This scene contains violence.

48th of the Lilac’s Bloom, 2031 D.C.E

Ayvarta, Solstice — East Wall Defensive Line

“All guns, site the enemy tank and open fire on approach!”

Ferried across the desert by four tank transporters, the massive steel crate dropped its front door open like a ramp onto the sand, and from the aperture escaped an enormous tank, easily larger than any tank Madiha Nakar had ever seen. It was wider and thicker than an Ogre or a Giant, with a track that must’ve reached twelve wheels in length.

Its front surface was sloped and seemed thick, and it carried an additional steel plate of bulldozer blades. in the middle of the glacis, a thick round mount surrounded a short-barreled howitzer or mortar that must have been at least 150mm bore. There were several structures on its flat, long upper surface that seemed like cupola, but only one was centralized and likely to be used for command. All of the others were located on the corners and it was possible to make out tiny barrels sticking out of them: machine guns.

Painted black all over, its designation was emblazoned on its side: the “Vishap.”

Cutting in between the hilly dunes that had kept it out of sight of the wall, the beast revealed itself in full to the defenders, and made clear its intentions. At the highest speed the gargantuan tank could muster with its weight on the treacherous sand, it was making  ponderously for the Conqueror’s Way. Men in Cissean and Nochtish uniforms charged alongside it, rifles in hand, barely keeping pace with the grinding march of the machine.

Atop the walls, the rampart gunners hurried back to their posts, and found the Vishap on their direct-fire optics. Madiha Nakar and Parinita Maharani surveyed the proceedings as the crews began turning wheels and pulling levers to get the guns moved. By adjusting the height of the gun mounting itself, they could make up for the lack of negative elevation on the 76mm all-purpose gun, and fire over the wall at targets far below.

At the General’s order, a dozen 76mm guns on the ramparts opened fire on the Vishap. Each impact was near invisibly distant and sounded dull and almost unreal, as if the artillery of a battle a world away. Smoke obscured the machine after the first red-hot tracer impacted the hull and exploded. Shells fell around it a dozen every few seconds, throwing sand into the air, billowing dust and fire; it was impossible to confirm any hits.

However, in the light of the rising afternoon sun it was possible to see the shadow, continuing to lumber, and once the last shell had exploded, the sound of the roaring, grinding engine was still perfectly audible. From the cloud of dust and sand, the Vishap crawled out, undaunted. Its front surface was pitted and pockmarked and in places cracked, and one of the bulldozer blades had been blasted off. Some of the front track guard and the armored skirt covering its wheels had been damaged, but not too badly.

“Madiha, take a closer a look at it, I think there’s something odd about its armor.”

Parinita handed Madiha the binoculars, and set down a radio unit, hidden behind the rampart stones. She took up a radio headset and began to make calls to Solstice for support, while the General honed in on the Vishap’s front and surveyed the damage.

Over, around and between the bulldozer blades, the armor plate was the thickest, and insignificant damage seemed to have been dealt to it. However, the form that damaged took was confounding. There were deep, uneven cracks, and dusty bruises, and no deformation from the heat whatsoever. Armor this dense could crack, but not in the way this material was cracking. It looked like a brick wall that had been suddenly hit with a sledgehammer, not a sheet of metal that had deformed under intense, prolonged heat.

“It’s concrete. It’s got to be. They put a layer of concrete armor over the tank.”

Madiha was perplexed, but it made sense. Anti-tank shells were designed specifically to defeat metal armor that would resist the pointed nose of the shell, and deform around the packed-in explosive charge, in very specific ways. It was meant to go through 50 to 70 millimeters of metal armor, not through a centimeter or more of concrete cement.

“Do we have anti-bunker or anti-concrete available for the 76mm?” Madiha asked.

Parinita shook her head despondently, waving to the city behind them.

“No, we’re not stocked with those. Those are special-assignment for assault troops.”

Madiha looked over her shoulder. She was so focused on the battle ahead, that she hardly had taken any time to look at what she was protecting. Always, behind her every shout, her every shot, Solstice waited at her back. It was a vast city, its few tall buildings visible in the distance, but mostly composed of small, flat-roofed brown buildings, either made of clay or textured to look like it. All kinds of colorful awnings hung over porches and balconies to help the inhabitants get some air while beating the oppressive heat. Winding roads and numerous labyrinthine alleyways characterized a city that grew, organically and haphazardly, for thousands of years. It was beautiful; and most of her troops were there. They awaited orders to counterattack a sizable divisional force.

