Conceal Me What I Am Ch. 14

Turned into magical plasma, one launcher would turn an entire hillside into superheated gravel and smoke. I gave the big bunker both barrels just to make sure.

I could aim the big 4cm crystalline tubes right from my driver's station on a little TV screen and both massive rounds of plasma hit right on target and turned the entire hillside in a smoking saddle-backed crater. If I'd figured these two fixed guns out earlier, our tactical problems getting around Fort Steele could have been avoided and the fortified town would have become a smoking maelstrom of fire and glassy rubble.

True, it did take these front two barrels nearly half an hour afterwards to stop glowing cherry red. A second volley taken anytime sooner might have melted the entire front end off of the Pig. Clearly, this was an 'oh shit' weapon of limited use... and preferably just one barrel at a time, but oh man could it turn tons of rock and reinforced concrete into fingernail sized rubble!

****************

Sitting alone finally at the very edge of Bamforth Forest about fifteen miles northwest of Laramie and nearly completely now out of silver ammo, I coasted the Pig to a stop at the top of the first small hill outside of the forest to inspect our domain, as we were masters of everything that we could survey. In front of us for several miles we could see the shattered remnants of what was perhaps an entire mechanized infantry division and a good deal of smoking armor. The disorganized leftovers of the reserve armor units we'd torn up at Elk Mountain had showed up late and in rather poor defensive array and sacrificed themselves to magical plasma one at a time for the better part of an hour. A few attack helicopters also made rather uncoordinated forays into Miranda's line of sight, a mistake that nearly all of them came to regret within moments. A couple of fixed wing aircraft suffered identical fates. If Miranda could see it, then she could shoot it down.

We were the battle-lords, rulers of this field of carnage and if my feisty young partner had any regrets about slaughtering, not just merely killing, perhaps thousands of people in the last few days, she didn't show any. Like a trooper, she was chewing our last unmangled cigar into oblivion, and scanning the horizon for more things to shoot at. The fact that they didn't have a prayer at shooting back at us didn't make the slightest difference. Her thumbs, sore and swollen as they were, were more than ready to teach the soldiers of Deseret that they weren't at all welcome here, and that she'd just as soon send them all straight to hell where they belonged than just send them packing with their tails between their legs.

Perhaps for the first time in their lives, the bastards had been taught the meaning of fear. And Miranda still had half of one remaining ammo can of silver left to teach any of the slow learners a final lesson! If the US could get its head out of its ass long enough, the entire frontier all the way to Elk Mountain was theirs for the taking, right now! Maybe, perhaps, we'd ignited just enough of a spark to push the local units onwards. But that was now someone else's job now.

I let Miranda pick off one last overly brave scout car about a mile or two ahead of us and I turned the Prissy Pig around to take us back home. I was hungry and wanted a long, long nap... and was tired of the smell of ionized silver and burned flesh searing my nose. I wanted to check on Bel and Janice and quietly give Miranda a comforting hug. Someday, maybe not today or even right away the enormity of the slaughter we had committed would hit her... and I wanted, needed... to be there for her.

Reaching the Battalion HQ, I parked underneath a wide spread of trees as close to the hospital tents as I could manage. Even with Miranda's skillful clearing of the skies earlier, Deseret did have air superiority in this region and when things started to quiet down they'd use to try and find us again. A few gentle hints to the staff gathered up enough troops to gather up enough brush to give the Pig some decent cover.

In my book, the wounded captain had been pretty courageous during our part of leading the spearhead, and I hinted strongly that the crippled officer deserved some significant recognition. He was probably going to lose an arm and his legs didn't look particularly healthy either. I also needed to check on the women and then get some food and sleep, in about that order. Then, after that, I could charge up another pair of power cells to get us safely further east to Fort Cheyenne.

Just five miles from the GWA border of Western Colorado, the US and GWA had set up a training ground at a joint international camp that straddled the border between GWA Western Colorado, and US Eastern Colorado and Wyoming. Once there, I'd find some generals... especially a GWA or two to hand the keys to the Pig over to.

