I chuckled and turned back to the men in the back.

"Mages," I enhanced my voice to be heard over the noise of the plane, "in two hours we are going to unass this plane, and join the forces in Kansas. The Guards on the plane will continue to LA, and report to Graves when you get there. You know the drill, save as many as you can."

"What exactly do you mean when you say unass the plane?" asked Prada suspiciously.

She looked over at Rictor, who had a wide grin on his face.

"Ah, hell," she cursed and looked at me with a frown, "I hate you."

I laughed and returned to the cockpit "Send a message to the other plane" I said. "Tell them to continue to LA as before. Tell them my Guards will be there with them shortly. The rest of us are dropping off in Kansas."

"Yes, Sir," the copilot said.

I went back to the rear and paced the length of the plane for nearly two hours. The whole time, the rage kept clawing at its cage.

"At least Lyrica is there if the opportunity to use Alpha pops up," Rictor said from behind me.

We were back at the cockpit by then.

"Alpha?" asked the pilot.

"Hell on Earth," Rictor answered.

"All right, Sir," the copilot said, "Five minutes till drop zone."

"Roger," I said.

"What?" he asked.

I chuckled and headed back to the door.

Two minutes out, the ramp lowered and the wind ripped through the plane. My eleven Mages lined up to jump. Prada was in the front, and I could see the whites of her eyes as she fought the fear in her aura with discipline. She hadn't lost that fear of heights.

The light turned green and Rictor kicked her out the door.

"Fuuuuuuuu," I heard her scream as Rictor followed her out, laughing like a maniac.

Rostov was next and he couldn't hide the laughter. I shrugged and he jumped. The rest jumped and I leaped after them.

"Soullord One, Incoming," I reported on coms.

"Copy," I heard the voice of Dietrich Jaegher, "Command channel 32, Sir."

"Copy."

"Rictor," I said on my regular channel, "assemble at the command center."

"Copy."

"Command channel 32."

"Copy," answered a chorus of voices as my squad heard me. The Command channel would be the channel they would receive orders from Jaegher as he performed his duties. He was the conductor of our little symphony of destruction. He had so much more experience in open battlefields than anyone else alive. He was quite good at it, and I had no doubt he could do the job well.

I was studying the ground below us as we plummeted toward it, "Chutes."

I opened the portal on the shield chute I had created not long after my last incident with a plane.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon and the scene below us was straight out of nightmare. There were thousands and thousands of Demons. They had pushed our lines so far back already, I was worried they would break out. I knew what was planned if that happened. Massive bombing and if all else failed, nuclear bombs. On American soil.

That might stop the bastards, but it would destroy a sizeable chunk of the country. We would be doing their job for them. Destroy ourselves and they wouldn't have to.

I saw a wave of destruction plowing through the horde of Demons on the right flank. The Jaeghernauts were at work. There were only twenty of them, but they plowed a row of destruction through the ranks two hundred feet wide.

I think there were already more of the Kresh on the field than the whole first attack had been altogether. They looked endless. More poured out of the Gate.

I was seventy five feet above ground, and closed my portal to drop the rest of the way. I had steered to land near the command center. It was a fortified building with a flat observation platform at the top where Dietrich had stationed himself and his staff. I scaled the side of the building instead of going inside. It was much quicker.

As I landed beside Dietrich, he said, "Welcome to the festivities, Soullord. Thought you weren't gonna make it to the party."

One of his staff muttered, "Doesn't look much like a party to me."

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," I said. "What's our situation?"

"We're holding at the moment," he said, "but that's not gonna last much longer unless we can get an Alpha situation."

"Are the AC130's ready?"

"They've made two runs already," he said, "They're reloading ammo right now."

"They do any good?"

I watched his memory flash across his aura of one of the planes circling the area, and it looked like it unloaded pure hell into the packed masses of Demons. It was beautiful.

"That has to be one of the best ideas you've had. The forts were too close to the Gate, though. They pushed us out past them in the first hour."

"Damn!"

"We learn as we go," he said, "If we live through this, we can build more, further out."

Suddenly he was looking to the right, "Reinforce Delta team."

The second of his staff began speaking into his com to send a squad to the far right flank.

"Jaeghernauts," Dietrich said on Command com, "Make a run up the right flank and give Delta a respite."

"Copy," I heard Kharl respond.

"When this started, we had a group of civilians out by one of the forts. They had a squad of trainees doing Guard duty. It was close but they got out just in time. They're over there on the left, workin their way out."

"Your boy, Khalib and my daughter are part of the Guard. Your reporter and some engineers were out there. Looks like they're out now though."

"Good, trainees have no business out in that," I said.

I was watching the Gate and what looked like a huge dome of evil came through and stopped not far from the front of the Gate.

I could see the power roiling in that dark mass. Demonmages. It looked like a whole group of them.

"That looks like trouble," Dietrich said just as the twisted blackness erupted with a hail of what had to be fifty of their ugly black and purple fireballs.

"Son of a Bitch!" I cursed as the wave of fire swept a swath of destruction across the left flank. I had just located the small group of civilians when it had happened.

Demons flooded through the hole in our ranks and the party of civilians was right in their path.

"No," I heard the whisper as it escaped Dietrich.

Chapter 46.