“Focus artillery fire on the supporting infantry!” Madiha turned back around and shouted at her rampart gunners, and they began to coordinate among themselves and to lob shells at the encroaching enemy battalion. She then turned back to Parinita, and to the desert ahead. “Let the Vishap come. How’s our air support? That flat roof is the weakest part of the whole thing, it has to be. We can order a strike from Vulture.”

Parinita shook her head, pulling off her headset and hitting a switch on the radio. “That’s what I thought so too, but I just got off the airwaves with Air Command. Vulture and the other air units are split between supporting the western defenses, interdicting incoming raids on Solstice, and launching their own long-range air attacks. It’s mostly Elves who are trying to come after us at this point, with token Nochtish support, but if we can break through these attacks, we may be able to inflict some damage on the Elven navy.”

“So the air force gets to launch a counteroffensive, but the Army has to sit and wait.”

Madiha grumbled. Parinita shrugged and rationally replied, “There’s no Lines in the sky.”

“We’ll have to make do then. Release the vanguard rifle battalion onto the bridge to fight. I’ll come up with a battle plan as we go.” Madiha said. “Get the drawbridge gate open.”

“Roger. Contacting the drawbridge engineers and the 7th Battalion now.” Parinita said.

Minutes later, the Eastern gate of Solstice began to drop, accompanied by the chunky sound of a motor. It was a drawbridge door that no longer presided over a gap in the bridge, perhaps thirty meters tall and a little less wide, now powered by diesel motors and held by heavy anchor chains and gears. Behind the door waited nearly a thousand ready soldiers of the 7th Battalion, who had deployed all along the road inside the city as a rapid response force. Slowly the door began to angle, and a crack developed at the top where the light of the desert peered into the structure of the Solstice gate threshold.

There was an abrupt crash, and the slackening chains went rigid and tense.

Smoke began to spread from the gatehouse out into the threshold tunnel.

Between the booming of the rampart guns, Madiha heard the gears grind down below.

She peered carefully over the rampart and found the gate at a steep angle.

“Parinita, what is happening?” Madiha asked.

Parinita turned from the radio box and faced Madiha, alarmed.

“Something’s happened to the gate mechanism. It’s stuck part of the way.” She said.

Madiha blinked hard and covered her face with her hands.

It was always something!

“Sergeant Agni is asking permission to blow off the chains and–”

“Absolutely not.” Madiha said. “Should that gate fall Nocht will not give us a respite to properly repair it. We can’t afford for any of the gates to stay open unnecessarily.”

“Then what do we do?” Parinita asked, pulling off the radio headset.

Madiha looked down over the ramparts as the Vishap’s tracks hit stone for the first time.

“I’m calling the bridge by field telephone. Tell Agni to get the engineers and some of the Svecthans with Mountain training ready to go over the wall. As soon as possible!”

Parinita nodded her head and returned to the radio box.

Meanwhile, the General produced the field telephone from behind one of the ramparts. Cable had been laid down to the bridge long ago, and much of it had survived the bombings. She picked up the handset, hit a switch, and immediately called down.

“Sergeant Kajari, listen closely to me.”

Ayvarta, Solstice Desert — Conqueror’s Way Approach

Brigadier General Gaul Von Drachen watched the Vishap go with a sense of minor, quiet amusement. After the machine trundled out of its carriage, he ordered a company of his lead men to chase after it. Rifles in hand, sweating profusely, the riflemen followed his orders and charged after the machine. They had been following it for what seemed like weeks, out in the brutal heat of the Solstice desert, and now they trampled over the sand and made to move ahead of it. There were no words of protest or complaint from them.

“You don’t want to hear it, but I’m taking full credit for this delivery.” Von Drachen said.

At his side, Major General Rodrick Von Fennec scoffed and stamped past him. He was a square-shaped man, with a brick of a head, beefy limbs, but an older, stiffer, and bowing stature than that of the younger, more limber Von Drachen. His remaining eye glanced at Von Drachen with disdain; the other was patched up but likely sported similar scorn. Somewhere under his thick white beard, Fennec’s lips were probably turned up as well. For a louplander, his tail was very stubby and short, and it barely wagged; his ears, poking out from under his desert helmet, were also blunt, and just barely fuzzy.

Von Drachen thought they could commiserate over using fake names, but Von Fennec was instantly hostile to him, even though he went along with Von Drachen’s genius plan.

“Yes, yes, to be frank, only you could have been crazy enough to suggest such a course of action. I will give you full credit for the penetration of the enemy line through the unguarded desert sector; also responsibility for the 100 men who died along the way.”

Von Fennec snorted and put on a confident grin as though he had crushed Von Drachen.

Von Drachen, in turn, shrugged his shoulders. “They knew what they signed up for. I care about the living and I will achieve victory for the dead. All of my men know about this.”

