Beyond the gatehouse lay a street running along the interior of the city wall. It was littered with debris and destruction, but all of it was masonry or ruined buildings; there were no dead bodies around, human or Phantom. Either the population had managed to evacuate, a possibility he very much doubted, or the Phantoms had overwhelmed them without chance for resistance and done something with them, though he could scarce stomach to imagine what that was.
There were tall residential towers lining the roadway and Lupus felt a pang of familiarity. The city reminded him of Paroxia, the capital of Dystopian where he had finished the Purge Crusades. That day felt like aeons ago now. As he darted right, predictably finding a lane into the heart of the capital like he expected given the city’s infrastructural similarity to Paroxia, he wondered why they hadn’t been attacked yet. Even on Dystopian where the Phantoms had numbered far less, their thirst for slaughter had made them reckless. Now with nowhere to run and a larger army, where was the enemy hiding?
The 617th stay with me, he voiced to everyone, legionnaire and Apostle alike. The 21st armour will support us, with the 77th and 10th at our heels. Gaia and Nightingale, take your legions to the flanks and cut into the enemy where they breached the walls.
The Apostles complied, not with words or even a psychic acknowledgement, but by what felt like a mental nudge. Had the others developed a way of reaching his mind and touching it by way of response? Whether that was a new method to them or not, Lupus couldn’t say, yet it struck him as blindingly natural.
Though the communication with the other Apostles felt right, there was something in the air that smelt wrong.
Sabre, contact the Luminon. Get Valerian to scan the city. Something’s off about this place, I can sense something both terribly young and impossibly old here… Lupus told the commander.
He slowed his advance, the street eerily peaceful and quiet. A soft wind blew ash and litter around, but other than the battle in the distance, that was the only sound. There was a pile of rubble on his left where shards of glass sat sprinkled over golden beams and timber supports. He could tell it had been a residential tower or maybe a workplace for the more affluent in the city and he was saddened to think that so many humans would have lost their lives in such an elegant building undeserving of ruination.
The 617th were around him checking the debris for any signs of life signs, friend or foe. He heard the gentle rumble of Warhound tank engines behind them rolling slowly forward and always scanning the area for signs of the enemy, their turrets whirring and swivelling round every time there was the slightest noise.
Lupus stopped where he was and sniffed the air again. He could hear very little, despite his attuned senses. It unsettled him, made him uneasy. There should have been something moving, someone making a sound. Even if the source was Phantom rather than human, he would have been reassured, but the silence was discomforting beyond explanation.
Inhaling through his nostrils, he caught a whiff of something foul. He couldn’t determine what it was, but he could tell its direction; it was coming from the north of his position, toward the city centre and yet closer than that too.
“My Lord,” Sabre began, returning to his Apostle with the information he was asked to seek. “Valerian reports scans still indicate a human presence in the city. He is certain that they are grouped, though he cannot tell in what state they’re in, but they appear to be underground”.
Lupus listened to the commander’s words. As much as he wanted to believe the truth of them, it all just seemed too simple. Where were the Phantoms? Where was the proof of an enemy leader capable of stalling the assault of dozens of legions and hurting Valkyrie from such a distance? He couldn’t help but feel they had to turn back before something came up from the deep and swallowed them all in its maw.
Sabre, have the other legions reported anything strange? He asked.
Sabre adjusted the shoulder strap of his rifle and held a hand to the bead in his ear. It was a small communications device, one that held a microphone to pick up his voice and a receiver to hear those of others. On his wrist guard there was a range of buttons, each designed to adjust the volume, channel or type of communication he could send.
He sent a message to the commanders of the legions on the flanks where their reports would be more telling. After a few moments, he had an answer. “The 505th under the Apostle Gaia report nothing, my Lord. Nor do the 101st with Nightingale.”
Lupus didn’t like that response. It irked him. Nothing? He turned his head to look at his old friend and his eyes almost bore into the commander with fret and consternation. This isn’t right, Sabre. It stinks of Paroxia.
Sabre couldn’t hold his gaze for long, even if he was the single most familiar legionnaire to him and looked ahead into the city where only the inexplicable stillness awaited them. “I agree, my Lord. What would you have us do?” he asked.
Lupus joined Sabre in his watch of the distant city centre. We have to advance. If there is a trap, they will either spring it or they will not, but that is not our choice to make; it is theirs. We go forward as planned. There are people left alive and it is our duty to save them. Tell the commanders to remain wary. The enemy could be hiding anywhere and perhaps today we will learn how apt the name ‘Phantom’ really is Lupus replied.
He was sure he didn’t need to tell the legionnaires who had been fighting this war for longer than he could remember how to fight and what to do, but it at least helped to take the edge off his concerns for their security. As they continued down the street, he couldn’t help but feel that he was about to lose a lot more than he ever had before.
ARCADIUS HEFTED A small section of wall away from a mound of wreckage. Underneath was a square piece of paper, simple enough in design but he was drawn to it all the same. It was a picture of something, but there was a thick layer of dust covering its surface. He wiped it away with his fingers, uncaring of the way it dirtied his gloves. He was glad to have done it, because the photo he now held in his hands reminded him why the Guardians were even fighting this war.