There was no way in seven hells that I was gifting over this baby to the barbarians on this side of the border. US Arc-Tec was just so lame that it would take them a decade just to figure out how the Pig worked... and we were going to need either BattleCars of our own, or a host of Pig-killers by early this summer at the very latest. That meant my home team, the GWA and its competent cadre of Arc-Tec wizards... like me.

Bel and Janice would scream bloody murder, but I didn't give a rat's ass. This was my baby and it was going to be parked in the GWA garage just as fast as I could manage it! Maybe we'd play nice and let our US allies shine up the bumpers or crystalline windscreens, or even play gunner!

***********

It took us three days to make our departure from our camp near Battalion HQ, and during this time it moved further west for three days in a row, although the medical unit stayed put. Eventually, some General did get off of his ass and realized a big chunk of central Wyoming was now available for the taking. Still, in my very definite opinion he'd sat on his hands dithering too long and advanced much too cautiously and eventually massive Deseret reinforcements killed the counter-offensive a good five miles east of Elk Mountain near Medicine Bow. Things returned to a nasty stalemate and battle of attrition and I just gritted my teeth and screamed at any officer who would listen about lost opportunies.

A few did. The 'God-damned Zyphyr' had really stolen all of the military credit for stopping the Deseret attack and turning the tables by leading the spearhead of the counter-attack. The local Division commander, a certified dithering two-star asshole, tried to spin his version of the story but too many actual front line officers and war correspondents soon knew the real story and the name of the 'Zyphyr' started to feature as the shining hero, 'the wizard of wonder from Texas that helped lead the way to US victory', as one national newspaper put it. The morons got most of the facts wrong, as usual, but at least they gave me the credit for being the inspiration for the spirited defense and counter-attack, and more importantly there was zero mention of the Prissy Pig. That was at least one good thing about government censorship!

The women were more or less recovered, warmly clothed now and decently fed. And even slightly back into a better frame of mind, but both Bel and Janice were fairly quiet and subdued. They'd both missed enough of the fun that they both felt like very second-class hangers on to the great and mighty Zyphyr, and even playing my usual Texas 'aw shucks' routine didn't seem to mend that fence.

About an hour before we reached Fort Cheyenne an advance group arrived to greet us bearing a set of nice Texas and GWA flags that soon decked the front of the Pig, and we soon entered the multi-national fort grounds in victorious slender. The gals both disappeared into the waiting arms of the local US magician cadre, which included a relatively senior FMBR civilian official, and they more or less disappeared entirely for the next two days. So be it.

I, in return, handed off my rather scratched and dented 'Prissy Pig' off to a resident group of GWA magical engineering combat team members and they started calling in the nearest big Imperial wizards from Denver to come take my baby away to one of our R&D bases for some serious reverse engineering. For the next two days I told my story repeatedly to groups of increasingly higher ranking GWA officers and wizards, and even a few selected US guests. I kept Miranda as close to my side as possible and let her play both sides of the political fence; to my pals at the GWA she was a US citizen, but to her native officers and wizards she was my legal GWA apprentice. All of the benefits, I hoped -- with none of the responsibilities.

That strategy more or less worked. Everyone truth-spelled me until my brain felt like tapioca, but nothing too embarrassing spilled from my mouth that I didn't want revealed... like Sean.

Mason Probert now started his career as a snitch, and allegedly implicated several higher ranking US federal officials as being at least aware of the weapons smuggling scheme. His capture quite corroborated everything that Bel, Janice and I had to say. The five rescued minor witches and Adepts added their own additional reports of what they'd seen and heard during their captivity and the intelligence services of both countries were going to get more than they could chew on for quite awhile to come.

I only saw Bel and Janice just once more while at Fort Cheyenne, at a rather over-attended joint military conference that did little more than rehash the events of the last week. For fun however, a GWA intel officer did show us nice aerial photograph of the huge crater that used to be the secret Deseret R&D facility. That was one really big crater, just about a mile around. Another picture showed the damage I'd done to the Rock Springs pyramid and religious center, and seen from above the destruction was rather frightening. After the meeting I just barely had time to say goodbye and then the pair of them were bundled off onto a military plane for yet more meetings back in Chicago.

