It was three in the morning. Britannia flew ahead of the vast incursion force, generating an electrical and magnetic field that would scramble the sensors of the fortresses for hundreds of miles along the Irish coast. She was generating so much force that it was raising thunderclouds and lightning storms.

Or so she thought.

Far ahead in the distance, she perceived a pinpoint of electrical energy. Cursing under her breath, she shot ahead to engage the defender.

Lightning crackled around Pioran, and the winds flew against the intruder with the force of a gale. He floated serenely, an electric calm surrounded by the chaotic energies of the sky, and waited for her to approach.

In central Europe, Pioran had been thought a god for many centuries - a god of storms and war. Recently he had defended Ukraine against Napolean, then the Huns, then later the Nazis. Now he served a greater master than the land that bore him, and the people that worshiped him. He served Autocrat, Master of Earth. And this interloper would pay for disturbing the servant's rest.

Britannia recognized the floating figure, and her eyes widened briefly. She recognized the minor god - they had fought together before, and occasionally fought against one another when the needs of their countries diverged. But this was beyond the needs of Eastern Europe.

"When did you become a pawn?" she yelled across the closing distance.

"I am less pawn than you, who serve a single lowly country! I serve the ruler of the world!" Chest out, he struck a gallant pose, awaiting her hurtling figure.

"Bollocks!" Britannia yelled as she rammed through the space he had occupied a moment before. Neither her fists nor her trident impacted him; he simply wasn't there when she arrived. Her trajectory took her instead into a ball of lightning that crashed off her armor and shields, leaving her falling for the few moments it took to recover her equilibrium.

"You are slower than I remember," taunted Pioran. "Perhaps I should tie an arm behind my back?" He theatrically placed his left arm behind him. She saw the power building as he pulled electrical energy from the clouds around him. She stooped and dove three thousand meters to the sea.

"Oh, come now. You are no coward!" Pioran called after her, then allowed himself to fall a thousand meters. He watched the surface for signs of her emergence, but there was only a streak of foam showing her passage to the west. She had retreated.

Very well, then. She had left the incoming forces to his mercy. Too bad for her he didn't have any.

Captain Alan Wharton of the 82nd swore as he listened to the running commentary by his copilot, who was watching the fight through advanced vision goggles. Their group was supposed to be defended by that cowardly British bitch. You couldn't trust metas, whichever side they might be on.

They had perhaps seven minutes before they would enter the airspace controlled by the enemy meta. Over his radio link, Wharton heard the order authorizing several fighters of the 82nd to attack. The next few minutes wouldn't be pretty. Hopefully, the humans would get their chance to land a blow.

Two jets roared forward out of the formation, releasing missiles which tracked the target for a few seconds then arced toward the clouds and the sea, tracking the static discharge rather than the god himself. As bright a target as he might make on their equipment, they simply couldn't maintain a lock on him. The cannons and guns peppered the area of sky surrounding the god, then went silent as lightning bolts ignited first one then the other of the jets. The copilot thought he saw a single chute.

Pioran laughed, and thunder rumbled across the miles to the incoming planes. Two more fighters hit their afterburners to begin an attack run.

Suddenly a massive wave crested a thousand meters into the sky, boiling steam another several thousand meters. Lightning leaped from the wave to the clouds, grounding the static charge for a kilometer in any direction. Pioran cursed. Of course! Britannia had used her powers of magnetism to ionize the water, then injected it into his clouds. It would be several minutes before he could generate more than a small spark.

But no matter, he considered. I am on the side selected by destiny. He drew his gilded sword, the same which had slain Stahlhelm so many years before, and prepared to kill again. It felt good, but oddly unfamiliar. For a moment he had doubts about defending this foreign land.

Britannia soared into his altitude, then gained another thousand meters in a second or two. He began to rise after her, but was interrupted by the chattering of another incoming jet. These toys were so tiresome.

"Épa!" He spoke and dodged like a matador, cutting the left wing off at its midpoint. The jet rolled to its left and vanished out of sight in the black clouds.

"Así." Britannia replied as she struck him from above with her trident, piercing his chest in a way that would have killed a mortal. Fair play was one thing, but this was war, and she had seen the recon photos of the rape camps. She watched him fall to the sea.

