The 3rd Superweapon (69.1)

This scene contains violence and objectionable bodily fluids.


56th of the Hazel’s Frost, 2030

Undisclosed Location — Newly-Founded Republic of Ayvarta

Furnishing an underground conference room in Ayvarta on a short notice was an ardous task. Nochtish girls in support staff uniform crawled around the ruins of a nearby university, and procured the chairs, the tables, a projector. The Meeting would be held in the command bunker of a set of old coastal guns. During the Solstice War, the guns saw no use. There was no enemy navy in the Southeast Ayvartan Sea. There still wasn’t any; the communists had wrecked the ports and their submarines made long patrols deadly.

Allied flags, banners and symbols were furnished for the meeting room, lights were installed, carpeting, everything that could bring to mind the propriety and comfort of an actual military headquarters. There was an attempt made to sew a banner for the Republic of Ayvarta’s flag, an eagle superimposed over a sun and carrying a sword, the eagle black, the sun red, the backdrop gold. Nobody could get one made in time, and the Republic went unrepresented among the flags of Nocht, Hanwa and Lubon in the room.

At the appointed date and time, the meeting room filled with top generals from the three allied countries. There were Hanwans with their ceremonial swords and dark brown uniforms, and Lubonin officers in their green parade uniforms, never seen on the battlefield, and Nochtish generals all wearing the dour, utilitarian gray common to all soldiers in their army. At the head of the meeting, atop a stage and podium constructed for the purpose, stood Field Marshal Dietrich Haus, a man looking younger than he was, soft-faced, imposingly tall, strong-shouldered, with hair almost to the shoulder now.

He stood before everyone, and behind him, a projector displayed many aerial images of a city, surrounded by walls, vast, larger than any city on any of their continents, able perhaps to hold all of their capitals in one plot of land. On a blackboard, Haus began to write. Across the silent room reverberated the sound of chalk striking board. In a few moments he had several figures up on the board. Then, he turned back to the room.

“The City of the Solstice is the strongest defensive position on the planet, gentlemen. Its air defense network alone comprises 10,000 guns in the city, most of 76mm caliber, many on the wall ramparts. Several of these guns can be used to attack ground targets as well. In terms of raw ground fire artillery, we’re looking at over 30,000 additional barrels. Solstice alone contains the 100,000 strong Revolutionary Guards army, as well as 300,000 reservists. Over 2000 tanks are at their disposal, likely including many of these new types that have gotten the better of us. In the air, we’re looking at at least 1000 fighter aircraft alone, with many hundreds of ground attack planes in support. Judging by the pace at which the enemy has been reorganizing, these numbers will only grow the longer we wait. You can bet that by the time we arrive at the city walls, there will be at least a million frontline personnel, if not more, defending Solstice. Never has a military force of mere men faced such an obstacle. Solstice has never fallen from without; nevermind the name and legend of the Conqueror’s Way. This city has never been taken in a fight.”

“Well,”

There was a lone other voice, sounding above the crowd otherwise entranced by the Field Marshal. One hand rose into the air, as if in a school. Haus followed the hand, the length of the arm, and saw a youthful, grinning face, like a fox. Short dark-blond hair, combed and slicked, and severe, sharp cheekbones accentuated that face, which could not be mistaken, and that detestable voice. It was Gaul Von Drachen of Cissea.

“One person took the city in a fight.” Von Drachen said. “Well, a few really, but one–”

“You mean Madiha Nakar, the mediocre general whom you can’t seem to overcome.”

“You’d do well not to underestimate her.” Von Drachen said. “That girl has, a kind of secret factor, you could say. She will surprise you. Mark my words, friend Haus.”

“I am not your friend, Von Drachen. Shut up, and don’t interrupt me again.”

Several heads in the room turned to glare at Von Drachen, who seemed far too comfortable and satisfied with himself despite everything that transpired.

Haus raised his fist. At the back of the room, his beautiful and unflappable assistant Cathrin Habich switched the images in the projector, from a reel of photographs of Solstice, to a reel that began with a map of Ayvarta. As the reel progressed, more of Ayvarta turned from red to blue. There were dates accompanying each color shift.

“We began this war on the 18th of the Aster’s Gloom. Our primary goal was regime change. The communist Socialist Dominance of Solstice has for years been a sponsor of revolutionary territorism and a dealer in arms to foreign threats to democracy. We carefully built up forces in the two independent nations in the continental Ayvarta, Cissea and Mamlakha, both of whom were sympathetic to our cause. Striking with swift pincer movements, we overran and destroyed many Ayvartan defenses, starting in the states of Adjar and Shaila, and then moving to Dbagbo and Tambwe. Over the the past 100 days we have captured over half the territory of the Ayvartan union. I will not mince words: our losses have been great. Our logistics are in tatters, resupply is slow and ardous and expensive thanks to the lack of suitable port facilities and to deficiencies in our Navy and merchant marine. But we have set foot in the red sand, Gentlemen.”

Cathrin switched the reels once more. Now instead of maps of Ayvarta, there were images of Nochtish and Ayvartan equipment. Photographs, schematics, planning documents, shipping manifests, tables of organization. Cathrin scrolled the images at the slightest signal from Haus, as he addressed the room again with renewed fervor.

“Gentlemen, I want anyone daunted by what you’ve seen and heard to leave this room, and never speak to me again! If you are not energized by this challenge, you are unworthy! We will bring the light of God to the godless communists! Solstice’s walls, dozens of meters towards the heavens, will fall before our might! Even as we speak, the Nocht Federation is preparing 10 weapons known as the ‘Wall-Breaking Potentials’ that will grant us access to the invincible city, where we will end this war. Feast your eyes!”

Again the reel was switched; images of weapons scrolled one after the other, larger than anyone in the room save perhaps Haus himself. Technical specifications on a new explosive, C-10. An ultra-long-range cannon on a super heavy battleship dubbed “Jormungandr.” A massive bomber dubbed “Thor,” and its rockets, “Mjolnir.” A super heavy tank, “Vishap.” An eerie cube shaped material for many experimental uses, “Lehnerite.” Weapon after weapon, fully unveiled with schematics and top secret information. It was awe-inspiring. Everyone in attendance was agape at them.

It was quickly evident this meeting was not simply about unity against the communist scourge. It was about the power of Nocht, about their prestige, ingenuity, wealth.

Ayvarta was a stepping stone, an example.

These weapons could cover any territory. The power to destroy a wall of Solstice could easily become the power to destroy Palladi or Edo. That was the assumption all foreign generals in the room immediately made and Haus did nothing to reassure them.

“You are witnessing the twilight of communism, gentlemen. The end of Revolution. No more will chaos triumph over the order of the world. Nothing and nobody can stand against these powers. Protected by these swords, peace will finally reign on Aer!”

No one dared ask who’s peace, or what kind, or where it would reign, or for how long. Nobody dared say a word, or even allowed themselves a loud breath. Eyes cast cautiously about the room as if looking for commonality. At least Haus was careful not to mention Democracy too much. There were monarchists and imperial theocrats in the room who were uncomfortable enough at the upstart democracy and its boldness.

“In the next few days, we will chart out a path to this peace, together. For now–”

“Ah, wait up! One more thing!”

A familiar voice rose in the back of the room, and a most familiar man walked down the aisle that split up the seating arrangements for the various delegations. Slick blond hair, a sharp suit, boyish good looks and a winning smile: it was none other than Nochtish president Achim Lehner, making his first ever appearance in the Ayvartan continent. Everyone was aghast; even Haus was surprised. His eyes drew wide open, and a smile crept up. He charged off the stage and ran up to Lehner, and took him in arms.

“You should have told me you were coming!” Haus said excitedly.

Lehner did not return the embrace, but did smile at his friend. “It was short notice.”

“Short notice? It’s a week-long voyage. God in heaven.” Haus smiled, and laughed.

Lehner stood back a step from Haus, extricating himself, and the two, once separated once more by propriety, made their way down to the stage. Lehner took the podium. At the other end of the room Cathrin stood in calm, collected confusion, not having any reels prepared for this. Haus motioned for her to cut off the projector, and turn the lights on the stage. Properly shone upon, Lehner began to speak to the crowd himself.

“Hey there, listen, friends, colleagues. A hundred days ago we embarked upon this amazing project together, and it’s been quite an experience. We’ve experienced a hell of a lot. I wanted to be here to see off the next step in the journey to a freer, better, stronger world. Part and parcel of that, is, letting go of old attitudes, old beliefs. Embracing the new. We’ve got all kinds of new. Weapons, tactics. I wanted to be here, personally, to introduce something else new, that I would like all of you to know that we have.”

He gestured to the back of the room again, where the door once more opened up.

“This information doesn’t leave this room, by the way! None of it does, of course, we’ll discuss that, but this especially. This especially does not leave this room, okay?”

Heads turned toward the back, where, perhaps most surprising of all, it was a woman walking down the aisle now. A pair of women; one was tall, slender, fit, with skin the color of molasses and long, dark hair in a messy ponytail, beneath a cap emblazoned with a silver eagle. Her nose was sleek, slender, sharp, her cheekbones high, and her face had a condescending expression. Her uniform was all black, and it was patterned after frontline soldiers, unlike that of her companion, who clearly wore a secretary’s coat and skirt. One was clearly a soldier, or intended as one, while the other was shorter, meeker, blond-haired and blue-eyed and a little bit plump. She would have been fairly typically Nochtish had it not been that she wasn’t: because both women had furry ears and tails.

“Please allow me to introduce you to 2nd. Lieutenant Aatto Jarvi Stormyweather of the Vorkampfer Corps, our first woman combat soldier. Times are a-changing, gentlemen!”

There was no applause. As Aatto took the stage, she shot the crowd a disdainful look, while her companion followed behind her with her tail literally between her legs, and looked utterly terrified. Around the room there were faces, some curious, others perplexed, and several furious. Among the Hanwans in particular, who had some interesting cultural notions toward women, this move did not inspire confidence.

Near the front of the crowd, a man with an old-style Nochtish cavalry uniform and a very geometric mustache stood in consternation and singled out President Lehner. He spoke in a rabid voice, as if he had been ready to snap and this was what broke him.

“Mr. President, you have asked us to conduct this war without materiel, with green men, overseas, against unknown foes, for months, with nary drill nor preparation for jungle warfare, for river warfare, for desert warfare; that, we did honorably, and that, I did grudgingly, for my country. But this, I simply will not stand! I will not stand for this army, already on the brink, to be filled with every two-meter trollop you deem erotic enough–”

From the stage, Aatto glared his way, and the gentleman instantly seized up.

His last words choked up, and he gripped his own throat in confusion, and he stared at Aatto, and at Lehner, and at Haus, and his legs shook as his words continued to fail him, as breath failed to enter him. Lehner looked toward the 2nd Lieutenant: without confusion, as would be expected, but instead with open nervousness. As Aatto’s mouth curled upward in a sadistic grin, the General below seemed to choke more violently.

“Aatto, please.” said the girl beside her, tugging on her sleeve.

“Uh, Stormyweather, that’s good enough, I think this misogynist learned his lesson eh?”

Lehner tried to be affable, and Aatto shot him a glance.

Sighing, she turned her head away.

At once, the old General breathed again in a terrible, raspy gasp.

