the sergeant screamed.
Then, they heard a new sound. A deep, guttural THWOMP-THWOMP-THWOMP.
Two AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters, callsigns "Gunship-1" and "Gunship-2," rose over the buildings, their dark green forms like predatory insects.
"Gunship-1, we see hostiles engaging police, Jaffa Gate," the co-pilot/gunner reported, his eye pressed to the TADS (Target Acquisition and Designation Sight). "They're... they're using swords. This is... I don't know what I'm looking at. Are those... orcs?"
The pilot was dry. "Doesn't matter. They're hostile. Engaging with 30-mil."
The Apache's nose-mounted M230 30mm chain gun, slaved to the gunner's helmet, swiveled. It let out a deep, percussive THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The High-Explosive Dual-Purpose (HEDP) rounds, designed to shred light armor and infantry, hit the charging orcs. The brutes were turned into pulp. They didn't just fall; they were ripped apart, their crude iron armor shattering like glass.
The Yasam officers cheered, until a new threat appeared. On the Old City wall, a robed figure, not an orc, raised its hands. It began to chant.
"Gunship-2, I have a target on the wall," the gunner said. "Looks like... a civilian? No, he's... he's glowing."
"Fire a warning shot," the pilot ordered.
The gunner sent a short 30mm burst. THUMP-THUMP.
The rounds flew... and stopped. They hit a shimmering, blue, translucent shield that had appeared around the robed figure. The 30mm shells detonated harmlessly against it.
"What the... what the hell?" the gunner screamed. "Rounds ineffective! It's a... it's a magic shield! Pilot, I'm non-responsive to 30-mil!"
"Magic? To hell with magic," the pilot barked. "Switching to rockets. Firing one, AGM-114 Hellfire. Laser-designating... now."
"Wait, a Hellfire? That's... that's overkill! That's an anti-tank..."
It was too late. The missile, a 100-pound, armor-piercing guided weapon, screamed off the Apache's stub-wing. It flew true, locked onto the laser dot the gunner had painted on the mage.
The Hellfire missile, designed to kill a T-72 main battle tank, struck the blue shield.
For one, single, insane millisecond, the shield held. The air crackled.
Then, the 20-pound tandem-charge warhead detonated. The shield, the mage, and a twenty-meter section of the 500-year-old Ottoman wall were vaporized in a cloud of fire and pulverized stone.
"Target... uh... neutralized," the gunner whispered, his voice shaking.
The ground rumbled. The main IDF force had arrived. The roar of 1,500-horsepower gas turbine engines filled the streets as two Merkava Mk. IV main battle tanks, their 120mm cannons pointed forward, rolled into the plaza. Behind them, Namer heavy APCs, built on the same Merkava chassis, opened their rear ramps.
Dozens of soldiers from the Golani Brigade poured out, their green-and-brown uniforms sharp against the ancient stone. They formed a perfect, professional firing line, their IWI Tavor X95 bullpup rifles snapping to their shoulders.
"Squad, sector seven! Engage remaining hostiles!" a sergeant commanded.
The last pocket of orc-like warriors, trapped between the police and the new IDF line, charged.
The Golani soldiers opened fire. The controlled, crisp pop-pop-pop of their 5.56mm rifles was a sound of calm, lethal efficiency. The brutes were cut down. One, enraged, shrugged off the rounds and got within 20 feet of the line, its axe raised.
Before the sergeant could even react, the sound of a heavy THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD filled the air. The Samson Remote Weapon Station—a .50 caliber M2 Browning machine gun—mounted on top of the nearest Namer APC, swiveled and fired. The .50-cal rounds hit the brute, cutting it in half at the waist.
The battle, which had begun 20 minutes ago, was over. The surviving soldiers, their rifles smoking, stood in a stunned silence, looking at the carnage... the bodies, the fire, the shattered stones, the fading purple scar in the sky.
A young Golani soldier, his Tavor held in a low-ready, looked at his sergeant. "Efo... efo ze ba me?" (Where... where did this come from?)
The sergeant just shook his head, staring at the portal as it zippered closed, leaving behind an empty, blue sky. "I have no idea."
FORT HOOD (NOW FORT CAVAZOS), TEXAS
MILITARY DORMITORY, C-COMPANY
The dorm room was packed. Ten soldiers, all in their early 20s, were crammed around a single laptop, watching the live feed from Jerusalem. The Mako news broadcast was being chaotically dubbed by a frantic-sounding English-language streamer.
They watched the whole thing. The fire. The F-16s. The Apache. The infantry.
"Holy shit," one soldier, a private named Diaz, breathed, his eyes wide. "Did you see that? Elves in space, and now... orcs? In Jerusalem? What the hell is going on?"
"Forget the orcs, man," another soldier, Specialist Miller, said, leaning in. "Did you hear that pilot? 'Splash one dragon.' That's a new one. And the Apache... took out a wizard... with a Hellfire." He let out a low whistle. "That's just... peak."
One soldier was silent. He sat on his bunk, his arms resting on his knees, just watching the feed. He was 24. His name was Harris Brown. He wasn't cheering. He wasn't shocked. He was... analyzing.
He watched the replay of the Namer's .50-cal cutting the orc in half. He watched the F-16's Vulcan cannon turn the wyvern into mist. He noted the initial police response, how their 9mm pistols failed. He noted how the 5.56mm rounds were only effective with overwhelming, disciplined fire. He noted how the .50-cal and 20mm rounds were decisive.
Miller turned and clapped him on the shoulder. "Looks like our job's safe, Brown. Plenty of monsters to shoot. You ready to go kill some orcs?"
Harris Brown looked up, his eyes cold and focused, a strange, calculating light in them. He gave a slow, single nod.
"Yeah," Harris said, his voice quiet. "Looks like it."