The planes of the 82nd passed, while lightning played upon the deep.

******

Hex Danced.

The C-130H Transport maneuvered like a pregnant elephant, but Captain John "Shorty" MacLean of the 101st was a good stick. As the lasers and incoming missiles flashed by, he somehow managed to bob the plane, weave it, drop a few hundred feet and turn a fraction, avoiding them by hair-raising inches. The troopers in the hold were seasick, yes, but somehow, through all the incoming flak, he was getting them there alive. The luck of the Irish, he thought.

Hex danced.

Salvage piloted the jet, holding it as steady as possible in the incoming storm of fire. He listened to the faint strains of music coming from the back compartment. None of the incoming ordinance seemed to be aimed directly at the jet; the defenders possibly were ordered to concentrate on the hulking transports rather than his little craft. Or it could be the power of the Sister's dance, bending probability so that none of the incoming missiles seemed to track him. Either way, he kept the craft steady, listening to the rhythmic sounds of feet falling in intricate patterns.

Hex Danced.

MacLean felt the violent jerk of shrapnel ricocheting off the right wing. This was the most dangerous mission he had ever flown, and he was feeling incredibly lucky just to have survived across the majority of the antiaircraft emplacements. Now, leaving the other side of those killing fields, his luck had apparently just run out.

The copilot quickly verified that they were losing fuel from the right wing. MacLean swore and switched the pump to transfer all remaining fuel from the right tanks to the three undamaged left tanks. It wouldn't matter much - he could feel a sluggishness that indicated massive damage to the right side, and occasional ripping sounds indicated that the superstructure was deteriorating. The plane began a listing that pulled it increasingly harder toward the right.

"Attention all personnel. Prepare to jump. We are not over the LZ, but it's the closest we're going to get." He dropped the airspeed as they prepared the plane for the drop. He switched onto the command channel and calmly spoke a coded message giving the coordinates he expected to ditch.

The plane was falling erratically as he waved the copilot into her parachute. She hesitated only a moment, knowing that only one of them at a time could be free - the jerking of the plane required total commitment to the controls. She banged her head against a bulkhead as the plane lurched. Her hand came away bloody from the bump, but somehow she managed to get the chute on and clipped, and replaced the NGV helmet she had laxly removed earlier.

In the back of the plane, the Loadmaster had Sergeant Keller move his squad through the motions of deployment, yelling over the load moaning of the engines. Rather than the expected HALO jump, they would be jumping out at a mid-to-low altitude. Better for them, since HALOs were a bitch, and he didn't need his team scattered all over the damn landscape.

They were going down in enemy territory, over sixty miles from their target zone. Based on the known enemy deployment, they would be a few dozen men, unsupported and with their location probably not even known to their own command. But damn it, they were soldiers.

They started their drop.

Hex Danced.

Salvage marveled at the information on his radar and other scopes. Out of hundreds of planes, they were almost all still coming. He would have expected a minimum of thirty percent attrition by now, but there was only a single plane that he could identify as going down. If any others had been hit, they must have been vaporized by the impacts. Of course, they had not yet had to deal with any incoming jets. The Lancers and Demons were definitely to be feared, and they had not apparently been deployed yet.

Hex Danced.

They were still at six thousand feet when Lieutenant Loren Gutierrez perched on the right chair and began mimicking his movements, taking over the controls a little at a time. MacLean clambered his six foot four frame out of the left chair and checked her gear over briefly, pulling her crotch straps tighter without any self-consciousness. Although she was jump rated, she had never had to bail out during combat before, and hadn't remembered what the sudden jerk on those loose straps would have done to her private parts.

He called back to the Loadmaster for a status on the evacuation. Over half the troops were out the doors already. He quickly donned the second emergency chute and pulled the straps tight. It was doubtful whether he could leave the controls and successfully exit, but he would try once the crew was safely out. Landing this ailing beast was just not on the agenda.

He took the left chair and repeated her motions, taking complete control before jerking his thumb toward the back. She looked at him mutely, maintaining her hands on the controls. Her eyes were slightly off focus.

