Chapter 15 Clash of Titans #2

"The shielding's vulnerability is broader here," she said.

"The wrongness is readable at this range without the close approach.

The formation is" she oriented, the directional sense running “two hundred yards above us.

There." She pointed to the rock face above them.

In the dark and the altitude and the wind it looked like high alpine rock the same as the surrounding terrain, no visible difference, no cave entrance, or obvious geological feature.

"How many signatures?" Sigrid said. She was at Elara's right the forward contact position, the same as Deep Root.

Elara read as carefully as she could. The shielding here was different from the broader vulnerability she'd noted, compared to the Mackenzie Basin at equivalent range, cleaner. More readable.

"Eleven," she said. "Eleven command class signatures." She paused. "And the root note. The command source itself." She paused again. "It's different."

"Different how?" Thor said. He was very still.

"The root note," she said. "Heimdall said darker. That's the right word. It's the same frequency but it's carrying something that it wasn't carrying in the Mackenzie Basin. Something that" she searched “something that's been added to it. Added into it."

"The sixty percent transfer," Sif said.

"More than sixty percent," Elara said. "The transfer completed more than we thought. It's" she was reading it as accurately as she could, the trained perception at its current maximum “it's past the Fenrir threshold."

The word landed in the alpine night.

"Elara," Heimdall said on the channel. From his position at the approach boundary, the maximum range he could maintain given the shielding. "Confirm your reading."

"Confirmed," she said. "The command source has passed the threshold. It's already at sufficient capacity." She looked at Thor. "It doesn't need the second activation cycle. It used whatever it found in the six weeks to complete the transfer. It has what it needs."

"Then why doesn’t it" Sif started.

"Because it's doing something else," Elara said. "It's not activating. It's preparing. It's orienting." She looked at the rock face above them. "It knows we're here."

"It's been expecting us," Thor said.

"Yes," she said. "The eleven command class signatures in organized positions, the formation above us, the shielding profile" she looked at him “it came here because this terrain is advantageous to it.

The cold, the altitude, the limited access.

It chose this position because it's the most difficult available approach for a divine assault.

" She paused. "It wanted us to come here. "

"It wants to finish this," Thor said.

"Yes," she said.

He looked at the rock’s face. Then at her. "Then we finish it," he said.

They went through the rock this time.

The command source's preparation of the position had sealed the geological entry points with the resin hardening technique that created barriers that were stronger than the base rock.

She could read this from the shielding, the way the wrongness frequency was differently dense at the potential entry points.

Thor went through the rocks’ face. Not the sealed entry points.

The face itself. Mjolnir at the resonance frequency that the Mackenzie Basin briefing had identified as effective against this mineral composition, and the full Aesir fire output, and the committed forward momentum of someone who is not looking for the door because the door is not the point.

The rock face opened. The quality of a god at full expression applying maximum available force to a fixed geological object. The rock came apart at the frequency boundary.

They went in. The stronghold interior was different from the Mackenzie Basin smaller in volume, less developed, the six-week establishment showing in the relative thinness of the resin compared to the decade’s deep accumulation of the previous position.

But the eleven command class entities were deployed and ready, and they came from the prepared positions, entities that have been told what to expect and have organized their response.

The first three came at Thor and Tyr simultaneously and the exchange that resulted was the full intensity version.

Not the managed, controlled engagement of an operative working within environmental constraints.

Thor at full divine expression in a space that did not have the forty preserved people of the Mackenzie Basin chamber.

One that did not have the same structural sensitivity.

He worked in it at the fully available level.

She had seen him fight before. She had fought beside him, had seen the Port Melbourne and Sydney engagements, had watched him in the Mackenzie Basin deep section on the channel's audio picture and Freyja's real time relay. She had not seen him at this level.

This was the level that the holding back had been concealing.

The Aesir fire running at full continuous output, not in arc discharges but as a sustained field.

The air around him carrying the charge density of a storm at its most concentrated point, the lightning coming not from above but from him, generated rather than conducted, the divine weather having a source rather than an atmosphere.

The first three command class entities took the field engagement and were disrupted in the sequence of three targets encountering a force that was significantly above their capacity.

Elara was at the right side of the chamber with Sigrid, working the secondary wave of the defense.

Two command class entities positioned to intercept the nondivine members of the assault team.

The tactical intelligence of a command source that had assessed the team's composition and designed its defensive positioning around the assessment.

It knew the human element was present. It had assigned resources to the human element.

She engaged with the full kit Brightmetal in the right hand, the arm at functional operational level with the adrenaline management that pushed the eighty percent capacity to something closer to ninety and Sigrid at her left.

The exchange was the most complex and demanding field engagement she had run in five years, including Port Melbourne and the Mackenzie Basin approach.

The command class entity that came at her from above was the same category as the inferring entities from the Mackenzie Basin deep section old, developed, with the tactical intelligence of something that had been at the command source's primary location.

It had followed the command source to this new position. It knew what it was doing.

She read its approach with the frequency of wrongness at full discrimination, which was even in the middle of the fight. Not the combat skills, which were excellent and which she trusted. The perception. The ability to read what was coming before it arrived in the visual or physical range.

She read the approach. She moved before arriving.

Brightmetal at the contact point, the full output of the discharge tool, and Sigrid's flanking engagement on the other side.

The entity was disrupted. She hit it again.

Her right arm was she noted it, the professional inventory at the limit.

The limit of the fracture site under sustained engagement load, the eighty percent that was bleeding toward seventy.

She was aware of this. She was managing it.

The second entity was already moving. It came from the rock, the targeted grip.

She was watching for it with the frequency read and she saw it coming and she moved her feet, but the terrain here was different from the tussock grassland of the basin approach, it was rock and resin.

The uneven surface of a hastily established stronghold interior, and her foot came down on the edge of a resin ridge and her balance went sideways.

Not down. She didn't go down, she caught it, she had the physical capacity that five years of this work produced but the sideways catch put her right arm into weightbearing for half a second and the fracture site said the thing it said when it was pushed past the limit, a sharp statement that she processed and managed while she was already moving again.

Sigrid was on the second entity. The exchange was Sigrid in fully divine capacity. And the command class entity was durable but not at the level the deep section's inner ring had been, and Sigrid ended it with the efficiency of the Valkyrie class divine capacity that was hers.

"Clear right," Elara said.

"Clear," Sigrid confirmed.

She looked toward the center of the stronghold.

The full picture was this: Thor and Tyr had cleared six of the eleven in the forward engagement.

Sif was at three more in the secondary section, managing the threat they posed to the extraction approach that Erik's team would need when the stronghold was cleared.

That left two unaccounted, and the command source. It was active. Directed.

"Thor," she said on the channel. "The command source is moving toward you."

"I know," he said.

She moved. The command source at Fenrir threshold was she read it at range, and it was the most significant wrongness reading she had accumulated in five years of the trained and developing perception.

Not the ambient wrongness of a nest. Not the intensified wrongness of a command class entity.

The deepest frequency, the root note, but at the full threshold level, carrying the transfer of sixty plus percent of accumulated human lifeforce run through a divine amplification circuit and loaded into an entity that had been building toward this for seventy years.

It was what it had been preparing to be. And it was large. In the frequency sense, large. A presence that occupied the stronghold's frequency environment the way a physical object occupies space.