From the outside of the battle zone swept a large group of men and women. In the lead was my mom, and she was followed by nearly every trainee that had managed to tie their knot. The lines were ragged but they never faltered.

"Damnit, Mom," I muttered.

"Ric," I spoke over coms, "take our Company and reinforce those Trainees! Close up that hole!"

"Copy."

My group of Mages shot off at close to seventy miles per hour.

"I'm going for the civilians," I said. I could see the worry in Dietrich. His daughter was out there in a desperate situation.

"Send the Jaeghernauts to meet me, there."

He nodded and began spouting orders again.

The next instant I was air born.

I'm pretty sure that movies will be the death of me. I saw a movie a few months back about a man who had been transported to Mars where there was a whole civilization of people. Due to his denser structure and the lighter gravity on Mars, he could leap hundreds of yards at a time. Special effects have inspired me to do a lot of things, and this was another of those inspirations.

I flew across the ranks of Soulguards and landed near the lines. Then I was air born once more. As I started down the backside of the arc I opened my weapons and launched everything. Disks of fire blew a great hole in the horde of Demons directly in front of me.

Unfortunately, the backlash had me land in another spot where there was maybe a thousand screaming Kresh.

My swords blurred and arcs of power slammed through the Kresh around me. Then I was air born again. At the apex of my arc I could see the group of civilians. There were ten civilians, twelve NG's, and ten Guard Trainees. They had settled in a diamond formation of sorts.

The way a squad of Guards is divided is Three Guards per team, three teams per squad and a squad leader. At the four points of the compass was stationed Guards. Three to the south, I didn't recognize them. Three to the east, Irenia Jaegher was the team leader and two others on her flanks. On the west was Cordell Fortraine, and I recognized two of his fellow New Yorkers on his flank.

There was only one Guard facing north, directly into the face of the enemy. Six and a half feet of concentrated violence, Mr. Khalib stood with his swords blurring. He was adept with any weapon made by man before he tied his knot. In three months, the man had proven himself to be nigh unbeatable in a fight.

National Guardsmen crouched just inside the Soulguard lines, and their weapons spat fire as fast as they could.

I released arcs of power to clear my landing and was back into the sky again. Two of the trainees were down and the Kresh were closing in. I saw Alstead grab a rifle from one of the fallen NG's, and start firing into the horde.

One more leap and I would be there. I crafted a shield that wrapped around me and anchored to my Soul. On the right side I built a thirty foot long blade that hooked toward the back. It was sharp as a razor and about chest level. On the left was a sloped shield to turn the bullets that were flying. I wasn't sure if they would stop shooting in time so I figured I'd be careful.

I landed on the east, almost directly in front of Irenia. I was about twenty feet out in the horde, and the second I landed I opened the portal on my shield. At nearly fifty miles per hour, I made a complete circle around the group with a huge arc of Demon blood exploding into the sky.

The civilians were looking at me with the strangest looks. It may have had to do with the fact that I might have been laughing the whole time I was slaughtering the Kresh. I made another complete circle as the others cleared out the circle around them.

I pushed the animal back down. That was the source of the laughter. I closed on the group and slammed out a shield around them.

I stopped and saw crumpled forms on the west side one of which I recognized immediately. I could see it was too late for Cordell Fortraine. He was Lying in a pool of blood and it hit me hard. He shouldn't have been here. I brought him here just to die in the dirt. I knelt by him as I saw him reach feebly toward me. He smiled through bloody teeth and I heard his last words.

"Stood...my...ground."

He died there and his Soul slipped down into the earth to join the Source. I reached down softly and closed his eyes. I squared my shoulders and stood back up.

"That you did, Cordell," I said and let out a large sigh.

I began forming tendrils at the beginning of the shield and the end to tie it to the Source. I pointed toward the south where I made an arch glow.

"There's the door," I said, "Guard it till you can get these people out of here. The first chance you get, pull these people out."

Mr. Khalib nodded, and I opened the door. He planted himself there, and began swinging those swords in a form very near what I always called the Blade Barrier. I turned back to the shield, and slammed the ten inch tendril into the Source. In seconds, I slammed the second one down and cut my tie. The shield thrummed with power and shimmered. I had used large enough tendrils to feed it so nothing would be breaking through to the people within.

Alstead approached me, "Why leave a door at all? Can't you take it back down later?"

"If I'm still alive when this is done, yes."

Her face paled as she realized what I had just said.

"Jesus," she muttered.

I turned back to the others and went to the wounded. The first one had a nasty cut down his arm. I lay my hand on his arm and he gasped in pain. Then I Pulled straight to the wound. The blood stopped flowing and the skin began to draw together where I was holding the cut closed.

I had to stop before it went too far. Lyrica had told me it was dangerous to do too much at one time. He would be fine to reach the infirmary if they managed to survive what was going on around us.

I could feel the ground shaking as I looked up to see a great wave of destruction plowing through the horde toward us. The Jaeghernauts exploded through the mass of Kresh to form a circle around the outside of the shield.

"Dad," I greeted the huge man standing in front of me on the north side of the shield, facing out toward the horde of Demons flowing through our area.

"Looks like you got here all right," he said. "I saw the grasshopper act. I could have been wrong about that particular subject. Seemed to work pretty well."

I grinned at his back. Very seldom will you get an "I was mistaken" out of him, and I have to relish them when they make an appearance.