Tag: lgbtq

The Battle of Conqueror’s Way (70.2)

This scene contains violence and death.

Ayvarta, Solstice — East Wall Defensive Line

Gulab scarcely had time to guide her shaken troops back into the shadow of the Vishap before the trails of fire appeared far overhead and arced violently down to the bridge.

“Get down!” She shouted, physically shielding those close.

She pulled down Loubna and Aditha in time for the first warheads to come crashing down like meteors. Waves of heat washed over the squadron as flames engulfed the bridge, barely contained by the concrete barriers along the edge of the bridge. Ravenous tongues of fire lashed out over the bridge, shrapnel bounced off the top of the barriers and cascaded into the river. They saw enemy infantry, on fire or badly maimed or both, climbing and tumbling and thrown bodily over the barriers and falling to their deaths in the river below, swept up by the current under the stone and out of their sight.

Though the rookies gaped and gasped at the ruined men, Gulab had long since learned to tune out the immediate casualties of the enemy. She kept everyone in line and urged them to stay down until her signal. This was a god-sent opportunity for them right now.

From behind the wall, the rockets came relentlessly for what seemed like a solid minute or more of non-stop bursting and blasting, running down like a series of stomping steps all over the bridge from the back of the Vishap and stretching almost to the desert itself. When the pounding of the rockets eased up for long enough, Gulab dared to peek over the wall briefly. Smoke billowed from the scattered fires left in the rocket’s wake, and the bridge was pitted and cracked all over from the explosions. There were corpses, charred and charring, and she felt the residual heat from the explosions. It was different from the dry, windy heat of the desert. It was chemical, noxious, it reeked like a coal mine.

And slowly creating distance was the Vishap, almost to the rubble of the second gate.

Gulab shook her head and crawled back down to her squadron, who looked at her with their eyes wide open, their hands shaking, their weapons dropped on the bridge-side.

Seer, in particular, was so despondent and shaken that Gulab knew she was done now.

“We’ve only got one more shot at this while the bridge is clear.” She said. She couldn’t spare time for comfort right now. She was an officer, and she had a mission. It was just like the General, like Madiha Nakar, everything was like she had told her. Everything had to be for the mission. Steeling herself, though she felt uncomfortable with the hardness of her own tone, Gulab continued quickly. “Loubna, Jaffar, you’re going to throw fragmentation grenades at the machine guns on top of the Vishap. You’ll shut down the guns and I’ll run in and jam an anti-tank grenade into the track and stop it. Okay?”

“Sergeant, you’ll die!” Aditha shouted. “You’ll absolutely die if you go out there like–”

Gulab puffed out her chest and stuck her hands to her hips, grinning at Aditha.

“Hah! You think this hunk of metal scares me? I’ll have you know I hunted rock bears in the inner mountains for years. And those could turn on a dime in less than a second!”

She shook her finger right in Aditha’s face, who stared on in speechless confusion.

“Act your rank, rookie! Rookies don’t worry about their officers! It’s the other way around! Loubna, Jaffar, you have your orders. Aditha, lead Seer up to the C.P.! Now!”

Aditha looked at Seer, who in turn was staring at the ground despondently.

She took her hand by the hand and reluctantly led her away, following the river and keeping their heads low below the wall. Gulab barely watched them go; she had precious little time. Already the bridge was starting to shake, and rock started to fly as the Vishap crunched into the rubble of the second gate, its bulldozer blades and gun blasting into it.

“Come on!”

Loubna and Jaffar swallowed hard and followed Gulab as she crouched and ran beneath the bridge barrier and followed close to the Vishap’s position. Beneath her she could feel the ground shake from the machine’s struggle. She heard its infernal engine pounding so hard that the vibration seemed to overwhelm that of her own heart. She grit her teeth.

Everyone got into position in the shadow of the Vishap, grenades in hand.

“Throw now!” Gulab called out.

Loubna and Jaffar pulled the grenade pins, stood, and each quickly made their throws.

Before them the Vishap was gargantuan. It was like a mountain enduring falling stones.

Two explosions consumed the roof of the Vishap in smoke for an instant.

Gulab had little time to check whether it had worked as she intended. At least for a moment, the Vishap was blinded, and she had her chance. Taking in a deep breath, she jumped, climbed the barricade, and landed on the other side in a run. She threw her anti-tank grenade by its handle as straight as she could, and ran around the back of the Vishap. She heard an explosion and saw sparks flying from under the machine.

She was on the bridge, running past the corpses of the men caught in the rocket attack.

It was hot. It was hellish. She peered over her shoulder at the nearby Vishap.

On the floor, the Vishap’s track flew out the back of its churned-up track guard in pieces.

Gulab nearly caught one of the chunks.

She stopped dead in her tracks, catching her breath, staring.

She wanted to laugh. They had done it! They had crippled the machine!

Then in front of the Vishap, there was a terrible flash.

Gulab nearly tumbled from the shock of the explosive blast from the Vishap’s main gun.

In moments, the rubble of the second gate vanished, like a door opening before them.

There was screeching. Sparks went out from the Vishap’s side, where metal met rock.

Beneath the machine, something struggled, metal on metal, something ground.

Something twisted, something labored, more than it possibly could have.

Gulab felt the vibration in her stomach, in her throat, punching her adam’s apple.

She felt her heart sink as the Vishap’s road wheels began to turn on its injured side.

