An unfinished version of the next chapter of The Solstice War was accidentally published before it was meant to go up. Please disregard the email alert for it, though you are welcome to read the fragments, I suppose. Sorry for the delays and technical issues surrounding this chapter recently: it has been a very busy and erratic holiday for me. Expect a complete version to be published for real tomorrow evening.

52nd of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Tambwe Dominance — City of Rangda, 8th Division Barracks

In the middle of the cross-hairs appeared a shadowy, helmeted head.

Under the gloom that had settled around a knocked-out street light, the figure moved with confidence, as though sure that it was not watched.

Muttering under her breath, Gulab Kajari held as steady as she could.

She kept her scope trained on the peak of the faceless human shape.

Watching from far across the street, behind the gates of the base, she followed the figure as it wandered around the corner, holding a rifle to its chest, turning its head down both directions on the opposing street. It signaled with its arms, waving a pair of allies out from their own cover and onto the street. They crouched behind a bus stop bench. Gulab heard the springing of a handset cord, and a minute of unintelligible whispering.

They were using the radio. Calling in whatever it was they had found.

Then the figures stood from cover and began to retreat back to the corner.

“I’ve got you, you snow weasel!” she whispered to herself.

Once more the cross-hairs expertly followed the figures, swaying from one figure’s head to its torso, keeping just far enough head to lead a shot.

Gulab held her breath again.

She steadied her aim; but the figures disappeared from her sight.

Her scope had gone entirely black.

“We have orders not to shoot, Gulab.”

Charvi Chadgura lifted her hand from Gulab’s scope, and she could see again. However the men in her sights had gone. Somewhere around the street corner toward Ocean Road they had vanished, but they were all still out there. Through the stillness of the night she had heard trucks moving in the distance, and even at times what sounded like a tank or a tractor.

The 8th Division was moving closer, but the false war dragged on.

“I was not going to shoot!” Gulab said, slightly irritated.

“I’m sorry. I trust you, but we can’t take any chances.” Chadgura said.

Then you don’t trust me!, Gulab’s mind screamed at her superior and friend.

She felt half indignant and half foolish. She felt as if she was blowing everything out of proportion, but also slightly offended. Gulab knew her orders. Nevertheless she felt she had to keep a close eye on the enemy.

And it was a fact she had to confront, that she had half a mind to shoot; Chadgura was not entirely wrong in intervening. It still annoyed Gulab.

“They are likely scouting the area for a checkpoint.”

At their side, Sergeant Nikayla Illynichna laid on her belly with the scope of her silenced carbine only a centimeter removed from her eye. She spoke in a monotone that rivaled Chadgura’s, but she could become much more heated if necessary. She was small, her eye level reaching only to Gulab’s chest, and pale as a ghost, with icy-blue Svechthan hair; add the dark of night and Illynichna was practically invisible in their ambush position.

Gulab and Chadgura crouched near her. All of them were hiding in a ditch on the side of the base road that ran through the front gate. Orders from high were to detain the gate guards, who might possess some allegiance to the 8th Division, and to shut off the gate searchlights. Under the cover of darkness they would lay near the gate and watch the road. All along the gate road there were several ambush positions. Gulad and comrades had been given the foremost position and watched the road most closely.

Through the iron gate bars they silently preyed on anyone who appeared.

Any 8th Division troops that barged into the base would be shot by snipers and machine gunners in a hellish crossfire. However, if they walked in with their guns down and unloaded, it was a wonder what anyone would do. They had been told not to shoot unless shot first. Operating under those rules of engagement was quite stressful. It meant anyone had a chance to die before an effective defense could potentially be mounted.

“More vermin incoming.”

Illynichna urged everyone to crouch, and they settled against the ditch.

From around the corner they heard the sound of marching boots and then the drowning-out of that sound by the wheels and exhaust of a truck. A dozen men and an old rompo turned into their street and stopped a mere thirty meters away. Briefly the truck’s headlights shone through the gate, their beams illuminating a few fighting positions by accident. When the truck completed its turn onto the street everything was dark again.

Adjusting her magnification Gulab spied on the arrivals with her scope.

She watched helplessly as 8th Division soldiers approached the truck and began to unload sandbags and set down a foundation for a fighting position near that old bus stop across from the gate. From the back of the truck a heavy machine gun was unhitched and rolled until it was protected behind the sandbags. Bag by bag the wall went up, waist to chest high.

“This is more than just a checkpoint, Chadgura.” Illynichna said.

“I’ll report it to command.” Chadgura said. They had a radio nearby.

Gulab drummed her finger on the side of her gun, near the trigger.

“I’m getting mad. Are the 8th Division our enemies or not?” She asked.

“It doesn’t matter to our rules of engagement.” Chadgura replied.

Illynichna cracked a little grin, lying next to her gun.

“Would you shoot your own people whenever someone declared them your enemies, Kajari?” She casually asked. She did not even turn away from her scope to make eye contact; she simply dropped the bombshell.

“Would you?” Gulab shot back, stammering slightly.

Illynichna grunted.

“The Elves and their Colonial Authority all but enslaved my people and destroyed their culture and killed scores of us for hundreds of years. Any countryman of mine siding with forces like them deserves death.”

Gulab’s own thoughts were more elusive and much less forceful. Some part of her that she deemed reasonable did not believe the 8th Division was some force for evil; things were more complicated than that. Just like she believed in the Colonel and followed her orders, she was sure the 8th Division was following their own heroes in this time of confusion. Surely they owed their lives to whoever extracted them from the Nochtish lines.

They thought they were doing right to come here, and that it was the 1st Motor Rifles who were putting the city at risk. Something happened along the way that twisted everyone. Ordinary rifle soldiers were not to blame.

The 8th were not here to steal land like Nocht. Rangda was their home and they believed they could protect it through these dubious actions of theirs.

Or at least that is what she wanted to think of fellow Ayvartans.

And yet– if they did anything that would put Gulab’s precious comrades at risk, like the kids; or the staff; or Charvi; she would definitely kill them.

And if Colonel Nakar gave her a good reason to shoot she would just shoot.

“It doesn’t matter to my rules of engagement.” Gulab finally replied.

Again Illynichna cracked a little grin. “My, my, what a sly answer.”

Gulab focused her attention on the road. It was practically bustling.

When the enemy’s sandbag wall was finally constructed, the truck backed away around the corner and out of sight, and the soldiers remained. They crouched behind their sandbag wall, next to their machine gun, and they faced the gate, opposite Gulab’s own fighting position in the ditch. It was like a scene from decades past. Rival trenches across no-man’s-land. She was sure the 8th Division knew she was there now, or at least suspected it.

It raised the tension. Now she had an enemy in sight who could shoot first.

“Can I at least give them a scare?” Illynichna asked, finger on the trigger.

“No.” Chadgura said sternly.

Illynichna sighed and slumped over her carbine. “Bozhe moi…”

Minutes and hours passed, staring at the enemy in the eye. Gulab called on all of her resolve. She would shoot them if they shot her. She had to.

---

 City of Rangda — Council District

Once the shooting died down and Madiha Nakar was far enough removed as a threat to the surroundings, the civil police returned in a new role.

Though they had summoned their union representatives and refused to engage in battle with any unit of the 1st Motor Rifles, including the fugitive commander and police impersonator Madiha Nakar, they had agreed to perform military labor in service of the 8th Division. In front of the Council building, the police gathered to clear the gore from the green and set into place sandbags and ammunition stocks. Police trucks towed anti-tank guns into place, under the supervision of 8th Division Goblin tanks in the process of being turned into sandbag bunker guns.

Uncertain words were exchanged around the Council front green. Nobody knew what the future would hold for them. News from Solstice had been slow to travel, and likewise news from the front seemed eerily hard to come by. Starved of direction, the police stuck with the local government. There was no other force presenting itself as desiring their allegiance.

Even if it meant antagonizing the fearsome Hero of the Border, the police union did what they had the power to do to cooperate on their own terms.

Thus the lawn became crewed primarily by blue uniforms instead of green.

For an hour the police worked in peace until they spotted a liaison car in the distance. Through the work area arrived Aksara Mansa’s open-top staff car followed by the defeated M4D Sentinel with Von Drachen’s head visible over the top hatch. Though the M4D continued to its storage space for refueling, Aksara Mansa and General Gaul Von Drachen left their vehicles and crossed the green, stepping over knee-high sandbags and around barbed wire to access the building. Inside they found a throng of onlookers waiting with their work in their hands and their breaths held.

“Return to your offices! Get back to work!” Aksara commanded.

At once the crowd uneasily dispersed, going back to their documents and calculators and radios. Nobody knew what would happen next and they resented the position they were placed in. They stared at Aksara as they left, some with bitterness in their lips and eyes. There was heavy tension in the halls of the Council Building. Outside the tanks and trucks and the movement of supplies could easily be seen and heard. All of them were being thrown into a battlefield without their consent. Aksara knew this.

“Perhaps we should make haste for the command room, before anyone more forceful decides to delay your timely passage.” Von Drachen said.

Without response, Aksara Mansa started up the steps to the second floor.

He felt like he was walking outside himself, a doppleganger watching his body take action, his commands to it slightly delayed. He had the size, the skin, the face of his father, even the shadow of the man. But he was not his father; he had always been keenly aware of this fact. He knew he lacked the charisma certainly. He also lacked the vision his father had.

His father had been driven by some kind of plan. Aksara Mansa knew only the smallest details. He knew his father wanted an independent Tambwe. He had always wanted an independent Tambwe. His own Tambwe to rule. Even under the Empire he had wanted this. And it was as if a voice from on high had spoken to him and told him with great clarity what had to be done. Aksara always stepped aside and deferred to his father. Anyone who knew the man and felt the immense strength of his resolve did the same.

Confronted with the current situation in Rangda, Aksara Mansa struggled to think of what to do. He had put little hope in Von Drachen’s ability to recover Madiha Nakar; and recovering her was in his eyes a fool’s errand that even if successful would have changed little. He had a city that was slowly being evacuated to bunkers and shelters and schools and hospitals and repopulated with combat units at his father’s command, many of which knew not of the man’s death. Without Arthur Mansa, nobody quite knew what the endgame of ejecting or destroying the 1st Regiment was.

Inside the command room there were five long aisles of men and women seated behind radios and telephone boards, receiving the communications of the entire Battlegroup Ram, from which the 8th Division had been pulled. Since his father’s agreement to cooperate with the foreigners, the front had been quiet. Nocht had stayed their attacks, buying Mansa the time necessary to secure Rangda against Solstice. Perhaps, then, the deal was to turn Rangda over to Nocht, to open the front bloodlessly.

Aksara felt a stab of self-doubt. Why had his father not confided in him?

What had been his plan or even his motivation? What power drove him?

Where had he gone?

“So, what is the situation right now?” Von Drachen asked.

They stopped just outside of the rows of communications equipment.

Aksara gave him a contemptuous glare.

“I have confirmed the death of my father and suspect that it occurred as you say, Cissean.” He said. “Nevertheless, you have failed and thus the situation is at is has been for the past several hours. We are deploying our forces as fast as we can and we suspect the 1st Regiment has aggressive intentions. We can take no action against them yet. We are not ready.”

“Governor, if I might make a bold suggestion?”

At Aksara’s side, Von Drachen flared his hooked nose and shrugged his long arms, a lopsided grin stretching on his face. He looked ridiculous. More like an improvisational comedian than a Brigadier General.

“Go on.” Aksara said with muted disdain.

“Hand me command of the 8th Division. We must assault the 1st Motor Rifles immediately, before they can stage their own attack first.”

“I already told you we are not ready. Have you some miraculous plan?”

Von Drachen continued to smile. “I have a practical plan, and that is all that we need at the moment. You see, I know we can bring our numbers to bear on them if we trap them in the base. While we don’t have the combat power to defeat them in battle outright, we can surround them in a small area and saturate it with firepower once our heavy weapons arrive.”

Aksara snorted. How could this foreigner know that he spoke of the 8th Ram Rifle Division, the most elite of Tambwe’s forces, its officer corps unflinchingly loyal to the Mansa family, its men and women trained in the harsh sun and deep jungle of Tambwe? How could he speak of combat power when he had never met the brave men of the Lion battalion?

“On what basis do you claim we lack the power to defeat them outright?”

“On their abysmal performance against my 13th Panzer Brigade just before their pitiful capture beyond the Ghede River.” Von Drachen casually said.

“If your own men are so strong, use them.” Aksara sharply replied. “I will continue to build up my forces for a decisive battle, as my father wanted.”

Von Drachen crossed his arms and heaved a long sigh in response.

