To Spite Another God Pt. 10

The evening was heavy with the sound of work -- the sound of clattering tools and dragged carts, of creaking wood and straining ropes, of the padding of immense feet. In the darkness, visible between the tiny lamps that flickered and guttered to give the mortals awake at this time of hour a chance to completing their tasks, the sight of immense, impossible figures shifted and flowed, shadow into shadow.

It had been nearly a week since the Martians had been repulsed from their first assault, using mortal men and women transformed into their servants and tripods built out of local materials, and the last army on Europe that had not been smashed, gassed, or burned into cinders was working to devise a new means of war from the cutting edge of modernity and with magic long thought lost and shadowed into darkness.

Mina Murray watched it all from a small hilltop, next to her husband and George Wells, as the two of them operated a telescope, liberated from one of the cities that the vampires of the army had visited to retrieve supplies from. The telescope was the finest that she had ever seen -- brass and wood and finely detailed engraving, and the two of them peered through it, murmuring softly one to the other. George was here because he had spent some time in an astronomic club and had used telescopes to observe the moon and several of the more interesting planets in the bygone days before the war.

Jonathan was here because, beyond keeping clerical lists and organizational charts, he was entirely useless for the great work going on below -- work that required vampiric alchemy and vampiric shapeshifting. Poor Jonathan hadn't yet figured out how to create the simplest concoctions that a vampire could manage -- noctis vitae or album vitae. His shapeshifting remained constrained to rather small, inoffensive creatures like terriers and house cats. If he felt ashamed of that, he concealed it behind his normal studious affect, and took detailed notes as George and he panned the telescope through the sky, night by night, seeking out any sign of the incoming Invasion Cylinders that they knew were steadily drawing nearer and nearer to London.

Mina herself had a collection of reports in her lap, and she knew she should be reading them. But her mind felt utterly unfocused -- skipping from task to task, unwilling to settle down. General Fosch and General Schlieffen had (with her glaring at them periodically) worked out a means of organization that would allow the French and German armies to fight side by side, with the Spanish thrown in for good measure. Her scouts had ferreted out more unlikely survivors -- a whole company of British fusiliers who had made the harrowing ride in boats too small to be struck by the Martian aerial corps from the coast to the continent, the tattered remains of an Austrian regiment that was primarily comprised of their machine gunners, and piecemeal remains of artillery battalions from every major power.

Their stories blurred together -- miraculous escapes, hiding, running, surviving by falling in with other scattered people. But in their totality, they painted a terrifying picture of the demographics of Europe. Bats sent to the far east and south said that there were stories of mass exoduses -- boats that had fled across the Mediterranean and Black Seas, trains that had carried people by the thousand over the Hellespont, and eastward into the vast Russian steppe. Refugees, crammed into every city surrounding Europe. But then there had come the terrible day where the Martian aerial corps had smote the shipping lines of humanity.

Mina tried to imagine the number of mortal men and women and children who, in that single twenty four hour span, had thought they had gotten away, had thought that they had been safe...only to see the flying chevron of the Martians, had time enough to leap into the oceans, to hope that it would save them before heat rays struck the decks of their ships, immolating wood, slicing through steel, piercing into boilers and transfiguring rigging into Hell upon the Earth.

Mina closed her eyes. She now, quite fiercely, wished to imagine anything but.

The civilians who had not fled nor been smothered by the Black Smoke were now congregating here. The best of the vampires at explaining things gently and calmly -- using their words, not any hypnotic power -- had been set to the task of gently introducing those civilians to the reality of life in the camp. There, Jonathan had been tracking the amount of blood they had to take, and the album vitae they had to make, and then began to work out a procedure for the creation of new vampires. Experimentation had shown that if they were buried in a coffin that itself was suspended above the ground, within a casket of earth mixtures from across Europe, that they returned from unlife with the ability to slumber in France or Germany or Poland with equal ease -- and so, teams of vampires in the forms of bats and wolves had been dispatched to gather up the mixtures of Earth, moving stealthily through the continent and returning in drips and drabs -- creating the row upon row of casket that they now used to birth new vampires.