It once more started to move.

Stunned to silence, Gulab’s eyes helplessly tracked the machine as it began to inch away, and then they darted to the top, where the smoke had cleared and the two rear machine guns were slowly turning around to meet her. She could almost see the flash of the guns and the flash of the eyes behind the guns, and what she did then was turn, and run.

At her back twin glowing trails of tracer rounds slashed the air with a ravenous fury.

Gulab threw herself forward moments into her dash, hitting the dirt in a shell crater.

She fell in with a corpse and quickly pushed herself under it.

She covered her head with her hands as the trail of bullets caught up to her.

Nothing but the sounds of a thousand hornets buzzing–

Chunks of stone and spent casings and dust and something fluid trickling, trickling–

Gulab felt a series of impacts along her back and cried out.

It was like a hammer pounding away at the body on top of her.

Blood started to pool at the bottom of the crater and she felt cold and numb and limp.

Her hands shaking, her strength wavering, she pulled the hand radio in her bag to her mouth. Gritting her teeth, shutting her eyes, she drew in a long, labored breath.

“I’m pinned down behind the Vishap! I need help!” she shouted desperately.

Briefly she heard Charvi’s voice answering back, inter-cut with a sound like gunfire.

“Gulab, stay down, we can’t–!”

More noise; the radio signal cut out abruptly.

Charvi was in danger too! But how–

There was no time to think about it. Gulab had to escape and stop the Vishap.

All of the blood wasn’t hers. It came from the corpse. Nothing had impacted her body.

She raised herself slowly, and in turn raised the body above the cover of the shell crater.

She felt the bullets striking around the shell crater, and an impact on the corpse.

Gritting her teeth, Gulab once more lowered herself into the crater.

Her eyes filled with tears. She felt helpless to do anything.

She pulled the radio back up to her face and started turning the frequency dial.

“I can’t wait longer! I’m attacking the Vishap! I’m sorry Charvi! This is my only chance!”

Even if she was hit by the guns, even if she was killed, she could at least take out the tracks! She was not her father at all. His hard words weren’t backed up by anything! Gulab Kajari was a woman who would sacrifice her own life to defend her charges!

Feeling anxious and overwhelmed and not thinking straight, Gulab thrust herself up.

At her back, the advancing Vishap adjusted its machine guns. It was not shooting.

Reloading?

Gulab quickly reached into the pouch of the dead man and took his anti-tank grenade.

She glanced it. Her heart nearly stopped when she noticed the expandable fins on it.

It was a panzerwurfmine! Those things were impossible to use!

She dropped it back into the crater and grabbed the corpse’s pouch.

Inside she quickly found what looked like blocks of clay.

“A satchel!”

Feeling a ray of desperate hope, she stood up off the shell crater and charged.

Her bomb in one hand, and the radio in the other, committing the last of her strength to either radio in her own death or the crippling of the Vishap. She girded herself for it.

There was no more time. She closed in as fast as she could.

There were flashes from machine gun mounts atop the Vishap.

Twin bursts of gunfire sailed past the dashing Gulab.

She felt something graze her skin, releasing a sharp, short spurt of blood.

Gulab’s feet went unsteady, and she nearly fell.

For an instant she felt suspended in water, struggling to gain any ground.

She thought she could see each individual bullet flying her way, closing in.

Her cheek was cut; a pouch fell off her side; her hip was clipped, the closest shot yet.

She was struck then, she knew it, and the force was almost enough to throw her down.

She hit the button on the radio.

What would she say?

“I’m sorry I gave you false hope, Charvi, but you love an utter fraud–”

But before she could even transmit, someone preempted her and called first.

“Gulachka, don’t worry. ‘Mommy’s’ got you.”

In the next instant, she saw flashes inside both of the machine gun cupolas in quick succession. There were sparks and a brief flame like an incendiary round going off.

Both machine guns moved to stare in different, haphazard directions.

There was a shred of light inside each cupola where someone had penetrated.

Gulab briefly glanced at the wall, where she knew she could see the flash of a gun.

And she recognized the voice. It was the little blue haired sniper: Captain Illynichna!

She had saved her! She saved her from the guns–

Gulab’s face went red and she slammed the button on her hand radio.

“Change your callsign, right now Illynicha!” She shouted.

“Chto?” went the voice again, clearly Illynichna’s. “Gulachka?”

“I refuse to call you ‘Mommy’! Have you no shame?”

“What are you talking about? I chose this sign because of my deep respect for mothers–”

“Change it now!”

Atop the Vishap one of the Cupola swung open.

A man thrust from atop the tank, his face ruined with scars, blood and burns.

His shaking hand wielded a pistol at Gulab.

Before he could shoot, however, he was pierced from the side by a friendly red tracer.

Gulab took off running after the Vishap, and with her came Loubna and Jaffar.

“I’m sorry Sergeant!” Loubna cried, a rifle in her hand, “My throw didn’t do anything!”

Jaffar cast eyes down at the floor, perhaps ashamed of his own ineffective attack.

All of three of them were mere meters from the Vishap, and the Vishap itself was beginning to cross the second gate, and would in moments be within shooting distance of the gate into Solstice itself. It would be able to shoot the first artillery to ever hit the city interior in decades, and the first to ever threaten the Socialist community inside.

No matter what, Gulab had to prevent this disaster.

