The three of us watched together, fascinated, as several waves of Air Force fighter jets engaged the herald. I had high hopes. Earlier we’d shot one in the face with an AR-15 and some handguns, and scared it off. Imagine how much more scared this one would be after we shot it with missiles and machine guns.
But no, we were not so lucky. This particular herald was supernaturally maneuverable in the air, and easily avoided missiles that were downright slow-moving by comparison. With giant heaving flaps of its wings, it could knock incoming jets out of the sky. And my original judgment about its size was woefully miscalculated, because it was still in the process of oozing its entire body through some invisible rift from the logosphere into the material plane.
The only reason for a herald to come here this soon, before the logosphere was fully destroyed, was because it was on the hunt for the Dauphine. Who knew how many more were queued up behind it?
I got out my burner flip phone and tried to call Maddy.
“Hello, General,” Violet said smoothly. “Yes, I see that. Not a great showing. I’m guessing those planes will be hard for us to replace. Tell me, what other options do we have here?”
Maddy finally answered. I peeled away to talk to her.
“Where are you?” she asked. “There’s a herald in the sky right now!”
“I know, I’m probably about as safe as you are at the moment,” I said. “Tell the Dauphine not to do anything rash like trying to fight it.”
Even as I said that, I saw a streak of white rocket exhaust sail up through the air to engage the herald—the Dauphine’s jetpack.
“Or don’t do that,” I said, “I mean, that’s fine, too, I guess.”
“Who the hell else is going to fight it? The military?”
“That’s usually the purpose of having a military, Maddy.”
“Well, you can see how well it’s working, I presume.”
A wave of ground-based missiles sailed through the air, missing the herald by wide margins on all sides.
“What the hell was that?” Violet demanded into the phone. After hearing the answer, she told Bradford and me, “Apparently those were heat-seekers, which failed to find their target because the herald gives off no infrared emissions.” Back on the phone, she said, “Which, explain to me how we couldn’t deduce that before we fired a dozen ZILLION-DOLLAR MISSILES at it?”
“Did I just hear Violet Parker in the background?” Maddy asked, incredulous.
“It’s a long story,” I said. “Bradford’s here, too. Cameron sent me here.”
“I see,” she said. “Did they give you a cabal membership card? Do you pay dues? Did they give you a parking space at the secret clubhouse?”
“This is not helpful, Maddy.”
“Tell me exactly what would be helpful, Isobel. I would be delighted to do your bidding in this, our hour of need.”
The Dauphine was now making effective use of her portal weapon to rip the wings right off the side of the herald. Watching her fight, you might think it was easy to destroy heralds. Sadly, the damn thing’s body was still emerging and there were two other sets of wings now unfolding on the latter half of its horrifying body. The good news was the larger the herald got, the larger an attack surface it presented and the surviving jets were getting better at hitting the thing.
“How many of your people went home when you told them to?” I asked.
“Five,” she said. “The five people in our crew who don’t use power morphemes. Gridstation went with them, pissing and moaning about it. The rest of the crew heard your little exclamation about ‘eight fucking people,’ and they can count, and understood you meant to leave them behind. But apparently they’re not interested in missing this shit. I said, ‘People, we are literally going to die on this misadventure,’ but they’re loyal to me, and they’re loyal to you. So we still have a crew.”
The herald suddenly reared up, six wings flaring out wildly, and a new weapon emerged, a dazzling, rippling web of ghastly green energy that snared almost every jet in the sky in its blast radius. The jets dissolved in the air. The Dauphine was spared; through sheer luck, she had circled around behind it to take a shot at the back of its head. Her aim was precise and its head was torn clean off in one fell swoop. The body began to plummet to the ground, and a new head was regenerating even as it fell. But the new head arrived too late to control the body, which smashed into several buildings on its way to crashing down hard on the streets below. From our obstructed view, we couldn’t tell if it had survived at first, but moments later, the Dauphine swooped down toward it, hopefully to score a coup de grâce.
“Isobel,” Violet said calmly, “what’s that little flying toy out there that has just outperformed hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Air Force materiel?”
“Her name is the Dauphine of the Shimmer Lands,” I said. “She’s a video game character who’s come to life.”
“Did you hear that, General? A video game character just killed the alien while your fighters were smacked around like pinballs,” Violet growled. “Oh, you think that’s the unlikely part of all this?”
“This herald is some kind of scout, yes?” Bradford asked.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I think it’s part of a hunting party, looking for the Dauphine. I think the main force is probably—hopefully—occupied by Alexander elsewhere.”
“Then we’re wasting time watching this fight,” he said. “Let your Dauphine handle it, and let’s get to work on putting your battle choir together.”
Maddy said, “The Dauphine just got back. Thing is dead. When are you coming back?”
“Ten minutes,” I said. We hung up, and I told them, “The herald is confirmed killed.”
“So you’re telling me hundreds of these things are lined up in the logosphere somewhere,” said Violet, “and Alexander is single-handedly fighting them off?”
“I don’t know what Alexander is currently doing,” I said. “He’s been studying them for a long time, though. He can kill one or two on his own. And I’m told he can win them to his side somehow. If that’s a transferable skill, we might have a little hope here.”
“And just to be absolutely sure I understand,” Violet continued, dripping with irritation, “all we get for wiping out a shit ton of heralds in the logosphere is the satisfaction of a job well done and the eventual arrival of the thunderstorm anyway? I’m starting to doubt the wisdom of your plan for us to join forces and rush out to battle. Shouldn’t we accelerate the launch even more? Shouldn’t we get the fuck out of here even faster?”
“Violet, if we evacuate now,” Bradford said softly, “we abandon Alexander to his fate. Do we not owe him slightly more consideration than that?”
She said nothing.
He said, “The scout ship is scheduled to launch tomorrow. That means we need to find Alexander today.”
Violet turned to me, a cold look in her eyes, and said, “Can you find Alexander that fast?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’ll give you one extra day to find him. If he wants you to fight alongside him, then you fight, with everything you can muster. Follow him into the fray. Fight like all of reality depends on absolutely every single spell and combat trick you’ve ever learned in your short and glorious life as the Queen.
“On the other hand, if he insists on being a god before he even does business with you, you tell him he gets nothing and then you abandon him by the side of the road like a hitchhiker you’ve just robbed. I won’t give a shit about him at that point. I don’t know if you can kill a man who’s already dead, but these are strange times, and you’re a clever woman, so give it the old college try if you must.
“But here’s the bottom line, Isobel. If, in two days’ time, you haven’t miraculously, convincingly, and thoroughly demolished every herald and pushed that thunderstorm back to where it came from, then I expect you personally to report to Bradford and me for duty.
“Because I heard you promise Bradford you’d pilot our scout ship. And I damn well intend for you to honor that promise.”