"Abel, you're going to have to jump with Loren," he yelled to the back. "She's got a concussion."

The flight engineer popped his helmeted head into the cabin and glanced at them both, noting the chutes. "Oh, you meant all of us."

MacLean bit back his anger. "That's generally what 'all personnel' means."

"Oh. Good enough." Abel disappeared for a moment, then returned wearing a parachute. He took Gutierrez's hand off the wheel, then jerked his head toward the back. She looked at him dumbly, then shook herself. They stumbled slightly on the way to the door.

"Pull her cord at 700 feet, then yours when she clears. And when you land, for God's sake don't try to stand up, you'll break your knees." MacLean yelled over his shoulder, then turned back to the controls, noting the altitude was about 3500 feet. He shook his head over entrusting her to the flight nerd, but it was all he could do at this point. The engineer, like everyone else in the 101st, was jump rated, but it never hurt to remind them of the basics - especially those personnel that never expected to leave the plane.

"Any personnel still on board, Report!" He spoke slowly into the microphone. There was no response. The thrum of the engines and the shuddering of the plane suddenly reminded him of a song. An old song, one his mother used to sing to him as a child in Boston.

He couldn't remember the words exactly, or perhaps there were no exact words, but he found himself humming the sounds as he struggled with the controls. Another missile passed harmlessly by, distracted by the pieces falling off the transport, or by its erratic jerking motion.

He began singing the old words, as best as he could remember.

Hex Danced.

Salvage brought up a screen to watch the performance in the back compartment. Hex glistened with sweat, her head and hands and legs moving alternately to the music of jingling and thumping and wailing. Each limb seemed to track a different instrument, to move in its own time and space, and to sometimes blur or jump from one place to another. It was like each arm was its own Schroedinger's cat, there and not-there at the same time.

Feeling dizzy, Salvage returned his gaze to the controls before him, still listening to the eerie music. He seemed to merge with his ship, a tighter linkage than he was used to. Sensing something he couldn't describe, he made changes in the flight surfaces, then suddenly pressed a control to fire two missiles without warning. It startled him out of his reverie, even as he looked at the radar to see where they were going.

Rising out of a fortress in the distance was a squad of Man-shaped ships. Or ship-sized Men. Demons.

And on the way to meet them were over a dozen missiles, launched from various jets. The brief chatter on the radio showed the pilots had all fired "on accident". Even before the Elite units began to lock on to the incoming planes, the missile detonations disrupted their systems and blasted a few into glowing chunks.

He glanced at the display of the dancing woman, then closed it to concentrate on his flying. Briefly he thought, Lady Luck ... You can know where she is, or how she moves, but not both.

A second flight of missiles was launched on purpose. A few plasma missiles left the Demons and inexplicably went wide of the incoming force, impacting the first Lancer as it launched from the fortress. The last Demons went down on top of the hulking structure, digging glowing trenches in its armament. One landed on the second Lancer to be launched, exploding it and jamming the launch tubes.

Hex Danced.

Pale green sweat dropped off her onto the floor plates of Salvage's jet. It had started clear, but was gradually growing darker as the fatigue built up in her systems. She had been this tired before, but only when she had used her powers against others who were similarly equipped, or for several days in continuing circumstances. On this scale, she had never needed to perform before. It was undeniably difficult.

The movements of her limbs represented and mimicked the movements of the Other, the one thing she could never quite explain. The Other obeyed her, after a fashion, while also opposing her and mocking her. Sometimes it made her slip, and then bad things would happen. Indubitably, bad things must not happen this time.

Hex Danced.

A green fog drifted up from the ground, sensing something it could not place. It had been so long.

The Blood!

There was one of the Blood nearby, getting closer quickly.

It had searched the land for them, but there were none left. Any that existed were tainted, sometimes beyond recognition. And it could not cure the taint without accepting the taint to itself. Only a Bearer could do that.

It awaited the Blood.

Hex Danced.

******

And all that kept them in formation was a hundred pilots who normally had better sense than to fly this close to each other.

Britannia gritted her teeth and pushed again, expanding the field a fraction, to a little over seven hundred meters. She could not hold it long at this size, but it was the signal to prepare to deploy. In addition, it would give the pilots a few extra seconds of warning if it was about to fail.

