by Kali Altsoba
Daemons lick their fangs and herd the dead. Ox Head brays louder than ever, while Horse Face whinnies. King Yan’s bulging red eyes widen in expectation of the coming days and weeks of judgement. More soon-to-be-dead are running right to him up-and-down nearly 23,000 klics of the black. The slate Gates of Youdu, the Dark Capital where rival gods and minions dwell, creak open and a little torchlight struggles to sneak out, to snake into the Region of Darkness. It’s pushed back inside by King Yan’s daemons, who snarl as they crack! whips to herd the souls of the dead inside. Yamarāja looks out with dead mortal eyes, searching for a way to escape his Lordship over all Pitrs, over the dead departed who cannot depart. He sniffs at the dark, smells more war coming to him through the dank, putrid air of Diyu. Then the daemon guards of the Gate slam it, locking him back inside.
Nothing good or pure ever happens in the Yue ming, the obscure regions as the locals on the Alliance side of the frontline call the middle bit. Or they say, “the black.” Always lower case, of course. Only civvies say “The Black,” like it’s some kind of Theme Park with thrill rides and popcorn. The black has many names. RIK calls it that, too, and Dark Territory. Some call it no-man’s-land, but WCB and Alliance women know that it’s not a fit place for women, either. Might as well call it no-god’s-land, for no one’s deity dwells or lingers there, except for King Yan and the Yue ming daemons. And maybe the God of Artillery, who serves the God of War, who watches over terrible Leviathans that howl and gnash steel teeth and slash at each other with jagged ice swords.
Does the Great Trickster of the Universe sit back and laugh at it all? Or is the greatest jest that the gods play on us struggling mortals the secret lie that no one is listening or in charge at all? Out in the median wasteland between contending First Trenches that neither side controls, yet can’t fully deny to the enemy, there’s only cold fear and hot death for ordinary men and women on all sides who dwell along its edges. The black is a dark realm without prayer or pity, mercy or quarter. Remorseless and hopeless. If it’s the territory that no man or woman controls but only gods may roam, then the gods be damned.
Lovers
It’s Year Three of the Fourth Orion War on Amasia, and both sides are worn down by constant fighting. It has been a specially bloody season of combat, that saw the biggest offensive yet tried by General Johann Oetkert. It was really big. Massive. With two huge flank attacks going in first, followed by a frontal assault made right into the teeth of General Lian Sòng’s defense-in-depth. That’s right, the idiot whose veins run with the blood royale, and his vaunted battle planning staff holed up in Xiamen HQ, did exactly the same thing that they tried and failed with in the First Shaka Offensive, as it’s now called. Does third time pay for all?
“By the gods’ blood, Nadine! We barely stopped a local offensive on a narrow front, not even 200 klics wide,” General Lian Sòng concedes the point to General Nadine Yupanqui with a weary look.
“Yes, but we did hold them. We broke their vaunted Second Shaka Offensive, just like we broke their earlier one. That fool Oetkert simply upped the scale of his attack and repeated it, as if we also learned nothing from the first time.”
It was a three-pronged plan, mastermind of the anything but masterly General Johann Oetkert. He made two huge diversions before launching the main attack. A big one went in north of the main schwerpunkt, at the hinge of The Veranda. It ran into an armored counterattack by herds of Buffalos and mobile infantry, who got there in time because of a lone reed defender who held up key support infantry in Oetkert’s masterpiece symphony. Lt. Joachim Suri and an anonymous mohawk man did it. A near washout marine and a private no one could later find. Suri was a failure at everything he ever tried, at least until the morning of his first blooding in combat. He manned a solitary rapido that he just wouldn’t abandon, firing and slaughtering some of Rikugun’s best assault troops and terrifying too many others into halting, then running. Oetkert had the MI man who told him about the failed assault stripped of his rank and arrested. Suri got a medal, then killed himself.