His knees buckled, and he fell to the ground, and openly expelled blood, and vomit.

It fell out of him like slush, like melting snow. He was coughing up bloody ice.

“As you wish, Mr. President.” Aatto said.

Lehner clapped his hands together. “Uh, thanks, doll. Appreciate you and all you do.”

Aatto rolled her eyes, her tail slowly swishing behind her.

“Whatever.”

Lehner turned back to the room.

Another man was standing.

Gaul Von Drachen was giving a standing ovation, clapping, staring at Aatto in awe.

He seemed entirely too emotional about what had transpired.

Lehner ignored him and addressed the room again.

“Gentlemen, we have a lot to discuss. You see, God has smiled a smile that is only smiled once in a millennia, and he has smiled it on the Federation of Northern States. And on its enemies, he has cast a bolt of lightning that the world hasn’t seen since ages gone by. If you thought Nocht was starting to run out of steam: well, you ain’t seen a damn thing.”

There was chatter, confusion, and a restrained fear, all around the room.

“Gentlemen, who here has heard of magic? None of this leaves the room, by the way.”


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Storm The Castle (68.3)

Solstice, Eastern Wall Defensive Line

“Yuck. It reminds me of the final scene in The Last Dragoon. I can’t stand to look.”

Parinita Maharani, Chief Warrant Officer for the 1st Guards Mechanized Division, put down the binoculars and averted her eyes from over the ramparts with disgust.

At her side, Brigadier General Madiha Nakar of the selfsame unit gently touched the woman’s shoulder, comforting her with her presence as best as she could just then.

Madiha held out her hand and her lover gave her the binoculars, and she looked herself at the battlefield. From the ramparts they could see the entire desert unfold before them, a desolate expanse of swirling ruddy sand. But it was hard to see anything around what remained of the First Gate of the Conqueror’s Way, kilometers away. There was so much rubble piled so high and the ramparts viewed the bridge at such an angle that it blocked the vantage. However, though they could not see the death directly around the bridge, on the edge of the desert they saw enough corpses and blood to confirm the slaughter.

“I have never seen that film, but I guess I can imagine what it must be like.” Madiha said.

Parinita got excitable and started to gesticulate wildly as she spoke. “They packed hunks of pork and tomatoes bound in gelatin into uniforms to resemble gore, for the aftermath of the fated charge into the machine guns. It was really gross! I think it just didn’t look like what you think a human being should, even in death, so it was really shocking!”

“I see. Well, death isn’t very pretty, you know? Not in any form, not even in action film.”

Madiha put down the binoculars. Her eyes felt a little heavy from what she had seen in the battlefield, even those little hints from that far way. It never got any easier to see bodies. One learned to not see them, to avoid acknowledging them after a fight. When forced to see the butchery for what it was, Madiha found her stomach unsettled by it all.

Parinita raised a hand to her hair and wrapped long, wavy strawberry locks around a finger. She looked a little embarassed and ashamed of her previous enthusiasm.

“Hey, I’m sorry Madiha. I was being glib, but seriously. I needed to do that to process it.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m always happy to hear you talk film, remember?” Madiha replied.

She smiled at Parinita, her lover, confidante, and primary support personnel.

It was a hard smile to hold up, but it was worth it for her. Anything was.

“Right. I get carried away sometimes, though. But, anyway! It looks like the coast is clear.”

Parinita waved a hand over the desert. Madiha smiled and nodded at her lover.

They were dozens of meters above the ground, standing a few meters removed from the edge barriers of the Eastern Wall ramparts. Solstice’s heat bore down on them, it was past midday. Madiha could vaguely hear, even off in a great distance, the firing of the rampart guns on the Southern Wall of the city, which also under attack. Nocht had finally pushed far enough ahead, and slashed through enough of the defenses (or in this case at least, bolted past them), to besiege Solstice directly. Madiha had been put in charge of the defense of the Conqueror’s Way, though she had her own intentions for it.

Conqueror’s Way was so named because it was the route taken into Solstice by several conquering kings in antiquity. It used to be a rocky wasteland. It was said that whoever crossed the Conqueror’s Way, and then left the city victorious and paraded down the Way once more, and survived both journeys, would bless their rule to last a lifetime.

In modernity, it was a massive bridge, its length in the thousands of meters of stone and concrete and steel, suspended just shy of the rushing waters of the great Qural river. Once upon a time it boasted many fortifications; all of which had been pounded to rubble by repeated high-altitude bombardment during the preceding months.

Conqueror’s Way was as close as bombers could get to Solstice before the defenses got them, and as such presented the safest place to bomb where Solstice could heard it.

For a few weeks it had been a topic of great terror how Conqueror’s Way was destroyed.

Madiha intended to ride out through this bridge, or what was left of it, a hero herself.

But not yet; now was not the right time.

For now, she trusted the defenders on the remaining walls, and focused on her own.

“I have to wonder why they thought they could cross Conqueror’s Way with a company.”

Parinita turned to face Madiha with a quizzical expression. Madiha crossed her arms.

“I wager we have succeeded in hiding our numbers from aerial reconnaissance. They must have thought we left the bridge undefended after overflying and bombing it so much and seeing nobody there. Without troops on the bridge, they could walk to the very gate. Likely they intended to absorb the casualties inflicted by the rampart gunners, using those sacrifices as a means to attack the gate itself and ultimately breach the wall.”

“I guess after all that bombing they did, they must have been ready to believe it paid off.”

“That’s precisely why I allowed them the chance. It wound up helping us.” Madiha said.

In truth, there would’ve been a remote possibility of defending the bridge against air attacks. Madiha had calculated that scenario as well. Solstice’s anti-air defenses were strongest at the walls and within the city, and they were focused almost singularly on preventing overflight of the walls. It was possible, like with any artillery, to extend its cover beyond its typical range, to reorganize and retrain the shooters, and thereby extend a thin cover from the Eastern Wall’s dedicated Anti-Air to cover the Way.

It would’ve been bloody.

Conqueror’s Way was far more exposed than any part of Solstice.

Therefore, sacrificing expert anti-air gunners for the task did not sit right with Madiha, especially when the bridge could be so much more useful as a pile of rubble. Nobody understood it except her. The symbolic Conqueror’s Way, bombed out, empty. It was an enticing target, and the enemy took the bait. She had rebuffed a Company-sized attack and destroyed likely the entire enemy unit without casualties using only her recon troops. All because of deception and concealment. She found herself feeling oddly clever and elated, thinking to herself now that her deception had saved lives and killed foes.

“You got the first after-action reports in, right? What do you think?” Madiha asked.

“Gulab and Charvi were just a touch more reckless than they should’ve been.” Parinita said. “It feels like every time you give them an inch they want to fight it all themselves.”

“I will have words with them later.” Madiha replied gently.

“You should, they’re officers, and officers need to mind the back more in this army.”

Madiha nodded. “Well, right now, Chief Warrant Officer, our Kajari and Chadgura–”

Parinita grinned and laid her hands on her hips. “–Jeez, Madiha, you’re so formal–”

“–managed to produce a result,” Madiha continued, unimpeded by her lover’s teasing.

“I know!” Parinita said. “They have it harder than us. Still, it pays to be careful.”

Madiha nodded again. Sometimes she wondered how they did it.

Madiha had been an officer almost all of her career. She had fought on the front several times, and endangered her life plenty; but she could count the number of times she had been in danger at the head of an attack. For a grunt, it was every day, until the days were indeterminate. People like Gulab and Chadgura had volunteered to face death every day. Madiha was always called back to her headquarters. She was far safer than any of them.

She had to play disciplinarian, but a certain guilt tempered her response to recklessness.

“I’ll reacquaint them with the value of their lives.” Madiha said, half-jokingly.

As the desert wind blew away the scent of war, the two of them continued to watch the desert. Defense was not glamorous, and wars of defense even less so. All tales of great wars told of massive offenses and glorious charges and sweeping encirclements. Cunning was sang of when paired with initiative, and forgotten if not. So far, the Golden Army had strengthened itself and proven a tenacious defender, but Nocht kept coming, and they were driven to their last wall. All they could do was wait for an enemy to show up to fight. There was no means for them to launch effective attacks right now.

Sitting idle like this, awaiting battle on the enemy’s initiative, took a toll. On the soldiers, absolutely. But also on Madiha, who felt keenly the weight of her decisions every day.

Every defense had a cost. Today’s defenses, so far, had been free. This would change.

Madiha felt exhausted.

She could hardly believe she was still moving fluidly and standing tall.

Parinita hid it well, behind that pretty face and charming smile. But she was hurting too.

It had been a hellish, evil year, 2031.

“I think in Psychology they call it The Uncanny. You know?” Parinita said suddenly.

She had a finger on her cherry-red painted lips, and was staring off in thought.

“What are you talking about?” Madiha asked.

“Oh, um, sorry, I mean the thing from before. About how unsettling the fake corpses were in The Last Dragoon. I remember some papers on film psychology I read about that. It’s because of the unreality of it, you know? We expect things to be a certain way, but war just feels unreal to experience. At least, that’s what I believe. This violence, and all.”

Parinita shifted a little nervously on her feet. Her tongue was starting to slip from her.

Madiha nodded her head. She had understood; and she especially understood having a thought and having it turned to molten cheese in your brain by your own neuroses.

“I agree. We have an idea of what death should look like. And none of this feels right.”

“I feel it’s more that we don’t know how to think about any of it, even now.”

Parinita put her back to one of the rampart barriers and crossed her arms.

Next to her, a 76mm gun stood sentinel. It was unmanned, because the gunners were ready to rotate, and had gone on a little break. Solstice’s heat, especially on the walls, could easily reach 40 degrees or worse, and would cook one’s brain on a full shift. All essential personnel in Solstice’s defense had to be redundant, and consistently rotated.

“I go on my day to day treating it like a job, or like a favor that I’m doing for my girlfriend. When I’m alone, and I have time to myself, and there’s all the reports in front of me and all that. But looking at it like this, being confronted by it, its so eerie. I vacillate from thinking of it like a math problem. I think about stupid essay questions. ‘A train leaves the station carrying 100 tons of ammunition’ and so on.” Parinita continued, raising a finger into the air. “I am good at those. I also think of it like film sometimes. Prologue, act one, act two, climax; and the actors working tirelessly. But that’s not what it is. Just like tomatoes and pork set into jelly aren’t really a murdered human body.”

Madiha remembered what she said before. Parinita was trying to process it. She had to; to try to rationalize the unreality of everything. To try to find a way to live sanely with what they were all doing. That was Parinita. Madiha tried to shove things out of the way of her mind, the same way that same mind pushed physical things with its power.

Reaching out a hand idly, Madiha pushed on a stone on the wall and levitated it.

Parinita followed the stone around with her eyes, like a cat watching a toy.

It was odd that the most unreal thing among them was the easiest one to accept.

“Well. You’re more normal than I am I think. I think of war as a game.” Madiha said.

She was instantly ashamed of it, but she said it.

It helped at least that Parinita did not look disgusted or judging.

She smiled warmly at Madiha, catching the levitated stone out of the air in her fist.

“I learned to strategize via Academy war games. To me, its chess, except, I’m good at it.”

Madiha looked out over the desert and sighed.