When it was about to fail.

When she was about to fail.

Which would be another minute or two.

A flight of missiles crashed against the wall of force, sending a shock through her as well as rippling along the curved surface of the field. She screamed hoarsely, even as she pushed herself to the limit. Another hundred seconds. Regaining her breath, she passed the word to the planes.

They had passed over the heavily fortified coast and were now deep into the interior, a few dozen miles from the LZ at Athlone. Flying defenders from all over Ireland were massing for assaults on their flanks. The transports would need to be prepared to begin dropping their payloads as soon as her field went down, but they would also need time to disperse to a safe distance. Buying this time would be the job of the fighters.

The worst concentration of enemy Lancers was to the west, so that was the direction she would peel off. Having her between the transports and the incoming Lancers would provide them a measure of diversion. Between that and the fighters, they should be able to get their payloads out.

The moment came.

Britannia swerved to the left, dodged through the massed aircraft, and morphed the field, changing it from a globe to a bell open at the rear, and then to a vast shield. Then the next wave of plasma missiles and laser fire hit it. The magnetic shield shattered, allowing a third of the plasma balls to penetrate, although their depleted energy didn't actually destroy any of the planes that they impacted. Britannia fell.

Captain Wharton swore as his plane rocked to the left with the impact. Sparks flew off the controls, and the stick suddenly went mushy. He checked the left wing visually - both Allisons were on fire, and the external tank was mangled. The tactical channel was filled with voices of other pilots, some with planes in worse shape than his. Damn metas. He alerted the Loadmaster, then awaited a lull in the voice traffic to confer with the wing commander. The formation was still too tight for anyone to start dropping troops.

He watched the scope as the Lancers rose like Cobras to meet the incoming transports. The American jets shot ahead to pull their fire while the Hercules fleet began to separate widely enough to drop their human cargo. Jets and Lancers went down in balls of flame. He saw another Hercules split wide open by a powerful laser, disintegrating into chunks and bodies. Chutes began opening among the debris far below.

He didn't see the metahuman Brit anywhere in the mix, which wasn't surprising, given her performance so far. Even that Irish guy in the big orange power suit didn't seem to be earning his keep. But meanwhile, the formation finally opened enough that he could give the Loadmaster a green light.

As the speed of the convoy dropped, Gunnaghyn shifted her power suit into cruising mode. To the left, a big Hercules was beginning to list due to damage to its left wing and engines. She flew in tight to its left side, checking the superstructure with her Taylor visor before she began supporting the wing.

As Captain Wharton began a gentle turn, he felt a bump on the left side, and did another visual check to see what new item had fallen off. There, between the two Allisons, was a new burnt-orange colored engine. That big Irish guy. He was providing a little lift and a little thrust, pretty well balanced with what the other wing was still doing.

After a moment's annoyance, Wharton chuckled. After all, pilots have to stick together, and running that suit was kind of like being a pilot. He gave the guy a thumbs-up sign, then used his left hand to indicate that he was starting a turn to the left. The guy dropped his lift a bit, and the plane once again began its turn.

After a few minutes, no more troopers were dropping out of the rear doors of the big transport. Gunnaghyn watched the gestures of the pilot as he indicated that he and his copilot were going to bail out also. She checked the plane's structure again, then waved an okay. She could hold it pretty straight for the minute or so it would take him to get out the hatch.

On his way out the back, Wharton thanked his stars that he could do this the easy way. Of course, once he hit the ground, all bets were off. But the 82nd was a top-notch American unit, and he was one of their own. Together, they would show those mutant bastards a thing or two.

******

Captain John MacLean awoke with a start as the creature broke through the aft fuselage, and swung his head back to look up at it. It looked like a gigantic scorpion, with slashing claws and multiple legs and a bad attitude directed down at him, or which would have been directed at him if there hadn't been a bulkhead between them.

The cabin smelled of ozone, oil and burned plastic, along with something like crushed plants and peat. It was canted at an angle, the windows smashed and smeared to obscurity and possibly buried several feet in soft swampy soil.