At this callousness, or perhaps more at Von Drachen’s lack of reaction to what should have been a harsh indictment, Von Fennec turned his cheek and grumbled inaudibly.

As the Generals amicably conversed, all of the unit’s strength rallied around the Vishap. All that could be taken along the Vishap on the desert trek, was a light rifle battalion and some stray elements of tank and motor units. Behind Von Drachen, the camouflaged tank transporters, unburdened of the tank’s weight, retreated back behind the dunes, tugging behind them the massive crate-like object that once housed the Vishap inside it.

A few token escort tanks, “Rick Hunter” pattern with 76mm guns, drove past, crawling their way out of the hilly dunes separating them from the battlespace, using the last of their fuel and the last endurance of their tracks and suspensions to make it within visual range of the wall and bridge. Divided into platoons of 50 men, the Vishap’s infantry escort formed an arrowhead with the machine and a few men at the head of the pack.

“So Von Fennec, what’s preventing this operation from being bombed to pieces?”

Von Drachen glanced at Von Fennec from the corner of his eyes.

Von Fennec snorted and laughed.

“Take a gander at that sand dune over there, and feast your eyes.”

Von Drachen looked over his shoulder, half-interested. Atop a nearby boulder, to which the sand dunes formed a neat little ramp, a trio of tanks with extensive modications raised twin anti-aircraft guns into the air from open-top turrets. All of them were likely based on the new Rick Hunter light tank types, which were just barely nudging the “medium” category in armor and weight, but had great speed. Open-top turrets allowed the the new M3A3s to mount much larger weapons than the old M3s and M5s, and despite lessened survivability they grew to replace the little sluggers in large numbers.

“We call it the M8 R-K Peacekeeper. Any Ayvartan ground attack craft that closes in to the Vishap will be shredded by 18 rounds a second of high-explosive anti-aircraft fire.”

“I see.” Von Drachen said. “So what prevents those things from being bombed?”

“Shut up, Von Drachen. Do something with yourself. Go talk to Aatto or something.”

“Oh, I plan to. Not talk to Aatto; she’s nice, but I have business with a lady at the front.”

“Excuse me?”

At this point, as if on cue, a utility car pulled up behind them. It was driven by the old Cissean colonel, Gutierrez, who looked exhausted behind the wheel, and on its bed, was carrying air tanks and flexible suits, rope and hooks, and other seemingly random pieces of equipment for some nondescript purpose. A squadron of fifteen men sat around on the back of the truck, squeezed between the equipment and looking most unhappy.

“You’re about to fall for Nakar’s trap and I’m about to get you out of it.” Von Drachen said.

Von Fennec looked livid. “What do you mean? There is nothing Madiha Nakar can do now! Our only difficulty was getting the Vishap here. It is going to walk right through the Conqueror’s Way, and cut a path for us! Reinforcements can follow the desert behind us; once the gate is breached, the battle in the northeast can be ignored for this purpose.”

Von Drachen shook his head. He could see where all this was going. He had been there before. “Here is what will happen. Madiha Nakar will put up a stiff resistance that will endanger the Vishap and cause you to commit more forces to push the Vishap forward. This will force you to consolidate your troops into a large, dense formation. She will retreat, and you will think you’ve won, and you’ll charge your big, dense attack group deeper into the bridge. Then, she will surround it and find some way to destroy it, inflicting disproportionate casualties on you because of the density of your unit.”

“Absolutely not! There’s no way to surround anything on that bridge!” Von Fennec said. His face was red and his tail was standing on end. His nose was starting to wet with anger. “It’s a completely narrow path with nowhere to hide except behind rubble. The Vishap will clear all the rubble, mortar through every fallen gate, and mortar the main gate. You think you know better than me, child? I’m a veteran of countless battles! That is why I was entrusted with a superweapon, and you’re just relegated to recon! Shut up!”

Von Drachen shrugged. “I’m going to the front where it’s friendlier. We’ll meet there.”

Nonchalantly, he began to walk away, knowing full well that Von Fennec was not going anywhere near the front. Von Fennec, meanwhile, stood dumbfounded, his old cavalry brain grinding to a halt at the bizarre idea that a General would go join his men to fight.

“How the hell you intend to get there anyway? You’re gonna walk?” Von Fennec shouted.

Still walking away from the Major General, Von Drachen stretched out his arms in glory.

“I’ve evolved since last me and Nakar fought. I’ve finally overcome my one weakness on the battlefield, Von Fennec!” He sounded triumphant. “I have emerged, like a beautiful butterfly from my cocoon! Molted into a force of nature! I have learned how to swim!”

He continued to laugh as he followed the utility truck out into the open desert.

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