The picture was of a couple, a male and female human that had resided in this very part of the city, it seemed. They were hugging each other in a warm embrace, the woman’s face cuddled up against the man’s chest. She was smiling somewhat shyly, yet with pride and happiness emanating from her expression. The man’s eyes spoke of care and love.
Arcadius realised that despite their own, violent history, the human race was astonishing. How could a species know so much hate, yet feel so much joy? Then he considered there was a balance to everything and if there was an extreme in one direction, there was an opposite as well.
Did the couple still love one another when the Phantoms came? He wondered. Did they embrace one last time when their friends and family were killed around them, or did the Corruption get to them too? Pheia wasn’t far from Colossi, so it could have been more than possible…but he begged with his heart that their fates had been better than that.
“Arcadius, come on” Sulla called to him further ahead in the street. She had seen him stop to investigate the ruins and the look on her face was unmistakably one of impatience. “The Lion advances and you want to stay behind?”
Before he could answer a voice came over the comm-device in his ear. It was the commander. “Legionnaires, move up and form ranks. We have encountered an obstacle and we can march no further. Prepare a defensive line”.
Although the instruction was vague and alluded to little, the 617th were masters of intuition and independence. They always knew how to organise themselves with the smallest degree of command, so there was very little reason for the officers to have to guide them. Discipline was rife amongst all the legions, but it was especially ingrained with the 617th, allowing an adaptation to any development in battle to be quick and painless. At least, it had always been that way in the past. Arcadius suspected this war could change that.
He joined the ranks of advancing legionnaires. There were two thousand of them
left in the 617th, all moving towards the same position. It was fortunate that the city streets were so expansive; it was not because the humans had boisterously large vehicles, but rather from so much commerce being on the fringes of the Empire where a dense population of traders and scientists resided in the city. Arcadius was impressed to see that even two Warhounds could fit side by side along the road without any hindrance.
“So, what do you think it is?” Sulla asked, slowing so that he could catch up with her. It grained on him that her moods and tones changed so quickly; one moment she seemed annoyed with him, as though he were a child, the next she was so friendly she seemed a different person.
They trailed behind a tank from the 21st. It reminded him of Scipio, a Guardian from that same legion, who he had come to fight alongside more times than he could remember during the Purge Crusades. He wondered where his friend was today. Was he still alive? Had he been killed before they entered the city, or was he sitting in the very Warhound Arcadius followed now? There was precious little way to tell until after the battle.
“I couldn’t say,” Arcadius eventually replied.
Sulla looked at him, holding her rifle in both hands and frowned. “That’s a weak answer, Arcadius. You should at least take a guess”.
He continued onward, paying her little attention. A moment later, out of politeness, he decided to answer. “Perhaps we’ve finally found an enemy big enough for all of us to kill, or maybe there’s a pile of their dead blocking our path” he suggested.
“Because the Steel Idols weren’t enough, eh?” Sulla laughed at the idea, but her upbeat mood was short lived as a legionnaire from the 77th Fireblades came past them. “It’s a little worse than that; it’s natural, too”. He didn’t wait for them to reply and moved between the two Warhounds in front, a squad following him closely.
“How does he know when we don’t?” Sulla complained. “If the Fireblades can see through tanks, we deserve an upgrade too”.
“I imagine he’s an officer, Sulla. Didn’t you see the three flames on his shoulder guard?” he said, but she ignored him.
Just as quick as they vanished from sight, another voice came across the comms network. This time the voice was sterner and full of frustration; Olympus, no doubt. “Break rank and reform on the ridge. Armour units to fall behind while infantry digs in. 617th to hold the centre, 10th and 77th to take the flanks”
Looking to one another both as curious as the other, Arcadius and Sulla broke rank upon the order and strode forward. Legionnaires all around were doing the same and as the Warhound veered off to the right to take its position, their line of sight was cleared and they finally saw what the Fireblade had been talking about.
As the legions spread out, it was patently clear why the entire battle line had to halt. The buildings of the street had either been blown to dust, or had simply never been there, but now there was a gap in the street running horizontal to them so long that it ran beyond his sight in both directions. It was so wide that even with the bridging vehicles it would take them hours to get across.
“Spread out! Form a line. Warhounds in front, infantry behind!” Olympus reiterated at the top of his voice as he walked between the rows of legionnaires. As he strode past Arcadius and Sulla, neither of them able to draw their gaze from the canyon, its dark depths convincingly bottomless, he stood and made an example of their distraction. “What’s wrong, never seen a hole before?!” he shouted at them and then even louder “FORM UP!”
Snapping out of it, they broke to the left and joined a group of legionnaires setting up an AGG-II nest, its muzzle overlooking the rift. A Warhound wheeled itself as close to the edge as it could get without falling in, despite the orders to stay back. Maybe that one was Scipio’s, Arcadius thought to himself. Still, should the enemy decide to show up, its cannons would be more useful at the fore should they turn and run.
On the other side, most of the residential towers still remained intact and defiant of destruction. With the chasm where it was, the city was divided in two, the part denied to them the antithesis of the devastation they were forced to remain in.
