The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [143]
"Jormun-who?"
"Jormungand. The Midgard Serpent."
"Loki's tech version. What's the real Jormungand do? What's it capable of?"
"Killing. Killing with its breath alone."
I looked back to the massive tubular behemoth barrelling towards us. Men in the front ranks had already opened fire on it, and their bullets were bouncing off like grains of rice. An RPG arced towards it, trailing smoke. The explosion left a star-shaped scorch mark but made no appreciable difference.
"Its breath..." I said, wonderingly.
And then Jormungand was within spitting distance of the outer defence perimeter, and it let rip.
The noise was indescribable. Beyond loud. Staggering. Gut-wrenching. An immense booming blare that sprang from its hollow front. The sound radiated outwards in a visible cone, a warped, white-tinged shimmer extending perhaps twenty metres ahead of the beast. And anyone touched...
...burst.
No other word for it.
Humans became patches of red fog. Clothing was shredded. Bones were pulverised. Even guns were shattered into components and fragments of components. One moment, a living, breathing person. Next, a thinning spray of popped organ and vaporised blood.
Jormungand was fitted with some kind of audio generator, massively amplified, and used soundwaves to drill a path for itself through the earth, pummelling rock to dust. Up above ground, those same soundwaves could be employed as a weapon. Nothing - organic or inorganic - could withstand a volley of such sheer volume. It was instantaneous destruction by decibel.
There was nothing else for it but to retreat. No point holding the line when the enemy could carve through so easily. The outer defence perimeter broke. Men scattered and ran. Jormungand ploughed onward, propelled by those serrated wheels. It was on a direct course for the castle, and I doubted there was anything we could do to divert or waylay it.
The radio on my belt crackled.
"Ground forces, this is Sleipnir. I see you're, ah, having a spot of bother down there."
"Too bloody right we are, Thwaite," I said. I scanned upwards and spotted the Chinook zeroing in over the treetops. "Any ideas?"
"Flight Lieutenant Jensen's had one. Can't say I'm mad keen on it myself."
"Right now I'll take any suggestions you've got."
"We're, er, we're going to ditch the chopper."
"Ditch...?"
"On top of that thing. See if we can't stop it that way."
"Are you sure about this?"
"Christ, no. Jenners reckons there's a one in ten chance we'll make it out alive. My own estimate's somewhat more conservative. But needs must and all that sort of thing."
I didn't think I could talk them out of it. Didn't want to, truth be told. There weren't a whole lot of other options available to us.
"Fair enough," I said. "Thwaite? About your moustache?"
"Yes, Coxall?"
"It's a pretty nice one, actually. Lush. I'm just jealous."
"Acknowledged," said Thwaite. "Over and hopefully not out."
I watched Sleipnir pick up speed. It swooped in behind Jormungand, its rotors two discs of grey blur. Jensen was keeping its nose up, so that when the crash came - and it came jarringly hard - the Wokka's underside took the brunt. Sleipnir bellyflopped onto the back of the unsuspecting Jormungand, a dozen tons of aeronautical engineering colliding at speed with Loki's crawling serpentine vehicle.
The force of the impact smashed Jormungand's rear end deep into the ground and crumpled part of its topside inwards. It also split Sleipnir's fuselage in two, and I saw the forward section of the helicopter, cockpit and all, shear off and roll down Jormungand's flank. It hit the earth head-on, bounced, and came to a halt.
The aviation fuel in Sleipnir's tanks ignited. The fireball engulfed fully half of Jormungand, and the vehicle jolted, then shuddered to a complete standstill.
The explosion flung chopper parts far and wide. One of the rotors hurtled into the woods, scything through trees. The other shot over our heads, falling apart as it flew, each of the three blades separating from the rotor head mechanism in weird slow motion. One blade struck the castle,