In truth Aksara’s convictions were not so strong. He knew the 8th Division had a dismal disposition, while the 1st Regiment was a cipher. But he had to believe that his father’s overall strategy could work; even if they had failed to remove Madiha Nakar. How important a component could the removal of one woman, from a Regiment of thousands, have been?

He suspected Nakar was not as important as claimed. With enough time to deploy fully he could crush her. Tactics could not contend with numbers.

Once the 8th Division fully deployed he would have four times her troops.

Thus he convinced himself. The 8th Division would stay the course.

It was a decision he made quietly and in a quiet place.

There was little activity in the command room. Officers from the 8th Division commiserated over a map of the city, plotting their fighting positions. Radio operators waited for airwaves and kept their pens and pads ready to take any important notes. Secretaries brought refreshments to the weary personnel. It was a subdued room to stand around in.

Until, in a far corner, one of the radio operators stood suddenly.

She stared across the room and waved toward the governor.

“Sir, we’re receiving a government communique on the teleprinter.”

Aksara Mansa turned sharply around and faced the machine, set against the far wall of the room on the last aisle of communications equipment. Soon as it was acknowledged, the teleprinter began to spit out its encrypted type on a roll of paper. A pair of operators left their radios and withdrew their code books and began to decrypt the message right away.

They were speechless at first. Aksara left Von Drachen’s side.

“Well, what is it?” He cried out to them as he approached.

One of the women cradled the papers grimly as if holding a corpse.

“Sir, there’s– there’s been a change of government in Solstice.”

For a moment the words were lost in the silence of the room.

For much longer, nobody wanted to believe them.

---

City of Rangda — Central Rangda

Over the skies of Central Rangda the old Stork biplane transport flew unmolested. Not a round of flak soared to meet it as it headed for its destination.  Even as the 8th Division began to spread, taking up positions around Ocean Road and encroaching on their old base, they did not intercept the Stork flying over their heads. Rangda was still locked in a state of phony war, despite the blood already in Madiha Nakar’s hands.

Until a tactical unit of the 1st Motor Rifles Regiment fought a real 8th Division counterpart it seemed the city would remain silent in the night. Neither side had achieved the correct conditions to make war on the other. There were leadership disruptions on both sides that exacerbated this.

Madiha had to get to her base and make her preparations.

But she found her body betraying her. As she tried to escape Sergeant Agni’s ministrations she found her arms jelly-like and her legs unstable. There was no way she could stand on the plane by herself; perhaps not even on solid ground. Her eyes were still hazy, and her thoughts muddled.

“Colonel, I’ll help you sit up. Move with me.”

Sergeant Agni helped Madiha slide away from the side-door of the plane and toward the opposite wall of the hull. She sat her up, and administered a syrette of morphine before cracking open a medic’s bag. There were bandages and gloves and shears and dozens of packets and bottles of medicines inside. Madiha breathed deep in regular intervals and tried to remain conscious and to occupy her flagging mind. Even before the effects of the morphine she had already lost the feeling of pain; she was too dizzy and exhausted to feel the shredded flesh in her shoulder too strongly.

She felt eerily disembodied, hovering into and out of reality.

“Colonel, are you doing alright?”

From the door to the cockpit the pilot stuck out her head briefly.

Logia Minardo, wearing a pair of goggles.

Her appearance gave Madiha a needed jolt of outside stimulation.

“I thought you were airborne assault?” Madiha strained to shout.

Minardo cracked a little grin and returned to the pilot’s seat.

“Well, that doesn’t mean I can’t fly!” Minardo shouted back. She had to beat the sound of the rattling hull and the thrumming engine in order to be heard. Despite her casual attitude she had a great command of the plane. They were flying steadily, and the daring maneuvers Madiha witnessed during her rescue where nothing short of masterful.

“So did you start out as a pilot or as infantry?” Madiha asked.

“We’ll discuss it some other day!” Minardo replied. “Get some rest!”

She waved her hand out of the door and turned her attention fully back to flying the plane. Madiha smiled to herself, feeling strangely cosseted. Minardo could take care of things; she had proven herself very reliable.

“Colonel.”

After minutes of picking through a pack, Agni returned.

“I have gauze.” She said, holding up a roll.

From her clumsy grip it unfurled and trailed around the floor.

Madiha shook her head. “Give me a stimulant. I’ll handle the rest.”

“I don’t follow.”

She would have to do without the stimulant then.

Without warning the Colonel lifted a hand to her shoulder, and with her teeth grit and her eyes wincing, she thrust a finger into her own wound, causing blood to gush and flesh to rip. Agni was alarmed, and reached out to stop her, but Madiha was not rummaging in the wound. She imagined the lead that had to be embedded in her body, and pulled on it mentally.

She felt pangs of cutting pain as she clumsily led the metal to the surface.

Blood seeped from the wound, inadvertently pulled on by her thoughts.

Even through the warming haze of the morphine she felt terrible pain.

“Colonel, no.”

Soon as Agni’s arms seized Madiha’s own and forced her hand free of the wound, the gloved, bloody fingers that came out carried a deformed lead penetrator between them. Madiha dropped the artifact on the floor, and felt a subdued, cold pain in her now more terribly mutilated shoulder.

“Now you can close it up.” Madiha moaned. Her breath started to leave her lips at involuntary, irregular intervals, her injury causing her to gasp.

“That’s easier said than done now.” Agni replied.

She started cutting Madiha’s clothes open with the shears, and then applied a clotting powder, compress and bandages. Madiha saw the world then as if through a waterfall, and could hardly make out Agni’s shape wavering in front of her. Her arms grew heavy, and her whole body felt the effects of gravity much more strongly than before. She was growing weak.

“We will need a medic to sew it. I dare not do so.” Agni said.

“Thank you, Agni.” Madiha whimpered.

“Never tamper with your wounds again.”

Despite her monotone voice Agni was sounding brusque and angry.

Madiha nodded weakly. “I promise.”

She could not truly promise it; if the situation required, she could even burn the wound closed. She could have done it then, had she trusted herself with the task. And had Agni turned away from the sight. Madiha was not sure how much she wanted anyone to know about her power.

Von Drachen knew, but the less anyone else did, the more he looked crazy.

“Base is in sight! Prepare for a rough landing!” Minardo called out.

In Madiha’s ears those words gained an echo and became distorted.

As the Stork started to drop altitude, Madiha’s world turned black.

She felt the pull of gravity on her body in a way she had never experienced.

Her head felt empty and her whole body tight.

Though she had hoped to leave the plane walking upright and among her troops, heartening them for the battle ahead, her body had just been too tortured that night to continue. Without warning, she closed her eyes, and could not thereafter open them of her own volition. Madiha blacked out.

---

On the ground below, some of Agni’s engineers played the role of landing crew and waved signal flags for Minardo to descend. Between the aircraft’s departure and return, the crew had stamped out another improvised runway in the middle of the tank course, one longer, softer and farther away from any collateral objects than the strip they previously used.

A series of reflectors on the ground gave Minardo something to aim for. She gradually began to cut her speed and altitude and maneuvered the Stork into position, aiming it like a lumbering bolt to the target below. Winds buffeted the craft, and it shook and protested as its descent began in earnest. Minardo grabbed hold of the flight stick with all her strength.

She had not flown in years, but that had neither given her pause nor impeded her. Colonel Nakar needed her to fly and she had flown.

Minardo never forgot the sense of being in the air. She would dream of flying, of feeling again the weight of her craft as it sliced through the skies, of sensing the response of the vehicle to her various instruments. Now in the cockpit she was drawn back to those years of innocence, when the plane felt like an extension of her body, a limb regularly stretched.

It was not flying like a bird would fly; Minardo could not imagine what that could be like. Nor did she want it. There was something unique about flying a plane that gave her a thrill, coursing through her body, lighting a fire in her chest unlike anything. There was a sense of weight and strength amid the clouds that flying under one’s own power would likely lack.

Flying a plane was defiant — humans flew in the face of God.

It was awkward and laborious and, she discovered, still part of her nature.

All of the muscle memory returned. She expertly aligned the craft with the makeshift runway, gauged her altitude and speed correctly, and within minutes she felt the bump as her landing gear hit dirt. For a moment the friction startled her, but soon it passed, and the craft gently slowed.

There was a moment when the forces around her abruptly stopped.

She felt such a stillness then, such a sense of peace. She had landed.

In her duel with the sky, she had won.

And she had brought everyone back safely.

Not bad for a washed-up biplane ace in the age of monoplanes.

She turned around from the instruments and waved at Agni.

“Agni, cover up the Colonel with a bag or something! We don’t want gawkers finding out she’s hurt!” Minardo cried out. Behind her, Agni nodded her head and searched for a rain tarp and threw it over the Colonel’s unconscious body. It rose and fell with her breathing.

Minardo unbuckled her safety harness, too tight around her full belly, and picked her goggles off her head. For now the joyride was simply over.

After years on the ground, Logia Minardo had taken to the air again.

She had defied the wishes of someone very special to her.

She had flown and she had landed. The Stork may not fly again soon.

Certainly not with her at the helm.

Minardo stared in a trance at the controls before her, and at the lenses on her goggles. She thought she could see her, reflected in the glass. For so long, she had sat behind her in the trainer, and then in the liaison plane, and then in the two-seat light bomber. On the stork there was no partner seat behind her. There was just the hull cargo storage. She was alone.

Minardo stared at her own reflection in the goggles, waiting expectantly, waiting to hear her praise, waiting to have her affection. Waiting still.

“Did I do good?” She muttered to herself. “I landed her right.”

Behind her the side doors opened.

She shook her head. Those were fancies that had to pass.

Medics arrived from off the landing strip and brought a stretcher on wheels. Agni and Minardo carefully set the Colonel down atop the stretcher, covered up with the rain tarp. They ordered the medics to be discrete. Vitals were carefully taken, morphine administered, and the medics then covertly took the Colonel away to the base hospital.

“Go with them. Make sure she’s guarded.” Minardo said.

Agni nodded her head and ran after them.

“Minardo!”

Moments later, flanked by a pair of military policemen for protection, Acting Commander Parinita Maharani arrived on the runway. She stared at the Stork with a small smile on her face, and turned a congratulatory grin on Minardo. She stretched out her hand and Minardo gratefully shook.

“I have to admit, I doubted for a second.” Parinita said.

“I doubted too. That’s why it was a stupid idea.” Minardo replied.

She had feared she would enter the cockpit and lose all sense of what flying was like. But she soared over Rangda; she flew circles over the hapless men of the 8th Division. Flying had never left her even after her wings were taken from her. It felt reassuring, and oddly validating.

Parinita turned around and waved away her escorts. Both men complied.

Once they were out of earshot she leaned close with a cute little smile.

“Minardo, I wanted to thank you, before I went to see her.” Parinita said.

“What for? I’m just doing my job.” Minardo said, grinning like a devil.

Parinita waved a dismissive hand. “Oh don’t give me that, you.”

There was no use being coy; but Minardo just liked acting difficult.

That, too, was as much part of her nature now as flying. Maybe more.

“Listen, I just I want to steer naive young girls like you right.” She said.

“Well, you listen too: we’re only a few years apart! I’m thirty years old!”

“Yes, but I’ve lived a life twice as rich in experience as you, my child!”

Minardo pointedly laughed. Parinita stared sharply at her.

“Well then; anyway, like I said, thank you. If it means anything, I think that when you stop goofing around so much, you’ll make a great mother.”

Parinita put on a warm, innocent and friendly smile.

Minardo’s fiendish grinning intensified.

She shrugged in an exaggerated fashion.

“I’m not planning to be a mother, really.” She said.

“Huh?”

Parinita stared at her with concern, looking at her belly for a moment as if there was something wrong with it; Minardo grew exasperated, took her by the shoulders and pushed her in the direction of the base hospital.

“Oh, forget me, Maharani. Go visit your girlfriend.”

“Minardo, are you really alright?”

“I’m more alright than the Colonel! Go check up on her.”

After that bit of prodding, Parinita glanced at her one final time before going on her way. Soon she disappeared into the gloom of the base, many of its lights shut down to prevent it from becoming too bright a target.

Minardo stood against the Stork and tried to savor the air a bit more.

She was grinning not like a devil anymore, but like a young girl herself.

She had flown! She had flown again, despite everything.

---

City of Rangda — 8th Division Barracks

Madiha woke with a start in a stark white room.

Immediately she drew back against the bed in pain and discomfort.

Her shoulder protested violently to the sudden movement.

“Madiha, calm down, you’ll hurt yourself!”

From the side of the bed, Parinita stood and knelt next to the Colonel.