Due to the fact they had to use the same set of coffins and bits of Earth for each vampire thus born, they had a linear growth rather than exponential -- and Mina wasn't sure if that was the right thing. They had several thousand civilians gathered around their small army, and from them they had created a mere hundred and twenty vampires, who were split into training cadres...but...

The Martians had been busy as well. Her bat spies said that rather than continuing their lightning attacks and aerial raids, they had instead focused upon taking and fortifying several coastal towns. They had not been able to get close enough to make more concrete checks, because the Martians had taken their 'sun ray' idea and expanded it into the creation of immense, curved mirrors that swept the skies and grounds around their fortified areas, preventing any vampire from drawing too close, lest they lose their powers and be left vulnerable.

Behind that cloak of uncertainty, anything could be happening, and Mina knew that if she guessed wrong, if she made the wrong move, if she sent her forces outwards, they would be...that would be...

"Mina?"

She lifted her eyes and saw Jonathan looking at her, his eyes filled with concern. "Are you well?" he asked.

Mina rubbed her palms against her face. "Yes, Jonathan, dearest. I just have a great deal of paperwork to get done. Who knew being a general would have more paperwork than being a schoolmistress." She smiled, then looked down at the documents. She skimmed over the figures and numbers -- and wondered if that vampiric ability to learn quickly had already, invisibly, served to make this more legible and understandable than it would have been otherwise. Because rather than a mystifying number of shells and explosives and rifle bullets and meat and bread, she saw instead that they had food enough to keep themselves operating for two months, but the rates of growth were slowing.

The storehouses of Europe were meant to be filled by farmers and factories -- but those farms were either empty and fallow or were keeping their food to themselves and their heads down.

She ruffled the papers over -- then a rustling sound came from the air and a bat landed upon her knee -- Antoni.

Mina flashed, for a moment, upon the memory of turning him. It was still...one of the most intense moments of her life, and why, unlike Lucy, she found herself unable to repeat the act very often. She had watched him laying upon the soft earth, trembling, as Jonathan stroked himself to the side. She had impaled herself upon his warm cock, the young artilleryman's hands gripping her buttocks. She had felt his heart-beat, throbbing inside of her cunt, and she had felt powerful and heady and wild. She had ridden him, her hips slamming against his, her mouth opening in a moan. She had let that feral rush fill her and sank her fangs into his throat, pinning him down. He had cum inside of her -- filling her mouth with his blood and her womb with his seed.

And then, once he had been emptied of both, she had slid free, and pounced upon Jonathan, still wild, still fierce.

It had been...

A bit much.

Especially since she had been needed at a meeting with the civilian leadership and the generals a few minutes afterwards -- she hadn't realized how wild she'd have been, how insatiable. So, she had quietly refrained form turning others, much as it caused Lucy to tease her for being a 'prude.'

Now, Antoni shifted to his human form and she had to admit...vampirism suited him quite well.

Even if he looked grave, rather than his usual little smile.

"Some days, I wish that I hadn't volunteered out of the artillery service," he said -- and she chuckled, quietly.

"You know, I think a vampire would make quite a good artillerist," she said, softly. "Good math, good eyesight, it has to function well." She reached her fingers back into the wild brush of his hair and found the narrow point of his ear, teasing it gently as she tried to get a bit of a smile from him -- since, well, she was sure the news was bad, but there was no reason to not at least try to cheer him up. Antoni squirmed, then smiled at her.

"Yes, well..." he shook his head, brushing his hand back, gripping hers as Jonathan shifted over to nuzzle against Mina. "I've completed the scouting of the fortified towns -- Calais and Dunkirk. They're...different. But that is not why I had to rush back so fast. It...Paris..."

"Yes?" Mina asked.

"It's gone."

Jonathan drew back from her neck, his brow furrowing. "Gone?"

"Yes, Jonathan, gone," Antoni said, looking at him, placing his hand upon his shoulder. Mina realized that the younger vampire was trembling slightly -- and she gently put her hand upon his other hand, squeezing it, taking it to her lips and kissing his knuckles. She had noticed that...being a vampire made tactility, expressions of affection and closeness, more important than ever. Simply holding Antoni made his trembling fade slightly and he nodded, his eyes closing.