And she had to get through that hunk of metal to assist Charvi as well!

Her own insecurities, and everyone else’s, could be dealt with later.

“I’m just glad to see you safe!” Gulab said. “I’m going to need your help.”

She raised the hand radio to her lips once more. “Illynichna, what’s wrong at the C.P.?”

Presumably from atop the wall, the Svecthan captain replied. “Frogmen, Gulachka! A sizeable amount of infantry came out from the river and onto the bridge to assist the Vishap. We don’t know how they managed it: they must be world class swimmers.”

“Without the Vishap they’ll have to retreat.” Gulab said. “Illynichna, is Charvi okay?”

There was an instant between her question and the reply that nearly lanced her heart.

“Yes, she is alive.” Illynicha said.

“Assist her then! I’ll take out the Vishap!” Gulab said.

“You will what?”

“Just do it!”

Gulab pocketed the hand radio, and turned to Loubna and Jaffar.

All of them were practically in the shadow of the Vishap.

And they seemed just as helpless against it as before, even if they couldn’t be shot by it.

It took being within meters of the beast, staring it dead-on, to realize how solid every part of it was. How thick the metal seemed, how armored, how invincible. Even the individual rivets seemed unassailable. Substantial battle damage had been inflicted on it, and yet every scar seemed inconsequential while the machine continued to lumber on.

“Tanks rears are supposed to be the least armored part, but, this is a lot still.”

Gulab found herself able to run right behind the Vishap at its pace.

“We’ve only got one bomb.” Gulab lifted the satchel to show Loubna and Jaffar.

“Ma’am, I have an idea.” Loubna said.

She pointed at the top of the Vishap. “If the engine is at the back of the tank, then, there must not be a lot separating those machine gun points from the engine block.”

Gulab blinked. She smiled and grinned wildly. “You’re a genius!”

She speed up the pace and took a leap.

Her feet hit the track guard of the Vishap, and she climbed up.

In front of her, two remaining machine guns were busy firing forward.

Gulab could see the final gate ahead, and the C.P. just off the main bridge thoroughfare.

There were tracers flying everywhere there.

Her whole body was screaming with pain and exhaustion. She felt the heat like the cruel beam of light from a magnifying glass, burning the ants below. The Vishap itself was like a frying pan, its armor unbearably hot to touch, gleaming in the sun despite the hundreds, maybe thousands of pockmarks upon its surface. Gulab’s head was pounding with bad thoughts and with grave fears and anxieties. It took so much from her to climb onto that machine, and to drop herself inside the ripped-up machine gun mount.

There was a little drum-shaped space there, sealed off. There was a corpse, and a ruined Norgler with ammunition still laying, protected in a case on the wall.

Gulab faced the front of the Vishap from inside and set the charge.

She had maybe ten seconds to spare, so she scrambled back atop the Vishap.

There was no time to climb down, and Gulab’s strength, sapped by the heat and the stress, would not suffice for it. She threw herself off the machine and onto the floor.

Below, Loubna and Jaffar rushed to catch her.

All of them hit the ground together and fell back into a shallow crater.

And ahead of them, the explosive went off with a greater fury than Gulab imagined.

She felt a wave of heat and power coming from the blast that knocked them all back.

Consumed in a beautiful and terrifying flash of light, the rear of the Vishap exploded like a tin can under pressure, ejecting its wheels and parts of its complicated suspension system into the air. Bits and pieces of the monster went flying everywhere like a cloud of shrapnel. Gulab raised her head and immediately lowered it and forced Loubna and Jaffar down; over their heads went a sheet of armor spinning like a thrown chakram.

The Vishap was propelled forward by the blast, and it slid on the smooth stone of the inner thoroughfare, the jagged metal of its underside and remaining wheels casting sparks as the machine flew out of the second gate, skidded around the bridge and smashed into one of the side barriers, stuck partially off the bridge with its cannon facing away from the innermost gate. Flames played about the massive rupture on the rear of the machine, and its remaining track and wheels spun haphazardly in a futile show of its remaining life. Fluid trickled out of it and spread into a puddle, like blood.

Gulab managed to force herself straight, sitting knees-down. At her side, Loubna and Jaffar were thoroughly exhausted, and laid on their backs, panting and panicking.

“We nearly died! We nearly died!” Loubna screamed, checking her body for wounds.

Her head was cloudy, but in that instant, Gulab felt an incredible sense of triumph.

She raised the hand radio to her lips. “Sergeant Kajari, reporting one tank down!”

Almost in the instant she transmitted, an ear-splitting boom sounded ahead.

The Vishap’s gun fired a round and struck the right-hand wall next to the gate.

Ancient rock chipped off the wall and into the water; there was a sizeable dent.

Gulab dropped the radio, and felt all of her remaining strength leaving her.

Had she failed?

Read The Previous Part || Read The Next Part

The 3rd Superweapon (69.3)

This scene contains violence and death, and an experience of dysphoria.

Loose stones began to shake and rattle atop the ruin, trembling with the ground.

“Gulab, the Vishap is approaching. Good luck. I love you.”

She almost muttered the last sentence.

“No luck, just skill! I love you too, Charvi!”

Gulab was loud about it as usual.

She switched the radio frequency on the portable talkie and put it in her pouch.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to steel herself for what was to come.

It was just like hunting the rock bears, she told herself.

But even that gone poorly for her in the past.