Gasping for breath, sweating profusely, Madiha came to realize through the absence of sounds that she was not in battle anymore. She had escaped the gunshots, the cacophony of engines and cannons, and the toxic smell of that ever-burning pale fire.  She was alive; back at base.

Without word Madiha made an effort to lean forward and seized Parinita into a deep, hungry kiss. Parinita’s eyes drew wide with surprise but she quickly reciprocated. Madiha held for a few seconds, delighting in the warmth of her lover before losing her breath and gasping for air over Parinita’s lips. Clumsily they connected again, pulling each other into shorter kisses between gasps and groans. Both were breathless when they pulled decisively apart. Parinita was fiercely red in the face and tearful.

“You worried me half into a grave!” She said.

Madiha smiled gently. “I’m so sorry, Parinita.”

“Never again, Madiha! I’m never letting you go alone like that again!”

Parinita carefully wrapped her arms around Madiha from her bedside.

When they parted, Madiha laid back on the bed and turned her head. She was in a bed, in a concrete room without a window. Her police uniform had been taken, and hopefully Agni or someone else had discretely burnt it. At her side on a bedside drawer there was a folded black uniform laid for her.

Her shoulder was thickly bandaged, and sewn beneath. It was a large wound, one likely made worse by her own meddling. There had been quite a lot of blood, and even more was smeared on her bandages. She felt too weak to stand up, though she desperately desired to be out of bed.

She felt herself too separated from the outside world. Something had to be happening that she was not aware of. Her military mind was afire.

“What time is, Parinita?” She asked.

“It’s just dawned. You’ve been asleep maybe four hours.” Parinita said.

Madiha shook her head. “This is not good. I need to get out there.”

“You should in all honesty sleep more than that.”

“I cannot. I have to get up.”

Madiha struggled to sit up and then stand, but she quickly failed.

Parinita stepped forward again to hold her down.

“You can’t! You’ll just hurt yourself again.” Parinita said. “Listen to me: I predicted this would happen so I’m already set up here, just watch.”

She swiped her hand at a curtain beside Madiha’s bed.

Behind the curtain was a table with a radio. On a nearby wall there was a corkboard with a map of the city. There were green pins stuck in various places. Judging by the fact that the Council building had the largest green pin on it, the greens must have represented the 8th Division. There were a few pins frighteningly near the base, a congregation around Rangda University in the north, a few around Rangda Airport, a line down Ocean Road that walled off the main thoroughfare from Madiha’s barracks.

“I realized that Kimani left some of her specialist staff with us, so I ordered them to perform some signals incursion.” Parinita said. “We managed to triangulate the location of a lot of 8th Division units. We don’t know what all of these units are, but we know where they’re parked at.”

“That was very astute. You really held things down while I was away.”

Parinita covered her mouth to stifle a little laugh. “Well, I tried.”

Madiha stared at the map, and she started to plot at once. She recalled perfectly the units at her disposal, the hobgoblin tanks, the chimera guns, her motorized infantry. Her fatigue was a thing of the past; soon as war entered her mind she was in a trance. In her mind she was moving pieces, like chits in the wargame, tracing paths through the streets of Rangda.

“We also received a message from Solstice.” Parinita said. “I transcribed it and compiled other information about the 8th that we dug up, here.”

She handed Madiha a thick file folder, almost like their own Generalplan Suden. Nodding her head, Madiha quickly began to digest the information in the pages. She found the communique from Solstice; her heart swelled as she read the information contained there. This was monumental.

“Parinita, can you hook me to the loudspeakers? I need everyone to hear.”

---

 

As the sun started to rise over Rangda, the mobile kitchens attached to the Regiment’s various units made their rounds across the base, delivering hot paneer, flatbread and fruit chutney to hungry units scattered across the base in defensive positions and reserve areas. Soon after the first few plates were emptied, however, the base communications system sounded and the wagons stayed in place with the troops, listening intently.

“Comrades of the 1st Order of Lena, Bada Aso Motor Rifle Regiment! This is Colonel Madiha Nakar speaking. You have had a difficult and uncertain night, but with the coming of the sun, a new age for Ayvarta has dawned. Last night at 0200 hours we received an encrypted message from Solstice. The High Civil Council has unanimously decided to step out of the war effort and has directed Daksha Kansal to assume the role of Premier of our Socialist Dominances of Solstice. Having worked under Daksha Kansal for many years, and seen her revolutionary fervor during the violent birth of our country, I could think of no better person to lead us in trying times.”

There was surprised whispering around the base. Most of the soldiers did not quite understand the position of Premier, one which had many powers over executive matters and was last held by Lena Ulyanova, a foreigner who loved Ayvarta more than many men born on Solstice’s own sand. But the Colonel did not clarify: she moved confidently forward in her speech.

“Last night was transformational in more than one way. We received information that shone light upon a truth you have seen with your own eyes now. Rangda’s 8th Ram Rifles Division wishes us harm. In fact, the 8th Division are pawns, willing and unwitting, in a reactionary and counterrevolutionary scheme to deliver the city to the vile Federation!”

Some gasped; but for anyone who had a rotating shift patrolling on the gate road the build-up was plain to see. Though they had not attack the 8th Division had aggressive intentions. Sandbags and guns did not appear as precautions between fellow comrades. They were an act of war.

“Comrades, I understand that many of you joined the service to protect Ayvarta from Nocht. You joined to save your families and loved ones and to support your friends; you joined not to sacrifice your lives, but to stay alive and to resist with every inch of your being the oppressing forces that march upon our shores. You did not join to fight your own people. Many of you did not live through the time of revolution. You did not see brother fighting brother and sister fighting sister on Ayvartan soil. But there are Ayvartans here in this city who conspire with the enemy. And in so doing, they become the enemy. They become akin to the traitorous White Army.”

There was silence in the base. Perhaps recognition; perhaps resignation.

“We may not relish this battle the way we would celebrate the defeat of Nocht and the deaths of its pillaging soldiers. But all the same, I must ask you all to prepare for combat. Orders will headed to each battalion and from there to companies and platoons within the next hour. Eat your fill, gather your supplies, and steel yourselves. Remember the training you received; remember that I am here to support you, my precious troops. We do not fight here for revenge: we fight, purely, for socialism! For Ayvarta! We fight to show the misguided 8th Division the strength of our unity!”

Though nobody could see her do it, it was if they felt the arm rising through the radio system. All around the base, fists rose in unison.

Madiha Nakar had cast the die and battle would quickly be joined.

It did not matter that the 8th Division just outside the gate might have listened. In Madiha’s imagined Deep Battle nothing the 8th Division could do at this point mattered except for them to attack first and immediately.

---

 

City of Rangda — Council District

Night turned slowly to morning, and the skies overhead cleared.

Even with the returning visibility, there was still a halt to the hostilities.

Dawn passed quietly, and by mid-morning the preparations had been completed. The staff of the Council and the soldiers of the 8th Division, alongside the civil police, mingled on the front lawn of the Council Building, standing where once gore had been strewn and corpses had collected after Colonel Nakar’s escape. They gathered on short notice to listen to an impromptu conference to be held by the governor.

Everyone stood in skeptical silence as Aksara Mansa stepped out.

They wanted him to address the curfews and the evacuations and the relocations of civilians and most important, what the point of this resistance was in the long run. Why did they treat their city as if it was under siege; and why were they themselves also readying to siege it?

For Arthur Mansa they might have once blindly walked into this fire, but that time was past and that trust eroded. Their hero had tested their faith, pushed their loyalty to its limits, only to challenge another hero and die. Madiha Nakar, hero of the border, had killed him. This information had been trickling out for hours. Now it was out and nobody understood.

All they knew was that Aksara Mansa was all that remained.

“My fellow Rangdans,” he called out, his voice boosted by a microphone. “It is with great agony that I must announce that we have received word of a coup in Solstice.” There was a generalized gasping from the audience. Everyone stood speechless, incredulous. Mansa gazed out over them. He lacked the slow, deliberate and uninterrupted cadence of his father. He drank some water from a glass as he let the words to stew in the crowd.

“My fellow Rangdans,” he started again. “Two nights ago, Warden Daksha Kansal of the KVW pressured the High Council into a unanimous vote of dissolution that ended with her being handed the title of Premier. It is a title that was retired with the death of Lena Ulyanova and replaced with the democratic and representative system we have enjoyed for close to a decade. It is a title that makes plain her ambitions. Daksha Kansal has made herself dictator in Solstice, and suppressed the information until the legal backing for the coup was completely secured and the government was firmly in her grip. It is for this reason that we only learn this now.”

There was not even a gasp in response. There was instead stillness around the crowd. Clutched hearts, clenched teeth, sweating brows, tearing eyes.

“During this information blackout, traitorous units seeded throughout our free cities, like the 1st Regiment of Madiha Nakar, have been preparing to enforce the coup across the Dominances. They have been aided by the chaotic advance of Nocht’s forces from the south and west. Madiha Nakar would have us bow down to this tyranny; some hero she is! I tell you right now, fellow Rangdans, I refuse this coup government! I refuse Daksha Kansal! Rangda will use all resources available to restore democracy!”

His voice was not as fiery and fierce as his father’s; there was no applause. Nobody seemed set ablaze by this course of action. Confusion reigned in the crowd. Eyes glanced aside wondering if they had all seen the same. In a rising collective whisper the crowd picked apart the speech, interrogated their own allegiance, and collectively felt unsettled by the situation.

“As we speak, units of the elite 8th Division have the traitor Regiment trapped in their barracks, and will shortly move in to detain them. I am sure scores of the traitors will surrender to justice, but many will fight, and they will be defeated. Know that the coming months will be difficult. We may need to parlay, we may need to fight, we may need to–”

Mansa opened his mouth and a booming noise seemed to escape from it.

Several hundred meters down the road a wall of sandbags erupted and flung sack and sand and shards of metal in a spray that fell just short of the crowd. Before the blast the sandbags had been erected around an old 76mm mountain pack howitzer brought in pieces by the men of the 8th, and set up in defense of the Council building. In one shot, the howitzer, the men behind it, and the sandbags around it, had been crushed.

Panic ensued. Staff rushed past Mansa in a desperate bid for cover inside the building. They knocked over his podium and loudspeakers, scattered his speech papers. Police dispersed, dropping their weapons and fleeing. Soldiers hit the dirt and searched around for an enemy they could not see. The 1st Regiment should have been dozens of kilometers away. Nothing in their arsenal could have hit this deep into 8th Division territory.

No additional shells followed the first, but the lawn nonetheless cleared quickly out. Mansa stood, watching the crowd sweep past him, stunned.

From behind him, a skittish aide appeared and whispered into his ear.

“Governor,” the young woman stammered. “The Lion Battalion has been routed. They are making gestures of surrender to the 1st Motor Rifles.”

Aksara Mansa was frozen in time, his ears echoing with the din of Madiha Nakar’s opening salvo and slowly realizing that she had dealt first blood before he even knew what was happening. That shell was not her signal. It was rubbing salt into a wound that he did not even know had been opened.

When had this battle even started? How had it moved this far this quickly?

“Where are the other units? How did the 1st Regiment break out?”

Grimly, the aide shook her head. “There are attacks in every sector, sir.”

This chapter contains violence and death.

---

52nd of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Tambwe Dominance — City of Rangda, Council District

From the steps into the Council building a fresh unit of soldiers charged down the front green, avoiding the six dead men strewn about the lawn and rushing toward the corner of Council Street and its central block. Scouting the area, their weapons up as they ran, they joined a pair of men hiding on the edge of the green, huddled behind a pair of benches.

Though the sky was black, several powerful searchlights shone from the roof and from several windows in the council building, providing targeting capability to the infantry. Every street lamp along Council Street was set again to full power, having been previously dimmed to support the curfew.

Carefully the men behind the benches and bushes on the edge of the Council lawn peered down the street, perhaps expecting gunfire. There was no retaliation against them. They assembled and prepared quietly.

“How many?” asked the squad leader, leaning out toward the road.

One man answered in a panic. “Just one sir! But she’s strong–‘

With a grin the squadron leader cut the man off.

He stood from behind the bench and held out his arm.

“You coward! Just one shooter has forced you back? Move out and–”

From farther down the street a rifle round struck the squadron sergeant’s adam’s apple as he berated his men. His head nearly came off as he fell.

There was immediate panic. Even with a tracer, it should have been nearly impossible for a shooter in the dark to kill this accurately with one shot.

An entire squadron dove and scrambled for cover around the corpse of their officer but found little they could use. In front of the large, square, u-shaped Council Building the green was wide open. There was nothing but small manicured bushes, stray benches made of widely spaced boards and a pair of flagpoles to hide behind on the lawn, and all of these were many meters apart. There were the torches on the street, but in the dark these posts immediately marked the men they covered as obvious targets.