The US brass wanted me back in Chicago too, probably for more questioning without any GWA handlers around me to play interference, but the magical combat engineering team and ever arriving hosts of military Arc-Tec specialists wanted to keep me around awhile longer to demonstrate my prize in person, and explain how everything worked... and how the heck I'd managed to both recharge the ArcCells on the fly and power the Pig on direct Zyphyr current only. I had to be a bit vague there and claim blind luck and inspiration.

When my poor Pig was at last bundled into a covered railcar in the dead of night and shipped off towards home, my handlers were pretty much done with me. I'd filled out reports until I had writer's cramp and pretty much told the story straight and factual, filling in the minute details the best I could. I was sure that other big 'visitor nests' were scattered around Deseret and that they were providing a lot of unhealthy ideas and dark spirit power to those crazy assholes, and someone needed to find out some more about that damned breeding program of theirs using captured wizards.

My best guess was that it was hard for this nasty alien race to exist at all upon our world with our own magical energy apparently being nearly the opposite sort from their own. Newcomers were shades without substance here, immaterial and invisible, and they needed to drain a lot of our life energies to be able to seize bodies that they could occupy and use. With still more effort needed to mold and enter hybrid-forms, half human and half alien, where they could then utilize our magic, as well as their own. Constructs like Chuckles were apparently advanced hybrid forms created by earlier breeding programs, but with each new generation their powers would increase. Chuckles was already bad enough, and his children could be really, really nasty to evict! Especially if they were destined to become the next front rank of Deseret battle mages.

The idea of Deseret working hand-in-hand with an especially dark and malevolent race of visitors scared the robes off of every single wizard I'd talked with. This was fucking insane and serious and the GWA need to go on a war-footing now, and get ready to clean house on Deseret once and for all... with or without the help of the inept US wankers. The Brits in Columbia would probably be happy to pitch in, but no one counted their army as being much if any better than the US's. Still, any help was better than none.

I wanted to get back home to Texas, and probably more months of interviews and reports back in Austin, but the US top government brass wasn't done with me yet. They wanted to pack me onto another airship to return to Chicago and then probably a few weeks in Washington. I didn't want to go and they really couldn't make me!

Eventually, some big cheese Imperial wizard from San Francisco took me aside and very politely (but firmly) asked me to be nice and play ball for the home team. Surprisingly, both please and thank you were parts of his vocabulary, and sincerely used in appropriate context. I shuffled my feet a bit and eventually gave in, but I sensed that the Great Wizard Conway wielded a lot of clout within the top Imperial branch of the GWA, and he was playing awful nice with me. He either hadn't read my Texas GWA file that said that I was a fuck-up, or else he was willing to make his own judgments without prejudice. I actually suspect the latter. Besides, you just don't say 'no' to any Imperial Wizard!

I probably could have manipulated the situation to earn me a whole bunch of goodies, but I kept my requests for 'favors' simple. I wanted my Adept's license reactivated from suspension and I wanted the Imperial and Republic of Texas GWA folks to keep their paws off of Miranda.

"Let's all play nice and treat this like a new joint GWA-US magical partnership program. Give her something official on paper to keep the FMBR assholes away from her too. She's a maverick and raw as they come, but she's got more spirit than any of the other US magicians I've encountered and she's got the will to succeed, and I want to help her!"

Conway agreed, and two hours later Miranda had an official Imperial document that put her powers under GWA authority and protection. If some senior FMBR numbskull wanted to make a diplomatic incident over grabbing my girl for their own use, I could justly threaten war! As of now we were both under diplomatic immunity. A nice little piece of paper of my own announced that I was now a GWA official delegated to the Magical Assistance Authority as part of the GWA Embassy in Washington. A minor official to be sure, but still with diplomatic immunity! I had the feeling I was going to need it!

The US bastards could threaten to question me for weeks in some dark dungeon, but they had to say 'Please' now first... and I was going to say 'No!'