Atop the mound of rubble that was once the first gate of the Conqueror’s Way, the approaching Vishap was like a boulder rolling down from the mountains, like an avalanche of metal. Sergeant Gulab Kajari tried to find more homely metaphors to describe what she was seeing, but without embellishment, it was a gigantic tank with a big gun pointed directly at them. Its dauntless trundling kicked up clouds of sand, and the infantry at its sides looked minuscule in comparison. It was easy to forget them.

She was surrounded by people who could not afford for her to overlook anything.

She sighed internally, smiled outwardly, and pointed at the incoming Vishap.

“Troops, I’ve got nothing here to say but: we gotta kill that thing.” Gulab said.

Loubna and Aditha and the rest of the rookies in the squadron cast eyes at the floor. They were huddled atop the mound, half their bodies on the steep end away from the approaching Vishap, looking over the makeshift hill. They were hidden from the enemy, hoping to ambush them as they neared. In their hands they had submachine guns and rifles, useless against armor, and one their belts they had anti-tank grenades. Though small, these could at least fare better than a rifle round against the heavy tank.

There was more to it than that, but Gulab didn’t have the time to catch everybody up on everything the General hurriedly told her over the field telephone. Even Gulab herself thought she had not caught all of it. But she had to somehow make all of it work out.

“Trust me, I’ve hunted bigger!” Gulab said. “We just have to know when to run away.”

She pounded her fist against her chest and put on a proud expression.

Morale did not improve upon hearing such a thing with the Vishap in the background.

“Why isn’t it shooting?” Loubna asked. Everyone was watching the machine breathlessly.

Gulab cast her eyes at the approaching tank. She remembered some of the things she had learned from Adesh Gurunath about cannons, in the various times they had cooperated during the war. Longer cannons could shoot farther, and their shots flew faster; the larger the hole of the cannon, from which it ejected shells, the stronger and larger the ammunition was. The Vishap’s cannon was very short and stubby, though the bore was wider than most of the guns Gulab had seen on tanks. It was mounted on the front face of the tank and seemed unable to swivel or turn, since it had no turret to move with.

“I don’t think it can shoot this high, and I don’t think it’s in range yet.” Gulab said.

There were a few sighs of relief among the assembled soldiers, but the trundling of the machine nearing them seemed to put into doubt whether it had any weakness at all.

As the Vishap approached the bridge, the machine noise that accompanied it grew louder, but it strangely enough began to slow down a tick, as it neared closer to 1000 meters from the Conqueror’s Way. Then from around the Vishap’s flanks rushed enemy riflemen, charging across the open desert. Gulab raised her hand at the sight and silently ordered her squadron to huddle closer to the ground and to hide themselves.

Within minutes the enemy riflemen were jumping over the rubble and onto the bridge itself ahead of the machine. A squadron of foot Cissean soldiers was in the lead, and several more followed them. They were armed with rifles and bayonets and quickly left the cover of the rocks. Boldly, they started across the open space to the first gate ruin.

This was good fortune for Gulab’s team; they had to pose a credible threat to the enemy.

And while Gulab doubted she could even dent the Vishap, she knew she could kill men.

“Fire on mark; Loubna, sweep the left flank, everyone else aim at the right.” Gulab said.

“Are these guys related to the men before? Don’t they know we’re here?” Aditha asked.

“I don’t think so. I think they’ve been lost in the desert for longer.” Gulab replied.

“So it’s an ambush?”

“That’s the plan.”

In truth, it was General Nakar who thought that, but Gulab nonetheless took the credit.

It was important for the kids to look up to her!

Aditha did not seem impressed, but she did focus back on the enemy with steeled eyes.

Loubna prepared her partially concealed light machine gun, facing the approach she was to cover; Gulab checked her Rasha submachine gun for one final time before cocking it and setting it on a stone for stability. Squadron members with basic Bundu rifles set them on the rocks, partially hidden, taking impromptu sniping positions across the ruin.

Gulab drew in a breath and aimed for the men running toward the mound.

“Mark!”

Gulab briefly raised her fist, and then laid it down, finger on the trigger, and fired.

Her squadron quickly followed suit.

Tracer fire sailed from atop the rubble of the first gate and showered the advancing enemy infantry. It was almost a moment of deja vu as Gulab watched the men struck down mid-run as if they weren’t expecting to be shot, and their compatriots clinging to the nearest piece of rubble for cover, or running back to the Vishap. Automatic fire from the submachine guns and Loubna’s Danava viciously covered the approach, and a dozen men were killed almost simultaneously before the rest took the hint and scattered.

As the waves of enemy infantry grew timid they began to concentrate around the Vishap.

There was only one way Gulab could account for this behavior among enemy soldiers.

They had caught them by surprise! It was just as General Nakar had predicted; they had not been in contact with the Republic of Ayvarta troops that had attacked this position previously. These new arrivals with the Vishap group likely expected an ambush but could not have known its ferocity or character, because they were acting independently of the main body of RoA troops deployed to take the Conqueror’s Way. As such, like the RoA troops defeated before them, these Cisseans and Nochtish were taken by surprise.

“Hah! Trekking through the desert melted their brains! Pick them off!” Gulab shouted.