The second big diversion was made in the deep desert two days later. It was also meant to draw reserves away from the main attack. It went through the pitted black and sprawling trench cities of Tornado Alley. Yupanqui let the lead armor wedge advance over First Trench, until she enfiladed it with anti-armtrak guns on both flanks. Then she annihilated its lead divisions, sending in Argos 7th Assault. That division is become the bane of Oetkert’s reputation and martial ambition. He beat it bloody thrice before, on Glarus, Oberon and the Caliban moons. This time, the Argosians held fast, fought his brilliant attack to a standstill, blunted his plans so completely that General Sòng moved no troops or armor southward. Susannah Page was in the swirling fight that lasted ten days, alongside a trooper who’s still as ripe as a schoolgirl to look at, but now a veteran fighter with real killing skill. Jan Wysocki, the Wreckers and Rusty Buckles, were also in the fight. Back on Amasia from an offworld tour with White Sails, KRA volunteered them to go in alongside the Enthusiastics in the counterattack. Sòng sent them straight to the black.
“We can’t hold everywhere, then counterattack everywhere, every time. If we defend everything we’ll end up defending nothing in sufficient depth, and lose it all. What do we do if Rikugun attacks all along the black wall, all at once?”
Yupanqui doesn’t hesitate to answer, even as she runs a tired hand through her close cropped, dyed red hair. “We fight. We send our dear children out to die, but we fight. And we hold. We hold the line here on Amasia no matter what.”
Like the sealed command room they’re meeting in, she smells of old coffee and stiff determination. Nadine is a great comfort to Lian Sòng, especially with Jan Wysocki and his special insight and specialty troops offworld yet again, with White Sails. Lian looks into the steel gray eyes of the tough commander of the 7th Argos, and sees that she means every word. It’s what she needs to hear. It’s really why she asked to meet Nadine Yupanqui tonight, not for advice but for comfort. Even a general as tough as a Buffalo’s armored hide needs that from time-to-time.
“Aye, Nadine. Forgive my moment of weakness. You’re right, of course. You are right. We will hold. We hold here, we hold now. We hold forever.”
Now it’s tough, hardened Nadine Yupanqui’s turn to indulge her moment of doubt. “Can they do it, attack us everywhere at once along the wall? Do they have that much strength? We cannot hold if they hit us everywhere at once.”
“No, they can’t do it. Or they would have done it already. Not even that royal bastard in Xiamen is so stupid not to seek to overwhelm us, if he could. I don’t know why I doubt our own strength, sometimes. We’re getting stronger daily.”
“It’s not weakness to doubt us or yourself, Lian. Fortune in war is always the most doubtful thing. You are wise to know it, and to consider it in your plans.”
“Maybe, but I don’t feel wise today. And neither of us will feel clever or wise when we go out tomorrow to burn the great piles of our brave dead from this latest fight, those whom we can reach and recover at least.”
“Aye, that’s the bald truth. Tomorrow, you say?”
“I’ve ordered the cremations. I know you will want to be there. Yet again, Argos 7th, the Enthusiastics, took heavy losses. You know it better than I. It seems that I push your people into the dike every time a leak in the black wall starts up.”
“It’s the reason that we’re here. May I say, general, that the only thing that my division objects to is being called ‘Enthusiastic.’ We prefer Argos 7th Assault.”
“I know, Nadine. But you’re stuck with the name. The Hornet’s Nest likes it. The politicians like it. The public likes it.”
“Ah, well then. But just between us, Lian? We’re more the ‘Exhausteds’ than the ‘Enthusiastics’ these days. The division has seen a helluva lot of fighting.”
“You’re going to see even more before this ends. One day, Nadine, I promise you and all our honored dead, those past, present and to come, that it
will be us who attack across the black. I will retake this world. I will drive these swarming locusts from our fields and cities, drive the awful popovs off the ice. Amasia will never fall to a tyrant, not to Pyotr or Jahandar.”
***
A month later, Rikugun MI reports to Xiamen HQ that the Alliance is using city taxis and old farm vehicles, armored up and converted for use as slow surface haulers. Essentials are trickling to the black wall by all and any means of transport, fast and slow. From acoustic hovers where New Beijing can get its hands on them, to deeply buried maglev networks, to hardened ice roads and prewar, old forest trails expanded to handle military traffic. Newly built surface trucks are running baffled and without lights under compact light and sound camo packs, joining the old taxis and confiscated civvy vehicles on runs into the desert or across the tundra that lies south of the Dauran Gate, or over the grassland ocean of Central Lemuria. Small boat fleets are in the five southern river systems, and long trails of porters have been seen in roadless forests to the north and the jungle region in the south.