"How could a whole city be gone? What did the Martians do to it?" Jonathan asked.

"I saw the chevrons going above it -- five flying machines -- and I saw the Tricolore flying above the city, and a downed tripod. I believe the Parisians had managed to hold on, and were fighting a good fight there. I planned to fly in once the flying machines had left, but then I saw them dropping canisters. The city had enough pal on it-" By which he meant the black powdery residue left after the black smoke had been dispersed or soaked up by rainfall. "-that it had to have been hit by the Black Smoke dozens of times. Somehow, the Parisians had kept themselves alive in the face of it..." He sighed, softly. "But then the canisters broke apart. I counted six smaller bombs within each canister, spreading outwards. They reached roughly the height of the taller buildings, maybe twenty meters off the ground, and then..."

He paused again, this time for some time, clearly thinking.

Mina placed her hand upon his cheek. "Antoni, here. Do you mind if I simply...look through your memory, instead?"

Antoni blinked. "Y-You can do that?"

"I've been practicing with Lucy," Mina said, grinning shyly. "Now, I don't want to invade your privacy."

"No, no, please. I have...no real words for it," he said, leaning forward against Jonathan, who seemed faintly shocked at the contact, but then relaxed into it, nuzzling against Antoni's hair. Mina closed her eyes, then focused upon the thin connection that still existed between her and the vampire she had sired. Only thanks to his own acceptance of the contact was she able to gently slide into his mind and see through his eyes -- see the subtle distinction in color and shape of the world, to feel the faintly different pressures of awareness...

But those minute differences faded away in the sight of the five flying machines soaring above Paris, of the Tricolore flapping in the breeze, of the hexagonal shapes of the smaller bombs spreading away from the canisters as those canisters broke apart...

Then...

Brilliance.

A sun's heat and radiance exploded above the city, exceeding the moon overhead, and causing the stars to vanish into the blackness of the sky. The suns that hung above the city caused the buildings to shine and, for a moment, look completely normal. But even before the bombs continued their dropping towards the ground, the glass and metal of the taller buildings was beginning to run and bubble. Stone cracked and exploded, the sidewalks ran like slurries. The flag that had flown so proudly transformed, instantly into ash -- and then a wave of hot air rushed outwards. Buildings weakened by the radient heat were transformed into matchstick and kindling, toy houses struck by the palm of a furious war god. They came apart and collapsed with a roar like the end of the world.

The mighty Eiffel tower, standing among the devastation, slumped and then fell towards the burbling ruin that was the city. Flames and smoke intertwined...

Mina jerked back and away from Antoni -- shaking.

"Now you see what I mean?" the young vampire asked, his voice guarded as he pressed his cheek against Jonathan's chest. "I circled the city three times -- they had dropped five canisters, each bomb contained six bombs and I counted each: Thirty distinct suns. They're still burning in their craters, burning and burning and burning. They produce enough heat that the ruins have turned to ash and the ash have mixed with molten metal and flowing stone. It's like lava, covering the entire city of Paris. The catacombs collapsed and created a kind of crater -- the suns rolled through the slurry and are collected together, fusing into one great big furnace. You can feel the heat miles away. The countryside around her is burning. You can see the light over the horizon all the way in Germany!"

"Good God," Mina whispered.

"What are we going to do?" Jonathan asked.

"...we're going to have to make a move," Mina said, quietly. "If they find this place and attack us with those bombs..." She shook her head. "Antoni, go, rouse the generals, if you'd be so kind." She smiled as he stood, nodding to her, then giving her a quick kiss on her lips. Of course, as a kiss between vampires was wont to do, it evolved into something considerably longer and deeper, his tongue sweeping into her mouth. She gently pushed him away and Antoni flashed her a smile before he transformed into a bat and flew away into the night.

Jonathan stood, his hand squeezing hers. "I am ready to be quite useless again," he said, his voice wry.

She smiled. "You're never useless, Jonathan." She kissed his cheek.