Arcadius found himself staring into the abyss, where he could determine no end to the gloom. It was a colossal crevice, wide enough that nothing short of a toppled tower block could bridge it in one go. Though, given the way the rubble seemed to group into piles leaning towards the gap at its edge, he began to doubt that possibility. The darkness of the gorge turned to navy and then to midnight before becoming a black so fierce it defied all shades. It went ever onwards until even the shadows seemed grey in comparison.
“Not quite the foe I expected…” he whispered aloud to no-one in particular.
IN ORBIT, THE enemy was a much more real and present menace. The arrival of the three Oblivion class Phantom ships had cut a swathe through the legion fleet, cutting apart destroyers with insulting ease and rivalling the combined power of the Blackstars.
On the bridge of the Luminon, Captain Orion fought fiercely to maintain his calm in the face of a threat he hadn’t faced since the days of Colossi. Thankfully, without great difficulty, he and the captains of the other Blackstars had managed to rally the fleet into a defensive formation before the enemy ships could spearhead their position.
The Guardian destroyers had peeled off at Orion’s command to finish the last of the Phantom vessels that had been circling Pheia. Though the Blackstar captains held the same rank, Orion was considered first among equals purely through his association with the Lion. With their speed, the destroyers were able to outrun the guns of the Oblivion ships before taking overwhelming casualties and were no longer pursued, the Phantom leviathans turning instead to the Blackstars who would prove to be a better match.
The Phantoms had brought the three Oblivions in so inexorably and without much care that the Resolute had been overwhelmed and annihilated before its kin could move in to support. Orion was determined not to let that happen to another vessel, but his hopes were being drained every passing minute as the engagement continued to drag on without any clear conclusion. Despite being outnumbered three to one, the three Oblivions could suffer the odds. But for how long? Orion wondered.
Nevertheless, where the Phantoms had bewildering firepower to bring to bear, the Guardians had vastly superior shields and the battle soon became a conflict of attrition. The Luminon had faced off against one of the three brutes alone briefly, taking a ferocious broadside to its starboard side before the Everlasting came to her aid and, slipping between the two ships, took the brunt of the Phantom vessel’s blinding volleys against her untarnished armour. Then, flanking the enemy vessel from the other side, the Burning Spectre joined the fray.
Withdrawing from the fight to lick its wounds, the Luminon watched on as the two Blackstars hammered the Oblivion with salvo after punishing salvo. However, the Phantoms had not been entirely negligent in sacrificing shielding for weapon strength; the armour was outrageously thick and resilient to all but the most devastating legionary weapons.
“Captain, the enemy vessel is sending out Reaper squadrons! There are hundreds of them, Sire” Zeno called out.
Though the Blackstars of the 10th and 77th had come to relieve the Luminon from the battle, Orion was determined not to let them fight the Oblivion on their own. “Bring our fighters in to support. If we don’t add our Voidhawks to the Everlasting and Burning Spectre’s own, they won’t last long” Orion commanded.
Zeno bobbed his head in acknowledgement. “Diverting squadrons three through seventeen…” he said calmly.
Orion knew his fellow captains had scores of their own fighter squadrons already flowing out to counteract the Phantom bombers, but he didn’t want to take any risks. They had to overwhelm the enemy with everything they had and leave no room for chance. The Reaper bombers could be fatal to any ship in large groups and the only way to cull them quickly enough was to outnumber and crush the squadrons before they could do any damage.
A loud, wailing klaxon suddenly filled t
he bridge with noise. Only Orion knew instantly what it meant. “Brace for impact!” he screamed, anticipating what was about to happen.
The whole of the Luminon shook violently, a movement that belied its gigantic, rigid structure. A salvo of Phantom torpedoes had struck its portside hull, somehow bypassing the shields to collide with and dissolve whole sections of armour plating.
“What the vecq was that?!” Orion yelled. “Where are my shields?”
“Shields are down, Captain. Working on it…” a female legionnaire answered, unnervingly composed given the shock everyone else was in.
“What took them down?” he replied. “Get me all remaining Voidhawks; bring them in for anti-munitions defence”. It was one thing to support his fellow captains, but he wouldn’t be able to do that if his own vessel was blown to smithereens.
“Yes, Captain” Zeno said.
“There was a pulse of some kind embedded in the missile warheads. Our radar only picked up the signal as they hit the shields” the woman from before explained. When Orion finally managed to becalm his throne, a dozen different warning messages flittering up for his attention, he saw that it was Felix. How had he not recognised her soft, stoic voice before he saw her face?
He couldn’t let that get to him now; he had an enemy stupid enough to attack him to kill. “Find me the bastard ship that hit us” Orion demanded, bringing up a hologram of the battle at the pedestal near his throne.
Two of the Oblivion vessels were surrounded by Blackstars, with the third approaching his own and unleashing its fearsome weaponry. Another Blackstar, the Nighthunter, trailed behind it but did not attack. What the hell are they doing? Orion thought.
As he tried to work out his sister ship’s plan, he had an idea. “Divert all power from main batteries to the shields. Keep defence turrets up. Present our damaged flank completely to the enemy” he said.
The Deian War: Vermillion's Apostles Page 37