Snipers could have hidden inside the western arm of the Council Building, but then they would not be able to see the fugitive. Even the men at the forefront of the gun battle could hardly see their target, only thirty meters away, save for a flash of movement in dim lamplight after her every kill.

Madiha Nakar had picked her position on the connecting Council Street to shield her from the sight of the Council Building. She was deep enough into the street that the arms of the building could not shine their lights on her, and she was distant enough from a torch post to hide in the gloom.

While her enemies had trouble targeting her, Madiha’s own field of view to the lawn was wide open, and she had reasonable cover from the old, thick steel mail bank box set on the side of the road. It was akin to a wall. Stray bullets bounced off the side and top of the box. Its exterior was made of fairly thick metal, and any bullets that penetrated would be slowed or diverted by the papers and boxes inside the bank. She had her pick of targets whenever she peered beyond the bank. Over the iron sights, she led her shots on the men even as they struggled to escape.

One shot through a mouth; clack went the bolt action; one shot through an eye; clack; one through a nose. Three men dropped to the ground in quick succession. Madiha retreated behind cover and felt the force of several shots transfer through the metal into vibrations against her back.

Taking a deep breath, she produced a new stripper clip from the pilfered ammunition bang slung over her shoulder and fed it into the rifle. Sensing a long delay between rifle shots at her back, she peered around the postal box. Selectively targeting the men in green uniforms she retaliated anew.

Through the space between the boards on the bench backrest she saw one of the panicked men that was shouting before. She shot him in the chest.

Tracers soared through the gloom like flaming arrows. Madiha took note of as many of the flashes and cracks as she saw and heard while shooting and before hiding, divining enemy positions and retaliating accurately.

As the exchange of gunfire continued, she saw less and less of the panicked blue-uniformed civil police in the vicinity. She had hoped they would finally break and flee after a show of force, and she had been thankfully correct. There was only a smattering of green uniforms on the Council Building front green and soon, not a single blue police uniform.

She hid behind the post box anew and worked the bolt. Mentally she prepared herself for the next volley of rifle shots launched her way.

In place of the cracking of Bundu rifles she heard a continuous noise.

Dozens of rounds struck the back of the box, many penetrating into the interior and striking against the metal directly at Madiha’s back. Chips of hot metal flew overhead like the shavings of an electric saw. Bright green tracers raked the street and the road at her sides. A spraying cone of lead showered the surroundings in hot metal, hungry for her flesh. It was an enemy Norgler. She could tell from the noise; she couldn’t risk peering out.

Soon as she heard a lull Madiha fled from cover, ducking stray rifle fire to run into an alley. She put her back to the bricks of a shop wall, and closed her eyes. Hundreds of flashing green fragments blew in toward her from the edge of the alley wall as the automatic tracer fire chipped at the bricks. Stowing her rifle she withdrew her pistol and stuck out her hand, shooting blindly back into the road and toward the green, unable to tell the effect.

Before she could even think to peek again the Norgler fire resumed.

She was trapped in an alleyway. Everything was dark owing to the distance from the street lights. There seemed to be no civilians around, not on the street, in the alley or in these buildings. Nobody there to be hit by the shots but her. It was the only comforting thought she had the entire night.

There was scarcely a pause between volleys. Automatic gunfire perfectly sited the street. Her muscles tensed and she grit her teeth, flinching from bits of brick and lead flying sharply off the corner and stinging her cheeks.

She crept farther into the alley and hid between a garbage can and a set of steps into a side door. Her original intention had been to fight until she thought she had a good chance to flee to safety. She had perhaps stuck around too long; the showers of tracers made her plans impossible.

Under the cover of the Norgler there were likely men moving in against her, combing the gloomy streets. They would find her quickly even in the dark. She would be hard-pressed to deal with a rifle squadron while cornered in an alley. All they had to do was throw grenades into the alley.

She had to take action first; she could not sit here and wait to die.

From her stolen pack she withdrew a flare gun and fired it into the sky.

A canister launched heavensward and exploded with a red flash.

Under the moonless sky the flash was enough to light the entire alley.

It was a signal for help. But it also exposed her location to the enemy.

On the street six men rushed past and stacked on both sides of the alley.

Madiha crouched behind the garbage can with her head almost in her legs.

As she feared she heard a shout. Grenades came flying into the alleyway.

Over the shouting of the men Madiha heard a high-pitched roaring.

As she hoped, the grenades flew right out as a stiff gust blew into the alleyway from above. Three grenades bounced back out into the street along the ground and detonated simultaneously on top of their owners.

Madiha felt the detonations and huddled in place until she heard the last of the spraying fragments settle. When she lifted her head again, she found Kali beside her, having descended from the heavens. Even in the dark her scales seemed to glint with their own dim luminescence.

Her little dragon looked worse for wear.

Bullets had become lodged in its scales in various locations, cracking “plates” of armor but seemingly not drawing blood. Where blood had been drawn was its underbelly and wings, where shards of glass had become embedded, and bruises and blood spots had formed wherever Brass Face had managed to strike in their combat. She was clearly quite wounded.

Kali did not seem disturbed by her wounds. It sat on all fours like a cat, with its head raised, staring blankly at Madiha in the same way as usual.

“Kali, you’re hurt!” Madiha said sadly.

No response from the little dragon. It stared expectantly.

Madiha reached out and petted it on the head as Parinita had taught her.

Kali purred and closed its eyes.

Madiha felt foolish; what she said before was obvious, but she felt strongly compelled to acknowledge it to herself. Kali had been hurt. Her actions and decisions had not just affected herself or the enemy. Her little friend had been badly beaten around. She did not even know how much Kali really understood things. Though it had the aptitude to fight, and some apparent knowledge of how its enemies were fighting her (what shooting was, and how to deflect big projectiles) she felt strange attributing that much agency to it. Madiha still thought of her as a pet that needed care.

And as far as caring for Kali went, Madiha had failed miserably.

She was about to punctuate her failure even further.

From her bag she withdrew a thick bundle of grenades.

“Kali, can you understand me?”

Kali stared at her, craning its head to one side.

Madiha reached out her hand to pet her head again.

She settled her palm over Kali’s head and projected an image.

“Can you see this man too?”

She tried to gently push into Kali’s mind the image of a male soldier with a Norgler. She focused on the size of the weapon, on the way a man would be holding it, on the noise and visual effect of the weapon. It was akin to drawing a sketch for a trainee to help them visualize an enemy target.

There was no protest to the psychic display.

She was not trying to intrude on Kali’s mind like she did to Brass Face’s. Through the tenuous connection she conveyed her non-aggression as strongly as she could. She tried to evoke a one-way conversation, a giving of information, a telling of facts. Madiha took not even a trickle of Kali’s thoughts. In turn the dragon was calm and gentle, completely trusting.

In a few seconds she was satisfied with the picture she had projected.

Madiha removed her hand from Kali’s head and smiled at her pet.

“Kali, I need you to drop this on that man. Can you do that?”

Soon as she was done speaking the exterior alley lit up with green tracers.

Kali seized the bundle of grenades from Madiha’s hands and took off.

In the preceding days Madiha had only ever really see Kali float and glide, but today she was flying as though propelled by her own little engine. She flapped her wings once and generated enough wind to lift dust from the floor and to lift her whole body into the sky. She elevated without concern, flying directly up and down as if unburdened by the physics of aviation.

She disappeared from over the alley. Madiha crouched along the edge of the wall, hurrying toward the street. She pulled on the leg of a corpse, drawing the remains into the alley and pilfering ammunition. Just a meter overhead and scarcely a meter of brick from the street, the Norgler’s fire resumed slicing the pavement and the corner of the shop. Hundreds of bullet holes had scarred the street and the lips of the alleyway walls.

Madiha sat against the wall, pistol in hand, waiting for a sign.

There came another volley of Norgler fire, chipping at the walls anew.

Then a loud blast quieted the gun mid-spray.

Madiha charged out of the alleyway, firing her pistol up the street. She found a trio of men running from the lawn and attacked them, shooting two before ducking back behind the mail bank. She spotted several more men that had been assembling on the green, and were now stumbling around wounded and dazed from the explosion. Amid a circle of burnt grass and running blood were a pair of bodies lying on a mangled pile of metal tubing and cooked ammo that had once been an automatic weapon.

Overhead Kali circled like a vulture smelling carrion in the air.

With the Norgler suppressed and the men scattered, now was the time to flee. Madiha withdrew her flare gun, popped a new canister into the weapon and aimed further down the street. She unloaded a flare, set her sights on Ocean Road at the end of the block, perhaps a kilometer away, and took off under the red flash, hoping that Kali would see it and follow.

As she left cover and ran Madiha felt a closer, hotter flash behind her.

Chunks of metal flew past her as the box exploded a dozen meters back.

Eyes drawn wide with terror, Madiha looked over her shoulder mid-run.

She found herself suddenly turning gold under a pair of bright lights.

Blinded at first, she caught a glimpse of her aggressor when the lights moved from over her body and instead illuminated the road ahead.

Moving into the green from beyond Council Street was a Goblin light tank, the ubiquitous main tank of the Territorial Army. Characteristically angled tracks bore it forward, its three-section glacis with a flat front plate facing Madiha. Atop its thinly armored, riveted hull was an off-center turret with a thin gun and a linked machine gun, and atop that was a pintle-mounted anti-aircraft machine gun, rarely seen equipped.

One 45mm high-explosive shell was all it took to smash the mail bank.

Against other tanks it was lacking, but a Goblin was deadly to infantry.

Madiha saw the gun barrel light up as she glanced again over her shoulder.

In an instant a second shell flew past, infinitely faster than she could run.

Had it deviated a meter toward her it would have struck Madiha directly.

Instead thirty meters ahead it exploded on the road, scattering fragments.

Madiha shielded her face with her arms, turned on her heels and dove blindly into the nearest alleyway. She felt a sting on her flank; a fragment must have bitten into the back of her ribs somewhere. Flinching from the new pain, she found herself scarcely a few dozen meters from where she had started, stranded in a wide alley mostly adjacent to her last refuge.

Behind her she heard the loud whining of the tracks as the Goblin neared.

The Cisseans must have cried out for help to the rogue 8th Division.

Or perhaps they had just pressed a captured Goblin into their own service.

Regardless Madiha now had to contend with a tank.

She cast wild eyes around the alley and found a large dumpster belonging to the shops on this block. She put down the lid and climbed atop, and leaped up. Her hands barely seized a second-story windowsill, and she pulled herself up. Over the smaller building at her other side she could see the tank coming closer. It thankfully could not see her, not with its optics.

Pressed precariously against the shop window, Madiha withdrew her pistol and shot the glass, creating an opening. Using her knife she smashed off as much of the sharp glass as she could from the bottom half of the window and slid herself inside. She found herself in a dark storage room that seemed empty, dusty and cobwebbed. There were windows on the other end of the room, and she rushed toward them and crouched.

On the street below she heard the tracks and the engine come closer.

She heard the road wheels, characteristically slamming in protest as the Goblin tank tried to navigate the ten centimeter step up from the flat road to the alley street. Goblin road wheels were quite poorly arranged and any change in elevation caused them to lift violently and issue a harsh noise.

It was likely trying to turn into the alleyway below to corner her.

Giving chase in such a way was quite an amateurish mistake.

In such a tight melee the tank was under as much danger as its prey.

Madiha stood up against the corner of the room, between windows.

She peeked outside and confirmed her suspicions.

The Goblin had turned into the alley to search for her.

Madiha withdrew a lone anti-tank grenade from her ammunition bag.

She cracked open the window, primed the grenade and threw it.

Landing atop the engine compartment, the grenade’s cylindrical explosive head detonated violently. A cloud of smoke billowed from the back of the tank as the roof of the rear hull practically melted. Immediately the Goblin’s tracks ceased to whine and the engine ceased to rumble.

Fires burst from within the ruined grates once covering the engine.

There was no movement from within the tank. Had anyone survived they would have bolted out of the hatches. But judging by the detonation and the fires, and the slag that had become of the rear hull roof, it was likely that a shower of metal spall had killed everyone inside, if not the heat of the initial detonation. The Goblin tank was completely paralyzed.

Soon the fire would reach the ammunition and explode a final time.

Madiha pulled the window open the whole way. Enduring the stinging at her side, she gingerly leaped onto the Goblin’s turret. She misjudged the jump; she hit the turret roof hard, and nearly slid off with her momentum. Groaning, she sat up and began to pull free her prize. Madiha took the Danava machine gun from the simple mounting atop the turret.

