With no time to micromanage each individual engagement, I give suggestions on the fly. A flanking maneuver to a centurion defending gun controls, a maniple formation to a Legate on deck thirty-three. Moments later though, I circle back to see the centurion dead, the Legate sealing the breach with engineering teams. I redirect the Legate to the next breach, three levels down.
I must trust my ground officers. My most important function is arranging for and massing reinforcements where they matter most. I triage based on a culmination of factors: the importance of each clawDrill’s objective, the likelihood of preventing the enemy from reaching the objective, and my overarching strategy of containment.
The strategy is working. Lysander has overreached.
Fierce and disciplined as the Praetorians are, with Kavax delaying their second wave on the surface, they’re outnumbered nearly everywhere. I’ve managed to mass legions in strategic areas to oppose their progress and swamp their flanks. Fifteen minutes in, more than half of the clawDrills have been intercepted and destroyed by ground units. I may be the only one who sees the order in the chaos. Meanwhile, the squad coms are overwhelmed by that chaos.
“Fuuuuuuuck…what the fuck was that?!? Get the fuck down, Corran. What the fuck were you thinking? Did anyone see where that came from? Where the bloodyhell is Horrow? Need to call this shit up! Need heavy armor.”
“Horrow ain’t on coms no more. Certius is.”
FRAFRAFRAFRA
“Where the slag is Horrow?”
“Dead!”
“Bloodydamn! Certius get over here. You lilyshit bastard—knew I needed to call this shit up. Boyo, you gotta be nut to butt. Wait, where the bloodydamn is doc?! Doc!?”
“Oy.”
“Why the fuck are you so far forward?”
“I was plugging up Horrow.”
VrreeeeVRREEEEdunnnnng. FRA FRAFRAFRA.
“Berserkers!”
“Waste them!!! Next one. No next one right!! The fucker with the ham—”
“Norus! Norus!”
“His head’s off, man. Fire!”
“I’ll get him!”
“His head’s fucking off!”
“I got—agghhh.”
“Slag Norus. We need to fall back! See that water processor looking thing over there?!”
“That thing?”
“No that’s an incinerator, Carthus! That motherfucker! That toaster thing.”
“Yeah Yeah, registers.”
“Heavies give us cover and move move move—”
“Fuckfuckfuck Scarred! Scarred!”
“Anti-Scar up! Up!”
“Rocket green. Rocket away!”
Phhhhhhhoooozchhhh.
“Eat my cock goldilock! Nrrrrk.”
“Bring that tripod up! Where’s our heavy armor!? Is anyone fucking listening to me!? OVERWATCH??!?”
I answer: “I’m here. Heavy armor reinforcements en route and will flank from tunnel sixteen C. Hold your position at all costs.” And that was a veteran unit. I cycle to the next. Red Legion I bleeds and burns to plug the holes. Stomping over Praetorian carapaces leaking blood and machine oil, they rush forward to make bulwarks against the invaders. Tramways, gravLift shafts, subterranean agoras where commerce once thrived become slaughterhouses choked with smoke, fire, rent metal, and robotic screams echoing in helmets.
Sweat stings my eyes. Time disappears. Gone are the learned moralities that once differentiated me from my father. I force my ants in the path of the enemy worms. Then I isolate those worms. Swarm them. Kill them fast as we can. Plug the breaches, damn the cost. Create a grid around them with Haemanthus Legion and Hawk Legion. Constrict the grid. Squeeze the enemy out. It’s working well enough that every few minutes I can check on Kavax.
His Drachenjäger charge must have been a dreadful sight to Lysander’s Praetorians. Five wedges rolling in silence down the slopes of Bastion One. Under cover of the restored shield, they hit the enemy just as their troop carriers brought the second wave of House Lune Legions. By the time I checked back, Kavax had hurled the enemy off a third of their breaches and looked as if he might eradicate the Praetorian Guard by hour’s end.
But the next glimpse shows a fuzzier picture: His charge has stalled. The stubborn Praetorians refuse to be routed. They rally again and again and entrench in the cityscape, delaying him, giving their brothers behind them time and cover to flow down to support their vanguard inside the moon.
It’s impossible to find Kavax in the fray. Enemy sensor-jamming is killing everything except direct laser coms. Armies of codebreakers on both sides wage war from deep within bunkers while battle-brave Green fulgur bellatores—lightning warriors—sneak through the warzone to hard hack and enslave enemy systems or remotely hijack vessels or guns.
Despite the chaos, Kavax is doing his job. I struggle with the magnitude of my own, and I almost miss two clawDrills threatening to break through our lower perimeter. I move eight centuries to intercept. By the time I’ve cycled back to them ten minutes later, the clawDrills are down but the centuries I sent to stop them are already broken and in flight. The enemy group responsible for the rout is moving fast. They’re over two hundred strong and pressing for the maintenance lifts to the sector’s reactor. I hurl more men from nearby at them only to watch their biometrics flatline one by one. Somehow the enemy keeps finding ways to flank the units I send.
Is that you, Lysander?
Or is it another Gold ally? The Golds have so many fine commanders, it’s impossible to know. In the murky images, I think I see a beast of a man in black armor with skulls on it.
Ajax?
Using another three hundred of Red Legion as sacrificial lambs to slow the enemy progress, I search for more reserves to send from Bastion One. All are committed except my four thousand Lionguards in the hangar.
“Nakamura, pass off your prism. Front.” She jogs over as a Gray officer takes her prism circlet. “This enemy unit has bypassed our killboxes and has chewed through everything I’ve thrown at them. We’ve whittled them down to one fifty or so. But they’re past the perimeter going for the reactor. They still have doors and automated defenses to get through, but their battle Greens are good. You can beat them to the reactor. Take five hundred Lionguards from the hangars and see them dead.”
She salutes, and then fixates on a holofeed showing the enemy squad. She shoves an armored finger toward a Praetorian with a transverse crest on his dragon-head helmet. He’s half hidden in the smoke. “That’s Flavinius,” she says. Her eyes narrow and she points to a big shadow in the smoke. “Ajax?”
“Take a thousand. Lune might be with them. I can’t give you more,” I say.
“Let Virgilus lead them,” she says. She motions up the Lionguard centurion. “I’m with you, ma’am. You’ve already sent Kavax. I will not leave your side again.”
“Virgilus, you heard?” He nods. “Go then. Good hunting.”
He salutes and he’s off. I glance at Nakamura, mildly annoyed at being contradicted, as she returns to her prism.
Victra finally breaks through the jamming. “Virginia…holding…our own. Rath…Votum missing.”
“Diomedes…” Char’s voice.