It put her in a foul mood to think of it like that.

All those corpses on the desert.

Those misbegotten fools whom she hated; and yet they died because, she was better? Because she had outplayed them? Gambled and won? Any number of metaphors, they were all wrong. They all made the conflict out to be a game, or a film, or a story. There was no way to capture what had happened that wasn’t completely, utterly insane.

“Like I said before, we have to do it to process. We have to do something to understand and to carry on with the fight. We’re the victims here, after all.” Parinita replied. As soon as she said it, she seemed frustrated with herself. “I don’t even know why I’m thinking about this, to be honest. Maybe I am going insane now. It’d be inconvenient as hell.”

“You’re not insane. You’re tired. I’m tired.” Madiha said. “I haven’t slept in a week.”

“I’ve slept poorly. Maybe we need to get in bed together.” Parinita said, beaming cheekily.

“We’ve done plenty of that.” Madiha replied.

“Hah, look who’s lewd now? And you say I’m the minx here. I meant nothing erotic by it.”

Parinita put on a little grin and pretended to be innocent, circling her finger over head as if to suggest there was an angelic halo in the space over it, and not devilish little horns.

“I know you too well.” Madiha replied, grinning herself.

“Say I was being lewd, what would you do about it?”

Parinita took a few steps forward with hands behind her back and leaned into Madiha.

With a gloved finger, she pulled a little on the neck and collar of her shirt and winked.

“I’d sort you out and make you proper again.” Madiha replied.

She turned briefly toward Parinita and slipped her own finger down her coat and the neck of her shirt to grip on it and give it a teasing little tug. Parinita tittered happily.

Madiha was so glad for the shift in the conversation, even if it was a little out there.

“Let’s calm down for right now though. It’s too hot out and the gunners return soon.”

“Hey, I’m a paragon of self-control.” Parinita replied, pressing a hand against her breast.

“Right. Anyway, get the map, we’ll do one last check to make sure we report everything–”

Still feeling jovial, Madiha lifted the binoculars back up to her eyes.

There were the corpses, some of her own soldiers in parts of the bridge where she could see them, such as atop the mounds of rubble that once were gates. There was a sizeable amount of sand, and the Khamsin blowing in from the southeast was turning the air just a touch dusty and yellow, even over the Qural river. Satisfied, Madiha looked farther out.

Parinita returned and pressed herself close to the General.

“I got the map here, so what do you want to–”

Madiha spied something in the desert sand, something– uncanny.

Something large, something difficult to place. Something that shouldn’t have been there.

“Parinita, call back the rampart gunners, now. Right now!” Madiha shouted.


Observers on the eastern wall, such as General Nakar, and even those along the ground with the recon troops on Conqueror’s Way, finally spotted the enemy that now made itself known amid rising and falling dunes of the red desert. It had been carefully crawling in the distance, taking whatever path put the most geometry between itself and the walls. It had come close enough now; nothing could disguise its size, the smoke, the men around it, the vehicles that supported it. This was a battalion-sized formation.

But it was all concentrated around a single, monstrously large entity.

A massive series of camouflage nets shed from its bulk, and sand sifted off its surfaces as if it had risen from the desert like a whale from water. It had traversed the desert on the backs of several tracked tank transporters. Scopes and spyglasses could see letters on the side of the massive, metallic conveyance that held the weapon in its place for travel.

RKPX-003 VISHAP.

Around it, men in yellow and ash-gray uniforms unlocked the crate, and its lid came crashing down like a ramp. Inside, an engine roared to life, loud as a howling dragon.

Around the side of the great machine, two men watched the unfolding deployment.

“Well, General, I believe I have successfully infiltrated your weapon past enemy lines.”

One of the men sighed and patted down his own cap against his head.

“Oh, shut up, Von Drachen.”


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Storm The Castle (68.2)

This scene contains graphic violence and death.


Solstice City — Conqueror’s Way Defense Zone

For all the myth that surrounded it, Conqueror’s Way was a bridge, built out of stone in antiquity and reinforced with steel and concrete in modernity. It had withstood a horrific punishment during the war. Across its monumental bulk the bridge’s gates had been bombed to rubble, the ramparts pulverized, the bunkers and pillboxes crushed by relentless ordnance. Rubble lay undisturbed where it had fallen. Its hundred meter width was pitted and ruptured, but there was clearance here and there, where towers had fallen into the water instead of over the lanes, or where gates blew outward instead of collapsing in on themselves.

Atop the rubble of the outermost gate, soldiers of the 1st Guards Mechanized Division’s 2nd Motorized Infantry Regiment stood guard over the Conqueror’s Way. They passed a pair of binoculars among themselves, each individual hoping that they could confirm the sight before them as merely a wraith in the heat’s haze, a trick of the desert sun and partial dehydration. When the binoculars landed in the hand of eighteen-year-old Loubna Al-Alwi, and she raised them to her eyes and stared over the rubble at the edge of the desert, she saw the sand blowing up into the air in the distance, and the figures, rippling in the heat mirages, moving closer and closer, trampling in a huge mass, until she could make out uniforms, helmets, and guns.

At her side, her partner was quivering. She reached out a hand to Loubna’s shirt.

“Loubna, they’re coming. They’re really coming. We’re really going to fight.”

Loubna was a few months older than Aditha, and she wanted to say something reassuring as a senior to a junior, but she knew she had nothing in her that would ease the situation. They had been waiting with the breath trapped in their chest for months. She could see in Aditha’s sweat-soaked face, in her green eyes, that fear. She felt like she could make out her own perplexed face, mirrored in the tears starting to roll out of Aditha’s eyes.

She shook her head, averted her eyes and took Aditha gently by the hand.

“We should tell the Sergeant and the 2nd Lieutenant. Come on.” Loubna said.

Aditha wiped her tears and nodded her head.

At their sides, the shimmering waters of the long, twisting Qural disappeared behind the remains of the bridge’s barriers as the pair slid down the mound of rubble to the bridge.

Leaving the other five members of the squadron atop the rubble mound, Loubna and Aditha crossed the car lanes on the pitted, uneven bridge flat and ran toward a chunk of a guard tower on the left-hand side. There were people all around, with their backs to rubble, seated with canteens out and tarps strung wherever they could be, trying to beat the heat. Beyond them lay the rubble of the second gate, still half-standing and retaining more of its shape, having only been struck directly by a single heavy bomb from a Nochtish airplane.

There were more people behind that second gate, but that was not Loubna’s destination. Instead, behind the remains of the forward guard tower the recon platoon’s command element had set up a radio under a grey, amorphous tent that looked like another piece of rubble.

Inside, 2nd Lieutenant Charvi Chadgura and 1st Sergeant Gulab Kajari were seated together, crossing out parts of the gridded desert map in conjunction with radio personnel from the Division. It was something that transpired quietly every week. Old maps were destroyed, and new ones with new positions, directions and coordinates were issued and marked up.

Everything looked almost serene, like nobody had any idea the war had arrived.

“Ma’am! There’s a problem!” Loubna said nervously. At her side, Aditha merely stared.

Lt. Chadgura looked up first. Her face, dusty from the desert wind, was fully devoid of emotion, and her speech felt dull to the ears. She was unimpressive of stature, but colorful in appearance, her silver-like hair a contrast to her dark skin. She made an impression.

“Private Al-Alwi; please explain.” replied the Lieutenant, fixing her with a strong gaze.

At her side, Sergeant Kajari pulled off a big pair of radio headphones.

She gave Loubna a big smile from over her shoulder.

“Yes ma’am.” Loubna and Aditha both stood straight and saluted. “Ma’am, at 0137 we caught sight of figures in the desert, and keeping watch on their movements, we now believe them to be the enemy, ma’am! They are making their approach from the desert, direction of uh,”

Loubna’s brain became stuck, she could not remember the surrounding areas well–

“–From the direction of Sharahad, ma’am!” Aditha added, covering for Loubna.

Loubna felt secretly the most grateful she ever had been for Aditha at that moment.

“Huh? Did they get past the 1st Tank then?” Sergeant Kajari said, turning to the 2nd Lt.

“No, they must have gone through the sands. It’s the only gap.” 2nd. Lt Chadgura said.

“So then, it’s probably a recon force and an exhausted one at that.” Sgt. Kajari said.

Sergeant Kajari stood up from the ground, and picked up a Danava type Light Machine Gun set against the wall of the guard house ruin. She stretched her arms up, and let out a big yawn, as if she had not stood up for many hours, or as if she had been bored. Wiping dust off her rump, she walked over to Loubna, who was still stiff as a board nailed to a checkpoint barrier.

Face to face, Loubna was a head taller than Sergeant Kajari. She had bigger shoulders and shorter hair and felt just a little inadequate faced with the unit’s vibrant, energetic idol.

Smiling all the while, Kajari thrust the Danava into Loubna’s hands and patted her back.

“It’ll be fine, Private Al-Alwi! Private Chatham! Let’s go hunting! We’re recon after all!”

Aditha, shorter, longer-haired, a bit more dainty, drained of color.

Loubna gulped, but Sergeant Kajari had such energy it was impossible not to follow her.

“Please be careful, Gulab.” 2nd Lt. Chadgura cried out to them.

Sergeant Kajari merely raised a hand and waved it dismissively, without even turning back.

“We’re forming two echelons! Five of you follow me up to reinforce the mound. All the rest of you stay down here, and form up behind the rubble!” Sergeant Kajari commanded.

Not one canteen was left on the ground, not one tarp strung up. Instantly, all of the platoon that was situated between the 1st and 2nd Gates began to take up fighting positions. Loubna was transfixed by them for a moment, how quickly and efficiently they moved and worked. These were Sergeant Kajari’s regulars, the elite of the 2nd Division’s Guards Reconnaissance.

Meanwhile, their leader was hopping and skipping toward the battle with Loubna in tow.

With almost a relish, Kajari charged up on top of the first gate mound, laid flat atop it, and asked for the binoculars to be passed to her. Loubna and Aditha laid down beside her. Sergeant Kajari raised the binoculars to her eyes and stared down the desert. The advancing forces were making no effort to conceal their movements. Though in fact, it was more apt to say they could not. Aside from the rise and fall of the sand, there was no cover for them to hide from the bullets. Their only protection was to move quickly and spread out their formation.

“Hmm!”

She passed the binoculars to another platoon member, and clapped her hands together.

“I knew it. I read the map correctly. Those are Republic of Ayvarta troops, comrades.” said Sergeant Kajari. “Traitors who joined with Nocht and seek to hand Solstice to them.”

“That’s the Empress’ government in the south.” Aditha said, as if to herself in shock.

“Don’t sound so impressed. Empresses and Kings and Queens are all fake.” Sergeant Kajari said sharply. “I can go around saying the desert belongs to me just as well as anybody else. And nobody has to listen to me either. They’re all cowards, and we’re teaching them a lesson.”

Out in the desert the formations of men entered combat distance, and they could see the yellow uniforms of the Republic, and the Nochtish-issue rifles being hefted up for battle, and the sabers and machetes being drawn by officers signalling their men to charge. There were over a hundred men approaching in scattered groups, all coming within a kilometer.

Sergeant Kajari suddenly stood up from the mound, and raised her rifle to her eye.