Now she had a real weapon on her hands.

Faint and distant, she heard the trampling of boots over the hissing fires from the tank’s engine. Madiha cast a quick glance overhead, making sure that Kali was still airborne. Finding her dragon flying over the alleys, Madiha signaled to her, leaped down from the tank and ran further into the dark alleys and around the backs of the shops on Council Street.

She had a good weapon, a head start and the night.

She was sure she could get away now.

---

City of Rangda, Council Building

Around the back of the Council Building pair of Cissean men stood on either side of a heavy-duty steel shutter at the bottom of a concrete ramp descending between the green and street. They pulled on a pair of levers to unlock the shutter and lifted it to gain access. A pair of headlights shone from inside as a heavy truck with a massive, canvas-covered steel bed made its way out of the garage and toward an expectant Von Drachen.

Two wheels in front and six in the back bore the weight of thirty tons of cargo. The Tank Transporter crawled up the ramp at the direction of the two men. At the top of the ramp turned around on the back green of the Council Building. Both men supervising the transporter pulled a slide out from under the bed, attached it to the lip of the bed and allowed it to drop.

From within the tank transporter a spotlight shone and an engine blared.

Tracks distinctively whined as an M4 Sentinel made its way out of the transporter. Painted an absurdly gaudy red with a golden stripe around the turret, this M4 Sentinel was in most ways a standard production M4 with its armored contours gently curving, its rounded turret, and a steep front with a characteristically bulging plate protecting the lower front hull.

Rather than a longer-barreled anti-tank gun, however, this M4 boasted a shorter gun with a wider bore. On the gun mantlet there was a searchlight.

Upon seeing the vehicle fully displayed on the lawn, Von Drachen clapped.

“Leave it to the Barbaros to make silk out of peasant cloth!” He cheered.

Nocht had been loath to provide much in the way of armored vehicle assistance to Cissea, despite pressuring them to support the invasion. Von Drachen’s Azul Corps in Adjar had made do with the Escudero, a variant of a common export market light tank produced in Occiden. Madiha Nakar had then made quite sure that he lost his limited stock of them. When Nocht finally approved M4s for Cissea, they gave up their older early production stock that had been languishing in warehouses, like this big fellow.

However, the engineers of Barbaros Valley always came through. Even the heavy purges of their labor force and academics, hundreds tried and made examples of for supporting the anarchists, did not stop them from largely reconstructing the M4 bottom-up in a few weeks. Von Drachen lovingly called it the M4D Dragoon Sentinel. Without a word more he leaped onto the back of the engine and skillfully climbed atop the turret.

Gutierrez seemed much less impressed by the machine at his side.

“Why is it red? It blends in with nothing. There’s no red terrain.”

Atop the turret Von Drachen looked over his shoulder with disdain.

“Excuse you.” Von Drachen said. “Solstice’s red sands are almost red.”

“They’re a ruddy brown, they’re not watercolor red like this thing.”

Von Drachen shrugged. “We will agree to disagree on the aesthetics.”

Gutierrez stared at him with growing confusion and concern.

“Mijo, where are you going? You’re gonna drive that thing yourself?”

“Of course not. I’m only the gunner and commander! I don’t drive.”

Von Drachen smiled and descended into the interior of the machine.

At the front, his driver was already at his post and prepared to move.

He would not be too necessary. Von Drachen intended to do most of his fighting from the Council Building lawn, supported by the mechanisms in front of him, taking up much of the M4’s turret interior. In place of the 50mm anti-tank gun, the Dragoon Sentinel possessed a 75mm howitzer. There was an elevation dial sight for laying, a compass, a telescopic sight, a periscope sight for naked eye perspective on the battle. Von Drachen also brought an urban map of Rangda, and pinned it to the turret wall.

He sat behind the controls of the gun and felt himself surge with energy.

Finally he would be able to challenge Nakar in a military arena. No swords, no standoffs, no barbarity, just two prodigious intellects clashing at last. Granted, he accepted the imperfections of this contest. Madiha was alone, or supported only by a strange pet according to certain whimsical reports. Von Drachen counted on the support of over a hundred men and he had this tank, and, gods willing, he had Mansa’s 8th Division at some point.

Surely once he crushed Madiha Nakar that command would easily be his.

Nonetheless, it was as close as they would come to a real battle of military wills before Nakar’s untimely demise. Von Drachen was quite positive.

He pulled off his officer’s cap and donned a radio headset, connecting himself to the tank’s radio system on his right-hand side. He flicked a switch on the audio control box clipped to his chest and made a call.

“This is General Von Drachen. I want a front-line report of Nakar’s last known position along Council Street and the time of the sighting.”

As he spoke, the M4D started to move across the grass, rounding the corner of the Council Building and around the west wing before moving onto the front lawn toward Council Street. Through his periscope sight, Von Drachen spotted his men huddling near their dead. Many drew their eyes away from the fight to gawk, presumably impressed with the color.

After a few minutes, Von Drachen had marked on the map every spot where Madiha Nakar had been seen. From the ruined mail bank box, he shone his spotlight on the burnt-out wreck of a Goblin tank, half-turned into a nondescript alleyway. Marking that on his map as well, he quickly came up with an appropriate firing solution. He signaled his driver to stop.

“I’ll handle the rest. You leave the tank right in this spot.” He said.

Von Drachen grabbed hold of the turret control handle and began turn the gun toward the interior of the block of buildings just off Council street. He made some rapid-fire calculations in his head. Judging the performance of Madiha Nakar’s young and hale body against the thing in the Council Building, and the state of exhaustion in which she must have been; and judging by the layout of the map, and her goal of reconnecting with her own troops; and judging by the wind, the dark, the cold, and lady luck–

Numbers, numbers, numbers; none of them mathematician approved.

Von Drachen’s internal monologue was mostly a series of half-formed gut feelings that he represented with arithmetic that made sense only to him.

From the rack at his side he grabbed hold of a heavy yellow-tipped shell.

He laid it on his lap like a babe, while he turned the elevation wheel on his gun, a slow and laborious process. He triple-checked the elevation dial as well as his compass. Satisfied with his siting, Von Drachen popped open the breech, and held the shell aloft in front of him. After adjusting the base fuse for timing, loaded the shell and locked the breech securely. He lifted his hands, sat back, and took a deep breath. Firing was done by his foot using an electric pedal system, so he could relax for a brief moment.

Von Drachen laughed, grinning viciously to himself.

Nakar wasn’t the only one with a command over fire.

With his free hands he broadcast his voice over the radio once more.

“All units currently combing the alleys, keep your eyes peeled and beware the sky. Give it a one minute window before you resume your pursuit.”

He then lifted his shoe, and started to bring his sole down on the pedal.

Suddenly he received a call back.

“But sir, aren’t there civilians in Council block?” cried a scared man.

Von Drachen scoffed. “Please trust me better than that. Mansa had them moved to air raid shelters hours ago. Besides, I’m not firing explosives.”

“Sorry sir! Yes sir–”

Von Drachen cut his audio receiver off to quiet the man.

He sighed deeply and slowly worked his way back into his zone.

“Anyway. Firing for effect! Incendiary Airburst going out!”

He slammed his shoe on the pedal and the gun fired.

---

City of Rangda, Council and 2nd Block

Portable torch in hand, Madiha hurtled through the alleyways and into a tight concrete path a block up from Council that linked a few small shops and a canteen. She was flanked on all sides by two-story buildings. Cars would have been cramped in the one-lane byway serving as both road and street; most tanks would not fit between the buildings into the alleys.

Madiha soon found herself with a dead end ahead, represented by a tall brick wall and an enormous stack of crates blocking her way. She could have tried to climb, but she had lost her sense of where Ocean Road was in her rush to escape — and she feared snipers. Keeping low was for the best.

She turned around and headed up between a shoe shop and the canteen.

She had expected to see men hot on her heels by now but there were none.

As she ran she raised her head to the rooftops around her, to the windows; she peered into adjacent alleys, through half-open doors. There was not a soul around. Either people did not live in these shops, only manned them during work hours; or everyone had been taken somewhere. She supposed it would have been easy to round people up with the curfew and the police and military presence. They could not have used the air raid alarms — Madiha would have heard those and been alerted to the evacuations.

Hopefully those people were safe and would remain so through what was to come. At least Madiha could rest easy knowing that. But the question then remained: where were the police and soldiers who were chasing her?

She heard her answer in the form of a dire song whistling overhead.

That she heard the shell at all usually meant it had overshot her.

Those destined to die heard nothing. They were simply crushed.

Those in the vicinity would have heard an instant of sharp, eerie rushing noise before the deep rumble of the shellfall. It was the signal of a low-velocity, high-arc weapon like a mortar or howitzer. Ordinarily it was safe.

Madiha’s gaze immediately shot skyward.

Amid the dark clouds she saw the dim trail from the shell.

It would not merely overfly her.

In a split-second it burst into hundreds of trails of falling fire.

She was reminded of the fireworks during the festival.

Except the trails of color were all hurtling earthward.

She dropped her torch.

Madiha ducked under an awning as hundreds of fragments of burning metal struck the rooftops and the ground in the alley. She found herself surrounded by knife-point sharp chunks of steel casing, embedded into the ground at high velocity like throwing daggers hurled by an invisible hand. One of the closest struck just off of her foot, millimeters from her.

At once the dark alley had lit up. Wisps of fire started to spread across the ground, along the brick walls and over the concrete floor. Discarded crates and trash-filled drums caught by the fragments burst into wild flames. It was as if someone had poured gasoline around every fragment of metal.

Madiha felt an instant of sharp pain and raised her boot from the ground.

She found a trail of fire dancing over a drop of gelatinous substance on her boot. It melted the plastic and heated up the steel insert protecting her toes. Immediately she pulled off her shoe and hurled it away. Gritting her teeth, she pulled off her worn-out sock and found a boil had formed on her toe from the heat. Struggling not to weep from the pain, she sidled on one foot along the wall of the alley, trying to escape from the raging fires.

Spreading over the floor in long, golden lines of crawling death was more of the same gelatinous chemical, rolling off the red-hot fragments that bore it to the ground. Thick white smoke trailed from the fires it caused.

An acrid reek accompanied the rising fumes. Madiha started to feel dizzy. Her stomach was turning. She felt bile rise to her throat from the smell.

Her eyes and nose watered. Madiha concentrated on her escape. Should she tumble forward into the fires she would have certainly, horribly died. Even now her boot was still burning on its own just from that drop of jelly.

That substance could not be put out easily — perhaps not at all.

Step by step along the wall she crawled, setting down her foot only on its heel to regain balance. She stood as if on the edge of a precipice, hardly able to open her eyes, her back ramrod straight. Everything inside her hurt and protested. She held in her breath as much as she could.

Step by step; she opened her eyes briefly again. She was close.

Her side stung; her foot throbbed with agony. Her senses swam.

Step by step–

A sudden noise forced her eyes open.

Madiha was almost out of the burning alley when she heard rifles crack.

She saw the bullets impact the opposite wall and the floor around her.

Desperate to escape she set down her injured foot and staggered out of the alley and behind a corner, scarcely avoiding the last thick concentration of burning jelly. She quickly checked her whole body to make sure nothing was burning. Peering back through the smoke and the dancing red light from the incendiaries, she could just make out men on a distant rooftoop.

Behind the corner, she took a knee and quickly bandaged her toe.

Just beside her the rifle bullets continued to fly past and against the wall.

Standing up again, and setting down her foot, she withdrew her machine gun. She had only a pair of 45-round drum pans, top-fed into the Danava.

This fact made her no less conservative about her ammunition.

Peering around the corner and into the smoke, she aimed high and opened up on the rooftops with a long automatic spray from the DNV. Where the bullets went, she did not know; the white smoke had risen high enough to block any possible view of her enemy. Red tracers flew off into a void.

From within the smoke a short series of rifle shots responded.

Louder than the rifles and the crackling fires was the whining of a shell.

Far greater than the whining was the inevitable detonation.

Madiha experienced a flash much closer to the ground than before.

She reflexively turned her back and shielded her face from the source.

Behind her the hot fragments struck the earth and caught fire.

She felt the wind, crawling through the alleys, bringing the heat to her.

There was no new pain; she had avoided the fragments.

When she turned quickly back around she found the alley ahead blocked off by a wall of golden yellow fire. Flames clung to brick, to stucco, even to windows. A massive conflagration raged in the middle of the alley and barred any access past it. Stray boxes in the vicinity seemed to vaporize of their own accord; copper pipes running along the wall glowed white-hot.