Loubna reloaded, and she began to fire on the enemy’s cover selectively. Gulab praised her discipline and began to fire upon a sited spot herself. A few men tried to contort themselves with their rifles around the chunks of rock and from out the pits and trenches that scarred the Conqueror’s Way, but to no avail. Every time a rifle came out, a stream of bullets from atop the remains of the first gate silenced it. More and more of the enemy appeared and consolidated in thick formations behind cover, but without any cover down the middle Way they could not approach the mound. They were pinned.

For a moment, it seemed almost like they had turned back the tide. The enemy had advanced, lost men, retreated a step, and become bogged down in relentless gunfire.

This was all part of the General’s plan! It was all working as she had said.

In any other situation such a stalemate could be exploited. Gulab had seen it before.

However, there was nothing the bullets could do to stop the Vishap, ever closing-in.

It was this detail that made this battle different, and rendered this triumph so null.

Soon as its tracks hit the stone of the Conqueror’s Way, the Vishap changed the tide of the battle. It ground rocks beneath its bulk, and shoved rubble away with the bulldozer on its face, and its own men leaped out of its way as it charged forward. But once it moved past their positions, the Cisseans took up its back and began to advance again. Though the mound continued to brutalize the Conqueror’s Way with submachine gun, rifle and machine gun fire, there was nothing they could do. All manner and caliber of small arms fire was bouncing harmlessly off the Vishap’s blades and its wounded front plate armor.

“It’s not doing anything!” Aditha shouted, rapping the trigger of her rifle uselessly.

“Keep shooting! Wait for my signal before doing anything more!” Gulab shouted back.

Trundling to within a stark 500 meters of the first gate, the Vishap’s cannon glowed.

Smoke and fire belched from the aperture, and with a terrifying growl the Vishap loosed a heavy shell that flew in a belabored, shallow arc into the bottom of the mound. There was a monumental flash. Fire and metal and chunks of rock flew straight into the air in front of the defender’s very eyes. Everything shook under them. It felt like the mound would collapse. The Vishap moved once more, and it loomed larger and larger as it did.

Atop the machine, two of the shoulder cupolas turned to face the mound, and the dark slits cut across the sides of the structures flashed a bright green. Hundreds of rounds of machine gun fire struck the rubble at the peak of the mound, and a cacophonous sawing noise sounded above the shifting of the stones and the sound of loading and firing of rifles. Hundreds of bright green tracers bounced skyward or overflew the peak. Even the rookies could identify the sound as that of the deadly Norgler machine gun, and they scrambled back from the rubble, putting the slope between them and the Vishap.

The Vishap’s top-mounted machine guns blazed as the machine crawled toward the mound. It was like a demon, belching fire from its snout-like cannon, its cupolas like eyes firing searing, chaotic beams of green tracer ammunition. It was a terrifying sight that cowed the defenders like nothing else. Not another shot flew out from atop the mound; Gulab swallowed hard and shrank back with the rest of her squadron, pinned.

“Comrades, get ready to retreat! Grab your weapon and start moving toward–”

Beneath the infernal noise of the machine guns the Vishap’s cannon cried out once more.

One more shell impacted the rubble of the first gate, and this time the force of the blast wound itself inside the rubble, and rocks and concrete belched out the other side of the mound, collapsing some of the rookies’ own footholds on the rear of the slope. Several squadron members were blown back with the rock, and they dropped from the mound and hit the ground. Disoriented, but alive, they fled in a panic back to the second gate.

There was no time to hold the Vishap there. They had to sacrifice the first gate and fast.

“Comrades, over the side barriers, right now!” Gulab shouted. “Come with me!”

Everyone looked at her with surprise. They clung on to the rubble and rock as if they were suspended over a precipice, and their guns were almost an afterthought, hanging by belt loops or pressed between them and the slope. Nobody was moving at all.

“Come on!”

Gulab grabbed hold of rookie Loubna with one hand, who was paralyzed with her Danava embraced in her arms, and the sweating, panting Aditha with the other. Finding purchase on a solid slab of concrete beneath her, Gulab could afford to let go of the mound for this maneuver, and with all her strength, she dragged the two rookies, and leaped from the mound and atop the side-barrier. She pushed Loubna and Aditha off, and it looked to everyone as if she was throwing them in the river. There was no splashing or screaming, however, if any such thing could even be audible under all the machine gun fire; and witnessing Gulab herself disappearing behind the barriers, the remainder of the squadron gasped with collective fear and charged toward the water.

Jumping around the meter-and-a-half tall concrete barriers on the side of the bridge, Gulab found herself in a drainage segment off the side of the bridge. There was maybe a meter in which to stand or sit, and the rushing waters of the Qural below. Loubna and Aditha clung to the barrier, terrified by the rushing water. Gulab urged them to move; in a moment, five additional squadron members would jump the barrier and land messily one after the other, some nearly falling into the river. Gulab got everyone organized.

She huddled the group and addressed them. “Alright, see, nobody fell, nobody got–”

Behind them, there was a much louder blast and an even more violent rumbling and rattling as the Vishap finally destroyed the mound of the first gate. Then, the grinding of its tracks and the roaring of its engine resumed, and they could all feel it moving past them, like a dragon stomping its way past their village as they hid from the destruction.

Gulab had no intention to remain hidden. This was all another chance to attack.

“Comrades, any hunter can kill any beast by stopping it from moving! If that thing gets past the second gate, it will have a clear shot at the wall. We can’t let it get any further.”

