As the lead elements of Voggoth’s attack shattered, General Simms turned her attention to the west. From her elevated observation point she could glimpse through the spires of the mountain tops. Back there, between the walls of rock, hovered a thick, white mist hugging reaching out from the Wet Mountain Valley. That mist stumped guidance systems, distorted heat signatures, and hid The Orders’ muster zone.

Beneath that artificial mist Voggoth’s legions gathered for another push through the Rockies, a push thwarted several times before by weather as much as resistance. Simms knew that this time their battlefield was one of three that day, each aiming to hold off the easterly tide of The Order.

She heard a scream. A chorus of screams. And then from that mist flew a flock of four Spooks wailing as they searched for targets, each one resembling a ball wrapped in a large spoiled sheet that fluttered like a kite or a cape.

She radioed, “Razorback, this is Hawkeye, watch your six; Spooks closing fast.” The Spooks flew at the fleeing aircraft, their howls disappearing into the greater song of artillery firing and explosives detonating around the mountain pass.

In desperation, the planes dropped flares and chaff despite knowing that neither radar nor heat drew Voggoth’s anti-air defenders. Nonetheless, two of the pursuers followed the decoys, exploding in mid-air harmlessly. One of the A-10s, however, did not escape. The missile-seemingly a living missile despite Voggoth’s minions lacking any real life-impacted the tail assembly and shattered the rear half of the jet.

Cassy Simms shook her head in silent prayer for another dead comrade, then turned her eyes to the mountain pass favored by the enemy. She saw more Spider Sentries advancing from the mist in a long line, another coral-red platform preparing to shoot more rolling shells, she saw more of the monks who had once been human, and more of the lumbering gray Ogres.