Her whole body was soaked in sweat, and the fumes irritated her skin.

Madiha had no time to marvel at the terrifying flames.

She loaded her final canister into her flare gun and shot it just over the alley. Almost instantly, she saw the body of a man swept off the roof fall and smash back-first into a barrel, horribly contorted. His neck broke.

Overhead, she heard shots and growls and the sounds of invisible combat.

Kali was taking care of the men on on the roof. She had to trust her.

Madiha heard footsteps from around the corner, and more gunfire struck the wall past her and the wall at her side. There were men coming at least as close as the fires she had left behind; the rooftop runners were not her only pursuers. More incendiaries were likely on their way as well.

Reaching into her pack, Madiha withdrew two stick grenades.

Quickly she tied them by their handles with a bandage.

She primed both, threw behind her and ran.

There was a detonation but no way to tell its effects.

Avoiding the wall of fire in front of her, Madiha turned toward a back door into a squat building. It was made of some kind of metal; judging from a quick knock from her fist it was thin. There was no padlock she could see, but the door definitely had at least a simple interior lock on its knob.

Thankfully, nobody in Ayvarta focused on defending against break-ins.

One padlock and she would have probably died here.

Backing off a few steps, she stood on her good foot and kicked the door as hard as she could with her injured foot. She aimed near the knob and lock, as she had been taught. Instantly she felt pain shoot through all of the sinews in her foot and her ankle. She felt the knob and lock give. Rearing back, she bit down hard to endure the pain and delivered a second kick.

Under the strain of this second kick the door finally burst open.

Madiha put her injured foot on the ground and felt the pain once more.

Nearly limping, she made her way into the building.

Through the door-frame she could see the fire spreading outside.

She was in a restaurant kitchen. There was an old brick oven, wood-fired, and some more modern conveniences alongside it. She scanned for chemicals she might have used to improvise an explosive. Nothing stuck out to her. She would have to make do with the last of her stolen supplies.

As she struggled out the kitchen door into the dining area, she seized a delicate prize from her ammunition bag. She stowed her last magazines inside her coat and on her belt, before discarding the bag in the trash.

In front of the kitchen door was a small, charming cloth carpet with the words Hujambo! sewn in colorful letters. She left the kitchen door open, lifted the little mat and gingerly slid an anti-personnel mine under it.

Hefting only her machine gun now, she shot the glass front door open and ran outside. She came out into a wider-open one-lane road that could support cars and perhaps even a tank. Directly in front of her there was seemingly no open connection to Ocean Road. To her right there were nondescript buildings. To her left, she saw a small park in the distance.

Moments later she heard a detonation at her back.

Madiha took off running as well as her foot could support.

She had nowhere else to go but that park.

She fixed her eyes on the green that she could see ahead through the distant illumination of street lamps. Her whole body was protesting her every move. She was exhausted; she had been poisoned and drugged and she felt the effects on her brain and in her sinews, a burning, prickling feeling. Her hands were shaking, her knees shaking, her foot was burnt. She felt the fragment dug in her flank. All of her was crying but her eyes.

A dozen meters from the restaurant, there was a sudden new pain.

It was accompanied by the sound of a rifle.

Glancing over her shoulder, barely cognizant that she had been shot right through it, Madiha spotted the men — mountain climbers, Gebirgsjager. They were on the rooftops. They had easily climbed the urban terrain.

Had they gotten Kali? She could not see her anywhere around.

Fearing the worst, Madiha swung around her Danava to retaliate. She flinched violently. When the butt-stock hit her shoulder, blood spurted out. Her whole body was shaking from the pain. She could not aim.

She heard a cartridge discard, and a bolt pull from the rooftop.

Then she heard the singing of an artillery shell.

There was no other choice.

Madiha dropped her machine gun and raised her good hand.

Spotting the shell in the sky she pushed on the detonation.

Instead of tumbling toward her the shell detonated backwards from the tip of its nose and spewed all of its fragments and flaming jelly over the Gebirgsjagers on the rooftop. Soaked in the incendiary chemicals, the men screamed with a haunting agony that shook Madiha to her core.

She stood and watched, dumbstruck.

Doused in liquid flames the men rolled off the rooftop and onto the street, still burning. They ripped at their clothes, stamped, scratched, and could not stop burning. Their uniforms melted; the incendiary coated their skin.

Those men still trapped on the roof in the middle of the dire gold flames seemed to disappear into white smoke themselves, vaporized slowly.

Madiha ripped herself away from the sight and shambled toward the park.

That was a malevolent power her own flames could not match. No matter what magic did, the ingenuity of men and technology was always worse.

She clutched at her gunshot wound and focused on breathing and walking.

 

There was no singular experience of “being shot.” Every gunshot was unique. Madiha had been stricken by bullets both stray and malicious. She had been grazed in the side in a training accident; she had been shot in the hip by a fleeing spy. As a child she had been shot in the chest and almost killed. Sometimes the bullet felt like a fist blow followed by burning and cutting sensation in the wound. Sometimes it seemed like the metal melted in the flesh and slashed its way through every strand of sinew.

Madiha felt almost nothing of this bullet now. When struck she had felt a shallow stab. Her body was shaking, and she was bleeding. She could not move her arm, partially out of unconscious fear, partially due to injury. There was a slight stinging. But she was not wracked with agony. It was as if the experience of the gunshot had stabilized the rest of her pains.

Any agony she felt now was purely in her own mind, she thought.

All of the images that wracked her as she escaped.

For all the horrors she had seen tonight, those burning men left a scar.

Much like the transformed man in the Council Building; too cruel a fate.

Those were powers stronger and more terrible than any of her own.

She had to live; she had to see Parinita again. She had to return to her soldiers. They could not face that kind of fate. She would not allow it.

Trying to keep a clear head, she staggered slowly away. Step by step.

Stepping to live, stepping to breathe, stepping to step.

---

City of Rangda, Council Building

“What do you mean it detonated backwards?”

From the inside of the M4D, Brigadier General Von Drachen was not quite having a great time of hearing his troops squandering his lovingly given artillery support and running into mines somehow, unable to hit the broad side of a rather tall young woman. And now they got caught in the flames! This was to be the resurgent dragon’s final victory! It was all gone awry!

He sighed internally. Giving in to desperation was not professional.

“I’m afraid anyone burned too badly by these shells is not going to survive long. Deliver them mercy. I warned all of you to give me some space!”

He argued with the man on the radio, working to be calm but stern.

In the back of his head, however, he knew that he was not off-target with his shells and that his men had not gotten caught in them. Rather, he had seen Madiha Nakar deflect an explosion before. He was sure she must have done something like that again. Her power; it made her highly dangerous.

But she was not immortal, he told himself.

Stopping that explosion inside the Council Building had hurt her arm.

He had seen it. He had seen her falter.

He grinned with the knowledge.

She had limitations. Those fires she could sling, those shields she could put up, her so-called ESP. They were not limitless. She could run out of fire, and she could certainly buckle and die under enough ammunition.

Madiha Nakar was no god; there was no such thing as a god on Aer.

At most, she was a monster. She had alien powers, but killable flesh.

He had seen powers and horrors tonight; but he had seen them falter.

More than anything that renewed his confidence in human strength.

He could not tell his men all of these things. It was not the right time.

But he was not ready to give up on them or on himself quite yet.

“Back off from her. She’s headed to Manban Park, yes? I’ll intercept from the south. Slip around her and cut off her escape from a distance.”

He switched from the long-range radio to the tank intercomm.

“Driver, take us to Manban at full speed!” Von Drachen commanded.

At once, the M4D started to move off the lawn of the Council Building.

Von Drachen had to admit she was a very worthy opponent. He had every advantage and she was still putting him on the defensive from afar.

Perhaps he was growing cocky and losing the sober precepts that carried him this far. Nobody could really tell what the outcome of anything was. All of their world was governed by a preternatural chaos that had only some grounding in arithmetic. And yet, inside the cockpit of this tank, fighting against his nemesis, he felt an eagerness and wildness in him.

He felt confident. He had prepared for an outcome, and he would effect it.

Her failures emboldened him. She was weakened now. He had a chance.

Through his periscope he observed the road as the M4D headed north and west along the various straddling the Council’s artery streets, hoping to reach Manban Park from the south. Men were running on foot alongside him, combing through the alleyways and charging down the streets.

As the M4D picked up speed along the roads, the men fell behind.

He had an appointment with a most troublesome young lady.

---

City of Rangda, Manban Park

Madiha laid down in the center of Manban Park, hiding behind a statue of Arthur Mansa. She caught her breath, holding a bundle of cloth she ripped from her undershirt tight against her wound. There were two streets she could take from her vantage, but one lead back south toward Council.

She was not sure the other would take her to Ocean Road.

Even if it did, she was becoming increasingly unsure she could make it back to the base. She had not planned on being shot along the way.

For the first few minutes of being shot, one focused on survival and escape, on the possibility of life. After enough bleeding, enough pain, enough struggling alone, the mind drifted toward the prospect of death.

Madiha shook her head.

She wanted desperately to live. But hope seemed ever farther away.

Had anyone been beside her, perhaps she would have the impetus to fight.

Instead she struggled to ignore the prospect of dying here alone.

With her injured arm she could not shoot full-size weapons anymore. It had already been a struggle to shoot when her arm was healing from the beating the Majini had given her days ago. Now she was shot through the shoulder. Danavas and Bundus were out of the question. She had a pistol.

She aimed her pistol around the side of the statue. She could aim back the way she came, and she could aim toward the south and north streets.

Her face was soaked in sweat. Long rivulets trailed down her nose and lips.

In front of her the landscape was dancing as if viewed through a haze.

She spotted men in the distance as warped, shapeshifting figures.

She pulled the trigger on her pistol once. One shape fell down.

Even absent the rest of her senses her trigger hand still went for the head.

She hid behind the statue and waited out the snapping of the rifles.

Bits of stone and iron from the plaque chipped off as the bullets hit.

She saw the fragments in the floor like dust.

Bits of Mansa; Mansa who vanished so suddenly.

Did these men think or know they were killing an empress?

Madiha shook her head. Everything was going out of focus.

Her brain was just regurgitating thoughts, independent of her body.

She stuck her hand out from behind the statue and rapped the trigger.

Images flashed in her mind with every trigger pull. Daksha Kansal, in the rain, shocked that a child had killed a man to save her. Lena Ulyanova teaching her about socialism and other subjects, as she had taught Daksha before. All of the people whom she had met as a Courier in Bada Aso. Chinedu, who took care of her and supported her with such devotion.

There was a long stretch of nothing. Then, more recent memories.

Sergeant Agni, back when she was Private Agni, still stiff and dull-spoken but excellent with tools and trinkets. Chakrani, fashionable and pretty and impressed with her uniform, who met her and bedded her quite quickly.

There were the missions, the spy-hunting, the military review.

Then–

Parinita, with those gentle eyes that saw worth in her.

Eyes that looked through her and desired to love her unconditionally.

Parinita who supported her without judgment.

Her face was fuzzy in her memory, like a bad picture on a television.

It was torment; she wanted so badly to see Parinita again–

Madiha shook her head again, more harshly this time.

Before she knew it her pistol was empty.

Had she been shooting all this time?

Was this what it felt like to die? Slowly losing control of oneself?

She peered around the statue. Briefly she saw the men closing in.

A stray bullet struck near her cheek and sent dust into her eyes.

She retreated. From her belt she withdrew a new magazine.

She slipped the magazine into the pistol from the handle.

Again she stuck her hand. She slammed the trigger quickly.

She heard the report of her pistol far louder than usual.

Long bursts of loud gunfire tore through the park.

There was something else too. She heard a whirring engine.

Shocked from her stupor, Madiha stood slowly from behind the statue.

Overhead she spotted a plane, its side door open.

Streams of automatic gunfire dropped from the side of the plane like red darts, chopping up the grass and chopping up the men. Someone was at the door and firing a machine gun. The Stork passenger biplane swooped over the park in tight circles, slashing across the enemy column.

Under this aerial attack the men scampered away.

Madiha felt a surge of energy. She reached her hand up and signaled.

The Stork blew past overhead and dropped something.

On the nearby grass, a bundle hit the ground.

Madiha scrambled for it and ripped it from its canvas covering.

There was a harness and heavy backpack that rattled as if full of metal.

Attached was a note that read Fuchs Recovery System.

On the back was a diagram.

Madiha pulled the bundle from the ground and strapped on the harness.

She found standing straight difficult. The Fuchs pack was very heavy.

When she finally managed to make it upright, a shell soared past her.

It struck a tree on the other end of the park and set its crown ablaze.

Madiha turned around in shock.