Rikugun is doing some of that as well, employing adapted surface vehicles it camos as best it can, especially in the north country where it still uses rough roads called rollbahn that its combat engineers crashed through the forests during the first weeks and months of the invasion. In that exciting time, all movement was one way from east to west and victory seemed assured, if only the engineers could reach the next valley and the one after that, getting key resupply up to the fighting divisions that were cutting edges of four offensive thrusts being steadily whittled by contact with a fiercely resisting but inferior enemy. Then it all stopped, when Rikugun reached the first incomplete black walls and was pushed north and south in futile flanking moves that only led to more and more black walls. Now Xiamen relies on repair and expansion of the prewar Lemurian maglev system it took over in the central zones, moving the bulk of matériel underground. RIK also maintains a heavy skycraft CAP wherever it must move troops or supplies on the surface.
What startles Xiamen MI is a report that ACU Logistics is using a long train of dromedaries in The Sandbox. Not to get supplies to First Trench, but to move them in the deep rear areas, even as far inland as the rear of Second Trench. From there, MI spies report that regular infantry hump triple weight as they return to the black from coastal leave, or when arriving for the first time, cannon fodder from offworld. The camel train is spotted by RIK skycraft observers. It’s seen moving on the far horizon in the ACU deep hinter zone, closer to the west coast than the long black ribbons of upside down wall that slice the full length of Lemuria. It’s a vision from a memex drama about the ancient past. MI thinks it can’t be real!
It is real. It’s one of ten thousand slow supply trains that ACU Logistics Corps is adapting to the varied sectors of Lemuria. MI takes more notice of reports of Alliance animal power of all kinds moving key supplies, from the high tundra and subarctic regions to all the way across the deserts and austral mountains. Spotters see muskox and dog sleds making runs in the high and low arctic zones; camels loaded sidesaddle in The Sandbox; ten-dog teams pulling low sledges toward the Dauran Gate; horse teams harnessed to ancient wheeled wagons winding through Tornado Alley. Elsewhere, RIK observers are startled to see files of elephants in the southern jungles, donkeys and mules on high mountain trails, yoked bullocks and oxen crossing the sahel and Great Plains. It’s all evidence of New Beijing’s commitment to protracted war on Amasia by all and any means, and forever. Even if that point escapes arrogant Shōshō Oetkert, who blames a return to stalemate and chronic low-intensity losses on poor staff work, not his too obvious plans.
The krasnos at the Dauran Gate are doing much the same thing as Alliance, only using horseless carts pulled by prisoners or hooked to confiscated troikas and other ski toed vehicles. It’s the only way woefully underequipped DRA can move supplies over the tundra grasses in summer, across the snow desert in winter.
“Why aren’t they using muskox or dogs, like the enemy?”
“The krasnos ate all the local horses and dogs and muskox, sir, before DRA Supply Service figured out how to use them as raw muscle power.”
“So now they use slaved prisoners?”
“It’s what they do, general. They’re swinepriest Daurans, after all.”
Confirmation of the camel trains and dog sleds and ox convoys greatly alarms General Staff officers when it reaches RIK Main HQ on Kestino. The smartest generals gathered there shudder with dread to hear the news. As does Pyotr, once Takeshi Watanabe explains to him what it means. This isn’t the war they planned or expected. This isn’t a war they can win. This isn’t a ‘short and lively’ war of the kind they foolhardily believed would take Orion for them, or for the Black Faith, or Purity, or the Imperium. This is long war, wearing and protracted, promising to erode Rikugun over time. War waged by deliberate attrition, not quick decision though strategic surprise, operational brilliance, and tactical genius unique to the star nation that claims it invented war. It’s a rikishi hold meant to exhaust before the winning throw, or maybe a sutemi-waza sacrifice technique. Either way, this is mortal combat. War down to knuckle and knife. War to the last bloody rock.