She took aim and fired a shot that seemed to resound across the empty desert.

Somewhere in the distance one of the moving figures fell and vanished.

“Take aim and fire, comrades! We’re Guards Reconnaissance, and we lead the way!”

Bullets started to drive right back at them from the desert, striking the rock and rubble, flying over them and past the brazenly upright Sergeant, and it made her mad shouting all the more imposing, all the more commanding. There were now twelve of them atop that mound, and facing the incoming onslaught seemed almost suicidal, and yet, none of them would run.

Loubna found herself reaching down her side, and she pulled up the Danava LMG and set it atop the rubble, the barrel shroud poking out from between two concrete bricks and the sight peeking just over the debris. Beside her, Aditha withdrew her rifle and laid on the rocks, taking aim with her telescopic sight. Her teeth were chattering and her hands shaking.

Sergeant Kajari laid down flat atop the rubble of the first gate and started shooting.

One by one their other comrades in the squad were picking targets and firing.

Judging by what she had seen in the binoculars the approaching enemy lacked vehicles and seemed to be low on heavy weapons. It was a mass of riflemen and bayonets, hoping to penetrate in a cavalry charge without horses. They could do it against a lightly armed position, such as theirs, but there was one wrench in that dire strategy. Sergeant Kajari had entrusted Loubna, perhaps carelessly, perhaps unthinkingly, with the tool to win the battle.

It was like everything Loubna had read in the pamphlets and in the tactical reports.

She had an automatic weapon and none of the enemy approaching her did.

They had no cover, and she had all the bullets, more bullets than the whole squadron.

Everyone’s lives were in her hands. She sweated, and looked down the Danava’s sights.

Her own hands were shaking, but she thought of Aditha and what they had gone through.

“Loubna, are you alright? You’re shaking.” Aditha said, setting up her rifle.

She patted Loubna on the shoulder. In turn, Loubna tried to steel herself for the battle.

“Adi, I’ve never shot anyone real before. But I promised.” She said, in a serious voice.

Aditha looked up from her scope in shock at those words, but she could not say anything before Loubna held down the trigger, and the metal crack of each shot silenced her.

“I promised I’d take care of you!”

Loubna shouted, and from the barrel of the Danava dozens of seething blood-red rounds flew out into the desert, kicking up sharp spears of sand and dust into the air wherever they hit. Loubna swung the gun around on its bipod, settling the sights in the general area of an enemy group and pressing and depressing the trigger rapidly. In short, rapid bursts the bullets soared down on the enemy, grouped closely but deviating in a cone spread that showered the desert.

Her entire body shook with the forces going through the weapon.

Wild and mostly innacurate, her gunfire served to disrupt the enemy’s movements. She moved her sight from group to group, launching several quick bursts before moving to the next, and causing the men to drop, to spread out, to crouch and lose their pace. Formations began to run into each other in the chaos, and the enemy march lost its discipline and efficiency.

As the men scattered, her comrades and their slower-firing weapons could pick them off.

As one, the squadron fired its rifles in time with Loubna’s bursts, and set upon the enemy.

It was powerful; her Danava was monstrously powerful.

When her gun clicked empty, Loubna ripped the pan magazine from it, and reached into Aditha’s bag beside her (she was the support gunner), and slammed a new pan into place.

“Loubna–”

Aditha again had no time to speak before Loubna, focused like bird over a bug, shot again.

This time the men were closer, and this time Loubna’s shots began to inflict upon them.

“Loubna!”

She saw it, or at least, she thought she did, when the first man she ever killed fell.

He was an officer in the midst of his men, holding out a machete, almost 500 meters close.

She set her sight on him, opened fire, and the group dispersed and dropped and scrambled away from the gunfire, but he was caught, instantly, amid the burst. He stood for seconds as if suspended in the air by cables, his arms going limp as the bullets impacted his shoulder, his elbow, his armpit, like a series of knockout boxing blows. His knee exploded from a shot, bringing his dying body down. His face swung to catch a round in the nose.

Loubna had thought the first man she would kill in this war would be some Nochtish devil in grey fatigues with skin like a ghost. Instead, she shot a man as brown as she, and he died.

There was a cosmic instant where this became apparent to her, and she thought she would be trapped in it, and she thought she would regret it so deeply that it would kill her as brutally as the bullets had killed him. But the adrenaline pushed her out of that deific second where she contemplated the power she had, and into the next deific second where she wielded the lightning like the Gods of the North had done. She raised her hand, and with a flick of the wrist had the appropriate elevation angle, and continued to shoot as she had been.

Just that simple turn of the hand guided her bullets to three other men crouching away from the gunfire, and slew them in turn, perforating their flesh and blowing up dust and sand over them. It looked for a ridiculous instant as if spears of earth had blown through their bodies, and the desert itself killed them in revenge. It was just the penetrating power of the gun.

She had shot at beef hunks as part of her training; she knew what bullets did.

Moments later, she felt a click, and a sputtering final recoil through the gun, and she stretched out her hand, shaking like mad, into Aditha’s bag for another pan. It felt numb, weakened.

Suddenly she felt a warm hand on her arm, and turned with wide-open eyes to see Aditha.

Her long, dark hair was over her honey-brown face, and she was sweating, and red in the eyes.

“Loubna, please, you’re hurt. Please.” Aditha said.

Loubna felt a sting in her shoulder.

She looked down and saw a cut in her coat, bleeding.

It hurt suddenly. Her arm started to shake even worse.

“It’s nothing.” Loubna said, her voice trembling.

“You’re shaking. Please, for the love of God, take this and settle down for a moment.”

Aditha handed her an injector, and a compress bandage, from her bag.

She returned to the scope on her sniper rifle.

“Listen. I don’t need you to protect me. In fact, I can protect you. Don’t be so conceited.”

Aditha took a deep breath, and pressed the trigger.

700 meters away a man’s head vanished into red mist.

Loubna could not read Aditha’s mind or place herself in her head.

But she wondered if Aditha had felt that moment of strange disquiet after her first kill.

Seemingly without pause, without even drawing a new breath, Aditha worked the bolt on her sniper rifle, and quickly lined up and took a second shot. Out in the desert a man trying to set up the enemy’s only visible Norgler machine gun fell down a tall sand dune with the weapon, and both ended up partially buried at the bottom of the hill by the rising winds.

“Right now the worst you could do to me is to die. Please, Loubna.”

Loubna nodded, shaken a bit by the intensity of her friend’s words.

She slid down a bit from the position of her gun, flipped onto her back, and spread her coat.

She applied the compress under her clothes and over the wound, the waxy glue sticking the bandage hard against her bleeding, cut and bruised shoulder. She took the injector and pressed it against her neck, and pressed the button, and felt the sudden prick in her skin. There was a cold pain and then a sensation of lightness as the drugs spread through her bloodstream.

“A hundred meters! We’ve got enemies dashing in!” shouted a comrade.

Rifle shots rang out, and were answered, the replies now far too close.

They could hear the boots trudging up the steep mound.

“Loubna watch out!” Aditha shouted.

Loubna looked up and saw a shadow over her with a rifle and a glinting bayonet.

Over her the Republican soldier who had breached the line raised his weapon.

Rifles and pistols went up all around him, but there wasn’t time to stop him.

He roared, and he thrust down.

Then, as if instantly meeting a wall, he sailed back from Loubna.

2nd Lieutenant Chadgura had charged up the rubble and struck him with her shoulder.

He reeled, and she drew her machete and drove it into his gut, pulling him closer.

Blood splashed onto the rubble, onto Loubna, who lay vulnerably beneath the melee.

2nd Lt. Chadgura drew her officer’s pistol, her other hand holding the dying man by the blade.

She thrust the corpse forward, where it met the rifle bayonets of a pair of republican soldiers.

She raised her pistol, and fired at both in quick succession, their faces vanishing in red gore.

“Charvi!”

Sergeant Kajari stood up from the rubble, drew her own pistol and knife, and joined 2nd Lieutenant Chadgura at the fore of the defense, shooting the men clambering desperately up from the desert below. Rifle fire sailed past her, and both officers were lucky that the enemy did not want to stop to aim at the bottom of the makeshift hill, or they would have been shot.

They had no automatic support: Loubna had the Danava, and Loubna could hardly move.

It wasn’t even the drugs or the pain.

It was fear. A man had tried to kill her, to butcher her with a blade.

It was scarier than any shootout, and Loubna felt paralyzed.

“Gulab, please hide, I am enacting a plan.” Chadgura dispassionately said.

“Like shit you are! You scared me to death!” Gulab said.

Both of them continued firing, each taking an enemy corpse in front of them as a grizzly shield.

“You may not believe me, but everything is going according to a design–”

“Oh save it, Charvi. I wasn’t just laying around either.”

Sergeant Kajari dropped her pistol and withdrew something from her back pouch.

There was a bundle of grenades linked by a string.

“Oh, well.” Chadgura said.

“Yeah, well,”

Sergeant Kajari heaved the bundle down the mound, and all the grenades primed at once.

Both tossed the bodies they were holding, absorbing stray fire as they backed away.

They rolled downhill, and Sergeant Kajari turned around and grabbed 2nd Lieutenant Chadgura. They both fell hard onto the rubble, one atop the other, and behind them a half-dozen grenades went off at once, shooting up smoke and metal and collapsing some of the footholds up the rubble of the first gate. Men were thrown bodily, and slid down, and several were caught in the blasts and shredded, and Loubna could barely see it from her vantage. There was just smoke and blood and indistinct carnage and she could hardly believe it.

It had been less than a minute’s worth of war, that exchange, and it was madness.

“Gulab, you have once again succeeded in playing the hero, so could you please–”

Sergeant Kajari, in full view of the rookies, pressed herself against 2nd Lieutenant Chadgura and took her into a kiss, fully and passionately. The 2nd Lieutenant reciprocated in confusion.

When their lips parted they were staring intensely into each other’s eyes.

“Now I succeeded.” Sergeant Kajari smiled.

2nd Lieutenant Chadgura blinked. She did not smile, but she did seem eerily content.

“You absolutely did.”

Sergeant Kajari, elated, turned to the rookies. “You all better not snitch!”

All around the mound, the rookies nodded their heads in surprise, confusion and anxiety.

“Oh right,” Sergeant Kajari looked down at Chadgura. “What was your plan, sweetie?”

“Oh yes. My plan.” Chadgura shouted. “Dabo!”

From behind them, a serene-sounding voice replied.

“Yes ma’am!”

Coming from below, a large, round man ran up the rubble, heaving in his arms a metal gun shield in one hand and a machine gun in the other. As he reached the top of the mound, he slammed into place the shield, burying its sharp underside into the rubble, and he set down the machine gun in the slot on the shield. It was a sleek, black, all-metal gun that Loubna was only vaguely familiar with. Long ammunition belts fed it, instead of pans, and it lacked the characteristic water jacket of the old Khroda machine guns: it was an A.A.W. CH-30 Chakram.

Sergeant Kajari and 2nd Lieutenant Chadgura slowly unwound themselves from each other, and both of them hid behind the gun shield with the large Corporal Dabo, and face down the remains of the enemy in the desert. Sergeant Kajari held the ammunition belts, 2nd. Lt. Chadgura ranged the gun, and Corporal Dabo’s huge hands took the gun handles.