All of her squadron was clearly shaken. In a span of minutes they had lost a position, lost comrades, and witnessed head-on a massive tank bearing down on them. Their eyes were watering, their faces sweating and turning pale, their bodies shaking. But they were focused: Gulab saw it in their faces that they understood the urgency. That was good; a soldier could be afraid, but they had to channel that fear into their survival.

“On my mark,” Gulab continued, and laid a hand on Aditha’s shoulder, and quickly explained as the Vishap neared them, “Aditha and Seer will throw frag grenades at the road to distract the riflemen, and then, me, Loubna, Fareeha and Jaffar will rise up and throw anti-tank grenades at the tank’s side and tracks. We only have one shot at this!”

Aditha looked frightened at first, but Loubna put a hand on her shoulder too, and her face turned red. She averted her eyes, turned her cheek on Loubna and withdrew a pair of grenades from her pouch. Looking sour in expression, she nodded silently to the team, most of whom seemed perplexed by her behavior. Meanwhile Fareeha, a tall, dark, athletic woman, and Jaffar, a rugged-looking boy, both gave Gulab intense looks that suggested to her their eagerness to fight. Both were rookies. Everyone here was now.

Gulab didn’t look at Loubna, she felt she didn’t need to. Loubna was ready. Gulab felt it. Loubna was big and tough, and she had a soft heart that yearned to defend the weak.

She saw her own face in Loubna’s, like staring into her reflection on the mountain ice.

She hoped she could count on at least her.

Behind them, the Vishap chewed up the remaining rubble of the first gate, and the ground beneath them and the barrier in front of them and seemingly even the water at their backs, all of it shook and shuddered with the weight and power of the beast. It fired a round at the ruined second gate, resulting in a massive explosion, and its machine guns screamed as it engaged the blocking position set up around the second gate’s remains

Gulab’s stomach vibrated, and she felt the presence of the machine in her neck when she tried to speak, like constant jolt to the adam’s apple. Her words came out shaken.

The Vishap was within zero of the squadron; they had to attack now or never.

Its frontal machine guns were occupied, and its gun was unable to target them.

It was time.

“Aditha, Seer, now!”

Aditha and Seer pulled the pins on their grenades, waited a second, and threw.

Four grenades, one in each hand, landed in the road and exploded in various directions.

Gulab stood and launched her AT grenade in as straight a throw as she could muster.

Only on a direct hit from the head would the grenade be primed and detonated.

She caught sight of something that made her throat seize up.

The Vishap had an armored skirt protecting its wheels and track.

Would the attack even be effective?

She watched the grenade strike the top of the skirt at an angle and burn a visible hole.

The Vishap trundled on.

On the road were dead and wounded riflemen, caught out by the grenades.

Their own comrades were coming in for them.

Just then, behind Gulab, in a sluggish sequence, came Loubna, Jaffar and Fareeha.

Their own throws were haphazard, with Jaffar throwing from the grenade’s head and Loubna lobbing hers. Both grenades exploded over the armor skirt and left minor cosmetic wounds on the tank. Fareeha seemed to have had the best throw. Her grenade hit the Vishap in the side of the skirt and burnt through the armor, exposing a wheel. Some smoke and fire spat out of the wound, but the Vishap continued to advance.

“Everyone down!” Gulab shouted. They had stood out too long, threw too late–

Atop the Vishap, the leftmost rear cupola turned to the edge barriers and opened fire.

Alarming green norgler fire sprayed over the concrete.

Gulab shoved herself into Loubna and Jaffar, the two closest, and brought them down.

Seemingly hundreds of rounds struck the concrete, chipping away bits and pieces that fell over the squadron and casting concrete dust into the air. So many rounds were fired at the barrier that the chipped concrete dust formed a small cloud over the edge of the bridge. Disdainfully the Vishap pressed on, fully leaving behind Gulab and her team.

On the floor, Gulab pressed her hands over herself and found no wounds.

She grabbed hold of Loubna, who was staring at something mouth agape.

She was unwounded too; Jaffar was also alright from the looks him, and then–

Just a few steps away from them, sitting with her back to a black-red smear on the barrier, was Fareeha. Her chest and neck had bled out heavily in moments, judging by the red stain all around her, like an aura burnt into the ground and wall. Her feet dangled from the bridge, and her eyes were open, staring endlessly out into the water.

She was dead.

Gulab hadn’t been able to knock her down too.

From behind Gulab sounded a heart-rending cry.

“Fareeha! No! No!”

Aditha, crouched on the floor, held back a thrashing, screaming Seer, whose black face was turning pale and flushed, her eyes red and strained, weeping. She tried to claw over Gulab to make it to Fareeha’s corpse, and Aditha and Loubna both tried to hold her back. She was screaming for Fareeha, screaming that she could not be left behind, that she could not stay here, that she would be fine if they could get her out of this place.

Gulab looked back at the corpse as if, mindlessly, trying to assess whether it could be ok.

It could not.

She pored over, in that eternal instant where anxiety reigns over the mind, whether she had seen anyone die before. She had seen people die, but had they died? There was an importance difference there that she felt but could not grasp. Certainly, nobody had died under her command before. Because she had not really done that much commanding.

Now, she was in command. And a young woman of merely eighteen had died under her.

In the background to all this, was Solstice city, and Gulab stared at the wall.

She felt the Vishap, attacking the second gate. She felt its motion through the ground.