Rikugun finally concedes reality, turning not to animal power but to enslaved millions from the occupied east coast cities as loaders and porters. Other prisoners on short rations are made to grow basic food in rear areas, grains and vegetables to supplement convoys that fail to bring enough powdered foodstuffs past strong Alliance lunar interceptors. RIK engineers and pioneers build and widen surface roads and repair bombed out maglev tunnels, while reserve infantry is assigned to haul ammo and food in many thousands of small truck caravans that are less likely to draw attention from swarming Jaguar interdictors than mega haulers. All the armies revert to primitive supply to supplement the maglev routes that interlace for hundreds of klics behind the black walls of Third Trench. It’s a closer match to real fighting conditions. It’s an acceptance of brute attrition as the way ahead.
One general says it with angry disgust in a dispatch sent to Kestino Main HQ, which just sent him the new battle plan it’s proposing for Year Four: “Shove your fucking operational and tactical theories! There’s no room on Amasia for theory! I need protein powders by the megaton. I need more trucks, I need hovers, I need slaves. Get them here or my army will sit on its ass all winter and into next year.”
“Not even our best assault troops broke the damn stalemate on Amasia.” Pyotr laments out loud, running a fat, ebony finger down a hair thin scar that stakes out the contour of his left cheek like a taut draftsman’s line. He does it over and over. It’s an ominous gesture, unconsciously made but known to those who watch his every twitch and movement. It can mean that someone is about to die.
“Tell me, my generals, what in the name of unholy hell do we do now?” He asks it of his Great General Staff. But no one has a new answer for him. Not even intimates of his innermost circle, The Admitted. No one can say what to do next.
“That’s what I thought! Colonel Watanabe, join me in my chambers. We need to discuss plans. We must take over this war from my generals. No one could do worse than they have, especially my idiot uncle on Amasia.”
Pyotr doesn’t know that war confidence is ebbing lower on the Alliance side as well. Doesn’t hear reports that General Lian Sòng and the strategic experts on Kars and Caspia know just how close Gross Imperium came to breakthrough in the Second Shaka Offensive, and fear another such grand assault may succeed in taking Amasia for the Imperium. He only knows that he’s walking a knife edge of potential regime failure, even of revolution. There have been multiple attempts to kill him, from the amateurism of a couple of drunk fools who tried to climb the Jade Gate with a single frag grenade, to an Acis apple brandy bomb, to a real coup attempt put down in the streets of Novaya Uda. Takeshi stopped the coup, taking Pyotr offworld then laying in a death trap for the putschists. It took nearly a month to repair damaged streets and the Jade Square outside the Waldstätte
Palast, where broken armtraks and thousands of dead Rikugun lay amidst Royal Canaries and SAC commandos who stayed loyal. Pyotr suspects that more plots are still on the boil, but hasn’t yet identified his main enemy. He rages, as the clocks count down.
There’s no going back. Pyotr fumes, then agrees he must do more of the same. It’s not about him. It’s not even about the poison snake Takeshi Watanabe, whom Pyotr leans on ever more intimately and crucially. He does so at his peril, despite his murdered mother’s voice not just in his head but also heard aloud in chambers, warning that he’s bedding down with a true viper. Yet even Pyotr can see his real dilemma, that he needs more production of war matériel and more tens of millions of young recruits; women, too, if he must. Even he sees that the war is not about generals, if it ever was. It’s about logistics. It’s about waxing Alliance production and determination, and waning Imperium capabilities and High Caste support.
It’s about winter and tundra and mountains. It’s about LPs and lunar bases and White Sails raids made even into Imperium space. It’s about rear areas and supply, and protection of production and convoys, not planning quick victory or decisive battles or spectacular turns of fortune. It’s about grinding, not glory. His too clever Bad Camberg ruse no longer matters. His playing the Calmari PM for a gullible fool before surprise attacks in league with Jahandar, that’s all a thing of the past. That doesn’t control the present or his future. The now is all about chronic fighting that’s slow eroding everybody’s morale and whittling down everyone’s numbers of men and machines. The tomorrow is about capacity for endurance of ordinary soldiers along the black, on world after contested world. Pyotr understands that he has lost control of his war. That it has grown beyond anyone’s control. That it could yet consume him, burn down the Imperium, and ravage half of Orion.