“Platoon machine gun team, ready! Fire for effect!” 2nd. Lieutenant Chadgura shouted.

Corporal Dabo rapped the trigger of the CH-30 and unleashed a storm of firey red tracers.

Each 12.7mm shot from the long barrel of the Chakram boomed like thunder, and there were dozens of shots flying out seemingly every second. It caused a terrifying cacophony, and an even more frightening result on the battlefield. Wherever the gun turned, its shots lanced through the attackers like nothing Loubna had ever seen. This was no Khroda; each bullet was twice as long and nearly twice as thick. Flying red spears rained brutally down on the desert. In their wake whole chunks of human vanished from bodies, arms sliced off, ribcages blown out from the side, heads severed instantly from necks. The Chakram churned through the ammunition in its belt as it churned through the numbers of the enemy, wiping out whole sections and squadrons as Dabo turned the barrel from unit to unit at Chadgura’s instruction.

Loubna’s Danava was a toy compared to this devastating weapon.

It took no more than its fire alone, and the enemy’s charge was completely broken.

Loubna crawled up, and dropped next to Aditha. Both of them bore final witness.

Survivors began to flee into the desert. There were few.

Below the mound were hundreds of bodies it seemed, splayed all over the desert, at the foot of the first gate rubble mound, a few atop the mound from the earlier melee. There was blood everywhere, seeping into the already ruddy sand and turning it almost black in places. There were wounded men still crawling about without hope, and the dead lay pathetically without any uniformity in their wounds, everyone missing something or other, no body left whole.

Loubna could not draw her eyes away from the sight. It was so disgusting she wanted to vomit.

2nd Lieutenant Chadgura stood up from behind the Chakram gun shield and sighed.

“Good kills, Corporal, Sergeant. Private Al-Alwi. Everyone get ready to move back down.”

Around her, all of her comrades were standing up, their rifles against their chests, breathing heavily from the drop in adrenaline. Loubna could still hear the booming of the Chakram and the rhythmic cracking of the Danava in her ears, within the awful silence of the desert. Was that all of the enemy? She looked out over the sands, trying to ignore the scars formed by the blood and bodies on the landscape. There were no more living enemies that posed a threat.

2nd Lieutenant Chadgura raised her voice. “We will ask for reinforcements and perform body collection. Clearly the enemy is persistent. They will attack again. We held out, but we’ll need more than a recon platoon to carry out the defensive plan against this concerted an effort. ”

“You got that right. These guys were crazy. How could they keep charging like this?”

Sergeant Kajari looked quizzically at 2nd Lt. Chadgura as if her lover could answer this.

Chadgura shrugged. “They must have liked their chances against such a light defense.”

“I doubt it was just that. I feel like something’s got to be happening. But, we’ll see.”

Everyone started to wander off down the mound. Aditha stood, and tugged on Loubna’s shirt.

“We’d better go too Loubna. We should at least drink some water and lay back.” She said.

Loubna nodded silently. She felt ashamed of herself, having fought, in her reckoning, as poorly as she had in that engagement. Sergeant Kajari had entrusted everything to her, and yet–

She felt a sudden pat in the back, strong and sharp and full of vigor.

“Good work, private! Amazing for your first real combat. I knew I could count on you.”

Sergeant Kajari appeared from behind her, smiling her honey-brown smile brightly. Her braided ponytail was flying with the desert wind, and she wore the quilted shawl of a desert nomad over her uniform, for reasons unknown to Loubna. She was always smiling at the rookies, and always patting them on the back. When Loubna looked at her, Kajari winked.

“You remind me of myself, Private! Except bigger and tougher! You’re taller than my brothers!”

Loubna did not feel that was particularly flattering, but Sgt. Kajari must have meant well.

“I’m sure you’ll make a splendid soldier! Just stick with Private Chatham here, she looks like the sort who will set you straight.” Sergeant Kajari looked at Aditha and winked too.

Aditha looked between Sergeant Kajari and Loubna and turned red in the face.

“No, it’s, it’s definitely not like that.” She whimpered with embarrassment.

Loubna averted her eyes. “I don’t think this is a good time, ma’am, but thank you for trying.”

Sergeant Kajari laughed. “Listen: don’t take any levity for granted, or you’ll go insane.”

Waving and smiling one last time at the rookies, she turned and followed the 2nd Lieutenant.

Loubna looked at Aditha, and Aditha at Loubna, and they both averted their gazes after.

Loubna averted her gaze toward desert, in time to spot a column of sand blowing into the air.

She blinked, and stared, uncomprehending of what she was seeing.

Something was approaching, and it was either very large, very fast, or both.

“Adi, do you see that?”

Aditha, her arms crossed over her breasts in a meek posture, peeked over her shoulder.

Her eyes drew wide open.

She raised her sniper scope to her eyes and adjusted the magnification.

“Loubna, we had better get the officers back here.” Aditha said, her voice trembling.


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Storm The Castle (68.1)

This chapter contains graphic violence and death.


48th of the Lilac’s Bloom, 2031 D.C.E

Ayvarta, Solstice — South Wall Defensive Line

Around the city of Solstice the Red Desert rolled into hills and valleys. It rose, and it fell, and patterns formed on its surface like ocean waves captured solid, an endless sea of windswept rust-colored dust parched by a brutal heat. Stones set on the ground in ancient times traced paths through the desert to the oasis that is Solstice, but these paths came and went with the winds, and with the shape and stature of the surrounding dunes.

Since the beginning of the war, the unkempt paths had all but disappeared into sand.

One of those vanished roads once led to the southern wall of Solstice, said to be the only one “touching ground.” On the famous eastern road the massive stone bridge of the Conqueror’s Way parted Solstice from the rest of the land, the Qural river flowing from the north and down underneath the massive fortification; to the west, sheer cliffs, wide pits and broad gorges, which had been filled with water artificially, blocked the city access.

And so, it was along the fated south, that the first grey shirts and the first black jackboots, climbed the sandy hills to stare face to face, for the first time, at the vast walls of the city.

Upon spying the wall for the first time, the men, already enervated by the stinging, relentless heat, grew quieter, and their muscles tensed, their whole bodies frozen still. Eyes drew wide at the distant sight of the ancient stone wall, dozens of meters tall. It was tall enough to keep the giants of nochtish legend out of the socialist’s streets. It was like staring at a cliff from far off, an obstacle one knew to be in one’s own future; it was the polished, brown stone face of a mountain that set itself on an adventurer’s weary trail.

Those who trudged up the hill without hope, simply collapsed at the peak, dead in spirit if not already dead. They had come for little reason or no reason at all, and nothing could drive them further. Months of campaigning in the desert had all but killed them, in spirit if not flesh. Those who had come to fight, loaded their weapons. Masses of men, broken up by tanks, backed up by the small, quick cars upon which their offices rode on, crested the hill, and assembled atop the sand. There were no horses. All of the horses were dead.

Some men were allowed to ride on the backs of the light tanks driving up to the wall. Many were old model light “Ranger” tanks, worn and pitted with bullets and discolored in places where old worn-out plate had been replaced with new armor. Even the most veteran of these tanks was obsolete now. It was a motley assemblage. On these tanks, men could ride atop the enclosed turret and in the back, over the engine, if they could stand the heat.

Many among the fighting men griped about the lack of sturdy, powerful M4 tanks in this crucial juncture. They suspected shortages, but did not suspect the nature of their mission.

Their true purpose was cleverly concealed by a few pieces of less expendable technology.

Among the old warhorses there were scattered signs of Nocht’s ruthless wartime evolution, enough to improve the general morale and to make the charge seem a little less doomed. These new tanks, moving at a faster clip, and with open-topped turrets boasting powerful 76mm guns inspired by the new Ayvartan tanks, were new model M3A3 R-K Hunter light tank destroyers, replacing the old, flawed Hunter artillery tanks.

Those men who got to ride on the “Rick Hunters” got a breezy journey to the starting line.

Trucks pulled artillery into place, engineers dug earthworks for the camps. Crucial water was stockpiled air-tight and under tarps. A village of tents rose to support the battle.

However, everyone’s eyes were taken by the gallantry of the front line.

Atop the hill, Nocht’s combat power arranged itself into neat, preplanned ranks.

Slowest first, fastest last, and in staggered waves down to the platoon level.

Back at the camps, numerous tents housed radio control teams, staffed by young women as had become customary, who worked the wireless boxes, set up antennae, and delivered orders from nearly endless slate of officers down the chain of command. Firing off hundreds of calls, the radio girls kept everyone on time, in place and organized, and kept their commanders appraised of the situation moment to moment. Everyone spoke in prepared codes on the radio, but officers in the tents allowed themselves to be candid.

“Bring forward the C-10 teams! We’re breaching that fucking wall!”

Thousands of men, hundreds of vehicles, assembled across a several-kilometer swath of desert, and faced the wall. Within fifteen minutes, not even enough time for the vast, long, multi-headed shadow they cast upon the sand to shift a degree, the command was shouted, and there was a convulsion along the body of this great beast, and it shrugged.

The 365th Infantry Division along with elements of the 25th Panzer Division would be the historic vanguard, the honored heroes who would initiate the 1st Wall Attack Operation.

First into the fray was the 3rd Battalion of the 365th’s 18th Regiment. One thousand men almost to the head broke off from the body of the Division and began to move across the ten kilometers of flat distance between the crowded divisional area and Solstice. It was a charge of the modern day, not a sprint of a hundred meters from speartip to speartip, but a tactical march against a fortification on a strict timetable. Some men ran as if they could cross the desert flats and fight within the minute, and those men fell ten minutes later.

Those marching steady kept weary eyes forward, on the walls that came closer and closer.

Across the desert the cry resounded, unchallenged by the silent stone: Vorwarts!

Accompanying the cry and the charge were the sound of loud, intermittent blasts behind them. It was not enough to startle anyone; they all knew the plan. They had to. Over the heads of the men, artillery guns fired heavy shells that crossed the distance to the city in moments, and they struck the stone walls like iron fists. These were the first blows of the war directly at the walls of Solstice. Chunks of stone went flying, and smoke and dust blew up in front of the wall and obscured the obstacle. Each shot sent a triumphant thrill through the mass. The 3rd Battalion picked up the pace. Within the hour they had cut the distance to half. Several tanks caught up quickly, and the Pionier engineering teams and their explosives started to make ready. In an hour more they would be in the city!

Maybe in two or three, the war might be over! They could go home, triumphant!

Owing to the wind and the dust, and the contribution of their own artillery fire to both, a yellow curtain fell over the march. There was a foul wind picking up that was scattering sand into the atmosphere, an effect known to the locals as the “khamsin.” Within an atmosphere the color of parchment that howled and stung, the 3rd Battalion did not see the shells flying over their own head. They did not see the flashes atop the wall, nor the casings falling from on high. And when the blasts fell at their backs, those ahead believed it to be their own guns, and did not see the carnage that was creeping slowly back to front.

When the dusts ahead began to settle, and their own artillery quieted, and the wall again came to view, the 3rd Battalion saw minimal damage inflicted on the stone. They paled as they saw something glinting in the scorching sunlight: reinforced plates behind a false layer of stone. All of that howitzer fire had done nothing; Solstice was still untouched.