***

"From the description, and from what I have read in the various books we've collected, there's only a single possibility: They're atomic weapons."

The meeting council of General Schlieffen, Fosch, the wives of Dracula, and Mina's finest followers all nodded along as Dr. Elphinstone spoke. Over the week, he had been tasked with putting his vampiric brain to the test and began to learn more and more information about the physical sciences, as naturalists and scientists were both quite thin on the ground. Mina had expected there to be a limit to what he could accomplish, but with the energy of his newly immortal condition and the consumption of willingly donated blood, the good doctor had consumed books that had been collected from libraries in Germany, Poland, France and Romania. Copies of every scientific magazine that had been printed had been put through his office, and he now seemed able to speak with astounding confidence on a wide range of topics.

"The essential theory depends upon a chemical elements that have been derived from the radiative element of Thorium - Carolinium. Via the use of this new element, if it could be produced with sufficient quantities, it is theoretically possible to create bombs that explode atomically. Rather than releasing their energies all at once, they would release them over a great deal of time -- multiplying the energy by exponential amounts." Dr. Elphinstone gestured to the diagram he had drawn of several spheres, labeled as lead, carolinium, lead and then carolinium again. "The outer shell is isolated from air and carolinium both. When the outer shell is opened, possibly via electric control, the oxygen of our atmosphere is exposed to the carolinium, which is so radioactively hot that it causes the air to burst into flames. This melts the lead in the inner container, and causes both carolinium segments to combine, pushing the creation of heat even further!"

"An astounding weapon!" Schlieffen exclaimed. "How does one defuse it afterwards? Dousing it? Lead containers?"

"You don't," Dr. Elphinstone said, blinking at the elder German general. "That is...that's the point of the atomic device -- it cannot be defused. It will simply burn and burn and burn and burn until the energies of the carolinium is reduced to nothing." He shrugged. "That could be anywhere between five years to five hundred. We simply don't know enough."

"No, we do," Fosch said, his hands clenching tightly. "These inhuman brutes have destroyed Paris. They must die. They have to be driven into the sea immediately."

"I agree," Mina said.

Schlieffen, who had been about to say something, closed his mouth and looked at her in clear shock. "While I grieve for the loss of Paris as much as any right thinking man," he said, quietly. "Are we ready? There's an unknown number of enemies -- and their weapons are still terribly powerful. Our industrial capacity is...more than expected, considering we're hiding in the backwater of Europe and have nothing to rely upon but your stomachs and your muscles..." He gestured to the vampires in the room. "Is such an attack truly wise?"

"So far, we've been kept safe because the flying machines only had two methods to attack us: With black smoke, which we have countermeasures against, and with the heat rays. Which require the flying machines to come close enough that we can engage them in the air."

Schlieffen nodded, frowning.

"But these bombs can wipe out our entire army and we have no means to stop them. Nothing but not being where they drop." She sighed. "You heard the description -they melted Paris down to the catacombs." She glanced at Fosch, who had closed his eyes and ducked his head forward, his shoulders trembling in silent rage. She placed her hand upon his back, gently, walking behind him as she spoke. "Thus, we have to take the offensive. We have to take Dunkirk -- and from there, we have to take London."

"Well, we have nearly sixty five thousand men. We have artillery, we have machine guns, and we have those quick firing french guns," Schlieffen said, slowly. "And we have a hundred and twenty vampires. Is that enough?"

"A hundred and thirty, in a few hours," Jonathan said, nodding.

Mina smiled. "And that's why we have to use them properly." She bit her lip. "Aleera and Verona and I have been discussing some ideas. What do you think of them?" As she spoke, Aleera unrolled a large map of Dunkirk they had acquired during their scavenging and annotated with what little spying they had managed to get done during their flights. There, Mina leaned over it and began to lay out the plan, pointing at the areas of the map, gesturing to indicate movement. The Generals were of two minds.

"It is bold...but there will be an issue: Communication. How-" Schlieffen started.

Mina closed her eyes. Like this, General, she thought, focusing and pressing the words into his mind. He jerked upright, his eyes widening, his newly grown mustache bristling.