Gulab turned toward Seer and grabbed hold of her shoulders and shook her roughly.

“An entire city of millions of defenseless people will join Fareeha if we don’t do something, Private Dbouji! Wait to mourn until we’re inside some safe walls!”

She picked up her submachine gun from the floor, crawled past Loubna and Jaffar, and without turning back, motioned for everyone to follow. She hated all of this, and herself.

She hated how much it felt like something her father had done and said to her, long ago.

How much that voice sounded like his own.

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Storm The Castle (68.3)

Solstice, Eastern Wall Defensive Line

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not yet; now was not the right time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It would’ve been bloody.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madiha felt exhausted.

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

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

It had been a hellish, evil year, 2031.

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

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

“What are you talking about?” Madiha asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madiha looked out over the desert and sighed.

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

All those corpses on the desert.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parinita returned and pressed herself close to the General.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RKPX-003 VISHAP.

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

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

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

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

“Oh, shut up, Von Drachen.”

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Storm The Castle (68.2)

This scene contains graphic violence and death.

Solstice City — Conqueror’s Way Defense Zone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aditha wiped her tears and nodded her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She gave Loubna a big smile from over her shoulder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hmm!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I promised I’d take care of you!”

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

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

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

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

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

It was powerful; her Danava was monstrously powerful.

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

“Loubna–”

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

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

“Loubna!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loubna felt a sting in her shoulder.

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

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

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

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

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

She returned to the scope on her sniper rifle.

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

Aditha took a deep breath, and pressed the trigger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They could hear the boots trudging up the steep mound.

“Loubna watch out!” Aditha shouted.

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

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

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

He roared, and he thrust down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Charvi!”

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

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

It wasn’t even the drugs or the pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a bundle of grenades linked by a string.

“Oh, well.” Chadgura said.

“Yeah, well,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Now I succeeded.” Sergeant Kajari smiled.

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

“You absolutely did.”

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

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

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

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

From behind them, a serene-sounding voice replied.

“Yes ma’am!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Adi, do you see that?”

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

Her eyes drew wide open.

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

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

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Declaration (66.1)

This scene briefly contains sexual content.

42nd of the Hazel’s Frost, 2030 D.C.E

Federation of Northern States, Nocht — Rhinea

“Ugh.”

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

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

“Why do I keep doing this to myself?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Just a friend?”

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

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

“I know.”

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

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

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

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

But in the end even the difficult things remained simple.

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

Achim never made her feel that way.

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

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

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

“I’m still here, you know.”

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

She was nearly face to face with Gretchen.

Gretchen was complicated too, but in a simple way.

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

Cecilia smiled.

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

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

“I’ll see you later. Alone.”

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

Gretchen made no argument.

Nocht Federation — Windsbach, Haupt Radar Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What kind of food can I get?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coming in from the east were dozens of bombers.

Hundreds of them.

Helmut stared until the green glow burned in his retinas.

He reached for the telephone at his side.

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

Procedure dictated he describe the problem in detail–

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

And then they hung up on him.

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

Those blips were moving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Helmut was speechless.

Aluminum. He wanted to say that word.

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

Why was aluminum falling from the sky?

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Dominoes (64.1)

This scene contains violence.

52nd of the Aster’s Gloom, 2030 D.C.E

Tambwe Dominance, Rangda City — Council

Palladin Arsenica Livia Varus felt her brain trembling as she tried to process the sudden, deadly turn in her fortunes. She had hastily recalled all of her radio personnel back to her communications room upon discovering Von Drachen’s escape, and there she stood, pacing, rubbing her temples, eyes wide open, jaw hanging open enough to gasp.

“Order all units to fall back to Council and Ocean Road! Shut them down immediately!”

This nonspecific order belied her helplessness. On all sides the Ayvartan attack was slicing through her units. She was being pushed back from Rangda University, from the old 8th Division base, from Ocean Road itself. Madiha Nakar had come suddenly alive again and was sweeping her aside wherever she moved. Arsenica tried to raise her voice but her voice was not a gun, and all around the Lady Paladin, her guns were being silenced, one by one, shot by shot. Radio contact was sketchy at best, and she was short on field leadership.

It was almost enough to make her regret having sacrificed the Paladin combat team once led by her rival for the throne, Gwendolyn Vittoria. Almost, but not quite. She had her pride and still, and this pride was the rod set against her spine and keeping her upright. Throughout the battle, she waited, and she paced, and she hovered like a grim reaper over her radio personnel, over her tactical advisors, over the maps on the battlefield table.

“I want the Cheshires to dig in right on Ocean Road, do not allow anything through! I want barricades erected with whatever can be spared, and I want every gun we’ve got peering over or around cover and shooting until we’re out of ammunition! Use captured Ayvartan weapons, use anything! Throw rocks if you have to! We cannot let them through!”

Paladin Arsenica shouted as if it was a lack of effort and motivation that rendered a rock unable to pierce a tank. Her radio personnel relayed her orders with trembling voices and shaking hands, and they sat at the edge of their seats as if standing on tip-toe, nervously awaiting futile replies. There was nothing for them to hear back save incredulity and desperation, none of which was communicated back to the Paladin. But she was not as foolish as everyone around her assumed, not completely. She knew what was happening.

She was content, however, to remain uninformed. Ignorance allowed for some hope.