**************

After the morons tried for the third time to get me on-board another airship to Chicago, I had to pull a bit of the Great Zyphyr act, much to the amusement of Wizard Conway. I demanded (and received) a first class train ticket and they ended up giving me my own private passenger car, complete with bedroom suite, private bath, a kitchen and a parlor. It was actually pretty darned nice and I don't know what VIP they'd stolen or borrowed it from, but it came well stocked with its own private bar, complete with a butler who was a decent sort and willing to play bartender and head chef, and even sit down and play cards and drink with us. They even managed to find me a nice new suit that only looked vaguely late Edwardian instead of mincingly Neo-Victorian. It would do fine until I could reclaim the rest of my clothes back in Chicago.

It was something like eight hundred miles or so to Chicago, and as expected it took nearly three full days, but they were happy ones. We slept, ate and played cards for hours, or just quietly detoxified ourselves from the stress we'd been in for most of the last week. And it was wonderful!

Miranda was a bit young still to corrupt her with a seemingly endless supply of bootleg booze, and I had to admit that the gal handled the situation well. She stuck to champagne for the most part and sipped like a lady rather than guzzled the nice bubbly down. Not my sort of stuff, but that said, the vintages were all nice GWA California ones. I started off mostly enjoying the wine cellar, trying a dozen different things until I discovered a dry Cabernet with some interesting character. A rather nice bottle of very forbidden CSA whiskey from Tennessee sort of distracted us later for some augmented late night consumption. Sean helped himself to everything else but appeared to find four bottles of bootleg Pennsylvania Schnapps of especial merit.

At bedtime, there was a nice master suite at the rear of the car that had a real king sized bed big enough for the two of us, but eventually I'd wake up with Miranda all curled up next to me under the covers. I was wearing shorts to bed and she'd found a warm sleep shirt somewhere at Fort Cheyenne so our nocturnal encounters remained mostly chaste. She cuddled and kissed, but kept her hands largely to herself. She was dead serious about making me make the next move... and I was going to wait those last few months until she turned eighteen. I had enough of a checkered reputation and didn't want to add 'baby-snatcher' to it. Legal age of consent in Texas or not, I was damned determined that if I was going to do anything more than sleep with her, that she was going to be a fully-legal woman, and not just a pretty and very willing teenaged girl!

**************

When the train stopped a few days later in the early morning, I took a peek outside the carriage window of our bedroom and noticed that we were back east now as far as Rockford, and this reminded me of one last errand that needed taking care of.

After gently prying Miranda's arms and soft tits off from around my chest, I went to check with the conductor handling the rest of the normal passenger cars behind us, and I found that we'd be parked here for at least another three hours and probably longer, waiting for a freight train that had priority to get out of our way. This would give me plenty of time to run my errand and I woke up Miranda and asked if she wanted to join me, and she did. Wherever I went, she was once again certain to be my shadow!

My butler had located the station master who was now in the process of flagging us down a taxi and as we left he promised to hold the train for us if necessary. The word had been given very clearly to the train's engineer that I was his primary cargo and he was not to appear in Chicago without me! Nice to know!

***************

The dragon, still ensconced downstairs in the ruins of Probert's farmhouse, wasn't at all happy to see us again. The portal at this end was gone of course, but the entire cellar floor positively glowed with molten dragon guano. The smell was indescribably worse, and I retreated nearly immediately back up to the top of the stairs where I could hope to catch my breath again.

"You again..." it whimpered. "Why Me? You've defeated me, slain my summoning masters and closed the portal with extreme and excessive primitive brutality! I could feel what you did from this end. I thought this society had laws, protections against barbarians like you. Clearly I was mistaken. I'm trapped among savages now - you and your primordial race have no sense of proportion! I'd weep, if I could manage it."

"Thank you! I certain did my best over there. I did meet with a rather unfriendly reception. Did I understand you right in that all of your summoning masters are now dead? We left the Wizard Probert in suitable hands for discussion of his numerous dishonorable deeds and he should be alive... or is he?"