And then there was another flash, and another, these were no trick of the desert light.

Guns started flashing from several openings on the stone. With the dust clear and the distance cut, it was possible to see a hint of gun barrels protruding over the top wall, belonging to heavy rampart guns. These impressive weapons launched massive 100+ millimeter shells along the length of the column, with one or two startling shots a minute.

The carnage they wrought distracted the men from the guns in the wall itself.

There was an instant of silence. The advancing infantry seemed not to realize their fate.

Amid the khamsin a hail of gunfire met the 3rd Battalion. At first soundless in the wind, their red tracers masked by the haze, the machine gun fire was an invisible reaper that swept across platoons and companies and put to the ground dozens of men. They fell like they had fallen all along the trek through the desert, suddenly and mysteriously, as if the heat had finally dried out the last drop of their souls. They fell as they had fallen before and so they fell forgotten, and the 3rd Battalion marched on as it had learned to.

Hidden within the soundless stone, inside the face and the columned corners and interred at the base of the wall, were machine guns, anti-tank cannons, mortar emplacements.

When mortars and gun shells began to land, blasting skyward pillars of earth and gore, and the buzzing machine gun fire started to build enough to chop men to pieces as they stood, the urgency of the situation became horrifically apparent. It was then that the bullets became visible, and that death became less abstract. The disciplined mass of the 3rd Battalion split and scattered and charged the wall in haphazard patterns, and all across the carpet of flesh blossomed horrific circles of death where howitzer shells exploded.

There was still some semblance of a plan. Guide the C-10 to the wall. The C-10, the 10th of the Wall-Breaking Potentials. Those men who ran with hope ran with that hope in hand.

Around the teams of C-10 carrying engineers, the attacking troops rallied, and so the battalion coalesced into three distinct masses with gaggles of stray soldiers between.

There was no louder sound in the desert than the Ayvartan guns. Even the panic in the invader’s heads was quieter. Shells fell savagely around the advancing infantry. A near-miss would detonate in a hail of cruel metal fragments; if the concussive blast of a nearby explosion did not take an arm or a leg, a cloud of jagged metal knives would. Any group so unlucky as to have a shell land on them disappeared, a red mist and a red splash atop the ruddy-brown sand. It was as if the men were bubbles being popped by falling needles.

Hundreds died immediately, and hundreds more followed, as the shells and the machine gun fire and the guns swept forward and back, forward and back, leaving a trail to the wall.

Tanks, lagging behind the advance, were picked off by the large-caliber guns atop the walls. There were several M3s and few M4s, and none could withstand the concentrated fire of the wall guns. They moved implacably, an iron wall buckling at its supports, some tanks trying to swerve and zig-zag, others praying as their front armor took stray shots.

It was too much. Single shots to the front plate outright destroyed the light tanks, and even the brand new M3s would falter, their open tops exposing their crews to shrapnel and flame. M4 tanks shot in the cheek, would diffuse the blast across their hulls and rattle mad every man inside it. Whether or not the armor survived, the machinery inside was doomed, shaken to pieces. Many tanks were abandoned, serving no function but cover. The Ayvartan fire was accurate and ferocious, and when the line of tanks stalled, it joined the other human detritus of the operation, a vast graveyard soiling the southern desert.

But while the battle raged on, the landscape was shifting.

Wind and war moved the sand and the earth, creating craters, mounds, features otherwise missing in the flat terrain between the Division and Solstice. While their heavy machinery and thick formations crumbled, individual men clung to life within the storm like dogs hurled into ocean water. Within one or two kilometers, a step away from their destination, the men of the 3rd Battalion could huddle in holes and against the shadowed parts of their ephemeral sandy hills and found a measure of safety. Machine gun fire was sailing above them, and shells striking safely behind them. They now had a foothold.

“This is Storm-Two!”

At the head of the bloody march, a captain from a C-10 team picked up a radio.

“Repeat, this is Storm-Two! We’ve made it to the shadow of the wall!”

“Acknowledged, Storm-Two,” replied a dispassionate female voice. She was speaking in code, but the Captain knew her words immediately, having memorized the ciphers, and so in his mind he heard her speaking crisp Nochtish. “1st and 2nd Battalion will move forward soon to reinforce the approach. Ready to deploy the C-10 against the wall.”

“Division, I don’t think we can advance in this condition. We’ve lost almost everything up here.” the Captain grimly said, huddled behind a boulder unearthed by a fortunate wind. Around him were maybe a dozen engineers and riflemen, and the big packs of C-10 bombs.

“Losses are within acceptable parameters,” corrected the voice, “continue the attack.”

The Captain knew that as that radio went dead, another dozen of his men went dead too.

Still, he turned to them, and he raised his hand and waved to the wall with conviction.

“Huddle around the engineers! We’re taking that C-10 to the fucking wall!” He shouted.

There were stares of disbelief, even as the men’s bodies slowly went to work.

Back in the rear, the 1st and 2nd Battalions started to retrace the steps of the 3rd. Little had changed for them. In this battlefield even the veterans among them knew nothing. Without having seen the fire falling first-hand, without the intimate yet split-second knowledge of the good shell-holes, the blind spots, the good cover, these men were butchered the same as before. It was only Ayvartan reloading and refitting, which became more frequent as ammo cycled and barrels overheated, that allowed many to escape.

Those at the front threw themselves at the wall. Escorting the C-10 explosive teams, stray platoons and even impromptu squadrons of survivors organized, shouted their last words, and charged with rifles up. Machine guns on the base of the wall opened fire, cutting dozens of them down in plain sight. For the last 1 kilometer dash of the fight, there was little cover, little sand, no boulders, no shell-holes. Just dry, packed dirt, a wall and death.

“Run! Run! Run!”

Storm-Two was reduced to near-incoherence the slobber from his visceral screams evaporating in the heat and the scorching wind of the khamsin. Ahead of him he saw the bullets, the screeching red tracers flying by him like fiery arrows, and each one could have been for him and each one wasn’t. At his side one of his men took a bullet in the eye and collapsed. Another’s helmet flew off his head from a dozen shots, and the thirteenth blew his nose apart. Storm-Two could barely register what was happening. He ran, and he ran, clutching the explosive pack, charging into the curtain of bullets, and not one hit him.

With a final, guttural cry he stamped the pack against the stone of the wall, maneuvering himself so that he stood between two obvious firing ports built into the stone and hidden by the sand. He slammed the C-10 pack against the wall, and he reached inside of it.

There was a mechanism, wires, string, a tiny snap lever, attached to thick, gray blocks.

His entire body shook and rattled as hundreds of thousands of bullets flew out from the wall. He thought he could feel every instant of recoil, every muzzle burst, every click of the trigger, through the cold stone of the southern wall. He kept the pack up, fumbled with the mechanism. He wasn’t even thinking that if it exploded, it would take him.

He was at the wall. Nobody knew. Nobody was alive to know. But he was there.

He took the C-10 home, and he was going to blow a hole in the fucking wall.

Storm-Two linked the wires, waited for the tell-tale sign of an electric charge.

Around him the gunfire intensified. Overhead the wall cannons fired, and he felt the massive energy of several heavy guns transferring down the wall, shaking up his guts. He thought he would throw up. He shuttered his eyes. Had he heard the fizzing noise?

He looked at the C-10 pack, and he saw no smoke, no sparks.

Had he missed it? Storm-Two was too deep to back off.

At least he would die a hero. He would destroy the wall. He would win the war.

He held the pack against the stone and put his head head to it.

In a few minutes, certainly–

Nothing.

Far behind him several artillery shells exploded, wiping out more men and machines.

He looked desperately inside the pack for signs that it was armed, that it would blow.

He prayed for death, and he could not have it. His C-10 remained unexploded.

It was a dud. He had a dud bomb.

Storm-Two dropped the pack, collapsed onto his knees.

In front of him, a stone slid on the wall.

For a brief instant, Storm-Two saw a face in the wall.

Clean, soft, with large eyes and little expression. Long hair, lovely lips, dark brown skin.

He was regarded, quizzically at first, by the Ayvartan behind the defenses.

Storm-Two looked up in futility.

He put his fist to his chest, and then he raised his arm to sign the eagle’s wing.

He died patriotically as the Ayvartan behind the stones shot him in the face with her rifle.

She closed the stone, locked the armored hatch behind it, and returned to her post.


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Declaration II (67.1)

1st of the Hazel’s Frost, 2030 D.C.E

Socialist Dominances of Solstice — Solstice City

More than ever before the walls seemed to dominate the landscape. Walking through the city on foot they were ever-present. They had always been visible from seemingly every stone and concrete street, every gravel road, every dirty alleyway. Before the war, however, it was easy to forget their purpose. Now they loomed ever larger with people’s fear.

Even as the sun came down and the walls cast their longest shadows, the sense of their presence never heightened or lessened. Madiha felt hyperaware of them, at all times of the day. It was almost distracting, to look at the horizon and see the stone. She had taken for granted the view of the ocean in Rangda. Solstice was like a world inside of a jar.

Madiha shook her head. She had been assigned a crucial mission and would not fail.

She checked her list, nodded to herself grimly, and proceeded on her way.

All of them would have to be taken out for her to succeed. Survival depended on it.

Thankfully for her, the streets never closed in Solstice. It was the biggest city in Ayvarta, big enough and populated enough to be its own state. There was always a crowd on the streets, there was always an open door where one could get a drink or watch a show, and there was always a stall to trade or buy whatever you wanted, in some fashion.

Her targets would be out there; but she would have to be swift.

Revolution street cut through the center of Solstice from north to south. Almost everything of military importance was built off-center from Revolution as part of the post-civil war city rebuilding, but it was seen as important for there to be a straight shot, door to door path where anyone could see a grand display of Solstice’s civilian bounty. Along Revolution there were all kinds of shops, theaters, parks; Madiha walked down several blocks, and quickly found her first Msanii, the traditional open air markets.

Madiha moved with intensity and purpose. Around her the crowd seemed to part.

Perhaps some of them knew her or one of her epithets; perhaps it was simply legible on her face that she was determined. Eyes forward, back straight, with a collected gait. Scouting the surroundings for her prey. They could be anywhere; they would not elude her.

All kinds of things were on sale at the Msanii. Handcrafted textiles, shoes; traditional dyes and makeup; limited amounts of food of various kinds. Journals and scrapbooks, hand-sewn, blank, with beautiful covers and thick sheets of paper. Mancala boards, beads and traditional jewelry; Madiha wondered the stalls, pretending, casual, all the while silently acquiring her mark, calculating a vector, bringing those killing instincts back to work.

She spotted her first target standing on a colorful carpet, amid a crowd of people.

Madiha took a deep breath, hands in her pockets, gripping a concealed object.

She approached the saleswoman’s carpet, honed in on her prey, and struck.

Pushing through the crowd she jabbed the honed edge of a fountain pen on a can.

“Two cans of tomatoes please! I have money and a market ticket!” Madiha shouted.

She tapped multiple times on a stack of tomato cans, full of oily, chopped goodness.

All around her the people she pushed past stared at her, confused at her passion.

“Um. Of course!” said the saleswoman, an older lady in a headscarf.

All of the stack was probably canned far away in Jomba; she was likely a union sales rep.

