Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion Read Free Page B

Rhodes received another instant promotion to the leader of the decimated Second Corps.
    Despite the haughty rank and long title, Generals Rhodes fought on the front lines, riding along with the 3 rd Mechanized Division as it struck at the heart of the enemy. More specifically, his formation held the key to turning the tide of a war that had been deteriorating for months.
    Essentially, he was tasked with saving The Empire, if it could even be called that anymore. The word did not roll as smoothly off the tongue when retreating.
    Still, as he rode north in a Humvee as part of a snake-like band of infantry and light armor weaving between the crumbling rock walls hiding Highway 165, General Philip Rhodes believed his mission would be successful. The plan—Trevor’s plan—made perfect sense.
    Voggoth marched his forces with a simple but effective strategy: engage and destroy humanity’s armies. He left his lesser minions—the Mutants and Wraiths and Roachbots—to infest cities and eradicate stragglers. But his main forces—his Leviathans and Spider Sentries and Chariots—sought to engage mankind’s organized forces.
    And that is why The Order rigidly followed Highway 96 through the mountains and into battle against the main human army encamped at Wetmore. As such, Voggoth had ignored Highway 165 that sprouted away from 96 in the middle of the Wet Mountains. Highway 165 had become difficult to pass, anyhow, due to years of neglect. Landslides had turned it from a modern road into little more than a rocky path.
    While heavy armor would have difficulty negotiating the downed boulders and debris cluttering the tight roadway, Humvees and infantry could push through. Rhodes’ strike from 96 would cut the alien force in two once the Leviathan fell. At that point, armored reserves hiding near Wetmore would attack the head of Voggoth’s column. Between the two attacks they would slice up and liquidate the enemy.
    Of course, Rhodes knew his fight to be one of three that day. He knew that the Phillipan and the Chrysaor moved to intercept the other two prongs of The Order’s push east. And therein lay Voggoth’s mistake. With his heaviest weapons—three Leviathans—split between three different battle groups, The Empire could deal a decisive blow to the center and roll back the entire front. If they could draw out and knock down that walking battering ram.
    The order to advance meant that part one of the plan had succeeded. While a tough fight remained, victory now appeared plausible with the Leviathan toppled.
    A gamble, true, but all their victories since the invaders came had been the results of gambles and it seemed to General Rhodes that Trevor Stone rarely rolled snake eyes.
    “Boppers charged to eighty percent,” Hoth echoed the display on his Weapons Status monitor for the benefit of the XO and crew. “Target in range. Preparing to fire.”
    Beyond the windows and far out past the tip of the flight deck, loomed the incredibly large biomechanical monster known as a Leviathan. Near the top of its skyscraper-sized form hovered a patch of gray and black thunderheads, seemingly the remains of a storm long gone. Far below swirled a thick white mist pumped by The Order’s machines to hide the other components of Battle group North that threatened Denver.
    Hoth knew the first Leviathan had fallen at Wetmore. He knew Rhodes launched a surprise attack. He knew it meant he had to keep his end of the deal. Those who knew Hoth understood that the General always kept his end of the deal. Ever since his days playing football for Army, the career-officer lived by the military code.
    Indeed, on that fateful day last summer when Trevor Stone returned from the dead, the General had been prepared to blast the Excalibur from the sky because those had been his orders from the recognized chain of authority. That chain had changed that day, to the relief of all, but perhaps no more so than to William Hoth.
    Indeed, while Hoth would never