The only way out was going to be past that Elite scorpion. He attempted to move, and his hanging leg banged painfully against something. A stab of pain shot through him, blinding him with green spots. The leg was broken, or at least a bad hairline fracture.

"Hope...that...bulkhead...holds," he said to himself as he levered himself to a full sitting position, or the best he could do from the odd angle. He braced himself with his good leg against the instrument panel below, and released the webbing holding him to the seat. His vision was still fuzzy, with green spots swirling through the cabin and highlighting the aft wall where the nightmare machine was attempting entry.

Abruptly his legs gave out, and he flopped down on the instruments. He twisted to look up at the holes opening up in the aft wall. Sidearm first, he thought distractedly, reaching to draw the weapon.

It was not there.

"Hold, damn you." He thought to the wall as he looked around for something to help. His headache pounded in time with the pounding of the creature's limbs on the bulkhead. Against all logic, the bulkhead was holding. The Elite machine must be much less powerful than it appeared.

Everything was at odd angles, and a fabric box was beside him where the deck met the cowling... the parachute he had abandoned before strapping himself back in. It was no use. However, there was the emergency kit.

Even as he reached down, a part of him was pushing against the back wall, willing it to stay solid. He could see the dents and holes occasionally punched by the marauding creature. Good thing it was a wall and not himself that was taking that beating.

He opened the emergency kit and took out the flare gun. With the right opening, maybe he could damage that thing.

The Collector stopped pummeling the bulkhead and stood back for a moment, examining the wall with all of its sensors. More anomalous readings. The structure of the wall should not have taken more than 18 seconds to dismantle, and yet it was acting as if covered additionally by a level 5.4 force wall. Acting accordingly, the Collector switched to a more appropriate cutting rig.

MacLean listened to a few seconds of silence, before he heard the whine of some kind of drilling rig. His face tightened into a determined grimace. "Okay, you son of a bitch. I'm ready for you."

The Collector began cutting at the right side of the wall. The alakite blade cut through the bulkhead in seconds, meeting no unusual resistance at all. Perhaps the sensors were faulty. The hole was quickly enlarged to the point where it could move itself in towards the body, which was exhibiting signs of high stress. The Collector would soon correct that problem, for the glory of Autocrat.

One chance, thought MacLean. This shot has got to go through its eye and destroy its brain, like a tiny meteor. He visualized the shot, waiting his chance. Hold it. Hold it.

The Collector moved its sensor unit down through the hole, focusing the sensors toward the heat from the target body.

NOW!

The shot from the flare gun, magnesium white with a peculiar green halo, cracked through the plating on the face of the Collector, scattering shrapnel through both the cockpit and the aft fuselage.

The Collector twitched.

MacLean reloaded, watching the hanging head spark randomly. After a few moments, the head jerked out of the hole, and a massive twanging dance of the limbs ensued. Was this its death-throes, or merely anger?

He thought about the dangers of climbing with an injured leg past a creature which could well be playing possum on him. He closed his eyes and said a silent, heartfelt prayer that his leg would serve him well. Then he sat and waited.

The sounds of twitching and of electrical arcing finally subsided, and he moved himself to get a better vantage at the injured machine. It was still partially blocking the hole it had made, but it showed no signs of actual function. He fired the second flare at the thing, but it merely bounced off and provided a bit of light on the fuselage behind. The machine did not react at all.

MacLean climbed past it, barely noticing the slight stiffness of his right leg. He had more important things to worry about, trying to sense whether there were any other Elite units nearby, and whether he could safely make it back to his unit, which were arrayed across several miles a few miles behind him.

Abruptly he smiled. He, and the others like him, were a lance aimed straight at the heart of the Elite. Somehow, they would find the chinks in the Elite armor, and blow the insufferable bastards to kingdom come, just like that scorpion back there.

In an odd sort of reverie, he was unsurprised when the Collector behind him began to move, and also unsurprised when the lance of green fire from his hand blew it to sputtering chunks.

It was a few minutes later, when he considered and finally realized what had happened, that the surprise began to set in. Then the awe.

When the retrieval squad found him, he was grinning from ear to ear.

This would definitely put some flies in their ointment.
 

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