It was an sign of the cooperation between the states of Ayvarta, near and far.

Solstice was at the center of it all; everyone gave their share so it could survive the desert.

These relationships were sure to strain in the future. For now, Madiha had her tomatoes.

Madiha grabbed the cans out of the stack, and laid down the scrip and the money.

She retreated from the stall, marked off the first target, and hurried to secure the others.

This was a vital mission entrusted to her by her beloved Parinita; she could not fail!

She went from stall to stall, picking things up little by little in small quantities. Peppers here, spices there, a small bag of garlic heads, ghee, canned paneer. There was some finesse to it; several short supply items she snatched from the expectant hands of another person. She did not feel proud of it, but this was her mission and she would not fail it.

Everywhere she went, she quickly handed the sum in coins and paper, all out of her military wages. There was still currency, wages were still paid in shells, and things still cost money here and there. These were “market items.” Everyone could sell a small amount, and the selling and buying was regulated. Different places had different rules. In Solstice, where supply security was crucial to survival, market scrip proved compliance. During inspections and permit renewals, market scrip helped legitimize the seller’s books.

It wasn’t perfect Communism quite yet.

Though the Civil Canteens offered enough food for anyone to get by, prospective diners would always be limited to what was served that day. Everyone ate the same food, whatever was convenient to prepare for thousands, maybe millions across the city with whatever produce could be acquired or brought out from stock. But that wasn’t exactly what brought Brigadier General Madiha Nakar out to the markets on her time of leave.

“I want to cook for you! We’ll eat like a couple!” Parinita had said.

Madiha had been so surprised at her passion for something that small.

But she found it so endearing that she wanted to see it happen.

There was one item on the list that seemed to elude her. She traveled to several stalls and shops, fully aware of the turning hands of the clock, the descending sun at her back.

Milk.

Whole cow’s milk, at least a half a liter. Not powdered; the wet stuff.

That was all in Parinita’s handwriting.

Something which she had taken for granted in Adjar, a land of milk and honey compared to Solstice, trapped in its circle of sand-blown walls amid the most arid place in the world. There were no cows around Solstice. There were yaks in mountainous South Solstice, closer to the sea; and in the coastal paradise of North Solstice there were elk. Tribal folk in Central Solstice herded camels. Cows required grazing; Cows lived in farming states.

Madiha had a market ticket for cow’s milk and it was the same as any other legal scrip from the Commissariat. But being able to buy a certain amount of milk at market price meant nothing if milk was not available to market. That seemed to be the case that day.

She thought of Parinita’s beautiful smiling face, her eyes bright, her strawberry hair tied in a functional ponytail, an apron over her casual dress. Waiting back at the apartment for Madiha to return so they could use their blessed, gods-given personal stove oven to cook. So they could eat together, just the two of them at their own table. Like a couple in a film.

Madiha looked down at her market ticket and felt despondent. Would she fail her love?

Sighing deeply, she looked out onto the road, and saw a familiar face amid the crowd.

It had to be Logia Minardo; a visibly pregnant woman in a gorgeous little yellow sundress, her shoulder-length, slightly messy hair, under a straw hat with a red ribbon, carrying a bag weighed down with goods from the shops. She was walking down the road, along the very dry ditches, in the opposite direction from Madiha. They met almost at once.

Minardo pushed up a pair of sunglasses perched on her nose, and then put them away.

She smiled. Madiha tried to muster a smile of her own but was immediately distracted.

Hanging carelessly from the tips of Minardo’s fingers was a half-liter bottle of cow’s milk.

“Good evening General! Congratulations on your promotion!” Minardo said.

“Good evening.” Madiha said. “I hadn’t seen you in some time since the evacuation, Minardo. I was beginning to fear you might have been reassigned out of my headquarters.”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” Minardo said, cocking a little grin. “During the evacuation every single transportation resource was tapped out. There was a shortage of pilots in Rangda to help fly people out, so I stayed behind to help organize all of that. It was very close: we barely made the last flight out in time to avoid Nochtish patrol flights.”

“I see. I’m glad you managed to extricate yourself in time.”

“Hah! You forget, I cut my teeth in the air forces.”

“Yes, I often do forget.”

Madiha continued to fixate on the bottle of milk.

“Out and about on the town, Minardo?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, I’ve got a date.” Minardo winked.

“Oh, congratulations.”

“I met a serious, interesting man at the shops yesterday. He was forthright too–”

She started to chirp about this fellow and Madiha could not have cared less.

For an instant, Madiha almost thought of ordering Minardo to surrender her milk.

However, Minardo was a pregnant, expecting mother and as such, entitled by law to fresh cow’s milk. For a staunch, loyal socialist like Madiha, it was anathema to ask of her to make such a sacrifice for her own selfish needs. It took some struggling, but she managed to tear her eyes away from the milk and to stare Minardo in the face and smile.

“So why are you out and about, General? You always seemed an anti-social type.”

Her subordinate had a savage grin on her face as she delivered this projectile.

Madiha remembered then that this was Logia Minardo whom she was speaking to.

Again she felt a temptation to rip the milk from her teasing subordinate’s hands.

But such an action would’ve been against the eternal science of Lenanism.

Minardo paused for a moment, and seemed to notice something about Madiha.

“Oh ho! Is that a shopping list I spy? Oh I know what this is! How precious!”

She was always a very observant person, for all her various other faults.

Madiha wanted to sink into the earth. She averted her gaze meekly.

“My, what a spirited girl, that Maharani! She’s already on top of you!”

“Desist at once! That is an order!” Madiha said, feeling flustered.

“I can’t believe all along that goofy girl was actually such a powerful minx.”

Madiha waved her hand in front of Minardo’s face. “You never saw this!”

She accompanied the action with a mental push; but nothing transpired.

This act of desperation left her standing foolishly there for no good reason.

“Excuse me?” Minardo grinned.

Madiha flashed back to her childhood, and felt suddenly bereft of power.

“Damn it all. It was an effective tactic for my childhood self.” She mumbled.

Once more, Minardo seemed to have paid undue attention to every part of the scene.

Her hearing, her eyesight; for gossip-worthy things she was the perfect scout.

Minardo giggled, and squished Madiha’s cheek. “Oh, honey, oh sweetie; people played along with you because you were a cute little kid, not because you can control minds.”

Madiha felt the sudden strike of anxiety and excused herself. “I’m sorry. I’m uh. Drunk.”

Minardo patted her on the head. “I won’t tell anyone. Have a nice day, General.”

She waved, giggled, and went along her way.

Madiha watched her as she met a man around the corner, took his arm and led him away.

Sighing, having wasted more time with nothing to show for it, Madiha went her own way.

After an hour or two walking around the city, she felt exhausted, and sat down on a street-side bench next to a newspaper box. There were no coin-operated locks on the box; the newspaper was free. She picked up an issue and glanced over the cover and pages idly.

Tensions were high. There was a map of the front line. It was carefully drawn to show that there was still some southern territory technically in Ayvartan hands, because the front line with Nocht was uneven and there were bulges everywhere. But this only mildly papered over the reality that half the country was in foreign hands. Solstice stood sentinel now against the invaders, and it was unclear if the upper half of the country stood with it.

She hard talk around her, from the benches, from the streetgoers. It was all about food and films and dates and books, about the soccer rivalry between Yayatham and Dhurna; but she could feel in her heart and in her mind the anxiety of the moment. So many things had changed for them seemingly overnight. Council was dissolved, Daksha Kansal was in power; the shining port of Rangda had rebelled, been put down, and lost to Nocht; the vast Southern dominions with their huge populations and wealth fell with weak fight to an invader. There was an invader. Nocht had invaded them. Attacked them on their own soil.

All of them, these people with her, and she herself: they were the front line now.

Madiha put down the newspaper. She rubbed her hands across her face. Milk.

She had to get milk, she remembered. For Parinita; that was her mission then.

“Oh oh! Hey, look there Charvi! It’s the General! It’s the General!”

Madiha blinked and looked up from the road. Approaching down the edge of the street were a couple of young women whom she easily recognized. They were a reliable pair for Headquarters security and clandestine jobs; Corporal Gulab Kajari, a honey-brown skinned girl, short but fit, with hair in a long braided tail, and her partner, the curiously silver-haired and short of words Sergeant Charvi Chadgura. While Gulab opted for a vest and dress pants ensemble that reminded Madiha of her own style, Charvi wore a strapless, sleeveless sun-dress of a bright crayon-orange color with a sunflower-studded sun-hat.

“Ma’am!” Gulab said happily, tipping her fedora at the General.

Madiha waved meekly. She had left her own fedora, Daksha’s old one, at the apartment.

“Out on the town alone?” Gulab said, rather carelessly.

Charvi waved half-heartedly.

Madiha nursed a mild resentment at everyone assuming she was being anti-social.

Then again she did not want to be too loud about her relationship to her aide, either.

“I’m shopping.” Madiha replied.

“Oh, nice. Me and Charvi are just taking in the sights. We got a whole week’s leave!”

“And a whole week’s pay.” Charvi said, toneless but at the same time eerily blunt.

“Hey, be grateful.” Gulab interjected nervously.

Madiha, too, was still owed some back-pay from the Aster’s Gloom.

With all that had happened, however, she was not up in arms about receiving it anymore.

“It’s fine. I’m mad about it too. But I understand these are hard times.”

“We do also!” Gulab was quick to say. “I uh, I wanted to. Honestly, ma’am, I’ve been wanting to thank you for very long. Charvi can tell you, you’re uh, very inspirational.”

“I can indeed attest to that, Commander.” Charvi dispassionately said.

Smiling, the General put away her paper and gave the two a good look.

“Thank you. It is an honor to be able to serve our motherland alongside such fine soldiers. I’m happy for you two. You seem to have struck a great friendship. Hold on to it dearly.”

Madiha thought she was saying something profound to her younger subordinates.

Gulab seemed to be respectfully holding back a laugh and Charvi had averted her eyes.

Sighing, Madiha averted her own gaze briefly, only to find it lingering on Gulab’s hand.

She was holding a bottle of milk, an unopened half-liter bottle.

This was it; this would certainly be her last chance to complete the mission.

“Corporal!”

Madiha called out with such force Gulab reflexively saluted.

Charvi blinked, and then with a stoic face saluted also at Gulab’s side.

“Corporal, you want to do everything in your power to aid me, correct?”

“Yes ma’am!” Gulab enthusiastically replied.

Charvi remained quiet.

“Corporal, I have a vital mission that I must complete. I must make use of your milk.”

“My milk?”

“Her milk?”

“Your milk!”

Gulab mechanically extended her hand and handed Madiha the milk.

Madiha handed her ten shells and a market ticket.

“At ease soldiers! Your service in this hour of need shall be remembered!”

Gulab and Charvi seemed to deflate, all the tension leaving their bodies.

There was a short silence as Madiha carefully read the label. It was not exactly fresh, it had been laced with preservatives for transportation and was kept in ice. In fact it was still cold to the touch; it must have once formed part of the stock that the government produced locally and held for children, the sick and for pregnant mothers. There was no other answer. Either Gulab knew somebody who could supply it or she or Charvi must have–

“Congratulations to you two.” Madiha said. “Have a good night.”