From the southern approach, a bright red M4 Sentinel approached.

Making minute corrections, its cannon zeroed in on her.

She could not escape from it.

Not on foot. Not with this bundle at her back.

Madiha grabbed hold of a pair of handles on the harness.

She stood defiantly before the tank.

As the M4 trundled forward, its cannon likely reloading, the old Stork flew over the southern road and turned, headed in a straight path over Madiha.

Madiha pulled the handles.

At her back, a pair of metal rods extended skyward in a v-shape.

Another pair extended toward the ground with feet to stabilize the weight.

It was just like in the diagram.

Slung between the two top poles was a sturdy line.

As the M4 Sentinel fired its second shot, a hook from the stork snagged Madiha’s line. Both rods were pulled closer as the plane flew past at hundreds of kilometers per hour and the line instantly stretched to its limits; Madiha soared off the ground, snatched suddenly by the plane.

Below her the incendiary shell detonated harmlessly on the ground.

Overhead the stork pulled back its hook via a winch, lifting Madiha higher.

Her hair flapped every which way with the buffeting winds.

She felt an intense pressure on her body. Her consciousness wavered.

She heard a rushing noise. Something big and warm seized her in the air.

Though the pressure waned then her mind was still too weak.

Everything went black as the hook pulled her up in fits and starts.

She felt an incredible stillness, an eerie sense of peace.

Suspended in mid-air, moving without need of her own power.

Her mind seemed to fall out of the world for a time.

Everything was dark and soft like the inside of her own eyes.

Her body felt cold. Her back was especially cold.

Her chest was warm, however. It was an odd mix of sensations.

Slowly that peace she had achieved was giving way to the chaos of living.

Madiha saw a light in front of her, above her, somewhere.

She opened her eyes with a start.

She was lying on a floor, staring up at the ceiling lamps on a green cabin.

There was a big, dark, warm bundle near her. It was Kali, purring softly.

Madiha weakly stretched her hand to pet her.

“Sergeant Minardo, ma’am, it looks like she’s coming to.”

Into her hazy view came a person.

Looming over her was a dull-eyed, unsmiling brown face with dark hair.

“In the interest of disclosure: that could have easily killed you.” Agni said.

Madiha burst out laughing, and then stopped immediately to cough.

Her ribs and shoulder protested horribly at this reaction.

She was alive. Badly injured, but alive.

“Who is Fuchs? I could kiss them!” Madiha asked weakly.

“You couldn’t. He’s dead.” Agni said. “I completed the system but–”

“I’ll kiss you!” Madiha said, tears in her eyes.

“Please don’t.” Agni dryly replied.

---

 

Atop the M4D the cupola hatch swung open.

An incredulous Von Drachen climbed half out of the tank and leaned slothfully against the back of the cupola, resting on the high seat.

His lips spread, first in bewilderment.

They then curled into a smile.

He burst out laughing.

Overhead the plane grew distant, pulling Nakar farther away.

As easily as he found her, she had again slipped from his grasp.

At his side there was a loud and unexpected screech.

From the southern road a vehicle had charged into the park.

“Von Drachen, what in hell is that? What happened?” Mansa shouted, pointing at the plane from the back seat of the arriving liaison car.

He was red in the face, distraught by the carnage around the city no doubt.

Von Drachen smiled gently at him.

“That, good governor, is all our troubles shooting across the sky.”

Aksara Mansa stared at the horizon with a blank gaze.

Once more the prospects forced a laugh out of Von Drachen.

Against all rationality, he wanted more badly than ever to fight her.

He had thought he was the chaos that had arrived to accelerate this stagnant world, but no, it might just be her. She was exceptional.

This scene contains violence and death.

---

City of Rangda, Council Building

“What do you mean it detonated backwards?”

From the inside of the M4D, Brigadier General Von Drachen was not quite having a great time of hearing his troops squandering his lovingly given artillery support and running into mines somehow, unable to hit the broad side of a rather tall young woman. And now they got caught in the flames! This was to be the resurgent dragon’s final victory! It was all gone awry!

He sighed internally. Giving in to desperation was not professional.

“I’m afraid anyone burned too badly by these shells is not going to survive long. Deliver them mercy. I warned all of you to give me some space!”

He argued with the man on the radio, working to be calm but stern.

In the back of his head, however, he knew that he was not off-target with his shells and that his men had not gotten caught in them. Rather, he had seen Madiha Nakar deflect an explosion before. He was sure she must have done something like that again. Her power; it made her highly dangerous.

But she was not immortal, he told himself.

Stopping that explosion inside the Council Building had hurt her arm.

He had seen it. He had seen her falter.

He grinned with the knowledge.

She had limitations. Those fires she could sling, those shields she could put up, her so-called ESP. They were not limitless. She could run out of fire, and she could certainly buckle and die under enough ammunition.

Madiha Nakar was no god; there was no such thing as a god on Aer.

At most, she was a monster. She had alien powers, but killable flesh.

He had seen powers and horrors tonight; but he had seen them falter.

More than anything that renewed his confidence in human strength.

He could not tell his men all of these things. It was not the right time.

But he was not ready to give up on them or on himself quite yet.

“Back off from her. She’s headed to Manban Park, yes? I’ll intercept from the south. Slip around her and cut off her escape from a distance.”

He switched from the long-range radio to the tank intercomm.

“Driver, take us to Manban at full speed!” Von Drachen commanded.

At once, the M4D started to move off the lawn of the Council Building.

Von Drachen had to admit she was a very worthy opponent. He had every advantage and she was still putting him on the defensive from afar.

Perhaps he was growing cocky and losing the sober precepts that carried him this far. Nobody could really tell what the outcome of anything was. All of their world was governed by a preternatural chaos that had only some grounding in arithmetic. And yet, inside the cockpit of this tank, fighting against his nemesis, he felt an eagerness and wildness in him.

He felt confident. He had prepared for an outcome, and he would effect it.

Her failures emboldened him. She was weakened now. He had a chance.

Through his periscope he observed the road as the M4D headed north and west along the various straddling the Council’s artery streets, hoping to reach Manban Park from the south. Men were running on foot alongside him, combing through the alleyways and charging down the streets.

As the M4D picked up speed along the roads, the men fell behind.

He had an appointment with a most troublesome young lady.

---

City of Rangda, Manban Park

Madiha laid down in the center of Manban Park, hiding behind a statue of Arthur Mansa. She caught her breath, holding a bundle of cloth she ripped from her undershirt tight against her wound. There were two streets she could take from her vantage, but one lead back south toward Council.

She was not sure the other would take her to Ocean Road.

Even if it did, she was becoming increasingly unsure she could make it back to the base. She had not planned on being shot along the way.

For the first few minutes of being shot, one focused on survival and escape, on the possibility of life. After enough bleeding, enough pain, enough struggling alone, the mind drifted toward the prospect of death.

Madiha shook her head.

She wanted desperately to live. But hope seemed ever farther away.

Had anyone been beside her, perhaps she would have the impetus to fight.

Instead she struggled to ignore the prospect of dying here alone.

With her injured arm she could not shoot full-size weapons anymore. It had already been a struggle to shoot when her arm was healing from the beating the Majini had given her days ago. Now she was shot through the shoulder. Danavas and Bundus were out of the question. She had a pistol.

She aimed her pistol around the side of the statue. She could aim back the way she came, and she could aim toward the south and north streets.

Her face was soaked in sweat. Long rivulets trailed down her nose and lips.

In front of her the landscape was dancing as if viewed through a haze.

She spotted men in the distance as warped, shapeshifting figures.

She pulled the trigger on her pistol once. One shape fell down.

Even absent the rest of her senses her trigger hand still went for the head.

She hid behind the statue and waited out the snapping of the rifles.

Bits of stone and iron from the plaque chipped off as the bullets hit.

She saw the fragments in the floor like dust.

Bits of Mansa; Mansa who vanished so suddenly.

Did these men think or know they were killing an empress?

Madiha shook her head. Everything was going out of focus.

Her brain was just regurgitating thoughts, independent of her body.

She stuck her hand out from behind the statue and rapped the trigger.

Images flashed in her mind with every trigger pull. Daksha Kansal, in the rain, shocked that a child had killed a man to save her. Lena Ulyanova teaching her about socialism and other subjects, as she had taught Daksha before. All of the people whom she had met as a Courier in Bada Aso. Chinedu, who took care of her and supported her with such devotion.

There was a long stretch of nothing. Then, more recent memories.

Sergeant Agni, back when she was Private Agni, still stiff and dull-spoken but excellent with tools and trinkets. Chakrani, fashionable and pretty and impressed with her uniform, who met her and bedded her quite quickly.

There were the missions, the spy-hunting, the military review.

Then–

Parinita, with those gentle eyes that saw worth in her.

Eyes that looked through her and desired to love her unconditionally.

Parinita who supported her without judgment.

Her face was fuzzy in her memory, like a bad picture on a television.

It was torment; she wanted so badly to see Parinita again–

Madiha shook her head again, more harshly this time.

Before she knew it her pistol was empty.

Had she been shooting all this time?

Was this what it felt like to die? Slowly losing control of oneself?

She peered around the statue. Briefly she saw the men closing in.

A stray bullet struck near her cheek and sent dust into her eyes.

She retreated. From her belt she withdrew a new magazine.

She slipped the magazine into the pistol from the handle.

Again she stuck her hand. She slammed the trigger quickly.

She heard the report of her pistol far louder than usual.

Long bursts of loud gunfire tore through the park.

There was something else too. She heard a whirring engine.

Shocked from her stupor, Madiha stood slowly from behind the statue.

Overhead she spotted a plane, its side door open.

Streams of automatic gunfire dropped from the side of the plane like red darts, chopping up the grass and chopping up the men. Someone was at the door and firing a machine gun. The Stork passenger biplane swooped over the park in tight circles, slashing across the enemy column.

Under this aerial attack the men scampered away.

Madiha felt a surge of energy. She reached her hand up and signaled.

The Stork blew past overhead and dropped something.

On the nearby grass, a bundle hit the ground.

Madiha scrambled for it and ripped it from its canvas covering.

There was a harness and heavy backpack that rattled as if full of metal.

Attached was a note that read Fuchs Recovery System.

On the back was a diagram.

Madiha pulled the bundle from the ground and strapped on the harness.

She found standing straight difficult. The Fuchs pack was very heavy.

When she finally managed to make it upright, a shell soared past her.

It struck a tree on the other end of the park and set its crown ablaze.

Madiha turned around in shock.

From the southern approach, a bright red M4 Sentinel approached.

Making minute corrections, its cannon zeroed in on her.

She could not escape from it.

Not on foot. Not with this bundle at her back.

Madiha grabbed hold of a pair of handles on the harness.

She stood defiantly before the tank.

As the M4 trundled forward, its cannon likely reloading, the old Stork flew over the southern road and turned, headed in a straight path over Madiha.

Madiha pulled the handles.

At her back, a pair of metal rods extended skyward in a v-shape.

Another pair extended toward the ground with feet to stabilize the weight.

It was just like in the diagram.

Slung between the two top poles was a sturdy line.

As the M4 Sentinel fired its second shot, a hook from the stork snagged Madiha’s line. Both rods were pulled closer as the plane flew past at hundreds of kilometers per hour and the line instantly stretched to its limits; Madiha soared off the ground, snatched suddenly by the plane.

Below her the incendiary shell detonated harmlessly on the ground.

Overhead the stork pulled back its hook via a winch, lifting Madiha higher.

Her hair flapped every which way with the buffeting winds.

She felt an intense pressure on her body. Her consciousness wavered.

She heard a rushing noise. Something big and warm seized her in the air.

Though the pressure waned then her mind was still too weak.

Everything went black as the hook pulled her up in fits and starts.

She felt an incredible stillness, an eerie sense of peace.

Suspended in mid-air, moving without need of her own power.

Her mind seemed to fall out of the world for a time.

Everything was dark and soft like the inside of her own eyes.

Her body felt cold. Her back was especially cold.

Her chest was warm, however. It was an odd mix of sensations.

Slowly that peace she had achieved was giving way to the chaos of living.

Madiha saw a light in front of her, above her, somewhere.

She opened her eyes with a start.

She was lying on a floor, staring up at the ceiling lamps on a green cabin.

There was a big, dark, warm bundle near her. It was Kali, purring softly.

Madiha weakly stretched her hand to pet her.

“Sergeant Minardo, ma’am, it looks like she’s coming to.”

Into her hazy view came a person.

Looming over her was a dull-eyed, unsmiling brown face with dark hair.

“In the interest of disclosure: that could have easily killed you.” Agni said.

