The Power of Five Oblivion

twenty-first-century air force. They had underrated their enemy and this time their powers had failed to protect them.
    The planes were strafing the courtyard, tearing it apart. Lohan saw tiny figures attempting to run over the humpback bridge that connected the two towers. Suddenly, without warning, it shattered beneath them, sending them plunging down. More missiles exploded. If the planes returned a third time, they might smash through the very ice shelf itself. And why not? Somewhere deep beneath the ice was the sea. Another couple of attacks and the fortress might sink into it and disappear, carried down by its own weight.
    But the Super Hornets had finished their work. There had been no air defences, no counter-attack. Not a single one of them had been hit. The pilots would have been happy to continue the bombardment but, obeying orders, they peeled away, heading back to the US Polar Star . Moments later, a bombardment from the various destroyers had followed, missiles streaking down with ferocious accuracy. When the smoke finally cleared, it seemed to be all over. The walls were breached, the fortress in ruins. There were dead bodies everywhere, lying on the ice, surrounded by fragments of stone and broken bricks. Nobody was moving. Any soldiers who had been guarding the fortress on the battlements or standing outside, when the onslaught began, would have been killed at once. Many of the corpses were on fire, the flames tugging at their clothes. Others were so smashed up that they were hardly more than red smears on the ice. It really did look as if the battle had already been won.
    Standing on the platform that had been raised outside his tent, waiting to make his next move, Commander David Cain lowered his binoculars and resisted the urge to smile. Less than half the fortress remained standing. Casualties must have been enormous. And this was just the work of six aircraft! For all the talk of creatures from another world, of strange gates and children with special powers, he had relied on old-fashioned American firepower – and he had been right in his judgement. He wondered now if he had been unwise to commit land troops but he was interested to see what he would find inside the fortress and the clean-up operation would end this once and for all. At least his troops would be in no danger. He could see for himself. All resistance had been shattered. The air attack simply couldn’t have gone better.
    He was holding a radio transmitter. He raised it to his face, pressed a button and spoke a single word.
    “Amber.”
    It was the agreed signal. At once, the entire World Army, divided into five squadrons, began to move across the two kilometres of ice that separated them from the fortress. Cain knew that they weren’t much to look at. The great majority of them were on foot, already picking up speed. Few of them were in uniform and some of them didn’t even have guns. But he had done what he could for them. Every man and woman had received some training in hand-to-hand combat. And, he reminded himself, this was their choice. They wanted to be here. He was proud of every last one of them.
    The advancing troops were accompanied by around forty armoured vehicles and jeeps, American, French and Argentinian, offloaded from the boats. These were being driven by professional marines equipped with rocket and grenade launchers, heavy-duty artillery and automatic machine guns. They were moving at a steady sixteen kilometres per hour. It would take them just six minutes to reach what was left of the walls. As he watched them dwindle into the distance, moving in the exact formation that he had prescribed for them, David Cain decided that command could be a pretty lonely place. With all his heart, he wished that he could be with them too.
    Scarlett was just a few metres away from him but her thoughts were very different. She had been watching the devastation with a mixture of horror and excitement. The fireballs and great columns of flame that had erupted one after another certainly had a degree of majesty. It had been like watching the most spectacular firework show on earth. And she didn’t care how many of the Old Ones died. In fact, she hoped every shape-changer and fly-soldier in the fortress had been torn apart by the bombardment.
    But at the same time, she couldn’t forget that there were men and women inside there too, even if they had chosen to fight for the other side. Scott was one of them. She remembered