She stood up from the bench, turned sharply and departed, while her baffled subordinates stared at her from the middle of the street, speechless at first, and then exchanging looks.

“Do you think she thinks that you or maybe that I am–?” Gulab began.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.” Charvi replied.

“Yeah. Right. Hey, let’s go get an ice cream bar. No tricks this time!”

“No tricks. Gulab, did you know that if you spice an ice cream bar with chili–”

“You’re lying! You’re lying! You’re trying to trick me!”

“No, I am serious. You will access a world of flavor with just a dash of hot–”

“I wasn’t born yesterday! Just because I hadn’t eaten an ice cream before–”

Their chirping soon vanished into the background, along with the streets of Solstice.

Madiha Nakar declared her victory; perhaps her first non-Pyrrhic victory of the war.

Unfortunately, a key detail of her adventure was once lost to history.

So ecstatic was the great General to leave the streets with all of her goods in hand, that she did not catch even the tiniest hint of the commotion just a block down from her little meeting bench, where an engineering firm working on electric ice boxes had been giving away cold milk. Such was luck for the long-suffered and ever calculating Madiha Nakar.


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Declaration (66.1)

This scene briefly contains sexual content.


42nd of the Hazel’s Frost, 2030 D.C.E

Federation of Northern States, Nocht — Rhinea

“Ugh.”

She awakened to an atmosphere of heat and sweat, but also cold, clinging to her skin. Once the haze of pleasure had blown out of the room with the central air, it left behind the staid reality that followed a fantasy. She was back in the world, a person once more inhibited, and she could hardly stand the disappointment and tedium she felt then.

It was the least delectable part of the transgression: dealing with the consequences.

“Why do I keep doing this to myself?”

Cecilia Foss mumbled to herself as she stared into the placid face of the very nude woman in front of her, peeling the woman’s legs off her waist while at the same time gently extricating herself from the arms of her sleeping boyfriend, just behind her. It had become almost a talent, a series of acrobatics, to retrieve herself in such situations. Making sure not to awaken anyone, she slowly left her bedmates, gently stirring behind her.

Surveying the scene, there were a lot of cigarettes, a lot of drinks, a lot of discarded rubber. This was a hotel room made for thrashing, thank God; she was certainly not going to pay any fees for it. She recalled all too clearly the reason for all this. She wished she didn’t; in short it was stress, greed, hunger and neediness and loneliness. Perhaps not so short.

It was an important date, too! And she had blown it off to fuck a computer and her boy.

“Ugh. I’m the worst. God damn it. She’s waiting; Agatha’s going to be waiting.”

She found her leggings, her heels, her skirt and blazer, and the rest of it, strewn about the room. Her brassiere was nowhere to be found; Cecilia glanced over the bed with misty eyes, shook her head, and stubbornly dressed without it. God knows she needed it, but life wasn’t always so forgiving. She dressed, patted everything down, took a quick trip to the restroom to wash her face and apply a coat of lipstick– and the moment she turned around again, making to leave the bathroom, there she was at the door. Cecilia sighed.

“It’s so like you to hit me and run like this, Lia. This must be the millionth time.”

Gretchen had on a fake, coquettish pouting face, her short, curly brown locks greatly disturbed, her body wrapped in her partner’s discarded button-down shirt. Dangling from her fingers was Cecilia’s brassiere. Seeing it again, Cecilia kind of wanted it back; it was big, lacy and cute and firm and having walked a few meters without it she dearly missed it.

“I’m losing my touch. I didn’t expect you to be awake.” Cecilia said.

“No, trust me, you’ve still got your touch.” Gretchen said, winking at her.

Cecilia averted her gaze. “Usually I’m enough for the women I’m seeing.”

Gretchen scoffed and rolled her eyes. “So you can fuck everyone, but everyone has to–.”

“Yes, it’s not fair but it’s how things work around here.” Cecilia interrupted with a grin.

She could not help but feel a little bit jealous of the rings on their fingers; just a little.

Not because she wanted the same; she just didn’t want people in her life to leave her out.

Though judging by the current events, she would not have to worry about that too much.

Gretchen flicked the bra at her, and Cecilia caught it.

Casually, she started to undress again so as to put it on.

“Where are you off to now? Three-timing me?”

“You can’t really call it that? At any rate, I’m meeting a friend.”

“Just a friend?”

“She’s a special friend, but yes. She’s married.”

“Wow. Do you realize what you just said?”

“I know.”

She was married in a way nobody else Cecilia slept with was “married.” Even these two.

It was commonly said by the conservatives that Nocht had lost god, had lost marriage, had lost itself in the frenzy of power and industrialism. Its institutions were a shambles as were its ethics. For the state was only war and killing, the sex of machines; for the treasury, there was only plunder and privation, the sex of economy; and for individual people, whatever indulgence was their sex. Cecilia was not the average Nochtish citizen.

She had never had a faith in anything to begin with.

She told herself, she was a simple person. She just wanted to have fun, pure, easy fun, with whatever pleasure she set her sights on. She found things and took them because she wanted them and because she could. Difficult things to get, became games to be won.

But in the end even the difficult things remained simple.

Or so she thought; but the way her stomach churned and her heart trembled when she thought of meeting Agatha Lehner, after all she had done, after all that had been done to her, to both of them. It was not simple at all. It was the most complicated thing for her.

Achim never made her feel that way.

She thought he would; but he never did. He was simple, just like her.

Simple and comforting in his simplicity, which is what she liked about him.

She had known Agatha longer; and she only became more complicated with time.

“I’m still here, you know.”

Cecilia tried to move to the door, lost in thought.

She was nearly face to face with Gretchen.

Gretchen was complicated too, but in a simple way.

“I’m not going to let you dine and dash this time.” Gretchen said.

Cecilia smiled.

She leaned forward, pulled Gretchen in by the tie around her neck, pilfered from her man.

She took her sloppily painted lips into her own luscious red embrace.

“I’ll see you later. Alone.”

She spoke as her tongue parted her lover’s, and she walked off at the same time too.

Gretchen made no argument.


Nocht Federation — Windsbach, Haupt Radar Center

High atop the mountains separating Windsbach from the northernmost Republics, was a snow unlike anyone had ever seen, even in the mountain villages. However, the signals technicians at the Windsbach Haupt Radar Center did not see this snow fall, silver and swirling like ribbons from the clouds. Since the war began they were on long, rotating shifts that did not end until one was sure, with perfect certainty, to be replaced for at least twelve hours with another restless soul awaiting the slaughter come out from the sky.

All of them had been reared as adults on the nihilism of “the bomber will always get through.” And yet, their job was to stand defiant against it. Should the bomber come, they had to know when, from where, and what it sought. They had to deliver the unspoken retribution that nearly always came to the bomber that “got through.” Scrambling fighters, summoning air defense. These were part of their responsibilities. They had to protect the civilians too, by sounding the air raid sirens and alerting the fire brigades.

Like diviners from ancient times, they had only their scrying glasses: the massive FREIJA radar arrays, top of the line technology, hooked up to glowing green displays that pulsed with eldritch life inside the cold steel bunkers. While Ayvarta slowly toyed with short ranged mobile ground radars hiding in puny trucks, Nocht gambled its money on colossal stationary radars with incredible range and power. Untold amounts of energy flowed into the FREIJA arrays, and their signals could cover vast quadrants of Nocht’s sky and coast.

Inside the FREIJA bunkers, the technicians watched the green light pulse, and they waited.

For the long-timers, the magic had worn off. Their own planes showed up on the radar too, though nowadays, practices had evolved such that advanced warning was given to them to prevent panic and disarray. Seeing those blips made the possibility of an enemy blip far less mythical. Those were hunks of metal in the sky too. Newcomers were glued to their cathode-ray tubes, as interested in them as children had become with Television.

On that fateful winter day of the 42nd, radar technician Helmut Weigel sat in front of his CRT and saw nothing. He waited for hours, he ate his lunch at his desk, he read a book, nervously peeking at his station radar between pages to the point it almost became a character in stories. He looked over the energy output, checked the temperature and atmospheric pressure readings, and pored over various other gauges every thirty minutes.

His shift passed; he declared his intention to stand so as not to startle anyone.

From the upper floors where the military officers congregated, a young woman in uniform came down and urged him to stay in his seat. His replacement had an accident.

“You will have to stay here.”She said. “We’ll procure food and a chance of clothes, and I can stay here for fifteen minutes while you wash up. But you must come back to work.”

Helmut did not protest. What had he to go back to? He lived on his own in the village.

“What kind of food can I get?”

That was his only question, to which the young woman did not reply. She urged him out.

Once he was clean and had on a fresh shirt, coat and a change of pants, he sat back down.

Until a replacement could be found, he was on shift. He would keep working.

He stared at his screen, and saw a dozen blips all clustered together.

On his desk, just below all the gauges, he turned a page on his book. He was almost done with it, but he had another in his suitcase. Helmut loved fantasy adventures, with brave heroes and nasty goblins and mysterious dames. He put one back in his suitcase, retrieved another, and spread it open right in front of his monitor. He saw the blaring blips again.

Helmut put down his book, and he stared dumbfounded at the screen.

Coming in from the east were dozens of bombers.

Hundreds of them.

Helmut stared until the green glow burned in his retinas.

He reached for the telephone at his side.

“Hello? My CRT is broken. Can you send someone down here?”

Procedure dictated he describe the problem in detail–

But on the other end, an engineer too cheerful to have work simply said, “Sure!”

And then they hung up on him.

Helmut stared back at the screen. They were not going away.

Those blips were moving.

He ripped a piece of paper from the side of his workstation and found the numbers for his counterparts in various other stations. Every week they performed a comprehensive data corroboration drill, where Helmut and all of his colleagues in Windbach would call their doppelgangers in Junzien or Tauta or Ciel, and compare readings where their signals met.

“Hello, this is Helmut Weigel, station #13 Windbach. My station’s catching a large concentration of enemy aircraft coming in east-southeast at latitude–”

Helmut described everything he needed to and while he did, he heard an eerie echo from every station around him. People rattling off coordinates and latitudes on the phone, the sharp twisting of the rotary dials, the incredulous chatter between every stations.

“I’m afraid I don’t see anything on my end Helmut. I think you’ve got an ACS fault.”

Automatic control system, the mechanical network that kept the gauges running and regulated the current between stations and dishes, and so on. To so casually say that the entire FREIJA system in Windbach was broken to so fundamental a point put Helmut greatly at ease. Around the room, there was a great heaving sigh of relief as more information came in. No other overlapping stations saw the cluster. It was just ACS.

“Radar techs can go home! We’ll request patrol flights to cover the gap.”

That same girl from earlier, who told Helmut to stay, was now ordering everyone to go.

People grabbed their coats, lined up at the door, and made their way out.

Until the stations were fixed there was no use keeping extraneous staff around.

Outside though, the radar technicians paused all at once, considering the landscape.

Blowing in the wind, all around them, was a snow of silver ribbons mixed in with white.

Helmut held out his hand, and he caught strands, like Hollyday tinsel.

He wanted to report it, right away. But at the door to the bunker, he met with disdain.

“Just go and don’t cause any trouble.”

Helmut was speechless.

Aluminum. He wanted to say that word.

It had a radar signature. They had to know, right?

Why was aluminum falling from the sky?


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