Madiha burst out laughing, and then stopped immediately to cough.

Her ribs and shoulder protested horribly at this reaction.

She was alive. Badly injured, but alive.

“Who is Fuchs? I could kiss them!” Madiha asked weakly.

“You couldn’t. He’s dead.” Agni said. “I completed the system but–”

“I’ll kiss you!” Madiha said, tears in her eyes.

“Please don’t.” Agni dryly replied.

---

Atop the M4D the cupola hatch swung open.

An incredulous Von Drachen climbed half out of the tank and leaned slothfully against the back of the cupola, resting on the high seat.

His lips spread, first in bewilderment.

They then curled into a smile.

He burst out laughing.

Overhead the plane grew distant, pulling Nakar farther away.

As easily as he found her, she had again slipped from his grasp.

At his side there was a loud and unexpected screech.

From the southern road a vehicle had charged into the park.

“Von Drachen, what in hell is that? What happened?” Mansa shouted, pointing at the plane from the back seat of the arriving liaison car.

He was red in the face, distraught by the carnage around the city no doubt.

Von Drachen smiled gently at him.

“That, good governor, is all our troubles shooting across the sky.”

Aksara Mansa stared at the horizon with a blank gaze.

Once more the prospects forced a laugh out of Von Drachen.

Against all rationality, he wanted more badly than ever to fight her.

He had thought he was the chaos that had arrived to accelerate this stagnant world, but no, it might just be her. She was exceptional.

---

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This scene contains violence, burning and death.

---

City of Rangda, Council and 2nd Block

Portable torch in hand, Madiha hurtled through the alleyways and into a tight concrete path a block up from Council that linked a few small shops and a canteen. She was flanked on all sides by two-story buildings. Cars would have been cramped in the one-lane byway serving as both road and street; most tanks would not fit between the buildings into the alleys.

Madiha soon found herself with a dead end ahead, represented by a tall brick wall and an enormous stack of crates blocking her way. She could have tried to climb, but she had lost her sense of where Ocean Road was in her rush to escape — and she feared snipers. Keeping low was for the best.

She turned around and headed up between a shoe shop and the canteen.

She had expected to see men hot on her heels by now but there were none.

As she ran she raised her head to the rooftops around her, to the windows; she peered into adjacent alleys, through half-open doors. There was not a soul around. Either people did not live in these shops, only manned them during work hours; or everyone had been taken somewhere. She supposed it would have been easy to round people up with the curfew and the police and military presence. They could not have used the air raid alarms — Madiha would have heard those and been alerted to the evacuations.

Hopefully those people were safe and would remain so through what was to come. At least Madiha could rest easy knowing that. But the question then remained: where were the police and soldiers who were chasing her?

She heard her answer in the form of a dire song whistling overhead.

That she heard the shell at all usually meant it had overshot her.

Those destined to die heard nothing. They were simply crushed.

Those in the vicinity would have heard an instant of sharp, eerie rushing noise before the deep rumble of the shellfall. It was the signal of a low-velocity, high-arc weapon like a mortar or howitzer. Ordinarily it was safe.

Madiha’s gaze immediately shot skyward.

Amid the dark clouds she saw the dim trail from the shell.

It would not merely overfly her.

In a split-second it burst into hundreds of trails of falling fire.

She was reminded of the fireworks during the festival.

Except the trails of color were all hurtling earthward.

She dropped her torch.

Madiha ducked under an awning as hundreds of fragments of burning metal struck the rooftops and the ground in the alley. She found herself surrounded by knife-point sharp chunks of steel casing, embedded into the ground at high velocity like throwing daggers hurled by an invisible hand. One of the closest struck just off of her foot, millimeters from her.

At once the dark alley had lit up. Wisps of fire started to spread across the ground, along the brick walls and over the concrete floor. Discarded crates and trash-filled drums caught by the fragments burst into wild flames. It was as if someone had poured gasoline around every fragment of metal.

Madiha felt an instant of sharp pain and raised her boot from the ground.

She found a trail of fire dancing over a drop of gelatinous substance on her boot. It melted the plastic and heated up the steel insert protecting her toes. Immediately she pulled off her shoe and hurled it away. Gritting her teeth, she pulled off her worn-out sock and found a boil had formed on her toe from the heat. Struggling not to weep from the pain, she sidled on one foot along the wall of the alley, trying to escape from the raging fires.

Spreading over the floor in long, golden lines of crawling death was more of the same gelatinous chemical, rolling off the red-hot fragments that bore it to the ground. Thick white smoke trailed from the fires it caused.

An acrid reek accompanied the rising fumes. Madiha started to feel dizzy. Her stomach was turning. She felt bile rise to her throat from the smell.

Her eyes and nose watered. Madiha concentrated on her escape. Should she tumble forward into the fires she would have certainly, horribly died. Even now her boot was still burning on its own just from that drop of jelly.

That substance could not be put out easily — perhaps not at all.

Step by step along the wall she crawled, setting down her foot only on its heel to regain balance. She stood as if on the edge of a precipice, hardly able to open her eyes, her back ramrod straight. Everything inside her hurt and protested. She held in her breath as much as she could.

Step by step; she opened her eyes briefly again. She was close.

Her side stung; her foot throbbed with agony. Her senses swam.

Step by step–

A sudden noise forced her eyes open.

Madiha was almost out of the burning alley when she heard rifles crack.

She saw the bullets impact the opposite wall and the floor around her.

Desperate to escape she set down her injured foot and staggered out of the alley and behind a corner, scarcely avoiding the last thick concentration of burning jelly. She quickly checked her whole body to make sure nothing was burning. Peering back through the smoke and the dancing red light from the incendiaries, she could just make out men on a distant rooftoop.

Behind the corner, she took a knee and quickly bandaged her toe.

Just beside her the rifle bullets continued to fly past and against the wall.

Standing up again, and setting down her foot, she withdrew her machine gun. She had only a pair of 45-round drum pans, top-fed into the Danava.

This fact made her no less conservative about her ammunition.

Peering around the corner and into the smoke, she aimed high and opened up on the rooftops with a long automatic spray from the DNV. Where the bullets went, she did not know; the white smoke had risen high enough to block any possible view of her enemy. Red tracers flew off into a void.

From within the smoke a short series of rifle shots responded.

Louder than the rifles and the crackling fires was the whining of a shell.

Far greater than the whining was the inevitable detonation.

Madiha experienced a flash much closer to the ground than before.

She reflexively turned her back and shielded her face from the source.

Behind her the hot fragments struck the earth and caught fire.

She felt the wind, crawling through the alleys, bringing the heat to her.

There was no new pain; she had avoided the fragments.

When she turned quickly back around she found the alley ahead blocked off by a wall of golden yellow fire. Flames clung to brick, to stucco, even to windows. A massive conflagration raged in the middle of the alley and barred any access past it. Stray boxes in the vicinity seemed to vaporize of their own accord; copper pipes running along the wall glowed white-hot.

Her whole body was soaked in sweat, and the fumes irritated her skin.

Madiha had no time to marvel at the terrifying flames.

She loaded her final canister into her flare gun and shot it just over the alley. Almost instantly, she saw the body of a man swept off the roof fall and smash back-first into a barrel, horribly contorted. His neck broke.

Overhead, she heard shots and growls and the sounds of invisible combat.

Kali was taking care of the men on on the roof. She had to trust her.

Madiha heard footsteps from around the corner, and more gunfire struck the wall past her and the wall at her side. There were men coming at least as close as the fires she had left behind; the rooftop runners were not her only pursuers. More incendiaries were likely on their way as well.

Reaching into her pack, Madiha withdrew two stick grenades.

Quickly she tied them by their handles with a bandage.

She primed both, threw behind her and ran.

There was a detonation but no way to tell its effects.

Avoiding the wall of fire in front of her, Madiha turned toward a back door into a squat building. It was made of some kind of metal; judging from a quick knock from her fist it was thin. There was no padlock she could see, but the door definitely had at least a simple interior lock on its knob.

Thankfully, nobody in Ayvarta focused on defending against break-ins.

One padlock and she would have probably died here.

Backing off a few steps, she stood on her good foot and kicked the door as hard as she could with her injured foot. She aimed near the knob and lock, as she had been taught. Instantly she felt pain shoot through all of the sinews in her foot and her ankle. She felt the knob and lock give. Rearing back, she bit down hard to endure the pain and delivered a second kick.

Under the strain of this second kick the door finally burst open.

Madiha put her injured foot on the ground and felt the pain once more.

Nearly limping, she made her way into the building.

Through the door-frame she could see the fire spreading outside.

She was in a restaurant kitchen. There was an old brick oven, wood-fired, and some more modern conveniences alongside it. She scanned for chemicals she might have used to improvise an explosive. Nothing stuck out to her. She would have to make do with the last of her stolen supplies.

As she struggled out the kitchen door into the dining area, she seized a delicate prize from her ammunition bag. She stowed her last magazines inside her coat and on her belt, before discarding the bag in the trash.

In front of the kitchen door was a small, charming cloth carpet with the words Hujambo! sewn in colorful letters. She left the kitchen door open, lifted the little mat and gingerly slid an anti-personnel mine under it.

Hefting only her machine gun now, she shot the glass front door open and ran outside. She came out into a wider-open one-lane road that could support cars and perhaps even a tank. Directly in front of her there was seemingly no open connection to Ocean Road. To her right there were nondescript buildings. To her left, she saw a small park in the distance.

Moments later she heard a detonation at her back.

Madiha took off running as well as her foot could support.

She had nowhere else to go but that park.

She fixed her eyes on the green that she could see ahead through the distant illumination of street lamps. Her whole body was protesting her every move. She was exhausted; she had been poisoned and drugged and she felt the effects on her brain and in her sinews, a burning, prickling feeling. Her hands were shaking, her knees shaking, her foot was burnt. She felt the fragment dug in her flank. All of her was crying but her eyes.

A dozen meters from the restaurant, there was a sudden new pain.

It was accompanied by the sound of a rifle.

Glancing over her shoulder, barely cognizant that she had been shot right through it, Madiha spotted the men — mountain climbers, Gebirgsjager. They were on the rooftops. They had easily climbed the urban terrain.

Had they gotten Kali? She could not see her anywhere around.

Fearing the worst, Madiha swung around her Danava to retaliate. She flinched violently. When the butt-stock hit her shoulder, blood spurted out. Her whole body was shaking from the pain. She could not aim.

She heard a cartridge discard, and a bolt pull from the rooftop.

Then she heard the singing of an artillery shell.

There was no other choice.

Madiha dropped her machine gun and raised her good hand.

Spotting the shell in the sky she pushed on the detonation.

Instead of tumbling toward her the shell detonated backwards from the tip of its nose and spewed all of its fragments and flaming jelly over the Gebirgsjagers on the rooftop. Soaked in the incendiary chemicals, the men screamed with a haunting agony that shook Madiha to her core.

She stood and watched, dumbstruck.

Doused in liquid flames the men rolled off the rooftop and onto the street, still burning. They ripped at their clothes, stamped, scratched, and could not stop burning. Their uniforms melted; the incendiary coated their skin.

Those men still trapped on the roof in the middle of the dire gold flames seemed to disappear into white smoke themselves, vaporized slowly.

Madiha ripped herself away from the sight and shambled toward the park.

That was a malevolent power her own flames could not match. No matter what magic did, the ingenuity of men and technology was always worse.

She clutched at her gunshot wound and focused on breathing and walking.

There was no singular experience of “being shot.” Every gunshot was unique. Madiha had been stricken by bullets both stray and malicious. She had been grazed in the side in a training accident; she had been shot in the hip by a fleeing spy. As a child she had been shot in the chest and almost killed. Sometimes the bullet felt like a fist blow followed by burning and cutting sensation in the wound. Sometimes it seemed like the metal melted in the flesh and slashed its way through every strand of sinew.

Madiha felt almost nothing of this bullet now. When struck she had felt a shallow stab. Her body was shaking, and she was bleeding. She could not move her arm, partially out of unconscious fear, partially due to injury. There was a slight stinging. But she was not wracked with agony. It was as if the experience of the gunshot had stabilized the rest of her pains.

Any agony she felt now was purely in her own mind, she thought.

All of the images that wracked her as she escaped.

For all the horrors she had seen tonight, those burning men left a scar.

Much like the transformed man in the Council Building; too cruel a fate.

Those were powers stronger and more terrible than any of her own.

She had to live; she had to see Parinita again. She had to return to her soldiers. They could not face that kind of fate. She would not allow it.

Trying to keep a clear head, she staggered slowly away. Step by step.

Stepping to live, stepping to breathe, stepping to step.

---

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