Then came the dreadful final blow in the place least expected. Northern Rangda, so stable, quiet, the bulwark sector that had been clinched by the elves at the start of the battle, began to call Arsenica’s headquarters. They called for help. Arsenica’s operators could hardly pass on the depth of the fear in their contact’s voices, and so Arsenica was coaxed into speaking and listening personally. She discovered then that horrific, final truth.

Amid sounds of heated gunfire, a woman’s voice pleaded, “Lady Paladin, we need support right away, the 8th Division is attacking every defensive line, and they’ve broken through to the east and south, heading into Ocean Road! We can’t contain them like this!”

Arsenica said nothing, and put the handset back onto the radio, and turned away.

The 8th Division, which had been several times humiliated, demoralized, broken, disarmed. Pushed into hiding in the darkest, deepest recesses of the city, cut off from supply and command, their communications compromised. Madiha Nakar had damaged them and the elven landings had broken them. So then, why? How? She thought she was hearing all their radio chatter: were they sending fake broadcasts and communicating personally among themselves? She could have sworn they were defeated, and yet here they were, using the last of their blood, bayonets and paltry ammunition to assault her.

And they were winning.

And they had won.

When this sudden surge of manpower met the lines of the Ayvartan motorized infantry under Nakar, they would become as floodwater uncontained. Surely that was their goal; any fool could see that Madiha Nakar had struck some kind of bargain with her former enemies against the threat of the elves, and this was the result. Arsenica had nothing that could stop such a press of bodies. She was barely hanging on as it was because Madiha Nakar had to stretch herself thin to cover the entirety of Arsenica’s line, as she desired to.

Had Von Drachen realized what was happening? She had taken an interest in him, but like all the toys of her girlhood, she had ignored him and was all but ready to discard him.

She could not indulge this fantasy for too long; gunfire erupted outside.

There was an explosion, one not distant enough, that alarmed the whole building.

The Paladin stared out the door, speechless.

Everyone in the room was looking at her.

Arsenica had a haunted appearance. Her skin had turned ghost-pale, her eyes shadowed.

She turned to the radio operators, then cast a sweeping glare at the knights out in the hall.

“What are you all waiting for? An order to retreat? You will receive none! You will remain here or lose your honor as cowards! Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am?”

She drew her sword, and advanced out into the hall, red in the face.

There was a yelp of fear and a most surprising result.

As Arsenica raised her hand to strike down the first subordinate who looked to eager to run, she was struck in the face by an iron-gloved fist. She felt the cold of the gauntlet and the heat of rushing blood as the fist swiped across her face. Arsenica dropped to the ground, bloody, her nose broken, in excruciating pain. She looked through her hands, pressing on her own face and mouth as if trying to keep the blood in, and saw the face of a stoic, black-haired elven woman, who gave her a filthy look as she lay on the carpet.

“Gisella?” Arsenica cried, in disbelief and despondence.

Gisella turned her back and left the hall at a brisk pace.

From around the departing knight, some lesser subordinates became emboldened.

Three younger girls approached Arsenica, and with vengeance in their eyes, lifted their metal boots and kicked. They struck her breasts, her belly, her limbs. Arsenica cried out and pleaded, but they neither intended to sustain their assault nor stay it completely. Each girl delivered several quick, hit and run kicks, before running away, peeling back one by one as each had their seconds fill of thrashing their superior. Shaking, bleeding, hardly able to move, Arsenica curled up on the ground, and cried, her vision blurring with pain.

Passing beside her, the radio personnel then fled, thankfully without violence.

Within minutes, the hallway and the room and maybe the council building, were empty.

Empty, save for a blonde, classically-elven girl, shaking in her ill-fitting breastplate.

She looked barely an adult and her eyes were filled with tears.

When everyone had left, she approached Arsenica.

The Paladin covered her body with her arms as best as she could, and curled up.

She was expecting to be struck, but instead, the girl touched her gently.

“Lady Paladin, I’m sorry, please, lets get you back up.”

Arsenica groaned, every inch of her body screaming with pain as the girl helped her to stand on one foot, and supported the woman over her shoulder. Huffing and puffing with the effort, the girl struggled to get Arsenica back into the communications room, where she laid her on the couch, and wiped the blood from her face, and brought her wine.

“It’s my ration ma’am. You can have it.”

She poured the drink between Arsenica’s broken, bloody lips.

It was hot. That wine had been in a tin pressed against this girl’s body for days.

And yet, that strange act of kindness gave the drink a strange potency.

Arsenica did not feel better. She could not. But she felt an odd inkling of relief.

Watching her drink, the girl started wiping her own tears, and looking down at her.

“I’m so sorry ma’am. I couldn’t– I wouldn’t have been able to fight them all. I was scared if I pulled my gun they would all start shooting and everyone would die. I’m so sorry.”

She locked eyes with her battered superior, pulling back the tin once it was empty.

“You– you don’t deserve it ma’am. I admired you for a very long time ma’am. Those girls have no upbringing! How dare they do this. I wish I could’ve stopped it. I’m so sorry about everything. All of us, if we’d tried harder, we wouldn’t be in this situation. I’m sorry.”

That girl apologized more and more and the reasons why made less and less sense.

Arsenica wanted to ask her for her name, but she couldn’t find the strength to talk.

Instead, she curled up tighter, and wept, traumatized and uncomprehending.

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